Featuring 282 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children's and YA Books
KIRKUS VOL. LXXXVII, NO.
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REVIEWS Joanne Ramos knows
she’s living what is supposed to be the American dream. But her debut novel, The Farm, is a story about capitalism and the human costs that make it possible. p. 14
from the editor’s desk:
May Books That Stand Out B Y C LA I B ORNE
Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N
SM I T H
# Chief Executive Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N mkuehn@kirkus.com
Photo courtesy Michael Thad Carter
Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall (May 21): “A history of 20th-century sisters who bore witness to Southern culture, politics, and values. In 1973, Hall, director of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina, interviewed two sisters, ‘improbable voices from the deepest South,’ who each had grappled with her heritage and was shaped by a “maelstrom of historical events and processes.” Grace Lumpkin (1891-1980) and her younger sister, Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin (1897-1988), are the central characters in a sweeping, Claiborne Smith richly detailed intellectual and political history of America from the 1920s to the 1980s, an absorbing narrative based on impressive scholarship.” Rabbits for Food by Binnie Kirshenbaum (May 7): “A writer experiences a breakdown and ends up hospitalized; against all odds, hilarity ensues. ‘The dog is late,’ says Bunny, ‘and I’m wearing pajamas made from the same material as Handi Wipes, which is reason enough for me to wish I were dead.’ Bunny is seated on a bench in a psych ward waiting for the therapy dog to arrive. It never does. After a New Year’s Eve breakdown, preceded by months of severe depression—she found herself unable to leave her apartment or sleep or eat or shower—Bunny has landed in a Manhattan hospital surrounded by the fellow patients she refers to, variously, as inmates, lunatics, psychos, and loons….Surprisingly, the book is hilarious….Kirshenbaum is a remarkable writer of fiercely observed fiction and a bleak, stark wit; her latest novel is as moving as it is funny, and that—truly—is saying something.” The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer (May 7): “An elegant, meditative novelistic reconstruction of critical years in the life of Varian Fry, the American classicist who is honored at Yad Vashem as ‘righteous among the nations’ for his work rescuing victims of the Holocaust. Focusing on the era that informed her first novel, The Invisible Bridge (2010), Orringer opens with an encounter in which Marc Chagall, one of the most beloved of modern artists, figures. He is living in Vichy France, convinced that because it is France he will be kept safe from the Nazis….Altogether satisfying. Mix Alan Furst and André Aciman, and you’ll have a feel for the territory in which this well-plotted book falls.” Print indexes: www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/print-indexes Kirkus Blog: www.kirkusreviews.com/blog Advertising Opportunities: www.kirkusreviews.com/about/advertising opportunities
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from the editor’s desk
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contents fiction
INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS............................................................ 4 REVIEWS................................................................................................ 4 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................... 6 ON THE COVER: JOANNE RAMOS................................................... 14 SASKIA VOGEL GIVES PERMISSION................................................ 24 MYSTERY...............................................................................................35 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY.......................................................... 40 ROMANCE............................................................................................ 43
The Kirkus Star is awarded to books of remarkable merit, as determined by the impartial editors of Kirkus.
nonfiction
INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.......................................................... 47 REVIEWS.............................................................................................. 47 EDITOR’S NOTE...................................................................................48 RICHARD HOLBROOKE & THE AMERICAN CENTURY..................62 WHY YOU SHOULD TURN OFF THE GPS.........................................68
children’s
INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS...........................................................75 REVIEWS...............................................................................................75 EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................... 76 BROOKE BOYNTON-HUGHES’ SMALL ACT OF BRAVERY............ 92
young adult
INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.........................................................112 REVIEWS.............................................................................................112 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................114 ZACK SMEDLEY’S HEARTBREAKING NOVEL............................... 120 SHELF SPACE: LITERATI BOOKSTORE........................................... 124
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INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.........................................................125 REVIEWS.............................................................................................125 EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................. 126 INDIE Q&A: AMY A. BARTOL...........................................................132 FIELD NOTES.....................................................................................146 APPRECIATIONS: WOLF HALL TURNS 10..................................... 147
Jean Reidy and Lucy Ruth Cummins introduce a small tortoise who has an uncommonly big heart. Read the review on p. 104.
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fiction These titles earned the Kirkus Star: TELL ME EVERYTHING by Cambria Brockman...................................8 THE BODY IN QUESTION by Jill Ciment...........................................10 KING OF THE MISSISSIPPI by Mike Freedman.................................16 NEVER LOOK BACK by Alison Gaylin................................................16 DELAYED RAYS OF A STAR by Amanda Lee Koe..............................21 COSTALEGRE by Courtney Maum..................................................... 24 HUE AND CRY by James Alan McPherson..........................................25 MAGGIE BROWN & OTHERS by Peter Orner....................................30 THE JOURNAL I DID NOT KEEP by Lore Segal................................. 31 JACOB’S LADDER by Ludmila Ulitskaya; trans. by Polly Gannon... 33 THE GOLDEN HOUR by Beatriz Williams.........................................34 WANDERERS by Chuck Wendig........................................................ 42
DELAYED RAYS OF A STAR
Lee Koe, Amanda Talese/Doubleday (400 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-385-54434-4
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GIRLS LIKE US
Alger, Cristina Putnam (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-525-53580-5 An FBI agent stumbles into a cesspool of police corruption and dead girls after the death of her father, a Long Island homicide detective. After scattering the ashes of her father, Martin, Nell Flynn heads to his South Fork home to sift through his possessions after a motorcycle crash took his life. Nell is on leave from her job in D.C. as a member of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit after she killed a member of the Russian Mafia in the line of duty and got a bullet to the shoulder for her trouble. Nell mourns her father but also looks forward to moving on and never looking back at a town that holds nothing but bad memories, including the brutal murder of her mother, Marisol, when she was only 7. But getting out of town soon isn’t in the cards for Nell. When her old friend Lee Davis, a newly minted homicide detective, asks for her help solving a series of gruesome murders, Nell is intrigued. A young girl, shot, dismembered, and wrapped in burlap, has been found buried in a local park, and she bears a striking resemblance to a young Latina found the previous summer. Nell soon learns that a mansion near the burial is the site of lavish parties attended by Washington elites, where possibly underage girls are provided for entertainment. Nell’s digging leads to young Latina escorts afraid to come forward for fear of deportation and the wrath of their pimp, who is working with some of the most powerful men in New York. When a local landscaper is arrested, Nell isn’t convinced he’s the killer, and disturbing secrets about the local police—even her father—are rising to the surface. Nell carries a palpable sadness and is still haunted by her mother’s murder and her complicated relationship with her father. She has a vulnerable, empathetic core that will pull readers in, and Alger has a feel for small-town dynamics. The tension becomes nearly unbearable as Nell realizes she truly can’t trust anyone. Readers can expect a few genuine surprises, and the light Alger shines on society’s most vulnerable members is an important one. Melancholy and addictive.
THE WIND THAT LAYS WASTE
Almada, Selva Trans. by Andrews, Chris Graywolf (136 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-55597-845-7
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Sturm und Drang on the pampas. Argentinian fiction writer and poet Almada makes her English-language debut with a slender tale redolent of Flannery O’Connor—and, at some turns, Rod Serling. An itinerant preacher, one of those hands-on, evilspirits-out kind, is on the road with his 16-ish daughter, her mother a long-distant memory in the rear-view mirror. The daughter, Leni, is full of doubts, sheltering herself with a music player on which she’s promised dad to “listen to Christian music, nothing else,” but instead has been catching hints of the bigger world outside. When their car breaks down, the Rev. Pearson and Leni wind up in El Gringo Brauer’s garage. If the Rev. is a fire-and-brimstone true believer, Brauer is just as dedicated an atheist: “Religion was for women and the weak,” he thinks. Meanwhile, his assistant, a motherless boy about Leni’s age named Tapioca, is proving susceptible to the preacher’s blandishments. “Now he was thinking that perhaps he should have warned the kid about the stories in the Bible,” thinks Brauer— since, after all, “It wouldn’t be so easy to get that stuff about God out of his head.” If Leni would just as soon be dancing to disco music, Tapioca is ready to follow the Rev. Pearson out of the backwater and see the world, joining the crusade. Brauer objects, naturally. Well, what are the angels of good and evil supposed to do? Wrestle with each other, of course, in an apocalyptic rainstorm of a kind that levels crops, knocks down power poles, and fries someone with righteous lightning. Almada’s story, fueled by alcohol, religious symbolism, and doubt, feels a touch incomplete; she might have given a little more space to the things that make each character tick. Still, the story packs a punch in its portraits of a man who exalts heaven and another who protests, “I don’t have time for that stuff ” while confused youngsters watch and wait. A welcome new voice in Latin American storytelling.
from mismatched parts, but hers are found in a highly advanced lab whose real goal is not to offer parts for Kelly’s private project but to market the first caregiver AI: a robot intended to provide meaningful companionship to lonely or ill people and even pass for human in close interactions. The trouble starts when Kelly is too good at her own job: She not only gives Ethan access to the entire internet, but also spends every day with him—with nearly fatal repercussions: She falls in love with her creation. In her debut novel, Archer concocts an endearingly unluckyat-love heroine, although one beset with the social awkwardness of the stereotypical engineer: Relentlessly reminded by her mother that, at 29, her marriageable days are waning fast, Kelly dreads every family dinner and blind date. And although her best friend, Priya, is a man magnet, Kelly is more likely to get pickpocketed than picked up at a nightclub. With Archer’s wry tone, Kelly’s social flubs set up her fall into AI love. And while she is surprised to find herself falling for Ethan, the reader spotted it long ago, when Kelly chose the fancy lavender eyes instead of the utilitarian brown for her plus one. Indeed, reading between the lines reveals that in assembling Ethan, Kelly
THE PLUS ONE
Archer, Sarah Putnam (336 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-525-53917-9 Gorgeous, thoughtful, intelligent, sexy, supportive—Ethan is everything Kelly has ever wanted in a man. Too bad he’s a robot. Pressured to find a date for her sister’s wedding, robotics engineer Kelly Suttle stumbles upon the perfect solution: She builds her own. Like Victor Frankenstein, Kelly cobbles her creature together |
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rita awards’ lack of diversity continues
Photo courtesy Andrea Scher
When the Romance Writers of America announced the finalists for their RITA Awards in March, there was a glaring problem: Out of 77 books, only three were written by women of color: Bad Blood by M. Malone, My So-Called Bollywood Life by Nisha Sharma, and Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan. After a similar result last year, the RWA tried to change the judging process to encourage a more inclusive list of finalists, but clearly they didn’t go far enough. If you’d like to check out these three books, author Courtney Milan and others are organizing a book group, Romance Sparks Joy, to read them together, beginning on May 15 with My So-Called Bollywood Life. You can find the discussion on Twitter at @sparkjoyromance as well as on Goodreads and Reddit. And if you’d like to read some of the books that should have been finalists, you could start with two books that were on Kirkus’ list of Best Romances of 2018, The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory and A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole. I just read The Proposal Jasmine Guillory and went on to devour Guillory’s other two books, The Wedding Date and The Wedding Party—which doesn’t come out until July 16—in less than a week. Cole didn’t publish an installment of her Civil War–era Loyal League series in 2018, so none of them were eligible for the RITA, but you could check out An Unconditional Freedom, which came out in February. Our starred review calls it “a sumptuously written and meticulously researched tale of a country at war with itself and two damaged people who find themselves in each other’s arms.” Author Helen Hoang wrote on Twitter that she didn’t submit her first book, The Kiss Quotient, for the RITA, saying: “Until the judging process has been fixed and a black author has won this award, RITA finalist/winner is not something I want on my bio.” Hopefully the RWA board will find a way to make their award something all writers can be proud of by next year. —L.M. Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor. 6
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has attended to rather intimate details, making some of the scenes between the two a bit uncomfortable. But the real question is: Will Kelly be able to turn Ethan off after the wedding? Or will robot love spiral out of control? A fun story that will appeal to geeks and beachgoers alike.
LAYOVER
Bell, David Berkley (416 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-440-00086-0 An airport meet-cute goes south in Bell’s (Somebody I Used to Know, 2018, etc.) new thriller. Poor Joshua Fields. All he does is travel for his job as a real estate developer with his father’s company. He’s tired, bored, and ready to settle down. Enter Morgan Reynolds. After meeting Joshua at an airport gift shop in Atlanta, she agrees to get a drink with him. Who is this tall, ridiculously beautiful woman in the hat and giant sunglasses? Joshua plans to find out. After a drink and a bit of conversation, Joshua is properly starry-eyed, and when Morgan plants a passionate kiss on him, he’s truly a goner. So, it’s a bummer when she firmly tells him she has to go and that they won’t be seeing each other again. Most people would count the experience as an oddity and get on with their lives, but not our Joshua. He throws caution to the wind and changes his flight, but Morgan pretends not to know Joshua when he confronts her on the plane, making him feel like an “aggressive creep, a stalker, a weirdo.” Well, if the shoe fits. When he touches down in Nashville, Joshua sees Morgan’s face on TV, and when he looks her up on Facebook, he’s stunned to see a post headlined “Have You Seen Morgan? Missing Person.” After telling his story to the airport police, he decides that Morgan surely needs his help and sets off to find her. Meanwhile, in Laurel Falls, Kentucky, Detective Kimberly Givens is on the hunt for Giles Caldwell, a prominent local businessman who has disappeared, and the trail leads to Morgan Reynolds. Nearly everyone involved in this paper-thin thriller, with the exception of Detective Givens, seems to be suffering from an alarming lack of common sense, and they’re not nearly interesting enough to make up for it. Bell makes a lot of hay over Joshua’s need to break free of his everyday grind, but that doesn’t excuse his going to such great lengths to follow a woman after she repeatedly brushes him off. Readers desperately hoping to be rewarded with a few shocking revelations upon reaching the end of this dull cat-and-mouse game will be disappointed. This flight never gets off the ground. Hopefully Bell will return to form next time.
ALPHA
Bessora Illus. by Barroux Trans. by Ardizzone, Sarah Bellevue Literary Press (128 pp.) $24.99 | May 1, 2019 978-1-942658-40-5 This graphic novel from author Bessora, illustrator Barroux (How Many Trees?, 2019, etc.), and translator Ardizzone follows a migrant’s arduous journey from West Africa to Europe. Alpha is a cabinetmaker in the Ivory Coast who wants to take his family to visit his sister-in-law in Paris, but he runs into a mountain of red tape when applying for a visa. “When you leave the consulate, one thing’s for sure—you understand that Côte d’Ivoire loves France more than France loves Côte d’Ivoire,” explains Alpha, before wryly adding, “But, seeing as Côte d’Ivoire doesn’t love its own people very much either, Ivorians still flee for Europe.” So Alpha goes into debt to pay
a smuggler to start his wife and son on their journey to France. Six months later, Alpha sells his cabinet shop to pay yet another smuggler in hopes of following his family’s path. The book has the appearance of a photo album, most pages presenting a stack of two equal-sized, rectangular images with a short paragraph of Alpha’s deeply human narration beneath each illustration, documenting his journey. As Alpha quickly learns, the road out of Africa is beset with con men, drunken soldiers, endless dusty desert, and death—but also kindred spirits. Barroux’s illustrations have a deceptively simple quality, with heavy lines and people with dots for eyes and bulbous, shiny noses; that simplicity makes an ill migrant’s hollow stare or the stiff joints of a body left to rot all the more haunting. Bessora is a fiction writer whose work “is underpinned by extensive research,” according to the author bio, though the origin of this story is unspecified. It is a compelling tale, though major events transpire in the text-only epilogue, which is delivered by an omniscient narrator rather than Alpha, robbing the conclusion of some of its heft. Heartbreaking and timely.
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TELL ME EVERYTHING
Brockman, Cambria Ballantine (368 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-9848-1721-1
A tight group of college friends fight to keep their relationships from splintering under the pressure of secrets in Brockman’s debut. When Malin’s parents drop her off at Hawthorne College, her father whispers one word of advice: Pretend. Malin has always been quiet and introverted, but this self-imposed separation has given her ample opportunity to hone her perception and observation skills. Deciding to branch out and find some friends in order to keep her parents happy, Malin chooses Ruby to be her best friend. Pretty, outgoing, and athletic, Ruby is Malin’s way into a small but insular group: Gemma, Max, John, and Khaled. During freshman year, the six survive the usual college
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shenanigans—wild parties, drunken hookups, last-minute study binges—before moving in together. But Malin can see the cracks in their friendships from the beginning: how John bullies Max; how Gemma drinks herself into oblivion to avoid her loneliness; how Khaled needs constant reassurance; how Ruby bows to John’s every wish. And then there’s Malin herself, top student on campus, the silent witness to so many conflicts. All six of the friends have secrets. By senior year, each of them is buckling under the twin pressures of loyalty and knowledge. Will they make it out alive? By telling parts of the story out of sequence, Brockman successfully builds each character in fragments, preventing us from seeing the full context until close to the end. The college-centered plot is reminiscent of many novels that have come before about quirky kids forming a family of sorts only to destroy each other—Tana French’s The Likeness, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History—but the development of Malin as a narrator is truly inspired. While French and Tartt use the outsider-as-narrator to further emphasize the group’s isolation and the narrator’s failure to find true acceptance, Brockman’s Malin draws riveting attention to humankind’s vulnerability to
A brisk, witty tale of saving your life by finding your voice. death and other happy endings
RIOTS I HAVE KNOWN
evil. She is a shadowy figure; an unreliable narrator we get to know through subtle hints and slanted comments in addition to flashbacks. A truly chilling thriller with a twist so quiet, you never hear it coming.
DEATH AND OTHER HAPPY ENDINGS
Cantor, Melanie Pamela Dorman/Viking (352 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-525-56211-5
A hyperliterate prisoner who is barricaded in his sanctuary while a riot unfolds writes his last words. Well-versed pop-culture writer Chapman (Conversation Sparks, 2015) offers a debut novel that is as eccentric as it comes but also fitfully funny and murderously wry in its humor. Our imprisoned narrator is, as happens in a lot of transgressive comic novels, nameless but for his prison moniker, “MF.” There’s really no character here—we only learn our nameless narrator is an immigrant from Sri Lanka whose previous gig was working as a doorman in New York City—but he serves as a convenient cipher who allows the author to wax poetic about the role of literature in society and the blunt cruelty of the American prison system
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When 43-year-old Jennifer’s doctor gives her only three months to live, she resolves to write candid letters to the three people who broke her heart, standing up for herself at last. Devastated by the diagnosis of a mysterious blood disorder (Jennifer herself only catches the suffix “-osis”), she confides in her best friend, Olivia, who encourages Jennifer to take this last chance to really open her heart. So letters go out to Andy, Jennifer’s philandering ex-husband, who left her for another woman while Jennifer was still reeling from a miscarriage; Harry, the ex-boyfriend who restored Jennifer’s trust in men only to pull the rug out from under her again when he, too, cheated on her; and Isabelle, her older sister, who stole from Jennifer everything from wallpaper patterns to lovers. Almost immediately upon deciding to tell off the loved ones who wronged her, Jennifer casts further caution to the wind, impulsively kissing and falling into the arms of a handsome stranger she meets in the park. The contrast is a relief—from the first page of this, her debut novel, Cantor sets up Jennifer as a funny, compassionate, yet deeply wronged woman who does not deserve these horrible people in her life, much less her death sentence. But Jennifer fails to give the handsome stranger her phone number, choosing instead to tie up the loose ends of her life. And here is where Cantor’s conceit hits pay dirt: Even though Andy, Harry, and Isabelle seize the opportunity to reconcile with Jennifer, no fairy-tale endings ensue because these cads remain as flawed and self-centered as ever. And when Jennifer’s diagnosis alters, she has the chance to transform her life entirely. A brisk, witty tale of saving your life by finding your voice.
Chapman, Ryan Simon & Schuster (128 pp.) $24.00 | May 21, 2019 978-1-5011-9730-7
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while enabling his capricious doppelgänger to pen arch reminiscences of his paramours. These include the now-bitterly despised Betsy Pankhurst, with whom, in a flashback, the narrator has an intimately described conjugal visit, and a fellow prisoner named McNairy, with whom he has what he calls a “meet-cute.” It turns out that our narrator is the editor of a popular prison journal aptly dubbed The Holding Pen, and apparently one of his missives has triggered the very riot that now threatens his life. The book is purposefully messy—the prose is breathless, meandering, and riddled with pop-culture references and responses to real-time events on platforms like Instagram and Reddit, which the narrator has access to as editor of the paper—but Chapman demonstrates an arch humor that mimics French existentialism as much as it does traditional American satire. It’s even easy to gain an odd affection for our superarrogant narrator despite his supercilious tone and his sentence, which is, as we learn late in the game, for doing something genuinely terrible. This is certainly not a book for casual readers, but those who appreciate a genuinely original stylist and acidly dark humor will find it an odd treat. A frenzied yet wistful monologue from a lover of literature under siege.
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THE BODY IN QUESTION
Ciment, Jill Pantheon (192 pp.) $24.95 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-5247-4798-5 Two sequestered jurors on a tabloidworthy Florida murder trial tumble into an impassioned, illicit affair in this engaging, empathetic novel. In a jury holding room, waiting to be called into the courtroom for a voir dire, two prospective jurors, identified for most of the book only as C-2 and F-17, begin a flirtation that rapidly grows into a full-blown love affair. C-2 is a 52-year-old female photographer of some renown. Having shot portraits for magazines like Rolling Stone and Interview early in her career, she eventually concluded she was interested in people not as individuals but as a species, and she turned her lens to other subjects, such as war and animals. C-2 is married to a much older man, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who is now 85. Their once-ardent relationship has evolved, and she is increasingly aware of the toll time is taking on their lives and bodies. Now, intensely attracted to F-17, a professor of anatomy in his early 40s with a pitted complexion, piercing blue eyes, and “beautiful feet,” C-2 finds herself hoping for “one last dalliance before she gets too old.” As the affair plays out against a backdrop of a gruesome, sad, and unsettling murder trial (a teenage girl stands accused of killing her toddler brother, but is the real culprit her twin sister?) and the shabby Econo Lodge accommodations and unappetizing luncheonette meals the court has arranged for the jurors during their sequestration, C-2, as both a lover and a juror, must weigh issues of guilt and innocence, loyalty and betrayal, life and death, passion and compassion. Ciment (Act of God, 2015, etc.) lays out the plot—part love story, part whodunit, part coming-of-old-age tale—with gentle sensitivity and straightforward intelligence, approaching complex emotions and conflicting loyalties as might a good juror: observing her characters’ behavior with an open mind and heart, an ability to consider context and varied perspectives, an appreciation for the evidence, and a notable lack of judgment. This honest, mature look at life and love adds to a growing body of evidence leading to a decisive verdict: Ciment is an author well worth reading.
Dennis’ debut collection delves into the humanity and pain of highly flawed characters. here is what you do
HERE IS WHAT YOU DO
Dennis, Chris Soho (216 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-64129-036-4
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Dark, visceral, and wide-ranging, Dennis’ debut collection delves into the humanity and pain of highly flawed characters. In the title story, a young man in prison on a drug charge develops an intimate yet violent relationship with his cellmate. A widowed woman with a self-destructive streak finds herself on a yacht off the coast of Mexico outrunning a tsunami in “In the Martian Summer.” “The Book-Eating Ceremony” follows a jaded lesbian academic with a deep resentment for her girlfriend (and her girlfriend’s gaggle of dogs) as she attempts to write a book about misogynist gynecologist Albert H. Decker while grieving her mother and obsessively pining for another woman. In “Nettles,” a husband buys a slaughterhouse and moves his family out of
the city only for tensions to boil over with his wife and with the religious neighbors he bought it from. “This Is a Galaxy” tracks the son of a gay Turkish immigrant who finds himself violently orphaned and working in a butcher shop. One story, “In Motel Rooms,” is told from the point of view of Coretta Scott King, hounded by the FBI and carrying the burdens not only of the Jim Crow South, but of family duties and activist organizing as her husband has an affair. While King is written with more empathy and care than the other female characters in the book, it can be argued that Dennis, a white man, is not the person who should be telling the story of a black woman’s domestic pain. The stories in this collection are often bloody, brutal, and sad. The protagonists’ hopelessness (and the author’s inclination toward the grisly) is clear in one character’s observation that “it felt as if every animal were designed to be disassembled.” The relationships are dysfunctional and the interior lives of the characters scalding, the sex brutal, and the trauma acute. Dark corners of complicated people are on full display. With a fearless voice and a diverse array of characters, Dennis’ debut delivers strong prose but tips toward the overly morbid.
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WE WENT TO THE WOODS
Dolan-Leach, Caite Random House (368 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-399-58888-4
Five young people set up an idealistic living experiment in upstate New York in this tantalizingly mysterious second novel by the author of Dead Letters (2017). Mack, the narrator, has good reason for heading off the grid with four attractive semistrangers. A former Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, she has been thrown out of her program after a scandal involving a reality TV show, and her middle-class parents are getting tired of her bumming around their house in Ithaca. So when she meets wealthy Louisa while helping to cater a party for a local land trust and Louisa introduces her to charming Beau, sweet Chloe, and enthusiastic Jack, Mack jumps on the chance to join them in setting up a homestead on an abandoned farm
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owned by Louisa’s family. Despite the fact that it’s winter, and regardless of the lack of winter plumbing, they eagerly move in to their respective cabins on the farm and start making plans for planting crops and raising chickens and regularly swapping beds. Their lives become complicated as they interact with the residents of the more organized and far more radical commune next door, led by the charismatic Matthew, who spends his time journeying among a network of collectives he has established. Mack—observant, curious, and apt to leap to unwarranted conclusions—makes a likable and understandably unreliable narrator. While the characters are not as well-differentiated as they might be, the setting, traced through a year of seasons, is richly realized, with believable details about the difficulties of farming with little resources and less knowledge. Dolan-Leach grounds the contemporary story in references to earlier American attempts to “go to the woods” by Thoreau and the many founders of intentional communities in the area in which this one is located, though her attempt to integrate passages from the diary of a fictional resident of one such community into the novel fizzles out.
This first novel is a bibliophile’s delight. the last book party
TEMPER
Equal parts slow-burning thriller and intelligent analysis of the pros and cons of intentional communities, the novel will appeal to those who would rather read about such endeavors from a safe distance than be immersed in their messy reality.
THE LAST BOOK PARTY
Dukess, Karen Henry Holt (256 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-250-22547-4
The theater is a tempestuous, bloody place to be in Fargo’s prickly debut. The struggle is real for 30-something stage actress Kira Rascher. She lives hand to mouth with her best friend (with benefits), Spence, works a day job she hates, and auditions for theater roles every chance she gets. She longs to star opposite the enigmatic Malcolm Mercer, who runs Chicago’s Indifferent Honest Theater Company alongside his partner, and platonic roommate, Joanna Cuyler. Auditioning for Malcom for a new two-person play called Temper is a visceral experience, but not just for Kira. Joanna hates Kira on sight, pointing out that “she’s beautiful, to be sure, but in an obvious way. Nearly vulgur.” Kira gets the part, opposite Malcolm,
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A young woman with literary aspirations jumps at the chance to become a summer assistant for a prestigious author in Dukess’ bittersweet comingof-age debut novel. It’s June 1987, and Eve Rosen is starstruck as she walks up the driveway of the summer home of New Yorker writer Henry Grey, for the guests are “Truro’s summer elite, the writers, editors, poets, and artists who left their apartments in Manhattan and Boston around Memorial Day and stayed on Cape Cod into September.” An editorial secretary at Henry’s New York publisher, Eve is thrilled to meet the man whose correspondence with her, however brief, is the highlight of her job. She is also dazzled by Henry’s attractive son, Franny, and Henry’s aloof wife, the poet Tillie Sanderson. With dreams of becoming a writer, yet lacking confidence, Eve longs to join this world, so very different from her Jewish parents’ suburban, middle-class lifestyle. “I was buoyed by a sense of possibility. A tentative belief that I could have a creative life too.” Returning to Manhattan, Eve meets her boss’s new literary discovery, snobbish Jeremy Grand, who went to school with Franny. Jealous of Jeremy’s connections with the Greys and his early success, Eve reads his unpublished novel and is stunned by the power of his voice. Her doubts about her own abilities grow, but when Eve is bypassed for a promotion, she quits her job and accepts Henry’s offer to work as his research assistant for the summer. Her decision leads her to some hard (if somewhat predictable) truths that are exposed at the Greys’ annual book costume party. Eve is an appealing protagonist, naïve and yet assertive in trying to find her own voice as an artist. Written with fresh confidence and verve, this first novel is a bibliophile’s delight, with plenty of title-dropping and humorous digs at the publishing scene of the 1980s. The lyrical evocations of the Cape Cod landscape will also enchant readers seeking that perfect summer read.
Fargo, Layne Scout Press/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-9821-0672-0
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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Joanne Ramos
IN RAMOS’ DEBUT NOVEL, WOMEN WHO NEED MONEY BEAR CHILDREN FOR WEALTHY WOULD-BE MOTHERS WITH NO TIME FOR PREGNANCY By Rachel Sugar Photo courtesy Danielle Siess
Joanne Ramos knows she’s living what is supposed to be the American dream. Her family moved to Wisconsin from the Philippines when she was 6, and they worked hard, and she worked hard, and her resume is evidence that everything works like it’s supposed to: Midwest middle-class to Princeton; Princeton to Wall Street. “Without any explicit memories of my parents saying to me, ‘You’re expected to move on and move up,’ we always kind of knew it,” she says. And she did, and her presence—an anomaly in the world of high finance—only proved that the system worked, how you can, if you’re smarter and work harder, gain access to a rarified world. “I was taking private jets everywhere; there was a private chef that made us meals. It was really kind of a mind-blowing experience.” And isn’t that the national promise? That you can come here and work hard and climb up? “Most of my life, 14
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I’ve been told I was the American dream,” she says. “But at Princeton, I was like, what does that mean?” It was clear to her, for the first time, that the playing field wasn’t equal, that there are various roads that lead to America’s most elite institutions, and some have to do with “deserving” things and some don’t, at all. And then she moved into finance and it struck her again: “Do I deserve this nicer lifestyle because I made it to finance?” she asked herself. She’d worked hard, yes, but wasn’t it also a function of luck? It was a question she couldn’t resolve and couldn’t escape. By her 30s, she was the one raising a family in Manhattan, and she was the one whose kids had all kinds of advantages. “What does it mean to be a meritocracy, when certain kids at such a young age get so much more? Including my kids, because all of sudden, I was in this world.” It struck her, too, around then, that the only Filipinas who were part of her day-to-day life in New York were “caregivers, nannies, baby nurses, all the people I got to know in my new orbit of being at the parks and the playgrounds.” But they were employees, and she was an employer, and that difference didn’t make any particular sense to her either. “I don’t know if all immigrant communities are like this, but certainly in the Filipino community, you celebrate other Filipinos’ success,” she says. Some of the nannies she’d gotten to know had since become friends and “would say to me, ‘You’ve made it, we’re so proud of you!’ And I just…I questioned that.” Because they’d made it, too, hadn’t they? They were also here, in New York, “working as hard as I ever had,” Ramos says. “It’s a very different path because of luck and happenstance as much as merit.” And so she was thinking about all that when she sat down to write what would become The Farm (May 7). Jane, the Filipina immigrant at the heart of the book, isn’t lucky. A young single mother with a 6-month-old, she’s living with her cousin, Ate, an enterprising baby
upward mobility, and the costs that make it possible. “Do things change?” Ramos wants to know. “If you’re coming to this country, if you’re someone from the bottom, can things change? Does the dream still work? Does it work for a few of us enough to…distract from the fact that it doesn’t work for most of us?” At the risk of a spoiler: She doesn’t have the answers. But still, she’s obsessed with the questions. “If anything, they’re even farther from being resolved.” The day we talk, like the world had planned it, the news is saturated with headlines about the college admissions scandal, in which wealthy parents were found to have paid millions of dollars in bribes to get their kids spots at elite colleges, and it’s shocking not because we didn’t know the system was rigged, but because it’s so rare to see the rigging laid bare. “Had I made it up in the book, it would have sounded stupid. Like, Ehhhh, that’s a bit much,” Ramos laughs. “I could have written another book on that and fictionalized it and explored many of the same issues, right?” Rachel Sugar is a writer living in New York. The Farm received a starred review in the Feb. 1, 2019, issue.
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nurse, at a dorm in Queens. Ate understands what Jane doesn’t about the intimate dynamics of domestic labor, and when Jane loses a plum nannying job, it is Ate who has a solution: Golden Oaks, a luxury facility housing surrogates carrying the children of the ultra-elite. The money is too good to pass up—game-changing money—and so Jane leaves her daughter with Ate, nine months away for the promise of a better life. Are most of the surrogates low-income immigrants of color? Yes, but not all. Is it exploitation? Mae Yu, the ambitious Chinese-American MBA whose career rests on the venture, doesn’t think so. As she explains to one potential “premium” host—a white, pretty Duke graduate with moral reservations— it’s simply free trade, which is, by definition, mutually beneficial. “It isn’t like we force our Hosts to be Hosts,” Mae says. “They choose to work for us freely—I’d argue: happily. They’re treated extremely well, and they’re compensated more than adequately for their efforts.” “I wanted it to be a world that was immersive, so people could really sink into it and then come out of that world at the end of the book, and say ‘Huh, that made me feel uncomfortable, and yet it’s only inches away from the world we’re in now,” Ramos says. It’s not a dystopian novel; it’s just reality turned up half a notch. Ramos hadn’t written a novel before. She hadn’t, in fact, written any fiction in 20 years. “It just wasn’t in my head that you could do that,” she says. When she left finance, it was for financial journalism. “I was too scared to go into writing fiction,” she says. Except then she turned 40. “I was like, What do I really want to do?” she recalls. “Do I really need to prove myself anymore? And the answer was no, I just wanted to try writing about all this.” And she’d been trying to write about “all this,” with “stories about dog walkers to wealthy people, or nannies, or an Amazon fulfillment center, and it just wasn’t working.” Then she happened upon a brief article in the Wall Street Journal about surrogacy in India, and it unlocked a whole world. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” Ramos says. “I really wanted to talk about not just inequality, but how we fail to see each other when we have such different lives.” She was thinking about her own position, being someone “who can hire a Filipina nanny.” She was thinking about what it would be like to leave your own child “halfway around the world” so you could support them by taking care of someone else’s. And she had her way in. There aren’t any villains in The Farm, not really. “It’s a work of fiction meant to explore the mythology of a country that has given me everything. Everything,” Ramos says. It’s a book about surrogacy, but it’s not a book about surrogacy; surrogacy is a vehicle for the question, not the question itself. The question is bigger than that. At its core, it’s a book about capitalism, the promise of
THE FARM Ramos, Joanne Random House (336 pp.) $27.00 | May 7, 2019 978-1-9848-5375-2 |
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and to say the two have chemistry would be an understatement. The script is very physical, and Malcolm is a merciless taskmaster willing to go to ridiculous lengths to squeeze the best from his actors, including inviting Kira’s horrid, simpering ex-boyfriend to rehearsal as a tactic to stoke her rage. Meanwhile, the self-contained Joanna stews in a brew of jealousy and wasted opportunity, doing all the grunt work for the company while the odious Malcolm stirs the pot and beds his co-stars. All this tension would drive anyone crazy, but for these two women, it’s bound to get messy. Fargo’s propulsive writing style and Joanna’s and Kira’s dueling narratives drive the increasingly frenzied chain of events that play out in the lives of two very different women who find themselves at an inevitable breaking point. While certainly effective, the finale isn’t shocking, especially after getting an eyeful of two otherwise intelligent women seething under the toxic spell of such an insufferable man. This caustic passion play may not knock your socks off, but Fargo is an author to watch.
STAY AND FIGHT
Ffitch, Madeline Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-374-26812-1 On their Appalachian homestead, an unusual family struggles with the wilderness, society, and each other. Lily and Karen are a couple living near the West Virginia border on the Women’s Land Trust. When their son, Perley, is born, they know they’ll be forced to move within five years, as the land is designated as women-only. To their surprise, Helen, a Seattle transplant who lives in a camper on 20 acres of land nearby since being abandoned by her boyfriend, invites them to build a home with her; the three women, plus baby Perley, live together as a motley, but largely content, family. Lily, Karen, and Helen approach their homesteading life with varying degrees of commitment and dogmatism. Each week they play Survival Dice to determine whether they’ll get food from the grocery store (Lily’s preference) or live only off what the land can provide (Karen’s and Helen’s). As Perley grows up, he becomes accustomed to foraging for acorns, shoveling piles of “humanure,” and sharing his home with tenacious black rat snakes. However, when Perley decides at age 7 that he wants to attend school, the women’s unconventional lifestyle is suddenly on display, and when an accident draws the attention of Children’s Services, the family is threatened by forces bigger than any they’ve faced before. Ffitch (Valparaiso, Round the Horn, 2014), who has a long track record as an environmental activist, has crafted a story that is unabashedly political. But what could have been a didactic or strident novel is rendered, through its multiple first-person perspectives, with wit and nuance. And Ffitch has surely created one of the best child narrators in recent memory with the charming Perley. A cleareyed, largehearted take on the social protest novel. 16
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KING OF THE MISSISSIPPI
Freedman, Mike Hogarth/Crown (256 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-525-57378-4 Two alphas battle to be top dog at a global consultancy in this amusing satire on business, ambition, and entitlement. Brock Wharton, at 33, reckons he has logged “a lifetime of doing everything right.” Quarterback at the University of Texas, married money, Harvard Business School, and on the fast track to becoming managing director of Houston-based Cambridge Consulting Group. But while interviewing new hires, he meets his nemesis, Mike Fink, who seems comfortable being all wrong for CCG. Weak GPA at Tulane, majored in English literature, and sartorially unsplendid: “Navy double-breasted suit he wore as if he were a redneck admiral at a regatta that Wharton would never enter.” But Fink’s resume includes serving as a Green Beret in the Middle East. So while Wharton thinks of the military as “the last stop for the talentless,” CCG’s managing director feels that “in our post 9/11 world, these heroes are a lot more real to clients than another fresh-faced MBA.” Wharton soon realizes Fink is no hick. During a session with client Dr. Pepper, Wharton spouts CCG’s usual mix of jargon, arrogance, and newish ideas. The wily Fink undermines his slideshow and charms the CEO with a paean to corporate tradition. Freedman (School Board, 2014), a former Green Beret himself, uses Fink to skewer the style and substance of consultancies, Houston’s moneyed class, and male egos in general—the novel’s women barely rise above cliché. The scattershot satire can be rough or forced, but it has a compelling energy, like Rodney Dangerfield’s shtick. Freedman’s debut was a broadly comic look at business interests in Houston’s politics as a charismatic teen vies with an oil executive for a school board seat. Maybe there’s another city portrait in the works, something akin to William Kennedy’s Albany novels. A solid entertainment from a writer of considerable talent and promise.
NEVER LOOK BACK
Gaylin, Alison Morrow/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-06-284454-5 A young man seeking catharsis probes old wounds and unleashes fresh pain in this expertly crafted stand-alone from Edgar finalist Gaylin (If I Die Tonight, 2018, etc.). Quentin Garrison is an accomplished true-crime podcaster, but it’s not until his troubled mother, Kate, fatally overdoses that he tackles the case that destroyed
A vibrant parable of abuse and survival. blood
terrorism attempts to point up connections between violence in personal relationships and other, larger scenarios. Lurid and breathless, driven by galumphing characters and some belly laughs, this furious tale of brutal times and remedies doesn’t quite make that link, but the wild ride, underpinned by its author’s sharp perceptions, entertains quite a bit. A horror movie–esque last act sees the family coming together to defeat oppression and Monica transformed at last from lone warrior to larger-than-life local hero. Even if the novel can seem unsettled, she’s irresistible. A vibrant parable of abuse and survival, stronger on the family front than the national one.
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his family. In 1976, teenagers Gabriel LeRoy and April Cooper murdered 12 people in Southern California—Kate’s little sister included—before dying in a fire. Kate’s mother committed suicide, and her father withdrew, neglecting Kate, who in turn neglected Quentin. Quentin intends for Closure to examine the killings’ ripple effects, but after an interview with his estranged grandfather ends in a fight, he resolves to find a different angle. When a source alleges that April is alive and living in New York as Renee Bloom, Quentin is dubious, but efforts to debunk the claim only uncover more supporting evidence, so he flies east to investigate. Renee’s daughter, online film columnist Robin Diamond, is preoccupied with Twitter trolls and marital strife when Quentin calls to inquire about her mom’s connection to April Cooper. Robin initially dismisses Quentin but, upon reflection, realizes she knows nothing of Renee’s past. Before she can ask, a violent home invasion hospitalizes her parents and leaves Robin wondering whom she can trust. Artfully strewn red herrings and a kaleidoscopic narrative heighten tension while sowing seeds of distrust concerning the characters’ honesty and intentions. Letters from April to her future daughter written mid–crime spree punctuate chapters from Quentin’s and Robin’s perspectives, humanizing her and Gabriel in contrast with sensationalized accounts from Hollywood and the media. A mind-bending mystery, an insightful exploration of parent-child relationships, and a cautionary tale about bitterness and blame.
BLOOD
Gee, Maggie Fentum Press (324 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jul. 8, 2019 978-1-909572-12-6 What should Monica Ludd, the fearless sister to five other Ludd siblings, do when she finds their horrible father beaten to a pulp? And what does the dysfunctional Ludd family’s predicament tell us about Brexit Britain? “The Ludds. Artistes of awfulness” is how noted British novelist Gee (Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, 2014, etc.) introduces the bizarre family around which she builds her tragicomedy of revenge. Monica, 38, 6-foot-1, “an amazon, strong, deepchested, solid haunches,” narrates the book, haunted by the fearsome childhood she endured. Her twin brothers, Boris and Angus, “two jut-jawed Herculeses,” their wand-thin model sister, Fairy, and another sister, glamazon Anthea, lived in dread of their cruel father, Albert, whose pitilessness forced the last child, Fred, into the army; he was killed in Afghanistan. But for all her power, Monica is not quite as tough as she seems. Discovering Albert’s bloody, smashed-up body after a party to celebrate Fred’s life, she flees, beginning a chain of farcical events that exposes both her resourcefulness and her vulnerability. The Ludds live in Thanet, a spit of land in southern England, “the end and beginning of Britain,” and Gee’s nonstop procession of grotesques, slapstick, and sideswipes at Brexit and domestic |
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YOU’VE BEEN VOLUNTEERED A Class Mom Novel Gelman, Laurie Henry Holt (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-1-250-30185-7
Max Dixon is in third grade, and his mother has been roped into active duty again. The subtitle of this sequel to Gelman’s (Class Mom, 2017) maiden foray into the wilds of elementary school volunteering indicates that Jen Dixon, room parent extraordinaire, is in it for the long haul. Good thing. Dixon’s emails to and escapades among the concerned parents of Kansas City have the same anodyne quality as an old-fashioned television sitcom, with a pratfall, a wisecrack, and a chuckle every few minutes like clockwork. This year, Dixon is trying to use the SignUpGenius software to organize the refreshments for “that Fyre Festival known as curriculum night,” has been charged with supervising the morning safety patrol, and is coping with the effects of a nasty new kid and his tight-ass mom on the peanut-free ethos of William Taft Elementary. Her mom has recovered from breast cancer, her husband, Ron, is trying to woo an investor to help him expand his sporting goods business, her adult daughters are having boy troubles, and Jen herself has discovered the transcendent joys of spin class. The plot gambols along from one parent missive to the next—“Exciting news from Mrs. Randazzo! She has finally decided on a field trip for our offspring. About time, am I right?” “I’m sure by now you’ve all heard what happened at safety patrol today so let me just state the obvious: this cannot happen again”—takes a quick, boozy detour to Vegas, and winds up with everything just fine, sitcom style. Just add chardonnay.
FAMILY OF ORIGIN
Hauser, CJ Doubleday (304 pp.) $26.95 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-385-54462-7
In the wake of their father’s death, two half siblings confront their pasts and try to rewrite their futures. Hauser (The From-Aways, 2014) returns with a strange and heartbreaking novel about what it means to be a family. When their estranged father, Dr. Ian Grey, drowns while conducting research, adult half siblings Elsa and Nolan Grey are brought together for the first time in years. Ian, along with other peculiar scientists and researchers, lived on Leap’s Island in the Gulf of Mexico, where he studied the undowny bufflehead, a duck species that seems to be evolving backwards. Before his death, Ian had become obsessed with one duck, Duck Number Twelve or the Paradise Duck, which he described as 18
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“a freak among its peers.” Traveling to Leap’s Island, the half siblings hope to gather Ian’s possessions and find answers to their lingering questions. Elsa believes Ian committed suicide, but Nolan is adamant he didn’t. They both wonder if their own failures, inadequacies, and mistakes caused their father to withdraw from the world. Elsa and Nolan must also grapple with their fraught relationship—full of taboos, secrets, and abandonment issues. Playing with time, memory, and point of view, the novel is structurally ambitious, though sometimes to its own detriment. Its strongest parts are its ruminations on the Grey family dynamics, so the portraits of the islanders feel expendable. Hauser’s ability to render the complexities of family relationships with radical honesty is a feat. When Elsa thinks back on her childhood, Hauser writes, “her father had been taken from her over and over again, and Elsa was tired of coming up with new ways to suffer in his absence.” A lesser writer would not be able to deliver the disturbing and weird with the grace that Hauser does. A unique, poignant, and slightly taboo novel about family, biology, and evolution.
BREATHE IN, CASH OUT
Henry, Madeleine Atria (304 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-982114-53-4
An investment banking analyst dreams of becoming a yoga teacher, but that’s easier said than done. Allegra hates her job. That’s not saying much, since everyone at Anderson Shaw, the most prestigious investment bank on Wall Street, hates their job. It involves pulling constant all-nighters, doing busy work at a moment’s notice, and working such long hours that a steady stream of caffeine is the only way to survive. But Allegra has a secret: Unlike her co-workers, she doesn’t dream of moving up the banking ladder and making a seven-figure salary. Allegra’s passion is yoga, and as soon as she gets her yearly bonus, she plans to quit Anderson Shaw, take a yoga training program, and become a teacher. The only problem is that her job is killing her. After one impulsive night away from the office leads to unknowingly sleeping with her new boss, Allegra’s at rock bottom—stressed, unhappy, and in awful physical shape from sitting hunched over a computer all day. That’s when she runs into her idol, an Instagram yogi named Skylar Smith. Skylar wants to help Allegra break out of her terrible job and into the world of yoga, but some of Skylar’s suggestions (such as fasting for 48 hours) actually create major problems for Allegra at work. Eventually, Allegra starts to realize that she doesn’t fully trust Skylar’s intentions, and she might just have to take more drastic action to get her life back on track. Debut author Henry has a background in both investment banking and yoga, and she imbues the story with believable and horrific details that perfectly illustrate how cutthroat and all-consuming the world of banking is (employees having
seizures after working too long without sleep or passing out after overdosing on caffeine pills). Allegra’s work life is an endless stream of misery, but, luckily, on the page it’s much more entertaining due to her profane inner monologue that points out the ridiculousness she encounters in both the banking and yoga worlds. A sharp and funny look at an unhappy woman’s quest to manifest a better life.
VINCENT AND ALICE AND ALICE
Jones, Shane Tyrant Books (265 pp.) $16.95 paper | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-9992186-7-9
An artist-cum-bureaucrat gets his wife back (or a version of her) in Jones’ (Crystal Eaters, 2014, etc.) fourth novel. It is a summer of thunderstorms and xenophobic unrest in A-Ville, but Vincent, a former painter who works for the state, hardly notices. He’s reeling with depression because his wife, Alice—fed up with Vincent’s emotional enslavement to the retirement package (still hypothetical and more than 20 years away) that keeps him from quitting his job and leaving A-Ville—has divorced him. Then Vincent is asked to participate in PER, a program run by Ronald Reagan worshipper Dorian Blood, who promises that PER will allow Vincent to “live a fulfilling existence while being
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a productive worker”; in other words, it will distort his experience of reality so that he can work with “stunning proficiency” while “physically interacting with the life [he’s] always wanted.” Vincent has reservations, but Jones wouldn’t have a book if Vincent didn’t acquiesce, so he does, only to discover that his ideal life consists of just one change: It includes Alice. An uneasy mishmash of social satire, moral fable, dystopian sci-fi, and love story, Jones’ novel slides between the influential shadows of writers like Anthony Burgess, George Saunders, Philip K. Dick, and Don DeLillo while never quite cohering into a convincing shape of its own. This is, in part, because the world— a twist and shake different from our own—feels incompletely built. PER Alice, for example, is never quite convincing as an entity, mostly because we don’t know the metaphysical rules of her existence: Sometimes she’s visible and audible to others— when she answers the telephone, her words are heard—and yet she’s also a nontangible figment of Vincent’s memory. Similarly underdeveloped are A-ville’s violence and racism, the existence of which would powerfully indict Vincent’s solipsism—people are attacking Muslims while he perpetuates his fantasies and
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earns his pension—if the scenes that describe it, which are jocular and cartoonish, didn’t feel written solely to have exactly that moral effect. However, Jones is an acute cultural observer and a very funny aphorist—“Anger is lazy”; “Men are brave but only inside cars”; “Everything makes sense if you let it”;—and his book, despite its faults, contains many delights. An intelligent, entertaining, and yet unconvincing mashup of Office Space, A Scanner Darkly, and A Clockwork Orange.
RAISED IN CAPTIVITY
Klosterman, Chuck Penguin Press (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-7352-1792-8
Thirty-four wry bits of metafiction from the eternally ironic Klosterman (Chuck Klosterman X, 2017, etc.). Billed as “Fictional Nonfiction,” in this we get more echoes of the creative process behind Gen X icon Klosterman’s two absurdist novels (Downtown Owl, 2008, and The Visible Man, 2011) than we do from his tart essays and meandering nonfiction. It kicks off with an interesting scenario in “Raised in Captivity,” in which a nominally successful dude is presented with an existential crisis when he discovers a puma in an airplane bathroom. It’s a bit worrisome that the collection is absolutely laced with confessions—the perp being interviewed in “Experience Music Project,” the dying father in “To Live in the Hearts of Those We Leave Behind Is Not to Die, Except That It Actually Is,” and the guy who swears he didn’t kill those people in “Execute Again,” to name just a few—but they’re acidly funny. Even stranger: The serial attacker in “Cat Person,” who...rubs cats on people, is drawn in glorious noir-tinged prose. Klosterman not only excels at character and dialogue, as the people and conversations in the book seem very organic, but he’s also keen on setting up offbeat scenarios, which often drift toward the bizarre. In “Every Day Just Comes and Goes,” a regular Joe finds himself arguing with a time traveler. There’s a surreal conversation about magic in “Tricks Aren’t Illusions.” A terribly polite housewife hires an overeager hit man in “Not That Kind of Person.” Elsewhere, Klosterman savages political correctness in “Toxic Actuality,” conjures up a band with a hit single that’s superracist in “Blizzard of Summer,” and imagines a death cult in Silicon Valley in “What About the Children.” Armed with everything from existential crises to a robot dinosaur, there’s really something for everyone in this crisp collection of imaginative snippets. A colorful, somewhat wicked collection of stories that are touching as often as they are laugh-out-loud funny.
Lee Koe’s novel follows the intersecting lives and careers of three 20th-century film greats. delayed rays of a star
DELAYED RAYS OF A STAR
Lee Koe, Amanda Talese/Doubleday (400 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-385-54434-4 Lee Koe’s (Ministry of Moral Panic, 2013) decade- and continent-spanning novel follows the intersecting lives and careers of three 20th-century film greats. At the Berlin Press Ball 1928, three young women meet: Anna May Wong, an up-and-coming Chinese-American actress in Hollywood; Marlene Dietrich, a loudmouthed German trying to break into the business; and Leni Riefenstahl, a striving director just embarking on a career making Nazi propaganda films. From there the narration branches out, in alternating, braided sections, to trace the arcs of their lives. An octogenarian Marlene, bedridden in a Paris apartment, receives flirtatious phone calls from a mysterious young man who recites
Rilke to her every Sunday, and she’s cared for by a Chinese maid named Bébé, who has fled her rural village in Taishan and a prostitution ring in Marseilles. Anna May wrestles with her romantic feelings for Marlene after a brief post–Press Ball tryst as they costar in Shanghai Express, and she battles against regular takedowns in the Chinese press, her laundry-owning parents’ disapproval of her career, and Hollywood’s—and the world’s—limited roles and expectations for a Chinese-American woman. “And where are you from? Los Angeles, Anna May said. Before that? Anna May shook her head, repeated herself: Los Angeles. But where were you born? Los Angeles, she said.” Leni Riefenstahl shoots her film Tiefland in the Bavarian Alps, using Roma and Sinti extras from a concentration camp while navigating her relationships with Hitler and Goebbels, and eventually faces public vitriol and rape threats for those Nazi ties. For a novel so dense with historical fact and larger-than-life celebrity cameos (everyone from John F. Kennedy to Walter Benjamin to David Bowie), its portrayals are nuanced enough that each character comes off as deeply human regardless of their fame or importance to the novel’s plot. “In retrospective appraisal, [Marlene] divided her affairs not by
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gender or duration, but those for whom she’d cooked pot-au-feu and those she had not.…Marlene would not have guessed that she had one more pot-au-feu left in her, and for an anonymous caller no less.” It’s the steady accumulation of intimate details like these that creates a sweeping sense of history that feels truly alive. Expansive, complex, and utterly engrossing.
THE SUM OF ALL SHADOWS
Lustbader, Eric Van Forge (352 pp.) $28.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-7653-8863-6
Heaven and hell duke it out once again in this fourth religious fantasy thriller in the author’s Testament series (Four Dominions, 2018, etc.). Lucifer, the Principal Resident of hell and the Sum of All Shadows, is fed
up with God. So after eons—or at least after three previous Testament installments—he decides to organize the Fallen to “begin their final assault on Heaven.” Of all possible places in the universe, this plot involves climbing out a hole in the Syrian island of Arwad. Their biggest obstacle is not the creator himself but “the accursed Shaw family…the only humans with the knowledge and power to defeat his purpose.” They are the siblings Emma and Bravo Shaw, who are Gnostic Observatines. The Principal Resident wants to drive a wedge between brother and sister, who may not be wholly human. Their great-great grandmother Chynna Sikar had mated with the Fallen Seraph of “Unparalleled Glamour,” Leviathan. He is “something out of a lunatic’s nightmare: a six-winged beast with red and gold eyes, a bestial snout, and ears like a bat’s wings.” Adding to the charm, he likes chowing down on human bones and surrounds himself with an armada of buzzing flies. So what’s not to like? And there’s Oq Ajdar, a chimera that changes from a dragon to a sea serpent to an eagle in a few blinks of the eye. Even good guys take strange form, as Emma is rescued from certain death by a big frog wearing a waistcoat, formal jacket, trousers with a satin stripe, and “jaunty silk ascot.” At least he wasn’t holding a martini glass. The premise is a highly imaginative take on the eternal conflict between good and evil, and just because this novel has a satisfying conclusion doesn’t mean that Lucifer, like Schwarzenegger, won’t be back. Readers able to suspend great gobs of disbelief will enjoy this yarn, but they might do well to read the books in order.
DEEP RIVER
Marlantes, Karl Atlantic Monthly (736 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-8021-2538-5 Marlantes (What it Is Like To Go to War, 2011, etc.) moves from the jungles of Vietnam to the old-growth forests of Washington in this saga of labor and love. It’s the late summer of 1901, and Aino Koski is learning to read and write courtesy of a schoolteacher boarding with her family in the Finnish backwoods, his textbook of choice The Communist Manifesto. Soon she’s a socialist, and so she will remain, even as her neighbors and siblings follow other beliefs and courses. Escaping the Russian occupation of her country, Aino and others in her community move across the waters to Washington state, where, despite her hope that America will prove a socialist paradise, any utopianism is worn away by the realities of endless hard work in the forests and mills: “Aksel’s hands,” Marlantes writes, “work-hardened since he was a boy, still blistered from the nine-pound splitting maul and eight-foot-long bucksaw.” Aino devotes herself to labor activism while members of the Finnish immigrant community work, build families and lives, grow old, and die. Aino hardly has time to take a breath, but she still finds room for agonies of secret-charged love that stretch out over 22
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the decades, until fate finally allows some measure of happiness: “He leaned over and smothered his face in her hair,” Marlantes writes poetically of Aino’s husband-to-be, who has followed a hard path of his own, “and the pain and the disappointment poured out as he said her name over and over.” The story is long and has its longueurs, but Marlantes carefully builds an epic world in the forests of Scandinavia and the Northwest, taking pains to round out each character, especially the long-suffering Aino. Drawing on his family history, he weaves themes from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic—as he writes, the paterfamilias has named all his children after the mythological heroes and heroines in its pages—as well as real-world events in the annals of the early-20th-century labor movement. A novel that sometimes struggles under its own weight but that’s well worth reading.
THE DREAMING TREE
Mather, Matthew Blackstone Publishing (412 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5385-8941-0 In a world where people can be swapped into new bodies to keep them alive, do you ever really know who you are? After a car accident that could have killed him, Roy Lowell-Vandeweghe wakes up to discover a fate he feels is worse than death. His wife, Penny, and his wealthy mother have teamed up with Eden Corporation to give Roy the first-ever full body transplant. The groundbreaking and potentially sinister Dr. Danesti has been paid a sum of—well, Roy doesn’t even want to know how much, to ensure that Roy survives, though maybe the doctor is keeping him alive just long enough to access his trust fund. Since Roy wasn’t close to either his wife
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a debut novelist’s attempt to write “the least sensational book about sex possible”
Photo courtesy Fette Sans
In Saskia Vogel’s debut novel, Permission (May 7), erotic Los Angeles comes alive for Echo, a struggling actress grieving her father’s fall from a sea cliff near the family home. “I enjoyed putting these two forces of nature together, the landscape and the erotic,” says Vogel, an LA–born, Berlin-based Englishto-Swedish translator and writer whose criticism focuses on gender, power, and sexuality. “In Wallace Stegner’s ‘Wilderness Letter,’ he talks about the wilderness as the force against which human nature, or a character of a people, is shaped,” she says. “What if you take away the patriarch, the Saskia Vogel force against which Echo and her mum have shaped their lives?” Grief over the missing man further divides Echo from her mother, “whose refusal to be pleased was a form of tyranny,” Vogel writes. Seeking solace in Orly, a local dominatrix, she reconsiders her sense of place, relationships, pleasure, and pain. “Only after I met Orly and understood that loving in the way you love is not enough— you have to pay attention to how people need and want to be loved—did I come to realize that [my parents] were blind to each other,” Vogel writes. Kirkus calls this stimulating story “an intimate study of power within two of the relationships that define us most precisely—that of lover and that of child.” “My goal was to write the least sensational book about sex possible,” Vogel says. “I want to open up the kind of space where we can actually think about sex and sexuality, think about the erotic…and look at what kind of insight is available to us when we don’t shove sex into a corner of, ‘It’s either erotica or porn, or it’s literature.’ ” —M.L. Megan Labrise is the editor at large and co-host of Kirkus’ Fully Booked podcast. Permission was reviewed in the March 1, 2019, issue. 24
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or his mother before the accident, he’s not quite sure why he’s been kept alive and isn’t satisfied by the nonanswers he’s given. His restlessness and curiosity lead him to return the phone call of Suffolk County Police Department Detective Delta Devlin, who’s tracking a serial killer in the Hamptons. Something in Roy is triggered by her quest: Could the body he’s currently tenanting be that of the man who committed the crimes? Roy, unable to rest until he knows the truth, hires a detective of his own to uncover the facts behind his medical miracle. As he learns more about Eden Corporation, Dr. Danesti, and the man behind his second chance at life, Roy’s sure of only two things: That he’s on to something dark and that he may be the very person he can’t trust. Piling on questions about who we are and how we know it, Mather (Polar Vortex, 2019) is more successful when he concentrates on his twisted take on Frankenstein’s monster, even though this leaves his serial-killer subplot less fleshed-out.
COSTALEGRE
Maum, Courtney Tin House (240 pp.) $19.95 paper | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-947793-36-1 A young girl follows her mother and a wayward group of artists into the Mexican jungle on the eve of World War II in this spare, enchanting novel. Fourteen-year-old Lara Calaway just wants her mother to notice her. Instead, Leonora, a wealthy New York socialite, is more interested in collecting members of the avant-garde. There’s Konrad, a traumatized painter, whom Leonora marries; C., Konrad’s longtime lover, a forceful and dedicated writer with hair that “floats around her face like an evil halo”; and the loathed Hetty, “the only other woman with us in Mexico…[who] is just horrible.” Maum (Touch, 2017, etc.) depicts Lara’s curiosity and longing in exquisite, diary-style vignettes, sketches, notes, and unsent letters. “He’d be so beautiful if he were happy,” she muses about Konrad, her new stepfather. “Sometimes at the parties when I catch the way he is with C., I hate my mother for the way she has to have the things that everybody likes.” According to Maum, Leonora and Lara Calaway are based loosely on Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter Pegeen while the artists who make up “the entire bin of loons” at Costalegre are composites of surrealists like André Breton, Leonora Carrington, and Djuna Barnes. Lara makes for a fine narrator—young enough to be both enchanted and annoyed by the strange collection of adults that surround her and old enough to explain her frustrations with heartbreaking clarity. Only occasionally does Maum allow her teenager to really sound like a teenager, and then it’s played for laughs. “If she ends up putting her museum here,” Lara writes of Costalegre and her mother, “I am going to die.” Occasional theatrics aside, Lara blooms when she encounters a Dadaist sculptor from Germany, moved by his work and his
ability to really see her, “you know, in that way that feels like something has been thrown directly toward you, as if you’re on the other end of a straight line.” The novel closes as quickly as it opens, in a moment of teenage confusion, rage, and hope. A lush chronicle of wealth, art, adventure, loneliness, love, and folly told by a narrator you won’t be able to forget.
HUE AND CRY
McPherson, James Alan Ecco/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jul. 19, 2019 978-0-06-290973-2
During World War II, five Americans head to Nazi-occupied France on a secret mission for the OSS, but only four return. Twenty years later, OSS case officer Alistair Renault finds a clue in a history book that the missing member of their group might have survived after all. He flashes back to the beginning of the operation, when he first assembled the team he dubbed “Dragonfly”—three men and two women who were chosen for their special skills and secret connection to the war. The five recruits bond in training, but once on their mission, they split up to avoid being caught by the enemy and communicate by making marks on a mural painted on the courtyard wall of a convent.
