March 2025 BookPage

KAREN RUSSELL

In her long-awaited second novel, the Pulitzer finalist turns her boundless imagination to the Dust Bowl

6 memoirists share what it’s like to put a life on the page

Pop-culture guru Linda Holmes on work, love & podcasts

Stirring reads for Women’s History Month

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Elizabeth Grace Herbert

PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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MANAGING EDITOR

Savanna Walker

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Phoebe Farrell-Sherman

Yi Jiang

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BRAND & PRODUCTION MANAGER

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SUBSCRIPTIONS

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SALES COORDINATOR

Jena Groshek

INTERNS

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Jenna Montgomery

CONTRIBUTOR

Roger Bishop

FOUNDER

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CONTENTS

COVER STORY

karen russell

In her epic second novel, The Antidote, the Pulitzer finalist makes our Dust Bowl history whole.

FEATURES

feature | sff romance

A sorcerer, a super soldier or the boy next door? Take your pick of these fantastical love stories.

behind the book | kell woods

The author explains how she blended aspects of “The Little Mermaid” and “Cinderella” to create a magic all her own.

feature | STEM romance

Think a Mars simulation and a video game company wouldn’t be romantic? Think again!

interview | linda holmes

10

The NPR host’s third slice-of-life romance explores the pitfalls of letting your job define you—even if it’s your passion.

feature | memoir march

12

Six memoirists describe the power and pleasure of putting their stories on the page.

feature | thrillers

The triumphs and trials of parenting take center stage in two suspenseful new novels.

feature | inspirational fiction

Set during World War II, these books are testaments to the power of courage during times of upheaval.

feature | women’s history month

Celebrate trailblazing women with six new biographies.

q&a | guojing

In the author’s latest middle grade graphic novel, Oasis, two children seek comfort in a discarded AI robot.

feature | meet the author

Meet Jashar Awan, the author-illustrator of Every Monday Mabel.

17

Many voices, one story

Headshot (Penguin, $18, 9780593654125), Rita Bullwinkel’s powerful debut, focuses on eight teenage boxers— all women—who are contending for a title at Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada. Bullwinkel skillfully shifts points of view throughout this dramatic, often funny novel, developing a unique identity and personal history for each fighter, as she recounts their boxing bouts in wonderful detail. Against the backdrop of competitive sports, Bullwinkel probes the aspirations and inspirations of this unforgettable group. Their differing motivations and struggles with self-determination will stimulate lively conversation among readers.

Book clubs will have plenty to debate with these multiperspective novels.

The Family Izquierdo (Norton, $16.95, 9780393866827) by Rubén Degollado chronicles the lives of members of a close-knit Mexican American clan in McAllen, Texas. The novel follows the family across three generations as they contend with a curse they believe has caused the physical decline of Papa Tavo, the head of the family, and the marriage woes of Gonzalo, the eldest son. Narrated by different members of the Izquierdo clan, the novel examines family ties and traditions as well as life on the Texas-Mexico border. Degollado creates a rich chorus of voices in this moving, compassionate novel.

Intricate and enthralling, Megha Majumdar’s A Burning (Vintage, $18, 9780593081259) takes place in Kolkata, India, following a terrorist attack. Jivan, a Muslim woman, is implicated in the attack and jailed. Lovely, a trans actress, could clear Jivan’s name, but is reluctant to speak up. Jivan’s former gym teacher, PT Sir, who has been increasingly drawn toward right-wing politics, is also involved in the case. Each character provides a different take on the events at hand, and the result is a nuanced, multilayered tale. The tough questions it raises about justice make Majumdar’s novel a rewarding choice for book clubs.

In Wandering Stars (Vintage, $18, 9780593311448), Tommy Orange continues the mesmerizing family saga that started with his acclaimed novel There There (2018). He resumes the stories of Orvil Red Feather and Opal Viola Bear Shield in modern-day Oakland, California, while also detailing the lives of their forebears, including Jude Star, a survivor of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. Told from the viewpoints of multiple characters, the book weaves together varied voices to create a complex narrative tapestry. Throughout the novel, Orange explores long-standing family conflicts and the enduring legacies of American Indigenous history. A BookPage reviewer since 2003, Julie Hale recommends the best paperback books to spark discussion in your reading group. book clubs by julie hale

Blast from the past

Dive into nostalgia with these picks from four beloved children’s series .

The Headless Cupid Big families are common in children’s literature, yet I am willing to argue that there is none more charming than the Stanleys, the stars of a four-book series by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Their story begins in The Headless Cupid (Atheneum, $8.99, 9781416990529), which won a Newbery Honor in 1972. Two years after his mother’s death, 11-year-old David Stanley has a new stepmother, but it’s her daughter, 12-year-old Amanda, who really shakes things up for David and his three younger siblings, brilliant and chatty 7-year-old Janie and 4-year-old twins Blair and Esther. Amanda arrives wearing “ceremonial robes” and carrying a crow she calls her familiar, leading the Stanley children in occult rituals that feel like games—until what might be an actual poltergeist shows up. Alongside that mystery and the hilarious antics of the younger siblings, Snyder explores the grief that follows a parent’s death and the growing pains of a blended family with subtlety and wisdom, making this series one that will continue to resonate with new generations.

—Trisha, Publisher

Marie Antoinette

Like many a millennial nerd, the Royal Diaries series was my entry point to the joys of history; finding a fellow fan is still a shortcut to friendship. These fictional diaries of iconic royal women were rigorously researched yet highly entertaining. In Cleopatra: Daughter of the Nile, I learned that she shaved with razors made from seashells and breathlessly watched her foil assassination plots. Because the books took place when their supposed authors were quite young, it was easy to empathize with otherwise intimidating figures such as Eleanor of Aquitaine or Nzingha. The books’ back matter offered more information about the period and the later life of their subject, which either thrilled or broke my young, optimistic heart. I was particularly enamored with Kathryn Lasky’s Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles (Scholastic, $6.99, 9780545315630) and was devastated to learn of the funloving, light-hearted French queen’s ultimate fate. (Don’t get me started on how I felt when I realized that my beloved Elizabeth I had another series heroine, Mary Queen of Scots, executed.)

—Savanna, Managing Editor

Sabriel

Growing up, my sister, Anna, and I were known in the neighborhood for our over the top, obscure Halloween costumes. We loved to read, and we chose our costumes based on which characters we most wanted to transform into—not what would be the most recognizable. After falling in love with Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series, and especially the heroine of the first book, Sabriel (HarperCollins, $15.99, 9780063040496), Anna dug up a beautiful blue coat, slung a belt across it diagonally, and pinned seven bells to her chest. I thought it was a slam dunk. When we trick-or-treated, however, our neighbors were nonplussed. Memorable comments included: “What are you supposed to be? A crumpled up Union soldier?” and “You look like you have the junk drawer strapped to your chest.” Ouch. But our enjoyment of the book was undented. Sabriel’s a wonderful character because she charts her own path and follows the call of her destiny—taking up the mantle of her necromancer father, the Abhorsen, using her bells to travel beyond the gates of death, fighting demons and saving souls—and we took after her.

—Phoebe, Associate Editor

Into the Wild

Erin Hunter’s Warriors series begins with Into the Wild (HarperCollins, $9.99, 9780062366962), which kicked off a massive universe with dozens of installments, including supplementary field guides, graphic novels, novellas and more. Warriors follows the lives of four feral cat clans—ThunderClan, WindClan, RiverClan and ShadowClan—as well as StarClan, a fifth, mystical clan of ancestors who send prophecies to help the living cats navigate conflict. Each clan has a leader, a deputy and a medicine cat, and they all operate under the warrior code in order to live separately but harmoniously— for the most part. They look down upon kittypets (housecats) and fear the dreaded TwoLegs (humans). The stories are filled with love and chaos, defending one’s home, and maintaining order in the brutality that one may imagine ensues when large groups of feral cats attempt to coexist. Readers won’t ever find themselves bored, thanks to the massive series’ ever-shifting perspectives and clan rivalries. Hunter gives kids a sense of wild adventure from the perspective of a well-loved and familiar animal.

—Jena, Sales Coordinator

Sorcerer, super soldier or boy next door?

Whoever you chose, you’re in for a fantastical ride .

A Harvest of Hearts

A plain and practical butcher’s daughter, Foss is aware that nobody would ever want to win her heart—which keeps her safe from the magic-workers, who steal them to fuel their magic. But when a visiting sorcerer comes to her village, he Snags her heart and vanishes without a word, leaving Foss riddled with painful heartsickness.

