January 15, 2025: Volume XCIII, No. 2

FEATURING 314 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children’s, and YA Books

IMANI PERRY’S EXQUISITE BLUES RIFF

The award-winning author traces the color blue through Black history

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

COMING ATTRACTIONS

THE NEW YEAR can be a bittersweet time. Amid the optimistic resolutions and hopeful expectations comes the book lover’s nagging self-reproach: What about all the books from last year that I never got to?

Still on my to-be-read list from 2024 are a number of titles, including the novels Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez and Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly and nonfiction such as John Ganz’s When the Clock Broke: Con Men , Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s and Cher: The Memoir, Part One (perhaps I should wait for Part Two and just binge the whole thing).

But enough regrets! This issue of Kirkus Reviews features our Spring 2025 Preview, and the editors

have harvested a bumper crop of new and forthcoming books—100 in all, across the categories of fiction, nonfiction, picture books, middle grade, and young adult. Once you get a look at these gorgeous covers and tantalizing titles (full reviews are available on our website), we think you’ll be ready to turn the page on 2024 and dive into the new year’s bounty. Here are a handful that are already on my upgraded TBR:

Shattered: A Memoir by Hanif Kureishi (Ecco/ HarperCollins, Feb. 4): I’ve been a fan of Kureishi since the release of the film My Beautiful Laundrette (for which he wrote the screenplay) and the publication of his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia . So I was horrified when, in 2022, I saw on social media that

Frequently Asked Questions: www.kirkusreviews.com/about/faq

Fully Booked Podcast: www.kirkusreviews.com/podcast/

Advertising Opportunities: www.kirkusreviews.com/book-marketing

Submission Guidelines: www.kirkusreviews.com/about/publisher-submission-guidelines

Subscriptions: www.kirkusreviews.com/magazine/subscription

Newsletters: www.kirkusreviews.com

For customer service or subscription questions, please call 1-800-316-9361

he’d fallen and suffered spinal nerve damage that resulted in partial paralysis. He began to dictate reflections on his condition (and life, generally), and these form the basis for his new memoir. Our starred review praises its “grace, dignity, and black humor.”

The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe by Nancy Goldstone (Little, Brown; Feb. 25): Biographer Goldstone has established a cottage industry writing about the women royals of Great Britain and Europe, including Marie Antoinette and Mary, Queen of Scots. With her latest book, she turns her attention to two lesser-known but equally fascinating 19th-century figures. Our starred review calls it a “richly detailed, entertaining dual biography.”

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (Pantheon, March 4): In my last column, I wrote about the resurgence of dystopian fiction in the wake of the U.S. presidential election. Here’s a title

that would have fit right in. The latest novel by the author of The Moor’s Account and The Other Americans envisions a future America where everyone is being continuously surveilled—so far, so normal—even in their dreams. Our starred review calls it an “engrossing and troubling dystopian tale.”

The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor (Europa, April 4): Here’s a pick that cleverly does double duty. I’ll check one book off my yet uncompleted 2023 list by first reading My Father’s House, the previous entry in O’Connor’s projected WWII trilogy. Then I’ll be ready for this second installment continuing the story of an Irish monsignor stationed at the Vatican who orchestrates safe passage out of Nazi-occupied Rome for thousands of Jews and escaped Allied POWs. Our starred review calls it “top-notch storytelling filled with emotion and drama.”

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson TOM

Contents Spring Preview

OUR FRESH PICK

The arrival of magic forces a Cape Town girl to examine how she faces—and avoids—her intense feelings.

Interactive Content

www.laevnotes.com

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

Kindle eBook ISBN: 978-1-7343635-4-8

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

—Publishers Weekly/ BookLife Reviews

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

—Kirkus Reviews

“A wonderfully composed portrayal that could be considered narrative Art Nouveau.”

—BookTrib

Co-Chairman

HERBERT SIMON

Publisher & CEO

MEG LABORDE KUEHN mkuehn@kirkus.com

Chief Marketing Officer

SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com

Publisher Advertising & Promotions

RACHEL WEASE rwease@kirkus.com

Indie Advertising & Promotions

AMY BAIRD abaird@kirkus.com

Author Consultant

RY PICKARD rpickard@kirkus.com

Lead Designer KY NOVAK knovak@kirkus.com

Magazine Compositor

NIKKI RICHARDSON nrichardson@kirkus.com

Kirkus Editorial Senior Production Editor

ROBIN O’DELL rodell@kirkus.com

Kirkus Editorial Senior Production Editor

MARINNA CASTILLEJA mcastilleja@kirkus.com

Kirkus Editorial Production Editor

ASHLEY LITTLE alittle@kirkus.com

Copy Editors

ELIZABETH J. ASBORNO

LORENA CAMPES

NANCY MANDEL BILL SIEVER

Contributing Writers

GREGORY MCNAMEE

MICHAEL SCHAUB

Co-Chairman

MARC WINKELMAN

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

President of Kirkus Indie

CHAYA SCHECHNER cschechner@kirkus.com

Fiction Editor

LAURIE MUCHNICK lmuchnick@kirkus.com

Nonfiction Editor JOHN McMURTRIE jmcmurtrie@kirkus.com

Young Readers’ Editor LAURA SIMEON lsimeon@kirkus.com

Young Readers’ Editor

MAHNAZ DAR mdar@kirkus.com

Editor at Large MEGAN LABRISE mlabrise@kirkus.com

Senior Indie Editor DAVID RAPP drapp@kirkus.com

Indie Editor ARTHUR SMITH asmith@kirkus.com

Editorial Assistant NINA PALATTELLA npalattella@kirkus.com

Indie Editorial Assistant

DAN NOLAN dnolan@kirkus.com

Indie Editorial Assistant SASHA CARNEY scarney@kirkus.com

Mysteries Editor

THOMAS LEITCH

Contributors

Colleen Abel, Paul Allen, Stephanie Anderson, Jenny Arch, Kent Armstrong, Mark Athitakis, Colette Bancroft, Audrey Barbakoff, Robert Beauregard, Heather Berg, Ty Billman, Elizabeth Bird, Elissa Bongiorno, Nastassian Brandon, Melissa Brinn, Jessica Hoptay Brown, Justina Bruns, Cliff Burke, Ana Cackley, Kevin Canfield, Hailey Carrell, Charles Cassady, Ann Childs, Amanda Chuong, Tamar Cimenian, Carin Clevidence, Anastasia M. Collins, Adeisa Cooper, Jeannie Coutant, Kim Dare, Michael Deagler, Cathy DeCampli, Dave DeChristopher, Kathleen Deedy, Elise DeGuiseppi, John Diaz, Amanda Diehl, Anna Drake, Lisa Elliott, Joshua Farrington, Brooke Faulkner, Margherita Ferrante, Katie Flanagan, Amy Seto Forrester, Cynthia Fox, Elaina Friedman, Robbin Friedman, Nivair H. Gabriel, Elisa Gall, Laurel Gardner, Carol Goldman, Amy Goldschlager, Melinda Greenblatt, Christine Gross-Loh, Tobi Haberstroh, Dakota Hall, Alec Harvey, Yunte Huang, Julie Hubble, Ariana Hussain, Darlene Ivy, Wesley Jacques, Jessica Jernigan, Danielle Jones, Deborah Kaplan, Marcelle Karp, Lavanya Karthik, Ivan Kenneally, Akifa Khan, Colleen King, Lyneea Kmail, Maggie Knapp, Megan Dowd Lambert, Carly Lane, Chelsea Langford, Christopher Lassen, Tom Lavoie, Judith Leitch, Maya Lekach, Seth Lerer, Coeur de Lion, Patricia Lothrop, Sawyer Lovett, Mikaela W. Luke, Kyle Lukoff, Isabella Luongo, Rachel Mack, Michael Magras, Joan Malewitz, Mandy Malone, Thomas Maluck, Emmett Marshall, Michelle H Martin, Matthew May, J. Alejandro Mazariegos, Breanna McDaniel, Jeanne McDermott, Don McLeese, Kathie Meizner, Tara Mokhtari, Andrea Moran, Rhett Morgan, Jennifer Nabers, Liza Nelson, Therese Purcell Nielsen, Dan Nolan, Katrina Nye, Emilia Packard, Megan K. Palmer, Derek Parker, Sarah Parker-Lee, Hal Patnott, Warren Pederson, John Edward Peters, Christofer Pierson, Vicki Pietrus, Shira Pilarski, Carolyn Quimby, Bridget Quinn, Judy Quinn, Kristy Raffensberger, Jonah Raskin, Darryn Reams, Evelyn Renold, Nancy Thalia Reynolds, Jasmine Riel, Erica Rivera, Amy Robinson, Oisin Rowe, Sydney Sampson, Bob Sanchez, Keiko Sanders, Caitlin Savage, Meredith Schorr, Gretchen Schulz, Gene Seymour, Jerome Shea, Madeline Shellhouse, Sadaf Siddique, Linda Simon, Laurie Skinner, Wendy Smith, Christine Sneed, Margot E. Spangenberg, Allison Staley, Mathangi Subramanian, Jennifer Swanson, Jennifer Sweeney, Deborah Taylor, Eva Thaler-Sroussi, Renee Ting, Amanda Toth, Katie Vermilyea, Katie Weeks, Sara Beth West, Angela Wiley, Vanessa Willoughby, Kerry Winfrey, Marion Winik, Livia Wood, Bean Yogi, Jean-Louise Zancanella

Great reads from great minds.

Journey of Sea, Heart, and Land

Jaime Enrique Gutierrez Perez

This romantic fiction follows the story of a young man, Elias Gomez, who longs for travel around the world, discovering more than he expected, including love, friendship and dreams.

$26.99 paperback

979-8-3694-9189-8

also available in hardcover & ebook www.xlibris.com/en-au

Higher Power

My Life of Service

Michael D. Schmitz, Rev.

We all make mistakes in life. In this memoir, author Michael D. Schmitz, Rev. shares some of the experiences— good and bad—that led him to priesthood at the age of 50.

$10.99 paperback

978-1-6632-4192-4 also available in ebook www.iuniverse.com

Empowerment Against All Odds

A Fearless Female Battle for Drisdale

Christina Lim

In a world where the selfish and greedy are rewarded, this empowering tale tells about a passionate young doctor who goes above and beyond to save a suffering society.

$17.99 paperback

978-1-5437-7422-1

also available in hardcover & ebook www.partridgepublishing.com/Singapore

The Business of Possibility

Re-imagining your organisation –revealing the essence of the entrepreneur

John A. Wood

This guide points to and explains the shift oganisational leaders - and the influentionin the 21st Century, must make to create thriving and thus sustainable organisations. Read on!

$13.99 paperback

979-8-3694-9217-8

also available in hardcover & ebook www.xlibris.com/en-au

The Other Book of John Remembering My Home and Native Land

John Geen

The true story of how an uneducated boy emerged from poverty and the obscurity of an Ontario farm to realize personal and professional accomplishments.

$21.99 paperback

978-1-4897-4505-7

also available in hardcover & ebook www.liferichpublishing.com

God’s Paintbrush at Dawn Meditations and Photographs

Heather S. Coombes and Doug Tanner

Heather S. Coombes and Doug Tanner share the wonder of nature and God’s creation through quotations and photographs widely beyond the local Redlands area in Queensland, Australia.

$20.99 paperback

979-8-3694-9051-8

also available in hardcover & ebook www.xlibris.com/en-au

The Amberwood Estates: The Seniors’ Diaries

Predicting a brighter future for the elderly

Salma Hamid Hussain

This novel follows the lives of several elderly residents, with individual circumstances, as they become intertwined and endowed with hope of a better lifestyle at Amberwood Estates.

$37.99 paperback

978-1-5437-7291-3

also available in hardcover & ebook www.partridgepublishing.com/Singapore

We Don’t Catch Butterflies Anymore.....

Jennifer Rose

Three young children, one whose life, though very short, brought many blessings, and two who were left to find meaning in the death of their brother and the sadness that surrounded them.

$15.95 paperback 978-1-9822-9364-2

also available in ebook www.balboapress.com.au

SPRING PREVIEW 2025 FICTION

Whether you want to read about the past, present, or future, there are exciting books coming your way this season. Meet a 16th-century French noblewoman stranded on a Canadian island and follow a Shanghainese family through the 20th century. A paraplegic author shoots to global fame? Nnedi Okorafor gives us her life and her dystopian book. The moon really is made of cheese? John Scalzi imagines what might happen. Dig in!

The Note

Burke, Alafair | Knopf (304 pp.)

$29.00 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 9780593537084

The complex friendship among three flawed but engaging characters anchors this satisfying psychological thriller.

Hot Air

Dermansky, Marcy | Knopf (208 pp.)

$27.00 | March 18, 2025 | 9780593320907

A new Dermansky novel is like a holiday declared out of the blue.

Brother Brontë

Flores, Fernando A. | MCD/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (352 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780374604165

A stunning tale of survival and a biting critique of book bans and late capitalism.

Theft

Gurnah, Abdulrazak | Riverhead (304 pp.)

$30.00 | March 18, 2025 | 9780593852606

A tightly constructed family drama with surprising complications.

A Season of Light

Iromuanya, Julie | Algonquin (256 pp.)

$29.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781643755519

An affecting, observant rendering of the immigrant experience in contemporary America.

Homeseeking

Chen, Karissa | Putnam (512 pp.)

$30.00 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 9780593712993

Romantic lyricism and hard-edged realism merge in this compelling novel.

Fagin the Thief

Epstein, Allison | Doubleday (336 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780385550703

Vivid characters populate a riveting narrative.

Isola

Goodman, Allegra | Dial Press (400 pp.)

$28.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780593730089

Goodman’s sweeping page turner is at once historical and modern, intimate and epic, personal and powerful.

We Do Not Part

Han Kang | Trans. by e. yaewon & Paige

Aniyah Morris | Hogarth (272 pp.)

$28.00 | Jan. 21, 2025 | 9780593595459

A mysterious novel about history and friendship offers no easy answers.

The Dream Hotel

Lalami, Laila | Pantheon (336 pp.)

$28.00 | March 4, 2025 | 9780593317600

An engrossing and troubling dystopian tale.

Nobody’s Empire

Murdoch, Stuart | HarperVia (432 pp.)

$32.00 | Jan. 21, 2025 | 9780063383456

Murdoch proves he’s as good a novelist as he is a musician.

Death of the Author

Okorafor, Nnedi | Morrow/ HarperCollins (448 pp.) | $30.00 Jan. 14, 2025 | 9780063445789

All-out Okorafor—her best yet.

Stag Dance: A Novel & Stories

Peters, Torrey | Random House (304 pp.)

$28.00 | March 11, 2025 | 9780593595640

Even when Peters’ experiments don’t pay off, it’s exciting to read an author willing to take these risks.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye

Scalzi, John | Tor (336 pp.) | $27.89 March 25, 2025 | 9780765389091

A ridiculous concept imbued with gravity, charm, humor, plausible cynicism, and pathos—and perhaps the merest touch of spite.

Darkmotherland

Upadhyay, Samrat | Soho (768 pp.)

$32.00 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 9781641294720

Dizzyingly complex and dazzlingly written, full of rewards and arch humor for the patient reader.

The Ghosts of Rome

O’Connor, Joseph | Europa Editions (400 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9798889660620

Top-notch storytelling filled with emotion and drama.

Waiting for the Long Night Moon

Peters, Amanda | Catapult (256 pp.)

$27.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781646222599

An impressive collection rooted in the grief, trauma, tradition, resilience, and hope of Indigenous peoples.

The Antidote

Russell, Karen | Knopf (432 pp.)

$30.00 | March 11, 2025 | 9780593802250

A storytelling tour de force that lives up to the promise of its name.

We Lived on the Horizon

Swyler, Erika | Atria (336 pp.)

$28.99 | Jan. 14, 2025 | 9781668049594

Singularly stunning and stunningly singular.

Beartooth

Wink, Callan | Spiegel & Grau (256 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781954118027

A novel of impeccable control and unflinching darkness. And then a glimmer of hope.

THE PLEASURES OF ANTICIPATION

IF THERE’S ANYTHING almost as exciting as reading a great new book, it’s anticipating one. There’s a lot of fiction to look forward to over the next few months, beginning with new work from two recent Nobel laureates.

Han Kang’s We Do Not Part (trans. by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris; Hogarth, Jan. 21) is narrated by Kyungha, who’s recently moved into an apartment in Seoul and has barely been sleeping. When a friend asks her to travel to Jeju Island to take care of a pet bird, she takes off in the

middle of a snowstorm. This “mysterious novel about history and friendship offers no easy answers,” according to our starred review.

Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Theft (Riverhead, March 18) takes place in colonial Tanzania in the early 1960s, a time of great change. A young man, Karim, lives with his mother, Raya, and her husband, Haji, an uneasy household even before the arrival of Haji’s relative, Badar, whom they treat as a servant—and then accuse of theft. Our starred review

calls it “a tightly constructed family drama with surprising complications.”

Nobody’s Empire (HarperVia, Jan. 21) is the first novel from Stuart Murdoch, leader of the Scottish band Belle and Sebastian. It tells the story of Stephen, 23, who has myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (as did Murdoch in his early 20s). He listens to music in Glasgow, hangs out with his friends, and then takes a trip to California. “Nothing much happens in this novel,” says our starred review. “But that’s what makes it so accomplished.…[This is a] compassionate, sweet, beautifully written novel.”

Julie Iromuanya’s A Season of Light (Algonquin, Feb. 4) examines the scars passed down through the generations of a Nigerian family in Florida. When 276 Nigerian schoolgirls are kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in 2014, attorney Fidelia Ewerike, haunted by his sister’s disappearance during the Biafran War in the late 1960s, decides to lock his 16-year-old daughter, Amara, in her bedroom to protect her. Our starred review says, “The interweaving nightmares and yearnings of these characters are evoked with empathy, tenderness, and intensely lyrical prose.”

Allison Epstein is the latest author to write from the perspective of a minor character in a classic novel; her Fagin the Thief (Doubleday, Feb. 25) presents Dickens’ criminal ringleader and exploiter of orphans from Oliver Twist as a victim of antisemitism in Victorian London who, at 16, is left an orphan himself. “Epstein captures the bravado and vulnerabilities of [Fagin’s] motley crew of orphans, and the gritty ambience of the alleys, cellars, and seedy pubs they inhabit.…Vivid characters populate a riveting narrative,” according to our starred review.

In Emily St. James’ Woodworking (Crooked Media Reads/Zando, March 4), 35-year-old Erica Skyberg is still living and teaching high school English as Mr. Skyberg, telling no one her secret until she meets 17-year-old Abigail Hawkes, a new student who’s outspokenly trans—but also wants to disappear into the woodwork, to be seen as just one of the kids. “St. James’ plot moves like a Shakespeare comedy,” according to our starred review. “Some contrivances, yes, but all in the service of portraying the prismatic variations of the characters here.”

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.

LAURIE MUCHNICK

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

A woman is detained under an American regime where even dreams are being surveilled.

Lalami’s stellar fifth novel concerns Sara Hussein, a Moroccan American woman who’s returning home from a conference in London to her family in L.A. when she’s held by the Risk Assessment Administration, a federal agency that uses biometric data to assess citizens’ “pre-crime” tendencies. She’s done nothing troubling, but her “risk score” is high enough to force a stay at an all-woman “retention center” that’s effectively a prison. Though her stay is supposed to be brief, the smallest hiccups lead to extensions, and the private-prison firm contracted by RAA charges extortionate rates for

everything from emails to clean sheets; Sara and the other retainees are also expected to work to lower their scores, labor that partly involves feeding AI models. There are echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale here—as Margaret Atwood does in that book, Lalami builds a convincing near-future dystopia out of current events, and Sara plots a similar small-scale resistance. But Lalami’s scenario is unique and well-imagined— interspersed report sheets, transcripts, and terms-ofservice lingo have a realistic, poignant lyricism that exposes the cruel bureaucracy in which Sara is trapped. (Not for nothing does she have a Borges book checked out of the library.)

The Dream Hotel

And the story exposes the particular perniciousness of big tech’s capacity to exploit our every movement, indeed practically every thought. It’s a fiction-workshop cliche that dreams are unnecessary, but here they play a crucial role in the plot, opening up questions of

what we’re sacrificing in the name of convenience and safety. The novel’s striking message is summarized in Sara’s retort to a bureaucrat who tells her the data doesn’t lie: “It doesn’t tell the truth, either.”

An engrossing and troubling dystopian tale.

A novel suffused with heart, feeling, devastation, and hope.

THE EDGE OF WATER

Kirkus Star

33 Place Brugmann

Austen, Alice | Grove (368 pp.) | $28.00 March 11, 2025 | 9780802164087

T he dramatically intertwined fates of the residents of a Beaux Arts apartment building in Brussels, 1939-43

The fiction debut of filmmaker and playwright Austen, this novel opens with a notarized roster of building residents, from the refugee seamstress Masha Balyayeva in the 5th floor maid’s room to the Sauvin and Raphaël families in 4L and 4R, to the building manager and preparer of this list, Jan Everard, on the ground floor. In an impressive display of Austen’s storytelling skill, about a dozen of these individuals become point-of-view characters, unfurling an unusually colorful and intelligent, poignant and rich World War II novel, a special treat for the many fans of that genre. “To me, architecture is an idea about how we should live. A good architect creates a system of communication and relationships,” says Francois Sauvin, architect, in conversation with his neighbor, the art dealer Leo Raphaël— an idea that resonates through the novel in many ways. These two are the parents of Charlotte Sauvin, a gifted though colorblind painting student, and Julian Raphaël, aspiring filmmaker doing maths at Cambridge, childhood best friends and would-be lovers, if only Charlotte hadn’t met someone else at art school. In any case, all these lives are about to be derailed by the arrival of

the Nazis, and as the novel opens in 1939, the Raphaël family has already disappeared overnight, along with their important painting collection (the mystery of the location of the paintings is one of myriad subplots Austen manages brilliantly). As the novel rotates among its plethora of firstperson narrators, each with a distinctive voice, from the wry and cultured Sauvin to the horrible busybody Miss Hobert in 3R, the issue of how to live in terrible times is explored with insight, compassion, and steeliness. Among many ancillary pleasures is the ongoing attempt of the characters to make sense of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and from his writing arises imagery that gives the novel’s fabric a furbelow of magical realism. Excellent banter also leavens the mix. In an exchange between horrible Hobert and architect Sauvin: “‘If I were you—’ she began. ‘And thank goodness, you’re not. If life has taught me anything, it’s that we need fewer men in this world.’”

After a somewhat decorous launch, the charming characters get themselves a thrilling, moving plot. Crème de la WWII novel.

The Edge of Water

Bankole, Olufunke Grace Tin House (272 pp.) | $17.95 paper Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781963108057

Nigeria and the U.S., makes full use of her experiences in telling the story of Esther, a Yoruba mother, and her daughter, Amina. Esther’s marriage and motherhood start with violence, and together mother and daughter weather abuse, divorce, betrayals, gossip, and economic pressure, their struggles punctuated by occasional successes. After winning the visa lottery and settling in the U.S., Amina becomes a single mother herself, and learns that living in the U.S. isn’t an easy path. The story is told via Amina and Esther’s letters to each other, interspersed with narration by Iyanifa, “the conduit of the Oracle of Knowledge.” Iyanifa’s sections add broader historical and spiritual perspective to the story; early on, she shares a prophecy of the tragedies to come. Even with dark predictions hanging overhead, this book is readable and fun—when Amina goes to an internet cafe to work on her visa lottery application, patrons are admonished: “No Naija Prince Email Scams!! Stop Embarrassing Your Nation!!!” The setting and relationships are vividly written, with details that evoke the social and economic pressures of Nigerian life. Each character is given their due, with full portraits of their histories, passions, and desires. The book becomes darker when Amina’s dream comes true—adjustment to life as an immigrant and single mother is hard, and then Hurricane Katrina comes to New Orleans, putting Amina and her daughter in an untenable and dangerous situation. When things change irrevocably, the story feels hopeless, until those who remain start to act on the love they still carry. A global, multigenerational novel suffused with heart, feeling, devastation, and hope.

A Nigerian woman moves to New Orleans and faces the terror of Hurricane Katrina. The author, who was born in Maryland and grew up in both

For more fiction reviews, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh

Brown, Colwill | Henry Holt (336 pp.)

$27.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781250342881

The complicated relationship among three Doncaster lasses. Written in savory Yorkshire dialect (perfectly comprehensible to non-locals after a page or two), Brown’s first novel follows the trio from age 11 in 1998, when they bond on the first day of “big school,” through a fraught reunion in 2017, when a long-kept secret finally comes out. We begin with Rachael’s first-person recollections of a wild night out in their teens that sketches the social and emotional currents informing their interactions. Rach’s two-parent family sits at the top of the British working class, and as the girls start big school has just moved to a better neighborhood. Kel and Shaz have the “same single mums they called ‘mam,’ same state-sponsored quid-a-day [lunch] money, same missing dads.” In Rach’s view, Shaz is the tough girl who knows more and dares more, though Rach also thinks she lies about some of her escapades and isn’t afraid to say so, while Kel anxiously tries to keep the peace. When the novel switches to Shaz’s point of view, a second-person narration that reflects her alienated psychological state, we see that to her Rach is the solid, self-assured one clearly headed for better things. That’s why Shaz can’t reveal a shameful episode involving the boy Rach is dating, “cuz it’s whorish behaviour, innit.” In their world, girls are supposed to be sexually free but not “slags,” and signals are equally mixed about rising out of the working class. Is going to “uni” and getting a decent job making something of yourself, or getting above yourself? There aren’t any definite answers as Brown perceptively chronicles the shifting power dynamics of the girls’ teenage years and then their separate odysseys as Rachael becomes a teacher, Kel moves to America, and Shaz sinks

lower and lower with drugs, drink, and lousy jobs. A moving conclusion opens old wounds but suggests healing is possible for women who have meant so much to each other for so long.

A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.

Universality

Brown, Natasha | Random House (176 pp.)

$24.00 | March 4, 2025 | 9780593977309

A young journalist’s searing feature about a near-death attack at a rave on a Yorkshire farm at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic exposes the sociopolitical undercurrents of contemporary Britain. Hannah, a struggling freelance journalist, is catapulted into quasi-fame after writing a buzzy exposé. The article seeks to understand the motive behind the violent attack with a gold bar—and discovers a tangled web involving an unprincipled banker, a controversial conservative writer, and an anarchist movement. The first third of the novel is relayed via the article itself, a form which is engaging but feels, at times, somewhat basic. The rest of the book explores the fallout from the article. With the money from its success, Hannah’s been able to buy a flat, but has drifted from her university friends, who don’t respect her work or her politics. Lenny, the provocative columnist somewhat responsible for the article’s nascence, experiences a sudden mainstream popularity different from her previous position on the fringe. Brown’s novel is strongest and most compelling in its sharp analysis of social relationships, of the ways in which we understand and fail to understand one another: Hannah’s friend Martin thinks, “That was the problem with Hannah, and the thing he couldn’t reconcile in all this. She was culturally clueless, practically allergic to the zeitgeist. How had she

pulled it off?” Or when Lenny, interviewed by Martin, lashes out in a moment of viciousness: “I find that I’m leaning over to him, jeering: ‘Er, er, er... um, um, um...’ My voice is high-pitched and throaty, a cruel imitation of his stammer.” She recognizes, as soon as she’s done it, that “it was too far, too nasty.” At times, Brown’s political analysis is acute, although her characters are in danger of presenting as caricatures; Lenny, in particular, who fuels much of the antiwoke commentary, can appear a little two-dimensionally predictable, despite the book’s insistence that she defies labels constituting its own strategic predictability (“Yes to Europe, no to multiculturalism, maybe a yes to feminism? Pro-regulation, anti-affirmative action, pro-leveling up...It all comes off a little, hm, a little muddled,” the interviewer remarks).

A clever, though at times predictable, analysis of modern-day British politics.

The Californians

Castleberry, Brian | Mariner Books (336 pp.)

$28.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9780063213333

Two families navigate a century of art, commerce, and estrangement. Castleberry’s second novel opens with a would-be art heist: In 2024, Tobey Harlan, the ne’er-do-well son of a California real estate mogul, is planning to steal three paintings by Di Stiegl, an acclaimed artist who emerged in the 1980s downtown New York scene. Out of this plot spills a complex history involving the worlds of visual and fine art. Stiegl’s grandfather, Klaus von Stiegl, was a German-born film director who was in demand during the silent era; the talkies, plus a scandal or two, sidelined him until the ’60s, when he directed a TV crime drama, Brackett, starring Tobey’s grandfather. (A provocative final season, dark in the way that anticipated The Sopranos, made Klaus a critical darling and cult figure.) The

novel luxuriates in epic sprawl in the mode of Jonathan Franzen, Nathan Hill, and Garth Risk Hallberg. And it’s rich in time-shifting, stylistic flourishes; interstitial sections mimic blog-speak, Hollywood trade papers, art world chatter, and more. While the varying fates of the Harlan and Stiegl clans gets convoluted, Castleberry’s message is straightforward: Wealth facilitates art but also undermines it (a studio kills Klaus’ magnum opus, Di loses years to a coke habit), and can be even more ruinous to families. Percy, Klaus’ son and Di’s father, exemplifies the wayward, money-grubbing personality that threatens to undermine the family. And Castleberry suggests that as a culture, we’re subsisting on an inheritance and nearing bankruptcy: “Did anyone actually create anything anymore? Weren’t we past all that to just pure consumption?” This novel, of course, is determined to serve as a counterweight to that idea, even if stuffed nearly to the breaking point. An admirably ambitious, if knotty, all-American saga.

Missing in Flight

Cole, Audrey J. | Thomas & Mercer (285 pp.) $16.99 paper | March 1, 2025 | 9781662520709

A baby goes missing on a flight from Alaska to New York. About two hours into her flight home from a visit to her father, Makayla Rossi feels a sharp pain in her bladder and realizes that she desperately needs a bathroom break. But her fussy infant son, Liam, is finally snoozing peacefully. So rather than taking him with her and risk having him howl for the remaining five hours of the trip, she goes it alone. Naturally, she comes back to find Liam’s bassinet empty. Makayla alerts the cabin crew, who search the plane fruitlessly. The reader is teased with the usual missingin-flight possibilities: Did someone steal Liam? Is Makayla, whose mother had

transient global amnesia, suffering from a similar memory loss? Is she making the whole thing up? But anyone who wants answers has a while to wait. Cole seesaws back and forth between the crisis in the cabin and several innings of casual chit-chat between the pilot and copilot, and every bit of dialogue sounds exactly the same. Even Special Agent Castillo, once the flight crew decides to notify the authorities, speaks in the same pedantic, expository way as the frantic mother and harried flight attendants. It isn’t until Makayla’s husband, Jack, finally gets looped in that the heat gets turned up, and from there, the narrative gets flat-out bizarre. What starts as just another routine, midair missing baby hunt turns into a wild-ass killing spree that will make air travel seem even less appealing than the airlines’ new pricing and fee structures already have. Nope.

Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine

Collins, Callie | Doubleday (240 pp.)

$28.00 | March 18, 2025 | 9780385548847

A n atmospheric slice of the 1970s Austin music scene, with realityadjacent characters and settings. Based on extensive research, Collins’ debut novel breathes life into a scenario that occurred before her birth, but is within memory for a healthy chunk of her book’s likely audience. Set at the Rush Creek Saloon, which mirrors the long-gone Soap Creek Saloon, its central character is Doug Moser, modeled closely on the late country-blues musician Doug Sahm, who lived for a time in a house in the woods behind the bar, as does his namesake character. Other places and people, notably the Armadillo World Headquarters and Joe Ely, appear without aliases. Over this historic scaffolding, Collins has wrapped a novel in the voice of three characters:

Doug; Deanna, half of the couple who owns and tends the bar; and Steven, a very in-your-face 19-year-old fan whose intrusive presence drives the most dramatic plotline. Unfortunately, Steven’s story is not the most successful aspect of the book, though little can be said about it without spoilers. A more effective subplot focuses on the attraction between Doug and Deanna, both of whom are married—sizzling, though unresolved. Also intriguing is the relationship between Doug and Joe Ely, whose success Doug simultaneously envies and tries to leverage. The daughter of a drummer who was part of this scene back in the day, Collins writes well about music and does a fine job of bringing the bar to life in all its detail, from the plugging-in of the neon star out front to the clipping of the Fritos onto their display stand. “We’d leave the back door wide open, and the side door too, and people would cluster around them frenzied, burst out into the parking lot like herds of animals, trying to catch any kind of breeze.” She does not romanticize the excessive drinking and drugging that was endemic to this scene, and the nasty bar fights they led to among a half-redneck, half-hippie crowd are here in force. Though the book is generally true to its period, a nitpicker must note that the word janky, used several times, was not common slang until almost 1990. The scent of spilled beer and overflowing ashtrays practically wafts from the pages. Just tell your phone to play Doug Sahm.

Gurnah, Abdulrazak | Riverhead (304 pp.)

$30.00 | March 18, 2025 | 9780593852606

Nobel Prize–winning novelist Gurnah delivers a story whose title reverberates throughout. Raya is a beauty who, having caught the

Kirkus Star Theft

eye of a revolutionary soldier in the colonial Tanzania of the early 1960s, is instead married off quickly to an older man whom she does not love and who “was relentless in his demand for her body.” She finally leaves him, taking her 3-year-old son, Karim, with her. He is mostly an afterthought; as Gurnah writes, somberly, “Karim’s mother treated him like a possession she was fond of but the details of whose welfare she was happy to leave to her parents.” Finding new love, she leaves Karim with them; only two years later is he invited to visit her in her new home in Dar es Salaam. Without much ambition, he finally moves in with Raya and her husband, Haji, to attend university, a household arrangement augmented by the arrival of a young man, Badar, a villager who, though a kinsman of Haji’s, is treated as a servant. Badar is uncomplaining, though he harbors a hatred for the father who abandoned him: “He could not remember when he started to think of him as a shithead,” but the feeling runs deep. An accusation of theft shatters the uneasy peace of the household, unfounded though it is; it will not be the first time that Badar comes under suspicion, although it is the late-blossoming and suddenly career-minded Karim who abuses Badar’s trust—and that’s just the start of it. No word is wasted as Gurnah steadily subverts the good will he has built for Karim and reveals Badar to be less passive than he appears. Unexpectedly, the story even has a happy ending, if only for Badar—and given the trials he’s put through by hapless Western tourists, arrogant aid workers, and his own family, that’s a relief.

A tightly constructed family drama with surprising complications.

A long-lost manuscript from pioneering writer Zora Neale Hurston.

THE LIFE OF HEROD THE GREAT

The Life of Herod the Great

Hurston, Zora Neale | Amistad/ HarperCollins (368 pp.) | $28.99

Jan. 7, 2025 | 9780063161009

A long-lost manuscript from the pioneering folklorist, anthropologist, and student of Black history. Following on Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Hurston spent years studying the life of Herod the Great, the famed Jewish leader. Her editor rejected the resulting book, which wound up in a trunk and then, following her death, in flames— the trunk burned by a crew hired to clear out her house—and miraculously rescued by a passing sheriff’s deputy who knew she was a writer. Hurston had two apparent purposes: She wished to chronicle “the 3,000 years struggle of the Jewish people for democracy and the rights of man,” and she saw in Herod’s alliance with Rome a metaphor for the Cold War struggle between Russia and the United States. While many ancient sources portray Herod as a tyrant, anticipating the fiercer denunciation of his son as the scourge of both Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, Hurston builds on other accounts; in particular, she rejects the charge that a monstrous Herod ordered “the massacre of the innocents,” instead insisting that “he was beloved by the nation.” The Herod of her story is a smolderingly handsome man suitable for a romance novel, which earns him the attention of a lustful and decidedly bad Mariamne, who repaid his blandishments by plotting his death, bringing it instead on herself: “Mariamne was dead. Dead. Never to burn

away annoyances with her hot, soft body.” Hurston sometimes writes with a kind of high-gothic-romance seriousness (“My own father is at fault for beseeching Caesar to reinstate this treacherous Hyrcanus in the priesthood”), mixing in charming if perhaps not quite appropriate Southernisms (“Cleopatra knew more ways to kill a cat besides choking it to death on butter”). Altogether, the manuscript, while an interesting historical document, lacks the polish of Hurston’s classic books, such as Dust Tracks on a Road and Their Eyes Were Watching God

Not Hurston at her best, though completists will certainly take interest in her story.

The Passenger Seat

Khurana, Vijay | Biblioasis (240 pp.) | $16.95 paper | March 4, 2025 | 9781771966306

Two high school friends fall into a rite of poisonous passage toward toxic masculinity in this debut novel. Alvin and Teddy have a complicated relationship, both complementary and competitive. Alvin is the leader, yet also a loner, with Teddy his only follower. Alvin lives in a world of video games and internet conspiracies; he’s likely an incel, though that’s not a term the novel uses. The narrative refers to them as “boys-or-men,” but it’s unclear whether this is how they think of themselves. Psychological perspective is tricky throughout the narrative, because the novel spends plenty of time inside one or the other

For more by Abdulrazak Gurnah, visit Kirkus online.

of their heads, switching back and forth, while some of the insights might seem to transcend the maturity of either. Neither comes from a happy home, and there is no evidence in the novel that any man and woman can have an enduring, enriching relationship. Teddy has other friends, even a girlfriend, but he somehow needs Alvin—needs his nerve, his impulsiveness, but perhaps mostly needs him because Alvin has a driver’s license and Teddy does not. Alvin persuades Teddy to hit the road and leave their homes forever. Teddy convinces Alvin that they should buy a rifle, which, sure as Chekhov, will prove pivotal. (It’s Teddy who has this license.) The titular passenger seat is Teddy’s, though they will eventually switch off. As Alvin asks himself, “What would either of them be without the other to define him?” Even with each other, just who are they and where are they going? Their pilgrimage seems to carry the weight of modern masculinity on its shoulders, without any lightening of warmth or humor. A coda focusing on two other friends, middle-aged and purposeless, suggests that the going doesn’t get any easier once boys become men.

A novel for those who like their grimness unadulterated by any glimmer of redemption.

Kirkus Star

The Umbrella Maker’s Son: A Novel of WWII

Lending, Tod | Harper/HarperCollins (400 pp.)

$18.99 paper | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780063413849

A young man and the people he loves struggle to survive the Nazi occupation of Poland. On September 1, 1939, the first day the bombs fall, Reuven Berkovitz and Zelda Abramovitch are in love and dream of a life together. Reuven helps his papa, Lev,

an umbrella maker in Kraków who takes great pride in his work. But soon, German soldiers occupy Poland and force Papa to hand his shop over to a non-Jew. “Suddenly,” the 17-year-old Reuven says, “Papa and I were no longer umbrella makers. We were nothing.” The vise closes quickly on Jewish society, and “within nine months, the Germans had stolen our business, belongings, and identities.” Then the Jews of Kraków are confined within heavily guarded walls while the rest of the city goes about its daily business. Reuven has one advantage: Due to his fair coloring, he can easily pass for gentile. But the two lovers are separated early on, and Reuven’s unflinching desire to find Zelda is the engine that drives this compelling and heartbreaking debut novel. Once he witnesses the murder of his family, grief becomes his “constant companion.…No matter how trapped [he] felt in [his] prison of melancholy, she was the one thing worth living for.” For a while, he survives by working on a farm and pretending he’s mute. Later, he’s on a work crew assigned to smash headstones then dig up and burn decaying bodies in a Jewish cemetery so a road can be built through it. The calculated and often casual cruelty is painful to read, even for those familiar with the dark history of antisemitism and the Nazi thugocracy. Reuven’s experiences feel so immediate that we want to cry with him. Will he ever find Zelda? Will they ever emerge together on the other side of the war? Will hope finally triumph over horror? A sympathetic Catholic man speaks to Reuven of a “memory now braided, like the bread, with love and grief.” Author Lending’s great-grandfather was an umbrella maker in Warsaw in the late 1800s and served as his inspiration. At once well told and ineffably sad. Read it but keep your tissues handy.

Ring

Lerner, Michelle | Bancroft Press (218 pp.)

$22.95 paper | Jan. 14, 2025 | 9781610886284

Do people need to remember how to live before they decide to die?

In a series of episodic sketches, Lerner’s narrator, Lee, recounts the feelings of depression and apathy they experienced after the death of their beloved daughter, Rachel, as well as the other disabling effects of their complicated grief. Lee, who is nonbinary, raised Rachel with their wife, Susan, who approached the ambiguous circumstances surrounding Rachel’s death differently than Lee, by methodically seeking out information and certainty. After Susan moves out of the family’s Madison, Wisconsin, home, Lee, frozen by psychic pain and in retreat from almost all social interaction, seeks a resolution to their seemingly intractable grief and embarks upon a journey to the Seven Pillars Sanctuary in remote, snowbound northern Canada. The Seven Pillars Society, formed as a religious group, provides therapeutic intervention for people who can’t see the sense in continuing their lives. Each “pillar” represents a “journey through a layer of the self, where the seventh pillar was the end of the line…” The end of the line for some who seek shelter at the sanctuary is a final, solo walk out into the snow, providing a supported and informed end to a life of suffering. It is this resolution that Lee seeks. With a sympathetic and thoughtful delivery, Lerner portrays Lee’s experiences and conveys the complexities and nuances of assisted suicide. At the sanctuary, the

At once well told and ineffably sad. Read it but keep your tissues handy.

THE UMBRELLA MAKER’S SON

issue is approached as a matter of assisted living, where the residents receive training in nutrition, meditation, yoga, and other therapeutic interventions— including the companionship of a dog named Ring, in Lee’s case. Although the final decision about reaching the seventh pillar will be Lee’s, the sanctuary staff ensures that anyone seeking shelter there knows how to live before choosing to take the final walk into the snow. Touching and thought-provoking, with potential triggers for some readers.

The Manor of Dreams

Li, Christina | Avid Reader Press (352 pp.)

$28.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781668051726

A Chinese American Upstairs, Downstairs meets Fall of the House of Usher meets young queer love Li’s adult fiction debut revolves around the death of an Oscarwinning Chinese actress named Vivian Yin. When asked to attend the reading of the will, Nora Deng, the granddaughter of Yin’s long-dead housekeeper and groundskeeper, is shocked to learn that Vivian made a last-minute change to the document, leaving her stately but spooky California home not to her own descendants but to Nora’s mother, Elaine Deng. WTF? Lucille Wang, Vivian’s daughter, is having none of it. Though the lawyer reports that her mother told him, “My daughters can’t have this house. It will ruin them,” Lucille is certain that Elaine forced Vivian to change her will, then killed her. She prevails on Elaine to let her; her troubled sister, Rennie; and her daughter, Madeline, stay in the house for a week to get Vivian’s things together and “process” what’s happening. Despite her intense hatred of the Yins, Elaine agrees, though she says she and Nora will be staying there, too. (One of many things not to think about too hard.) As that week rolls forward, a parallel timeline in the past unfolds the story of Vivian Yin’s life and marriage, revealing her to be

both the victim and perpetrator of long-buried misdeeds. Though, in the present, the two families couldn’t be more at odds, Nora Deng and Madeline Wang discover they feel a connection to one another, one which only the reader knows is eerily predestined. And let’s not forget the immense, overgrown, long-untended garden, a very serious little shop of horrors. Is there too much stuffed into this novel? Are there a number of dubious plot elements? Are there any truly credible characters? Picky, picky, picky. Packed with gothic plot, gushing blood, choking clods of dirt, and angry ghosts—a smorgasbord for devotees.

Kirkus Star

Twist

McCann, Colum | Random House (256 pp.) $28.00 | March 25, 2025 | 9780593241738

A (fictional) Irish writer explores brokenness in McCann’s latest. Anthony Fennell is at sea. Not literally, at least at first. The Irish writer and narrator of McCann’s latest novel finds himself with a “stagnant” career and “unsure what fiction or drama could do anymore.” He’s drinking too much and writing too little. “What I needed was a story about connection, about grace, about repair,” he says. He gets it when a magazine editor asks him to profile a crew that repairs breaks in the underwater cables carrying information across continents. Fennell soon sets off to South Africa to meet fellow Irishman John Conway, the chief of mission for the Georges Lecointe, a ship that works in the Atlantic Ocean. Fennell sets sail with Conway and his crew after a series of ruptures in cables near Congo; at first, he is beset by seasickness, but soon rallies and learns as much as he can about Conway. It’s not much; the engineer and diver plays his cards close to the vest. He opens up a little after his partner, a Black South

African actress named Zanele, is viciously attacked in England. But not long after, the crew is rocked by a disappearance, and Fennell goes back to South Africa, unsure what to make of his stint on the sea. This is a deeply interior novel, and McCann does an elegant job depicting Fennell as a man wrestling with something that might be a midlife crisis, but might be something much deeper. As usual, his writing astounds; McCann hasn’t lost the shining prose that marked his earlier novels like Let the Great World Spin (2009). What a beautiful, sparkling book this is.

Another astounding novel from a fiction master.

Kirkus Star

Wild Dark Shore

McConaghy, Charlotte Flatiron Books (320 pp.) | $28.99 March 4, 2025 | 9781250827951

The reality of climate change serves as the pervasive context for this terrific thriller set on a remote island between Australia and Antarctica. Four family members and one stranger are trapped on an island with no means of communication—what could go wrong? The setup may sound like a mix of Agatha Christie and The Swiss Family Robinson , but Australian author McConaghy is not aiming for a cozy read. Shearwater Island— loosely based on Macquarie Island, a World Heritage Site—is a research station where scientists have been studying environmental change. For eight years, widowed Dominic Salt has been the island’s caretaker, raising his three children in a paradise of abundant wildlife. But Shearwater is receding under rising seas and will soon disappear. The researchers have recently departed by ship, and in seven weeks a second ship will

THE KIRKUS Q&A: GRADY HENDRIX

The bestselling novelist has perfected the art of making you laugh—and then scaring the pants off you.

BY MICHAEL SCHAUB

GRADY HENDRIX HAS a knack for finding the humor in horror.

The novelist burst onto the literary scene in 2014 with Horrorstör, set in an IKEA-esque furniture retailer; the book was a hit with critics and readers who appreciated Hendrix’s absurdist take on, among other things, consumerism and reality television.

Several more novels followed, including My Best Friend’s Exorcism , We Sold Our Souls , The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires , The Final Girl Support Group, and, last year, How To Sell a Haunted House, which is currently being developed as a film for which Hendrix is writing the script. (He previously wrote the screenplay for the horror-comedy film Satanic Panic and co-wrote the screenplay for another scary movie, Mohawk .)

Hendrix’s latest, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls , follows Neva, a scared, pregnant 15-year-old who’s taken to a home for pregnant young women in Florida by her disappointed father. At the home, she is renamed Fern by Miss Wellwood, the stern house mother, and befriends the three other girls at the facility. The girls are miserable, at least until they meet Miss Parcae, a bookmobile librarian who gives them a copy of a spellbook called How To Be a Groovy Witch. The novel has its share of scares—but also of Hendrix’s trademark laughs.

Hendrix, who’s preparing to go on a tour with the novel, says he’ll be relieved once it’s out in the world.

“This book took me longer than they usually do, and there came a point where I was like, It’s never getting released ,” he says. “This book is just my frenemy that lives in my office with me, and it’s never moving out .”

Hendrix spoke to Kirkus via telephone from his home in New York. Our conversation has been condensed for length and clarity.

didn’t know that until they were in their 70s. They kept it a secret, and one reunited with her son very late in life, and the other wasn’t able to reunite with her child. It always haunted me. These were women I love very much, women I thought I knew, and one of the most important facts about them is that they each had another child that I never had a clue about. I thought, There is a horror story here. These are girls who are teenagers, mostly, who’ve been told they’ve done the most horrible thing in the world, and then they’ve been locked up in a house and hidden away in the woods.

around for a long time, and they run the gamut. There were girls who said, This was great, because instead of being hidden in my bedroom where everyone hated me, I was around other girls my age who were going through the same thing, and we really looked out for each other. Some people had really kind house mothers and support staff and social workers.

What made you decide to set this one in a home for unwed mothers in 1970?

I have two older relatives who were both sent away as teenagers, and we

The research you did into these homes must have been pretty horrifying, I would imagine. It was interesting because these homes have been

So it ran the gamut, and I wanted to be really careful to make this home not the absolute worst but not the absolute best. There were ones that offered nutritionists and social workers and all kinds of stuff, and there were ones that treated you like a prisoner. I wanted to be somewhere in between.

Did you start writing this book after the Dobbs decision that overturned

Albert Mitchell

Roe v. Wade?

That happened while I was writing the book. When Dobbs happened, my editor and I were like, Oh, crap, we’ve got a book that centers on reproductive rights that’s going to come out in August of an election year. This is not going to be good. Then I blew that deadline, so it’s coming out [six days before Inauguration Day], which is also going to be a very strange time. I don’t know if there’s a notstrange time for this book to come out.

Your books frequently have women protagonists. Do you prefer writing women characters? It really started as a way to put the characters at arm’s length. If I write a character who’s a dude, they just feel like different shades of me. But making them women, which is radically different from me, I had to step back and look at them as full human beings rather than what I want people to see when they look at me. Some of the stories really lent themselves [to women characters], like My Best Friend’s Exorcism. Friendships in high school were so much more demonstrative and ran so much hotter between girls that I knew than between boys. We Sold Our Souls started out being a book about a guy. After the 2016 election, I was coming back from a really depressing election party, and I thought, If I’m writing a book about a character to whom the world has said, “You are worthless,” it has to be a woman to

feel convincing right now. Immediately the book clicked into place. With this story, it had to be a woman, and with The Final Girl Support Group —there are some final boys but, really, final girls are a more resonant image.

How do you balance the humor and occasional lightheartedness in a novel with a subject

matter this serious? Horror and comedy have the same kind of mechanism: setup, setup, payoff; setup, setup, payoff. I’d be hard pressed to find a horror movie that didn’t have a fair amount of comedy in it, even some really dark ones. I just feel like our lives aren’t one genre. You have amazing sex, and then you get a phone

I’d be hard pressed to find a horror movie that didn’t have a fair amount of comedy in it, even some really dark ones.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Hendrix, Grady

call that your mom died in the middle of it. You walk out after getting fired, and you slip on a banana peel. This stuff sits next to each other, and I really want my books to reflect that. Just getting people to lower their guard and move their attention in another direction so that I can set something up where they’re not looking—humor’s really helpful with that.

A lot of your books have been set in your hometown, Charleston, South Carolina, but this one you set in St. Augustine. What made you decide to move a couple states away for this one?

Because I was talking to one of my sisters and complaining that people from Charleston are obsessed with Charleston and that all they talk about is Charleston. And she said, “Yeah, OK, Mr. I-Write-All-My Books-andSet-Them-in-Charleston.”

And I thought, Oh, dammit. What’s another city? I’d written some stuff set in Savannah, so I was like, OK, moving further south, what’s another historical coastal city with a heavy tourist business? St. Augustine! There you go.

So it wasn’t that the Charleston tourism board was upset at you for scaring people away? Like, You’ll never eat shrimp and grits in this town again?

I wish. I don’t even think the Charleston tourism board knows I exist.

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.

SEEN AND HEARD

Article on Cormac McCarthy Prompts Controversy

Vanity Fair profiled a woman who says she was the late novelist’s teenage “muse.”

A woman claims that she was the “muse” of legendary author Cormac McCarthy when she was a teenage girl and he was in his 40s, according to an article in Vanity Fair. McCarthy died in 2023.

Augusta Britt says that she had a relationship with McCarthy beginning

in 1976, when she was 16 and he was 42. The two met, she says, at a swimming pool in a Tucson, Arizona, motel; she claims she recognized him from an author photo in his novel The Orchard Keeper.

She claims that the two took a road trip to Mexico when she was 17 and he was 43. Britt says McCarthy was afraid of running afoul of law enforcement who might arrest him for statutory rape and human trafficking.

Barney’s article was met with skepticism from the literary world. In the Telegraph, reporter Liam Kelly wrote that “no fact-checkers seem to have interrogated Britt’s assertions,” noting that there was no author photo on the only paperback edition of The Orchard Keeper

Some observers also mocked Barney’s florid writing. The article begins, “I’m about to tell you the craziest love story in literary history. And before you ransack the canon for a glamorous rebuttal, I must warn you: Its preeminence is conclusive.”

Barney did have his defenders, including writer and podcaster Jay Caspian Kang, who accused Barney’s critics of being “super duper pooper mean.”—M.S.

For a review of The Orchard Keeper, visit

Cormac McCarthy

Kirkus online.

Barbara Taylor Bradford Dies at 91

The author was known for her bestselling debut novel, A Woman of Substance.

Barbara Taylor Bradford, the prolific author known for her bestselling debut novel, A Woman of Substance, has died at 91.

Bradford’s death was announced in a news release by her publicist, who called her “a storyteller of substance.” Bradford was born and raised in Leeds, England, and discovered writing at an early age, selling her first short story to a magazine at the age of 10. She left school to work at the Yorkshire Evening Post newspaper, first as a typist and then as a reporter. In 1964, she moved with her husband to New York.

In 1979, Doubleday published her debut novel, A Woman of Substance, about Emma Harte, a servant girl who becomes the head of a wildly successful international business. The novel was adapted into a miniseries starring Jenny Sea-

Barbara Taylor Bradford grove, Deborah Kerr, Barry Bostwick, and Liam Neeson, and spawned six more books featuring Harte and her family. Her most recent novel, The Wonder of It All, was published in 2023. Bradford’s admirers paid tribute to her on social media. On the platform X, author Andrew Wilson posted a photo of A Woman of Substance and wrote, “RIP Barbara Taylor Bradford, the original woman of substance. Loved reading this as a 15-year-old gay boy in a small northern town. She taught me the importance of dreaming big.”

And broadcaster Wes Butters posted, “RIP best-selling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford. I found her to be the epitome of glamour. She used to say, ‘I write about ordinary women who go on to achieve the extraordinary.’ She certainly did that herself.”

—M.S.

For reviews of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s books, visit Kirkus online.

pick up Dominic and his kids. Meanwhile, they are packing up the seed vault built by the United Nations in case the world eventually needs “to regrow from scratch the food supply that sustains us.” One day a woman, Rowan, washes ashore unconscious but alive after a storm destroys the small boat on which she was traveling. Why she’s come anywhere near Shearwater is a mystery to Dominic; why the family is alone there is a mystery to her. While Rowan slowly recovers, Dominic’s kids, especially 9-year-old Orly—who never knew his mother—become increasingly attached, and Rowan and Dominic fight their growing mutual attraction. But as dark secrets come to light— along with buried bodies—mutual suspicions also grow. The five characters’ internal narratives reveal private fears, guilts, and hopes, but their difficulty communicating, especially to those they love, puts everyone in peril. While McConaghy keeps readers guessing which suspicions are valid, which are paranoia, and who is culpable for doing what in the face of calamity, the most critical battle turns out to be personal despair versus perseverance. McConaghy writes about both nature and human frailty with eloquent generosity. Readers won’t want to leave behind the imagined world of pain and beauty that McConaghy has conjured.

Ward D

McFadden, Freida | Poisoned Pen (320 pp.) $17.99 paper | March 4, 2025 | 9781464227271

A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.

Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in

Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?

A superior entry in the night-on-thenightmare-ward genre.

The Expert of Subtle Revisions

Menger-Anderson, Kirsten Crown (256 pp.) | $28.00 March 18, 2025 | 9780593798300

Essayist and short story writer Menger-Anderson melds history and SF in her debut novel about loss, yearning, and the nature of reality. The intricate plot tacks between contemporary California,

where a young woman awaits a visit from her father, and 1930s Vienna, where a group of brilliant mathematicians becomes increasingly vulnerable to violence and antisemitism erupting with the rise of fascism. Hase’s father has told her that if ever he fails to appear when expected, she must go to a public library in Berkeley and retrieve a certain book by the Austrian mathematician Walfried Engelhardt and turn to page 71. When the Coast Guard finds her father’s abandoned boat, Hase follows those instructions, which set her on a circuitous path of discovery. Besides eking out a living tutoring and doing odd jobs, Hase has been devoted to editing Wikipedia entries, as was her father. “Like me,” she knows, “he enjoyed the site because he could be invisible and visible, an outsider and a participant simultaneously, a contradiction realized.” She finds comfort in browsing deleted pages, a “shadow history” of content. “Most people don’t even know it exists,” she admits, “but I’m a connoisseur of untold stories.” As MengerAnderson’s narrative unfolds, Hase’s own shadow history emerges: She realizes her parents’ true identity, and she suddenly understands that her mysterious music box can effect time travel. Menger-Anderson drew on a memoir by her grandfather, a mathematician and member of the internationally renowned Vienna Circle in the 1930s, who was caught up in the political events that made intellectual life impossible; in 1936, he accepted a position in the U.S. and fled. As Hase discovers, though, the past can never truly be escaped; the present is haunted by shadows. Caught in the swirl of time.

For more by Kirsten Menger-Anderson, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

Tongues: Volume 1

Nilsen, Anders | Pantheon (368 pp.)

$35.00 | March 11, 2025 | 9781524747206

A collection of the six issues (plus supplement) to date of Nilsen’s hallucinatory graphic novel.

A humanlike figure, bound to a rock in the faraway mountains, is visited daily by an eagle that eats its liver. The process starts all over the next day. It’s the tale of Prometheus, of course, though Nilsen calls him “The Prisoner.” The eagle is talkative, and a good chess player, though the Prisoner is better: “It’s your move,” he tells the eagle. “Your queen is under threat.” The whole world is under threat, as it happens, thanks to humans and their insatiable ways. Says another visitor, Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus, portrayed as a sort of antelope and bent on ending the human desecration of the planet, “I am acting not only to save the ten thousand species I most love, or to end the decimation of all life. I am acting to end its perversion to human ends.” There are humans aplenty in Nilsen’s tale, and most are indeed up to no good: There’s a Russian soldier of fortune, for instance, who’s bound up in intrigue, and a cult devoted to the god Omega, and a mysterious kid named Teddy Roosevelt who converses with, yes, a stuffed bear. Chickens talk, gods talk, bad guys talk, the young worldsaver named Astrid talks. Only a monkey that bounces around at points in the tale keeps shtum, but one has the sense that the monkey knows much more than it’s letting on. The whole

narrative has a decidedly otherworldly sense to it, a kind of Classics Illustrated run amok, and it’s utterly beguiling: throw in a magic cube to complicate the storyline, and while it may not make much sense, it doesn’t really have to if the reader suspends disbelief long enough to listen to an eagle trying to make sense of an iPhone. Superb graphic art meets an exceedingly odd tale, and to wonderful ends.

Stag Dance: A Novel & Stories

Peters, Torrey | Random House (304 pp.)

$28.00 | March 11, 2025 | 9780593595640

Three long stories and a short novel by the author of Detransition, Baby (2021). In her debut, Peters told the story of a trans woman and her ex-lover—formerly a trans woman, now living again as a man—building a family together with the latter’s new partner, a cisgender woman. Tender and funny, the novel was a critical and commercial success. This follow-up volume is a lopsided collection that the author wrote over the course of 10 years. The opening piece, “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones,” is set in a hellish future in which a pandemic renders humans incapable of producing sex hormones. It’s also sort of an antiromance centered around two trans women who are inextricably connected, despite what the narrator might wish. In “The Chaser,” a boy who’s reluctant to acknowledge his own sexuality embarks on a secret relationship with his boarding school roommate,

Superb graphic art meets an exceedingly odd tale, and to wonderful ends.

the results of which are disastrous for both of them. “The Masker” is a darkly intense interrogation of identity and desire centered on a “sissy” boy who is trying to figure out if they are a cross-dresser or a trans woman while being pulled in different directions by a charismatic fetishist and an overbearing trans elder. Babe, the protagonist of the longest piece, Stag Dance, fells trees for an outlaw logging operation. Remarkably large and prodigiously ugly, he discovers a self he hadn’t recognized before when the camp boss declares that there will be a stag dance—a rustic soiree at which some loggers volunteer to be women. Babe is a terrific character, and his relationship with the prettiest boy in the camp is nuanced and affecting. This could be a crackerjack short story, but it feels interminable at novel length. It’s repetitive, and the old-timey jargon loses its charm pretty quickly. Peters might think about trimming this down to a taut tall tale and venturing deeper into the world she’s created in “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones.”

Even when Peters’ experiments don’t pay off, it’s exciting to read an author willing to take these risks.

Death Takes Me

Rivera Garza, Cristina | Trans. by Sarah Booker & Robin Myers | Hogarth (320 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780593737002

A professor and a detective become obsessed with a killer.

“That’s a body.” That’s the reaction of professor Cristina Rivera Garza—the main character of this novel, who shares her name with its author—when she discovers the corpse of a man while on one of her customary runs. The man is missing his penis, the victim of a mutilation; “a terrible thing against the dead,” Cristina says, referencing “Great Deeds Against the Dead,” a sculpture by Jake and Dinos Chapman, itself based on an etching by

Francisco Goya. Cristina reports the body to the police, and the case is assigned to an officer, “the Detective,” who is interested in a clue left at the scene of the crime: four lines from a poem by Argentine literary legend Alejandra Pizarnik. Over the following days, three more bodies are found, all with their genitals removed. As the Detective works to solve the case, Cristina receives a series of cryptic messages from the murderer, who tells her, “You shouldn’t be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you. I couldn’t possibly hurt you.” There’s also the Detective’s assistant, Valerio, and a tabloid journalist, both of whom are fascinated with the case. Much of the novel is given to various philosophical musings on gender and art, and the text is interspersed with occasional verse. It’s a fairly audacious literary experiment with shades of Roberto Bolaño, but it never really comes together—the narrative trickery is frustrating, and while Rivera Garza is clearly a more than talented author, the effect is ponderous. For a novel with a blood-soaked premise, this one is oddly bloodless. A rare miss from an author with an impeccable bibliography.

Kirkus Star

The Café With No Name

Seethaler, Robert | Trans. by Katy Derbyshire | Europa Editions (192 pp.)

$25.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9798889660644

This is the spirited story of a workingclass Viennese cafe and its oddduck denizens. Robert Simon, an orphan who endured a hardscrabble youth, is now 31 in the year 1966. He makes a living doing odd jobs in Vienna’s old Karmelitermarkt and rents a furnished room from a war widow whose snoring he finds “strangely touching.” Simon does have some ambition, and when the decrepit old market cafe is put up for

The spirited story of a working-class Viennese cafe and its odd-duck denizens.

THE CAFÉ WITH NO NAME

rent, he signs a lease and makes it his own. Soon, the place is humming, filled with local patrons—among others, there are yarn-factory girls; Simon’s pal Johannes, the local butcher; the former bill collector Harald, who plays with his glass eye; and Heide the cheesemonger, who feuds with her philandering younger husband, Mischa. When the robust country girl Mila, an out-of-work seamstress, turns up, Simon is persuaded to let her help run the cafe. Mila soon becomes involved with another patron, René, a hulking sometime wrestler. Simon, shy and kind-hearted, takes great pleasure in the cafe’s success. The book meanders pleasantly, though there is some real drama: Simon is severely injured when a furnace beneath the cafe explodes. Some time later, he finds himself falling for an odd Yugoslav woman named Jascha. And during the farewell party for the cafe, a decade after its opening, a nearby bridge collapses. Somehow, the life of the cafe—with its many comic and melancholic moments—seems to mirror an actual life. An earlier novel by this Viennaborn author, A Whole Life (2016), was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Here, Seethaler shows a great gift for describing how things work as well as the beauty of the natural world. While the premise of lost souls drifting together in a scruffy cafe may not be wildly original, his funny/sad characters are finely drawn and remarkably vivid. Vienna itself is a player here: The Prater amusement park with its famous Reisenrad Ferris wheel, the pastry shop Demel’s, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and even the Danube all figure in the proceedings. A gem of a novel, whimsical and bittersweet but never sentimental, with indelible characters and a powerful sense of place.

Count My Lies

Stava, Sophie | Gallery Books/ Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) | $28.99 March 4, 2025 | 9781668079348

A woman with a penchant for deceit becomes entangled with a wealthy couple who live in a world where nothing is quite what it seems. Sloane Caraway lies about everything to everyone because “the truth is so uninteresting.” But behind the easy bravado is a young woman who longs to feel special in ways that her often difficult working-class life never allowed. When she runs into Jay, a handsome game developer, in a Brooklyn park, she presents herself as a nurse named Caitlin. She tends to Jay’s bee-stung daughter with assumed authority, all while dreaming of another encounter. She gets her wish when she meets Jay’s wife, Violet, in the same park and receives an invitation to their home. Asked to become a nanny for the couple’s daughter, Sloane enters a world that is anything but perfect. Stava engages readers start to finish not only with characters who hide their motivations from each other, but also a narrative built on unexpected twists: As much as Sloane wants to literally become Violet and have her beautiful life, Violet wants nothing more than to dispense with her identity and escape a cheating husband who loves her only for her money. Shifting points of view add psychological complexity to each of the three main characters. There are no heroes or villains in this story: only people drawn to each other for things— like money or freedom—that they

desire enough to engage in dangerous games of deception. This compelling, tautly plotted book will appeal not only to lovers of Gone Girl –style tales of suspense but anyone with a taste for smart, well-crafted fiction.

A page-turning thrill ride of a story from a debut novelist.

Kirkus Star

Woodworking

St. James, Emily | Crooked Media Reads/Zando (368 pp.) | $28.00 March 4, 2025 | 9781638931478

A trans teen helps her English teacher through the fraught process of coming out as transgender in small-town Mitchell, South Dakota. Thirty-five-yearold Erica Skyberg has always known she was a woman, despite the fact that she’s still Mr. Skyberg to her high school students and, well, to everyone else. Her ex-wife, Connie, with whom Erica is still in love, is pregnant by her new Trumpsupporting farmer boyfriend. It’s only when 17-year-old Abigail Hawkes— spiky, foul-mouthed, outspokenly trans—transfers to Mitchell High that Erica has someone to tell her secret to. Abigail’s got enough of her own problems and complications: parents who have kicked her out, a boyfriend whose rich conservative mom is bankrolling a state political campaign for a local transphobic preacher, and Abigail’s own work as a volunteer for the preacher’s Democratic rival. (The novel is set in the autumn preceding the 2016 election, which feels long enough ago in the timeline of transgender politics as to constitute historical fiction.) As the only trans person Erica knows, Abigail reluctantly becomes her sounding board, and Erica feels guilty leaning on her; they gradually grow close even as their relationship draws scrutiny and suspicion from the people around them. Alternating primarily between Erica’s

third-person chapters and Abigail’s first-person ones, St. James contrasts Erica’s attempts to be seen for who she really is with Abigail’s thwarted desire for “woodworking,” or disappearing into the woodwork to achieve the normalcy she thinks she so badly wants. (“I’ll be hiding in the walls, trying to be any other girl, like in that one story with the yellow wallpaper,” she vows.)

St. James’ plot moves like a Shakespeare comedy—some contrivances, yes, but all in the service of portraying the prismatic variations of the characters here, both cis and trans, who alternately fail themselves and each other, and work to rescue them back again.

Pristinely characterized, this debut novel is by turns funny and heartrending.

Kirkus Star

Wildcat Dome

Tsushima, Yuko | Trans. by Lisa HofmannKuroda | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (272 pp.) $28.00 | March 18, 2025 | 9780374610746

Enigmatic, elegant novel by one of modern Japan’s leading novelists.

A mother whose son has died surrounds herself with bathroom tissue, “as though she were trying to convince herself that she was worth less than a roll of toilet paper.” She fears that her son was a serial killer. And everywhere, as Tsushima writes, “the end of the world is here, now,” an end wrought by “a tsunami so big you couldn’t believe your eyes,” bringing on—after Hiroshima and Nagasaki—Japan’s third nuclear disaster. That disaster has had the effect of making the impossible happen: Mitch, who hates Japan, has returned home to the apartment that his late friend, Kazu, bequeathed to him. Death stalks Tsushima’s novel, whose protagonists, she slowly reveals, are the mixed-race children of GIs who abandoned them and whose mothers,

grieving but without recourse, put them up for adoption, some to be taken off to distant lands. Tsushima writes empathetically of those children and the racism they endured: “At the orphanage, being Black was normal, and Mama never said anything about it,” says Kazu. That the keeper of the orphanage was a kindhearted woman who sincerely believed the children would be happier abroad does not help: One arrives in America only to grow up to die in Vietnam, and in any event all harbor a terrible secret from childhood that grows in intensity even as the adult orphans enter their 50s. Part ghost story and part noir thriller, Tsushima’s narrative unfolds carefully, small details building even as Tsushima draws broad connections: the color orange sets the killer off, the soldiers who murdered Chile’s dissidents in 1973 wore orange uniform shirts, the Americanized orphan died in a jungle doused with Agent Orange, and, as Mitch observes quietly, “Time surges forward and keeps blowing back.” A superb literary mystery that leaves readers, like the protagonists, constantly guessing.

Just Want You Here

Turits, Meredith | Little A (320 pp.)

$28.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9781662523991

A young woman’s broken engagement upends her life. Turits’ engrossing debut novel follows Ari Bishop, a 28-year-old New Yorker, whose life is thrown into chaos when her fiance, Morgan, ends their relationship after 10 years. The breakup also irreparably changes Ari and Morgan’s relationships with their longtime best friends, another couple named Summer and Luke, as they all look toward different futures than they’d imagined. Sifting through the rubble of her relationship, Ari flees New York for Boston, where she lands a job as the executive assistant to Wells Cahill, a tech CEO. Forty, British, and a married

father, Wells sees the promise in Ari that she is unable to see herself. Almost immediately, they start an affair, the beginning of which feels too quick and not fleshed out enough. With Ari’s fresh start seemingly snuffed out before it could begin, Summer becomes increasingly distraught as she realizes that Ari isn’t going to end the relationship. Turits does a great job of providing a multidimensional look at how consuming, confusing, and irrational affairs can be. As Summer and Luke’s wedding approaches, Ari finds herself more deeply and shamefully enmeshed in the lives of Wells; his accomplished wife, Leah; and their toddler son, Rowan. Their newly formed nucleus slowly becomes a black hole that threatens to swallow them all. Ari— whose choices are messy and inconceivable at times—seems unable to see beyond her own wants and needs until it’s too late. Turits deftly explores the ways that grief, trauma, and secrets can manifest in ways big and small. Unfortunately, the novel’s climax comes too close to the end, and there isn’t enough space to explore the fallout. A fresh, if sometimes frustrating, take on the traditional affair novel.

Kirkus Star

Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

Unger, Lisa | Park Row Books (384 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780778333364

Engaging characters meet for a game that turns deadly. Adele Crane’s life was shattered when her seemingly wonderful husband, Miller, vanished along with millions of dollars embezzled from the tech company he founded. Adele has been struggling to make a living and raise her traumatized kids: fiercely independent Violet and sweet-natured introvert Blake. Always athletic, she’s rebuilt her

confidence with half-marathons and an online presence as a health influencer. So, it makes sense when Blake suggests she apply for a streaming reality competition for influencers called Extreme Hide and Seek. Contestants are taken to some challenging location, where they hide from the Extreme team. Last one found wins $1 million. That’s how Adele finds herself on remote Falcão Island, the site of Enchantments, a luxury resort built in the 1980s but long abandoned and now about to collapse. It’s quickly apparent that the Extreme team itself is on the verge of chaos. Its founder and star, Maverick Dillan, began his career as a kid doing skate stunts for viral videos, but now he heads a hugely successful enterprise—or so it seems. Maverick is approaching middle age, and all his past injuries and current pressures are catching up with him, accelerated by the fact that on the last round of Extreme Hide and Seek, one contestant, a young woman named Chloe Miranda, hid and was never found— something that internet vigilantes won’t let him forget. Maverick’s girlfriend, no-nonsense Angeline, is holding him and the company together, but it’s tough. The team’s other three members are his oldest friends, but fractures are appearing. Adele’s competitors, a former kids’ show host called Wild Cody and a famous young mountain climber named Malinka Niqui, have problems of their own. As they assemble on Falcão for the contest, they’re warned to leave by a mysterious old woman with a paramilitary backup team—and then a huge tropical storm blows in. Weaving together multiple points of view from her believable characters, Unger plunges the reader right into a

sense of dread, then skillfully ratchets up the physical terrors of the challenge while revealing one disturbing secret after another.