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Short stories reach across decades of racial upheaval and social transformation to reaffirm what remains human and vulnerable in all of us. McPherson (1943-2016) was the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction, which he received for his 1977 collection of short stories, Elbow Room. Nine years earlier, the Savannah-born McPherson, who held degrees from both Harvard Law School and the University of Iowa (whose storied Writers Workshop he later directed), published this, his first and only other shortfiction collection. Upon reading this new edition, it somehow isn’t enough to say that the stories “hold up well.” Their blend of grittiness and sophistication, compassion and common sense, measured observation and melancholy humor can still profoundly move and illuminate. “Gold Coast”—which was later included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike—manages to compress whole contradictions of personality, ethnicity, and class into the seemingly discursive but poignant reminiscences of a young black janitor’s apprenticeship to his building’s embittered and elderly Irish superintendent. With similar incisiveness and sensitivity, the title novella dissects the vagaries of interracial romance. McPherson’s keen ear is perhaps most evident in “A Solo Song: For Doc,” which uses the irascible first-person voice of a 60-something Pullman waiter to recount the life of a similarly testy co-worker whose supreme competence and fierce dedication couldn’t protect him from bigotry or arbitrary dismissal. “Of Cabbages and Kings” evokes some of the darkly comedic paranoia of the 1960s while “An Act of Prostitution” puts the edgier comedy of the legal system up front. The collection remains an exemplar of humane, tough-minded grace while anticipating much of the trenchant, boundary-breaching fiction by young African-American writers emerging so far this century. Half a century ago, Ralph Ellison was excited by the prodigious talent on display in this collection, and it can still galvanize contemporary readers.
DRAGONFLY
Meacham, Leila Grand Central Publishing (576 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-53873222-9
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Their cover stories offer surprising glimpses of daily life for the French and their German occupiers. (And a character list at the beginning of the book helps keep their real names and aliases straight.) Christoph Brandt, a track-and-field coach who couldn’t be drafted to the American military due to his missing thumb, learns firsthand how the Hitler Youth are taught to bully. He ingratiates himself with the Nazis by tutoring the son of the head of the Abwehr German intelligence agency in France. But the Nazis won’t be fooled for long. Civil engineer Samuel “Bucky” Barton risks being discovered by Christoph’s old friend from his hometown who betrayed his country to join the Third Reich. Working side by side with the enemy, the Americans are surprised to learn that some of the Nazis are not what they seem. Tired, disillusioned, and looking for redemption, they blur the line between friend and foe, giving Dragonfly both a way into the organization and a way out of the war. Complex, epic, and rich in historical detail—an uplifting story of finding friendship behind enemy lines.
THE CUBAN COMEDY
Medina, Pablo Unnamed Press (192 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-944700-87-4
A young poet’s muse is slowly stifled as the Castro regime takes power in Cuba. If this novel by the veteran poet, novelist, and translator (The Island Kingdom, 2015, etc.) qualifies as a “comedy,” it’s of the most melancholy and bittersweet sort. Its hero, Elena, has grown up in a rural patch of the island, the daughter of the maker of an infamously potent firewater. Dad suggests that her budding love of poetry at 17 is the real danger, though. She’s “infected with something more terminal than death,” and he means it: Elena’s verse for a time turns the town into sexobsessed layabouts and catches the attention of Daniel, a mesmerizing “Bard of the Revolution” who awards her a national poetry prize. In the interior and for a time in Havana, Elena’s life feels charmed and strange in ways that evoke the 1960s Latin Boom. Her father’s cousin is a healer who speaks in a patois of Latin, Spanish, French, and English; she falls for a comically well-endowed man who quits his firewater habit before they marry, have a daughter, and he dies; in Havana, she’s taken in by a couple that keeps a coop full of pigeons and a parrot with the fraught name of Pity. The peculiarity of the narrative becomes deliberately straightforward, though, after she marries Daniel and he falls afoul of Communist leaders and is detained by State Security. Tales of lust and exorcism and flight fade from the narrative, replaced by Elena’s despair that poetry gained her only “a husband in jail and the sword of the state dangling over her.” Rather than get into particulars of how everyday life changed in Cuba by the early ’60s, Medina memorably conjures a stark change in atmosphere. A bleak fable that honors the poetic spirit, recognizing lyricism and metaphor as dangerous tools of defiance.
INHABITATION
Miyamoto, Teru Trans. by Thomas, Roger K. Counterpoint (320 pp.) $16.95 paper | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-64009-217-4 In 1970s Osaka, a young man moves out of his mother’s home and is consumed by thoughts of life, love, and an impaled lizard. Stretching from the cherry-blossom spring of one year to the spring of the next, this novel follows the passionate preoccupations of graduating college student and part-time hotel bellboy Iryō Tetsuyuki. Miyamoto (Rivers, 2014, etc.) published this novel in 1984—straight after the release of his novel Maboroshi no hikari but before it had found fame as 26
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An engaging chuckle about an elderly man who fights to regain the autonomy he deserves. the great unexpected
THE BURNING CHAMBERS
Mosse, Kate Minotaur (608 pp.) $27.99 | $61.99 audiobook | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-250-20216-1 978-1-250-22396-8 audiobook Mosse returns to Languedoc, her favored historical territory, for a swashbuckler about a purloined inheritance and religious persecution. The main plot of this series launch— set in 1562, during the regency of Catherine de Medici—has all the ingredients of a fairy-tale adventure. Mosse’s young heroine, Minou Joubert, daughter of a Carcassonne bookseller, is actually of noble birth. Puzzling out exactly how this came to be is the book’s main agenda. The principal players are Minou, her father, Bernard, her brother, Aimeric, and younger sister, Alis. All are Huguenots, members of the often persecuted French Protestant minority. They find an ally in Piet, a Protestant soldier of
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the film Maborosi—but its themes are timeless. Sometimes literally and always figuratively feverish, Tetsuyuki struggles with the tangible aspects of adult life: finances, collegiality, romantic love, filial obligations. The book’s Japanese title, Haru no Yume— Spring Dream—gives a good sense of Tetsuyuki’s tenuous grasp of reality as he comes of age. A perceptive if judgmental character, Tetsuyuki can be a deeply exasperating protagonist, though he’s portrayed with just enough sympathy and fascination to keep the reader engaged with his constantly shifting resolutions. Through this balancing act and his clear prose, Miyamoto shows why he is respected in Japan, if little-known abroad. Somehow, Tetsuyuki’s feelings toward his girlfriend, the financial debt he inherited from his father, his relationship with his mother, the profound nature of existence, and various concepts of reincarnation are all bound up with Kin-chan, the lizard he accidentally nailed to a pillar on his first night in his own place. A cast of characters at the Osaka hotel and around the Kansai region also provide foils for Tetsuyuki’s developing sensibility and counterexamples for many of the relationships he is trying to develop. A fascinating exploration of early adulthood in Japan.
THE GREAT UNEXPECTED
Mooney, Dan Park Row Books (368 pp.) $15.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-7783-0858-4
In his 70s, Joel Monroe proves he has plenty of life left in him despite being held “prisoner” at the Hilltop Nursing Home. Joel shared a room at Hilltop with his wife, Lucey, until he awoke one morning to her unexpected death. When Lucey’s bed is given to Mr. Miller, a man in a coma, it only adds to Joel’s grief and loneliness. When Miller dies, Joel is not ready to share his life, such as it is, with a new roommate, let alone flamboyant Frank de Selby, a soap opera actor of bygone years. But Frank’s not one to take rebuffs seriously, and, after a rough start, the two became unlikely friends. They share heart-wrenching secrets while fighting the powers that be at Hilltop with cranky defiance and passive resistance, pulling off applauseworthy antics such as sharing a pint—or several—at various pubs around town. Mooney addresses issues of aging—and life in general—with humor. Yet at times, while championing issues the elderly face— feeling infantilized, marginalized, hopeless, and forgotten—he delivers a subtle, perhaps unwitting, parody of the aged, painting with a soft stereotypical brush, on occasion making some look silly. Thankfully the characters fall short of becoming caricatures, and the strong message that there is life and value in older folk resonates loud and clear and encouraging. This is a testimony to the powerful medicine that a friend can be. An engaging chuckle about an elderly man who fights to regain the autonomy he deserves.
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fortune. Piet and Minou are struck by un coup de foudre—love at first sight. The villains are Blanche, who is the third wife and now widow of Lord Bruyère of Puivert, whom, italicized passages reveal, she poisoned. Blanche hopes to retain the Puivert lands and titles by producing an heir, although she is pregnant not by Bruyère but by her lover, Vidal, a priest (who also happens to be Piet’s estranged friend). Vidal hopes Blanche’s influence can help him usurp a bishop’s throne, and he also plots to take credit for recovering the stolen Shroud of Antioch, even if it means passing off a fake relic as the real thing. Blanche is desperate to locate, and destroy, a will that is the sole evidence of a competing claim to her late husband’s estate. Amid battles, Inquisition torture sessions, massacres of Huguenot civilians and collateral Catholic damage, the complex tale spreads tentacles throughout the Midi region of France. The exposition is somewhat heavy-handed as characters discuss political upheavals, military factions, and religious strife past and present— including the purge of the Cathar heresy. However, the history is engrossing and goes down easy thanks to the hurtling plot. Mosse has successfully cornered the Midi market.
THE REUNION
Musso, Guillaume Trans. by Wynne, Frank Little, Brown and Company (288 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-316-49014-6 A high school reunion on the Côte d’Azur brings together murderers who haven’t spoken to each other in years. The latest novel to be published in English by France’s No. 1 bestselling author, Musso (The Girl on Paper, 2012, etc.), features Thomas Degalais, a bestselling French author. Perhaps this is why Musso feels compelled to reveal in an author’s note at the end of the book that he personally has never walled up a body in the gym. Many others in this book have, and now that gym is slated for demolition as part of a new building initiative at the school. Ruh-roh, to quote Scooby Doo via Felicity Huffman. The mystery aspect of this novel is ridiculous to say the least—based on unbelievable premises and getting crazier all the time, as both the dead bodies and responsible parties pile up. The main reason to read this novel is to marvel at the amazing conglomeration of American and French pop-culture knowledge that the average French reader must have at his or her fingertips. While one character has “become a Laura Palmer-like character in a remake of Twin Peaks set on the Côte d’Azur,” others look “a little like Lauryn Hill when she was with the Fugees” or “Jeremiah Johnson in pursuit of a ghostly grizzly bear.” Still another is “like an American,” because “he brazenly flaunted his success” and “bragged about the merits of his Tesla.” Ouch! Just as fast and thick come references to French writers, music, fashions, and celebrities that will be inscrutable to most American readers but add a little Gallic je ne sais quoi. Somehow, amid the mayhem, the suspense, and the ongoing pop-culture avalanche, 28
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there’s time for a few profound philosophical observations of the sort one would hope for from a (modest, Tesla-free) Frenchman. “Passion is a no-man’s-land, a bombed out warzone situated somewhere at the intersection of sorrow, madness and death.” Tell it, brother. Sacré bleu!
THE GHOST CLAUSE
Norman, Howard Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (256 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-544-98729-6 A young couple adjusts to life in a rural Vermont farmhouse and the specter of the novelist who once lived there. Norman’s fiction (My Darling Detec tive, 2017, etc.) is death-stalked stuff: His novels are suffused with the ghosts of spouses and parents, murders around hotels and lighthouses, and downcast observations of the somber, foggy Northeast. Though nobody would confuse him for a horror writer, he has a keen eye for the way loss uneasily sticks with those left behind. This time he lets the dead do the talking. Simon, the narrator, is a novelist who died of a heart attack on a ferry in Nova Scotia and who’s returned to his home in Vermont to observe its new occupants: Zachary, a private detective, and Muriel, a scholar of Japanese poetry. The two are suspicious of a strange presence; the alarm in their library keeps getting set off, a book by Wallace Stevens (that most metaphysical of modern poets) can’t stay in one place, and the home’s deed has a “ghost clause” that obligates the prior owner to buy back the home in case of a “malevolent presence.” But the home is stressed enough already, as Zachary works on the case of a missing girl that’s torn up the town and sends him down a series of false leads. This isn’t a plot so much as a kind of atmosphere; Simon observes frustrations, losses, and elisions, from miscarriages to missed leads to his widow, Lorca, deep in mourning. Yet, like the poet Muriel studies, who tucks erotic parentheticals into her mordant poems, a little light slips into the story, resolving both the case of the missing girl and Simon’s uneasy sense of place. What opens as a ghost story turns out to be something of a love story instead. Familiar turf for Norman’s longtime readers, but he still has a knack for finding emotional resonances in muted, unlikely scenarios.
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MAGGIE BROWN & OTHERS
Orner, Peter Little, Brown (336 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-316-51611-2
In these 44 stories and a novella, Orner (Underground America, 2017, etc.) concentrates on small perceptual moments, especially those involving knotty problems in relationships. Orner’s stories range from one paragraph to several pages, so he scarcely gives himself enough time to develop conflict and character. Instead, he focuses our attention on small epiphanies and suggests that these moments of insight, if they come, might be all we can expect in this circumscribed world. Orner tends to direct our attention to both domestic and family relationships, both of which are found wanting. In “Visions of Mr. Swibel,” the narrator explains the communication strategy of his
taciturn mother: “She didn’t bother to speak to my father any more than absolutely necessary. Words were energy and she was storing them up for another life.” A couple in therapy in “Rhinebeck” goes to a theater after their sessions and sits through any movie that happens to be playing, “all the way through the credits when there are no more names to thank and the whole deal stops....Anything not to go home.” A tone of wistful and often comic nostalgia pervades many of the stories, for Orner has a sharp eye for absurdity and a discerning ear for dialogue. The narrator of “The Captain” finds himself “thinking about peripheral people in my life, people I hardly knew”—people, in other words, like the title character, a drug dealer who dresses up like Captain Kangaroo. The longest piece here is Walt Kaplan Is Broke: A Novella, but even here Orner breaks his narrative into 30 chapters, using a small but recurring cast of characters in his microfictive world. Insightful, rueful, and often humorous, this collection holds a mirror to contemporary life and gives the reader much to reflect on.
STILL I MISS YOU
Pedrosa, Inês Trans. by Rosenberg, Andrea AmazonCrossing (298 pp.) $24.95 | Jul. 1, 2019 978-1-5420-9333-0 Two former lovers address one another after one of them has died. Any and every novel will ask that, while reading, you suspend your disbelief. A novel in which one of the main characters has already died, and continues to speak from beyond the grave, asks with a bit more urgency. That’s the conceit of Pedrosa’s (In Your Hands, 2018) latest novel to appear in English. There’s no plot here, no real action. Instead, in alternating chapters, a man and a woman—formerly lovers—address one another in long, stream-of-consciousness passages that describe their relationship, their lives, and quite a few more abstract ideas, too. It’s the woman who has died. “I died when a drifter got lost on the way to my uterus,” she explains. “I died because my body decided to produce a new life and screwed it up.” And her counterpart? “Did you think about me as you were dying?” he asks. But most of the novel is far less straightforward. Both characters trade in lyrical abstractions as they wax on and on about whatever comes to mind. A typical passage: “Through you, I existed before I was even born, in the harsh, secret vocabulary of a war that no longer belonged to me….” These meditations grow tiresome rather quickly. Unsupported by any action, the weight of the novel sags heavily in the middle. Pedrosa has worked as a journalist in her native Portugal: Some journalistic precision might have helped sharpen this hazy novel, at least enough to bring it into focus. An excess of navel-gazing quickly grows tiresome.
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Segal is a monumental writer, one of the finest of her generation. the journal i did not keep
LOCK EVERY DOOR
Sager, Riley Dutton (384 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-5247-4514-1
SAY SAY SAY
Savage, Lila Knopf (176 pp.) $24.00 | Jul. 11, 2019 978-0-525-65592-3 A millennial adrift learns about life while caring for others. Anyone who has ever worked in the helping professions knows that these jobs can create strange intimacies. This is potentially fruitful territory, but whether or not this novel works depends very much upon how one feels about its protagonist. Ella is almost 30. After dropping out of her graduate program, she started working as a caregiver. This
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Another homage to classic horror from a bestselling author. Sager’s debut novel, Final Girls (2017), wasn’t so much a horror novel as a commentary about horror movies in novel form. It was clever but also very wellcrafted. The author tried to do something similar with The Last Time I Lied (2018), with significantly less satisfying results. This new novel is another attempt to make the model work. Whether or not it does depends on how invested one is in formula for the sake of formula. Jules Larsen is getting over a breakup and the loss of her job when she finds a gig that seems too good to be true: The Bartholomew, a storied Manhattan building, wants to pay her thousands of dollars to simply occupy a vacant—and luxurious—apartment. Jules soon gets the feeling that all is not as it seems at the Bartholomew, which is, of course, a perfect setup for some psychological suspense, but the problem is that there is little in the way of narrative tension because Jules’ situation is so obviously not right from the very beginning. While interviewing for the job, she’s asked about her health history. She’s informed that she is not allowed to have guests in the apartment. She’s warned that she must not interact with or talk to anyone else about the building’s wealthy and famous inhabitants. And she learns that she will be paid under the table. While this might not be enough to deter someone who is broke and desperate, it does mean that Jules should be a bit more concerned than she is when the really scary stuff starts happening. It’s possible to read this as a parody of the absurdly intrepid horror heroine, but, even as that, it’s not a particularly entertaining parody. Jules’ best friend makes a reference to American Horror Story, which feels less like a postmodern nod than a reminder that there are other, better examples of the genre that one could be enjoying instead. Lacking in both thrills and chills.
isn’t her chosen vocation; it’s just what she does to pay rent, buy groceries, and pick up vintage tchotchkes at thrift stores. She lives with a woman named Alix who is her sexual and romantic partner, but Ella doesn’t like to think of herself as part of a couple. When a retired carpenter named Bryn hires Ella to care for his mentally impaired wife, Jill, Ella becomes a part-time member of their household. There isn’t a lot of dialogue in this novel, nor is there much in the way of action. What there are, mostly, are third-person descriptions of what’s going on inside Ella’s head as she cares for Jill, gets to know Bryn, and watches the pair interact. Ella has a number of revelations about love and life. Mostly, she thinks about herself. This is true of most people, probably, but it doesn’t make for much of a story unless you find Ella as fascinating as her author does. The most interesting aspect of this novel is the weird relationship between the protagonist and the narrator. Consider this passage: “Ella was ashamed of how her own beauty comforted and seduced her; she visited it like a secret lover, she stroked it softly like a young boy watching television, one hand tucked into his pajama bottoms, fondling his small, flaccid treasure.” This very long sentence contains what is surely one of the most awkward similes in contemporary fiction, but it also shows us an author who is maybe a little bit too in love with her heroine, not to mention a bit too in love with her own voice. A tedious first novel that might have been a rich short story.
THE JOURNAL I DID NOT KEEP
Segal, Lore Melville House (432 pp.) $28.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-61219-747-0
A retrospective collection from an illustrious writer’s long career. Segal (Half the Kingdom, 2013, etc.) was 10 when she was sent, by Kindertransport, from Vienna to England. Eventually, she and what was left of her family made their way to New York. Now in her 90s, Segal’s still there and long overdue for a retrospective of her writing. This is a spectacular volume. It collects excerpts from Segal’s major novels with short stories and essays, some new, some previously uncollected. Throughout her long career, Segal has returned again and again to the biographical impetus that launched it: Her first novel, Other People’s Houses (excerpted here), draws directly from her childhood flight to England and subsequent life with various foster families. Other pieces reflect an abiding interest in Jane Austen, racial inequality, and aging: One particularly delightful story describes an elderly woman at a party for which she can’t quite remember the occasion, or the hostess. As it turns out, it’s not a party after all. In all of these pieces, Segal’s prose is exquisite—crystalline, clear, and utterly unsentimental. In a chapter excerpted from her 1985 novel, Her First American, Segal describes a group of friends—some black, some white—who |
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summer together in a large house in the 1950s. These scenes can be wickedly funny, and excruciatingly awkward, as the wellintentioned white characters bumble around. Segal is critical of liberal white hypocrisy but never cruel to her characters—whatever their race or religion. Segal is a monumental writer, one of the finest of her generation; this lovely collection is a fine introduction to her work.
LET’S HOPE FOR THE BEST
Setterwall, Carolina Trans. by Wessel, Elizabeth Clark Little, Brown (384 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-316-48962-1
In this debut from Stockholm-based writer Setterwall, a real-life relationship becomes the basis of a novel about anxiety, motherhood, and trauma. Carolina is an adventurous concert promoter who falls fast and hard for quiet Aksel, a freelancer. “I’m thirty, and my love life is a mess,” she admits, detailing her failed relationships and attempts to address bad romantic patterns in therapy. An anxious but eager girlfriend, she pushes the two across milestone after milestone while circumspect Aksel agrees to be pushed. “If I just wait a few hours, you come back,” she muses. “I’m starting to learn your patterns. I’m starting to figure out how to exist in your world.” But things shift when the new couple moves into their suburban Stockholm apartment and Carolina admits to wanting a baby. Despite Aksel’s hesitations, Carolina resolves to find a way to both have a child and keep Aksel in her life. “Our negotiations are not beautiful,” she recalls. “Neither of us ever leaves the kitchen table feeling good.” Then, when their son, Ivan, is only a few months old, Aksel dies suddenly in his sleep. To cope with her grief, Carolina chronicles their relationship, from the day they first met until their son turns 2 and romance finds her yet again. Addressed directly to Aksel, the twin narratives of excitement and grief depict Carolina’s obsession with both being and having this particular partner. Like grief itself, the narrative is exhausting and exhaustive, as Carolina accumulates details to learn more about her need to control relationships in the face of real or manufactured chaos. Her sentences are spare and simple, and they reveal a portrait of anxiety and control, grief and abandonment, that lasts for many painful years. “How can I hold onto you when you’re not here?” she asks. “How can I move on without the approval of the people in our life who matter the most to me? The equation seems unsolvable.” An occasionally moving and tender work of autofiction that depicts the obsessive interiority of grief.
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REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
Stibbe, Nina Little, Brown (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-316-30937-0
Quirky, British, and on the cusp of adulthood, Lizzie Vogel is starting a new chapter of her life, which will include guerrilla dentistry, her first dinner party, and possibly a romance with Andy Nicolello, whose mother may be even more eccentric than her own (“Mine: drunk, divorcee, nudist, amphetamine addict, nymphomaniac, shoplifter, would-be novelist, poet, playwright”). In two earlier volumes, Stibbe (Paradise Lodge, 2016, etc.) has traced the chaotic but disarming history of the Vogels as experienced by middle child Lizzie. Now 18, Lizzie no longer works part time at the Paradise Lodge old people’s home, having accepted a proper job as assistant to hateful, racist dentist JP Wintergreen. The position comes with an apartment over the practice, and Lizzie encounters the mixed blessings of freedom and loneliness there; she finds solace reading women’s magazines, which inspire dreams of a future, in London, writing columns of her own like “Eleven Warning Signs that Your Husband Is Bored with His Food.” Deadpan yet droll, and no kind of rebel, Lizzie is taking her first unsteady steps into adulthood— learning to drive, buying a clingy dress (to be worn without panties), and exploring the possibility of intimacy with handsome yet diffident Andy. Andy works for the Mercurial Dental Laboratory, so is always dropping in, but the couple bonds over the use of Lizzie’s Hoover Aristocrat washer/dryer and a spot of illegal dental work to help out a friend of her mother’s. Stibbe, a master of low-key observation and throwaway punchlines, captures Lizzie’s romantic uncertainty and open, sometimeswounded heart while also pointing up the intermittent absurdity and restrictions of life for women in provincial England in the early 1980s. An idiosyncratic, bittersweet coming-of-age tale that certainly justifies its title.
THE EXPECTATIONS
Tilney, Alexander Little, Brown and Company (320 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-316-45037-9 Prep school isn’t what it used to be, as Ben Weeks discovers during his first year at the elite St. James School. Debut author Tilney deftly limns the unchanging eponymous expectations: that students will graduate to the Ivy League and real-world leadership; that while at St. James they will uphold such dubious traditions as ferocious competitiveness in sports and brutal hazing of new students. But Tilney
A sweeping, ambitious story reminiscent at times of Pasternak in its grasp of both history and tragedy. jacob’s ladder
A PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS
Tomar, Ruchika Riverhead (352 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-525-53701-4
A teenager in a small desert town desperately searches for her missing friend in this debut novel. Cale Lambert was born at the center of a mystery: Her mother abandoned her as an infant at the local hospital, and she was raised with no real knowledge of her parents by her maternal grandfather, whom everyone calls Lamb. As the novel begins, Cale is up against another mystery: Her friend, Penny Reyes, has vanished, leaving behind her cellphone, her emergency cash, and a smear of blood on her freezer door. In chapters that are numbered out of order like a shuffled deck of cards, Tomar flicks back and forth between the present, which includes Cale’s search for Penny, her dealings with the town sheriff, her life at home with a cancer-riddled Lamb, and the recent past, when Cale uncovers secrets about the circles Penny ran in and gets drawn into the danger herself. The further Cale goes on her desperate quest, the more she understands the ways that violence and trauma can engulf a life like a wildfire. Tomar is a superb writer of place, whether describing the tiny desert town her characters inhabit, that “sprawl of dirt and char,” or
the rooms in which they live. But Cale herself is inaccessible; as a character, she is aloof and taciturn, and as a narrator, she is the same. We rarely, then, understand who she is, what she wants, or why she does what she does. This blurriness of character seems meant to resolve itself the closer Cale comes to finding the truth about Penny, but somehow, even as Cale tries to solve the mystery, she remains one herself. Tomar is unafraid of aesthetic and emotional difficulty, but the main character’s inscrutability can sometimes undermine the story’s power.
JACOB’S LADDER
Ulitskaya, Ludmila Trans. by Gannon, Polly Farrar, Straus and Giroux (560 pp.) $35.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-374-29365-9
Voices whisper, fearful and secretive, across the generations in Russian novelist Ulitskaya’s (The Kukotsky Enigma, 2016, etc.) latest. Nora Ossetsky is a Soviet icon of a kind, a single mother who resolutely raises her child alone while working to advance the cause of the fatherland. But, alas, in those days of Brezhnev and an arteriosclerotic state, she’s a bit of a bohemian, involved with a brilliant theater director who has decided that it would be better to wait out the repression back home with his wife in Tbilisi, a defeated retreat from Moscow after a staging of Chekhov is shut down on the eve of its premiere, having enraged “the ministerial special forces, the Party hacks” with its subtly subversive staging. Russian theater lies at the heart of Ulitskaya’s richly detailed story, which takes its title, subtly as well, from the musical Fiddler on the Roof, but so too do epic, multigenerational works of fiction—for underlying Nora’s story are those of her parents and grandparents, the latter from the revolutionary generation. The patriarch of the family is the watchmaker Pinchas Kerns, who has emigrated from Switzerland in time to watch the first stirrings of the anticzarist uprisings; largely indifferent to politics—“He remained a craftsman all his life, and never quite grasped the finer, or even cruder, points of communism, much less capitalism”—Pinchas and his children are nevertheless swept up by events: war, the rise of the Stalinist state, and soon enough the gulag. “Even such a giant among men as Dostoevsky feared the horror of loneliness!” writes Nora’s grandfather Jacob, in a diary that tracks the horror not just of loneliness, but of being separated from family and society for the crime of being one whose “thinking was out of step.” Life improves for Nora with the end of the USSR, but even in 2011, at the end of the book, when “old age caught up with her,” the fear remains. A sweeping, ambitious story reminiscent at times of Pasternak in its grasp of both history and tragedy.
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also nails the changing social climate of the mid-1990s, when Ben arrives more than 125 years after the first Weeks attended St. James. There are female students now as well as students from such previously unheard-of places as Dubai, like Ben’s roommate, Ahmed. Ben eagerly looks forward to following in the footsteps of just-graduated older brother Teddy, legendary for his rule-breaking panache, and he’s also excited to join the school’s equally legendary squash team. So he’s mortified by Ahmed, whose clothes and accessories are too obviously expensive for the school’s ostentatiously modest ethos and who calmly walks out of the hazing ceremony, incurring the malice of a clique of upperclassmen determined to “hold the line” for “our kind.” They are the cool kids Ben is desperate to be accepted by, his insecurity exacerbated by the knowledge that his father is in financial trouble and hasn’t paid his tuition. He engages in some petty cruelty and stupid escapades, but he also feels grudging admiration for Ahmed’s ability to simply be himself. Tilney’s inexperience occasionally shows as he cogently traces Ben’s trajectory toward his own version of that self-assurance. The third-person narrative is mostly from Ben’s perspective but from time to time pulls back jarringly to tell us what another character is thinking or to offer an Olympian overview of the shifting social landscape. Despite such infelicities, the novel paints a compassionate portrait of a confused young man groping for maturity and comes to a trenchant conclusion about St. James: “The school’s ethics were a scrim over its animal need to survive. Just manners over its unforgiving appetite.” Smart, shrewdly observed, and highly readable.
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MURDERABILIA
Vonderau, Carl Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (408 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jul. 8, 2019 978-0-7387-6130-5 A respected banker’s buried past makes him and his family the target of an obsessed copycat killer. Personal banker William McNary, who narrates in a somber first person, harbors a dark secret: His father, Harvey Dean Kogan, was the infamous serial killer dubbed The Preying Hands. Kogan targeted women who abused children and turned their dismembered bodies into artful photographs. Though McNary’s a law-abiding family man, it disturbs him that his past as a photojournalist in war-torn Algeria obliquely ties him to his father. An even more troubled past is unearthed when a menacing man calls claiming to be McNary’s brother, then later tapes an envelope to the front door of his home. Inside is a picture of Leslie Miller, Kogan’s last victim. When the police don’t immediately respond to McNary’s call, he huddles with his family— wife Jill, young children Garth and Frieda, and sister Polly—and braces for more ominous contacts. The police finally do askMcNary to come in to the station, but only to interrogate him about the brutal murder of Elizabeth Morton, Jill’s friend and fellow teacher. After a review of some forensic evidence implicating him and some aggressive questioning that triggers his anger, they arrest him for the murder. Flashbacks meanwhile fill in sad details of his childhood and his time in Algeria. His father went to prison when he was 8, and they haven’t seen each other since. Once McNary’s abrasive lawyer, Marta Gutierrez, manages to get him out on bail, he struggles to figure out how to catch the madman and protect his family. This debut eventually loses some steam, as if Vonderau lacked the expertise to portray its psychological twists with greater depth or complexity. An explosive premise, intermittent chills, and a clever solution.
THE BOOKISH LIFE OF NINA HILL
Waxman, Abbi Berkley (352 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-451-49187-9
Introverted Nina Hill, the only child of a single mother, is pulled—both kicking and screaming and passive-aggressively resisting—into a new family and a new relationship. Nina likes “pinning things down,” being prepared in advance, and making a daily schedule. After working in the bookstore, she goes home to her cat, Phil, where she reads and bones up for her next trivia contest. Her static, well-regulated life is turned upside down when a lawyer contacts her with news about her 34
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father, though her mother had always claimed not to know who he was. Turns out he was wealthy, and he’s left her something in his will. At the lawyer’s office, she meets the rest of the family, her half-aunts, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, some welcoming and others decidedly not. Nina wants no part of this family. Who cares what her father might have left her? No thanks! And then another intrusion appears in the form of a handsome man, captain of a rival trivia team. He’s too showy for Nina, and besides, he knows all the sports category answers, so she pegs him as a nonreader, a big turnoff. Nina wants only to be left alone. But Nina is not all rules and solitude. She has a spark, an imagination, and a sense of humor that make you want to sit with her and observe people over a cappuccino and pastry... while making wisecracks. She of course grows and opens her life to new experiences—her new family and, maybe, the trivia guy. Waxman (Other People’s Houses, 2018, etc.) skillfully shows Nina’s changing mindset in the hilarious schedules, complete with meal plans and shopping lists, she makes each day. If you love writing plans and sticking to them, you’ll love Nina Hill. If you roll your eyes at people who make daily schedules, you’ll love Nina Hill, too. Waxman has created a thoroughly engaging character in this bookish, contemplative, set-in-her-ways woman. Be prepared to chuckle.
THE GOLDEN HOUR
Williams, Beatriz Morrow/HarperCollins (480 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-06-283475-1
To a portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, this historical novel adds two grand fictional passions: one beginning in Switzerland in 1900, the other in the Bahamas in 1941, both involving a ginger-haired Brit named Thorpe. The first scene of Williams’ (The Summer Wives, 2018, etc.) latest novel introduces the resourceful and wonderfully articulate Lulu Randolph Thorpe, “a pedigree twenty-five-year-old feline, blessed with sleek, dark pelt and composure in spades.” A columnist for an American women’s magazine stationed in the Bahamas in the early 1940s, Lulu reports on the doings of the former Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson—scrupulously avoiding all mention of the thicket of political corruption and racial tension that surrounds them. But to us, Lulu tells all, going back to how she dispensed with her first husband, the problematic Mr. Randolph, and continuing through her current mission—to spring her second husband, British undercover agent Benedict Thorpe, from a German prison camp. A second narrative set 40 years earlier focuses on Elfriede von Kleist, a new mother from rural Westphalia with postpartum depression so severe she has attempted suicide, causing her husband, the Baron, to dispatch her to a clinic in Switzerland. There she meets a young Londoner named Wilfred Thorpe, interrupting his grand tour
of the continent to recover from pneumonia—but never to recover from meeting Elfriede. The portrait of wartime Bermuda and the awful Windsors, observed and reported by Lulu, is original and fascinating. Lulu herself is an excellent creation, tough, smart, sexy, and ruthless. While the secondary Elfriede plot adds interesting complications to the historical puzzle, it doesn’t have quite as much verve. A fresh take on the WWII love story, with a narrator who practically demands Myrna Loy come back to life to play her in the movie.
COPPERHEAD
Zentner, Alexi Viking (368 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-9848-7728-4
THE SHAMELESS
Atkins, Ace Putnam (464 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-525-53946-9
As if Mississippi’s Tibbehah County didn’t have enough present-day malfeasance to keep Sheriff Quinn Colson hopping, a cold case brings the customary pot of criminals and misfits to yet another boil. Newly married to Maggie Powers, Quinn would like nothing better than to take a break from his hometown’s constant diet of organized and disorganized crime and begin adoption proceedings for Maggie’s 8-year-old son, Brandon. Not happening. His attention is demanded by another Brandon, who’s suddenly captured the imagination of Thin Air podcast reporter Tashi Coleman and her producer, Jessica Torres. They’ve made the trip down from New York at the behest of Shaina Taylor, whose brother vanished in the wilderness 21 years ago before turning up shot to death a week later. Brandon Taylor, the coldcase publicity hounds announce, has waited long enough for justice, and they aim to camp out in Tibbehah County, asking awkward questions and bedding the locals, until they’ve gotten to the truth. Does this mean that franchise villains like Fannie Hathcock, the county’s premiere supplier of sweet young female companionship, and the syndicate she’s in bed with will wither from neglect? Not a bit, because they’re all tied in to Brandon Taylor’s long-ago shooting, U.S. Marshal Lillie Virgil’s recent arrest of fugitive Wes Taggart, and the race-baiting gubernatorial campaign of state Sen. Jimmy Vardaman. When Taggart, who hints that he knows where the bodies are buried, is shot to death in his cell by a pair of hired killers who manage to infiltrate the jail, his murder raises what ought to be the pivotal question of “why his sorry ole ass was so important to the Syndicate boys.” But the furious torrent of crimes past and present and revelations about same keep any one question or plotline from rising above the fray. Like James Lee Burke’s Louisiana, Atkins’ violent Mississippi idylls seem more and more clearly shaped as installments in an ongoing serial drama, and this one, ending with both a bang and a whimper, seems mainly intended to set up the next.
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A slow, gritty coming-of-age story in which class, racial, and family tensions come to a head in one long weekend. It’s a snowy November Friday in upstate New York, and Jessup is 17, smart, and a fine linebacker who may be tackling for Yale next year. In a playoff game, he makes a crushing hit and scores. But in the parking lot later, the black player he took down, Corson, confronts Jessup, who is white, and terrible events are set in motion that will leave Corson dead and Jessup mired in a coverup that spotlights his dark family history. His brother, Ricky, is serving a 20-year sentence for killing two black men four years earlier when they attacked him because of racist tattoos on his torso. Jessup’s stepfather, David John, went to prison on a lesser, related charge and is just out. The family attends the Blessed Church of the White America, where the elders “have been promising a racial holy war.” The police go after Jessup as an obvious suspect in Corson’s death, and a media-savvy church member sees a martyr who can rally more whites to the cause. Jessup is a likable but painfully ambivalent young man, closely tied to his family yet silently opposed to their racist credo and desperate to escape their trailer home, their muddle of virtues, and vile racism. It’s a stretch for him to have a black girlfriend but more implausible for her to not know of his family history before they become intimate. Zentner (The Lobster Kings, 2015, etc.), a Canada-born novelist, has written two literary works under his own name and four thrillers as Ezekiel Boone. His characters here are well-drawn, though the story has some weak spots and his bedeviled linebacker is prone to repetition that can sound at times like whining. A persuasive take on a familiar theme: the venomous prejudices lurking in small communities.
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WATCHERS OF THE DEAD
Beaufort, Simon Severn House (256 pp.) $28.99 | Jul. 1, 2019 978-0-7278-8891-4
A reporter’s work in the African Colonial Service offers him insights into a series of murders reportedly committed by cannibals. At the opening of the Royal Courts of Justice in 1882, Alec Lonsdale learns that Alexander Haldane, barrister and newspaper owner, has been hacked to death in the basement. This is just the first of several deaths attributed to the Kumu cannibals brought over from Africa to spice up the opening of the British Museum’s Natural History Branch. Tim Roth, Lonsdale’s friend from Africa, has not breathed a word of this story, but Hulda Friederichs, Lonsdale’s clever and ambitious fellow reporter on the Pall Mall Gazette, somehow knows about it. Lonsdale is constantly dogged by Henry Voules, whose wealthy father got him a job on the Echo, a rag willing to print his ridiculous stories, including a pack of lies about Roderick Maclean’s recent escape from Broadmoor, where he was confined after trying to shoot Queen Victoria. Lonsdale, who lives with his barrister brother, Jack, is becoming more uncertain about his feelings for Anne, the fiancee he fears is becoming more like her narrow-minded sister, Emelia, Jack’s fiancee. He’s also being pressured by their father, Sir Gervais Humbage, a snob who abhors Lonsdale’s profession. The next victim is professor Dickerson, who brought the Kumu from the Congo and squired them about the country. Despite the mounting pile of bodies, all killed the same way, Scotland Yard insists they were not murdered and assigns the case to their dullest detective. Lonsdale, Hulda, and Inspector George Peters, the Yard’s star detective, quietly continue to investigate. At least four of the murdered men were members of the Garraway Club, which includes a group calling themselves Watchers, who rumor suggests are preparing a nasty surprise for Christmas. Beaufort’s second puzzle for his journalist sleuths (Mind of a Killer, 2018) is thronged with real-life characters and almost too many twists and turns for comfort.
KILLER IN THE CARRIAGE HOUSE
Connolly, Sheila Minotaur (336 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-250-13588-9
A small Maryland town struggling for survival becomes a magnet for murder. When unemployed Kate Hamilton was asked by a former high school friend to come up with ideas to help save their hometown of Asheboro from extinction (Murder at the Mansion, 36
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2018), she never thought she’d end up staying. The town’s magnificent Barton mansion needs little work to become a tourist attraction, and a storm recently revealed that downtown Asheboro has lovely Victorian buildings hidden under modern excrescences. So Kate hopes to reinvent the town as a living history area, like a pint-sized Colonial Williamsburg. Since Asheboro’s broke, Kate devises a plan to get all the merchants on board and come up with the money for restoration. She calls in archivist Carroll Peterson to root through the treasure trove of papers found in the Barton mansion in hope of finding things that could help her both historically and financially. Kate’s boyfriend, Johns Hopkins professor Josh Wainwright, who serves as the mansion’s caretaker while working on a project in his field of 19th-century industrialization, is more than willing to help. So is her landlord, attorney Ryan Walker, her old high school squeeze. Having received permission to use the town library, which is currently closed, to organize the paperwork once it’s moved from the mansion, she and Carroll stop in to check out the space only to find a dead body partially buried under a fallen bookcase and piles of books. Because she’s no more persuaded than the police that the death was an accident, Kate adds sleuthing to her list of things to do. She continues to talk to everyone she can find who has knowledge of Asheboro’s past, when Barton’s shovel factory was the biggest employer in the area. The key to both her plans and the murder are to be found among the secrets in the abandoned factory. The murder plays second fiddle to the exponentially more fascinating hunt for historical data that will reveal all the answers.
CLAUSE & EFFECT
Dunnett, Kaitlyn Kensington Books (304 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-4967-1257-8 A retired teacher’s unwanted project leads her to a killer. Returned from Maine to her childhood home in Lenape Hollow, New York, Mikki Lincoln became a freelance editor to pay for some urgently needed repairs and immediately stumbled into a murder (Crime & Punctua tion, 2018, etc.). Now her old friend Darlene Uberman and her frenemy Ronnie North are pushing her to spruce up a play for the town’s quasquibicentennial. The original script was written 25 years ago for the bicentennial by high school teacher Grace Yarrow, who had theatrical ambitions and hasn’t been seen in town for years. The town council and the historical society would love to take advantage of an increase in Catskills tourism generated by a new casino and nearby Bethel Woods, the site of Woodstock, now home to a museum and popular concert venue. When Mikki arrives at the historical society to read the only copy of the script, which is badly written and factually incorrect, director Gilbert Baxter refuses to let her take it home. So she returns the next day just in time to join the repairmen working to fix a wall watch it collapse, revealing a semimummified
A divorce and a life change turn out much weirder than a new B&B owner could ever have imagined. peach clobbered
body hidden in a closed-up fireplace. When the body is identified as Grace Yarrow’s, Mikki resolves to help Detective Hazlett despite his warnings of danger. After all, she’s one of the few townsfolk with an alibi, since she was living in Maine when Grace was killed. Rumor has it the teacher spread her favors around pretty freely, from high school boys to married men. Although Mikki wasn’t on hand to watch or listen, many of her friends were, and some had reason to hate Grace. Even while overhauling the play, Mikki finds enough sleuthing time to make her the target of someone who will go to any length, including more murder, to hide past secrets. Dunnett’s new heroine has charm and smarts.
STONE COLD HEART
Frear, Caz Harper/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-06-284988-5
A divorce and a life change turn out much weirder than a new B&B owner could ever have imagined in this series kickoff from the prolific Gerard (Fool’s Moon, 2018, etc.). Using her settlement from her golf pro ex-husband, Nina Fleet buys a lovely Queen Anne house in Cymbeline, Georgia, where she lives with her Australian shepherd, Mattie, who protects her from the likes of Harry Westcott, who claims his great-aunt was planning on leaving the place to him. Arriving at Nina’s house wearing a penguin suit on a 90-degree day, he passes out on her porch. It turns out that he’s the mascot of the Taste-Tee-Freeze Creamery, a hunky if annoying guy who claims to be an actor. Although he appreciates Nina’s hospitality, Harry still plans to see her in court. Meanwhile, Mayor Melissa Jane Green, who’d refused to grant Nina a zoning change to start a B&B, asks if she can open the business the very next day to accommodate some nuns kicked out of their convent by developer Gregory Bainbridge. After hustling to prepare the rooms, Nina joins the nuns’ protest against Bainbridge the following day. During their lunch break, a tourist begs Nina to help another man dressed as a penguin who’s been stabbed in a nearby alley. Once the paramedics cut the suit off, they realize the victim is Gregory Bainbridge. So was the killer after Harry, who claims he’s being stalked by a crazy fan, or Gregory, who’s crossed many of the town’s citizens? Even though she’s a newcomer, Nina manages to pick up plenty of gossip and assistance when she decides to do a little sleuthing. Harry needs a place to stay in town and strikes a deal with Nina to move into a tower room she didn’t know existed, and the delightful nuns have a lot of insight to offer even though they’re all suspects. Filled with Southern charm and enough ditzy characters to keep readers guessing and laughing.
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Detective Cat Kinsella of London’s Metropolitan Police returns to solve the murder of a young Australian woman in Frear’s (Sweet Little Lies, 2018) latest procedural. Cat’s still spooked from the fallout of the Maryanne Doyle case; it brought her and Aiden Doyle together, sure, but she can’t tell anyone about their romance. Still, she and her partner, DS Luigi Parnell, are on good working terms, and the rest of the team is holding their own, with beautiful, unpredictable DCI Kate Steele still making everyone’s life hell but also keeping them to high standards. Called to a crime scene, they find the body of a young woman. Of course, the layers of lies and family tension quickly mount: Naomi Lockhart, the dead woman, was temping at a recruitment firm owned by Kirstie Connor, whose husband, Marcus, runs a charity for ex-felons, including Naomi’s roommate. Marcus’ sister, Rachel, is married to Joseph, who has made no secret of his numerous infidelities and actually had propositioned Cat several months before. And then there’s Rachel and Joseph’s daughter, an aspiring forensic investigator. As the detectives scramble to find evidence that proves the guilt of the prime suspect, they find more and more inconsistencies in all these stories. Throughout it all, Cat struggles to keep her mind clear and her personal relationships solid; Aiden resents the fact that she won’t introduce him around, and her dad’s old “colleague” Frank Hickey is making ominous suggestions of blackmail. He will expose what Cat has done to protect her father if she doesn’t help him in return. The characters’ banter is a delight. Frear writes scenes of conversation between the detectives that make them all feel like familiar old friends—to each other but also to the reader. The mystery, however, is less compelling in this second outing. Ultimately, the discovery of the perpetrator feels a bit obvious and anticlimactic, not so much careful police work as a story in need of better editing. The emphasis on the minutiae of the investigation will be interesting, perhaps, to fans of CSI, but even they may chafe at the slow pace.
PEACH CLOBBERED
Gerard, Anna Crooked Lane (320 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-64385-006-1
ONE LITTLE SECRET
Holahan, Cate Crooked Lane (320 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-68331-972-6
A domestic thriller that’s actually filled with lots of secrets, some of them pretty big. Their kids safely packed off to summer camp, three couples—ER physician Louis Murray and his wife, orthopedistturned–TV sports commentator Jenny Murray; indifferently successful writer Ben Hansen and his wife, Rachel Klein, a lawyer; and venture capitalist Nadal Ahmadi and his wife, Susan, |
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whose own law career is on hold while she home-schools their autistic son and supports her husband’s app Doc2Go, with which he hopes to make a killing—head to an unseen Hamptons rental for some R&R. What they get instead is instant disappointment with the lodgings (though there’s a great view of the beach), enough wine to take the edge off their sorrows, an escalating round of spats and accusations, and sudden death. When Rachel turns up strangled and drowned at water’s edge, suddenly every little twitch of the survivors looks suspicious. Recently promoted DS Gabriella Watkins is pulled away from a party-rape accusation to the crime scene because the victim’s torn swimsuit suggests the kind of assault Gabby’s good at investigating. Not surprisingly, she finds beneath the vacationers’ moneyed veneer a roiling stew of sins—adultery, abuse, threatened lawsuits—that make everyone look guilty, even if not of this particular crime. The surprise is that the alibi of Ben Hansen, whose heated quarrel with his wife sent her flouncing off to the beach, never to return, depends on his presence at the very party Gabby had been investigating, the one at which 18-year-old au pair Mariel Cruz woke up naked next to surfing banker Andrew Baird with no memory of how she’d ended up there. Holahan deploys a before-after-during-after-beforeand-so-on series of perspectives that go a long way toward dissipating the suspense they’re presumably meant to intensify. But her gimlet eye for the foibles of this particular social set is as unforgiving as in the much superior Lies She Told (2017).
THE STORIES YOU TELL
Lepionka, Kristen Minotaur (352 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-250-30935-8
Things get much too personal when a private eye’s brother is implicated in the disappearance of a local DJ. Not a sound sleeper, especially when she’s over at her girlfriend Catherine’s place, Roxane Weary is roused in the middle of the night by a frantic call from her brother, Andrew. Andrew is panicked that he might be in trouble—real trouble, more than his home stash might otherwise get him into. He tells Roxane the story: Addison Stowe, a girl he once knew, came by his apartment in a state of terror, made a phone call, then disappeared into the night. Now Addison’s missing and Andrew’s the last person to have seen her. He knows he needs an ally like Roxane if the cops come knocking because he has a suspicious scratch on his face that suggests he might’ve been more than just a potential safe harbor to Addison. But Andrew claims he hadn’t seen or heard from Addison for ages before this last visit. Roxane wants to protect Andrew, whom she trusts in spite of his unconvincing story. She reaches out to Tom Heitker, a friend on the force who was her late father’s closest friend, to ask for his help and also because, well, she’s missed him. The two have 38
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put a brief romantic interlude aside to pursue a less fraught friendship, though Tom may be interested in revisiting their past. Roxane and Tom connect Addison’s presence at Andrew’s to the Nightshade Club across the street, where Addison was a sometime DJ, and to the BusPass dating app. Just as things start to go Roxane’s way in the investigation, Mickey Dillman, a former cop connected to the case, turns up dead, bringing Roxane back to square one and Andrew into police custody. Lepionka’s keen eye for integrating national news and technology into her developing characters’ plotlines produces a story that’s timely in more ways than one.
BETRAYAL IN TIME
McElwain, Julie Pegasus Crime (400 pp.) $25.95 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-64313-074-3
A time-traveling FBI agent is more celebrated for her forensic skills than her social ones. Even though it’s no picnic to be stuck in 1816 England, Kendra Donovan is fortunate to have become the ward of the Duke of Aldridge, who passes her off as the daughter of an old friend and the lover of his nephew, Alexander Morgan, the Marquis of Sutcliffe, who is indeed keen to marry her. Both men, fascinated by her knowledge, try to help her adjust to a very different world in which her outspokenness often lands her in trouble. Having already solved one murder case (Caught in Time, 2018), she’s a natural choice for Bow Street Runner Sam Kelly to call on when Sir Giles Holbrooke is found naked with his tongue cut out in an abandoned church. Sir Giles was both a spymaster and an adviser to the prince regent, and his death is sure to cause shock waves. His body was covered with a crosslike symbol written in invisible ink that became visible only when the heat of the lanterns used during his autopsy brought them out. Reporter Phineas Muldoon hints that politics and the Irish problem may be involved. Then again, Gerard Holbrooke, a spoiled young man deep in debt, may have killed his father to escape being shipped off to India. The sleuths discover that Sir Giles’ long friendship with the family of apothecary Bertel Larson ended in disaster when Sir Giles convinced their brilliant son Evert to spy for him and he was killed in an incident in France that left Lord Eliot Cross and Capt. Hugh Mobray the only survivors. Kendra finds both the parents and their son David bitter over Evert’s death. When Cross is murdered in the same way as Sir Giles, the members of the Larson family become prime suspects. But Kendra senses something fishy about the story of how Evert died and knows she must dig deeper in search of the truth. A much improved mystery, a touch of history, and the obligatory romance combine for a pleasing read.
EVERGREEN
Owen, Howard Permanent Press (254 pp.) $29.95 | Jul. 1, 2019 978-1-57962-573-3
GIRL GONE MISSING
Rendon, Marcie R. Cinco Puntos (208 pp.) $15.95 paper | May 14, 2019 978-1-947627-11-6 In her second outing, Cash Blackbear goes off to college and finds herself embroiled in the mystery of a missing classmate. “I’m not used to folks treating me like I’m stupid,” says Cash. But Moorhead State is another world, one slow to disclose the secrets of its
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Richmond crime reporter Willie Black accepts a commission to clean up his unknown father’s grave and ends by cleaning up a whole lot more. Willie’s never known much about Artie Lee, like where he’s buried or when and how he died. So when his cousin Philomena Slade, brought to a hospital she’s clearly not going to leave, says she wants to talk to Willie about his father, he has decidedly mixed emotions. Of course he’s going to do whatever he’s asked by his cousin, one of the few truly decent people in his family tree. But clearing Artie’s plot at Evergreen Cemetery turns out to be only the tip of the iceberg, for Willie can’t rest until he finds out what put his father there in the first place. A series of conversations with the surviving members of the Triple-A’s—Artie’s ancient friends Arthur Meeks and Arkie Bright—reveals mainly that they really don’t want to talk about the one-car encounter with a tree that killed Artie back in 1961, when his son was just learning to walk, and his dying newspaper’s files add precious few details. Willie’s big discovery concerns the aftermath of a Ku Klux Klan rally the year before, when a car bombing killed married police officer Phillip Raynor and his companion, 22-year-old Julia Windham, whom friends said he’d offered shelter from a thunderstorm that the weather pages from that date don’t mention. Unearthing the connection between their murders and Artie’s death six months later would be a challenge under ideal conditions, and Willie’s conditions—working 57 years later under the watchful eye of Benson Stine, yet another know-nothing representative of the conglomerate owner MediaWorld, who loads him with new responsibilities and forbids him to spend any time working on his own concerns during the paper’s time, which is all the time—are anything but ideal. Middling for a series (Scuffletown, 2019, etc.) whose most distinctive features are its sharp eye for the mixed-race hero’s heavy burdens, including, but not limited to, the decline and fall of print journalism.
initiated. When Cash (Murder on the Red River, 2017) attends a meeting called by the guidance counselor, Mrs. Kills Horses, to launch a new college chapter of the Indian Studies Association, the other students who turn out seem to be on another planet. When she wants to test out of her entry-level English class because the simple assignments bore her, professor LeRoy, the department chair, acts as if she can’t be serious. The activities most congenial to her—picking farmer Milt’s sugar beets and loading them on a truck, shooting pool at Shorty Nelson’s bar, drinking beer with her married ex-lover, Jim Jenson, smoking a million cigarettes—are all things she did long before she arrived at Moorhead State. Not even the request by Sheriff Dave Wheaton, who plucked the 3-year-old Cash from the wreck that killed her mother, to speak with the parents of vanished classmate Janet Tweed seems to lead anywhere. Only the unheralded return of Mo, the brother she’d long since forgotten, from his stint as an Army medic to Cash’s place, where he promptly installs himself, awakens much of a response, and it’s one that’s not entirely positive. Nothing will get Cash’s engines revving, it seems, but being snatched and imprisoned along with Janet and half a dozen other cheerleader types. Unfurling her secret weapons—the ability to take a beating and a dead-eyed determination to be accountable to no one but herself—she methodically plans an escape that will be capped by Mo’s remark: “What’d I tell you? White slavery.” The furious intensity of the heroine’s simmering energy overshadows most of the cast. It’s a particularly nice touch, though, that the kidnapper, once identified, is never seen again, vanishing as completely as last week’s trash.
MISS PINKERTON
Rinehart, Mary Roberts Penzler Publishers (264 pp.) $25.95 | $15.95 paper | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-61316-138-8 978-1-61316-269-9 paper When an aged matriarch’s unloved nephew is shot to death, Inspector Patton sends for Hilda Adams to nurse the matriarch and incidentally keep her ear to the ground for clues. Did Herbert Wynne shoot himself without leaving any gunpowder marks on his forehead? Did the gun go off accidentally? Or was he murdered? The firm that recently sold him a life insurance policy worth $100,000 would love to believe the first alternative, which would allow them to deny his estate’s claim on the money. His imperious, fading aunt, Juliet Mitchell, and everyone else who knew him—Miss Mitchell’s last surviving servants, Mary and her husband, Hugo; her attending physician, Dr. David Stewart; her lawyer, Arthur Glenn, and his secretary, Florence Lenz; and Herbert’s fiancee, Paula Brent, who seems to be in love with someone else—would rather believe the second, which would reassure them about their own safety. And of course genre fans everywhere will avidly seize on the third. “I’m no detective,” Nurse Adams tartly tells Patton, and |
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she certainly has a point; when he finally reveals the solution to the mystery, she’s flabbergasted. But her unmistakable talent for drawing people out, overhearing revealing snatches of conversation, and stumbling on and sometimes over physical clues makes her a nondetective well worth rooting for in this reprint of a 1932 novel. As Carolyn Hart’s introduction points out, Rinehart was the founder and leading exponent of the hadI-but-known school, distinguished by the narrator’s frequent coy hints of impending doom (“sleep she did, for at least part of a night which was to be filled with horror for me”). But Nurse Adams is so levelheaded, focused, proactive, and omnicompetent in the face of mounting threats and scares that not even the moment when she’s accused of killing her patient can slow her down for long. More creaky and less gripping than its sequel, Haunted Lady (1942), but still a welcome resurrection of its prolific, bestselling author’s only continuing detective.
PAPER SON
Rozan, S.J. Pegasus Crime (320 pp.) $25.95 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-64313-129-0 After a hiatus in this series (Ghost Hero, 2011, etc.) that’s felt like forever, Lydia Chin’s formidable mother, who’s never approved of her work as a private eye, packs her off to the Mississippi Delta for the best and worst reasons. The first time Lydia ever hears of her cousin Jefferson Tam is when her mother tells her that he’s been arrested for stabbing his father, Leland, ne Lo-Liang, to death. He was found bending over the dead man, his fingerprints on the murder weapon, but he’s obviously innocent, and Lydia and her partner, Bill Smith, have to exonerate him. Lydia’s pleasure that her mother needs her professional skills, from which she’s always recoiled in the past, is undercut by her own deep reservations about leaving Manhattan for the Deep South. Despite the hospitality of Jefferson’s uncle, the gambler Capt. Peter Tam, Clarksdale feels impossibly foreign to her even though her great-grandfather’s brother Chin Song-Zhao, aka Harry Tam, settled there long ago, masking his identity by the time-honored method of bribing naturalized Chinese-Americans to file false information identifying him as their son. Barely have Lydia and Bill arrived than Jefferson escapes from police custody, eliminating any lingering doubts deputy Bert Lucknell might have had about his guilt. The case immerses Lydia and her Kentucky-born partner in an exotic landscape stuffed with eminently recognizable local types and three generations of knotty family history, appropriately climaxed by an interview with a dotty old lady who has no idea that she holds the key to the riddle. But Rozan is far too conscientious a plotter to settle for detective tourism, and the solution manages to be both utterly predictable in its broad outlines—even the book’s title is a broad wink—and mind-bogglingly complicated in its details. 40
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This is Mississippi, the dazed heroine keeps reminding herself with every new twist. Maybe, maybe not—but it’s a triumphant return of this sorely missed franchise either way.
science fiction and fantasy THE REDEMPTION OF TIME
Baoshu Trans. by Liu, Ken Tor (272 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-250-30602-9
A strange hybrid of a yarn that seeks to embellish and extend a universe created by another writer—in this case, Cixin Liu’s superb Three Body Problem trilogy, which culminated in Death’s End
(2016). Baoshu’s tale began life as online fan fiction, and it shows in a confusing opening. Trilogy readers will need to recall that a dying Yun Tianming allowed his brain to be captured by an approaching alien Trisolaran fleet. He hoped to trick the invaders, who are constitutionally unable to lie and cannot understand subterfuge. Instead, they trap him in a virtual reality, and eventually, the aliens force him to help them subjugate humanity. Yun survives. Much later, long after both Earth and Trisolaris have been destroyed, a consciousness calling itself the Spirit of the Master arrives. The Spirit needs Yun’s help to locate the Lurker, an evil entity that threatens to destroy what’s left of the universe. But, as Yun eventually comes to understand, the Spirit’s plan involves rewinding everything to zero, followed by another Big Bang and a rerun identical to the current version. And what, Yun wonders, would be the point of that? The entities at odds since the beginning of time bring to mind the creation story in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. The universeengulfing struggle recalls John C. Wright’s astonishing multibook Eschaton saga. And the whole has a transcendental quality that might earn a nod from William Blake. Baoshu writes powerfully about difficult concepts (one such is the self-explanatory “ideabstraction” in Liu’s felicitous translation), and his central thesis, involving dimensional collapse as the key to explaining the evolution of the universe, is an absolute stunner. None of this will mean anything, though, unless you’re very wellacquainted with the original trilogy. A narrative that assumes far too much previous knowledge but ultimately finds an identity all its own.
An intriguing debut from a writer with the skills to create weird and wonderful worlds. the border keeper
PROTECT THE PRINCE
don’t lie. Even an accidental untruth can lead to brutal punishment. Meanwhile, Vasethe’s mortal body will lie sleeping at the border keeper’s house, where the Ageless are approaching the fence, testing the strength of Eris’ wards. The underworld created here is rich and strange, populated with children transformed into translucent crabs, armored, cloven-hooved birdfaced creatures carrying masked riders, and glittering parties where the wrong word can kill. But debut novelist Hall throws readers a little too far into the deep end, offering almost no details about who Vasethe and Eris are and what they want, which makes them hard to connect with. The bones of a great story are here, but too much becomes meaningful only in hindsight, when key information is finally revealed. An intriguing debut from a writer with the skills to create weird and wonderful worlds, this one is almost great.
Estep, Jennifer Harper Voyager (448 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-06-279764-3
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Estep returns to the fantasy setting established in Kill the Queen (2018) to follow the new queen as she embarks on a reign complicated by treachery and duty alike. Previously, Evie claimed the crown of Bellona after she killed her cousin Vasilia in vengeance for Vasilia’s orchestrated butchery of most of the royal family. But keeping the crown will be the hard part. Evie and the nobles of Bellona struggle to get along—Evie certainly remembers every insult she ever received as a girl who was 17th in line to the throne and had only meager magical abilities. Now, she must earn the nobles’ respect and keep them from outmaneuvering her—especially into a marriage with one of their families. That’s in addition to making peace with neighboring Andvari, which lost a prince to Vasilia’s attack; fighting off more assassins from the evil kingdom of Morta; and daydreaming about handsome, brooding Lucas Sullivan, her friend...and the bastard son of Andvari’s king. It’s a lot to handle; sadly, the plot doesn’t always manage it. A sham betrothal to the other prince of Andvari does nothing but drive a gratuitous rift between Lucas and Evie—it’s not clear why Evie feels it’s necessary to use her betrothal to lure out assassins when they’ve already tried to kill her several times by then. Of course, the best way to fight magic-using assassins is just to be immune to magic: Evie’s secret gift, which grows only stronger in this book. The thin plot is somewhat redeemed by a genuinely poignant twist, but it’s fighting uphill against monotonous setting descriptions, a clichéd romance, and the notion that high-stakes courtly intrigue is best shown by peppering dialogue with f-bombs. The second book of the trilogy struggles with its own expectations, just like the heroine herself.