She sets off to the city to make the sorcerer give her back her heart, but he doesn’t recognize her and, in a panic, Foss lies and offers to become his housekeeper. The sorcerer, however, isn’t what she expected. Sylvester may be superhumanly beautiful, but he’s also

opinions on sexy dresses) and talking cat Cornelius steal the show.

While imperfect, there is much to enjoy in A Harvest of Hearts, and this fantasy romance will satisfy fans of Alexandra Rowland and Rebecca Thorne.

—Nicole Brinkley

H A Curse for the Homesick

Tess is an engineer. A good swimmer. A young woman with a life in California, sunshine and Silicon Valley. When she’s asked to return to her home island of Stenland, a “small rock between Scotland and the Arctic,” for her childhood best friend Linnea’s wedding, she

sullen, lonely and unable to control his magic. Can Foss undo the spell, help the other heartSnagged humans and sort out her feelings for Sylvester?

Poet and novelist Andrea Eames pays homage to modern fantasy classics like Naomi Novik’s Uprooted and the Studio Ghibli adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle with A Harvest of Hearts (Erewhon, $18.95, 9781645661900). Eames doesn’t always hit the same peaks as those inspirations: Characters act exactly as expected from the moment they are introduced, and the world building is unique but inconsistent. The finale is more focused on the emotional stakes of the romance than the actions of its characters, leaving the Big Bad to be quickly defeated by a Macguffin in order to devote more space to a cozy post-credits scene. Eames’ writing shines best with her side characters: Sylvester’s beautiful, villainous sister Clarissa will please a certain subset of readers that love a hot, evil woman. The magical shape-shifting House (and its strong

Brooke Robson’s simple, elegant tale is also a devoted character study and a love letter to her gorgeous fictional setting of Stenland: the wind, the cairns, the old towers; the ice cream spot and Hedda’s, the only coffee shop; the concrete swimming pool and the claustrophobia of a small town. This grounded, moving novel is a perfect rainy day read and an ode to what it is to be human—to desire and gain, to desire and lose, to find again.

—Jessica Peng

Chaos

assumes it will be no more than a blip in her schedule. A couple of days of PTO.

But as A Curse for the Homesick (MIRA, $30, 9780778368472) unspools, it’s obvious Tess has unresolved history with Stenland. Years ago, she left behind her great love, Soren, among the Stennish caves and sheep pastures. Soren, who before everything else, was a reminder of why she needed to leave. Every so often, and without warning, a few Stennish women are marked with three black lines across their foreheads, becoming “skelds.” For the month the lines remain, anyone who makes eye contact with a skeld will turn to stone. Soren and Tess have been bound since their elementary school days, when Tess’ mother turned Soren’s parents to stone during her skeld season. Growing up in the dark shadow of the curse, Tess was adamant to never be a skeld, to never stay. When she fell for Soren, who loves Stenland, she knew it was star-crossed.

A Curse for the Homesick is above all a second-chance romance, but author Laura

Caro Ogunyemi, the often-overlooked engineer on the spaceship Calamity, knows that any job offered by her former captain is bound to be bad news. But when he asks her to find Victor and Victory, missing twin mercenaries whom she’s come to see as friends, Caro can’t say no. Especially after she learns that their mission involved infiltrating the very project she tried to sabotage years before: brain-implant chips that strip people of their autonomy and personality to create sleeper super soldiers. If Caro can break into a prison, extract Levi, an improbably handsome and incredibly dangerous test subject, and save the twins, she just might be able to forgive herself and feel like she deserves her place aboard Calamity Chaos (Bramble, $19.99, 9781250330437), the third book in Constance Fay’s Uncharted Hearts series, is part romance, part Shawshank Redemption. Caro narrates her tale with self-effacing humor that belies her deep insecurities. Plagued by questions of her own inadequacy, she repeatedly puts herself in danger that threatens to sabotage any chance of finding happiness. While the meetcute is anything but ordinary (he’s a mindless shell, she’s pretending to be an evil scientist), Levi and Caro’s story is one of redemption. They force each other to see themselves as others see them: Caro is a brilliant engineer who has more than made up for her missteps, and Levi’s humanity isn’t determined by what others have done to him.

Fans of the found family that was built aboard Calamity may be a little disappointed that the rest of the crew have relatively little screen time. However, all signs point to an explosive conclusion yet to come for the crew of Calamity and fans of Fay’s series.

—Laura Hubbard

SEA SLIPPERS AND FAIRY GOD-WITCHES

Kell Woods blended aspects of “The Little Mermaid” and “Cinderella” to create a magic all her own

“Far out in the ocean the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass.”

So begins Hans Christian Andersen’s beloved fairy tale, “The Little Mermaid.” Published in 1837, the original story is far darker and sadder than later, popular versions such as Disney’s 1989 animated film. There are no talking crabs or ditzy seagulls. And there is definitely no happy ending. A quiet, thoughtful and curious young mermaid longs to explore the world above the waves—and gives her heart to a prince who, sadly, does not want it. There’s no wedding for her, no feast. Just a brokenhearted girl turning to sea foam on the waves at dusk. The tale is filled with imagery both dark and bleak. The mermaid allows a treacherous sea-witch to cut out her tongue, willingly exchanging it for a pair of dainty, though incredibly painful, feet.

different); and fall for a prince. Both tales also focus on shoes or feet. Mermaids are liminal creatures, half one shape and half the other. In many folktales, they are shape-shifters, able to change their tails into legs on a whim. Cinderella, too, is a shape-shifter, appearing in different forms, hiding her true identity from the people around her.

Dark, and sad. Beautiful, too.

I had been thinking about writing a retelling of it for quite some time. Back in 2015, I began by writing these words on the first page of a crisp, new notebook: “It will be a dark, salty tale about sea-magic, loss, unrequited love, family, betrayal, self-discovery, and revenge.” Of course, you can’t have darkness without some light, too, and it soon became clear that I needed another tale to work into the story. Something sparkly and romantic, with enough softness, warmth and wonder to balance out the strange, haunting bitterness of “The Little Mermaid.” That tale, I decided, was “Cinderella.”

Although there are thousands of variants of this story, I focused on the French iteration penned by Charles Perrault in 1697. It’s the most recognizable version, and was the first to include the pumpkin, fairy godmother and those mesmerizing glass slippers.

Closer analysis of the two tales revealed interesting connections. Both Cinderella and the little mermaid have a wealthy or powerful father; sisters (the mermaid’s are far kinder); are motherless and feel trapped; seek help from an aged, wisewoman figure (like the sisters, the sea-witch and the fairy godmother are quite

These similarities (and differences) seemed strong enough to become the foundation of an entirely new story. One that was enchanting and romantic, and dark and sad. Maybe, just maybe, it would be a little terrifying, too—not unlike mermaids themselves.

Perrault’s “Cinderella,” being French, led me to set the story on the shores of Brittany in the mid-18th century, a time when the fabulously wealthy ship owners and dashing corsairs of Saint-Malo dominated the seas, decadent balls lasted till the early hours of the morning, ladies’ shoes were dainty and their gowns—ridiculously wide and sweeping out from their hips—changed their shapes dramatically from the waist down. England and France were at each other’s throats (again), science had not yet ousted superstition and the people of Brittany still visited sacred springs and standing stones. They left bread out for the faeries. And they believed in magic. It seemed the perfect backdrop for the tale—a seaside “kingdom,” an “aristocracy” of shipowners, a king-like merchant and his daughters. Sea-witches roamed the shore, and smugglers plied their trade across the English Channel, each of them living according to the will of the sea. The sea that—I’m sure Hans Christian Andersen would agree—was as blue as the petals of the bluest cornflower and as sparkly as a slipper made of the purest glass.

—Kell Woods

romance by christie ridgway feature | STEM romance

H A Gentleman’s Gentleman

TJ Alexander (Chef’s Kiss) offers delightful surprises in their first Regency romance, A Gentleman’s Gentleman (Vintage, $18, 9780593686201). According to his father’s will, eccentric Lord Christopher Eden will lose his inheritance if he fails to marry before his next birthday. But the aristocrat has no interest in women or marriage, and no idea how to go about finding a spouse. Enter a new valet, James Harding, with very traditional ideas as well as a secretive past. Christopher also has secrets, which keep the pair at odds even while they work together to aid another society romance. Pathos and painful backstories provide a heartaching emotional heft to this tender and witty love story.