The perils of the real and virtual worlds collide effectively in this relentlessly paced thriller.

The River

Vinogradova, Laura | Trans. by Kaija Straumanis | Open Letter (140 pp.) | $15.95 paper | March 4, 2025 | 9781960385130

Latvian author Vinogradova explores the aftermath of loss in this award-winning novel about a woman whose sister disappears. The reader first encounters Rute through her sister Dina’s eyes. To Dina—lonely and struggling, haunted by the traumatic childhood the two endured—her younger sister seems spoiled; Rute has a loving husband and a beautiful home with heated floors. The next chapter jumps forward in time: Dina has been missing for 10 years, and Rute has fallen apart. Instead of the house with the heated floors, she’s staying in a dilapidated cabin inherited from the father she and Dina never knew. Unsure if Dina is alive or dead, Rute writes her letter after letter. “Yesterday I thought the river might be in pain,” she writes of the waterway beside the cabin.“That it carries too much.” Pulled unwillingly into the lives of a pregnant neighbor with a small son and her seafaring brother, Rute comes to learn more about her own father, and ultimately about herself. Vinogradova, who has written for children as well as

The perils of the real and virtual worlds collide in this relentless thriller.

adults, has a straightforward, unadorned style and an expansive empathy for her characters. Everyone in the book struggles in their own ways, from Rute’s neighbors to her husband back in Riga, to the incarcerated mother Rute visits in prison. No one has it easy; no one is actually “spoiled.” The brutality of life is ever-present and matter-of-fact. Children are neglected, unwanted kittens drowned in a bag. But there’s kindness and beauty as well. The river keeps flowing. “Pain gives birth to pain,” Rute writes to her sister later in the book. “…But is reality just pain? Is there a school for laughter? If there was I think I’d like to sign up.”

A moving portrait of a woman slowly making her unsteady way toward connection and the possibility of happiness.

Kirkus Star

The Riveter

Wang, Jack | HarperVia (320 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780063081833

A debut novel of love, culture, and war. In Kamloops, British Columbia, a young Chinese Canadian man wants to fight for a country that does not accept him. Josiah Chang is a lumberjack, or “faller,” with his father, until the father is killed in an accident. Josiah then finds a job as a riveter building cargo ships at the beginning of World War II, and he falls in love with Poppy Miller, a white woman. Poppy wants to marry him and settle down, though if she does, Canada will strip her of her citizenship. Over her objections, Josiah also wants to fight for his country, but Chinese Canadians can’t join the military. He persists, heading east to another province and eventually finding a recruiter who accepts him because of his obvious physical fitness. He trains as a paratrooper, the only Chinese Canadian in his unit. Across the miles, Poppy and

Josiah exchange letters and remain faithful to each other despite temptations. He feels he has a lot to prove to himself and to a country that rejects him as an equal. Paratrooper training is demanding, and many trainees wash out, but Josiah is determined to be the best of the best. His unit, the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, is assigned to land at Normandy as part of the great invasion of Europe, and survival is a matter of chance: “If you lived, you were glad and carried on.” Paratroopers are shot to death on their way down or get snagged in trees before they can defend themselves. The bravest of men can be gone in a heartbeat, but Josiah and his unit fight on. “Stay alive for her,” he muses during a lull in combat. He kills as he must while trying to retain a sense of honor, which doesn’t stop him from shooting a rapist between the eyes. But this novel is about more than war; it is about love and loyalty, acceptance, and clash of cultures. Will Josiah survive the war? Will Poppy wait for him? They are both sympathetic characters readers will root for. The tale has its roots in history: There was in fact only one Chinese Canadian in that battalion, although many more fought in other units. Josiah is fighting for more than simply defeating Hitler, as African American soldiers also did with distinction. All Josiah wants from Canada is full citizenship and the right to vote.

A compelling and emotional read.

Sister Europe

Zink, Nell | Knopf (208 pp.) | $28.00 March 25, 2025 | 9780593534915

A motley assortment of the wealthy, the titled, and their attendants venture out into the Berlin night together. With novels like Avalon (2022) and Nicotine (2016), Zink has demonstrated her love for

outsiders. Sometimes, she creates characters who have been ostracized by others. Sometimes she creates characters who have chosen their own exile. Often, it’s difficult to tell which is which. While she typically writes about people living on society’s precarious edges, here she presents a cast of characters who are—mostly—set apart from everybody else by extreme wealth and privilege. Demian is an “in-demand freelance art and architecture critic” whose cushy lifestyle—including his career—is subsidized by his wife, a structural engineer. His 15-year-old daughter, Nicole, is fumbling her way through both adolescence and transition. He’s promised his friend Toto a “free Michelin-starred dinner in exchange for sitting through a one-hour literary-award ceremony.” Livia, also Demian’s friend, enjoys status and ease unmarked by her grandfather’s role in World War II. Radi is an Arab prince born and raised in Switzerland. All of them gather—alongside a woman Toto met online and a cop who thinks Toto is trafficking Nicole—to honor a renowned author, but they separate and pair off and reconnect over the course of one night. As ever, Zink is funny in a way that requires careful observation and precision. She exposes her characters’ weaknesses and shortcomings without being cruel or moralistic. For example, when Radi deadnames and misgenders Nicole, Zink lets Nicole handle it for herself. Overall, the night narrated here feels like the kind of time outside of time in which classical comedies take place—a liminal space in which characters experience transformations impossible in the everyday world. Here, some characters find each other, some find their way home, and some get a bit closer to finding themselves. Zink is one of the most humane writers we’ve got, and one of the best.

Kirkus Star

SEEN AND HEARD

New Novel by Stephen King Coming This Year

The author will bring back the character of Holly Gibney, a fan favorite, in Never Flinch.

Stephen King’s latest novel will hit shelves later this year, Entertainment Weekly reports.

Scribner will publish the horror master’s Never Flinch; the press describes the book as “thrilling, wildly fun, and outrageously engrossing” and “one of King’s richest and most propulsive novels.”

The book will bring back fan-favorite character Holly Gibney, the shy and brilliant detective who King introduced in his 2014 novel, Mr. Mercedes, and who went on to appear in Finders Keepers, End of Watch, The Outsider, If It Bleeds, and Holly. The character was played on screen by Cynthia Erivo in the

miniseries based on The Outsider and by Justine Lupe in the Mr. Mercedes television adaptation.

In Never Flinch, Holly helps a police detective who has received a letter threatening a mass murder; she also serves as a bodyguard to a feminist activist whose speaking events are being disrupted by a stalker.

“Featuring a riveting cast of characters both old and new, including world-famous gospel singer Sista Bessie and an unforgettable villain addicted to murder, these twinned narratives converge in a chilling and spectacular conclusion—a feat of storytelling only Stephen King could pull off,” Scribner says.

Never Flinch is slated for publication on May 27.—M.S.

For reviews of Stephen King’s books, visit Kirkus online.

Stephen King

AWARDS

Winner of the 2025 Giller Prize Revealed

Anne Michaels took home the Canadian literary award for Held. Anne Michaels has won the Giller Prize, given annually to an outstanding work of Canadian fiction, for her novel Held, The Associated Press reports.

Michaels’ novel, published in the U.S. by Knopf in January 2024, tells the story of multiple generations affected by war, focused initially on John, a British soldier who survives a severe injury during a World War I battle. A critic for Kirkus called the novel, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, “a gorgeous meditation on whether the ghost in the machine is actually in our hearts.”

In her acceptance speech for the award, Michaels said, “Everything I write is a form of witness against war, indifference, against amnesia of every sort.”

The Giller Prize has been the subject of controversy over its connection to Scotiabank, the main sponsor of the award, previously known as the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Scotiabank has a stake in Elbit Systems, the Israeli arms manufacturer. Protestors demonstrated outside the Giller Prize ceremony, some carrying a banner that read “Boycott Giller Gala.”

The Giller Prize was established in 1994. Previous winners include Rohinton Mistry for A Fine Balance, Esi Edugyan for Half-Blood Blues and Washington Black, and Omar El Akkad for What Strange Paradise.—M.S.

For a review of Held, visit Kirkus online.

Anne Michaels

Five luminaries from the Golden Age of detective fiction solve a murder.

THE QUEENS OF CRIME

Killing Me Soufflé

Alexander, Ellie | Minotaur (320 pp.) | $9.99 paper | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9781250326218

When an unpopular Oregon resort manager is murdered, there are plenty of suspects on the menu. Jules Capshaw, pastry chef and owner of Ashland’s Torte bakeshop, has traveled with her husband, Carlos, and his son, Ramiro, to Whaleshead Resort on the Oregon coast. Jules had spent happy days in the little beach town growing up, but this trip is to support two of her former employees, Sterling and Steph, who are managing the formerly moribund SeaBreeze Bistro. Upon their arrival, they find the chefs a jittery mess since their boss, Erik Morton, seems bent on sabotaging their efforts. Among the people unhappy with Erik is the fish supplier, who’s not getting paid, and plenty of locals, who don’t want the old-fashioned establishment turned into a mega resort. The cabins on the property are privately owned, and the owners are planning a vote to sell the place. The real estate agent is naturally eager to see the deal sealed, but people like the handyman, whose salary includes a cabin, and a local painter who enjoys free use of a place to live and work are furious. When Jules, who’s pregnant with twins, goes out to pick some vegetables, she hears a scream and carefully walks down a trail to discover Erik’s dead body, which has fallen from a cliff. Suspecting that the fall was no accident, she’s delighted when her stepfather, who’s a detective, turns up to help her investigate.

A foodie’s delight that includes an enticing look at Southern Oregon’s beauties and appended recipes.

The Queens of Crime

Benedict, Marie | St. Martin’s (320 pp.)

$29.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781250280756

Five real-life luminaries from the Golden Age of detective fiction team up to solve a murder.

Five months after nurse May Daniels disappeared during a day trip in October 1930 from a railway station near Boulogne-surMer, a farmer finds her bloody body strangled to death. The French police, unconcerned about the damage they’re doing to the victim and her family, announce on scant evidence that May—whose companion, nurse Celia McCarthy, last saw her entering a ladies’ room she never emerged from—was a drug addict who deserves few tears. By that point, the title quintet—Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Baroness Emma Orczy, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham—have already sprung into action. Their original motive for traveling to France, proving themselves the equals of G.K. Chesterton and the rest of their condescending male counterparts in the newly formed Detection Club, has morphed into a deep sense of connection to the dead nurse and “an urgent quest to do right.” Working mostly with the reticent, brainy Christie, Sayers, who serves as narrator, methodically retraces May’s last movements and works backward

to figure out what she was doing before she and Celia embarked on their trip. Their most promising leads implicate Louis Williams, the son of Mathers Insurance founder Jimmy Williams, as May’s benefactor, beau, and killer. But no reader who’s spent time with any of these writers’ own books will believe that the actual solution will be as simple as that.

A routine whodunit enlivened by the byplay among the author sleuths and their determination to stand up to the patriarchy.

Someone From the Past: A London Mystery

Bennett, Margot | Poisoned Pen (288 pp.) $15.99 paper | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781464230431

Bennett’s last crime novel, originally published in 1958, is in many ways her finest. It’s certainly her most sharply focused. Alarmed that a series of anonymous threats she’s been receiving have escalated, London magazine editor Sarah Lampson asks Nancy Graham, her old roommate and colleague at Diagonal Press, to help figure out which of her former lovers is intent on killing her. But it’s already too late, for one of the candidates, artist Donald Spencer, reports to Nancy the next morning that Sarah’s dead in her bed. Determined to make sure the police don’t suspect Donald, who’s become her own boyfriend, Nancy hurries over to Sarah’s place and methodically cleans up every trace of evidence that points to Donald’s presence there. Unfortunately, her conscientious labors only ensure that she’s taken in for questioning by Detective Inspector Crewe. Despite her salt-and-pepper relationship with Sarah, Nancy is a highly sympathetic narrator, but Crewe is one sharp cookie, and he soon catches her in the first of many misstatements. When Nancy meets with the other suspects—Peter Abbott, a crook who was Sarah’s first love;

Laurence Hopkins, features editor at another Diagonal magazine; and stage actor Michael Fenby, whose divorce from Sarah has just become final—the dialogue is so brittle and charged with recriminations that readers may wonder if the whole story is one round robin of interrogations. Continuing to stretch the truth to Crewe and everyone else, Nancy ultimately digs herself in so deep that Crewe brands her “the worst liar in the business.” She certainly is one of the most entertaining.

An acerbic, tightly structured whodunit that remains a brilliant example of how to do more with less.

Galway’s Edge

Bruen, Ken | Mysterious Press (288 pp.) $26.95 | March 4, 2025 | 9781613166000

Private eye Jack Taylor goes up against the Galway chapter of the criminal combine Edge. And there’s much, much more.

Burly Father Richard, special envoy (read: hatchet man) from the Vatican, tells Jack that St. Joseph’s parish priest, Father Kevin Whelan, is one of the movers and shakers in the local Edge, which has most recently killed a pedophile named Cleon, and that he needs to be neutralized. Although his diagnosis is correct, his prescription misses the mark, because someone hangs Father Kevin in his backyard before Jack can do anything. And he’s not the only Edge member marked for death by hedge fund millionaire George Benson, who seems resolved to take over the local chapter and push it in a new direction. When Therese, the local Mother Superior, asks Jack to recover a jeweled crucifix that’s been stolen, he goes to meet Benson, the presumed thief, in his office, asks him to return it, and gets thrown out for his trouble. In between times, a beaten wife whose husband breaks Jack’s nose when Jack confronts him ends up sorry she ever approached him.

So does Jordan, the thief Jack persuades to break into Benson’s place and recover that cross. Benson’s beefy head of security pays a visit to Jack’s apartment to threaten him. A new client who’s been diagnosed with cancer hires Jack to kill him on his birthday. Mother Therese asks Jack to find out who’s been leaving dead cats at the nunnery door. And so on and on, with even the most important of these individual crimes and conflicts subordinated to the gently manic music of them all.

A shaggy, wonderfully evocative lineup for a hero whose “modus operandi [is] to retaliate first.”

Tunnel Vision

Church, Wendy | Severn House (224 pp.) $29.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781448313228

A data analyst consulting with the Chicago Police Department is hamstrung between two cases that pull her in very different directions.

Maude Kaminski isn’t a police officer or even a full-time employee of the CPD. So, she’s surprised and dismayed when she’s appointed to a Criminal Networks Group task force created to prevent Brajen Krol, who runs the Greenpoint Crew for Brooklyn’s Polish Mafia, from taking over the fentanyl traffic in the Windy City. The only compensation when she’s assigned as an undercover operative who’ll take photos during the Taste of Polonia festival, which everyone assumes Krol will attend, is that Gavin McCullom, the intelligence analyst she’s paired with, is quite a hunk. Even before the four-day festival begins, Kaminski’s life gets a lot more complicated when she learns that Sheila Johnson, who was found dead two months ago in the tent city where she lived, had with her a backpack that had belonged to Kaminski’s brother, Michael, who vanished when she lost him in a crowd 20 years ago, when he was 2. Work is work, but family is family, except when family is

work. Kaminski’s determination to track down her missing brother seriously compromises her commitment to the task force, and her superiors pull her off the assignment. When she gets wind that Michael may still be alive and working for Brajen Krol, however, she offers to work full time for the CPD if her boss will give her another undercover gig as an addict who can help make connections that will ultimately implicate Krol without endangering Michael. That decision turns out to create serious ripples in every conceivable direction.

The second in Church’s Shadows of Chicago series is violent, dark, and steadily absorbing.

Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave

Cosimano, Elle | Minotaur (320 pp.)

$28.00 | March 4, 2025 | 9781250337344

A body discovered beneath a Virginia neighbor’s yard plunges the irrepressible title character into another reprise of murder. Five years after he vanished, Ashburn mortgage broker Gilford Dupree has finally turned up, buried in the garden of 81-year-old neighborhood watch president Margaret Haggerty. By the time Maggie’s released from police custody for lack of evidence, the power and water in her house have been shut off, so her politically minded grandson, Brendan, brings her over to Finlay’s place, where she announces that she plans to stay until everything’s set straight at her home. That may take a lot longer than the weekend Finlay originally envisions, because there’s no sign of any contractors at Maggie’s house, and because Brendan’s taken a powder. Loudoun County Detective Mike Tran’s arrest of Finlay’s ex, developer Steven Donovan, for the murder throws Finlay’s dream of having even one more peaceful night with her adorably self-assertive children and her

latest beau, Fairfax County Detective Nicholas Anthony, into the trash can. As Finlay struggles to figure out how to deal with the lucrative offer Hollywood producer Randall Wolfe has made to turn the story of her earlier adventures (read: earlier crimes she’s secretly been complicit in) into a TV series, ghosts from her past seem to confront her at every turn, eventually leading her to the truth.

Less rollicking and more businesslike than the earlier installments, whose comedy of crime seems ever harder to sustain.

In at the Death

Cutler, Judith | Severn House (240 pp.)

$29.99 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 9781448313471

T he final novel in Cutler’s Harriet and Matthew Rowsley series of Victorian mysteries focuses on the fate of Thorncroft House and its odd and varied cast of residents.

Although he’s never appeared during the life of the series, Lord Croft is the force that drives it. To care for him in his incapacity, the trustees of the estate have created the family wing, run by the skilled, resolute Nurse Webb, who studied under Florence Nightingale. They’ve chosen Harriet and Matthew to oversee the daily maintenance of the estate, with help from family lawyer Montgomery Wilson. Since Lord Croft has no son, only an illegitimate daughter who was adopted by a local longboat man and his wife, a variety of putative heirs have laid claim to the estate. In addition, Mrs. Marchbanks, whose husband is head librarian at the Bodleian in Oxford, hints in her dying

breath that the current Lord Croft’s father left a will that could change Harriet’s life. So the appearance of Claude Baker, an American gentleman whom Mr. Wilson thinks may have a creditable claim on the estate, is a momentous event in the lives of all of Thorncroft’s residents—so momentous that it seems to knock the murder straight off the page. Although the killing is a particular gruesome one, leaving the victim without a head or genitals, nobody seems in a hurry to identify him, much less to figure out who killed him. The Rowsleys’ energy turns almost exclusively to determining whether Baker is the rightful heir, and if he is, whether he and his delicate wife are fit to run Thorncroft. The ending couldn’t be more predictable, wrapping the whole saga in a neat package likely to disappoint all but its diehard fans. Murder most ignored.

The Wagtail Murder Club

Davis, Krista | Berkley (320 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780593817520

It all starts with a dog on the side of the road. On her way home to Wagtail, Virginia, where the inn she co-owns is located, Holly Miller spots a cage. Stopping to look more closely, she rescues a black Lab pup left inside with some toys and a note reading, “My name is Squishy. I am a very good boy. Please take care of me.” Wagtail is a vacation destination for animal lovers, a town where pets are welcome everywhere. Taking care of Squishy is the least of Holly’s problems. A man just released from prison after

It all starts with a dog on the side of the road.

having served 12 years for murder has returned to Wagtail, making people nervous. Cooper Adams was convicted of killing Harold Harvey’s son, Jeff, and a furious Harold wants Holly’s Oma, the mayor, to run him out of town. The inn is full for a special event, and Holly’s not happy when her former boyfriend Ben Hathaway arrives and assumes he can use her guest room. Ben is in Wagtail with members of his law firm, who are thinking of opening an office there that he wants to run. When the lawyers hike up the mountain for a party to celebrate a lunar eclipse, one of them doesn’t come down. And when Holly’s terrier, Trixie, no stranger to dead bodies, finds that of hotel guest Dinah Bonetti, who’s fallen or been pushed from the same spot as Jeff, everyone naturally suspects Cooper. Holly, who’s noticed tension among the lawyers, isn’t so sure. She and her friends do enough sleuthing to turn up several possible motives for murder. Despite the engaging characters, the pets are the real stars of a mystery that’s perfect for animal lovers.

Playing Dead: Short

Stories in Honour of Simon Brett by Members of the Detection Club

Edwards, Martin. | Severn House (288 pp.) $29.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781448312962

In this anthology, 22 members of Britain’s Detection Club gather under the banner of its current president to honor his immediate predecessor, Simon Brett, on his 80th birthday. Edwards’ introduction indicates that he gave his contributors free rein, and many of them took him at his word. Andrew Taylor traces the consequences of four schoolmates’ discovery of a body on forbidden ground. Michael Ridpath presents a couple’s curdled revenge for

an online scam. Catherine Aird revisits the 1593 murder of Christopher Marlowe, and Elly Griffiths reimagines the incident that sparked Wilkie Collins to write The Woman in White John Harvey produces an efficient mini-procedural for Charlie Resnick. Michael Jecks’ copper crashes a funeral in order to unearth a Ponzi scheme. Frances Brody follows her hero from the acquisition of 120 Churchill Crowns—a set of commemorative coins—till his death. Abir Mukherjee does right by a wrongfully convicted rapist. Other contributors echo Brett’s work more closely. Peter Lovesey and Lynne Truss plant their crimes in the world of radio broadcasting, and Ann Cleeves, Alison Joseph, David Stuart Davies, Michael Z. Lewin, and Aline Templeton stage theirs in the theater. Brett’s best-known franchise detective, actor Charles Paris, appears in Kate Ellis’ tale of impersonation gone wrong, and Ruth Dudley Edwards’ resourceful hero seems a lot like Brett himself. L.C. Tyler and Christopher Fowler push Brett’s antic wit even further, and editor Edwards pushes anagrams to their limit. Liza Cody provides a triple haiku just 39 words long. The last and longest story is by Brett himself, not to be outdone, who plays on the title of his first novel, Cast, in Order of Disappearance, in another Charles Paris misadventure that rings down the curtain with an appropriate anticlimax. Lots of acting, lots of playing, a fair amount of meta. Happy birthday!

Dead Men Wag No Tails

Fox, Sarah | Severn House (224 pp.)

$29.99 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 9781448312313

A pirate fan bites the dust in the run-up to an Oregon buccaneer festival. Nobody’s more excited about Dead Eye Days—Twilight Cove’s tribute to 18th-century pirate Dead Eye Dawson, the town’s most notorious bad guy—than Jasper

Hogan. He even wears his pirate duds to a meeting of the festival’s planning committee, putting him almost literally at swords’ points with history buff Flynn Smith-Wu, who insists that no pirate ever made it as far up the Oregon coast as Twilight Cove. But Jasper never makes it to the festival. When fellow committee member Georgie Johansen goes to check on him a short time before the big day, she finds him in his study lying in a pool of blood. Naturally, Georgie wants to help the police find the killer, and until she does, her time is divided equally between sleuthing and wondering whether her boyfriend, pro baseballer Callum McQuade, really likes her. (Spoiler alert: He does.) Fox gives Georgie everything a cozy armchair detective needs, and then some. In addition to a quaint seacoast hometown and an animal sanctuary she runs with her aunt, Georgie has two rescue spaniels with supernatural powers, an owl, a kitten, and a talkative parrot who used to belong to Jasper. The magical mutts don’t add much pizzaz to the mystery, which ends very much as busybody cozies end. The parrot is pretty amusing, though.

Yo ho ho, but no bottle of rum.

Runaway Horses

Fruttero, Carlo & Franco Lucentini Trans. by Gregory Dowling | Bitter Lemon Press (180 pp.) | $16.95 paper Feb. 25, 2025 | 9781916725034

T he murder of a jockey casts a pall over a lavish party and triggers some thoughtful sleuthing. Avvocato Lorenzo Maggioni, a Milanese attorney, and his wife, Valeria, both look forward excitedly to Siena’s spectacular Palio, a festival with a horse race as centerpiece—Valeria describes it as an orgasm following a 365-day erection— followed by alcohol-fueled parties. Valeria is enraptured by the suave Count Guidobaldo; Enzo has eyes for the

alluring blond American Ginevra. Readers may share Valeria’s assessment of an event that runs on flirtation, dalliance, and tidbits of local color until the death of Puddu, “the king of the Palio jockeys,” is discovered halfway through. Rakish Dr. Lippi arrives shortly after on a motorbike to question everyone. Most observers assume that Puddu died by suicide, but the analytical Enzo isn’t so sure. Now that the tantalizing revelry has soured, Valeria wants to leave, but her husband doesn’t. And of course, leaving isn’t an option until the mystery is solved. Now that the sensual pleasure he expected is off the table, Enzo begins to investigate, beginning with Puddu’s tearful girlfriend, Elisabetta. The comedy of licentious manners, going hand in hand with Enzo’s probe and the authors’ rich description of the Palio and the equestrian world, all add up to a colorfully offbeat mystery. Fruttero and Lucentini’s sophisticated drollery and Italian sensibility will particularly delight fans of the prolific Andrea Camilleri, whose final Inspector Montalbano novel was published in 2021.

A macabre Mediterranean mystery bubbling with romantic intrigue.

The Socialite’s Guide to Sleuthing and Secrets

Golden, S.K. | Crooked Lane (288 pp.)

$30.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9798892420266

A third case of murder makes 1958 a banner year for the Pinnacle Hotel in all the worst ways. Evelyn Murphy, the 21-year-old daughter of the hotel’s owner, rarely leaves the premises because, unlike most socialites, she’s agoraphobic. But that’s alright, because criminal complications keep coming to her. As she gets up to leave the round of champagne she’s shared with Lois Mitchell and three of her underlings at Ladies Love

to Sparkle, who hope to recruit her to join them in selling costume jewelry, Lois clutches her throat and dies a few hours later of anaphylactic shock induced by shrimp stock. Marco, the Pinnacle chef, insists that there isn’t any shellfish in his whole kitchen, so it looks like the fatal allergen was deliberately introduced into Lois’ food or drink by someone who was actually on the scene—salespeople Prudence, Ruth, or Veronica, or maybe Evelyn herself, who naturally starts detecting. As if Lois’ death isn’t enough for the Pinnacle to live down, New York Times journalist Dottie Stewart—who seems to have it in for both Evelyn and the hotel she’ll inherit—eagerly reports that Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Taylor, who were married at the Pinnacle 13 years ago and have celebrated their anniversary there every year since, became the latest victims of Manhattan’s Gentleman Thief the night they returned home from their latest visit. Everyone thinks room 1313 is haunted; could it be that the entire hotel is cursed?

A gamely nostalgic valentine that’s less inventive than its predecessors, until the heroine’s climactic abduction to Newark.

Stone Certainty

Green, Simon R. | Severn House (192 pp.) $29.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781448313518

Eerie events at a historic British stone circle could be caused by supernatural forces—or a craven criminal.

Telegenic bishop Alistair Kincaid has traveled to the small town of Chipping Amesbury to take part in a documentary about its imposing stone circle, the stuff of dark myth and legend. The presence of glamorous actress Diana Hunt, with whom the tabloids have linked Alistair ever since their unraveling of a baffling mystery in The Holy Terrors (2024), has guaranteed his

Events at a British stone circle could be caused by supernatural forces.

STONE CERTAINTY

participation. Several other visitors join them, including lead presenter Stewart Munroe, fellow presenter Natalie Daye, producer Kim Locke, and local historian Elspeth Montgomery. Green’s second Holy Terrors mystery follows a classic pattern, introducing a huge cast of colorful suspects before the inevitable midpoint murder. The characters’ proximity to the stones provokes a good deal of banter and a lot of creepy stories, made even creepier by a sudden violent storm. As darkness falls, the group retires to The Other Place, formerly known as The Smugglers’ Rest. Soon after a crowd of locals descends threateningly upon them the next morning, warning them to leave, a corpse is discovered among the stones. The presence of a pitchfork marks the victim as a witch, and Elspeth eagerly spreads superstitious scenarios for the killing. Inexperienced PC John Fitzroy seems neither very interested nor very skilled. Fortunately, Alistair and Diana are both, and they eagerly investigate. Charming sleuths and bubbly dialogue add up to an appealing whodunit. A spirited cozy with a supernatural twist.

If It Isn’t One Thing...

Havill, Steven F. | Severn House (224 pp.) $29.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781448311699

A fatal truck crash tips Undersheriff Estelle ReyesGuzman into a series of related and unrelated felonies in Posadas County, New Mexico. It’s pretty clear that trucker Alijandro Gutierrez hit the pickup

driven by Martín Sisneros—killing Sisneros, setting free the horse he was carrying from his trailer, and littering the intersection with the wood Gutierrez was hauling—because he was drunk. What’s not clear is what Sisneros, who was also drunk, was doing in the first place behind the wheel of that truck, which was registered to Quentin Smith, a ranch hand who’d been assigned to transport El Kazzar Kobi Dancer from Nebraska to a veterinarian far away who was trusted by Smith’s imperious boss, Patty Jorgenson, to treat the stallion. Estelle, who’s scheduled shortly to follow her old boss, Sheriff Bill Gastner, into retirement, prepares to rouse her troops to investigate. But a serious complication arises when Posadas County Deputy Dwayne Bishop, responding to a domestic violence call, shoots Raul Cardona dead after Cardona seriously wounded both his wife, Mindy, and Bishop himself. At least that’s how it looks at first. As usual, Havill unfolds his story at a leisurely pace that allocates so much time to reintroducing the franchise regulars and their families and friends and law-enforcement colleagues that the investigation into Martín Sisneros’ unaccountable presence in Quentin Smith’s RAM inevitably gets pushed to the side. But then who reads this warmhearted series for the mysteries, anyway? If it isn’t one walk-on, it’s another.

For more by Steven F. Havill, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

Death Among the Stitches

Hechtman, Betty | Severn House (224 pp.)

$29.99 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 9781448312931

In a neat reversal on tales of fame and fortune in the big city, a pair of L.A. 20-somethings find adventure in rural Indiana. Every perk Annie Sara Hart enjoys as the daughter of talent agent Bryan Hart comes with a hefty price tag. At 10, she was assigned the task of being best friends with Gray Hanover, the daughter of Bryan’s rich and famous client Camille Constantine, giving her access to a world of wealth and privilege but denying her the opportunity to make her own friends. Now in her late 20s, Annie Sara is still tethered to Gray, working at her Camille-funded boutique. When she inherits a derelict knitting shop in the Midwest from her uncle, she rejects Gray’s whiny claim that she can’t run Malibu Kids without her and demands two weeks off to check out the one thing in life that belongs to her alone. Her plan: assess her holdings, make renovations to render the shop marketable, sell up, come home. But Franklin, Indiana, is a revelation to her—a combination of welcoming and mysterious, with unexpected kindnesses and unexpected blind spots. (The murder of the shop’s previous owner, for example, is all but swept under the rug.) Instead of going home, Annie Sara has Gray shipped out to Indiana, along with a freezer full of restricted-calorie meals and instructions from Bryan and Camille to make sure Gray returns still able to fit into the minuscule jeans required for an upcoming photo shoot. But the young women have their own ideas, and seeing them take root and flourish is groundbreaking. Hechtman joyfully turns many timeworn cozy tropes on their heads. (Instead of an elderly maiden aunt, for example, Annie Sara

inherits her windfall from a travel writer uncle who died on an expedition to Peru.) But most of all, she creates characters who are rich, complicated, and altogether human.

If the Booker Prize had a category for cozies, this would be a contender.

Cat’s Claw

Hitchens, Dolores | American Mystery Classics (264 pp.) | $25.95 March 4, 2025 | 9781613166253

An innocuous bit of surveillance takes a pair of septuagenarian spinsters far from their Los Angeles home in pursuit of a killer. The third of Rachel and Jennifer Murdock’s 13 cases, originally published by Hitchens in 1943 under the pseudonym D.B. Olsen, begins innocently enough with Rachel idly watching a bandy-legged man, who in turn has been watching one particular window in a neighboring building for three days. Just as he seems to be giving up his vigil, he’s struck by a car whose driver picks him up from the sidewalk and spirits him away. A search of the abandoned apartment under the aegis of LAPD Lt. Stephen Mayhew reveals clues that lead the sisters to the mountain village of San Cayetano, with Rachel very much in the lead. Settling into a rooming house, they try to make connections with the circle gathered around Florence MacConnell, who as “Mrs. Smith” had taken residence in the Murdocks’ neighborhood, and the land Tommy Hale’s father sold to the late father of the Aldershot children: elder brother Robert, who suffers from a heart condition; beautiful sister Monica, who’s involved with Tommy; and younger brother Harley, who lacks the legal power to control the property. The discovery of a barely buried body identified as that of Tim Woodley— the bandy-legged man who worked with his brother, Jeff, for the

Aldershots—persuades the sisters that they’re on the right track even as it points to the dangers ahead. Despite Jennifer’s reservations about sleuthing so far from their comfort zone, Hitchens keeps everything moving briskly in what the sisters endearingly dub “The Case of All Outdoors and Bear Heaven.” There’ll be spiders, too. Apart from a few dated references, a remarkably fresh entry in the cozy- adventure genre.

Big Name Fan

Knox, Ruthie & Annie Mare

Kensington (320 pp.) | $28.00 Feb. 25, 2025 | 9781496751331

The reunion of a cult-hit TV detective series may mean a second chance at romance for the show’s stars, who face a mystery that might bring them together.

Returning to the Craven’s Daughter set five years after the show ended, Bexley Simon can’t help but wonder if the place is a little haunted. Although Bex’s friend Jen Arnot, the show’s makeup artist, tragically died on set, Bex is less worried about actual ghosts than about things that have been left unsaid. For example, just as the romantic tension between Cora Banks, the private eye she played, and Henri Shannon, the former FBI agent played by Samantha Farmer, was never resolved, neither was the relationship between the two actors, for whom the timing was never right. Now back together for a reunion special and an accompanying rewatch podcast, Bex and Sam are revisiting all those will-they, won’t-they moments on air. As happened with the original ambiguously close Xena and Gabrielle, fans are rooting for the two to find their way to each other. Again echoing their predecessors, a large contingent of online fans have launched their ships into fan fiction, perhaps hoping to plant seeds in the

head of Bette Holloway, the show’s nepo-baby writer. While Bex and Sam try to sort out who they are and who they can be to each other, a guest on the podcast mentions that the person known only as Big Name Fan, a prolific writer of Craven’s Daughter fanfic, may have been more closely connected to the show than anyone realized. Questions of the Fan’s identity swirl around set, making Bex wonder whether Jen’s fatal plunge from a balcony could have been more than misadventure.

A TV reunion is fertile ground for a queer pop culture makeover.

A Slant of Light

Lasky, Kathryn | Severn House (192 pp.) $29.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781448313860

Georgia O’Keeffe takes on Nazis and the Catholic Church. In 1936, isolationism is sweeping the U.S., and people like the fanatical priest Father Charles Coughlin are praising the Nazis and spewing hatred. Georgia’s settled at the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, far from her cheating husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and enjoying her relationship with Santa Fe Sheriff Ryan McCaffrey, who’s worried about Nazi espionage and Opus Dei, the archconservative offshoot of the Catholic church that’s giving his friend Bishop Claudio Peterson sleepless nights. During a painting trip, Georgia discovers Joseph, a frightened boy, hiding in a culvert. She brings him to her home and feeds him. He eventually reveals that he’s half Navajo and half Tarahumara, and that he was planning to run all the way to Mexico, but he ends up staying with her for several days and devouring her books. When Georgia goes to Santa Fe to see the bishop about creating a mural, she finds him hanging from a rope in the garden. Was his death suicide or murder? There are indications that he was strangled with a spiked cilice of the type that

some church members use on themselves for self-mortification. Upon her return home, Joseph has vanished, leaving behind a note. Going after him, she learns that the priests and nuns who run the St. Ignatius School, where he had been sent by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, killed his sister and physically and sexually abused the children under their care. Georgia takes the opportunity to teach art at the school in order to uncover more murder and abuse. Ryan, who’s gone east to learn more about Nazi plots, returns to help Joseph uncover the grave of his sister. Everything comes to a head in a snowstorm that puts everyone in danger before good triumphs over evil.

A riveting look at the Indian boarding school system whose horrors continue to be uncovered today.

The Four Queens of Crime

Limoncelli, Rosanne | Crooked Lane (320 pp.) $29.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9798892420600

As World War II looms, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham headline a fundraiser in an aristocratic manse that promptly turns into a murder scene.

The morning after the four bestselling authors—who, along with Baroness Emma Orczy, coincidentally starred in Marie Benedict’s The Queens of Crime just last month—join ranks to raise money for real-life activist Lady Stella Reading’s Women’s Voluntary Service, their host, ex-MP Sir Henry Heathcote of Hursley House, smokes his last cigar, which someone’s dipped in cyanide. Since the baronet’s idea of supporting his native land’s values includes looking down his nose at Communists, Blacks, Jews, and women, the assembled party is full of people who, as one of them acknowledges, “won’t mind very much that he’s dead.” But it could well be that members of Sir Henry’s immediate family—from his son, Charles, now the

12th baronet, to his daughter, Kate, come home from boarding school, to his fiancee, Lady Sarah—had the best reasons of all to kill him. Although real-life DCI Lilian Wyles of Scotland Yard is eager to enlist the help of the Queens of Crime, fictional DCI Richard Davidson, her partner on the case, won’t hear of it, and the pair’s dutiful, endless interrogations of Sir Henry’s family and staff shunt Christie, Sayers, Marsh, and Allingham to the sidelines, where they remain chatting among themselves to the very end; their detection is pretty much limited to elucidating a single clue that baffles the Scotland Yard sleuths. Bonus: Readers can congratulate themselves on having the enlightened social attitudes the victim and suspects sorely lack.

No Comfort for the Dead

O’Donnell, R.P. | Crooked Lane (288 pp.) $29.99 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9798892420563

Two natives return separately to a tiny village in West Cork. Things are tough for one of them and even tougher for the other. Even before she fell in love with Charley Thornton, Emma Daly was determined to join the Garda Siochana and rise to the very top. She got her first wish, but her second was squelched by an affair with a married colleague who promised to leave his wife for her but got her fired instead. Now she’s back in Castlefreke, living with her father and doing her best to transform the town library from a room full of books to a social and cultural center. She’s called back to her earlier vocation by the news that Mr. Hollis, the town’s wealthiest citizen, has been shot dead in the Big House. There, village doctor Adam Thornton, Charley’s father, finds his body, along with the seriously wounded Colm Thornton, Adam’s younger brother, who vanished 32 years ago, settled in Belfast, and became a priest. When Adam and

An advisor to London’s haut ton tackles a case with grave implications.

THE MATTER OF THE SECRET BRIDE

Colm’s parents, Jimmy and Frances Thornton, beg Emma to investigate, her undying sense that she’s channeling Sherlock Holmes makes her highly susceptible. The Thorntons aren’t convinced that the two men shot each other; they’re far from certain that Garda Sgt. Noonan can figure out who the real killer is; and they can’t understand why Colm, who’s had no contact with his family for a generation, chose to come back home in the first place. O’Donnell’s debut is so atmospheric in its background and poetic in its language that readers will forgive the distinct sense of anticlimax when the real culprit is unmasked. As coolly bracing as an Irish spring.

Broken Fields

Rendon, Marcie R. | Soho Crime (272 pp.)

$28.95 | March 4, 2025 | 9781641296588

Peyton Place meets Fargo in this clipped tale of misdoings in the Red River Valley. As she’s plowing a field on Bud Borgerud’s farm one morning, Cash Blackbear spots a car parked with its engine running outside a house Borgerud’s renting to Nils and Arlis Petterson. The car is still there and still running the next time Cash passes, and the time after that. So Cash, an Ojibwe woman with a troubled past and a sixth sense that tells her things other people miss, pulls over and checks out the car, which is empty, and the house, which is occupied by a little girl and a dead body. The terrified girl speaks only

enough to identify herself as Shawnee, but Cash recognizes the corpse as that of Bud Borgerud. Although Norman County Sheriff David Wheaton, the mentor who’s already gotten Cash out of more than one dangerous situation, assumes that Arlis Petterson shot her landlord and ran off with her husband, Cash can’t imagine why Arlis would abandon a child Cash believes is her daughter, a child who’s now unhappily shifted first to a county social worker’s custody, then to newly widowed Jean Borgerud’s. And the balance of authority shifts from Wheaton to Cash when she rescues him from the trunk of his car, where he’s been locked by a trio of bank robbers who got the drop on him. Rendon is less interested in spinning out further complications— most readers will spot Borgerud’s killer early on—than in exploring the ways the deck is stacked against Cash because she’s a woman, an Ojibwe, and a maverick with limited respect for white men’s rules.

A telling epitaph for the dreams of a heroine who had “dared to hope for something else this time.”

The Matter of the Secret Bride

Wilde, Darcie | Kensington (448 pp.) $27.00 | Dec. 24, 2024 | 9781496750631

Rosalind Thorne, advisor to London’s  haut ton, tackles a case with grave political implications. In her quest to become self- sustaining, independent of father or husband,

Rosalind has met with a great deal of success. She earns enough helping other women solve their domestic problems to own her own home, complete with cook and footman. She no longer relies on the generosity of her clients; her man of business now negotiates a fee for her services. And she’s able to pay former police detective Adam Harkness for his help. But success comes at a price. When Maria Fitzherbert summons Rosalind to her gracious home on Tilney Street, Rosalind can hardly decline, even though some consider Mrs. Fitzherbert “the most notorious woman in the kingdom” because of the rumor that she married the Prince of Wales, now King George IV, when both were young—a marriage that would have been forbidden by British law, since Mrs. Fitzherbert is Catholic. George went on to marry Queen Caroline, with whom he’s now embroiled in a bitter divorce. Mrs. Fitzherbert has discovered that her marriage contract with George was stolen from her bedroom, and she wants Rosalind to find it. Her reasons are personal, but the political stakes are enormous. The burden of the task takes its toll not only on Rosalind but on the reader. This case just isn’t as light of heart as the heroine’s earlier outings, and sorting out the amorous tribulations of the king and his multiple wives weighs heavily on the narrative. The series has created quite a dilemma: If Rosalind doesn’t climb the ladder professionally, she risks stagnation. But climbing too fast makes her queries more consequential, more fraught, and a little bit grim. Here’s hoping for more fun in future adventures.

Book to Screen

Anne Hathaway To Star in Verity Adaptation

The film, directed by Michael Showalter, is based on Colleen Hoover’s 2018 novel.

Anne Hathaway is set to star in an Amazon MGM Studios film adaptation of Colleen

Hoover’s Verity, Deadline reports.

Hoover’s novel, selfpublished in 2018 and reissued by Grand Central in 2021, follows Lowen Ashleigh, a writer who is hired by a man to finish uncompleted books by his injured wife, Verity. Lowen discovers the draft of an autobiography that contains shocking secrets. The book was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.

Hathaway, known for her roles in films including The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada, will star as Verity in the film, which will be directed by Michael Showalter (The Eyes of

Tammy Faye, The Idea of You). Writing the screenplay is Nick Antosca (The Forest, Antlers). Producers include Hoover, Hathaway, and Showalter.

Hoover’s novel It Ends With Us was adapted into a film released earlier this year, directed by Justin Baldoni and starring Baldoni and Blake Lively. An adaptation of Hoover’s Regretting You is also in the works, with Allison Williams set to star.

Hoover shared news of Hathaway’s casting on Instagram, writing, “@annehathaway as Verity!

For reviews of Colleen Hoover’s novels, visit Kirkus online.

Michael Showalter directing! @amazonmgmstudios! Verity is coming to theaters and I am so excited for this cast and the script and the director and the whole team bringing this to life. Cannot wait. More coming soon!”—M.S.

Anne Hathaway

Provocative Novels for Your Book Club

more booklists, visit Kirkus online.

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales

Fawcett, Heather | Del Rey (368 pp.)

$29.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780593500224

In the conclusion to the Emily Wilde trilogy, a Cambridge professor of dryadology—faerie studies—prepares to live her research as never before.

Previously, in Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (2024), Emily poisoned Queen Arna, the usurping stepmother of her faerie-prince fiance, Wendell Bambleby, and found a gate to Wendell’s lost kingdom; naturally, the process of establishing a new monarchy in a quixotic faerie realm will be far from smooth. Unfortunately, Arna is not quite dead; she is using her poisoned, liminal state to blight the very landscape. Emily must employ her specific mortal skills (academic research and unrelenting resolve) to find the faerie lore that best describes their current situation, picking out the clues within scraps of old tales to locate the hidden, dying queen, and deal with her in a way that doesn’t lead to further damage. Although much of what she learns is grim, Emily forges on, determined to discover the path to a happy ending for herself and Wendell, where she can be the faerie queen she never imagined she’d be (and is frankly quite uncomfortable being). Thankfully, this concluding volume isn’t the feared retread of the previous two, both of which involved Emily’s research in remote European locations and her efforts to get on with the human locals, even while her obvious neurospiciness and deep understanding of rules allow her to deal with faeries more effectively than most mortals can. This installment makes effective callbacks to the previous

two, while moving the story forward as Emily, despite the concerns of her mortal friends, tries to make a place for herself in a dangerous new world where not all of her subjects are prepared to take her seriously. Janet of Carterhaugh merely had to drag her lover Tam Lin from a horse to secure her happiness from a vengeful faerie queen; Emily has to put in real work, using her brain and plunging into physical danger to earn her future. The result is far more satisfying and believable, despite being mainly set in a fantastical world. A well-constructed and enjoyable conclusion.

Elphie: A Wicked Childhood

Maguire, Gregory | Morrow/ HarperCollins (288 pp.) | $30.00 March 25, 2025 | 9780063377011

It’s not easy being green, as this prequel to Maguire’s Wicked series amply shows. Everyone has parents, but few are as flawed as those who brought Elphaba—Elphie, here—into the world. Pop is an emotionally unavailable missionary from Munchkinland, working among the poor Quadling laborers of Wend Hardings, “sheep-shit country.” Mom often keeps a breast exposed, hopeful of catching the attention of someone, anyone, who’ll pay attention to her: “A need to be seen. By men.” It being a standard trope of children’s literature that daughters must live without their mothers, mom has to check out fairly early in the proceedings, leaving Elphie to take care of her armless—so we are frequently reminded—sister and a brother who’s a bundle of misdirected energy. There’s not

It’s not easy being green, as this Wicked prequel shows.

ELPHIE

much love in evidence, and of course the absence of love is an essential ingredient in the recipe for producing evil people. In Maguire’s telling, Elphie, who “makes wishes on falling stars still,” begs for our sympathy, but then does something just awful enough—for example, picking viciously on poor armless Nessa—to lose it. Elphie’s need for connection is met, at least in some small part, by her relationship to animals: She’s gifted in communicating with “polter-Monkey[s]” and dwarf bears, whom Maguire, nodding to current headlines, calls “migrants on the run.” Indeed, a subtle political undercurrent runs throughout, with Elphie searching for connection with a wise Indigenous man who “went off to the imperialists to tell their military to stop sending troops to build that highway of yellow steps.” Not much happens in Maguire’s talky pages, certainly as compared to the previous Wicked books, but he’s constructing a psychological backstory that prepares the way for Elphie/Elphaba’s turn to the dark side. “Hurt can distend rationality,” he writes, and that’s just so.

A bit of a slog and a bit of a downer, but essential for Elphaba fans.

Two Truths and a Lie

O’Brien, Cory | Pantheon (304 pp.) | $28.00 March 4, 2025 | 9780593687284

Even in a future world where both landscapes and personal identities are way too fluid, murders still happen, and their solutions must be found. No matter what (or who) is damaged along the way.

Never mind the exact year. All you need to know is that sometime in the future, coastal cities like Los Angeles are all but halfway submerged in water and there has been so much war in the interim that it’s hard to know who won or lost. Still, people adapt to change as they always have and Orr Vue, a grizzled, sardonic retired soldier and professional “fact checker” for a powerful

data-collecting company called InfoDrip, insists on living as quiet a SoCal life as super-stressed socio-environmental circumstances permit. Somehow, there’s always LAPD around, and they pick up Orr for questioning about the murder of his employer, Thomas Mahoney. Orr’s not a suspect, but Auggie Wolf, his fellow war vet and one-time lover, is being held for interrogation. Even though the cops are sure they have their man, they allow Orr to dig further into the case using his facility with piercing through foggy deceptions with factoids—and with wielding surplus military drones. Also interested in using Orr’s detecting skills is Mahoney’s daughter, Marianna, enigmatic and, of course, beautiful, though the old soldier isn’t satisfied with using that mere adjective: “[She] had a body that hit my eyes harder than tear gas, lit up my nervous system like a dozen Tasers, made my heart pound harder than a panic attack, and took my breath away like a week of water-boarding…I wanted to tell her secrets until I ran out of them, and then make some up just to keep on talking.” That sentence should give you some idea of how O’Brien keeps your head in the action with antic, lyrical wit and vivid—if sometimes bewildering— action scenes as Orr’s search for Mahoney’s killer becomes more brutally complex. It all works out in extremely weird, perversely satisfying ways. This used to be labeled “cyberpunk.” Some believe it’ll be called “real life,” sooner or later.

The Dark Mirror

Shannon, Samantha | Bloomsbury (576 pp.) | $31.99 | Feb. 25, 2025

9781639733965 | Series: Bone Season, 5

In this longawaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe. After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige

Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turnedlover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people— and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more actionthriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.

Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.

Immortal

Tan, Sue Lynn | Harper Voyager (464 pp.) $32.00 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 9780063267619

A poisoned princess must free her people from the tyranny of the immortals even as she falls under the spell of the mysterious God of War. Tan returns to her Celestial Kingdom in this standalone romantic fantasy. The Lord of Tianxia serves the immortal Queen Caihong of the Golden Desert faithfully until he is forced to choose between her and Liyen, his granddaughter and heir. Liyen has been poisoned by the waters of death in the Wangchuan River in the Netherworld and can only be healed by the Divine Pearl Lotus, which her grandfather refuses to hand over to the queen, though she’s demanded it. When his heart gives way soon after, Liyen blames the immortals, even though they’re not directly responsible for her grandfather’s death. She vows that under her rule, Tianxia will be liberated from service to the immortals. Complicating matters, Liyen is attacked by Winged Devils, monstrous allies of the Wuxin who were banished to the Netherworld following an attack on Tianxia, and she needs help from the God of War to figure out why. Although there is romantic tension between the two of them, it is so gradual that the romance is the least interesting part of this ambitious saga. Tan’s worldbuilding skills are impressive and her vivid descriptions of magic and mythology move this doorstop epic through a rich, well-established backstory. Liyen struggles to navigate the heavens and Earth without quite understanding the forces manipulating her life, which isn’t to say that she lacks agency, just context. Her struggle pays off in the third act, but at times the journey is slow and the romance gets lost in the slog.

An unhurried, mostly chaste jaunt spanning several worlds.

Kirkus Star

Promise Me Sunshine

Bastone, Cara | Dial Press (416 pp.) | $17.99 paper | March 4, 2025 | 9780593595732

Following the death of her best friend, a Brooklyn woman completes her “Live Again list” with the help of a wounded stranger.

After her best friend, Lou Merritt, dies from cancer, Lenny Bellamy feels like she’s barely hanging on. Thankfully, the babysitting gigs she picks up to pay the bills also serve as a bright distraction in her life. Lenny is one of those blessed individuals who knows exactly how to identify with children. She’s warm and endearing, and nannying makes her feel just the slightest bit better—or at least that’s what she tells herself. Her latest job is watching 7-year-old Ainsley. Ainsley’s mom, Reese Hollis, is a single parent, raising her daughter in the swanky apartment left to her by her father, a famous musician who’d died a year earlier, with her moody half brother, Miles Honey, living upstairs in the same building. It’s obvious from Miles’ first appearance in Reese’s apartment that their relationship is strained—he barely knew his father and has only been in Reese’s life for two years. He doesn’t trust Lenny, clearly overprotective of his niece and judgmental about everyone who takes care of her. As Miles transforms into a helicopter uncle, he starts to recognize something familiar in Lenny—the grief that is all but consuming her life, something with which he’s had some experience. When Lenny reveals that she and Lou had compiled a “Live Again list” to help Lenny work through her friend’s death, Miles agrees to help her fulfill the tasks on her list on one condition: He wants Lenny’s help in finding ways to connect with Ainsley and Reese. Bastone’s contemporary romances are truly in a class of their own, creating difficult events and softening them with the comfort of finding a romantic partner who is both supportive and empathetic.

Miles’ rough and admittedly awkward edges are smoothed by Lenny’s dogged efforts to carry on through her sadness and pain. This is a tender slow-burn romance with an emotional wallop. A beautiful portrayal of two people navigating love and grief.

Kirkus Star

Back After This

Holmes, Linda | Ballantine (320 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780593599259

A podcaster hosts a show about her own dating life— but falls for someone off-limits. Cecily Foster cares deeply about her job at the podcast company Palmetto Media. She’s mostly behindthe-scenes there, using her perfectionist tendencies to make everyone else sound better—but what she really wants is her own show. When she gets the chance, though, it’s not exactly what she’s always dreamed of. Cecily has to go out with 20 men chosen for her by influencer/ relationship coach Eliza Cassidy and document her experience as she (hopefully) finds love. Cecily long ago lost interest in dating when her fellow-podcaster boyfriend stole her idea for a show, and letting listeners in on her dating exploits seems humiliating. But Palmetto needs a hit and Cecily wants leverage, so she agrees on the condition that she gets to have her best friend, Julie, as producer. Cecily promises to give Eliza’s method the old college try, going out on dates with 20 different men with varying degrees of success. The one man Cecily is actually attracted to, though, is Will, a guy she meets when she helps him rescue a runaway Great Dane on the sidewalk. As a laid-back waiter and photographer, he certainly doesn’t fit in among the career-driven doctors and businessmen Eliza suggests. He keeps showing up in her life, though, being both charming and cute, and she finds herself

wondering if she can trust her own instincts. Should she stick to Eliza’s plan, protecting her job in the process? Or should she do something far riskier and follow her heart? Holmes clearly knows a thing or two about the world of podcasting, as she’s one of the hosts of the popular NPR show Pop Culture Happy Hour, and she fills the book with details that give listeners a peek behind the curtain (for example, hosts should avoid drinking Mountain Dew because it “makes you sound like your mouth is sticking to itself”). Cecily is a winning character—her burgeoning relationship with Will manages to be both realistic and sexy, and her personal growth as she learns to value her own opinion is a joy to read. Holmes also showcases her fine ear for dialogue with crackling banter and plenty of snappy retorts.

An altogether charming and delightful romance full of laugh-out-loud lines.

Something Cheeky

Lam, Thien-Kim | Avon/Harper Collins (336 pp.) | $18.99 paper March 4, 2025 | 9780063237384

Two friends team up to bring the musical of their dreams to life.

Zoe Tran is a self-made woman and proud of it. After successfully opening a plus-size lingerie boutique in Washington, D.C., she’s earned a reputation for helping women feel like the best version of themselves and doesn’t expect her life to change anytime soon. Then her old college friend Derek Bui walks back into her life, making her an offer she can’t refuse. When they were wide-eyed theater students, they dreamed of making their favorite Vietnamese fairy tale into a rock musical—and now, Derek’s here to turn that dream into reality, but he can’t do it without Zoe and her eye for fashion. With Derek directing the musical and Zoe designing the costumes, plus an all-Asian cast and creative team, the production has a

great chance of success. Getting it off the ground means Zoe and Derek will be working together very closely, leading Derek to experience a resurgence of his longtime crush on Zoe and leading Zoe, who’s demisexual, to gain an all-new perception of her old friend. As if things couldn’t get more complicated, the theater’s artistic director is breathing down Derek’s neck, trying to pressure him into stripping the musical of its unapologetically Vietnamese identity. Amid creative clashes, new feelings, and a ticking clock to opening night, Zoe and Derek have to decide whether they’re going to stand up for the vision they’ve always believed in or let an outsider have the final say. Lam’s romance is refreshingly sex-positive and inclusive, focused on characters who don’t always get the spotlight in the genre. The book doesn’t hesitate to tackle the shortcomings of the theater world, either, exploring the question of whose narratives are often diminished or reduced to outdated stereotypes. There’s a deft balance between sweet moments and serious conversations, but not every element is paced as well as it could be.

Culture takes center stage in this confident friends-to-lovers romance.

Kirkus Star

Losing Sight

Richardson, Tati | Generous Press (306 pp.) $17.99 paper | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781955905817

A sports reporter’s new glasses help her see the world in a new way. Tanika Ryan hit 40 and was demoted from the crown jewel of sports gigs, Thursday Night Football . Tanika knows ageism and colorism are at the root of the decision; the new reporter is a beautiful young woman who knows nothing about sports or journalism. Her boss makes it clear that if Tanika doesn’t help train her on-air replacement, she’ll lose the

opportunity to be named VP of Programming for the whole network, a powerful behind-the-scenes role that she covets. To make matters worse, Tanika has no choice but to get glasses after years of ignoring her deteriorating vision. Optometrist Gideon Miles is working to revive his practice, having neglected the business after losing his wife to cancer. Tanika and Gideon have instant chemistry and he asks her out, but she demurs due to her extensive and exhausting travel schedule. When Tanika’s new glasses arrive, they allow her to see people’s auras. It’s a charming, mystical element that reaffirms Tanika’s ability to judge the intentions of those around her. Over the next few weeks, Gideon and Tanika develop a flirty friendship via text. Tanika interviews a series of unconventional athletes, a young hotshot F1 driver and a sexy older rodeo star, who make it clear they’re interested in romancing her—but they aren’t nearly as appealing or captivating as the handsome optometrist back home in Atlanta. Richardson’s novel is laugh-out-loud funny while still being a poignant exploration of the way people navigate the personal and professional challenges of midlife. Tanika and Gideon’s romance is a masterclass in creating characters who struggle with life’s disappointments while still being playful and sexy. A terrific romance highlights the struggles and triumphs of midlife characters.

The Gilded Heiress

Shupe, Joanna | Avon/HarperCollins (352 pp.) | $18.99 paper March 25, 2025 | 9780063310315

A Gilded Age grifter makes good, eventually. Josie Smith does what she needs to get by, after having been abandoned as an infant and raised at the Boston Children’s Asylum. She takes care of herself and her best friend and

looks for every opportunity to sing, in the hopes that her extraordinary talent might make her famous someday. And indeed, singing on the street does bring attention her way, but it’s from one of Boston’s many con men: Leo Hardy. His father died after having been unfairly accused by the wealthy Pendelton family of having kidnapped their baby, and now he’ll do anything to keep his mother and sisters off the streets. When the desperate Leo hears Josie sing, he’s immediately drawn to her voice, and then, when he realizes she has an uncanny resemblance to the lost Pendelton child, he puts together a swindle that could make them both rich. Leo convinces Josie to let him be her manager, then insists on taking her to New York City to audition for her big break; unbeknownst to her, he’s also plotting to get her near the Pendeltons, in the hopes they’ll believe she’s their daughter and he can collect the reward for finding her. Neither of them counts on what will happen when their purposely platonic relationship starts to heat up in the middle of Central Park, or what else will happen after the Pendeltons finally learn about Josie. Shupe’s newest Gilded Age romance builds on the framework of the movie Anastasia , which is a good match for the extreme inequality of the era. This inspiration explains the fantastical nature of the story; though Shupe includes the historical details that always set her romances apart, and it’s not her first time adapting a fairy tale, it becomes hard to suspend disbelief at certain points. Her writing is as saucy and spicy as ever, however, and combined with some thoughtful consideration of class and wealth in the era, Shupe’s fans will find much to enjoy.

An appealing historical romance with enchanting touches.

2025 NONFICTION SPRING PREVIEW

Like newborns that emerge after a long winter in Chloe Dalton’s Raising Hare, a number of notable books, including Dalton’s memoir, will make their way out into the world this spring. Other standout memoirs include one by the musician Neko Case, and there are eye-opening biographies (few remember Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s first South Asian star) and new approaches to history (Imani Perry, for one, examines the color blue in Black culture). In essence, a season of wonders. Happy reading!

The Harder I Fight the More

I Love You: A Memoir

Case, Neko | Grand Central Publishing (288 pp.)

$30.00 | Jan. 28, 2025 | 9781538710500

A sweet-and-sour study of a songwriter’s coming-of-age.

The Rebel

Empresses:

Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe

Goldstone, Nancy | Little, Brown (640 pp.)

$35.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780316419420

A richly detailed, entertaining dual biography.

Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives

Gross, Michael Joseph | Dutton (480 pp.)

$35.00 | March 18, 2025 | 9780525955238

An engagingly learned look at the human body.

The Killing Fields of East New York: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood

Horn, Stacy | Gillian Flynn/Zando (320 pp.)

$28.00 | Jan. 28, 2025 | 9781638931225

Solid in-depth reporting with a polemical kick.

Shattered: A Memoir

Kureishi, Hanif | Ecco/HarperCollins (336 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780063360501

Refashioning his life after an accident— with grace, dignity, and black humor.

Raising Hare: A Memoir

Dalton, Chloe | Pantheon (224 pp.)

$27.00 | March 4, 2025 | 9780593701843

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

In My Remaining Years

Grae, Jean | Flatiron Books (304 pp.)

$29.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781250857538

A fierce, funny book that embraces life and all its imperfections with open arms.

Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson

Hoffman, Claire | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) | $32.00 March 18, 2025 | 9780374601713

A well-researched portrait of an outsize personality.

Disposable: America’s Contempt for the Underclass

Jones, Sarah | Avid Reader Press (304 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9781982197421

A powerful, heartfelt argument for a more humane economics.

Song So Wild and Blue: A Life With the Music of Joni Mitchell

Lisicky, Paul | HarperOne (272 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780063280373

A beautiful tribute to a legendary musician and the act of creation.

The

Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball

Miller, John W. | Avid Reader Press (368 pp.)

$30.00 | March 4, 2025 | 9781668030929

An illuminating, entertaining biography of a mercurial tactician who changed the national pastime.

Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry

Plunkett, Adam | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (512 pp.) | $35.00 Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780374282080

A superb biography that neatly weaves in nuanced and insightful readings of many poems.

Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly

Selinger, Hannah | Little, Brown (304 pp.)

$29.00 | March 25, 2025 | 9780316570770

It’s not Bourdain, but sensitive readers pondering a kitchen career might rethink it after reading this memoir.

Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church

Shenon, Philip | Knopf (608 pp.)

$35.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781101946411

An extraordinary accomplishment: controversial, but crucial for discussions in today’s Catholic Church.

Ginseng Roots

Thompson, Craig | Pantheon (448 pp.)

$35.00 | April 29, 2025 | 9780593700778

A spectacular and inspired graphic memoir that traces the many threads of a remarkable root.

Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People

Perry, Imani | Ecco/HarperCollins (256 pp.)

$28.99 | Jan. 28, 2025 | 9780062977397

An innovative cultural history.

The Secret Public: How Music Moved Queer Culture From the Margins to the Mainstream

Savage, Jon | Liveright/Norton (768 pp.)

$35.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781324096108

A keenly intelligent, comprehensive survey of some of the bravest artists in history.

Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star

Sen, Mayukh | Norton (320 pp.)

$29.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781324050810

An extraordinary biography of an extraordinary South Asian woman.

Magic in the Air: The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk

Sielski, Mike | St. Martin’s (368 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781250287526

A suitably vibrant history of spectacular doings on—and above—the hardwood.

Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause

Watts, Naomi | Crown (256 pp.) | $29.00 Jan. 21, 2025 | 9780593729038

In a society that values youth above all else, Watts celebrates women’s inherent value, no matter their age.

Nonfiction

JOHN McMURTRIE

NEW BEGINNINGS, NEW BOOKS

NEW YEARS ARE ABOUT renewals, and few know more about starting fresh than Hanif Kureishi. In 2022, the British Pakistani author and filmmaker broke his neck in a fall, leaving him largely paralyzed. Since then, Kureishi, who’s 70, has undergone spinal surgery and rehabilitation and struggles with constant pain. Through it all, he’s retained his dark sense of humor. It’s on full display in his forthcoming memoir, Shattered (Ecco/ HarperCollins, Feb. 4). If he’s not on his mattress, he writes, “I have a tremendous pain in the arse.…I can tell you that a pain in the arse is a pain in the arse.” Despite his suffering, Kureishi has moments of optimism, which he cherishes. As our starred review puts it, his condition “affords him the opportunity

to meet and empathize with new people.”

There are other new beginnings that one can read about this spring. Like Kureishi, the singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell nearly died; she suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015 that robbed her of the ability to speak and play the guitar. Now 81, she’s recovered remarkably well, relearning her lost abilities. Paul Lisicky celebrates the power of her artistry in Song So Wild and Blue: A Life With the Music of Joni Mitchell (HarperOne, Feb. 25). A lifelong admirer of the musician, Lisicky writes that “Joni’s songs saved my life.”

In the words of our starred review, “Hers was ‘the music of loneliness’ yet ‘layered with happiness and hope,’ a particularly resonant message for a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. Even after he

turned to fiction and had received recognition for his writing, Lisicky found inspiration in Mitchell’s work. He wanted, he writes, ‘to give to others what Joni had given to me…a chart as to how one lives a life.’”

Another notable book about music that’s out early this year is Jon Savage’s The Secret Public: How Music Moved Queer Culture From the Margins to the Mainstream (Liveright/Norton Feb. 4). Our starred review calls the work “a keenly intelligent, comprehensive survey of some of the bravest artists in history.”

One sure sign of spring’s arrival is baseball. John W. Miller pays homage to an old-school talent in The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball (Avid Reader Press, March 4). Our starred review describes it as “an

illuminating, entertaining biography of a mercurial tactician who changed the national pastime.”

Care more for basketball?

Mike Sielski takes an inspired approach to the sport in Magic in the Air: The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk (St. Martin’s, Feb. 11). Our review notes that this “suitably vibrant history” describes how racial prejudice was behind a longtime ban of the dunk. What exactly helps all those athletes excel at what they do?

Michael Joseph Gross has some answers in Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives (Dutton, March 11). “An engagingly learned look at the human body,” says our review; this just might be the book for those looking to keep that perennial promise to get in shape.

John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

A grand tour of a museum like no other.

Deftly weaving history and memoir, former New York Times Paris bureau chief Sciolino offers a spirited journey through France’s most storied museum, the Louvre. At various times a fortress, a public inn, an arsenal, a prison, a mint, and a workplace for artisans, the king’s palace became a “people’s museum” as a result of the French Revolution, open to all. Its original royal collection quickly grew, augmented with art from the homes of guillotined aristocrats, Versailles and other palaces, churches, and monasteries. Added to and remodeled as it expanded, with artworks gained through conquest

and plunder, it became a sprawling edifice, with over 400 rooms in an assortment of architectural and decorative styles. The galleries, stretching half a mile, exhibit some 30,000 of its half million holdings; it employs more than 2,300 people, including curators, restorers, guards, and guides, working on 25 different levels. Sciolino reports on her conversations with many of them as she encountered specific pieces of art (the Mona Lisa , the Venus de Milo , the Winged Victory of Samothrace , to name a few), or she follows themes such as food, animals, jewels, and even shoes.

The Louvre has so many shoes in its paintings that it published a coffee-table

Adventures in the Louvre: How To Fall in Love With the World’s Greatest Museum

Sciolino, Elaine | Norton | 352 pp.

$29.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9781324021407

book on footwear. Sciolino takes unexpected paths to find quiet corners: a small collection of Impressionists (the bulk being at the Musée d’Orsay), tribal art, and one of the world’s largest collections of frames. Although the Louvre does not offer a queer-themed tour, unlike other major

museums, Sciolino notes its extensive queer art collection. Her celebration of a beloved venue also highlights outposts in the French city of Lens, in Abu Dhabi, and in Métro stations featuring a host of reproductions. Illustrated with 53 black-and-white photos. An intimate visit with a generous, genial guide.

Learning of a literary friendship spurs thoughts on identity.

BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME

Baldwin, Styron, and Me

Abdelmoumen, Mélikah | Trans. by Catherine Khordoc | Biblioasis (160 pp.) | $16.95 paper March 11, 2025 | 9781771966269

A multiplicity of being.

The daughter of a Tunisian father and Québécoise mother, Abdelmoumen grew up in Montreal and lived in France between 2005 and 2017 before returning to Canada, where she has continued her career as a writer, scholar, and editor of a literary journal. In this insightful memoir, the first of her books to appear in English, Abdelmoumen reflects on race, ethnicity, cultural appropriation, and her own multiple identities. The relationship between James Baldwin and William Styron is central to these reflections: In France, reading Baldwin for the first time, she was surprised to discover that he and Styron had been lifelong friends. Styron, the grandson of slave owners, and Baldwin, the grandson of a slave, “were both consumed with the problem of racial inequality.” When Styron expressed interest in writing a novel about the rebel slave Nat Turner, Baldwin encouraged the project. The Confessions of Nat Turner won a Pulitzer Prize but incited fierce objections from some prominent Black writers. A white man, they claimed, could only promulgate “white southern myths, racial stereotypes, and literary clichés.” Baldwin disagreed, but he, too, later came under censure for not being “Black enough.” Abdelmoumen considers other efforts by white men to portray Black experience: John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, Ron Stallworth’s Black Klansman, and Abel Meeropol’s song about lynching, “Strange Fruit.” The

idea of cultural appropriation, which has become an incendiary issue, seems to Abdelmoumen misguided. “Mistaking an ethnic checklist for a person’s identity is problematic,” she asserts, “as is the ensuing assumption that a person with a certain identity is necessarily knowledgeable about all related topics.” Diversity, she claims, should describe not minority status, but a society that acknowledges the complexity “that comes from all the different facets” of each person’s identity. A thoughtful, timely contribution to a controversial debate.

Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America

Ahamed, Meenakshi | HarperCollins $21.99 | Nov. 29, 2024 | 9789365692402

Making it in America.

When Ahamed arrived in suburban Boston in 1970, she felt “an acute sense of disappointment,” she writes. “What were these quaint, old-fashioned houses doing in the land that had sent men and rocket ships to the moon?” The silence of her new home made her long for the noise and liveliness of her native India. In the ensuing decades, her opinions changed—so much so that she was inspired to write a book about her adopted country and to explore the contributions that Indian Americans have made to American culture and society. Ahamed chose to focus on three fields: tech, medicine, and public policy. Each section of the book features interviews and profiles of Indian American leaders, including Sun Microsystems founder Vinod Khosla, author and neurosurgeon Atul Gawande, and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. Most of the

leaders Ahamed profiles are men; the exceptions are Haley, as well as sisters and businesswomen Chandrika Tandon and Indra Nooyi, who share a chapter. While several of the interviews present fascinating insights into the characters of these high-profile people—for example, legal scholar Neal Katyal discusses how taking improv classes improved his performance arguing in front of the Supreme Court—the book lacks overall coherence, jumping between leaders without drawing sufficient connections between their attitudes and histories. Ahamed’s implicit definition of success seems to involve amassing degrees from elite institutions and becoming wealthy, an approach that not only reinscribes the model minority myth, but also is debunked by interviewees like Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

A problematic survey of Indian Americans’ accomplishments.

Kirkus Star

Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary

Amelina, Victoria | St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $29.00 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9781250367686

Witness to war— and victim of it.