THE BORDER KEEPER
Hall, Kerstin Tor (240 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-250-20941-2
A journey into an underworld filled with gods and demons, beauty and danger. The border keeper lives in solitude on the shadowline between Ahri, the realm of the living, and Mkalis, the spirit realm, until a man named Vasethe arrives and calls her Eris, a name she hoped had been forgotten. He’s come to travel into Mkalis. A woman he loved is dead, and Eris can guide him through the underworld to find her. He just has to follow a few simple rules—don’t eat or drink anything, and |
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DRAGONSLAYER
Hamilton, Duncan M. Tor (304 pp.) $27.99 | $17.00 paper | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-250-30672-2 978-1-250-30673-9 paper Set in the same pseudo-medieval European world as some of his previous works, the first installment in Hamilton’s (The Blood Debt, 2017, etc.) Dragonslayer series is a fantasy adventure chronicling one man’s redemptive journey that involves slaying a mythic beast—and quite possibly changing the course of history for all the kingdoms in the entire Middle Sea realm. Lord Guillot—who is the Seigneur of a small village of Villerauvais—was once a great swordfighter. He is, in fact, the last surviving Chevalier of the Silver Circle, a legendary fighting force that protected the kingdom from its enemies. But after the tragic death of his wife, Gill, as he is called, has become a
drunk, seeking solace at the bottom of a bottle. Five years of almost constant inebriation has turned Gill into a shadow of the man he once was. But when a dragon starts terrorizing nearby settlements and killing its inhabitants—though the beasts were believed to be extinct—Gill is forced out of his alcoholic stupor. When he is told by the king to kill the creature, he accepts the mission—but is unaware that he is a pawn in a much larger game being played by an evil Prince Bishop who is secretly plotting for magic use to become legal and culturally acceptable again. The addition of Solène, a young woman persecuted because of her innate magical abilities, introduces another layer to the story. But while the writing is certainly fluid, the storyline is banal and filled with numerous sequences that come off as contrived (like Gill’s stumbling across a rare artifact that just happens to be monumentally significant to the story). Additionally, the characters are all stereotypes with no emotional connectivity. The novel feels like a story that fantasy fans have read countless times before; two-dimensional characters, a predictable plot, and an unsurprising ending make for a forgettable read. Uninspired.
WANDERERS
Wendig, Chuck Del Rey (800 pp.) $28.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-399-18210-5 What if the only way to save humanity was to lose almost everyone? This was kind of inevitable: Wendig (Vultures, 2019, etc.) wrestles with a magnum opus that grapples with culture, science, faith, and our collective anxiety while delivering an epic equal to Steven King’s The Stand (1978). While it’s not advertised as an entry in Wendig’s horrifying Future Proof universe that includes Zer0es (2015) and Invasive (2016), it’s the spiritual next step in the author’s deconstruction of not only our culture, but the awful things that we—humanity—are capable of delivering with our current technology and terrible will. The setup is vividly cinematic: After a comet passes near Earth, a sleeping sickness takes hold, causing victims to start wandering in the same direction, barring those who spontaneously, um, explode. Simultaneously, a government-built, wickedly terrifying AI called Black Swan tells its minders that a disgraced scientist named Benji Ray might be the key to solving the mystery illness. Wendig breaks out a huge cast that includes Benji’s boss, Sadie Emeka; a rock star who’s a nod to King’s Springsteen-esque Larry Underwood; a pair of sisters—one of whom is part of the “herd” of sleepwalkers and one who identifies as a “shepherd” tending to the sick; and Matthew Bird, who leads the faithful at God’s Light Church and who struggles with a world in which technology itself can become either God or the devil incarnate. Anyone who’s touched on Wendig’s oeuvre, let alone his lively social media presence, knows he’s a full-voiced political creature who’s less concerned with left and right than the chasm between right and wrong, and that impulse is fully on 42
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display here. Parsing the plot isn’t really critical—Wendig has stretched his considerable talents beyond the hyperkinetic horror that is his wheelhouse to deliver a story about survival that’s not just about you and me, but all of us, together. Wendig is clearly wrestling with some of the demons of our time, resulting in a story that is ambitious, bold, and worthy of attention.
r om a n c e ANDREW
Beckstrand, Jennifer Zebra/Kensington (352 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-4201-4771-1
Two competitors duke it out at a televised cooking contest in LA, but their hearts are soon on the line as well. A trained chef who’s tired of working as an assistant cook and living with his parents, Marvin Carter is determined to win first place in the Food Truck Bucks challenge. Naomi Carson learned her way around the kitchen from her grandmother, but she has every intention of turning professional by topping the competition and claiming the grand prize of a food truck and $50,000. When Marvin bumps into Naomi on Day 1 of the contest, they know they are rivals but are drawn to each other’s quick comebacks and smack talk. Marvin is also attracted to the full-figured, self-confident Naomi, and they start what feels like a casual fling. Matters turn more serious when she sees how kind he is to her grandmother and his family starts to like her. Apart from the professional battle that is already an obstacle to their happy ending, Day (Sin City Vows, 2019, etc.) piles on several external conflicts, like scheming, catty women interested in Marvin, Naomi’s ex, a false accusation during the competition, and a medical scare. Despite those elements of unnecessary tension, she ably executes the central narrative of a romance unfolding amid the pressure of a highstakes tournament and livens it up with humorous, occasionally bawdy, banter between the couple. While the story could have been told more tightly, and a moment where Naomi apologizes for having a stalker strikes a sour note, the rich portraits of the central characters and the detailed depictions of their families and larger African-American community in LA makes for enjoyable reading. A fun, flirty third entry in the Blue-Collar Lover series.
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A pregnant young prodigal daughter returns to her Amish hometown and acts as a lightning rod for the community even as a handsome, confused neighbor falls for her. “After not seeing her family for two years, she’d shown up wearing jeans and a Maroon 5 T-shirt. And pregnant….She should have thought that one through a little better.” You think? When Mary Coblenz shows up at her Amish home, her mother closes the door in her face, so Mary plods down the road in her flip-flops to her neighbor Bitsy’s house. Bitsy—who married into the community and still sports brightly colored hair and nail polish—takes her in, and Mary moves back with her head held high. Some neighbors, the nice ones, show her love and acceptance, while mean, judgmental neighbors shun and shame her. Meanwhile, the rascally 8-year-old Petersheim twins decide to engage in some matchmaking for their older brothers. First up is Andrew, who leans toward the camp that feels a little disturbed that Mary “didn’t see the need to repent.” Until she convinces him that she doesn’t need to repent. Until another neighbor convinces him that she does. Until his mother convinces him….On the surface, the book has amusing elements—those impish twins! And deep, spiritual conversations—shouldn’t Mary be ashamed? Didn’t Jesus die to take our sins away? But at heart, the book feels like an oversimplified morality play the rest of the world worked through decades ago; Mary seems wise when she needs to be for the plot but ridiculous many other times (see first line of this paragraph); and Andrew comes across as a man who doesn’t know his own mind until his mother guides him to the right answer. If it’s your thing, you’ll be entertained.
SWEET HEAT
Day, Zuri Dafina/Kensington (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-61773-429-8
THE WEDDING PARTY
Guillory, Jasmine Berkley (352 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-984802-19-4
A one-night stand slowly evolves into a long-term relationship in Guillory’s (The Proposal, 2018, etc.) third book featuring an interconnected group of friends. Maddie Forest and Theo Stephens have never liked each other. Maddie thinks Theo is annoying and arrogant, and he thinks she’s a vapid party girl. However, having the same best friend, Alexa Monroe (heroine of The Wed ding Date, 2018), means they have no choice but to see each other socially. After years of terse interactions, Maddie and Theo have a one-night stand after his birthday party. The beginning |
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crackles with promise, but then they drift into a monotonous monthslong secret affair which consists solely of them hanging out in Theo’s apartment, eating pizza, and having sex. Neither Theo nor Maddie wants to tell Alexa they’re hooking up, and when she asks both of them to be members of her wedding party, they decide the wedding will be the end point for their affair. As time passes, they share with one another their professional hopes and aspirations about making the world a better place. Theo is working to pass a statewide pre-K initiative, and Maddie dreams of landing a gig as a TV stylist for women reentering the workforce after having gone through homelessness or rehabilitation. When Theo’s pre-K rally takes an implausible turn, they double down on secrecy even though it’s clear their feelings have changed. Ultimately, the characters display a perplexing lack of initiative as romantic partners: Everything happens to them, they rarely stop to examine their feelings, and they are too afraid to share the truth in their hearts. The sheer lack of action brings the romance to a grinding halt as Maddie and Theo wait for someone else to arrive and propel them into the next stage of their relationship. Likable characters trapped in a plodding, directionless romance.
THE TROUBLE WITH COWBOY WEDDINGS
Helm, Nicole Zebra/Kensington (304 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-4201-4696-7
A marriage of convenience to save the farm forces two lifelong friends to confront buried feelings in this contemporary Western. Louisa Fairchild has had a rough life. Abandoned by her parents at age 9, she was raised on her grandparents’ ranch outside of Gracely, Colorado. And since her cheating ex burned her barn down, she has physical scars to match her emotional ones. Still, Lou prides herself on her resilience and runs a successful flower farm on the Fairchild land. But when her widowed grandmother insists that Lou find a husband or lose the ranch to her deadbeat father, she’s at a loss. Gavin Tyler’s big, boisterous family owns the neighboring ranch. Good-natured and loyal, he’s a middle son, eager for the chance to run a big operation on his own rather than play second fiddle to his older brother. More importantly, Gavin has been quietly in love with Lou since they were teenagers. He offers his hand in fake marriage, and Lou grudgingly accepts, but the charade becomes all too real when affection turns to burning passion. The rushed marriage feels unnecessary, and the resulting compressed timeline makes Lou’s shift from “the snarly angry caricature of herself she’d become since the fire” to an open, loving companion difficult to accept. Helm (Homecoming for the Cowboy, 2019, etc.) excels at deep emotional exploration, though, and this is angst-y without being melodramatic. The Tyler family bonds 44
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are in full force, with many characters returning from the four prior installments of the Mile High series to offer support, witty repartee, and, when necessary, a kick in the Wranglers to the main protagonists. A fast-paced, emotional romance with lots of family drama.
PROJECT DUCHESS
Jeffries, Sabrina Zebra/Kensington (352 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-4201-4855-8 After his stepfather’s death, a duke with complicated family ties must face his difficult past, especially if he hopes to win the special woman he meets when his mother summons him to the funeral. The Duke of Greycourt doesn’t know how to feel when he learns that his stepfather—his mother’s third husband, who’d recently inherited a dukedom and returned to England after years serving abroad as a diplomat—has died. Maurice was the closest thing to a father he’d ever had, but his relationship to him, his mother, and his four half siblings was strained when Grey was sent back to England to be raised by his father’s brother when he was 10, a painful, tense situation that Grey is still working through. Spending time with his loving but challenging family makes Grey reconsider his feelings, but meeting Maurice’s niece Beatrice is truly life-altering. Immediately attracted to her, he offers to help her prepare for a long-delayed season and soon is completely smitten, though it takes him a while to figure it out. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that Maurice’s death wasn’t an accident, and his son—Grey’s half brother and Beatrice’s cousin Sheridan—is increasingly convinced her brother Joshua was responsible. Grey and Beatrice seek the truth and fall in love, but the road to happiness has a few bumps along the way. Jeffries begins a new series with a large, charming cast and a unique backstory plus subtle hints at future pairings. Readers will love Grey and Beatrice, and the nicely paced, intriguing plot will keep them engaged, though the core conflicts lack bite and the intensity and immediacy of the couple’s sexual awareness feels slightly modern for the rest of the story. An appealing historical romance from a fan favorite.
A delightful romance that’s both cheerful and heart-wrenching. sweet wild of mine
SWEET WILD OF MINE
Kerr, Laurel Sourcebooks Casablanca (416 pp.) $7.99 paper | May 28, 2019 978-1-4926-7088-9
UNEXPECTED
Rimmer, Kelly Harlequin HQN (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | May 28, 2019 978-1-335-50495-1 The relationship between best friends Abby and Marcus becomes complicated when Abby decides to fulfill her dream of becoming a mother and Marcus agrees to play sperm donor. Abby Herbert is a popular video game streamer. While it’s a dream job, Abby’s real goal is to become a mother; she has even amassed a pile of
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A curmudgeonly Scottish author volunteers to work at a small zoo to get his career back on track and is soon reluctantly falling in love with the town, the animals, and the local tea shop owner. Magnus Gray’s life choices have included remote locations and minimal human interactions, balanced by an affinity for animals. When his memoirs become bestsellers, he moves to London, but his acerbic urban commentary falls flat with fans. To revive his career, Magnus volunteers at the zoo in Sagebrush Flats, U.S.A., where the first person he meets is June Winters, the town’s resident blonde bombshell, sunny personality, entrepreneur, and busybody. June is used to men falling all over her and prefers a different type from Magnus: “Yes, June enjoyed handsome, debonair men….In contrast, the scowling Mr. Rude looked like a grumpy Paul Bunyan.” Still, she’s intrigued by the glowering Scotsman. Magnus just wants to be left alone, but an unexpected side effect of June getting his hackles up is that it mitigates his speech disfluency, and her own family’s experience with stuttering turns into the foundation of a growing friendship. The two become helpmates and confidants, leading to a passionate love affair, but June’s deep need to meddle may drive them apart. Kerr’s (Wild on My Mind, 2018) sophomore effort, the second title in her Where the Wild Hearts Are series, maintains the poignancy and originality of the first. Polar cub Sorcha, Magnus’ complicated childhood, and June’s elderly grandmother provide an emotionally complex spectrum of issues and events that June and Magnus navigate. Revisiting Sagebrush residents, animal and human—especially another feisty honey badger—is an added treat, though Kerr’s excessive, sometimes unwieldy, use of simile and metaphor weighs down her otherwise great writing. A delightful romance that’s both cheerful and heart-wrenching.
parenting books and kept a thick binder of important information. When Abby receives news of her declining fertility at the age of 30, she feels like her time to be a mom is now or never. The only problem is that she’s unattached and is having difficulties deciding on a sperm donor. Marcus Ross is Abby’s roommate and best friend. He’s also hopelessly in love with her. He’d do anything to make her dreams a reality and agrees to help her get pregnant. They get on well together, but he makes it clear that he won’t allow Abby to be a single mom. He wants to be just as involved in raising her—their—child. However, the notion of co-parenting as best friends while keeping things strictly platonic is easier said than done. Abby’s chutzpah in taking control of her future is commendable. The main issue with the book is that neither Abby nor Marcus seems mature enough to handle parenthood; when they begin their romance, it feels as if they’re hurtling toward a huge mistake. Their apartment can’t accommodate a baby in addition to Abby’s work from home, as her bedroom is also her gaming studio. They ignore a doctor’s advice on having legal precautions in place and attending counseling to make sure they’re on the same page about parenting styles. The forward momentum hinges on Abby’s tunnel vision for a baby and Marcus’ being too much of a doormat to his best friend’s whims to speak up. A friends-to-lovers setup that’s overshadowed by a very bad idea.
UNDER CURRENTS
Roberts, Nora St. Martin’s (448 pp.) $28.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-250-20709-8
An abused boy fights back, escapes, then returns as an attorney to his beloved hometown, but just as he’s falling in love with a transplanted landscaper, a series of attacks from shadowy enemies jeopardizes their happiness. “From the outside, the house in Lakeview Terrace looked perfect.” Which of course means that it wasn’t. We’re introduced to the horrifying Dr. Graham Bigelow, who beats his wife and, increasingly as the boy gets older, his son, Zane. On the night of Zane’s prom, a particularly savage attack puts him and his sister in the hospital, and his father blames Zane, landing him in jail. Then his sister stands up for him, enlisting the aid of their aunt, and everything changes, mainly due to Zane’s secret diaries. Nearly 20 years later, Zane leaves a successful career as a lawyer to return to Lakeview, where his aunt and sister live with their families, deciding to hang a shingle as a small-town lawyer. Then he meets Darby McCray, the landscaper who’s recently relocated and taken the town by storm, starting with the transformation of his family’s rental bungalows. The two are instantly intrigued by each other, but they move slowly into a relationship neither is looking for. Darby has a violent past of her own, so she is more than willing to take on the risk of antagonizing a boorish local family when she and Zane help an |
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abused wife. Suddenly Zane and Darby face one attack after another, and even as they grow ever closer under the pressure, the dangers become more insidious. Roberts’ latest title feels a little long and the story is slightly cumbersome, but her greatest strength is in making the reader feel connected to her characters, so “unnecessary details” can also charm and engage. Another success for the publishing phenom.
SPITFIRE IN LOVE
Ronin, Isabelle Sourcebooks Casablanca (416 pp.) $7.99 paper | May 28, 2019 978-1-4926-6196-2 A classic new-adult story set on a college campus, where a beautiful, broken hero and a spunky heroine with trust issues can’t resist each other. Kara Hawthorne and Cameron St. Laurent are college students in Manitoba, Canada, whose paths cross when Kara’s younger brother wrecks Cameron’s motorcycle. Cameron is a varsity athlete who hides his wealthy background as closely as he does terrible secrets from his broken childhood: “There is a darkness lurking inside me.…I knew most people couldn’t handle or accept the real me.” Kara has an absentee mother but comes from an otherwise close-knit working-class family. She’s never dated, preferring to stick to her goals, which require holding down multiple jobs while going to school full time. Cameron is gorgeous and sexually experienced, but he is intrigued by the guarded and “feisty” Kara, whose “jagged edges could cut like a chainsaw to wood.” When she offers to have the bike repaired for free at her father’s garage, he ups the ante by demanding she drive him around in the meantime. Ronin (Always Red, 2017, etc.) began writing serialized stories on a social media site, where a version of this novel was first published. A plot that might be right-sized in smaller chunks feels unnecessarily attenuated thanks to frequent emotional reversals and too many details of daily life. The book’s strength is its depiction of the likably complex Kara and Cameron, both working through issues from their childhoods while trying to navigate the adult world in which they now find themselves. Although the ending is optimistic enough to please readers, a sequel to this chaste story is planned. Ronin creates believable characters and puts them in a well-drawn social world. The effect of the typical high angst and emotional upheavals of new-adult fiction is blunted by an unnecessarily drawn-out romance plot.
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nonfiction PLACES AND NAMES On War, Revolution, and Returning
These titles earned the Kirkus Star: PLACES AND NAMES by Elliot Ackerman........................................47
Ackerman, Elliot Penguin Press (256 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-525-55996-2
ARE WE THERE YET? by Dan Albert................................................ 48 THE VOLUNTEER by Jack Fairweather..............................................54
CULTURE IN NAZI GERMANY by Michael H. Kater........................63 THIS LAND by Christopher Ketcham................................................. 64 UNDERLAND by Robert Macfarlane.................................................. 66 THE MOON by Oliver Morton............................................................ 69 OUTPOST by Dan Richards................................................................. 71 GEORGE MARSHALL by David L. Roll............................................. 71
UNDERLAND A Deep Time Journey
Macfarlane, Robert Norton (496 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-393-24214-0
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A memoir of the war you can’t leave behind. For Ackerman (Waiting for Eden, 2018, etc.), a former Marine who earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart, and so many of the others he met during his return to the battlefronts of the Middle East, there was no good reason for them to be drawn back there other than the feeling that war had given their lives purpose and that civilian life offered no fulfilling substitute. “If purpose is the drug that induces happiness,” he writes, “there are few stronger doses than the wartime experience.” The equation of war with happiness may jolt readers who haven’t seen combat, but the power of this memoir comes from the author’s illumination of paradoxes and contradictions that provide a common emotional denominator for soldiers who previously found themselves in wars where they discovered more than two sides. “For a moment we sit, three veterans from three different sides of a war that has no end in sight,” writes Ackerman of his bonding with two friends who might have been categorized as Muslim terrorists, one of whom would later ask him to be best man at his wedding. “Not the Syrian Civil War, or the Iraq War, but a larger regional conflict,” one in which they discovered “a unifying thread between us: friendships born out of conflict, the strongest we’ve ever known.” Throughout the poignant narrative there is a sense that the Americans for whom the author has fought have misunderstood the Muslims that he has fought against and that the boundaries dating back to the colonial era have never reflected the ethnic geography of those who inhabit the region. A story in which Ackerman made new friends and confronted old ghosts culminates in a flashback to the Battle of Fallujah and his memories of what took place. A profoundly human narrative that transcends nationality and ideology.
SCHOLARS OF MAYHEM by Daniel C. Guiet & Timothy K. Smith.................................................................................58
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down with the blues ARE WE THERE YET? The American Automobile Past, Present, and Driverless
Photo courtesy Leah Overstreet
“I never intended to have anything to do with the blues,” writes acclaimed Memphis-based music journalist Stanley Booth in his new collection of essays, Red Hot and Blue (May 7). “They came into my life through my bedroom window when I was a child. It wasn’t a matter of choice. What I learned I paid for in experience at the school where they arrest you first and tell you why later.” Readers will be thankful that even if he didn’t seek out the blues, the blues found him, as the author has spent decades writing about the ever elusive genre as well as other strains of Southern and roots music, including jazz and rock. Though he’s written only three books, Booth is a legendary music writer, having penned numerous significant articles about a wide variety of landmark artists, including Furry Lewis, Blind Willie McTell, Ma Rainey, James Brown, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons, and, of course, the Rolling Stones, the subject of Booth’s long-gestating, classic 1984 book, Dance with the Devil. As our reviewer notes, Booth’s characteristic style is on full display from the beginning of Red Hot and Blue: “Plunging in with a humorous—somewhat salty—indictment of contemporary music journalism, so-called authorities on American musical traditions, and the slick treatment of the blues by modern media, Booth stakes his ground, imparting the value of essence over image in music writing.” In addition to some of his most well-known pieces—e.g., “Furry’s Blues” (about Memphis bluesman Furry Lewis) and “Situation Report: Elvis in Memphis, 1967”—there are numerous other gems to be found in a collection that should be in any blues lover’s library. Indeed, this is “further entertaining testimony from a music journalist whose writing pulsates with the same blues rhythms as the soil and streets in which they were born,” our reviewer writes. —E.L.
Albert, Dan Norton (304 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-393-29274-9
With driverless cars on the way, a journalist asks, is America ready to accept them? One way to begin formulating an answer is to examine the car culture that has defined America since the 1920s, when Henry Ford turned his “missionary zeal for low, low prices” into the country’s first line of affordable automobiles. In his debut book, Albert, who writes about cars for n+1, provides a witty history of the automobile and a look at the future. He takes readers on a fascinating journey covering a lot of ground: the earliest battery-powered electric vehicles of the 1890s; Ford’s first big triumph with the 1909 Model T; Alfred P. Sloan Jr., “the most important CEO in GM’s history,” who introduced car loans in the 1920s to encourage repeat buying; the birth of America’s interstate highway system in the 1950s, “by any measure the largest government project in American history”; and the push for smaller and more environmentally friendly vehicles in the 1960s and ’70s, thanks in part to Ralph Nader. All of this leads to an incisive analysis of the current culture, in which young people would rather call an Uber than own a car, and the question of whether driverless cars really will achieve their promise of fewer accident-related deaths. A late chapter on the author’s auto-repair prowess feels airlifted in from another project, but the narrative is still an entertaining exploration of American vehicle culture and American culture in general. Along the way, Albert can’t resist political jabs, most of them directed at the right, as when he writes, “America First types may be disappointed to learn that it was France that had the first car culture.” He also notes a few facts that may surprise—that supposedly safe SUVs, among the most profitable vehicles on the market, “tip over at twice the rate of cars.” An exceptional work of scholarship about “our relationships to cars and through cars and the stories we tell about those relationships.” (15 illustrations)
Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction and managing editor.
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Focusing on black feminism, Allred builds a thorough and detailed critical study of how Beyoncé’s catalog reflects, connects to, and is informed by literary and theoretical work. ain’t i a diva?
BURN THE ICE The American Culinary Revolution and Its End
AIN’T I A DIVA? Beyoncé and the Power of Pop Culture Pedagogy
Alexander, Kevin Penguin Press (384 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-525-55802-6
Allred, Kevin Feminist Press (392 pp.) $18.95 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-936932-60-3
Brooklyn-based educator and speaker Allred delivers a book-length extension of a college class he designed, “Politicizing Beyoncé,” including texts, references, and broader theoretical frameworks. This project fits in the educational tradition of including analysis of popular culture as a teaching strategy, now widely regarded as an access point for students to engage with critical theory. Focusing on black feminism, Allred builds a thorough and detailed critical study of how Beyoncé’s catalog reflects, connects to, and is informed by literary and theoretical work. He interrogates Beyoncé’s music and videos to explore the
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A back-of-the-house, behind-thescenes look at new restaurants and passionate chefs. Making his book debut, James Beard Award–winning food journalist Alexander offers an energetic, scattered chronicle of the food world from 2006 to 2017, a decade, he asserts, when “independent, chef-owned, casual finedining restaurants” created a culinary revolution. He locates the revolution’s birth in Portland, Oregon, where a young chef named Gabriel Rucker opened a small restaurant, Le Pigeon, generating hype that “morphed from local buzz into a national fever pitch,” putting Rucker—and Portland—on the map of culinary stardom. Rucker, writes the author, invented a new aesthetic: “the mismatched chairs, the Goodwill plates and silverware, the lack of tablecloths,” along with “scratch-kitchenlevel food made by hand using local ingredients.” Rucker is one among the many individuals Alexander profiles, gleaned from nearly 100 interviews with cooks, chefs, and bartenders whose ambitions, challenges, successes, and failures add up to “a mosaic of the last decade’s sprawling, mercurial, pyrotechnically creative culinary ecosystem.” There’s Tom Colicchio, who learned how to cook by working at top New York restaurants. At 26, he earned a three-star review from the New York Times, soon opened Gramercy Tavern with prominent restaurateur Danny Meyer, and went on to establish his own restaurant, Craft, “radical in its simplicity.” When reality TV producers wanted a chef to judge a food competition show, Colicchio was high on the list; the show was Top Chef. There’s Anjan and Emily Mitra, who struggled to open an Indian restaurant in San Francisco and ended up so overwhelmed by their success that they lost sight of their original motivation to share the texture, balance, and “crazy versatility of flavors” of South Indian food. There’s Phil Ward, innovator of the craft cocktail movement that spread across the country. Alexander’s choice of characters seems random, and their stories, though engaging, don’t cohere into an overarching analysis. Initially claiming that the revolution is over, the author concludes that “a fresh torch” is likely to be lit. A colorful yet rambling history of transformations in the food world.
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complicated spaces where racism, sexism, and capitalism collide. Using the singer’s work as a canon, Allred analyzes how her lyrical and visual texts handle such themes as self-definition, love, and resistance. With a referential scope that includes Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, bell hooks, the Combahee River Collective, and many others, Allred effectively demonstrates how Beyoncé’s work aligns with and advances many elements of black feminism. Throughout, the author offers well-grounded insights into the political and cultural significance of Beyoncé’s work and provides an expansive base from which to view it. Yet the enthusiasm that may spark lively class discussion does not necessarily translate onto the page, and offering a single class as an academic model may work against the broader purpose of accessibility common to pop-culture pedagogy. While Allred cites the work of the African-American women and scholars examining Beyoncé’s feminist influences and appeal, this text functions more as monologue about a class than a dialogue with the current rich scholarship on the topic. Still, the author’s emphasis on instructional methods positions this work amid important existing trends connecting education to contemporary society. Acclaimed poet and black feminist activist Cheryl Clarke provides the introduction. An asset for educators interested in feminism and popculture pedagogy.
WILLIAM STONER AND THE BATTLE FOR THE INNER LIFE
Almond, Steve Ig Publishing (168 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-63246-087-5
Literary criticism/memoir regarding an overlooked American novel. In the latest volume in the publisher’s Bookmarked series, Almond (Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Coun try, 2018, etc.) delivers an energetic discussion of Stoner, the 1965 novel by John Williams (1922-1994), who won a National Book Award for Augustus (1972). The Bookmarked series encourages authors to personally engage with the works they are championing, and Almond delves into personal failures and accomplishments as well as relationships with family, friends, and students, all through the prism of Stoner. Though some readers may find this approach disruptive, it results in a sensitive and perceptive reading of a novel Almond first read when he was a struggling 28-year-old writer. He has since read it innumerable times, each time learning more about the novel and himself. Stoner, which has been reissued a few times, is a quiet, reflective tale that recounts the life of a rural farm boy who becomes an English professor, husband, and father. Almond offers this “peculiar pint-sized ode” to a novel that has become for him a manual for “living.” A “literary novel” that is also “subversive,” Stoner “casts a piercing light upon the worship of power and wealth that has corroded our national spirit.” Almond loves how it “captures 50
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with unbearable fidelity the moments of internal tumult that mark every human life.” At times, he gets “furious” with William Stoner the “perfect martyr,” the “hardcore masochist.” He discusses the novel’s “unrelieved narration,” or “plain style,” as Williams described it, and its portrayal of a wrecked marriage, the nasty world of academic in-fighting, and the challenges of child-rearing. Almond argues that Stoner is both an anti-war novel and, with its detailed portrait of the “collision of poverty and privilege,” a “radical social novel.” A concise, useful examination of a novel that, at its heart, is a “wise and merciful book” about the love of teaching.
DON’T WAIT UP Confessions of a Stay-at-Work Mom
Astrof, Liz Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 30, 2019 978-1-982106-95-9 A producer and comedy writer for 2 Broke Girls and The King of Queens, among other programs, brings her humor to the homefront with these essays about her childhood and raising her own children. Given Astrof ’s extensive background in comedy, readers will expect humor throughout, and the author delivers with one punchline after another. The author clearly loves her children, but she prefers to leave the details of raising them to her husband. She shares a wide, wacky variety of stories: how she avoids returning home until she knows her kids are safely tucked in bed, how she handled a weekend at Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor water park where signs warned swimmers not to enter the pool with “active” diarrhea (“I could only speculate as to what ‘active’ meant to the legal team…but mostly, I was grateful that I wouldn’t have to so much as dip a toe in that shit river”), how she reacted when her stash of candy dissolved while on vacation in Mexico; why she is convinced she’ll be murdered while on a work-related weekend with fellow writers; why a “fun” trip to the mall with her kids is anything but; and how an idyllic vacation in Hawaii turned into a fiasco thanks to one errant text message. Underneath the comedy, however, are details about the author’s difficult childhood living with verbally abusive parents who fought over her custody. She also grew up with weight and self-esteem issues and still has trouble with both concerns as an adult. The juxtaposition between the absurdity and the reality of Astrof ’s life creates a mostly effective balance, which pushes this book beyond the slapstick visible at the surface and into a more reflective realm. Droll wit and profundity swirl together in a revealing memoir from a successful comedy writer.
THE LAND OF FLICKERING LIGHTS Restoring America in an Age of Broken Politics
Bennet, Michael Atlantic Monthly (304 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-8021-4781-3
A Colorado senator sees the country at a historic turning point. Making his book debut, Bennet offers a strident critique of our current rancorous, ineffective government that has betrayed the Founders’ visions and is “desperately out of sync” with the nation’s needs. Like the late congressman John Dingell (The Dean), Bennet’s fellow legislator—and echoing other recent political analysts—Bennet laments the destruction of bipartisanship, the corrupt influence of wealthy donors and lobbyists on politicians, and the rise of “an insurgent faction of Republicans.” He credits the Supreme Court’s Citizens United
decision with the insidious rise of dark-money groups, empowering billionaires to manipulate campaigns and legislation. “Citizens United, quite simply, has warped the character of our political system,” writes the author. So have individuals now in power, notably Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. Bennet aptly characterizes McConnell as Machiavellian: “patient, strategic, undistracted, impervious to give-and-take (except when he is taking everything)—and, in a political sense, ruthless.” The author underscores Trump’s ignorance of foreign policy, his nurturing of “ugly nativism,” and his shocking denial of climate change, to name just a few of his shortcomings. “Income inequality, stagnant social mobility, and inadequate access to health care and education” are overarching problems that need vigilance and action, Bennet argues, urging Americans to muster confidence in themselves and one another: “Only citizens,” he writes, “can answer the fire bells in the night.” He proposes four values that can lead us into the future: freedom to rise, which requires decent health care, equitable tax policies, and a safety net for the vulnerable; freedom from ignorance, which requires strong public schools and financial support for
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A useful book for newsrooms and journalism students. automating the news
students; freedom from violence, including the “insidious violence” flourishing on social media; and freedom to govern ourselves, which requires citizen engagement and participation in public life. “The loss of faith in our governing institutions, and in one another,” Bennet writes, “is a death spiral.” A forceful argument that patriotism, hard work, and belief in the common good can revive a prosperous and powerful democracy.
INSIDE THE FIVE-SIDED BOX Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon
Carter, Ash Dutton (480 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-5247-4391-8
The former secretary of defense delivers a lucid explanation of how the Department of Defense operates. A theoretical physicist who became interested in international affairs, Carter (Director/Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future, 2001, etc.) entered government service in 1993 as President Bill Clinton’s assistant secretary of defense for international security policy and eventually became President Barack Obama’s secretary of defense in 2015. Specializing in international security, nuclear policy, and weapons procurement, the author considers himself a technocrat rather than a political operative. Though he was first appointed by a Democrat and was never appointed by a Republican, he accomplishes the impressive feat of soothing conservatives by emphasizing that private enterprise is the most efficient source of our military’s goods and services. “Business is business,” he writes, “and if they are to succeed…they need to mind their bottom lines. The taxpayer shares an interest in their viability.” Carter also soothes liberals by agreeing that, absent strict government oversight, companies pad their profits, drag their feet, and have no objection to bribery if it is deemed useful. Even out of office, he provided expertise to all administrations and remained on good terms with even highly conservative leaders. His evaluation of all presidents since Ronald Reagan is never less than mildly favorable, with one exception that will surprise few readers. His major criticism of Donald Trump is that he despises experts who disagree with him. Readers will squirm to learn the difficulties of keeping our nation secure, which, even in the good old days, was hobbled as much as helped by members of Congress who gave their own interests priority over the nation’s and journalists who preferred scandal to substance. Today, with Congress nearly paralyzed and journalism dumbed down by the internet, it’s even more difficult. An illuminating if unsettling account of what it takes to run “the largest and most complex organization in the entire world.”
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AUTOMATING THE NEWS How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Media
Diakopoulos, Nicholas Harvard Univ. (304 pp.) $29.95 | Jun. 10, 2019 978-0-674-97698-6
Can machines take over the job of human reporters? Increasingly, they’re doing just that. Machines are already hard at work putting together the morning paper or news broadcast, writes Diakopoulos, the director of Northwestern’s Computational Journalism Lab. At the Associated Press, for example, “every fiscal quarter automated writing algorithms dutifully churn out thousands of corporate earnings articles.” Such articles were the stuff of drudge work once assigned to cub reporters, but now machines can parse corporate reports, extract the required information, and put it into readable form. By the author’s account, this is a positive development; it allows news organizations to publish quickly, and it gives seasoned human journalists the raw material to dig in and do data-rich interpretive work. Just so, he notes, at least a quarter of all Bloomberg News reports are done by computers in whole or part. Algorithms, he writes, “are suffusing the entire news production chain.” Sometimes they weigh whether one headline is more effective (and clickworthy) than another, and other times they data mine to support investigative reporting, sorting through vast bodies of material to dig out the ones that are truly relevant to a case and, of particular interest, “claim-spotting” with computational tools as an aid to fact-checking. Diakopoulos counsels that this algorithmic wealth will be put to work in situations that are subsidiary to human journalism. Though one wonders whether the bosses might not like machines that can replace human editors, the author argues that these modern machines belong in the realm of telephones, cameras, and other technological adjuncts to journalism that have come along in the past, for the work of reporting and writing is really itself the realm of human creativity. “Rare is the algorithm that can surprise and delight in entirely unanticipated ways,” he writes—rare, but not entirely out of the question, for which reason he urges news organizations to get busy developing “their own competitive strains of algorithms and AI for knowledge production.” Despite all the troubling possibilities, Diakopoulos predicts a thriving future for machine algorithms. A useful book for newsrooms and journalism students.
FIRE IN THE SKY Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth
how much truth there is to these narratives. In short, how much should we worry? Regarding the chance of an impact, he offers an alarming conclusion. “It’s not a question of if,” he writes. “It’s only a question of when. And at this point, we can only hope that the world will be ready.” Using his own research and numerous interviews with scientists and other experts, the author provides an elegant overview of the history of terrestrial collisions and breaks down what governments are doing to prepare for another—and whether that preparation is good enough. From asteroid hunters to planetary defense officers, a cadre of specialists are working to identify threats and devise realistic plans to neutralize them. Dillow explains the science behind these efforts in plain language and, despite the sometimes-weighty subject matter, good humor. He also engagingly describes his awe in considering Earth from a new perspective, that of a vulnerable, smallish planet flying through a crowded solar system. One medium-sized asteroid (never mind a comet) slamming into Earth could easily destroy a city, a country, or even most of mankind. After all, it’s generally accepted that a 6-mile-wide
Dillow, Gordon L. Scribner (288 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5011-8774-2
According to scientists, it’s inevitable that a giant piece of space rock will eventually hurtle toward Earth: “So where do we currently stand in terms of planetary defense against Earthimpacting asteroids?” We’ve all seen the movies in which an asteroid is on a collision course with our planet and we have scant time to devise some way to destroy it or change its path. In this entertaining book, Dillow (co-author, with Charles Campisi: Blue on Blue: An Insider’s Story of Good Cops Catching Bad Cops, 2017, etc.), a veteran reporter and war correspondent, investigates
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An inspiring story beautifully told. the volunteer
asteroid wiped out almost every living thing on the planet 65 million years ago, including dinosaurs. Dillow threads a lovely history of asteroid impacts into an urgent call to arms, and the result is a thrilling read.
Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism, 2010) sets out to identify how these two forces related through the so-called American Century. Though his lengthy study does not necessarily prove an organic relationship between oil and faith—in many instances, the connections were simply caused by the omnipresence of Christianity in a culture in which oil was asserting itself—the author ably shows how these connections shaped American history. Beginning with the oil discoveries in Pennsylvania after the Civil War, which solidified John D. Rockefeller as the paragon of Eastern oil barons, Dochuk explores the first “wildcatters” who set out to compete with Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, resulting in a continuous cycle of booms and busts. Eventually, with oil discoveries in Texas and Oklahoma, the center of the industry moved west. At every step, the church was present in these new settlements, attempting to curb the wild influences of oilmen. At the same time, many of the industry’s leaders were committed Christians, seeing in their work a divine calling and often using their wealth to support religious causes. The philanthropy of the Rockefellers, the Pews, and others remains as a testament to these convictions. As the power of American oil waned after World War II, its influence became more centered upon political movements and the rise of Evangelicalism. Dochuk notes that evangelist Billy Graham was funded by oil figures early in his career, and the industry has been involved in the development of countless organizations, from the Fuller Theological Seminary to Oral Roberts University. The Bush family’s oil ties round out this intriguing book. A sweeping tale that uses both oil and faith to paint a panoramic portrait of post–Civil War American history.
ANOINTED WITH OIL How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America
Dochuk, Darren Basic (672 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-465-06086-3
A history of America’s oil industry with an emphasis on its interplay with Christianity throughout the decades. Asserting that both oil and faith shaped the United States significantly through its years of ascendancy, Dochuk (History/Univ. of Notre Dame; From
THE VOLUNTEER One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz
Fairweather, Jack Custom House/Morrow (528 pp.) $28.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-06-256141-1
One man’s remarkable heroism in the face of Nazi terror. Nothing about Auschwitz is pleasant reading. Thankfully, Fairweather (The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan, 2014), a former correspondent for the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph, delivers a well-written, riveting work. The protagonist is Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki (1901-1948), part of Poland’s cavalry reserves, much of which was decimated by the blitzkrieg’s main panzer thrust. With Warsaw surrounded, most military leaders left the country, but Pilecki and another officer banded together and organized the remaining soldiers. During this time, Germany continued to pit ethnic groups against each other and, mostly, against the Jews. Nationalism was flourishing, and attacks on 54
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Jews escalated. When Pilecki tried to fuse their group with the mainstream underground, his partner asked him to form a new group—in Auschwitz, to fight from the inside. Once inside, a Polish work foreman got him a builder’s job, which allowed him to start developing resistance cells among prisoners. In addition to some brave locals, newly released prisoners passed on his reports to Warsaw and then to London. The camp doctor saved Pilecki’s life more than once, but in many of his messages, Pilecki begged to have the camp, arsenals, and railways bombed. Despite his messages, the Allies made excuses, claiming that winning the war was the only way to control the camps. Based on the reports from Pilecki, they certainly knew that Auschwitz had become a death camp. Using myriad sources to paint the pictures of the camp’s horrors, including the prime source, Pilecki’s memoir, which has only recently been translated, Fairweather shines a powerful spotlight on a courageous man and his impressive accomplishments in the face of unspeakable evil. An inspiring story beautifully told.
most susceptible targets, writes Fazzini, are banks, which are probed and tested every waking moment for weaknesses from every corner of the globe, all good reasons for being hypervigilant about online transactions and remembering to change your password regularly. Good reading for anyone contemplating a career in cybersecurity and a useful tool for turning people’s thoughts in that direction. (first printing of 100,000)
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KINGDOM OF LIES Unnerving Adventures in the World of Cybercrime
Fazzini, Kate St. Martin’s (240 pp.) $28.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-250-20134-8
A breezy exploration of the many bad guys who lie in wait out on the other end of the cyberwire. “What makes cybersecurity complicated is the complexity of human beings,” writes Fazzini, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who is now the cybersecurity reporter for CNBC. The hacker community, for instance, is hardly a community at all: There are people who hack computers in just about every human community, period, and not all of them are up to no good. It’s against the ones who do have nefarious ends that the cybersecurity community has evolved, and again, it’s a rather motley congregation, with few Lisbeth Salanders among it; indeed, as Fazzini writes, only 9 percent of the workers in the field are women. “I know a lot of them,” she notes, “maybe because we are such a rare lot.” They need to be less rare, she adds, because there’s greater demand than supply for cybersecurity experts, and that need will only grow, requiring people who are risk-averse, hypervigilant, and imaginative in thinking of scenarios that few other people would consider— “three characteristics of so many new mothers,” she concludes. Threats come from all sides. Some of the author’s cases in point are pimply experimenters; some are very thoughtful, technologically adept sociopaths; some are the agents of unfriendly governments such as Russia and Iran, about the second of which she describes the countermeasures taken by one lonely white-hat hacker: “As the suits pile in, act interested, and watch Carl sit at the computer and fight the Iranian Army every fucking day, as he becomes more detached and more alone.” The |
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The author tells Skelly’s story well, presenting him as an enterprising and resourceful trailblazer. superpower
WAFFEN-SS Hitler’s Army at War
Gilbert, Adrian Da Capo (512 pp.) $32.50 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-306-82465-4
An in-depth examination of the elite group of soldiers originally designed as Hitler’s bodyguards and carefully groomed and trained by Heinrich Himmler for murderous duty. British military historian and broadcaster Gilbert (Chal lenge of Battle: The Real Story of the British Army in 1914, 2014, etc.) offers a nuts-and-bolts, chronological study of the Waffen-SS, from the time of Himmler’s assumption of its command in 1929 through training, successes, atrocities on the Eastern and Western fronts, and to its bitter defeat in 1945 (and resurrection in a postwar loyalists’ group). After Hitler’s elimination of Ernst Röhm and his thuggish SA (the
“brownshirts”) in the so-called Night of the Long Knives on June 29, 1934, the elite Schutzstaffel became the “prime arbiter of violence in Nazi Germany.” Himmler envisioned a group with “a confirmed Aryan pedigree and a high level of physical fitness”—education was not a priority—forged into “a vanguard of political soldiers for the Nazi cause.” Of course, the men would be inculcated in racial doctrine and develop an intense sense of comradeship. Gilbert explores the competitive dynamic between the Germany army and the SS and the army’s attempts to undermine the SS and its various splinter groups. While Himmler pursued his vision of an ever larger role for the SS—as the racial war against the Jews and Slavs progressed—Hitler “did not favor diluting its special character through mass recruitment.” As Nazi expansion continued, so did the widening makeup of the SS, and the group began to incorporate mercenary Dutch, Finns, Norwegians, and Danes. With the Germans increasingly desperate, “the once fixed racial lines were also becoming…blurred, something not lost on bemused Waffen-SS veterans.” Ultimately, the organization fought until the bitter end. Of the “more than 900,000 men [who] passed through its ranks,” writes Gilbert, “...300,000 were killed or died of their wounds.” A fairly technical study featuring some riveting revelations about the diverse makeup of the notorious Nazi organization.
SUPERPOWER One Man’s Quest to Transform American Energy Gold, Russell Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-5011-6358-6
A profile of an ambitious and persistent entrepreneur and a revealing look at the complex issues involved in the process of transitioning to renewable energy sources. Gold (The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World, 2014), a Gerald Loeb Award–winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal, chronicles the efforts of Michael Skelly, an infrastructure builder, to create an interstate transmission superhighway to bring direct high-voltage electrical power from the balkanized world of solar and wind farms to cities thousands of miles away. Unlike many present-day journalists, the author keeps himself mostly out of the story, with Skelly and his colleagues and adversaries front and center. Before getting into the story of Clean Line Energy, Skelly’s company, Gold shows him working in the late-1990s for a tiny, aggressive company in the rapidly growing wind industry in Houston, developing wind farms. In 2007, when the firm had become a major wind power producer and was bought and remodeled by Goldman Sachs, Skelly quit the wind business and ran for Congress. As a Democrat in a heavily Republican district, he lost. “From despondency comes inspiration,” according to Skelly, and 56
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it was then that he conceived of Clean Line Energy. The long process of trying to turn his concept into a reality is the subject of the second half of the book. The narrative is sometimes mazelike, full of sharply depicted players, corporate strategies, funding problems, struggles against longexisting utilities determined not to lose control of the grid, politicians and their personal preferences, misconceptions by lawmakers, the parochial interests of individual states, court cases, outdated statutes, and confused or fearful citizens. Ultimately, despite the complexity, Gold shows clearly the myriad daunting problems facing an entrepreneur in the renewable energy business. The author tells Skelly’s story well, presenting him as an enterprising and resourceful trailblazer.
or custom, he seemed energized by “an electric current.” Kelp, seawort, ant eggs, and grasshoppers are just a few of the ingredients he tried out, which for Redzepi “exemplify all meanings of the word ‘wild’ ”—“flavors and textures of the untamed.” A vivid chronicle of a rare culinary adventure. (16 b/w photos)
HUNGRY Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World y o u n g a d u lt
Gordinier, Jeff Tim Duggan Books/Crown (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5247-5964-3
A renowned chef reveals his appetite for risk—and edible insects. In 2013, Copenhagen’s dining sensation, Noma, hit a serious snag: an outbreak of norovirus that threatened the restaurant’s future and the reputation of its world-famous chef, René Redzepi. When Esquire food and drinks editor Gordinier (X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking, 2008, etc.) met Redzepi in 2014, the chef felt burned out, looking for new inspirations and, as he wrote in his journal, “scared of losing the precious worldwide attention we’d stumbled into.” Eager to reinvent himself and invigorate his cooking, he decided to travel in search of new ideas, and he invited the author to come along to share in and write about the journey. At his own crossroads—depressed over his failing marriage— Gordinier saw Redzepi’s invitation as a gift, a recognition of his talent, and a chance to join the “fierce, focused crew” that made up the chef ’s entourage. The search for flavor took the group to Sydney, arctic Norway, Copenhagen, and Mexico, where Redzepi planned a pop-up, Noma Mexico, to investigate “the complexity of Mexican cuisine,” flavors that long had haunted him. The author reports the chef ’s ecstatic response to the lush abundance of the markets: tripe, blood sausage, bags of chicken hearts, wild cherries, prickly pears, avocado leaves that smelled like licorice, wondrous tropical fruits, and “galaxies of chiles, oceans of nuts, pyramids of palm sugar, lakes of tamarind paste.” “To watch Redzepi in a Mexican marketplace,” Gordinier writes, “…is like getting a contact high from somebody else’s peyote trip.” Redzepi’s “kinetic fixation on propelling himself forward” characterizes the author’s portrait of him: restless, “allergic to inertia,” easily bored. Whenever Redzepi discovered an unfamiliar ingredient, technique, |
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Any World War II buff will love this tale of heroism. scholars of mayhem
READING BEHIND BARS A Memoir of Literature, Law, and Life as a Prison Librarian Grunenwald, Jill Skyhorse Publishing (360 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-5107-3706-8
A newly minted librarian discovers the importance of reading for prison inmates. In 2008, with a fresh degree and few job prospects, Grunenwald (Running with a Police Escort: Tales from the Back of the Pack, 2017) took her first professional position in a men’s minimum security prison in her native Ohio. Although she came to her new job with part-time experience in public libraries and a master’s degree in library and information science, she felt completely unprepared for the restrictive prison environment. “I had neither intended nor set out to become a prison librarian,”
she admits, not even fully understanding what a “correctional facility” really entailed. In a forthright, gently told memoir, the author portrays herself as both naïve and well-intentioned as she deals with inmates—mostly serving time for drunken driving charges or drug convictions—for whom a prison library meets a range of needs. Some read local newspapers, some consult law books or, with limited access, LexisNexis; one inmate confesses that he wants to read the books he should have read in high school; a few take the opportunity to hide behind bookshelves to masturbate—one of the many infractions that Grunenwald must report. The library also serves as a place of respite. For inmates who work as library assistants as well as for those who come to read, the library is “a unique pocket of freedom” within the highly regimented and surveilled prison. What Grunenwald encountered on her first day was a huge mess: outdated reference books, mixed-up encyclopedia volumes, inadequate shelving, unprocessed donation books, and two computers for inmate use, one of which was continually broken. In addition, she confronted a plethora of rules that governed inmate behavior, movement, and her own responsibilities. Quickly, she had to establish her authority. “Power in prison is in constant flux,” she notes, with inmates having the power “to inspire fear within the staff.” After 20 months, “tired and burned out,” Grunenwald left for another job, hoping she helped some inmates to develop a real love of books. A compassionate perspective on prison life.
SCHOLARS OF MAYHEM My Father’s Secret War in Nazi-Occupied France
Guiet, Daniel C. & Smith, Timothy K. Penguin Press (272 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-7352-2520-6 A remarkable World War II story of an American within the French Resistance. Guiet teams up with former Fortune senior features editor Smith to tell the story of Guiet’s father, Jean Claude Guiet (1924-2013). At the outbreak of war, Jean Claude and his brother, Pierre, got stuck in France for a year, giving them valuable experience in French life. Fluent in idiomatic French, they were prime targets for recruitment by the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA. OSS head Bill Donovan drew up the plan for American spy services with Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Both brothers were sent to England, Pierre to a desk job and Jean Claude to rigorous training in codes, wireless operations, parachuting, and unconventional warfare. Then he was assigned to an operations group named “Salesman II,” along with three others: Violette the messenger, Philippe the leader, and Bob the explosives expert (last names were never used). The authors make it absolutely clear that they were not spies but rather secret agents, trained for mayhem. Their job was to organize and galvanize the “maquisards,” the guerrilla 58
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WRITING TO PERSUADE How to Bring People Over to Your Side
army, to create havoc, and to prevent Nazi troops and materiel from reaching the D-Day landing sites. Though poor weather delayed their arrival in Limoges until the day after D-Day, they wasted no time finding the maquisards. The problem was to convince them all to work together. Communists, socialists, and anarchists all disagreed and often trusted no one. Philippe managed to pull everyone together, which left the matter of getting Allied equipment where it was needed. Those drops were epic in their volume, one involving 72 plane loads; another featured tricolor parachutes, which incurred Nazi wrath. In this page-turning, exciting book, the authors demonstrate an eye for significant details and a strong feel for the players. Any World War II buff will love this tale of heroism.
Hall, Trish Liveright/Norton (256 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-63149-305-8
From the former editor of the New York Times op-ed page, a book that is part memoir, part self-help, and part writing guide. At its core, Hall’s text is about becoming a better listener, friend, partner, and citizen. Readers looking for tips on how to run the editorial gauntlet of the New York Times or other top national publications will find a few here. Unfortunately, some of the determining factors are beyond the fledgling writer’s control. As the author clearly shows, your work is more likely to be read by an editor if you are a celebrity, a writer with a following, or someone referred by a journalistic colleague. For those without such advantages who
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A welcome addition to the literature of Castro and Cuba. young castro
hope to rise above the slush pile, the advice is fairly routine: Focus your piece, write clearly and conversationally, tell stories, be specific, have a different perspective or experience, surprise the editor with your story, and delight her with the quality of your prose. Beyond such standard advice, the worth of Hall’s counsel extends well beyond writing, as she illuminates the types of attitudes and approaches that might make others more receptive or resistant and how crucial it is to find common bonds or frames of reference, to engage rather than antagonize. In these times of political polarization, she suggests that it’s still possible to find common ground and to talk to each other rather than shout past each other. This may not result in publishable opinion pieces or help you persuade anyone of anything, but it might make for a more civil, polite society. Near the end, the author offers a helpful section called “How to Write and Pitch an Op-Ed,” including the advice, “you need to offer an opinion, not just an analysis of the problem or applause for someone else’s solution.” A lucid book about building bridges through communication along with some interesting behind-the-scenes background at the NYT.
YOUNG CASTRO The Making of a Revolutionary
Hansen, Jonathan M. Simon & Schuster (496 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-4767-3247-3
A sympathetic portrait of the younger years of the quixotic Cuban “liberal nationalist.” Hansen (Latin American History/ Harvard Univ.; Guantánamo: An American History, 2011, etc.) underscores Fidel Castro’s (1926-2016) rise in terms of Cuba’s long, frustrating wait for emancipation from foreign powers. “When Cubans thought they had [independence] in their grasp in 1898,” writes the author, “the United States snatched it away, inaugurating six decades of political and economic subservience that haunts Cuba to this day.” Castro always had a larger vision in mind, from growing up the son of a “hardworking, serious, unaffectionate” farmer near Santiago de Cuba to his education next to the Havana elite and his immersion in the violent revolutionary push back of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. Castro believed that because of his “record of sacrifice” and unswerving dedication to the cause that he alone should be the legitimate leader of the revolutionary struggle. Hansen frames this story of young Castro around the letters the author was granted access to by the aged Naty Revuelta, a like-minded revolutionary who shared a two-year mostly epistolary affair with Castro while he was in prison after the attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba in July 1953. Sharpening his skills as a leader and envisioning a new government for Cuba, Castro needed books; in particular, he asked Revuelta for books on Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Hansen emphasizes that Castro did not head to Cuba from exile in Mexico with his ragged band of revolutionaries in 60
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1956 with the intention of engendering a communist regime— only later, because he was shunned by the U.S., did Castro make his alliance with the Soviet Union. Castro believed fervently that Cuba was ripe for revolution and emancipation, and in the disciplined, restless, and ultimately lucky Castro, the country found its leader at last. While the early period of Castro’s life is not the most exciting, the details in the makeup of the man come together for an engaging, astute character study. A welcome addition to the literature of Castro and Cuba. (16 pages of b/w photos)
NORMANDY ’44 D-Day and the Battle for France
Holland, James Atlantic Monthly (720 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-8021-2942-0
A fine account of the familiar but eternally fascinating 1944 Normandy landing and campaign. Veteran military historian Holland (Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War II, 2018, etc.) knows the drill but doesn’t hesitate to wander from the script. He begins with the massive planning of the invasion, emphasizing that previous Allied seaborne landings were disasters (Dieppe), near disasters (Salerno), or disorganized efforts against weak opponents (North Africa, Sicily). According to Allied intelligence, Normandy would be a far greater operation against a prepared enemy. “Ensuring enough men and materiel were landed quickly enough…before any concentrated enemy counter-attack could be mounted was the absolute number-one priority,” writes the author. In fact, Germany lacked the resources to fortify more than 1,000 miles of Atlantic coast, and Holland delivers an expert account of their efforts. German Gen. Erwin Rommel, the commander in Northern France, wanted to fight at the beaches; his superiors, including Hitler, wanted an organized defense inland. Since historians usually prefer Rommel to Hitler, they look kindly on his plan, but it’s unlikely either would have worked. The Allies achieved complete surprise, and success was never in doubt. Historians concentrate on the carnage at Omaha Beach; Holland points out that the defenders inflicted terrible casualties from their bunkers, but all they could do was shoot. They had no tanks or reinforcements for a counterattack, and Allied naval gunnery pounded them mercilessly; they were doomed. Focusing on the landing, the Allies paid little attention to what might follow, and it took nearly two more months of bloody fighting before the Wehrmacht collapsed. A skillful writer, Holland delivers the occasional jolt, such as a mild rehabilitation of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Even contemporaries criticized his careful preparation and slow advances, but the author points out that this took maximum advantage of superior Allied resources and saved lives. Far from the first but among the better histories of the Allied invasion of Europe. (maps and photos)
THE TRUFFLE UNDERGROUND A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus
Tasting a white truffle, Jacobs reports, proved so intense that he felt transported, “momentarily, into an alternate universe, a place where flavor mattered more than truth and virtue.” Of the hundreds of truffle species, only a handful are edible, and of these, only two generate passionate “culinary fervor”: the rare, pale white truffle, “the culinary holy grail,” and black winter truffles, “the crown jewels,” which sell for an astonishing 500 to 1,000 euros per kilo. The truffles’ rarity and scarcity are the result of a complicated botanical process: Truffles’ spores emit a musk that attracts forest animals, which ingest them and release them as defecation on the forest floor. The spore cluster then needs to find a particular tree root in order to germinate, a process that can take decades; when it burrows into the root’s outer cells, a symbiotic relationship between tree and fungus begins, and through several seasons, if temperature and moisture are optimal, the truffle produces its edible fruit. Truffle hunters rely on specially trained dogs to sniff out their buried quarry, dogs that are vulnerable to stealing or poisoning by competitors. Truffles can be farmed as well as hunted, but competition is just as furious and “suspicion and paranoia” just
Jacobs, Ryan Clarkson Potter (288 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-451-49569-3
A rare fungus inspires rapture, deceit, and stealth. In an entertaining, revealing book debut, Pacific Standard deputy editor Jacobs brings his considerable skills as an investigative reporter to the fiercely competitive business of marketing truffles. Coveted by chefs and wealthy diners, truffles inspire rhapsodic descriptions of their earthy aroma and taste. “There’s something about them that is very primal,” one chef notes. “They get your attention at a very deep emotional level.”
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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
George Packer
HIS BIOGRAPHY OF RICHARD HOLBROOKE IS THE RIVETING LIFE STORY OF A DEEPLY FLAWED DIPLOMAT By Gregory McNamee Photo courtesy Michael Lionstar
Richard C. Holbrooke was a man of parts, a literate and erudite man who, it seems, read everything and knew everyone. As a diplomat, he traveled the world, projecting American power, resolving international crises, soothing ruffled feathers, cajoling, wheedling, sometimes bullying. He helped negotiate treaties and alliances. Perhaps most important, having learned the wasting powers of meaningless wars in Vietnam, he brokered a peace in Bosnia, forcing unwilling enemies to the table to end a bitter ethnic war. He was also a pill, impatient, difficult to deal with, insecure, hurt that he was not elevated to the upper reaches of power. Small blows amounted to huge assaults on his ego, and as for the larger slights, as when Hillary Clinton said that “it wasn’t at all certain he would be doing the 62
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talking” during peace negotiations in Afghanistan, they shattered him. The quoted words appear in Our Man: Richard Hol brooke and the End of the American Century (May 7), the latest book by George Packer, a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of such politically incisive books as The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013). Perhaps concerned that his place in history wouldn’t be properly recorded, Holbrooke called Packer one day and began to talk. “I was slightly acquainted with him,” Packer tells Kirkus. “I was one of the journalists he thought could be of use to him, and he was never shy about being in touch with people he wanted to talk to.” Having made half a century’s worth of enemies and friends in and out of various governments around the world, Holbrooke fell ill not long after his unhappy encounter with Clinton, dying in 2010. “Could Holbrooke have solved Afghanistan?” asks Packer in Our Man. The answer? “I don’t think so,” Packer says. “The best ideas are useless without the ability to bring them into the world.” Having influenced presidents and government officials from the time of John F. Kennedy onward, Holbrooke had lost his sway by the time of Barack Obama’s second term—but even so, and even if President Obama himself characterized Holbrooke as “disruptive,” Secretary Clinton made sure that Holbrooke stayed in government, sure that he would be useful somehow. Was he disruptive? Certainly. But, says Packer, “Holbrooke was also larger than life. I see him as a 19th-century picaresque figure, a man who wanted to be on the same level as his heroes, statesmen like George Kennan and Dean Acheson.” Those men saw the world and experienced danger and adventure in the service of their country, and Holbrooke certainly wasn’t shy, either, about putting himself in the line of fire to find out what was happening in the world and put his stamp on it. Packer was working on The Unwinding, absorbed by what appeared to be a growing conflict between political factions and social classes in this country, when renowned policy mavens Strobe Talbott and Les Gelb suggested that he write a biography of Holbrooke. “I decided
Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor. Our Man received a starred review in the March 15, 2019, issue.
as pervasive. France and Italy produce the most coveted truffles; some experts look for “the specific aroma that the Italian terroir imparts,” but other traders are not so particular, knowing that they can sell inferior truffles from Morocco, Tunisia, China, and Romania, passing them off as higher quality to buyers who desire “the appearance of wealth.” A deftly crafted tale of obsessions and true crime in the culinary world.
CULTURE IN NAZI GERMANY
Kater, Michael H. Yale Univ. (472 pp.) $35.00 | June 4, 2019 978-0-300-21141-2
A much-needed study of the aesthetics and cultural mores of the Third Reich, with often surprising turns. Kater (Emeritus, History/York Univ.; Hitler Youth, 2006, etc.), a widely published scholar of the Nazi era, begins with the premise that “in order for a new Nazi type of culture to take hold, the preceding forms first had to be wiped out.” These forms were those presumed to be “non-German” and, indeed, were largely Jewish or African: jazz, modernist art, anything smacking of the avant-garde–ism of the Weimar era. Joseph Goebbels was among many Nazi officials who took the lead in bringing music, film, architecture, and the like under the control of the regime. Though Hitler had a thorough cultural program in mind, his tastes were not always predictable or widely shared: He may have revered Wagner, but he wasn’t much of a Beethoven fan even if, in 1934, Goebbels, always pressing for a “German” art, “cut down on the political crudities and embarked on a campaign of promoting serious music, beginning with a Beethoven cycle in February, followed by rich programs of music by Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Bruckner.” Hitler, like so many readers of German fiction, was a fan of the pseudo-Westerns of Karl May, but he had no special interest in farming and so paid little attention to his regime’s emphasis on “blood and soil” novels celebrating farming and the outdoor life. Nazi officials spared a few Jewish practitioners of the arts, but most suffered the same fate as Jews everywhere in the Reich. In a narrative rich in detail and documentation, Kater examines such matters as the plotlines of films in the wake of the defeat at Stalingrad, competition among various Reich figures and ministries to take the lead in cultural matters, the flight of German intellectuals such as Thomas Mann to the U.S., and the general mediocrity of Nazi art. “The relation between culture and tyranny is a complex one,” Kater concludes. Indeed, and his book does much to make it comprehensible.