While the Duke Was Sleeping

Comedy ensues when a lady’s maid pretends to be her mistress in While the Duke Was Sleeping (Forever, $9.99, 9781538757734) by Samara Parish. After her employer, Cordelia, runs from her wedding, Adelaide “Della” Rosebourne escapes with her to the countryside. A short while later, more complications arise when Cordelia persuades Della to take her place at a duke’s home—as his fiancée. Oh, and the duke is in a coma. The details really don’t matter; the fun is in the lengths Della will go to keep up her ruse, and the lengths the duke’s sexy scoundrel of a brother, Everett “Rhett” Montgomery, will go to expose her. Della and Rhett find themselves falling for each other, which seems so wrong even as it feels so right. Della is a worthy heroine, full of spunk and spirit, and Rhett discovers he’s much more than a rapscallion. Readers will root for them to find a way to forever and will enjoy the large, engaging cast in this utter charmer.

Dead Man’s List

The hunt for a serial killer nearly upends a burgeoning romance in Karen Rose’s third entry in her San Diego Case Files series, Dead Man’s List (Berkley, $30, 9780593817179). Homicide detective Kit McKittrick has finally let down her guard and is actually looking forward to a second date with police psychologist Dr. Sam Reeves. But then a particularly gruesome case comes her way. As connected murders pile up, Kit and Sam dive into the details. Their attraction grows, but closeness isn’t possible while the danger to the community and Kit’s family (from another bad guy) is on the rise. As usual with a Rose whodunit, the gory specifics of the crimes are balanced by the wholesome family and friends who step up to help the protagonists solve the whodunit. Readers will enjoy armchair detecting while watching Kit and Sam at last develop a deeper relationship in this satisfying, kisses-only romantic suspense novel.

Christie Ridgway is a lifelong romance reader and a published romance novelist of over 60 books.

Lessons in chemistry

Think a Mars simulation and a video game company wouldn’t be romantic? Think again!

The Love Simulation

Etta Easton’s got her head back in the clouds in The Love Simulation (Berkley, $19, 9780593640241), her fun follow-up to 2024’s acclaimed astronaut romance, The Kiss Countdown

A headstrong vice principal at Juanita Craft Middle School, Brianna Rogers has been putting all her energy into the school’s effort to upgrade the library—then her infuriating principal earmarks the funds for a new football field. Which is why Brianna joins a sixweek Mars simulation competition, which will award $500,000 to any team of teachers that makes it through the full term. What could go wrong, right?

Single Player

Roman Major. That’s what could go wrong. The dreamy science teacher is Brianna’s nightmare: He may be handsome and good with his students, but he’s also their mutual principal’s son.

Easton’s sophomore romance has great pacing, a fun premise and relatable characters. Roman’s father’s animosity towards Brianna provides some built-in tension, but our nerdy science teacher dips into his hero reserves when it counts. Brianna is just as heroic, setting a strong example for the students and faculty, and standing true to her beliefs. There’s a lot of introspection, miscommunication and external forces working to ruin a good thing, but there’s also Roman and Brianna, proving their chemistry is a force to be reckoned with— on Earth or on Mars.

—Dolly R. Sickles

Non-white, non-straight, non-cisgendered protagonists are still the exception rather than the rule, both in romances and in the gaming industry, which is exactly why Tara Tai’s Single Player (Alcove, $18.99, 9781639109937) is a breath of fresh air. Because everyone deserves the chance to have a goofy, tumultuous, accidentprone rom-com of their very own. Cat Li gave up a profitable but soulsucking career and her family’s approval to chase her dream of working in the gaming industry. She’s beyond thrilled when she’s hired to write romance arcs for a hot new game overseen by her idol, Andi Zhang, a wunderkind writer and creative director who uses both she and they pronouns. But when Cat and Andi actually meet, sparks fly in the worst way. Their interactions are full of misunderstandings, insecurities and a surprising mutual ex-girlfriend, and some readers may become frustrated by their inability to communicate. But then Cat and Andi finally, truly start to connect.

While Single Player waves its nerd flag proudly—there were probably about a million references that sailed directly over my head—there’s a lot here for even the least gamer-savvy reader to enjoy. Cat and Andi face hurdles aplenty to reach success, both romantically and otherwise, but that just means that by the time they reach the end of their gameplay, they’ve more than earned their happy ending.

—Elizabeth Mazer

H Master of Me

Actress, musician and award-winning performer Keke Palmer dives deep into art, media and owning your life’s direction in Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative (Macmillan Audio, 6 hours). Palmer uses personal stories and excerpts from her podcast to reflect on creativity and self-worth. She’s not afraid to delve into serious topics, like child abuse and trauma, using honesty about tough issues to share universally relatable, poignant wisdom. Palmer narrates with her signature dynamic tone, achieving humor, gravity and sarcasm, sometimes all within the same chapter. With Master of Me, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll walk away inspired to take charge of your own life.

—Tami Orendain

The Serviceberry

Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist and scholar, has created a pocket of calm in the cacophony of modern living with The Serviceberry (S&S Audio, 2 hours). Written and narrated by Kimmerer, The Serviceberry is an educational yet heartfelt guide to cultivating a mindset of reciprocity, modeled after the life cycle and properties of the titular berry, a fruit important to several Indigenous cultures. Using the berry as a metaphor, Kimmerer argues for cooperation and gift-giving as greater investments into our economy—and our future—compared to the scarcity mindset of our current capitalist system. Kimmerer writes with stunning elegance, her vocabulary deliberate and evocative, and her prose is enhanced by her steady, solemn intonation. This little audiobook prompts necessary reflection and promotes healthier, happier living.

—Jessica Peng

Pick-Up

Nora Dahlia’s unconventional romantic comedy, Pick-Up (S&S Audio, 12.5 hours), focuses on divorced parents interacting during drop-off and pick-up at a Brooklyn public school (and sometimes behaving even more childishly than their offspring). Fans of contemporary romance audiobooks have grown accustomed to hearing from two different narrators as each half of a potential couple tells their side of the story, but here, Dahlia shakes things up by adding a third voice, that of “Very Involved Mom” Kaitlin. Actress Gilli Messer shines as barelyholding-it-together Sasha, and Teddy Hamilton exudes warmth and confidence as her love interest, Ethan. Eunice Wong’s Kaitlin is vaguely menacing for reasons that only later become clear. Listeners who enjoy witty enemies-to-lovers romances will find much to appreciate.

—Norah Piehl

Take the LONG WAY HOME

READ BY DION GRAHAM READ BY INA BARRÓN

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READ BY SURA SIU

Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” wants to be clear that her third novel, Back After This, is not inspired by anyone she knows in real life. Well, except for the dog. “The Great Dane [Buddy] in the book is based on a real Great Dane that went to my dog’s day care who looks exactly like how the dog is described: giant black-and-white Great Dane and has a bandanna that says ‘Not a horse,’ ” she says, giving a shoutout to Buddy’s reallife inspiration, Jude.

As Back After This opens, podcast producer Cecily Foster has been dreaming of hosting her own show for ages. Her boss, Toby, has an idea that could be the key to bringing in revenue and staving off impending layoffs. The catch: It’s a dating show, and Cecily will be a host, but she’ll be paired with influencer-turned-dating coach Eliza Cassidy, who will set her up on a series of 20 blind dates, all of which will be recounted on-air. If Cecily plays ball, Toby will give her the chance to pitch a project she actually wants to host. But Eliza’s dating experiment might be doomed, as Cecily keeps running into the very cute Will and his dog, Buddy.

Love what you do

The NPR host’s third slice-of-life romance explores the pitfalls of letting your job define you—even if it’s your passion.

conversation completely in favor of talking about favorite romantic comedies. Holmes also plugs the show Starstruck, about a regular woman who meets a movie star, in case any further recommendations are needed.)

“My idea was to write the absolute most rom-com rom-com.”