Just before taking her son on a vacation to Egypt, novelist-turnedwar-reporter Victoria Amelina bought herself a gun. Unlike fellow Ukrainians, Amelina did not plan to join the army. Instead, she would begin working with a mentor from the Truth Hounds, a nonprofit dedicated to researching and documenting the Russian occupation of Ukraine, when she returned from her holiday. On her last day in Egypt, in February 2022, all flights to Ukraine were grounded due to the latest Russian invasion. Amelina and her son managed to get to Poland, where she left him to reenter Ukraine alone. She writes, “I lied to my child, and I will keep lying; war is a source of

bad habits.” It is also, Amelina proves, a rich source of devastating stories. The author documents everything from a group of Ukrainian writers rescuing a stag beetle on a crowded train platform to an elderly farmer mourning the loss of his beloved animals. Amelina has an impressive eye for detail and an incredible capacity to lyrically capture an image and imbue the smallest moments with humanity. In June 2023, Amelina and other writers were at a restaurant that was struck by a Russian missile; she died a few days later, at age 37, before her manuscript was finished. Fortunately, Amelina’s writing has been assembled in this book; her editors have meticulously recorded where they rearranged text, and they also captured unfinished fragments that give readers a rare perspective of wartime Ukraine and insight into the author’s brilliant mind. A late Ukrainian writer’s gorgeously rendered compilation.

Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity

Appelbaum, Yoni | Random House (320 pp.)

$32.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780593449295

A revisionist history of U.S. residential mobility and its consequences. Appelbaum, historian and executive editor at the Atlantic, claims that “the freedom to move is a fundamental American right.” Despite this ideal, the country has a mobility crisis. When people moved to where opportunities for advancement were abundant, America prospered. The country was growing, and housing was available where people could live well. Mobility shaped the American character and guaranteed its democracy. In the early- to mid-20th century, geographical mobility was sharply diminished. Tenement house reforms, restrictions on mortgage lending in the 1940s and 1950s, and

NIMBY movements a few decades later closed communities to newcomers.

“Every year, fewer Americans can afford to live where they want to,” he writes. The primary culprit was and still is zoning, a system of land use regulation that stifles attempts to diversify places of opportunity. Overlaid on this problem is persistent racial discrimination in housing. The result is diminished upward social mobility, increasing inequality, and lower economic growth.

“The loss of mobility is experienced as a loss of agency, a loss of opportunity, a loss of dignity, a loss of hope.” Appelbaum proposes higher-density development, tolerance for a variety of housing types, flexible zoning, and more housing in affluent places. Except for his discussion of race, though, Appelbaum attends too little to the mechanisms that distribute opportunities in job markets, education, and health care and through the courts, nor does he give enough consideration to how housing and land markets function in a capitalist political economy. He rarely mentions developers and bankers, and the class nature of housing markets is hardly discussed. That said, Appelbaum deserves credit for highlighting the relationship between access to opportunities and spatial mobility and for sketching its history. An informed, if limited, case for why geographical and residential mobility matters in capitalist economies.

Talk to Me: Lessons From a Family Forged by History

Benjamin, Rich | Pantheon (320 pp.)

$29.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780593317396

An inquisitive scholar explores his family’s hidden past.

“Unspeakable things, unspoken.” That much described the silence that shrouded

Benjamin’s mother, and, as he chronicles in this searching memoir, for good

reason: Traumatized as a child, she became an advocate for children who had suffered violence while enabling Benjamin’s father’s violence at home. “Don’t tell the neighbors,” she would say after his father administered floggings that, Benjamin writes wryly, “were a rational, bourgeois affair” intended to punish Benjamin’s seemingly unshakable habit of getting into trouble over small transgressions. Outside the home and the neighbors’ gaze, the family was the soul of propriety, his mother a natural-born aristocrat, the daughter of a shortreigned president of Haiti. Therein lie some of the secrets that Benjamin, author of Searching for Whitopia (2009), means to tease out in order to relate the “disremembered years” of his mother’s life in Haiti, “lost stanzas in an epic poem.” Interwoven into the family tale is a memoir of Benjamin’s own life as a gay man whose mother, having finally learned of his sexuality, sent him a clipping from the New York Times headlined “HIV Rates Spiking Among Young Gay Men of Color.” Benjamin’s often arch sense of humor shines through these pages, even as he relates the “toxic antics” of his youth, antics that, way back in the pre-smartphone days of yore, happily went unrecorded: “We were fabulous when we were fabulous, and when we dressed up, we did it for ourselves, for one another. Everything was communal, exclusive, not broadcast and needy for likes.”

Although many secrets remain, Benjamin did learn a few things from his mother that have clearly stood him well in difficult circumstances, as when she revealed her recipe for survival:

“When you’ve been to hell and back… nothing can ever destroy you.”

An evocative, wise memoir of a multilayered search for roots.

Kirkus Star

For a review of Searching for Whitopia by Rich Benjamin, visit Kirkus online.

Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us

Boylan, Jennifer Finney | Celadon Books (256 pp.) | $29.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781250261885

Charting the boundaries between manhood and womanhood. In 15 engaging chapters that blend memoir and cultural critique, Boylan chronicles numerous formative experiences, ranging from her childhood and adolescence on the Philadelphia Main Line, to college at Wesleyan University and marriage as a cis man to a cis woman, to parenthood and success as a writer and college professor. The book’s emotional linchpin is “Mothers,” in which Boylan, a noted authority on gender, depicts her older child’s decision post-college to transition from cis male to trans woman. Boylan initially experienced a welter of conflicting emotions upon learning of her child’s intentions: “It was all something I’d never have wished on anybody, especially someone whom I loved” and “Is it possible, I wondered, that I made this look like fun? ” The irony and painful surprise are worthy of an O. Henry story. Other chapters are informed by observations of the shifting attitudes toward trans people and the fewer opportunities for community that Boylan has noted over the past two decades since she first came out as trans: “There used to be a lot of [trans-centered] conventions, places where trans people could safely gather for a weekend.” Of her 2003 memoir She’s Not There, Boylan remarks that the book is permeated by “an air of apology,” and “In so many ways, the author of that book is begging the reader—Please, don’t hate me. I’m so sorry.” Today, however, “People coming out as trans…aren’t apologizing for who they are. They aren’t begging for forgiveness or understanding.” Her stated hope for her community, in spite of rising backlash, is that “love will prevail”—the same words her mother used when Boylan told her she was transitioning.

An exploration of gender that effectively balances pathos and humor.

The Private Is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Brescia, Ray | New York Univ. (224 pp.)

$35.00 | Jan. 21, 2025 | 9781479832330

The mutual exclusivity of democracy and surveillance capitalism.

Early in his prescient book, legal scholar Brescia points out a stunning irony. We all know this is the era of “surveillance capitalism,” in which the internet habitually violates our virtual space. We understand that purportedly free social media companies (a.k.a. “Digital Pinkertons”) effectively exist to co-opt and sell the private data (“political privacy”) that we inadvertently shed and surrender upon entering their sites. But few focus on the fact that this is happening because, on balance, while the law does not protect the integrity of our identity, it does protect that of the social media companies exploiting us. The result: relentless “digital abuse.” This all matters on a level far beyond that of the individual, Brescia says. For political privacy is critical to a functioning democracy, yet social media users are increasingly manhandled by third parties that analyze their online habits, texts, searches, comments, etc., to nudge them to actions they wouldn’t normally take, from buying products they don’t want, to casting self-defeating election votes. Indeed, the 2016 presidential campaign, marked by rampant misinformation, was all about manipulation via digital abuse, he posits (and might well have said about the 2024 election, if the book were written slightly later). Brescia explores in depth the different ways that “laws, norms, constitutional protections, and practices” surrounding political

privacy “essentially provide immunity to those companies that have access to our digital selves [and] creates a form of moral hazard in which those same companies are largely free from oversight and responsibility.” But he does believe there’s hope if we follow the patterns of past successful civil rights movements, where there was a gradual convergence of understanding—coming from disparate groups of legislators, lawyers, academics, activists, and industry tycoons—that for democracy to thrive, it must protect and never again “extract” the teeming private selves at the heart of it. A farsighted book that portrays the devastating consequences of unfettered surveillance capitalism.

Why Taiwan Matters: A Short History of a Small Island That Will Dictate Our Future

Brown, Kerry | St. Martin’s (272 pp.)

$30.00 | Jan. 28, 2025 | 9781250362094

An island nation’s troubled waters. Of all the flashpoints around the world, Taiwan may be the most dangerous. The author of numerous books on Asia, Brown emphasizes this point in his accessible study. As an example, Brown notes that 381 planes from the Chinese air force entered Taiwan’s air defense zone in 2020. Two years later, that figure jumped to 1,727 planes. Brown outlines the turbulent history of Taiwan, exploring the Japanese occupation from 1895 to 1945, the arrival of the defeated Nationalist forces in 1949, and the slow march to democracy and prosperity since then. The real value of the book, however, is its analysis of the past two decades. China has become increasingly assertive about its claim to Taiwan, while a new generation of Taiwanese people want to move toward full independence. The U.S. sees Taiwan,

which is roughly the size of Maryland, as a democratic bastion against a communist superpower. Brown stresses how this is a delicate balancing act for the West, which must find a level of support for Taiwan that will deter China while not provoking Beijing. The Chinese government may believe that it could take and hold Taiwan without great difficulty, but Brown is not so sure. A wrong move could easily draw the U.S. and other powers into a broader conflict. He concludes that the status quo, with Taiwan remaining ambiguously half-independent, might be the only answer. “For today, strenuous defence of the stalemate is all that we can meaningfully do,” he writes. “Anything else is insanity.”

A cogent and unsettling exploration of one of the key geopolitical issues of our time.

Kirkus Star

Cher: The Memoir, Part One

Cher | Dey Street/HarperCollins (480 pp.)

$36.00 | Nov. 19, 2024 | 9780062863102

T he diva recounts the action-packed first half of her life story, an allAmerican rags-toriches dream.

Like Barbra Streisand, this iconic woman, born in 1946, is going to need about a thousand pages to tell the story of her amazing life and career—but she has chosen to do it in two volumes. This one ends about eight years before she won her Oscar for Moonstruck in 1988, but having started her partnership with Sonny Bono at the age of 16, there is plenty to cover. She begins at the beginning: “I mean, jeez. My family. You couldn’t make it up.” Though Cher grew up with sour milk, ants in the Rice Krispies, and saddle shoes held together with rubber bands, her mother always won the “misery Olympics” with stories of her own past: “Did your dad ever try to gas

Raised by a mother who always won the “misery Olympics”—and was married six times.

CHER

you in your sleep?” Georgia Holt, this beautiful man-eater actress mom, was married six times (twice to Cher’s “smooth-talking Armenian father,” Johnnie Sarkisian), and Cher’s relationship with her, which included quite a bit of difficulty over the years but always landed on love, seems to presage her history with Bono. He died in 1998, creating an opportunity for affecting candor and self-reflection about their trajectory, which included a divorce on the basis that “Sonny had held me in ‘involuntary servitude,’ in direct violation of the US Constitution’s Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.” Their comedy act continued to thrive after their split: She loved this man, and always will. The story of Sonny & Cher is a story of the ’60s and ’70s, of the growth of the music and television industries, of fashion and celebrity culture, of the evolving role of women in the 20th century. And the skinny on her relationships with music mogul David Geffen, second husband Gregg Allman, and Kiss frontman Gene Simmons is just as riveting. “We talked so long on the phone he ended up with a $2,800 phone bill,” she writes of Simmons. “That’s when he blurted out that he loved me….What is it with these men? ”

The vicarious experience of wealth, glamour, and romance is rarely this much fun. A truly great celebrity memoir.

Bibliophobia: A Memoir

Chihaya, Sarah | Random House (240 pp.) $29.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780593594728

The promise— and peril— of books. Though she attempted suicide three times between the ages of 10 and 18, Chihaya writes, “One thing I was pretty sure about [the term] ‘nervous breakdown’ was that it was not for people like me.” The child of a Japanese immigrant and a Japanese Canadian woman who “didn’t really believe in the concept of mental health,” she diagnosed her adult self as “a self-harm hobbyist, a casual insomniac, and a nonchalant bulimic,” rather than someone seriously distressed. Dark humor like this slightly leavens the grim mood as Chihaya delineates her intense and in her judgment often harmful relationship with books. “I was always reading for something,” she comments, “for validation, for comprehension… and always, secretly, for salvation.” Only after her inability to write the academic monograph required for academic tenure prompted a full-fledged collapse was she forced to acknowledge her precarious emotional state. Her probing and wrenchingly honest memoir looks back on books that affected her powerfully in various ways, from Toni Morrison’s terrifying The Bluest Eye, which voiced her teenage fears of failing to measure up to “all the provinces of whiteness,” to Ruth Ozeki’s reassuring A Tale for the Time Being, read while she was an anxious assistant professor, which “kicked up my faith in a book that could save me.” At times, Chihaya’s

For more by Cher, visit Kirkus online.

analysis of the effect certain books had on her is so minute it becomes wearying, and her many definitions of bibliophobia —“acute, literal fear of books,” “violent fits of melancholy and resentment after finishing a book,” “superstitious fear of incompletion,” and more—make her explanation that “bibliophobia is many things” seem like nervous justification. Nonetheless, she offers an intriguing alternate view of passionate reading, and the closing pages movingly describe Chihaya coming to terms with the fact that she will always be a suicide risk. The book offers more than some readers will want to know, but it’s probing and wrenchingly honest.

An elegantly written memoir of a lifelong struggle with mental illness.

Kirkus Star

Citizen: My Life After the White House

Clinton, Bill | Knopf (464 pp.) | $38.00 Nov. 19, 2024 | 9780525521440

Beyond 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Bill Clinton has covered quite a few bases since leaving the presidency at age 54 in 2001. He recounts them in his latest memoir in ways that can be charming and sentimental (especially involving his daughter, Chelsea, and his fond relations with fellow ex-presidents), occasionally preachy (about the deficiencies of the national press or the devolution of American politics), and sometimes wonky (distilling data and financials of his philanthropic efforts). Ever loquacious, he chronicles his global missions to extend humanitarian relief and American goodwill, offering tutorials on the history and plight of other countries. He devotes a chapter to Haiti, a place “full of promise and tragedy,” revisiting the devastating 2010 earthquake that prompted him to leverage his clout

and connections on behalf of a people he has revered ever since his first visit, on his 1975 honeymoon with Hillary Clinton. As for any insights into their relationship, most personal revelations are kept in soft focus; the sharper backstories involve his postpresidential diplomacy and the sorry state of domestic politics. The former president does run through his roles in his wife’s campaigns, and he expands on what he thinks kept “as gifted a leader as I’ve ever met” from the Oval Office. His short answer: “The political media, Jim Comey, and Vladimir Putin deserve most of the credit” for Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. If there is a common thread in the disparate stories of this appealing memoir, it is that Clinton, for all his pragmatism as 42nd president, came out of the rough-andtumble of Washington as the idealist who was first drawn to public service. A bighearted look back by a former president who has not lost his fervor.

Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age: A Forgotten History of the Occult

Cormack, Raphael | Norton (304 pp.)

$29.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9780393881103

The occult world of charismatic, miracle-working holy men. Cormack, a professor of modern languages and culture at the U.K.’s Durham University, investigates numerous enterprising men, or con men, who

came to the fore preaching new kinds of occult religions after World War I during a turbulent time of crisis and rebirth. Tahra Bey, the “Egyptian fakir” from Istanbul, set up shop in poor, ravaged Athens. The Armenian—Cormack is good at describing the Armenian people’s plight— astounded people with his Houdini-like physical and mental “powers,” including being buried alive for long periods of time and enduring swords and knives. The gruesome show went to Italy in 1924, where he added to his act, supposedly hypnotizing rabbits and chickens. In France, where spiritualism and magic were booming, his shows were hugely popular and profitable. A curious Marie Curie attended one. Bey’s success spawned a Rahman Bey in London in 1926. Others turned up to ride the occult wagon, like the eccentric Dr. Hereward Carrington, while Harry Houdini fought their charlatanry. Fakirism was on the wane in the late ’20s when an American named Hamid Bey, more performer than prophet, became popular on the vaudeville circuit preaching “applied life vibration.” The next fakir Cormack profiles is Dr. Dahesh Bey from Beirut, a prolific author, conjurer, and renowned hypnotist who read the minds of others and “communicated directly with the souls of the dead,” all while spiritualism was spreading throughout the West. Dahesh “was creating a successful mystical persona for this modern age.” In the 1940s, he was at the peak of his popularity with his new religious message of Daheshism. The news that he passed in 1984 in Connecticut went largely unnoticed. A fascinating, detail-laden history of a time when occultism ran rampant.

The Armenian astounded people with his “powers,” including being buried alive.

HOLY MEN OF THE ELECTROMAGNETIC AGE

Kirkus

Star

Raising Hare: A Memoir

Dalton, Chloe | Pantheon (224 pp.)

$27.00 | March 4, 2025 | 9780593701843

Made more humane by a hare. A political adviser whose demanding work often had her leaving England, Dalton spent much of the Covid-19 pandemic at her converted barn in the countryside. Out for a walk one February day, she spotted a creature in the middle of an unpaved path. “Leveret,” she writes. “The word surfaced in my mind, even though I had never seen a young hare before.” Hours later, she returned to the spot and found that the russet-colored animal hadn’t moved, defenseless against predators and cars. Unsure of what to do, Dalton carefully picked up the animal and brought it home. Thus begins an astounding debut memoir in which Dalton shows how a serene and long-misunderstood creature opened her eyes in many ways. It just might do the same for readers. The leveret—a diminutive of the French word for hare, lièvre —is a fluff ball that fits in her palm, lighter than an apple. When Dalton feeds it, “its tiny ivory-coloured paws would…knead the air in a trembling, milky ecstasy.” Not knowing how to care for the animal—unlike rabbits, a smaller species, hares haven’t been domesticated—Dalton educates herself. The books she reads say much about hunting and cooking hares, but little else. To the rescue comes an 18th-century poem by William Cowper that cites the food that “little one” comes to devour: oats. Those oats (and pears) help the hare quickly grow to its full size, a lean and lively “miniature bucking bronco” that, when not “unmoving as a sphinx,” loves to dance about the house. What becomes of the animal in a land where hares’ numbers have drastically declined? No secrets will be spilled here. But Dalton herself

is changed, calmed by an endearing creature that, as she writes, “challenged my priorities and woke up my senses.” A soulful and gracefully written book about an animal’s power to rekindle curiosity.

Beyond Architecture: The NEW New York

Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Barbaralee, ed. New York Review Books (224 pp.) $37.50 | Dec. 10, 2024 | 9781681379104

The future of historic preservation in New York City. In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), Diamonstein-Spielvogel, former LPC commissioner and nationally renowned arts advocate, invited people knowledgeable about the city’s architecture and history to “write freely on any and all… aspects of the built environment, including the role of preservation in a changing city.” The result is a diverse set of essays ranging from the history of the Bowne House, the oldest house in Queens, to the engineering challenges of adaptive reuse and the need to design and construct buildings that will endure beyond their original use. The book’s value lies with those essayists who encourage the LPC to lessen its fixation on the aesthetics of individual buildings—particularly regarding historic districts—and its timidity in the face of real estate interests. They urge the LPC to preserve, as New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman writes, the “things that give the city and its neighborhoods their character, distinction, vitality, social cohesion, and meaning.” The intent is to protect and preserve the city’s cultural history (its intangible heritage), sites of ecological value (i.e., living landmarks), historic signage, and structural and mechanical building systems. Yet the book excludes the voices of the many people who think “beyond architecture,” including urban

planners, urbanists, sociologists, and cultural scholars, among others. Historic preservation in New York City seems unable to escape the gravitational pull of individual buildings and the architectural profession. The book would have benefited from an essay reflecting on the LPC’s political, bureaucratic, and financial limitations and unrealized potential. Well worth reading, nonetheless, are thoughtful essays by Kimmelman and fellow architecture critic Paul Goldberger, architect Lisa Switkin, and the historic preservation scholar Andrew Dolkart. An informative introduction to the challenges of historic preservation.

Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―And How To Bring It Back

Dunkelman, Marc J. | PublicAffairs (416 pp.)

$32.50 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9781541700215

A progressive takes a stand against gridlock and NIMBYism among his fellow activists. Dunkelman opens with a thought exercise: Wending through the inferno that is New York’s Penn Station, he finds himself wondering how it can be that the city has long been “allowing its most important gateway to fester as a rat’s nest.” In the days of the powerful urban planner Robert Moses—a figure for whom Dunkelman, while not exactly resurrecting him in glory, expresses some admiration—Penn Station would gleam, just as traffic would zoom across the boroughs and the trains would run on time. Progressives, Dunkelman notes, are torn between what he deems Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian ideals. A Jeffersonian would seek to diffuse responsibilities and authority such that a Moses-like figure could not take charge and get the big things done, while a Hamiltonian would seek to appoint a czar and accomplish the pressing concerns: battling climate change, solving the housing crisis, rebuilding

infrastructure. These core tenets, Dunkelman argues, “flow from wildly different and contradictory narratives about power,” and they need to be reconciled. In the face of reality, Dunkelman observes that the big projects—the Tennessee Valley Authority in the days of the New Deal, the battle to rein in climate change today—come with painful decisions that must be made, despite “our cultural aversion to power.” Foremost among them is the hard recognition that for the most part, “there is no way to serve the greater good without exacting some cost on at least someone,” and there’s no use pretending that this isn’t the case. Given that widespread aversion, we have governments to determine who will pay such costs—and if not, he warns, “a government too hamstrung to serve the public good will fuel future waves of conservative populism,” the very thing progressives should wish to avoid. Provocative reading for anyone with a stake in public works writ large.

The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History

Dunlap, Kent | Univ. of California (336 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780520393035

A sidelong look at an evolutionary adaptation that really shouldn’t work—but does.

It’s not just gruesomeness— though there’s a hint of that—that prompts anatomist and artist Dunlap to begin his narrative with dancer Isadora Duncan, who snapped her famously long neck when her scarf got caught in a car wheel, her life “finished off at [an] expressive but vulnerable constriction.” Everything about the neck screams vulnerability: Its vital blood vessels are close to the surface, easily sliced; its bones are fragile, easily snapped; its tubes are “easy to clog or puncture”; on top of that, our necks are so narrow that we can choke or drown in an instant. Necks, Dunlap notes, are perhaps not strictly necessary,

and not every creature has one; still, emerging about 375 million years ago, the neck is what allowed human beings to form language (by accommodating the larynx) and to become upright and bipedal (by holding our heads up), the better to see long distances with. Why, then, don’t we have giraffelike necks to see even farther with and gather food below? Because, Dunlap observes, “we are liberated from the necessity of a long neck to reach the ground because we generally grasp objects with our hands rather than our jaws.” Of course, getting around requires our heads to rattle around quite a bit atop our heads, and then when we sleep, so many of us suffer apnea, “a nearly unique human phenomenon.” (A couple of flat-faced dog species suffer from it, too.) If there’s a note to be made about the neck, Dunlap’s got it, from the fragility of vase necks to the interesting thought that a turtle’s slowly head-withdrawing neck is, in some species, retooled so that it’s a lightning-fast forward-thrusting thing, the better to prey with.

A novel blend of history, art, and science that tells readers everything they’ll ever need to know about a crucial body part.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

El Akkad, Omar | Knopf (224 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780593804148

An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.

“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which,

he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”

A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.

Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China

Feng, Emily | Crown (304 pp.) | $29.00 March 18, 2025 | 9780593594223

An inside look at Xi Jinping’s China through the eyes of its discontents and dissidents. American journalist Feng traveled widely through China until being expelled in 2022; she now

Kirkus Star

works from Taiwan. As she writes at the opening, “This is a book about identity, how the state controls expressions of identity, and who gets to be considered Chinese.” Whereas Mao Zedong sought a big-tent sort of nation, officially recognizing 55 ethnic groups, Feng writes that current leader Xi Jinping considers only Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese to be real Chinese—and heterosexual ones, too, and loyal to his version of the Communist Party. One pointed example from her travels is a member of the Hui minority, who, notes Feng, are “visually indistinguishable from Han Chinese” and speak Mandarin; the difference is that many Hui are Muslim, and Xi considers Muslims to be enemies of the state, a view reinforced by a loyalist social scientist who champions fighting against “religious fundamentalism eroding Chinese secular mainstream culture.”

Treated even worse are visibly non-Chinese minorities such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Kazakhs, who live under “grid policing,” a system of intense law enforcement scrutiny backed by numerous neighborhood informants. In this closely observed book, Feng profiles a civil rights attorney who has braved imprisonment for “subverting state power,” entrepreneurs once encouraged by the Chinese government to grow wealthy in a booming economy but now targeted as antithetical to the state’s ideology, and members of the Chinese diaspora in communities around the world, including the U.S., where Chinese students, fearful of government reprisal, actively censor critics of Xi and his policies. Those policies, Feng fears, are intended to produce a monolithic authoritarian state, a direction, many fear, that the U.S. will also take. Essential reading for anyone interested in geopolitics—or the world of the near future.

Kirkus Star

The Rebel Empresses:

Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in

the Struggle for Europe

Goldstone, Nancy | Little, Brown (640 pp.)

$35.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780316419420

Extraordinary women caught in the maelstrom of history.

Goldstone, biographer of many European queens, turns her attention to two 19th-century empresses: Elisabeth (1837-1898), wife of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and Eugénie (1826-1920), wife of Napoleon III. Both women, in Goldstone’s vibrant, wryly witty portraits, emerge as glamorous, strong-willed, and independent, refusing to be circumscribed by stultifying expectations. In alternating chapters, Goldstone traces each woman’s family background and upbringing in the context of tumultuous, bloody political and social unrest, revolutions, invasions, and war. Each of them traveled a far different road to their elevated stations: Elisabeth, known as Sisi, was 15 when she met Franz Joseph, who was meant to marry her older sister. Instead, he was instantly besotted with the vivacious girl, and although she wanted to stay with her menagerie of pets rather than be sent from home to marry, she had no choice in the matter. Soon she found herself in a hostile court, under the surveillance of an overbearing, manipulative mother-in-law, and realizing quickly that her job “was merely to project the image of an empress, not to be one.” Eugénie was 27 when she married Louis Napoleon, newly declared emperor after the French Republic was

Two strong-willed women who stood up to their husbands.

A richly detailed, entertaining dual biography.

The Maverick’s Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream

Gopnik, Blake | Ecco/HarperCollins (464 pp.) $32.00 | March 18, 2025 | 9780063284036

One man’s journey from successful chemist to prominent art collector.

Born in Philadelphia, Albert Barnes (1872-1951) grew up working class in a part of town where bullies were so prevalent that he “taught himself to box by sparring with his brother.” Barnes eventually attended the University of Pennsylvania to study medicine yet remained “as keen to fight as ever.” That bulldozer attitude served him well. After graduation, he got a job with the drug company H.K. Mulford and Company, where, during off hours, he and a colleague developed the drug that made his fortune: Argyrol, a “silver-based antiseptic” used to treat gonorrhea. He would use his riches to build the Barnes Foundation, one of the most extensive modern art collections of the 20th century, with a focus on artists “with a socially progressive slant.” In this admiring work, Gopnik, author of a celebrated biography of Andy Warhol, documents the highlights of that collection, with its Cézannes, Renoirs, and El Grecos, and Barnes’ egalitarian impulses, such as his efforts to educate the public for the

>>> abolished and “imperial dignity” restored. Both wives were well aware that their duty was to produce a male heir. After several miscarriages, Eugénie finally had a boy in 1856; the pregnancy was so difficult that she could not risk another. At 17, Sisi gave birth to a daughter; at 19, another girl; at 21, finally a son was born, at last raising her status at court. In a brisk, lively narrative, Goldstone seamlessly interweaves the women’s trials, challenges, and betrayals with the world events that swirled incessantly around them.

IMANI PERRY

Through the ever-shifting prism of a color, the award-winning author beholds the Black experience.

BY LISA KENNEDY

IN HER NEW BOOK, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, Imani Perry pulls on the threads of the color blue woven into Black lives. Make that colors —and tonalities and moods. She plumbs the oceanic depths of the Middle Passage and soars on the riffs of jazz and blues musicians in search of meanings. Toni Morrison haunts the book. Miles Davis makes an appearance. So, too, do Tuskegee founder Booker T. Washington and his most brilliant of hires, George Washington Carver.

During a recent interview on Zoom, the National Book Award–winning author of South to America and Looking for Lorraine often ended a sentence with “right?” There was nothing insistent or uncertain in the interjection; it didn’t require confirmation or rebuke. Instead, it seemed to weave us into the tapestry of her thoughts, into the quilting work of shared consideration. Kirkus’ starred review deems the deeply poetic, searingly knowledgeable book an “innovative cultural history.” Indeed.

Perry opened our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, with an unexpected declaration: “This book is actually shifting my emotions around.”

What an intriguing way to start. Why? I think it’s creatively vulnerable. I don’t want it to have failed the Ancestors is the only way that I can say it.

That seems impossible. But yeah, if we hew to narrow notions of what we think of as history, as scholarship, then this book challenges them. There’s this piece I love that [critic] Albert Murray wrote about artist Romare Bearden where he basically says, “You know what Romy does?” (He called him that because they were friends.) “He’s making a picture, but he’s cutting out these different pieces of paper to make that picture. And the way that he’s cutting them out and putting them together is a jazz aesthetic. There’s a likeness, and the likeness is in conversation with the history of art, but

I’m more of a reader than I am a writer, in the sense that I write most days, but I read every single day.

the composition is in conversation with Black music.” And for me that’s the ideal.

So how did this book come together? When I first proposed this book, it was more like a series of essays. Straightforward. Not disconnected, but the thing that was going to connect them was just the color. But I realized I needed a narrative component—not a strict narrative, but one where people would have a sense of how we got here. I really was trying to copy Bearden’s style. It was like a collage or like quilting, which for me makes sense because one of the primary ways that you encounter blue—particularly in the Black South—is through quilts. So it’s a quilting aesthetic with a narrative component.

In the past, you’ve spoken about sharing stories of trauma and speaking the unspeakable and how these acts pertain to craft and to ethics. Can you say a bit more about what you mean? In some ways, that was me following so many people whose work has shaped my own. There’s that moment toward the end of Toni Morrison’s Beloved where there’s this repetition, “This was not a story to pass on.…” But she is passing it on, right? Part of her brilliance, her genius, is finding a way to tell the horror. Not so that it’s digestible, but so that it doesn’t destroy us. Because we need to know. It’s awful to know sometimes, but we need to know because there are some strategies for survival. There’s ancestral wisdom. It’s not just knowing what happened but, to borrow from Mahalia Jackson, knowing how we got over.

Yes—what we need to know to survive the moment and to go forward. And ethics feels like the most intimate register, the very level of what we choose day to day.

Speaking of ethics: How have you managed since the election? I’m in conversation with lots of people about how to be healthy—adequate sleep, trying to get [proper] nutrition. That could sound self-involved, but I really don’t think it is. We’re about to enter into a new phase of arduous living. And I think we have to be as well

Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People

Perry, Imani

Ecco/HarperCollins | 256 pp.

$28.99 | Jan. 28, 2025

9780062977397 | 9781646052295

as possible—as opposed to being hysterical and histrionic—in order to be in community with people, in order to figure out how we’re going to take care of people.

How do we argue for the arts in these moments?

Basic safety, food, shelter, proximity to violence, vulnerability, that’s important. I do think we all have a responsibility to figure out how we’re going to be involved in that. But—and we know this from the gifts of Black folks—in those most dire of moments, art becomes even more essential. What the blues teaches us, it’s not transcendence. It’s not evasion. It’s a survival tactic. You create beauty at the very site of the wound. It allows you to endure. It allows you to imagine. It allows you to feel some tenderness and softness. Imagine what Sunday nights were like on the plantation. People, exhausted, decide to play the fiddle and dance and sing and even do their hair, right? There’s all this adornment and beauty and art in what we imagine as the very worst possible scenario. There’s something instructive in that.

There’s a word you don’t use that one might assume would appear repeatedly: resilience. Do you have an allergy to that word right now?

I don’t know if I have an allergy to it as much as what I’m looking for is something more, to identify something that’s much bigger than resilience. Also, I often think of resilience as something private and personal and individuated, and that what we have is collective.

Reading and writing—that call and response—how do they work for you?

I’m more of a reader than I am a writer, in the sense that I write most days, but I read every single day. Things have to be really, really bad for me not to be reading. It’s my lifestyle. It’s not just for information. It is pleasure, it is joy, it is insight, it is spiritual.

Did you have a This is going to break my brain moment during the writing of this book?

They all feel like they’re going to break my brain.

I’d like to thank you. I’m now in love with George Washington Carver. I’m so frustrated by the way we get his story. You know, the McDonald’s Black History Month version of George Washington Carver. Like, He made the peanut great! We don’t get the story that he was a queer man. We don’t get the story that he was an artist. We don’t get the story that he was wandering around in the forest. We don’t get the story that he was oftentimes at odds with Booker T. He’s this magical person.

Truly.

He’s a model of how to live. You don’t have to be one thing. You can be all of the many things that you are. He’s one of these people who, like [playwright and activist] Lorraine Hansberry, is a beacon. But why do we need these models? We need them not because they were famous, but because they exemplified being full and complicated.

Is there any blue you left out?

There’s so much blue that didn’t make it in. And at times, it got frustrating. Because I’d be like, Oh, but I need to talk about Mario Moore. Oh, but I need to talk about Norman Lewis. Oh, but I need to talk about “Mood Indigo.” I always say this about my books, but I have to remind myself every time: This is an invitation. It is not an end.

Lisa Kennedy writes for the New York Times, Variety, the Denver Post, and other publications.

AWARDS

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize Revealed

Richard Flanagan won the U.K. nonfiction award for Question 7.

Richard Flanagan has won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for Question 7. Flanagan’s book, published in the U.S. by Knopf in September 2024, is a memoir and history hybrid that considers his own family’s past and the purpose of fiction. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “a haunting, jagged, sparkling narrative puzzle in which the pieces deliberately refuse to fit.”

The Australian author becomes the first writer

to win both the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Booker Prize; he received the latter for his 2014 novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North Isabel Hilton, the chair of judges for the Baillie Gifford Prize, said in a statement, “This compelling memoir ranges from intimate human relations to an unflinching examination of the horrors of the 20th century, reflecting on unanswerable questions that we must keep asking.”

The Guardian reports that in a prerecorded acceptance speech, Flanagan said he would not accept the prize money—about $63,000—until Baillie Gifford, the investment management firm that sponsors the award, comes up with a plan to reduce its investments in fossil fuels.

The Baillie Gifford Prize was established in 1998. Previous winners include James Shapiro for A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 and Patrick Radden Keefe for Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty.—M.S.

For a review of Question 7, visit Kirkus online.

Richard Flanagan

Kelsey Grammer To Publish Memoir About Late Sister

The Cheers and Frasier actor’s Karen will be published in the spring.

Kelsey Grammer will tell the story of the murder of his sister, and the healing process that followed, in a new memoir, People magazine reports.

The press describes the book as “a moving tribute to a life cut tragically short, a testament to the enduring bond between siblings, and a message of hope at a time when we need it the most.”

Grammer, known for his role as the psychiatrist Frasier Crane in the television series Cheers and Frasier, was 20 years old when his sister Karen was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she worked at a Red Lobster restaurant.

For memoirs recommended by our editors, visit Kirkus online.

Kelsey Grammer

HEARD

Freddie Glenn and Michael Corbett were convicted of the murder.

Grammer told People that his memoir is “not a Grief book. It is a Life book, a celebration of Karen’s life.”

“I wanted to tell Karen’s story and at the same time include a bit about my life, our life together and the love we shared,” he said. “It is [an] unflinching account, raw and punctuated with horror. The words spilled from my mind to my fingers, and into the pages of this book. It poured from days long past, fresh and alive. Fifty years hence, I learned that love, that our love, is forever.”

Harper Select will publish Karen: A Brother Remembers on May 6.—M.S.

“improvement of human nature” and to provide opportunities for Black artists, although he “had the same white-savior complex as many of his peers on the left.” He even wrote books about art, one of which, The Art in Painting, is so prolix that, Gopnik writes, “reading analysis after analysis of his favorite paintings can feel like consulting the lab notes from a year’s worth of assays on a silver colloid.” As one can tell from that sentence, Gopnik is no slouch at wordiness, either. His prose can be arch, as when he notes that, in The Art in Painting, “Barnes perorates on the yellow and green rhythms in a Cézanne.” But this is a clear-eyed assessment of a champion of modern art, even if Barnes’ judgment wasn’t always keen. When he saw Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, he called it “so incoherent that it might as well have been called Cow Eating Oysters.”

A comprehensive portrait of a noteworthy patron of the arts.

No Less Strange or Wonderful: Essays

Greene, A. Kendra | Tin House (272 pp.) $28.95 | March 4, 2025 | 9781963108088

Exploring a world of marvels. Greene brings ebullient inquisitiveness to 26 illustrated essays on matters human and animal, mundane and metaphysical. With occasional interjections by children whom she counts among her friends, she investigates mysteries such as the concept of zero, the morphology of the giraffe, and natural history museum displays. About zero, she reports, “Nothingness first got a numeral in ancient India,” where, she notes, “the concept of nirvana had long since taken hold. The mystic symbol has since met all kinds of resistance. Even typewriters at first made no distinction between the elliptic numeral 0 and the circular letter O, didn’t waste a key on that.” Working at the Iowa Museum of Natural History elicits essays about a model of a sloth, which she was tasked with dressing in various holiday costumes, and a

“Nothingness first got a numeral in ancient India,” the land of nirvana.

NO LESS STRANGE OR WONDERFUL

taxidermied ivory-billed woodpecker, which a visitor stole. Greene draws on a host of quirky experiences, including attending Twist and Shout, the annual balloon twisters’ convention, where a friend constructs out of balloons a halter dress like the one Marilyn Monroe wore in The Seven Year Itch. “Somehow this balloon dress, this intersection of what reads as balloon and dress and body and icon, somehow it becomes a category of its own,” Greene discovered unhappily. “Spun in bespoke bubble wrap, I am not extra protected. I feel all but canceled out.” In prose at once whimsical and poetic, Greene muses on metaphor and apophenia, or “a human tendency to see connections, to find patterns, though they aren’t really there. Pareidolia is similar, the way we make pictures out of randomness, see shapes or faces, glimpse meaning where it doesn’t actually exist.” With deftness and grace, she draws connections and meaning from her fresh take on a vibrant universe.

A delightful collection.

Mainline Mama: A Memoir

Harris, Keeonna | Amistad/ HarperCollins (224 pp.) | $26.99 Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780063205697

L earning to navigate the prison system in the name of love unexpectedly taught a woman how to value herself.

At 14, Harris dreamed of attending a prestigious Black college, becoming a doctor, and living a perfect life with an equally educated Black man. Instead, she fell in love with Jason, a Mexican

American gang member who fathered Harris’ first child, then went to prison to serve a 20-year sentence for carjacking, all before he turned 18. Harris pledged to stand by Jason until he was released, without fully understanding what that vow would entail for her as a single “mainline mama” committed to loving a man behind prison walls. With searing honesty, the author reveals how maintaining her connection to Jason forced her to submit to an implacable system that punished inmates and loved ones alike. Jason was state property that could be moved at will; as his partner and eventual wife, Harris was a “criminal” by association and subject to harsh rules governing all forms of interaction. Over time, the author learned to work around the obstacles of loving—and trying to maintain a weekly visiting schedule with—an imprisoned partner by befriending other women who faced the same predicament. But as Harris forged a path to a better life in a world Jason could not access, she also became painfully aware of his limitations and her own need to escape the “prison” of a toxic relationship. Unflinching in its indictment of prisons, this book is also a celebration of female resilience and courage in the face of a penal system meant to break—rather than reform—the lives of incarcerated people and their families.

An engrossing memoir about resisting carceral dehumanization through community, connection, and self-love.

For more biographies and memoirs, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

Mornings Without Mii

Inaba, Mayumi | Trans. by Ginny Tapley

Takemori | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (192 pp.)

$17.00 paper | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780374614782

Not just another Japanese cat book…

“Her face was the size of a coin, and was split by her huge wideopen mouth as she hung suspended in the dark. She was stuck in the fence of a junior high school on the banks of the Tamagawa River in the Y neighborhood of Fuchu City in western Tokyo.” Ginny Tapley Takemori, the translator of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, brings us another resonant slice of Japanese literature and culture. First published in 1999, this memoir by the poet and novelist Inaba (1950-2014) has long been a classic in its home country. The kitten’s rescue in the late summer of 1977 turned out to be the beginning of a 20-year relationship—one that outlasted the author’s marriage and several jobs and changes of residence— and became entwined with her development as a writer and her life as a single woman. In prose chapters that usually end with a poem, Inaba chronicles Mii’s routines and behavior, her early life with unfettered outdoor access and plenty of “boyfriends,” and then her later years, when the pair lived in a high-rise and Mii suffered a long decline. The accounts of feline health crises, aging, and excretion are unsparingly detailed, but in fact, it’s Inaba’s unabashed descriptions of the physical intimacy between a human and an animal that make the book unique. “Since my husband had left, Mii and I had become closer than ever. Our intimacy was spun without words and in time formed into an unbreakable bond. We slept in the same bed, entrusting our bodies to each other, snuggling together, and in the morning the first thing we saw was each other.”

The translation preserves some

unfamiliar Japanese words (tsubo, tokonoma), but they add to the vivid sense of place created by the many geographic names and Inaba’s lucid images of the physical world around her: wooded suburb, asphalt cityscape, rugged seaside.

A striking evocation of the way we meld our lives and hearts with a beloved creature.

Afro Sheen: How I Revolutionized an Industry With the Golden Rule, From Soul Train to Wall Street

Johnson, George E. | Little, Brown (320 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780316577342

A pioneering Black entrepreneur recounts a life of invention and innovation. Nearing 100, Johnson looks back on a long life shaped early on by the entrepreneur S.B. Fuller, whom he met in 1944, and who preached a gospel that proclaimed, “God did not intend for you to be poor.” Johnson went to work for Fuller, convinced that, as Fuller said, “Anything a White man can do, so can you!” Johnson eventually developed his own product line that Fuller could have taken as competition but didn’t: A specialty good in a time when natural hair was out of favor, it straightened the hair of Black men without burning the scalp, as other products did. He entered a partnership that taught him a thing or two about vetting your associates. Upon dissolving it, Johnson steadily built an extensive line of grooming products, always remembering Fuller’s example: “The money I made in Chicago, I invested in Indianapolis. The money I made in Indianapolis, I invested in Cleveland. The money I made in Cleveland helped me open Detroit.” That line came to include more natural products that became iconic, such as the Afro Sheen of the title, for a time the engine driving an empire that allowed Johnson to underwrite another iconic

expression of Black pride, the syndicated TV show Soul Train, which “conveyed contemporary Black youth hair, music, clothing, and culture…organically conveying positive messages.” The positive racial messages notwithstanding, Johnson found himself so successful that white businesses crowded into his market, so that, he writes, “according to some sources, by 1988, White manufacturers dominated more than half of the Black haircare market.” In this detailed, anecdotal memoir of business, Johnson notes this detail without rancor, closing with a shrug: “As much as it pained me to witness, that’s capitalism.”

A book full of lessons for budding entrepreneurs, wise and empathetic.

The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

Karp, Alexander C. and Nicholas W. Zamiska | Crown (320 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780593798690

A passionate call for a new cultural approach from Silicon Valley. Karp is co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, which specializes in developing software platforms connected to big data analytics, and Zamiska is a senior executive in the firm. In this book, they argue for a thorough rethinking within the tech sector, which, while full of intelligent and innovative people, has lost a sense of national purpose or common good. Instead, the authors say, America’s best and brightest are focused on creating shiny new toys, from phone apps and games to marketing algorithms. Karp and Zamiska posit that the culture of Silicon Valley is based on self-centered libertarianism, with most of the players coming from privileged backgrounds and a college system that disdains any collaboration with government. The result is that the U.S., while still leading in most areas of

technology, is seeing its advantages diminish in next-gen fields like artificial intelligence and swarm warfare. There needs to be an increased awareness of the challenges facing the country and a readiness to put forward ambitious, multidimensional solutions, they argue. For its part, the government’s security institutions should be more welcoming of software specialists and should streamline the labyrinthine, wasteful procurement processes. Interesting stuff, although the book pays insufficient attention to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which has successfully used talented people from the tech sector and which could be a good model for future efforts. Nevertheless, the book has many thought-provoking ideas; now it remains to be seen if people in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., will listen. A provocative examination of how the U.S. can maintain its leading position in tech innovation.

Surreal: The Extraordinary Life of Gala Dalí

Klein, Michèle Gerber | HarperCollins (336 pp.) $32.00 | April 1, 2025 | 9780063220577

A n overdue, comprehensive biography of a surrealist instigator. Biographer Klein’s account of one of the driving forces of the surrealist movement is wonderfully thorough and rescues Gala Dalí from being cast in the role of “mere” muse, reclaiming her as the definitive artist and collaborator she was. Klein uses her subject’s first name throughout the book, essential because Gala held three surnames in her lifetime, two of them shared with far better-known men: French poet Paul Éluard and Spanish artist Salvador Dalí. Gala’s life and work have long been overshadowed by the famous men she was entangled with as husbands and lovers. Klein’s biography convincingly demonstrates how Gala was a singular player in the development of a

Rescuing Gala Dalí from being cast in the role of “mere” muse.

SURREAL

major 20th-century art movement, whether in choosing the pen name for her first husband (born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel), while co-writing and editing his earliest poems, or creating work with Salvador Dalí, who often signed pieces with both their names: Gala Salvador Dalí. While Klein can deploy memorable turns of phrase, such as noting that Gala’s lover Max Ernst “exuded the sex appeal of a fallen angel,” this account of an astonishing life is surprisingly conventional. It’s a traditional soup-to-nuts chronological account, with an odd lack of emotional tension or psychological insight, especially since surrealism concerned itself with mining the depths of the unconscious and the wild and woolly ways it might reveal itself. Although there is much about lavish interior decoration (for example), there is less about Gala’s only child, Cécile Éluard, who is nearly absent in this biography of “the mother of Surrealism.”

A thorough account of Gala Dalí’s dramatic life and importance to surrealism, but short on emotional drive.

Sucker Punch: Essays

Koul, Scaachi | St. Martin’s (272 pp.)

$28.00 | March 4, 2025 | 9781250270504

Reflections about divorce and other difficulties by a millennial Canadian journalist/ internet personality of Indian descent.

“My ex is the hero of my first book because that’s how it felt to me at the time. I felt rescued. It’s bad enough to lie to yourself privately, but to sell it to a

public who believes those stories, too? It feels like a scam. Strangers are sad to hear about my divorce because they thought my marriage stood for something bigger than just my own relationship.” Unfortunately, the story of Koul’s divorce from a white partner 13 years older than she, the main subject of this follow-up collection, also suffers from that limitation. Readers hoping to find themselves through reading about someone else’s experiences may get a bit frustrated by this hall of mirrors (of mirrors of mirrors of mirrors…). Not that readers will never stumble upon a funny sentence or a relatable insight— but it’s not enough. “Writing about yourself for the internet means pulling off little pieces of your body and letting them walk around without you. You have to let them go, and when you meet them again, you might not like them anymore.” This is certainly the case with the story of her rape by a college classmate, a subject dissected at length in the first book, but now subject to radical and extended revision based on new developments. On other topics— body image, eating disorders, women’s relationship to food—if there is anything new to say, and there really might not be, Koul hasn’t found it. The attempt to hang all this on a framework of Hindu mythology is…a nice try. After reporting the mending of her relationship with her father after an estrangement, the decision to end the book with a section called Moksha (meaning enlightenment) that consists entirely of “A Comprehensive List of Everything My Dad Has Called Bergdorf Goodman”—Häagen-Dazs, The Googleheim, Goodman Goldstein, etc.—is a bit of a sucker punch for her dad and a cop-out for readers.

The author’s trademark self-lacerating humor does not quite save the day.

From These Roots: My Fight With Harvard To Reclaim My Legacy

Lanier, Tamara with Liz Welch Crown (288 pp.) | $30.00 Jan. 28, 2025 | 9780593727720

Battling on behalf of enslaved forebears.

This inspiring memoir features unforgettable dialogue: “We’re going to Columbia, South Carolina, to spend the weekend with the family who enslaved our ancestors!” So Lanier tells her daughters, announcing a remarkable development in a long campaign. Her goal: compel Harvard University to hand over images of her great-great-great grandfather Renty Taylor and his daughter Delia, enslaved in the 19th century and treated as “specimens” to be studied. Lanier’s memoir begins in 2010, when she promises her dying mother that she’d chronicle her family’s history. She serendipitously mentions the project to the owner of an ice cream shop near her Connecticut home. Turns out he’s a “genealogical whiz.” With his help, she discovers that Renty and Delia are among seven enslaved people seen in infamous daguerreotypes commissioned in 1850 by Louis Agassiz, a Harvard professor with repugnant white supremacist theories. Lanier informs Harvard of her lineage but is thwarted by “academic arrogance.” Nevertheless, she persists. A phone call to the family that enslaved her relatives leads to a powerful moment, with Lanier “sitting in a chair handcarved by” Prince Thompson, another ancestor. She also collaborates with descendants of Agassiz on a public appeal for Harvard to surrender the images, which the school published on a textbook cover and projected on a large screen at an academic conference, while denying similar requests from Lanier. Her 2019 lawsuit didn’t force Harvard to give up the daguerreotypes, but in a decision by Massachusetts’ highest court, justices cited strengths in Lanier’s claim and ruled that she could sue Harvard for

emotional distress. This “marked the first time,” Lanier writes, “that a descendant” of enslaved people was “afforded the opportunity to seek accountability from an American institution for the atrocities caused by slavery.”

A stirring first-person account of holding powerful institutions responsible for abetting slavery.

Kirkus Star

John & Paul:

A Love Story in Songs

Leslie, Ian | Celadon Books (448 pp.)

$30.00 | April 8, 2025 | 9781250869548

A new take on a legendary partnership. British journalist Leslie’s thoroughly delightful portrait of the Beatles comes by way of the duo’s friendship and their songs. Early on, besides playing others’ tunes, they came up with their own, like “I Lost My Little Girl”; the “more they shared, the closer they became.” Manager Brian Epstein’s relationship with producer George Martin resulted in their composing more songs, including “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” on their first single, garnering income for the now songwriting pair. Their first hit, “Please Please Me,” and a TV appearance, were followed by their first album, opening with “I Saw Her Standing There.” Leslie meticulously works through the canon, with the bio unfolding. He’s excellent at delving just deeply enough into how the music and words created songs. “She Loves You” became the “bestselling single of the decade.” For a new album came a “powerhouse”: “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” The single sold nearly 700,000 copies in America. Their songs began to show the influence of Bob Dylan—especially for John—and pot. Leslie notes that the band probably saved John’s life—he literally meant “Help.” “Ticket to Ride” is a “masterpiece”; nobody “sounded like this before.” Paul’s

“Yesterday” was a striking, masterful departure for the band. The inventive Rubber Soul brought “out the best in John.” His “In My Life” is for Paul. “Eleanor Rigby”: “Nobody had created a pop song like this before.” “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” begat Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. On Feb. 10, 1967, they had a party at Abbey Road that resulted in “A Day in the Life.” Paul said: “We weren’t the Beatles anymore.” Leslie closes nicely with Abbey Road ’s “The End” and the duo’s rocky post-Beatles relationship. Fans will love this fresh, insightful approach to the band.

Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling

Lien, Henry | Norton (192 pp.) | $19.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781324079101

West, meet East. Calls for diversity and a broader range of representation in media have seen as many incremental successes as disappointments. Lien, author of speculative fiction and the Peasprout Chen fantasy series, parses familiar examples of both in this book, asking readers to consider how technical aspects and cultural roots in storytelling itself—traditional formats, narrative progressions, themes—can make or undermine such efforts. We often think of progress in terms of diversity in authorship and performance. Nudging us further, Lien writes that “diversity can and should be about more than just plopping different faces into stories that are 100 percent Western in spirit.” Western storytelling—the three-act story structure; general symmetry in ascent and descent; a focus on conflict, tension, and resolution—is the kind of cultural monolith a passive audience might be too close to for further consideration (think any Marvel movie). Lien hopes to crack through this passive consumption, and his anvil is a counter-perspective in Eastern storytelling. Where Lien breezes through some nuances

of novel literary modes and their historical background, he clearly marks where these cultural and literary structures significantly affect the audience’s experience. Each section, rarely more than a handful of pages, makes this venture into literary criticism easily accessible. Lien expects readers to have some familiarity with the works he delves into—Star Wars, Parasite, Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the Harry Potter series, Rashomon, Everything Everywhere All at Once —and apologizes for the many spoilers. Bringing readers closer to understanding how a hero’s struggle to triumph over adversity or a villainous force might be imbued with Western-rooted values of individualism and moral progress, Lien points to satisfying alternatives—and broader literary horizons.

A refreshing wake-up call for breadth of perspective.

The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings

on China

Link, Perry | Paul Dry Books (287 pp.) $24.95 paper | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9781589881983

A potpourri of critical observations about contemporary China from a noted sinologist. Retired Princeton professor Link, now at the University of California, Riverside, is an expert on Chinese literature and popular culture. This collection of essays, most of them previously published, includes book reviews, op-ed pieces, literary criticism, and memoirish vignettes he’s written for the New York Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, and other venues. Grouped under four categories, “Captive China,” “Learning,” “Teachers,” and “Day Job Joys,” these essays, rendered in Link’s lucid prose, take us back to his early days as a student of Chinese literature in the 1960s, when China was virtually closed to the West. Link’s first in-person glimpse of China came in the fall of 1966, when he

peered over the border separating the skyscrapers of Hong Kong from the rice paddies of Shenzhen—and spotted a water buffalo. From that first sighting, the young, naïve aficionado of Maoist China went on to teach Chinese language and literature at various U.S. colleges and became an authority in the field who was welcomed by China. But after he became interested in dissident writers, especially in the wake of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, when he became vocal about human rights issues, Link was blacklisted by the Chinese government and has been denied entry to the country since 1996. While watching China from afar once again, Link wrote many pieces with a touch of nostalgia and a hunger for truth, whether reviews of fiction by authors like Ha Jin and Mo Yan, obituaries of dissenting intellectuals like Fang Lizhi and Liu Binyan, or scholarly studies of popular art forms like xiangsheng (crosstalk). Readers interested in contemporary China will find useful perspectives in these essays by a veteran China watcher.

Kirkus Star

Song So Wild and Blue: A Life With the Music of Joni Mitchell

Lisicky, Paul | HarperOne (272 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780063280373

A memoir about a recording star’s influence on an author’s life and work.

When Lisicky’s fourth grade music teacher—a woman who “made music feel like it was meant for everyone, not just those with special talents”—introduced the class to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” the result for him was transformative. Thus began a lifelong love of Mitchell’s considerable output. As Lisicky puts it, “Joni’s songs saved my life.” In this exceptional, warmhearted memoir, each chapter bearing the title of one of Mitchell’s songs, Lisicky draws parallels between

the singer-songwriter’s artistry and life struggles—from her bout of polio when she was 9 to a late-life brain aneurysm that “left her for days on the floor”— and his own difficulties and cites how her work inspired him. An aspiring songwriter himself—he composed liturgical songs, in part because he couldn’t write love songs about the men he was attracted to—Lisicky was moved by the structure of the tunes in Mitchell’s album For the Roses and by her voice, which, in one of many poetic phrases, “sounded like honey had been poured onto it—or perhaps California had been.” Hers was “the music of loneliness” yet “layered with happiness and hope,” a particularly resonant message for a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. Even after he turned to fiction and received recognition for his writing, Lisicky found inspiration in Mitchell’s work. He wanted, he writes, “to give to others what Joni had given to me…a chart as to how one lives a life.” Along with moving passages about his relationships and their challenges, Lisicky writes beautifully on mortality and death, including his parents’ health struggles, and on the highs and lows of being an artist. “To follow Joni’s lead,” Lisicky writes, “was to find out what was inside me.”

A beautiful tribute to a legendary musician and the act of creation.

White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus—In Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World

Lohmann, Jack | Pantheon (288 pp.)

$30.00 | March 18, 2025 | 9780593316610

Illuminating the role of death in life. “We have altered our connection with the earth,” warns science writer Jack Lohmann in his first book, about phosphorus, eons before industrial farming, and after it. Before industrial

farming, the element—drawn from waste products like bat guano and carcass bones—was recycled locally by farmers. They used waste from their small farms to fertilize the wide variety of plants they fed their families. They instinctively understood their complex soils, which invariably hosted varieties of microorganisms ferrying life-giving (if immobile) phosphorus to plant roots. So they fertilized with complex local phosphorus mixtures and carefully turned soils over without crushing them (as modern machines do), leaving busy pockets of microbial life. Industrial farming changed all this. Agribusiness mined the earth for huge quantities of phosphate rocks, which made crops grow faster, but reduced both their own diversity and that of their nutrients. The result: farming that hasn’t solved world hunger, and excess phosphorus leaking into rivers and lakes, prompting excessive algae growth, hypoxia, and animal death (eutrophy) in most lakes of Eurasia and North America. Lohmann points out that, for millennia, hunter-gatherers did not die of chronic diseases. He suggests one reason may be their diets of local plants naturally fertilized with complex, recycled local waste. By comparison, for example, in agribusiness-dominated India, which uses massive amounts of mined phosphate fertilizer, half of all crops lack zinc; one-third lack boron, potentially contributing to weak skeletal and immune systems. Happily, worldwide, recognition of the urgent need to return to more balanced local farming practices is growing, Lohmann concludes. We are coming to see that “the soil functions as a living organism that preserves the world of a billion years ago while sustaining lives that will continue far into the future.”

A surprisingly riveting look at the role of death, in life, as illustrated via a single element.

Pure Innocent Fun: Essays

Madison III, Ira | Random House (256 pp.) $29.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780593446188

Musings on our pop-culture pasts. Blending memoir and pop criticism, Madison’s essays lace deeply intimate stories with lavish praise and punishing blows for icons of the ’80s and on. A critic, podcast host, and TV writer, Madison pulls few punches as he lures readers into a deep nostalgia. “The beauty of nostalgia,” he writes, “is that most people forget the things that they hated about something they love.” We remember a star or a show for a moment—a song or a scene that fixated us at the time, or simply because those were the people we told our friends we loved and so defined our lives. If this retrospective flattening offers us a more cohesive view of the past, then Madison is adept at re-creating the seamlessness with which media and real life can sometimes mesh. The memoir aspects of developing an understanding of his sexuality and self-image, parsing through family dynamics, and ricocheting between majority Black and majority white spaces in education are shot through with notes on Oprah, The O.C., Tom Cruise, the Power Rangers, and even Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Where the author pauses to pull apart the seams, he reveals an absurdity hidden beyond our memory. Madison’s ability to re-create the limelight, then cast withering shade, is insightful. Writing of Cruise—“a soulless cipher skilled at mimicking human emotion”—he describes the actor as “approximat[ing] human behavior in a way that makes you think he’s learning how humans interact with one another,

How agribusiness made crops grow faster—but reduced diversity.

LIGHT

not merely observing and deciphering it like most actors.” A brilliant critical voice for millennials, those on the cusp, or anyone who has had their eyes open over the past few decades, Madison proves a worthy successor to his own idol, Chuck Klosterman.

An engaging and often hilarious memoirin-essays from a pop-culture fiend.

Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham

McGilligan, Patrick | Harper/ HarperCollins (832 pp.) | $50.00 Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780062941336

Everything you always wanted to know about the nearly canceled octogenarian auteur and more.

A professional joke-writer in his teens who parlayed his comedic talent into writing, directing, and starring in Oscar-winning sweet-and-sour dramedies like 1977’s Annie Hall , Woody Allen has been—sorry, what’s that? You just want to know why you should care about a filmmaker who’s been mired in scandal since the early ’90s? Veteran Hollywood biographer McGilligan (Funny Man: Mel Brooks, etc.) is plainly a fan of Allen’s work, but also comfortable calling out the clunkers in his 50-film oeuvre, and to his credit he goes deep into the actions, alleged and confirmed, that made him a #MeToo target. Confirmed: He fell for (and later married) Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his longtime partner, actor Mia Farrow. Alleged: That he pursued that relationship when she was a minor, and that he sexually abused Dylan, a daughter he adopted with Farrow, when she was 7. The only convictions came in the court of public opinion, and in McGilligan’s reckoning, Allen preserved his demeanor: diffident, a bit callous, and fiercely defensive in ways that belie his nebbish onscreen persona. There’s also plenty about his moviemaking in this hefty book, and though McGilligan himself seems to tire

of recapping Allen’s plots and (with rare exceptions) modest box-office income, he characterizes Allen as being gifted with actors and constantly willing to experiment. To press the case that Allen’s work still resonates, McGilligan polled more than 100 film critics and scholars for their thoughts on Allen’s life and work. Some demurred, but those who replied celebrated works across his career; recent sleeper hits like Blue Jasmine and Midnight in Paris made the top 10. Not exculpatory, maybe, but evidence of an enduring artist, however problematic. Comprehensive and disinterested in pigeonholing its subject as genius or art monster.

Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words

McWhorter, John | Avery (240 pp.)

$28.00 | April 1, 2025 | 9780593713280

They for a singular person? Says the eminent linguist: Why not?

He’s been branded a conservative, but McWhorter, who doesn’t avow the label, is no William Safire. Instead, in this pointed treatise, McWhorter considers the pronouns we use as both historical and ever-changing things, resisting conservatism, linguistic and otherwise: “I am a great fan of the new usage of they, and think it is a very sad thing that we are taught that it is a form of mental debility to use me and other object pronouns as subjects.” He’s not alone: McWhorter enlists a phalanx of English writers to back him up in various usages that became canonically disapproved only when the proto–grammar police set up shop back in

Georgian times. Shakespeare, he notes, failed upward by using “Between you and I” in The Merchant of Venice, anticipating a matter that’s still of confusion: When I, and when me? McWhorter traces the sources of confusion all the way back to the evolution of our pronouns in Old English and even earlier: the old uncer, for our, widespread in English, turns up in supposedly unlettered dialects as you-uns, and as for y’all and youse, those are laudable—well, at least not condemnable—survivals of the old dual form in English, which distinguished the singular you (once marked by thou) and the plural, used to address both more than one person and the presumedly socially superior among us. “Really—if English were normal, we would be walking around with our flip-flops and iPhones and Drake and whole-grain pasta calling each other thou,” McWhorter writes. “It would be you that felt increasingly antique.” McWhorter gets deep into the weeds, and it helps to know a little about historical linguistics, but it’s not required.

Fun and instructive—and thou mayest emerge spaking they for that single person standing next to you.

Freedom

Merkel, Angela with Beate Baumann

St. Martin’s (720 pp.) | $40.00 Nov. 26, 2024 | 9781250319906

Finding herself in the free world.

It wasn’t long ago that, in the eyes of many, the de facto leader of the Western world was—irony of ironies—a graduate of Karl Marx University. That institution has

“If English were normal, we would be walking around... calling each other thou.”

since reclaimed its original name, Leipzig University, and that leader is now retired. Angela Merkel has certainly earned the right to chronicle, over more than 700 incident-rich pages, her improbable journey from East German Ph.D. quantum chemist to Germany’s first female chancellor, a position she held from 2005 to 2021. The book’s title isn’t hyperbolic: Growing up in the spysteeped German Democratic Republic, Merkel witnessed how her parents were “on thin ice,” forever wary of speaking their minds. The collapse of the GDR inspired Merkel, lighthearted and intellectually curious by nature, to use her new freedom. In 1989 she walked into a political party office and offered to help. “See those boxes back there?” she was told. “Could you unpack them?” From there it was a steady rise to the top, by way of the Bundestag (the parliament) and cabinet ministries. Merkel’s prose may be as graceful as her mother’s boxy and basic Trabant car, but her spare sentences have their own power, reflecting her rational approach to politics when, having to deal with the “self-righteousness” of Vladimir Putin and the selfishness of Donald Trump, she was the adult in the room. “Never explain, never complain,” she writes, citing the axiom linked to the British royal family. Merkel’s longtime adviser Beate Baumann helped write the memoir—the female partnership is itself rare—and the voice is confident but humble, and not without heart, as the author recounts a time of prosperity and tumult. The book is as no-nonsense, and often as comforting, as the sausages and potato salad that Merkel dined on to celebrate becoming chancellor—the same modest fare that she ate 16 years later to mark her retirement.

A rigorous and sober assessment of a groundbreaking career.

For more books about Germany, visit Kirkus online.

No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce

Mlotek, Haley | Viking (304 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9781984879080

An exploration of divorce through a variety of lenses. Even before she went through her own divorce, Mlotek’s “entire world was divorce”; her grandparents and parents both divorced, and her mother was a professional divorce mediator. In her full-length debut, she looks at both cultural history and popular literature and film to make sense of divorcing her husband after one year of marriage and 12 years together. She follows the rise of both love as a basis for marriage and the acceptance of legal divorce as the means of disentangling from a spouse, noting along the way how the institutions of both marriage and divorce influenced movements for women’s equality. As divorce became more commonplace, it infiltrated literature and film; Mlotek dedicates a large stretch of her text to cataloging and dissecting her favorites of these artistic touchpoints, infused as they are by insights, ideals, and instructions that the author “sought out in narratives first and therapy second.”

Attention to and scrutiny of the author’s own marriage and divorce provide both elements to these somewhat jittery summaries, as well as to an accounting of various romantic escapades following her separation. While she hints at a number of things that could be said about her relationship and its dissolution, she fails to fully say any of them. Mlotek has a flair for the profoundly and poetically stated, but her style wanders, injected with dramatic segues and self-conscious reflections that muddy the narrative arc rather than illuminate it. In the end, readers are left holding too many disparate threads— some interesting, others provocative, several linguistically elegant—that together create a sort of temperamental wrestling with the function of divorce.

An uncertain and stifled stab at understanding the changing significance of marriage and divorce.

Kirkus Star

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live

Morrison, Susan | Random House (640 pp.) $36.00 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780812988871

How a Canadian joke writer became American comedy royalty, and worked to keep his crown.

Any book about Lorne Michaels is inevitably a book about Saturday Night Live, the comedy program he created and (excepting one disastrous hiatus) has led for 50 seasons. Few TV programs are better documented than SNL —especially its brash and druggy early years—and Morrison, articles editor at the New Yorker, covers the relevant highlights. But she also offers an engrossing story about Michaels’ rise, celebrity, and philosophy of comedy. Raised in Toronto, he married into Canada’s comedy scene—his first wife was the daughter of a top Canadian gag duo. Eager to escape the country’s provincial scene, he headed for America but chafed at working for squares like Phyllis Diller; a fortuitous connection with a rising Lily Tomlin earned him a reputation as a judge of comic talent and an eager iconoclast. Each of the book’s seven sections opens on one day in the manic life of a 2018 episode of the show, which reveals Michaels as being hands-on with every element of the show, from lighting to soothing cast members’ egos. But it also reveals him as a sphinxlike figure, an inveterate name-dropper who never fires anybody directly and makes guest-host choices, like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, that sometimes infuriate his left-leaning cast. (Michaels notes that as a national show, SNL needs to take a pox-on-all-their-houses posture.)

Morrison soft-pedals some elements of Michaels’ history—whether he might have intervened more when John Belushi and Chris Farley were spiraling, the show’s weak record on diversity, his failed marriages—but the book isn’t hagiography, chronicling his tussles with network

Boat Baby: A Memoir

Nguyen, Vicky | Simon & Schuster (320 pp.)

$29.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9781668025567

The daughter of Vietnamese refugees climbs the long ladder to 30 Rock. Following in the path of colleagues like Connie Chung and Dion Lim, Nguyen offers insight into her experience of growing up Asian American and achieving a high-profile career as a broadcast journalist. She begins with an account of her parents’ hair-raising escape from Vietnam in the 1970s, during which she was a babe in arms, followed by an account of her girlhood in California, when the family moved around quite a bit. Following her father’s early entrepreneurial successes, the threesome lived in both predominantly Vietnamese areas and ones where minorities were few. Often drawing self-help-style advice from her experience, she offers a few pieces of counsel we have not heard before: “I tell you, cheerleading is underrated as a crash course in social skills.” She also shares insights into various aspects of Vietnamese culture: “Berating the survivor for getting hurt in the first place is our language of love.” Because her career path has been relatively smooth, the main friction in the memoir comes from her relationship with her father, whose successful years in business were followed by a long period of embarrassing failure and delusion. The book is framed around the decision to move her family, including both parents, from the West Coast to New York for her high-profile job on NBC’s Today show, a tough move for her husband, who had just started his dream job in medicine. Unfortunately, the moment they got there, the pandemic hit, taking the wind out of their sails,

>>> execs and various film flops. Morrison does a fine job of revealing a leader who keeps his cards close to the vest, which is both a temperament and a survival tactic. A top-shelf showbiz biography.

Boldface Names

Memoirs by these political and entertainment luminaries make for great listens.

BY MARION WINIK

ALEXEI NAVALNY’S Patriot (Random House Audio, 16 hours and 46 minutes) is a book of rare importance and power. The voice of this heroic, brilliant, and droll man, speaking from beyond the grave, expressively read by English actor Matthew Goode, will entertain you, educate you, and ultimately move you to tears. Part 1 recounts the author’s experience of being poisoned in 2020—most likely by Russia’s FSB security agency—and was written while he was recovering in Germany. Arrested immediately upon his return to Russia, Navalny was able to complete Parts 2 and 3 as planned, chronicling his early

life in the USSR, his sweet romance with wife Yulia, and his political career as an opposition leader, dealing ample scorn to the “dodderers,” “deadbeats,” “liars, thieves, and hypocrites” who control the country today. After that, imprisoned in ever more draconian circumstances and given only the barest access to writing materials, Part 4 became a prison diary cobbled together from brief dispatches. As his physical condition nosedived, he was treated only by a “typical prison doctor whose job is to confirm that a prisoner is completely healthy until he stops breathing” and charged with endless new crimes. Certain that he would

not leave prison alive—as he did not—Navalny continued to be wry, upbeat, and unflagging in his commitment to his beloved country.

In his famously gravelly voice, with occasional resort to spluttering, falsetto, and Shakespeare, the great Al Pacino gives a heartfelt chronicle of his life and his craft in Sonny Boy (Penguin Audio, 12 hours and 27 minutes)—from his childhood in the South Bronx to discovery of his talent in high school to the movies that made his name in the 1970s: The Panic in Needle Park, The Godfather, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon. The audiobook itself is proof of his talent: Pacino delivers these stories in a style so natural and off-the-cuff that you’re sure he’s ad-libbing. (A comparison confirms that he’s reading almost word for word.) As the years unfold, the never-married star focuses more on his successes and failures in art and business than on his personal life, but we do get to hear about his relationship with Jill Clayburgh and some great stories about Diane Keaton—then, in the last pages of the book, meet his infant son, Roman. Clearly, he’s a youthful 84.

As the author explains at the start of the audiobook of Cher: The Memoir, Part One,

(HarperAudio, 15 hours and 47 minutes ), her dyslexia would have made it impossible for her to read it all by herself. So she passes the mic back and forth with the actress who played her on Broadway, Stephanie J. Block, and it works perfectly. Another opening note explains that her trans son, Chaz, known as Chastity during the years the book covers—it ends around 1980—and has approved appearing here as daughter Chas. With that out of the way, the adventure begins, “an all-American rags-toriches dream” in the words of our reviewer, who concluded that the “vicarious experience of wealth, glamour, and romance is rarely this much fun.” Cher rocketed out of a chaotic childhood at 16 when she met 27-year-old Sonny Bono, an assistant to record producer Phil Spector. They say we’re young and we don’t know…but these two definitely did know and were performing together within the year. You’ll be glad Cher took her time to linger over all the boyfriends, all the drama, and all the details, from the Bob Mackie “souffle dress” to the inside story on the night Robbie Robertson died.

Marion Winik hosts NPR’s The Weekly Reader podcast.

SEEN AND HEARD

Memoir by Olympian Jordan Chiles Coming This Year

The gymnast’s book will feature a foreword by Simone Biles.

Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles will tell the story of her life and career in a new memoir, People magazine reports.

Harper Influence will publish I’m That Girl: Living the Power of My Dreams, co-written by Felice Laverne, in the spring. The press describes the book as an “inspiring memoir chronicling her unlikely path to the podium.”

Chiles, an Oregon native, joined the UCLA gymnastics team in 2021, after being part of the U.S. women’s team that won a silver medal in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. She temporarily left the school to prepare for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where she was a member of the U.S. team that won a gold medal.

She initially won a bronze medal in the individual floor exercise competition in the Paris games but was stripped of it after an appeal from Romania challenging how two of its athletes had been scored by judges.

In her book, Harper Influence says, Chiles “digs deep, sharing the story of her life’s challenges—the racism she encountered as a gifted Black girl in a predominantly white elite sport, the childhood coach who called her fat and led her to develop eating issues, the grueling practices, the injuries, the moments of nearly calling it quits.”

I’m That Girl, which features a foreword by fellow gymnast Simone Biles, is scheduled for publication on March 4. —M.S.

For

Jordan Chiles

sports books recommended by our editors, visit Kirkus online.

De La Soul Condemns

New Book as “Unauthorized”

The hip-hop group spoke out against Marcus J. Moore’s High and Rising.

The iconic hip-hop group De La Soul has condemned a new book about it as “unauthorized.”

The group posted about Marcus J. Moore’s High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul, published by Dey Street, on the social platform X: “[W]e want to make it absolutely clear: this is an unauthorized book, and we are not connected to it in any way.”

Moore’s book tells the story of the trio, which formed in 1988 and released its first album, 3 Feet High and Rising, in 1989. A critic for Kirkus praised the book as “an affecting memoir of a music journalist’s lifelong

SEEN AND HEARD

relationship with an eccentric rap trio.” The group consists of Kelvin Mercer and Vincent Mason; co-founding member David Jolicoeur died in 2023 at age 54.

“If you choose to support this book, that’s your right,” De La Soul said in its statement. “We just want it to be clear that we do not and we are exploring all of our legal options.”

De La Soul’s post sparked backlash on social media. On X, author Shanita Hubbard wrote, “This is a tribute book. One of the best music journalists in the game dedicated four years of his life to give well-deserved flowers to De La Soul. This is such a disappointment response.”—M.S.

For a review of High and Rising, visit Kirkus online.

From left, Vincent Mason and Kelvin Mercer of De La Soul

and also providing a somewhat awkward and abrupt ending to the book. A letter of gratitude and inspiration addressed to her daughters is included as a coda. An upbeat immigration and career narrative.

On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR

Oney, Steve | Avid Reader Press (448 pp.)

$35.00 | March 11, 2025 | 9781451656091

A sprawling history of an American institution that gets plenty of love, if too little money. “It was an odd assortment of folks,” said one of the first reporters to join National Public Radio when it went live in 1971, adding that he was hired “as a safety in case these crazies went off the deep end.” Some of the “crazies,” Oney’s comprehensive history reveals, were pretty crazy indeed, especially when cocaine became commonplace in the 1980s: “There was nothing like snorting lines while wrestling with a complex story that required dozens of precise cuts and aural nuances,” observes the longtime journalist and author. For some, “it was like ingesting a focusing device that enhanced one’s powers of calibration.” That such antics raised managerial hackles was another matter. NPR was famously packed with a talented staff that included Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, Scott Simon, and Noah Adams, each of whom brought tremendous skills to the job of reporting. Some of those skills were perhaps not the stuff of other media hotshots: there was the nerdiness— quite successful, eventually—of Ira Glass, while, as Oney notes, Stamberg’s standout strength was “a willingness to pose the obvious question,” the answer to which “everyone wanted to know.” Talent and superb journalism notwithstanding, by Oney’s account NPR was always strapped for money and

Chronicling the history of NPR, back to its early—and scrappy—days.

sometimes held hostage by a hostile, politically much more conservative Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Its management and internal politics were sometimes messy as well: One boneheaded executive decision that fortunately didn’t endure was to “de-emphasize distinctive personalities” and hire “interchangeable and replaceable hosts.” And like so many institutions, it seems, NPR sometimes talked a good game when it came to equity but still was slow to promote women and hire minority staff; as one Black executive noted drily, “NPR news was not friendly to outsiders.”

A warts-and-all account that’s full of surprises, and with plenty of insight into the world of nonprofit media.

Eternal Flame: The Authorized Biography of the Bangles

Otter Bickerdike, Jennifer

Grand Central Publishing (416 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780306833342

The path to the top of the pop charts is tortuous and temporary. Sisters Debbi and Vicki Peterson had been honing their musical chops for years as drummer and guitarist, respectively, in Southern California rock bands before forming the classic lineup of the Bangles in the early 1980s with guitarist Susanna Hoffs and bassist Michael Steele, a founding member of ’70s rockers the Runaways. The four women found harmony by sharing songwriting and vocals on

jangly tunes shaped by 1960s rock and psychedelia. As rock historian Otter Bickerdike (Being Britney: Pieces of a Modern Icon) makes clear in this appreciative book, the band’s burden was heavy, with a domineering and dismissive producer, a rock press that objectified them as women, and a management team that pitted them against each other. Though they proved themselves with three solid albums and several Top 10 hits in the ’80s, the Bangles struggled to shed comparisons to female rockers the Go-Go’s, skepticism about their musicianship, and a management team that pushed Hoffs to the forefront at the expense of the other talents in the band. “People didn’t quite know what to do with us, especially men,” Vicki Peterson says. “We were complete aberrations of nature, being women on stage playing rock music.” Resentment over the spotlight on Hoffs dissolved the band by the end of the ’80s, but it re-formed almost a decade later. Though Steele declined to participate, the book offers a wealth of recollections from Hoffs and the Petersons. “There was something catchy about the music,” Hoffs recalls, “but also about the idea of this unique set of people coming together and trying to create something. That was the goal: to show up and deliver a kind of magic.”

An entertaining depiction of four talented musicians who left their mark on ’80s pop.

The Crossing: El Paso, the Southwest, and America’s Forgotten Origin Story

Parker, Richard | Mariner Books (448 pp.)

$32.50 | March 4, 2025 | 9780063161917

How American history began in the West.

If you want to look at the starting place of American history, writes native son Parker, forget Plymouth Rock or Jamestown. It’s El Paso you want. “The first white man we ever saw,” wrote an Indigenous historian of the Rio Grande Valley, “was a black man.” He means Esteban or Estevanico, a Moroccan sold into slavery to a Spanish conquistador who, shipwrecked on the Texas Gulf Coast, made it on foot to what is now El Paso. Indeed, well before English colonists landed on the Atlantic seaboard, Spanish settlers were founding towns and missions up the spine of the Sierra Madre to the place where the oncemighty Rio Grande could be forded. Just so, writes Parker, Native peoples were in the El Paso area thousands of years before they were presumed to be crossing the Bering Strait, and when the Spanish arrived, they formed a third culture in which people met each other more or less on their own terms. Not so the newly arriving Americans, many of them from slaveholding states, who categorized and subjugated and despised, dividing peoples and countries. “The very idea that an imaginary line in the desert would somehow divide the fates of the two nations was an absolute folly,” writes Parker, but folly has ruled. Folly and murder: Parker’s framing device is the 2019 mass shooting by a white supremacist outsider who killed a veritable melting pot of El Pasoans, only one of them a Mexican citizen, along with “Anglos, Mexican Americans, a German, and others” representative of El Paso’s cosmopolitan past and present. With so much history to cover, the book is a touch

too long, but its point is well taken: That mix of people and cultures is the very nature of the Southwest, and it’s the American future as well. Overstuffed, but well written and full of eye-opening stories of a place worth knowing more about.

Pretend We’re Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the ’90s

Pearson, Tanya | Hachette (256 pp.) $31.00 | Jan. 28, 2025 | 9780306833373

When music was no longer a man’s world. Feminist musicians who either performed as solo artists or were part of high-profile bands played significant roles in the indie music scene that dominated the last decade of the 20th century. But nearly all female ’90s rock luminaries, including Hole lead guitarist Courtney Love and Garbage singer/songwriter Shirley Manson, had largely faded from view by the early aughts. Writing from her perspective as an ex-indie-musician-turned-academic and director of the Women of Rock Oral History Project, Pearson offers insights into the women and forces that shaped the world of indie music. Much of her study takes the form of interviews with women who consciously broke gender stereotypes in their work. Some, like Manson, created edgy, “100 percent opinionated” personas; others, such as Liz Phair, wrote and sang explicit songs that addressed taboo subjects like female sexuality. Others whom the author did not interview, like Alanis Morisette, unabashedly raged against gender injustice. Regardless of how they approached their art, Pearson argues that these women revealed a deep consciousness of the misogyny that dominated the “boy’s club” of rock until the advent of grunge in the early ’90s. This movement, along with

the more accepting environment of the pre-corporatized music industry, celebrated female musicians for their innovation. But a late-’90s media backlash that culminated with an “anti-feminist, nationalist sentiment” in the wake of 9/11 once again buried female musicians in obscurity. As probing as it is intelligent, Pearson’s book will appeal to fans of ’90s music and beyond.

A refreshing and much-needed contribution to the male-dominated history of rock ’n’ roll.

Kirkus Star

Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women’s Ascent of Denali

Randall, Cassidy | Abrams (288 pp.)

$28.00 | March 4, 2025 | 9781419771538

The story of how the “Denali Damsels” found mountaineering, each other, and the summit of the “Great One.”

In 1970, Grace Hoeman and Arlene Blum led six women on the first all-women’s summit of Denali. Randall’s record of this climb is a study in showing rather than telling, spanning the grueling, weekslong trek and the question of how the “audacious, boundary-breaking climb” became largely forgotten. Despite its quiet place in history, the group’s journey to the highest peak in North America defied the expectations of what women could withstand, physically and psychologically, in a climbing environment so hostile that it, more often than not, turns climbers back, and sometimes claims their lives. With clear appreciation for and understanding of the technical skill their achievement required, the author laces together the group members’ individual backgrounds, relationships, motivations, and brushes with catastrophe that threatened the mission before it even began. Instead of dedicating long passages to redeeming

the oft-discounted strength and endurance of women or musing about the appeal of such a goal, the author mines archives, private journals, and her own interviews to construct a story full of almost achingly vivid details and mounting friction between complicated, heroic women undertaking great risk in a notoriously exacting environment. Randall’s account is a bit lopsided, leaning heavily on the perspectives of only half the group, but even so, it illustrates how personal idiosyncrasies, shaky group dynamics, savage winter weather, and the high stakes of success weighed on the group’s decisions and tolerance for risk along the way. The prejudices, intimidation, and exclusion of the male-dominated sphere of mountaineering affected, angered, and motivated each of the Denali Damsels differently, but readers will be left in awe of the women’s enthrallment to the sport, their determination, and the bittersweet spirit of their life-changing experience.

An entrancing tale of a harrowing adventure.

Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS

Rogak, Lisa | St. Martin’s (240 pp.)

$29.00 | March 4, 2025 | 9781250275592

Valiant women at war.

Journalist Rogak, biographer of media personalities Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, among others, uncovers the eventful history of four women recruited by America’s Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, to create and disseminate propaganda aimed at breaking the morale of Axis soldiers. They were 28-year-old Betty MacDonald, Czech-born Zuzka Lauwers, Navy wife Jane Smith-Hutton, and international film star Marlene Dietrich. Restless, feisty, and ambitious, each wanted to participate in the war effort, preferably

The story of Europe’s “greatest popular uprising” before the French Revolution.

SUMMER OF FIRE AND BLOOD

overseas. Betty had worked as a reporter in Hawaii when her husband was stationed there; Jane, who spoke fluent Japanese, had been held captive in Tokyo for six months with her husband, a naval attaché; multilingual Zuzka had worked at the Czech embassy in Washington, D.C., before enlisting in the Army. Among the 21,640 employees of the OSS, they joined a department known as the Morale Operations branch, where they carried out tasks that often put them in mortal danger. Zuzka, for example, digging for military intelligence, interrogated German POWs “who could snuff out her life with one well-aimed finger to the throat.” Betty worked behind enemy lines in China, writing radio scripts to strike fear in Japanese soldiers; one of Jane’s projects was producing a phony field service code manual for Japanese soldiers designed to incite them to surrender. Marlene, who made USO tours and sang on clandestine radio broadcasts aimed at German civilians and soldiers, had a bounty on her head. But her need for revenge against the Nazis made her fearless. Rogak recounts the projects that energized them during the war, the sexism they faced within the largely male OSS (only 4,000 employees were women), and their profound feeling of letdown when the war—and the intense excitement of their jobs—ended. An enjoyable and briskly told group biography.

Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War

Roper, Lyndal | Basic Books (544 pp.)

$35.00 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781541647053

History of a great peasant uprising during the heart of the Reformation. The German Peasants’ War of 1525, writes Roper, “was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution.” As the Oxford historian recounts, the uprising was fueled by Martin Luther’s concurrent revolt against the Catholic Church, although its roots as a movement of resistance against feudalism began far earlier. In the end, Luther’s call for freedom did not extend to the poor, and the theologian sided with the lords in a season of repression that ended with the deaths of as many as 100,000 peasants. That the Reformation was entwined with the Peasants’ War was in large measure because the Catholic Church was itself a feudal power, with estates that demanded free labor and shares of the harvest on the part of a peasantry already beset by low crop yields during the Little Ice Age. The revolt led to the collapse of monastic political power in many parts of Germany. In some instances the equerry sided with the peasantry, but the lords were naturally in a better position to fund and field armies to crush the revolt. Crushed the revolt soon was, though not without results: Feudalism effectively ended in Germany, while “after the war, the Reformation and the resultant secularisation, dissolution, and simple closure of so many monasteries and convents

For more by Lisa Rogak, visit Kirkus online.

accomplished one of the greatest transfers of land and property ever seen in the German region.” As Roper writes in her worthy rejoinder to Norman Cohn’s classic Pursuit of the Millennium, whereas in England most clerical wealth landed in the hands of the nobility, in Germany it “increased the power of the state,” as manifested in the founding of schools and universities, social service agencies, and the like.

Capably recounting a forgotten episode in European history, Roper’s book is full of lessons for modern readers.

Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

Roth, Kenneth | Knopf (448 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780593801321

Applying pressure for change. As the director of Human Rights Watch for three decades, Roth put public opinion to work in the service of his cause: The nongovernmental organization, he writes, “figured out how to deploy the public’s sense of right and wrong to pressure the political branches of governments to respect rights.” Sometimes this pressure was brought to bear on corporations instead of governments directly. Sometimes the effort worked the other direction, as when Xi Jinping’s China “realized that it had a powerful weapon to silence human-rights criticism: it could deny access to any critic,” whether Roth’s organization or a foreign corporation. Some of Roth’s carefully orchestrated campaigns have been successful, as with the organization’s contributions to arranging a cease-fire in Syria. That was a cease-fire in which the ever-implicated Vladimir Putin had to sign off, given Russia’s armed intervention there, while attempts to improve rights conditions in Russia have faltered, Roth allows. He insists, though, that even Russia might one day come around: “Some backers of

Ukraine have been inclined to treat all Russians as enemies, hoping that their suffering will push them to stand up to their government. I think a more productive approach is to treat them as potential allies.” Having retired, Roth is now free to name names in sometimes less-than-diplomatic ways: He calls out numerous figures in the Saudi ruling family as responsible for war crimes in Yemen, and he calls U.N. Secretary General António Guterres “a humanrights disappointment, reluctant to use his public voice in an effective way.” This reluctance, Roth notes, has daily implications in places like Gaza. Given the never-ending assault on human rights, a valuable call to fight back.

Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen

Rubenhold, Hallie | Dutton (400 pp.) $32.00 | March 25, 2025 | 9780593184615

A comprehensive telling of the North London Cellar Murder and its aftermath. Kunegunde (often spelled Kunigunde) Mackamotzki had other names and trajectories before she became Belle Elmore, a singer, friend, and Music Hall Ladies Guild treasurer who was brutally killed by her husband in early 1910. Hawley Harvey Crippen was a fraudster preoccupied with wealth and notoriety who moved mysteriously between questionable business enterprises and romantic interests. And Ethel Le Neve was the last of Crippen’s paramours, boldly winding through her own layers of obfuscation and opportunism into both his workplace and his home. While Belle’s killing and Crippen’s and Le Neve’s arrests and trials became the stuff of cultural legend, the maze between these three individuals has long been muddied by deceptions, omissions, and inaccuracies. Rubenhold, whose

previous work includes The Five: The Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, leaps into the dark holes in the historical record with her trademark commitment to reorienting mythologized true-crime stories around the stories of the victims. She meticulously constructs the fullness of the web that contains Belle, Crippen, and Ethel, along with the friends, colleagues, and family members affected by Belle’s murder, sketching the turn-of-the-century backdrop with notes on the era’s medical practices, London’s sphere of stage performers, and the influential notion of the “New Woman.” The author deftly maintains fidelity not only to facts, distinguishing between what can and cannot be certain and proved, but also to narrative intrigue, somehow creating suspense despite decades of extensive journalistic coverage and study of her subject. But Rubenhold’s true mark as a narrator of historical true crime is reinforced in this work by her continued loyalty to the women whose characters and stories have been flattened and overshadowed by journalists’ assumptions, their killers’ fame, or the simple fact of their victimhood.

A satisfying read that gives the impression that some new justice has been done.

In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings

Scott, James C. | Yale Univ. (248 pp.)

$28.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780300278491

A primer on the benefits of flooding and the enduring costs of domesticated rivers. In this posthumously published book, Scott urges his readers “to recognize the animated liveliness of the river and its tributaries“ as he “give[s] voice to all the flora and fauna whose lifeworld centers” on a river’s

watershed. His focus is the flood pulse that occurs every year as water from seasonal rains, snow, and glacial melts surges into river basins. The overflow provides nutrients for soils, trees, plants, fish, and mollusks. It supports insect, bird, and animal life that then attracts animals, birds, and fish higher on the food chain, creating a diverse ecosystem. Scott, who founded the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale, pays particular attention to the role of rivers in the evolution of human settlements, from hunter-gatherers to the present. Lurking in the historical shadows are industrialization and nation-states with the capacity to build massive dams, irrigation channels, and levees and engage in flood-control measures indifferent to the ecological and cultural consequences. This argument draws on Scott’s Against the Grain (2017) and Seeing Like a State (1998). To illustrate, he turns to Burma (his preferred name), and the Ayeyarwady (often spelled Irrawaddy) River, which runs nearly the length of the country. He tells of the river’s many meanderings, its long history, its place in the seasonal lives of fishermen and farmers, and the river spirits that are part of people’s daily lives. But Scott seems unsure of the book’s central focus. His three major concerns—the basic knowledge of watershed dynamics, the history of human engagement with rivers, and the Ayeyarwady River—form a somewhat disjointed narrative. Regardless, he has written an informative introduction to the inarguable coalescence of rivers, weather patterns, soils, and the

humans and nonhuman creatures in their midst.

Debunks the perception that rivers exist solely to provide humans with water, power, and transportation.

Silent Catastrophes: Essays

Sebald, W.G. | Random House (240 pp.)

$28.00 | March 25, 2025 | 9781400067725

The first English-language publication of two collections of essays by the noted German writer. Published in German in 1985 and 1991, these scholarly essays were written while Sebald was pursuing a university career, before the publication of such unique blends of fact and fiction as Austerlitz and Vertigo. The pieces show their academic roots: Ranging from relatively well-known writers (Arthur Schnitzler and Franz Kafka) to those likely to be unfamiliar to English speakers (Adalbert Stifter and Charles Sealsfield), they are dense critical exegeses peppered with phrases such as “In this paper I will try to determine the nature of [Thomas] Bernhard’s political, moral, and artistic credo,” or “Names such as [Josef] Weinheber and [Karl Heinrich] Waggerl will suffice to demonstrate the idea of Heimat which persisted well into the 1960s.” Heimat, generally translated as homeland but also connoting a sense of belonging, is an important concept in these essays, or rather—unsurprisingly for Sebald, who spent most of his life as an expatriate—the loss of homeland and/ or a feeling of being estranged from it. This notion comes across most powerfully in “A Kaddish for Austria,” on

On rivers and their important roles in diverse ecosystems.

IN PRAISE OF FLOODS

Joseph Roth, the Austrian Jewish writer who saw the Holocaust coming; and in “Westwards—Eastwards,” about the ambivalent feelings of Jews who left their shtetls for the cities of the Hapsburg Empire. Other themes Sebald discerns as running through Austrian literature from the late 18th century through the 20th include the destruction of nature, the inadequacy of science, psychiatry, and rationalism to completely understand human behavior, and, as translator Catling deftly puts it in the introduction, “the crises of consciousness and identity, particularly bourgeois identity.” In addition to the previously mentioned essays, one on Schnitzler and two on Kafka are of general interest, but most are likely too specialized for the average reader. Best suited to academics and those with a serious interest in Austrian literature.

Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism

Shabi, Rachel | Oneworld Publications (288 pp.)

$28.00 | Jan. 14, 2025 | 9780861548378

Moving beyond “blind spots and biases.” Shabi’s potent book explores the nature of Jewish identity from the personal perspective of a British woman of Iraqi Jewish heritage. Her central argument is that race is a social construct, that the association of skin color with race is a cultural convention, and that “racism itself creates race—and not the other way around.” The book pivots around what Shabi, a journalist and author, calls a “category error.” She writes, “The history of Jewish people in the West, persecuted, killed and then, finally, absorbed into white majorities, is not only a story of antisemitism. It is itself a story about the fakery of whiteness. That we can’t agree on whether or not Jews are white does not tell us that Jewish people are hard to categorise. It tells us, again and again, that racial categories are specious.”

Building on this idea, the author draws

on her experience as someone who sometimes presents as white and sometimes is taken for a person of color. This is less a book about antisemitism itself than a book about how charges of antisemitism have become the weaponry of both right- and left-wing politics. The author spends much time reviewing the academic critique of “settler colonialism” as it applies to Israel. We should recognize, she writes, the origins of Zionism in the long-standing antisemitism of Europe while at the same time condemning “the injustices perpetrated by the state of Israel.” Then again, she writes, “antisemitism is not surfacing because of ever-growing and justified criticisms of Israel. It is coming up because [of] centuries-old patterns and structures of antisemitism.” While this is not a subtle book, it may help us understand how we have learned to talk the way we do about Jewish identity in the 21st century.

A passionate reinterpretation of antisemitism.

You Can’t Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads:

Angelo Herndon’s Fight for Free Speech

Snyder, Brad | Norton (336 pp.) $37.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781324036548

The man at the heart of a landmark First Amendment case. Now all but forgotten, Angelo Herndon was a cause célèbre, often spoken of in the 1930s in the same breath as the accused Scottsboro Boys. Like his Alabama contemporaries who were imprisoned for the alleged rape of two white women, Herndon was on trial for his life before an all-white jury, accused of breaking a Georgia law against inciting insurrection that predated the Civil War, when it was used to target rebellious slaves. A Communist, Herndon aroused local

officials’ ire by attempting to organize an interracial protest in segregated Atlanta against paltry unemployment payments during the early days of the Depression. An unwarranted search of his home turned up a book advocating for a Black homeland carved out of the so-called Black Belt of several Southern states, including Georgia. At his first trial, which ended in conviction, the judge “showed mercy” by sentencing Herndon to 15 years in a chain gang, a de facto (albeit slower) death sentence that only the hardiest few survived. The bulk of Georgetown Law professor Snyder’s important and timely history is devoted to the aftermath of this trial, each chapter shining a light on the courageous interracial group who took on Herndon’s case as it made its way to the Supreme Court. The bravest was Herndon himself, who, barely out of his teens, survived legalized torture by racist police, prison guards, and Ku Klux Klansmen and, after his release on bond, became an eloquent spokesman for his own cause and those of others both in print and at rallies around the United States.

An inspiring portrait from an appalling chapter in American history.

This Beautiful, Ridiculous City: A Graphic Memoir

Sohini, Kay | Ten Speed Press (128 pp.) $24.99 | Jan. 28, 2025 | 9780593836156

Finding solace in the big city. Growing up in the outskirts of Calcutta in an era of unprecedented economic liberalization, Sohini obsessively read books about New York City. Her romanticization of the city that had produced writers like Sylvia Plath, Alison Bechdel, and Colson Whitehead led to her decision to immigrate to the city of her dreams to pursue her Ph.D., a choice that was also propelled by her need to escape an abusive romantic relationship plagued by betrayal and deception. While living in Calcutta, Sohini

struggled with intense mental health issues as well as grief about her grandfather’s sudden death. New York, however, felt like a place that suited her intensively introverted personality and her emotional connection with both cooking and consuming food, which she’d forged growing up in her intergenerational Indian home. Something about the city broke her depressive patterns, providing her with a life force that she hoped to maintain despite the economic threat of gentrification. Sohini’s gorgeous illustrations are in and of themselves marvels of bright colors and elegant compositions. Unfortunately, much of the accompanying text lacks the coherence of the artwork, partly because the narration lingers on historical context and other topics that abruptly shift the tone of the story. The author also has a tendency to allude to past trauma without giving readers details. While her healing relationship with New York is inspiring, the underlying reasons for her sudden ability to cope with her mental illness and her traumatic past are never fully explained.

A beautifully illustrated memoir that is hampered by uneven narration.

Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

An in-depth look at the chief strands that make up the American far right.

“The movement described in this book isn’t looking for a seat at the noisy table of American democracy; it wants to burn down the house.” So writes journalist Stewart, whose previous work has concerned the disappearing wall between church and state. Just so, among the major contributors to MAGA and other far-right elements have been the leaders and foot soldiers of “a radically new, intensely politicized

Kirkus Star

religion centered on a newly concocted ‘pro-life’ theory and—among a large number—the idea of spiritual warfare.’” Stewart argues that the movement is an elaborate con whereby power elites pretend to share common ground with “the Infantry,” while what she terms the Funders and the Thinkers seek self-centered gains that do nothing for ordinary people: “Each gains power by deceiving the others. Inevitably, they attempt to deceive the rest of us, too, and then they begin to deceive themselves.” Antidemocratic, opposed to public education, and given to conspiratorial thinking, this united front, albeit with divergent goals, has gained so strong a foothold in national and now international politics by drowning out the opposition and keeping the “right-wing outrage machine” fully engaged, Stewart says. But she reminds readers that “the antidemocratic reactionaries are nothing more than a disproportionately mobilized minority,” vastly outnumbered by centrists. She counsels that the far right is essentially divided, though it appears to be monolithic, and that its message is often contradictory and often off-message entirely. Defeating it, she notes, will require long-term thinking, since the far right is “not merely planning to win the next election.”

An impassioned takedown of a “militant minority.”

American Poison: A Deadly Invention and the Woman Who Battled for Environmental Justice

Stone, Daniel | Dutton (368 pp.)

$32.00 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780593473627

A crusader takes on toxins.

Science writer Stone investigates the life and work of physician Alice Hamilton (1869-1970) and inventor Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889-1944), who became pitted against one another in the controversy over lead toxicity. As a young doctor, Hamilton

lived at activist Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago, making house calls to poor families, during which she noted that men who worked near animal pens in stockyards suffered high rates of pneumonia, and those who worked in steel mills suffered from “a peculiar brain fogginess” caused by breathing carbon monoxide. These observations led to her extensive research into industrial poisons, making her an expert in the field. In 1910, invited to join a commission to investigate 29 known poisons, she focused on lead. The commission’s findings about lead toxicity led to significant reform: Bosses in Illinois were required to compensate workers affected by poisonous fumes, gases, and dust. But toxins transcended the workplace after Midgley, intent on improving fuel combustion, invented an anti-knock tetraethyl leaded fuel. A significant breakthrough for the automotive industry, the leaded fuel “would mean their cars could run cleaner and go farther and, in the process, boost the allure of the automobile.” Although automotive workers—and even Midgley himself—began suffering lead poisoning, he and the industry insisted on its safety, funding inadequate studies to bolster their claims. While Hamilton and other scientists disputed those findings, companies engaged in a strategy that still continues: “doubt, denial, and delay.” Stone’s informative history, populated with corporate shills, lazy investigators, and upstanding scientists, serves as a cautionary—and somewhat optimistic—tale. Hamilton, he notes, has been vindicated “on the dangers of low-dose poisoning from mercury, radium, asbestos, and carbon monoxide.” And the public has grown rightly suspicious of governments’ and corporations’ “sweeping guarantees.” Entertaining and eye-opening.

Natural History of Silence

Sueur, Jérôme | Trans. by Helen Morrison | Polity (250 pp.) | $22.95 paper | Jan. 29, 2025 | 9781509564026

Now hear this. An eco-acoustic researcher at the Natural History Museum in Paris, Sueur has long been listening to the sounds of the earth, animals, and humans. Inspired by the work of the late Canadian soundscape composer R. Murray Schafer and Bernie Krause, a soundscape ecologist and author of The Great Animal Orchestra (2012), Sueur has traveled on “acoustic quests” to remote French forests and distant jungles in South America. One place he visits, the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the Alps, prohibits noise in a surrounding zone of silence—as mandated by a 1975 decree. With humor and passion, Sueur describes his fascination with flora, fauna, dinosaurs, and genetics. One might call Sueur a sophisticated listening machine who sought the absence of sound and noise and discovered that, in fact, “sound and noise are everywhere.” He writes, “Silence is by no means an emptiness or a negation. It is rich and contains information essential to animal communication and to the structuring of natural systems. It is a contested resource and a space to be filled.” Helen Morrison’s translation preserves the vitality and charm of Sueur’s original French text. “Making noise is exhilarating,” he acknowledges. “Who has not experienced a certain sense of power on a moped, a motorbike, in a car or a boat travelling at speed and defying the passing of time?” And yet Sueur hopes

Traveling the world, from jungles to the Alps, on “acoustic quests.”

we can cut out the “acoustic waste” in our lives and “reintroduce natural sounds”—of crickets, frogs, owls, and any number of creatures. And of plants and trees in the forest that, as he beautifully puts it, “become the instruments and musicians of the wind.”

A lively and learned celebration of sonic environments.

Ginseng Roots

Thompson, Craig | Pantheon (448 pp.) $35.00 | April 29, 2025 | 9780593700778

A noted graphic novelist explores the complex story of ginseng, the medicinal root with an oddly humanlike shape. Ginseng is “prized in Chinese medicine,” Thompson writes, but it is also grown in the perhaps unlikely confines of rural Wisconsin, where he grew up. Put to work harvesting ginseng as a child, Thompson recounts, he dreamed of doing something different, “the fantasy of a career path that could transcend our economic class.” That “different” path involved writing comic books and, in time, graphic novels, rejecting his parents’ fundamentalist Christianity and forsaking the countryside for downtown Portland, Oregon. Yet, for all the slugs and mosquitoes, the scorching heat and freezing cold, and the endless labor of harvesting the stuff, Thompson, now approaching 50, chose ginseng as the avenue by which to write of his life, with its nagging working-class guilt that “what I do isn’t real work.” But it is: Writing about ginseng itself takes him into the lives of others, from Hmong refugees in California (and from there the Midwest, and now to Oklahoma to grow legal marijuana), to farmers and agronomists in China and Taiwan. He’s learned much in his travels, as when a back-to-the-lander tells him that a ginseng monoculture is as harmful as any other single-crop agriculture, defeated by companion planting: “The forest, like the

human body, is not simply an assemblage of parts, but an open system in communication with itself.” He returns, too, to Wisconsin, with a newfound respect for his parents’ hard lives, even as they respect his choices. Thompson’s closing is poignant and memorable, enshrining the recognition that all the labor of ginseng is a Sisyphean one, since “the value is in what’s left behind in the gouged out earth.”

A spectacular and inspired graphic memoir that traces the many threads of a remarkable root.

Kirkus

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

Vara, Vauhini | Pantheon (320 pp.)

$30.00 | April 8, 2025 | 9780593701522

A South Asian American journalist uses the history of technology to tell the story of her life. When technology reporter Vauhini Vara was a freshman in high school, her sister was diagnosed with cancer. In response to the news, she conducted a series of searches on Yahoo!, the most popular search engine at the time, because it was easier than talking to a human about it. Vara writes, “I never did get up the nerve to take the question to a human being who might be able to answer.” The reason, she says, is that “I harbored a vague terror that naming my fears out loud would make them come true.” Eventually, the then-limited internet would expand to “more than one billion websites,” including morally dubious ones like Facebook and Amazon, which, against her better judgment—and despite her years of covering the best and worst practices of technology companies—Vara continues to use. Vara would see these changes, but her sister, Deepa, would not: Deepa eventually succumbed to cancer while she and Vara were in

college. As the internet continues to grow and change, so does Vara’s grief, so much so that, as an adult, she uses AI to try to find the words to describe a loss that defies language. Vara’s essays are beautifully written and profoundly researched, but what sets them apart is their profound vulnerability. Her use of experimental forms, like listing a brief history of her Google searches and creating an annotated essay about her recent Amazon purchases, pushes the limits of the genre without ever compromising her circumspective, confessional approach.

An original essay collection about loss, technology, morality, and identity.

The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both To Find Happiness

von Hippel, William | HarperCollins (304 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780063319257

A breakdown of enduring bonds lies at the root of our discontent, according to this wide-ranging examination. A central paradox of the modern era is that we are becoming more unhappy even though, compared with hunter-gatherers, “the comforts, safety, and ease of our existence make us the equivalent of multimillionaires.” So says von Hippel, a longtime professor of psychology, who delved into sociology, anthropology, and biology for some answers. He argues that societies are constructed around two evolutionary imperatives: the need to connect with others, and the desire for personal autonomy. The people in hunter-gatherer societies tend to be quite happy because they have a network of connections, even while they have room for self-expression and individual action. As societies become more complex and productive, the autonomy imperative becomes dominant over the connection imperative, and the balance is lost. The point of equilibrium varies between

Kirkus Star

Star

individuals, but von Hippel says that everyone needs a mix of both—no amount of money, novelty, and blingy tech can make up for a lack of connection with others. The author devotes a chapter to the impact of social media, which can undermine genuine connections (not surprisingly) if the screen becomes central to one’s life. Used the right way, however, it can be a powerful antidote to an excess of autonomy. Von Hippel offers a series of suggestions for finding a better balance, mainly by making personal linkages a part of life rather than an occasional afterthought. “Choosing autonomy has become a habit for most of us,” he writes. “But once you start adding connection back into your daily life, that, too, will become automatic and easy. It should also be incredibly rewarding.”

A thought-provoking look at how to bring balance back into our lives.

More Than Words: How To Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Warner, John | Basic Books (320 pp.)

$30.00 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781541605503

Minds over machines.

Warner argues that artificial intelligence, including chatbots such as ChatGPT, should never replace human writing as a personal practice and a living art. In lively prose and with many engaging personal anecdotes, he deftly explains how ChatGPT mines data for examples to imitate. He calls attention to authors

and artists who have sued generative AI companies, accusing them of “hoovering up” copyrighted text and images. The real point of Warner’s polemic, however, is a view of writing as difficult, worthy of struggle, and central to shaping an individual’s sense of self. AI systems that purport to write for us, he claims, offer only simulacra of writing. Stringing together words and phrases, he notes, is not writing. Writing is creative, much like mathematics. Pocket calculators made computation easier for students. Real mathematics—the study of complex ideas represented in numbers, with equations of beauty and power—is done by humans. We may no longer need to memorize log tables, just as we may no longer need to learn how to write a five-paragraph essay (the demise of which Warner has chronicled elsewhere). What we need to do, instead, is read books closely and emotionally. Warner avers, after surveying a range of AI-constructed texts: “I’d satisfied myself that in terms of writing, real writing that comes from a fully embodied process of thinking and feeling, powered by an intention to communicate human-to-human, GPT had nothing to offer.” Some may be content with a B-minus paper, just as some may be content, he says, with a mediocre dish from a home-delivery meal service. Warner’s resistance to AI could be akin to trying to hold back the tide with a broom. But anyone who loves to read and write, who teaches excellence and personal achievement, and who remains convinced that people are unique will find this book a welcome arrow in their humanist quiver. An impassioned plea for writing as a human practice and a social necessity in the age of AI.

A view of writing as difficult, worthy of struggle, and central to shaping an individual’s sense of self.

New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement

Williams, Juan | Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $28.99 | Jan. 14, 2025 | 9781668012352

Following in the footsteps of civil rights heroes. Years before he became best known as a Fox News political analyst, Williams wrote his first book, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965, a companion to the acclaimed documentary series that aired on PBS in 1987. Williams has followed that work with an examination of what he calls America’s Second Civil Rights Movement. “They cannot fairly be compared,” he rightfully observes of the two distinct struggles for equal rights. “This Second Civil Rights Movement had to deal with persistent, deep-seated cultural issues that the First Movement had left unresolved, and in some cases, new issues that arose in the backlash to its legislative and political victories.”

Not surprisingly, Williams centers much of the book on Barack Obama, who has credited the Civil Rights Movement for making possible his own rise to power. Williams explores the hope, backlash, and disappointment that Obama’s presidency elicited, addressing police violence against Black Americans, demographic shifts, academic and economic progress and regression, and the Trump and Biden presidencies. “There is no real argument about the fact that a large percentage of Black and brown people continue to struggle to survive in twenty-first-century America,” he writes. “But whites in Trump’s Republican Party shun the history of America’s racial oppression as well as stories of racial inequality today. Instead, they express fear of the government discriminating against white people.” The case of Black Lives Matter is especially telling, Williams writes, noting how the movement went from “instant online sensation” to “high visibility scapegoat for the Republicans.”

Generations after the Civil Rights Movement, it is clear that activists have much work ahead of them: They must still keep their eyes on the prize. An important appraisal of the present-day struggle for civil rights.

Kirkus Star

Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses

Wolf, Peter | Little, Brown (352 pp.)

$30.00 | March 11, 2025 | 9780316571708

Elegant, eloquent vignettes from a star-studded life.

“David [Lee Roth] and I were lead singers, each to varying degrees demanding, difficult, obsessive, paranoid, neurotic, and competitive. Ironically, both he and I would end up being kicked out of our bands, but for very different reasons.” A kid from the Bronx whose dad was also a talented vocalist, Wolf is best known as the lead singer of the J. Geils Band from 1967 to 1983, but he also had a solo career and studied painting in Boston before he was a musician. He was married to actress Faye Dunaway during the peak of her career; among many interesting photos is a poolside shot titled The Morning After: the two of them with her Oscar, scattered newspapers, and a copy of Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy. The chapters focus on a wide variety of cultural figures with whom Wolf has crossed paths: musical greats from Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker to Van Morrison and Mick Jagger, but also Eleanor Roosevelt, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Lowell, Julia Child, Tennessee Williams, and more. Describing Bob Dylan playing “A Hard Rain a-Gonna Fall” for the first time in a nearly empty New York club: “In one seismic moment, he had brought us into new and unexplored terrain, just as Picasso helped radically reshape the landscape of modern painting with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.”

On setting up a recording session with Merle Haggard: “I could not have

Air: an embattled space long before the Covid-19 pandemic.

AIR-BORNE

prepared a bank heist with greater attention to detail.” During an anxiety-filled afternoon audience with Hitchcock at his home, hoping for a soundtrack commission, the master repeatedly offers his guest something to drink. Sensing “that this was his way of checking to see if I was one of those hard-drinking, drugged-out, unreliable rock-and-rollers,” Wolf sticks to tea. Nothing comes of the meeting. Only years later does he learn that Hitchcock’s wife “strictly frowned upon his drinking alone at home in the afternoon. However, he could indulge if he was with a guest.”

Recollections of a rock ’n’ roll life, charmingly related.

Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe

Zimmer, Carl | Dutton (496 pp.)

$32.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780593473597

What we know—and continue to learn—about a substance that sustains us.

In this enlightening history, Zimmer writes of efforts to study the “gaseous ocean in which we all live,” which “contains exhaled viruses that can then be inhaled.” Air itself became an embattled space during the Covid-19 pandemic, but as the New York Times science writer shows, such discord isn’t without precedent. His opening chapters evoke dreadful images—14th-century plague doctors tried to evade infection by wearing masks with beaks that contained, among other substances, “the ground remains of human mummies”—and

explain advances made by visionary scientists and physicians. In 1864, responding to a colleague who disagreed with his theories about airborne microorganisms, Louis Pasteur used lab tools and edifying props during a pivotal Sorbonne lecture on his “hunt for floating germs.” Inspired by Pasteur’s breakthroughs, Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, began using carbolic acid when treating compound fractures, substantially reducing infections. In the 20th century, William Firth Wells and Mildred Weeks Wells, husband-and-wife collaborators, made essential contributions to the study of airborne viruses. But, Zimmer notes, “their difficult personalities” and misinterpretations of their findings robbed them of due credit, a measure of which arrived posthumously when doctors treating Covid-19 cited the importance of William’s work (while mostly ignoring Mildred’s role). A recurring theme is the “failure of imagination” that has prevented governments and global organizations alike from recognizing “the full threat of an airborne disease.” Such failures, many scientists believe, contributed to avoidable Covid-19 deaths. Alongside informative chapters about terrifying government projects to build airborne biological weapons, Zimmer recounts some of the field’s more cinematic episodes. In the 1930s, researchers dropped a spore-collecting device from a helium balloon piloted by military men wearing leather football helmets.

An astute, accessible look at science’s hard-won understanding of our air.

Books That Go Way Back

By Catherine Nixey

Catherine Fletcher

By Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry

2025 CHILDREN'S BOOKS SPRING PREVIEW

For many kids, books are like a second home, and that’s how readers will feel upon diving into this spring’s offerings. The settings here are utterly inviting, from a Mississippi summer, courtesy of memoirist Kiese Laymon, to the forest wilds as experienced by a young wolf, to the tops of skyscrapers in an ode to Iroquois construction workers. Whether readers are seeking escape, solace, or adventure, these tales will open doors to new worlds.

Tíos and Primos

Alcántara, Jacqueline | Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) | $18.99

Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780593620137

This thoughtful and meaningful look at extended familia is a true gem.

Shark Girl

Beaton, Kate | Roaring Brook Press (48 pp.)

$18.99 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9781250184924

A scaly new hero sure to save the day—and to endear herself to readers.

The Urban Owls: How Flaco and Friends Made the City Their Home

Cooper, Christian | Illus. by Kristen

Adam | Little, Brown (40 pp.) | $18.99

Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780316583572

A breezy, appealing whoo’s whoo.

Home

de la Peña, Matt | Illus. by Loren Long

Putnam (48 pp.) | $19.99

March 11, 2025 | 9780593110898

Simply divine.

Let’s Be Bees

Harris, Shawn | Neal Porter/ Holiday House (40 pp.) | $18.99

Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780823457090

Let’s be readers and explore this book together—again and again.

How Sweet the Sound

Alexander, Kwame | Illus. by Charly Palmer | Little, Brown (48 pp.)

$18.99 | Jan. 14, 2025 | 9780316442497

A work whose lyrical and artistic genius only becomes more apparent upon rereads.

To Walk the Sky: How Iroquois Steelworkers Helped Build Towering Cities

Buckley, Patricia Morris | Illus. by E.B. Lewis | Heartdrum (40 pp.)

$19.99 | Jan. 28, 2025 | 9780063046979

Awe-inspiring.

The Peanut Man

Deedy, Carmen Agra | Illus. by Raúl Colón Margaret Quinlin Books/Peachtree (48 pp.)

$18.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781682635681

Exceptionally lovely, like a gentle tug at the heartstrings.

The House on the Canal: The Story of the House That Hid Anne Frank

Harding, Thomas | Illus. by Britta Teckentrup | Candlewick Studio (56 pp.)

$19.99 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 9781536240702

Deeply moving, powerful, and breath taking.

Caboose

Jonker, Travis | Illus. by Ruth Chan Abrams (40 pp.) | $18.99 Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781419765032

Don’t bring up the rear! Be the first in line to read this laugh-out-loud story.

Home Is a Wish

Kuo, Julia | Roaring Brook Press (32 pp.)

$18.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781250881328

Elegantly constructed yet warmly comforting—a soothing balm for children undergoing similar changes.

Are You a Friend of Dorothy?: The True Story of an Imaginary Woman and the Real People She Helped

Lukoff, Kyle | Illus. by Levi Hastings

Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) | $19.99

April 29, 2025 | 9781665931663

A historical look at the importance of community, now more relevant than ever.

Smiling Eyes

Park, Linda Sue | Illus. by Lenny Wen

Allida/HarperCollins (32 pp.) | $19.99

Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780358663928

Eye-catching and inspiring.

Raven’s Ribbons

Spillett, Tasha | Illus. by Daniel Ramirez

Little, Brown (32 pp.) | $18.99

Jan. 14, 2025 | 9780316422161

Weaves Two-Spirit self-expression and collective belonging into a beautiful tribute to Indigenous heritage.

What Color Is the Baby?: A Celebration of Skin Tones

Vankineni, Harshini | Illus. by Neha Rawat | Candlewick (40 pp.)

$18.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781536228946

A feel-good story that asks us to look beyond color to see the beauty in everyone.

City Summer, Country Summer

Laymon, Kiese | Illus. by Alexis Franklin | Kokila (32 pp.) | $18.99

April 1, 2025 | 9780593405567

A heartfelt, elegantly wrought, and triumphant tribute to Black boy kinship.

Pilgrim Codex

Mansour, Vivian | Illus. by Emmanuel Valtierra | Trans. by Carlos Rodríguez Cortez | Levine Querido (48 pp.)

$18.99 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781646145157

A gripping, thought-provoking migration saga.

Echo

Rex, Adam | Dial Books (48 pp.)

$19.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9780593699324

A quirky, relatable, and visually spectacular emotional journey.

Sunday

Tolentino, Marcelo | Trans. by Rahul Bery | Blue Dot Kids Press (48 pp.)

$18.95 | Jan. 22, 2025 | 9798989858811

Imaginative play has never been this exciting.

The One and Only Rumi

York, Rabiah | Illus. by Maneli Manouchehri | Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) | $18.99

March 11, 2025 | 9780593325766

A dazzling tribute to a luminary figure.

It’s All or Nothing, Vale

Arango, Andrea Beatriz

Random House (272 pp.) | $17.99

Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780593810927

Moving and insightful.

The Super-Secret Mission to the Center of the Moon (Pie)

de la Cruz, Melissa | Disney-Hyperion (304 pp.) | $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2025

9781368083751 | Series: Octagon Valley, 2

Nonstop lunar lunacy.

My Presentation Today Is About the Anaconda

Dumon Tak, Bibi | Illus. by Annemarie van Haeringen | Trans. by Nancy Forest-Flier | Levine Querido (224 pp.)

$19.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781646145102

A brilliant use of anthropomorphic animals, serving up facts and entertainment.

Oasis

Guojing | Godwin Books (160 pp.)

$21.99 | $14.99 paper | Feb. 18, 2025 9781250818379 | 9781250818386 paper

A thought-provoking, affecting allegory that reflects difficult realities yet is filled with love.

A Dangerous Idea: The Scopes Trial, the Original Fight Over Science in Schools

Levy, Debbie | Bloomsbury (256 pp.)

$19.99 | Jan. 14, 2025 | 9781547612215

A compelling, well-researched account.

What Fell From the Sky

Cuevas, Adrianna | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) | $17.99

Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780374390457

A story of friendship, identity, and courage showing that even one voice can spark resistance.

Orris and Timble: Lost and Found

DiCamillo, Kate | Illus. by Carmen Mok Candlewick (80 pp.) | $16.99

April 29, 2025 | 9781536225303

Sensitive and quietly enthralling.

Max in the Land of Lies: A Tale of World War II

Gidwitz, Adam | Dutton (352 pp.)

$18.99 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780593112113

Series: Operation Kinderspion, 2

A headlong thriller laced with provocative and topical historical truths.

Very Bad at Math

Larson, Hope | HarperAlley (240 pp.) | $15.99 paper | Jan. 21, 2025 | 9780063311282

Series: A Very Graphic Novel, 1

A buoyant misadventure with some lessons along the way.

A World Worth Saving

Lukoff, Kyle | Dial Books (352 pp.)

$18.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780593618981

Powerful and awakening.

Earthrise:

The Story of the Photograph That Changed the Way We See Our Planet

Marcus, Leonard S. | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (160 pp.) | $21.99

March 4, 2025 | 9780374392116

Provocative and thoughtful—rich in period details and timeless insights.

Jella Lepman and

Her Library of

Dreams:

The Woman Who Rescued a Generation of Children and Founded the World’s Largest Children’s Library

Paterson, Katherine | Illus. by Sally Deng | Chronicle Books (112 pp.)

$21.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781452182629

A stirring, singular tribute.

The Snips: A Bad Buzz Day

Raúl the Third | Little, Brown Ink (128 pp.) | $14.99 | Jan. 28, 2025

9780316528689 | Series: The Snips, 1

A shear feast of an adventure.

Whale Eyes: A Memoir About Seeing and Being Seen

Robinson, James | Illus. by Brian Rea Penguin Workshop (304 pp.) | $18.99

March 18, 2025 | 9780593523957

Frank, unusual, and insightful.

All the Blues in the Sky

Watson, Renée | Bloomsbury (208 pp.)

$17.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781547605897

A heartfelt portrait of the complexities of grief and the indomitable human spirit.

A Wolf Called Fire

Parry, Rosanne | Illus. by Mónica Armiño | Greenwillow Books (256 pp.)

$18.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780063415133

An exciting and thoughtful portrait inspired by a real animal who succeeded by being different.

At Home in a Faraway Place

Perkins, Lynne Rae | Greenwillow Books (128 pp.) | $18.99 Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780063378421

A warmhearted introduction to the joys of travel.

Will’s Race for Home

Rhodes, Jewell Parker | Illus. by Olga Ivanov & Aleksey Ivanov | Little, Brown (256 pp.)

$17.99 | Jan. 14, 2025 | 9780316299336

An exciting gallop through real history with little-known heroes taking the lead.

Who

Is Amy Schneider?: Questions on Growing Up, Being Curious, and Winning It Big on Jeopardy! (A Young Readers Edition of In the Form of a Question)

Schneider, Amy with Tanya Lee Stone Simon & Schuster (160 pp.) | $18.99

March 4, 2025 | 9781665933056

A fun, honest memoir.

Bad Badger: A Love Story

Wood, Maryrose | Illus. by Giulia Ghigini | Union Square Kids (192 pp.) | $18.99 | Feb. 25, 2025

9781454953456 | Series: Bad Badger, 1

A tender friendship tale with a luster all its own. (Fiction. 7-10)

Children's

A SNEAK PEEK AT BOOKS TO COME

AS A KID, I could never resist taking a surreptitious peek at my birthday presents. As an adult, I feel the same way when it comes to learning about upcoming books. Thankfully, my job as a Kirkus editor allows me to catch a glimpse of compelling titles long before they become available to the public, and I’m pleased to share some can’t-miss children’s books coming out this spring.

This year’s picture books offer an enchanting mix of silly and serious topics.

Travis Jonker’s Caboose (Abrams, Feb. 4) follows a hippo who’s always at the head of the line when the students leave the classroom. But power goes to our protagonist’s head, and the youngster is banished to the back of the line. Jonker celebrates those endearing kids who nevertheless make mischief wherever they go; Ruth Chan imbues her soft-hued cartoons with sass

and sweetness as our hero finally learns to cooperate.

With Home (Putnam, March 11), author Matt de la Peña and illustrator Loren Long reunite for a follow-up to their acclaimed Love (2018), and the results are equally spectacular. Melodic text (accompanied by mesmerizing acrylic paintings) reassures readers that anywhere can be home, from a houseboat to a fancy high-rise; most crucially, home is in the communities we build and the bonds we forge.

Kyle Lukoff’s Are You a Friend of Dorothy?: The True Story of an Imaginary Woman and the Real People She Helped (Simon & Schuster, April 29) unpacks the titular query, a way for queer people to find others like them in early-20thcentury America. Though Lukoff acknowledges that LGBTQ+ people confronted dangers—and still do—his text celebrates the

joy of community, brought to life by Levi Hastings’ energetic, retro artwork. 2025 is also looking like a banner year for middlegrade books. For the characters of Will’s Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes (Little, Brown, Jan. 14), illustrated by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov, freedom doesn’t always feel free. Will’s father, a formerly enslaved sharecropper in Texas, longs for better opportunities, and when he learns about unclaimed land in Oklahoma, he and Will set out to claim it.

Thrumming with tension, this tale offers insights into the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush—a topic many readers may be unfamiliar with.

Bibi Dumon Tak’s My Presentation Today Is About the Anaconda (Levine Querido, Feb. 4), illustrated by Annemarie van Haeringen and translated from Dutch by Nancy Forest-Flier, raises the bar for animal

non fiction as furry, feathered, and finned students deliver a series of hilariously apt class reports. A cleaner fish expounds on the shark, a white rhino holds forth on the shoebill stork, and an earthworm discusses the titular snake. Everyone earns an A: for effort, accuracy, and ingenuity.

In Guojing’s graphic novel Oasis (Godwin Books, Feb. 18), two siblings eke out a meager existence in a dystopian desert setting while their mother toils in an underground factory. Their world is upended when they encounter an abandoned robot with a maternal side. This haunting tale feels like a Twilight Zone episode for the younger set, though it’s woven with hope, along with thought-provoking musings about family and environmental devastation.

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

Go reflects on the experience of watching her beloved grandparents grow older and weaker.

The young narrator adores spending time with Grandma and Grandpa. Their interactions have a loving simplicity: Grandpa gently places a hat on Grandma’s head when the weather turns hot, and every Jesa Day, when many Korean people honor their ancestors, he gives her a brightly colored okchundang candy. As the book progresses and the narrator matures, Grandpa is diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, but he initially conceals his illness from everyone except Grandma.

Slowly he weakens and dies. Grandma retreats into silence; a doctor diagnoses her with Alzheimer’s, and she’s admitted to a nursing home. Mirroring the sweet okchundang, her color fades with time. Told from the perspective of an adult Go reminiscing, this graphic memoir, set and originally published in South Korea, takes on aging and death—topics many authors flinch from—with a rare mix of respect, tenderness, and candor. Love is palpable throughout, too: in the grandparents’ enduring bond and in scenes of the narrator bathing Grandma and trimming her nails.

Okchundang Candy

Go, Jung-soon | Trans. by Aerin Park Levine Querido | 128 pp. | $21.99 March 4, 2025 | 9781646145140

Go’s illustrations have a childlike playfulness that often tempers the heavy subject matter; characters have rounded, oversize heads, while pencil marks are visible throughout. Themes of familial love and

loss will pierce readers’ hearts while also offering them both windows and mirrors into Korean culture. An achingly lovely work laced with profound truths on love, death, and grief. (Graphic memoir. 10-14)

Síne Quinn; illus. by Dermot Flynn

A solid bit of instruction, delivered amid much

Triassic tomfoolery.

DINO POET

I Wish I Had a Dragon

With Marshmallows

Alber, Diane | Cartwheel/Scholastic (32 pp.)

$14.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781546109921

A youngster’s spontaneous wish comes true. While playing in the yard one day, a child finds a lizard that resembles a dragon. The two begin playing, and when the young narrator’s stomach rumbles, a wish bursts forth…for “a DRAGON with MARSHMALLOWS!” Plop. Suddenly, the lizard runs off, and there in the middle of the grass is a large, dumpy, blue-green dragon (the same coloring as the lizard), clutching a bag of marshmallows. There’s only one problem: The dragon is sad. And as the youngster correctly surmises, a sad dragon can’t produce fire—and that means no toasted marshmallows. What would make the dragon smile? The child comes up with a string of ideas, but after trying all of them, the two fall to the ground, exhausted, to take a nap. Upon awakening, the child can’t find the dragon—but the lizard is back! Was the whole thing a dream? A plate of toasted treats suggests otherwise. Rendered in black and white, Alber’s round-headed youngster (with skin the white of the page and rosy cheeks and red shorts and sneakers for a spot of warmth) stands out against the geometrically splashed colored backdrops. The plot feels a bit clunky, awkwardly meandering from one event to the next, but young dragon lovers will relate to the wish and will happily make their own scaled friend using the appended sock puppet instructions.

Fire-breathing fun for dragon enthusiasts. (discussion questions) (Picture book. 3-6)

The Stream Team: Battle Squad

Amyoony, Nick “NickEh30” & E.C. Myers Illus. by Ronaldo Barata | Andrews McMeel Publishing (304 pp.) | $12.99 paper | March 18, 2025 | 9781524884581

Series: The Stream Team, 1

Four young gamers gather for a boss battle against an insidious computer virus that threatens to take over both the virtual and real worlds in this work co-authored by popular professional gamer NickEh30.

After outbreaks of rioting by zombified, purple-eyed fans of the mysterious new game Battle Squad kick off a string of virtual and IRL battles, the mysterious Special Division recruits four young world-class gamers—Lebanese Canadian Teddy “TedSh0t” Habib, South Korean Yuri “Keke_ Klutch” Song, Argentinian Tina “TeenyTerrorPlays” Torres, and African American Maxwell “Stackz” Warren. It seems that an alien AI that can infect people through their optic nerves is bent on taking over the planet. Fortunately, the four each bring special powers to the fray thanks to mental updates from Layla, Teddy’s shadowy coding whiz aunt. But can they blast virtual hordes of the Glitched (there are no real-world fatalities) and destroy the geomagnetic dome hovering over (real-life) Cairo, Egypt—all while figuring out a cool name for themselves

and, most importantly, getting over their egos and learning to work together? Some readers might be after, as Tina puts it, “Less chat, more splat,” and they’ll be well served, but it’s Teddy, with his insight that outsmarting the game is the real road to victory, who demonstrates true leadership qualities. The characterizations are paper thin, but the fast pace will keep the pages turning. Barata’s lively spot art opens each chapter. Teamwork’s the name of the game in this action-packed romp. (Adventure. 8-12)

Dino Poet: A Graphic Novel

Angleberger, Tom | Abrams Fanfare (96 pp.) $13.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9781419772801 Series: Dino Poet, 1

Reluctant to be eaten, a froggy Triadobatrachus gives a toothy, literary-minded Coelophysis some basic schooling in the art and craft of poetry.

Angleberger’s cartoons, drawn on raggedly torn squares arranged as panels on brown paper backdrops, lend rough-and-ready energy to the amphibian’s desperate efforts to distract its hungry, versifying attacker. “Don’t chase me…chase life!” The little green lecturer notes that sticking to accurate facts and genuine feelings will lead to better writing. So will avoiding “lazy” rhymes like eat and meat. The frog also suggests practicing short forms like a limerick or a “speed haiku” and, just for fun, composing “poo-etry” on some topic gross enough to, coincidentally, kill one’s appetite. The predator poet records steadily improving verses in a small notebook. All the while, fraught encounters with even larger dinos and a side trip to the “pen tree” for a ripe new pen supply plenty of action, silly and otherwise, on the way to an amicable literary partnership. (“Well,” says the nervous narrator of the tree, stepping out of character for a moment, “where did

you think he was going to get a pen? Walmart?”) Budding poets in our own Cenozoic era will also find these simple prehistoric precepts and exercises helpful first steps. A solid bit of instruction, delivered amid much Triassic tomfoolery. (Picture book. 7-9)

Little Cloud’s Big Dream

Arreola, Ixtzel | Illus. by Martina Liebig | NorthSouth (40 pp.) | $19.95 March 11, 2025 | 9780735845619

Events in the life of an anthropomorphic little cloud with grand ambitions. A bigger cloud tells Re how to grow: Collect dew. So Re does just that as she drifts over lakes, rivers, and puddles. After she clears the drops from Flower’s eyes, the two become “the best of best friends,” and Re somehow manages to stay in one place, close to her new pal. Soon, Re turns heavy and dark, and “a THOUSAND RAINDROPS [FALL] OUT OF HER.” She becomes “a gentle rain,” a raging storm, and then, just as abruptly, a single raindrop that falls on Flower, who has managed to avoid being flattened by the winds and rain. The friends wish each other good night, and the book swiftly ends. The text of this Swiss import is anemic, and the rhymes and rhythm—abandoned during the section devoted to the storm—are weak. The plot contains no tension or conflict to intrigue readers; Re never entertains doubts about whether she’ll realize her goals, nor do she and Flower ever argue. The art is a showstopper, however. Delicately rendered and gently colored illustrations depict a botanist’s delight: leaves and flowers of all shapes and hues amid a busy jungle filled with rainforest fauna, reminiscent of Henri Rousseau’s paintings. A bland story enlivened by lush visuals. (Picture book. 4-7)

Dear Bookstore

Arrow, Emily | Illus. by Geneviève Godbout Candlewick (32 pp.) | $17.99 March 11, 2025 | 9781536210699

A child finds a second home in a small bookstore. “We’re glad you’re here! ” The young narrator feels welcome right away; everything—an adorable pup, the books all around, even the soft, comfy chair—seems to be extending an enthusiastic greeting. A friend shares the child’s belief that the store is full of magic. On each return visit, the bookseller welcomes the protagonist and asks what books the little one is seeking. Whether the child craves mysteries, adventure, or stories that “twinkle,” the perfect book is always right there. Brief, highly expressive text and fantastical illustrations adeptly capture the child’s love for the bookshop. Many scenes are bathed in a dreamy, nostalgiahued mist. As children and adults peruse the books, their dreams take flight in the form of bright yellow birds, flowers, animals, and strange creatures that float against a purple backdrop. As time passes, the narrator becomes a writer, who hosts a book signing at the store; the bookseller, now gray-haired, carries a stack of books, and the protagonist’s friend has become a painter. Though the narrator realizes that bookstores are facing challenges (“People weren’t reading books anymore—they mostly just read screens,” a neighbor notes), the beloved shop is still here, filled with readers and their dreams. The narrator is light-skinned, while the friend and the bookseller are Black, and their community is diverse.

A heartfelt tribute to the power of books and bookstores. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-9)

Henry’s Picture-Perfect Day: Book 3

Bailey, Jenn | Illus. by Mika Song Chronicle Books (48 pp.) | $14.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781797230252 | Series: Henry, 3

It’s Picture Day for Henry and the other kids in Classroom Ten. Some of the students are excited, but Henry, who appears to be on the autism spectrum, can’t help fidgeting in his uncomfortable clothes. Their teacher, Mrs. Tanaka, receives word that the photographer is running late. What should the class do while they wait? Mrs. Tanaka discourages any suggestion that involves getting messy, and the class settles on having a snack. When Henry bites into his carrot stick, something goes snap! One of his teeth is now loose, and soon it pops out completely. But where did his tooth go? His friends help him search among the supply of dirt the class recently used to plant beans—an accidentally messy activity. Henry’s shirt might be smeared with dirt, and his smile might have a gap, but Mrs. Tanaka says that pictures aren’t about looking perfect; they’re about commemorating “special times and special friends.” Henry realizes that the best way to do that is by being himself. Once again, Bailey has created a conscientious portrayal of a child who marches to the beat of his own drum yet who always feels included. The sense of community within Henry’s diverse class is lovely; everyone makes mistakes but ultimately supports one another. Song’s soft watercolor-andink illustrations, rendered in black and white with pops of purple, are wryly insightful, as always. Henry and Mrs. Tanaka present as East Asian. Another charming outing for this winsome protagonist. (Early chapter book. 4-8)

Another charming outing for this winsome protagonist.

HENRY’S PICTURE-PERFECT DAY

Cats in Construction Hats

Bardhan-Quallen, Sudipta | Illus. by Leeza Hernandez | Random House (40 pp.)

$18.99 | April 8, 2025 | 9780593706848

Series: Cats in Hats

Fun-loving, hard-hatted felines romp through difficulties to collaborative triumph. Starting with the blueprint endpapers, this book offers readers plenty to pore over as a kitty crew builds a perfect cat condo. Though the workers wear Day-Glo construction vests, sharp eyes will spot the color of their fur underneath. The cats are organized both by fur and hat color. “Yellow cat. Green hat.” “Green cat. Orange hat.” The laboring felines add brief commands in speech balloons presented in a sans serif font (“Dig this.” “Clear that”), making every four lines a rhythmic, rhyming quatrain. Readers who prefer vehicles to animals will delight in seeing the bulldozers, dump truck, forklift, and hydraulic crane in action. Some workers are more interested in having fun than in getting the job done, like the green cat happily wading in a pool of concrete and the orange cat blithely juggling bricks. This OSHA-ignoring carelessness results in a spectacular accident (“BOOM! CRASH! SPLAT!”) and an exclamation (“RATS!”)—a reference to the rodents who can be found in every scene. But now cats and rats all “work together,” clean up, get dressed up, and celebrate their success with a ribbon cutting. Bright illustrations reminiscent of Richard Scarry’s work will stand up to the rereads sure to be requested. A message of determination and cooperation, conveyed with a kid-friendly combo of colors, trucks, and cute kittens. (Picture book. 3-6)

The Vanquishers: Rise of the Wrecking Crew

Bayron, Kalynn | Bloomsbury (224 pp.)

$18.99 | Oct. 8, 2024 | 9781547611607

Series: The Vanquishers, 3

A hive of vampires becomes more aggressive despite the efforts of a determined group of middle schoolers and their parents. As this third series entry begins, Boog Wilson is on the run, along with her parents and best friends, Cedrick, Jules, and Aaron; their home is no longer safe from the undead. They’re also dealing with the harsh reality that people they trusted have turned on them, and they can’t depend on the authorities, either. The group takes refuge in a former Vanquisher training facility outside San Antonio. As they move through the building and visit archives holding artifacts of vampire lore, Boog’s mom shares more about their previous battles. With the entire city at risk, the adults agree to intensify the middle schoolers’ training. As the kids work on their combat skills, they learn the alarming news that a powerful vial of Dracula’s blood is missing and likely in the hands of a dangerous foe. The group members sustain some injuries when they fend off another attack, only to make a shocking discovery. Full of pageturning twists, this is a satisfying conclusion to a series populated with lively, likable characters. As in previous entries, the story depicts realistic adult-tween relationships as it reveals more about Vanquisher community history. The diverse cast enriches the well-plotted narrative, which propels readers toward a surprising finale.

For those who love chaos and mischief, fun will be had.

An action-packed and thoughtful trilogy closer. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Annabelle and the Spaghetti-Confetti Surprise

Beatrice, Jenna | Illus. by Annabel Tempest | Two Lions (32 pp.) | $18.99 March 18, 2025 | 9781662518867

A child’s gettogether is filled with outlandish snafus.

Sporting a sparkly hair bow and armed with a clipboard, Annabelle has a reputation for hosting amazing celebrations. As she plans a block party, she worries about disappointing her beloved neighbors with anything less than perfect. Annabelle decides her shindig needs a big surprise, which will require the help of Anthony, her disheveled, disorganized older brother. He lends a hand but, sporting an oversize pair of headphones, mishears her requests. When Annabelle asks for streamers, Anthony yells back, “Lemurs?”— which magically summons a group of the primates. Spaghetti (instead of confetti) rains down from the sky after another miscommunication. With baboons (rather than balloons) swinging through the crowd, Annabelle is on the verge of tears until she realizes that the spaghetti is in fact delicious, and the attendees are thrilled. Annabelle’s story is delightfully over-the-top fun laced with a gentle message about going with the flow. Anchored in bright pink, the pages burst with colors and visual interest, which may overwhelm some. While the narrative is swiftly paced, readers will want to slow down to linger over the busy party scenes and details such as a table overflowing with desserts. Annabelle and Anthony are light-skinned; their neighbors are diverse. A party of a book; for those who love chaos and mischief, fun will be had. (Picture book. 4-8)

Action-packed and thoughtful.

Montgomery Bonbon: Death at the Lighthouse

Beckett-King, Alasdair | Illus. by Claire Powell | Candlewick (304 pp.)

$18.99 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781536241648

Series: Montgomery Bonbon, 2

Bonnie and her grandfather go on a well-deserved holiday, but instead of relaxing, they discover a murder.

Bonnie Montgomery and Grampa Banks, whom readers met in the first series entry, have solved many cases together. Now on vacation on Odde Island, they’re eager to enjoy “a week without murder” and to visit Leerie Lighthouse. But they find it closed because Maude Cragge, the lighthouse keeper and Grand Maven of the Order of the Golden Fleece, died in a fall the night before. Discerning Bonnie spots that it wasn’t an accident, but since 10-yearolds don’t usually solve murder mysteries, she dons her false mustache and adopts “the foreign accent most mystérieux,” becoming the unusually short detective Montgomery Bonbon. When a second death occurs, Bonbon and Grampa Banks must determine who among the resident Oddities is the culprit. This case finds the white-presenting duo, plus Bonnie’s friend Dana Hornville, who presents Black, running around the craggy island while together they uncover an Order in disorder, an onion (smuggling) ring, and a peculiar pageant. Powell’s bold and humorous illustrations capture the dizzying terrain and eccentric cast of characters. Despite the red herrings she confronts, readers will never doubt that Bonnie will reveal the murderer tout de suite.

A jolly good cozy mystery with a cliffhanger reveal. (map, cast of characters, author’s note) (Mystery. 8-12)

Caterpillar Chryzzle

Bond, Andrew | Illus. by Julie Völk NorthSouth (32 pp.) | $19.95 March 11, 2025 | 9780735845596

In this picturebook adaptation of a Swiss German song written by the author, a caterpillar undergoes a spectacular transformation while a neighboring worm scoffs.

“I’m chryzzaling,” Caterpillar tells Worm in an attempt to convey its feeling of bewildered excitement. “Very soon I could be changing everything.” The worm and its wife chuckle over the caterpillar’s claim that it might even fly. They miss the main event—the caterpillar’s exit from the chrysalis and its first flight as a butterfly—but our protagonist beams with pride all the same. Though the moral is sound, the awkward phrasing will leave listeners uninspired: “Those who chryzzle and who trust their deepest feelings / Stand a flying chance of reaching anywhere.” Bond’s sentimental words make for a clunky read-aloud (“Listen, life is full of secrets and surprises. / There’s far more to see than where we sit and crawl. / So I’m chryzzaling and wonder where we’re heading, / And what is the deeper meaning of it all”). Völk’s delicately drawn and colored illustrations, however, are delightful. Whimsical faces on both Caterpillar and Worm (who sports a pair of spectacles), trees that seem to flutter in the wind, and small moments like people buying balloons on the town square convey joy as the perspective moves from the level of grass and flower stalks to the sky. Human characters have skin the color of the page. Lackluster text but worth a look for the marvelous art. (QR code for the titular song) (Picture book. 4-7)

Above, Below and Long Ago: Animals, Plants and Fossils in Hidden Places

Bright, Michael | Illus. by Jonathan Emmerson | Orca (64 pp.) | $26.95 March 11, 2025 | 9781459842137

A select gallery of elusive flora and fauna, from living and extinct fossils to an orchid that only blooms underground. Bright doesn’t stick too closely to his “hidden places” premise, instead including several easy-to-find creatures, such as horseshoe crabs and barn swallows. But nature lovers won’t mind, since his 24 profiles are long on mysteries and surprising facts—and are accompanied by Emmerson’s vivid, multihued linocut portraits. In sections titled “Above,” “Below,” and “Long Ago,” the author offers introductions to creatures as ubiquitous as brown rats and as rare as the yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse, which lives on the slopes of one volcano in the Andes and at a higher altitude than any other mammal in the world. Though the entries are brief, readers will come away with clear pictures of why each of Bright’s chosen subjects is unique and also about what remains to be discovered about many, such as how seeds produced by the western underground orchid are distributed or just what that Andean mouse can find to eat at such heights. Emmerson portrays the plants and animals in lively, naturalistic poses against detailed or textured backgrounds ranging from deep seas and black caves to bright, steep mountain crags and crowded cityscapes. Stimulating ventures into some of the world’s less accessible locales. (map, glossary, illustrator’s note, index) (Nonfiction. 7-10)

For more by Michael Bright, visit Kirkus online.