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to take it on,” says Packer, “with the condition that there be no strings attached—I would write what I saw.” Next thing he knew, his home office in New York was filled with the contents of Holbrooke’s office across town, file cabinets, boxes of paper, books. “I could barely get to my printer,” Packer says, “but even so, I didn’t get to the Holbrooke papers for three years.” Then he started reading Holbrooke’s journals and letters, one by one, page after page, and, Packer says, he was hooked: “He convinced me posthumously by being so brilliant and interesting.” Drawing on that vast archive, Our Man is filled with smart insights into how government and diplomacy work as well as astute observations on the psychological costs of working in public service, a sometimes-thankless, always stressful occupation at the higher levels of statecraft. For all that, and for all the weight of the world that Holbrooke carried on his shoulders, Packer also finds in him a character full of life and zest, someone who well deserves that “picaresque” label. Richard Holbrooke is gone, but parts of his legacy live on—for one thing, the peace still holds in the former Yugoslavia, for the most part, a quarter-century later. Much of his hard work, though, has been undone in the wake of the neo-isolationist government now in power. “Holbrooke loved America,” writes Packer, adding that what we call the American century, a time of “overwhelming evidence that this was a great and generous country,” was really just a half-century, and one that overlapped in large part with Holbrooke’s working life. “Holbrooke would be horrified at what’s going on now,” says Packer. “He was a liberal internationalist, the exact opposite of what we have now. He believed that we have a responsibility, with all our might and wealth, to be a global leader. Trump is the stake in the heart of that idea, and even though we can still be involved in the world in a positive way, this is something that I fear will be a permanent historical shift. My book is a history of something that’s over.”
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A sad and uplifting, ultimately poignant exploration of a tiny world within a bigger, harsher, and crushing world. this land
THIS LAND How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West
Ketcham, Christopher Viking (432 pp.) $29.00 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-7352-2098-0
How arrogance and greed are eviscerating public wilderness. Making an impressive book debut, journalist Ketcham, a contributor to Harper’s and National Geographic, among other publications, reports on his journeys throughout the West investigating the state of public lands: 450 million acres of land—of which national parks are only a minor portion— that are “managed in trust for the American people” by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Both agencies, argues the author persuasively, have shown inept
oversight, caving to demands of oil, gas, mining, and lumber industries to “defund and defang” environmental laws, “leading always to the transfer of the commons into the hands of the few.” In Utah, “rabid Mormons” stridently insist that the “entire federally managed commons” are constitutionally illegal. Latter-day Saints, Ketcham asserts, are anti-science, deny climate change, and hold “naked contempt” for environmental regulation. But they are not alone: Enormously wealthy—and federally subsidized—cattle ranchers, who dominate millions of square miles of public land throughout the West, viciously attack lawmakers and activists who dare to stand up to them, refuse to acknowledge endangered species, and mount sadistic hunts for wolves and coyotes that, they claim erroneously, threaten their cows. Grassland has been degraded by overgrazing and watersheds contaminated by bacteria from cattle waste. Republican and Democratic administrations—including “self-proclaimed protectors” like Barack Obama—have repeatedly betrayed their mandate to protect the environment. Wildlife Services, a Congressional agency, “kills anything under the sun perceived as a threat to stockmen.” The Nature Conservancy, likewise, has bowed to corporate power, and federal funding has compromised the missions of well-meaning nonprofits. “To save the public lands,” the author maintains, “we need to oppose the capitalist system.” Echoing writers such as Bernard DeVoto, Edward Abbey, and Aldo Leopold, Ketcham underscores the crucial importance of diverse, wild ecosystems and urges “a campaign for public lands that is vital, fierce, impassioned, occasionally dangerous, without hypocrisy, that stands against the tyranny of money.” A sad and uplifting, ultimately poignant exploration of a tiny world within a bigger, harsher, and crushing world.
A DEATH IN THE RAINFOREST How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea
Kulick, Don Algonquin (288 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-61620-904-9
How a culture withers and its language is rendered mute. Kulick (Anthropology/Uppsala Univ.; Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes, 1998, etc.) wears his scholar’s hat casually in this deeply personal, engaging inquiry into a “tiny windless slit in the rainforest [of Papua New Guinea]…surrounded on all sides by massive trees rooted in a vast, seemingly boundless swamp.” A small village of roughly 100 people, Gapun has its own unique language, Tayap. The author renders his academic research in a light, almost novelistic style, with plenty of drama and heartache. He invokes anthropologist Margaret Mead’s conviction that we should “learn from difference.” From 1985 to 2014, Kulick lived in the village seven times, once for 15 months. The 64
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villagers called him Saraki and thought him a dead person, a white ghost, a “harbinger of the change they want so badly.” He immersed himself in their lives and culture and learned their unique language, later writing a grammar. The linguistic part of the book may be a bit much for some, but Kulick does a fine job describing the language’s origins, how he learned it, and how it differs from the country’s national language, Tok Pisin. The author discusses their cuisine, especially their main staple, sago, a raw form of flour, maggot stew, and chewed betel leaves; how they educate and raise their children, never hitting them; their sex practices; and creative swearing, which is mostly done by women. Kulick also recounts a harrowing episode when gunmen from outside tried to rob him and a villager was killed. He understands that they want to change, but he wonders, at what cost? Few now speak their precious and irreplaceable language: The “mighty tree that once was Tayap has been whittled down to a skinny toothpick.” A sad and uplifting, ultimately poignant exploration of a tiny world within a bigger, harsher, and crushing world.
expectations low, and your heart open.” It is advice she tries to follow in mothering her recovering son, and she maintains an open-hearted compassion toward mothers battling similar addictions. At the same time, she shows just how tough some decisions can be when lives are on the line. In a concise book, Lamb ably demonstrates the challenges and pitfalls of passing judgment in such an imperfect world.
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THE NOT GOOD ENOUGH MOTHER
Lamb, Sharon Beacon (216 pp.) $24.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-8070-8246-1
A psychologist often hired as an expert witness to judge the suitability of other mothers develops doubt about her own mothering. As the person who is often put in the position of deciding whether a child should remain in a foster home, be placed for adoption, or returned to their birth parents, Lamb (Counseling Psychology/Univ. of Massachusetts Boston; Sex Ed for Caring Schools, 2013, etc.) has long recognized that such decisions aren’t as black-and-white as courts would like them to be. So many of the parents have had issues with addiction, and the author knows well that relapse is usually part of recovery and that lying is a frequent character trait that further confuses the issue. Her understanding of addiction has been deepened by her own experience as the mother of an addict whose deception long fooled her, whose recovery has been punctuated by relapse, and who has left her feeling guilty about whether she is a good enough mother. “Why didn’t I just take over his life then and there, put him on one of those toddler leashes I used to look at with disgust?” she asks after her son suffered another life-threatening relapse. “The average number of relapses for opiate abusers,” she writes, “is seven to nine, and…it takes a while to get clean and stay clean.” Ultimately, she asks, “is it the pattern of standard recovery or of repeated failure?” While lawyers hire her to determine what’s best for the child in a given situation, she knows from her own experience that there is only so much anyone can predict or control. She has learned from Alcoholics Anonymous that the best strategy is to “keep your boundaries high, your |
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A treasure all its own. Anyone who cares to ponder the world beneath our feet will find this to be an essential text. underland
UNDERLAND A Deep Time Journey Macfarlane, Robert Norton (496 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-393-24214-0
An exploration of the little-visited realms of the Earth, from deep caves to bunkers, trenches to Bronze Age burial chambers, courtesy of an accomplished Virgil. Macfarlane (The Lost Words, 2018, etc.), who has pretty well revived single-handedly the fine British tradition of literary natural history writing, can usually be found atop mountains. In his latest, he heads in the opposite direction, probing the depths of the Earth to find the places in which humans have invested considerable imaginative attention yet fear to tread. He opens with a cave network discovered in China’s Chongqing province only a few years ago that
“was found to possess its own weather system,” with layers of dank cold mist that never see sunlight. From there, the author moves on to other places that require us to “go low,” into places that humans usually venture only to hide things— treasure, sacred texts, bodies. Now that many such places are making themselves known, exposed during construction excavations and unveiled by melting permafrost, “things that should have stayed buried are rising up unbidden”—treasure sometimes, more often just bodies. All of this is occasion for Macfarlane, a gifted storyteller and poetic writer, to ponder what historians have called “deep time,” the time that is measured in geological rather than human terms and against which the existence of our kind is but a blip. Even places well known or celebrated in antiquity—from the underworld of The Epic of Gilgamesh to the Iron Age mines of the Mendip Hills of southwestern England—are recent points on the map of that ancient landscape. As he moves from continent to continent, Macfarlane instructs us on how to see those places, laced with secrets and mysteries (“all taxonomies crumble, but fungi leave many of our fundamental categories in ruin”). Wherever he travels, he enhances our sense of wonder‚ which, after all, is the whole point of storytelling. A treasure all its own. Anyone who cares to ponder the world beneath our feet will find this to be an essential text. (24 illustrations)
THIS LAND IS OUR LAND An Immigrant’s Manifesto Mehta, Suketu Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-374-27602-7
Mehta (Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, 2004), an immigrant from India who now teaches journalism at New York University, turns in a powerful defense of movement in search of better lives. “Why are you in my country?” So asked an exasperated Briton of Mehta’s grandfather, who had come to London. The answers were several, not least of them the fact that the British had, of course, come unbidden to India, and the same question applied to them: “They stole our minerals and corrupted our governments so that their corporations could continue stealing our resources.” More to the point, though, the author—who notes that at least a quarter of a billion people now live in countries other than the ones in which they were born—writes that immigrants bring economic vitality, diversity, and cultural health to the places to which they come. Sometimes, they’re not coming in the numbers that one might desire, as in the case of Indians who choose to remain at home rather than staff the depleted ranks of IT workers in Germany, a place that, like so many other European nations, is now experiencing nativist resentment and the far-right politics that ensue. Why move there, asks Mehta, to a place where hatred and division reign? It’s not 66
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just Donald Trump’s America, though Trump’s America is a poster child for this sort of intolerance: Mehta notes that Indians fear Bangladeshis, South Africans fear Zimbabweans, and so on. Even so, and despite obstacles, the author writes that “mass migration is the defining human phenomenon of the twenty-first century,” probably one that cannot be contained. Nor should we want to, for, despite Trumpian protestations that the country is full, Mehta counters, “America has succeeded, and achieved its present position of global dominance, because it has always been good at importing the talent it needs.” An intelligent, well-reasoned case for freedom of movement in an era of walls and fences.
was unsafe and would only get less safe as the economy grew more dependent on technology. This was classic market failure, compounded by political failure.” A quick tale of black hats and white hats, with a lot of gray area in between.
CULT OF THE DEAD COW How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World y o u n g a d u lt
Menn, Joseph PublicAffairs (256 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5417-6238-1
Computer pranksters and the internet come of age together, as the former become the leading security experts on the latter, joining forces with and against corporations and governments alike. “In its earliest days, the chief moral issues for the teens in the [hacking collective] Cult of the Dead Cow were how badly to abuse long-distance calling cards and how offensive their online posts should be,” writes Reuters technology reporter Menn (Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet, 2010, etc.). “But as they matured, the hackers quickly became critical thinkers in an era when that skill was in short supply….They all helped push a realistic understanding of security challenges and ethical considerations into mainstream conversations in Silicon Valley and Washington.” The author narrates a fast-paced story about how a little-known movement that could trace its roots to the psychedelic rock of the 1960s—one visionary was the son of the Jefferson Airplane’s drummer while another was a lyricist for the Grateful Dead—would eventually serve as security advisory for the Pentagon, the cybernetics industry, and geopolitical forces around the globe. Menn introduces many characters who were formerly anonymous or deeply underground, known only by their “cDc” monikers, the names by which they posted during the days before the World Wide Web, when bulletin boards attracted kindred spirits. The group had its genesis in the remote outpost of Lubbock, Texas, but its influence eventually extended from San Francisco to Boston and beyond, as computer technology triumphed over geographical logistics. They recognized the porousness of the web’s security because they had penetrated it, and they knew that those insisting that information was secure were in denial. They knew that “everything |
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in m.r. o’connor’s wayfinding, there’s a clear lesson: turn off the gps EYES IN THE SKY The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All
Some years ago, a British university issued a study of children’s geographical knowledge of the areas around their homes. In the 1960s, when all kids had bikes and no instructions other than to be home at suppertime, children knew the contours of an area extending four or five miles in any given direction. In the 2000s, with fearful parents who ferried them around amid overmanaged schedules, that territory had shrunk to two or three blocks. That’s a tragedy in the making, because new places mean new experiences mean new knowledge. New knowledge means a better workout for the hippocampus, the part of the brain that governs our memories and our abilities to plan ahead. A bigger hippocampus means a more active mind. The converse, of course, is true as well, yielding a M.R. O’Connor world of dullards. “The number and complexity of navigational tasks a person practices influences the amount of gray matter,” writes Brooklyn-based journalist M.R. O’Connor in her new book Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World (April 30). That’s a conclusion she happened on while researching her book, which was born, she says, by way of a chance meditation on technology. “I looked at my phone one day, and I thought, Wow, I used to not have this thing and had to get around on my own. Now I have this piece of technology, and I use it all the time. I don’t have to think about getting places. Isn’t that interesting? I wonder what it’s doing to my brain.” The lesson from O’Connor’s book, a model of scientific journalism, seems clear: Turn off the GPS and the phone, grab a map, head out the door, explore at leisure, stretch your brain and your spatial memory—and grow your freedom. —G.M.
Michel, Arthur Holland Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (336 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-544-97200-1
A look at airborne spycraft and how, “someday, most major developed cities… will live under the unblinking gaze of some form of wide-area surveillance.” Drone surveillance unsettles civil liberties advocates, but they will have much more to discuss regarding an eye in the sky that observes everyone all the time. That all-seeing entity is the subject of this disturbing account from Michel, co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College. The military mostly employs drones for observation, but their cameras are helpless against improvised explosive devices planted along roads. Dealing with IEDs requires 24-hour surveillance of huge areas. Suspicious actors can be followed. Once an IED explodes, one simply rewinds the tape, watches insurgents plant the bomb, and then retraces their steps to the base of operation. Cameras with this ability require immense computer power and expensive technical backup, but diligent research has produced several systems now deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. The cameras remain a work in progress. The author excels in explaining their bumpy development but reveals little about their effectiveness on the battlefield; this is classified information, so spokesmen provide only vague, optimistic details. What Michel makes vividly clear is that civilian authorities yearn for this technology, and entrepreneurs supplying the military are anxious to branch out. The FBI and many police departments are flying prototypes, which have sometimes proved successful in tracing criminal activities. Is this a preliminary to the all-seeing eye of Nineteen Eighty-Four? “To be sure,” writes the author, “aerial surveillance can certainly be used for purposes we can all agree upon….But there is a very real line beyond which the all-seeing eye becomes a dragnet that is incompatible with the tenets of civil liberty.” So far, public opposition has quashed local efforts at permanent surveillance, but this will change as accuracy improves and law-and-order advocates extol the benefits. Michel concludes with a review of legal safeguards that, in a perfect world, will accompany these programs. A skilled, mildly alarmist overview of another dazzling if intrusive technology. (26 b/w illustrations)
Wayfinding received a starred review in the Feb. 1, 2019, issue.
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Accessible, informative, and entertaining— first-rate popular science reporting. the moon
THE MOON A History for the Future
Morton, Oliver PublicAffairs (352 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5417-7432-2
An engaging, multifaceted view of the moon. British science writer and editor Morton (The Planet Remade: How Geo-engineer ing Could Change the World, 2016, etc.) provides an account that is not only rich in facts, but leavened with fiction, for the author seems to have read widely in the literature of science fiction to show the interest, ideas, and fantasies people have had about our nearest companion in the solar system. To show how the moon has been perceived by humans over the centuries, he draws on Renaissance paintings, Victorian works, music, Robert Heinlein’s novels, and transcripts of conversations between Apollo astronauts and mission control in Houston. A respected writer on a variety of space-related topics, Morton presents solid facts about the moon, including its size, mass, surface features, orbit, atmosphere (or lack thereof), and, importantly, light. As the subtitle suggests, the author also looks at the future, and he reports that although a half-century has passed since man first walked on the moon, its exploration is far from over. In fact, he writes, “a flotilla of robotic payloads is slated to beach up on the lunar surface in the next five or so years, some from established spacefaring powers like China, India and American, some from newcomers, such as Israel and Canada. Some will be paid for as business investments, and some as philanthropy, instead of by governments, and some by money from all those sources. Some will get there under their own steam; some will pay for a ride on another company’s, or country’s, bus. Some will be given their rides for free.” The author also explores moon-mining, the production of solar energy, and space tourism. He predicts that humans will likely return to the moon, perhaps to stay, maybe even setting up bases and villages; indeed, the moon could well become a steppingstone to Mars. Accessible, informative, and entertaining—first-rate popular science reporting.
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of the Dream: Why School Integration Works, 2019, etc.) shows clearly how Donald Trump, with his “intentionally nonlinear presidency,” established a Cabinet consisting of crucially inexperienced individuals in public service, each remarkably unqualified to assume key pivotal decision-making roles in politics. In an assembly both “overwhelmingly male, and overwhelmingly old,” each member was lauded for their elite status and financial worth and, to the author, “wealth that was tacky and vulgar, wealth desperate for recognition, wealth that could only have been an insult to the average citizens whose tribune Trump vowed to be in Washington.” Nazaryan provides glaring examples of the rampant conflicts of interests and ethical red flags by meticulously detailing the head-scratching nomination hearings of Betsy DeVos, a fundamentalist conservative Christian with a skewed view of an education official’s priorities; Steve Mnuchin, secretary of the Treasury, who filed false financial asset disclosures upon his appointment; Rick Perry, the Department of Energy secretary who was blatantly unsure of what his position actually governed; wealthy investor–cum– commerce secretary Wilbur Ross; and Department of Housing and Urban Development nominee Ben Carson, who lacked any governmental or federal agency experience whatsoever. While this type of bureaucratic runaway train is not news to political watchdogs, the author manages to put a fresh spin on a dire situation with snarky humor and wince-inducing facts, though his intense contempt at times borders on unnecessary mudslinging. While he also identifies countless other impurities infiltrating the political stream—Priebus, Pruitt, Spicer, Bannon et al.—thankfully, he balances these out by documenting how imprudence and circumstance caught up to the pack and an incremental exodus ensued. Many others surprisingly remain in power, and Nazaryan is pleased to call out the remaining political “backbenchers of public and private life” whose tenures continue to crumble beneath the weight of unmet expectations. A dizzying, tragicomic crash course in contemporary political incapacities.
OUT OF THE SHADOWS Reimagining Gay Men’s Lives
Odets, Walt Farrar, Straus and Giroux (368 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-374-28585-2
THE BEST PEOPLE Trump’s Cabinet and the Siege on Washington
A San Francisco–based clinical psychologist explores how gay men construct fulfilling lives through selfacceptance and an awareness of their individual core instincts. With an understanding of the difficult challenges gay men face in America, Odets (In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HIV– Negative in the Age of AIDS, 1995) shares case studies and personal stories from his years working during the AIDS epidemic and the aftermath. These serve as examples to help gay men consider how they can move beyond negative family and societal influences to live more satisfying lives. The author views gay men as living in
Nazaryan, Alexander Hachette (304 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-316-42143-0
A disheartening portrait of the alternately incompetent and corrupt Cabinet of the current administration. In his scathing critique, Yahoo News national affairs correspondent Nazaryan (co-author: Children |
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“tripartite communities, with significant psychological and social differences that define each group”: older-group, middle-group, and younger-group men, each defined by age and social awareness in relation to the AIDS epidemic, from the often fatal trauma of the early years to the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy in 1996 and to the more technologically advanced present era. Odets closely examines the negative impacts of early life experiences, often triggered by a lack of family and/or community acceptance, and stresses the need for self-acceptance in order to move forward. “Self-acceptance allows realistic selfconfidence, which is significantly unhinged in adulthood from the expectations and approval of others,” he writes. “In the end, authentic self-acceptance—or lack of it—is almost the entirety of what defines a life.” The author’s writing is perceptive and honest, as he openly discusses relationships and sex and accurately relates the struggles each generation has experienced. These reflect both similarities as well as differences and the difficulties in finding a genuine sense of community, especially within urban gay meccas. Odets convincingly argues for the benefits of talk therapy, with each story revealing how some level of personal growth was achieved. One issue: Though his cases reflect a broad range of ethnic and racial examples, the overwhelming majority of his profiles are about affluent individuals, all of whom can afford years of ongoing therapy. Though it could have been even more diverse in its presentation, this is an encouraging and deeply compelling study of how gay men can build meaningful identities.
ON BEING HUMAN A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard
An inspirational speaker and yoga instructor shares her life story along with motivational tips and exercises from her
popular workshops. Over the past several years, Pastiloff has built an abundant international following for her On Being Human workshops, inspiring retreat gatherings in which she offers a fusion of yoga movement, motivational writing, and communal sharing. In her debut memoir, she digs into the significant life events that led her to this unusual entrepreneurial opportunity. She reflects on childhood and family dynamics, personal losses, past boyfriends, her struggles with depression and increasing hearing loss, and day-to-day encounters while waitressing at a restaurant in Los Angeles. Though her career steps may seem unremarkable on the surface, the author stresses her evolving talent for remaining receptive and present throughout these experiences, enabling her to recognize beautiful moments as they occur. “It was there at the restaurant that I first began to pay attention to the beauty, because if I hadn’t, I would |
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THE STORY OF THE DINOSAURS IN 25 DISCOVERIES Amazing Fossils and the People Who Found Them Prothero, Donald R. Columbia Univ. (488 pp.) $35.00 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-231-18602-5
A smooth education on dinosaurs through the history of the discovery of
Pastiloff, Jennifer Dutton (336 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5247-4356-7
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surely have killed myself,” she writes. “The landscape of selfloathing I traversed was so treacherous that the only thing that could have possibly saved me were those moments of beauty I hunted—accidentally at first, and then deliberately, and in earnest.” In recounting her stories and her various emotional states, Pastiloff ’s prose is occasionally overwrought. Though her followers will surely relate to most of the author’s stories, newcomers may find her style heavy-handed. Eventually, after training to become a yoga instructor, Pastiloff began to find her calling, and elements of her platform emerged. At this midway point in the text, the narrative gains more energy and substance. Though still reliant on feel-good aphorisms—chapter headings include “Embracing Change” and “Make Room for the Possible and the Impossible”—the author ultimately clearly conveys her authentic intentions. By the end, many readers will admire her tenacity and open-hearted mission. For self-help fans and seekers of self-empowerment, this is an inspiring memoir with tips for overcoming and maybe prospering from the chaotic or disappointing elements that comprise an imperfect life.
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their bones. Paleontologist and geological researcher Prothero continues his series of books on significant scientific discoveries, following The Story of Earth in 25 Rocks (2018) and The Story of Life in 25 Fossils (2015). The author begins in England. Since the Bible describes human giants, those were considered the source of most of the large bones that were unearthed, until the turn of the 19th century. Many of these old bones ended up in Oxford’s anatomy collection, where, in 1818, the famous French anatomist George Cuvier took a look and decided they were the remains of a huge lizard. “Huge lizard” in Greek is megalosaurus, the first dinosaur to be named. European naturalists began turning up impressive numbers of fossils, but they were soon trumped in post–Civil War America, where the famous “bone wars” saw two wealthy paleontologists conduct a vicious competition to exploit massive fossil beds in the West. In his chapters on the 20th and 21st century, Prothero describes a stream of new finds revealing larger, smaller, and weirder dinosaurs who could have been brightly colored, feathered, warmblooded creatures moving in herds and caring for their eggs. Despite the cheery title, generous illustrations, and plethora of anecdotes about eccentric bone hunters, this is a serious primer on dinosaur science. Readers will learn
Readers who prize outdoor experiences—and tiny houses and the simple life—will find this book a source of much pleasure, bears and all. outpost
how studying bones determines what is and isn’t a dinosaur. Ancient reptiles that flew or swam in the ocean don’t qualify, but modern birds do. Determining what extinct creatures looked like remains difficult; the heads are often missing, the skeletons incomplete, and the discoverers too opinionated. At the end of each chapter, the author provides a useful list of books for further reading. Solid proof that dinosaurs through scientific eyes are no less fascinating than they are in the movies. (illustrations throughout)
OUTPOST
Richards, Dan Canongate (288 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-78689-155-6
Roll, David L. Dutton Caliber (704 pp.) $34.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-101-99097-1
An overdue, authoritative biography of one of America’s greatest soldier-statesmen. Roll (The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hop kins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler, 2013, etc.) emphasizes that George Marshall (1880-1959), a brilliant staff officer, always impressed his superiors. A favorite of Cmdr. John Pershing, he became aide-decamp when the general served as Army Chief of Staff from 1921 to 1924, and few were surprised when Marshall attained that office in 1939. The author excels in describing the period from Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland until Pearl Harbor, when Marshall urged rearmament and Franklin Roosevelt, aware that most voters opposed it, proceeded too cautiously for his taste. Opposition vanished after Pearl Harbor, to be replaced by questions of strategy, and here, Marshall’s record is spotty. He advised defeating Germany before taking the offensive against Japan and invading France in 1942 or 1943 instead of expending resources on the periphery: North Africa and Italy. Always congenial, Roosevelt agreed and then, after listening to public opinion, Churchill, and other advisers, changed his mind. After the war, President Harry Truman sent Marshall to China to end its civil war in what everyone agrees was an impossible assignment. Appointed secretary of state in 1947, he vigorously supported the European Recovery Program, which became known as the Marshall Plan. He resigned in 1949 but returned as secretary of defense in 1950 during the nadir of the Korean War, when he helped restore confidence in the armed forces. He resigned permanently in 1951 and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, the only serving military officer to do so. Roll admits that America would have won World War II even with a less competent chief of staff, and many of his decisions remain controversial, but he was a thoroughly admirable, surprisingly quirk-free figure who, even during his life, seemed larger-than-life. Despite not straying far from the almost universal veneration, this is a definitive, nuanced portrait.
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Literate journeys to some of the world’s less-traveled places, seen through an unusual lens. British travel writer Richards (Climb ing Days, 2016, etc.) comes by his wanderlust naturally. Before he was born, his father spent time in the remotest reaches of Svalbard, the Arctic island chain, from which he brought home a polar bear’s pelvis. As he writes in an arresting opening, the object fascinated Richards, but more so the thought of living in a shelter such as the one his father called Hotel California, which a bear would probably tear apart in a minute. “An unremarkable garden shed, the only thing that makes it a shed of note is the fact it’s there, stood on Svalbard,” he writes before embarking on a fascinating series of journeys. There are the literarily famous sheds, of course, such as Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond and the one Jack Kerouac scaled a mighty Cascade peak to groove in, guided by Gary Snyder. Richards climbed the same mountain, having eaten a burger the night before with the admonishment that the joint would be dead, “D.E.D. Ded,” in a quarter-hour, “the most American thing ever said.” The author also traveled to Iceland to visit “houses of joy,” which serve as “refuge stations for travellers crossing the hinter/highlands,” joy-giving spots that offer shelter from the storm, “modern bunkhouses on ancient foundations.” Some of the sheds, huts, and shelters Richards chronicles are works of art, literally, such as a Danish construction called Shedboatshed: “I liked it the moment I saw it as a shed at Tate Britain and took an even greater pleasure in it once I’d learnt its backstory.” Others are invested with meaning, such as the Japanese mountain stronghold called Nageire-dō, “the Oz of shrines.” The author was also able to travel to Svalbard to have a look for himself. Readers who prize outdoor experiences—and tiny houses and the simple life—will find this book a source of much pleasure, bears and all.
GEORGE MARSHALL Defender of the Republic
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THE BEAUTIFUL NO And Other Tales of Trial, Transcendence, and Transformation
Salata, Sheri Harper Wave/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-06-274319-0
The story of one woman’s reinvention after a 20-year career as an executive producer on the Oprah Winfrey Show. After two decades working alongside one of the most famous women in the world, Salata, who eventually became the co-president of Harpo Studios and OWN, was ready for a change. Despite her impressively successful career, the author, moving toward her late 50s, felt unfulfilled, and she had the feeling that there was more to come. She had dreams that had been shelved for years and knew it was time to dust them off. First, however, she needed to reconcile issues with her past, primarily her weight fluctuations and her romantic relationships. “The reckoning—my reckoning, your reckoning—is not about selfjudgment,” she writes. “It’s about hope. It’s the beginning of the stirring up of possibility. It’s the seed of the tiniest momentum that propels you beyond the ruts you are stuck in, the routine you have so dedicatedly constructed over decades.” The author blends moments of humor—e.g., her stint at a spa that featured “daily colonics,” a liposuction episode—with memorable advice she has absorbed from 20 years working with Oprah and her innumerable guests. Salata shares how she and her good friend, who was also looking for a life change, made a commitment to support each other unconditionally, and she stresses the importance of such valuable friendships, especially later in life. The author does meander a bit—she gives readers an inside look at life with her dogs and how she went from being an employee at a convenience store to eventually snagging her dream job—but on the whole, the narrative maintains a steady beat of useful advice coupled with honesty and wit, making this an empowering read for women of all ages but especially those 50 and above who are seeking a change. Honest reflections on a life well-lived and how the next chapter looks to be even better.
ENTRENCHMENT Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies
Starr, Paul Yale Univ. (280 pp.) $28.50 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-300-23847-1
An examination of how democracies have had difficulty rising, have endured threats of all sorts (wars, economic crises), and now face new and perhaps even more ominous threats. 72
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Starr (Sociology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.; Rem edy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform, 2011, etc.), the co-founder and co-editor of American Prospect magazine and winner of both the Bancroft Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, returns with a scholarly look at “entrenchment,” which he defines as “the making of changes [in our political and social systems] that then become hard to undo and that increase the resistance to stress at the foundations of society.” His organization is conventional and historical: He defines the terms, distinguishes between various methods of and paths to entrenchment, and examines the effects of power and wealth, stories of slavery and immigration, and the power of rules established by the powerful (rules designed to retain power—e.g., the cutting of taxes on the wealthy, the control of voting rights, the appointment of like-minded judges). The author also discusses the entrenchment of—and threats to—social welfare programs, and he comments on the notion that some deserve health care and public assistance while others do not. He also looks at two dire threats: “oligarchy and populist nationalism.” Although Starr’s principal focus is the history of the United States, he also leaps across the pond occasionally to comment about similar situations in the U.K., France, Scandinavia, and other countries dealing with similar issues. He initially avoids any specific references to the current political situation in America, but by the end, he lands on Donald Trump, who “embodies this fusion of oligarchy and populism and the simultaneous pursuit of enrichment and entrenchment.” The final pages are admonitory—and apprehensive—as the author expresses a sober concern about the survival of American democracy. An erudite book featuring important concepts and convincing research, but it’s a text whose diction and political leanings will appeal primarily to like-minded academic readers.
THE KENNEDY HEIRS John, Caroline, and the New Generation—A Legacy of Triumph and Tragedy Taraborrelli, J. Randy St. Martin’s (624 pp.) $29.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-250-17406-2
The prolific celebrity biographer delivers another Kennedy family saga, this time focusing on the 29 individuals comprising the “third generation” of the famed clan. In this sprawling post-Camelot account, Taraborrelli (Jackie, Janet & Lee: The Secret Lives of Janet Auchincloss and Her Daughters Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill, 2018, etc.) details the lives of the third generation—the grandchildren of Joe and Rose Kennedy—as they have tried to live up to Kennedy values (honor, family, loyalty) while failing to cope with the murders of John F. (1963) and Bobby (1968). Growing up in families that never discussed the assassinations among themselves and offered few healing mechanisms to their children, the young
A brisk study of the history and meaning of an especially contentious punctuation mark. semicolon
SEMICOLON The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark
Watson, Cecelia Ecco/HarperCollins (224 pp.) $19.99 | Jul. 30, 2019 978-0-06-285305-9
A brisk study of the history and meaning of an especially contentious punctuation mark. What is a semicolon for? What rules guide its usage? Consensus is hard to come by. Indeed, as Watson (Language and Thinking Program/Bard Coll.) explains in this informed and witty book, efforts to pin the semicolon down have only made it slipperier. A 15th-century Venetian publisher introduced the mark at a time when punctuation was employed more loosely, to signal pauses and underscore rhythms rather than serve grammatical correctness. Since then, despite diktats from the Chicago Manual of Style and elsewhere, satisfying guidance remains fleeting. Fittingly but also a bit frustratingly, the author structures her book in a semicolon-ish way; the chapters are loosely related but not always closely connected. A history of the semicolon gives way to an extended digression on squabbles among 19th-century grammar gurus; a discussion of how semicolons impacted Boston drinking laws and a death sentence gives way to an op-ed riff on the messiness of legal interpretations; close analyses of passages by Raymond Chandler, Irvine Welsh, and Herman Melville flow into Watson’s own usage advice and critiques of the perceived snobbery of high style in general. If the author isn’t padding, she sometimes seems determined to stretch the scope of the book beyond its stated subject. Yet
from chapter to chapter, she brings a gadfly’s spirit to the proceedings, thoughtfully lobbying for written English that resists restrictions and recognizes that “rules will be, just as they always have been, inadequate to form a protective fence around English.” The value of the semicolon may be no clearer by the end. But then, it’s a form of punctuation defined by ambiguity. Sprightly and scholarly, this will appeal to grammar geeks who are patient with Watson’s free-range sensibility.
THE POWER OF HUMAN How Our Shared Humanity Can Help Us Create a Better World
Waytz, Adam Norton (272 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-393-63476-1
It’s hard work being human—and putting up with other humans. However, writes social psychologist Waytz (Northwestern Univ.), it’s necessary in the face of creeping dehumanism. In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, calls have come for increased attention to civility and empathy toward those who didn’t vote the way we did. The enmity, writes the author, comes from not “seeing human,” not admitting the humanity of the other—and never mind, as the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observed, that “the responsibility to forge unity belongs not to the denigrated but to the denigrators.” Waytz enumerates the many ways in which we regularly dehumanize the other, as drone pilots call the children they’ve bombed “fun-sized terrorists,” pornography turns sexuality into something clinical, and the like. He observes, for instance, that between 1970 and the present, the number of people who responded positively in a poll to the proposition that humans can be trusted has declined precipitously—a decline that he links, but not as closely as one might wish, to income inequality. Reversing trends of polarization and stratification will be important in maintaining any semblance of a civil society, he writes. Observing that people “behave more morally toward individuals than groups,” the author counsels applying the “power of human” of his title, working under the assumption that we are all more influential than we might think in modeling behavior—for, as he writes, “fitting in with others, by doing what they do, feels good.” Still, Waytz allows that “empathy is cognitively demanding because getting inside of another mind draws on finite working memory, our capacity to hold and process information,” which is already overtaxed. It is especially demanding on those whose work requires “emotional labor,” such as first responders, teachers, and service personnel. An interesting foray into the realm of emotional intelligence, with good questions raised if not always entirely answered.
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heirs often self-medicated with alcohol and drugs. Innumerable infidelities, confrontations, and divorces run through this soap opera, which teems with intimate views of angry, heavy-drinking matriarch Ethel, mother of Bobby’s 11 children; Ted, who kept the family together, and his wife, Joan, both “unpredictable, alcoholic parents”; and the smiling, seemingly happy children, who struggled inside, some wanting “anything other than to be Kennedys.” Taraborrelli rehashes Bobby’s son Michael’s affair with a 16-year-old babysitter; the murder conviction of Ethel’s nephew Michael Skakel; David Kennedy’s death by cocaine overdose; JFK Jr.’s death in a plane crash, and so on. “Terrible things have happened to the Kennedys,” writes the author, “sometimes by fate and circumstance, sometimes by their own volition.” Taraborrelli’s depictions of Caroline’s therapy as a child and the family’s expectation that Bobby Jr., who made drug runs to Harlem, would run for president, are unsettling. All of this is recounted against the glitz, wealth, and historical role of the family, the ever present paparazzi, the family pressure to excel, and the children’s careers in politics and other fields. No scandal or luxurious dining room goes overlooked. A doorstop of a melodrama. Kennedy die-hards will love it. (16-page color photo insert; 16-page b/w insert)
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CITY OF OMENS A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands
ELVIS IN VEGAS How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show
Werb, Dan Bloomsbury (304 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-63557-299-5
Zoglin, Richard Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-1-5011-5119-4
An epidemiologist investigates the rash of female deaths in and around Tijuana. For the past decade, Tijuana has seen a drastic uptick in crime, most notably in the deaths and suspicious disappearances of women. After completing his doctorate in epidemiology and biostatistics in 2013, Werb traveled to the city to “dive into the purgatories Tijuana could produce,” including the region’s sex trade at Zona Norte and the arid, festering River Canal area. The author began his probing examination with a visit to a needle-exchange initiative. As a white Canadian, Werb stood out as he was escorted through the toxic cityscape to meet the indigent and drug-addicted people who call the storm drainage shafts and canal tunnels home. The author’s steely focus and smooth, vivid prose make his encounters, which are often heartbreaking, come fully to life. He writes about how overdoses, murder, and rampant, untreated HIV have caused unprecedented deaths and disappearances in recent years, much akin to a surge that occurred in the late 1990s, when women vanished or were found dead by the roadsides. Illuminating the desperation of the area, Werb profiles a variety of residents—e.g., an aged sex worker participating in drug-injection studies and an elderly “shooting gallery” gatekeeper—and chronicles his collaborations with public health officials. The author also identifies known informational roadblocks, such as Tijuana’s health care bureaucracy and police and amorphous Mexican cartel syndicates. Very little of Werb’s spadework “tracking deaths backward in time” makes for easy reading, but his text shines a necessary light on Tijuana’s epidemic of “femicide” and its unrivaled drug and poverty problems. While the statistics are increasingly staggering, the author, utilizing his epidemiological expertise, was able to uncover a “new syncretic agent of death” in the form of a lethal variety of street heroin. Werb cuts through the desolation to get at the truth of the region’s vexing problem, but the solutions remain frustratingly elusive.
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In a spectacular Las Vegas show, Elvis Presley (1935-1977) revived his flagging career. Entertainment journalist Zoglin (Hope: Entertainer of the Century, 2014, etc.) uses Elvis’ 1969 comeback to recount a history of Las Vegas from 1931, when Nevada became the first state to legalize gambling, to its current iteration as a vacation destination boasting lavish, theme park–like hotels, designer shops, gourmet restaurants, blockbuster performers (Celine Dion, Elton John, and Lady Gaga, to name a few), and hightech, hugely expensive extravaganzas, such as Cirque du Soleil. Before focusing on Elvis, the author reprises stories about “the boozing, macho Rat Pack” and many other headliners who drew crowds at the city’s glitziest hotel, the Sands. “Sinatra was the king,” Zoglin writes, “Vegas’s undisputed Most Valuable Player,” selling out his shows and attracting wealthy gamblers to the casinos. The 1960s, though, saw a “seismic shift, in music as well as in the rest of the culture”; along with the advent of rock ’n’ roll and the Beatles, tumultuous political events such as Vietnam, anti-war protests, and civil rights activism all affected the Vegas strip. Elvis, too, had gone through “a rough decade… in many ways a disastrous one.” His early trajectory to fame had been interrupted by two years of military service. When he returned in 1960, at the advice of his domineering manager Col. Tom Parker, he gave up live performing, instead appearing in a spate of lackluster movies. By 1969, writes the author, both Elvis and Parker agreed that he needed to return to the concert stage—beginning with Vegas. Drawing on scores of interviews, Zoglin paints a vibrant picture of Elvis’ thrilling, electrical presence: “everyone was dumbstruck,” one woman said. “It was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen.” Elvis’ performance, writes the author, “set a new standard for Las Vegas. The star was now his own spectacle.” Sadly, success proved brief: Less than a decade later, the star was dead. An enthusiastic portrayal of an iconic performer.
children’s ALL IN A DROP How Antony van Leeuwenhoek Discovered an Invisible World
These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE FIRST by Katherine Applegate; illus. by Max Kostenko.............76
Alexander, Lori Illus. by Mildenberger, Vivien HMH Books (96 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-328-88420-6
COREY’S ROCK by Sita Brahmachari; illus. by Jane Ray..................78 LIBERTY ARRIVES! by Robert Byrd................................................... 80 SPOT & DOT by Henry Cole................................................................ 82 JUST LIKE BEVERLY by Vicki Conrad; illus. by David Hohn...........83 CAPTAIN ROSALIE by Timothée de Fombelle; illus. by Isabelle Arsenault; trans. by Sam Gordon............................. 84
ONE SHOE TWO SHOES by Caryl Hart; illus. by Edward Underwood............................................................... 89 MY TINY PET by Jessie Hartland........................................................ 89 NOT IF I CAN HELP IT by Carolyn Mackler...................................... 96 VROOM! by Barbara McClintock....................................................... 96 QUEEN OF THE SEA by Dylan Meconis.............................................97 THE MAGNIFICENT MIGRATION by Sy Montgomery; illus. by Roger Wood & Logan Wood................................................... 98 GIVE ME BACK MY BONES! by Kim Norman; illus. by Bob Kolar................................................................................ 99 GROUNDBREAKING GUYS by Stephanie True Peters; illus. by Shamel Washington...............................................................101 TALLULAH THE TOOTH FAIRY CEO by Tamara Pizzoli; illus. by Federico Fabiani....................................................................101 HARRY HOUDINI by Kjartan Poskitt; illus. by Geraint Ford..........102 STAY by Bobbie Pyron........................................................................ 103 THE MAGIC FLUTE adapt. by Chris Raschka................................... 103
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GINNY GOBLIN CANNOT HAVE A MONSTER FOR A PET by David Goodner; illus. by Louis Thomas.........................................87
In the latter half of the 17th century, Antony van Leeuwenhoek devised his first microscope by cleverly grinding a bit of glass into a nearspherical shape and mounting it into his own custom-made frame. It would change his world. By grinding his lenses nearly round, he stumbled upon the secret to creating a substantially more powerful microscope than the few then currently in use. With his ability to take a clear look into the microscopic world, he became the first to identify microbes, organisms far too small to be viewed with the naked eye. Although other scientists initially rejected the concept—and he was unwilling to share his microscope design to help them make their own discoveries—an English scientist was later able to replicate his work using his less-sophisticated microscope. Still, Antony’s groundbreaking studies seemed to spark little enthusiasm in others for further research. It would be well over 100 years later that Louis Pasteur finally realized that some microbes caused disease. As Alexander describes him, “Antony watches patiently, thinks deeply, and reports carefully.” By breaking his work down into simple, understandable steps and incorporating Mildenberger’s delicately childlike cartoon illustrations to complement the present-tense narration, this effort makes Antony’s life’s work accessible to a young audience that is sure to be intrigued and inspired. Excellent backmatter rounds out this fascinating tale. Methodical young scientists will see themselves in the “Father of Microbiology.” (Biography. 8-11)
HATS ARE NOT FOR CATS! by Jacqueline K. Rayner.................... 104 TRUMAN by Jean Reidy; illus. by Lucy Ruth Cummins.................. 104 COLORS by Shelley Rotner & Anne Woodhull; illus. by Shelley Rotner........................................................................106 BRAVE THE PAGE by Rebecca Stern; illus. by Grant Faulkner........108 YOU ARE HOME by Evan Turk.........................................................109 THE RANGER by Nancy Vo................................................................110 |
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international picture books of spring 2019 Photo courtesy Leah Overstreet
It’s the beginning of May, which means that I am in the thick of working on books that will hit the shelves in fall 2019. Before we say goodbye altogether to spring, let’s look back at some of my favorite international picture books of the season. Goliath, by Ximo Abadía. Although the author/illustrator is a Spaniard, this book comes to the U.S. from Germany. It’s a visually stunning meditation on difference and perspective. Through the experiences of protagonist Goliath, depicted as an enormous all-red figure, as he struggles to find a place for himself in the world, readers see how a shift in the way one sees oneself in relationship to others can change everything. Una Huna? What Is This?, by Susan Aglukark and illustrated by Danny Christopher and Amanda Sandland. Nunavut-based Inuit author Aglukark bases this story on her own recollections of the impingement of the West on her community’s culture and traditions. Little Ukpik is playing with her new puppy when a trading boat docks bearing goods that initially excite her but then unsettle her; it is her grandmother’s wisdom that restores her sense of balance. When Spring Comes to the DMZ, by Uk-Bae Lee and translated by Chungyon Won and Aileen Won. In this moving South Korean import, each season, elderly Grandfather visits the DMZ separating North and South Korea to look across at his unattainable homeland. As he does, he observes the plants and wildlife that flourish there and freely cross the border, offering both ironic commentary and a sense of hope. Vanishing Colors, by Constance Ørbeck-Nilsson, illustrated by Akin Duzakin, and translated by Kari Dickson. This surreal Norwegian import, illustrated by a Turkish-Norwegian artist, visits a war-torn city, juxtaposing its protagonist’s memories of peacetime with terrifying images of the current chaos. An enormous migratory bird offers both readers and protagonist a vision of the future. Read these and bring the world a little closer. —V.S. Vicky Smith is the children’s editor. 76
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THE FIRST
Applegate, Katherine Illus. by Kostenko, Max Harper/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $17.99 | May 7, 2019 978-0-06-233556-2 Series: Endling, 2 In this second installment, the dairne Byx’s quest is far from over. Applegate continues her otherworldly saga in this second installment of the Endling series. (Yes, the second book is called The First, while the first book was called The Last. Just go with it.) Here readers follow doglike Byx and her companions—humans Khara and Renzo, catlike Gambler, and the small and furry Tobble—as they attempt to find the traveling island of Tarok and, they hope, more dairnes, saving Byx from being the last of her species. Along the way, Applegate shifts focus from the first outing and uses Byx’s narration to explore Khara’s transition from a young girl to a leader. This change serves the story well, pulling readers further into the political turmoil of the land. The current reigning dictator, the Murdano, will soon be under attack by the no-less-vicious Kazar Sg’drit, who is enslaving other sentient species in his quest to build an army. Against this backdrop, Khara must rise as a leader and raise an army to stop a war even as Byx evolves from a pup to a leader in her own right. Themes of conservation, war, and human trafficking are skillfully interwoven into a world of magic and wonder. This second installment will have readers salivating for a third. Khara is explicitly described as having brown skin; absence of such specificity implies Renzo’s white. Simply sublime. (Fantasy. 8-12)
THE DRONE PURSUIT
Appleton, Victor Aladdin (144 pp.) $17.99 | $6.99 paper | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-5344-3631-2 978-1-5344-3630-5 paper Series: Tom Swift: Inventor’s Academy, 1 In a relaunch of the venerable Tom Swift series, Tom returns as a middle school student at the Swift Academy of Science and Technology, funded by his father, Tom Swift Sr., with profits from his company, Swift Enterprises. Tom and his best friend, Noah Newton, have modified and reprogrammed a drone that they test in the halls of their school between classes. But while they’re in class—watching a documentary on infamous hackers, including one who looks like their school custodian—the drone goes missing from its hiding spot. Using his VR headset, Tom tracks the drone to the custodian, so Tom and Noah enlist their pals Amy Hsu and Samantha “Sam” Watson to retrieve it from Mr. Conway’s locked room in the basement. In the process they begin to suspect the custodian
Chock full of fascinating facts about fireflies and how to help them. bug off!
is responsible for a computer virus that hit the school’s network—which is tied into the servers at Swift Enterprises. The relatively simplistic mystery rests on red herrings and functions as a setup for fun scenes of sneaking about and even-more-fun drone-chase sequences. Though some parts of the story don’t withstand lengthy scrutiny, the overall quick pace and focus on the child protagonists make it an accessible choice for reluctant readers. With the relatively low stakes, this realistic update doesn’t rely on nostalgia. Tom and Sam present white; Noah presents black, and Amy presents Asian. A kid-friendly aspirational series relaunch. (Science fiction. 8-12)
BUG OFF! A Story of Fireflies and Friendship
Birney, Betty G. Putnam (144 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-5247-3997-3 Series: According to Og the Frog, 2
A gentle read that delivers a frog’seye view of the world. Og the frog and the students of Longfellow School are back again for another interspecies romp. Og monitors the goings-on of Room 26 with amphibious aplomb as he observes the interpersonal struggles and social challenges faced by the students. Fans of Birney’s According to Humphrey series will recognize several plot points from Trouble According to Humphrey (2007), this time written from Og’s perspective. Og takes a cue from his fellow class pet, hamster Humphrey, and tries to make a positive impact on the students he comes to know. Inspired to
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Best, Cari Illus. by Plecas, Jennifer Farrar, Straus and Giroux (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-374-38062-5
EXPLORING ACCORDING TO OG THE FROG
Lessons about friendship and inclusion complement lessons about insects and bugs when Maude tries to join Louise’s Bug-of-the-Month Club. Maude is new to country life, and she is fascinated and delighted to see her first lightning bugs. “They sparkle like little firecrackers,” she says, “but without all the noise.” Maude is undaunted when she learns that the first step to auditioning for neighbor Louise’s club is to prepare a speech about a bug. She happily researches fireflies at the library and presents a wellresearched speech to Louise and the other club members. From the start, only Louise acts cool toward Maude. That coolness evolves into hostility when Louise insists that the other members list all the reasons that fireflies are not technically bugs… and then summarily releases Maude’s 11 coddled fireflies. Sweetnatured Maude channels her anger at Louise into an inspired campaign to protect fireflies, and by the end of the story, even Louise has become an ardent champion of the cause. This is more an illustrated story than a picture book, with a text chock full of fascinating facts about fireflies and how to help them. The cartoonlike children exhibit various skin tones, hair types, and eye shapes, and they are set against uncluttered, pleasant outdoor backgrounds; Maude has beige skin and extremely curly brown hair while Louise’s skin is pale and her blonde hair is straight. Both text and art evoke the best of Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts,” with a 21st-century, environmentalist twist. (Picture book. 5-9)
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A tale lyrically told, dressed in sublime illustrations. corey ’s rock
explore by tales of human and frog adventurers, Og manages to make forays outside of his tank in between helping children. Og even spends several weekends at the home of principal Mr. Morales and his family, who sprinkle some Spanish words into their dialogue. No other clues around culture or ethnicity are given for the Morales family—or other characters in the story— so readers are left to guess at the significance of this addition. Og encounters several students who show characteristics of neurodiversity, and he accepts and encourages them when their teachers do not. Punctuated by Og’s froggy songs and poems as well as homespun wisdom from his very own Granny Greenleaf, the story hops along at a familiar pace. Readers craving more about Room 26 will enjoy the green frog with a heart of gold. (Fantasy. 7-11)
COREY’S ROCK
Brahmachari, Sita Illus. by Ray, Jane Otter-Barry (96 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2019 978-1-91095-997-8
Traversing the territory of grief, young Isla and her parents seek renewal in change. Isla clings to her parents while they toss petals into the sea, one for each year of the five that her brother, Corey, was alive, after they move to the small Scottish island where her mother grew up. Isla dreams of the selkie, imprinted in her psyche from the selkie story her dad has told her. It, the ocean, and Corey converge in her dreams, as she feels lost in her grief. Isla and her father walk along the beach each day to her new school, and they stop to sit on Corey’s rock each time they pass it. Isla resents having left Edinburgh to start a new life without Corey and her friends. But on her first day of school, she meets her first new friend, Magnus, who welcomes her warmly while other new classmates (all are white) quiz her on her origins: “But where are you really from?” The child of an interracial marriage, Isla is biracial, with a white mother and a black father, both Scots. Brahmachari delicately weaves selkie lore into Isla’s free-verse narration as she considers identity and grief, while Ray’s delicate watercolors seamlessly transition between folklore and real life. A tale lyrically told, dressed in sublime illustrations that brilliantly depict the fragility and beauty of life, lost in the landscape where myth and sea converge. (Verse/fiction. 9-12)
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RABBIT, HARE, AND BUNNY
Broder, Robert Illus. by Langdo, Bryan Ripple Grove (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-9990249-6-6
“Rabbit is neat [and] Hare is organized,” but Bunny is messy, loud, and inconsiderate, which makes for a tough co-living arrangement. Rabbit and Hare use devices to listen to their favorite music privately while Bunny dances around the house loudly strumming his banjo. Bunny neglects his share of household chores, leaving the others to pick up the slack. He interrupts them when they have visitors and makes noise when they need to concentrate, and he hogs their shared facilities. Frustrated and exasperated, his roommates ask Bunny to leave. Bunny moves back home with his parents, but the readjustment is difficult. Rabbit and Hare’s search for a new roommate is just as unsuccessful. They discover they miss one another, so Bunny moves back in with a better attitude, and Hare and Rabbit are more tolerant of his quirks. These anthropomorphic leporidae present as male young adults. Their appearances and personalities are distinct and amusing in Langdo’s bright ink-and-watercolor illustrations, complementing and enhancing the text with detailed vignettes of the action. Broder keeps the tone light in this gentle lesson in tolerance, consideration, and getting along. But the concept of living with roommates instead of their families will probably be foreign to many young readers and outside their developmental comfort zones; these are not child stand-ins à la Frog and Toad but rather young, independent adults. A sweet tale but not in the audience’s developmental wheelhouse. (Picture book. 7-9)
MICHAEL COLLINS
Buckley Jr., James Aladdin (160 pp.) $17.99 | $6.99 paper | Aug. 27, 2019 978-1-5344-2480-7 978-1-5344-2479-1 paper Series: Discovering History’s Heroes A profile of Apollo 11’s pilot as a hero who “just did his job.” Buckley’s account is shot through with references to working, having jobs to do, and tackling “chore after chore.” It covers Collins’ testpilot and astronaut trainings, his experiences in space both in Gemini 10 and as the third man aboard Apollo 11 (where, at times, in lunar orbit, “he was the most isolated person in human history”), plus later gigs as writer, artist, and Smithsonian administrator. Though pointedly noting that NASA didn’t hire an astronaut of color until 1967 nor a woman until 1978, the author generally steers clear of controversy, even quoting Armstrong’s line as “That’s one small step for a man” without comment. He
also presupposes so little prior knowledge from his intended audience that along with minimizing technical details he feels compelled to explain who Adam and Charlie Brown are. With the lack of illustrations further distancing modern readers from events, the resulting narrative reads as a bland tribute, particularly next to Bea Uusma Schyffert’s lively The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon (2003) and Collins’ own memoir for younger readers, Flying to the Moon and Other Strange Places (1976; republished in 2019 as Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut’s Story). Serviceable but sparkless. (endnotes, bibliography) (Biography. 9-11)
MOONLOCKET
Bunzl, Peter Jolly Fish Press (384 pp.) $12.99 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-1-63163-375-1 paper Series: Cogheart Adventures, 2 Robert, Lily, and Lily’s mechanimal wind-up fox, Malkin, have been living together since the adventures that killed Robert’s father and revealed Lily’s mechanical heart (Cogheart, 2018). Lily is practically Robert’s family, and he has nearly settled down to that reality, but how can he completely when there are so many questions about his own life? Where is his mother, Selena, who vanished when Robert was just a baby? Why is vicious escapologist and diamond thief Jack Door on the lam from prison, lurking around the ruins of Robert’s old home? Why is Jack so interested in Selena? Perhaps Robert can find some answers in a half-moon locket he discovers, a portrait of
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Celebrated
GRAPHIC NOVELS Ages 13-18 PB: $9.99 Ages 9-14 PB: $11.99
“Grossly fabulous.” —starred, Kirkus
“Heartfelt and heartwarming.” —starred, Kirkus
MK208-0519
Celebrating 60 years
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his mother within and odd letters engraved on the moon’s face. Lily is always happy to help, especially if it means dangerous adventuring aboard zeppelins with inadequate adult supervision. There are plenty of cinematic adventures in this seemingly all-white Victorian England (including a death-defying drop from the skies and a well-paced sewage flood), and there’s enough information for readers to decrypt some of the codes. With lots of thrilling dashing about, fleeing from blackguards, and enjoyable wordplay, this should satisfy genre fans. You know it’s a “tockingly” good steampunk mystery when the dastardly escaped criminals who stole from Queen Victoria are somehow connected to the hero’s mysterious, long-lost mother. (glossary) (Fantasy. 10-13)
A GOOD TEAM
Burnell, Heather Ayris Illus. by Quintanilla, Hazel Scholastic (64 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-338-32905-6 978-1-338-32904-9 paper Series: Unicorn and Yeti, 2 Pals Unicorn and Yeti return for a second, teamwork-filled adventure! In the first of three short chapters, Yeti, who is good at kicking, invites Unicorn to play ball. As it turns out, Unicorn is not so good at kicking. Unicorn thinks they’re better at bouncing, but, sadly, the ball just gets stuck on their horn. When Yeti pulls the ball off the horn—POP!—the ball turns into a ring. The pair maintains their positivity by switching to a ring-toss game. In subsequent chapters, Unicorn and Yeti try a racing game (once they can agree on the method) and ice skating (once Unicorn figures out bipedal movement). Throughout, they stay on message: The best fun happens with strengths-based collaboration. Excluding a sentence that sets the scene and a short narrative action sequence, the majority of the story is told through dialogue. As with the first book, dialogue is color-coded (purple for Yeti; orange for Unicorn). The comic-book format mixes panel shapes and sizes, at most six per double-page spread. Repetitive dialogue helpfully recycles phrases and never exceeds three short sentences per speech bubble. Some words are bolded for emphasis. Yeti is identified with the masculine pronoun, but Unicorn is ungendered. Quintanilla’s colorful, expressive art and Burnell’s infectiously whimsical tone make their own good team. The final page includes instructions on how to draw Yeti and a short creative prompt. More sparkly, delightfully silly fun for Unicorn and Yeti fans. (Graphic early reader. 4- 7)
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LIBERTY ARRIVES! How America’s Grandest Statue Found Her Home
Byrd, Robert Illus. by the author Dial (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-7352-3082-8
Lady Liberty’s arrival almost didn’t happen. Intended as a 100th-birthday gift from France, the statue was the brainchild of a French judge who envisioned a symbol of friendship between the two nations and hired sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi to create it. After choosing its New York Harbor site, he fashioned numerous, ever larger models and chose copper for its light weight. Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel devised an “iron skeleton” to support Liberty, and then the completed statue was exhibited in Paris; parts of it had already been shown in the States. A pedestal was designed—with no funds to build it. Nonetheless, Bartholdi had the statue’s pieces shipped in crates to America nine years after the centennial. Finally, Joseph Pulitzer successfully encouraged Americans to donate; Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” was initially written as a fundraiser. In a crowded field, Byrd’s signature narrative and artistic styles elevate this effort. Pages with type set in newspaperlike double columns feature outsized, capitalized headlines and datelines denoting years and places. Spreads include masterly ink-and-watercolor illustrations with details that invite readers to pore over artwork. The author’s awestruck writing, featuring punchy, taut sentences, makes for fast-paced reading, as do dramatic page turns, and it emphasizes the grandeur of the enterprise; fascinating, quirky facts abound. In most illustrations, persons default white. A book worthy of the statue herself. (measurements, timeline, facts about the statue and historical figures, author’s note, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-11)
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD?
Ed. by Carle, Eric Godwin Books/Henry Holt (40 pp.) $18.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-1-250-29514-9 Fourteen renowned author/illustrators share musings about their favorite foods. In this follow-up to What’s Your Favorite Color (2017), a variety of children’s-book creators present one double-page spread each about their favorite meal, snack, or dessert. Each is done in the artist’s characteristic style, from Dan Santat’s close attention to detail to Isabelle Arsenault’s painterly presentation. The text varies significantly as well. Some entries are brief, like Misa Saburi’s entry on strawberry daifuku: “Mochi stuffed with
The text is cordial and playful. little juniper makes it big
/ sweet azuki paste / and a fresh strawberry / is quite magical!” Others are more informative, like Eric Carle’s opening description of tannen honig, or pine honey, and some are funny, like Laurie Keller’s assertion that French fries come from the sun. Greg Pizzoli inserts a sly admonition to vegetarianism, saying that “what I like most of all / is that nothing in my bowl / had parents.” The final two pages show photographs of the authors (majority white and also majority women) as children with their biographies. While this collection is enjoyable enough, it remains to be seen whether children will be curious enough about the topic (especially given children’s general lack of name recognition) to warrant rereading. Good for young audiences and their grown-ups looking for something quick, enjoyable, but not too filling. (Picture book/poetry. 5-8)
LITTLE JUNIPER MAKES IT BIG
Cassie, Aidan Illus. by the author Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-374-31045-5
A youngster deals with the persistent impatience that attends wanting to grow bigger. Juniper, an anthropomorphic raccoon with two parents, does not like being little, so she is frustrated when, “three days later,” her mother’s assurances to have “patience” don’t pay off. Feeling dwarfed by objects around her house, she goes on a spree, building height-extenders to fix her dilemma, manifested in a succession of hard-to-reach cookie jars (of which there are a surprising number for one raccoon family). At school, Juniper feels more at ease because there, she is “average.” She makes friends with a new student, Clove, and is impressed by the squirrel’s acrobatics, which make up for her diminutive size.