“My idea was to write the absolute most rom-com rom-com, which is why it has these kinds of chance meetings,” Holmes explains. She cites the movie Serendipity, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, with its unbelievable chance encounters, and, naturally, the Nora Ephron classics. “The odds that these people would be in this position and bump into each other in the ways that they do are all very unlikely. But it’s amazing how much you will forgive when you like the characters and want good things for them.” (This writer was tempted to derail the

There’s a cozy, anecdotal quality to Back After This, in which no one even comes close to being a truly Machiavellian villain. Instead, Holmes says she chooses to write about the way things are difficult even for people who are genuinely trying. Cecily’s boss and her jerk of an ex-boyfriend may do things that are at odds with Cecily’s goals, but their actions stem from trying to protect their own livelihoods and foster their careers. “And honestly, it’s less about those people than it is about people who try [but still] make errors, because that’s how an overwhelming majority of people are,” Holmes notes. Her characters feel very much like people you know: some acquaintance of your sister’s with a fascinating job, a best friend trying to determine the next step in their career or the cute neighbor down the street with the friendliest dog. How those people figure stuff out, how they move through their day-to-day moments, is what Holmes is most interested in.

While Eliza’s selections for the 20 first dates make sense on paper, very few grab Cecily’s attention enough to warrant a second one. “I think those dates are dealt with fairly quickly because they don’t make a huge impression on her,” Holmes explains. “If you’ve ever been on a so-so date you struggle after the fact to remember the details because it’s all just small talk unless it sparks in some way.” Holmes admits she isn’t a huge believer in this kind of matchmaking, and that’s reflected

interview | linda holmes

in Cecily, who finds the setting of parameters, the guidance of a complete stranger and the revolving door of mediocre first dates to be lacking in the passion and spontaneity that she prefers.

But Cecily’s biggest relationship, the one that looms even larger than her 20 dates and connection with Will, is the one she has with her job. She loves her work in audio production, but she’s consistently held back by the fact, as Holmes puts it, that she’s just too good at the position she’s in, and her boss couldn’t possibly lose her by promoting her. “On the one hand, she’s really revered at her job, but she also has no ability to choose what she’s going to do,” Holmes says. “It’s something that many people have seen and experienced, and it causes people to have a fracture at a job that they love because there’s nowhere for them to go here.”

Holmes explains that Back After This and its evolution was partly inspired by news of a round of layoffs at her own company and how she thought about work and its role in people’s lives and identity.

Despite having a third novel hitting shelves, Holmes laughs at the thought of having mastered the art of crafting, writing and editing. “I feel like I have writing down to something that terrifies me slightly less than it did when I started doing it. I do think I have reached a point where I’m a little better than I used to be at believing that I will eventually get it to come together,” she says, adding that she’s the kind of writer that will do several—and this is stressed— big plot changes while editing. Holmes reveals that in the first iteration of Back After This, the podcast with Eliza never even got made and the book focused more on the pre-launch preparation. “Do I have it down to a science? Absolutely not. I am a little better at not freaking out in the middle when I don’t know how we’re going to fix it,” she says, though quickly follows up with a laugh, “I don’t know. I’m probably lying and I’ll still freak out.”

Back After This Ballantine, $28, 9780593599259

Both Cecily and Will (who is a photographer but also works as a waiter) struggle with how integral their jobs have become to their identities. Separating from a workplace or career path that is really enjoyable, but cannot offer you the growth or opportunities you need, can feel just as bad as a breakup. “I have a particular hope that people who are in this extraordinarily difficult environment for media jobs feel like I understood some of that insecurity,” Holmes says, “and some of that feeling of your work is not your worth and your job is not the same thing as your work anyway.”

While Holmes’ novels so far have skewed toward romance, a genre label that she welcomes with open arms, she describes her current writing project as more of a family story. “I think it will be fun if I can figure it out,” she adds. Her readers trust and know she will, however many freak-outs aside. They are eager to take comfort in the little pockets and slices of life of her characters as, despite whatever difficulties they may face, they still find the courage to try.

—Amanda Diehl

Visit BookPage.com to read our review of Back After This.

More romances for audio nerds

The Other Side of Disappearing

Kensington $17 95 9781496737311

Jess Greene’s mother ran off with a con man who’s now the subject of a podcast. After Jess agrees to assist the show, she finds herself falling for its producer in Kate Clayborn’s emotional romance.

Sleep No More

Berkley, $9 99 9780593337844

Each book in Jayne Ann Krentz’s paranormal Lost Night Files series, which starts with Sleep No More, follows one of the three co-hosts of the titular podcast. All three women have recently gained psychic powers—but they have no idea how.

The Ex Talk

Berkley, $17 9780593200124

Rachel Lynn Solomon’s debut takes place at a local radio station, where producer Shay and her workplace rival, Dominic, pretend to be exes on the station’s hit new relationship advice show. Inconveniently, hate soon turns to love.

MEMORY SERVES

Six memoirists describe the power and pleasure of putting their stories on the page .

H BIBLIOPHOBIA by Sarah Chihaya

Sarah Chihaya always thought books could save her from suicide. In her perceptive debut memoir, Chihaya tells her life story through the prism of reading. Brave and perceptive, Bibliophobia (Random House, $29, 9780593594728) is equal parts astute literary analysis and moving memoir.

—Alice Cary

Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?

I think Bibliophobia is actually like an after-dinner drink: something to help you digest everything you’ve read before. And there are more cigarettes in it than I’d realized, so like a good Scotch, it’s very smoky.

What kind of reader do you think will most appreciate or enjoy your book?

Anyone who ever wonders why they are driven to read and/or write, and questions what might drive us to look for comfort or sometimes discomfort outside our own lives. I think anyone who’s been truly changed by a book will have their own version of this experience. How do you feel now that you’ve put this story to the page? I still had a lot of academic hang-ups when I started Bibliophobia about what one was “allowed” to write, which had to do with expertise and earning your way into a topic or form. I don’t think these are totally resolved—maybe they will never be—but I feel more able to let myself entertain ideas I didn’t think I was ready to tackle before, like fiction.

H RAISING HARE by Chloe Dalton

Chloe Dalton had been cooped up in her country home during the COVID19 pandemic when she found an abandoned day-old hare. The tiny animal eventually extended its influence over Dalton’s entire world. Raising Hare (Pantheon, $27, 9780593701843) is a sweet and curious meditation on what we gain when we allow the natural world to teach us.

—Anna Christensen

Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?

I’d like to think that it would be something unpretentious, nourishing, warm and comforting. Something homemade, and simple. Freshly made bread, perhaps, with a touch of salt.

What do you love most about your memoir?

I wrote the book with the hare stretched out on her side in my office, or licking her paws beside me. As I settled at my desk in the morning, she would arrive back from her nocturnal wanderings. I never knew what the next day would bring, and it filled me with a sense of wonder. If I’d been writing about an experience that was already in the past, there might have been a temptation to burnish it with my own interpretation. Instead, my task was to observe closely, to listen and to try faithfully to describe what I witnessed.

How do you feel now that you’ve put this story to the page? I feel closer to nature, more attuned to animals and particularly conscious of the vulnerable lives lived by our remaining wild creatures. The hare clings on, despite the destruction of the natural landscape. It is a symbol of beauty, resilience and survival against the odds. This experience has made me more hopeful about the possibility of finding a better balance between humans and nature, and the rewards for all of us if we can manage that.

LOVE, RITA by Bridgett M . Davis

Bridgett M. Davis’ riveting and heartbreaking memoir Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss and Legacy (Harper, $29.99, 9780063322080) is a homage to her sister, Rita, who died at age 44 from complications with lupus. Davis seamlessly weaves her family’s narrative with facts about the ways racism and societal trauma can have a devastating impact on Black women’s lives and medical outcomes.

—Deborah Hopkinson

Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?

Love, Rita is a delicious chicken shawarma with creamy garlic sauce. Not only was this one of my sister’s favorite meals at her favorite Middle Eastern restaurant in the Detroit area, but it captures that combination of familiarity and comfort mixed with spiciness that embodied Rita’s personality.

At what point did you know this story was a book?

On what would’ve been my sister’s 65th birthday, I wrote a letter to her, and I realized she’d lived through so many cultural touchstones; her life’s events were resonant as markers of Black life from the midto-late 20th century. I committed to writing this memoir, with two goals in mind: To honor my sister, and to highlight what America’s structural racism looks like through the lens of a personal, lived experience.

How do you feel now that you’ve put this story to the page?

I’m greatly relieved to have gotten this story—which for so long felt too hard to write, yet consumed my consciousness—out of me; I feel liberated from this family narrative and the parts that saddened me, yet surprisingly comforted by the parts that lifted my heart. Now I feel proud of myself for facing my fears and writing the hard parts.