Broad and subtle in turn—verse to stay with readers for years to come.

WORDS WITH WINGS AND MAGIC THINGS

The Sinister Sisters and Other Terrifying Tales

Brown, Roseanne A. | Illus. by Shazleen Khan, Bill Masuku & Gigi Murakami Abrams Fanfare (192 pp.) | $24.99 Jan. 21, 2025 | 9781419763588 | Series: Are You Afraid of the Dark? Graphic Novel, 2

In this graphic novel inspired by the 1990s kids’ horror show Are You Afraid of the Dark?, a pair of feuding siblings tell stories influenced by West African folklore. Izzy’s twin sister, Grace, has been acting differently lately, so Izzy sneaks out one night and follows her into the woods. Turns out Grace belongs to the Midnight Society, a group of kids who meet to tell campfire stories. Grace is irritated at Izzy’s meddling; Izzy’s annoyed that Grace has been keeping secrets. The members break up the argument, offering the sisters the opportunity to compete in a “scare-off.” Their terrifying stories, influenced by the twins’ Ghanian Gramma Ama, are illustrated in full, frightening color by several different artists. Masuku relies on discordant colors for “The Tale of the Bushwalkers,” which transports readers to a dangerously competitive school in Accra where bad grades might have monstrous consequences. Murakami wields a more muted palette for “The Tale of the Spirit Drum,” in which a wish-granting magical drum is deployed in increasingly selfish and disastrous ways. Judging them is a tough task, so the two girls collaborate on the third, titular tale, which serves as a tiebreaker. Izzy and Grace’s rivalry adds dimension and emotion to the framing story, while the individual entries ramp up the

tension. Grotesque imagery will keep readers shuddering as Brown explores how everyday tensions such as jealousy or sibling conflict can unleash our darker sides.

Spooky sisterly storytelling sure to scare and charm. (Graphic paranormal. 10-13)

Kirkus Star

Words With Wings and Magic Things

Burgess, Matthew | Illus. by Doug Salati Tundra Books (128 pp.) | $19.99 March 18, 2025 | 9781774880289

A tasty mix of visionary and nonsense verses, lavishly illustrated by a recent Caldecott Medalist. Systematically gathered into seven loosely thematic groups, the poems, likewise tidy of rhyme and scansion, range from meditations on “Zero” and the many colors of the sky to silly wordplay (“What kind of pizza / do you like to eatsa?”) and a droll paean to pasta that rhymes spaghetti with yeti. The notion of flying away almost serves as a running theme; in various entries, a piñata, a child on “Jetpack Sneakers,” a breaching whale, and, for a moment, a boy waking to a sparrow’s song take off into the sky. Salati depicts a menagerie of creatures both real and imaginary that share space with a rich and racially diverse assortment of small figures who often resemble Maurice Sendak’s Nutshell Library outtakes for their large-headed, stubby-limbed looks and balletic poses. The entries are lighthearted overall; several read like nursery rhymes. Burgess

displays a keen intuition for what will get kids laughing—and what will make them think. One poem, perhaps a reference to current politics, invites them to “leave the shouters with their schemes / while we continue with our dreams,” while another urges them to “live your dream / Reign supreme / King or queen / or something / delightfully / in between.”

Broad and subtle in turn—verse to stay with readers for years to come. (index) (Poetry. 7-11)

Isle of Ever

Calonita, Jen | Sourcebooks Young Readers (320 pp.) | $16.99 | March 25, 2025 9781728277035 | Series: Isle of Ever, 1

A tween enters into a highstakes and high-rewards hunt for a life-changing treasure.

After years of financial instability, and moving from place to place with her mother, Everly “Benny” Benedict, 12, is poised to come into a large inheritance from her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Evelyn “Sparrow” Terry of Greenport, Long Island—but only if Benny can solve Evelyn’s riddles and find a mysterious island within the deadline, less than two weeks away. If she fails, Benny will lose the entire estate. As the pressure mounts, Benny and her newly acquired Greenport friends, Zara and Ryan, unravel clues tied to a rare Blood Orange Moon, a deadly 1825 Yellow Fever epidemic, and family connections spanning generations; in addition, events from Evelyn’s timeline shed light on the present day. Incorporating text messages, the young detectives’ notes, and 19th-century newspaper articles, journal entries, and letters, Calonita deftly transitions between the past and the present. Greenport is rich in magical elements that gradually play a larger and larger role in the plot, setting this book apart from other inheritance treasurehunt stories and creating an added layer

of interest. Severe weather phenomena and other challenges contribute to the building tension. The worldbuilding contains several unexplained developments, and the book ends on a frustratingly major cliffhanger, but this series opener is clearly setting up for a sequel in which more answers will hopefully be forthcoming. Main characters are cued white. An engaging, puzzle-centered page-turner. (Fantasy adventure. 8-12)

Piper’s Story: A Puppy Tale

Cameron, W. Bruce | Illus. by Richard Cowdrey | Starscape/Tor (240 pp.) $17.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781250213532

Finding the purrfect home is a stressful experience for a cat. Even as a newborn kitten, Piper processes every experience, from the metal box in which she’s born to the smelly humans who grab at her littermates. Piper hides until the right person comes along: a respectful girl named Riley. Piper happily goes home with Riley, who names her Piper Peanut Priscilla Mitzi-Moo Monkey the Marvelous, and is thrilled to discover a spacious house and delicious food. Other household members include eighth grader Riley’s younger brother, Jackson, their parents, and the family puppy, Tank, all of whom Piper finds marginally acceptable. The family has their dramas, but they recede; Piper’s ordeals are more serious, mostly due to Jackson’s friend and new neighbor, Eddie, who’s so menacing that Piper decides to find a better home for herself and Riley. Her search goes awry, however, when she encounters Cat Loving Lady, who’s a bit too enthusiastic about welcoming Piper, whom she dubs Tabbytha, into her home. Will Piper make it back to Riley—and what will she find when she does? Through narrator Piper, readers gain insight into a cat’s perception of the world, and they’ll be on tenterhooks as they follow the threats the resourceful

feline encounters in this suspenseful cautionary tale. Riley and her father have dark hair; Jackson and his mother have lighter hair and eyes. Final art not seen. Twists and turns make this catnip for animal-loving readers. (reading group guide, post-reading activities) (Fiction. 8-12)

A Teddy Bear for Emily―And President Roosevelt, Too

Churnin, Nancy | Illus. by Bethany Stancliffe | Whitman (32 pp.) | $18.99 March 6, 2025 | 9780807504222

The true story of the Jewish immigrants who in 1902 created the beloved “Teddy’s Bear.” After Emily’s parents, Morris and Rose, read a news story about how President Theodore Roosevelt spared the life of a wild bear on a hunting trip, the little girl helps her mother make a stuffed bear in his honor. Using velvet fabric, Emily stitches the seams while her mother tells the story of how Morris fled persecution in Russia for the United States. On the ship, he gave his treasured stuffed animal to a sad-eyed youngster, an act of compassion similar to the kindness that President Roosevelt showed to the bear. When Emily and her mother finish the toy, they call it Teddy’s Bear and display it in the family’s candy shop window. Soon kids all over Brooklyn—and indeed all over the country, including the president’s own children—are cuddling teddy bears sewn by Emily and her mother. The illustrations are flat but cheerful, depicting expository moments that reflect the text. Images of the original Teddy’s Bear himself are especially sweet. The characters are light-skinned; Emily’s mother uses several Yiddish phrases, italicized and integrated into the dialogue. An author’s note offers more context and clarifies that there’s no evidence that Emily helped create the bear (though she may well have assisted).

A sweet, straightforward story that stitches hope and kindness into the history of a very special toy. (Informational picture book. 4-7)

Rembrandt Chooses a Queen

Cohen, Deborah Bodin & Kerry Olitzky Illus. by Cinzia Battistel | Apples & Honey Press (32 pp.) | $19.95 Jan. 7, 2025 | 9781681156828

Rembrandt’s apprentice finds a way to impress the master. Samuel, a Jewish boy, aspires to more than cleaning brushes, but if he wants to paint, he’ll have to work all day. Samuel can only work mornings, however; his father is the director of the yeshiva, and he insists that Samuel spend his afternoons studying. Papa thinks painting is “frivolous,” though Samuel’s older sister, Isabel, gently tells Papa that the boy has real talent. The next day, as Rembrandt poses models for a Purim-themed painting—what will become Ahasuerus and Haman at the Feast of Esther —Samuel tells him that his proud, haughty Esther is unsuitable. Rembrandt agrees, and Samuel realizes that modest Isabel is the perfect candidate for Queen Esther. When Rembrandt meets Isabel and hears her motivation (“Esther is humble, faithful, and proud to be Jewish…She’s my hero”), he places a crown atop her head—and then invites Samuel to paint this section of the work. Even Papa is impressed— Samuel incorporates his yeshiva learning into the painting—and asks Rembrandt to come to the synagogue for Purim tonight. Written by two rabbis, this warm story gives readers an accessible introduction to the 17th-century artist, demonstrating his regard for Amsterdam’s Jewish community; backmatter offers further information. Dominated by earth tones, Battistel’s painterly images evoke Rembrandt’s own work and capture the period well.

An uplifting historical tale exploring the intersection of art history and religion. (information on Purim, biography of Rembrandt) (Picture book. 6-9)

An informative and celebratory story of swimming.

KWESI AND NANA RUBY LEARN TO SWIM

The Big Bad Wolf

Collings, Michaelbrent | Illus. by Brandon Dorman | Shadow Mountain (320 pp.) | $19.99 | March 11, 2025 9781639933808 | Series: Grimmworld, 2

Eleven-year-old twins Willow and Jake return to Grimmworld, a bleak universe where fairy-tale tropes are recycled and have unhappy endings. After wrenching a happy-ish conclusion from their first foray, The Witch in the Woods (2024), the siblings arrive home to discover their father has disappeared, and only they remember that he ever existed. Jake grows angry and rebellious, while Willow becomes inwardly resentful; their differing responses threaten their epic closeness. After suddenly being transported back to Grimmworld, they meet another sibling pair, Rot and her brother, Ruin, whose story bears echoes of “Little Red Riding Hood.” They all team up on a quest to find Rot and Ruin’s grandmother, who may be able to locate the twins’ father. The second half of the book details a contest with the society of Wolfs, which doubles as an indictment of selfish, autocratic leadership. As before, the rules of Grimmworld appear haphazard and changeable, an inconsistency that makes what could have been fun reveals instead feel contrived. Surviving the perils of Grimmworld restores Willow and Jake’s strong relationship, and the story’s end sets up for a hazardous mission to come in the third series entry. Human characters largely present white. Further adventures in a fantasy realm whose worldbuilding is more convoluted than enchanting. (author’s note, reading guide and discussion questions) (Fantasy. 9-12)

Kwesi and Nana Ruby Learn To Swim

Commeh, Kobina | Illus. by Bárbara Quintino | Barefoot Books (32 pp.)

$17.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9798888593622

A young Black boy and his grandmother become confident swimmers. Kwesi accompanies his friends to Lagoon Lake, but his fear of the water keeps him on the pier, which prompts teasing from his peers. Crestfallen, Kwesi hides his tears as his mother drives him home. After enjoying a scrumptious meal of peanut soup and fufu made by his Nana Ruby, he opens up about what happened at the lake. Nana Ruby— who moved to the U.S. from a small Ghanian village as a child—tells her grandson that she never learned to swim. When she was young, white Americans filled pools with dirt rather than integrate them. But she strikes a deal with Kwesi: She will learn to swim if he does. Commeh integrates many aspects of Ghanaian culture into this story, among them the African water spirit Mami Wata (who serves as inspiration as both grandmother and child begin swim lessons), Adinkra symbols, the djembe drum, the game oware (also called mancala), and more. All of this makes for wordy though heartfelt text that’s sometimes weighed down by explanations. Quintino’s mixed-media illustrations are dominated by oranges, greens, and deep blues; vibrant nature scenes alternate with warm domestic tableaux. Commeh brings the narrative to a triumphant conclusion as both Kwesi and Nana Ruby dive into Lagoon Lake together.

An informative and celebratory, multigenerational story of swimming. (author’s and illustrator’s notes, glossary, map of Ghana, explanation of Ghanaian names) (Picture book. 4-8)

The Only Monster

Coyne, Matt | Frances Lincoln (32 pp.) $18.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9780711298774

Being an only child can feel lonely. In Bonglibod, a land inhabited by endearing monsters, lives a loving family consisting of a dad, mom, and a child. On photo day at school, everyone shows up looking pictureperfect: with messed-up hair, unbrushed teeth, and “bogies” in their noses! After individual pictures are taken, the students pose for “brother-sister photographs”—everyone except our protagonist. She’s heartbroken at missing out. Dad can’t help noticing his little one’s sadness as he walks her home after school. She replies that their family is “odd”; other families have many kids, but theirs has only one. Daddy thinks before answering, then responds that families should be measured by love instead of numbers. In fact,  their family is “bigger than the Earth, the moon, the sky, and stars above!” Joined by Mom, Dad adds, “You’re MONSTER PERFECT to your monster mom and me.” Dad also reminds his daughter that in their large, loving community, one’s “never short of family when / you’re blessed with such good friends.” This winning tale, told in sometimes awkward verse, nevertheless offers “onlies” some much-needed reassurance that families come in all sizes. Kids will giggle at the riotous monster names and at the comical digital illustrations, filled with adorably kooky, wide-eyed creatures.

Quirky yet warmhearted fun. (Picture book. 4-7)

Oh Deer!

Crede,

Phaea | Illus. by Erica J. Chen

Sleeping Bear Press (32 pp.)

$18.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9781534113398

A shy creature learns to balance solitude with companionship.

Jasper the Sasquatch lives alone; he finds others’ company overwhelming. Life on his own is a bit boring, but growing turnips keeps him occupied. When he discovers deer feasting on his crops, he tries to dissuade them, but they return. After chasing them off one last time, Jasper notes his lone remaining turnip—and a lost, whimpering fawn, to whom he feeds the turnip. While he’s still reluctant to socialize, he knows he must help the little one reunite with its family. The deer are initially frightened but eventually welcome him. Jasper briefly enjoys their company but then gladly goes home. Jasper’s reformed—a bit. He’s more comfortable spending time with others, but when that becomes too stressful, “he still loves being alone!” Crede’s often-wry narration pairs well with Chen’s energetic, expressive illustrations: A looming Jasper cuddles with a teddy bear, while the deer are a delight to behold, shimmying with wild abandon in the turnip garden and fleeing in unfettered horror when Jasper shows up with the fawn. Crede walks a fine line, depicting Jasper not as a cranky misanthrope but as a thoughtful creature who simply needs time to himself to recharge. Many youngsters will appreciate seeing a quiet protagonist portrayed heroically.

An entertaining tale with an affirming message for introverts. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-7)

Spring’s Miracles

Curtice, Kaitlin B. | Illus. by Gloria Félix | Convergent (40 pp.) | $14.99

March 4, 2025 | 9780593577851

Series: An Indigenous Celebration of Nature

A n Indigenous child draws courage from the land on a springtime climbing adventure.

To welcome the beginning of mnokme (spring), Dani and her family plan a trip to the mountains. They’ll camp out, go rock climbing, build a fire, and enjoy a feast. Their outing is a happy one but marked occasionally by Dani’s moments of nervousness, from strange noises outside the tent and the dizzying heights of a cliff. But when she’s afraid, Dani finds solace in her family, the land, and her cultural knowledge. She reminds herself that “Grandfather Sun rises every day, no matter what is going on in the sky,” and she takes four deep breaths, counting in Potawatomi. Doing so helps her remember that “even when she is scared, she can still do great things.” Bravery and celebration are at the heart of Curtice’s (Potawatomi) feel-good story, which connects Dani’s determination in the face of fear and her family’s honoring of spring with their Native heritage. Félix’s upbeat cartoon illustrations employ bright colors and playful depictions of animals to highlight the story’s cheerful message. The narrative covers a lot of ground, but readers will be satisfied, especially those interested in the outdoors and in Indigenous cultures.

A fun excursion centered on a family’s observance of a special time of year.

(Picture book. 5-9)

Much-needed reassurance that families come in all sizes.

New Shoes for Leo

Deedy, Lauren Agra | Illus. by Susan Gal

Scholastic (40 pp.) | $18.99

March 4, 2025 | 9781338770216

A Cuban American boy helps prepare aid for his faraway family. Each month, Mami and Tía Ana gather muchneeded items and send them to relatives living in Cuba. William’s usually on the sidelines during the packing extravaganza, but one day, Mami gives him an important job: to check whether anyone in the family has extra zapatos (shoes) for his cousin Leo. Armed with the outline of Leo’s footprint on a piece of paper, William starts his mission, learning more about Leo with each stop. First, he heads over to Tía Rosa and Tía Olga’s downstairs apartment, but Tía Olga’s shoes are too big for Leo, and Tía Rosa’s high heels aren’t suitable, either. William goes to his abuelos’ apartment next. Alas, Abuela has only extra pantuflas (slippers), and Abuelo wears special shoes due to his bout with polio at a young age, so no luck there. Where will William find shoes for Cousin Leo, who loves baseball, has freckles, and enjoys drawing, just like William? In her picture-book debut, Deedy draws upon childhood memories to weave a touching testament to family bonds grounded in immigrant experiences. Though more perceptive readers may wonder why it takes William so long to finally hit upon a somewhat obvious solution, his eventual decision closes this tale on a lovely note. Gal’s effervescent illustrations boast solid pencil and ink linework and gorgeous blends of watercolors, to rich results.

A tender look at family, near and far. (glossary, author’s note, artist’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)

For more by illustrator Susan Gal, visit Kirkus online.

Pablo and Splash: Frozen in Time

Dempsey, Sheena | Bloomsbury (240 pp.)

$12.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781547616190

Series: Pablo and Splash, 2

Penguin playmates

Pablo and Splash tackle a literally mammoth challenge after an obstreperous time machine strands their mad scientist friend, Professor O’Brain, back in the ice age.

Excitable Splash has a predictable reaction to the news that the light-skinned, pink-haired professor needs rescuing from Northern Europe 68,000 years in the past: “ROAD TRIP!!!!” Her timorous companion, recalling what happened the last time they climbed aboard the touchy, talking TimeBender, has an entirely different—and, as things turn out, all-too-prescient—take: “Great.” Still, there’s nothing for it but to mount a rescue, which leads to nervewracking encounters with a saber-toothed tiger, a herd of woolly mammoths, and a befuddled, brown-skinned Neanderthal (or, as Splash puts it, “Nanderfall”) hunter who’s briefly dumped into the modern world. Not to mention a momentous, if hilariously unlikely, discovery involving live earthworms and space-time-spanning wormholes. “OH MY COD,” as Splash is wont to exclaim at these misadventures.

Chortling readers may well have the same reaction, since in Dempsey’s brightly colored and simply drawn panels, the wandering waddlers zigzag through time and space from prehistory to the Old West and finally back to their Antarctic flock, where for some reason, the tale of their adventures is met with skepticism! Go figure.

Further lively antics from a pair of comical penguins. (Graphic adventure. 7-10)

Further lively antics from a pair of comical penguins.

PABLO AND SPLASH

Wolf Girl: Into the Wild

Do, Anh | Illus. by Jeremy Ley & Annie Ji | Harper/HarperCollins (224 pp.) | $19.45 | March 18, 2025

9781760525095 | Series: Wolf Girl, 1

Fleeing from conflict and separated from her family, a young girl lost in the wild must learn to survive with the help of her new animal companions.

An entertaining, action-packed series opener. (Adventure. 8-12)

Slam Dunk: The Shot That Changed the Game

Doeden, Matt | Millbrook/Lerner (64 pp.)

$34.65 PLB | March 4, 2025 | 9798765626801

For more in the Pablo and Splash series, visit Kirkus online.

“We have to move fast! They’re coming!,” says Gwen’s mom as she shakes her awake. Equipped only with what they can hastily fit into their car, Gwen’s family flees into the night. After Dad crashes the car, the family runs toward a forest, seeking safety from an overhead bomber, but Gwen ends up separated and lost in the wilderness. While trying to find her mom, dad, and older sister, Gwen discovers she’s not alone—a misfit band of dogs saves her from drowning, and they quickly become inseparable. Together with her new animal companions, Gwen recalls advice from her parents, honing her instincts and learning how to survive. Roughly three years later, Gwen is “no longer a helpless little girl” but the “leader of a pack of animals” that has become her family— but she never forgets her human family, and a pivotal moment sends Gwen and her pack on an unexpected journey. Captivating black-and-white illustrations appear on nearly every page, adding to the tale’s suspense. Vietnamese Australian author, artist, and performer Do strikes just the right balance between realism and fiction in this fast-paced, highly engaging story of friendship, loyalty, surprises, and survival with an alluring cliffhanger ending. Gwen has light skin and dark hair.

A tribute to one of basketball’s most showy and dramatic feats. Despite the aid of many big, colorful action photos, Doeden struggles to stretch his topic out to book length. Still, young fans may find their appreciation for the game enhanced by the easily digestible doses of historical context, the expansive gallery of renowned dunkers, and even the anatomical diagrams and descriptions of muscle groups that have to work in concert to sink the shot. The author traces the slam dunk’s development from a disparaged and even at times banned move to its status as “a pillar of modern NBA strategy.” Though he highlights many spectacular, if ultimately repetitivesounding, examples of its use, he doesn’t neglect to mention its hazards to vulnerable bodies and breakable backboards. And, along with shoutouts to such highflying royalty as Michael “Air” Jordan and LeBron James, he gives women their due, from Georgeann Wells (the first reported dunker in a women’s game, 1984) to Brittney Griner (most prolific WNBA dunker). Whether or not readers readily buy his claim that a slam dunk is “one of the most exciting moments in all of sports,” they’ll have to admit that Doeden has built a feasible case. Slender topic, but high enough in interest to keep young basketball players engaged. (glossary, source notes, further reading, index, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 9-11)

Nellie’s Big Splash

Doerrfeld, Cori | Dial Books (40 pp.)

$18.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9780593856291

Doerrfeld expands her repertoire of stories featuring social and emotional learning with a tale of baby turtles and enormous waves. After Nellie hatches alongside her many siblings, she’s overwhelmed to see how far they’ll have to travel to reach the ocean. Once they make it, the others dive happily into the surf, but Nellie takes one look at the pounding, terrifying waves and heads in the other direction. Each time Nellie thinks she has the situation under control (she tries to hide, run away, and rely on someone bigger and stronger), something comes along to change her mind. Scaling the nearby cliffs, she finds herself alone and lonely, but from her high vantage point, she realizes that the waves may be daunting, but there’s more to the ocean than she initially thought; in fact, it’s beautiful. Few young readers will blame Nellie for wanting to escape, and whether or not they pick up on the obvious messaging is less important than Nellie’s own personal journey. Her attempts to avoid her troubles carry hints of beloved titles such as Ashley Spires’ The Most Magnificent Thing (2014). The adorable, thick-lined digital art featuring a beguilingly expressive, largeheaded, big-eyed, tiny turtle makes adept use of perspective, driving home the lesson. In this sweet story, scary things may remain scary, but pushing past them yields enormous rewards. (Picture book. 3-5)

Under Anna’s Umbrella

Driscoll, Amanda | Illus. by Luisa Uribe Rocky Pond Books/Penguin (32 pp.)

$18.99 | April 22, 2025 | 9780593618561

of mourners in a cemetery, each holding an umbrella. The titular accessory becomes a symbol for grief as Anna refuses to put it down, holding it over her head in school, at ballet practice, and in the stands of a baseball game. The spotted red canopy initially makes Anna feel safe, but as those around her try different ways of coaxing her out, she experiences anger and loneliness. Finally, another rainstorm convinces her to share her umbrella with a new friend, Henry, and eventually she decides to put it away for good. Forcing readers to read between the lines, the story heavily implies that one of Anna’s parents has died, but, unlike her straightforward emotions, this plot point is never spelled out, which may confuse children and leave adults with some explaining to do. Nevertheless, the umbrella makes for a tangible representation of the isolation and frustration that often accompany loss. The appropriately muted, uncluttered artwork sets a somber tone; Uribe has opted not to fully show Anna’s face until she meets Henry—an effective way to convey her feelings of alienation. Anna is light-skinned, Henry is brown-skinned, and their community is diverse. Somewhat opaque but solid guidance on navigating grief. (Picture book. 4-8)

Moving Day

Drobnick, Teri Roche | Illus. by Jennifer Black Reinhardt | Margaret Ferguson/ Holiday House (40 pp.) | $18.99 March 11, 2025 | 9780823452590

A child struggling with loss can’t let go. Amid the lashing rain, Anna and her family stand somewhat apart from a group

It’s normal to be nervous on moving day, especially when you’ve been in the same place for more than 100 years. Anthropomorphized by spindly, stockinged legs and pointy boots, an ornate Victorian home on a cozy San Francisco street nervously steps onto a flatbed trailer—and so the journey begins. A parade ensues as curious neighbors gather, children ride their bikes alongside the trailer, and a police escort leads the way. Teetering

Charming, entertaining, and full of heart. (Picture book. 3-7)

Piggle the Pig: The Perfect Pigsty

Dudolf | Flamingo Books (40 pp.)

$9.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9780593691618

Piggle the Pig tries—fruitlessly—to clean up his home before his parents visit. Text rendered in black stylized lettering on a stark white page— accompanied by an image of the titular character snoring near a red telephone—declares: “Piggle the Pig was quite busy with his usual morning routine when his phone rang.” From the get-go, the simple, thick-lined, colorful art suggests that the words in this tale will not exactly match the almost prosaic but quite sophisticated text. Piggle’s “busy” routine is, of course, sleeping in. The sweet, classically pink and rotund protagonist is awakened by a call from his parents, similar

>>> and tottering, the house waits as tree trimmers cut low branches and utility workers remove street signs to make way for the oversize caravan. The bashful and bruised house wonders when this will all be over before finally spotting the new residents: a multiracial family of five who smile and wave from an empty lot. Settling in, the house misses being in the old neighborhood, but the new family’s love and the comforting sound of the ice cream truck make for a sweet, empathetic conclusion to a daunting adventure. Dynamic ink and watercolor illustrations lend the house a lively personality and depict a diverse crowd of bystanders. Careful readers will notice delightful details such as flowering bushes on either side of the house that transform into giant, floral-patterned carpet bags, clutched tightly to the house’s sides by curling ivy arms. An author’s note discusses the book’s inspiration—a real-life San Francisco home that was moved six blocks in 2021.

THE KIRKUS Q&A: MATTHEW CORDELL

The Caldecott Medalist and his young protagonist go in search of an elusive bird.

BY DAN NOLAN

FROM WOLVES THAT follow a girl in the snow to lions visiting their grandchild, Matthew Cordell’s picture books reveal his wonder and awe toward animals. Never has this been more apparent than in To See an Owl , the story of a young girl’s relentless quest to see her first owl in the wild. Illustrated in vibrant pen-and-ink illustrations, Cordell’s book touches on themes of perseverance and connections with nature. A birder himself, Cordell drew on his own awe-inspiring experiences with owls to color this heartwarming tale. Our review notes that the title is “easily summed up in a single word: magic.” We spoke with him over Zoom to discuss this magical book of nature. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You write in the book, “To see an owl is magic.” Why, compared to other birds or other animals, do you think this is true?

They’re so secretive, so quiet, so well hidden, that if you try hard enough and look hard enough, it’s very much like a blessing [to finally see one]. I mean, they’re so camouflaged, too. It’s just such an impossible feat in some ways. And they could be anywhere. If you ever go on walks in nature, looking for one thing specifically in the density of the woods is so challenging; it feels like magic when you can finally lay eyes on the thing that you’re looking for.

This book has a strong theme of perseverance. Did

you start with the theme or with owls? How did you combine the two?

After I started birding, it slowly occurred to me that the one bird I hadn’t looked for and had never seen was an owl. I knew there were owls in my area; I’d just never seen one. It’s nearly impossible to find a hidden owl in the daytime. And so I was just searching and searching for one, and then one night was a full moon night, and we were walking down this trail, and all of a sudden this great horned owl just flew up and landed on top of an evergreen tree. I’ll never forget it. We were so close, too, which I just found so strange, because I think it was

curious about us or wasn’t concerned about us. It just let us stand there and observe it for a while. And I got some pictures of it silhouetted by the full moon, and so ever since, I’ve just been obsessed. I mean, I was already obsessed with not seeing them, but I just became more obsessed. In terms of perseverance, it took me so long [to finally see one]. It was learning about their habitats, learning about their behaviors.

A lot of the book’s pages have separate panels or images within images, much like graphic novels and comics. Did those things influence you? I’ve been a lifelong fan of comics and graphic novels, and so throughout my career as an illustrator, I’ve used a lot of those storytelling devices that comics do

so well with panels and with large sections of hand lettering to emphasize noises and sounds and things like that. One of the great things about using panels is that you can show many pictures on a spread, and by looking at them sequentially, you get a sense of the passage of time, where if you just had one or two images per page, you wouldn’t get that. But—talking about persistence and waiting and patience—it’s such a great way to show the change of scenery, the change of weather. [Doing that] helped me to support the idea that a lot of time is going by in this search.

You’ve written and illustrated pretty extensively about animals in general, some of which have been more anthropomorphic. I noticed the great horned owls are

Matthew Cordell

rendered quite realistically. How did you land on this stylistic choice? Was it a challenge not to depict a more anthropomorphic owl? I wanted them to be lifelike and naturalistic. The one thing I amplified was the size of the eyes. I mean, it’s such a defining feature of an owl, the big round eyes. I wanted to draw things with more crosshatching, more detailed line work, and I was also lightly leaning into Japanese styles of animation and illustration, where the eyes are just so big and circular. The main character, Janie, also has those big circular eyes. That big circle disc just gives [the owl] a sense of wonder, and it also stylizes [things] a little bit, too.

There’s a page where the owl is almost camouflaged. Artistically, how were you able to convey camouflage, which is such

a crucial part of nature? It really was just about using similar colors, which is how they hide so well. I wanted to have some sense of an owl seeing the person who’s looking at it, and the person not seeing that bird, because that has to happen so many times while birding or even just being in nature. An animal—not necessarily even an owl, just a very quiet animal—could be sitting there in plain sight, and you’d have no idea an animal was there. It’s a defense mechanism. [The animal] has to be good at hiding itself. I always think, whenever that happens, How many times has that bird watched me walk back and forth? I find it so humorous and also fascinating that animals can do that. It’s just such an interesting concept that the bird in that picture is

I’ve been a lifelong fan of comics and graphic novels, and so throughout my career as an illustrator, I’ve used a lot of those storytelling devices.

just sitting there looking at them, and they’re searching and searching in the completely different, wrong direction.

Did you learn anything surprising while researching owls? What did you want young readers to learn about them from your book? There are so many interesting things about owls that can tell you how to find them, like owl pellets. That was something I had never heard of, that an animal would just eat something whole and then semi-digest it, and then regurgitate the parts that are not necessary. If you’re searching the woods, if you look for trees that have pellets beneath them, it could be that an owl roosts in that tree. I learned a lot of little factoids about owls that I wanted to weave into the

book, factoids that were helpful to me. I think it was a subconscious thing—I wanted the story to have elements of nonfiction and fiction, so it wasn’t just some backmatter that has [a bunch of] facts, but to seem more organic.

Your upcoming projects include a picture-book biography of David Bowie and a book about a young boy’s fever dreams. What draws you to such a wide range of topics? I feel like life is too short to just do one thing, or even to draw one way. I find, from one book to the next, that the way I like to draw changes. If you can be creative in different ways and tell different stories, it just makes life all the richer.

Dan Nolan is an Indie editorial assistant.

To See an Owl

Random House Studio | 40 pp. $18.99 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 978059364989

Cordell, Matthew

in appearance except for his father’s mustache and his mother’s round spectacles. Unfortunately, Piggle’s attempts to tidy up before his parents arrive are all stymied, either by his recognizable rationalizations for procrastinating or by his adorable ineptitude. Examples of piggish behavior—gluttony, laziness, sloppiness—add to the fun. Little ones won’t be able to contain their giggles as the silly swine accidentally uses permanent “goose turd green” paint instead of shampoo as he tries to wash up. This event occurs shortly after he makes a note to use a clean rag on his walls next time. Piggle does experience some panic—particularly when the doorbell rings—but the ending perfectly completes a tale with uncompromisingly dry wit and uproarious art. Whole-hog fun. (Picture book. 4-7)

Our Plastic Problem: A Call for Global Solutions

Durnford, Megan | Orca (48 pp.)

$21.95 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781459836709

Series: Orca Footprints

It’s essential, it’s ubiquitous, and it doesn’t go away when it’s discarded—so what can we do about the growing problem of plastics pollution?

Dubbing waste plastics the secondgreatest threat to our environment (after climate change), Durnford effectively communicates a sense of urgency. Rather than laying out doomsday scenarios, however, she focuses on potential ways to reduce the use of plastic, and to reuse it. She readily admits that “we are all completely dependent on plastic” and points to large- and small-scale efforts to reduce the amount of plastic in our food chains, from experimental filters for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and four other floating oceanic “soups” to chai vendors along Indian railways who are switching from plastic cups to disposable clay ones. Keenly aware that the crisis has social as well as environmental

It’s smooth sailing for this earnest and upbeat series.

RAINING CATS AND DOGS

effects, the author notes that U.S. communities of color are disproportionately affected by hazardous emissions caused by the production of plastic. And her observation that waste plastics are often sent by wealthier countries to developing nations underscores the need for regulatory initiatives on an international level. Young eco-activists will also find general guidelines for localized projects, as well as specific instructions for laundering clothing to reduce microfiber shedding, among other immediately applicable advice. Stock photos of racially and culturally diverse groups of smiling young people join revealing views of factories, brightly colored plastic items, and cluttered beaches and landfills. Accentuates the positive without minimizing the issue’s scope. (resource lists, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 8-11)

Raining Cats and Dogs

Eschmann, Reese | Illus. by Charlot Kristensen | Scholastic (144 pp.)

$5.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2025 9781339018171 | Series: Cruise Life, 2

Caitlin’s second cruise is off to a stormy start.

Caitlin Cruz is still adjusting to her parents’ recent divorce, which threatens to turn the annual family trip to Disney World into two separate visits. Although her anxieties continue to nag at her, Caitlin sets herself a positive goal—to become a people person. She has the perfect opportunity to make that objective a reality: Before the Disney trip, she and her older brother, Dylan, will be spending another week

on the Wandering Princess, where their father has a summer job as ship’s doctor. The Fancy Feline Society of North Carolina and their 264 cats will be aboard, but chaos looms as everyone suddenly realizes that the Greater Florida Kennel Club—with their 236 dogs—has also booked the cruise. Readers of the first series installment will welcome the return of familiar characters such as Max and Olivia (grandchildren of the ship’s chef) and glamorous former actor Gigi and her toy poodle, Pearl. The pet-propelled plot is lively, if a bit implausible, though Eschmann’s emphasis on her protagonist’s feelings keeps it grounded. Caitlin and the other kids’ resentment at the cruise staff’s refusal to listen to their ideas will resonate, while excerpts from Caitlin’s What If journal, where she chronicles her worries and wild speculations, make for delightful interludes. Characters’ ethnicities aren’t mentioned; the previous installment cued Caitlin and Dylan as Latine. It’s smooth sailing for this earnest and upbeat series. (Chapter book. 7-10)

Kirkus Star

Alberto Salas Plays Paka Paka con la Papa: Join the Quest With Peru’s Famed Scientist and Potato Expert

Fajardo, Sara Andrea | Illus. by Juana Martinez-Neal | Roaring Brook Press (40 pp.)

$19.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781250838612

A potato hunter’s game of hide-andseek nourishes the world in this quirky biographic tribute. Alberto Salas is on a mission: to discover and document all the potatoes he can “before they’re

lost for good.” The renowned Peruvian agronomist—affectionately portrayed as a rosy-cheeked, wiry-haired, squat man clad in a yellow coat—plays the game of potato paka paka (or hide-and-seek), scouring the Andes to support the development and proliferation of potatoes across the world. Each day the growing effects of climate change make his endeavor more urgent. Blending an affable, often playful tone and a loose yet incredibly informative narrative peppered with words in Spanish and Quechua, Fajardo recounts the potato expert’s adventures in all their glory, putting the story into a broader context that makes clear the global issue of widespread hunger. The author homes in on Salas’ precise methods and unorthodox solutions, including homemade maps and newspaper pouches to transport plants. Working in paper collage, Martinez-Neal favors dabs of rich colors among broad landscapes of earthy browns and lots of potatoes of different shapes and sizes to bring Salas’ potato exploits to life, including his collaboration with Indigenous communities. A robust glossary and backmatter delving further into Salas’ work and the diversity of potatoes round out a sublime portrait. Publishes simultaneously in Spanish. A remarkable path to starch-dom. (author’s and illustrator’s notes) (Picture-book biography. 4-8)

The Strongest Heart

Faruqi, Saadia | Quill Tree Books/ HarperCollins (384 pp.) | $18.99 March 4, 2025 | 9780063115859

A 13-year-old boy struggles with the pain, anger, and sadness of living with his father, who struggles with mental illness. Mohammad Mirza and his abbu, Mumtaz, move from Queens to Houston to stay with Naila Phupo, Abbu’s widowed

sister, and her son, Rayyan—Abbu can’t keep a job, and they have nowhere to live. Mo’s mother, Becky Eckert, an engineer and UNESCO fellow who’s cued white, is away working in a refugee camp in Greece for two years. Abbu, who’s Pakistani American, has paranoid schizophrenia; life has been difficult for Mo, with Abbu’s raging episodes and his parents’ constant arguments. In Texas, Mo grows close to Rayyan, who’s also 13, and his devoutly Muslim aunt, who cares for him attentively. Mo loves desi folktales (which are woven into the book), learning, music, and art, but he acts tough to defend his soft interior against more pain. He harbors deep anger toward his father and longs for his mother, whom he connects with on occasional video calls. Eventually Mo must decide: Can he change the narratives he’s long held about his life, himself, and Abbu? The story is engrossing, populated with appealing, well-rounded main and supporting characters. The portrayal of serious mental illness and the complex emotions of a child whose parent suffers from it are realistic, eye-opening, and moving. An authentically textured account of a young teen coping with a parent’s mental illness. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-13)

The Little Cloud

Fong, Pam | Greenwillow Books (40 pp.)

$19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9780063359994

Little Cloud is different from the others. Fong’s delicate, digitally compiled watercolors introduce ephemeral white clouds with human features flying against purplish-gray skies. Everyone is “busy being busy,” assembling their lightning flashes and water buckets, getting ready to storm— all but Little Cloud, who implores them to “look at the wonderful things below.” “NO TIME!” thunders Big Gray Cloud. But Little Cloud’s enchanted by the sights below. Briefly, we see several tall

evergreens reflected in Big Gray Cloud’s angry eyes. Finally, Little Cloud spots actual trees on the land below as a warmer palette takes over. Full-color, finely detailed farm scenes depict a red barn and a silver silo and a young East Asian–presenting child waving from a farmhouse window. The scene expands, and small vignettes show animal families waking up. Little Cloud is enchanted to see a little black-and-white cow glance up with a wink. “FOCUS!” Big Gray Cloud yells at the mischievous subordinate, but suddenly, an orange glow enters the picture, and bright sunlight chases away the clouds. No one can get over their disappointment, except Little Cloud, who’s delighted at the pleasures of a beautiful day. Many readers will relate; this is a simple but effective read-aloud that makes lovely use of visual storytelling. A ray of sunshine for those youngsters who, like our protagonist, know what truly matters. (Picture book. 4-8)

The Tide Is Rising, So Are We!: A Climate Movement Anthem

Friedman, Shoshana Meira | Illus. by Kiki Kita | Beaming Books (40 pp.) | $18.99 March 18, 2025 | 9781506495989

Friedman, an activist and rabbi, turns a protest song she co-wrote with her husband, leadership coach Yotam Schachter, into a tale of collective action. Her anthem extends to encompass various aspects of the climate movement, from grassroots efforts to political activity. A diverse array of characters protest, march, canvass, and talk to policymakers, as well as engaging in gardening and storytelling. All are clearly heeding a vital warning from the planet itself to “make a better choice!” While the fight is challenging, Friedman emphasizes that it’s always better to try than to remain passive. Her words are lyrical and elegant, though a few turns of phrase may confuse younger

Kirkus Star

readers (“Immune cells of the Earth, we rise: / One giant, swelling enterprise”). Kita’s colorful montages set an optimistic tone, depicting activists uniting to save the Earth from climate change. Both the author and the illustrator acknowledge the effects of global warming: Scenes of oil rigs over once-pristine beaches serve as examples of the encroachment of industrial activity on natural landscapes, while a dramatic spread portrays raging storms and forest fires. These visuals, combined with images of protestors holding signs and hands, create a striking contrast between human exploitation of the Earth and the work many are doing to help heal the planet.

A vibrant ode to the climate movement. (song lyrics) (Picture book. 4-8)

13 Ways To Say Goodbye

Fussner, Kate | Harper/Harper Collins (304 pp.) | $18.99

March 18, 2025 | 9780063256989

Feeling independent yet deeply alone, a girl uses her deceased sister’s journal to help her move forward.

Until three years ago, Nina’s family spent their summers in Paris, a delightful tradition that included happy memories and fun times with the ebullient Aunt Renee. But ever since her older sister Lily’s death in a bike accident, Nina’s parents have retreated into themselves, leaving Nina to try to find ways to ground herself. She hopes to find some peace with what happened by completing Lily’s “13 Before 13” list prior to her own upcoming 13th birthday. Lily kissed someone and learned to bake before she died, but other items on the list remain undone, and one—“Take a selfie with the Mona Lisa”—requires her to be in Paris. Aunt Renee enrolls Nina, a white-presenting American girl, in art classes and arranges for her co-worker’s daughter Sylvie, who’s Black, to be Nina’s “nouvelle amie” and Métro guide. Nina finds her feelings for Sylvie blossoming into the

A tale that shreds off the page and out the back of readers’ skulls.

SHRED OR DEAD

possibility of more, and pursuing the tasks on Lily’s list provides a springboard for her growth. The verse format and scenes in which Nina relives moments when Lily was alive suit the depth of Nina’s feelings and her halting, uncertain progress through the aftereffects of Lily’s death. The Parisian setting is authentically developed, and the pitch-perfect ending brings the plot full circle and allows for gentle closure for a summer crush.

A moving, sensitive exploration of healing in the wake of loss. (Verse fiction. 10-14)

Shred or Dead

Gambles, D. Bradford | Top Shelf Productions (296 pp.) | $19.99 paper March 11, 2025 | 9781603095471

Absurd humor and over-the-top skateboarding go together like chips and soda.

Claris Hills is “the absolute capital of skate culture,” a place where survival means joining a good crew, minding other crews’ territory, and raising one’s skating level. The characters’ skating levels are displayed like real-life video game stats. Sam, age 10, is determined to increase her skating level (which is a paltry 15) in order to defeat Radical Tim (who’s at an impressive level 100). His Too Cool Crew is expanding their territory and excluding everyone else. But she runs afoul of The Law (age 47, level 0), an authoritarian grocery store guard who has a hang-up about skateboarders. Sam and friends embark on a different harrowing adventure with each chapter,

including a sympathy-building sequence from The Law’s point of view. Gambles enjoys building up the dramatic and supernatural threats, only to pop any tension with humorous absurdity: Look no further than the deliriously dystopian third act, which features a jailhouse fingerboard duel as well as a skateboarding trick so intense it rips a space-time hole that defies physics. The two most dependable elements of this chaotic tale are the word garf (a derogatory slang term) and Sam’s explosive skateboarding powers, illustrated in blue. Sam and The Law read white; the cast members overall are diverse in skin tone.

Skateboarding demands—and has found—a tale that shreds off the page and out the back of readers’ skulls. (Graphic adventure. 9-12)

Can’t Stop Kissing That Baby

Going, K.L. | Illus. by Fiona Lee Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $19.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9781442434165

Several families share a picnic in the park, full of affection.

As the day begins, Momma ices a cake in a warm, modern kitchen while a dog snoozes nearby; in a shadowed back bedroom, another parent attends to a sleeping tot. Spare and repetitive verse calls for a melodic read-aloud as Momma heads over to the crib: “She can’t stop kissing the baby. / Can’t stop, / just can’t stop. // No, she can’t stop kissing the baby.” Outside, the couple share a snuggle with their child as they walk a dog, a bicycle, and a stroller along a verdant boulevard. Meanwhile, the bouncy verse continues (“Oh, you’ve

gotta stop kissing that baby”) as another couple take their infant to a cafe. The characters vary in skin tone; their hip hairstyles and comfortable-looking clothes make them broadly relatable— and provide a playful, stylized counterpoint to the at-times forceful sweetness of the text. A variety of happy families move through this idyllic neighborhood, watching a soccer game, buying flowers, and taking a turn on the park’s swings before gathering at a picnic table. It’s a meal full of activity, so it’s no wonder the baby from the beginning— now sporting a birthday hat—seems to be asleep in Momma’s arms as they head home. “Very best mommas!” the unseen narrator proclaims. “They never run out of those kisses.”

A singsong paean to the cuddly days of early childhood. (Picture book. 4-8)

Charley Mouse Cleans House

Gorelik, Katerina | Red Comet Press (48 pp.) $19.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9781636551418

In this interactive tale, a rodent happily cleans homes. Charley Mouse loves keeping things tidy; she spends each day putting her neighbors’ houses in order. The whimsical art depicts cross-sections of the homes, starting with Charley’s, a polka dot teapot filled to the brim with cheese. Despite the cheery text, many of the other habitats are filled with macabre details that will remind readers that these residents are unapologetic carnivores, such as a wicker basket of bunny tails in Mr. Wolf’s house. Charley’s comments often indicate a naïveté that will elicit giggles. She thinks the moles are playing hide-and-seek with the earthworms rather than preying on them. Rumors abound that Mr. Wolf is responsible for the disappearances of several pigs and goats, but Charley vouches for his vegetarianism despite all evidence to the contrary, including the skulls, bones, and knives strewn throughout his

house. The Gingerbread family and the Unicorns are among the few clearly benign neighbors; the latter have strawberry jam–scented manure. Invitations to find items such as Mama Mole’s lost keys or Mr. Fox’s misplaced eggcup are challenging but doable. Humor abounds, and the contrast between the cozy charms of the homes and their grisly contents makes for an oddly delightful tale for the right reader. Drolly unique. (ways to use this book) (Picture book. 5-8)

Hannah and the Wrong Note

Goth, Shane | Illus. by Sara Gagnon-Dumont | Owlkids Books (32 pp.)

$18.95 | April 15, 2025 | 9781771475914

A young musician discovers the joys of improvisation. Hannah dreams of becoming a professional pianist and expects nothing less than perfection from herself. As she plays, a series of personified notes emerge, holding hands as they march and keeping “perfect pitch and a steady tempo,” even as Hannah’s more free-wheeling little sister, Jenny, romps among them. As Hannah practices for a performance of Swan Lake at her school’s year-end concert, she consistently gets one note wrong. “Wrong notes are fun,” says Jenny. Hannah disagrees and diligently rehearses. When the wrong note makes an appearance at the concert, Hannah is devastated. Her parents praise her, but she counters, “It wasn’t perfect!” At home, Jenny discovers the wrong note sulking in the corner and tickles it; together they wriggle in glee. Hannah’s never seen a note do that before. Ignoring her sheet music, she tries something new, and the notes “tripped and skipped and even flipped.” Hannah adores these new sounds and concludes, “Maybe the wrong note wasn’t wrong.” Though the story’s a bit heavy-handed, with an abrupt ending, it conveys a vital message about embracing imperfection and learning to cut loose. Goth employs

robust language to convey Hannah’s passion, while Gagnon-Dumont’s loose, energetic illustrations rely on a limited palette of browns, grays, blues, white, and black, with yellow splashes. Hannah and her family are brown-skinned; their community is diverse. Sound, visually inspired guidance for young perfectionists. (Picture book. 4-7)

On the Night Before You Turn One

Graves, Kristie | Illus. by Gregorio de Laurentis | Familius (32 pp.) | $16.99 March 4, 2025 | 9781641705820

Few milestones are as emotional as a child’s first birthday. A parent cuddling an infant lovingly marvels at how quickly time passes: “On the night before you turn One, / I will kiss your little nose. / And spend a minute wondering / About time and where it goes.” The narrator recognizes what a moving occurrence this will be: “I’ll try my best to be strong.” The pair will still do all their favorite activities: They’ll snuggle in their chair and sing a song, and the parent promises to stay with the child long into the night. Our narrator is excited about the future, when the little one will “explore a world that’s new.” And the child isn’t the only one who’s changing: “I’ll whisper in your ear / All the ways we both have grown / Through this, your very first year.” Told in gentle verse, this sweet, contemplative tale is aimed more at parents than youngsters. It captures the dueling emotions that many caregivers experience—pride at seeing their little ones mature, mingled with wistfulness for those early days. The illustrations, created with a warm, muted palette, depict vignettes of a brownskinned parent and child, charting the little one’s growth from a tiny baby to a toddler taking first steps and helping out in the kitchen.

An ideal baby shower or first birthday gift—though this one’s definitely meant for the parents. (Picture book. 1-3)

Adds

both perspective and a positive spin on a universal

experience.

NEWBORNS

When Tree Became a Tree

Hodgson, Rob | Rise x Penguin Workshop (64 pp.) | $19.99

March 25, 2025 | 9780593886694

The life of an apple tree, from tiny seed to proud parent. Following the pattern of When Cloud Became a Cloud (2021) and When Moon Became the Moon (2023), Hodgson endows nearly everything in his bright cartoon illustrations, from seeds to sun, with a smiley face. He slips a fair bit of scientific information into the minimal narrative, which follows the growth of a seed that emerges from a decomposed apple (“Hi, I’m Seed!”) to a mature tree shedding apples of her own. Along the way, younger readers will gain insight into photosynthesis, learn how flowers turn to fruit as the seasons pass, and discover how roots absorb nutrients, serve as anchors, and, with help from fungal mycelia (“I’m a fun guy!”), communicate with other nearby trees. Though the notion that trees do eventually die goes unmentioned, the octogenarian Tree does drop a branch that provides “cozy homes for critters” until it breaks down to improve the soil. In one minichapter, select relatives, from rain forest durian trees to spiky pines, weeping willows, and bulbous baobabs, hint at the diversity of Tree’s “big, special family.” The human figures who appear in some scenes for scale are likewise diverse. A beneficent view of growth and cycles in nature.

(Informational picture book. 4-7)

One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe

Horn,

Dara | Illus. by Theo Ellsworth

Norton Young Readers (152 pp.)

$18.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781324082132

In this fantastical graphic novel, a boy attempts to bring his family’s never-ending Passover seder to a close.

According to Jewish law, a seder cannot end until the afikoman—a piece of matzah broken and hidden somewhere in the home—is found. So when the unnamed protagonist’s little sister throws the afikoman into a wormhole, the seder is forced to continue indefinitely. Six months in, a talking goat—a reference to a song traditionally performed at the end of the seder—arrives to help the boy track it down. The goat explains that all the seders that have ever occurred are stored under the protagonist’s house, and the afikoman is hidden in one of them. As the pair journey through time, the boy watches his great-grandmother participate in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He witnesses historic seders, such as one that took place during the Spanish Inquisition and another that occurred during the Jewish-Roman Wars. Ellsworth’s black-and-white illustrations are filled with busy crosshatched patterns, while characters often talk over one another. This chaos mirrors the surreal plot; reading the book feels like falling down a rabbit hole. Horn zips from one historical event to another without offering much context or explanation; most readers, even those versed in Jewish tradition, will likely be confused. The protagonist’s reflections on his identity and family are

intriguing but similarly rushed. Characters have skin the color of the page. A wild ride that will leave most struggling to keep up. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

Newborns: How Baby Animals Come Into the World

Jara, Paulina | Illus. by Mercè Galí Trans. by Lawrence Schimel | Orca (64 pp.) $24.95 | March 11, 2025 | 9781459840348

Translated from Spanish, a lighthearted celebration of the miracle of birth, from being spit out by a daddy Darwin’s frog to a baby giraffe’s six-foot drop to the ground. With the avowed intention of showing “how wondrous and diverse—and cute!—the natural world is,” the author recaps common natal experiences for 25 animals, accompanied by Galí’s fluidly drawn cartoon portraits, mostly of smiling parents and offspring together. The breezy tone is decidedly infectious. Jara describes a mating dance between scorpions that eventually results in “scorplings,” commends the young of the paradoxically named seven-arm octopus, who are immediately ready to float off and “make their mother proud,” and coos that opossums give birth to “around 20 teeny joeys” at a time. Some newlings are born nearly helpless, while others are fully ready to strike out on their own. Amazingly, the armadillo can put active pregnancies on hold, while the alpine salamander’s gestation varies, depending on the altitude at which it lives (two years for those living at 3,200 feet and three years for those that reside even higher). These and other airy facts set a mellow mood for the final animal babies, which are the human ones— “the only living creatures that smile intentionally at their parents,” the author writes fetchingly. The sleeping infant has light pink skin. Adds both perspective and a positive spin on a universal experience. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Our Lake

Kang, Angie | Kokila (40 pp.) | $19.99 March 4, 2025 | 9780593698235

Grief and remembrances of times past converge on a hot day.

A pair of unnamed, East Asian–presenting siblings hike to a nearby lake that holds memories both cherished and painful. As they approach the water, both fear and sadness keep the younger sibling, who narrates, from jumping in. The children’s beloved father has apparently died, and the protagonist can’t help thinking of how he used to accompany the kids on swims. After Brother takes the plunge and spurs his sibling to follow suit, the younger child shakes off the fear, conveyed through squiggly green lines emanating from the little one’s body, resembling the ripples of the water. The protagonist draws strength not only from Brother’s encouragement, but also in the comforting memories of the good times they both had with their father. The siblings realize that despite their sadness, they still have each other: “Here in our lake, / we are all together.” Debut author/illustrator Kang has created an effective look at how activities that once brought joy can fill us with dread following loss. The gouache, crayon, and colored pencil illustrations, with their warm yellows and deep blues and purples, convey a sense of calm and comfort while also acknowledging the anxiety of the unknown. A sensitive look at the delicate process of navigating loss. (Picture book. 5-8)

Tiny Bear Goes Missing

Kasha, Manka | Feiwel & Friends (40 pp.) $18.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781250856999

(who uses they/them pronouns) and their trusted companion, Tiny Bear (plush but seemingly sentient), explore a cave aglow with shining crystals but wind up falling asleep. Some taller knights bring the little human back to the palace, where the queen is waiting, but where is Tiny Bear? As Small Knight frets, a jar breaks, and the Anxiety Monster (captured offscreen at the beginning of the book) emerges. Small Knight stands up to the monster, depicted as coalesced ink scribbles with horns. But as Small Knight unsuccessfully looks for Tiny Bear, their fears mount and the monster grows. The child decides to search the cave and commands the beast to accompany them. But the Anxiety Monster begins to worry, too, and Small Knight reassures it. This back-and-forth defines the youngster’s relationship to the monster and to anxiety itself—at times it can be overcome, but sometimes it’s in control. When all are safe again, the Anxiety Monster shrinks, and Small Knight finds a cozier yet still secure home for it. In the author’s note, Kasha discusses the challenges of coping with anxiety. Accompanied by quaint, atmospherically fantastical watercolor-and-ink illustrations, her story offers an accessible depiction of doing so, which many readers will find validating. Small Knight and the queen are light-skinned; the other knights are darker-skinned. A charming and creative take on adapting to life with anxiety. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pencil

Kim, Hye-Eun | TOON Books/ Astra Books for Young Readers (48 pp.) $18.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781662665530

a thriving natural space, surrounded by other arboreal wonders. Eventually, several trees are cut down and shipped to an industrial factory belching soot into the air, where they’re made into multicolored writing implements. In an art supply store, an East Asian–presenting child picks up one of these pencils from a wall of rainbow colors and embarks on a revelatory artistic journey. Originally published in South Korea, this impeccably told, wordless story is an enchanting tribute to the creative process and a celebration of patience and the natural world. Kim’s vibrant art, rendered in colored pencil and marker, is minutely detailed, with delicate linework that prominently showcases both action and stillness. A spread depicting the trees being cut down as birds fly away packs the same emotional punch as the illustrations of the child quietly drawing a forest of trees that come to life—a metafictive twist that brings the tale full circle. The tale closes with tips on how to read a wordless book that speak to the importance of creating space for children to engage with works like this one. A stunning ode to the natural world and the cyclical nature of imagination. (Picture book. 4-8)

Alfred Blooms

Kruck, Carrie | Illus. by Carmen Mok Random House Studio (40 pp.) | $18.99 March 25, 2025 | 9780593647608

T he diminutive hero introduced in Small Knight and the Angry Prince (2023) returns for a more personal adventure. Pale-skinned, brave Small Knight

A single pencil holds so much potential. The shavings from a freshly sharpened pencil turn into the newly formed leaves of a tree sapling. As time progresses, the tree becomes part of

Poor Alfred needs a friend. No one ever visits Alfred; he’s sure it’s because his yard is barren. He tries and fails to grow flowers like his friend

Lulu, who receives a constant stream of visitors to her glorious garden. Dejected, Alfred decides to try one last time. He buys a seed packet, which he accidentally scatters all over himself with a big sneeze. He wallows sadly in the mud; when he’s caught in the rain, the seeds inexplicably take root on him and immediately bloom, covering him in blossoms. So enflowered, he goes on his

Kirkus Star

weekly errand to bring Lulu a blueberry muffin. She’s delighted by Alfred’s blooms and the sweet treat, but she assures him that she loves his visits, not because of the muffins, but because she enjoys spending time with him, and Alfred’s heart lightens. Why didn’t Alfred already know this after so many visits? Why doesn’t Lulu help him with his garden? Such unresolved questions are more emotionally pressing than the puzzling mystery around the quickblooming flowers that sprout from Alfred’s person. The cartoon-style art doesn’t clarify matters, though readers may enjoy playful details such as a Little Free Library in Lulu’s yard, topiaries outside the store where Alfred purchases his seeds, and a yellow bird that follows him throughout the story. Alfred is tan-skinned, Lulu is lighter-skinned, and their community is diverse. Warmhearted but less than satisfying. (Picture book. 4-8)

High Top: Sole Mates

Lacey, Tom | Tiger Tales (32 pp.)

$18.99 | Oct. 15, 2024 | 9781664300590

An anthropomorphic sneaker wants to show his friends how much he loves them. Vivacious, outgoing High Top cares deeply about the other residents of Shoe Town; his love languages are physical affection and acts of service. But when he decides that it’s time for a grand gesture as big as his own personality, things don’t go according to plan. The giant “I Love Shoe Town” sign he makes draws enough electricity to plunge the town into a blackout. Dejected, High Top heads home to find his previous goodwill returned in the form of thank-you notes and various tokens from his friends. Even better, he soon realizes that his pals have repaired the sign, which now reads “We Love High Top.” The story is simple and straightforward, with spare text that’s ideal for emerging readers. The art is child-friendly; the shoes—among them ballet slippers, sandals, and boots—have

expressive eyes and shoelace arms. Lacey weaves in sly humor—side characters have names such as Shoezanne and Vincent Van Toe. Stronger than the first installment, High Top: The Sneaker That Just Can’t Stop! (2023), this tale reads well as a stand-alone. Sweet-natured and optimistic. (Picture book. 3-7)

Finn and the Pen

Lawrence, David | Illus. by PJ Reece with Cherie Dignam | EK Books (256 pp.)

$12.99 paper | March 11, 2025

9781921966538 | Series: The Pen, 3

In a sharp test of heart and conscience, a mistreated foster child finds a pen that grants any wish. Lawrence pitches a third preteen protagonist into a crisis of conscience brought on by a magic fountain pen that makes whatever it draws or writes come true. Finnian is initially thrilled to discover that his new pen will bestow on him anything from a real credit card to bully-humbling basketball skills. Leaving behind four foster siblings as well as the Grimshaws, his villainous foster parents, Finn sets out to track down his birth parents. Life-changing revelations ensue—but it doesn’t take long for him to realize that for every benefit the pen brings him, it inflicts harm on someone else. The main question is: Will he, or can he, cast off the source of all that power? Lawrence again dishes up properly tidy just deserts all around. It’s always a treat to see bullies get proper comeuppance from their victims, and there’s deeper satisfaction in watching said victims work through their anger issues to make good, moral choices. The pen seems to be controlled by mysterious folk whom readers only glimpse; perhaps their purpose will come clear in a future series entry. Finn and his foster parents present white; names cue ethnic diversity in the supporting cast. This Australian import features sprightly double-pagespread illustrations.

An entertaining tale that poses a knotty dilemma and offers a pleasing resolution. (Fantasy. 9-12)

The Many Hauntings of the Manning Family

Lawrence, Lorien | Amulet/Abrams (288 pp.)

$17.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781419768835

Ghost-hunting twins Trent and Gabby follow in their grandparents’ footsteps, taking on a dangerous mission to free the ghosts trapped in the neglected Majestic Theater. The 13-year-olds inherited their grandparents’ gift for communicating with ghosts. Their mom, who doesn’t have paranormal abilities, seeks to capitalize on her legendary parents’ reputations and her kids’ talents; she eagerly records the siblings’ ghosthunting and posts them to YouTube. Unlike Trent, Gabby is tired of feeling used for content, but the anniversary of their grandparents’ Last Haunt looms large, and Mom has a plan to mark it. She’s determined to revisit the Majestic Theater, the site of Grandpa’s “one big regret,” and document the siblings’ ghost-hunting for social media dividends. But what awaits the twins is something more sinister and vicious than any spirits they’ve encountered before. The suspense builds deliciously as the twins get to work in the theater, and the spooks it contains are equal parts thrilling and disgusting. The stakes feel high, and each sibling has the opportunity to stand out while also demonstrating trust in the other. Gabby, bold and outspoken, is the perfect foil for her brother, who’s quiet and hesitant. Together, they’re a likable, believably drawn pair. Lawrence has a clear vision for the world of ghosts, and she pulls readers in through evocative descriptions of place and atmosphere. Most characters present white. Top-shelf suspense and page-turning thrills. (Paranormal. 10-13)

Kirkus Star

City Summer, Country Summer

Laymon, Kiese | Illus. by Alexis Franklin | Kokila (32 pp.) | $18.99 April 1, 2025 | 9780593405567

Celebrated memoirist and novelist Laymon makes his picture-book debut with a glimpse into the friendship that springs up among three Black boys one summer in Mississippi.

There’s nothing like a visit to your grandmother’s house—whether you’re from up North like New York, who comes down to stay with his Mama Lara, or a local like Country, who with his little brother in tow is visiting his Grandmama. On the sunny porches of their grandmothers’ neighboring houses and in the cool shadows of the surrounding woods, hesitation becomes tenderness, anxiety becomes laughter, and difference becomes safeness. And in the humid stillness of the garden that separates Mama Lara’s and Grandmama’s houses, New York’s homesickness and Country’s emotional wariness ease as the three friends begin to recognize the love that connects them. Laymon has set a high bar for himself and cleared it easily. A melody of lyrical prose and a rhythm of community ring out as, under the quietly powerful guidance of Black grandmothers, references to “they” slip steadily into an affirming “we.” Franklin’s digital paintings set realistic depictions of Black boys within the hazy fantasy of summer, emphasizing evocative facial expressions and using spreads filled with natural, liminal spaces to insulate their growing bond.

A heartfelt, elegantly wrought, and triumphant tribute to Black boy kinship. (Picture book. 6-10)

Octopus Ocean:

Geniuses of the Deep

Leiren-Young, Mark | Orca (104 pp.) | $24.95 | Feb. 11, 2025 9781459838956 | Series: Orca Wild, 16

A ll hail the weirdly alien cephalopods: dreamers, unsurpassed escape artists, and among the smartest creatures on the planet.

Noting that even as he was writing this book, researchers were continuing to make new discoveries about octopuses and their squid and cuttlefish cousins, Leiren-Young nonetheless forges ahead to introduce representative members of the cephalopod clan and to explore their distinctive qualities and capabilities. In addition to celebrating their vaunted ability to camouflage themselves and to escape from captivity (one Auckland overachiever, dubbed Rambo, even learned how to use a waterproof camera), he points to evidence that they are at least as smart as chimps and dolphins, that they may dream, and that, with fantastically sensitive sensors in their arms, they can tell if what they touch is “friend, foe or food” and even detect light and color. The author attempts to remain nonjudgmental about the consumption of octopuses; after all, he writes, “any animal that can eat an octopus will,” including other octopuses. Still, he emphasizes the controversy around farming them, and to counter anthropodenial (the assumption that animals don’t have emotions or intelligence), he urges readers to use gendered pronouns when thinking about

An unusually lively meet and greet—stimulating and informative.

them. From the giant Pacific octopus and a “squid squad” to a fingertip-size wolfi and the “adorable” dumbo, specimens undulate fetchingly across natural settings in the heavy suite of stock photos.

An unusually lively meet and greet— stimulating and informative. (glossary, resource lists, index) (Nonfiction. 9-12)

Saved by the Smell

Lerner, Jarrett | Aladdin (128 pp.)

$17.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781665942973

Series: My Mad Scientist Mom, 1

A ri’s odorous T-shirt comes in handy on an unexpected trip to the Cretaceous Period. New in town, Ari hasn’t made a single friend, though next-door neighbor Mr. Jakes’ frequent visits indicate his interest in Ari’s mom, an inventor who’s been deemed a “mad scientist” for her unusual experiments. Ari takes all this in stride, mostly. Mom’s latest project is a time portal that will allow her and Ari to retrieve piles of clean clothes from “the last time we washed, dried, and folded our laundry.” It’s a necessary creation; Ari’s been wearing a T-shirt that started to smell “four and one quarter days ago,” according to TED, Mom’s snarky, ice cube–size supercomputer. They decide to travel six weeks back in time, but when the portal overshoots their goal, Ari, Mom, TED, and Ari’s pet turtle, Fred, find themselves 60 million years in the past. Fred nearly becomes prey to a Tyrannosaurus, but fortunately the funk from Ari’s shirt is enough to scare off even a ferocious dinosaur. And, just maybe, there’s a better solution to the laundry problem—one that might bring Mom and Mr. Jakes a bit closer. The fast-moving story is filled with wild antics. Ari’s affection for Mom comes through clearly and humorously, and the book sets up the possibility of future mishaps. Goofy cartoons match the energy of the lighthearted adventures; characters have skin the white of the page.

A wacky tale jam-packed with prehistoric hijinks and weird science. (Fiction. 7-10)

Book to Screen

Courtney

B. Vance

Joins Percy Jackson Cast

The actor will play Zeus in the series, replacing the late Lance Reddick.

Courtney B. Vance has joined the cast of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Disney+ series based on Rick Riordan’s

series of children’s fantasy novels, Variety reports. Vance, known for his roles in television series including Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, and Lovecraft Country, will play the Greek god Zeus on Percy Jackson. He replaces Lance Reddick, who originally played the role and died last year at the age of 60.

Riordan’s bestselling novels, about a young demigod and his friends who must protect the Earth from Titans, launched in 2005 with The Lightning Thief ; the seventh and latest book in the series, Wrath of the

Triple Goddess, was published in September. Two films based on the books were released in 2010 and 2013, respectively, to widespread critical disdain.

The Disney+ series, which stars Walker Scobell, Leah Sava Jeffries, and Aryan Simhadri, aired its first episode in December 2023. The show has been a hit with critics and viewers.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am to join the extraordinary cast of Percy

For reviews of the Percy Jackson books, visit Kirkus online.

Jackson and the Olympians! ” Vance said. “I know that stepping into this role of Zeus will be a memorable experience and I’ll be giving my brother, Lance Reddick, who left us way too soon, a heavenly hug.”—M.S.

Courtney B. Vance

Fetching Tales for Animal Lovers

Candace Fleming; illus. by Deena So’Oteh

Emily Jenkins; illus. by Manuel Preitano

Julia Donaldson; illus.

Catherine Rayner

Cats:

Kitten Around

Hilda Eunice Burgos; illus. by Siara Faison

SEEN AND HEARD

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo Writing a Kids’ Book

The musicians will publish My Grandma and Grandpa Rock! this summer.

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo are hitting grandparenthood with their best shot.

The rock musicians will make their children’s literature debut this year with a picture book, People magazine reports. Sourcebooks will publish the couple’s My Grandma and Grandpa Rock!, illustrated by Tiffany Everett, next year; the press describes it as “a book for the coolest

For recent music books, visit Kirkus online.

grandpas and grandmas everywhere.”

Benatar rose to fame in 1979 with her album In the Heat of the Night, which featured Giraldo on lead guitar and keyboards. The two married in 1982, two years after Benatar released her signature single, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” and one year before the release of another hit song, “Love Is a Battlefield.”

The couple have two daughters and three grandchildren. “Everything they said about having grandchildren is true,” the couple told the magazine. “When we met in 1979, having children was one of our dreams. We were blessed with two beautiful daughters and now have three darling grandchildren― our dream on steroids!”

In a video, Benatar said of their grandchildren, “They really don’t understand what we do for a living. They see us, and they watch us on videos and things, but to them, we’re still just their grandparents…so we did it for them.”

My Grandma and Grandpa Rock! is slated for publication on Sept. 9. —M.S.

Pat Benatar, left, and Neil Giraldo

New Picture Book by Ziggy Marley Coming in June

The musician’s Pajammin’ is inspired by one of his father’s best known songs.

Ziggy Marley is turning one of his father’s best known songs into a children’s picture book. HarperCollins Children’s Books will publish the reggae musician’s Pajammin’, illustrated by Letícia Moreno, this summer, the press announced in a news release. It says the book, which is inspired by reggae legend Bob Marley’s 1977 song “Jamming,” “will inspire young readers and their caregivers to make bedtime a ritual worth celebrating.”

Ziggy Marley rose to fame as one of the members of the Melody Makers, the Marley family band that scored hits with the singles “Tomorrow People” and “Tumblin’ Down.” The band broke up in 2002, and Marley

AND HEARD

has since released several solo albums.

He is the author of four previous children’s books, including I Love You Too and Music Is in Everything, both illustrated by Ag Jatkowska.

In his new book, HarperCollins says, “Marley transforms iconic lines from ‘Jamming’ into a bouncy, bedtime read-aloud. The result is a rollicking roadmap for screen-free family time, complete with Moreno’s exuberant illustrations inspired by Marley’s own multicultural family.”

“This book is about togetherness and happiness,” Marley said in a statement. “Children and adults will be able to tell ’cause the love that we put into it is vibrating from the pages.”

Pajammin’ is slated for publication on June 24.

—M.S.

Ziggy Marley

For other books by Ziggy Marley, visit Kirkus online.

A captivating exploration of middle school activism.

MAEVE MULVANEY HAS HAD ENOUGH

Beasts of the Uncanny Wild

Lin, Cindy | Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.)

$19.99 | Dec. 31, 2024 | 9780063064843

Series: Creatures of the In Between, 2

A prince must fight for his rightful place on the throne. Following the events of Creatures of the In Between (2023), at age 13, Prince Jin is now the youngest emperor of the Three Realms. He’s flanked by his friends Bingyoo, Mau, and Masa as well as two monsters, a piyao and a kirin. As part of his goal to reintegrate monsters into the kingdom’s economy, he’s traveling with his monstermates to the kingdom’s first monster exposition, where he’s hoping to build public goodwill. The action-packed narrative evolves quickly as the event is sabotaged, and Jin, needing to think about his next steps, takes leave on Whisper Island. But Jin’s sabbatical is disturbed when news from the palace reveals that Mau has gone missing, and he and his friends embark on a journey to find him. The group’s epic mission includes a series of intriguing twists filled with mythical creatures from East and Southeast Asian cultures. A skillful reveal of a secret connected to Jin’s family leads to political intrigue and conflicts, which are so numerous that the pace feels rushed at times. Readers may wish for some quieter moments to allow the story’s events to sink in. Those who have fresh memories of the previous installment will better appreciate this volume.