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Inevitably readers will dawdle and dream about each tiny circumstance. spot & dot
Clove invites her to a sleepover, and it turns out that a young raccoon is about the size of adult squirrels, so Juniper loves being “adult-size” in a house where she can easily reach the box of cookies on the top shelf. But there are some drawbacks, like how “hide-and-seek [is] unexpectedly quick.” Juniper returns home with a new appreciation for things as they are. The text is cordial and playful, including alliteration for her various inventions that all “fell short.” Cassie’s drawings resemble black pen and watercolors. Most of the items populating the friendly cast of woodland creatures’ homes are all-natural, aligning with the woodsy color palette. Fetching in words and pictures, this story shows how sometimes all one needs is a growth in perspective. (Picture book. 4-8)
DANCING WITH DAISY
Coates, Jan L. Illus. by Bisaillon, Josée Running the Goat (44 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-927917-20-6
In 1962, Hurricane Daisy hit Nova Scotia. When Liam asks about an old photo, Grampy, with his bald pate and white beard, begins to spin a tall tale. “There’s a story goes along with that photograph, a story about a nasty, wild girl in search of a dance partner.” Grampy narrates his encounter with the storm, personified as a forceful woman. Ghostly hands and a spectral body whirl through the multimedia illustrations, with crayon and paint creating eddies of movement in the scenes. Liam probes about the experience’s effects: Grampy’s twisty hands, lack of hair, loss of teeth. His grandpa explains that Daisy tried to take hold of his hands while he clung to a tree, making his hands “as gnarled and crooked as that branch.” Then “her army of seagulls plucked me like a daisy” (causing Liam to recall a “mean” hair-pulling female classmate). Even after Grampy returns home, Daisy still pursues him, “wailing like a jealous banshee” before Nana successfully fends her off. There’s an appealingly close bond between Grampy and Liam (and both child and grandparents present white in the illustrations), but while the folkloric text sweeps readers along with its playful allusions, the persistent evocation of Daisy as both woman and threat palls. As Grampy draws to a close, Liam says, “I hope I never meet a wild girl like that!” Family history and legendary exploits in a memorable setting, but the remarks about the dangerous behaviors of women and girls pile up. (Picture book. 6-8)
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SPOT & DOT
Cole, Henry Illus. by the author Little Simon/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-1-5344-2555-2 A cat trails a runaway dog on a gleeful sprint through a bustling city. Just as Spot (the cat) sees a new neighbor kid pinning up a “Lost Dog” poster, the feline also notices that very dog (Dot) pawing through trash down the street. When Dot takes off, Spot decides to follow. Keeping up with them in Cole’s staggeringly detailed urban scenes couldn’t be more breathlessly fun— or more challenging. Squinting eyes inevitably settle on myriad vignettes embedded within the double-page, full-bleed, blackand-white spreads of exacting ink crosshatches and linework. Life happens everywhere (in apartment windows, at the bakery, on the street, inside the library, at the dog park, in the flea market). People and animals wave, sneer, smile, pull, lift, doze, fetch, paint, read, and wag and flick tails within these wonderfully congested urban scenes. Interpreting quotidian moments as a voyeur feels immensely pleasurable, and inevitably readers will dawdle and dream about each tiny circumstance—but then remember Spot and Dot and get back to work looking for the oval markings on the creatures’ flanks that distinguish them from all the other cats and dogs. So many cats and dogs! When they both return home, there’s palpable relief on their owners’ faces and in readers’ hearts. An extraordinary search-and-find that delivers the hum and intrigue found in a city’s multitudes and also the singular feeling of returning to one’s individual place in the world. (Picture book. 4-10)
WHAT DOES AN ANTEATER EAT?
Collins, Ross Illus. by the author Nosy Crow/Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5362-0591-6 A peckish anteater wonders what to nosh on…. An anteater wakes up hungry, sets off to find some yums, and comes upon a sloth. “Good morning. I know this sounds odd, but do you happen to know what an anteater eats?” The lazing sloth says it’s too busy to answer, so the anteater moves on. A toucan suggests the anteater have some watermelon, but the anteater’s mouth is too small. A lumpy python with a rather nauseated look on its face confesses it doesn’t know but advises chewing food well. An alligator offers old fish (which is “delicious”)…the anteater declines. The bats are too busy hunting dinner to help, and the cheetah thinks the anteater looks yummy. When the anteater finally asks some seriously busy ants what to eat, their panicked response says everything… kind of. The ants flee, and the anteater enjoys the bananas
they were carrying back to their hill. Collins’ cartoon illustrations in watercolor and charcoal are bright and engaging. Ants march along the bottoms of most double-page spreads as the anteater moves through a generic forest landscape looking to find breakfast. Listeners will giggle all the way through because they know the answer. The text is made up entirely of dialogue, the anteater’s set in boldface roman type and the other animals’ in italics. The silliness should have little listeners asking for repeat readings. (Picture book. 2-6)
JUST LIKE BEVERLY A Biography of Beverly Cleary
Dinos plow, fertilize, harvest, herd, pick, pull, pack, and build on the farm. The prehistoric crew from Dinosaur Pirates! (2017) and its predecessors fire up the farm machinery and roar off to tend fields and livestock, put up fence posts, lay down fertilizer, and, when the time comes, gather in a bountiful harvest of lambs and piggies, fruits and veggies to display at a “farm show.” To jagged lines of alliterative text that are big on sound effects—“Dirty dinosaurs digging, digging up the muddy carrots. The muddy carrots to be washed and weighed. Clatter! Clatter! Clatter!”—Dale pairs rural scenes crowded with modern farm animals seemingly unfazed by the more or less humansized dinos who, many sporting impressive dentifrices as well
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Conrad, Vicki Illus. by Hohn, David Little Bigfoot/Sasquatch (48 pp.) $18.99 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-1-63217-222-8 Series: Growing to Greatness
DINOSAUR FARM!
Dale, Penny Illus. by the author Nosy Crow/Candlewick (32 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-7636-9936-9
A picture-book biography that illustrates how Beverly Cleary created art from her life. Beverly grew up on a farm near Yamhill, Oregon, feeding the chickens—her friends in lieu of nearby playmates. As she grew, books became her close companions, and the few she had, her mother read to her repeatedly. Beverly’s hunger for new stories prompted her mother to start a children’s library in town. The family moved to Portland when Beverly was 6, and there she finally had playmates. She started school at Fernwood Grammar School, but as a struggling reader and a left-handed writer, Beverly found first grade challenging and unpleasant. She fell further behind when she got smallpox and finished first grade barely able to read. But a wonderful second-grade teacher helped her learn to read and to enjoy school, which changed everything. This informative and visually appealing account of Beverly Cleary’s path to children’s librarian and then author includes humorous details from her childhood that found their ways into the tales of her beloved characters. Cleary was determined to pursue the profession she had dreamed of since childhood, as explained in the backmatter and timeline. Hohn captures her lively spirit through illustrations, reminiscent of those by Alan Tiegreen for Cleary’s own books, that will keep young readers entertained. All characters depicted are white. A loving and informative tribute worthy of celebrating Cleary’s 103rd year of life. (Picture book/biography. 5-10)
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as a dazzling array of skin colors and patterns, are hard at work all around. It’s a little odd to see relatively tiny, toothy theropods operating relatively large farm equipment, but once readers become used to it, it’s hard not to get a chuckle out of two reptilian farmers trading waves as they till their neighboring fields. Two little pigs sneak out of the pen in the first full scene, and readers will enjoy spying them in unlikely places in the subsequent ones. Labeled galleries fore and aft identify both the 10 dinosaurs and the nine types of harvesters and other heavy machines that feature in the illustrations. Both dinophiles and lovers of big machines will dig this natural storytime companion to Frann Preston-Gannon’s Dinosaur Farm (2014). (Picture book. 3-6)
CAPTAIN ROSALIE
de Fombelle, Timothée Illus. by Arsenault, Isabelle Trans. by Gordon, Sam Candlewick (64 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-5362-0520-6
A young child undertakes a “secret mission” while her father is away at war. First published from a French original in the 2015 collection The Great War: Stories Inspired by Items from the First World War but presented here in a small, neatly formatted volume with new illustrations, the tale features 5½-year-old Rosalie, who spends her days at the back of the one-room school while her mother is off at work. The older children and the teacher, a veteran who’s lost an arm, think she’s just dreaming and drawing pictures, but she’s actually engaged in a mission: “One day I’ll be awarded a medal for this. It’s already gleaming deep within me.” The nature of that mission comes clear one day when she sneaks home and discovers that she can finally read for herself the letters her father had been sending from the front—but instead of the optimistic, loving missives her mother had been “reading” to her, she discovers them to be dark cries of anguish and despair. That very day a final letter arrives…from the Ministry of War, with a medal enclosed. Rather than end with that crushingly ironic twist, though, de Fombelle leaves Rosalie smiling, through her tears, at a friend and regarding the medal not as a dead thing but something alive. The bright red hair of Rosalie and her mother seems to glow in the gray, wintry light of Arsenault’s village scenes, likewise offering hints of life and warmth even in the face of terrible loss. Everyone in view is white. A spare tale likely to engender deep, complex responses. (Historical fiction. 10-14)
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THE PENNYPACKERS GO ON VACATION
Doan, Lisa Illus. by Kissi, Marta Roaring Brook (272 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-250-15411-8
A young boy vacations on a boat full of misfits. Growing up with a miserly father, Charlie Pennypacker has never taken a real vacation outside the staged ones in their backyard. Over time this embarrassment cost him his best friend, Gunter, who exposed his fake vacations to his classmates. After his profligate lawyer mom demands a real family trip, his father surprisingly complies, booking a Disney cruise in the Caribbean. But when they arrive it turns out not to be Disney but a “Wisney Cruise,” a worn-down fishing boat staffed by a less-than-enthusiastic staff. To Charlie’s chagrin, Gunter also appears. It turns out Charlie’s dad agreed to babysit Gunter for $30 a day. Just when it seems things can’t get worse, Charlie and Gunter witness ship’s captain Wisner narrowly escaping two men in black suits who threaten they’ll catch up to him eventually. Suspecting the mob, the former friends temporarily set aside their differences to find out Wisner’s troubles. Doan sets up a promising adventure with plenty of extreme personalities and outlandish situations. Unfortunately each player ends up defined by their quirks, disallowing any growth or a chance for readers to enjoy the humor in the situation. Charlie, his family, and the captain are illustrated as white while Gunter is biracial, with a Korean dad and (default-white) German mom. A misadventure that misses the boat. (Fiction. 9-12)
PAINT THE TOWN PINK
Doody, Lori Illus. by the author Running the Goat (40 pp.) $12.95 paper | Jul. 10, 2019 978-1-927917-21-3
A town flocks together to welcome an unexpected fuchsia visitor. Rose, a new flamingo in town, travels through the pages “in search for a flock of her own.” Her bright color makes her a good fit in a bridal party. Her flair allows Rose to be admitted in a flamenco dance troupe. And the flamingo’s iconic standing position qualifies her for a yoga class. As Rose searches for a family, readers are prompted to see which of Rose’s qualities make her both fit into each particular group and stand apart from them. Although she’s a good candidate for multiple groups, “none of them felt quite right.” The whole town becomes invested in making Rose a part of their flock, and townsfolk begin, as the title indicates, painting it pink to make the flamingo feel welcome in their society. Pink foods, pink yarns, and pink landmarks are all part
There is excellent research here. union made
of the town’s efforts to maintain their most “flamboyant” visitor as a permanent resident. Doody’s (Mallard Mallard, Moose, 2018, etc.) playful illustrations elicit sympathy from readers as Rose searches for a place to belong, delicately lined cartoons depicting the multiracial residents of this small Newfoundland city interacting with the bird. The backmatter, although concise, provides interesting facts about flamingos such as their life span and the origin of their pinkish hue. A heartening, sweet, and distinctive look at one unusual migrant’s successful quest for a new home. (Picture book. 3- 7)
LAIR OF THE BEAST
Epstein, Adam Jay Imprint (256 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-250-14695-3 Series: Snared, 2
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A young prince sets out on a quest for a legendary beast to save his kingdom from an army of evil mages in this sequel to Snared: Escape to the Above (2018). Wily Snare, former dungeon trapsmith–turned–heir to the throne of Panthasos, defeated the Infernal King with his ragtag group of adventurer friends and long-lost mother, but war still threatens. Stalag, the evil cavern mage who raised Wily, plots to unleash a force of indestructible stone golems across the land. If Wily is to have a positive legacy, he must find someone to tame Palojax, the only beast able to overpower the golems. All odds stand against Wily, and the fear of failure weighs heavily on his shoulders. Valor Pelage, a Quellmaster of the Roamabouts, joins the quest to protect the animals of Panthasos. Epstein pits her against elf Odette, the other “alpha female” in the party. The heavily plot-driven story shoves the characters from one conveniently solved conflict to the next on a journey that feels like a drawn-out travel montage. As in the first book, the final fight has a hasty resolution, and once again, Stalag escapes capture, which hints that more battles are to come in future books. Wily presents white while Valor has olive skin; Odette is pale with blue hair. A tiresome errand that lacks the satirical charm that started the series. (Fantasy. 8-12)
A Jewish immigrant, Gompers had learned cigar-making in his London home and continued to work at this trade as an adult in the U.S. His interest in unions sprang from his experiences with fraternal organizations and his growing convictions that “the only way to improve working conditions was peacefully within the capitalist system.” In 1881, Gompers helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (later reorganized into the AFL), which promoted the eight-hour day, limitations on child and convict labor, cash payments for salaries, and strict immigration laws, a policy that Gompers strongly believed in and the irony of which receives scant comment from Finkelstein. In this fact-filled but interpretation-light account, Sam Gompers was a workaholic and a person who loved public speaking. Readers get little sense of Gompers as a person, and they may struggle with his dismissive attitude toward unskilled workers, his realpolitik approach to race, and his hypocrisy toward immigrants. There is excellent research here, but the lackluster writing, the double-column format, and the hazy quality of some of the black-and-white archival photos produce an unexciting volume; some gaps in the index further limit its use.
UNION MADE Labor Leader Samuel Gompers and His Fight for Workers’ Rights
Finkelstein, Norman H. Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills (112 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-62979-638-3
A biography of Samuel Gompers, leader of the American Federation of Labor. |
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Offers much-needed mirrors for black and brown children. sweet dreams, zaza
This comprehensive but pedestrian biography will be fairly useful for school reports but is unlikely to inspire 21st-century labor activists. (author’s note, timeline, source notes, bibliography, index) (Biography. 11-14)
SWEET DREAMS, ZAZA
Freeman, Mylo Illus. by the author Clavis (24 pp.) $14.95 | Aug. 15, 2019 978-1-60537-461-1 Series: Zaza
As effectively as Good Night Moon and Grandfather Twilight, this book will help children get ready for sleep. When it’s Zaza’s bedtime, her six stuffed-animal friends get individual attention as she tucks them in for the night. George Giraffe is so long he requires two beds, over which Zaza stretches his soft blue body out for a rest. The spotted and flowered Bobby gets a tummy tickle; Mo, the snake, hears a song; and Pinkie, the rabbit, gets cuddled. Red bear Rosie, Zaza’s favorite, receives the most special attention. All of this love gets showered back on Zaza when Mommy enters. Mother and daughter both have deep brown skin and natural hair. Zaza’s afro puffs encircle her head, and Mommy wears a full Afro— offering much-needed mirrors for black and brown children. Despite the quietude of this good-night story, the bold, solidcolored, bright background for each image and the contrasting busy patterns on the stuffed animals and Zaza’s bedspread make it feel like a wide-awake story until the final, soothingpink background lulls readers to sleep. Observant children will also notice that the eyes of the stuffed animals open and close— suggesting that they might be as alive as Zaza. A wonderful depiction of a daily bedtime ritual for a family that happens to be black. (Picture book. 2-4)
SUPERNATURAL HERO
Gadot, Eran Illus. by Krac, Salit Trans. by Kahn-Hoffmann, Gilah Beyond Words Publishing (176 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-58270-688-7 Remarkably, this ghost story is much sadder before Andy’s grandfather dies than afterward. This middle-grade fantasy opens by showing the full pain of losing someone to cancer. At the funeral, in a lovely moment, Andy thinks, “I can’t tell if they’re all crying for Grandpa or if other people have died as well and they’re also being buried today. I don’t dare ask anyone.” But when Grandpa comes back as a spirit, the book turns instantly hopeful. He’s smiling, and he promises never to leave his grandson. The 86
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change in tone works surprisingly well at first, but in its later chapters, the book becomes a comic adventure, with Grandpa giving Andy tips on how to woo his crush, and then, abruptly, a thriller, complete with an evil phantom who threatens said crush. This figure appears and, literally, disappears with so little warning that the novel turns into a cartoon, but Krac’s surreal, smudged gray-black drawings are so disturbing that they add a whole layer of menace to the story. Unfortunately, they don’t make the underwritten love interest any less of a cliché (or the cast less uniformly white). Gadot leaves too many plot points unexplained—perhaps to set up later books in the trilogy—but in its slowest, most nuanced scenes, this story about ghosts shows the entire richness of life. A paranormal that’s at its best when it’s real. (Supernatu ral adventure. 8-12)
STAR STORIES Constellation Tales from Around the World Ganeri, Anita Illus. by Wilx, Andy Running Press (96 pp.) $19.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-7624-9505-4
A collection of international stories about the stars, retold by veteran children’s author Ganeri. In this unusual compendium, Ganeri gathers traditional stories about the cosmos from across six continents. Unlike other star-lore collections that focus solely on ancient Greek folklore and nomenclature, Ganeri features tales from Inuit, Incan, Maori, Sumerian, and other societies, occasionally highlighting the names of constellations as they are known from that culture’s perspective. Each story is introduced by a brief contextualizing paragraph and is accompanied by illustrations from multidisciplinary artist Wilx, whose work employs bold outlines and rich colors. Laudable in its scope, the collection reminds young readers that the stars were not only observed from a Western vantage—for example, the three stars that ancient Greeks saw as Orion’s Belt are known to Tongans as “Alotulu, ‘three in a boat,’ ” and Orion himself was known as Osiris to ancient Egyptians. However, Ganeri’s narrative style fails to captivate over the 23 tales, and there are no appendices on further reading and reference materials. Many Indigenous oral traditions place high significance on the storyteller’s sources and ability to contextualize tales; these aspects are notably absent. Like a meteor shower on an overcast night, this book’s dazzling premise is ultimately obscured by a few fatal flaws. (Folktales. 6-11)
GINNY GOBLIN CANNOT HAVE A MONSTER FOR A PET
Goodner, David Illus. by Thomas, Louis HMH Books (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-544-76416-3
HIDE AND SEEK
Green, Katie May Illus. by the author Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-7636-9606-1
The slightly spooky dark-haired twins of Green’s Seen and Not Heard (2015) return for a moonlit romp. “Right at the top / of Shiverhawk Hall / live children in pictures / on the wall. / Peeking out, woken gently / by a midsummer moon, / they spot something strange / about their room: / the twins have vanished / from their picture frame!” And so begins a lively midnight game of hide-and-seek and youthful shenanigans. The frolicking seekers are accompanied by a menagerie of critters. A sly black cat, a little brown dog, a trio of white mice, and a pair of owls participate in the fun. The book invites poring over every detail: statues that appear to move, the mice playing their own game of hide-and-seek, and clothing that becomes gradually dirtier as the night wears on.
SCOUTS
Greenland, Shannon Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown (272 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-316-52478-0 Sixth grade is out, and Annie is about to have the camping adventure of a lifetime with her three best friends. The Scouts have been friends since kindergarten, but Annie’s mom isn’t happy that she only hangs out with boys. Beans is a near genius with a burdensome secret. Handsome Fynn has started to like girls. Rocky is coping with his widower dad’s entry into the dating market. Their friend group is under stress, and Annie feels jealous of Fynn’s older cousin, Scarlett, who has tagged along on their trip. But when they witness a UFO crash in the woods near their campsite, they get their problems moving, hoping the adventure will strengthen their relationships. They encounter bat-infested caves, a near drowning, a black bear, a human skeleton, and a stranger named Edge as they seek the mysterious silver object and try to resolve their growing pains. A stereotypical hillbilly family known as the Mason Mountain Clan and a wrongheaded legend about Cherokee gold are two of the weaker storylines in the meandering tale. With a Cherokee mom, biracial Annie knows to call out that legend, but neither her heritage nor Rocky’s (his mom was Vietnamese) is explored in any depth, and the book otherwise adheres to a white default. This adventure tale about a UFO, set in 1985 Tennessee, sensitively explores the changing nature of adolescent friendships—but its subplots not so much. (Historical fiction. 8-12)
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The lovable, green-skinned imp has returned following her introduction in Ginny Goblin Is Not Allowed to Open This Box (2018). The first page establishes the fact that Ginny Goblin loves animals and that goats are among her favorites. The grinning, big-eyed toddler stands atop a similarly featured goat. The page turn reveals why goats are not good house pets: Five comical goats are wreaking havoc in a dining room. The fun begins when the narrator naively says, “Maybe if we help Ginny Goblin find a pet, she’ll stop trying to herd goats through the house.” The art perfectly complements the imaginative, absurd text, as Ginny— defying authority—tries to acquire a pet through such means as a bear trap, military tank, submarine, and rocket ship. No hermit crab or bunny for her! Just enough shiver accompanies the text and comical art’s introductions to such creatures as a kraken, a dragon, a basilisk, and a space monster. Even as Ginny is depicted doing the things she is not allowed to do, the text poses the frightful consequences: “If Ginny took her basilisk to school for show-and-tell, her whole class would turn into statues.” The text further accommodates little ones by frequently invoking the title; its tongue-in-cheek humor and clever wordplay will keep more sophisticated readers engaged. The surprise ending will elicit both a smile and a wink from all. Ginny is becoming a symbol of toddler power. (Picture book. 3- 7)
Young audiences will love playing spot-the-twins (those huge white hair bows are hard to miss), who can be seen peering out from their hiding places in each double-page spread. The impish children, dressed in old-world finery, are reminiscent of Sendak’s child characters, with rounded, slightly overlarge heads atop stout bodies. The digitally colored mixed-media artwork of soft and hazy dark blues and purples sets the atmosphere for late-night fun and games in the deliciously creepy setting. The children are all shown as white. Just the thing for a rainy day lap-sit storytime. (Picture book. 3-8)
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DUMPSTER DOG!
Gutman, Colas Illus. by Boutavant, Marc Trans. by Charette, Allison M. & Bedrick, Claudia Zoe Enchanted Lion Books (64 pp.) $14.95 | $8.95 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-59270-235-0 978-1-59270-252-7 paper Series: Adventures of Dumpster Dog A homeless dog is on a mission to find an owner in this first entry of a chapter-book series from France. Dumpster Dog is smelly, looks like an old rug, and can’t tell left from right. This pup of indeterminate breed may not be very smart, but he has a kind heart. Dumpster Dog shares his garbage can with his friend Flat Cat, who was run over as a kitten and is indeed flat. When Dumpster Dog expresses his longing for an owner, Flat Cat encourages the down-on-his-luck pooch to go out into the world and find one (along with a bicycle pump “to re-inflate” his feline pal). Like his fan club of flies, misadventure follows Dumpster Dog everywhere. Just when the hapless Dumpster Dog thinks he’s found his owner, the man takes him to the butcher to be made into sausage. Fortunately, Dumpster Dog isn’t very appealing! (But the poodle and basset hound are destined for somebody’s dinner, a detail the text elides.) He escapes only to come up against a trio of greedy, burgling kidnappers. Can Dumpster Dog save the day? And will Flat Cat ever be reinflated? Independent readers will delight in Dumpster Dog’s tongue-in-cheek escapades; the book is also suitable as a chapter-per-night bedtime story for pre-readers. The full-color artwork is rendered in a 1950s cartoon style with ironic touches that complement the action. Humans are shown as white. It’s a good thing more books are on the way. (Animal fan tasy. 6-10)
SILVER BATAL AND THE WATER DRAGON RACES
Halbrook, K.D. Illus. by Gort, Ilse Henry Holt (336 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-250-18107-7 Series: Silver Batal, 1
Thirteen-year-old Silver Batal lives in the desert town of Jaspaton and wants only to go to the capital city of Calidia to
race water dragons. She is meant to follow in her family’s legacy and become a jeweler, but she secretly plans to leave Jaspaton when she learns Sagittaria Wonder, “the best and most brilliant Desert Nations water dragon racer in the whole world,” will be visiting. Only her cousin Brajon, also 13, knows her secret. She befriends elderly and mysterious Nebekker, who promises to 88
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help her make a racing suit to impress her hero. However, her plans are thwarted when Sagittaria reveals herself to be far less than heroic, stealing Kirja, Nebekker’s bonded dragon, kept in secret outside of town. Silver also meets and bonds with Kirja’s baby, whom she names Hiyyan. The bond between a human and dragon is so strong that “you would do anything the other needs. Even die for each other. And when the day of death comes for one, the other cannot live.” Silver, Hiyyan, and Brajon’s quest to rescue Kirja takes them to Calidia and readers on a rip-roaring adventure. Halbrook’s worldbuilding includes a rich taxonomy of water dragons who are fully realized, with emotions, loyalty, and aspirations. The history of water dragons and the geopolitics of the Desert Nations are smoothly woven into her adventure plot. Halbrook, who is of Lebanese descent, injects cultural details readers familiar with the Arab world will recognize. For readers who enjoy a fantasy-filled world of adventure. (Fantasy. 9-12)
CAPE
Hannigan, Kate Illus. by Spaziante, Patrick Aladdin (336 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-5344-3911-5 Series: The League of Secret Heroes, 1 Superheroes, spies, puzzle solvers— or all three? It’s World War II, and Zenobia, Black Cat, and the other superheroes vanished from the streets of Philadelphia a couple of years ago. Josie, a white Irish immigrant, is despairing, with a war on and her beloved heroes all missing. At least Josie can do her part for the war effort, since a call has gone out for puzzle-solving and mathematically inclined kids. Just when it looks like Josie won’t be able to help—are her excellent ciphering skills going to be ignored just because she’s a girl?—a mysterious woman solicits the help of Josie and two other puzzler girls: Akiko, a JapaneseAmerican girl whose family is in an internment camp, and Mae, a black girl whose grandmother is a librarian, both also cipherand comics-loving superhero fans. And somehow, when the three of them get together, they have powers! Like the heroes of their favorite comics, the girls whoosh through the skies, caped rescuers fighting Nazis. Along the way they meet and rescue the women who are the first computer programmers. Mae and Akiko encounter a smidgen of racism, although far, far milder than accuracy would call for; this is a superhero/puzzling/Nazithwarting tale, not historical fiction. With interwoven action sequences told in comics panels, the tale has the exciting pace of a superhero adventure. Puzzles readers can solve are the icing on this cake. (historical note, further resources) (Historical fantasy. 9-11)
Underwood’s skillful compositions and expressive characters propel the sequencing of events. one shoe two shoes
ONE SHOE TWO SHOES
Hart, Caryl Illus. by Underwood, Edward Bloomsbury (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5476-0094-6
MY TINY PET
Hartland, Jessie Illus. by the author Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-5247-3753-5 A young child finds the perfect pet for a downsized lifestyle in this picture book. What’s a kid got to do to get a pet when the parents subscribe to the tiny house philosophy? The young narrator used to live “in a ginormous house…with six poodles, ten cats, a tarantula…”— and the pet list goes on in a delightfully rippling fashion. But when the child’s parents decide to “downsize!” and “simplify!” the pets are given away and the family moves to a tiny house in the woods. “All is good,” the narrator says in the casual, friendly tone that distinguishes the narrative, “except I really want a pet.” The parents are adamant: no pets. In science class, however, the child learns about the microscopic tardigrade—the “water bear”—and is convinced it would make the perfect tiny pet. Author/illustrator Hartland’s ingenuous gouache illustrations are chock-full of playful, humorous details (such as specialized pet products that include mouse Halloween costumes and toothpaste for
FANTAIL’S QUILT
Hay, Gay Illus. by Tolland, Margaret Starfish Bay (36 pp.) $16.95 | Aug. 1, 2019 978-1-76036-071-9 After her first nest is invaded by a rat, a mother fantail bird begins again, constructing a soft, warm nest where new eggs hatch successfully. Fantails are tiny New Zealand birds, adapted to living in a variety of habitats, including suburban parks and gardens, and not particularly frightened of humans. Because of their familiarity, they’re a relatively common subject for children’s books there. For American readers, though, much about fantails and their environment will be new, and the attraction here may well be the visual presentation of that different world. The simple story is related in short bits of alliterative text plus sketches on panels that mimic quilt patches, complete with “stitching” in different colors around the edges. These are set directly on spreads painted mostly in greens and browns showing natural shapes from the birds’ world as well as more fantails in various postures. The endpapers provide a key to the plants and other animals Tolland pictures. These include a morepork (a type of owl), a rat, a grasshopperlike tree weta, and a red admiral butterfly as well as some ferns, flowers, leaves, and a tree. A few fast facts at the end offer more information about fantails. Honored as a finalist for a New Zealand illustration award when it was first published in 2012, this story of determined bird parents can nest safely on American nature shelves as well. (Informational picture book. 4- 7)
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A playful pup, 10 mischievous mice, and some fashionable footwear unite in this seemingly simple counting book. Hart pays homage to One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish with clever rhyming text that channels the classic on its opening spreads. But in lieu of fish are shoes as seen from a dog’seye view as footwear of varying styles, shades, and purpose step past the frolicking pup on its walk. Home again, canine curiosity is piqued as mice scramble and scurry, one by one, to occupy the various shoes. Onomatopoeia offers clues as to the mice’s whereabouts, and readers will delight in the floppy-eared dog’s search for them. With one lick it scatters the plump white rodents before heading out on another walk. While the nonlinear text begs to be read aloud, it’s Underwood’s skillful compositions and expressive characters that propel the sequencing of events, bringing the tale full circle. Done in pencil and marker with paper and digital collage, the graphically simplified shapes showcase the artist’s ability to execute form and design. Reminiscent of M. Sasek, Mary Blair, and other artists influenced by post–World War II optimism, Underwood’s nostalgic interpretation of modern living channels a visual style associated with feelings of opportunity and prosperity, appealing to readers of all ages. A must-read-aloud text with memorable characters— Underwood and Hart make a perfect pair. (Picture book. 3-6)
elephants), and the book’s fresh storyline exposing the tiny world of tardigrades will have an undeniable appeal to young readers (and may inspire adoptions of microscopic pets). Visually, crisp dialogue bubbles mix with text and full-bleed illustrations to create a lively, engaging presentation (including an author’s note with tardigrade fun facts). The narrator and parents are shown as white with other characters illustrated in various skin tones. Original, superinteresting, expertly presented. (Picture book. 4-8)
LIFESIZE DINOSAURS
Henn, Sophy Illus. by the author Kane/Miller (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 1, 2019 978-1-61067-885-8
A rare opportunity to go nose to nose with Diplodocus, measure a human shoe against the fossil footprint of Allosaurus, and like dino-encounters. Following her up-close survey of modern creatures in Life size (2018), Henn goes prehistoric in the same 1-foot-square |
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Playful, cartoon illustrations effectively employ graphic-novel techniques to amp the chuckles. the evil princess vs. the brave knight
format. She alternates big, broadly brushed images of fossil or fleshed-out body parts (or a gathering of eggs on one spread) with pulled-back views of each creature in a broader setting accompanied by breathless commentary: “To be this completely GINORMOUS Diplodocus had to eat A LOT.” Said commentary is light on specific facts (though she does properly note that Pteranodon and Albertonectes were reptiles but not true dinosaurs), but she closes with a slightly more informative minigallery. A particularly sharp-looking Utahraptor claw (“OUCH!”) and multiple appearances or mentions of Allosaurus lead up to a climactic gander at the toothy grin of Tyrannosaurus rex— placed on a double gatefold and therefore a full 4 feet long. “Say cheese!” Although several of the creatures are depicted with feathers, Henn’s palette mostly hews to mud and moss colors, so despite the stunning close-up views, the book has an overall subdued look. The sharply defined realism of Steve Jenkins’ Prehistoric Actual Size (2005) may be absent, but young dinophiles will still roar. (Informational picture book. 5-9)
MIGHTY READER AND THE BIG FREEZE
Hillenbrand, Will Illus. by the author Holiday House (32 pp.) $18.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-8234-3992-8
Learning to read isn’t so scary when Mighty Reader’s around. Shy, new student Hugo—a brown puppy with black ears— searches for a friend on the bus. He ends up in an open seat next to bulldog Barkley, who’s reading a book about a superhero named Mighty Reader. When the canine students get to school, substitute teacher Ms. Wulff (a wolf, naturally) prepares the students for an author visit—from Will Hillenbrand. When Ms. Wulff asks Barkley to read the visiting author’s latest book, Spring Is Here (a real book from 2011), Barkley freezes. Sensing distress, Hugo heads to the dress-up center and secretly dons a Mighty Reader costume. As Mighty Reader, Hugo offers Barkley encouraging advice: “Look for words you know,” or “Think about what is happening in the pictures.” Barkley regains confidence and finishes the read-aloud just as Hillenbrand (as a schnauzer) introduces his work and artistic process. The comicbook layout, with at most four panels per page, combines minimal narration with speech bubbles. Hillenbrand’s expressive canine cartoons, boldly outlined in black against solid-color backgrounds, practically jump off the page. Some sentences are on the complex side, but the strong picture-to-text relationship will aid in decoding. Though the metafictive elements smack of gimmickry and self-promotion, readers may enjoy spotting the covers and pages of Hillenbrand’s other texts within this one. An em-paw-ering read for young pups. (Picture book. 4- 7)
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THE EVIL PRINCESS VS. THE BRAVE KNIGHT
Holm, Jennifer L. Illus. by Holm, Matthew Random House (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-5247-7134-8 978-1-5247-7135-5 PLB
Royal sibling rivalry. The Evil Princess torments her brother in fulfillment of her moniker, going so far as to select a book from the castle library entitled 101 Spells to Torment Annoying Brothers for inspiration. Her brother, for his part, tries to be brave, but the Magic Mirror, who acts in loco parentis throughout the story, sends them both to their rooms when their conflict gets out of hand. Once isolated, both children end up deciding that it’s no fun being evil or brave all alone. The Brave Knight suggests a quest, and they go to save “a damsel in distress across the moat” (their black cat, who is “perfectly comfortable,” napping in the bathroom). Alas, this brief episode of teamwork can’t overpower their historical rivalry: The Evil Princess pushes her brother into the bathtub, and he (finally) retaliates. “Their Magic Mirror was not amused,” reads the droll text, and they again must join forces—this time to clean up. This is sure to elicit laughs from readers through its humorous text and playful, cartoon illustrations that effectively employ such graphic-novel techniques as dialogue balloons and sound effects to amp the chuckles. The princess has light skin and straight, dark hair while the knight has brown skin and dark, tightly curled hair. The text never comments on this, instead focusing on their rivalry; in doing so, it provides a welcome, rare, and inclusive mirror for many children in similar families. The Holm siblings strike again! (Picture book. 4-8)
SCHOOL-TRIPPED
Holm, Jennifer L. & Holm, Matthew Illus. by Holm, Matthew Random House (208 pp.) $13.99 | $16.99 PLB | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-399-55444-5 978-0-399-55445-2 PLB Series: Babymouse Tales from the Locker, 3 When Babymouse’s class goes on a trip to the city museum, things go hilariously awry. In her third middle school adventure, the larger-than-life and full-of-big-ideas Babymouse is overjoyed to hear about the upcoming field trip to the art museum. Before her permission slip is even signed, Babymouse is already daydreaming scenarios that see her art framed among the masterpieces. True to character, Babymouse is quickly distracted and does not even make it out of the museum gift shop before ill-advisedly following frenemy Felicia and her cronies as they set out to skip the trip and explore the big city. Babymouse and her friend Penny soon lose Felicia in the urban hustle and bustle—but they find a lost kitten. They devote
the rest of their day to reuniting the adorable kitty with its owner for a promised reward. Predictably, Babymouse and Penny have one outrageous and exciting experience after another as they navigate the vast and unfamiliar city without any technological assistance (Babymouse drops and breaks her phone...again). Will the friends be able to maneuver the metropolis, return the kitten, and make it back before their bus leaves? Told through a fizzy mix of black-and-white comic panels and illustrations alongside prose, this installment has a delightful throwback feel, showing kids that they can be independent and self-reliant without smartphones and/or the internet. Fun, fun, fun. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 7-10)
I AM SOMEONE ELSE Poems About Pretending
“Imagine! Wish! Support! Invent!” Hopkins organizes this brief, thematic anthology into three sections under the larger umbrella of imagining: “Wish! Be a Storybook Character”; “Support! Be a Person Who Helps”; and “Invent! Be a Person Who’s a Maker.” Each of the collected poems is written in the first-person, and Hsu’s energetic, cartoon-style digital illustrations depict the diverse children as the individual speakers. Words and pictures alike often upend stereotypes and gender norms. For example, a poem about pretending to be a mermaid by Janet Clare Fagal depicts a brown-skinned child with tight, close-cropped curls wearing a green, striped T-shirt as the voice of the poem, allowing children of varying gender identifications to see themselves. Hopkins’ introductory statement affirms that “There is nothing better than being yourself,” which doesn’t undermine the title in the least since he goes on to affirm the fun in pretend play. Sometimes such play is aspirational, and the poems included in the categories “Support!” and “Invent” by authors such as Douglas Florian, Prince Redcloud, and Joan Bransfield Graham (with the standout offering “Nurse: Healing Hand”) give voice to career ambitions. Others, such as the aforementioned “A Mermaid’s Tale” and Lois Lowry’s “Big Problems” (about the challenges of being a giant’s wife), offer up more fanciful imaginings. A good collection, for real. (Picture book/poetry. 4-8)
James, Laura Illus. by Fox, Emily Jane Bloomsbury (144 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-5476-0217-9
How does a hippo go missing? Fabio and Gilbert are on the case! Bright pink Fabio is the world’s greatest flamingo detective, and his favorite place for a pink lemonade, taken in the company of his giraffe sidekick, Gilbert, is the Hotel Royale on the shores of Lake Laloozee. But all is not well there. Smith, the vulture who runs the place with his sister, chef Penelope, is none too keen on her daughter’s ideas to bring in more customers: Violet wants to have a talent contest. When head contest judge Daphne, a rhino who goes by “the General,” catches cold, Fabio takes her place…and then contestant Julia the hippo vanishes—from the stage. Was it a rival contestant? A crooked judge? Or is the disappearance connected to the strange events at the Gold Cup athletic competition, where many of the contestants seemed strangely sleepy? No need to fear with dapper, superobservant Fabio investigating. With this caper, James, British author of the Adventures of Pug chapter books, kicks off a new series of easy-reading mysteries peopled with jungle animals. Fox’s cartoons are offset by an arresting design that incorporates copious applications of bright pink and electric green. Characterization is broad: Fabio is quite self-assured and Gilbert, gangly and bumbling. Young sleuths will enjoy the easy mystery and the cheeky illustrations. More cases on the way! (Fantasy/mystery. 6-10)
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Ed. by Hopkins, Lee Bennett Illus. by Hsu, Chris Charlesbridge (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-58089-832-4
FABIO THE WORLD’S GREATEST FLAMINGO DETECTIVE The Case of the Missing Hippo
A FRIEND FOR BENTLY
Keiser, Paige Illus. by the author Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-0-06-264332-2 A lonely, crossword-loving pig finds an unexpected friend in a baby chick. This heartfelt story shares the joy of easing the loneliness of another. Bently is the one and only pig on Sunset Farm. Although Daisy is not introduced until Page 7, readers will see Bently through her eyes. Noticing that the other farm animals do not care for his piggy ways, Bently rejoices when he hears a faint “Oink!” coming from the meadow (hand-lettered onto the white space of the page). But it is not a pig but little chick Daisy, pretending to be a pig: “They have way more fun.” Bently’s disappointment is transformed as he teaches his new acolyte porcine habits: to roll in mud, to prefer slop over worms, |
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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Brooke Boynton-Hughes READERS STRUGGLING WITH SHYNESS WILL FIND INSPIRATION IN BOYNTON-HUGHES’ PLUCKY HEROINE By Megan Labrise Photo courtesy William Hughes
For Brooke Boynton-Hughes, attending the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ annual conferences constitutes a small act of bravery. “I love going to SCBWI conferences—I’ve learned so much there and really I owe my career to having attended,” says Boynton-Hughes, who’s illustrated books by six authors and counting, including Angela DiTerlizzi (Baby Love, 2015) and Dolly Parton (Coat of Many Colors, 2016), “—but they can also feel overwhelming and exacerbate my social anxiety.” 92
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“I spend so much time working by myself in my studio” at home in Colorado, she says, “that to go out to these conferences full of people and social interactions can feel like a lot.” Introverts will readily relate to the quiet, creative young heroine of Boyton-Hughes’ first author-illustrated book, Brave Molly (April 30). The poignant story sprang directly from her sketchbook at an SCBWI conference held in Los Angeles not long ago. “I drew a picture of a girl walking, looking discouraged, with her head down, which was how I felt at the time,” she says, “and then some little thumbnail sketches of her being followed by this dark shape. I began to wonder what her story was, and it grew from there.” Molly’s story begins in her comfort zone: her bedroom. She’s reading a book on a half-moon window seat, watching as three kids her age walk to a bench down the street. Once settled, they’re joined by a monster that, seemingly, only Molly can perceive. “I call them shadow monsters,” Boynton-Hughes says of the creature and its ilk, who personify Molly’s feelings of shyness, anxiety, and self-doubt. “What I was thinking about when I created this story were the things I struggle with, but I hope each reader can interpret them in a way that is meaningful to them.” When the children leave a book behind, Molly sets out to return it. To succeed in her quest, she must elude multiple shadow monsters, locate the owner, and, perhaps most fearsomely, utter Brave Molly’s only word: “hi.” “I would say in general I love wordless books because I’m much more comfortable with the visual than with the written word,” says Boynton-Hughes, a longtime fan of The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher by Molly Bang (one of the people to whom Brave Molly is dedicated), among others. “It was liberating for me to rely on what I feel is my strength as opposed to trying
to find my way to the words.” Presented in pen-and-ink, watercolor, graphite, and colored-pencil illustrations with eye-catching depth, Brave Molly gently conveys its subject’s hardwon triumph over anxiety and self-doubt. “The artwork itself feels bashful, with soft colors and plenty of white space,” Kirkus writes in an admiring review that concludes, “Brave indeed.” “I hope that other kids who struggle with being shy or struggle to find their own voice will see themselves in Molly’s story and recognize that they too can be brave,” Boynton-Hughes says. “And for kids who don’t relate to Molly, who are extroverted and don’t struggle with making friends, I hope they see that, for some people, saying ‘hello’ can be a struggle. “Sometimes acts of bravery are small,” she says. “They don’t look like something big and heroic, just a moment in someone’s day where they’re trying to do something that’s difficult for them.”
and to solve crossword puzzles. Keiser’s cheery watercolors are outlined with sketched pencil markings, and the doublepage barnyard spreads are calming, keeping the story light and approachable. Yet with scant transition, Daisy grows out of her piggy ways. With intended compassion, she wins Bently a replacement friend in a crossword-puzzle contest. This emotional complication can prompt discussions around kindness and outgrowing a friendship. But the worrying issues of commodifying friendship and staying with one’s own kind are equally present. The pacing and text, unfortunately, leave open a wide range of interpretations. While comforting to some, this well-intentioned story with engaging illustrations may prompt questions from others. (Picture book. 4-8)
SAVE YOUR FRIENDS!
Brave Molly was reviewed in the March 1, 2019, issue.
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Kyung, Hyewon Illus. by the author Greenwillow (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-06-268315-1
After a large fishhook dangled by a passing vessel becomes stuck in its mouth, a shark swims through a group of marine animals, accidentally swallowing several. The animals—a clownfish, a puffer fish, a seal, and more— and their worried friends and parents enlist readers’ assistance to free them. “Hello, friend! I need your help. Please turn the page. SAVE ME” reads one representative plea, and sure enough, on the next spread, that fish is free on verso while another one is stuck in the shark’s maw, which gapes open on recto. While the major elements of compositions are static, Kyung keeps pages fresh with humorous dialogue and expressive faces on her sea creatures. The shark initially comes across as a bully, but by the end, readers learn that its mouth is open due to the hook, and like the other animals, it needs their help. Once the hook is free, the shark thanks its new “friend”—and then playfully chases a sea turtle. The backmatter, entitled “Save the Sharks!” consists of a series of shark facts in speech balloons, like the rest of the book’s text. These include their sizes, diets, habitats, and physical peculiarities, but there is no mention of why the shark needs saving. Given the shark’s dilemma, readers may be puzzled not to see fishing addressed at all. Children will enjoy the interactive nature of this funny book during storytime or while sitting in a lap. (Picture book. 3- 7)
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Back-and-forth questioning moves the action forward but also prompts musings on belief and story. the playgrounds of babel
THE FOUR GUARDIANS
Laney, Matt HMH Books (368 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-328-70738-3 Series: Pride Wars, 2
Following the events of The Spinner Prince (2018), leonine Prince Leo Kahn goes on a quest to find his mother, deep in enemy territory among the Maguar, and save the world. Accompanied by three of his allies, Stick, Anjali, and Zoya, narrator Leo both seeks his mother and flees his usurping older cousin Tamir, the self-ordained supreme military commander of the Singa Royal Army. Prince Leo is the true heir to the throne, but his cousin wants him dead. On their journey, Leo learns the source of his powers as a Truth Teller—he can summon things from fiction into reality—as well as a startling revelation about his lineage. The prince and his friends attempt to win over the Maguar by warning them about Tamir’s intention to free the sea demon Hasatamura, imprisoned in the Great Mountain, by waging war—it is bloodshed that has the power to release Hasatamura. Everyone will suffer if the prides cannot band together, Leo argues. Laney’s worldbuilding is baroque, leading to a narrative festooned with capitalized jargon. It is also appropriative, with embedded folktales and characters’ names drawn from many different cultures and sources, including Cherokee, Buddhist, and Ghanaian, among others. The fantasy storyline gets lost in the collision of too many cultures, with appropriation that is both meaningless and confusing. (character list, story sources, author’s note) (Fantasy. 10-12)
I WAS AN OUTER-SPACE CHICKEN
LaRochelle, David Illus. by Gorman, Mike Sterling (96 pp.) $6.95 paper | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-4549-2921-5 Series: Alien Math, 1
Lexie and Lamar are practicing for their math tournament when they are abducted by a creature from another
planet. Fooz thinks that Lexie and Lamar are chickens, since that’s what they called each other just before she abducted them. Since chickens have “extremely low” intelligence, Fooz conducts a discreet intelligence test involving problem-solving and math to determine whether they are in fact not chickens. Solving problems under time pressure livens things up for Lexie and Lamar, who love to use numbers, as well as for readers. But proving their humanity is no help when they are kidnapped. Again and again, math, logic, and numbers get Lexie and Lamar out of 94
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sticky situations. Narrator Lexie never misses an opportunity to use numbers in storytelling (“three-inch trickles of sweat were dripping down my back”), making for a well-executed, funny (if hyperfocused) voice. Readers are subtly given opportunities to solve problems while reading. Full-page drawings and smaller spot illustrations break up the text in each chapter, depicting Lamar with brown skin and Lexie as white; both appear somewhat older than readers might expect. A depicted trio of threeeared rabbits looks unfortunately like stereotypical Native Americans. The math will be enough to draw some readers in while the action-packed story will keep the math-averse reading—and perhaps occasionally flexing their math muscles too. Book 2, Planet of the Penguins, publishes simultaneously. This playful math series is overall a valuable addition to the chapter-book shelf. (Fiction. 7-11) (Planet of the Penguins: 978-1-4549-2922-2)
THE PLAYGROUNDS OF BABEL
Lawson, Jon & Arno Lawson Illus. by Grobler, Piet Groundwood (32 pp.) $18.95 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-77306-036-1
A new take on the Babel tale featuring friendship, song, and a dragon. Two children on a playground overhear an old woman telling a story. Since one child doesn’t understand her language, the other takes on the storytelling. The story differs from what the listener—and perhaps readers—is familiar with: After the people of Babel built their tower, “God sent a dragon to destroy the tower, and then God made it impossible for people to understand each other—by making new languages for everyone.” The translating child continues, describing how sudden linguistic barriers did nothing to dim the friendship between two young girls of Babel. Through song, the two discovered how to communicate once more. Conveyed entirely through dialogue, back-and-forth questioning between listening child and translating child moves the action forward but also prompts musings on belief and story. “None of it is realistic. It’s a story, not reality.…No one’s asking you to believe, just imagine.” Grobler’s mixed-media work illustrates the narrative layers. He sticks primarily to an inky palette for the playground action while illuminating the Babel tale with bright watercolor and colored pencil. Just as the skeptical child concedes, “That sounds realistic,” the illustrator injects color into the playground. Languages are denoted by different symbol sets rather than lettering, and the cast of characters is diverse in skin color and dress, including both pairs of friends. A conversation starter. (author’s note) (Picture book. 5-8)
THE TWELVE
Lin, Cindy Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-06-282127-0
LOOK! I WROTE A BOOK! (And You Can Too!)
Lloyd-Jones, Sally Illus. by Layton, Neal Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-399-55818-4 978-0-399-55819-1 PLB From inspiration to finished tome, a child author demystifies the process. Part tongue-in-cheek commentary and part literary DIY, this book features witty tips and tricks for generating ideas, turning them into stories, and then publicizing your work, all based on the narrator’s own, albeit naïve, experiences. Starting with “a Good Idea,” the child guides aspiring authors through choosing a title, crafting the parts of a story, and inventing an ending, even covering the crucial revision process. Particularly helpfully, the narrator explains how fiction means “you made it up” and nonfiction means “you ABSOLUTELY didn’t make it up.” Some of the advice, however, falls a bit short: In 2019, a traditional, gender- and age-based interest in story content seems
THE TIME MUSEUM
Loux, Matthew Illus. by the author First Second (208 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-59643-850-7 Series: Time Museum, 2
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To save her friend and sister, a young girl embarks on a treacherous mission. Just five years ago, the island of Midaga was protected by the Twelve, warriors endowed with a magical treasure and animal power from the Asian zodiac. But then the villainous Dragonlord took control, eliminating the Twelve and their apprentices, or Heirs. Since then, all individuals with zodiac powers have been hunted or forced into hiding. When Usagi’s sister, Uma, and friend Tora are kidnapped by the Dragonlord’s men due to their powers, she joins forces with a group of bandits who turn out to be renegade Heirs trained by the last surviving Warrior, Horangi the Tigress. Usagi, endowed with powers of the wood rabbit, finds herself torn: Should she immediately rescue her friend and sister or prove her worth by climbing Mount Jade and training to become an Heir? Rumors that the Dragonlord plans to execute his weak captives accelerate everything, cutting short her training and sending Usagi and the Heirs to infiltrate the Dragonlord’s lair. Although this fantasy is not based on a specific culture, the majority of characters’ names have East Asian derivations. Unfortunately, other aspects of the worldbuilding are not so solid. Oddly for a book set on an island, for instance, there’s no mention of the ocean or ports and very little consumption of seafood. Obstacles are frequent but resolve quickly, limiting suspense but keeping pages turning. A mostly promising debut. (Fantasy. 8-12)
limiting (since grandmas can like dump trucks and tractors, too!); also, young children can indeed handle big words through context clues and illustrations. It’s unclear at times whether this advice is satirical or serious. The mixed-media illustrations are a bit too simplistic and caricatured in style, though they do present a diverse cast of characters. And yet the self-referential cover image seems to indicate the book’s obsession with its own cleverness. The protagonist appears to be a child of color, with medium-brown skin and straight brown pigtails that stick straight out. Not really enough of a story for telling a story about storytelling. (Picture book. 4-8)
A mission back to 18th-century France traps Delia Bean and her Epoch Squad in a time loop from which they have to be rescued by their later selves. Hidden agendas and wheels within wheels begin to emerge in this follow-up to the 2017 opener as the newly fledged squad is trained by genial time traveler Richard Nixon (“They always guess JFK!” he booms) in various seemingly random skills that turn out to be oddly useful later on. They are then sent to a ball in 1778, where their mysterious nemesis, the Grey Earl, first traps them, then secretly allows them to escape as part of some larger scheme. Meanwhile, nascent romances bloom and wilt, troubling revelations about the Time Museum’s origins come to light, and the squad shows its mettle in first battling a plant monster and later an outsized armored warrior. Though his panels tend to be small and tightly packed, Loux shows rare talent for depicting thrillingly dangerous-looking adversaries and cranking up both action and comedy with close-ups of wideeyed, wide-mouthed faces. Nixon, who often looks more like Bob Hope (and behaves more like Robin Williams), is a scene stealer, but Delia and her team are lively enough to keep the plot moving along briskly. Except for new addition Pauline, a dark-skinned British rock guitarist with a thing for Delia, diversity markers are present but barely visible in the cast. More excitement in the time stream—but always with time to party in between. (Graphic science fiction. 10-13)
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EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE
Lubar, David Illus. by Larkum, Adam Starscape/Tom Doherty (368 pp.) $13.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-250-18923-3 Series: Emperor of the Universe, 1
A seventh-grader stumbles into some intergalactic shenanigans. Nicholas V. Landrew is a typical middle schooler, with little about him people might find remarkable or unusual. But once Nicholas is beamed aboard a Craborzi spaceship he becomes quite distinct to the larger universe. With his beloved gerbil, Henrietta, and a package of ground beef as traveling companions, Nicholas zips across the galaxy trying to get back to his parents before he gets in trouble. The ensuing novel wears its debt to Douglas Adams on its sleeve, mixing a zany adventure with humorous asides that open up the author’s peculiar and silly version of the known universe. Readers looking for the standard middle-grade adventure story will find plenty to enjoy here, but the author elevates the material by crafting his novel with the Douglas Adams’ toolbox. There’s an odd remove from the novel’s expected course of events that puts everything just left of center, with the author letting readers know that this is all just a bit of fun that only the written word can create. Nicholas’ character does get a bit lost in the shuffle, creating a novel that won’t emotionally engage readers but will poke at their intellects here and there. Larkum depicts Nicholas as white in his frequent black-and-white cartoons. A Hitchhiker’s Guide for the middle school set. (Science fiction. 9-12)
NOT IF I CAN HELP IT
Mackler, Carolyn Scholastic (240 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 30, 2019 978-0-545-70948-4
Change is hard for most people, but it’s especially tough for Willa. She and her best friend, Ruby, are very different. Willa is 11, white, bookloving, tall, and vegetarian, and she unashamedly loves LEGOs and dogs. Ruby is (a smidge) younger, short, sporty, Indian-American, lactose intolerant, and anxious. Willa also has sensory processing disorder, but she staunchly prefers to keep that side of herself “private,” just among family. They are in the same fifth-grade class, and they initially connected over a love of gummy bears. They also both happen to have divorced parents. Now Willa’s dad and Ruby’s mom tell the girls they’ve been dating for some time, and they’re “sure [they’re] in love.” Despite what everyone else says, Willa knows this is “terrible, terrible news!” She already has to cope with the upcoming move to middle school, and now this. Willa’s family is comfortably off, and she has solid 96
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support in her corner from professionals, family, and friends. Mackler describes the way Willa experiences the world so that readers intimately perceive how it feels in her body. Refreshingly, the adult characters treat the children as mature, capable people, including them in decisions. There are also ringing truths to life as a kid of divorced parents that lay no blame and connect emotionally. The story focuses on working through tough changes, even when it is hard. A quality, truthful portrayal of the general challenges that come with different experiences of the world, whether personal or familial. (Fiction. 8-11)
HOAX FOR HIRE
Martin, Laura Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 27, 2019 978-0-06-280380-1 Can Grayson extricate himself from the family’s monster-making business? Twelve-year-old Grayson McNeil loves his camera, which is never allowed on hoaxes, the family business. For generations the McNeil family has orchestrated elaborate scams for pay, bringing “to life” the Chupacabra, Bigfoot, Mothman, and various sea monsters. Grayson has secretly applied to prestigious Culver Academy for a scholarship in hopes of escaping a life as a hoaxer. When his dad is arrested in Scotland and Gramps vanishes, Grayson and his 16-year-old brother, Curtis, must complete the hoax their family’s been hired to pull, but a rival hoaxing family plans to steal this hoax and eliminate the competition all at once. Can the boys beat the baddies and complete their dad’s contract? Martin’s cryptid caper joins a flooded field of similar tales, but it holds its own. Grayson is an engaging, Everyboy narrator, and the cryptozoological factoids are legion. As with many others of the subgenre, readers must check their credulity at the door whether they believe in crop circles or not; it’s the mundane events of the story that can cause the headscratching. The cast is largely white. The combination of adventure and light humor makes for a pleasant diversion—best where there is strong interest in imaginary zoology. (Fantasy. 8-12)
VROOM!
McClintock, Barbara Illus. by the author Farrar, Straus and Giroux (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-62672-217-0 The title says it all. Her auburn hair billowing behind like a second cloud of exhaust, little Annie peels out of her bedroom window in a silver bullet of a car. Helmet and gloves in place, she takes straight roads past fields of grain, twists up snow-capped mountains,
Meconis’ humor and storytelling gifts wed seamlessly with her evocative pen-and-ink and gouache illustrations. queen of the sea
zooms through deserts and woods. In the city, traffic slows her down for a second, and then she’s winning races, ultimately ending safely back home in a familiar room. “Tomorrow would be another fine day for a drive.” Writing with cadences plucked straight out of Sendak’s playbook, McClintock never wastes a syllable. Annie’s journey encapsulates “hot and dry” deserts and a “cool, damp forest.” The book allows kids the exhilaration of escape, coupling speed and danger with a warm bed and cuddle after a long day. Vast panoramic vistas from on high contrast exquisitely with intimate shots like that of Annie’s face in her rear-view mirror. Little details include the hubcaps that adorn Annie’s bedroom wall or the bald eagle peeking out of a tree as the girl whizzes past. The book doesn’t just put readers in Annie’s shoes. It dares them to find shoes of their own and let their imaginations take the wheel. Annie and her family present white. Max had his wolf suit and Llama Llama his red pajamas; Annie has her racing togs. She fits right in. (Picture book. 3-6)
Dr. Cosmic takes his students on an underwater adventure using a specially designed underwater vehicle he calls a SKWID. McElligott explores the ocean depths in this fourth title in the Mad Scientist Academy series, STEM-friendly science fantasies reminiscent of Ms. Frizzle’s Magic School Bus trips but with less text and a more modern approach. Sequential panels and occasional full-page illustrations, done with ink, pencil, and digital techniques, show red-haired, green-skinned Dr. Cosmic and his species-diverse students: a robot with pageboy hair, a bat-winged vampire, a zombie, a wolflike creature, something reptilian, and something faintly insectoid, characters first introduced in The Dinosaur Disaster (2015). His new assistant, Professor Fathom, is a dark-skinned mermaid with long black hair. Using student questions and an intriguing gadget they call a handbook that unfolds to offer encyclopedialike fast facts and interesting details, the author smoothly weaves solid information into his narrative. He describes sonar and echolocation; how animals get oxygen; food energy, producers and consumers, and the food web; phyto- and zooplankton; toothed and baleen whales; sperm whales and squid. There’s even a reminder of the need for a clean-energy source for their vehicle: Its biofuel is made from seaweed. All these concepts become part of the story, making this tale a surprisingly well-constructed teaching vehicle. Endpaper sketches detail Dr. Cosmic’s latest inventions. Information and entertainment in an appealing comic format. (more ocean organisms) (Graphic science fantasy. 6-9)
A French bulldog named Toby adjusts to the arrival of a new dog, a female named Pinkie, and the pair quickly
become best friends. Toby is a sedate, rusty-orange dog who has his favorite spots in his house, all denoting warmth and safety. He loves his special patch of sunlight on the carpet and the warm lap of his owner, a white teenager who likes to read. When Pinkie (with distinctive pink ears) arrives on the scene, she immediately takes over the house, leaving Toby displaced and depressed. He slinks down to the basement to hide in a corner, but Pinkie follows him, and her concern leads to a quick rapprochement, with the two dogs suddenly pals for life. Pinkie’s approach to Toby—she sidles up “against his rump”—may set off some questions or giggles, with its focus on dog rear ends. The metaphor of their canine companionship as the new sunshine in Toby’s life will likely go over the heads of the intended audience. Watercolor illustrations once Pinkie arrives have a rather dark, foreboding air to contrast with the sun and light elements, and the dogs often seem posed and static. The McMullans have won legions of fans with I Stink! (2002) and its sequels, but their dog characters fail to exert the same snappy appeal. (Picture book. 3- 7)
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THE OCEAN DISASTER
McElligott, Matthew Illus. by the author Crown (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5247-6719-8 978-1-5247-6720-4 PLB Series: Mad Scientist Academy
AS WARM AS THE SUN
McMullan, Kate Illus. by McMullan, Jim Neal Porter/Holiday House (32 pp.) $18.99 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-0-8234-4327-7
QUEEN OF THE SEA
Meconis, Dylan Illus. by the author Walker US/Candlewick (400 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-5362-0498-8 A young orphan’s and an exiled queen’s fates intertwine on a remote island. Loosely based on the childhood of Elizabeth I, Meconis’ rich historical fantasy centers on young Margaret, an orphan taken while a baby to live on a nearly forgotten island in the kingdom of Albion. Its only inhabitants are a small order of nuns dedicated to helping anyone “whose life or love is at the mercy of the sea,” a hapless priest, a couple servants, some farm animals, and a cat. Margaret, who’s been on the island for six years, thrives in the simplicity of her idyllic existence. Nevertheless, she eagerly anticipates the semiannual visits of the lone ship that docks on the island’s shores and finds her prayers for companionship answered when a young boy and his mother are sent to the island for opposing the king. Margaret then slowly learns the true nature of the convent’s existence and begins to question her own lineage when a mysterious visitor named Eleanor is banished to the island by |
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A climax that would be unbelievable in fiction. the magnificent migration
her sister, the queen, and kept under constant watch. Meconis’ humor and storytelling gifts here wed seamlessly with her evocative pen-and-ink and gouache illustrations, which are rendered in warm earth and sea tones and brim with movement, expressively capturing even Margaret’s interior monologues. With its compelling, complex characters and intrigueladen plot, this will have readers hoping it’s only the first of many adventures for Meconis’ savvy heroine. (Graphic fantasy. 10-adult)
SMALL WORLD
Mercurio, Ishta Illus. by Corace, Jen Abrams (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-4197-3407-6
A young girl discovers her world as she grows up. Little Nanda’s world begins in her mother’s arms when she is a small baby. As she grows, her world expands too. From friends and family to new places and new discoveries, Nanda pushes the limits of her world as much as possible—until one day, she realizes her world is the same as it was when she was a baby in her mother’s arms: “safe, warm, small.” Rich, imaginative text paints a beautiful picture of Nanda’s life and generously weaves in figurative language (“It soared through a symphony of glass and stone. / It spooled through spirals of wire and foam”). It is also refreshing to see Nanda depicted as a strong South Asian girl protagonist who blends in and yet stands out. Unfortunately, some of the text and the broader underlying concept of the book—which takes her through college and beyond to a career as an astronaut—may be hard to grasp for the target preschool audience. Corace’s illustrations, created using gouache, ink, and acrylic, effortlessly show Nanda’s curiosity and the diverse world we all live in today. Attention to detail and authenticity in the illustrations is evident on each page. A thought-provoking and evocative book that may unfortunately fail to pique the interest of its target audience but may also provide a fresh substitute for Oh, the Places You’ll Go come graduation season. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)
THE MAGNIFICENT MIGRATION On Safari with Africa’s Last Great Herds
Montgomery, Sy Photos by Wood, Roger & Wood, Logan HMH Books (176 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-544-76113-1 Montgomery journeys into the heart of the wildebeest migration with a wildlife biologist who has been studying these African mammals for more than 50 years. Eleven chapters and a reflective epilogue chronicle a twoweek visit to Tanzania’s northern plains with a small group led by Richard Estes, “the guru of gnu.” Montgomery, who has described many remarkable scientific field trips for the Scientists in the Field series, aims this report at older readers who can take in and act on her underlying message: “Throughout the Serengeti, our kind threatens the very survival of the migration we’ve come so far to witness.” Tension heightens as the wildebeest hordes elude them for days. Finally, a dramatic car breakdown in the wilderness is followed by “immersion” in an ocean of migrating gnus—a climax that would be unbelievable in fiction. Setting this particular safari in a larger context, and heightening the suspense, are interspersed short segments about Serengeti wildlife, poachers’ snares, the role of fire, “other magnificent migrants,” and more. The overall design is inviting and appropriate to the subject. There are maps, plentiful photos of African animals, and pictures and minibiographies of Montgomery’s all-white safari companions, both American and Tanzanian. Montgomery touches on the white-directed nature of much scientific research in Africa as well as pressures from colonialism and climate change but keeps her focus tightly on the wildebeest. A splendid wildlife adventure skillfully conveyed. (acknowledgments, selected bibliography, note on wildebeest conservation and tourism, photo credits, index) (Nonfiction. 11-adult)
POSITIVELY TEEN A Practical Guide to a More Positive, More Confident You Morgan, Nicola Poppy/Little, Brown (208 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-316-52888-7
A wide-ranging guide to harnessing the brain’s awesome powers on the journey through adolescence. De-emphasizing bodily changes, the brain takes center stage as the key to understanding individual differences, identifying character strengths and personality traits that affect how we experience the world, maintaining a positive mindset, focusing on what we can control, and letting 98
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TWO BROTHERS, ONE TAIL
Morris, Richard T. Illus. by Fleck, Jay Philomel (32 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 27, 2019 978-1-524-74085-6
The unconditional love and companionship between a boy and his dog are celebrated in a poetic ode. Though physically different in obvious ways—one has two hands, the other four paws; one has 10 fingers, the other 10 claws—emotionally, they are one and the same, with an inseparable affection for each other. Throughout the day as they lie on the grass together, share an ice cream, sing and croon a tune, enjoy a car ride, run and play, and eventually wind down with a good read in bed, the unnamed dark-haired, beige-skinned boy and the beagle remain devoted to each other as playmates, friends, and, yes, brothers. Minimally detailed, curved pencil drawings with digitally added color and texture achieve a bold outlined style and provide sweet visuals with a flat perspective. The rhymed text of short quatrains mostly reads aloud with ease. “Two brothers one coat / Two brothers with hair / Two brothers one sheds / Two brothers who cares!” Devoted dog owners who encourage a siblinglike relationship between child and pet will readily identify. A gentle and loving illustration of the absolute bond between a boy and his canine buddy. (Picture book. 3-6)
GIVE ME BACK MY BONES!