CONNECTING DOTS

by Joshua A . Miele

When Joshua A. Miele was 4, a disturbed neighbor poured acid on his head, damaging his face and blinding him. This tragedy radically changed Miele’s life. Written with veteran journalist Wendell Jamieson, this coming-of-age story focuses on the unconventional childhood and young adulthood that led Miele to become an award-winning innovator and disability activist.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?

A robust and resilient blind life dressed in a lively, acidic and sweet disability-pride reduction, served with good and bad choices, mixed mature and immature romance, a sprig of accessible design and plenty of fresh Pacific oysters.

What was the hardest memory to get on the page?

For most of my professional life, I’ve been trying to direct attention to my work in disability and disability inclusion, and away from my personal origin story: how I became blind. While the memoir focuses emphatically on “the important stuff”—blind identity, cool accessible technologies, inclusive design and even the arc of my blind life—completeness required us to include the story of how I got burned as a little kid. It was a challenge to cover these events while being neither dismissive nor sensational or maudlin. Ultimately, I think we got it just right. How have you changed since you started writing it?

If I’ve changed, it’s to become more patient, more understanding of difference, better able to communicate with people holding opinions different from my own. These are not changes brought by the writing process, but the slow progression of age and maturity. It’s been a long road.

CARE AND FEEDING

by Laurie Woolever

Care and Feeding (Ecco, $28.99, 9780063327603) details Laurie Woolever’s decades hustling in NYC’s food world, including her work for Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali. With entertaining anecdotes, memorable descriptions and nuggets of hard-won wisdom, the memoir shows that there are many stories to tell about food culture.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?

Care and Feeding is itself a tasting menu, delivering a full meal that’s been carefully calibrated with just enough comedy, pathos, thrill, horror, gossip and actual food.

At what point did you know this story was a book?

After the death of Tony Bourdain, I had occasion to reflect on my career. I was newly divorced and sober and grieving the loss of my

boss and mentor, and taking stock of how I’d gotten to that point. A decade ago, I wrote an essay about all the jobs I’d had since college, and that got such a strong response that I knew there was a lot of pleasure and insight to be gleaned by building a narrative around my work life, which so often bled into my personal life.

How have you changed since you started writing it?

I think that I have a perspective on the events described in the narrative that’s both deeper and broader than when I started. I’ve also realized over the course of writing and editing it, and now starting to promote it, that the writing itself held so much pleasure. I used to drive toward the finish line and only feel satisfied on publication day. I know now that every part of the process is a reward.

H THE TROUBLE OF COLOR by

Martha S . Jones

Martha S. Jones’ father was descended from enslaved people, while her mother came from European immigrants. In The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (Basic, $30, 9781541601000), Jones traces her father’s side of the family back five generations, writing with precision, grace and loving insight into how color affected their lives. The result is a genealogy that will change the way readers understand race.

Alice Cary

Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?

The Trouble of Color is like a side of greens, made from improvisation and with love.

At what point did you know this story was a book?

I’ve collected family memories for a long time. But I only knew I might have enough for a book when I uncovered the story of my great-great-great-grandmother, Nancy. She was born a slave in 1808 Danville, Kentucky, and no one in our family had spoken much about her. I stumbled onto the details of her life in the pages of some old, dusty account ledgers, and I could see how she was at the start of a book that stretched out across generations, all the way to me. I wrote with her portrait at my shoulder, and always felt sure that Nancy would be pleased to know that I had put her and her descendants’ lives on the page.

What kind of reader do you think will most appreciate or enjoy your book?

If you have been misapprehended, mistaken or misunderstood for someone you are not, this book is for you. If the look of your very person confounds, confuses or provokes others, this book is for you. If you’ve heard that your family is too complicated, too out of bounds, confused or contradictory, this book is for you. For everyone, The Trouble of Color is an invitation to reflect deeply on their own family stories.

Forgotten, but not gone

With the help of a magical camera, Karen Russell makes our Dust Bowl history whole .

From 1935 to 1944, the Farm Security Administration commissioned photographs of life during the Great Depression, and in particular, the Dust Bowl. Roy Stryker, head of the New Deal photographic initiative, was a merciless editor, and to obtain his desired portrayal of American rural poverty, he rejected thousands of negatives from Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein and others, not only declining to display them but also mutilating the images, “killing” them with a hole punch. In 2018, London’s Whitechapel Gallery hosted an exhibition of these altered photographs, titled Killed Negatives: Unseen Images of 1930s America. In some of the photographs from Whitechapel Gallery’s exhibition, the effect of the hole punch is surreal, even a little funny, the black hole appearing like an eclipse over a brittle landscape, or a ball bouncing into the scene. In others, it has a harsher effect, as when the hole punctures a person’s face. These missing circles are an easy metaphor for lost memories, reminding us how simple it is to alter the way history is told.

training as a Vault. “The memories that make them chase impossible dreams, that make them sick with regret and grief. Whatever they hope to preserve in the future. Whatever cargo unbalances the cart. . . . Milk, honey, rainwater, venom, blood. Horror, happiness, sorrow, regret—pour it all into me.”

“You can’t imagine a viable future, a world that’s kinder and more just than what we’ve got today, without returning to the past.”

The witch was the very first seed of the book, an idea that came to Russell when she was finishing up her Pulitzer-finalist debut novel, Swamplandia!, in 2009. Speaking by phone from Oregon, Russell says that at that time she had been writing around trauma, personal and familial, and exploring how private traumas can aggregate into a mass denial. “That’s how I write, kind of like a child,” she says. “I like to literalize these things that are very abstract. The question becomes, what kinds of forgetting are we ceaselessly encouraged to do, just to go on living as we do? What can people not carry into the future?”

Like Killed Negatives, Karen Russell’s second novel, The Antidote, transforms the iconic American imagery of the Dust Bowl into a stunning work of art: daring, masterful, hard to look away from. Her novel includes some of these censored Dust Bowl images, and a New Deal photographer named Cleo—whose Graflex Speed Graphic camera has an unusual power, and whose work has been rejected many times via Stryker’s punch—is one of the central characters in this Technicolor epic of land, history and memory.

Within The Antidote, the hole punch-like sense of something missing is represented by the titular character, a prairie witch known as the Antidote. She is a “Vault”—a bank of sorts, not for money but for memories.

“I will take whatever they cannot stand to know,” the Antidote thinks in a memory of her

Along with the Antidote and Cleo, the novel follows several other citizens of Uz, Nebraska, including a humble farmer named Harp whose wheat crop is flourishing while his neighbors struggle to make ends meet. Russell cracks a joke that “it’s hard to make [soil] sexy,” but Harp’s tender sections make a good go of it. There’s also Harp’s niece, Dell, a teenage basketballer who’s mourning the murder of her mother.

Inevitability is a powerful presence in the novel, which is bookended by two true events: the Black Sunday dust storm and the deadly Republican River flood. By 1935, when the book begins, nothing can avert these disasters. Even the New Deal agency soil expert sent to screen The Plow That Broke the Plains for Uz’s farmers is forced to admit that they can’t get their topsoil back. But though some events seem inevitable, it’s apparent that hard lines can yet be redrawn. The way Russell considers the

ecological elements of her novel is a distinct departure from the majority of environmental fiction, which is dominated by doomsday narratives, as if complete ecosystem collapse were already inescapable.

“I really went into this thinking, I want to tune my imagination to a future that’s not apocalyptic,” Russell says. “Elvia Wilk . . . wrote a book called Death by Landscape, and she talks about how utopias and dystopias are coterminous. I also love Joy Williams’ Harrow . What a dark book, but you can often feel the seeds of a future world, right? You can feel a resistance or a countervailing force, even if it’s like a micro-utopia, or a community of dreamers that make themselves a blueprint that’s not this fortress world.”

When it comes to what Russell calls “the weathervaning of utopias and dystopias,” Cleo’s magical camera is the novel’s greatest tool, as distinct as Philip Pullman’s subtle knife. It has the power to reveal scenes from the past, when the Pawnee people farmed the land effectively and nondestructively, as well as possible futures, good and bad. (At the end of the book, a “Land Lost Acknowledgment,” co-authored with historian James Riding In, recounts the history of the Pawnees, whose presence on the Central Plains predates foreign settlers by at least a thousand years.)

story together, nothing new can grow. Russell brings up the recent wave of legislation restricting the teaching of racial history in public schools, as we’ve seen proposed in more than 70% of U.S. state legislatures in the first half of the 2020s. To pass laws that forbid the teaching of true American history in classrooms is to risk a cultural dust bowl, with children primed to perpetuate the individualistic mistakes of their parents and grandparents out of pure ignorance.