An entertaining sequel that’s brimming with nonstop action. (author’s note, bestiary) (Fantasy. 8-12)

Vanya and the Wild Hunt

$17.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9781250899835

Magic abounds in this coming-of-age story about finding strength in the face of formidable odds. Eleven-year-old Vanya Vallen struggles to belong in the small English city where her parents, both of Indian descent, run a bookstore. Her brown skin makes her a target at school, her ADHD gets her into trouble, and she seems to be the only one who can hear the rare books in the store talking. When she finds her mother battling a terrifying monster, she discovers a web of secrets shrouding her parents’ lives. Before long, Vanya’s parents send her away to Auramere, a school of magic hidden in the Nilgiri Mountains of South India, where they were once students themselves. Under the guardianship of Irish Jasper and his husband, Roman, old friends of her parents’, Vanya makes new friends, discovers her strengths, and comes to terms with her neurodiversity, all the while trying to unearth the mysteries surrounding her mother’s past. But when the Wild Hunt, a dark, sentient force, threatens Auramere, Vanya steps up to take on a burden she’s unready for—and that could well destroy her. The vivid worldbuilding weaves characters from world mythology into a narrative that crackles with action. While taking little from the lore or culture of the region of India the school is set in, the book does feature nuanced characterization and positive portrayals of the diverse cast. Final art not seen. An engaging, well-developed introduction to a magical world. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Maeve Mulvaney Has Had Enough

Mangan, Kelly | Holiday House (272 pp.)

$17.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9780823458288

A group of middle school friends fight back against oppressive harassment and disbelieving administrators. Dedicated comics creator Maeve Mulvaney begins eighth grade in the new “Nowhereville” Florida town where her family has relocated for her astronomer mother’s university job. Leaving Vermont was devastating— her new community seems to care more about football than the arts— but luckily, she quickly finds a great comic book shop as well as a supportive group of friends. Unfortunately, she’s also plagued by incessant bullying from classmate Robbie, who challenges her love of comics and ridicules her weight, calling her things like “Fatty-Fatty Fake Geek.” The acutely painful in-person and online bullying scenes work well, effectively encouraging readers to interrogate the high value often placed on activities like sports and to recognize and call out sexism. Maeve’s troubled relationship with her mom is compelling, and Maeve frequently challenges the pressure she feels from both her parents to avoid expressing negativity. Maeve, who is white and bisexual, has a supportive, diverse, strongly characterized friend group: New best friend Daniel is a white gay boy, and her larger friend group includes racial diversity. As Maeve grows in her power to organize against the sexism, fatphobia, and homophobia she encounters at school—and the lack of support from school leadership—readers will be satisfied by her development as an artist and advocate for herself and others. A captivating, blisteringly realistic exploration of middle school activism. (Fiction. 11-14)

Mandanna, Sangu | Illus. by Nidhi Naroth | Roaring Brook Press (288 pp.)

Kirkus Star

Astro

Marsol, Manuel | Trans. by Lizzie Davis Transit Children’s Editions (64 pp.)

$21.95 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9798893389043

This Spanish import mixes meditations on mortality with an outer-space setting.

“We had never seen such a strange being.” A creature who’s 90% neck attached to a spherelike orange body tells the story of Astro—an orange-suited astronaut whose face is never visible—who lands one day on the narrator’s planet. Illustrations that feel like a mashup of Peter Max’s psychedelic work and the cacophony of Bruegel (though quite a bit sweeter) depict spectacular landscapes and denizens, alien and wonderful. The narrator is eager to play with Astro, and the two strike up a deep friendship. After musing that “you should make the most of the good times. Because they don’t always last,” the narrator dies one day in an accident, leaving Astro bewildered and bereft. The creature continues to narrate as the spaceman ponders beginnings and endings and, in an act of acceptance, finally leaves the planet. A postscript shows Astro and the narrator together, Astro finding a tiny object that he holds in gloved hands that seem to contain universes. This translated tale perfectly taps into feelings of gentle wonder. “Maybe beings and worlds disappear but questions stay floating forever.” The results are not merely otherworldly—they will also challenge children’s very perceptions of what it means to be alive. Quotes from

writers such as J.M. Barrie and Carl Sagan close out the work. An achingly beautiful testament to life, love, and death among the stars. (Picture book. 5-8)

Dear New Friend

Matloob, Taraneh | Illus. by Alida Massari | Red Comet Press (32 pp.) $18.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9781636551463

A Persian child welcomes a guest. “I am excited to have you come over,” the young narrator says.

“Knock with the secret knock only we know.” The dark-haired, brownskinned protagonist appears on the left side of the spread, doodling grass that transforms into a red brick path that continues onto the right side. A light-skinned, freckled, red-headed child walks along the path to the house. With matching smiles, the two children enjoy Grandma’s cooking, pick watermelons in the backyard (and spit out the seeds), peek in at Dad weaving a new rug, and play Tileh, a game involving marbles. Throughout, the narrator addresses the friend; readers, especially those unfamiliar with Persian traditions, will feel lovingly embraced, as though they, too, are being invited to enjoy Grandma’s walnut cookies or to flick a marble of their own. Filled with symmetric floral details reminiscent of Persian rugs, the stylized illustrations make sumptuous use of blue. An especially arresting spread shows outstretched hands intertwined with budding flowers and birds—a tribute to Dad’s weaving. The child shares a Persian aphorism: “A well-made

An achingly beautiful testament to life, love, and death among the stars. ASTRO

carpet becomes more good-looking as the years go by.” Sumptuous art is paired with spare text, while backmatter on Persian words and rugs and an author’s note provide a neat coda. A warm and most welcome invitation. (Picture book. 4-8)

Sunny Wants To Play

Maurey, Katty | Tundra Books (40 pp.)

$18.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9781774884812

A young girl wishes she had siblings to play with, and neighborhood kids might fit the bill…or not. Sunny and her extended family of parents, grandparents, aunties, and an uncle all live together in a Chinese-speaking country, as evidenced by shop signs and street scenes. Being the only child in a big, East Asian–presenting family can be lonely, and Sunny longs for “brothers and sisters like everyone else.” The adults certainly look boring as they sit around, run errands, or just nap, so Sunny entertains herself. One day, she gets a happy surprise: A neighbor child knocks at the door and brings Sunny to a nearby alley, where other kids are playing, blowing bubbles, dancing, and climbing. While Sunny is initially delighted to play with other children, a wayward ball kicked right into her face (“OUCH!”) sends her heading for the safety of home (“Phew!”) to snuggle up with her loving family. Maurey uses text sparingly, with only a few words or a single sentence on most pages; the gouache illustrations, which rely on bright colors with bold brush strokes and solid shapes, tell the bulk of the story. Sunny’s mint green dress, matching shoes, floppy sunhat, and pageboy haircut provide visual charm. Readers may be unsure what to make of her abrupt retreat, but overall it’s a charming slice-of-life tale that will especially resonate with only children.

Winning and relatable. (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Star

A Line Can Go Anywhere: The Brilliant, Resilient Life of Artist Ruth Asawa

McAlister, Caroline | Illus. by Jamie Green | Roaring Brook Press (40 pp.) $19.99 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9781250310378

An artist grappled with boundaries.

Growing up in California, Ruth Aiko Asawa (1926-2013) was keenly aware of an “invisible line” separating her life at home, where she was called Aiko, from school, where she was known as Ruth—though “she could cross back and forth or even straddle it if she had to.” This beautifully wrought metaphor for a bicultural Japanese American experience is echoed throughout the book: in the lines a young Asawa drew in the dirt at her family farm and the way she lined up for the Pledge of Allegiance at school. The most important lines, however, were those she made as an artist, especially when creativity sustained her while she and other Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. She studied to become an art teacher, but “because she looked like the enemy, her college wouldn’t place her at a school.” She persevered and, after the war, found her way to Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Drawing inspiration from Mexican wire baskets and memories of barbed wire at the camps, Asawa was driven by the conviction that “art is for everyone.” Infused with emotion, the unflinchingly honest text and exquisite mixed-media art, which layers dazzling pops of blue onto muted backdrops, detail the oppression Asawa faced— and her resilience. An informative author’s note provides additional context for this story of an innovative artist whose legacy of democratizing the arts is utterly inspirational. A title worth moving to the head of the line. (photograph, bibliography) (Picture-book biography. 7-11)

Nature takes center stage in this memorable story of companionship.

THE

PONY AND THE STARLING

The Pony and the Starling

McGrath, Jennifer | Illus. by Kristina Jones | Groundwood (36 pp.)

$19.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781773069791

Nature takes center stage in this quiet, memorable story of companionship. On the vast plains, a young girl accompanied by a dog feeds a gray pony in a summer pasture. One day the sky is spangled with a murmuration of starlings. Though the girl’s mother muses that “You never see just one,” when the flock moves on, a single bird remains. The girl asks the starling where the other birds have gone, but naturally, it doesn’t answer. Pony and starling spend their days eating and resting together. When a winter blizzard looms, the girl leads the pony to the barn, but despite her urging, the bird won’t enter. After the storm, the starling is nowhere to be found. Months pass, and the murmuration returns, “swirling around a dancing, prancing pony” in the spring field. Then the flock leaves—“all but one.” Is it the same bird? We want to believe so. Imbued with ambiguity, the text is gracefully eloquent, using human activities—the girl’s chores, her storm preparations—to anchor the natural melody. The tone is matched by the calm, watercolorlike images, foregrounding the soft-edged figures against the sweeping sky, punctuated by the black-and-white dog and the girl’s dark hair framing her pale face. Against the spare, neutral backgrounds, the jet-black bird seems to lift off the page.

A lovely, lyrical depiction of friendship. (Picture book. 4-8)

Be a Hero With Skipper the Seal

McRaven, William H. & Kelly Marie McRaven | Illus. by Howard McWilliam Little, Brown (48 pp.) | $19.99

March 11, 2025 | 9780316576406

Admiral William H. McRaven’s adaption of his bestselling adult title The Hero Code (2021) with his daughter, Kelly Marie McRaven. Wearing a military uniform and having “completed his training,” Skipper’s assigned a mission by the president (a bald eagle clad in suit and tie): “to find the greatest heroes of all.” Heading back to base, Skipper encounters his cat friend bravely defending a frog against a bullying shark. Here’s Skipper’s first hero! As the day proceeds, he finds more heroes, including the Giving Gorilla, a firefighter; the Caring Cow, a doctor; and the Persevering Penguin, who serves food at a homeless shelter. All offer solid words of wisdom, but Skipper needs one more hero: the little frog who was bullied by the shark. The Forgiving Frog accepts the shark’s apology, and Skipper the Seal declares, “There’s no greater hero than those who forgive.” The team members work together to rescue passengers from a sinking ship. Skipper introduces them to the president, who awards each a medal. Skipper leaves readers with a few final words: “Be a hero in all that you do!” Written in serviceable verse, this upbeat, slightly didactic story featuring a personable protagonist should encourage children to be heroic any way they can; the numerous examples—from the Funny Fox, who helps out by making his friends laugh, to the Humble

Horse, a hockey player who knows the value of cooperating—prove that heroism isn’t about size or strength. The rousing, cartoony digital illustrations are appealing.

Don’t skip this lively, feel-good story. (author’s note from Kelly Marie McRaven) (Picture book. 4-7)

The Trouble With Sunshine

Méndez, Yamile Saied | Scholastic (272 pp.) $19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781546122746

After her mother’s death, a grieving teen finds connection and comfort with a traumatized horse.

Thirteen-yearold Dorani Gutierrez loves her life in Miami amid a lively mix of Latin American cultures where she, as a Puerto Rican and Argentinian girl, blends in with her classmates. She’s a strong advocate for “truth and justice,” even when that means breaking the rules. But when her mother has a fatal heart attack on the way to speak with the principal after Dorani’s latest rebellion, her whole world shatters. With her absent movie star father on set in Mongolia, Dorani goes to live in Wyoming with her estranged aunt. Tía Ivette seems cold and prickly to Dorani, but she’s an expert at her job: running a ranch where she trains and rehabilitates horses with behavioral issues. Dorani feels an instant connection with one mare, Sunshine, who survived a terrible accident and is now mistrustful of humans. As Tía Ivette teaches her how to care for Sunshine, Dorani sees in the horse’s progress echoes of her own grief and slow healing. When she starts to notice injustices at her new multicultural middle school, it takes all her strength and courage to stand up for what’s right in her new home. The quickly wrapped up ending may leave readers feeling disoriented and vaguely let down, but the rich emotional center grounding this novel will stay with them.

A heartfelt story of grief, family, and healing. (Fiction. 9-13)

Our Tree

Meserve, Jessica | Tiger Tales (32 pp.) $18.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781664300620

A tree welcomes everyone. Little Red, a squirrel, scampers up a tree, cheerfully announcing that it belongs to him. Tree laughingly corrects him, pointing to a caterpillar chewing a leaf. The squirrel argues that the leaves are also his. Little Red’s displeased when Swift rests on a branch and thanks Tree for the perch. “Branches are for boinging,” says Little Red. “And, Tree, they’re all for me!” Wise Tree smiles, reminding Little Red to look again as Swift’s many friends alight everywhere. Soon, more mammals, birds, and bugs arrive. Tree happily teems with lifeforms: “We live here together, Little Red. I am for everyone, not just you.” Little Red decides to find his own tree, but he slips and lands on…Leopard, who licks her whiskers and quickly climbs the tree, announcing that it’s hers—as are all the animals in it! (Fortunately, Little Red escapes in time.) Tree chuckles, and all the creatures let out a roar; Little Red shouts, “This tree is for everyone!” Leopard flees, and a contrite Little Red begs to stay. Tree agrees and introduces Little Red to another squirrel. This gleeful U.K. import about trees’ crucial roles in the ecosystem delivers an excellent message about inclusion, friendship, and community. The illustrations sing with energetic movement; the lively characters, particularly Little Red and Tree, have very expressive personalities. A charmer about cooperation and living together in harmony. (Picture book. 4-7)

Earth Day and the Environment

Messner, Kate | Illus. by Justin Greenwood Random House (240 pp.)

$9.99 paper | March 11, 2025

9780593705308 | Series: History Smashers, 10

The latest in the History Smashers series untangles myths around the history of humans and the environment and the origins of Earth Day. Messner uses the first Earth Day, celebrated on April 22, 1970, as a kicking-off point before explaining that this momentous day, “when millions of people came together to teach and learn about how humans have changed the planet,” was far from the beginnings of people’s environmental awareness. She covers the extensive history of humans’ relationship with the environment, from sustainable farming techniques used by the ancient Maya to the European colonizers’ fur trade in North America, the Industrial Revolution, U.S. environmental legislation, and climate change. Text boxes are interspersed throughout, containing pertinent background material presented against a graphic resembling a paper scroll, such as “What Is Coal?” and “What Happens When You Flush the Toilet?” These interludes break up the chronologically presented information and connect the subjects to present-day concerns. Five sections of several pages each labeled “Changemakers’ Yearbook” appear between some chapters, introducing readers to a diverse, global range of notable environmental figures from the 1800s to the 21st century, including both famous and lesser-known people. Reproductions of historical images, black-and-white illustrations, and comics panels enhance this entertaining, informative, and well-paced work. Final art not seen. As comprehensive as it is engaging. (timeline, author’s note with resources, selected bibliography, image credits, index) (Nonfiction. 8-13)

For more by Jessica Meserve, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

Next Year in the White House: Barack Obama’s First Presidential Seder

Michelson, Richard | Illus. by E.B. Lewis Crown (40 pp.) | $18.99

March 4, 2025 | 9780593711583

The story of the first-ever White House Passover seder, celebrated by Barack Obama in 2009. As the Obama family and their guests come together, staffers Herbie Ziskend, Eric Lesser, and Arun Chaudhary recall last year’s seder, an impromptu gathering held in a hotel basement while the then-senator was on the campaign trail. Like his staffers, Obama was homesick, tired, and struggling to maintain hope against the odds. As he and his family joined Herbie, Eric, and Arun in the ritual retelling of the Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt, they all reflected on how this age-old story still inspired many intertwined struggles for liberation. Obama found the experience so moving that he declared, “Next year in the White House!” The story then flashes forward to 2009 as Michelle Obama calls the event a modern-day miracle: “The descendants of enslaved people are now free to share a meal together in the White House, at the invitation of America’s first Black president.” This elegantly told, behindthe-scenes peek at a momentous historical occasion is simultaneously intimate and solemn, balancing a vision for a more inclusive America with an authentic portrayal of the meaning and rituals of Passover. Lewis’ sophisticated, impressionistic watercolors capture both a sense of grandeur and small moments of tenderness: Herbie, Eric, and Arun sitting in the dingy basement; first daughters Sasha and Malia and their dog Bo searching for the afikomen. Essential reading for all children—and adults—who hope for freedom for all. (note from Ziskend, Lesser, and Chaudhary; hand-painted Haggadah

page; information on the first White House seder, on Black history, and on Passover; photo; recipe for flourless apple apricot cake) (Informational picture book. 5-10)

Besties: Prank War

Miller, Kayla & Jeffrey Canino | Illus. by Sarah K. Turner | Clarion/HarperCollins (224 pp.)

$15.99 paper | March 4, 2025

9780063285590 | Series: The World of Click, 3

Sixth grade buddies Trent and Sawyer bite off more than they can chew when they trick a clever and relentless classmate.

The boys become wrapped up in plotting pranks to submit to an internet contest run by pink-haired Trixie Sampson, a professional skateboarder with a web series called “Trixie’s Tricks.” They pick classmate Natasha as their next target, but the foolishness of that choice quickly becomes clear. Nat enlists their previous victims, even including their own family members, in a nonstop barrage of harmless but rousingly ingenious and messy counter“prankening” at school and at home, which quickly leaves them exhausted, humiliated, and jumping at shadows. So perfectly does Turner capture their haunted expressions in her neatly drawn panels that even readers who are inspired to try a few slime- and glitterfilled hijinks for themselves may well feel sharp twinges of conscience. If not, at least the implicit cautionary note about the hazards of online influencers may be well taken. Better yet, in a final scene following their warring parties’

sincere expressions of regret and a mutual détente, Miller and Canino suggest that the best pranks end not in pain or upset, but in laughter—even from the victim. The cast, depicted in animated and sometimes-dramatic poses to reflect the lively dialogue, is diverse in skin tone.

Lessons to learn, friendships to mend, and “prankening” aplenty to chortle over. (artistic notes) (Graphic fiction. 9-13)

Once for Yes

Millington, Allie | Feiwel & Friends (272 pp.) $17.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9781250326980

This contemporary novel is narrated by an unexpected storyteller: an old apartment building in a gentrifying neighborhood. The run-down, red-brick Odenburgh building chronicles the intertwined stories of its residents as they work to try to save it from demolition. Among the building’s diverse group of tenants is 11-year-old Prue Laroe, a freckle-faced girl with “poufy” and “frizzy” black hair. Prue is mourning the death of Lina, one of her sisters, and carrying unanswered questions about the traumatic accident that took her life. She clings to the building, using one of its landline telephones as a confessional. When the Odenburgh flicks its lights on and off, Prue interprets it as communication from Lina: She believes that her sister wants her to try to save the building. Prue meets and works with Lewis, a lanky boy from across the street who has binoculars, too-short pants, and his own

Essential for all children—and adults—who hope for freedom for all.

secret grief. The building continues to interact with Prue and Lewis, turning off the air conditioning and water and stopping elevators to manipulate people’s movements and bring the quirky (though sometimes caricatured) characters together so the kids can get to know them and persuade them to lend their support. This contemplative story explores themes of community, resilience, and healing through poetic prose that’s infused with heartache and wonder. Neither Prue’s nor Lewis’ racial identities are explicitly stated. A heartfelt story about loss and connection. (Fiction. 8-12)

The Journey of Clementine

Montagnana, Alessandro | Trans. by Cecilia Ross | NubeOcho (40 pp.) | $17.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9788410074422 | Series: Somos8

A firefly finds others of her kind, with help from a kindly youngster with a lantern.

Red-headed, big-eyed Clementine was “born” some distance away from a field densely populated with other fireflies. She looks for but doesn’t see “other glowing specks of light like herself.” She tells a curious moth and grasshopper that she doesn’t know what kind of insect she is. “Maybe,” she speculates, she came from the moon, since she gives off light just like it does. Meanwhile, a light-skinned young girl leaves her house to get a closer look at the flickering lights on a hill. When a hungry bat swoops in to make a meal out of Clementine, the light of the child’s lantern frightens the predator away. Firefly and girl “[gaze] into each other’s eyes, and a tender friendship [lights] up their hearts.” The deepblue background, the light of the moon, night-blooming jasmine blossoms, and the field full of fireflies are pretty, though many of the characters have a fairly generic, wide-eyed look. The narrative, translated from Italian, is filled with sweet sentiments. As an outdoor

adventure, however, it’s slight, lacking enough specificity to be a strong nature story; it’s also low on tension or conflict, making for a less-thansatisfying friendship tale.

A few charming ingredients imperfectly blended. (Picture book. 4-7)

A Rainbow in Your Cloud

Mucciolo, Amina | Illus. by Elle Pierre Scholastic (40 pp.) | $14.99

March 4, 2025 | 9781338792409

Instagram influencer Mucciolo offers an ode to unicorns— and to self-love. Amina, who uses they/them pronouns, doesn’t want to admit that they still like unicorns, though their friends have moved on to new interests. But, with the support of their loving pals, Amina soon realizes that it’s better to embrace their true self. This brief plotline takes place over just a few two-page spreads in the middle of the book; otherwise, there’s no real narrative arc, with most pages devoted to Amina offering a series of affirmations: “Whenever I wear an outfit that makes me feel happy…or braid my hair the way I like, my rainbow glows and grows.” The bright, lively, candy-colored cartoon illustrations are a strength; they’ll draw readers’ attention far more than the words. Still, the book offers much-needed encouragement to readers afraid to let their own rainbows shine; neurodivergent children will feel especially bolstered when Amina describes their tendency to flap their hands when they’re excited. One of the most important lessons occurs when Amina pushes back against the idea of being seen as “a little too much”: “I don’t care because I know I’m just right.” The characters all present Black and have fun, memorable designs, from vibrant hair colors to snazzy clothing patterns. On the final spread, they all appear together, labeled by name. A less-than-compelling story, though the striking art and crucial messages of self-acceptance will strike a chord with many. (Picture book. 4-8)

The Wanting Monster

Murray, Martine | Illus. by Anna Read Enchanted Lion Books (76 pp.)

$19.95 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9781592704194

A monster spreads greed wherever it goes. The Wanting Monster lurks outside a village in the hopes that someone will notice it. The white-furred creature blows a puff of white smoke that attracts the attention of brown-skinned Mr. Banks, who’s sleeping near a stream. Suddenly, Mr. Banks decides to dam up the waterway for his own private pool. Others see this new development and divert parts of the stream for their own purposes, causing it to dry up. After successfully sowing chaos, the Wanting Monster continues its path of destruction, whispering in the ears of other villagers, leading them to hoard all the flowers and even the stars in the sky. The results are barren fields and a land pitched into darkness. Feeling empowered, the Wanting Monster grows more powerful until a villager sings a lullaby, showing the creature the love it’s never experienced. Overcome with emotion, the monster weeps. So do the villagers; they cry enough tears to refill the stream. They then come to their senses and fix their mistakes. This fable teases out the difference between wants and needs and illustrates how excessive desire can lead to heartache. Read’s folkloric art has an ominous quality to it, with skies filled with gray, purple, and black swirls evoking the current climate disaster. The villagers vary in skin tone.

An atmospheric musing on the perils of avarice. (Picture book. 5-9)

For more by Martine Murray, visit Kirkus online.

One Wrong Step

Nielsen, Jennifer A. | Scholastic (336 pp.)

$18.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781338275865

A 14-year-old British boy risks everything on Mount Everest when his father’s expedition is in mortal peril. It’s August 1939, and Atlas Wade and his father are climbing the tallest mountain in the world. Nobody has ever reached the summit of Mount Everest, but Atlas hopes to be among the first. Unfortunately, his father insists he remain at Advanced Base Camp while the adults forge on. The discovery of a German military boot print and a foreign rope adds intrigue, suggesting that the Nazis are attempting to be the first to summit. Then, following Germany’s invasion of Poland, on the same day the British declare war on Germany, an avalanche endangers the climbers. Receiving only static on the radio, Atlas and Maddie, another expedition member’s daughter, attempt to rescue their fathers with help from Chodak Sherpa. When Chodak is injured, Atlas must take the lead to get Chodak, Maddie (who has a terrible fear of heights), and the expedition climbers to safety, even if a Nazi spy may be watching them. Atlas initially feels more like a conduit for conveying nature facts and historical details to readers than an active participant in the events. But as the story progresses and the stakes are raised, both the narrative and Atlas find their interesting, if measured, strides. Western characters present white. A slightly uneven story of daring in the face of daunting odds. (map, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)

Ice Apprentices

North, Jacob | Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781665968720

In the icy land of Tundra, an outcast with a mysterious past enrolls at a school for ice apprentices, where he seeks the truth about his family, fights to prove his worth, and confronts the monstrous dangers threatening the school.

Day after day, white transgender boy Oswin Fields toils away, planting splinters (which grow into logs) and harvesting logs for his harsh and humorless adoptive mother, Lullia. But that’s all a stray like him deserves, or so he’s always been told. Strays are treated as worthless burdens on the true Tundrans, who struggle for survival in their frigid homeland. Oswin expected to spend his whole life working in the fields until the grandmaster of Corridor, a school that teaches Tundrans skills of survival and magic, requests his attendance. Although Oswin is thrilled to join the ice apprentices and reunite with his adoptive brother, the stakes are high—the other students don’t like him, his adoptive family has a dubious legacy, he must pass his exams or be expelled, and monsters from beyond the Tundra are attacking the school. Fantastical mystery, suspenseful intrigue, and looming danger abound in this debut. Oswin, who’s an endearingly quirky and insatiably inquisitive protagonist, has a health condition resembling asthma and is cued as neurodivergent. The characters in the world around Oswin reflect diversity in skin tones, gender identity, and disability. A cliffhanger ending sets up an enticing hook for future installments.

An immersive and page-turning adventure. (map) (Fantasy. 8-12)

Advice on cultivating a positive outlook, the rabbit way.

THE YES BUNNY

The Boy Who Lost His Spark

O’Farrell,

Maggie | Illus. by

| Walker US/Candlewick (112 pp.)

Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini

$18.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9781536233933

Be careful what you claim to disbelieve. It may be listening. Jem has been overflowing with anger ever since his mother moved him and his little sister, Verity, from the city to the country, far from their old life and friends. As his unhappiness mounts, strange things begin happening: Jem discovers his shoes filled with chestnuts; the family’s clothing is shredded. Verity blames a “nouka,” a mysterious being said to live in the nearby hill. Jem’s frustrations build until one day he declares, “I don’t believe in the nouka!” These words trigger the local nouka, a furry black creature who does indeed exist and who likes warm fires and pranks—and who turns its attention to the boy, ramping up the misdeeds. For Jem, accepting his new home means also accepting the existence of the nouka, twin problems for a boy determined to be sad and serious. In this lengthy picture book, delicate watercolors illuminate the quiet beauty of the countryside, imbuing both Jem’s slowly dawning wonder and the nouka’s tiny world with magic and poignance. O’Farrell’s language is marked by elegant turns of phrase, as when Jem is described as feeling “so low and listless, sitting there, as if his insides had been stuffed with damp rags.” The characters present white. This U.K. import closes with music and lyrics to “The Song of the Nouka,” based on the Irish jig “Seanduine Dóite.”

A wise and gentle tale about the necessity of mischief to distract us from ourselves. (Picture book. 5-9)

For more by Maggie O’Farrell, visit Kirkus online.

A warmhearted introduction to the joys of travel.

AT HOME IN A FARAWAY PLACE

The Yes Bunny: 10 Stories About Doing Things Yourself!

Parker, Chris | Illus. by Ella Bailey

Magic Cat (112 pp.) | $19.99

March 4, 2025 | 9781419776915

Advice on cultivating a positive outlook, the rabbit way. Sofi lives in a retro-looking burrow with her patient parents and “baby brotherbunny,” Luka. Daily life has its challenges, and Sofi admits that sometimes she struggles when she’s asked to do things she isn’t in the mood for. But she wants to have a good attitude, and she shows us how she went from being the “No Bunny” to the “Yes Bunny” in 10 brief chapters. The short version: Use your imagination and find the fun in even seemingly boring situations. The stories involve familiar challenges: donning winter clothes, trying new foods, making the bed, taking a bath, and apologizing. Each chapter ends with a handy chart summarizing the Yes Bunny’s steps to positivity. Some of the suggestions won’t work for everyone. It’s lucky that Luka likes lettuce, which inspires an initially reluctant Sofi to finally try it. And Sofi’s too big for her favorite hat, but it now fits her brother, which makes learning to share much easier. But generally, the guidance will apply to most readers. Simple language makes the points clear. Detailed, cozy illustrations are infused with a carroty glow and lettuce-green touches. The book evokes Richard Scarry’s art, while the premise is reminiscent of Scarry’s Pig Will and Pig Won’t characters. The flat dark-outlined shapes recall Dick Bruna’s beloved Miffy, but with huge eyes and paler colors.

A hare-raising guide to getting to yes. (Early graphic fiction. 3-6)

At Home in a Faraway Place

Perkins, Lynne Rae | Greenwillow

Books (128 pp.) | $18.99

Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780063378421

A young traveler finds home in another land. Alongside her grandma, Lissie joins her father on a two-week trip to visit his old friend Raúl in an unnamed Latin American country, referred to as a “faraway place.” Though she knows very little about the world around her, her adventures provide plenty of opportunities to learn and grow, whether through impromptu Spanish lessons from Raúl and a new friend at the park, soccer sessions with neighborhood kids, or a hike up a volcano that “spits out lava and ashes sometimes.” Throughout each brief, delightful chapter, Newbery Medalist Perkins adeptly weaves in bucolic, whimsical black-and-white illustrations—some full page, many in panels—that serve as humorous snapshots, phonetic translations (including a phrase in Kaqchikel, an Indigenous Mesoamerican language), or both. Visits to Mayan pyramids and a bustling, humming mercado make for informative, fun explorations. Lissie even forges a tight bond with a girl named Flory. As her escapades conclude, Lissie feels fully at home in this faraway place. Ending on a wistful note, this leisurely, earnest tale devoted to “tiny friendships” and their cumulative effects emphasizes small moments of bliss and gentle understanding. Lissie appears lightskinned; the friends she meets are darker-hued.

A warmhearted introduction to the joys of travel. (author’s note, Spanish words and phrases that Lissie learns) (Fiction. 8-12)

Baa Haa

Perrott, Audrey | Illus. by Ross Burach

Scholastic (40 pp.) | $18.99

March 4, 2025 | 9781546134039

Laughter isn’t always the best medicine. Babette the sheep’s always giggling and acting silly. She enjoys making others laugh, too, so her pals call her Baa Haa. Babette doesn’t just chuckle when she hears something funny; she laughs when she’s surprised, excited, glad, nervous, or scared—even when she’s in trouble. Unfortunately, masking her discomfort with laughter is giving her a stomachache. She ignores her pain and tries different ploys to feel better. Nothing works. When her pals ask if she’s OK, Babette puts on a brave front but quickly breaks down. With friendly support, Babette’s knot unravels, and she giggles, confessing she’d felt “sheepish” for always concealing her emotions. She’s assured that, among friends, she needn’t pretend: “All feelings are welcome.” Thereafter, Babette always displays her feelings; so do her pals. “Because that’s what true friends do.” This tale should reassure children, though most kids probably won’t need reminders to display emotions; they’re usually transparent about their feelings. Still, youngsters who are reluctant to open up might feel less constrained after reading Babette’s story—and everyone will appreciate the laughter. Adults will have to explain the numerous puns, some based on sheep bleats, such as “baah-bles,” “baah-utiful,” and “Maah-nicures.” The humorous scribbly, cartoony illustrations, starring a googly-eyed all-animal cast, feature onomatopoeic sound effects representing laughter and are set in colored type.

A chuckle-worthy reminder that kids needn’t feel sheepish for showing their vulnerable sides. (Picture book. 4-7)

A stirring testament to the power of books to unite us

all for good.

THE KEEPER OF STORIES

SuperDrew and the Legacy of Donhil Corp

Pierson, BJ | Snowy Wings Publishing (232 pp.) | $10.99 paper | March 25, 2025 9781958051900 | Series: SuperDrew, 3

SuperDrew is back and ready for the final showdown against the Donhil Corporation. Drew and his allies, including his equally nerdy family and his friends—journalist Jazz, programmer Ward, and maker Tay—are facing the terrible reality that they’re the only ones still awake in a world put into a forced sleep by Donhil. They must break into company headquarters to foil the CEO, Chatana Lungowe, who’s imprisoned creative geniuses’ minds for her own selfish ends. Pierson maintains a strong pace through numerous spycraft set pieces, as Drew and company make their way through Donhil, encountering clever traps. The work highlights themes of societal justice and sinister capitalism, and Drew’s expanded cohort also brings a sense of cohesion and teamwork that makes this outing stronger interpersonally than the previous entry. The action still tends toward the repetitive, however, and the explicitly spelled-out lessons and Drew’s inspirational inner monologues feel heavy-handed. Drew, who’s dealing with a broken arm on top of his existing disability, which requires him to use braces, is allowed to perform his superheroics without any moralizing about taking physical risks. Offered the chance to be cured by Ms. Lungowe, he continues to grapple with internalized ableism before reaching a place of disability positivity. In a cast where most

characters present white (Jazz reads Chinese American), the world’s most evil person has names cuing South Asian and African heritage. Returning series fans will appreciate this largely satisfying wrap-up.

(Adventure. 10-14)

Jules, Penny & the Rooster

Pinkwater, Daniel | Tachyon (160 pp.)

$9.99 paper | March 11, 2025 | 9781616964320

A child, a rooster, and a dog who may or may not be a legendary wolf have unusual adventures in an enchanted suburban forest. Middle schooler Jules wins a collie in a newspaper contest. Hardly have the two bonded than they meet several creatures in the nearby woodland: a handsome rooster, a friendly if “pretty spectacularly ugly” witch, some dazzling tiny fairies, and a few other reclusive residents. Jules learns that the woods are about to lose the spell that has kept them protected from the outside world. It seems that a collector of magical artifacts has stolen a vital talisman called the Wise Old Turtle for his private museum. Sure, there’s a prophecy that a sacred rooster, a magic wolf named Hakawakamaka, and who knows, maybe a girl, will help save the forest—but how? Where there’s a will, there’s a way, or so the saying goes, and this snappy “girl and her dog” story zigzags toward a satisfactory resolution. What will stand out for readers is the intimate connection between the doughty narrator and her equally resourceful canine companion. “The big thing,” Jules writes, “is how we loved each other,

totally and completely, also right away and from the beginning.” Characters’ races and ethnicities aren’t mentioned. Fetching and folkloric. (Fantasy. 9-11)

Kirkus Star

The Keeper of Stories

$19.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781665914970

Stories must be preserved at all costs.

In April 1966, a raging fire broke out at the Jewish Theological Seminary on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, threatening to destroy its historic, multilingual, and multidisciplinary library. In what became known as Operation Booklift, religious leaders of various faiths worked tirelessly alongside the diverse community to salvage, clean, repair, and restore the collections. Seventy thousand items were ultimately lost, though miraculously 170,000 books and other materials were rescued. A food scientist proposed freeze-drying the soaked items, drenched from firefighters’ onslaught of water. Then a library volunteer came up with a more doable solution: inserting paper towels between wet pages. The call went out, and volunteers raised the necessary funds to purchase toweling. The urgency of the community is matched by the book’s compelling text. Pritchard’s forceful writing is marked by inspired turns of phrase. A recurring refrain set in blue type—“Keep our stories alive”—is breathlessly addressed to the walls of the library, to the firefighters’ blankets, to the sprays of rushing water, and to the pages themselves. The marvelous illustrations, created with acrylic paints, colored pencil, and collage, are abuzz with spirited, robust movement; Alko’s use of found objects, including what appear to be book excerpts, lends the narrative immediacy. A stirring testament to the power of books to unite us all for good. (about

Pritchard, Caroline Kusin | Illus. by Selina Alko | Simon & Schuster (40 pp.)

the Jewish Theological Seminary Library fire of 1966 , photos, author’s note, key sources) (Informational picture book. 6-9)

Kirkus Star

The Faerie Isle: Tales and Traditions of Ireland’s Forgotten Folklore

Quinn, Síne | Illus. by Dermot Flynn Candlewick (80 pp.) | $18.99 Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781536240719

A collection of Irish myths and legends, some encouraging, most cautionary. Irish folklore is populated by faeries, or “the good people,” as you’d best call them. They include creatures great and small, those of the land and of the sea, those who act as harbingers, and others who frankly just don’t like to be bothered. Each well-researched entry includes a page of general description covering the creature’s historical origins and traditional behaviors and temperament, as well as lessons to be learned, followed by a brief tale. “The Queen’s Shoes” tells of a tiny leprechaun shoemaker who rewards a kindly young shepherd, while “At the Crossroads” centers on a brave young girl’s encounter with the Headless Horseman. Quinn’s writing has a folksy, intimate tone; readers will feel as though they’re huddled by the fireside, listening to a gifted storyteller holding an audience spellbound. Even folklore enthusiasts will find unique depths within each jam-packed entry. Reminiscent of Stephen Gammell’s work, Flynn’s illustrations are grotesquely gorgeous—like the fae they depict, they are texturally rich, glowing with a unique allure and just a touch unsettling. Her use of color and negative space is haunting, well paired with the creatures depicted. Fantastic in all respects. (glossary) (Folktales. 7-13)

Don’t Squish a Slug

Rafik, Yussef | Illus. by Riley Samels Words & Pictures (64 pp.) | $16.99 Feb. 18, 2025 | 9780711293441

From delicate dragonflies to poop-policing dung beetles, bugs are amazing. The title of zoologist Rafik’s book points to humans’ unfortunately common tendency to react with disgust to creepy-crawlies. But this introduction to some compelling critters will have readers rethinking their assumptions. The more than 40 creatures featured are grouped into categories such as “Masters of Disguise” and “Daring Defense.” Some will be familiar, but many, like the owl butterfly, jewel beetle, giraffe weevil, volcano snail, diabolical ironclad beetle, pinktoe tarantula, and web-slinging wasp, are likely to be new to readers. Rafik’s goal of making bugs seem less gross might fail when it comes to the tongue-eating louse (luckily a hazard only to fish) or the devious and aptly named assassin bugs, which use their long, sharp mouths to “stab their prey and suck out their insides.” (Though they’re dangerous to creatures such as ants, they’re essential to ecosystems.) The text is deeply informative; Rafik flavors his facts with fascinating tidbits (e.g., bugs predate dinosaurs) and colloquial expressions (“Yummy!”). Text in a large font introduces each insect, while text in a smaller font text packs in additional data, including definitions. In the accurately detailed, watercolorlike art, these critters come off as mild and personable rather than scary. Entomology looks enticing in this collection of crawlies. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 7-10)

Einstein the Penguin

Rangeley, Iona | Illus. by David Tazzyman Kane Miller (224 pp.) | $16.99 | $7.99 paper | March 4, 2025 | 9781684648573 9781684648504 paper

For another book on bugs, visit Kirkus online.

A penguin on a quest becomes a guest of Imogen and Arthur Stewart and their parents. When the Stewart family of London visits the zoo one December afternoon, Mrs. Stewart extends a tongue-in-cheek invitation to a little penguin to “come and stay with us whenever you like.” Just before supper, Einstein arrives at their house, ringing the doorbell and carrying a small blue rucksack labeled with his name and containing a small supply of fish. Einstein shows the Stewarts Polaroid photos that provide clues to his previous home (Sydney, Australia) and his travels around London. The children and their parents are kind to this unexpected visitor. Nine-year-old Imogen is a reader of detective stories. Six-year-old Arthur is having a hard time making friends at school. After figuring out why Einstein came to London, the two set out with Arthur’s new classmate, Theo, to help him achieve his mission—and they succeed, mostly through observation and smart deduction. Charmingly small, Einstein can fit on a lap or in a handbag, and he even travels to school hidden in Arthur’s backpack. Except for his ability to write, Einstein remains true to his penguin nature. Rangeley’s wry, confiding tone and third-person narration are gently funny, offering a sense both of happy family life and safe adventure. Tazzyman’s loose-lined, goggle-eyed cartoon drawings emphasize the humor. Most characters appear white; Theo has black hair and brown skin.

Exceptionally likable and nicely set up for further escapades. (Fiction. 8-11)

Ready To Smile Again

Reinert, Katie Lee | Illus.

by

Sara Aziz

Gnome Road Publishing (32 pp.)

$18.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9781957655383

After a chipmunk’s home is destroyed, he keeps too many things— and feelings— stored away. Dexter returns to find the tree he lives in toppled over, his possessions tossed around. He begins picking up items—a broken cup, a ripped book—and stuffing them into his cheeks for safekeeping. Naturally, this makes talking difficult, so he keeps his feelings to himself; after all, he’s not in the mood to chat or smile. Friends offer support and ask how he’s doing, but he doesn’t want to risk answering and letting everything tumble out. But eventually, as he thinks about the kindness his pals have shown him, he finds himself smiling, then laughing… and everything he kept inside comes falling out. Reinert offers a literal representation of an abstract concept— bottling everything up after a difficult event—in a way that will hit just right for preschool readers. The silliness of Dexter’s carrying everything around (and spewing it out!) is giggle-inducing, though it also rings true. Caregivers looking for ways to help young children open up will find this book a useful tool. Dexter is an adorable and likable little guy, as are his woodland companions. The sunny illustrations are appropriately sweet, with cozy details: a bluejay diligently helping Dexter sweep, a rabbit friend looking on as a chubby-cheeked Dexter fretfully shops at the market. A sensitive take on learning to open up after weathering hardship. (Picture book. 3-6)

A sensitive take on learning to open up after weathering hardship.

READY TO SMILE AGAIN

The Friendship Guide

Roberts, Jillian | Illus. by Andrea Armstrong | Orca (32 pp.) | $21.95

Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781459839311

On the Last Day of School

Rudd, Maggie C. | Illus. by Taia Morley Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.)

$18.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9780374391454

For more picture books for animal lovers, visit Kirkus online.

What does it mean to be a good pal?

Roberts’ book offers a greatest hits of friendship advice, starting with the golden rule of amity: Be the friend you want to have. Eight more principles follow: Think of others, not just yourself. Be patient and kind. Do the right thing, and help others to do that, too. Make room in your friend group for newcomers. Share, and invite others to play. Don’t name-call, tease, or bully—and protect others from such behaviors. Remember to compromise. Don’t interrupt, and show respect for others’ boundaries. Each rule is followed by a brief scenario (two kids want the same swing; a child notices a new student alone at lunch), a possible resolution, and, when relevant, a question posed to the audience: If there is no one right solution, what would you do? When the fix is obvious, the author expands on the advice. Roberts also addresses the importance of fairness, small gestures, getting adult help with bullies, taking turns, and giving friends space. The situations are relatable, while the writing is direct, not overly pedantic, and suitably engaging for a young audience. Appealing cartoonish watercolorlike illustrations depict a cast diverse in terms of race and ability; one child wears a hijab. Valuable guidance on becoming a better friend, with solid insights and concrete examples. (author’s note, activities) (Informational picture book. 3-6)

School’s (almost) out for summer! There’s no shortage of books designed to help prepare youngsters for their first day of school, but far fewer celebrate the end of the year. Here we see the bustle and buzz of a day both ordinary and extraordinary as a classroom of children get ready for summer break. Though the youngsters follow familiar routines—awakening with the ringing of an alarm clock, eating breakfast, boarding the bus—they’re greeted by balloons and a banner at school. Readers are invited to reminisce about the past year: “You remember how nervous / and excited you felt. / Now you have a whole year of learning under your belt.” While the rhyme scheme is uneven, the images and words work well together to present a joyfully realistic representation of the cheerful chaos of early-elementary education. Particularly effective are the illustrations that juxtapose the normalcy of a school day with the transience of the end of the school year: “The bulletin boards are emptied. / The art’s taken down,” but the students still have work to do! Kids who haven’t yet experienced the last day of school will appreciate a glimpse at what they might expect, while more seasoned children will enjoy looking back on hugs and field days past. Morley’s soft-hued illustrations depict a loving, diverse community. An upbeat tribute to the culmination of a busy school year. (Picture book. 3-7)

Hugs Are (Not) for Everybody

Russell, Ella

| Illus. by

Udayana Lugo

Owlkids Books (24 pp.) | $18.95

March 18, 2025 | 9781771476393

A child learns a lesson in bodily autonomy at a costume party. Several friends gather to celebrate a birthday. A child dressed as a magician offers the others hugs. Some happily accept, but three kids make it clear that they prefer waving, highfiving, or exchanging secret handshakes instead. The would-be hugger makes mistakes along the way—initially assuming some children will welcome an embrace—but is given multiple opportunities to learn amid this loving, supportive environment. Together, the kids decide on the best way to end their secret handshake—with birthday cake, of course—and the book concludes with a sound message of consent: “All we have to do is ask.” Important concepts are presented in simple, exuberant language, with just a few words per page, making this a strong read-aloud option for young children. The full-color images are dominated by pink, teal, and gold, setting a delightfully festive air; a cat, a rabbit, and a mouse appear on most pages—fun easter eggs that kids will enjoy pointing out. Fans of fantasy creatures will appreciate the costumes, which include a fairy, a mermaid, a unicorn, and a dragon. The children are diverse in skin tone and hair texture; one youngster uses a wheelchair. A sweet, simple introduction to consent. (Picture book. 3-7)

Giraffe, Flamingo, Mouse, Cheetah, Elephant, and Snake gaze at the blank pages of a book. “What should we do?” Giraffe asks. Snake suggests writing a story. It’s a daunting prospect—the blank page holds terror even for animals—but all agree to collaborate. The pals brainstorm words (“KINDNESS!” “PEANUTS!”) before telling a story, sentence by sentence. Their tale follows a courageous Mouse, who sails off in search of a mountain made from cheese, and though Cheetah points out that Mouse doesn’t know how to sail, Snake wisely replies, “Anything can happen in a story.” The left side of each spread depicts the friends as they discuss and critique various plot points, while the right side shows the developing story, which often requires audience participation. Readers are asked to shake the book to make an underground volcano erupt and to tilt it to help Elephant swim faster, and it’s the audience’s actions that bring their story to a climax. Or does it? Set against stark white pages, the endearing, big-eyed animals all have a stuffed-animal sweetness, while color-coded speech bubbles and inspired page layouts make following the narrative easy. Ryland offers would-be writers enough structure to get started while also giving them space to flex their creative muscles— and permission to get goofy. Both an uproarious read-aloud and an entertaining primer for aspiring authors. (Picture book. 4-7)

The Gift of Eid

Giraffe’s Book Is Missing a Story

Ryland, DK | Page Street (40 pp.)

$18.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9798890031631

In this follow-up to Giraffe Is Too Tall for This Book (2023), five characters go in search of a story.

Safadi, Shifa Saltagi | Illus. by Aaliya Jaleel | Holiday House (40 pp.) | $18.99 Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780823455652

In this retelling of O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” a child searches for the perfect Eid present. Yasmine is preoccupied as Mama shops for za’atar and sfeeha at Souq al-Hamidiyeh in Damascus. The

marketplace’s arched ceiling reminds Yasmine of Baba, who used to pretend the openings were twinkling stars; he traced constellations while Mama shopped. But now that Baba’s no longer here, “they look like empty holes.” Yasmine muses on the perfect gift to make Mama smile again— and decides upon a heart-shaped jewelry box, just big enough for Mama to store her bracelet in. Unfortunately, Yasmine doesn’t have enough money, so the child sells a beloved gold chain. After prayers at the Masjid al-Umawi, Yasmine excitedly hands Mama the gift; Mama in turn gives Yasmine a heart-shaped locket. Just as Yasmine sold the chain to buy the jewelry box, Mama sold her bracelet to buy Yasmine’s present. They realize that their love for each other is the greatest gift of all. Incorporating the sights and sounds of a bustling Syrian market, this charming tale is rich in cultural details. Relying on repeated references to hearts, Safadi tells a story of loss, woven with the healing power of love. Jaleel’s arabesque illustrations showcase a lively marketplace that contrasts with the simplicity and tranquility of the mosque.

A tender tale of love, sacrifice, and hope. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)

Book Comes Home: A Banned Book’s Journey

Sanders, Rob | Illus. by Micah Player Random House (40 pp.) | $18.99

March 25, 2025 | 9780593813683

A library book loves being checked out by readers, until one day she finds herself unceremoniously banished. Book enjoys an idyllic life, bringing joy to countless children. Then, a sinister unnamed someone, concealed by dark shadows, sends her to the Banned Book Closet to languish without readers—a thought that sends “shivers up Book’s

spine.” But a group of dedicated readers organize (and presumably protest), and Book is brought back out to the light of the library. Written by “A. Person,” Book has a lavendergray cover and a perky nose and proudly displays a book award seal. The illustrations use light and shadow to great effect: The opening pages are full of vibrant colors, while the Banned Book Closet is drawn in a wash of dark-blue grays. With an appropriately light hand, Sanders shows the power of organizing and the value of the freedom to read, though readers may emerge with questions about why books are censored; adults should be prepared to offer context. The author’s note provides a brief history of book censorship. In addition, Sanders includes a glossary of related words (though not all appear in the book) and a list of resources. Human characters are diverse in terms of age, skin tone, and size.

A simple, child-friendly exploration of book banning. (Picture book. 5-7)

Afloat

Saunders, Kirli | Illus. by Freya Blackwood

Levine Querido (32 pp.) | $18.99

March 4, 2025 | 9781646145072

In this Australian import, an elder urges the community to lean on Indigenous wisdom in a changing world. The older adult and a child wade into a rushing stream, peering curiously at the life around them: “Roam the water with me. We are here to learn.” As the narrative progresses with a series of similar invitations, the lens widens to include more of the pair’s community and their environment. Over time, construction machinery and debris appear. Amid landscapes of urban decay, Saunders (Gunai) uses weaving as a metaphor for communitybuilding, demonstrating that Indigenous knowledge can be a source

A briskly paced, amusing fantasy adventure with light characterization.

THE HOUSE AT THE EDGE OF MAGIC

of connection and power as we work toward creating a better world. One spread is dominated by the snarl of a vacant lot crowded with rubbish and a construction crane, but the richly textured images draw readers’ eyes to the edge of the page, where a group of neighbors harvest rushes growing on the side of a road. Blackwood’s art underscores hope and opportunities to help cultivate the land. Diverse community members work together to gather natural materials, process fiber, and weave vibrant textiles, and as the book reaches a heartwarming conclusion, their vision is at last realized. Though the complexities of Saunders’ metaphor may be lost on the youngest readers, all will feel empowered by her overarching message, summed up in her final words: “We are here to fly, here to shape this world together.”

Reassurance for little ones facing an uncertain world. (author’s and illustrator’s notes) (Picture book. 4-8)

The House at the Edge of Magic

Sparkes, Amy | Illus. by Ben Mantle McElderry (240 pp.) | $18.99

March 18, 2025 | 9781665971874

Series: The House at the Edge of Magic, 1

“Life don’t bring you strawberries.” Nine is an orphaned thiefling who roams the streets looking for easy marks to help her earn her keep with the Faginlike gang-master, Pockets. One day, she manages to steal an ornament

that is, in fact, the bewitched home of the pretentious High Wizard, Flabberghast, who’s been trapped inside and drained of his power following a spat with a witch. This confinement, along with sundry other magical inconveniences, makes life vexing for the house’s other occupants, including gentle troll housekeeper Eric and the alchemist spoon who’s aptly named Dr. Spoon. Nine agrees to help them escape in exchange for a jewel that would change her fortunes. The unlikely quartet must break the curse before the clock strikes 15—or the house will shrink until everyone within ceases to exist. Readers seeking a plot-driven story that moves at a steady clip will enjoy this work: The anthropomorphic house has an entertaining, fun-house feeling with surprises behind every door—and even magicked into doorknobs. The charming chapter-header spot-art illustrations tease events in the adventurous plot. This series opener, which works as a stand-alone, emphasizes magical elements to a point that leaves little room for the characters’ emotional arcs, rendering the team dynamic between Nine and the house’s residents feeling shaky; a supporting character’s subplot is also underdeveloped. Human characters read white.

A briskly paced, amusing fantasy adventure with light characterization. (Fantasy. 9-12)

For more middlegrade fantasy, visit Kirkus online.

The Pinchers and the Curse of the Egyptian Cat

Sparring, Anders | Illus. by Per Gustavsson

Trans. by Julia Marshall | Gecko Press (92 pp.) | $18.99 | March 4, 2025 9798765668672 | Series: The Pinchers, 3

Will Theo ever become a criminal? A family story, an ancient curse, and a journey through the zoo may hold the answers.

Theo Pincher’s the only honest member in a family of crooks. When he serves as lookout for his thieving family members, his stomach knots in anxiety—much to their disappointment. After he and his sister, Ellen, wander into an antiques shop and break a statue of the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet, they learn that they may have unleashed an ancient family curse. Turns out, their globe-trotting ancestor Pick once swiped that same statue, which was guarding Tuttan-K’s tomb, and found himself cursed—sadly, he was unable ever to steal again. Now Ellen has turned honest, while Theo’s becoming a cunning young delinquent. The shop’s owner, Anne Tique, gives the family a letter hidden inside the broken statue: A series of mysterious clues will show them how to undo the curse. Following the clues, the Pinchers sneak into the local zoo that night, where they must contend with monkeys and a stern zookeeper who forces trespassers to spend the night in the poisonous spider exhibit. Will Theo ever return to his old self again? Laced with dry humor, this wildly fantastical, gripping narrative zips along to a satisfying conclusion.

Gustavsson’s atmospheric, actionpacked, full-page images and vignettes bring to life both thrills and hilariously wacky antics. Most characters are light-skinned. Another lively, funny jaunt with this unforgettable family. (Chapter book. 6-10)

Riding Through Rice Fields: A Trip to the Philippines

Sterling, Michelle | Illus. by Bianca Austria | Viking (32 pp.) | $18.99

March 4, 2025 | 9780593623077

Mateo glimpses another side of Dad as the two return to the Philippines for a family reunion.

Living in the city, Mateo and Dad “look at each other, but we don’t really see each other.” Yet the young narrator hopes for a deeper relationship when the pair arrive in the Philippines: “I see something in his eyes that I’ve never seen before— adventure.” As the two set off on bicycles, Dad shows Mateo the beautiful vistas of his homeland: “mountains that look like they’re made of chocolate and…a jewel of a turquoise river.” All are artfully brought to life by layered bright lines, shapes, and textures. The gentle rhythm of the first-person narrative continues as Dad explains the tradition of bayanihan—“coming together as a community to help a fellow neighbor in need”—after the two help a group of people who are literally moving a house. The duo are then on the receiving end of bayanihan when Mateo’s flat bike tire is secretly fixed by a stranger. Finally,

Mateo glimpses another side of Dad as the two return to the Philippines.

Mateo meets extended family and learns stories about Dad from titas and titos (“He’s mischievous and loves adventure. Like me”), finding a sense of joy that lingers long after they leave the Philippines. The alluring illustrations pair well with the uplifting message of building community—the image of Mateo, Dad, and their neighbors planting a garden together back home brings the tale to a warm conclusion.

A tender tale of family, culture, and connection. (Picture book. 5-8)

The Water’s Call

Stewner, Tanya | Trans. by Matthew O. Anderson | Arctis Books (320 pp.)

$18.00 | March 11, 2025

9781646900435 | Series: Alea Aquarius, 1

A summer sailboat adventure helps a girl discover her mermaid heritage in this translated German import. Alea has grown up believing she has cold urticaria, an allergy to cold water, which has left her terrified of exposure to the ocean, lakes, rain, and even glasses of cold water. But after her foster mother has a heart attack and ends up hospitalized, Alea is wandering around forlorn when she encounters the Alpha Cru, a trio of youths who live aboard an old sailboat. Assuming the name “Alea Aquarius,” she joins them as they make their way from Hamburg, Germany, to the Dutch port town of Renesse, seeking information about Alea’s mysterious biological mother. They play rock music on street corners for money and add a fifth crew member with magical abilities. Eventually, Alea learns that her allergy was a ruse that hid her true identity as a mergirl. With its brisk pacing and the kids’ quaint, old-fashioned dialogue (“Goody gumdrops,” “Alea told me you all were strange birds…But only now do I understand what she meant”), this episodic series opener is a fun family read-aloud that’s

reminiscent of the Boxcar Children series. The young people, who range in age from roughly 9 to about 18, have been through traumatic experiences, which are handled with a light touch; they largely come across as emotionally unscathed. Most characters present white; one crew member, who’s from France, is cued Black. Charming, if slightly twee. (Fantasy. 10-14)

So That Happened… But Maybe You Already Knew That

Sussman, Tami | Walker Books

Australia (272 pp.) | $18.99 March 4, 2025 | 9781761600517

Eleven-year-old

Natalie Sellek, nicknamed “Nutty” for her fondness for Nutella, faces both an upcoming bat mitzvah and serious upheaval in her suburban Australian life.

Natalie’s family is struggling financially, and she’s been growing apart from her one-time best friend, Avi Gluck. Natalie shares interests (Harry Styles, The Real Housewives) with other girls at her private Jewish school, and she’s unsure how to handle her classmates’ bullying responses to Avi’s gender nonconformity, especially when they come from new friend and queen bee, Shayna. Natalie’s favorite aunt, Sarah, who’s queer, is grappling with depression, and Bubi, her grandmother (a caustic Holocaust survivor), is distressed about moving to an assisted living facility. Debut author Sussman resolves most of Natalie’s challenges rosily, though not without moments of anxiety for the earnest protagonist, including moving house because her parents can’t afford the mortgage, scaling back her bat mitzvah celebrations, and anticipating attending public school. A central relationship

conflict is solved too easily, in a way that feels tied to underdeveloped characterization. Bubi stands out for her resistance to the book’s overall optimism: The complex expressions of her trauma and her discontented personality (devoted but never warm) provide an astute portrait of a vanishing demographic. Most characters are Jewish and present white; Avi is biracial (her father is implied white, and her mother, who converted to Judaism, is Chinese Australian).

A heartfelt, if slightly uneven, portrayal of managing challenges in early adolescence. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)

River of Spirits

Targosz, Shana | Aladdin (432 pp.)

$18.99 | March 25, 2025 9781665957632 | Series: The Underwild, 1

In a world based on Greek mythology, a 12-year-old aspires to be a Ferryer of the dead but gets off track when she meets a Living girl who’s found her way into the Underworld.

All Senka knows is her existence on an island in the middle of the Acheron River, “smack between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead,” where she’s the ward of Charon, the Ferryer of souls. Her teacher is an enormous raven named Mortimer. After Senka, who presents white, learns the Rules for Ferryers, Charon agrees to her repeated requests and starts training her to become a Ferryer. But when an

emergency leads to Senka’s being left alone, she disobeys Charon’s explicit orders, takes the boat out on her own—and quickly learns that ferrying souls is far more complicated than she realized. She encounters dark-haired, brownskinned Poppy, whose “edges are crisp”—she’s a Living girl who will sacrifice anything to find Joey, her younger brother who died. As Senka tries to convince Poppy to return to the Shore of the Living, the two get stuck in the Underwild, a “lawless place where chaos reigns” that’s filled with innumerable dangers and shrouded in secrets. Senka’s lively first-person narration relates the unexpected friendship that forms through her shared adventures with Poppy as they face mortality and the unknown. Debut author Targosz offers readers a meaningful exploration of grief and its impact on those left behind.

A beautiful, moving mythological adventure. (Fantasy. 9-13)

Alice Éclair, Spy Extraordinaire:

A Recipe for Trouble

Taylor, Sarah Todd | Nosy Crow (224 pp.)

$17.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9798887771106

Series: Alice Éclair, Spy Extraordinaire, 1

A young pastry chef turned spy in mid-1930s Paris boards a luxury train in order to steal papers from an enemy agent. Thirteen-yearold Alice Éclair is an accomplished pâtissière, creating cakes and pastries

A heartfelt portrayal of managing challenges in early adolescence.

in her mother’s pâtisserie. She’s also been receiving mysterious puzzles, codes, and sets of instructions in the mail. Someone is training her to be a spy—and she eventually deduces that it’s her uncle Robert, who was believed to have drowned in the Seine two years ago. Now, at his request, Alice takes on a dangerous mission, boarding the luxurious Sapphire Express in hopes of stopping a German spy. She balances her pastry duties with her spying— somewhat conveniently at times. On the train she encounters an Englishwoman journalist, a pair of American jazz musicians, and a professor and his teenage daughter from England. Alice is clever, plucky, and accomplished, but a surprising twist reveals that, despite her uncle’s advice to “trust no one,” she may have made an error in judgment. Relying on her maman’s motto, “nothing is ever wasted and nothing cannot be saved,” brave, scrappy Alice refuses to give up on a mission whose critical importance becomes clear to her the more clues she uncovers during her dangerous and suspenseful journey through France. Has all the elements of a marvelous story, including a clever, likable young hero with a strong moral compass. (maps, author’s note, glossary) (Historical adventure. 9-13)

You’re a Poet: Ways To Start Writing Poems

Taylor, Sean | Illus. by Sam Usher Candlewick (72 pp.) | $18.99

March 4, 2025 | 9781536239331

Taylor weaves lessons on writing verse into several stories about a young pig. In five lighthearted tales, Piglet learns what poems are, then discovers ideas for constructing them based on observation and imagination. Each of Piglet’s adventures concludes with more information on the kind

A pastry chef boards a luxury train to steal papers from an enemy agent.

ALICE ÉCLAIR,

SPY EXTRAORDINAIRE

of poem he’s learned to write, as well as tips for readers. In the first story, Piglet and his mom enjoy a hilly hike. When Piglet drops a stone in a puddle, words like sunshiny and sploshing splash out. When he recites them, his mom exclaims, “Piglet… that’s a poem!” After several more word bursts occur, Mom emphasizes that poems contain a poet’s “true words.” Taylor then introduces a mapping technique for arraying descriptive words around a subject. In the next tale, Piglet accompanies his best friend, Squirrel, on a family vacation to the beach. The ocean is thunderous on a wild, windy day, then quietly calm the next. The friends think of metaphors to describe the sea on each day, correctly speculating that they’ve created a poem. Taylor’s ensuing lesson, “A Comparing Poem,” helps readers identify two opposite qualities, then encourages them to think up four metaphors for each. Subsequent sections introduce personification (“A Making-a-Person-Out-ofSomething Poem”) and direct address (“An I-Would-Give-You Poem”). Usher’s watercolor illustrations provide charming details for both Piglet’s lively excursions and the clearly expressed, jargon-free writing exercises.

Appealing pictures, an engaging throughline, and solid guidance will inspire young poets.

(Informational picture book. 5-8)

For

Infinity’s Secret

Tsang, Katie & Kevin Tsang | Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) | $18.99 | March 25, 2025 9781665962513 | Series: Dragon Force, 1

L ance Lo, a 12-year-old British boy living in New London, seeks his dream of forming a heart bond with a dragon. Ever since the Great Collapse five years ago, “when the Dragon Realm fell into the Human Realm,” dragons and people have coexisted in the New World. Lance, who’s Chinese and white, has been invited to attend Camp Claw, a prestigious training center for Dragon Force, an elite unit of humans and dragons who keep the world safe. Surprisingly, his sister, Zoe, who’s only 10, is invited, too. The Dragon Force dragons have heart-bonded with humans, awakening their special powers. Because Zoe already bonded with a dragon, whom she names Violet, before camp began, Lance is left feeling even more anxious about whether he’ll find his own dragon. The siblings quickly make new friends, including Bea Garcia, who’s from Argentina. On the other hand, campmate Arthur Royden, whose family owns a major technology company, is less friendly and appears to be hiding something. While Lance does eventually find a heart bond with a dragon, Infinity, the pair’s special abilities are slow to surface. Threatening monster attacks are also on the rise, straining Dragon Force’s resources and hinting at a larger evil force at play.

more poetry, visit Kirkus online.

Two lonely 11-year-olds in Hull bond over their love of animals.

NORAH’S ARK

While the worldbuilding is intriguing and the plot moves quickly, the writing is a bit flat, and the villain is revealed suddenly, undermining the chance to build suspense. A solid dragon-filled series opener. (map) (Fantasy. 8-12)

Detective Stanley and the Mystery at the Museum

Tunnicliffe, Hannah | Illus. by Erica Harrison | Flying Eye Books (64 pp.) $12.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781838742119

A canine gumshoe has a case to solve.

The newly retired Detective Stanley has just sat down to a stack of fresh pancakes when a mysterious letter arrives. The director of Narlybone Museum, Jane Rosenbaum the cheetah, needs his help with a theft. He heads over to find the museum in disarray, and an early piece of evidence points to Stanley as the thief. He’s soon arrested and taken to prison. Stanley must crack the case—his very freedom depends on it. This Poirot-esque pooch quietly uses his powers of observation to gather evidence until the climactic scene in which he elegantly ties everything together. Bustling, precisely constructed panels give the settings plenty of life and personality. The museum is full of homages to well-known artists; a work of art by “Bleat” Mondrian is an especially winsome addition. The scenes are bursting with other eye-catching

details, particularly those in the prison: A penguin inmate can be seen giving a bear roommate a heart tattoo, while in another cell, a lion lifts weights. Like any good mystery, this one contains plenty of hints for readers to notice, especially on a reread. Spiteful Superintendent Shiro, who’s long resented Stanley, helps stack the deck against our clever hero in an almost cheerfully challenging way. The book concludes with some context about oil paintings, playfully presented inside modernist rectangles of color. The arrival of a plucky new detective on the scene is cause for celebration. (profile on Piet Mondrian, teaser for sequel) (Graphic fiction. 6-9)

Steve L. McEvil and the Twisted Sister

Turnbloom, Lucas | Colors by Marc LaPierre & Lucas Turnbloom | Crown (256 pp.) | $14.99 | March 11, 2025 9780593649589 | Series: Steve L. McEvil, 3

Villains both villainous and not so much square off against would-be galactic conqueror Perses the Destroyer in this Monty Python –style trilogy closer.

The rampant snark and farting of previous episodes continue into a climactic face-off in a garbage dump. The members of the lightskinned McEvil clan—newly reformed villain wannabe Steve, sporting his trademark bright orange quiff; fiendish, pink-haired

little sister, Eve; and retired archvillain grandpa Tiberius— reunite with a coterie of reluctant and/or inept allies to exchange tart ripostes while watching giant robots battle. A preliminary bout with the outsize foe on planet Malum dishes up more occasions for snappy dialogue. Robot: “Beneath the armor lies a being so frightening, to look upon me would mean certain death! ” Steve: “Sounds like my dad in the morning.” Along with all the satisfying arm-lopping and mighty blaster bolts, Turnbloom treats readers to classic burns (“Hey! You’re their little magic lackey, right?” “Sidekick . The word is ‘sidekick’”) as well as a profusion of powerful poots and prodigious plot twists, all leading to a heartwarming ending. The vibrantly colored art emphasizes the characters’ exaggerated facial expressions, particularly their highly emotive eyes. A final set of drawing lessons caps this slap-happy finale. Blasts its way to a literally disarming finish. (Graphic fantasy. 10-13)

Norah’s Ark

Williamson, Victoria | Neem Tree Press (304 pp.) | $14.95 paper March 4, 2025 | 9781911107996

Two lonely 11-year-olds in Hull, a city in the north of England, bond over their love of animals. Now that his leukemia’s in remission, Adam desperately wants to return to school and be able to swim again, but his protective mother keeps him close and isolated. Norah and her intermittently employed father have been dealing with housing insecurity; they live with the fear that social services might put Norah in foster care. Their current housing requires them to be out

during the day, so she spends her weekends riding her bike in the park. One day, Adam and Norah meet thanks to a nest of orphaned baby birds that they’ve both been keeping an eye on, and they join forces to protect the fledglings. A friendship quickly blooms between the two, who have a hunger for connection and a shared interest in saving animals in distress. The tension ratchets up when the city floods, and the two friends try to rescue the stray animals—a dog, cat, and kittens—they’ve been helping. Through her leads’ accessible, compelling, first-person narration, Williamson authentically explores the way social class differences have shaped the young people’s experiences. Norah’s father, a builder who lost his job, must frequently make tough choices to secure the services they need; meanwhile, Adam’s family can afford a cleaner and a private tutor. Norah, who presents white, has a learning disability; Adam is cued Black.

A touching, nuanced story with engaging characters that gently explores pressing themes. (Fiction. 8-12)

The Ghosts of Pandora Pickwick

Wolff, Christina | Trans. by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp | Arctis Books (256 pp.) | $16.00 March 4, 2025 | 9781646900466

A curious girl explores her strong connection to the spirit world in this translated German import set in England. Mia Jones’ life is full of mystery. She feels less at home with her adoptive parents than she does with her aunt Harriet, her adoptive mom’s sister. Mia loves spending time at Harriet’s dusty old shop, Pandora’s Antiques, which was named after Mia’s late grandmother, Pandora Pickwick. When her parents take off

A curious girl explores her strong connection to the spirit world.

THE GHOSTS OF PANDORA PICKWICK

to travel around the U.S. for their shoelace business, Mia persuades them to let her stay with Aunt Harriet. The shop, whose aisles are crammed with curios, is also, as Mia discovers, “a placement agency for ghosts” in need of new homes. Soon, unlike most people, Mia is able to see the ghosts in broad daylight. She befriends a spectral boy named Alistair, and together they experiment with the thin line between the human and spirit dimensions. But the deeper Mia dives into the spirit world, the more complicated and exciting things get: Vicious worms prey on unlucky ghosts, an ominous figure with a noose haunts the corners of Mia’s vision, and Pickwick ancestor Sir Paxton Blake plans his 400th birthday party—with a special role for Mia. Following some pace-slowing exposition, the story ramps up into a flurry of action and adventure, stretching the imagination and hurtling headlong toward an eerie, exciting resolution. The phrase “real parents” is repeatedly used to refer to white-presenting Mia’s birth parents. Unevenly paced yet satisfyingly spooky in the end. (Paranormal. 8-13)

How To Spot a Mermaid

Yolen, Jane | Illus. by Sally Deng

Chronicle Books (40 pp.) | $17.99 April 29, 2025 | 9781452182735

Finding these underwater creatures requires patience and a bit of luck.

An unseen narrator notes that mermaids

might dwell in an ocean, a lake, a river, a stream, a reservoir, or even a puddle. As a child gathers binoculars and a field guide, the text warns, “Mermaids are quite shy, / and they don’t / make friends easily.” The narrator keeps up a tongue-in-cheek tone, advising the light-skinned, dark-haired child to “pack a package of Goldfish crackers” to share with the mermaid. Brisk directions such as where to sit alternate with more subtle, speculative musings. If you see a water ripple, it might be a wave, a fish, insects, “or a shark. / Or a whale. // But it could be a mermaid.” While Yolen drolly avoids overpromising, she does ponder the prospect of friendship with a mermaid, who may “sit beside you on the rock” and “speak to you, finger to finger, / the way mermaids talk / beneath the sea. / Or…simply / dive back under the water / with a splash of her tail.” After all, “Friendship is a long promise. / It starts with a glance and grows.” Even if this creature’s not ready for that, “you will still have seen a mermaid. // And she will have seen you.” Deng’s lovely pictures depict diverse mermaids in flowing, sea-green swaths, swimming, diving, and even waving to a potential (human) friend.