Norman, Kim Illus. by Kolar, Bob Candlewick (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-7636-8841-7 In a watery anatomy lesson, a pirate skeleton gathers up and reconnects its scattered bones. As it goes, Norman’s rollicking rhymes cleverly incorporate each major bone’s common and formal names: “Collar me a collarbone, / the way-down-where-I-swaller bone, / a handy parrot-hauler bone— / I claim my clavicle.” She tracks her skeletal buccaneer’s sandy-bottom reassembly from skull to “fair phalanges.” Sandwiched between visual keys on the endpapers (in separate pieces in the front and assembled and accoutered in the rear), Kolar scatters simplified but recognizable body parts (plus the requisite peg leg) across sea beds well-populated with colorful tropical fish and other marine denizens. Several of these pitch in to help before the narrative leaves the finished skeleton posing heroically atop a sunken ship with a spyglass clutched in its metacarpals: “There’s treasure to be found here— / I feel it in my bones!” Budding biologists as well as general fans of pirates, poetry, and wordplay will agree—and it makes a fuller (and less freighted) alternative to Bob Barner’s Dem Bones (1996) and other versions of the old teaching spiritual. Both macabre and cheery—a rare treat. (Picture book. 6-8)
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go of what we can’t change. Confidence-building quizzes, tips, and online resources aim to help readers manage setbacks through cultivating a growth mindset, managing stress, and improving sleep. Techniques for improving one’s learning offer useful, practical advice. The message that, at the fundamental level of brain structure, individuals are more alike than not is comforting. The book touches only lightly on topics of gender and sexuality. Many of the recommended activities are geared to middle-class readers with considerable autonomy and financial resources. The dietary guidelines reflect a Western diet, although there is mention of vegetarian and vegan lifestyles. Exercise (including suggestions for those with disabilities), reading (and what to do if you don’t enjoy it), sensible social media use, and cultivating empathy are also covered. The text is broken up into manageable chunks utilizing a variety of fonts, and the chatty style is accessible. Despite some limitations, this presentation of growing up through the angle of brain development sends a positive message: Everyone’s different, but the upheavals of adolescence are universal. An upbeat, reassuring tool kit for tweens and young teens. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)
THE RIGHT ONE FOR RODERIC
Noy, Violeta Illus. by the author Templar/Candlewick (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5362-0572-5
The smallest ghost in the family yearns to be noticed. Little Roderic feels small and overlooked by his family. Wanting to be seen, he decides to try changing his appearance. On top of his standard white sheet, he adds a hat…and then another and another. But that doesn’t work out. Nor does a scarf. He tries taking off his white sheet (revealing his green, ectoplasmic essence) and changing his entire wardrobe, but that doesn’t go over well with the family. “Ghosts just don’t dress like that,” his elders say. He tries going to the city, where perhaps people will notice and appreciate his fashion. But “they [don’t] even see him.” So he returns home, where he has been missed, and the family drapes him in another white sheet, but he doesn’t settle for that. Roderic finally happens upon an outfit that feels just right, and he tells his family, “I am going to be different!!” Not only is he accepted, but his family is inspired to experiment too. The simple digital illustrations effectively use color and composition to set the endearing protagonist against unwelcoming crowds, including the city’s multihued sea of people, and to highlight his mostly lonesome journey. |
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Though the message is nothing new, the moments of humor and emotional resonance in this brave little ghost’s story make this one worth a read. (Picture book. 3-8)
Guglielmo Marconi. She promotes him as both a pacifist (notwithstanding his visions of particle-beam superweapons) and a conservationist whose experiments with wireless power transmission were spurred at least in part by environmental concerns. Without psychologizing she also notes his secretive nature, his tendencies to live beyond his means and to con investors, his now-disturbing eugenics theories, and his nomadic last years as a reclusive urban pigeon feeder. Period photos and patent drawings depict the hawk-nosed inventor, his work, his rivals, and his friends, and there are further resources aplenty at the end for curious or tantalized readers. Young experimenters hoping to fire up megavolt blasts of sparks or light bulbs held in their bare hands as Tesla did will be disappointed by the inserted projects, which begin with generating static electricity on a balloon and go on to demonstrations of magnetic fields and electromagnetism, writing an autobiography, and suchlike depressingly nonhazardous activities. Overall, a winning tribute to a scientific dreamer who was both a man of his times and, often, well ahead of them. (index, timeline, endnotes) (Biography. 11-13)
TITANS
O’Hearn, Kate Aladdin (496 pp.) $18.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5344-1704-5 Series: Titans, 1 A spinoff of the Pegasus series starring plucky young heroes trying to save the world of Titus from an existential threat. Titan Astraea and best friend Zephyr, her winged equine (she is not a “horse”!), are starting at a new, integrated school for both Titans and Olympians, established to help ease tensions between the two peoples now that they share one world. A conflict with an Olympian student lands them in detention right away, where they discover a forbidden human boy, Jake. Jake’s not the first human to mysteriously appear on Titus lately, and so they, along with silver-skinned Tryn, a fellow new student who is half human, half Rhean, keep Jake concealed while trying to find his missing sister and to discover who is bringing humans to Titus. Their investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with highly dangerous invaders already infiltrating the highest levels of society. The writing is simplistic and easy to follow, though the story rhythm is disrupted by repetitions and reminders of plot points that pad out the page count. While characters from O’Hearn’s Pegasus series are mentioned many times and appear briefly, saving the day this time is up to a new crop of heroes who must learn to work together. In a sharp pace change, the sequel-prompting climax (after the 400-page mark) is rushed. Both blond, Astraea and Jake present white. For fans of world-hopping adventure flavored with mythology, magic, and pretty wings on characters. (Fantasy. 8-13)
BROWN
Øvreås, Håkon Illus. by Torseter, Øyvind Trans. by Dickson, Kari Enchanted Lion Books (136 pp.) $16.95 | $9.95 paper | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-59270-212-1 978-1-59270-251-0 paper Series: My Alter Ego is a Superhero Bullies spur a lad and two new friends to dress up as secret superheroes in this trilogy opener from Norway. Encouraged by the spectral figure of his just-deceased grandpa, Rusty sets out for payback after three punks—identified throughout as “Anton, Ruben, and the minister’s son”— wreck the clubhouse he and his friend Jack have laboriously constructed from scrap. As “Brown,” dressed in a brown cape and mask, he sneaks out into the night to slap brown paint on Ruben’s bicycle. Shortly after Rusty tells Jack about the feat, another masked marauder, “Black,” repaints Anton’s bike. Joined by a third confidante, styling herself “Blue, or the Blue Avenger,” the trio sets out on one more nocturnal mission… only to discover that most of the stash of blue paint has disappeared. Still, there’s enough to repaint the bikes of all three foes blue. The next day Rusty, overcome by guilt, is on the verge of confessing…when he learns that his nemeses are now in deep doo-doo for several acts of mischief, notably splashing the local church’s spire with blue “rude words.” Off the hook! Small, finelined ink drawings with color highlights on nearly every page supply this tongue-in-cheek escapade with evocative vignettes depicting Rusty’s flights of fancy, quizzical-looking parents and other grown-ups, and masked prowlers in homemade outfits. The cast defaults to white. Chucklebait for Wimpy Kid fans. (Fiction. 9-11)
NIKOLA TESLA FOR KIDS His Life, Ideas, and Inventions, with 21 Activities
O’Quinn, Amy M. Chicago Review Press (144 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-912777-21-4 Series: For Kids
A searching portrait of the troubled, visionary SerbianAmerican inventor, with simple hands-on projects that touch on his life and interests. O’Quinn describes in some detail the achievements for which Tesla is best remembered—from the Tesla coil and the practical generation of AC electricity to an advanced type of turbine—as well as his conflicts with Thomas Edison and 100
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An off-topic complaint about the lack of diversity makes an opening for important conversations with young readers. tallulah the tooth fairy ceo
TRICERATOPS STOMP
Malala Yousafzai’s dad and champion, Ziauddin, transgender activist Kylar W. Broadus, and socially conscious creative artists including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Kendrick Lamar. Though intent on highlighting good works, the author doesn’t shy away from personal details—she identifies six entrants as gay and one, Freddie Mercury, as bisexual—or darker ones, such as Harvey Milk’s assassination and Anthony Bourdain’s suicide. Washington works with a severely limited menu of facial expressions, but each subject in his full-page accompanying portraits radiates confidence and dignity. Pure gold for readers in search of role models who buck conventional masculine expectations. (source notes) (Col lective biography. 11-14)
Patkau, Karen Illus. by the author Pajama Press (32 pp.) $17.95 | Jul. 17, 2019 978-1-77278-079-6
Triceratops babies have an eventful day after first hatching. Tucked away on the forest floor is a clutch of eggs. Readers can see tiny cracks beginning to form. Sounds jostle from the pages: “Tap-tap. Peck-peck. Crack. Crack. Crack.” After some picking and poking, out tumble triceratops babies! They “wriggle-wriggle” and “S-T-R-E-T-C-H” as they gain their footing and look at the world around them for the first time. What do these babies want to do? Eat, of course! “Chomp-chomp. Munchmunch. Gulp-gulp-gulp.” But suddenly, a loud “ROARRR!” interrupts their meal. A T. Rex is coming. “Thud-thud. Thudthud. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.” The tiny babies don’t know what to do. Luckily, their mother is close by. Never underestimate the protective nature of a mother, even a reptilian one. The layered greens and muted browns of the digital background highlight the tiny red mouths of the babies, who are continuously crying, biting, or yawning—and making a whole lot of noise. Although the dinosaur sounds may be hypothetical (Would they “cheep?” Did they “bellowww?”), dino fans will delight in this onomatopoeic romp. Extra information about other dinosaurs found throughout the story is appended at the end. Fill your storytime with prehistoric sound. (Picture book. 2-5)
TALLULAH THE TOOTH FAIRY CEO
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Pizzoli, Tamara Illus. by Fabiani, Federico Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 30, 2019 978-0-374-30919-0 A tooth-fairy mogul wrote the manual, but even the expert can be caught off
guard. Tallulah, CEO of Teeth Titans Inc., gives readers a sneak peek into her glamorous life. The wry narrative mimics the tone of many an inspirational biography, informing readers that Tallulah works hard to strike “a healthy balance between the three Ps: passion, purpose, and what pays.” From yoga to museum visits, Tallulah seems to have a full schedule, but she still makes time to hire and train tooth fairies for the entire world. Expert Tallulah has all the answers—or so she thinks until the night she gets a surprise from a little boy. Ballard has lost his tooth—literally—and leaves an explanatory note under his pillow in place of the missing item. This triggers an emergency board meeting that features remarkably realistic dialogue. Tom, a white man and the only board member who is not a woman of color, wears an #AllFairiesMatter T-shirt; his off-topic complaint about the lack of diversity makes an opening for important conversations with young readers. Tallulah is black and sports a voluminous purple Afro; Tom is the sole white character. Details in both Pizzoli’s text (Tallulah’s also the founder of the National Association for the Appreciation and Care of Primary Teeth, or NAACP-T) and Fabiani’s matte illustrations (a series of enormous, Warhol-like prints of Tallulah adorns her walls) will set adult readers chuckling. Funny and provocative. (Picture book. 6-10)
GROUNDBREAKING GUYS 40 Men Who Became Great by Doing Good Peters, Stephanie True Illus. by Washington, Shamel Little, Brown (96 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-316-52941-9
Single-page profiles of men who were guided by their better angels. “History books are full of men who have made their mark,” Peters writes. “But these great men were not always good men.” So this atypical gallery focuses on men who served communities, demonstrated real respect for others, or otherwise acted on worthy principles. With one exception, men presented were born in or at least lived into the 20th century. That exception, John Stuart Mill, leads off for his then-radical notions about human (including women’s) rights and the “tyranny of the majority.” The ensuing multiracial, multinational roster mixes the predictable likes of Cesar Chavez, Thích Nhåt Hąnh, and Roberto Clemente with Chinese diplomat Feng-Shan Ho (who helped “hundreds, and possibly thousands” of Jews escape Nazioccupied Vienna), Indian child-labor activist Kailash Satyarthi, |
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Focuses as much on conveying the distinctive character of its subject as on public achievements. harry houdini
PROFESSOR RENOIR’S COLLECTION OF ODDITIES, CURIOSITIES, AND DELIGHTS
strong and very bendy” performer hung about with shackles or posing with his closely knit family. (With the exception of the occasional child of color in a contemporary scene, characters depicted are white.) In line with the series premise and overall informal tone, the author refers to him throughout as “Harry” (his stage name). Andrew Prentice does likewise for his free-spirited subject in the co-published Amelia Earhart (illustrated by Mike Smith), taking “Amelia” (or, in childhood chapters, “Millie”) from homemade backyard roller coaster to final disappearance. Both profiles open with fictive but revealing introductory exchanges, and both focus as much on conveying the distinctive characters of their subjects as on their public achievements. Prentice adds a closing gallery of renowned women aviators, from African-American Bessie Coleman to Jerrie Mock, who, like Earhart, was white. Together with its companion, stimulating portraits of two colorful, driven historical figures. (timelines, glossaries, reading lists) (Biography. 10-12) (Amelia Earhart: 978-1197-3741-1)
Platt, Randall Harper/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-06-264334-6
A 19th-century girl with an unusual physique makes herself a life. Babe was born “right as rain” in 1882 in a tiny Idaho town, but she grew atypically. Now 14, she’s 6 feet, 9 inches and 342 pounds. Pa, greedy and cold, sells her to a carnival, where the carnival master promises she’ll be a “uh, strongwoman act.” She is, in fact, extremely strong, but he forces her into fakery (like all his acts) and harsh, brash showmanship. Babe’s time in the cruel titular carnival— and after leaving it—show her as dogged, thoughtful, and loyal, with a tenacious sense of justice and a fierce protectiveness toward “critters.” (Readers sensitive to animal pain should gird their loins.) The text humanely characterizes people perceived as freaks but undermines this with frequent objectification, spotlighting Babe’s gigantism and her enemy-turned-friend Lotty’s dwarfism: “the dwarf and the giant stared each other down”; “Nothing was more clumsy than a dancing giant with an awkward dwarf ducking in and out of her legs”; “the odd sight of a dwarf, a giant, and an elephant.” The m-word, identified as a slur for dwarfs, is nevertheless frequently used. Babe’s self-proclaimed “hick-like” speech is part lower-class stereotype (“libarry”), part creative (“ookus” for money). Everyone appears to be white. A heart-rending and memorable picture of 19th-century challenges for girls with unusual bodies—and for captive animals—though the narration sometimes uses carnival lenses itself. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-13)
IF PLUTO WAS A PEA
Prendergast, Gabrielle Illus. by Gerlings, Rebecca McElderry (40 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 20, 2019 978-1-5344-0435-9
This first picture book by novelist Prendergast (Pandas on the East Side, 2016, etc.) explains the relative sizes of the planets in our solar system. Two children camp out in a backyard, a black child with cornrows and afro puffs and a white child with freckles and glasses. Armed with a book about the solar system, they explore Pluto’s status as a dwarf planet by using the refrain “if Pluto was a pea” as a point of comparison. Each spread compares a pea-sized Pluto to another object in the solar system. “The sun would be a tent”; “Mercury would be a marble”; etc. The final comparison is to smaller objects—Pluto’s three moons. On each spread, the newly named object appears, sometimes with the last object or a pea in the picture too. In the digital illustrations, the background alternates among the night sky, the inside of the tent, and simple white space; the last unfortunately detracts from the cohesive feeling of the story as a cozy campout. An effort is made to keep the objects in proper proportion; this is not always the case though, and the inconsistency can cause confusion. Both metric and English measurements are given for each item for the mathematically minded; as the text is stolidly repetitive, it’s hard to imagine other sorts of readers for it. A good idea with execution that leaves much to be desired. (Informational picture book. 4-8)
HARRY HOUDINI
Poskitt, Kjartan Illus. by Ford, Geraint Abrams (160 pp.) $9.99 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-1-4197-3862-3 Series: First Names
The life and eye-widening feats of a showman who was “always hungry for adventure, challenges, fame, and success.” Warning would-be imitators away as needed (“Absolutely Do Not Try This!”) Poskitt offers an animated account of Houdini’s career and lifelong devotion to topping his own seemingly impossible tricks and escapes, punctuating it with explicit side explanations of how many of them were done. Along with helpful diagrams and cutaway views, Ford adds frequent depictions of gobsmacked crowds, despairing rivals, and scenes of the “very 102
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STAY
this parable is hammered home by its last line: “No trees were harmed in making this story.” The Spanish publisher has used a special “stone paper” made with calcium carbonate and highdensity polyethylene. This paper feels lovely in the hand, and the pastel illustrations, done in vivid, if synthetic, colors, show off beautifully. But librarians should weigh the advantages and disadvantages of this paper, which is advertised as durable, waterproof, and photo degradable—that is, the art may fade in time. While it lasts, though, it will make a conversation-provoking read-aloud. Goran presents white. The Spanish edition is also available. Best when shared with early elementary schoolers by an adult with time and tact for the discussion that will surely follow. (Picture book. 5-9) (El último árbol: 978-84-16733-45-3)
Pyron, Bobbie Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-0-06-283922-0 A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity. Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx. Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)
THE MAGIC FLUTE
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Adapt. by Raschka, Chris Illus. by the adapter Richard Jackson/Atheneum (48 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-1-4814-4902-1 A favorite Mozart opera presented in a retelling by a master of the picture book who is also an opera lover. Nobles fall in love, and commoners fall in love. A Queen of the Night and a king of the day rule their kingdoms. Snakes and lions appear, as do Wise Boys and Temple Priests. Characters face trials and tribulations in order to prove their worthiness. Folk are not necessarily what they first appear to be. The titular instrument, bells, and horns sound their beautiful notes. And at the conclusion of this frequently performed and very melodic musical comedy, “Beauty and wisdom are crowned!” In this labor of love, Raschka begins by (thank goodness) providing a cast of characters. Each scene of the two acts is introduced in regular typeface while graphic panels in fluid watercolors, replete with hand-lettered conversation bubbles, provide close-ups of the quickly moving action. The performers vary in color from stark white to green to midnight blue. Raschka’s art, in vibrant yellows, blues, and greens, is more than an accompaniment, turning his staging into a stellar performance of dialogue and scenic design. This last opera composed by Mozart, really a singspiel, is often presented with colorful costumes and a host of puppets. Reading this title and listening to the music are the perfect introduction to an enjoyable family outing. Love, adventure, and enchantment artfully cast their spell. (Picture book. 8-12)
THE LAST TREE
Quintana Silva, María Illus. by Álvarez, Silvia Trans. by Jon Brokenbrow Cuento de Luz (32 pp.) $16.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-84-16733-46-0 What if all the world’s trees disappeared? The fear of being burned or cut to pieces convinces the trees in Goran’s world to pull up their roots and depart, taking the shade, the birds, and the animals and leaving behind a “thick, grey smog.” Remembering all the ways he’s enjoyed the tree in his garden, Goran worries that it will leave too. He convinces it to stay and sleep through the winter while he and his friends replant the forest and pick up trash. In spring, the tree wakes to a better world. Quintana Silva, who described a refugee experience in Kalak’s Journey (illustrated by Marie-Noëlle Hébert and also translated by Brokenbrow, 2018), here introduces children to another distressing issue: deforestation. The obvious lesson in |
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HATS ARE NOT FOR CATS!
stuttering her amazement at his brave feats, is just right. Sarah and her mother have pale skin and straight, black hair; other city dwellers are diverse. Peaceful and pensive like Truman himself, this book charms; there’s just something uplifting and wonderful about the whole package. Never underestimate the feats an animal will brave in order to be reunited with their loved ones. (Picture book. 4-8)
Rayner, Jacqueline K. Illus. by the author Clarion (32 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 20, 2019 978-1-328-96719-0 Who should wear hats? Dogs or cats? A cat wearing a fez is admonished by a dog in a top hat: “Hats are not for cats.” The dog goes on to catalog the types of hats that just don’t work for cats: “Not hats that are festive or hats that are fun. / Not hats for the cold or hats for the sun. / Not hats that are fussy or hats that are frilly. / Not hats that are serious… / or hats that are silly!” Heedless, the cat keeps trying on different hats as it bounces through the pages, but every fashion choice is nixed by the hound. After the exhaustive list—capped by an enormous, spread-dominating eruption of “HATS ARE NOT FOR CATS!”—the gray puss begs to differ… and brings a parade of hat-wearing cats by to prove that hats are for everyone (including turtles, ducks, and canaries). Rayner’s inclusive celebration of chapeaux is a delightful debut. The big, shaggy dog and fluffy puss speak in color-coded dialogue balloons, providing all the text of the tale. The scribbly, smudgy figures appear to be done in watercolor and charcoal and are placed on expansive white space. Although they speak, show emotion, and wear hats, they are not otherwise anthropomorphic, and the sight of these four-legged critters in the various hats amps the silliness. An exuberant update on the theme of cats in hats. (Pic ture book. 2-6)
TURTLE AND TORTOISE ARE NOT FRIENDS
Reiss, Mike Illus. by Spires, Ashley Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-06-074031-3
Two eggs find themselves in the same pen in a London zoo, and when they hatch, a turtle and a tortoise emerge. The turtle and tortoise think of all the fun they’ll have together. “We shall be best friends,” they agree for a quick second, until the turtle dubs them “the Terrible Turtle Twins!” Suddenly, the tortoise is affronted. “I’m not a turtle,” he says, and goes on to explain that “a turtle is a horrid beast with rough skin and a hard shell,” whereas he, the tortoise, is “a handsome creature with a hard shell and rough skin.” The turtle and tortoise decide it would not make sense for them to be friends given their differences, and they spend many years apart and resolutely do not talk to each other. When their lives are (literally) upturned one day, the question arises: Can the turtle and the tortoise overcome their differences to help themselves and each other? Reiss’ subtle wit (which takes ample advantage of tortoise and turtle racing speeds) and Spires’ nearly identical turtle and tortoise highlight the absurdity of what it means to be different. The passage of time is marked by the fashion of passers-by, who grow more diverse with the decades. Although some readers may take exception to the zookeeper’s unexplained assertion that “all tortoises are turtles,” the book’s underlying message of tolerance and acceptance is worth sharing. Humorous and deep. (Picture book. 4- 7)
TRUMAN
Reidy, Jean Illus. by Cummins, Lucy Ruth Atheneum (48 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5344-1664-2 A tiny tortoise discovers just how brave he is when his girl unexpectedly takes a bus headed away from home. Truman, like his girl, Sarah, is quiet, “peaceful and pensive,” unlike the busy, noisy city outside their building’s window. In just the first few spreads, Reidy and Cummins manage to capture the close relationship between the girl and her pet, so it’s understandable that Truman should worry when he adds up the day’s mysterious clues: a big backpack, a large banana, a bow in Sarah’s hair, extra green beans in Truman’s dish, and, especially, Sarah boarding the No. 11 bus. He’s so worried that he decides to go after her, a daunting feat for a tortoise the size of a small doughnut. Cummins’ gouache, brush marker, charcoal, colored pencil, and digital illustrations marvelously convey both the big picture of Truman’s navigation of the house and his tortoise’seye view of things. And the ending, when Sarah arrives home in time to scoop him up before he slips under the front door, 104
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THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF
Reynolds, J.H. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (160 pp.) $16.99 | $5.99 paper | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-06-286935-7 978-0-06-286934-0 paper Series: Monsterstreet, 1 A weekend getaway takes a hairy turn when a full moon invites werewolves to play. Twelve-year-old Max Bloodnight is wary of meeting his grandparents for the first time and staying with them alone. They live in a dilapidated log cabin in the middle of the forest |
This middle-grade adventure starts slow but ramps up into a tale of maternal and brotherly love that’s never mawkishly sentimental. changeling
CHANGELING
in Wolf County, which means no cell service and no electricity. But meeting the grandparents also means getting closer to Max’s late father, who died in a mysterious hunting accident in the area. Max’s grandparents only have one rule in their house: “Don’t cross the barbed wire fence into the eastern forest.” Max quickly breaks this rule when he helps Jade Howler, his grandparents’ young neighbor, search for her missing dog. The forest proves to be as monstrous as his grandparents warned. Can Max learn the truth about his father and the disappearances in Wolf County, or will he become the next to vanish? More Scooby Doo mystery than bone-chilling horror, Reynolds’ debut series entry is a fast-paced, cliffhanger-heavy creature feature. Thanks to plenty of carefully laid clues, discerning readers will solve the mystery long before Max does. The predictable, trope-filled plot and medium scare factor offer nothing new but may appeal to the Goosebumps crowd. A stand-alone sequel that stars a different main character, The Halloweeners, publishes simultaneously. The cast assumes a white default; Max is vegetarian. Serviceable scariness for series seekers. (Horror. 8-12) (The Halloweeners: 978-0-06-286938-8, 978-0-06-286937-1 paper)
Ritter, William Illus. by the author Algonquin (272 pp.) $16.95 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-61620-839-4 Series: The Oddmire, 1
JOHN MADDEN
Richmond, Peter Random House (144 pp.) $13.99 | $16.99 PLB | Jul. 30, 2019 978-1-63565-246-8 978-1-9848-5211-3 PLB Series: Game for Life, 1
“Doink!” A biography of sports icon and train lover John Madden, who, at his core, is still just a big fan himself. “Madden NFL” is not John Madden’s sole accomplishment, and many of its contemporary players may wonder about their beloved video game’s namesake. This middle-grade biography follows Madden from his childhood days playing sports in empty lots through college play and a brief stint with the Philadelphia Eagles, ending in injury. The real legacy unfolds through his tenure as one of the youngest coaches in NFL history (for the Oakland Raiders) and as an accessible broadcaster with an unforgettable role in a beer commercial. Journalistic writing blends with narrative elements as Madden is described as a curious, empathetic sports lover who loved winning and still loves the game. The only named woman in the book is Madden’s wife, Virginia Fields, who, like Madden, is white; race in the NFL is only briefly discussed. Along with the development of Madden’s career, readers gain a crash course in other familiar names, the history of the NFL, and the world of sports broadcasting. Via Madden’s unconventional career, kids who are sports fans can discover that there are paths to greatness beyond scoring as an athlete. This play-by-play biography, peppered with quotes and stats, will delight enthusiasts. For football nerds who wonder about the “Madden” behind their favorite video game. (index, author’s note, photos) (Biography. 10-12)
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A human boy and a goblin changeling are raised as brothers. Thirteen years ago, a goblin out of the Wild Wood brought a doppelgänger to exchange for a human infant—then had to dash away to escape detection, leaving both infant and changeling behind. Though everyone knows one of the babies must be a changeling, their mother insisted on raising Tinn and Cole as twins. Now, years later, they’re inseparable, and both drive their mother to distraction, playing in the quarry and swapping the salt for the sugar. But one day the boys receive a mysterious letter explaining that if the changeling child doesn’t join the goblin horde, all the magical creatures will die. Neither boy knows who the real changeling actually is, and though they’re mischievous and irreverent, they each want what’s best for one another. Thus begins Tinn and Cole’s quest through the Wild Wood, past the Oddmire, and beyond the Deep Dark. They’ll encounter not just goblins, but also a hinkypunk (a grieving will-o’-the-wisp with a candle in his beard), the Witch of the Wood, and a feral little shape-shifting girl their own age. Apparently set in the same fantastic, alternative bygone America as Ritter’s Jacoby series for teens, this middle-grade adventure starts slow but ramps up into a tale of maternal and brotherly love that’s never mawkishly sentimental. A delightful series opener. (Fantasy. 9-12)
THE PAWED PIPER
Robinson, Michelle Illus. by Lee, Chinlun Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5362-0165-9
Who will help the book’s young narrator get a dearly desired cat? “I wanted a cat to cuddle. A great big furry fluff ball, like the cat in my book.” To attract one, the child sets out all sorts of things cats like: yarn, bowls of milk, jingle balls, and cushions. No cats come, so the child consults Granny, who has a black-and-white puss named Hector. The child acquires the suggested catnip and cardboard boxes and newspapers…but still no cat. Hugging the cat book, the child falls asleep—to be woken in the morning by Hector, who’s brought several friends—a lot of friends! There are 67 in all. The child spends the day playing with them all but likes the one sleeping in the sock drawer best. However, in taking Hector back to Granny’s, the child notices a well plastered with lost-cat posters—they all belong to other people. They must return to their |
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Rotner’s photographs are crisp, glowing, and crystal clear, bursting with nature and joy, making daily objects gorgeous. colors
homes, but the cat in the sock drawer has a surprise for her: kittens! And there is one kitten who stays. Robinson’s tale of a kitty-wish fulfilled will brighten the hearts of young cat lovers. The soft tones of Lee’s watercolor-and-pencil illustrations of a white-presenting family (and a passel of pusses of every color) are an excellent match for Robinson’s gentle story of pet love. Too many cats may be a possibility—but never too many books celebrating feline companionship. (Picture book. 2-6)
a photograph replacing one square. For green, that square is a frog photo. Green’s second spread presents text inside a rectangle—“Green grass grows. Green peppers, leaves and peas. Lizards and limes, green eyes”—and varying sizes of rectangular, close-up photos. Neat green borders glue the photo rectangles together, leaving no white space. Other colors follow the same format. The verbs don’t connect to their hues inherently— “blue floats” mightn’t work out of context—but the black girl in the turquoise swimsuit floating blissfully in blue water provides all the sense in the world. Rotner’s photographs are crisp, glowing, and crystal clear, bursting with nature and joy, making daily objects gorgeous. A yellow slicker and a sunny-side up egg positively glisten; an orange sunset almost requires sunglasses. The children (a multiracial cast) vary between facing the camera and doing their own thing, like blowing up a purple balloon or licking an orange Popsicle. There are plenty of picture books about colors, but they’re not all love letters. This one is. (Picture book. 2-5)
JUST FOR ME
Rolli, Jennifer Hansen Illus. by the author Viking (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-9848-3527-7
When Ruby has something special, it’s hard for her to share. Ruby, who appears white, likes to say “Just for me!” about all her special things: her dolly, a castle built of blocks, sprinkles on cookies, a turn at the mirror with Daddy’s shaving cream. When her brown-skinned friend arrives—“a friend just for me”—Ruby continues to smilingly declare ownership of everything. The two-wheeler and the bubbles don’t cause much trouble, but when Ruby tries to grab the tiara off her (unnamed) friend’s head, she isn’t smiling—and soon, neither is her friend. A broken tiara teaches Ruby to use the words “for me and you,” leading to “a good-bye hug just for you.” A silhouette of her parents walking with her on the last spread shows readers that her Mommy and Daddy are “just for” Ruby…but only “for now.” Visible paint strokes and strong colors make for textured and dynamic illustrations, though a too-varied color palette keeps the book from settling into a particular tone or mood. Ruby’s possessiveness will be familiar to many a toddler, and while the final image may need to be explained to younger readers, her turn-around is as instructive as it is intended to be. While Ruby’s claiming her friend as “just for [her]” is true to toddler development, that Ruby seems white and her friend appears black is quite unfortunate. There are better books out there on the sharing theme, but this one will do in a pinch. (Picture book. 2-5)
WISH ON ALL THE STARS
Schroeder, Lisa Scholastic (224 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-338-19577-4
Juliet and her new friends have founded the Starry Beach Club to distract them from their problems and grant wishes to those in need. In See You on a Starry Night (2018), narrator Juliet’s parents divorced and she and her sister moved with her mother to San Diego from Bakersfield, California. Juliet frets that everything back home is changing. Her best friend is starting to like coffee and dancing, and her father has started dating a woman from his work. She attempts to distract herself with new friends Carmen, who is Latinx, and Emma, who is white, like Juliet. Understanding that happiness comes by helping others, the three of them decide to work together to save the Mission Beach bookmobile. But as they develop their plan to raise money with a neighborhood art fair, Juliet realizes Carmen has secrets that can’t compare to her own. Can she use her writing skills to help her new Guatemalan friend, whose mother might be deported? And can she find the courage to use her painting skills to sell artwork at the fair? A breezy read with fine pacing, the story doles out plenty of wisdom about overcoming one’s fear of failure. With social activism, kindness to others, and compassion for those in need, Juliet sets a fine example of what it means to be a friend. A story that tackles immigration issues as part of a simple yet appealing plot. (Fiction. 8-12)
COLORS
Rotner, Shelley & Woodhull, Anne Photos by Rotner, Shelley Holiday House (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-8234-4063-4 Explore colors through photographs. Detailed in succinct, subtly poetic text, the six core spectrum colors plus black and white each receive two full-bleed double-page spreads in a row. Each color’s initial spread names it and assigns it a verb—“green hops”— across from a checkerboard of many shades of that color, with 106
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HOW TO BE ON THE MOON
defined in brief callouts, with several pages devoted to “going public.” Jennings’ cartoons add to the approachability of the text, which is sprinkled with quotations and fun facts, including an entertaining look at what it’s like to work at the Googleplex. However, the author’s lionizing account sidesteps the recent controversies around tax avoidance, antitrust laws, consumer privacy, censorship, racial diversity, and treatment of women employees. It also skims over the roles that extraordinary women such as Susan Wojcicki and Marissa Meyer played in Google’s success while ignoring many others, reinforcing the stereotype of “brilliant men with big ideas”; “Larry and Sergey” are both white. An engaging but unduly lopsided history for budding tech entrepreneurs. (timeline, sample interview questions, source notes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-12)
Schwarz, Viviane Illus. by the author Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5362-0545-9
Adventurous Anna and cautious Crocodile take a trip to the moon and
back to Earth. Anna wants to go to the moon, but Crocodile warns, “It will be almost impossible.” Undeterred, Anna responds, “I like that.…Let’s go!” Crocodile finds a hold-up at every turn. They need “special skills,” like math. Luckily, Anna can count backward from five. They need lots of patience. (“And now?” appears opposite “No” or “Still not” nine times in funny, eye-catching columns.) Anna figures Crocodile’s patience can do for them both. Crocodile makes the sandwiches while Anna builds the rocket, and they blast off. They play a game in the no-gravity zone, and after a short nap, they land on the moon. From the moon, Anna decides that “Poor Earth” misses them, and they head back home. Watercolor illustrations show brown-skinned, puffy-black-haired Anna, green-skinned Crocodile, and their colorful, patchwork confection of a rocket against white space at home and against deep, dark, star-studded skies on their journey. The moon and Earth are rendered in intriguing textural and color combinations. The contrast between Anna’s and Crocodile’s personalities allows audiences of different inclinations a way into the story. The story is fun—and the artwork shines. (Picture book. 3- 7)
MY CORNER OF THE RING A Memoir from a Champ y o u n g a d u lt
Silva, Jesselyn with Stevens, Brin Putnam (256 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-525-51840-2
At only 12, Jesselyn “Jesszilla” Silva is in the ring to win Olympic gold, no matter how many hurdles get in her way. Jess tells readers she knew she wanted to be a boxer from the age of 7. With too-big gear and fierce determination, Jess started down a road that will hopefully take her all the way to Olympic gold. Readers might think that the hardest part about being a girl boxer would be the uphill battle of proving herself tough enough, but while that can be a challenge, the bigger complication for Jess is simply finding other girls her age to fight. This is important, she tells readers, because Jess needs to be a registered boxer and to have fought in five registered bouts in order to qualify for the Junior Olympics, and sparring fights with boys her age don’t count. Jess is a smart, strong Latinx girl with a fierce determination, and readers will root through her wins and losses, ups and downs, all the way to the 2018 Junior Olympics. While the writing can be a bit uneven, young girls will be able to relate to Jess and will be inspired by her fighting spirit. Her loving relationship with her father and the support of her coach give an emotional weight to the story. Readers will come away believing nothing is more important than knowing you have people in your corner. (Memoir. 9-12)
FROM AN IDEA TO GOOGLE How Innovation at Google Changed the World
Sichol, Lowey Bundy Illus. by Jennings, C.S. HMH Books (128 pp.) $15.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-328-95491-6 Series: From an Idea to
An illustrated narrative of Google’s growth from a doctoral thesis topic to a tech giant; the latest in a series of nonfiction business books for children. Sichol (From an Idea to Disney, 2019, etc.) starts with the early experiences of the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both gifted children growing up in intellectual families who encouraged their interest in computers. She recounts their odd-couple meeting at Stanford University, their eventual partnership to create a search engine, and their persistence through initial setbacks. From there, it’s a breezy journey through raising initial funding; turning a profit from ads; growing the business through hiring, innovation, and acquisition; and, finally, restructuring. Business terms such as “invest” and “acquire” are |
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SOCCERVERSE Poems About Soccer
the writer is ready to tackle NaNoWriMo—to write a novel in four weeks—to fend off discouragement, each week’s guidance is prompted by a “PepTalk” written by different bestselling authors, including Daniel José Older, Celia C. Pérez, and Jennifer Niven. Though specifically targeting young writers, this upbeat handbook is a wonderful instruction guide for writers of any age as well as a perfect text for any creative-writing classroom. (Nonfiction. 10 & up)
Steinglass, Elizabeth Illus. by Ikê, Edson Wordsong/Boyds Mills (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-62979-249-1 Twenty-two poems celebrate, from a young person’s perspective, the beautiful
game that is soccer. Two poems offer the viewpoints of a pair of shin guards— one of them left on the field by accident after the last game. A wry observation about “Fans” is spot-on: “I like it when my parents come. / I like that they are near. / But when they yell instructions, / I pretend that I can’t hear.” A poem for two voices in which one player speaks Spanish and one English happily concludes: “Si! Juguemos! / Yes! Let’s play!” (The Spanish voice uses English punctuation conventions.) A player contemplates the difficulty of offering a handshake to an overly aggressive opposing player at game’s end. Another, carded for an infraction, is relieved to have his apology accepted. Ikê’s digitally created art is stylized and full of motion. His lighthearted illustrations incorporate some poetic fantasy elements and flourishes, such as an inventor creating a perfect teammate: mostly feet for a field player; hands for a goal keeper. Most of the players display a range of skin colors and hair colors and textures; a preponderance have short hair. Each poem uses one or more of 13 poetic forms described briefly in an author’s note—something that will surely charm teachers and aspiring poets. A pitch-perfect ode to the details and delights of playing soccer. (Picture book/poetry. 6-10)
MY NAME IS WAKAWAKALOCH!
Stiefel, Chana Illus. by Sullivan, Mary HMH Books (40 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 27, 2019 978-1-328-73209-5
Wakawakaloch is very upset because others cannot correctly pronounce her
name. The illustrations depict Wakawakaloch living in a quasi– Stone Age community à la the Flintstones’; her home is in a cave dwelling, but her parents have laptops. After their distraught daughter declares, “Me changing my name to Gloop!” (or something else she might find on a T-shirt), Wakawakaloch’s parents decide that she needs to see Elder Mooch, who is described as “the wisest Neanderthal in the village.” While the child stresses over the mixed message given to her by Elder Mooch—to be both a “forward thinker and a backwards seer”—Wakawakaloch is inspired by her ancestor of the same name, who performed brave and heroic acts for the tribe. Wakawakaloch decides to do the same, embracing her namesake by helping others and selling T-shirts that celebrate names at the big Roll-the-Boulder tournament. In Sullivan’s cartoons, these Neanderthals are a multiracial bunch; Wakawakaloch and her parents have light skin, and she wears her supercurly red hair in two puffs. The stereotypically primitive speech patterns used in dialogue will set some readers’ teeth on edge. On the other hand, Wakawakaloch’s frustrations surrounding the mispronunciation of her name will resonate with many, and her taking inspiration from her ancestor is a lovely touch. This bombastic main character allows the story to shine. (Picture book. 5-8)
BRAVE THE PAGE
Stern, Rebecca & Faulkner, Grant Viking (304 pp.) $13.99 | Aug. 27, 2019 978-0-451-48029-3 A NaNoWriMo primer for young writers. This instructional guide begins with an introduction from Jason Reynolds and an inspirational chapter assuring kids that their stories matter and are needed by the world. The following chapters provide step-by-step instruction to get a writer at any level ready to tackle the blank page. The chapter “Determine What Type of Writer You Are” provides a quick tutorial that affirms a diversity of writing habits that can be tamed to fit each individual’s writing practice. Once the writer is primed to begin, the next set of chapters helps lay the groundwork to write the novel: crafting the story plan and fleshing out characters as well as deconstructing the mechanics of plot and worldbuilding. Many chapters offer a “Dare Machine,” a series of writing exercises so varied that a young writer at any stage can easily engage with confidence and excitement. Once 108
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Much like the parks they celebrate, each majestic spread in this book holds wonders. you are home
THE LIFE HEROIC
Jennifer Lawrence, while also providing a spotlight for those who mastered their talent by perseverance, such as Serena Williams, the Brontë sisters, and David Beckham. Though this self-help book has good intentions, however, it is a little heavyhanded on the perpetuation of an achievement-oriented life. Perhaps it is also good to acknowledge that not everybody need aspire to someone else’s definition of greatness. Maybe it’s “awesome” to be average. (Nonfiction. 9-13)
Svoboda, Elizabeth Illus. by Hajny, Chris Zest Books (160 pp.) $16.99 paper | $37.32 PLB | Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-942186-25-0 paper 978-1-5415-7860-9 PLB Svoboda’s inspirational offering begins with the story of a high school senior who bravely took the wheel of a school bus after the bus driver had a heart attack while driving. The author then asks her young readers to imagine what they would have done in that situation. In an easy-to-read narrative, readers learn the myths of heroism and how it is truly the everyday acts of heroism that don’t make the news that matter. This book is for those that aspire to help the world, and it acts as a guide, providing chapters such as “Recognize Your Hero’s Journey,” which presents a condensed version of Joseph Campbell’s take on a hero’s evolution. Further chapters stress the importance of role models, giving examples of those that have already answered the call, like Phillip Zimbardo, who started the Heroic Imagination Project, which teaches young people to actively and confidently “do the right thing” when others are in need. The most inspiring chapter, “Transform Pain into Heroic Purpose,” coaches young people facing difficulty to transform their struggles into purpose by sharing their experiences in ways that can help others who are going through similar challenges. Though there’s little new in this middle-grade selfhelp book, this strategic, confidence-building read is just enough to energize a young person who still feels hope to change the world one day at a time. (Nonfiction. 10-14)
FOLLOW THAT MAP!
Tan, Sheri Illus. by Ng-Benitez, Shirley Lee & Low (32 pp.) $14.95 | $5.95 paper | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-62014-569-2 978-1-62014-570-8 paper Series: Confetti Kids
YOU ARE AWESOME
Syed, Matthew Illus. by Triumph, Toby Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (160 pp.) $14.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-4926-8753-5
Champion table tennis player Syed begins this encouragement book by chronicling his own story of how he grew up believing he was average until he began to master the sport. The goal of this book is to help kids realize that they needn’t necessarily be born with a certain gift or talent—that maybe success is a combination of hard work, the right mentors, and a strong support system. In the chapter “What’s Holding Me Back?” Syed offers a variety of ways a young person can begin to reflect on who they really are and define what their true passion may be. The following chapters stress the importance of practice, coping with pressure, and honoring mistakes as human rather than failure. Throughout the book, Syed highlights those he terms “Famous Failures,” including Steve Jobs, Jay-Z, and
y o u n g a d u lt
Sometimes getting there is half the fun! Pablo and his friends Henry, Lily, Mei, and Padma (the kids present as Latinx, white, black, Asian, and South Asian, respectively) decide to go to Coney Island as a fun way to end the summer. Pablo’s dad, who, like his son, has brown skin, agrees to accompany the children. “But how do we get there?” asks Lily. Pablo suggests that they use maps, and then he excitedly plots out their journey: First they will walk to the bus stop; then they will take a bus to the subway; then they will arrive at Coney Island. A true cartophile, Pablo experiences a moment of worry that his friends won’t “think it [is] fun to follow a map,” but his map-reading expertise ends up helping the children be patient as they traverse the city. The best map of all is the one that shows all of the fun rides on Coney Island. An activity suggestion in the backmatter prompts readers to make maps of their own neighborhoods, potentially extending this title’s use beyond its accessibility and support of emergentliteracy skills and into the realm of map-reading, too. As in her other work in this series, Ng-Benitez’s warm, engaging illustrations help define the individual, diverse characters while creating a sense of vibrancy and excitement in the urban setting. For readers who are going places. (Early reader. 5- 7)
YOU ARE HOME An Ode to the National Parks
Turk, Evan Illus. by the author Atheneum (56 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5344-3282-6
From Acadia in the east to Olympic in the west, Turk presents an artistic and inclusive ode to America’s national parks. Readers who pick up this 12-inch-square book will be immersed in nature and art even before they open it, as they |
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Vo employs color, plot twists, and dramatically changing perspectives to elicit surprise and maintain suspense. the ranger
IMAGINE THAT
share an adult and child’s view of mountains, flowers, stream, and sky. Much like the parks they celebrate, each majestic spread in this book holds wonders for the eye to explore, with one or occasionally two parks represented per spread. Wellknown and lesser-known parks alike are featured, whetting readers’ appetites to learn more and explore. From close-up views of animals—pronghorn amid prairie grasses, bison in a snowy oasis, a bobcat in the dark—to children and their families—city children and farm children, immigrants and Indigenous, all joyously diverse—the text repeats the soothing refrain to all: “you are home.” The art is created using pastel on black paper, which produces a deep feeling of purpose behind each stroke and swath of color. The art could stand alone, but the words manage to add even more weight, pinpointing the feeling familiar to many nature lovers: “a sense of belonging, / sung by the streams, / from valleys to peaks, / over thousands of miles, / through millions of hearts.” Perusing this book induces a longing to go outside and travel but also to create art of one’s own. Masterful. (Picture book. 5-adult)
Voss, Jonathan D. Illus. by the author Henry Holt (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-250-31455-0 Series: Hoot & Olive, 2 What to do when imagination fails on a rainy, indoor-play day? That’s the dilemma Olive faces when her best pal, stuffedtoy-owl Hoot, can’t enter her flights of fancy when she wants to play pretend. Is Hoot’s imagination lost, broken, jumbled, gone? Olive proposes inventive scenarios the pair can enact— their house floating away, a lurking giant, fairies in the cellar. She offers Hoot a colander (as an “antenna” to unscramble mixed signals) and poufy earmuffs (to prevent “leaks”). Nothing works. When a dejected Hoot mentions his heart hurts, there’s an aha moment: Olive remembers one must use the heart to imagine. Hoot does, and an imaginative play day ensues. In an aw-shucks ending, Hoot suggests he and Olive imagine being friends forever. The premise positions literal-minded Hoot as “broken” and inferior, a troubling notion that the obscure assurance that imagination springs from the heart does not dispel. Furthermore, readers will recognize that Olive and Hoot are already besties, so they won’t see the need for them to imagine continuing their friendship. Overall, the amusing, energetic pen-and-ink–and-watercolor illustrations fare better than the thin, unengaging text. Olive and Hoot are endearing, though Olive (who presents white) isn’t very expressive. A variety of perspectives throughout and lots of white space focus readers’ eyes on the protagonists. One needn’t imagine there are better books about using the imagination. (Picture book. 4- 7)
THE RANGER
Vo, Nancy Illus. by the author Groundwood (44 pp.) $17.95 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-77306-128-3 Series: Crow Stories, 2 Following The Outlaw (2018), this second title of a trilogy offers a new character to ponder. Various elements link this to the first book, such as the pacing; limited palette, with an abundance of gray, green, and black; incorporation of newspaper fragments and 19th-century fabric patterns. Nevertheless, such knowledge is not necessary for comprehension. Readers first see the back of the protagonist— a figure rendered in watercolor that bleeds into the scene, masking identity. The page turn reveals a female of indeterminate race with long black braids. Vo employs color, plot twists, and dramatically changing perspectives to elicit surprise and maintain suspense. While moving through the forest, Annie discovers an orange fox, trapped and suffering. She releases the animal and binds its wound but resolves not to tame it. Her emotional position is underscored by her physical one. Seen from the fox’s perspective, Annie appears as tall and unapproachable as the parallel tree trunks disappearing off the page. The creature accompanies the ranger on her journey; when a bear attacks and Annie is knocked unconscious, she is cared for by a mysterious woman, dressed in orange, casting the shadow of a fox. The ranger must then come to terms with her stubborn stance on independence in the face of friendship’s rewards. A restrained text fuses with visually arresting and enigmatic interactions to open a welcoming space for contemplation. (Picture book. 4- 7)
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HONEYBEES AND FRENEMIES
Wientge, Kristi Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5344-3815-6
When 12-year-old Florence Valandhingam is forced to jointly compete with her archenemy in the local Honey Festival, she learns important lessons about friendship, trust, and belonging. Flor is having the worst summer ever. Her best friend, Brooke, is going away to band camp just when the two of them are old enough to enjoy a modicum of freedom. Her parents, who used to get along, can’t stop fighting. Worst of all, Flor is forced to jointly compete with Candice, her nemesis, for the title of queen at the Honey Festival. At first, Flor is sure that their history will make it impossible to compete: When Florence beat out Candice for the title of queen in third grade, Candice told everyone it was because the largely white town had to pick a person of color or biracial Flor’s parents—her dad |
THE BIG BOOK OF BIRDS
is white and her mom, South Asian—would sue. But as the two girls get to know each other, Flor starts to believe that she and Candice might not be the worst team—especially when both of them realize that they are competing not to beat the other entrants but for the futures of their families. Narrator Flor’s voice strikes just the right balance of naiveté and sarcasm, rendering it authentic and fun to read. Wientge seamlessly weaves issues like racism, economic stability, and environmental devastation into a clear, engaging plot. While the book moves at a good pace, the last third feels a tad rushed—a small quibble. A sweet and satisfying read about friendship, sisterhood, and change. (Fiction. 8-12)
Zommer, Yuval Illus. by the author Thames & Hudson (64 pp.) $19.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-500-65151-3
LITTLE RED READING HOOD AND THE MISREAD WOLF
Wilson, Troy Illus. by Campana, Ilaria Running Press Kids (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-7624-9266-4
“Don’t judge a book by its cover” meets “Don’t believe everything you read.” Loving the color red, reading, and a hood from her grandma earns this white, redheaded, bespectacled heroine the name of Red Reading Hood. Grandma is sick, so Red packs a “treat” and goes to find her. Encountering a wolf, she remembers all the advice she’s read on wild animals, from “stand tall” to “throw rocks.” But this wolf is after more than dinner. At Grandma’s, unable to hold himself back, the disguised lupine pounces on the book in Red’s bag, upsetting the usual fairy-tale format. All ends happily with a storytime (the real Grandma emerging from a wardrobe), though there is a near decapitation thanks to an overzealous man with an axe. Book-smart Red’s—and readers’—expectations are challenged in the face of this unusual bibliophile. Building on this, the simple cartoon art excels in its depiction of the villain. Many a book lover will identify with the wolf rolling on a book like a cat in catnip, reveling in its “new book smell.” Kids familiar with the original tale will find much to enjoy in these unexpected twists and turns. No shade on books, but it’s real-world experience that saves the day in this alternative fairy-tale romp. (Picture book. 4- 7)
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Zommer surveys various bird species from around the world in this oversized (almost 14 inches tall tall) volume. While exuberantly presented, the information is not uniformly expressed from bird to bird, which in the best cases will lead readers to seek out additional information and in the worst cases will lead to frustration. For example, on spreads that feature multiple species, the birds are not labeled. This happens again later when the author presents facts about eggs: Readers learn about camouflaged eggs, but the specific eggs are not identified, making further study extremely difficult. Other facts are misleading: A spread on “city birds” informs readers that “peregrine falcons nest on skyscrapers in New York City”—but they also nest in other large cities. In a sexist note, a peahen is identified as “unlucky” because she “has drab brown feathers” instead of flashy ones like the peacock’s. Illustrations are colorful and mostly identifiable but stylized; Zommer depicts his birds with both eyes visible at all times, even when the bird is in profile. The primary audience for the book appears to be British, as some spreads focus on European birds over their North American counterparts, such as the mute swan versus the trumpeter swan and the European robin versus the American robin. The backmatter, a seven-word glossary and an index, doesn’t provide readers with much support. Pretty but insubstantial. (Nonfiction. 8-12)
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young adult QUEEN OF RUIN
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Banghart, Tracy E. Little, Brown (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-316-47145-9 Series: Grace and Fury, 2
THE BECKONING SHADOW by Katharyn Blair............................. 112 ALL OF US WITH WINGS by Michelle Ruiz Keil.............................116
Sisters unite in their battle both for their own lives and freedom for all of Viridia’s women. Following the events in Grace and Fury (2018), newly exiled Nomi arrives at Mount Ruin to discover her polished, feminine sister, Serina, has developed into a revolutionary warrior in the coup that overthrew the prison island’s guards. With their newfound agency, the female prisoners must decide firstly what to do with their remaining guards and, ultimately, if their next step should be staying on the island or commandeering a boat either to seek asylum in Azura (personal safety) or return home (social reform, casualties guaranteed). Nomi wants to rally them to overthrow sociopathic Asa, but the women aren’t eager to trust any Viridian men they help in an uprising not to keep the oppressive, male-privileging system intact. The storylines diverge: Serina grows through newfound leadership obligations to her fellow prisoners, and Nomi looks to redeem herself and assuage her guilty conscience over her role in Asa’s schemes by working to oppose him. Now that Asa has the power he wanted, he’s let the charming facade drop. While both sisters have their romantic storylines, the male leads are mostly in support roles while the women make decisions to control their own fates, and a third main romance is between two women. While both sisters face dangers and obstacles, there are no real surprises or twists in the straightforward plot. The primary cast reads as white. Empowerment-flavored brain popcorn. (map) (Fantasy. 12-16)
THE BECKONING SHADOW
Blair, Katharyn Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (480 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-06-265761-9 Series: Beckoning Shadow, 1
ALL OF US WITH WINGS
Keil, Michelle Ruiz Soho Teen (360 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-64129-034-0
A girl with magical powers enters a brutal tournament, trying to win a chance to rewrite her past. 112
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As a child, Vesper loved stories about the Oddities and their magic. Then she became one. She’s a Harbinger, capable of manifesting people’s fears. Ever since a horrifying incident borne of her lack of control, Vesper’s been a runaway loner. After landing in San Francisco, she crosses paths with fellow Oddities and learns about a high-stakes cage-fighting tournament; the winning Oddity gets $1 million and one unraveling (undoing something that has happened, altering the past). She doesn’t know how to fight and is scared of her own dangerous powers but badly wants to undo her damaging past. Vesper teams up with Sam, a nonmagical Baseline human, who oversees her rigorous training at an MMA gym. The deal is that she gets the cash prize, and he gets the unraveling to correct where things went wrong in his last relationship two years prior. Even while planning to betray him and claim the unraveling, Vesper begins to fall for Sam. All storylines—the tournament, what happened with Sam’s ex, why the rules of magic are changing— tie together through flawless pacing and well-balanced action, leading to revelations that foster character growth. While Vesper and Sam are assumed white, secondary characters have varying skin tones. An extraordinary debut packed with richly drawn characters in a sure-to-entertain storyline. (Fantasy. 14-adult)
Fiedler, Lisa Razorbill/Penguin (304 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-451-48080-4
PAST PERFECT LIFE
Eulberg, Elizabeth Bloomsbury (336 pp.) $18.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5476-0092-2
When you realize your life is a lie fabricated by your dad, the daunting task of facing college applications suddenly loses its severity. Ally Smith lives a financially humble but socially rich life with her single dad in a small Wisconsin town. She’s an unofficial member of the Gleason clan (the first family of Valley Falls) and an official topnotch student vying for college scholarships. But those application essay questions are the worst—particularly the one about a significant life event. Ugh. As a dorky, predictable creature of habit routinely indulging in Taco Tuesdays and Football Sundays with her dad, there’s nothing blockbuster about her life’s lovely little cadence. A red alert shatters Ally’s same-old existence when her social security number on a college application is revealed to be falsified. Confusion evolves to anger as she learns that her father has kept a life-shattering secret from her—and the changes that follow force Ally to leave behind everything she knows. This novel takes the self-identity trope and intensifies its scope, layering in the mature navigation of family relationships. An honest pace, salt-of-the-earth protagonist, and sympathetic, well-rounded characters keep the conflict from being hyperbolic even though Ally’s story becomes national news. Ally, friends, and family are presumably white. Family melodrama in theory, genuine identity crisis in execution. (Fiction. 14-18)
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In a story told in two voices, several generations of women in VanDrexel’s Family Circus learn how and when to be solo acts—and when to trust the net. When the circus comes to Brooksvale, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1965, a wealthy 16-year-old seizes the chance to escape her abusive father. Renaming herself Victoria, she joins the circus, planning to leave once she’s far enough away to build a stable, independent life for herself. She doesn’t plan to become a tightrope walker, and she certainly doesn’t plan to fall in love….Half a century later, 16-year-old high-wire star Callie and her mother, Quinn, leave the circus after Callie’s secretive grandmother Victoria dies. Quinn’s new job at an animal sanctuary in Florida puts Callie’s career on hold, and she reluctantly enrolls at the local high school. Against Victoria’s captivating and emotional narrative, Callie’s resistance to a settled life reads as less sympathetic and her conflict as lower stakes, even after the discovery of an old box of keepsakes from Victoria’s transformative and tragic young adulthood changes Callie’s life. Victoria, Callie, Quinn, and those closest to them are assumed white; nonwhite characters are extremely marginal. While Victoria briefly mentions the “ugly din” of “riots” in Harlem and Birmingham, specific social and political movements go unaddressed; Callie’s voice is similarly disconnected from current events. A compelling story of identity and family that resonates most powerfully in its historical voice. (Fiction. 12-18)
FINALE
Garber, Stephanie Flatiron Books (416 pp.) $19.99 | May 7, 2019 978-1-250-15766-9 Series: Caraval, 3 Picking up just after the end of Leg endary (2018), Garber continues to build the world of Caraval with a final installment, this time focusing equally on both Dragna sisters’ perspectives. After they released their long-missing mother from the Deck of Destiny, Scarlett and Donatella hoped to rebuild their relationship and gain a new sense of family. However, Legend also released the rest of the Fates, and, much to their dismay, the Fallen Star—essentially the ur-Fate—is only gaining in power. As the Fates begin to throw Valenda into chaos and disarray, the sisters must decide whom him to trust, whom to love, and how to set themselves free. Scar’s and Tella’s passionate will-they-orwon’t-they relationships with love interests are still (at times, inexplicably) compelling, taking up a good half of the plot and |
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who is ya for? On Goodreads and other social media sites, I infuriatingly encounter adults criticizing YA titles and their characters for being “immature” and using other terms that indicate a lack of awareness that these titles are intended to be developmentally appropriate for teens. With a stunning absence of insight, one adult on Goodreads slammed an ALA– award winning nonfiction title for 10- to 14-yearolds because it didn’t contain anything new that she—the grown-up who was possibly old enough to have lived through the events depicted—didn’t already know. Of course, there is no universal experience of adolescence, any more than there is of middleage. YA is commonly understood to span ages 12 to 18, relatively few years, but ones in which people undergo an astounding degree of physical and emotional change. Many young adults shoulder adult-level responsibilities and have already experienced a lifetime’s worth of sorrows. Others have had the privilege of travel and other experiences many adults never get to enjoy. Age is not a single determining factor any more than gender or race, but still we classify some books as being particularly well-suited to teen audiences. What do the ones written with the general developmental needs of teens—rather than the interests of the legions of adults who enjoy YA—have in common? Certain characteristics—compelling plot, vivid sense of place, engaging dialogue—apply regardless of age. What is critical in YA is a deep respect for people whose lives are exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure (sometimes in the space of a single lunch period), who are often stereotyped and underestimated purely due to their age, and who are consciously navigating major life transitions that frequently lead them to incisive114
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ly question societal norms, posing challenging questions that we would all do well to ponder. Check out the graphic novel Kiss Number 8, by Colleen AF Venable, illustrated by Ellen T. Crenshaw (March 12), for a great example. There are many things teens are experiencing for the first time, romantic love with all its complications not being least among them. They are developmentally able to contemplate questions of identity across many dimensions in a much deeper way than during childhood. The depth and intensity of the feelings these firsts bring about cannot be underestimated. Love from A to Z, by S.K. Ali (May 7), explores all of this beautifully. Many adults remember what it felt like to be an adolescent with a freshness that belies the years that have elapsed. These individuals write (or read) YA novels without demanding that the characters behave like adults or judging them for being anything other than what they are. It is the job of the adolescent to be an adolescent; teens are not imperfect or unfinished adults. The best YA books never forget that. —L.S. Laura Simeon is the young adult editor.