“I was taught this history in a very partitioned way, and it’s like, the dispossession of Indigenous people happens over here , and the Dust Bowl happens over here , and they’re in separate boxes. That started to feel like lunacy to me,” says Russell. She describes how textbooks make the connection between ecological and environmental collapse, “but it was very strange to me that we omit the violence and dispossession and attempted genocide and ethnocide.”

H The Antidote Knopf, $30 9780593802250

HISTORICAL FICTION

“You can’t imagine a viable future, a world that’s kinder and more just than what we’ve got going today, without returning to the past,” Russell says. “I just don’t think that you can skip that step. One of the exciting things about this book for me was [that] so many of the solutions are here with us today. We don’t have to indenture ourselves to Elon Musk’s space fleet.”

As for those solutions, Russell points to Land Back efforts and the work of Rebecca Clarren, whose book The Cost of Free Land investigates the history of her Jewish family’s land as stolen from the Lakota. Another solution: We consider our whole history, no holes punched. Through novels like Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, more stories based on our nation’s full history are reaching readers. In The Antidote, the Dust Bowl is the perfect metaphor for the United States: Without deep roots to hold our

What enables our forgetting is a hollow perception of scarcity, represented by the phrase “better you than me” (a refrain in the novel) and its cousin, “I’ll give when I have more for myself.”

“You have to partition your own heart and consciousness to live the way that we do,” Russell says, describing how it’s “so tempting” to ignore the injustice and suffering around us. “You have to exile a lot from your waking awareness, and you have to tell the story that, ‘Oh, well, that has nothing to do with me,’ which is such a fatally lonely story.”

Instead, Russell’s characters find themselves blessed with little miracles that force them out of step with the tradition of forgetting. “The emptiness of any place is an illusion,” Cleo says. “That’s what this camera has taught me. Any piece of earth is brimming over with living. I think this must be what the poets mean when they write in the fullness of time.” Books like The Antidote often leave a reader wondering, “OK, what am I supposed to do to fix all this?” But Russell’s novel won’t leave you at all. It’s a cascade of razed illusions, brimming over with living.

—Cat Acree

Battle Mountain

A perennial figure in mystery and suspense novels is the “second banana,” a sidekick/bodyguard of a series’ central character who is often more skilled, more focused and more lethal. Think Spenser and Hawk, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike or Easy Rawlins and Raymond “Mouse” Alexander. And then, on an entirely different level of lethality, there is C.J. Box’s Nate Romanowski: a loner, survivalist and falconer who was originally a supporting character in the Joe Pickett novels, but has taken center stage over the past several books (so much so that he has acquired a sidekick of his own, Geronimo Jones). The latest in the Wyoming-set series, Battle Mountain (Putnam, $32, 9780593851050), follows Nate in search of Axel Soledad, his wife’s murderer, who cheated almost certain death at the hands of Geronimo (you had ONE JOB, Geronimo). Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Nate, Soledad is a key figure in a case that Joe has become peripherally involved with. The governor’s son-in-law and his hunting guide have gone missing deep in the mountain wilderness. And somewhere within that wilderness are Soledad and his partners in crime, who are preparing for a massive criminal endeavor and have exactly zero desire to leave living witnesses to their presence. As is often the case with shifting narratives, the reader knows more than at least some of the characters at least some of the time, but do not let that put you off. There are still ample surprises in store.

Cold as Hell

Kelley Armstrong’s latest mystery, Cold as Hell (Minotaur, $28, 9781250351791), is number three in her, um, chilling series of novels about Haven’s Rock, a remote settlement in the Yukon—which is already quite remote by most measures—in which people can go off the grid, usually to hide from those who wish to do them harm. But predators have their own devious ways of seeking out prey: A Haven’s Rock woman gets drugged (maybe) and then abducted (definitely), only to be saved by the fortuitous intervention of a fellow villager who hears her screams above the noise of the heavy winds. The second victim is not so lucky. Unfortunately, one of the town’s chief law enforcement officers, Detective Casey Duncan, is deep into the third trimester of her difficult pregnancy, which rather complicates matters. The other law enforcement officer, Sheriff Eric Dalton, happens to be Casey’s husband—and he’s the only one in town who can fly the small airplane that will take her to the hospital. That distinction may prove to be academic, though, as a raging snowstorm precludes air travel for the time being. Let it be said that there is no shortage of tension here: stolen drugs, baby imminent, phones not working, a killer on the loose and a village full of people with secrets, plenty of whom could snap under the pressure.

Leo

A tongue-in-cheek aphorism dating from medieval times (but often misattributed to Oscar Wilde) suggests that “No good deed goes unpunished.” As Deon Meyer’s latest novel, Leo (Atlantic Monthly, $28, 9780802164230), begins, that saying must be going through the minds of South African police detectives Benny Greissel and Vaughn Cupido. In their previous outing, The Dark Flood, the duo exposed a massive corruption scheme, for which they have been rewarded with banishment. The university town of Stellenbosch is some 50 kilometers—which might as well be 50 light-years—distant from the rampant scofflawism that makes Cape Town a fascinating place to be a cop. Although it is something of a demotion, that cloud has had a bit of a silver lining for Benny, as his upcoming nuptials make up one of the three subplots of the book. A second subplot features an old nemesis getting recruited for a pretty audacious heist, and the third involves the killing of a student bicyclist and the subsequent (particularly nasty and possibly professional) murder of her suspected killer. Perspective shifts early and often in the narrative, but Meyer toggles seamlessly from one to the next, deftly tying all three storylines together in a timely fashion. By the way, speaking of timely: For having such a short title, Leo is quite a hefty tome—464 pages—so book out your time accordingly.

H White King

The third and final installment of Juan GómezJurado’s Antonia Scott trilogy, White King (Minotaur, $28, 9781250853714) possesses the same “I cannot put this damn book down” allure as its two predecessors, 2023’s Red Queen and 2024’s Black Wolf. The main character, Antonia Scott, is an amalgam of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander and Keigo Higashino’s Detective Galileo, with perhaps a bit of Stephen Hawking mixed in for good measure. Her interests and knowledge are wide-ranging and eclectic; she speaks more languages than the typical mobile phone voice translator (Telugu, for example, an Indian language from which she conjures up an appropriate word to fit her situation at the moment—“rakṣakuḍuha,” which means, in her words, “the bodyguard without armor who throws himself naked into the path of the arrow”). Antonia has been tasked with solving three crimes by her longtime adversary, the shadowy Mr. White, in order to save her partner and dear friend, Jon Gutierrez. Mr. White assuredly has an ulterior motive for setting such a challenge, but Antonia can’t risk Jon’s life. Meanwhile, the secret organization she works for— the multinational, investigative alliance known as the Red Queen project—is under attack. Thankfully, Antonia’s arguably the most gifted on-the-fly crime solver in the history of thrillers, making connections that stymie those around her (and the readers of her exploits), until the final reveal.

Bruce Tierney lives outside Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he bicycles through the rice paddies daily and reviews the best in mystery and suspense every month.

feature | thrillers

A mother’s intuition

The triumphs and trials of parenting take center stage in two suspenseful new novels .

Clever Little Thing

Charlotte knows that her 8-yearold daughter Stella isn’t like other children. Stella can’t stand certain sounds, has sensory issues with tight-fitting or scratchy clothes, and goes into an apocalyptic tantrum Charlotte calls “freak-out mode” when she’s overstimulated. But Stella is also reading vastly above her grade level, and is curious about the world in a way that makes her precocious and unique.

But after Stella’s babysitter, Blanka, quits her job with a vague text message, things begin to change. Charlotte notices her daughter accepts change more readily, but, alarmingly, Stella also seems to be regressing in her reading skills, and her once avid curiosity is gone.

H All the Other Mothers Hate Me

It’s no easy feat to write an equally comical and compelling novel about a missing child, but Sarah Harman accomplishes just that in her wild romp of a debut, All the Other Mothers Hate Me (Putnam, $29, 9780593851463).

As Stella continues to evolve, Charlotte begins to feel like she’s the only one who can see the truth about her daughter. However, she’s also in the midst of a highrisk pregnancy, a situation that others, including her husband, seem to think may be the true source of her anxiety.