A sweet addition to mermaid lore. (Picture book. 5-9)

For more by Jane Yolen, visit Kirkus online.

2025 YOUNG ADULT SPRING PREVIEW

A hallmark of YA is fearlessness, and the titles in our spring 2025 preview exemplify how, even in a climate of hostility toward creative expression, authors of teen literature refuse to back down. They go to daring places, engaging unflinchingly with the passion and intensity of adolescence while honoring the art of storytelling. Whether you’re reading fiction or nonfiction, ideas alone aren’t enough; gripping narratives like these shape minds and hearts and have true staying power.

Under the Same Stars

Bray, Libba | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (480 pp.)

$24.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780374388942

A breathtaking journey that will leave a lasting impression on readers’ minds and hearts.

Interabled: True Stories About Love and Disability From Squirmy & Grubs and Other Interabled Couples

Burcaw, Shane & Hannah Burcaw

Roaring Brook Press (288 pp.) | $19.99

Jan. 14, 2025 | 9781250620712

A welcoming and inclusive celebration of love.

Hangry Hearts

Chen, Jennifer | Wednesday Books (320 pp.) | $13.00 paper March 18, 2025 | 9781250374400

A delectable treat handmade with love.

Huda F Wants To Know?

Fahmy, Huda | Dial Books (224 pp.)

$24.99 | $17.99 paper | April 1, 2025

9780593855614 | 9780593855621 paper

An uplifting, insightful model for positive change.

The Red Car to Hollywood

Liu, Jennie | Carolrhoda Lab (256 pp.)

$19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781728493213

Charming and informative.

A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe

Browne, Mahogany L. | Crown (160 pp.)

$19.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9780593486474

Heavy, important, powerful and evergreen; remembers kids during the time when the world stopped.

True Life in Uncanny Valley

Caletti, Deb | Labyrinth Road (416 pp.)

$19.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9780593708613

An at times heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful story about chosen family.

I Am the Swarm

Chewins, Hayley | Viking (336 pp.)

$19.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9780593623862

A beautiful, introspective slow burn of a book.

A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel

Le Guin, Ursula K. | Adapt. by Fred Fordham | Illus. by Fred Fordham

Clarion/HarperCollins (288 pp.)

$26.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9780063285767

A beloved cornerstone of the genre brought vividly to life through striking illustrations.

When We Ride

Ogle, Rex | Norton Young Readers (336 pp.)

$18.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9781324052821

Achingly, beautifully written.

A Touch of Blood

Patel, Sajni | Rick Riordan

Presents/Disney (416 pp.) | $18.99

Feb. 25, 2025 | 9781368098779

A riveting companion novel that will leave readers eager for more.

Fable for the End of the World

Reid, Ava | Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.)

$19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9780063211551

A thrilling, page-turning must-read: prescient and necessary, impressive and disturbing.

Old as Stone, Hard as Rock: Of Humans and War

Sanna, Alessandro | Trans. by Ammiel Alcalay | Unruly (184 pp.)

$34.95 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781592704217

A haunting, poetic visual interpretation of one of humanity’s existential dilemmas.

All Better Now

Shusterman, Neal | Simon & Schuster (528 pp.) | $21.99

Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781534432758

A thought-provoking and grimly enjoyable tale exploring a strange future.

Honeysuckle and Bone

Tobias, Trisha | Sweet July/Zando (320 pp.)

$19.99 | Jan. 14, 2025 | 9781638931027

A deliciously dark and mysterious debut.

Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights

Ed. by Pérez, Ashley Hope | Illus. by Debbie Fong | Holiday House (304 pp.)

$19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9780823458301

An empowering and critically timely blueprint for action.

When the Bones Sing

Sain, Ginny Myers | Putnam (352 pp.)

$19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9780593625484

Gripping and intensely atmospheric.

Ravencave

Sedgwick, Marcus | Union Square & Co. (120 pp.) | $8.99 paper

Jan. 14, 2025 | 9781454958574

Series: Everyone Can Be a Reader

Gently spooky suspense grounded in social themes that will engage reluctant readers.

Cope Field

Simpson, T.L. | Flux (272 pp.) | $14.99 paper | April 22, 2025 | 9781635831054

A wise, emotionally rich tale of a young man finding his way through family trauma.

(S)Kin

Zoboi, Ibi | Versify/HarperCollins (400 pp.)

$19.99 | Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780062888877

A vividly creative, heart-pounding poetic journey infused with Caribbean folklore.

Young Adult

MUST-READ SPRING HIGHLIGHTS

SPRING IS A TIME for renewal and anticipation, and this year, when it comes to teen literature, we have much to look forward to. Below are five books that each bring something fresh and exciting to the table, whether in subject matter, form, or voice: a nearly wordless picture book by one of Italy’s foremost illustrators, a celebrated author’s fantasy debut, a verse novel exploring boys’ emotional lives through a friendship that’s at a crossroads, a frank and much-needed graphic novel delving into mental health in a Muslim family and community, and a heartfelt story that reminds readers that money and reputation can’t protect teens from harmful home lives. Each of these books also has value and strong appeal for adult readers, especially those who

parent or work with adolescents, whether as a springboard for conversation or a way to gain insight into their concerns.

Old as Stone, Hard as Rock: Of Humans and War written and illustrated by Alessandro Sanna; trans. by Ammiel Alcalay (Unruly, Feb. 4): Readers who pick up this exquisite visual meditation on war will immediately notice the pages’ beautifully tactile nature; their heft and texture add depth to Sanna’s rich, vibrant paintings. Hands accustomed to plastic devices will engage with this volume in ways reminiscent of both the intensely physical nature of early childhood reading and the bygone days of printing on cotton rag paper.

(S)Kin by Ibi Zoboi (Versify/HarperCollins, Feb. 11): The latest from Haitian

American Zoboi, a Coretta Scott King Author Award winner, is a riveting contemporary fantasy in verse that follows two Black teen girls, both living in Brooklyn but coming from disparate worlds. Caribbean folklore— particularly stories of the soucouyant, or skin-shedding witch—is woven into a deeply moving exploration of anger, magic, colorism, oppression, kinship, skinship—and hope.

When We Ride by Rex Ogle (Norton Young Readers, March 25): Prolific, creative, much-lauded author Ogle offers readers a heart-wrenching, unforgettable verse novel on a topic that’s too rarely given serious treatment in YA: loving friendship between boys. Over the course of senior year, longtime best friends Diego “Benny” Benevides and Lawson Pierce, who

both live in grinding poverty, find themselves on wildly different trajectories as Lawson deals drugs and Benny aims for college.

Huda F Wants To Know? by Huda Fahmy (Dial, April 1): This third entry in National Book Award finalist Fahmy’s graphic novel series about hijabi teen Huda is another masterful blend of humor, empowerment, cultural specificity, and universal emotional truths. Huda, who’s dealing with the stress of junior year in high school, is shocked to learn her parents are divorcing. This sensitive, informative, and reassuring treatment of mental health struggles will resonate widely.

Cope Field by T.L. Simpson (Flux, April 22): This unflinching and highly engaging sophomore novel by Arkansas journalist Simpson introduces Crawford, whose volatile former pro baseball player father is a beloved local celebrity. Since Momma left, it’s just been Pops, Craw, and his brother. Assaulting his dad leads Craw to community service, friendship with a girl who has her own family problems, and a critical turning point regarding the abuse he’s suffering at home.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.

LAURA SIMEON

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

The arrival of magic forces a Cape Town girl to examine how she faces—and avoids—her intense feelings.

Nell Strand knew that the magic would come for her at 15, just as it had for all the women in her family before her. It arrives differently for each one: Her sister, Mora, has music in her blood; her mother’s age changes from one day to the next. Nell wields numbness as a shield against her sister’s mental illness, her English father’s neglect, and her Afrikaner mother’s unpredictability. Her own magic manifests as insects

that represent the feelings she so carefully represses. Their arrival starts off harmlessly enough—joyful ladybugs when she plays the piano, black butterflies when she kisses the brown-skinned boy she calls “the antidote.” But when her lecherous music teacher stands too close, beetles appear. Gray moths flock when hopelessness sets in—and wasps swarm whenever her rage surfaces. Nell must decide how far she will go to hide from her emotions and whether she can be brave enough to face them. The novel is written in delicate, sparse, almost fragile verse that’s also

Chewins, Hayley | Viking | 336 pp. $19.99 | March 25, 2025 |

richly literary. Chewins examines each of Nell’s emotions as if it’s a butterfly preserved in amber, held up to the light for careful study. The elements of magic interwoven with the

very real cruelties of girlhood is a case study in successful fabulism. A beautiful, introspective slow burn of a book. (content warning) (Verse fiction. 14-18) I Am the Swarm

Powerful and evergreen; remembers kids during the time when the world stopped.

A BIRD IN THE AIR MEANS WE CAN STILL BREATHE

Exploring Careers in AI

Allen, John | ReferencePoint Press (64 pp.)

$33.95 | Jan. 1, 2025 | 9781678210083

An informative look at artificial intelligence and its impact on the workforce and society. Allen opens by describing how AI’s increasing prevalence has created new jobs and altered existing ones—for example, by automating many repetitive tasks. At the same time, AI is requiring people to develop new skills in areas such as writing, legislation, ethics, and machine-learning engineering. Five subsequent chapters go into more detail about the impact of AI on the workplace, specific career paths in AI, how young people can prepare for AI careers, the challenges of working with AI, and what the future may hold. The author explores how AI has affected areas as disparate as the hiring process and medical screening. He notes that while “novices need to learn the basics of AI, more experienced workers…are finding they must retool their skill sets to revitalize their careers.” The chapters open with narratives that offer insights into specific people and companies who are managing their work with AI, concrete examples that anchor the data and statistics. The book does a good job of discussing ethical issues, including AI errors and biases as well as the dangers of deliberate deception, personal privacy violations, and other concerns. This concise yet wide-ranging and readable work is enhanced by ample stock photos, interesting insights from experts, and well-designed text boxes.

A thought-provoking and useful look at AI jobs and their future. (picture credits, source notes, interview with a software developer, find out more, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

I Am Made of Death

Andrew, Kelly | Scholastic (368 pp.)

$19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781546104483

A n 18-year-old boy in Massachusetts takes a job that has unexpected consequences. When Thomas Walsh, desperate to support his ill mother and younger sister, is offered a high-paying job by the Farrow family, he accepts without much hesitation—despite the enigmatic patriarch Philip Farrow’s unsettling insistence on strict confidentiality. Thomas’s job is to serve as sign language interpreter for Philip’s stepdaughter, Vivienne, while living in their home and reporting back to Philip about her activities and contacts. Vivienne, who has selective mutism, is haunted by past trauma and a dark secret: She was possessed at the age of 4 after getting lost in a gorge. The power “bloomed” when she turned 12, and now the sound of her voice kills anyone who hears it. Determined to undergo a risky exorcism with help from connections to a secret society known as the House, she’s furious at having Thomas shadowing her every move. Initially clashing in a fierce battle of wills, Thomas and Vivienne develop an unexpected connection even as they begin to understand one another. Meanwhile, the consequences of Vivienne’s plans

loom ever closer. With each new revelation, a mounting sense of dread builds, hidden truths come to light, and external forces close in. Readers will find themselves immersed in a haunting narrative filled with unsettling descriptions and dark revelations as Vivienne and Thomas’ journey spirals toward an ominous climax. The main characters are cued white.

A gripping horror story that escalates in intensity. (Horror. 13-18)

The Fragments That Remain

Angeconeb, Mackenzie | DCB Young Readers (240 pp.) | $16.95 paper March 8, 2025 | 9781770867796

E xplores addiction, codependency, and love through a blend of poetry and prose. Born in Canada just 12 months apart to a “young urban Indigenous couple full of dreams,” Alexander and Andria struggle with self-worth and identity in this debut by Anishinaabekwe author Angeconeb. The “honorary twins,” Andy the painter and Ally the poet, are mirrors of each other, but despite their close connection, they keep their struggles with emptiness hidden. Andy feels like “a hollow shell,” and Ally is consumed by addiction. The first section focuses on Andy’s feelings, relayed in vignettes and letters that begin “Dear Brother,” as she describes watching Ally succumb to addiction. Unable to cope following his overdose death, she pushes friends away. After she discovers a shoebox of Ally’s poems, she’s confronted with the depth of his pain. The second section shifts to Ally’s perspective, revealing his internal battles through his poetry: “i have no identity, / no sense of self.” In the final section, Andy begins to face the weight of her grief, her feelings of powerlessness, and the ways she and her older brother lived through one another. She embarks on a healing journey, finding strength through

friends and connecting with her cultural heritage across generations of colonial cultural dislocation. This introspective, character-driven novel in which events are relayed after the fact moves slowly, offering a powerful exploration of identity and trauma through its emotional depth.

An affirming account of an Indigenous teen’s experience with multiple forms of loss. (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Star

A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe

Browne, Mahogany L. | Crown (160 pp.)

$19.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9780593486474

Young people and their families try to survive during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Two city girls with island roots,” Jamaican Electra and Trinidadian Hyacinth, are best friends whose voices serve as the book’s chorus, threading together individual stories and adding context, reflection, and direction. Their interspersed conversations are readers’ touchpoints for poems (in varied forms, including haiku and acrostic) and prose (which encompasses a letter, email, and a to-do list). Together the entries evoke the experiences of teens in New York City who are searching for love, hope, community, and liberation amid the fear and uncertainty of the pandemic. Browne’s use of varied formats and content offers a fresh and incisive look at the impact of the pandemic on young people’s lives as they dated, worked, attended school, and grew up while their world shut down around them. Grief becomes a palpable presence, as heightened responsibilities and innumerable losses demand from teens levels of grace, honesty, and care that many adults bowed under. The characters’ voices feel as authentic as if they were next to you—or, maybe, six feet away—close enough to feel the wrenching pain of hoping a

grandmother lives long enough for a vaccine to be available, close enough to understand the ecstasy of a first kiss after months with no physical contact. Heavy, important, powerful and evergreen; remembers kids during the time when the world stopped. (author’s note) (Fiction. 13-18)

Yeseni and the Daughter of Peace

Burrell, Solange | Unbound Firsts (272 pp.)

$18.95 paper | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781800182219

An 18th-century West African teenager’s powers place her at an impasse when she faces a choice that affects countless lives.

Sixteen-year-old Elewa is a girl from the Oleba tribe, which has been at war with the Okena for years. One of Elewa’s greatest desires is for her people to experience peace. When her father becomes Oleba High Chief, her arranged marriage to the son of the Okena chief becomes part of a tentative peace treaty. At the same time, Elewa’s Yeseni, or magical gifts of vision, show her a different African nation at a time when the Europeans are brutally enslaving people on a scale far beyond the slavery that’s present in her own world. An elder tells Elewa that she may be able to time travel to prevent this tragedy—but at the risk of not being able to return to her own time and help forge the longawaited truce. Elewa faces the agonizing difficulty of deciding whether to try to save millions from the unthinkable or focus on her duties to her immediate family and nation (even if she is uncertain about marrying someone she doesn’t love). Debut author Burrell presents an interesting dilemma, and Elewa’s first-person narration allows readers to feel connected with her as she deals with uncertainty, frustration, and other challenges both internal and external. The novel highlights themes of identity, self-discovery, family, and conflict through its imaginative premise.

An intriguing look at history and moral dilemmas through a fantasy lens. (Fantasy. 14-18)

Five Nights at Freddy’s: Tales from the Pizzaplex Graphic Novel Collection Vol. 1

Cawthon, Scott & Andrea Waggener

Adapt. by Chris Hastings | Illus. by Macky Pamintuan, Coryn Macpherson & Diana Camero Colors by Benjamin Sawyer, Gonzalo Duarte & Judy Lai | Graphix/Scholastic (192 pp.) | $14.99 paper | March 4, 2025 | 9781546128434

Series: Five Nights at Freddy’s Graphic Novels, 1

In graphic versions of three previously published episodes, the “extreme family fun” offered at Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex runs to dismemberment and attacks by blob monsters. Graphic in format but not—disappointingly, perhaps, to some readers—visual content, the tales feature mostly offstage carnage and rely heavily for their impact on suggestion and sound effects. In “Under Construction,” Maya has a Sweet 16 party with friends. They venture into in an augmented reality arcade that’s not quite ready for visitors, which she leaves (or so she thinks), only to find that people around her are dying of cancer and being replaced by hordes of weirdly blobby, pinkish, veined claylike figures. In the other stories, robots become gruesomely insistent on helping two young visitors lost in a maze, and a Pizzaplex workman named Grady gets caught in a series of looping tunnels meant for small children. The horrific consequences are visible as largely discreet splashes of gore. Maya’s extensive grief and a childhood experience of being locked in a closet that left Grady deeply cleithrophobic stir in some psychodrama, but the main appeal here can be summed up by the closing panel, which contains nothing but a bone-crunching “SPLURCH.” The art, though drawn and colored by a different set of artists for each story, has a consistent look

throughout, and features a human cast that presents as racially diverse. Expertly crafted, with most of the gory details left to the imagination. (Graphic horror. 12-16)

Like a Bird

Citra, Becky | Second Story Press (250 pp.)

$15.95 paper | March 4, 2025 | 9781772604177

A wildfire threatens a family’s home. The Bird family is no stranger to tragedy. Sixteenyear-old Rachel and her 7-year-old sister, Jane, have been living with their maternal grandparents, Wayne and Margaret, since their mother’s death in a car accident that also claimed their uncle. Raised in Vancouver, Rachel must adjust to tiny Aspen Lake, British Columbia, and the ranch where Wayne’s family has lived for generations. Introverted, awkward Rachel always feels on the periphery, connected to friends only through her relationship with boyfriend Cody. Despite Rachel’s maturity, the stress of handling adult tasks, such as taking care of Jane and helping her aging grandparents, overwhelms her. She also struggles with navigating relationship crises with Cody. Meanwhile, a wildfire encroaches on surrounding areas, slowly working its way toward Aspen Lake, a metaphor for the impending sense of doom and increasing anxiety that Rachel feels. News reports form a recurring motif throughout, taking over the family members’ lives as they regularly track the wildfires’ progress. Rachel’s reflective inner voice permeates her first-person point of view, creating meaningful, slower-paced moments amid the survival storyline. The novel prioritizes Rachel’s internal conflict over the wildfire subplot, which develops incrementally, lending the work the tone of dramatic literary fiction instead of an action novel. Ultimately, readers are led to admire the resilience of both Rachel and the Bird family as a whole. Main characters are cued white.

A deliberately paced, literary comingof-age survival tale. (Fiction. 13-18)

Nothing Bad Happens Here

Courage, Rachel Ekstrom

Delacorte (400 pp.) | $12.99 paper

March 18, 2025 | 9780593567593

A summer in Nantucket brings beauty and tragedy to the surface.

Pittsburgh high schooler Lucia hasn’t been the same since the tragic death of her best friend, Sammi. Hoping to lift her out of her melancholy, Lucia’s mom accepts an invitation for them to summer in Nantucket with Todd, her new long-distance boyfriend, and his college freshman son, Eric. Lucia, making the best of things for her mother’s sake, grudgingly tolerates Todd’s directive that she get a job and accompany Eric to his friends’ bonfire party. Not receiving the warmest welcome from the group, Lucia takes up with a trio of girls everyone assumes are daytrippers—Tamar, Kezia, and Selah. Lucia’s amused when bold Selah stands up to Eric’s elitist friend, Reagan, who’s the governor’s daughter. Drawn to the Three’s charisma and missing Sammi, Lucia ignores Eric’s mistrust of them. The idyllic atmosphere is abruptly shattered when Lucia makes the chilling discovery of a teen girl’s dead body in the water along the seashore. Consumed with anxiety that’s intertwined with the trauma of Sammi’s death, Lucia obsessively searches for the girl’s identity and the reason for her death. Island politics and concerns, which prioritize reputation over finding answers, add to the multilayered setting, bringing money and power to the forefront. Lucia’s complex relationship with the Three is as intriguing as it is unsettling, enhancing this immersive and haunting read. Most characters read white; Tamar is cued Black. Sparkling and seductive, with an eerie undercurrent. (Thriller. 13-17)

Caitlin Clark: Basketball Superstar and Inspiration for a New Generation

Currie-McGhee, Leanne

ReferencePoint Press (64 pp.)

$33.95 | Jan. 1, 2025 | 9781678210007

Details the journey of powerhouse Caitlin Clark, whose talent and drive have reignited interest in women’s basketball.

Currie-McGhee’s account unfolds in chronological order from her subject’s origins as a talented child baller to being the WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick in 2024. Along the way, readers learn about her life in high school and college and her pro career so far. Clark has been clearly focused on her goal of playing professionally since age 9. Her journey to the top has included practicing yoga for “increasing flexibility and preventing injuries,” taking piano lessons and playing other sports to help prevent “burnout at a young age,” and participating in therapy to protect her mental health given the high pressures athletes face. The author describes Clark’s roots in her close-knit family, whose Roman Catholic faith was central to her upbringing. Quotes from Clark and her relatives, along with vivid descriptions of sports action, bring the text to life. This highly positive account contains an interesting twist in the form of references to Clark’s learning to healthily channel feelings of anger and frustration, often stemming from “her passion for winning.” The text in this colorful and visually appealing work is broken up with photos and text boxes, including one describing Clark’s direct criticism of people who used her identity as a white woman to further their own “racism and misogyny.” An engaging deep dive into the life of a rising basketball superstar. (picture credits, source notes, timeline, for further research, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

I Love You S’more

Desombre, Auriane | Delacorte Romance (256 pp.) | $12.99 paper

April 8, 2025 | 9780593807545

A lesbian teen hopes that a summer of being a camp counselor will mend her broken heart. Getting dumped is always bad, but Ivy’s breakup is happening in public, dissected and analyzed by an entire fandom. Ivy’s high school sweetheart, Ally, now the teen star of a science fiction drama, has broken things off, and the internet is exploding with shipping hopes for Ally and her co-star. Perhaps if Ivy returns to her beloved childhood musical theater camp as a counselor it will give her the break she needs? It’s not to be, of course. The tween campers recognize Ivy from Ally’s social media. Worse, one of the other counselors is yet another source of trauma: Rynn, Ivy’s former best friend who abruptly cut her off back in sixth grade. Bouncing rapid-fire from angst to romantic hope to anger, Ivy can scarcely manage her campers’ dramas or the production of Peter Pan she’s co-directing with Rynn. The mostly white campers and counselors are affectionately portrayed, though they’re all exceptionally lightly drawn, primarily serving as mirrors for Ivy and Rynn to explore their own relationship. Still, the characterizations that are barely sketched out don’t keep this from being an enjoyable story of growth amid a romantic summer interlude. A cathartic tale of a shy girl gaining self-love and learning to forgive. (Fiction. 12-16)

Truth Cursed

Dickinson, Angie | Enclave Escape (368 pp.)

$24.99 | Feb. 18, 2025 | 9798886051742

A young woman learns that her curse is actually her strength.

After her parents’ murders, 8-year-old Cressida Hoth was taken in by her aunts, who cursed her to always tell the truth. Seven years later, Cressida is sent to Miss Tepsom’s School for Gently Bred Young Ladies, where she becomes fearful that her curse will be a liability after she learns that she is among the students who are being prepared to spy on the royal family. On her first mission with her classmates Rubia, Vivian, and Rosalie, she’s sent to court as a lady-inwaiting. Anxious about her assignment, Cressida is relieved when Emric Theon, her former fencing tutor, unexpectedly appears and declares himself an ally. Dickinson’s narrative features interesting plot twists and character developments. While the pace of the first part of the novel is slow and repetitive, the story picks up after Cressida’s mission is set in motion. As the stakes are raised, the intrigue increases, and it becomes unclear whether Cressida and her friends will succeed. Ultimately, the author successfully creates an engaging adventure centering on a strong female lead. In this fantasy world, ethnic diversity is unremarkable: Some central characters, including Vivian and Emric, have brown skin, while white-presenting Cressida has “lightly freckled skin,” brown eyes, and “dark, unruly hair.”

An intense, intriguing coming-of-age story in which the truth always prevails. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)

The teens offer loving portrayals of young people defying societal norms.

Roll for Love

England, M.K. | Running Press Kids (272 pp.) $19.99 | April 8, 2025 | 9780762488179

Two high school students wrestle with keeping secrets from their families. Harper’s life is thrown into upheaval when her mom moves them from Portland, Oregon, to small-town Clintville, Virginia. Uprooted for the last year of high school while navigating a strained relationship with her mother and mourning her grandfather’s death, Harper feels hopeful when she reconnects with childhood friend and crush Ollie. Both girls have secrets eating away at them: Harper doesn’t know how to tell her mother that she doesn’t want to go to college, and Ollie is terrified of the judgment she’d receive if she came out as bi. Harper finds solace in fixing up her grandfather’s old woodshop, where they spent happy summers together, and Ollie’s “extremely gay D&D group” joins in to help. Dungeons & Dragons sessions in the newly dubbed Gay Barn quickly become a safe way for the pair to explore their attraction through their characters, barbarian Aspen Wildeye and paladin Lyra Mythriniel. While Harper and Ollie dance around their feelings, Aspen and Lyra engage in overt courtship. The white teens offer loving portrayals of young people defying societal norms, and their difficulties manage to be gut-wrenching without crossing the line into a spiral of unhappiness. Brief peeks at the adventures of Aspen and Lyra inject action into an otherwise contemplative narrative, keeping the pace from plodding. A coming-of-age tale and queer love story that offers a thoughtful look at the fear of being different. (author’s note, resources) (Romance. 14-18)

Design Thinking: A Guide to Innovation

Estes, Fred | Twenty-First Century/ Lerner (176 pp.) | $38.65 March 4, 2025 | 9798765608005

With clear organization and a focus on fostering growth and action, this guide to the design thinking process offers much to young innovators and the educators who empower them. While design thinking has been part of the curriculum for some time, this simple how-to guide extends the “model originated by IDEO and the Stanford d.school” to include “designing for social impact”—a special focus on helping people design equitable and sustainable solutions to community problems. The book employs colorful graphic elements and a flexible, step-by-step model that will enable users to replicate the successes of the sample projects highlighted in its anecdotes and case studies, including innovations that help people with disabilities. Each chapter immerses readers in one phase of the design process while keeping an eye on the larger goal through tools such as troubleshooting aids and specific techniques, like non-defensive listening. With its long list of resources and sources to consult, the book will aid educators who are looking to launch a design thinking program, but the unvarnished language and direct approach make this book accessible to young readers who are hoping to bring about change in their communities. Veteran educator Estes encourages a positive mindset built on empathy, collaboration, curiosity, and openness to differences that enhances learning and growth in all settings. Valuable for classrooms, homeschools, and community groups: a guide to problem-based learning for the greater good. (author’s note, glossary, source notes, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Take a Chance on Me

Eulberg, Elizabeth | Scholastic (304 pp.) | $12.99 paper

March 4, 2025 | 9781546129271

After a relationship disaster, a 17-year-old American escapes to London, where she finds the one thing she’s trying to avoid.

Evie’s had a strained relationship with her father ever since her parents’ divorce a decade earlier and his return home to England. Swearing off relationships after discovering her boyfriend was hooking up with her close friend, Evie decides that London’s the perfect place to run away to for the summer. While walking off her jet lag, Evie is drawn to a busker who’s performing a sorrowful song. The next day, in a different part of the city, she runs into him again—and this time, she asks him out for a coffee. She fights her feelings, but she’s drawn to Aiden, who’s deeply wounded himself. As their tension and chemistry build, Evie also struggles with her father: They push each other’s buttons, and he’s very controlling, especially when it comes to food, which affects how he interacts with Evie. Over the summer, they attempt to create a healthy relationship, although her dad struggles to meet her halfway. While Evie’s relationship with Aiden is full of bubbly banter and romantic beats, the novel is deepened by the storyline in which Evie strives to be true to herself in the face of her father’s disordered eating. Central characters present white; there’s some ethnic diversity in the supporting cast. A winsome romance tempered by an astute exploration of family issues. (author’s note) (Romance. 13-18)

Kirkus Star

Huda F Wants To Know?

Fahmy, Huda | Dial Books (224 pp.)

$24.99 | $17.99 paper | April 1, 2025 9780593855614 | 9780593855621 paper

Huda has her junior year all planned out—and then her parents’ news shatters her world.

Egyptian American Huda and best friend Nabz have packed schedules to help propel them into college (Huda is only slightly distracted by a crush). While attending the masjid’s weekly halaqa for teen girls, she meets guest speaker Dr. Haifa, Nabz’s therapist, who discusses mental health, an issue that goes unaddressed in Huda’s family. After her parents announce their divorce, a distraught Huda is sent into a downward spiral, ultimately lashing out at her family and Nabz before recognizing that she needs help navigating feelings of pain, guilt, anger, grief, and fear of change. Fahmy’s newest addition to her series about Huda addresses healing generational trauma through the power of acknowledging and validating feelings; Huda’s mother clearly perceives her five daughters’ different coping mechanisms. With nuance, context, and cultural and religious texture, Fahmy calls out toxic religious positivity and the stigmas surrounding both divorce and addressing mental health in Muslim communities and families. The backmatter includes an author’s note highlighting her own experiences facing mental health challenges as a Muslim teen of color and child of immigrants whose issues of identity and experiences of racism compounded to affect her overall well-being. The book lists mental health resources, including general ones and those specifically supporting Muslims and people of color. Fahmy’s trademark lively cartoon-style art and humorous asides add lightness to the serious topics she discusses. An uplifting, insightful model for positive change. (Graphic fiction. 12-18)

For another book about overcoming heartbreak, visit Kirkus online.

Humorous asides add lightness to the serious topics.

HUDA F WANTS TO KNOW?

The Hallow Hunt

Fuston, Margie | McElderry (416 pp.)

$21.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781665934442

Series: The Revenant Games, 2

In the aftermath of The Revenant Games (2024), Bly searches for her sister, Elise, while the vampire Kerrigan seeks to make a deal with the witches to free his brother, Donovan.

The two are estranged because of Bly’s betrayal during the Games, which saved Kerrigan but damaged the trust between them by sacrificing Donovan. Their separate quests eventually lead them back into the woods, where they hunt for a magical root that could shift the balance of power between witches and vampires. Though they work toward the same goal, old wounds linger; Bly is consumed by guilt, and Kerrigan remains cold and distant. They discover that the forest holds dangers beyond those connected to the conflict between the witch and vampire cities, and they have encounters that lead to unexpected alliances. Secondary characters receive more development in this sequel, adding depth to the narrative. As before, however, a large portion of the book is spent in the vaguely described forest, whose poor development as a setting detracts from the story. Nevertheless, returning readers will be pleased with the neat resolution of the story’s open threads. The white-presenting leads are supported by a secondary cast of characters who are diverse in race and sexuality. Fans of the first book will enjoy this duology closer that satisfyingly wraps up earlier plotlines. (Fantasy. 14-18)

Kirby’s Lessons for Falling (in Love)

Gao, Laura | HarperAlley (304 pp.) | $18.99 paper | March 4, 2025 | 9780063067790

“Queen of Balance” Kirby Tan knows what to do on the rock-climbing wall, but she struggles with navigating the rest of her life.

After sophomore Kirby, a champion climber, injures her wrist in a fall at an invitational, she’s unable to climb for at least two months. In need of an extracurricular, she joins the newspaper club in hopes of bringing up her dismal English grade. Kirby teams up with Bex Santos to write an astrology-themed column to help their fellow students find love. Kirby isn’t sure she believes in the premise behind “Ask the Universe,” but she gets swept up in the adventure of guiding their classmates toward the romance they desire. In between matching others, Chinese American Kirby deals with her growing attraction to Bex, who’s Latine, and what that might mean for her relationships with her family and her church. Missing rock climbing, combined with grieving her father, who died eight years ago, and worrying about her immigrant grandfather’s worsening health, leaves Kirby feeling on edge and readers filled with empathy for her. Gao’s predominantly black-and-white illustrations feature bold lines and pops of salmon that emphasize strong emotional moments. The panels vary in shape, layout, and perspective, creating fresh, compelling visuals for this work that’s filled with powerful images of struggle but also of joy.

A refreshingly raw and vulnerable exploration of grief and hope. (Graphic fiction. 13-18)

Kirkus Star

The House No One Sees

King, Adina | Feiwel & Friends (304 pp.)

$19.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781250337191

Penelope Ross’ mother struggles with opioid addiction.

On the night of Penny’s 16th birthday, a desperate text from her estranged mother draws her back to the house they once shared. There, Penny, who presents white, is forced to confront buried trauma and painful memories. Through verse and prose that veer into the surreal, debut author King shows Penny revisiting a childhood in which she was left to fend for herself. Penny likens her mother to Sleeping Beauty; referencing a needle mark on her mother’s foot, she thinks, “This must be where the spindle entered. The one that turned you into The Sleeper.” She recalls the growing suspicions of adults who knew something was amiss and frequent visitor Seth—“He had dark hair and blue eyes that came / after me when you weren’t looking”—who died of an overdose in their home. Eventually, Penny’s mother enters rehab and her maternal grandparents take her in, beginning a cycle of painful separations. Life with Nana and Grandpa provides her with structure, physical care, and emotional nurturing as well as therapy. Meanwhile, life with her mother is marked by hunger, neglect, and chaos. The shifting narrative creates an intentional sense of uncertainty. Penny’s childhood memories are conveyed through a childlike voice that’s filled with longing for her mother and the blissful early days before addiction took hold. This heartbreaking work will resonate deeply with fans of A.S. King and Amber McBride. Raw, gripping, and heart-wrenching. (content note, resources) (Verse fiction. 14-18)

THE KIRKUS Q&A: SHANNON LEE & FONDA LEE

The daughter of Bruce Lee brings his philosophy to teen readers, with assistance from a YA author.

BY CHRISTINE GROSS-LOH

Breath of the Dragon Lee, Shannon & Fonda Lee Wednesday Books | 352 pp. | $21.00 | Jan. 7, 2025 9781250902672 | Series: Breathmarked, 1

IN THE NEW YA fantasy Breath of the Dragon , 16-year-old Jun has been separated from his mother and twin brother ever since he and his father were banished 10 years earlier for practicing martial arts, forbidden in the kingdom of East Longham. Now in West Longham, Jun practices martial arts daily. His goal: to win the Guardian’s Tournament and attain one of the country’s highest positions, in hopes of reunifying his family. But the tournament is full of dangers, and Jun must decide whom to trust and what is truly worth fighting for. In this first entry in the Breathmarked series, Shannon Lee (daughter of martial arts legend Bruce Lee) and Fonda Lee (the author of Jade City ; no relation) have crafted a moving tale full of intrigue and action. Kirkus spoke with Shannon (in Los Angeles) and Fonda (in Boston) by Zoom; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Breath of the Dragon is a powerful read. How did your collaboration come about?

Shannon: I had archived a lot of creative works, in various stages of development, that my father had

started. [Ed: Lee died in 1973, at the age of 32.] All these elements could be crafted into a world of their own, and I loved the idea of doing something for a younger generation, so I wrote a treatment. Fonda’s name was among the first to come up for a collaboration. I read some of her works and thought she was an amazing writer; when we met, I even found out that she’s a martial artist and that she already knew so much about my father and his legacy! It felt like there was a real connection there. We just hit it off.

Fonda: That’s right. When I got the call from Shannon I thought, I have

to take this , because her father was a huge influence on me as an Asian American and a martial artist and a storyteller. That made this project feel like the perfect fit. And when I read the treatment, I saw how it could be turned into a fantasy world. I didn’t know at that time that Shannon was a fan of the fantasy genre. That was another very cool connection, so I said, “Let’s run with this!”

Fonda, how has collaboration been for your writing process?

Fonda: I’ve been just very grateful that Shannon is so open to creative collabo -

Shannon Lee: Manfred Bauman; Fonda Lee: Michael Verity

Photography

Fonda Lee

Shannon Lee

rating. I’ve been working my own process with inspirational input that I get from Shannon. Every time we get on a call to brainstorm and bounce ideas back and forth, it feels very easy, very fun. We both respect the input that we’re bringing and we both just want it to be a good story. Neither of us is precious about anything. I was familiar with her father’s writings that I’d read in the past, so I refreshed myself on those and rewatched his films. I loved working in all the easter eggs that show up in the book and making sure there were things for the fans, our homages. I felt confident because Shannon’s eye was always on the whole thing.

Bruce Lee’s films were for adults. Was there a particular reason why you chose to write this for young adults?

Shannon: I really wanted to create something for a new generation, something broader, a little more artistic and creative. I wanted people to get my father’s messages in a story-driven way, not just a quote on social media. I do a lot of work through our foundation with youth mental wellness and felt it would be a beautiful tie-in to create something where fantasy and martial arts action can speak to coming-of-age issues and how to look at the world and oneself, which was a big part of my father’s messaging. I also wanted to anchor the story in a culturally Asian world.

Fonda: I, too, wanted to introduce a younger gener-

ation of readers to her father and his philosophy. Catching readers at that age is important. I think back as a writer to the media, the books, the films that had the most impact on me as a storyteller, and I encountered them early on in my life. In your teens and early 20s—that’s when the things that are going to make us really have a huge impact.

I can see that this book would appeal to many readers who might not see themselves reflected in other YA books.

Fonda: Yes, I started out writing action-packed YA fiction—my books were known for appealing to the reluctant male reader. Librarians and teachers would say, “Thank you for writing these books because I want to be able to hand something to the boys in my class who play video games, who like sports, who watch UFC, but don’t necessarily want to read the books that are typically considered YA.” Breath of the Dragon was a fit with what I already had worked

on and believed in. It contains so many of the messages that I think are very relevant for that coming-of-age period.

Let’s talk about those messages. Many philosophical ideas, such as your father’s, are timeless, but some feel more relevant at certain points in history than others. Which ideas do you feel are important for young people today to hear?

Shannon: One message would be one of my father’s core tenets: Using no way as way and having no limitation as limitation. I loved to write when I was younger and took a creative writing class in college, but I hated that class—and the professor—and left the class thinking I’m not good at this. It took decades to believe I could actually write something. So I would say, Don’t let anyone else set your limitations. If you have a passion for something, work at it.

Fonda: One of the messages that resonated for me was not being rigid,

We both just want it to be a good story. Neither of us is precious about anything.

not being dogmatic, not being mentally stiff. Be like water is a timeless message that we have to keep revisiting. People do get stuck thinking, There’s just this one way forward

Bruce Lee was asked once, “Do you think of yourself as Chinese or American?” He answered, “I think of myself as a human being.” That, I think, is a message that is as relevant as ever. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings. We have core things in common. We all want to be safe, secure, self-actualized, and respected, and we all deserve to have opportunities. Those are things that he stood for. He refused to be boxed in.

Breath of the Dragon revolves around a nation that is divided, people that are divided, not willingly but because other forces around them are forcing them apart. One throughline is about overcoming polarity. There’s a discussion on what you take a stand on. How do you take that stand? What are the turning points that open your eyes to those different discussions of unity and self-worth? How do you bring people together?

These messages have always been important— there’s always been some kind of struggle going on in the world. But of course, right now, times are very intense. A huge theme in this series is about breaking down barriers and finding unity. This is something that everyone needs to hear. Especially young people, but all of us, too.

Christine Gross-Loh is the author of Parenting Without Borders and The Path.

Intriguing

The Afterdark

Latimer, E. | Tundra Books (400 pp.)

$19.99 | Jan. 7, 2025 | 9781774882245

An 18-year-old heads off to school on a mysterious island, but she finds the institution and the nearby forest more sinister than she could have imagined.

After her identical twin sister, Ada, drowns, Evie’s mom sends her to Northcroft, the school Ada attended. The elite boarding school located on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia was founded by Evie’s ancestor, and her absent father is the principal. Upon arriving, Evie runs into TV star Holland, a former classmate and longtime crush—and they share an undeniable attraction. The intensity of their relationship grows even as girls around them go missing. The mysterious disappearances are seemingly linked to the dark, off-limits forest beyond the school’s walls and to the Crown and Grave, a secretive, elitist group of legacy students. The forest also appears to be a catalyst for the dark impulses Evie’s been feeling for years and which she’s having a harder time ignoring. The story’s narrative momentum is slow to build, making it difficult to enter the novel’s world and connect with the characters. Patient readers will find that the story eventually hits its stride, and the pace quickens in time for a gruesome finale. The queer romantic relationships are highly sexual, although the sex scenes feel

unnecessarily redundant, doing little to further the story. Most major characters are coded white. Unevenly paced and overstuffed queer supernatural body horror. (Horror. 14-18)

Solving For the Unknown

Le, Loan | Simon & Schuster (304 pp.)

$19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781665917155

Vietnamese American college students navigate pressures, expectations, and the future in this companion to A Ph ở Love Story (2021).

Entering the University of California, Davis, is a big adjustment for Việt. Between worrying about not being around to act as middleman in his parents’ rocky relationship and feeling unmoored in this new setting, he falls into depression again. After an initial not-so meet-cute, Việt keeps finding himself in the orbit of third-year student Evie, older sister to Linh, a friend from home. Their genuine connection leads to budding feelings that he tries to keep in check. Aspiring pediatrician Evie has a boyfriend, Jake, but she wonders whether he’s truly meeting her emotional needs. Le tackles college coming-of-age beats—dating and breaking up, attending sloppy parties, meeting a new roommate, finding chosen family—portraying them with welcome cultural nuance and heartfelt characterization. Evie and Việt struggle with loneliness and guilt connected to their family obligations, as they grapple with putting some of their own desires

Le immediately draws readers back into her Vietnameseinspired fantasy world.

first and figuring out who they want to become. It’s easy to root for this pair as they come out of their shells and into their own, separately and together. Le explores topics such as mental health, wealth and privilege, and providing emotional support to others. The story’s slice-of-life format and the carefully built foundation of the leads’ friendship make for a leisurely pace in this solid slow-burn friends-to-lovers romance. A sweet love story of self-discovery and mutual support. (Romance. 14-18)

Kirkus Star

His Mortal Demise

Le, Vanessa | Roaring Brook Press (400 pp.) $19.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781250881540 Series: The Last Bloodcarver Duology, 2

This duology closer following 2024’s The Last Bloodcarver explores how far you would go to save what you loved most. As powerful a healing art as heartsoothing can be, it all boils down to the transfer of energy. Even a heartsooth can’t bring a dead body back to life without taking another, equivalent, life in exchange. Nhika gave her life and the gift of her heartsoothing to save Kochin, the unlikely ally she grew to love. But six months later, she wakes up with no knowledge of how she lived before or why—and Kochin, whom she does remember, is nowhere to be found. Past and present converge as war descends on the land of Theumas, and Nhika works to piece together the truth of what happened. Meanwhile, Kochin finds himself at the very end of his strength and morals, torn between defiling his art—Nhika’s parting gift to him—and reclaiming it. Le picks up where the previous installment left off without slacking the pace, and she immediately draws readers back into her Vietnamese-inspired fantasy world where there are neither heroes nor villains, saviors nor monsters, but only

flawed and fragile people fueled by desperation and love. The characters are richly and sensitively portrayed, and Nhika and Kochin’s slow-burn romance is well integrated into the plot even as they fight for the “peace, freedom, [and] love” they’ve never known. Engrossing, moving, and intricately detailed. (map) (Fantasy. 12-18)

Kirkus Star

A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel

Le Guin, Ursula K. | Adapt. by Fred Fordham | Illus. by Fred Fordham

Clarion/HarperCollins (288 pp.) | $26.99

March 11, 2025 | 9780063285767

An ambitious young wizard embarks on a perilous quest to correct a mistake made from hubris in this graphic adaptation of Le Guin’s well-loved 1968 classic.

Duny is nearly 13 when he’s visited by Ogion the Silent, a mage who gives him his true name, Ged, a coming-of-age milestone. As Ogion’s apprentice, Ged begins his long journey of understanding the consequences of magic and the importance of maintaining the world’s balance. Ged studies wizardry at the School of Roke, where he performs a spell summoning the dead and calls up an evil shadow force that starts following him. Ged must defeat it before it can take over his body and use him to enact dark magic. Fordham’s watercolor-style art brings the story’s world to life, beautifully portraying seaside villages, starlit nights, the stone-walled school, and more. Wordless spreads seamlessly propel the plot, as when Ged battles fierce flying dragons off the coast of Pendor. While the story moves quickly, visual clues such as changing seasons signal Ged’s growth and the passage of time. The concise narration and dialogue enhance the story’s drama. A preface by Theo Downes-Le Guin, the author’s son, discusses the intentionality and

mindfulness behind the illustrations, as for example, in the portrayal of Ged as “a young copper-skinned man” rather than the “white, often middle-aged man” shown in other versions, which Le Guin felt betrayed her original vision. A beloved cornerstone of the genre brought vividly to life through striking illustrations. (map) (Graphic fantasy. 12-16)

Dropping Beats

Lessore, Nathanael | Little, Brown (288 pp.) | $12.99 paper Feb. 11, 2025 | 9780316576987

Thirteen-year-old Black Londoner Shaun “Growls” Thompson believes he’s destined to be the next big thing—and he plans to achieve greatness through his rapping. With his best friend and “partner in grime,” Shanks, whose family has Jamaican roots, he’s going to prove himself by entering and winning the annual Raptology competition for young teens. Without telling Shanks, Growls secretly livestreams one of their practices, hoping it will impress his crush, Tanisha. But two deeply embarrassing incidents unfold in front of hundreds of viewers, and soon Growls is receiving floods of messages, “and none of them [are] nice.” Things just get worse: Shanks doesn’t show up at school, and Growls’ mum reveals some bad news. Now, Growls has to figure out how to fix things and achieve his dreams with the help of allies, including a new friend from school, redheaded Siobhan. The story starts off slowly but gains momentum as it progresses. Refreshingly, the original British vocabulary is retained, enhancing the sense of place; a glossary is included to support any readers who need it. Imaginative, observant Growls’ conversational and humorous first-person narration blends London slang with his own creative expressions. This well-written story explores relevant topics including social media, mental health,

being a caretaker, and the importance of believing in yourself.

A hilarious, witty story centered on embracing your quirks and the importance of friendship. (author’s note) (Fiction. 12-14)

Till Death

McDaniel, Kellan | MTV Books/ Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) | $19.99 March 18, 2025 | 9781665949071

True love lasts a lifetime, even if that life isn’t mortal. High school senior Howard, who’s cued white, volunteers in a retirement home, organizing a weekly craft night. When he invites new resident James to join the class, he’s greeted by the man’s guest, an incredibly good-looking teen boy. It turns out that George isn’t as young as he looks, however: He’s a vampire who graduated from high school in 1960 along with James. Over the decades, George participated in protests for queer rights and supported people who were dying of AIDS before he reconnected with his mortal high school sweetheart, and he’s sympathetic toward the struggle the Queer Student Alliance at Howard’s private school is having with the conservative board. Perhaps 18-year-old Howard’s revolutionary spirit and love of vintage clothing can score him a date with an octogenarian vampire?

(The older couple are in an open relationship.) This book is a gay vampire romance with a social conscience. The dual narration allows the vampire’s perspective to shine through: How would it be for a gay white man to watch the world change for the better in some ways but not so satisfyingly in others? The story often reads like a wish-fulfillment fantasy in which righteous gay anger leads to the meting out of some morally satisfying consequences. Ultimately, the novel is less about sexiness and more about emotional connections and rebelling against heteronormativity. A thoughtful paranormal love story offering a wide lens on queer history and community. (Paranormal. 14-18)

Live Like a Goddess: Life Lessons From

Legends and Lore

Menzies, Jean | Illus. by Taylor Dolan Crocodile/Interlink (192 pp.) | $19.95 Nov. 26, 2024 | 9781623716578

A collection of myths and legends about goddesses around the world that impart empowering life lessons. This collection contains 21 depictions, each about 10 pages long, of goddesses from different world cultures and religions. Some, like Demeter and Isis, will be widely recognized, while others may be less familiar. Each tale is preceded by a description of the goddess’s origins and concludes with a discussion of easy ways to apply lessons from her myth in everyday life. With morals as varied as the goddesses represented, the chapters offer readers advice on themes such as advocating for themselves, as in the story of Diné creation deity Asdz’ą ’ ą Nádleehé, or inspiration to stretch their boundaries, as in the tale of Hawaiian fire goddess Pele. While each tale is distinct, Menzies presents most in ways that highlight overarching themes of confidence, independence, strength, and empathy. The writing style is accessible and engaging, and the entries are complemented by Dolan’s bold, eye-catching, black-and-white artwork that resembles linocut prints. The self-help and mythology sections of each goddess’s profile are well balanced, although the breadth of legends covered occasionally results in oversimplified retellings. However, the framing of the goddesses’ stories will inspire many readers to learn more about them and incorporate lessons from their myths into their own lives.

Equally entertaining and empowering; will appeal to readers seeking strong women role models. (resources, bibliography) (Mythology. 12-18)

You Belong Here

Miller, Sara Phoebe | Illus. by Morgan Beem | First Second (256 pp.)

$25.99 | $17.99 paper | March 4, 2025

9781250822314 | 9781250822307 paper

A Long Island teen faces a tumultuous year. In this stand-alone graphic novel, Esther “Essie” Rosen begins her senior year of high school with everything going for her: She’s dating handsome neighbor boy Bruno and is preparing her audition for the Tisch School of the Arts, which she hopes will lead to her dream of living in New York City near her best friend, who’s attending Columbia. But after her English teacher assigns a journal project spanning the full school year, Essie’s entries lead to a realization that her seemingly perfect life may be a carefully constructed facade. As events fail to unfold as planned, Essie must forge a new path for herself—even if it means defying her family’s and her own expectations when she falls for Christopher, a boy with a complicated link to her brother, whose difficulties challenge their mother’s insistence that “everything has to be perfect.” With its visceral, palpable angst, Miller’s tale will resonate with readers who have been at a crossroads. Beem’s dreamy blue-hued illustrations with watercolor flourishes are both alluring and stylish, bringing a decidedly cinematic feel. While the story contains elements of romance, it eschews a simple happilyever-after resolution, and Essie’s final choices will stay with readers long after the final page is turned. Essie, who’s fat, is Jewish and presents white, Bruno reads Black, and Christopher is Chinese American.

Raw and relevant; a book that belongs in the hands of any reader anxious about a new chapter. (Graphic fiction. 14-18)

Renegade Girls: A Queer Tale of Romance and Rabble-Rousing

Neus, Nora | Illus. by Julie Robine Little, Brown (304 pp.) | $18.99 paper April 1, 2025 | 9780316439930

A fictionalized account of two real figures: “stunt-girl reporter” Nell Cusack and photographer Alice Austen. It’s 1888. Each year, Nell summers in New York City with her well-connected aunt and uncle. She’s found employment as a society reporter for the New York Chronicle, a job which she hopes to finagle into more consequential reporting, like Nellie Bly’s famous mental hospital exposé. When she discovers that her best friend, Italian American Lucia Amatucci, who works as a maid for Nell’s aunt and uncle, was injured at her second job at a garment factory, Nell goes undercover to blow the whistle on the factory’s dangerous and inhumane work environment. After her article appears in print, the factory sues the paper. Fortunately, Nell has recently become acquainted with photographer Alice Austen, whom she enlists to gather photographic evidence for subsequent articles. In the nuanced resolution, Nell confronts her own privilege in pursuit of social justice. Along the way, the gently budding romance between Nell and Alice unfolds in sweet, swoonworthy scenes. While Neus takes liberties with the

Vast in scope, intricately plotted, and utterly original.

SILVER THROAT

story—the author’s note indicates there’s no historical evidence that Cusack was queer, though Austen spent more than 50 years with her woman partner—the fictional romance is a delight. The soft, luminous, full-color illustrations shine. The panels showing renderings of Austen’s actual photos, depicted in grayscale, are particularly evocative. Informative historical fiction about important trailblazers featuring a charming queer romance. (Graphic historical fiction. 12-18)

A Single Brutal Fate

O’Brien, Lee Paige | Amulet/Abrams (384 pp.) | $19.99 | March 11, 2025 9781419765179 | Series: The Broken Tower, 2

In this sequel to A Hundred Vicious Turns (2023), Rat must outwit magical enemies to save Harker. Two months ago, Isola, a deadly, feylike creature known as a Rook, took Harker, Rat’s love interest and occasional rival, captive. To rescue him, Rat must pay Isola’s ransom by finding Isola’s heart, which was taken from her and hidden in the Ingrid Collection long ago. However, Rat isn’t the only one seeking the Collection—Evening is also on the hunt. Thanks to a rare hint from Isola, Rat and their friends begin to suspect Evening of stealing from the archives belonging to the oldest magical families. Their best bet for finding out the truth is during the Revel, when Evening will be distracted by the festivities. Complicating matters, Isola offers her assistance in distracting Evening in exchange for an invitation that will allow her to attend the Revel for mysterious reasons of her own. Rat starts planning heists on two fronts when newcomer Allister points them to a spell that might let them sneak past Isola’s wards. While both enemies are preoccupied during the Revel, Rat must break into Evening’s office and rescue Harker from Isola’s tower. This duology closer seamlessly ties up loose ends without

disruptive exposition. Isola is as terrifying as ever, if a bit less alien now that she’s familiar to both Rat and readers. New information about the magical system expands the worldbuilding around the white-presenting leads. Shiveringly good. (Fantasy. 12-18)

Kirkus Star

Silver Throat

Pettersen, Siri | Trans. by Tara Chace Arctis Books (415 pp.) | $20.00 | Feb. 25, 2025 | 9781646900169 | Series: Vardari, 2

After risking her life—and heart—to free Grif in Iron Wolf (2023), Juva turns her attention to wolfsickness, which continues to spread in this translated title from Norway. Grif was an extraordinary being whose addictive blood sustained the lives of the vardari for centuries and incidentally fueled Náklav’s wolf-sickness epidemic. Now he’s gone, Juva distracts herself from the pain of his betrayal by dispatching the wolf-sick and nurturing her cadre of abandoned girls, fellow blood readers who can sense nearby vardari. Anxious to quell the spreading crisis, Náklav’s rulers order Juva to join forces with Silver Throat, a strange, charismatic priest from far-off Undst whose followers believe he can end the plague. Increasingly suspicious of Silver Throat’s real intentions and his association with Eydala, a vicious rogue vardari, Juva reluctantly allies herself with—and protects—the weakened vardari whom they’ve targeted. As Silver Throat’s plans take shape, Juva discovers Grif left her something—wolf-sickness?—along with three tiny vials of his blood. Fed to the giant stones in Nákla Henge, wolf and human blood fuels world travel and commerce. The vardari stole Grif’s blood to enrich Náklev and achieve immortality—and the price has yet to be paid. This middle volume builds suspense for the climax to come. Pettersen’s richly

textured, Norse-infused saga features comprehensive worldbuilding studded with well-developed architectural, cultural, linguistic, and historical details and compelling characters. Flawed and conflicted, generous and passionately ethical, Juva is a deeply engaging protagonist for our time.

Vast in scope, intricately plotted, and utterly original. (Fantasy. 14-adult)

Kirkus Star

Fable for the End of the World

Reid, Ava | Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9780063211551

A 17-year-old girl leading a hardscrabble existence in a post-apocalyptic society controlled by the allencompassing corporation Caerus fights to survive.

Inesa Yael Soulis lives with her younger brother, Luka, and their cruel mother in the waterlogged Lower Esopus neighborhood. While Inesa is working at the family taxidermy shop, which she runs with Luka, a Mask—a Caerus employee—walks in and announces that their mother nominated Inesa for the Lamb’s Gauntlet. The Gauntlet is a livestreamed challenge in which Angels, or lab-modified humans, hunt and kill Lambs to pay off citizens’ debts. Shortly before the competition is due to begin, Inesa and Luka go on the run. Meanwhile, Melinoë, one of the Angels engineered to be killing machines (who are “just human enough to feel”), is glitching. Painful memories seep through even as she sets forth to nab her Lamb before she can escape. As Inesa and Melinoë battle, a connection sparks, blurring the lines between hunter and hunted. In this brilliantly imagined work, the impoverished are terrorized not only by the environment but by the government, and women’s bodies are morphed and mutated to men’s ideals. This masterful queer

narrative encourages readers to question messages around gender and sexuality as humanity triumphs through persistence, acts of rebellion, and small victories against the backdrop of a dark and damning setting with worldbuilding that doesn’t disappoint. Most characters present white.

A thrilling, page-turning must-read: prescient and necessary, impressive and disturbing. (Post-apocalyptic. 14-18)

Deadstream

Romasco-Moore, Mar | Viking (320 pp.) $12.99 paper | April 1, 2025 | 9780593691885

Agoraphobic streamer Teresa’s safe online world is shattered after witnessing a fellow streamer being attacked by a shadowy presence.

Seventeen-year-old Teresa has been afraid to leave her bedroom ever since surviving the car accident that killed her best friend a year ago. Her isolation is hurting her relationships with family and friends, but she’s created a safe space in her room, doing online school and focusing on being a reasonably successful livestreamer; she has a supportive group of fellow queer streamers, the Rainbros. Her sense of security is shattered after a popular streamer is physically assaulted and eventually dies on screen as thousands watch. The shadowy attacker appears in other streams and chats, including Teresa’s own, encouraging them to “open the door.” Frozen with anxiety and increasingly terrified to leave her room, Teresa struggles to overcome her fears before the ghoulish figure endangers more lives, including those closest to her. Interspersed with transcripts from livestreams, online threads, video comments, and text messages, the narrative brings the action from the first chapter. Romasco-Moore creates a claustrophobic atmosphere as Teresa’s anxiety increases and she refuses to leave her room. Through haunting scenes, the author builds the tension,

leaving readers questioning whether anywhere is truly safe. The book also explores themes of grief, mental health, isolation, and the strength of online friendships. Main characters are cued white; Teresa, who’s questioning her gender identity, identifies as pansexual. A thrilling, claustrophobic horror that explores the danger of a ghostly online presence. (Horror. 14-18)

She Waits for You Beyond the Dark

Simmons, Kristen | Tor Teen (304 pp.)

$19.99 | March 11, 2025

9781250851161 | Series: Death Games, 2

A new game begins after the events of Find Him Where You Left Him Dead (2023).

The empress, who’s not so dead after all, starts a new game with her estranged husband, the emperor: She can possess Ian (whose friends rescued him in the first volume) for one night before sharing his body kills him. Unless she can gather the three pieces of the powerful but broken tomoe and remake it, she won’t be able to “recreate her empress form.” But the pieces can only be gathered by willing mortals. The villainous empress uses Owen’s romantic feelings for Ian to gain his assistance. Meanwhile, Maddy’s determined to rescue half-human Dax from Meido— where he learns the truth about his heritage—and to do so, she also ends up back in the game. Emerson, the final member of the friend group, is along for the ride despite her insecurities about being the couples’ fifth wheel (she has a self-acceptance storyline regarding her asexuality, which is an effective foil to the romantic storylines). This time, the game takes them to Jigoku in a creative take on the Japanese Buddhist hell. The structure and plotting of the story results in a fair amount of repetition, but the horrific threats and the settings, deeply rooted in Japanese mythology, are strengths. Although the ending feels

somewhat predictable, it’s a reward for readers who are attached to the multiracial cast.

Repetitive elements aside, fans of the characters and vibe will find much to enjoy. (Fantasy. 12-18)

Kirkus Star

Cope Field

Simpson, T.L. | Flux (272 pp.) | $14.99 paper | April 22, 2025 | 9781635831054

Years after his mother abandoned their family, a teen baseball star struggles with his feelings toward his abusive father in this contemporary novel set in small-town Arkansas.

After Crawford Cope hits his father with a baseball bat, he’s sentenced to 300 hours of community service—working to revamp a baseball diamond that will be named Cope Field after his famous pops, a hometown hero who played in the major leagues. Craw, who’s white, is paired with Hannah Flores, a brownskinned, bisexual punk rocker with bright blue, pink-tipped hair. They go to the same school, but he doesn’t know her; Craw’s reputation as the son of a wealthy local legend precedes him. Hannah has no interest in baseball, and Craw is initially annoyed by her constant talking, but as they learn more about each other and their respective difficult home lives, Craw falls for Hannah. His understandable anger toward his mercurial father fills him with shame, even when it’s provoked by his protective feelings toward his funny, precocious younger brother, Sutton, who doesn’t even remember their momma. Though he’s also tempted to play the hero for Hannah, who faces bullying at school and at home, Craw’s developing understanding that his well-intentioned barging in isn’t helping her, plus his willingness to listen to what she really wants from him, are refreshing. This heartbreaking, finely drawn story will keep readers engaged.

A wise, emotionally rich tale of a young man finding his way through family trauma. (Fiction. 14-18)

Every Borrowed Beat

Stewart, Erin | Delacorte (352 pp.)

$19.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9780593710661

Convinced she’s identified her donor, a Utah heart transplant recipient investigates the girl’s life. Four months ago, 17-year-old Sydney Wells got a second chance at life thanks to a donor’s heart. After some sleuthing, Sydney’s sure that donor is Mia Stoddard, who died in a flash flood. Compelled to learn about Mia so “this heart won’t feel like such a stranger,” Sydney crashes her memorial. There, Clayton Cooper, Mia’s best friend, asks Sydney to help him honor her by completing a vision board with a series of bucket list photos Mia took—the perfect opportunity for Sydney, who’s pretending to be Mia’s online friend, to gather information. As Sydney recreates the depicted scenes with Clayton and posts Mia’s photos on Instagram to inspire others to take risks, she realizes that “working on this Mia project has given me a purpose again.” But focusing on Mia threatens her long-distance friendship with fellow heart patient Chloe Munoz, who’s desperately awaiting a heart yet is always ready with advice. And if Clayton learns Sydney’s true motive for helping, their flirtatious budding romance could disappear. Stewart, a self-described “heart failure survivor,” poignantly explores the occasionally brutal realities of organ donation and transplant for patients and their families, particularly survivor’s guilt and grief. While Sydney and Clayton are multifaceted, Mia’s portrayal, which is filtered through others’ perceptions and the inspiration people derive from her life, occasionally feels less wellrounded. Most characters read white; Chloe is cued Latine.

This heartbreaking, finely drawn story will keep readers engaged.

COPE FIELD

Alternately heart-wrenching and heartwarming. (Fiction. 14-18)

Dear Manny

Stone, Nic | Crown (224 pp.) | $19.99 March 4, 2025 | 9780593308011

A white Ivy League student reconsiders his racial and class privilege when he runs for student government. After the death of his best friend, Manny Rivers—a Black teenager who was fatally shot by an off-duty cop—Jared Peter Christensen realized that his whiteness and wealth protected him from the bigotry that Manny couldn’t escape. Now a rising junior at an elite college in Connecticut, Jared wants to make a meaningful impact on the world. He’s also determined to block John Preston LePlante IV, a self-proclaimed “blueblooded Florida boy,” from winning junior class council president. But Jared’s plans are thrown for a loop when he meets Dylan Marie Coleman, a Black transfer student who enters the campus election. Initially guarded, Dylan opens up to Jared, and a mutual yet fragile romantic attraction blooms. As Jared tries to sort out his conflicting feelings, he writes letters to Manny. Can he earn Dylan’s heart and—more importantly—shed his old habits? In this final installment of Stone’s trilogy that began with Dear Martin (2017), Jared’s fraught journey is depicted with nuance, emotional honesty, and accessible realism. Through his mistakes, Jared learns about the insidious consequences of white supremacy and his complicity in a corrupt system. The positive ending rightfully doesn’t fully resolve all the

lingering questions, and readers will wonder if Jared continues to evolve or if his resolutions are fleeting promises. A concise, thoughtful narrative that challenges the concept and ideals of allyship through an unexpected lens. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14-18)

Divining the Leaves

Thakrar, Shveta | Harper/Harper Collins (416 pp.) | $19.99 March 4, 2025 | 9780063255265

Things are not as they seem in the yaksha kingdom. Nature-loving Ridhi Kapadia, who finds joy in telling stories through natural perfumery, has never fit in. In a nearby forest, Ridhi has visions of an enchanted realm, and after concocting the perfect fragrance and performing a special ritual, she’s granted entrance into the magical home of her dreams. Nilesh Batra’s comfortable life is turned upside down when he’s the last to discover that his parents’ seemingly perfect marriage is a facade. After he’s suspended from school, his mother takes him to family friends the Kapadias’ house to stay over spring break, much to Ridhi’s displeasure—cool Nilesh dropped Ridhi as a friend. Nilesh has derided Ridhi for her belief in magic, but when he encounters a pretty yakshini, or nature spirit, named Kamini, he’s happy to enter her world, especially if it means escaping his family’s problems. Meanwhile, yearning to remain with the yaksha, Ridhi negotiates with noblewoman Sulochana to become a yakshini herself. But when she learns that Nilesh has intentionally trapped himself in the yaksha kingdom, Ridhi begins to unravel a troubling story that the leaves

may have been whispering about all along. Divided into three parts, Thakrar’s Hindu- and Buddhist-inspired story with a primarily Indian cast is overflowing with lush, sensual imagery. Unfortunately, the gorgeous worldbuilding can’t camouflage the weak characterization, which is especially evident in the self-serving Nilesh, whose later reconciliation with Ridhi is unconvincing. A somewhat uneven but undeniably beautiful fantasy. (Fantasy. 13-18)

Why on Earth: An Alien Invasion Anthology

Ed. by Thor, Rosiee & Vania Stoyanova

Page Street (336 pp.) | $18.99

Feb. 4, 2025 | 9798890031617

Teenagers from a far-off planet crashland on Earth during a rogue rescue mission.

Iona, a Trevval from the planet Trexyl, is willing to risk her entire future to rescue her brother, Axariam, who went on a mission five years ago and never returned. On Earth, cloaked in a human disguise, Axariam is a global celebrity named Max Spencer, but Iona knows that if her brother hasn’t returned, he must be a hostage. When the ship’s engine overheats, the five crew members desperately launch themselves into escape pods that scatter them across the United States. The ship, piloted by Iona, makes quite a splash as it crashes into the water off the coast of Santa Monica. This collection of short stories by popular YA authors, including Julian Winters, Eric Smith, M.K. England, Emily Lloyd-Jones, and Beth Revis, follows the aftermath of the alien ship’s dramatic arrival from the perspectives of witnesses, whose lives are forever changed, and the Trevvals, who must reunite to complete their mission before midnight so their parents don’t find out that they stole the ship. While each story features a self-contained conflict, the individual entries also build on one another, creating a satisfying and

suspenseful overarching narrative. The cast forms a racially diverse ensemble, and many of the stories center on LGBTQ+ characters falling in love and finding community. This anthology twinkles with an adventurous spirit, quirky personalities, hope, and a sense of belonging.

Stellar. (contributor bios) (Anthology. 14-18)

They Bloom at Night

Tran, Trang Thanh | Bloomsbury (384 pp.) $19.99 | March 4, 2025 | 9781547611119

A Vietnamese American teen searches for something monstrous in a post-apocalyptic near future. Twenty-one months ago, Hurricane Arlene left the town of Mercy, Mississippi, waterlogged and its economy devastated. Worse, red algae lingers, enveloping everything from buildings to fish in a blood-red bloom. Now, Noon and Mom scavenge the contaminated waters in their shrimp trawler, looking for traces of Noon’s brother and father, who superstitious Mom believes have been reincarnated as sea creatures. Noon, who has never felt comfortable anywhere—“I have always been different. I am different”—feels at home in this strange new landscape. But things are becoming stranger still: The wildlife is mutating, Noon’s body is mysteriously changing, and people are going missing at an alarming rate. Jimmy Boudreaux, a crooked businessman and a tyrannical local boss figure, believes that a monster is stalking the waters. Using the loan Noon’s parents owe him as leverage, Jimmy extorts Noon into helping him hunt it down. With Jimmy’s ornery daughter, Covey, in tow, Noon returns to Mercy to investigate. The teens discover the shocking, skin-crawling truth about what’s overtaken the region—and Noon grapples with long-suppressed wounds. Tran fills the pages with sensory detail, creating a haunting setting that

immerses readers in their worldbuilding. Noon is a complex and multifaceted protagonist, whose reckoning with trauma and selfhood (especially gender identity and Vietnamese ancestry) is the emotional center anchoring the extraordinary plot events.

Overflowing with horrors—and with heart. (Horror. 14-18)

Children of Useyi

Utomi, Moses Ose | Atheneum (352 pp.)

$19.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9781665949910

Series: Sisters of the Mud, 2

When external forces threaten the Isle, competing Fam must learn to cooperate in this sequel to Daughters of Oduma (2023). On the heels of a devastating battle between the Mud and the Vine, Sis Dirt is growing into her leadership role as First of the Mud. Antie Yaya’s prediction that the Gods will return comes to pass during a celebration with other Fam of the South, when a stranger washes ashore—he’s an adult, the only one on the Isle other than Antie Yaya. Mister Odo comes “from the land of the Mamas and Papas,” where people go after their rite of passage, never to return. Antie Yaya announces that there will be an island-wide God Bow, and the winner of the tournament will accompany Mister Odo back where he came from. Godskins—the most elite Bowers—from the whole Isle will gather to compete at the Imperial Temple. But when monstrous creatures called Remnants attack, the powerful Godskins scatter back to their camps to protect their younger charges. Sis Dirt forms an uneasy truce with Carra Carre of the Vine as they both search for their Fam in the ongoing attacks. Nonstop action keeps the pages turning, especially during the climactic culminating journey. The growth experienced by Sis Dirt and other characters who

inhabit this West African–inspired world feels earned.

An action-packed storyline and robust characterization will please fans of the first installment. (map) (Fantasy. 12-18)

Tales From Dreamland

Valfre, Ed | Unruly (92 pp.) | $29.95 Feb. 11, 2025 | 9781592703777

A Los Angeles photographer pairs his images with brief lines of text, exploring the extraordinary amid the seemingly ordinary.

Capturing the beauty of everyday life in his photography, which sometimes borders on the surreal, Valfre presents evocative vignettes that riff on each image. Most of the two-page spreads feature a single black-and-white or color photograph accompanied by a short paragraph— occasionally just a sentence or two. “LUNCH in the CLOUDS,” which describes a worker on his lunch break who’s jolted out of his routine by a moment of beauty, appears beside a photo in which a glass-topped table reflects puffy white clouds and blue sky, a striking contrast to the mundanity of the wicker furniture, concrete paving stones, and unremarkable lunch of a “ham sandwich, banana, and cup of coffee.” Some entries seem to be autobiographical: In “The LOST FATHERS,” a striking black-andwhite photo shot from below—of silhouetted people climbing the mostly leafless branches of a tree, standing out against a stark, empty sky—appears beside a first-person description of a dream about conversing with a deceased father. Many of the photographs play with light, shadow, and reflection: Sunlight sparkles on a pool as a brown-skinned boy floats on his back, and a full moon is reflected in a small puddle in a cracked sidewalk. This unusual volume will please browsers and is also a good source of creative prompts for language arts and fine art classes.