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balancing out the large-scale power games with more domestic ones. Much like the previous two, this third book in the series is overwritten, with overly convenient worldbuilding that struggles nearly as much as the overwrought prose and convoluted plot. While those who aren’t Garber’s fans are unlikely to pick up this volume, new (or forgetful) readers will find the text repetitious enough to be able to follow along. For fans, a finale that satisfies. (Fantasy. 14-18)
Goo, Maurene Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $17.99 | May 7, 2019 978-0-374-31057-8
TEEN TITANS Raven
Garcia, Kami Illus. by Picolo, Gabriel DC Ink (176 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-4012-8623-1 Mother. Gone. Memory. Gone. Seventeen-year-old high school senior Raven rebuilds her life in New Orleans after a car accident takes away everything she knows. Raven now lives with her late mother’s sister, a voodoo priestess and “the Mother of Souls,” and her daughter. Raven searches for clues to her past while navigating conventional teenage social problems: a mean girl and a cute boy. She also contends with other people’s emotions invading her mind and the tricky tendency for her own mean thoughts to manifest into reality. While she cannot remember anything from before the accident, she suffers continual nightmares featuring a multieyed spirit. A compelling storyline pulls readers into Raven’s turmoil, guiding them competently through the floating panels of expressive artwork. The muted palette pairs perfectly with the noir tone of Raven’s search for her origins. The respectful but not extremely nuanced inclusion of matriarchal African heritage religions such as voodoo is more empowering than campy. In one notable scene, the spirits of dead “mothers, daughters, sisters, and grandmothers, voodoo queens and warrior women of O’rleans” are called forward to gather and vanquish evil alongside Raven. Picolo’s (Icarus and the Sun, 2018, etc.) ghostly images of girls and women from different eras erupting from their graves to surround and support their earthbound sisters elicit good chills. The diverse cast is indicated through names and variations in skin tone. Well-paced and thrilling; readers will fly high with Raven’s tale. (Graphic fiction. 14-18)
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A K-pop star finds love and adventure with an aspiring photographer in this modern retelling of Roman Holiday. Lucky, a Korean-American K-pop star suffering an existential crisis over her career, plays hooky one night after a big concert in Hong Kong, escaping her handlers and bodyguard in search of a hamburger. Woozy on anti-anxiety medication and sleeping pills, she loses her way only to be rescued by Jack, an attractive stranger and fellow Korean-American who at first has no idea who she is and is struggling through his own personal crisis over whether to study banking to please his parents or pursue the photography he’s so passionate about. As Lucky and Jack adventure through Hong Kong, they begin to fall for one another, but their budding connection is threatened by the lies they’ve told one another: Lucky hides her real identity, pretending to be an ordinary girl who is on tour with her church choir, while Jack has secret plans to sell photographs of their day together to a tabloid to help launch his career. Narrated in short chapters that alternate between Jack’s and Lucky’s first-person perspectives, Goo (The Way You Make Me Feel, 2018, etc.) develops each character’s voice with clarity. A quick-paced, entertaining plot, witty banter, and expert characterization make this a light and satisfying read, and a wealth of local details effortlessly immerse the reader in the worlds of Hong Kong and K-pop stardom. Charming and swoonworthy. (Fiction. 14-18)
WARHEAD The True Story of One Teen Who Almost Saved the World Henigson, Jeff Delacorte (352 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-525-64790-4
A cancer survivor looks back on how personal and family issues affected his diagnosis, treatment, and aftermath. Though debut author Henigson does go over the discovery of his brain tumor in 1986 at age 15 and the symptoms, surgery, ensuing courses of chemo and radiation, and then a quixotic journey to Moscow, thanks to the Starlight Children’s Foundation, in hopes of discussing nuclear disarmament with Mikhail Gorbachev, the fuel powering his narrative is a blend of smoldering anger at his cold, distant father, weary acceptance of his mother’s emotional dependence, and wrangles with adolescent libido and depression. Consequently, and notwithstanding worthy views on the arms race and a cogent insight that “battling” cancer is an invidious metaphor (“I |
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Birdbrained, in a good way. the confusion of laurel graham
ALL OF US WITH WINGS
wasn’t one of the combatants. I was the battlefield”), he comes off as a self-centered and not particularly reflective teen more interested in grinding axes against his neurologist, a certain unsympathetic teacher, and, most particularly, his dad than in offering comfort, coping strategies, or even reassurance that he ultimately found ways of moving past his anger. His account cuts off abruptly with his entry into college and an exclamatory letter of praise from a Russian fan. Cancer fiction with young characters abounds, but memoirs are rare—so it’s unfortunate that when one does come along, it’s neither particularly current nor much more than self-therapy. (Memoir. 13-18)
Keil, Michelle Ruiz Soho Teen (360 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-64129-034-0 Xochi, a teen runaway, is contracted by 12-year-old Pallas and her polyamorous family to be their governess. The night of an after-party during the vernal equinox, Xochi and her charge conjure two fey children bent on punishing all who have wronged the older girl. Debut author Keil paints San Francisco in both specific and broad strokes—the music scene, fashion, and lack of modern technology hint at a possibly historical setting. The worldbuilding falls somewhere between the dangerously thrilling and dark urban fantasies of Holly Black and the magic-infused, sweeping romances of Anna-Marie McLemore. The writing soars, especially at the sentence level, alternating effortlessly between past and present and the perspectives of multiple protagonists, including a bookstore cat with ties to the faery world. The secondary characters are multidimensional and bring their own storied pasts, which will draw readers to this loving and unconventional family. The often flippant dialogue helps to break up some of the heavier, more painful, and rawer passages. Xochi’s reckless decisions, especially a taboo sexual relationship and high-chasing drug use, aren’t played for drama or effect—they exemplify a truly traumatized teen on the path to recovery and healing. Through risky and sometimes-empowering behavior, she learns to forgive and love herself. Xochi is biracial (Mexican-American and white); she is also queer, as are multiple secondary characters. This tale of found family and recovery weaves an unforgettable punk rock–infused spell. (Magical realism/ urban fantasy. 15-adult)
THE STORM CROW
Josephson, Kalyn Sourcebooks Fire (368 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-4926-7293-7 Series: Storm Crow, 1 A familiar premise enlivened by some surprises. Princess Anthia has been depressed since the military might of neighboring kingdom Illucia destroyed her nation’s magical crows and killed her mother. Months later, about to be married to the Illucian prince, Thia discovers one surviving crow egg. This gives her the strength to become angry and fight her depression, fomenting rebellion (and falling in love—but not with the prince). There is diversity in this world; the kingdoms vary in culture, values, and appearance. Thia and her people are brown-skinned while her best friend is blonde and likes girls, something the text treats as unremarkable; the wicked Illucians are also fair-skinned. While the racial differences have some parallels to real-world power structures, the story never examines race in any meaningful way. Sadly, the worldbuilding is also reductive; as the backmatter makes clear, the values of the kingdoms are indistinguishable from the characteristics of the citizens. Pedestrian writing, particularly the overreliance on clichéd similes, further detracts from the strengths. The portrayal of depression feels clinical rather than emotionally resonant. Still, the formula of feisty female lead overcoming military might in a diverse world a lá Leigh Bardugo or Sabaa Tahir has plenty of sticking power, so this is likely to find some readers. Debut author Josephson may have potential but she’s not there yet. (map, guide to characters/setting) (Fantasy. 12-18)
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THE CONFUSION OF LAUREL GRAHAM
Kisner, Adrienne Feiwel & Friends (288 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-250-14604-5
Field journal notes from the eponymous 17-year-old—from April 29 through Sept. 5—include a beloved, critically injured grandmother; a man-obsessed mother; a budding same-sex romance; and the fight to preserve a nature reserve in Shunksville, Pennsylvania. From the title onward, the text is full of references to birds. (The collective noun for warblers is a “confusion.”) Laurel, like her grandmother, is an avid bird-watcher, environmental activist, and photographer. When Gran—Laurel’s “constant in this world”—is hit by a vehicle while in foolhardy pursuit of a bird, Laurel erroneously blames herself. She compartmentalizes her |
THE BEST LIES
guilt remarkably well, adding hospital visits with her comatose grandmother to her internship responsibilities at Birdscout Nature Center: leading tours, reading to youngsters, cleaning, and policing the bratty Birdie Bros. The latter share Laurel’s goal of winning a photographic prize from Fauna magazine. After cleared-up misunderstandings, Laurel’s relationship with hot co-worker Risa heats up simultaneously with local politics. Sneaky politicians and developers are working on a deal to build a school on protected land. Laurel and Risa are joined by other nature lovers—including feisty little Karen and her two mothers—as they try to win time for proper consideration of the project. Meanwhile, is Gran’s spirit inhabiting an unusual, elusive birdl? The many subplots intertwine gracefully through Laurel’s strong, humor-inflected voice and have realistic resolutions. The book follows a white default. Birdbrained, in a good way. (Fiction. 12-16)
Lyu, Sarah Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $18.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-4814-9883-8 When a friendship turns sour and a boyfriend ends up dead, what will it take to unravel the reasons why? When Remy Tsai meets Elise Ferro, all she wants is to be friends. Elise is confident, fierce, and strong—ready to defend anyone from injustice, either with a few choice words or with a carefully planned act of revenge. Remy wants to be just like her. Elise offers an escape from Remy’s fighting parents, from Remy’s perfect brother, and from Remy’s other friends, who are growing distant. But beneath Elise’s brazen exterior, she has her own wounds. As their friendship intensifies, Elise begins to clash with Remy’s boyfriend, Jack. When Jack is shot and killed, Remy must sort through abuse, guilt, and love
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to understand what happened. Was it self-defense, or did the differences between Elise and Jack finally become too much? Remy and Elise’s sometimes-electrifying, sometimes-toxic relationship is explored in detail, making both girls’ actions understandable, if still reprehensible at times. Though the drama is extreme, the trauma Elise and Remy both carry is explored deftly, and Elise’s hold on Remy is tantalizing throughout. Remy is Chinese-American, has another Asian-American friend, and notes that her schools have become more diverse, though most of the other characters, including Elise, are white. A gripping story of love, obsession, and the space in between. (Thriller. 13-18)
Miller, Sam J. HarperTeen (400 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-06-245674-8
Four years ago, when best friends Solomon and Ash were 12, something happened that neither remembers. The two reacted in very different ways: Ash struggles with depression, and Solomon has succumbed to serious mental illness. He dwells in Darkside, where dinosaurs live alongside humans and othersiders, humans with magical powers. In Darkside, Ash is a Refugee Princess under a spell, and Solomon has a crush on her bodyguard, Niv, who for safety has moved her from one undisclosed location to another ever since the riot when othersiders and humans clashed. In Ash’s reality, she attends Hudson High, where her Solomon sometimes attends class and his stepfather, hunky Mr. Barrett, is football coach and vice principal. She also hooks up with Connor, Solomon’s stepbrother. In Solomon’s world, a wave of anti-othersider violence coincides with vandalism and dangerous pranks in Ash’s, and the time the friends spend together in both places jars memories of the traumatic event that shattered their lives. Is it possible that their struggling friendship could be instrumental in saving two worlds? Miller (Blackfish City, 2018, etc.) delivers a tale of friendship and dovetailing realities: Each teen narrates from their own reality in alternating chapters, and the two narratives bleed into one another in a way that at times borders on confusing. The worldbuilding in Darkside will feel familiar to fans of fantasy. Ash is white; Solomon is white and Jewish. A darkly complex read. (Fantasy. 15-18)
THE CHANGELING OF FENLEN FOREST
Magyarody, Katherine Great Plains Publications (224 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jul. 1, 2019 978-1-927855-97-3-1 An old forest encloses mysteries both fantastical and personal. When Elizabeth was small, she cried out in loneliness and a unicorn came to protect her through the dark night. From then on, she has had a special ability for finding the creatures and an affinity for the forest in which they live. Having been abandoned by her father, Elizabeth and her mother take to scavenging for naturally shed unicorn horns, using them to make a miraculous medicine they sell to support themselves. A unicorn brings Elizabeth a sickly foal to raise, and she names her Sida. When Sida wanders too far into the forest on her own, Elizabeth, now 17, follows and accidentally discovers a small community of people who speak a different language and harbor a surprise discovery. In this fantasy world, there are wild beasts, blooming romance, an uncanny doppelgänger, disjointed time, and a culture where women are expected to be domestic. Characters seem to default to white. The story subtly morphs halfway through, once Elizabeth becomes lost in the forest, and, unfortunately, after that point feels a bit scattered; later elements don’t always flow naturally from earlier ones and the tale becomes somewhat disjointed with an unresolved ending. Readers looking for an escape will probably tolerate the story’s weaknesses, but there is little here to lift this beyond run-of-the-mill fantasy. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-17)
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EMMIE AND THE TUDOR KING
Murray, Natalie Literary Crush Publishing (304 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-9984484-7-3 Series: Hearts and Crowns, 1
Time travel enables a seemingly impossible romance. Emmie’s mind is on creating a piece of jewelry that will get her into a prestigious London design school, not on her friends or the end of high school. When she spots an unusual blue ring at a yard sale, she buys it—not realizing that when she falls asleep wearing it, she will be transported 400 years into the past, to the time of Nicholas the Ironheart, the last Tudor monarch of England, adding alternate history to time travel in this soft sci-fi. To Emmie’s surprise, Nick isn’t just the bloodthirsty maniac of history books; he’s handsome and dotes on his sister, Kit. But Emmie knows it’s Kit’s murder that will set Nick on his notorious historical path. As she falls in love with Nick, Emmie tries to protect Kit and to figure out whether she can give up |
A worthy coming-of-age story. german calendar no december
the freedoms of the 21st century for love in the 16th. Even before the constant crisscrossing trips across time and the lies to cover up her absences, Emmie is a wishy-washy, reactive character. The alternate history angle isn’t fleshed out sufficiently, and the time travel is overused. Worst of all, the romance is hard to stomach, especially with Nick’s jealous temper. Any potential the story had is let down by the execution. (Romance. 14-18)
MINUS
Naffziger, Lisa Illus. by the author Iron Circus Comics (178 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jun. 15, 2019 978-1-945820-32-8 A convoluted graphic novel thriller about a teen discovering the dark and twisted secrets of her childhood. Beck, a brown-skinned young woman with straight black hair, is en route by car with her father to begin her first year at the University of Chicago. The excitement of leaving her isolated home-school environment is abruptly derailed when a routine stop at a gas station turns fatal. Beck flees, and a concerned woman drives her into the city, but urban Chicago is bewildering for Beck, who is accustomed to rural living. This chance encounter with a seemingly random stranger later proves pivotal when Beck learns about mysterious circumstances from her past. An innocuous stuffed toy holds clues to Beck’s deep family secret and sets off a chain of events that forces two men in her life to confront one another. Themes of social media and surveillance, complicated familial relationships, and so much more are overshadowed by hasty plot twists, lackluster characterization, and a polarizing conclusion. The dark vector-style illustrations, heavy with deep crimson and indigo, are reminiscent of Faith Erin Hicks. Variations in the panels add visual interest. The cast is ethnically diverse. The disturbing and rushed ending may baffle some readers while opening up discussion for others. (Graphic fic tion. 12-14)
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referred to as “Oyinbo,” and Olivia dislikes the way it marks them as different. Sent to boarding school in Lagos, she is immediately othered and treated poorly because of her mixed heritage. Her fantasies of jolly adventures are quickly dashed by the realities of oppression and hazing. Hoping to put that mistreatment behind her, she finds her way to Hamburg, Germany, to attend university. Her arrival is less than pleasant after being questioned by a customs agent and embarrassing herself on an escalator. And she quickly learns that while in Nigeria she wasn’t black enough, in Germany she isn’t white enough. Among her multiethnic co-workers at a bakery she finds a family and a purpose, but it isn’t enough to shield her from harsh realities. Illustrations of birds interspersed throughout the story represent Olivia’s need to escape the familiar and seek what the rest of the world has to offer. Weyhe (Arbeit, 2018, etc.) infuses West African–style figures and art executed in simple lines with an orange, brown, and green color palette. Her expressive faces pair well with the honest, straightforward text, bringing to life the journey of a young woman seeking acceptance and belonging. A worthy coming-of-age story about resilience. (Graphic fiction. 13-adult)
BLOODY SEOUL
Patel, Sonia Cinco Puntos (224 pp.) $17.95 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-947627-20-8 Sixteen-year-old Rocky is the son of one of Seoul’s most powerful crime bosses. Not yet old enough to join his father’s organization, he runs his own high school gang, terrorizing and bullying the kids at school, until he begins to see the truth of who his father really is. Rocky initially longs to join his father in the Three Star Pa gang’s glamorous world of power, danger, and luxury, but when he starts to recognize his father’s moral bankruptcy, he begins to question all his assumptions. As his eyes open to his father’s alcoholism and dark moods, Rocky unearths memories of his loving mother, who disappeared 10 years earlier. He discovers ugly truths about his parents’ relationship and his mother’s disappearance and starts digging deeper. Patel’s (Jaya and Rasa, 2017, etc.) staccato first-person prose, liberally interspersed with flashback scenes and gratuitous similes, creates an emotional distance for readers. Rocky’s personal transformation from brutal bully to lovesick teen may also feel a bit too pat to be entirely realistic, exemplified by his 180-degree change of heart toward the Indian-Korean girl he had been tormenting at school. Rocky’s friendships with his gang members, who turn out to be the steadying foundation for his new life, are the strongest element of his journey. Readers who are drawn to the darker side of Korean pop culture will enjoy this archetypal, yet solid, redemption story. (Fiction. 13-18)
GERMAN CALENDAR NO DECEMBER
Ofili, Sylvia Illus. by Weyhe, Birgit Cassava Republic Press (192 pp.) $24.95 | May 8, 2019 978-1-911115-61-8 Ofili’s debut teaches readers that moving forward is the only option. Olivia Evezi wants to find her place in a world where she never wholly belongs. In her home of Warri, Nigeria, her white German immigrant mother is |
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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Zack Smedley
IN DEPOSING NATHAN, TWO TEENS BECOME AS CLOSE AS TWO BOYS CAN GET—UNTIL ONE STABS THE OTHER By James Feder Photo courtesy Peter Konerko
Deposing Nathan (May 7), Zack Smedley sets out to offer a new perspective on two communities whose stories continue to be told in ways that have been depicted narrowly: bisexuals and religious folk. Growing up, Smedley knew that he was attracted to both men and women. “But,” he recalls, “I was not familiar with the term ‘bisexual’ until sophomore year of college.” Immediately, he says, he recognized himself in the word, and he came out as bisexual three weeks later. Given the complicated and often dismissive attitude toward bisexuals both within and outside the LGBTQ community, Smedley’s delayed introduction to the concept should not, perhaps, be too shocking. Things are changing, of course. “Recently, I’ve come across young adult books that have a lot of mentions of bisexuality, and validation of it,” he says, “but that isn’t the same as exploring it head-on in the first person.” For Smedley, then, it was crucial to write Deposing Nathan in first person. A blossoming friendship between teens Nate and Cam becomes increasingly fraught in the novel as they begin to understand their attractions toward one another. While Cam is able to quickly incorporate his sexuality into his broader identity, Nate struggles. His main sticking point is his Christian faith—or his reading of his Christian faith. “I wanted to explore the different sides of the argument of sexuality versus religion,” Smedley explains. “So many think they repel each other, but I was raised Christian, and to me, it made all the sense in the world that if you were LGBT that would only serve to strengthen your relationship with your faith, so as to be more in tune with who you are.” He admits that writing Nate’s character proved more challenging than expected given how different his own experience was.
For a long time, the narratives woven around LGBTQ characters in literature dealt with sexuality as an obstacle, as something that needed to be addressed and overcome in order to allow for acceptance to be obtained from the self, the family, or the community. Recently, there’s been a trend in young adult fiction to present sexuality as just one part of one’s identity rather than the defining struggle of one’s life. However, this movement toward diversifying the stories being told about LGBTQ people has largely been constrained to dealings with cisgender, secular, gay male characters. In his debut novel, 120
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Nate’s shame, reinforced by a strict interpretation of religion peddled by his aunt Lori (a stand-in for his deceased mother and, according to Smedley, organized religion), causes Nate’s emotions to swing back and forth with increasing volatility, which strains his friendship with Cam. Eventually, confusion, hurt feelings, and misplaced anger boil over into an altercation in which Cam stabs Nate with a shard of pottery. This criminal element—the book is structured around Nate’s lengthy deposition— provides a high-stakes backdrop to Smedley’s careful and nuanced exploration of sexuality and faith, which remains the heart of this story. “I wanted to write something where the main character is unironically a person of Christian faith and trying to reconcile that with their sexuality and who ends up doing it,” Smedley says. “My hope would be that readers come to the realization that it’s possible to have a relationship with God and be Christian and still be queer. I think,” he adds, “and this applies to God and to family—if you feel that there’s a rubric you have to meet in order for someone to love you, then something’s not right.”
NO ESCAPE
Scarrow, Alex Sourcebooks Fire (384 pp.) $10.99 paper | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-4926-6026-2 Series: Plague Land, 3
James Feder is a writer based in Tel Aviv. Deposing Nathan recevied a starred review in the March 15, 2019, issue.
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Complete assimilation is the name of the game in the final installment of Scarrow’s Plague Land trilogy. Shortly after the events of Reborn (2018), siblings Leon and Grace and their friend Freya become separated. Freya is on a U.S. Navy ship bound for Cuba, aka the New United States, along with Leon and Grace’s father, Tom, who is desperate to locate his children. Leon is still in the U.K. with a small band of survivors after having fled the chaos that befell their last refuge, and Grace, who is now infected and more than human, is on a Chinese carrier carrying a shocking message. Over two years ago, the world was invaded by the horrifying virus that liquifies its victims, and though the discovery that salt water is an effective weapon has offered hope, it hasn’t been enough to stop the ruthless otherworldly intelligence that makes it clear that assimilation is humanity’s only choice. Is there a way to stop the takeover before humankind is annihilated? Scarrow’s devastated landscape and the terrifying entity that has taken it over are vividly rendered, and the plentiful, visceral imagery of bodies in various states of transformation is not for the squeamish. The conclusion may prove divisive among series fans, but it will linger. Main characters are assumed white, but there’s some diversity in the international supporting cast. Adrenaline-laced post-apocalyptic fun. (Horror. 14-18)
VIRTUALLY YOURS
Tash, Sarvenaz Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5344-3666-4 NYU freshman Mariam Vakilian is at a crossroads. Socially adrift, unsure about her major, and still grieving the end of a three-year relationship with her boyfriend, Caleb, who is attending UC Berkeley, Mariam signs up to try HEAVR, a virtual reality dating app. Reviewing her top three matches, she immediately recognizes—and impulsively chooses—Caleb. Creating an avatar and using an alias to disguise her identity, she goes on virtual dates with him, hoping he will fall back in love with her. Just to complicate things, another one of Mariam’s dating app matches is her new real-life friend Jeremy, with whom she’s becoming increasingly close. Muddling through all this confusion forces Mariam to work through some of her anxiety and self-absorption to truly connect and build honest relationships with family, high school friends, and her college circle. |
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STEALING HOME
Tash (The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love, 2016, etc.) presents readers with a young woman navigating life’s risks and rewards in a way that will resonate with many readers. Although the pacing lags at times, smooth writing and lively banter elevate this deceptively light novel. Mariam is the daughter of Iranian Muslim immigrant parents, and Persian cultural elements add texture and interest to the story. Caleb is implied AfricanAmerican, Jeremy is half-Mexican and half-Italian, and Mariam’s white lesbian roommate has a French-Canadian girlfriend. A sincere story of self-discovery. (Fiction. 14-18)
Wallace, Becky Page Street (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-62414-764-7
Ryan’s passion is her Texas family’s minor league baseball team in this satisfyingly, utterly predictable saga of girlmeets-boy (whom she should not fall for but does). Ryan is focused on running the Buckley Beavers, which used to be a mom-and-pop organization. But since Mom and Dad divorced, she’s shouldering extra responsibilities, including picking up Sawyer Campbell, the No. 1 draft pick, at the airport. He arrives just in time to puke all over Ryan; the meet-cute requirement is met, and all ensuing expectations of the genre follow, including the embarrassing almost-naked moment and being forced to spend time together by clueless adults. Little baseball is in evidence, and the business side of sports is the mechanism for the developing romance as mascots, on-field promotions, chasing of sponsors, advertising, and special events run rampant. Ryan fights for the survival of the team while her mother threatens to sell out her share to heartless corporations. Both Ryan and Sawyer know that a relationship is a bad idea—not to mention against the rules—but the kiss at the end is foretold from the beginning. Ryan and Sawyer are white, and Ryan’s wealthy best friend, Mia, is Latinx. Sawyer’s twin brother has cerebral palsy and seems to stand in as a symbol signaling Sawyer’s goodness rather than being a well-rounded character. For die-hard fans of the genre. (Romance. 14-18)
CONTAGION
Terry, Teri Charlesbridge Teen (432 pp.) $18.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-58089-989-5 Series: Dark Matter Trilogy, 1 An unusual plague sweeps across Scotland in this trilogy opener. In the opening pages, 12-year-old Callie Tanzer is being experimented on by scientists in biohazard suits in an underground bunker. She dies after being consumed by fire. Now she’s a ghost witnessing the spread of a sickness that is soon let loose into the wider population of Scotland and beyond. Being a ghost is frustrating, but Callie’s determined to find her family, including her half brother, Kai, who has been obsessed with locating her after she disappeared a year ago. Enter Sharona “Shay” McAllister, who contacts Kai with information about Callie’s disappearance (Shay conveniently has a photographic memory—it’s been a year, after all). It’s insta-sparks for Kai and Shay, but there’s no time for character development, because the epidemic, dubbed the Aberdeen flu, starts killing off friends and neighbors. Luckily, Kai and his mother, an epidemiological researcher, are immune. Shay gets sick and survives, but survival comes with creepy abilities. Survivors are now being hunted, and Callie is consumed by the need for revenge. Shay and Kai fall in love laughably quickly, and the plague’s origins take a back seat to navel-gazing and improbable plot twists. All main characters seem to be white. Fans of the genre deserve better than this. Boilerplate apocalyptic fodder. With kissing. (Dystopia. 12-18)
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MAYBE THIS TIME
West, Kasie Point/Scholastic (368 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-338-21008-8 Enemies unconvincingly become lovers. Judgmental and with a chip on her shoulder, Sophie wants nothing more than to escape her small Alabama town for design school in New York. To make money, she works for the local florist/party planner, which also lets her spend time with her best friend, Micah, a waitress for her father’s catering company. When Micah’s father is picked for former celebrity chef Jett Hart’s small business mentorship program, it brings Sophie into contact with Jett’s son, Andrew— a guy who rubs her the wrong way with his city manners and hesitation to stand up to his mercurial father. Over the course of various events throughout the year—a format working against narrative flow, not to mention romance—Sophie struggles to get some inspiration for her design portfolio, cope with family issues, and not let Andrew get under her skin, even as she |
Honest, satisfying, and surprisingly original. impossible music
starts seeing other sides of him. It takes fighting with Micah and a good, hard look at herself for Sophie to take a chance with Andrew, just in time for a new year to begin. The episodic format doesn’t jibe with the small-town setting—how can Sophie only see Andrew at events? Most characters are assumed to be white other than Micah, who is black. This stop-and-start romance doesn’t come together. (Romance. 12-16)
IMPOSSIBLE MUSIC
Williams, Sean Clarion (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-544-81620-6
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When Adelaide musician Simon experiences sudden deafness, he struggles to find where, or if, he belongs in the hearing and Deaf worlds. Narrated from 18-year-old Simon’s point of view, this novel explores the anger, frustration, grief, and fear of two teens dealing with unexpected hearing loss and follows them as they learn what it means to be d/Deaf. Simon awakens one morning to find that he can’t hear: A stroke has left him with an extremely rare case of cortical deafness. In Australian Sign Language class, he bonds with G, another teen dealing with her own recent deafness. Simon and G begin to build a relationship while trying to adjust to life without hearing and nursing a glimmer of hope for cures to their conditions. The author has taken a protagonist cut from the same cloth as many others —a moody teenage boy—and made him sympathetic and relatable. The search for identity is a universal theme, yet Simon’s story of confronting deafness and Deaf culture feels fresh. Though the story centers on Simon’s struggle to accept his deafness, it does not paint being deaf as a torture to be endured. It avoids both condescending pity and inspirational fluff, instead offering an unpretentious look at the process of losing and finding oneself after a life-changing event. Simon and G are white, and there is some ethnic diversity in secondary characters. An honest, satisfying, and surprisingly original coming-of-age story. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14-adult)
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Sh e lf Space Q&A with Mike Gustafson, Co-Owner of Literati Bookstore By Karen Schechner
Which was your favorite event and/or most memorable disaster? The day we opened, we ran out of receipt paper. Neither of us (my wife and fellow co-owner, Hilary) went to business school, so that makes sense. I drove too fast to buy more, because the next day was April Fool’s Day and I couldn’t stomach the cruel joke of a bookstore handing out post-it notes as receipt paper because it didn’t anticipate anyone would actually buy anything. My favorite event was hosting Patti Smith at the Detroit Institute of Arts on Valentine’s Day. Smith, who lived in Detroit, read and sang songs with her family on stage. One of the songs she sang was an audience sing-a-long of “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You,” which was coincidentally our wedding song. Hilary and I slow-danced in the back of the theater, and I mentally took as many snapshots as I could, trying as hard as I could to slow down time while simultaneously bathing in it, realizing in that moment that nothing would ever top that experience, booksellingwise.
Literati Bookstore might have broken a record. Hilary and Mike Gustafson opened their Ann Arbor, Michigan, bookstore in 2013 and within six years won Publishers Weekly’s prestigious Bookstore of the Year award. Since its inception, the bookstore has seen rapid growth in size (now 4,000 square feet), events (about 200 annually), and offerings (they added a coffee shop). Mike also published a book about the store, Notes from a Public Typewriter, which was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. The general bookstore sells new books and specializes in categories like literary fiction, poetry, and cookbooks. Here, Mike talks about hosting Patti Smith, eco and feminist book clubs, and a resident ghost.
How does the bookstore reflect the interests of your community? I don’t think any independent bookstore our size could survive if it didn’t reflect the interest of the community. Beyond specified curation, since we are downtown, we host many events as well as book clubs like our Feminist Book Club and Eco Book Club. Ann Arborites love to learn, so as part of our Local Learning at Literati Series, we invite local experts to teach the community their skills, like calligraphy or drawing the human form.
How would you describe Literati Bookstore to the uninitiated?
What trends are you noticing among young readers?
Literati Bookstore is a general interest, small-but-mighty, curated, events-focused bookstore in the heart of downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. We occupy all three floors of a historic brick building, one of which definitely has a ghost. (As far as we can tell, the ghost does not handsell.)
The resurgent interest in analogue among younger people is real and powerful. I’m old enough to remember when people said email would kill off cards. Cards are one of our bestselling items. Or when people said the word processor would eliminate the need for journals and notebooks. Journals and notebooks sell very well among younger people. Younger readers are passionate about new voices and new ideas but also about real, physical books and real, physical bookstores. They take photos of books. They create bookstagram accounts. They build bookshelves in their apartments. They enthusiastically celebrate the beauty that is the physical, analogue book. I’m not sure that was predicted 10 years ago.
If Literati Bookstore were a religion, what would be its icons and tenets? We unintentionally opened on Easter, so this question is unintentionally funny to me. I think most who visit us can witness firsthand that the book is not dead. Obviously, all who enter are expected to click-clack something on our public typewriter and behold the smell of new books and hot coffee. At night, sometimes words are spoken into microphones, people applaud, floors creak, pages turn, and the typewriter click-clacks away….Wait, independent bookstores aren’t a religion?
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Karen Schechner is the vice president of Kirkus Indie.
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These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Achtman, Lindsay Illus. by Morosan, Andra Self (32 pp.)
LIFE AS TRAUMA by Sarah Z. Mitić............................................... 140 MY SISTER’S MOTHER by Donna Solecka Urbikas.........................145
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A young girl tries to identify the creature that’s growing inside her pregnant mother in this picture book. The narrator’s mother is having a baby, and while everyone tells the girl it’s a surprise, she proudly proclaims, “I’m super great at guessing!” Based on how “soft and fluffy” her mother’s body feels, the girl first predicts the infant will be a puppy. When the baby kicks, it reminds the narrator of a unicorn’s horn. But since the infant is hiding inside, perhaps it’s a shy bunny. The girl’s animal guesses continue as noises and the way her mother moves inspire additional speculation. With each creature, the narrator envisions what fun they will have together. When her mother finally provides an ultrasound, the girl realizes that the baby will be a tiny human who will be her friend forever. Achtman’s (The Day the Swing Stopped, 2018) rhyming, child’s-eye-view text mimics the imagination of a preschooler perfectly (though this precocious narrator is already studying math). Morosan’s (Good Morning, Mirror!, 2019, etc.) big-eyed white characters and delightful animals are cartoonish with soft edges. And the boisterousness of the girl’s creativity is presented beautifully in her hoped-for adventures. For parents introducing the idea of a new child’s joining the family, this playful tale offers a joyful and effervescent celebration of siblinghood.
PERCEPTION A Photo Series
Adams, KC HighWater Press (120 pp.) $34.00 | Sep. 24, 2019 978-1-55379-786-9 MY SISTER’S MOTHER A Memoir of War, Exile, and Stalin’s Siberia
Urbikas, Donna Solecka Univ. of Wisconsin (312 pp.) $26.95 | $19.95 paper | $11.99 e-book Apr. 27, 2016 978-0-299-30850-6 978-0-299-30854-4 paper
A collection of photographs that challenges cultural stereotypes of Indigenous people of Canada. Canadian First Nations artist Adams has personally witnessed the stigma and ignorance that her country’s Indigenous people face daily. During her long, successful career, she’s worked in a wide variety of different media, including video, paint, ceramics, and beads. But in this anti-racism project, she felt that no other medium but photography could capture the raw, intense emotions that played across her First Nations subjects’ faces. By placing |
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on consignment Whether traditionally or independently published, most authors want to see their books on the shelves of their neighborhood bookstores. Traditional publishers vie for valuable shelf space, but many indie authors can opt for a simpler route—a consignment program. Authors pay a small handling fee, and participating bookstores stock several copies of their books (as long as said books meet certain reasonable criteria), paying authors after their books are sold. Bookshop Santa Cruz, in Santa Cruz, California, launched their current consignment program, which is part of their larger publishing program, more than a decade ago, and it’s very popular. “Our consignment program is one of the most robust programs of its type,” said Sylvie Drescher, Bookshop Santa Cruz’s Publishing & Local Author Coordinator. “Since 2009 we’ve consigned books from over 1,100 Bay Area authors and have at any given time between 200 and 300 active participants in the program.” At Village Books, in Bellingham, Washington, their consignment program is also the blueprint for a positive partnership between the bookstore and indie authors. Owner Paul Hanson said, “Authors receive a contract, and we pay our bills to them on a regular basis. We treat them as we treat all the other publishers we work with. We want them to work with us as professionals.” Watermark Books and Café, in Wichita, Kansas, launched its consignment program about eight years ago. Watermark was a pioneer of the comprehensive local author program, which is similar to those listed above. They’ve tweaked their program and instituted a $50 stocking fee for five books. Watermark owner Sarah Bagby said, “We have a good relationship with local authors because we don’t send anybody away. Sometimes we have to explain why we have to have a fee to stock the book, but once we do, it’s usually all good with the author.” —K.S. Karen Schechner is the vice president of Kirkus Indie.
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two stark, black-and white photos of each subject side by side, Adams effectively forces viewers to reconsider their assumptions, resulting in powerful shifts in perception. In the first photo, the subject was told to pose how they believe other people perceive them, and in the second, they presented themselves how they wanted to be seen. For example, readers see a portrait of a serious-looking woman, and, above her, are the words “Welfare Mom?” Then, just below that term, readers are reminded to “look again.” The second image shows the same woman, radiant and smiling, with words that describe who she is, including “Mother,” “poet,” “activist,” and “Bannock Lady” (bannock is a kind of quick bread). Each subject described themselves in their own words, which offers readers striking insights into their lives. The art project was so successful that, in 2015, a campaign was launched to stage the portraits across Winnipeg, Manitoba; the faces were then seen on buses and billboards across the city. In this beautifully understated collection, the images are preserved in book form, which readers may use as a tool to combat discrimination. In the foreword, Canadian poet Katherena Vermette, who is of Métis descent, sums up the book’s spirit: “it’s about looking again, looking deeper, and to me, it’s also about kindness.” Indeed, the potential lasting impact of this collection can’t be underestimated; this is socially engaged art at its best. A simple but persuasive presentation that encourages thoughtful reflection.
SASSIE’S NEW HOME
Albright, Erin Illus. by Hombs, Alexandra Albright Creative (20 pp.) $22.95 | $14.95 paper | $4.99 e-book Jan. 29, 2019 978-0-578-45681-2 978-0-578-44332-4 paper In Albright’s debut picture book, a mother explains the concept of heaven to her young daughter after their beloved dog dies. Light-skinned Lanie and her small, black-and-white dog, Sassie, have always been good friends, playing together and sharing snacks. One day, Lanie’s light-skinned mom tells her that Sassie has died and gone to heaven. She describes the wonderful things that Sassie will find there, such as dog treats growing on trees. She also explains how dogs befriend people who arrive in heaven and help them navigate it. Now, Lanie’s mom says, Sassie is “helping other people who need to feel the joy and enthusiastic welcome that only a dog can provide.” That night, Lanie dreams of playing with Sassie, saying goodbye to the dog, and watching her head toward her new “job.” Albright has the mother express some truly poignant sentiments, such as “It is important…that we hold onto all those happy thoughts to help us remember her.” Other statements are somewhat puzzling, though, such as that Sassie “is SO special and loves us SO much that she ages faster than we do.” However, the book’s overall message may provide comfort to kids dealing with a pet’s death. Debut illustrator Hombs’
A smart, action-oriented middle-grade series that’s designed to keep kids’ attention. bear company
THE FINAL WARS BEGIN
bright images feature engaging details, including textured trees and clouds. Youngsters will enjoy the depictions of various dogs. A well-meaning story with universal appeal.
BEAR COMPANY
Alexander, Cameron Bickering Owls Publishing (152 pp.) $6.99 paper | $2.99 e-book | Jul. 9, 2017 978-0-9991138-1-3
In this debut sci-fi novel, a military officer wanted for murder in the early 23rd century tries to prevent a war between human colonies. Lt. Gen. Bastien Lyons is hiding in New Paris, the human colony on post– World War III Earth. After defying an order that would have resulted in the deaths of innocents, Bastien resisted arrest and killed five men in self-defense. But the individuals who finally capture him don’t take him to the Martian colony, Port Sydney, where his superior, Gen. Crone, awaits. Bastien instead is the prisoner of New Paris’ Queen Marie Dubois. She attained her royal title by killing her father, and now Marie wants to use Bastien to assassinate her elusive sister, Belle, the throne’s rightful heir. Not handing over Bastien—a wanted criminal—to Crone violates the colonies’ treaty, which also includes Nippon One on Earth’s moon. The breach could ignite a war with Port Sydney, which is exactly what Marie wants. When Belle gets wind of her potential assassin, she intends to turn Bastien against Marie, primarily to maintain peace between the colonies. But Cube, a humanoid robot Crone sends to hunt Bastien, is a 7-foot-tall snag in everyone’s plans, and war may be unavoidable. In this first installment of a trilogy, Asthana deftly manages multiple characters in a sci-fi–flavored espionage story. Motivations, for example, make sense, particularly the reasons both sisters use Bastien rather than simply attacking each other. Alternating perspectives showcase superb characters, with Marie and Cube as standouts. Cube attempts to comprehend human feelings through music while its own emotions appear as data files (“>EMOTION = frustration.dat”). Marie is a metal-tentacled cyborg who, in her opening scene, kills and cannibalizes her lover. Although this book is a quick read, the author packs the narrative with plot developments: shifting alliances, shocking deaths, and scenes unfolding on all three colonies. At least one of those deaths is disappointing, but that won’t likely dampen readers’ expectations for the sequel. Extraordinary characters steer a taut, rousing futuristic tale.
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In this middle-grade novel, artificially intelligent teddy bears protect the son of a kidnapped scientist. Dr. Peter Barnes is being held against his will in a secret lab beneath the Arctic tundra. His kidnappers—referred to as “government agents”—know that he’s mathematically proven the existence of other dimensions besides our own. They want him to create a portal to one of those dimensions, and they’re willing to harm Peter’s 10-yearold son, Timmy, if he doesn’t cooperate. Timmy, whose mother died four years ago, is an excellent student—in large part because his and his father’s frequent moves have kept him from having a social life. Peter often takes work-related trips, leaving Timmy with a nanny. He’s never been gone for a month before, however, and the new nanny, Ms. Gertrude, isn’t too friendly. In captivity, Peter creates a blue-lit portal that releases hundreds of monstrous, shadowy beings, led by an imposing entity named Total Dark, who wants to rule our dimension. Total Dark, who’s also capable of absorbing other objects and using them as weapons, detects that Peter has a son. It sends its minions after Timmy in order to coerce the doctor into opening an even larger portal so that thousands more shadows may cross over. In response, Peter remotely activates Bear Company—five robotic teddy bears in his house, each programmed with a different specialty to protect Timmy. For his debut novel, Alexander launches a smart, action-oriented middle-grade series that’s designed to keep kids’ attention. His flair for fun description pops up in lines such as “this underground base…makes Area 51 look like a candy shop.” Vocabulary words, such as “rendezvous,” are defined in context and spelled phonetically (“ron-day-voo”) to boost the educational experience. Timmy also refreshingly uses a library—not just the internet—to begin his search for his father. The bears are color-coded and have names such as Bruiser and Sneak, which emphasize their capabilities. Adults may also notice Alexander’s cleverness in naming the humorous medical bear “Patch,” after famous real-life physician Hunter “Patch” Adams. An adroitly conceived series opener that’s tailored to action fans.
Asthana, S.A. Self (192 pp.) $0.99 e-book | Mar. 1, 2019
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THE LAST CHANCE LAWYER
Bernhardt, William Babylon Books (344 pp.) $14.99 paper | $4.99 e-book $16.99 audiobook | Feb. 22, 2019 978-1-948263-36-8
Bernhardt (Justice Returns, 2017, etc.), known for his long-running Washington, D.C.–set Ben Kincaid courtroom-drama series, returns with a new attorney in a different city. Lawyer Daniel Pike has always done things his own way, and that’s made him one of the top criminal defense attorneys in St. Petersburg, Florida. But when Daniel’s violent client Emilio Lòpez, whom he’d just saved from conviction, gets involved in a deadly shootout, the lawyer’s white-collar firm fires him. This leaves the arrogant attorney adrift, but then he meets an attractive woman named Maria Morales in a bar, and she invites him to a mysterious meeting. At that gathering, the shadowy “Mr. K” asks Daniel to join the Last-Chance Law Firm. His new associates include strategist Maria, researcher Garrett Wainwright, and facilitator Jimmy Armstrong. Daniel’s first case involves arranging the adoption of Esperanza Coto, a 9-year-old orphan who’s about to be deported to El Salvador. But this is complicated by the fact that Esperanza’s guardian, Gabriella Valdéz, has been charged with murder in the aforementioned shootout. As Daniel investigates the case, he learns that the woman is enmeshed in a much larger conspiracy. He’s going to need to solve this puzzle quickly to save Gabriella and Esperanza from grim fates. This novel is, first and foremost, about Daniel’s moral evolution. In the beginning, the self-centered attorney has no qualms about representing a “walking waste product” like Emilio; he even turns away a woman seeking help for her abused sister (“Too messy. Not profitable”). But as he takes up the cause of Esperanza and Gabriella, he comes to realize that the downtrodden have more urgent need of his services. Also, Bernhardt shows how Daniel was previously a lone wolf who felt that he didn’t have to answer to anyone, but, thanks to his Last-Chance Law Firm partners, he comes to appreciate the value of teamwork. Overall, the author’s narrative maintains a fast pace as Daniel discovers possible suspects before it reveals the unlikely killer. A brisk tale with a surprisingly sympathetic protagonist who should be able to sustain another winning series.
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CHRISTIANITY’S RELEVANCE FOR TODAY A Personal Perspective Block, Russell C. LifeRichPublishing (232 pp.) $33.95 | $16.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Nov. 7, 2018 978-1-4897-0884-7 978-1-4897-0883-0 paper
A longtime minister offers a manifesto on faith. Debut author Block, who has been involved in pastoring and community activism for over six decades, provides a lifetime’s worth of lessons about Christianity, Scripture, and the church. He necessarily begins with a brief autobiographical essay, providing readers with an idea of the author’s overarching frame of reference. From there, Block goes on to produce an outline of the Christian Bible, describing it in progressive and intellectually rich terms. For instance, in discussing the Tower of Babel, he takes the intriguing step of comparing the tale to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: “Human beings trying to play…God, while creating their own nemesis.” In discussing the New Testament, he extends a universalism to the story of Jesus, noting that “I fully believe also that God speaks to…people who profess other religions…and even no religion.” The author addresses what he views as misuses of the Bible, instances in which Scripture has been cited to support everything from racial and gender inequality to holy wars and the rejection of scientific findings. Finally, he commits a lengthy portion of his reflections to the subject of the church. His ideal view of the church is an open and liberalized one in which social activism is thoroughly coupled with a dedication to doctrine and evangelization. He also reviews the ministerial profession, with the benefit of a lengthy career’s worth of experience. Block is a clear and accessible writer who is frank, introspective, and well-read. But his opinions will not find agreement from the full range of readers. The author takes a thoroughly modern view of Scripture, studying it critically and proclaiming, for instance, that “one mistake is to maintain that the Bible…is automatically to be taken as the direct and literal word of God.” He quotes widely from progressive—and even controversial—authors like Eckhart Tolle, Bart Ehrman, and Marcus Borg and thoroughly discounts a literal reading of such traditional tenets of the faith as Jesus’ virgin birth. Still, his tone is generous and inviting throughout, endearing his writing to those who agree and disagree alike. Progressive and modern in approach, an engaging appeal to the future Western church.
HUNDRED PERCENT CHANCE
SKYWAVE
Brown, Robert K. Self (266 pp.) $16.95 paper | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 9, 2019 978-1-79343-149-3
A sequence of clicks in otherwise mundane radio signals may indicate the presence of aliens on a Jovian moon in Donoghue’s (UMO, 2018, etc.) sci-fi
series entry. Aerospace engineer Kiera Walsh’s former roommate asks her to meet with a man named Ajay Joshi. He’s an accountant by trade, but he’s also an amateur astronomer who’s made a discovery that Kiera has trouble believing. Specifically, he’s found periodic clicking noises in readily available NASA recordings of Jupiter’s radio waves. Most people claim that these are merely interference, but Ajay surmises that the clicks, which occur in a pattern, are an alien broadcast to Earth from Callisto, one of Jupiter’s moons. When Kiera peruses the recordings, she finds some validity in Ajay’s claims. She and fellow engineer Dante Fulton relay the information to billionaire Augustus Amato, whose company, A3rospace Industries, is focused on deep-space exploration. Amato responds by expediting a mission to Callisto; he suspects that if NASA makes it there first, there will be a coverup. Apparently, NASA has plenty of secrets, including a failed space mission to Callisto 23 years ago and the discovery of alien beings there, known as UMOs (“unidentified magnetic objects”). Soon, the race to Callisto becomes a tense standoff. Donoghue’s multigenre approach to his series opener is a triumph. Although it’s primarily science fiction, the story also boasts thrillerlike suspense (Amato is threatened with imprisonment at one point) and mystery (very little is known about the UMOs, which appear as light). Numerous characters evolve over the course of the story even though it’s only Book 1: Ajay turns out to be more than just an internet conspiracy theorist, and NASA’s chief administrator, Dennis Pritchard, begins as Amato’s ally, but circumstances change their relationship. The narrative is largely driven by dialogue—intelligent, engrossing discussions of such subjects as probe launching and how the UMOs’ behavior is akin to that of Earth’s bees. This approach results in minimal action scenes, but the ending promises further adventures with these well-drawn characters. A promising, if chatty, first installment in a spacefaring adventure.
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A man recalls his college battle with leukemia in this debut memoir. February 1990. College junior Brown was enjoying a year abroad in Lancaster, England, when he felt uncharacteristically winded after a milelong jog: “It’s been at least the past few days—or maybe closer to a week, I don’t know—that I’ve been feeling more beaten down than normal. Nothing obvious, nothing specific, just steadily higher levels of crushing fatigue.” Then the bruises started appearing on his body: on his calf, his thighs, his right hand. There was blood in his spit and then in his urine. A visit to the school infirmary turned into a trip to the local hospital, where samples were taken and tests were done. After a few days, he received the news: He had leukemia. He was quickly flown home to Seattle to undergo treatment—his condition, acute myeloid leukemia, was particularly fast-acting—including chemotherapy and bone marrow biopsies. Then more chemo. As this happened, Brown was visited by his family and friends from high school, causing him to look back on his memories with renewed gratitude for what he had seen and done. Throughout, he had his doctor’s words on his life expectancy at the front of his mind: “Your odds aren’t ten percent, or twenty, or even fifty. You either survive or you don’t. Period.” Brown’s writing is lively and lyrical, with moments of intense description offset by humorous ones. He often imagines his life as though it were being made into a film: “This brief hospital stay in London is as good a place as any for a rapidly-edited montage. No words necessary, saving the cost of paying actors and actresses portraying the hospital staff for speaking lines in what, ultimately, will be a cameo appearance in my life.” The author’s bout with leukemia was relatively compressed (though subsequent brain infections required a second hospitalization), allowing him to methodically document each development, treatment, and result. For those interested in seeing the toll leukemia can take on a young, healthy person, Brown’s account offers the details in searing prose. An intense, deftly composed cancer narrative.
Donoghue, K. Patrick Leaping Leopard Enterprises (324 pp.) $29.99 | $17.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Dec. 14, 2018 978-0-9997614-2-7 978-0-9997614-0-3 paper
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Brisk action and pitch-perfect Sherlock-ian aplomb.
sherlock holmes and the case of the undead client
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF THE UNDEAD CLIENT
Downing, M.J. Burns and Lea Media (270 pp.) $10.99 paper | $4.99 e-book | Jun. 1, 2019 978-0-9995083-4-3 Zombies take on the Victorian supersleuth in this debut homage to the Arthur Conan Doyle detective series. It’s 1888, and Sherlock Holmes, assisted by newlywed John H. Watson and a posse of street urchins, comes to the aid of Anne Prescott, a nurse whose sister and fiance have disappeared. In improbably short order, he figures out the basics of the mystery: Mad scientist Emil LaLaurie is using a brain-destroying infection, assisted by the voodoo rituals of his confederate Alcee Sauvage, to turn slum dwellers into zombies. The ensuing struggle to stop the villains is a well-rendered tribute to the Conan Doyle classics that retains the original style while updating the sensibility with combat feminism, queasy sex, and torrents of gore. Roaming a foggy, atmospheric London, Holmes is his old self, bursting with know-it-all pedantry (“It is perhaps a compound word from several terms in West African Kikongo…‘nzambi’ and ‘zumbi’ ”), unlikely deductions (“The particular callous patterns on the man’s right hand, the many injuries to his left, and the discoloration of his trouser legs all speak of a man accustomed to repairing shoes”), and curlicued trash talk (“I wish to assure you…that I am the least worthy of the agents of justice who will fall upon you soon and take you down to ruin”). But he’s also modern enough to declare that “it is high time, Watson, that we treat women as our equals” and to insist that Anne get samurai training. The latter comes in handy as the heroes confront hordes of rotting, snarling, brain-eating, galumphing undead and mete out old-school dismemberments and beheadings. The grisly violence—“The meaty ‘snick-snack’ sound of a razor-sharp blade slicing through flesh and bone came from my right….The head spun for a second in the air above the creature’s torso, and a weird giggle escaped my lips”—darkens Downing’s vigorous series opener. So does Watson’s agitation as he conceives an ungentlemanly desire for the gorgeous Anne that only grows more intense as she gradually zombifies after getting bitten. Holmes fans may find the video game carnage and Watson’s somber obsessions to be a tonal clash with the Conan Doyle aesthetic of cerebral cool, but the brisk action and pitch-perfect Sherlock-ian aplomb make for a page-turner. A gothic, ghoulish, but enjoyable version of Holmes.
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RIVER RULES
Fischer, Stevie Z. Green Writers Press (240 pp.) $19.95 paper | Apr. 23, 2019 978-1-73274-347-2 A colorful cast of characters unites to stop one of their own from exploiting a small New England town’s land and water. Brock Saunders is a blight on the community of Bridgeville, Connecticut. After ripping off the town’s farmers with a Ponzi scheme, he moved into the shadows, helping to facilitate the construction of an eyesore fuel-cell site and working as a consultant for the “New England Council Consortium,” an organization out to monetize the land at the expense of its people. Peter Russo knows well what it’s like to run afoul of Brock. Not only did he rob Peter’s brother and father, but he also raped his dear friend Nancy, an assault she has never gotten over. Though still quite active in his 50s, Peter will have to look to his friends, family, and fellow townsfolk for aid as a conspiracy by Brock and the consortium to sell the area’s water rights to the huge company Eautopia is slowly uncovered, a plot that the group is willing to kill to protect. Despite the high stakes of Fischer’s debut thriller, the book is often quite lighthearted. Peter’s “revenge” on Brock includes merely planting flowers around the ugly power station, and he’s aided in his fight with colorful characters ranging from a part-time private investigator and yoga-obsessed British ex– police officer to an obnoxiously loud ambulance chaser of a lawyer. Peter’s other allies are fully drawn individuals dealing with many of the modern challenges familiar to small communities; his niece, Rachel, is attempting to stay clean after opioid addiction; his ex Carmen, whom he still holds a torch for, lost her daughter to similar challenges; and most of the community suffers under a bureaucratic kleptocracy that isn’t answerable to its neighbors. Chapters are short but never rushed, and the dialogue is natural and funny, slang-filled and prone to friendly swearing and good-natured insults between close friends. As with any small town, there’s a lot of history to cover both about the area and among the characters, but even this is introduced organically, with details left to be fleshed out later on, feeding the story’s intrigue. Modern economic scheming versus provincial loyalty makes for an endearing thriller.
LUMINA
THE DESIRE CARD
Flinn, Mary Self (348 pp.) $26.89 paper | $6.99 e-book Mar. 1, 2019 978-1-73358-090-8
A high-stakes thriller focuses on a banker’s painful journey. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can purchase liquor, prescription drugs, and a Fifth Avenue apartment with a Central Park view. For Harrison Stockton, that’s almost the same thing. But getting fired from his investment banking firm seems like rock bottom, especially when home offers only cold comfort from his kids, Brenton and Gracie, whom he barely knows after years of long nights away, and his wife, Helene, for whom he’s ceased to be good enough. But he quickly finds himself in the hospital with liver disease, one problem he truly can’t buy his way out of. With this setup alone, the novel could have come across as a simple parable, as Harrison gets his just deserts for taking his life of privilege and the wealth of possibilities for happiness for granted until it’s too late. Nevertheless, even in the early sections of the tale, Harrison is surprisingly sympathetic. While his “extracurricular activities” certainly will raise readers’ eyebrows, the vivid portrait here is not of an evil man but one torn between striving for his own advancement and providing for his family until a haze of pain-killing vice takes everything from him. Or almost everything. As part of his severance package, Harrison receives the titular Desire Card, offering “any wish fulfilled for the right price.” When his last hopes dry up and he’s cheated out of a black market liver, the Desire Card is all he has left. But the price for such a request is all too high, and the shadowy cabal behind the Desire Card begins threatening people he cares about. Harrison must make the ultimate choice between everything he could want and the people to whom he owes so much. Goldberg (The Mentor, 2017, etc.) delivers a thoughtful examination of human selfishness in this series opener. The moving story is a modern-day devil’s bargain, twisting and turning through an understandable fight for survival and a more complex view of the morality of a system where anything can be had for a price, a more literal and explicit version of the landscape readers live in each day. A taut, emotional tale that portends an even deeper exploration of this world in the sequel.
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The Roaring ’20s come alive through the pages of an old yellowed manuscript that reveals a long-buried, sordid tale of love and betrayal among society’s finest in Wilmington, North Carolina. In Flinn’s (Allegiance, 2016, etc.) cleverly designed novel within a novel, four friends come together on Anne Borden “AB” Montgomery’s front porch to read a story written in 1930 and recently found among some of AB’s old papers. Attached to the manuscript was a letter from its author, Perry Whitmore, to AB’s mother, Sylvie Meeks. Perry, a friend of Sylvie’s brother Kip, explains that he composed the novel from letters he received from Kip during the summer of 1928 and Sylvie’s diary (given to Kip in 1929) covering the same period. Kip and Sylvie provide the manuscript’s alternating voices. AB and her three companions (80-year-old Bernard May and 30-somethings Elle McLarin and Nate Aldridge) take turns reading Perry’s novel aloud over successive summer nights. It begins when Sylvie and Kip go to a Saturday night dance at Lumina, the Wrightsville Beach pavilion “Palace of Light,” in May 1928. They run into Catherine and Clifton Carmichael, another sibling duo, whom they have known since childhood. The Carmichaels, sitting at the top of Wilmington aristocracy, and the Meeks, merely a family of means, move in different circles. But this fateful summer, the magic of music and dancing leads to risky romance—and violence. Flinn’s evocative prose re-creates the era: “Cicadas cranked up their song as a backdrop to the city noises, of the trolley bell clanging, train whistles blowing, automobiles rumbling along, dogs barking, and the occasional clipclopping of a horse-drawn cart.” She captures the exuberance of the decade’s dance, fashion, and changing social conventions as well as the more sinister underbelly of the Jim Crow South. Catherine’s sordid backstory, only partially disclosed before the manuscript’s dramatic denouement, skirts the edges of credulity but nonetheless packs a shocking punch. The evolving relationships between AB and Bernard and Elle and Nate create a satisfying narrative symmetry between the two storylines—one past and the other contemporary. An engaging, often tender tale filled with vibrant period details.
Goldberg, Lee Matthew Fahrenheit Press (309 pp.) $13.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Feb. 21, 2019 978-1-912526-35-2
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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Amy A. Bartol
THE BESTSELLER MOVED FROM SELF-PUBLISHING AS A LAST RESORT TO BECOMING A BESTSELLING SELF-PUBLISHER By Rhett Morgan Photo courtesy Lauren Perry of Periwinkle Photography
Even though she never expected anyone to read it, Amy A. Bartol wrote and then rewrote her first manuscript, Inescapable, at least 100 times before self-publishing it in 2011. After releasing several sequels, starting a second series, and hitting bestseller lists, Bartol signed a deal with Amazon’s sci-fi and fantasy imprint, 47 North, in 2015 and has since continued to excite YA readers eagerly awaiting June’s release, Rebel Born. The third volume in Bartol’s hugely successful Secondborn series, it brings readers to a world inspired by China’s one-child policy, blending political intrigue, secret societies, and a diabolical deep state with a forbidden, star-crossed love affair. When did you first want to be a writer? I grew up in a family where violence and alcoholism were part of my everyday life, so when I found books as a young
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child, they became an escape for me. When those novels ended, I never wanted to leave their worlds behind, so I’d spend days dreaming up new adventures for my favorite storybook characters. The thought of writing a book became a constant drip in the back of my mind. In the end, I told myself that I was going to write a book as an experiment to see if I could do it. What drew you to the sci-fi and fantasy genres? Um…they’re badass! I mean, c’mon! Nothing’s better than sci-fi and fantasy. Worldbuilding alone in these genres is challenging. It’s like its own separate character. If I can create intricate, multilayered environments with unusual political structures, deep states, secret societies, and more that readers can smell, touch, taste, see, and feel, then I’ve done something extraordinary, haven’t I? What do you think particularly attracted readers to your Secondborn series? I think readers are drawn to the Secondborn series because it’s a fast-paced futuristic adventure written in a Muhammad-Ali rope-a-dope style where I show you one fist but hit you with the other when you least expect it. It leaves readers reeling but wanting more. As an author working in YA fiction, what do you think is exciting teen readers today generally? I think teen readers crave something new—something truly mind-bending—like augmented realities that blend compelling bits of prophecy with science. Recently, I’ve become fascinated with synthetic biology and the idea of reinventing nature. I touched on those concepts in the Secondborn series and especially in my book Rebel Born, but there’s so much more to explore in that arena. One of
my favorite things to do is to dream up technology and a lexicon that don’t exist. When did you first decide to try self-publishing? Self-publishing was a last resort for me that evolved into the best decision I ever made. I thought my mom would probably buy 25 copies of Inescapable…and then I’d celebrate my literary obscurity with a cheap bottle of champagne scraped from the meager profits. And that is pretty much what happened the first month. But then, in the second month, I’d sold a couple of hundred copies....I was able to release my second novel, Intuition, a few months later in December 2011. Sales went crazy! I was selling thousands of books a month.
Rhett Morgan is a writer and translator living in Paris.