Helena Echlin’s Clever Little Thing (Pamela Dorman, $29, 9780593656075) is entirely narrated from Charlotte’s point of view, and her rising sense of panic and the “wrongness” about her daughter is acutely palpable. An impressively twisty thriller, the novel is also a testament to a mother’s intuition and her love for her child exactly as she is, not as society wants her to be. Sometimes spooky, sometimes rage-inducing, Clever Little Thing concludes with a truly unexpected, impossible to predict ending.

—Elyse Discher

Florence Grimes was once the lead singer in a successful girl band, although those days are long behind this young American single mom. She and her son barely squeak by in London, although 10-year-old Dylan goes to a posh school paid for by her ex-husband. Everything changes, however, when Dylan’s bully—wealthy Alfie Risby—goes missing on a field trip, and some suspect Dylan is to blame. Florence soon teams up with another “outsider” mom at Dylan’s school, newly arrived Jenny Choi, a high-powered attorney and single mom to twin boys. As they find themselves in increasingly unlikely—and dangerous—situations, their efforts have something of a Thelma and Louise vibe.

Florence can be a hilariously maddening, certainly not always admirable character, but she will keep readers entertained and intrigued. Seasoned mystery readers may pick up on some hints to the case’s solution along the way, but even so, plenty of surprises remain. All the Other Mothers Hate Me introduces an unforgettable bumbling detective, and hopefully Florence will find other mysteries to solve. Whatever the case, Sarah Harman is a writer to be watched.

—Alice Cary

Bravery when it counts

Set during World War II, these novels tell the stories of two women whose lives are testaments to the power of courage during times of upheaval .

Ace, Marvel, Spy

Jenni L. Walsh deftly fictionalizes the intriguing rise of real-life trailblazing tennis champion Alice Marble and her extraordinary life following the start of World War II in Ace, Marvel, Spy (Harper Muse, $18.99, 9781400246748).

After her brother encourages Alice to trade baseball for tennis, which he regards as more ladylike, Alice picks up a racket for the first time and falls in love with the sport. Through grit and diligence, Alice defies all odds, rising to unprecedented prominence in tennis. Her life is disrupted when war breaks out, but not one to give up, Alice joins the fight against the Nazis by becoming a spy.

Through a carefully crafted dual timeline, Walsh follows Alice’s exhilarating journey to becoming an 18-Grand Slam tennis champion and the Associated Press Athlete of the Year in 1939 and 1940. Alice’s later accomplishments include becoming an associate editor with All-American Comics’ Wonder Women of History series, covering the stories of notable women in history. She also plays a role in the desegregation of tennis, writing an editorial piece in support of Black player Althea Gibson, who goes on to become the first African American player to play in the National Championships (and the first to win them).

With expertise and finesse, Walsh provides a complete picture of Alice’s life that celebrates her unrelenting determination to succeed and courage in the face of hardship.

Midnight on the Scottish Shore

Sarah Sundin is the bestselling author of Christian historical novels including Until Leaves Fall in Paris, which received a 2022 Christy Award, and the Sunrise at Normandy series. In Midnight on the Scottish Shore (Revell, $18.99, 9780800741860), she weaves a stunning story of a brave woman determined to escape Nazi control and find freedom in England.

Intent on establishing a new life and leaving the Netherlands following the German invasion, Cilla van der Zee develops a plan: She will become a Nazi spy, then desert the Germans after arriving safely in England, and begin a new life. Her plan is halted when Scottish lieutenant Lachlan Mackenzie finds and arrests her. To avoid execution, Cilla is forced to work as a double agent and partner with Lachlan in relaying false messages to the Nazis.

Blending a woman’s exciting journey across Europe and the unlikely, endearing romance between the novel’s main characters, Sundin underscores Cilla’s bravery and Lachlan’s devotion to the Allied cause. Cilla’s vivacity and humor enliven the story, and her compassion and willingness to put her life at risk for others’ sake are inspiring. Sundin also explores Lachlan’s background and chronicles his growth, exploring themes of faith and forgiveness.

—Edith Kanyagia

H Stone Yard Devotional

By Charlotte Wood LITERARY FICTION

Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional (Riverhead, $28, 9798217047352), shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, is something rare: a jewel-like, introspective novel in which not all that much happens, yet worlds are revealed. Set in a sparsely populated abbey in rural Australia, the story unfolds through the diarylike ruminations of an unnamed woman who has come seeking spiritual retreat from personal turmoil. After separating from her husband, who has gone to England, this self-described atheist was drawn to the circumscribed religious life of a small community of nuns near the provincial town where she was a girl. This sudden proximity to her childhood feeds her deepest thoughts, reviving memories and recasting truths about her loving, nonconforming parents, who shaped her worldview and whose deaths left a hole in her heart.

H Stag Dance

By Torrey Peters

SHORT STORIES

Torrey Peters, the critically acclaimed author of Detransition, Baby , returns with a brilliant, mindblowing book which collects three stories and a novella, each of which defy gender norms and genre norms alike. Stag Dance (Random House, $28, 9780593595640) solidifies Peters’ reputation as one of the best contemporary queer writers with four thrilling and deeply felt tales of people who are forced to confront the gendered expectations of their worlds or else risk annihilation.

In “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones,” Peters tries her hand at speculative fiction. This story imagines a gender apocalypse where a virus has wreaked havoc on hormones and turned everyone trans. The twist? The virus started because the narrator (patient zero)’s ex wanted revenge for their messy breakup. The next story, “The Chaser,” is a teen romance which elevates the genre, showing its potential for sublime

The first driving episode of this gentle novel is a plague of mice that infests the abbey. Depicted in all their relentless, squirming vehemence, the vermin are the consequence of a drought that brings home the inescapable environmental threat hovering over the wider world (the novel is also set during the COVID19 pandemic lockdown, although Wood is careful not to make that the focal point of the story). The second event that rattles the otherwise isolated community is the discovery of the remains of a nun who disappeared in Thailand decades ago. The planned repatriation and burial of Sister Jenny’s bones triggers a third incident: the arrival of Helen Parry, a globetrotting, celebrity activist nun whose presence

tragedy. Two roommates at a boarding school begin an affair which quickly falls apart, as affairs between closeted teenagers are wont to do. The drama which unfolds is as scintillating as anything out of Gossip Girl or Dawson’s Creek

The title novella, “Stag Dance,” is the centerpiece: a swashbuckling western tall tale that follows a Paul Bunyan-type lumberjack who feels more feminine than the world allows him to be. When the camp throws a dance at which some attendees will be allowed to play the roles of women, the narrator sees his chance, but things go awry when he has to compete for attention with a lithe pretty boy who has already wooed much of the camp. Finally, in “The Masker,” Peters plays with horror, as a young trans woman attending a queer gala finds herself torn between an experienced older trans woman and a masked fetishist, and is forced to decide what queerness really means to her.

The real draw of this book is the masterful writing. Peters fully embodies each voice, such that all four narrators feel distinct and viscerally real. The variation of genres means each piece is its own entire world for readers to get lost in, though this isn’t to say that the book feels disjointed. Certain images, such as pigs, repeat throughout, providing cohesion. Overall, Peters’ vision is one where gender

is taxing for all, but most particularly upsetting for the narrator. As the second half of the novel plays out, the reason for this nettlesome friction, and the emotional hold Helen has over the narrator, deepens our understanding of her need for redemption.

Grief and forgiveness are undeniably the central tent poles propping up the novel, but Wood takes things deeper— wrestling with timeless human questions of faith (even among the faithless), mortality and kindness, parsing them with bare-bones clarity. With its absorbing and deceptively simple narrative, Stone Yard Devotional is a beautiful testament to the rudiments of shedding the unessential and living a life of intention.

—Robert Weibezahl

roles are never stagnant, and the world is made new by queerness.

—Eric A. Ponce

See Friendship

By Jeremy Gordon

LITERARY FICTION

Complex and authentic, Jeremy Gordon’s See Friendship (Harper Perennial, $17.99, 9780063375093) challenges the heart and mind with truths about friendship and memory.

Jacob Goldberg, a 30-something culture writer for a website of medium renown, is trying to stay relevant in the increasingly competitive media world. While brainstorming ideas for a podcast series, Jacob learns new details about the unexpected death of Seth Terry, one of his best friends from high school. Shocked by the revelation that Seth overdosed, Jacob fixates on the events leading up to the well-liked Seth’s death, which he decides to make the subject of his podcast. Jacob pieces together a narrative through interviews with former classmates, investigating what part

Lee—Seth’s friend and drug dealer—played in Seth’s demise.