A thoughtful, imaginative work to inspire dreamers and observers. (Fiction. 12-18)

While We’re Young

Walther, K.L. | Delacorte Romance

(384 pp.) | $12.99 paper

March 4, 2025 | 9780593813959

An entertaining romp reminiscent of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off High school senior Grace Barbour needs a break from school, and she’s pretty sure her

best friends, Isabel Cruz and Everett Adler, do too. The student body president engages in some subterfuge (and begging) to get the pair to skip school and hit the road for the best day ever. Grace’s motives aren’t entirely altruistic—she has growing feelings for Everett, who’s Isa’s ex. She needs them to make up ASAP so she and Everett can move forward with their relationship. Isa, meanwhile, is keeping a secret from Grace—she and Grace’s brother, James, have feelings for one another (and James is hot on the trio’s trail). An unforgettable day unfolds, as the longtime friends, who are just a month from graduation, deal with their entangled bonds, reveal secrets, explore the city, and eat cheesesteaks. Despite a slightly slow start, Walther’s latest ramps up to become a lively and enjoyable read. The Philadelphia setting shines as the friends reminisce about their childhoods growing up just outside the city and the special bond their families share. Mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and grief, are dealt with sympathetically between capers. The multifaceted characters effectively deal with their problems through satisfying conversations. Isa is Latine, Everett is Jewish and cued white, and Grace, who’s bisexual, also presents white. Rom-com fans will love this joyride through Philadelphia. (Romance. 13-18)

True Gretch—Young

Adult

Edition:

Lessons for Anyone Who Wants To Make a Difference

Whitmer, Gretchen with Lisa Dickey

Atheneum (192 pp.) | $18.99

Jan. 28, 2025 | 9781665983761

Michigan governor Whitmer highlights career achievements and life lessons in this young adult adaptation of her 2024 work for adults.

This book weaves self-help advice together with personal anecdotes from the Democratic politician’s childhood and political career (including the infamous, failed conspiracy by a far-right militia group to kidnap her in 2020). The chapter titles, which are the same in the original and YA versions, convey a strong sense of the content: for example, “Don’t Let the Bullies Get You Down” and “Seek to Understand.” Much of the text is also the same, although this edition includes passages offering important contextual explanations and directly addressing younger readers’ concerns: “If I could go back and talk to my ten-year-old self, I’d tell her to share with a trusted adult what was going on. Ask for help. Advocate for herself.” The fragmented presentation leads to some jarring transitions, for example, when one chapter ends with a slapstick tale of Whitmer’s slipping on ice and falling “right on my butt,” and the next one begins “On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered.” Most successful are the many anecdotes spotlighting the governor’s principles and the ways she’s worked to serve her constituents. While the lack of sources is a weakness, the conversational style will appeal to readers interested in politics and those seeking insights on leadership and attaining success.

A readable combination of advice and inspiration. (Q&A with Whitmer’s daughters, resources, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 13-18)

Indie

DOLLARS AND SENSE

EVERYONE LIKES THE idea of get-rich-quick schemes, but very few of them are successful in practice. In reality, it’s always a better idea to show prudence and patience when it comes to personal finances—whether opening a savings account, taking out a loan, investing in the stock market, or planning for retirement. But even the most cautious strategy can seem daunting when you’re insecure about money matters; after all, most people can’t afford to take big risks with their hard-earned cash. That doesn’t mean that you can’t find ways to pursue your goals. Here are three books, all recommended by Kirkus Indie, that offer intriguing introductions to responsible money management: Professional financial adviser Jeffrey Panik’s Your Future Is Now: A Guide to Understanding Your Finances and Gaining Independence offers “a brisk and authoritative financial blueprint for beginners,” according to our reviewer, which tackles everything from simple budgeting (“Understanding the Difference Between a Need and a Want”) and managing credit card debt to understanding taxes and

the details of student loans, car loans, and home loans.

“We may not always see it as a fun part of the process,” Panik writes at one point, “but taking the time to understand the details is key to success.” Throughout, the author uses bullet-pointed lists, charts, and hypothetical scenarios to transfer a wealth of practical knowledge (pun intended), which young people just starting out will treasure—and some older readers may wish they’d taken to the bank.

In The Wannabe Investor: 40 Must-Know Facts Before Buying Your First Stock, Ann Marie Sabath, a small business owner and successful personal investor, presents a primer for people looking to buy their first

stock, and she starts with basic definitions (“Stock is an ownership stake in a company”) before moving on to more complex ideas (“The length of time you hold an investment affects the tax rate you pay when selling it”). Along the way, she offers epigrammatic advice from an investment guru identified only as “Allan,” whose practical tips (called “Allanisms”) are worth remembering even if one has plenty of investing experience. For instance: “Rome wasn’t built in day. Neither will be your success in the market.” Kirkus’ reviewer calls it “a cogent, warmly written guide to beginning investing.”

Make Money Your Thing!: Ditch the Shame and Design Your Dream Life by financial adviser Kalee Boisvert is a guide to fiscal literacy that aims “to support women”

and “help them overcome their insecurities around money.” Over the course of this book, the author encourages women to examine their financial assumptions (often formed in childhood), to learn budgeting skills, and to gain fiscal confidence, while understanding that one can use money to chase one’s aspirations—whether they involve travel, purchase of a home, or other life plans. “You’re not on this earth to live anyone’s life but your own,” Boisvert writes. “Stay true to what you want, especially when it comes to your money.” Kirkus’ starred review calls it “a first-rate guide for women of any age looking to increase their wealth and feel confident doing so.”

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

DAVID RAPP

EDITOR’S PICK

A routine case leads a former judge into a web of intrigue in Boldt’s novel.

Nearly three years after State Administrative Judge Jason Erickson was injured in a shooting that killed his girlfriend Tara, his life in Wisconsin has resumed a semblance of normalcy, including a steady relationship with lawyer Grace Clarkson. One afternoon, Grace asks for his help with a case involving a coal shipment and storage facility located on Lake Superior that wants to renew its permit; she represents a consortium of local and environmental groups opposed to the renewal. Jason’s involvement in the case unites him with a surprising ally: Earl Franks, a disgraced former lawyer whose gambling addiction led to his involvement with the man who shot Jason and Tara.

Though Earl has lost his law license, his relevant case experience is an asset, and he genuinely wants to help Grace and Jason. As the case progresses, Jason’s relationship with Grace falters (“Grace had a certain coldness, a façade that he could seldom get behind”) after he meets Camille, a free-spirited Unitarian minister, and Grace rekindles her relationship with colleague Tim Gergen. When Grace and Jason come to suspect the facility is not adequately following environmental regulations, they work with Camille and Earl to surreptitiously obtain coal samples; what seems like a simple plan goes horribly awry, putting careers—and lives—at risk. Boldt’s sequel to Blue Lake (2022) is a captivating page-turner that balances courtroom drama with a deeper exploration of the

Big Lake Troubles

characters introduced in the author’s debut. Jason Erickson is a strong protagonist whose journey to rebuild his life after losing Tara provides some poignant moments in the novel. The well-drawn supporting characters include Earl Franks, whose redemption arc is nuanced and compelling; Courtney Sharpe, the attorney representing the coal storage facility who has a

personal connection to Earl Franks; and Camille, the compassionate minister who offers Jason another chance at love. While this is a direct sequel to Blue Lake, Boldt expertly weaves enough backstory throughout the narrative to establish the connections between the characters for new readers.

A satisfying sequel and one of the best legal thrillers of the year.

Our Desperate Hour: Novels of the Great War

Andrews, John F. | 46 North Publications (378 pp.) | $29.99 $15.99 paper | Nov. 10, 2024 9798989383580 | 9798989383573 paper

An unlikely soldier in World War I searches for his son on the Western Front in Andrews’ historical novel.

Forty-six-yearold Major Albert “Ab” Johnson, a newspaperman from Butte, Montana, recently rejoined the Army to serve his country in the Great War. He wasn’t expecting to fight, of course—he thought he was taking a safe supply job in Tours—but he’s just been summoned to Paris, where his fluency in French is needed to aid in gathering medical supplies for the scrambling American divisions on the front. Ab has barely reached the city before a German shell explodes the cafe in which he’s sitting, leaving a ringing in his ears. Ab hopes his proximity to the line might allow him to reconcile with his son Jack Johnson, who bucked family tradition by joining the Marines instead of the Army (and from whom Ab became estranged after making some anti-Marine remarks). Ab isn’t the only one acclimating to life in the combat zone: Arrogant surgeon Arthur Beck of the Navy Medical Corps, gung-ho Marine Carl Larsen, and hospital apprentice Lyle McCormack are all figuring out what exactly is expected of them in this bloody place. Little do they know, they are all headed toward the Battle of Belleau Wood, where a new chapter of Marine Corps mythology will be forged and Ab might (or might not) find redemption. Andrews captures the pain of war in muscular prose, as here when Ab speeds a bleeding soldier to an aid station: “The motorcycle bounces along the road as I race from Lucy to La Voie. I hope I don’t lose any teeth. The wounded private riding in the sidecar moans with each jolt. I’m too busy steering around the worst holes to groan with him.” Andrews clearly knows the time period—and

An exciting tale of misadventure and rescue.

DORA AND THE YELLOW STRAWSTACK

particularly the era’s medical practices— but he largely eschews the usual tragedy of WWI narratives in favor of a more palatable adventure tale. This is one for the war buffs, and particularly those who enjoy Marine Corps lore. An immersive war novel that manages not to become overly depressing.

No Way but Forward: Life Stories of Three Families in the Gaza Strip

Barber, Brian K. | Self | Jan. 15, 2025

A scholar of childhood trauma focuses on the stories of three Palestinians in this nonfiction case study. Hammam, Khalil, and Hussam, writes Barber, “are ordinary people living in an extraordinary context.” All three are Palestinian men who came of age during the intifada and Israeli occupation of their home in the Gaza Strip. While the book’s insightful introductory chapter offers readers ample historical context, the author, a professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee, emphasizes that this is not “a book about the PalestinianIsraeli conflict.” Instead, it is a story of resilience, survival, and trauma, told from the perspectives of its three main subjects. Barber’s research on childhood trauma in war-torn environments took him on multiple trips to the Gaza Strip over the last three decades, where he developed a close relationship with the three young men. Stories shared by the trio range from the typical trials of adolescence—Hammam, for instance, spends entire chapters stressing over his school exams—to confrontations with the Israeli military. In one particularly

harrowing anecdote involving both physical and sexual abuse, Hussam tells of witnessing a Palestinian assuring soldiers that he would “confess to anything” if released. Many of the stories defy Western narratives about Palestinian youth: In addition to getting highlights of Khalil’s day-to-day family life, readers learn of his history of political activism as he eschewed joining “the front lines of the stone throwers” to participate in behind-the-scenes organizations of demonstrations. As the author of multiple scholarly books on childhood psychology, Barber approaches the stories of Hammam, Khalil, and Hussam with an empathetic style that gives them space to tell their own stories. The book’s final section looks at the events of October 7, 2023, from a Palestinian perspective, providing an intimate exploration of the ways in which the subsequent Israeli response impacted the lives of three average Palestinian families. The book’s engaging narrative is supplemented by research footnotes, though it never reads like an academic text. The book includes photographs, maps, and other visual elements that complement its accessibility. A powerful look into occupied Gaza through the lenses of three ordinary young men.

Dora and the Yellow Strawstack

Bartel, Bob | Illus. by Chad Thompson FriesenPress (32 pp.) | $28.29 Sept. 19, 2024 | 9781039196841

A little girl and her brother get in a bit of trouble on a farm in Bartel’s illustrated children’s book.

In this tale, set roughly a century in the past, Dora is a little girl who does

everything with her big brother, Henry. One day, she spots a harvest parade arriving to their farm and calls out to her sibling to watch the workers help their father: “Some men connected the tractor with a long heavy belt to the threshing machine. Some lined up the grain wagons. Others drove the hayracks into the field of stooks and gathered the yellow sheaves with pitchforks, tossing them onto the racks.” (Thankfully, a glossary at the beginning of the book explains the farming jargon for youngsters.) The next day, Dora and Henry can’t resist playing on the yellow pile of straw. Henry has an idea to climb the old, firm brown straw pile to jump across to the fresh yellow one and slide down its side. Henry goes first and makes it across, but when Dora follows, she falls into a hollow and disappears into the quicksandlike straw. Henry yells for help and their mother and Willie, a farmhand, come running to rescue Dora. Thompson’s full-color cartoon illustrations depict the landscape with simple backgrounds, drawing attention to the foreground action, which is particularly helpful when the prose describes details of the harvest process. The text can be challenging at times, as it’s littered with vocabulary that many children may find unfamiliar, but the eloquence and elegance of the storytelling (alongside the aforementioned glossary) make the book quite readable. Questions about the setting’s specific time and place go unanswered, but there are hints in the author’s family photographs, included at the book’s beginning and end. Ultimately, the sibling bond and the cooperative spirit of the farm effectively undergird the educational details about traditional farming practices. The main characters are depicted with pale skin; background characters have a range of skin tones. An exciting tale of misadventure and rescue.

The Blind Man Game: A Memoir of Art, Activism and Adaptation

Boskind, Paul | Amplify Publishing (248 pp.) $30.00 | Jan. 28, 2025 | 9798891382077

In this conversational memoir, a psychologist navigates a life with deteriorating vision.

As a teenager, Boskind was diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a genetic condition that leads to decreased vision over time. Cataracts, diagnosed later, made it even harder for the author to move through the world like he used to do. When readers meet him at the beginning of this memoir, in 2022, he’s not only grappling with the logistics of his newly worsened disability, but also contending with grief. Knowing that his sight will continue to deteriorate as he ages, he braces himself for what’s to come by playing what he calls the “blind man game”—going about his daily activities the way that he would if his vision was completely gone. He doesn’t mask his fear and disappointment, but he also meets his uncertain future with relentless positivity: “Don’t stop. Keep moving forward. Keep dancing! ” he tells himself when experiencing moments of doubt. Boskind’s affecting emotional honesty extends to other areas of his life in this remembrance, including his upbringing in a financially struggling family who wouldn’t accept it when he came out as gay. The author balances these and other sad stories with positive accounts of a supportive chosen family, financial stability (the author currently owns three homes, including an Irish castle), and friends in the U.S. government. Such a full life is difficult to contain in a single book, and readers may feel overwhelmed with information at times. The book’s organization doesn’t help, as the author often introduces important names and facts without adequate context; for example, Boskind alludes to Ireland’s Clonbrock Castle multiple times before mentioning that he owns it,

and he mentions knowing famous political figures long before explaining his role as a fundraiser for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. Structural flaws aside, however, the positivity in this story is moving. A remembrance that offers a comforting reminder that grief can give way to new perspectives.

Justice At Trial: Courtroom Battles and Groundbreaking Cases

Brosnahan, James J. | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (286 pp.)

$35.00 | July 15, 2023 | 9781538174432

Brosnahan recounts his extraordinarily successful career as a lawyer and offers lessons for those aspiring to follow suit. The author did not enjoy a particularly promising start in life: In 1937, at the age of 3, he was diagnosed with rheumatic fever and was sentenced to more than two years of bed rest. By the age of 6, he still couldn’t read, and was compelled to repeat the fourth grade, a shameful “double internment.” Nonetheless, he would eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and enjoy a 60-year career in which he saw juries deliver 145 verdicts. With great clarity and insight, Brosnahan chronicles the highlights of his impressive professional experience, which includes work as a trial lawyer in civil and criminal law, both defending and prosecuting. He began his career as a federal prosecutor in Arizona—his first trial was a grisly murder case in which an Apache teenager was stabbed to death—and he memorably describes the “adrenaline-producing excitement of enforcing the criminal law daily.”

The author here recollects his most memorable moments as a lawyer, from prosecuting an illegal gambling ring involving dirty cops to defending a newspaper’s First Amendment rights… as well as those of a breast implant

manufacturer. In one of his most remarkable experiences, Brosnahan testified against the confirmation of William Rehnquist’s appointment to chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1986 and was warned by then-senator Joe Biden that his career would suffer as a consequence. In addition to sharing the lessons he’s learned along the way (which should be especially helpful to those just beginning to study or practice law), the author paints a vivid portrait of a lawyer’s psyche. “I wanted that impossible case. You may think this a very strange goal. I agree. However, in the souls of trial lawyers there is a contrariness, an independence of mind.”

Brosnahan has inarguably enjoyed an accomplished career, as well as a diverse one, and as a result his memoir is a valuable resource for anyone either committed to pursuing a life lawyering or simply interested in understanding the mind of a driven attorney. Much of the remembrance is devoted to the descriptions of actual cases the author tried; these analytically rigorous depictions reveal a lot about the work of a lawyer, and, more broadly, the judicial process in America, a system often hindered by bias, inequality, and corruption. As a young lawyer, the author discovered that even Harvard hadn’t prepared him for the actual practice of law, and this lucid synopsis of his own experience will be exceedingly helpful to anyone similarly green. For all of the text’s granular, technical descriptions of legal cases, it never reads as dry or academic; in fact, the author’s enthusiasm for the law shines through infectiously. “For me, the greatest mood elevator in life has not been a drug, but going into a courthouse as a trial lawyer. Sitting in the empty court early in the morning as I go over my papers once more gives me a feeling of being alive and involved in things that matter to the client.” This is an unusually satisfying memoir, one that teaches and entertains at the same time.

A captivating recollection that should be read by anyone embarking on a career in law.

The Contract of Love

Chaves, José | CreateSpace (386 pp.) $15.99 paper | Nov. 12, 2012 | 9781480225541

A young man yearns to break free from the cycle of addiction and toxicity that has haunted his family for generations in Chaves’ memoir.

The author begins his story as a kid in the backseat of his dad’s car, where his sister pours their father Hernando a glass of whiskey from a bottle kept under the passenger seat. Born in Colombia and divorced from their mother, Hernando was a formidable presence whose charm seemed irresistible. The head of an ostensibly successful engineering business, Hernando nevertheless regularly “float[ed] checks” to live outside his means, had an obvious drinking problem, and consistently hired teenage secretaries to sleep with. As Chaves grew up, he was continually torn between wanting to take care of his increasingly dissolute father (“I reach over and ease him back against the seat like a sleeping child, grateful that I’m here beside him, and a strange sense of warmth goes through me when I realize that my father needs me”) and the urge to establish his own independent sense of self. When Chaves left for college, he quickly found himself falling into the same cycle of addiction and selfdestruction he had witnessed throughout his life. Unhappy and suffering from panic attacks, he resolved to confront past demons in order to secure his future. With straightforward prose, Chaves paints an unflinching portrait of a father who wavered between being a

hero and villain, a man and a myth. The book contains plenty of harsh language (especially toward women) that may turn off some readers, but it is all presented via dialogue and does serve to provide a sense of realism and immediacy to the scenarios that the author describes. Chaves has written a memoir that may very well inspire others to embrace a kinder, more forgiving nature—regardless of how they were raised.

An uneven but compelling look at the heady pull of toxic masculinity and the strength needed to overcome it.

Peace of Me

Chicot, Joyan V. | Self (205 pp.) | $14.99 paper Sept. 18, 2024 | 9798336334913

Chicot’s book of poems addresses emotional healing and transformation.

The poet presents works on self-acceptance, personal growth, and love in this collection. It opens with a letter to self, expressing gratitude for having resilience, perseverance, and compassion. Many other poems echo this positive self-talk, encouraging the reader or the speaker herself to overcome fear, pursue greatness, and stay true to themselves. In “The climb,” the speaker acknowledges the hardship of life, with its “sleepless nights, / Harsh mornings / And tearful times.” Small steps carry the speaker of “The voice of trees” over summits and into valleys, until she can appreciate the blooming flowers around them; they find peace in nature, where “lovely scents, / Mellow sounds” ease their mind. Taking inspiration from a tree, a speaker admires the subject’s deep

A genuine and often affirming collection about embracing one’s best self.

PEACE OF ME

roots and ability to withstand the elements. Chicot experiments with different points of view in “Bravery,” a dialogue between a pigeon asserting its power and a blackbird defiantly declaring its independence. In “Be audacious!,” the narrator uses the past as “a source wisdom” and the present as a teacher, both essential ingredients for the future’s foundation. Poems contemplate love, from the deep kind “with no disguise” to the type that brings out the “softest me.” Other recurring themes include living intentionally, appreciating silence, and cultivating gratitude. Throughout this collection, Chicot uses straightforward, unadorned language, and simple, accessible similes, such as “Like stalactites, / Elevate others from the ground up” (“Be part of the story”). Many of the works are effectively encouraging and empowering; “Keep knocking at that door, / The one where your dreams are,” urges “No matter what, keep knocking!” She also ably incorporates sensory details: “Refreshing seabreezes caress the creases of my face.” However, a few similes fail to land, such as a description of love being “like the Nitrogen to the beans” (“To my lover”).

A genuine and often affirming collection about embracing one’s best self.

Kirkus Star

Scattershot: My Journey From the Projects to Paris to Rodeo Drive

Chrysler, Larry | Acorn Publishing (292 pp.)

$27.00 | $17.99 paper | Sept. 10, 2024 9798885280952 | 9798885280945 paper

Chrysler recounts his life as a gay man from Minnesota who led an extraordinary and successful life. Born Lawrence Bernard Cohen in 1931 to a struggling Jewish family in the Midwest, the author was not primed for success. Still, he always felt that he was

lucky, often finding opportunities falling into his path. He cites an encounter when he was 16 in Minneapolis in which a woman stopped him to say she saw two angels on his shoulders, calling to mind cartoons in which one shoulder might hold an angel and the other a devil; throughout the book, Chrysler attributes his luck to “his angels” when good things happen for him. The story of his life is extraordinary given the time period—he was witness to some of the most dramatic social and geopolitical changes of the 20th century. The author worked in various roles in the fashion industry, from selling to designing to teaching. From this vantage point, he was able to observe and integrate himself into the wealthy American upper class, coming into contact with such celebrities as Donald Sutherland, Lauren Bacall, and his good friend Bobby Short. As a gay man living during the AIDS crisis, the tragedy touches on parts of his story, but Chrysler does not delve deeply into the subject, arguing that he has nothing new to add. Still, the topics he does choose to address are handled with tremendous compassion and insight. The memoir’s title is apt, as the author takes a broad, slightly haphazard approach to his story, which reads like oral narration. In the author’s note, Chrysler acknowledges this, confessing, “I’ve always been recognized among my friends as someone who loves to talk…If a particular topic sparks a memory from my past, I dive into a narrative filled with intricate details.”

In this book, the author reflects on over 90 years of life—the text can be sentimental and sometimes verges on saccharine, but it’s never overwrought. Chrysler’s storytelling style ultimately works perfectly to convey his fascinating perspective on the time period.

A frank and touching look at being gay in America throughout the 20th century.

Disrupting Taxes: Applying Technology and Science to the Tax System, Reigniting the American Dream, and Exploring the Forgotten Stories of Taxes, Gold, and Money

Cryan, Thomas J. | InterTerra New Media (180 pp.) | $16.99 paper Sept. 6, 2024 | 9798990774209

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

Cryan delivers a thorough critique of the United States tax system and proposes an alternative. The author begins his concise and stimulating study with the familiar observation that the “gargantuan” U.S. tax code is an unwieldy mess, a “nearly impenetrable treatise” totaling upwards of 70,000 pages. In addition to its inscrutability, it is deeply flawed and unjust, per the author, permitting far too many loopholes and encouraging far too many tax-avoidance strategies, resulting in a “complicatedly unfair system that is steeped in political favoritism.” Cryan asserts that the dramatic shift—one that began in the 1980s—to a pronounced emphasis on the taxation of individual income produced the worst inequality the nation has ever seen. The author deftly sketches a brief history of tax policy in the U.S., convincingly arguing that the nation’s founders “never established an optimal tax theory for funding the federal government” and that what is most needed now is a “general mathematical construct.” Cryan articulates one: the Automated Banking Transaction (ABT) Tax, in which every single banking transaction is automatically taxed one percent. The author argues that this would generate sufficient revenue, eliminate loopholes, render obsolete the burden of filing taxes, and do away with all other federal taxes. The goal here, he states, is to create the broadest possible tax base and the lowest possible rates with a minimum of exemptions. This is a fascinating proposal, though it’s far too brief (well

under 200 pages) to be fully persuasive, as this is an excruciatingly complex issue. For this reason, it’s a shame the author wastes time arguing somewhat pointlessly that his theory accords with the principles of modern physics—there is a totally gratuitous section on entropy. However, taken for what it is—a condensed and hyper-general statement of an overarching principle—this is a worthwhile contribution to an increasingly urgent discussion. A provocative study of a subject too important to be neglected.

Wildcat: An Appalachian Romance

Dunn, Jeffrey | Self (168 pp.) | $14.95 paper June 18, 2024 | 9798873878420

In Dunn’s novel, a retired English teacher returns to the nowtransformed Appalachian Rust Belt town he lived in during his senior year of high school, revisiting the love and loss he experienced a half-century ago.

An unnamed narrator remarks that he feels like a “bloomed-out iris in a patch of Wildcat mayapples” now that he’s has retired to Wildcat, a mining/ mill town where “Interlopers are rare, even ones like [him] who lived here for a short time.” He has returned, some 50 years later—after living in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Upstate New York—at the suggestion of an old friend, Dominic Vitali, who informed him of “Wildcat’s magical changes, ones so different from the disastrous ones of the past” and the news that Carolyn Zalewski, the narrator’s first love when he lived in Wildcat during high school, is back in town. The main character, who had a career as an English teacher and writer, describes “Hotel Wildcat, my new home”—a living/dining collective with inhabitants engaged in artisanal activities (mushroom farming, sassafras furniture molding, and so on)—and enjoying locally sourced food.

He walks around Wildcat, interacting with various townsfolk and locales, including the riverfront where there are “chunks of concrete scattered here and downstream, a result of the time someone blew a hole in the dam.” The narrative eventually details the momentous events at which it hints early on—mine and dam explosions and a mill fire—that, decades before, jolted the town and the narrator’s relationship with Carolyn. The story ends with sightings of ghosts (dubbed “The Shadows”) that linger in the area, and a celebratory community event.  Dunn appropriately gives his book the subtitle “An Appalachian Romance”; it is indeed a love story, although it’s less about the man and woman at its center and more about the strikingly vibrant world that the author has created. The exact location of fictional Wildcat within Appalachia isn’t revealed, and one can argue that Dunn’s depiction of a modern Rust Belt town as a hub of back-to-the-earth sustainability and artistry is a utopian vision. Still, with his specifics about Wildcat’s new craft-making (who knew sassafras had such uses?), Dunn effectively makes the case that retooling is possible for any town, which makes this book a welcome alternative to the downbeat works that one often sees regarding the region. The novel’s other strengths include how Dunn dramatically shapes the narrative with headline-style punctations; he gives the word “Bang” its own page, just past the novel’s midpoint. His slow revelation of what led to the town’s tragic events is also effective, as when he introduces Carolyn’s brooding brother and the “sickly yellow” interior of her home. At its core, however, this novel is a lovely ode to nature, from a ramps-collecting idyll of young lovers to the “confluence” of the riverfront where “all thoughts and feelings and experiences fail, and it’s upon places like these that The Shadows endure.” This theme culminates in “Lost Surreal Interlude,” a marvelous final section that offers a lightning round of observations of the natural world. A riveting unfolding of past traumas and joyful celebration of nature and renewal.

Ice Cream for Lunch: A Grandparents Handbook

Foley, Laura | The Poetry Box (58 pp.)

$12.00 paper | Feb. 8, 2025 | 9781956285819

Foley offers a collection of free-verse poems about the beauty and awe of grandparenthood.

The book opens with a scene of a newborn daughter, Eleanor, on a mother’s chest, with the grandparent speaker experiencing sympathy twinges in her own womb (“Grandmothers”).

Another poem prays for infants in their “sheltering globes” in an intensive care unit, where “my first grandchild” was treated (“Neonatal ICU Prayer”). In “Alternate Reality,” set at Christmastime, a 2-year-old granddaughter, Evelyn, misidentifies a sanitation worker as Santa Claus while on a wintry walk. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a speaker struggles to connect with her granddaughter over a video call and longs for in-person outings (“Grandparenting in the Time of Covid-19”). Foley shares other snapshots of life as a grandmother, from nature walks to quirky conversations to meals with grandchildren. Poems marvel at grandchildren’s wisdom; in “On the Eve of June,” when a dog dies, a granddaughter tells the speaker that the pup “ has just gone home— / her old one.” Foley concludes with a fantasy of leaving the “uncivil world” behind to lead a more serene life, devoted to raising grandkids and appreciating the beauty of nature with them (“Holiness”). Overall, Foley’s poems are concise and sincere. She acutely captures youngsters’ silly speech, and the works effectively evoke the speakers’ surroundings; a pushy midwife at a granddaughter’s birth, she writes, “herds us like livestock / back to our holding pen, / to lap stale coffee” (“Grandmothers”). Some readers may find the collection’s depiction of grandparenthood to be somewhat idealized, as it glosses over many of the role’s emotional and physical challenges. However, the poet repeatedly transforms quotidian moments into soulful

meditations; for example, upon spotting a granddaughter’s parents greeting the toddler from a window, a speaker tells readers, “Imagine / seeing your reason for being, / framed, like a photograph, / waving and smiling at you” (“Imagine”). A tender, insightful reflection on everyday wonders of life with grandchildren.

Kirkus Star

Would It Be Weird?

Garcia, Edgar | Illus. by Mariano Epelbaum | Nextcore (38 pp.)

$11.84 | $10.99 paper | March 26, 2024 9781961166035 | 9781961166042 paper

A young girl takes her family along for a wild ride through her imagination as she dreams up increasingly weird—and hilarious— scenarios.

An unnamed little girl sits at the dinner table with her family. As her mother urges her to eat, the girl instead asks questions that always begin with the prompt, “Would it be weird….” For example, she wonders, “Would it be weird if my mouth was a piano? And then, every time I brushed my teeth, everyone would cheer and clap!” In response to these increasingly elaborate questions, the girl’s mother is always ready with a response: “Yes, that would be weird…. We would be so proud of you! We would even find a dentist who fixes pianos.” After the little girl, who has medium brown skin and bright green eyes, exhausts her mother with her questions (that involve everything from sharks in an epic dance battle to Egyptian mummies in pursuit to alien makeovers), she gets ready for bed and realizes she has one more question…but this time, for her dad. Epelbaum’s illustrations include bold lines and bright colors, giving the book an almost comic book–style flair that’s endearingly absurd (like the family dog using its eye lasers to blast a giant anthropomorphic slice of pizza). Both the text and illustrations

Unapologetically graphic, deeply disturbing, and all too believable.

THE VERY BEST OF CARE

infuse the story with a joyous feeling. It’s ultimately an exuberant ode to childhood, creativity, and family, and a pleasure to read for kids and adults.

A fun, laugh-out-loud journey through a child’s imagination with wacky illustrations—a delight for all.

I Was an Alien Fashion Model

Hamid, Ivy | Self (291 pp.) | $9.99 paper Nov. 10, 2024 | 9798991522618

A girl bodyshamed by her peers becomes a fashion star on a faraway planet in Hamid’s debut middle-grade novel. While at a shop in her Massachusetts hometown, Katarina Habib ducks out of sight from school bullies. The seventh grader hides in a storeroom full of clothing—which a spiderlike alien transports to her spaceship, taking Kat along for the ride. Extraterrestrial fashion designer Madam Xanis simply wants inspiration for her new collection; she declares the Earthling girl she’s inadvertently picked up as her muse. Back home, cruel schoolmates call Kat “Fatty Katty,” but Xanis, and members of many other galactic species, find her to be beautiful. She can help Xanis win the Path of Glory, a fashion competition on planet T’kai that Xanis has won four times (though she’s come up short lately). This puts the generally insecure Kat in the bright spotlight as she does interviews, poses for promotional “clicks,” and stays mum about her home world (since Earth is a “banned” planet). Xanis, meanwhile, has a mere two weeks to

complete 10 showstopping outfits. Hamid takes the affable protagonist on a lighthearted interplanetary adventure as Xanis finds a clever way to cover Kat’s absence on Earth and the human girl mingles with an array of relatively harmless aliens. The assorted species are a highlight, from beings with segmented bodies to a “Jello creature” to entities who prefer to slither into a room. As for the question of beauty standards: The various species, while finding allure in all sorts, have a particular fondness for multi-eyed, eight-legged T’kari like Xania. The story’s more grounded elements prove just as engaging—the aliens’ “entertainment grid” is akin to social media, allowing Kat to post personal “clicks” and present the “real” version of herself. The final act, which entails vying for the Path of Glory championship and Kat’s probable return to Earth, leads to a genuinely rewarding end.

Radiant characters electrify a witty and topical SF romp.

The Very Best of Care

Hatch, Julie | SparkPress (256 pp.)

$17.99 paper | June 3, 2025 | 9781684633142

Hatch’s debut medical thriller chronicles a woman’s nightmarish ordeal after inexplicably giving birth to her son nearly four months early. After trying to

conceive for years, Sophie and Adam Young’s last attempt at IVF proves successful. But after abdominal pain during her lunch break forces her to check into a midtown Manhattan

hospital as a precaution, she finds herself drugged and in labor 14 weeks ahead of schedule—she soon gives birth to a baby boy who barely weighs two pounds. Essentially living in the neonatal intensive care unit with her son as he desperately clings to life, Sophie begins seeing the always crowded and chaotic NICU, its doctors, and the healthcare industry in general in a new—and decidedly darker—light. One doctor in particular—Mitch Wagner, the obstetrician who delivered her baby—is connected to an alarming number of expectant mothers who have given birth prematurely. Sophie and her husband begin investigating, only to become entangled in a grand-scale conspiracy that puts all of their lives, including that of their vulnerable son, in danger. The author’s intimate familiarity with the daily trials and tribulations of working in the medical field (Hatch is a longtime pediatric nurse practitioner) gives this narrative its punch. Sophie witnesses an emergency C-section in which the baby is saved but the mother dies: “Sophie couldn’t pull her eyes away from the drama. [The woman’s] bra and underpants had been cut off and thrown on the floor. IV bags and tubing, medication vials, countless surgical pads, and bloody sheets and towels were strewn everywhere.” The emotional intensity throughout is off the charts (“…don’t mess with a mother and her baby”), and the commentary razor-sharp (“People complain about how expensive health care is. This is why. Big Pharma is buying our business, and it’s all wrong”). Hatch’s yarn is very much comparable to Robin Cook’s breakthrough novel Coma (1977); fans of medical thrillers will not soon forget this story. Unapologetically graphic, deeply disturbing, and all too believable.

A vivid depiction of India under the British Raj.

SLEEPING IN THE SUN

The Goffman Course

Hood, Thomas | Authors’ Tranquility Press (262 pp.) | $18.09 | $12.99 paper | July 18, 2024 | 9781959930532 9781959930549 paper

A series of lectures on the groundbreaking work of sociologist Erving Goffman. Born in Canada and educated at the University of Chicago, Goffman was such an original sociologist that his work often “puzzled his sociological colleagues.” Hood, a professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, here furnishes more than two dozen lectures on Goffman’s wide-ranging thought, presenting discussions that both explicate his core ideas with clarity and challenge them. At the heart of Goffman’s approach is the individual self, which he saw as both socially constructed and real, insofar as its existence generates societal and moral consequences. His approach falls within the realm of functionalism— his treatment of the self is consistently as a moral being—but within that tradition he introduces something new and controversial: microsociology, which takes as the basic unit of analysis the “the face-to-face social situation or ‘encounter.’” With impressive accessibility, the author explores the extent to which Goffman’s “methodological underpinnings” are consistent with sociology as an empirical science and the degree to which it “looks suspiciously like philosophy,” especially given his subject’s peculiar prose, which displays the “teasing artfulness of a brilliant writer.” (“What is striking about Goffman’s writing is the mood or tone of wry irony, of

sympathetic engagement coupled with detached disdain.”) Goffman’s work is important and profound, and by placing the methodological aspect of his endeavors at the center of these lectures, Hood has provided a concise introduction to his challenging thought. This is not a mere summary of Goffman’s work but a provocative extension of it, an attempt to “move beyond Goffman’s beginnings.” For anyone interested in Goffman or contemporary sociology, or just the problems posed by trying to understand society, this is a valuable resource. A thorough and thoughtful introduction to a philosophically-minded sociologist.

Sleeping in the Sun

Howard, Joanne | She Writes Press (288 pp.) $17.99 paper | Oct. 22, 2024 | 9781647427986

In Howard’s historical novel, conflicts come to a boil in a colonial Indian household. Twelve-year-old Gene Hinton is the youngest son in an American Baptist missionary family stationed outside of Calcutta in 1936, made up of his father, mother, and three older brothers. As a missionary, Gene is not a great success, but locals tolerate their presence. The story alternates his point of view with the Hintons’ longtime servant’s—Arthur, an Indian man. The novel begins with the anxiously awaited arrival of a man they call Uncle Ellis, a mysterious British figure who pops in and out of their lives. He’s a judge who’s taken leave of his position in the Indian city of Simla for reasons that are unclear, accompanied by a bodyguard of Afghan

soldiers. The boys have always been fascinated by Uncle Ellis, but as the days go on, they—and especially Gene— sense something unnerving about the fact that he’s effectively moved in with them, far from where Ellis usually lives. Arthur is even more attuned to the newcomer’s arrogance and casual cruelty, and later, Ellis’ secret finally comes to light. Also, Jaya, a mysterious young Indian woman, shows up, seduces Arthur, and awakens him to love and to the Indian Nationalist cause. Violence ensues, and in the end, everyone must face disturbing truths. Howard sketches Gene with skill, showing him to be quite mature and perceptive for someone so young. Of all the brothers, Gene is the most sensitive to his surroundings and the only one who’s a real friend to Arthur. The Hinton family’s cluelessness about India and its people is underscored time and again, and the oldest brother, John, has the air of superiority that was typical of many colonists. Arthur is characterized as someone who’s fended for himself since he was young and considers it a blessing to have a reliable job. Indeed, he’s resigned to his servitude until Jaya changes his worldview. Ellis’ vile attitudes about race are exposed, and Howard ably shows him to be a nasty piece of work.

A vivid depiction of India under the British Raj and an indictment of its colonizers.

Bachelor

Star

Holiday

Huhn, William | BlazeVOX (86 pp.)

$20.00 paper | July 2, 2024 | 9781609644680

Royal romance, desolate churchyards, the destruction of a city, and traffic snarled by a snowstorm are among the subjects of these captivating poems. Much of Huhn’s poetry explores spacious historical scenes through a close-up view of small details that

highlight the symbiosis of beauty, brutality, and decay. In these stanzas, the Kassite kings of ancient Babylonia sponsor the crafting of gorgeous rings by importing goldsmiths enslaved in their wars of conquest; a Zuni Indian woman fashions necklaces of turquoise and animal figurines as offerings to the souls of the dead flowing by in the river; and a youthful love affair between the young King Louis XIV of France and Marie Mancini is symbolized by the exquisite pearl earrings he gives her and ends in her death vigil as he “lay abed inside / the perfumed chamber / of their reunion, the / upshot of the countless / flowers gathered to mask / the smell of a leg marbled / black with gangrene.” The author also has a fondness for elegies replete with spectral figures and somber meditations on mortality—he describes a tableau of an abandoned church collapsing in on itself like a lost faith, and a sepulchral vision of a woman dressed in a spider-silk white gown who “stands / on a sea of dead / marked by crooked stone / buoys bobbing in dust”; a memento mori that reminds readers besotted by love that “nothing flies / as fast as life.” And there are less dramatic but still vivid renderings of contemporary scenes: The mundane crisis of a snow day, including a tragic hit-and-run, unfolds in a staticky jangle of AM-radio news reports; a man arrives at the beach “hoping / to get wet // but Untreated / Raw Sewage Spill // No Swimming / said the sign.”

Huhn’s writing is dense, sometimes cryptic (endnotes illuminate some of his more obscure references), and impressionistic; the poems’ structures feel loose-jointed and improvised, but the language is concise and compressed, with a single word suggesting a world. His imagery is dazzlingly evocative, conveying cinematic visuals in the Vesuvian eruption described in “Cast in Herculaneum”: “Mountaintop blossom / blacks out heavens / a sun the gods captured / breaks through crust / pounding free / Luminous / springs burst skyward / Barely time / to scoop up / a handful of / jewels.” Huhn can step down from these mythopoetic heights into a quieter register that, in “Summer Fragment,” infuses the annoying grime of everyday life with a glow of numinous meaning:

“Dearest don’t forget / and one last ask— / know anything good / to get gum off shoes? / A wad I picked up / on the boardwalk / won’t scrape off / It sticks like those / heavy summer days / when the thunderstorm / opens down so fast / we forget the sun / was just here.” This is open-hearted, emotionally resonant poetry, never more so than in this simple, exquisite rhyme in “Envoi”: “How lovers soon forget the day / When heaven shone upon the face / That built the little cottage dear / And wrapped with gold the dying year.”

An enthralling collection, with themes both grand and intimate and verses that pack a wallop of feeling.

My Father Had No Children

Jolley, Alana Lindberg | Newman Springs (278 pp.) | $37.95 | $21.67 paper | March 1, 2023 9798890613783 | 9798890633769 paper

Jolley reveals her World War II glider pilot father’s history in this memoir and biography. In 1967, the author—a writer of children’s books, a former museum director, and a professor of anthropology—was rejected for Social Security benefits because her father, Walter, who died in WWII, was listed as having “no children.” It turned out that, at his death, he was still married to a woman who wasn’t the author’s mother. This realization destabilized Jolley’s sense, she writes, and it led her to dig into family records and the National Archives to find out the full story of a father she never knew. The resulting book includes accounts of Walt’s upbringing by his mother, Peach, in Los Angeles; his Mexican Swedish heritage; his failed marriage; and the day he met the author’s mother, Lillian, at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville in 1943. The author offers riveting accounts of her father’s participation in famous battles, such as the Battle of the Bulge and the D-Day invasion; she also recounts his tragic death during a training exercise in grisly detail: “The glider plunged straight

Kirkus

down and, within a few seconds, hit the frozen ground, burying the nose section six feet into the earth….One glider pilot wrote: ‘When we talked about death, we always said we hoped it would be quick. Your dad’s death was very quick.’” Some of the finer points of Jolley’s father’s past may only appeal to those who knew him. However, the author’s accounts of his complex relationships with his wife and Lillian provide enough interest for casual readers to enjoy. Especially affecting is a letter from Walter to Lillian, which offers the clearest look at who he was before he died: “No use talking about it anymore, I want you and the baby, so payday I’m going to see about getting a divorce to HELL with everything and everybody, I’m going to start taking care of you and our baby.” A poignant account of a personal history torn apart by war.

Love Is Not Blind: You Are!

LaVigne, Shelly | Self (309 pp.)

$14.95 paper | Oct. 24, 2024 | 9798991770309

LaVigne’s self-help guide challenges the popular notion that love is blind and equips readers with tools to help them win the game of love. This book offers a refreshing perspective on the complexities of romantic relationships, presenting actionable advice that resonates with practicality and emotional depth. LaVigne’s use of her “4Cross Love Framework” is often compelling, as it provides an intriguing way to classify interpersonal dynamics. The book’s structure is easy to follow and offers clear and effective methods for strengthening connections and resolving conflicts. It categorizes people into four “positions”— North, East, South, and West—with each representing unique patterns of behavior, communication, and emotional need (“An East is the life of the party, always ready to try something new, crack a joke, or throw out a crazy idea that somehow sounds perfect in the

moment”). By exploring these in depth, the author encourages readers to identify their own tendencies and interpret the dynamics of their interactions with others. As such, the system demystifies complex emotional patterns, presenting them in a relatable way. The 4Cross Love Checklist goes beyond theory to offer actionable strategies. LaVigne’s engaging, often humorous style ensures that readers feel supported, rather than overwhelmed. Her use of pop-culture references, as when she analyzes Netflix’s dating TV series Love is Blind, grounds her concepts in relatable, real-world scenarios, making them tangible and accessible. The 4Cross Love Checklist, for example, translates complex ideas (such as “Awareness” and “Attraction”) into practical steps that can be implemented immediately. Additionally, the emphasis on understanding both oneself and one’s partner encourages readers to view love as a shared journey rather than an individual endeavor. A guide that blends insights and useful dating tips to help build fulfilling relationships.

Yonah and Devorah’s Traveling Music Theater

Leonie, Suze | Fidessa Literary (161 pp.)

$23.99 | $19.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2024 9789083370149 | 9789083370132 paper

In Leonie’s novella, a Dutch artist in the Netherlands inherits a peculiar chest whose contents plunge his life into crisis. Eli Schmidt never enjoyed a warm relationship with his grandmother, Cecile; in fact, the two were perennially at odds, and she gave him every reason to believe that she loathed him. This makes it surprising when, after she dies, she leaves Eli a cedar chest that she instructed him by letter never to open, but to protect forever. Overwhelmed by feelings of defiance and curiosity, he picks the lock on the chest to find a doll who can move and talk on her own; she nearly immediately begins screaming for her beloved,

Yonah, claiming dramatically that that the pair are “destined to be together for all eternity.” A stunned Eli is horrified by the “unpleasant shrillness” of the voice of the doll, who calls herself Devorah; he’s a misanthropic person who prefers to live in quiet solitude. Devorah cryptically claims that she was one half of Yonah and Devorah’s Traveling Music Theater, before some sort of accident separated the pair; she demands that Eli help reunite them. He realizes that he can use Devorah to his advantage; he’s a famous artist with a major exhibit coming up, and he plots to make her its centerpiece. He convinces her the publicity will help them locate Yonah—but when it doesn’t, she cunningly retaliates. Over the course of this novella, Leonie slowly and deliberately unveils the extraordinary secret that Cecile harbored from her family, and the possibility that that the inheritance with which she entrusted Eli is part of some grander plan—maybe even a “villainous ploy.” Still, at the heart of this novella is Eli’s own struggle to overcome his mental afflictions, the author also hilariously reveals his protagonist’s deep aversion to people of all stripes as the story goes on. Overall, this is a high-flying comedic story that’s delightfully strange, refreshingly unpredictable, and surprisingly thoughtful amid all the oddity on display. A playful brew of madcap humor and inventive intelligence.

The Other

Markowitz, Jeff | Level Historia (260 pp.) $16.95 paper | Nov. 5, 2024 | 9781685128043

Markowitz’s novel follows two men separated by generations but both facing racism and violence in a rural community. In 2023, Charlie Levenson has just purchased the old lock-tender’s house along a quaint canal not far from Princeton, New Jersey. With the help of his son Ben, Charlie starts to fix up the dilapidated property, imagining how

much his late wife Zoya would have hated it. The welcome from his new neighbors is anything but warm—a gruff stranger gives Charlie a cryptic warning: “Bad things have been known to happen here. You never can tell when bad things might happen again.” In 1933, Abe Dubinski lives in the same house and works as the canal’s last lock-tender before the advent of rail transit. Abe and his family meet Helmut Fischer, a young man who has just arrived in America from Germany and expresses nothing but aggression and menace to his Jewish neighbors. In the present day, Charlie witnesses a dangerous fire and sees a protest explode into violence, bringing him once again in contact with the mysterious stranger and setting him on a scavenger hunt for clues about the man’s identity and his connections with a local right-wing militia—which may have also played a role in his wife’s death. Back in 1933, Abe struggles to keep his family together as Helmut and a group of young Nazis camp out along the canal, targeting the lock-tender’s family. Markowitz’s parallel narratives touch upon several fascinating ideas, including the reach of Nazism—even in rural America— during WWII, the lasting impacts of the January 6 insurrection on today’s world, and the similarities between the two time periods, each burdened with an oppressive sense of dread. The inclusion of Zoya’s ghostly figure and her own story of coming to America from Iran provides another layer of texture and perspective while also endearing the grieving Charlie to readers. While the two stories share intriguing thematic connections, they can sometimes clash—especially as Charlie’s story ventures into tropes more common of a mystery or thriller. While the alternating timelines fail to cohere into a flowing narrative, Markowitz still

offers plenty of sympathetic characters and engaging questions. Insightful perspectives on historical and contemporary bigotry, despite some awkward juxtapositions.

Neigh Kid

Mayfair, Alan | Illus. by Gabi Moraes Tielmour Press (36 pp.) | $18.99

Dec. 7, 2024 | 9781738219384

A self-styled young superhero, wearing only a cape, must rescue his beloved cat before his parents can catch him in

Mayfair’s picture book.

Colt has a secret identity. By day, he’s a seemingly ordinary child, but when the neighborhood needs his help, he transforms into Neigh Kid—dressed in a horse mask, a red cape, and nothing else. He envisions himself as a majestic hero, galloping through streets on a mission to save a lost pet. However, the humorous reality is that he’s a scantily clad child dashing away from his loving parents, who are desperately trying to get him to put on clothes. Colt’s playful antics are sure to elicit laughter from kids and adults. However, the overarching, serious message of the story is one of bravery. Although elementary school–age children will find the text accessible, adults may need to explain occasional wordplay: “A cat: lost. A street: crossed. Colt: tossed.” Moraes’s full-color cartoon illustrations strategically and cleverly cover the protagonist’s nudity with a well-placed falling leaf or a flick of his cape. Colt and his family are depicted with pale skin, and his neighbors are portrayed with brown skin tones. A list of objects is included at the end for readers

A fast-paced, giggle-inducing adventure for kids.

NEIGH KID

to spot in the illustrations, making each read an interactive experience. A fast-paced, giggle-inducing adventure for kids.

I Refused To Be a War Bride

Norman, Howard | Illus. by Annie Bakst

Rootstock Publishing (58 pp.) | $17.95 paper | Nov. 19, 2024 | 9781578691807

Series: Detective Levy Detects, 3

Vermont private eye Jonathan Levy investigates the disappearance of a mysterious woman’s daughter in Norman’s third graphic novel in a series, illustrated by Bakst. Levy begins this episode by visiting his partner Alexa Sands’ gallery collection of 22 photographs, all taken on the same day and featuring the same elegant, older woman sitting in the background; Sands has no idea who she is. By the show’s end, all the photos have sold but one of war brides arriving on a steamship in Halifax in 1938, which Sands claims isn’t her own. Levy and Sands decide to call the number on the photo and are surprisingly connected to the aforementioned older woman: “I am at the inn at Montpelier, Room 105. My name is Bettina Eldersveld. I am Dutch by birth.” It turns out that she has a case for Levy, who’s a Montpelier-based private detective: She wants to know what happened to her daughter, with whom she hasn’t had any contact in 45 years; the only clue she has is a postcard. Alongside this central mystery is the story of the developing relationship between Levy and Sands, who are engaged to be married. In this volume, Sands introduces him to another aspect of her life: séances. She won’t get married, she says, until she has approval from the spirit world. Somewhat oddly inserted into all of this is the abrupt appearance of scenes from Veronica Lake movies; it’s eventually revealed that there’s a film festival in town, and Sands feels some sort of spiritual connection with the actor. This aspect of Norman’s series entry never

fully coheres with the rest of the work, and the actual detective work on display is brief to the point of lacking adequate suspense. However, there’s a soft, gentle, and playful tone to the work that will appeal to readers looking for a nontraditional detective story. Bakst’s painterly grayscale artwork is likewise low-key, with smudged edges that give most pages an expressionistic look. A light, breezy mystery that will leave readers looking forward to the next episode.

Kirkus Star

Jeep Show: A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge

O’Connor, Robert B. | OKPI Publishing (348 pp.) $15.99 paper | Nov. 21, 2024 | 9780990888451

O’Connor’s historical novel highlights the “Jeep shows” that entertained soldiers during World War II. Jim Tanzer (based on the real-life Jim Hetzer) is a song-and-dance man who enlists in the military to fight in WWII. He’s quickly assigned to the Morale Corps at Camp Sibert. “You’ll be entertaining combat soldiers in places where the USO can’t go,” his captain tells him. One of his fellow enlisted men is Mickey Rooney (who actually was in the Morale Corps during the war). They are two among a cast of more than 50 in a show called Hip Hooray that travels to New York and London before it’s disbanded in favor of “Jeep shows,” in which teams made up of one driver and two performers are sent out in a Jeep to perform for the troops. Jim, Mickey, and their friend Wes are one such team traveling to various battlegrounds, including the Ardennes and the famed Battle of the Bulge. The action hops back and forth in time, providing readers with depictions of an 11-yearold Jimmy’s introduction to vaudeville and his relationship with his wife, Stella. It seems odd to call a World War

II novel “delightful,” but that’s exactly what you get with O’Connor’s mix of history and fiction as battles rage on and enlisted men entertain the troops. The narrative covers a wide swath, from drama onboard ships to dealing with nasty weather to, of course, the travails of the injured (including Jim) and the dead during the war. It’s a fascinating look at a part of the military that many folks probably have never heard of. The characters, both real and imagined, are well drawn, and the author has a knack for dialogue that rings true. There’s also humor, thanks in no small part to Rooney’s presence. The interjection of real-life characters, particularly Rooney, isn’t jarring; in fact, it serves as a useful reminder that Jim Hetzer was a very real person. This is a compelling mix of showbiz and war, laughter and tears—a fine line that O’Connor walks well. A wild ride with entertainers serving during WWII.

Quigley Lopez: A Friend for Life

O’Hare, Dave | Illus. by Liesbeth Heikens O’Farm Publishing (40 pp.) | $12.26 paper | June 7, 2023 | 9781954780330

In O’Hare’s illustrated children’s book, a dog who loves her island life must visit a veterinarian on the mainland during the Christmas season.

A pup named Quigley, who resembles a golden retriever, was born in a small town in Colorado, but after she was adopted by her owner, she moved to a small island off Washington state where she’s surrounded by the Salish Sea. To go to the mainland, she and her owner must take a ferry. Quigley loves her toys and people’s shoes, especially those that she can cuddle or chew. Most of all, she loves her owner, whom the text calls “her Person.” (The narrator asserts that dogs can smell when someone loves them.) One Christmas Day, Quigley gets sick; her Person takes her on the ferry and then to a vet’s office. When the pup has

to stay there overnight, she’s confused and scared, but after she feels better, she and her Person have a happy reunion. Heikens effectively depicts Quigley, her Person, and the sea in colorful watercolorstyle illustrations. O’Hare’s playful narrative features a number of questions, encouraging children to jump in with answers: “Still, Quigley can’t stop thinking: Where is her Person?” The text also takes time to teach readers a bit about where the pup protagonist lives, and features illustrations of maps. Although the overall plot is simple, the stories of Quigley’s playfulness and her vet visit may resonate with young pet owners, especially those who’ve had to leave their animal pals at the doctor’s office overnight. The book may also encourage curiosity about United States geography, as readers may want to find out more about where Quigley was born and where she currently lives.

A sweet, well-illustrated story of a happy dog and her bond with her owner.

The Courtyard

Parket, Ben & Alexa Morris | Amsterdam Publishers (214 pp.) | June 6, 2024 9789493418011 | 9789493418004 paper

This memoir recounts a Jewish family’s surviving by being hidden away for two years in occupied Paris. The Parkiets— mother Rikla, father Joseph, and two sons, Sevek and Henek—emigrated from Warsaw to Paris in 1931. Binem, aka Bernard, the narrator, was born in 1933 after the move. They’re poor but hardworking and close-knit. Joseph was a furnisher finisher by trade. They found a place in an ancient apartment building that surrounded a large courtyard. Life was good, and most of their French neighbors got along fine with Jews. Then came the Germans and 24/7 terror. Joseph was taken to a detention center outside the city. Miraculously, because he became really sick, humane doctors saw to his release. Soon after, a neighbor offered a

warehouse space adjoining his furniture shop as a hiding spot, putting himself in considerable danger; that one room was the Parkiets’ refuge (and their prison) for the next two years. Clandestinely, the neighbors saw to their needs, and Binem was their link to the outside, running necessary errands. There were some terrifying close calls, but the Parkiets were never betrayed—this was a whole community’s effort, and they could have been killed if found out. The memoir, co-authored by Ben Parket, formerly Binem Parkiet (during immigration, family members changed their names), and his daughter-in-law, Alexa Morris, also follows the fortunes of the family after the war. They moved to Israel in 1949 and grew up with the new nation. Binem went to America, met his future wife, Orah, and found success as an architect, so it’s also an upward mobility story, and it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving clan. Sadly, for contrast, we learn that all the family left in Poland died in the concentration camps. The writing is clever and impressive: “[Henri] was drawn toward the provocative in the way a car in need of alignment pulls toward one side of the road,” and at a pro forma conference, there is cigarette “smoke swirling, scribbling nonsense” in the air. The book includes illustrations and family photos.

A mesmerizing, nightmarish story that has, for once, a happy ending.

Face Her Fear

Regan, Lisa | Bookouture (338 pp.) | $11.99 paper | Jan. 25, 2024 | 9781837909483 Series: Detective Josie Quinn, 19

A blizzard and a dead body turn a peaceful retreat into a suspenseful whodunnit in Regan’s mystery novel. Detective Josie Quinn has been struggling since the death of her beloved colleague Mett. Watching him die was just the latest in a series of traumatic events both on and off the job, and the effects of PTSD are

keeping her from focusing or sleeping. To work on her insomnia, Josie signs up for the Sacred New Beginnings Retreat at a remote mountain lodge north of her home in Denton, Pennsylvania. There, the warm and inviting doctor Sandrine Morrow has assembled a small group of six people, each reeling from some traumatic event—harrowing incidents of rape, stalking, murder, and freak accidents have brought them all together. Josie begins to worry that an impending snowstorm will trap them without enough supplies. (“There are worse places to be stuck although the company could be better. Buch of sad sacks, we are,” quips Alice, the wise-cracking New York City nurse with whom Josie quickly bonds.) The lodge’s capable caretaker sets off with the only satellite phone, and the trap for a classic closed-circle mystery is set when one of the retreat participants is soon found dead in the rising snow. Josie does her best to gather what few clues she can, but with wild bears on the prowl, no cell service, and dwindling supplies, the remaining guests have to all work together just to survive, even though they know that one of them is likely a murderer. As therapeutic talk breaks down into tense, violent exchanges, Josie’s husband, Noah, sets out from Denton determined to bring his wife home (and make up for a fight that they had before her departure). While struggling to get through the storm, Noah also stumbles into a dangerous situation stemming from New Beginnings. Both husband and wife will have to face the elements and their inner demons to make it out of this storm alive.

Regan’s setup for this country murder mystery is as classic as it gets, but her clever twist—making each of the possible suspects a victim recovering from trauma—adds a unique layer of emotion to the proceedings. Readers unfamiliar with detective Josie from the other books in Regan’s series will find themselves

immediately drawn to her vulnerability— having the book’s earliest scenes depict her sessions with Dr. Morrow is a smart way to dig into the complex protagonist’s psychology before getting into the sleuthing. The lodge storyline becomes a slowly simmering pot of deception and intrigue, while Noah’s parallel adventure punctuates the book with more actionpacked thrills—Regan smartly alternates between the two to keep readers turning the pages. The final revelations and motivations feel like they come together a bit too quickly and neatly; the complex psychology driving the first half is eschewed to reveal a much more traditionally evil villain, but Regan still delivers a worthy entry in her series. Readers will be easily drawn in by her smart characters and her snowy mountain setting, both perfectly cozy and creepy. A well-executed classic mystery to curl up with, featuring an admirably complex hero.

Parallel

Rohla, Leah | Self (330 pp.) | $12.50 paper April 3, 2020 | 9798723165182

In Rohla’s SF novel, an emotionallyinvested human observer of a distant planet breaks all the rules and makes contact with alien life.

Future Homo sapiens on a ruined, polluted Earth have found a stable “wormhole” portal that inexplicably hangs above a remote part of the Pacific. It leads to a wildlife preserve on the planet of Ysa, populated by humanoids—the tall, scaly, non-aggressive Aquila—who are sublimely advanced in many ways but not in others; blind spots in their scientific

A well-executed classic mystery to curl up with. FACE HER FEAR

A refreshing reimagining of fairy-tale figures.

AFTER HAPPILY EVER

development, for example, have left them ignorant of things like weapons (and the miraculous poral). On the Earth side, humans have kept tabs on the Aquila for years via drones and remote-sensor cameras cunningly planted by the human “sea base,” maintaining a non-interference policy while hungering for the aliens’ technology to exploit. Luna Reynolds is a disaffected young woman literally groomed from childhood to learn the Aquila language and customs. Luna enjoys the time she spends observing the Ysa household of two highachieving orphaned brothers, scientists Ictis and Sarin. Using a modified drone, Luna actually speaks with Sarin, who thinks he simply has an Aquila secret admirer with a cute gizmo—not an off-planet girlfriend in the throes of cross-species ardor. When an Earth virus passes through the wormhole and begins killing the vulnerable Aquila, Sarin is one of the millions left infected and dying. Luna, horrified when the monitoring project director delays medical assistance, risks going through the portal—a one-way trip with death the likely outcome for this spy in the interplanetary house of love. Rohla sets up a compelling situation, exploring a hopeless crush that would seem to violate all taboos on two worlds. When not chastely rhapsodizing about the erotic allure of scales (“His hand is so warm” is as hot as it gets), the author touches on provocative themes of humankind’s dismal record of imperialism and amoral abuse of other cultures. The science isn’t overly heavy, and the storytelling is solid enough to allow readers to forgive the fact that some key plot twists may be perceived approaching from light years away. The SF premise gains gravitas thanks to its astringent narrator and life-or-extinction stakes.

Kirkus Star

After Happily Ever: An Epic Novel of Midlife Rebellion

Safrey, Jennifer | Sibylline Press (388 pp.)

$22.00 paper | June 10, 2025 | 9781960573179

Safrey’s fantasy novel explores the lives of three fairy-tale icons long after their happily-ever-afters. The traditional tales read to children end when the (often teenage or very young adult) characters ride off into the sunset, all of their problems neatly tied up into a bow by true love. In this novel, the author imagines past that point, catching up with Neve (Snow White), Bry (Sleeping Beauty), and Della (Cinderella) when they are middle-aged. On the surface, their lives seem like a dream, with a serene, unchanging kingdom, marriages to princes, and the enviable stability of their royal status. However, cracks soon begin to show: Della struggles with her waning beauty, questioning her worth beyond the physical charms that once defined her. Bry, the ever-gracious peacekeeper, feels smothered under the weight of pleasing everyone but herself. And Neve, haunted by her stepmother’s attempt on her life, dreads the power and vulnerability that come with the throne (“she had sometimes wondered what it would be like to experience a day or two that didn’t dawn with the reminder of her death”). The sudden passing of the king sends each woman on a transformative journey, revealing the kingdom’s perfection as a fragile facade masking inequality and decay. The novel deftly balances plot and character, offering nuanced portrayals of each princess’ growth. The traumas

of their original tales—Neve’s poisoning, Della’s abuse, and Bry’s forced exile—are examined with sensitivity, shaping their struggles and triumphs in compelling ways. While readers will be familiar with the characters’ origin stories, these new threads in their tales create a fresh and engaging narrative to follow. The plot is well paced, with character development offset by action. Each woman’s journey is distinct, with Neve’s confrontation with fear, Della’s pursuit of self-worth, and Bry’s embrace of authenticity each resonating deeply. In centering older women as powerful, multifaceted protagonists, the story is both feminist and empowering, demonstrating that value and agency do not diminish with age. A refreshing reimagining of fairy-tale figures that redefines what it means to claim your happy ending.

Caleb McCallister and the Pirate Queen

Sargent, Scott M. | Red Branch Books (380 pp.) $14.95 paper | Oct. 7, 2024 | 9798988181767

Series: The Sentry Series, 2

A teen still honing his supernatural abilities fights to protect two worlds from diabolical forces in Sargent’s fantasy sequel. It hasn’t been long since 15-year-old Bostonian Caleb learned he’s a descendent of “magicwielding warriors.” His ancestors long ago retreated to “the Realm,” an alternate universe, but vowed to keep the human world safe with their Sentries. After Caleb, as a Sentry apprentice armed with a powerful sword, defends himself from wolflike assailants, his Sentry father sends him to Five Towers in the Realm. It’s a training camp primarily for kids much younger than Caleb and definitely not for Sentries. Just as he’s getting settled, Caleb heads to Ireland with Sentry Righán Flores and fellow apprentice Siobhán Fourviére to investigate a

robbed tourist boat (as magic was likely involved). Their hunt for pirates leads them to Molly O’Malley, the reputed Pirate Queen. While Righán and others don’t believe “petty thief” Molly takes priority over dark, evil creatures, Caleb is determined to capture her, and he soon uncovers a wicked plan that could spark a catastrophe in the Realm. Sargent’s sophomore series installment offers a nice balance for the returning hero; Caleb’s unexpectedly successful with a few powerful spells, but skilled 10-year-old Five Towers cadets can still humble him. He also has just the right amount of teen angst—his relationship with his seemingly indifferent, largely absent father is understandably strained, and he struggles with ongoing anger issues stemming from a “battle frenzy” affliction that past warriors have endured as well. A general sense of unease underlies this narrative, as most characters aren’t easy to trust. Caleb and company fall into several taut action scenes, battling the likes of monstrous Fomorians, Irish vampires, and goblins. The exhilarating final act begets a memorable climax. This smashing YA fantasy boasts adventure and a superbly multilayered protagonist.

And They Had a Great Fall

Saville, Shelby | She Writes Press (280 pp.)

$17.99 paper | March 11, 2025 | 9781647428464

In Saville’s romance novel, a movie star falls for a woman who’s working her way up the corporate ladder. After giving yet another bad performance while filming a movie, Jake Laurent calls Kat Green, his friend and former pandemic bedmate, in a panic, asking her to come visit him on location in Denmark. Even though the two haven’t spoken in months, and it’s been at least a year since they were in

each other’s presence, Kat, a busy executive at New York City–based PathMobile, finds a way to get to Copenhagen. Kat has her eye on the company’s chief operating officer position, which will be open soon, but she’s unfortunately lacking in international experience. A trip to Denmark would not only let her see Jake, but also highlight her skills at her company’s Denmark office. However, almost as soon as Jake arrives at the apartment they’re sharing, Kat finds herself completely distracted by him. To avoid drama from paparazzi following Jake around, and so Kat won’t be seen as unprofessional, the two come up with rules for their time together. The overall idea behind them is simple: “Whenever we can,” Kat says, “we should try to separate” while in public. At the same time, though, their physical attraction is more powerful than ever. In Saville’s contemporary romance, several famil iar romance tropes collide to form an offbeat love story that will keep genre fans turning pages. The story starts out with the two main characters already in a relationship of sorts, and the author does a good job of catching readers up on their shared past, adding in vivid memories from their time together and effectively comparing past moments to their present interactions. Both Jake and Kat come off as authentic, and their worries and concerns regarding their work, their passions, and their relationships with others and each other ring true throughout. What makes this novel truly shine, though, is how the two work together to help each other realize their goals, frequently talking through problems to find solutions.

A well-developed love story that will make readers eager for a happily-ever-after.

Pantomime

Sebela, Christopher | Illus. by David Stoll Mad Cave Studios (152 pp.) | $17.95 paper July 7, 2021 | 9781952303098

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

Two deaf orphans get in trouble while attending a special-needs school in writer Sebela and illustrator Stoll’s graphic novel. Haley and Max’s mother dies in the book’s opening pages, leaving the teenagers without a father or other relatives willing to raise them. They’re sent to the Wayfair Academy for Special Needs, where they meet a diverse group of other deaf young people. Haley quickly makes friends and finds out that one of her new pals, Lexa, is struggling to pay for school and may have to leave. Haley proposes a daring solution: a burglary. She gathers her new group of friends to do the heist, which initially seems like a success— until the person they robbed appears in Haley’s room and tells them that they’ll have to work for him to repay him for everything they took, or else. Soon, Haley and her buddies-turnedaccomplices are learning the skills of professional thieves and go on missions around town. However, what starts as a thrill quickly becomes a trap—one that Haley and her team must find a way to escape. This briskly paced tale, which takes a few time-jumps, smartly zooms in on its tense heist and action sequences. The core cast is realistically diverse; one character uses they/them pronouns and is selectively mute, another is late-deafened, and several were born deaf. Sign language is also incorporated into the storytelling, with speech bubbles emerging from hand motions and black lines highlighting movement. However, there’s an occasional overreliance on narration as past-tense confession. Although this adds some depth to the story, there are moments when images alone could have carried it; several standout sequences allow Stoll’s cinematic

visuals to take over for a few pages at a time. The images feature detailed character work and Ocean’s 11– style blocking, with bright pops of color—vivid reds, pinks, oranges, and blues—regularly lighting up the background, contrasting with often black-clad main characters. The story reaches a satisfying conclusion, but it sows enough seeds for potential sequels.

An offbeat, action-packed thriller with a winning cast of diverse characters.

Dick Tracy

Segura, Alex & Michael Moreci | Illus. by Geraldo Borges | Mad Cave Studios (130 pp.)

$17.99 paper | Dec. 17, 2024 | 9781545812280

Series: Dick Tracy, 1

Segura and Moreci’s graphic novel, with artwork by Borges, reimagines iconic 1930s-era detective Dick Tracy in a post-World War II narrative with a familiar cast of villains, including Pruneface and Flattop. Set in 1947, Tracy is a recent war veteran and the youngest cop ever to make detective in “The City.” He’s still struggling to come to grips with the horrors he experienced while in battle. After a crime reporter and an alderman are among those gunned down during an apparent robbery at a diner, Tracy investigates and discovers that the killings are tied to a complex conspiracy. The detective vows to identify the people behind the horrific crime, which included more than a dozen murders, and he eventually joins forces with the late alderman’s daughter, Tess Trueheart, and old war buddy Pat Patton, who’s looking for answers regarding his brother’s mysterious death. Patton’s also looking into the disappearance of numerous war veterans who worked as laborers on an ambitious waterfront development project. Ignoring directives from his chief, Tracy and company continue to dig, and soon find themselves the targets of

A deserving woman from history gets her moment in the spotlight.

FROM TICKHILL,

1348

numerous underworld thugs; Tommy gun–powered violence ensues. Borges’ masterful ability to convey a gritty, hardboiled atmosphere in actionpacked, blood-splattered, and visually stunning illustrations is an obvious strength, as is Segura and Moreci’s talent for intricate, deeply developed, and emotionally intense storytelling, largely through dialogue. Tracy and Patton’s war flashbacks, and their current inability to seamlessly reassimilate into society, are particularly powerful: “One day they give you a gun, they tell you to go kill people. Then they take the gun away. They tell you the war’s over. But for some men, it’s not that easy.”

A must-have reboot for anyone who calls themselves a Dick Tracy fan.

From Tickhill, 1348

Taylor, Pamela | Black Rose Writing (280 pp.) $21.95 paper | Dec. 5, 2024 | 9781685135201

Taylor’s historical novel chronicles the adventures of a remarkable noblewoman in the early part of the Hundred Years War between France and England.

In the mid-14th century, Jeanne de Flandre, a Breton aristocrat, is an independent and insightful woman happily married to John Montfort, who respects her intellect and counsel “because she always used her insights to further his position.” When John is named Duke of Brittany in the will of his half-brother Duke John III, the dying duke’s niece, Jeanne de Penthièvre (daughter of John III’s deceased full

brother, Guy) is incensed. Against a backdrop of shifting alliances among the towns and villages of Brittany, rumor-mongering among the French royalty, and court machinations that result in the invalidation of Duke John III’s will, King Philip of France imprisons John. John charges Jeanne to “do nothing to jeopardize the possibility of regaining the title and securing our son’s rightful inheritance…for now, our cause is in your hands.” She moves their young son and daughter, along with a small loyal army and the ducal treasury, to safe havens in Rennes and then Hennebort. Her leadership in routing the army that is laying siege to Hennebort is an inspiration to the fiercely independent Bretons, who dub her “Jeanne de la Flamme.” She forges an alliance with King Edward III of England, who needs Brittany’s help for his own designs on the French throne. Edward convinces her to bring her children to England for their safety… then turns the tables on her. Taylor builds on historical events with believable dialogue and action to bring Jeanne de Flandre to life as a fully realized woman. Political intrigue, ship movements, and battle plans mix with details of everyday life in the mid-1300s to propulsively move the story forward. Weaving Jeanne’s analysis into the narrative adds depth. Much like the fiction of Bernard Cornwell and Philipa Gregory, this book will enchant readers interested in well researched historical fiction.

A deserving woman from history gets her moment in the spotlight.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

Best Indie Books of January

B

B

B