Goldstein, Julia Bebo Press (240 pp.) $24.99 | $8.99 e-book | Apr. 22, 2019 978-0-9995956-2-6
An engineer explains how to make products less toxic and more sustainable. In this debut science book, Goldstein takes readers into the realms of manufacturing and recycling to explore how things— particularly consumer goods—are made, how the process can be improved, and what happens when they move into the recycling system. Capsule portraits of entrepreneurs involved in different aspects of sustainable manufacturing (a project manager who maintains a database of construction materials and their ingredients, a distributor of compostable flatware and packaging) appear throughout. These are woven into a narrative that includes a concise history of plastics from Bakelite to the present; Nike’s shift toward corporate social responsibility; and a visit to a steel plant. The book does a particularly good job explaining the complicated world of recycling, where both economics and feasibility limit the materials that can be productively broken down and reused. That section concludes with examples of cutting-edge techniques that offer new recycling possibilities. Goldstein frequently refers to earlier works on the subject, showing how sustainable manufacturing has evolved over the past decade. And she makes a compelling case for its eventual mainstream viability, drawing connections between lean manufacturing strategies and a more efficient use of raw materials, for instance. The book is well-written, with enough detailed information to engage knowledgeable readers but without technical jargon or minutiae that might overwhelm a novice. The tone is casual and intimate (“It’s great to have flatware that composts, but not if it falls apart when we’re using it”), and the author often uses her own experiences as a source of examples and anecdotes. While the volume maintains an upbeat perspective, Goldstein acknowledges the challenges of bringing sustainability to the manufacturing process and offers a candid evaluation of the effectiveness of each technology discussed. Readers will be left with the sense that although sustainability is not an easy feature to add to the manufacturing process, it is indeed possible to do so with both ecological and financial benefits. An engrossing, comprehensive overview of sustainable manufacturing and recycling and the challenges to expanding their adoption.
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What has worked best for finding an audience of younger readers? Amazon Publishing & Marketing has been crucial in this area. Their mailing lists are second to none. The best way to find young readers is to interact with them on social media sites like Instagram. I cross-promote with other authors in a group called #FantasyOnFriday. Every Friday, we talk about novels in our genres that we’ve read or that will release soon. It’s a great way to interact with the book community. I consider myself a book blogger now because I read and discuss a lot of different books and I try to give back to the readers that have given me so much.
MATERIAL VALUE More Sustainable, Less Wasteful Manufacturing of Everything from Cell Phones to Cleaning Products
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The author sidesteps the typical fretting over paradoxes when her characters travel back in time, instead allowing the girls to simply have fun. the time travel team: the great historic mystery
THE TIME TRAVEL TEAM The Great Historic Mystery
Hadden, Jordyn Windjammer Adventure Publishing (353 pp.) $19.99 paper | $8.99 e-book Oct. 11, 2018 978-0-9994812-2-6
Hadden’s YA fantasy debut features a group of teens who are tasked with saving the world by some of history’s great-
est thinkers. Fourteen-year-old Tyme Newton lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Her father, Benjamin, is president of the town’s vaguely described “mechanical engineering” factory. One day, in her father’s office, she discovers an old wooden crate containing a first edition of Philosophæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by her ancestor Isaac Newton. It also astoundingly contains a note, intended for his descendant, which reads, “you have come upon the beginning of a mystery.” The back of the book holds four “time crystals,” each supposedly able to power a trip back in time. Later that night, Tyme considers testing the crystals, but before she does, she remembers her Grandma Isabelle, who died three years before. Outside, a storm interrupts her thoughts, and lightning hits the O’Connells’ house across the street. Afterward, 14-year-old Zina O’Connell searches for her parents, but they seem to have disappeared. While wandering around the property, Zina finds a stone with carvings that read, in part, “To find your parents you will need… / A watch, a bulb, a brush, a kite.” Tyme and her friends Luna Edison, Avia Wright, and Olympia Van Gogh, have these things, but they have no idea of Zina’s plight. In fact, they’re beginning their own time-hopping mission. They soon receive guidance from their relatives Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, and Vincent Van Gogh, who’ve joined forces in a dimension called Intelligentsia. Only these geniuses’ descendants can stop a cosmic generator from overloading and causing Earth’s doom. Hadden is clearly enamored with all things scientific, and she strives to instill her passion for learning and the arts in her YA readers. The resulting adventure focuses on the heroic teens’ ancestries to kick the plot into high gear, and she adds a suspenseful, four-day countdown until the electricity machine will destroy the world. The author sidesteps the typical fretting over paradoxes when her characters travel back in time, instead allowing the girls to simply have fun—as when Olympia suggests a title for her ancestor’s latest work: “Well, it’s a night sky full of stars. You know, a starry night.” Tyme’s grandfather, Henry, frequently offers complementary notes of wisdom, as when he says, “We cannot live in the future, worrying about what lies ahead, or in the past....We must live now.” Coded ciphers and puzzles add further dimension to the narrative, as the girls must solve them to discover crucial details of their mission. Even famed dictionary compiler Noah Webster makes an appearance. Hadden’s core message, however, is the importance of teamwork and humility; Tyme’s ego—and her penchant for keeping secrets— nearly undoes the group and the mission, and her poor behavior 134
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is mirrored by Isaac Newton, offering a lesson for readers of all ages. By the end, everyone on the team has her own Idea Notebook to inspire future adventures in the series. A winsome tale with a reverence for science and the humanities.
LOW COUNTRY BLOOD
Hinkin, Sue Literary Wanderlust (344 pp.) $17.99 paper | $7.99 e-book | Apr. 1, 2019 978-1-942856-33-7 An African-American investigative journalist hunts her cousin’s killer and then becomes a target herself in this Southern thriller. Beatrice “Beazy” Middleton, freshly laid off from her reporting job in Los Angeles, drives her silver Beemer crosscountry to visit her family in Savannah, Georgia. Halfway there, her brother, Luther, a sheriff in rural Georgia, calls to say their 15-year-old cousin, Jayden, was murdered. Jayden, a musical prodigy, played fiddle and organ, and he “had the voice of a young Stevie Wonder.” Emad Al Alequi, whose father, Farouk, heads an Afghan heroin ring, recognized Jayden’s talent and was working as his manager. Marcus “Muhammed” Trotter, hired by Farouk to be his son’s handler, knew if Emad got overly involved with Jayden, it would interfere with the family’s drug trade. If Trotter couldn’t deter Emad, he could stop Jayden—with a “9mm hollow point, Teflon-tipped” bullet. It turns out Trotter’s history of being a very bad dude stretches back to high school, when he assaulted Beatrice, who was rescued by Luther’s best friend, Rio Deakins. Trotter relishes the chance to hurt Beatrice again while Rio, now a “goddamned gorgeous” motorcycleriding college professor, comes back into her life and may be the perfect man for her—despite his fiancee. Hinkin’s (Deadly Focus, 2018) second Vega and Middleton Mystery, which, like the first book in the series, stars only one of the titular characters and reads like a thriller, successfully blends multiple ingredients: fast pacing, romance, danger, humor, and a crazy wild ending. Nice details pepper the story: For example, a character in a coffee shop insists “on stabilizing the table with a couple of sugar packets,” and the female redheaded police detective has skin “the color of cream with cinnamon sprinkles.” Other passages border on the poetic, such as Beatrice’s thoughts as her car races like a swift, sleek panther home to Georgia: “Licking my lips, I sought the briny tang of the Pacific, but it was gone. Other flavors were on the rise. I took a long swig of water. I was good. A little anxious, but good.” A spirited reporter dealing with her past and helping police solve a murder in the family makes this novel hard to put down.
BUILDING THE MODERN WORLD Albert Kahn in Detroit
Hodges, Michael H. Painted Turtle (240 pp.) $39.99 | $24.99 e-book | Apr. 16, 2018 978-0-8143-4035-6
OFF THE WELL-LIT PATH
Holm, M.S. Sentry Books (128 pp.) $8.00 e-book | Aug. 16, 2019
A desperate man tries to recover his teenage daughter, kidnapped in Mexico. Bob Rugg and his 13-year-old daughter, Rose, travel to Mexico together with plans to relax on a sun-drenched beach. But they’re intercepted by gangsters who steal Rugg’s truck and abscond with Rose. Rugg, shot and left for dead, somehow survives. He’s brought to a hospital, where one of his legs is amputated. Hobbled but determined, he takes it upon himself to track Rose down, afraid that if he reports the crime, he’ll forfeit his only real advantage—the gangsters don’t know he’s alive and coming for them. Rugg only has the most meager of leads. For example, he remembers that a young thug with a pronounced limp lifted his wallet. Holm (Driller, 2016) alternates between two dueling narratives: a third-person perspective that focuses on Rugg and a first-person account from the perch of Rayo, a newly recruited gavillero under the rule of El Sin, the crime boss who runs the outfit that abducted Rose. The author artfully swings between two viewpoints worlds apart, capturing the vulnerabilities Rugg and Rayo share: Both submitted to the despotic calculations of El Sin. Rugg takes extraordinary risks to find his daughter and finds that the line that separates law enforcement from organized crime is capriciously drawn. Holm beautifully combines two typically incongruent fictional genres: a gripping, action-packed novel and an emotionally astute drama. His writing is poetically austere at times, invoking the hard-boiled prose of Cormac McCarthy: “The streets daylit. Rugg saw laborers with bundled lunches and water jugs, some riding bicycles, their lives lived beyond his troubles. Their troubles borne beyond what his life would know.” The author refuses to traffic in facile caricatures or easy moral distinctions: Rayo is a sympathetic character because of, not despite, his imperfections, and even El Sin, as dastardly as he is, is permitted a human side. And Rugg is a deliciously complex character—a former pilot and soldier, he radiates a grizzled toughness and a cynical wisdom born of loss and despair. Holm could have made him into a formulaic action hero—cinematically invincible—but he avoids that shopworn trope. And the surfeit of action the book does deliver unfolds in captivating language, the violence terrifyingly real, the |
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A biography examines architect Albert Kahn’s underappreciated legacy. According to Hodges (Michigan’s Historic Railroad Stations, 2012), Kahn’s indelible imprint on modern architecture has been overshadowed by his prolific industrial work. Today, he is most remembered for the factories he built for the automotive industry giants Henry Ford and Packard Motors, but his designs reverberate through the whole expanse of architecture and even manufacturing. His “daylight factories” became a model to be emulated by everyone. The author expertly traces the remarkable arc of Kahn’s life, from his early years in Germany and Luxembourg in a large and culturally vibrant family and his experiences as a financially straitened immigrant in Detroit to his successes as a globally renowned architect. He began his career inauspiciously—he was fired from his first apprenticeship when he was about 13 years old, and while he was a gifted draftsman, he was artistically limited by a total colorblindness. Nevertheless, despite an education that concluded in elementary school, he would eventually design the buildings that have become symbolic of Detroit’s iconic modernism, such as the General Motors building, the Fisher building, and the Detroit Athletic Club. Kahn was also devoted to the war effort, “knee-deep in equipping the United States to win the Second World War,” and worked as a consulting architect on the Soviet Union’s inaugural Five-Year Plan. Hodges makes a compelling argument that Kahn was not only an important architect, but also a historically significant steward of an embryonic modernity: “Unseen and largely unanticipated, the modern world was already in gestation but needed the skilled hands of Albert Kahn to give it form and substance.” The author artfully brings to fruition his intention to provide an “accessible introduction for the nonarchitect, nonacademic layperson.” Even the more technical discussions, like the ways in which Kahn and his brother Julius revolutionized the use of reinforced steel, are presented in plainly simple and sometimes elegant prose. Hodges covers an extraordinary expanse of historical and architectural ground in a short work— his powers of synopsis and distillation are impressive. He allows himself some speculation—for example, how Kahn managed the unrepentant anti-Semitism of Ford—but always displays admirable intellectual discipline, avoiding precipitous inference. The author’s overarching case that Kahn is unjustly underestimated by scholars—he “virtually epitomized the historical figure who is famous while alive yet vanishes the minute he’s in the ground”—is persuasively made. By the end of the book, it’s hard to disagree with the view of historian Wayne Andrews that even Kahn’s “factories were often works of art.” The architect was a maniacal workaholic, and so it makes sense that Hodges focuses on his professional achievements. But the author still
furnishes a vivid sense of the man’s character and his private life as a “good, if often distracted, father and a devoted paterfamilias to his extended clan.” Hodges includes pages and pages of gorgeous photographs of Kahn’s buildings that capture their magnificence and, even more than this intelligent biography, establish his undeniable stature as one of the finest architects of his time. A remarkable study of an architect’s works, both a historical and visual feast.
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An immersive re-creation of life and death on the Western Front. austin in the great war
danger sickeningly ubiquitous: “The desert without gully or outcrop. A vanished sea had left Rugg no concealment beyond the holes of long dead foraminifera, their benthic shells crunching under his feet. He ran with his mouth blooded and agape, as though in astonishment at a newly broken world, one where masked marauders set a man free so that they might shoot him in the back.” This is certainly not a feel-good story or for those in search of lighthearted entertainment. Holm asks a lot of his reader, both to understand the plot and to stomach the violence. But the author repays that labor with a memorable literary experience. A thrilling and moving story of love and desperation.
THE COORDINATE Jacobs, Marc Manuscript (212 pp.)
Two teenagers embark on a school project that turns into an exciting, dangerous, and globe-trotting adventure in this YA sci-fi novel. For 17-year-old Logan West, an upcoming history project represents a chance to reconnect with fellow student Emma James. He’s had a crush on her since second grade, when they were close friends, but they lost touch as they grew older. Now they’re both seniors at Jersey North High School, and they’ll soon be going their separate ways. But first, they’re partnering up to research the Secret Chamber of the White-Eyed Star God in the Copán Temple in Honduras. Its smoothly curved cave walls are inscribed with Mayan hieroglyphs—myriad four- to seven-digit numbers that experts still don’t understand. Logan and Emma soon discover a major obstacle to the project—all the web links to images of the numbers are now dead. The determined teenagers soon launch a search that sends them deep into the darknet. Along the way, they find out the secret of the Mayan numerals, involving a mysterious Norwegian named Albo, and go on a journey across America and abroad. Dangerous international criminals and U.S. intelligence operatives also pursue these secrets, but they have no concept of what the shocking truth means for humankind. In his debut novel, Jacobs tells a Dan Brown–style adventure story for a high school audience—one that’s full of puzzles to decode and bold, perilous actions. There’s plenty of room for reader skepticism, and the central premise, in particular, requires some suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless, the story holds together thanks to some good mathematical puzzlesolving and insights by both Logan and Emma, who make an excellent team. Jacobs keeps the plot moving throughout by introducing unexpected twists and developing relatively minor characters, such as a comic-book store manager. Entertaining on several levels and sure to win fans for a planned series.
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AUSTIN IN THE GREAT WAR A Nebraska Farm Boy in the 12th Balloon Company
Johnson, Robert Eugene WordHawk Publishing (530 pp.) $49.95 paper | Oct. 16, 2018 978-0-9996347-1-4
The carnage of World War I scars an American doughboy in this debut historical novel based on the life of the author’s father. Johnson deploys exhaustive historical research—along with invented dialogue, composite characters, and dramatically imagined scenes—to flesh out his father Austin’s experiences fighting with the U.S. Army in France in 1918. Austin is assigned to a unit that mans large hydrogen balloons—tethered to the ground—that float high in the air, reconnoitering enemy movements and correcting the aim of artillery. While that might sound like a safe, even frolicsome, way to fight a war, it is anything but. High winds toss the pilots in the baskets, who feel “like thistledown in a hurricane” after landing; German planes and artillery relentlessly attack them; and any stray bullet can turn an explosive balloon into a miniature Hindenburg disaster. Aside from one nauseating trip aloft, Austin works with the ground crew, but that still exposes him to shelling, gas attacks, and, on one occasion, a rain of flaming rubber after a balloon explodes. But quieter interludes are more harrowing as his outfit passes through French villages demolished by years of war and populated by stray animals or through an old battlefield turned by shell craters into a biblical “abomination of desolation,” sterile moonscapes from one horizon to another. Worst of all is Austin’s temporary reassignment to a “Sanitary” unit tasked with identifying and bagging the dead after combat, which takes him into a “Death Valley” where American and German corpses lie in heaps. Through Austin’s story, Johnson presents an immersive re-creation of life and death on the Western Front, especially among the seldom-sung balloon squadrons. (The author includes many photographs and long historical notes; the latter, while interesting, are inserted in the main text and tend to break up the narrative flow.) He grounds the absorbing novel in realistic detail: camp routine and soldiers’ equipment; mud and fleas; the procedural of balloon maneuvering and maintenance; the exact sound a gas shell makes when it bursts, alerting men to scramble for their gas masks. But in Austin’s narration, the tale is also a spiritual odyssey. Beneath his seemingly stolid Nebraska farmer’s exterior, he’s an observant, sensitive soul shaken by the violence he encounters. He notes the shellshocked psychiatric cases among his comrades and feels ever more shadowed by the mayhem, unable to brush it off as the fortunes of war. He prays for a dead German, refuses an order to run his truck over a live mule, and becomes increasingly haunted by nightmares. Johnson’s prose is straightforward and naturalistic, but through Austin’s laconic prairie twang, he conveys deeper emotional impacts, from the grotesqueness of death (“He was strung up across” the barbed wire, “twisted, face sideways….His left arm was broke and slung backwards to the ground strange, like he
THE ECLIPSE DANCER
was trying to grab something from it”) to a mother’s muted anxiety over a draft notice (“She put her arms around me and hugged me tight with her head sideways against my chest”). The result is both richly textured and moving. A fine evocation of the face of war and the hidden wounds it leaves.
GET IT ON THE PAGE Top Script Consultants Show You How
Kellem, Craig & Hammett, Judy with Bailey, Amy Illus. by Tokar, John CreateSpace (191 pp.) $14.95 paper | $6.99 e-book Apr. 6, 2019 978-1-5355-7544-7
A Midwesterner recalls her semienchanted childhood. This latest novel from Koerber (I Once Was Lost but Now I’m Found, 2017) tells the complicated family history of a 65-year-old woman named Andy. She lives in sleepy Allenburg, Iowa, “a small market town in the Midwest, surrounded by puppy mills, factory farms, and meth labs. And cornfields. Lots of gravel roads and lots of cornfields.” Andy looks back on her life growing up in this quiet, peaceful backwater, living with her brother, Danny, and her caustic, bitter mother, Cindy (her father, scorned by Cindy, left long ago). Andy and her mother enjoy chain-smoking and trading barbs. When she’s 13, Andy meets her “fairy godmother,” Alana, and, intriguingly, the label in the girl’s reminiscences seems as much literal as figurative. Alana introduces Andy to the world of Algonquin folklore, which she eagerly absorbs: “She wanted to understand the words of the oldest jiibay, or fairies, from back before they learned Native words and long before they started speaking English.” Andy’s memories move forward in time to encompass her mother’s failing health and her own relationship with her daughter, Bridget. Koerber balances her narrative’s relaxed and direct pacing with frequent, evocative descriptions of the seasonal beauty of the Midwest, which Andy always remembers warmly: “The grass in the yard was silvery, the trees a strange dense black flecked with the starlight that reflected off the leaves. She felt the night air wrap itself around her, heavy as a wool blanket.” The tale progresses naturally through Andy’s memories as she recalls encountering more clues as to the nature and whereabouts of her missing father. The author smoothly works in light fantasy elements, touching on the fairy kingdom that’s always adjacent to the real world. “Aunty” Alana tells Andy stories about that jiibay realm and its ways. The resulting gentle mix of small-town life and glamorous fairies is ultimately enchanting. A charming, readable tale about a resilient woman’s search for her family—both regular and supernatural.
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Two seasoned Hollywood script consultants offer a crash course on how to turn one’s ideas into a polished screenplay. Debut co-authors Kellem, a former development executive at Universal Television and 20th Century Fox Television, and Hammett, a former employee at Universal Studios and the Agency for the Performing Arts, currently run HollywoodScript.com, a boutique script-consulting service. In this entertaining, to-the-point debut—written with screenwriter and producer Bailey and contributing writer/producer Mark C. Miller, with occasional illustrations by Tokar—these industry pros walk readers through the nuts and bolts of writing scripts that will catch the eye of Hollywood decision-makers. The first section focuses on prep work—time spent reading other people’s scripts, “playing in the sandbox” of developing ideas, and fine-tuning a concept and story. Those tempted to skip straight to pounding out dialogue do so at their own peril, the authors argue, noting that pros spend most of their time prepping: “the only writers who get the chance to write without preparation are those who are not getting paid,” Hammett writes. The second part covers “Drafting and Crafting,” offering helpful advice, although the authors do it in fairly broad strokes. Don’t expect a deep analysis of why the final scene in Chinatown is so powerful; instead, Kellem provides such nuggets as “Less is almost always better” and “Surrender to the fact that writing is rewriting,” and Hammett offers brief explanations of why screenwriters should embrace stage directions. The final section discusses marketing and selling a script; in it, Kellem explains why sending lessthan-perfect work is a big mistake: “After all, who wants to buy a brand new Mercedes with a dent?” They’re also helpfully candid about the bumpy, often frustrating path to production. Overall, this insider’s look at the industry is invaluable, although it may throw cold water on some readers’ Tinseltown dreams. That said, the book is also full of encouraging asides, and the authors seem dedicated to using their extensive knowledge to help others succeed in a truly competitive business. A frank, funny introduction to the realities of making it as a screenwriter.
Koerber, Laura Who Chains You Books (200 pp.) $12.97 paper | $3.97 e-book Dec. 3, 2018 978-1-946044-40-2
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Long’s prose captures the wonder, fear, and excitement of his nerdy protagonist. genesis dimension
SAME TIME YESTERDAY
Lilo, Jami Self (214 pp.) $11.99 paper | $2.99 e-book | Feb. 3, 2019 978-1-79515-174-0 In Lilo’s (The Mermaid Upstairs, 2018, etc.) second novel, a teenage girl and her family relive the same weekday. Fifteen-year-old Catelyn starts her day like any other, taking care of her grandmother, Nana, who’s partially paralyzed from a stroke and can only say “Fee ne ne.” Her twin brother, Camden, is always getting into mischief, and their mom, Carla, an aspiring writer, struggles to pay the bills with a series of temp jobs. At school, Catelyn wistfully remembers how her friendship with her former best pal, Olivia, ended; then Catelyn gets drenched when a minor fire occurs. Soon, she learns that someone is threatening to expose a friend’s secret, and on her way home, she accidentally rips her jeans, which she can’t afford to replace. A mishap befalls Nana’s videotape of her favorite baseball game, and sparks fly when Catelyn meets Ben, the president of the high school video editing club, who helps her with the tape. But the day gets worse when Carla has a meltdown over a manuscript rejection and a tragic accident befalls someone that Catelyn knows. Before bed, Nana insists that the family listen to a special record, and they all feel better. The family members wake up the next day and find that everything is exactly the same as the day before, like in the movie Groundhog Day. The classroom fire happens again, as do the same conversations. However, Catelyn and her family can’t help making some changes to improve things this time around. Overall, this book is a charming look at the world of a teenage girl. Catelyn is a great character whose worries about friendships and boys ring true. She also has a special but frustrating relationship with her Nana. Other family members are also compelling characters; Camden, for instance, is a loose cannon who’s surprisingly kindhearted, and their mom just wants to follow her dream of becoming a published author. The plot device of time travel helps with the overall characterization, as everyone in the family experiences it, not just Catelyn. Readers will be excited to find out how events will unfold. A sweet, well-paced time-travel story about a teenager dealing with everyday challenges.
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Long, J. Boyd Mad Goat Press (330 pp.) $28.00 | $16.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Feb. 18, 2019 978-1-948169-08-0 978-1-948169-07-3 paper In this debut sci-fi novel, a man investigates the interdimensional secrets of the evil corporation that employs him. Other than his micromanaging boss, Quentin James enjoys working in the IT department of IBZ Energy, one of the world’s largest oil companies. But when he is asked to open an encrypted file for one of the company’s top executives, he sees that it contains photographs of IBZ security contractors murdering oil pipeline protesters. Hoping to blow the whistle on the company’s crimes, he and his friend Eissa go in search of the DimGate, which Quentin believes to be some sort of secret hard drive. But they end up being trapped in a mysterious locked room in the COO’s office: “In the center of the room was a door. It was flanked by a large gray box on each side, which sat perpendicular to the door. It looked like someone had taken two industrial breaker boxes and used them to hold up the door like giant bookends.” The DimGate turns out to be a portal to other dimensions, and after Quentin and Eissa are forced to use it to escape detection, they find themselves in an alternate version of 2015 where electricity hasn’t been discovered and the United States is at war with the Native American tribes that rule the territory west of the Mississippi. There, Quentin learns that IBZ is a subsidiary of the interdimensional DimCorp—and it’s been up to a lot worse than just “killing a few protesters.” In this series opener, Long describes the mechanics of the world with clarity and humor. His prose captures the wonder, fear, and excitement of his nerdy protagonist: “What a noble cause, and what an adventure it must have been,” thinks Quentin after learning about a small interdimensional resistance to DimCorp. “The last clear thought he had before drifting off to sleep, was that he, too, was on an adventure, and it was fantastic.” The portal-based world-hopping should appeal to the general sci-fi crowd, and the book’s themes—which take a critical view of the greed and power of international corporations—lend a deep relevance to Quentin’s quest. A fast-paced portal adventure with some well-integrated social commentary.
STATUS: MISSING
Maroney, D.W. State of Mind Publishing (304 pp.) $11.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Jan. 22, 2019 978-1-73278-393-5
NOT IN THE PINK
Martel, Tina Illus. by the author Self (192 pp.) 978-0-9939548-0-1
This debut illustrated memoir tells the story of an artist’s battle with breast cancer. When Martel walked the annual Run for the Cure in honor of her mother’s fight with cancer, she had no idea that in less than a year she would return to the event to commemorate her own battle. Diagnosed with stage 2B breast cancer, the Canadian artist documented her cancer bout by creating drawings, photographs, and paintings that expressed her feelings during
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In Maroney’s debut techno-thriller, a U.S. task force investigates a series of missing planes. Maj. Megan Sloan of Air Force Intelligence manages the Drone Theory task force. Three planes have vanished in the last year, and the team theorizes that someone somehow hacked the aircrafts’ onboard computers. A few years back, the Iranian government recovered a lost American drone and sold the technology to other countries. Sloan was a part of the failed mission to retrieve the drone—a mission she only narrowly survived. She gets her chance to possibly end the hijackings when she receives a satellite phone call from Secret Service Agent Liam Donovan. He’s traveling with a nuclear-arms negotiating team, and someone has hacked the plane’s controls, redirecting it to Pyongyang. North Korean leader Choi Min-ho is probably responsible, but it may be someone wanting America to blame North Korea and retaliate, thereby starting World War III. In either case, Sloan and the task force set out to regain control of the plane as well as locate the remote hijacker to prevent a potential catastrophe. Maroney generates action with abundant dialogue; characters work under intense pressure and time constraints, and their rapid-fire communications require quick decisions and concise details. Friction among characters further bolsters the tension: Donovan, who’d had a previous relationship with Sloan, left her for dead during the botched mission, and a hacker working for Choi covertly tries aiding Americans. The story, inspired by the real-life disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, is realistic—the task force doesn’t always save everyone. Regardless, Sloan is tenacious and coolly nonchalant: “I took a couple of rounds a few years ago. Messed some stuff up pretty bad. They patched me together. Said I was good to go.” A rugged, indelible heroine headlines a riveting tale.
that time. The end result is this colorful account (Martel calls it a “graphic narrative”) full of vibrant illustrations and the artist’s conversational notes, from diagnosis to life after cancer. There will be no girly pink for this survivor—she prefers, instead, the motto “Fuck Cancer.” But who can blame her? The author suffered severe side effects from chemotherapy and radiation, like mouth sores, hemorrhoids, nausea, bone-crushing fatigue, and peeling/burning skin. This unblinking cancer journey is full of sarcastic wit and dark humor, as when Martel jokingly compares her radiation peel to a bad sunburn at Chernobyl. At times, her words have a poetic feel. In a meeting to discuss her life choices, she writes that “the words skim off my skin and swirl around the room.” The author also describes insensitive comments she had to endure, including people who told her stories about others who had died of cancer. Still, she’s thankful for the supportive folks in her life, such as friends, family, and her loving husband, Doug. Ranging from dark to playful, Martel’s vivid artwork is memorably edgy; for example, a collage of women’s legs in trash cans symbolizes a bad chemo day. In contrast, a pair of animal print heels at the book’s conclusion has a much more upbeat, kicking-cancer’s-ass feel to it. Newly diagnosed readers may be terrified by some of the gritty medical details, like the 12-inch fluid drain inserted into her arm. But the author’s strong spirit is undeniably inspirational. A beautifully sassy survivor tale with a punk rock vibe.
COLLECTED WORKS Volume I: Thirty Years of Photography 1987-2017
Miesch, Deanna Photos by the author DNA Publishing (232 pp.) $59.95 paper | Nov. 20, 2018 978-0-368-52302-1
An overview of three decades of art photography, encompassing elegant black-and-white images, multiple-exposure manipulations, and bright, natural landscapes. The digital realm may be the default medium of most contemporary photographers, but Miesch hardly needs it. As she describes in her introduction, film “accepts perfection or imperfection, cause or effect, and nature or nurture as inevitable elements of the human experience.” In the 229 images here, she begins with accomplished black-and-white street scenes from 1987 New Orleans, begins to experiment with text and in-camera manipulation, and, by the late ’90s, settles firmly into vividly colored landscape work with occasional portraits and figure studies. Miesch’s frequent manipulations follow a path first cut by Anton Giulio Bragaglia, which he called “photodynamism” in his 1911 book Fotodinamismo Futurista. Indeed, Miesch’s work is the future of Bragaglia’s dreams. The vortex of swirling stars in “It moves & I grow unsteady” and “…and I see double” recall Linda Connor’s images of trailing starlight, but in full color, with deepening scales of blue and a heavy frame of tree silhouettes. “Garage land” and “D & J Stor” pay homage to Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s frightening Halloween masks but |
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Mitić shows a knack for relating vivid details of the wounded, of families’ suffering, and of her devoted colleagues. life as trauma
create more urgent effects with images of arrows, grimaces, and a striking red door. Multiple exposures render Texas foliage hallucinogenic in “Hot Springs Canyon” and double the colors of Sonoma rocks in several series centering on an abandoned mine called The Cedars. At their least potent, these experiments can resemble wayward family snapshots, as in the raft trip of “Ladybird mind.” But at their best, these transpositions are surprising. By positioning her lens left and low for one exposure, right and high for the next, Miesch makes the Torre del Mangia—an old chestnut of a subject—into something eerie and mysterious, as a rising tower haunts another already risen. Readers may crave more street photography in the latter sections; Miesch’s early work in that genre is so intriguing that readers will be naturally curious to see what she’d do with it now. However, most of the later images are successful on their own terms. A remarkable gathering of experimental scenes from a master photographer.
LIFE AS TRAUMA The Wartime Journals of an Anesthesiologist Mitić, Sarah Z. Unwritten History (354 pp.)
A war doctor shares her battlefront journals describing aiding military and civilian casualties during the 1990s Balkan wars. Belgrade-born Serbian physician, anesthesiologist, and debut author Mitić’s time as a trauma physician after the historic breakup of Yugoslavia is on brilliant display in these meticulous journals. Her journey began when she heard about the war in Yugoslavia while vacationing with her husband and two small daughters in Greece in 1991. “The people in Krajina are fighting for their lives and they need help desperately,” wrote the determined Mitić, who rushed home to Smederevo to make plans to travel to the war-torn region of Knin—even though her mother and brother both disapproved. She arrived in Knin the next year and began working immediately at a hospital where “the wounded, the dying, and the dead are arriving from all directions.” At this early point in Mitić’s powerful narrative, she begins incorporating stories and profiles of the medical rescue staff and of the grisly casualties. As explosions reverberated throughout the region, and civilian anger and confusion at the disintegrating multinational army seethed, she saved lives—Croatian children, countless anguished soldiers, a suicidal young mother. Her humanitarian determination kept her working in the hospital despite exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Further travels brought her to a Kosovo clinic, where there was tension with arrogant Albanian staff; and to central Croatia, where “life [was] disappearing fast.” Mitić struggled to manage casualties while ensuring her own safety, harrowingly depicted in an account of an assault by an agitated sniper. The final section finds the author back at home dealing with a catastrophic personal tragedy. At times, the book’s graphic depiction of violence and bloodshed can be arduous to read. However, 140
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Mitić shows a knack for relating vivid details of the wounded, of families’ suffering, and of her devoted colleagues. She also unflinchingly sketches her own extended family’s haunted history. Readers interested in the strife and unrest of the Balkan region, its divergent politics and populations, and the plights of its refugees will find Mitić’s narrative illuminating. A commanding chronicle of focused leadership and admirable humanity.
SILVER LOVE
Murray, Josette Sapphire Books Publishing (334 pp.) $16.95 paper | $8.99 e-book | Mar. 15, 2019 978-1-948232-51-7 In Murray’s debut novel, four lesbian friends navigate the romantic landscape of their senior years and support one another through hardships. A group of women takes a trip to New Orleans, expecting an invigorating weekend of good food and music, and although their ages range from 58 to 69, they all share a passion for life. Dory and Robby have been romantic partners for more than 20 years; the former is spontaneous and sometimes absent-minded while the latter is practical and protective. Charlene is a down-to-earth former judge from humble beginnings who’s now running for State House representative; at the French Quarter Music Festival, a romance blossoms between her and a courteous woman named Lee Childs. Jill Hunt, the youngest and wildest of the group, is a sharp-witted woman with an inheritance who’s currently seeing a much younger woman. However, it soon becomes apparent that the women have secrets involving the success of Dory’s new book, the details of Jill’s money management, and the legitimacy of Charlene’s past employment. As the women face the consequences of deception, betrayal, and blackmail, their bonds become more important than ever. Murray alternates the focus among the four main women, extensively developing each character. Her depictions of their interactions, both platonic and romantic, make for entertaining reading. The romantic moments vary in tone, from the serious, steadfast intimacy of established partners to the infatuation of a casual affair, enlivened by several explicitly erotic scenes. Despite the gravity of the characters’ situations and their resulting emotional lows, the tone of the book is ultimately optimistic. Along the way, the author provides bits of casual wisdom; for instance, in the subplot about Dory’s journey as an author, Murray comments on the difficulties of breaking into publishing. The text is also self-aware of how stories about older lesbians don’t tend to receive a lot of mainstream attention. An older demographic may be this book’s main audience, but it merits consideration by adults of any age. A refreshingly energetic novel featuring lovable heroines.
SLOWBOMB
Nee-Nee La Maison Publishing (123 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Mar. 24, 2018
NOT MY DOG
Norman, Gregg Self (244 pp.) $14.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Mar. 20, 2019 978-1-09-096862-3 Debut novelist Norman tells the story of a couple who attempt to make a home in a town with a dark history. The independently wealthy Delano “Del” Grainger lives outside a Canadian prairie town called Edgeworthy, on land that he also rents out
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In Nee-Nee’s debut coming-of-age YA novel, the fates of two teenage boys diverge as they deal with the poverty and violence that surround them. The book’s narrator, 14-year-old Brian, lives with his mother and older half brother, Jason, in Slowbomb—a dangerous, low-income housing project where delivery services won’t go and where “There are certain rules that we live by in order to, well, live.” These rules include turning a blind eye to sex-for-drugs transactions in the school hallways and never naming the perpetrators of beatings and killings. “This is what it’s like living in the projects, if you could call this living,” Brian narrates. With Jason’s help, Brian avoids trouble, using the street-smart survival skills that Slowbomb kids learn early, but things become especially difficult when his brutal father is in town. A talented artist, Brian works with little kids in a local sports program, has a girlfriend he loves, and hopes to help his hardworking mom move to a better neighborhood. But, because he feels resigned to spending his future in Slowbomb, he dismisses an opportunity to go to an arts-centered high school in Michigan. “We’re not meant to have more than this. This is as far as people like us go,” says Kenny, who’s on his own self-destructive trajectory. The relationships and daily struggles of the novel’s adult and teen characters ring true, as does the grimness of the world that they inhabit. The author consistently focuses on how life in Slowbomb is shaped by abject poverty. Intermittent descriptions of violence and sex are explicit but not gratuitous. At another point, Brian movingly remembers when he was a child and “ignorance was bliss”—when he rode in grocery-cart races, played around open fire hydrants in the summer, and sledded and made snowmen in winter. The tragedy that eventually overtakes Brian feels inevitable, and as he considers an action that could have irrevocable consequences, readers will become invested in his journey—and pull for him to succeed. A gritty, heartfelt novel with an authentic voice from an author to watch.
to a neighboring farmer. He resides there with his partner, Ivy, although the two have been having relationship troubles of late. Strange things have been happening in the area, as well; for example, a mysterious, large hunting dog, which seems to have come from nowhere, is stalking around the area, and Del’s one true local friend, English transplant Peter Fawcett, recently hanged himself. The death causes Del to question how much he really knows about the town where he lives—a place where “the locals…always asked for but did not easily disclose personal information.” At an auction of Peter’s things—his wife is selling their place and returning to Great Britain—Del finally meets the wellto-do farmer who rents his fields, a giant of a man named Walter Stevens. Walter tells the story of Del’s land, which was long the property of the local Romanoff family—and its scion, the unstable Hunter Romanoff, has sworn to get it back. Del comes to realize that Edgeworthy has secrets that he may not be able to crack. Norman’s prose is deceptively simple in style, painting the subtleties of Edgeworthy and its people in direct, muscular language. He particularly excels at dialogue: “You’ll like him,” one character says to describe another, “eventually. Most people do. Men, anyway.” It’s an intriguing take on the genre of the small-town novel, in which a brooding, silent figure is both the protagonist and a newcomer; indeed, the ways in which Norman shows these qualities to be weaknesses are surprising. Readers will experience a ghostly pleasure in watching Del move around the cold prairie locale in this slow-paced narrative, seeking answers to questions that are, in large part, about himself. A moody, finely textured literary work.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND MAKING A CASE
Roda, Joseph F. AuthorHouse (224 pp.) $26.99 | $15.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Nov. 17, 2018 978-1-5462-6393-7 978-1-5462-6394-4 paper A debut scholarly work explores Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable talent for rhetorical persuasion. Lincoln’s meteoric rise to political prominence was an unlikely one—he was born to uneducated farmers; his political accomplishments prior to the presidency were modest; and he was an uncommonly awkward, even unattractive man. But Roda argues he was also a brilliant wordsmith, preternaturally capable of changing the opinions of others through the eloquence of his speeches and writings. The author diligently tracks Lincoln’s evolution as a public speaker, beginning with an impromptu debate he had at age 21 with an itinerant preacher in 1830. A year later, Lincoln moved to New Salem, Illinois, and joined a debating society. He honed his skills not only as a politician, but also as a lawyer—over the course of his legal career, he was involved in more than 5,000 extraordinarily diverse cases. Despite the brevity of the book, Roda provides an impressively synoptic account of Lincoln’s rhetorical career, |
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spanning his courtroom experiences, chief speeches, including his inaugural addresses, and his famous debates with Stephen Douglas. In addition, the author charts the transformation of Lincoln’s style from flowery flourishes to one more restrained and elegant. Roda ably makes the case that Lincoln’s achievement as a persuader of others is historically unmatched: “Abraham Lincoln may be the most accomplished advocate the country has ever produced. There have been many Americans adept at making a case, to be sure, but who has accomplished more at this than Abraham Lincoln?” The author’s research is painstakingly meticulous, and the conclusions he draws are cautiously judicious. And while he concedes that the work’s “facts are not new” and “can be found in any number of books and articles about Lincoln,” he supplies an analysis of the president’s oratorical prowess as astute as any other single-volume treatment. Moreover, Roda also helpfully anatomizes Lincoln’s rhetorical success into five distinct virtues: “credibility, clarity, fact, logic, and emotion.” The author’s study is a valuable resource for historians and rhetoric scholars alike. An incisive Lincoln survey accessible to amateur historians.
This Issue’s Contributors # ADULT Colleen Abel • Paul Allen • Mark Athitakis • Joseph Barbato • Amy Boaz • Jeffrey Burke • Lee E. Cart Kristin Centorcelli • Devon Crowe • Perry Crowe • Dave DeChristopher • Kathleen Devereaux Amanda Diehl • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Kristen Evans • Mia Franz • Dan Friedman • Katrina Niidas Holm • Natalia Holtzman • Dana Huber • Jessica Jernigan • Jayashree Kambel • Paul Lamey Ruth Langlan • Tom Lavoie • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Angela Leroux-Lindsey • Chelsea Leu Elsbeth Lindner • Michael Magras • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Clayton Moore • Sarah Morgan • Jennifer Nabers • Christopher Navratil • Sarah Neilson • John Noffsinger • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • William E. Pike • Steve Potter • Margaret Quamme • Carolyn Quimby Amy Reiter • Bob Sanchez • E.F. Schraeder • Gene Seymour • Rosanne Simeone • Linda Simon Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Claire Trazenfeld • Jessica Miller • Wilda Williams • Kerry Winfrey • Marion Winik CHILDREN’S & TEEN Autumn Allen • Elizabeth Bird • Marcie Bovetz • Christopher A. Brown • Shauntee Burns-Simpson Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs • Alec B. Chunn • Amanda Chuong • Jeannie Coutant • Erin Deedy Luisana Duarte Armendariz • Eiyana Favers • Ayn Reyes Frazee • Laurel Gardner • Carol Goldman Melinda Greenblatt • Julie Hubble • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Betsy Judkins Deborah Kaplan • Megan Dowd Lambert • Lori Low • Wendy Lukehart • Kyle Lukoff • Meredith Madyda Joan Malewitz • Gauri Manglik • Michelle H. Martin PhD • Kathie Meizner • Daniel Meyer J. Elizabeth Mills • Katrina Nye • Hal Patnott • Deb Paulson • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine Rebecca Rabinowitz • Asata Radcliffe • Kristy Raffensberger • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Erika Rohrbach • Leslie L. Rounds • Hadeal Salamah • John W. Shannon • Rita Soltan • Mathangi Subramanian Jennifer Sweeney • Deborah Taffa • Lavanya Vasudevan • Tharini Viswanath • Angela Wiley Bean Yogi INDIE Alana Abbott • Kent Armstrong • Jillian Bietz • Julie Buffaloe-Yoder • Darren Carlaw • John Cotter Michael Deagler • Stephanie Dobler Cerra • Steve Donoghue • Megan Elliott • Lynne Heffley • Justin Hickey • Ivan Kenneally • Maureen Liebenson • Barbara London • Dale McGarrigle • Tara Mcnabb Randall Nichols • Joshua T. Pederson • Jim Piechota • William E. Pike • Alicia Power • Sarah Rettger Elisa Shoenberger • Holly Storm
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FROM DARKNESS A Novel of the Ancient Roman World Ruppelt, C.K. Self (428 pp.) $16.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Oct. 30, 2018 978-1-73290-760-7
A debut historical novel captures the last years of the Roman Republic from varying perspectives. The story opens in Rome in 90 B.C.E. with the young Julius Caesar being tutored on the fall of the ancient empires of the Mediterranean. The narrative charts Caesar’s development from eager scholar to esteemed soldier who was awarded a civic crown for saving the lives of his fellow fighters. The story of Caesar’s ongoing rise to power is but one thread in a larger fabric. Ruppelt recognizes that “a huge part” of Caesar’s “fighting force and camp followers consisted of people from all walks of life and all over the Mediterranean.” He therefore sets about creatively reimagining the lives of these individuals. The novel tells the story of Ozalkis and his nephew Adherbal, two Numidian archers who join the Ninth Legion after their family is slaughtered during a tribal raid on their home. The two men are assigned to Hispania, where they are to fight the Celts. The author also examines the theater of war from a Celtic perspective with a focus on female warriors such as Aina, who is battling for her clan’s survival. Other characters, like Timon, a slave, allow Ruppelt to explore a broad cross section of Roman society, from the most powerful to the most vulnerable. This ambitious epic of more than 400 pages skillfully manages an extensive and diverse cast of characters to illuminate a complex, multicultural Roman world. The author has an exceptional eye for detail, and his corresponding depth of research is particularly evident when describing Celtic combat training, where future warriors are instructed on the “twelve doors to the soul.” To discover one of these vulnerable points in their opponents, the young boys and girls are instructed: “Feel the back of your skulls, where the bone ends, and the soft tissue starts. Yes, that’s the point.” Ruppelt’s use of informative and plausible dialogue heightens the narrative effect, transporting readers to the training ground. It is only on occasion that conversations betray a contemporary tenor, for example when the “newly minted commoner” Pulcher comments: “I partied with his younger sister.” Nevertheless, this book, illustrated with maps, diagrams, and a family tree, is a thorough and refreshingly far-reaching interpretation of Roman society that should be of great interest to aficionados of the genre. A lavishly detailed, character-driven tale about the Roman world.
Scary ideas for young readers, but Ojala’s images make them more approachable. one too many
RAGGED ISLAND
Scott, Darcy Maine Authors Publishing (197 pp.) $6.99 e-book | Mar. 20, 2019
MUMMY IS SICK, BUT I LOVE YOU
Slade, Cheryl Illus. by Majan, Daniel XlibrisAU (28 pp.) $24.14 paper | $4.99 e-book Feb. 14, 2019 978-1-984504-73-9 In this debut picture book, a mother reassures her child about her own illness. Slade tells a story of a sick mother helping her young son understand her treatment. She tells him that “Mummy” must visit many doctors; she’ll be tired and might be sad or angry; she’ll sometimes stay overnight at the hospital; and she’ll look different. But in each case, the narrator assures her child that she loves him and that when she’s better, they’ll have fun. “I love you,” she repeats, and concludes, “I know you still love me”— even if he feels sad or angry, too. In Majan’s (Aidyn the Magical Frangipani Tree, 2018, etc.) somewhat stiffly posed illustrations of a white family, the mother appears fairly robust, even when her hair has fallen out. One nice feature is how the boy’s stuffed bunny appears in every scene and often echoes his moods. Another good idea is how the mother offers alternatives; for instance, although Mummy can’t play on the floor, she can still read books in a chair. The book’s affectionate tone is evident, and Slade echoes professional advice about expressing hope and soothing fears. However, Slade doesn’t have the mother use the word “cancer” or reassure the child that the illness isn’t his fault, which experts also recommend. Warmhearted and sensitive, although it could be more complete.
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A university professor with secrets gets entangled in a murder mystery in Scott’s (Margel’s Madness, 2015, etc.) latest series thriller. Middle-aged Gil Hodges, director of the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources, finds a severed finger in his office. As a police detective starts an inquiry, Liz Horvath, a retired professor of psychology and counseling, shows up to talk to Gil about Tiffany Burgess, one of her patients. Gil met Tiffany three years ago, when she was 15 and living on Matinicus Island, off the Maine coast. He hasn’t seen her since, but he knows that the eccentric teen has been periodically breaking into his campus office, taking insignificant items, and later returning them. He suspects Tiffany of giving him the severed finger and also of surreptitiously entering his condo and stealing a small safe. But Gil doesn’t impart this information to authorities—even after Tiffany subsequently appears in his classroom. It turns out that the two share a potentially dangerous secret regarding some deaths back on Matinicus. Gil surmises that Tiffany’s presence in Maine is a vague threat, because the secret involved the professor lying to quite a few people. But then she asks for his assistance in getting back her daughter, whose custody she lost. On the pretense of a family emergency, Gil takes leave from the university and heads to Matinicus to help, which may result in him finally telling the truth about what happened three years ago. But it isn’t long before a likely staged suicide puts everyone on the island under suspicion—with outsider Gil at the top of the list. Readers need not be familiar with Scott’s preceding novels, which also star Gil, to enjoy this third installment. Although the story heavily references an earlier book, the prologue offers some clarification for new readers. The professor isn’t a particularly likable protagonist; he’s known for having inappropriate relationships with his female college students, for example. But he also seems invested in his search for redemption—persistently struggling to improve on what he calls “the old me.” Gil also becomes more sympathetic as the story progresses; for example, he keeps his secret not only due to self-preservation, but also because he believes that the truth will endanger many others. In addition to various mysteries (whose finger is that, anyway?), there are some genuinely chilling moments, as when Gil, at one point, sees signs that a stranger has been inside his home. The conclusion does deftly reveal the killer’s identity, although the person’s motives are a bit convoluted. Still, Scott offers sharply defined characters as well as effervescent detail: “The harbor opens up as we round the breakwater—a semi-circle of small, weathered homes revealing themselves alongside workshops dotted with propane tanks and outhouses; finger piers crammed with wire traps, gaggles of lobster pots, coiled line,
and assorted other gear.” Supporting characters also stand out—most notably Al Freeman, who, along with his late wife, raised the abandoned Tiffany as his own. An exceptional whodunit that simmers with mystery and suspense.
ONE TOO MANY
Smith, Linda Grace Illus. by Ojala, Emmi Peppermint Toast Publishing (41 pp.) Debut author Smith and illustrator Ojala (Eggs, 2014, etc.) highlight the needs of children that are being unmet. Smith introduces the problems of children without homes, food, or water; who face abuse and abandonment; and who are denied access to good hygiene, medical care, and education. In each case, the author repeats, “As long as there’s one” child with that problem, “there’s one too many.” These are scary ideas for young readers, but Ojala’s images make them more approachable. While sad and serious, they have the effect |
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of reducing feelings of tension and fear; in the image of abuse, for example, a girl faces only a looming shadow, and throughout, soft, white outlines provide hints of solutions (a home, a friend, and so on). After one child helps a homeless boy find a home, those two kids provide spare clothing and resources for another girl. With each solution, the number of children grows, until finally, nine are solving problems as a team. Although the issues are all solved rather quickly, the concept of taking on one problem at a time will encourage young readers that they can make a difference. Ojala’s character depictions are quite diverse, showing that children of all ethnicities face challenges. An accessible introduction to the rights of children and social responsibility.
CRACKED PIANO
Stever, Margo Taft CavanKerry Press (96 pp.) A veteran poet ruminates on solitude, insanity, deviance, and health in this collection. Roughly 140 years ago, Peter Taft— half brother to a future U.S. president—was shut away in the Cincinnati Sanitarium. The exact reason for his institutionalization remains unclear to this day, but readers do know that his time in the asylum was intensely stressful. His sense of isolation was acute, and whatever treatments he received did little to assuage his pain. Readers know all this from Taft’s letters, which are lovingly reproduced by his greatgranddaughter as found poems and which serve as the core of this moving, masterful tour de force. Taft is a poet in spite of himself—or perhaps in spite of his circumstances—and his missives read like poignant verse. The most affecting is, aptly, the
K I R K US M E DI A L L C # Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Executive Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N # Copyright 2019 by Kirkus Media LLC. KIRKUS REVIEWS (ISSN 1948- 7428) is published semimonthly by Kirkus Media LLC, 2600Via Fortuna, Suite 130, Austin, TX 78746. Subscription prices are: Digital & Print Subscription (U.S.) - 12 Months ($199.00) Digital & Print Subscription (International) - 12 Months ($229.00) Digital Only Subscription - 12 Months ($169.00) Single copy: $25.00. All other rates on request. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Kirkus Reviews, PO Box 3601, Northbrook, IL 60065-3601. Periodicals Postage Paid at Austin, TX 78710 and at additional mailing offices.
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title poem, which opens: “Dear Father, / I am alone this evening as every, / alone. An artist of imperfect / mind is endeavoring to extract / harmonious discords out of a cracked / piano just at my left. Life here / is of the plainest, I might say, / of the hardest kind.” Stever (The Lunatic Ball, 2015, etc.) is mainly reproducing the work of her ancestor here, but it’s a wonder what a few deftly placed line breaks can do for emphasis. Taft’s letters are the foundation of this elegantly rendered book, but Stever angles away from them in a variety of dazzling and unexpected ways. Some tropes repeat: human cruelty, the distance between madness and genius, motherhood, the uniqueness of Ohio. Several poems seem to be one-offs, though no less valuable because their concerns are tangential to those of the other pieces. “Raven’s Rock,” about three ghosts that haunt the countryside near Sleepy Hollow, New York, features the following: “What is a raven but a bird, a ghost / but a raven bird, and the ghosts of three women / ravenous, waiting at Raven’s Rock / for a single man to pass by.” Stever’s kneading of the single word “raven”— which morphs from noun to adjective to proper noun while hiding in “ravenous”—is an act of faith and skill few rookie poets could pull off. But Stever is anything but a novice; she is a virtuoso, and it’s a joy to see her perform. A seasoned poet working at the peak of her craft.
SMOKE AND KEY
Sutton, Kelsey Entangled Teen (304 pp.) $9.99 paper | Apr. 2, 2019 978-1-64063-600-2 Sutton’s (Gardenia, 2017, etc.) paranormal YA thriller sees a young woman trapped in an afterlife realm, trying to solve the mystery of her own death. As the story opens, a young woman wakes in a dark, confined space. “Let me out!” she screams before falling into a dirty cavern. After orienting herself, she meets a handsome young man holding an unlit cigar who introduces himself as “no one,” adding that “We’re all no one.” She learns that he goes by the name Smoke; she soon meets another girl named Doll, after her one possession. The young woman has a key around her neck, so this becomes her name. It turns out that a small village of people live in “Under,” in homes fashioned from dirt. Nobody recalls their lives before they arrived there, but everyone maintains the markings (or coloration) that they had when they died; chillingly, Smoke has a slash across his throat. When a frightening man named Splinter accosts Key, Smoke saves her, and she goes on to befriend a girl named Ribbon as well as a man named Journal, from whom she borrows books. Yet how did books—and other objects, such as beds—come to be in Under? An even graver puzzle confronts Key when Splinter is found burned to a crisp. In this moody YA fantasy, Sutton offers a propulsive, multilayered mystery: How did her characters reach Under, and what’s the tangled nature of their relationships? There’s also a quiet sensuality to Key’s narration, as when she notices that, “Every line of [Smoke’s] body
A realistic depiction of the effects of evil. my sister’s mother
is elegant, and my fear is overpowered by admiration.” The plot slowly tiptoes forward as Key receives notes from an unknown scribe; one says, “Swim across the river,” which turns out to refer to a “river” of twisted tree roots. Sutton takes this dreamlike atmosphere a step further when Key begins to remember her former existence. More burned bodies appear, details of characters’ lives creep in, and pressure mounts for Key to stop the carnage. The superior pacing during the final third makes the ending hit like a slow-motion cannon blast. An excellent supernatural tale with a unique premise and indelible characters.
MY SISTER’S MOTHER A Memoir of War, Exile, and Stalin’s Siberia
In this heart-wrenching debut memoir, a mother and child survive Stalin’s work camp then struggle to find inner calm in America. As a child growing up in 1950s Chicago, Urbikas longed for a “normal” mom. Instead, her Polish-born mother, Janina, often told gruesome war stories and talked to herself in the mirror. But as Urbikas matured and suffered her own hardships, she began to understand her mother’s need to recount her past. On the extremely cold morning of Feb. 10, 1940, Communist soldiers pounded on Janina’s farmhouse door near Grodno, Poland, and informed her—a young, single mother—that she was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor. She and 5-year-old daughter Mira were stuffed into lice-ridden train cars and taken to a remote logging camp in the Siberian wilderness. Fed little and plagued by vermin, disease, and blistering cold, Janina lugged a heavy ax 4 miles to and from work every day, where she chopped thick branches off trees. Meanwhile, poor little Mira was left by herself to wait in agonizing bread lines, often unsuccessfully. After years of torture, Janina and Mira—helped by a Polish army officer who eventually married Janina—escaped to England and then America. Urbikas’ flashbacks are seamless as she alternates chapters between her mother’s and sister’s stories—written in third person—versus her own first-person account. With many vivid sensory details—like “the grainy taste of…coarse rye bread”—the author’s lyrical prose instantly transports readers to the labor camp. This gripping page-turner is also filled with stark contrasts. For example, in the camp, Mira and Janina sleep together on a dirty, bedbug-infested cot, and when Janina feels a rat scrabble across her chest, she can barely lift her tired arm to heave it onto the floor. In contrast, one of Urbikas’ biggest worries is making the majorettes team in her American high school. A realistic depiction of the effects of evil, Janina’s and Mira’s experiences are sometimes overwhelming. In one scene, a tiny girl drowns and nobody helps.
OILY
Woodward, Angus Spaceboy Books (242 pp.) $13.95 paper | $2.99 e-book Oct. 15, 2018 978-0-9997862-4-6 In Woodward’s (Americanisation, 2011, etc.) sci-fi comedy, a New Orleans couple must prevent aliens from exterminating the human race. College writing instructor Warren Avon spots what appears to be a “long, black acorn” while walking near his home. It’s actually a tiny spaceship containing Jerry and Phthsspitty-snapp, aliens from the planet Xxzzrrrva. The former is a scientist on his 29th planetary mission, and the latter, an intern on her first voyage. Their probe of Earth, which they call “Grawgraw-3,” is halted when Warren captures their ship, so Jerry initiates communication with the human. As he relates their mission, he takes the opportunity to ask Warren about Earth. Jerry finds out that petroleum is a valuable local fuel, and he’s sure that Xxzzrrrva’s Exploratory Board will destroy humanity to keep them from wasting it. The two aliens, along with Warren and his wife, Penny, devise a plan to stop Jerry’s superior, Councilor Hmmm, from authorizing mankind’s eradication. This isn’t an easy task, especially after Jerry inadvertently blows up an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The group also faces another seemingly impossible task—to somehow convince humans to use alternative fuel sources. Unusually, Woodward structures his entire novel as a “TERMS OF USE” agreement. However, this agreement also includes excerpts from a book (with Warren listed as its author) that advance the more traditional story in a chronological manner. This offbeat approach is frequently hilarious, as when the agreement includes an example of plagiarism that simply changes the characters’ names (“Jerry,” for instance, becomes “Larry”). Surprisingly, though, the agreement’s constant interruptions are never jarring. Although the short novel doesn’t delve deeply into its characters, they are distinctive; for example, Penny suffers from a mysterious ailment that results in conflicting diagnoses. The narrative also often provides memorable descriptions, as when Warren explains fishing boats to Jerry. The Terms of Use are more formal in tone but take comical turns; the agreement discourages loaning the book to others, offering “strategies for deflecting loan requests.” A straightforward sci-fi story in an unorthodox but entertaining package.
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Urbikas, Donna Solecka Univ. of Wisconsin (312 pp.) $26.95 | $19.95 paper | $11.99 e-book Apr. 27, 2016 978-0-299-30850-6 978-0-299-30854-4 paper
A painfully beautiful portrayal of an indomitable, loving mother’s survival.
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Fi e l d No t e s Photo courtesy Heather Weston
Photo courtesy Sarah Huny Young
By Megan Labrise
“If Woody Allen won the slam dunk contest in the McDonald’s All American contest, you’d be like, ‘Holy s—.’ That doesn’t fit....I think, with this book, people might be surprised by how deep and how vulnerable and how much I talk about that anxiety and nervousness and self-cautiousness. I come in a different package. Those neuroses are not unique to white people or upper-middle-class people.”
“...[N]arrative has enormous authority for us even when it is designated as fiction or even when people recognize it as false. Our politics has always been about who tells a better story, but now you see with immigration, for one example, that the storytelling from the Trump administration is rife with demonstrable lies, yet it still exercises enormous power.”
—Damon Young, author of the memoir What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, at the Undefeated
—Susan Choi, author of Trust Exercise, in the LA Times
“[T]he whole shape and form of the novel, that just felt like I had not read anything like that before. It felt like it had stripped away everything boring about a novel and just let in the stuff that was actually good. And it was really like: Oh my God. We don’t have to write the boring bits.”
—Erin Lee Carr, author of All You Leave Behind, a memoir of her relationship with her father, former New York Times reporter and memoirist David Carr, in the Times
—Sally Rooney, author of Normal People, on reading Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?, at The Cut 146
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Photo courtesy Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
“He would say things like, ‘I expect you to change the world,’ because he wanted to do that and I was kind of his protégé. There’s a story where we were on vacation and I was being a jerk and complaining about things. And he said to me, ‘Looking at you is like looking into a dirty mirror.’ I remember that stinging in the moment, and stinging when I was writing it. It shows that he wanted me to be a mirror image of himself, but was disturbed when it actually looked like him.”
“Faulkner and Joyce don’t get dismissed for their difficulty; they’re praised for it. Morrison’s difficulty as a writer is neither coy nor glibly aspirational. It is an ethos.”
—Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift, “On Black Difficulty: Toni Morrison and the thrill of imperiousness,” at Slate
Appreciations: Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Enters Its Second Decade
B Y G RE G O RY MC NA MEE
Photo courtesy John Haynes
“Beneath every history, another history.” So writes the English novelist Hilary Mantel in Wolf Hall, published in 2009, the opening bolt in a projected trio of books that show how political power really works: through violence and intrigue, sure, but also through the network of who knows whom and who knows what. The great knower in Wolf Hall and its 2012 successor, Bring Up the Bodies, is Thomas Cromwell, a poor man who rises to the heights of power. Thomas, versatile and intelligent, is the son of a London blacksmith and sometime brewer who had no small experience with power himself, having been hauled up before the magistrates at least four dozen times for offenses ranging from assault to watering down his beer. Escaping his father’s beatings, Thomas runs away from home and makes his way over much of Europe, serving as a soldier in France and Italy and, by a circuitous path, becoming a lawyer skilled in commerce and
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fluent in several languages. Enter a cleric who, upon Thomas’ return to England, approaches him and asks for his help doing an end run to secure funds for a church. Thomas knows something of the weaknesses of the tightfisted pope, having deduced that weakness is the key to the soul, and he cajoles his way to a successful resolution. From then on out, anyone in power in England knows to go to him. His is not a pretty business. As Mantel writes, “That was the way of the world: a knife in the dark, a movement on the edge of vision, a series of warnings which have worked themselves into flesh.” Thomas also comes to understand that no matter who may profess to be his friend or ally, flesh is weak and bonds are loose. Soon Thomas is working for Cardinal Wolsey, the clerical powerhouse who sits at the right hand of the ambitious Tudor king, Henry VIII. And soon enough, Wolsey having displeased the king, fatally, Thomas is working for Henry directly, a fixer who forges settlements here and dispensations there but who can’t quite pull off the ultimate legal coup, engineering a divorce for the king that the pope will approve. Presto: Out with the old church and in with the new, one headed by the king in the ultimate expression of l’état c’est moi. It’s not a spoiler to predict that, Mantel being scrupulously true to history while endowing it with elegance and drama in her storytelling, the series will not end well for Thomas Cromwell. He will have his revenge, though, through an indirect descendant, Oliver, who will break the back of a royalty gone broadly murderous through the reigns of Henry and his daughter. Henry called Thomas “the most faithful servant I ever had,” but Mantel knows that the dead haunt the living for their crimes—and in Wolf Hall, the dead mount in great heaps. When Thomas asks at the end of the book, in a moment that flashes back to his 6-year-old self, why coffin lids are nailed down, his father’s apprentice answers, “It’s so the horrible old buggers don’t spring out and chase us.” Verily. 147
A STORY OF FRIENDSHIP, FIRST CRUSHES AND OPERA
“Pitch perfect.” — Booklist, starred review
“Brimming with raw emotion.” — School Library Journal, starred review