See Friendship is a nuanced, layered story. In his interviews, Jacob delves into the shared past of all Seth’s former acquaintances, unearthing the complexities of those relationships, as well as Jacob’s own demons and regrets. Through Jacob’s eyes, readers also glimpse the world of journalism, witnessing the evolution of his work on the story from a professional project about the legacy of a dead classmate into a personal reckoning. Jacob’s concerns are relatable, as he balances the demands of his precarious career with the desire to treat his friend’s story with humanity.

A thought-provoking and stirring exploration of the lasting impact of connection, See Friendship may resonate with those who enjoyed The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Gordon’s writing is both sensitive and grounded, skillfully capturing the complex emotional responses to loss through keen and evocative observations. He masterfully explores the capricious nature of memory—how certain moments resurface with ease, while others remain elusive— revealing the fluid, and often unreliable, ways we process the past.

—Maya Fleischmann

Wild Dark Shore

By Charlotte McConaghy

LITERARY FICTION

Novelist Charlotte McConaghy’s books blend romance and mystery with a focus on ecological topics, from rewilding the Scottish Highlands ( Once There Were Wolves) to following the flight of the Arctic tern ( Migrations ). In Wild Dark Shore (Flatiron, $28.99, 9781250827951), McConaghy turns her attention to a seed bank located on a remote island off the coast of Antarctica.

Widower Dominic Salt and his three children—teens Raff and Fen and their younger brother, Orly—are the lone inhabitants of Shearwater Island. Though it was once populated by botanists and researchers, the rising sea level and raging storms threaten to destroy decades of hard work, and have driven the other scientists away. Before they too depart the island, the Salts have been tasked with packing up the seeds to be taken to safer storage. Each of

them is already mourning the loss of their home; for Orly, it’s all about the seeds, for Fen, the seals, and for Raff, the memories of his first love and subsequent heartbreak make the island a bittersweet place. But it’s clear the end of their time on Shearwater won’t go as they imagined after Fen finds a woman named Rowan half-drowned in the ocean and brings her back to the research center.

Though they’re committed to caring for her until she recovers, the Salts are suspicious of Rowan at first. Who is she, exactly, and what brought her to this remote place? But gradually, Rowan proves a balm to past losses, as she listens to Orly’s stories and Fen’s doubts, and helps with projects around the island. The possibility of having a fifth member of their family again is a potent force, especially for Dominic, who is still grieving the loss of his wife. But Rowan has come to the island with a personal agenda, and when she finds a recent grave, she realizes the Salts, too, have things to hide.

McConaghy’s thought-provoking and passionately told novel is about family and trust, but it is also about climate change and the effect of severe weather on our environment and on our lives. Wild Dark Shore asks, what will happen when we risk losing our homes and our neighbors? What will we save and what will we let go of? And how can we start again after the sea takes it all?

—Lauren Bufferd

The Strange Case of Jane O.

By Karen Thompson Walker

SPECULATIVE FICTION

Sculpting a novel that conveys vastness through inner lives alone is a tremendous challenge. Making that same novel a page-turning mystery that’s simultaneously moving and often nailbiting is another challenge altogether. With The Strange Case of Jane O. (Random House, $28, 9781984853943), Karen Thompson Walker rises to meet both of these challenges head-on, and succeeds.

The title character is—externally at least—an unremarkable woman, a single mother who works at the New York Public Library. Alarmed by potential hallucinations, blackouts and a feeling of lingering sadness and dread, she seeks the help of a psychiatrist, who takes an interest not just in Jane’s case, but in the way the woman sees

the world. Told through a combination of the psychiatrist’s reflections on his sessions with Jane, and Jane’s own diary entries addressed to her infant son, The Strange Case of Jane O. seeks to excavate a particular human mind in such a way that the minds of everyone around her, and the very nature of their reality, might turn on what becomes of this fascinating protagonist.

Though this engrossing book often moves with a thriller’s pace, there is little sensationalism in Walker’s writing. But it’s not cold prose. In fact, as the psychiatrist discovers the nature of Jane’s unique memory, her hallucinations and the source of her dread, the precision of Walker’s word choice becomes key to deciphering the mystery. This is not a book that holds the reader’s hand through every revelation, but one that asks something of us, wanting us to decipher along with its characters a mystery that is bigger than psychiatry, bigger than crime, bigger than a single strange incident.

Slowly, elegantly and with tremendous grace, Walker starts to draw parallels between therapist and patient, between mother and father, between woman and child, and The Strange Case of Jane O. becomes an emotional journey into the heart of what drives us, what breaks us and what keeps us walking the line of mundane daily life.

—Matthew Jackson

H Dream State

By Eric Puchner

LITERARY FICTION

From the very first pages of Dream State (Doubleday, $28, 9780385550666), Eric Puchner draws readers right into the seemingly charmed world of a multigenerational summer lake house in the imaginary town of Salish, Montana, a house graced with outdated carpet, board games, bric-a-brac on every windowsill, Adirondack chairs, apple orchards, raspberry bushes and cherry trees. “Fingers stained red,” Puchner writes, “bloated with fruit, you’d run across Route 35 and jump into the lake to clean off, whooping lustily at the cold, feeling like a character in a Russian novel.” The year is 2004, and the cottage belongs to the Margolis family, who are ready to celebrate the wedding of anesthesiologist Charlie Margolis and his fiancée, Cece, a medical school dropout who “was sure she had something great to

offer the world, something big and purehearted and indispensable. If only she could figure out what it was.”

Into this scene walks Charlie’s best friend, Garrett, an airport baggage handler who is hiding from life, tending to his dying father and struggling with the fallout from the accidental death of their mutual college friend, for which he feels responsible. This is a packed saga of the very best kind, spanning from the characters’ college days through their old age, examining a multitude of themes that include friendship, betrayal, marriage, parenting, aging—and also the road not taken, climate change and addiction. Not many authors could successfully pull off such a sprawling, multifaceted chronicle, but Puchner excels at both the big picture and the small details, creating funny, believable dialogue throughout and using characters’ expertise to enrich the plot (such as Charlie’s medical knowledge or Garrett’s later career as an environmental scientist specializing in wolverine protection).

“If you look for a meaning, Tarkovsky once said, you’ll miss everything that happens,” a character says near the end of the novel, citing the Soviet filmmaker. Happily, however, this novel overflows with both meaning and intriguing plot, layer by layer, year by year, and even doubles back on itself in an artful way, returning to the Margolis wedding at the very end.

Although very different books, Dream State shares remarkable similarities with Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red: They both skillfully and humorously center on a wedding and a young love triangle, a tragic accidental death, and concerns about climate change and the ways humans damage the environment. Don’t miss Dream State, whose memorable characters leave readers with plenty to contemplate about life’s most vital aspects.

—Alice Cary

has been that, as the years pass, it has become less rather than more clear to me whether I’m a good or bad person,” a character muses in “Giraffe and Flamingo.” Many of Show Don’t Tell’s characters are similarly taking stock, in sharp portraits of mostly (though not entirely) middle-aged women and their long friendships, floundering marriages and postdivorce lives.

Some of the stories trace a brief encounter with a celebrity and the surprises that result. In “The Marriage Clock,” movie executive Heather tries to persuade a Christian marriage expert to cede his creative approval rights for a film adaptation of his megabestselling self-help book. And “The Richest Babysitter in the World” recounts Kit’s year of babysitting for a young Seattle family; the dad has founded a startup that, decades later, will become an Amazon-like behemoth. In “The Tomorrow Box,” Andy, a teacher, reconnects with a college classmate who’s made an unlikely fortune as an influencer peddling total honesty.

Other stories push a character and a cultural moment together. The cringe-inducing story “White Women LOL” details the aftermath of a viral video. Jill, a white Midwestern mom, is caught on camera behaving in an undeniably racist way, and in trying to get out from under the weight of the incident, digs herself into a deeper hole. In “A for Alone,” Irene, an artist, aims to create a conceptual artwork out of the Mike Pence rule (do not meet with anyone of a different sex who’s not your spouse). As Irene blunders through this project, setting up lunches with various men, often to hilarious effect, she unfortunately proves the merit of the Mike Pence rule.

Show Don’t Tell

By Curtis Sittenfeld

SHORT STORIES

In her second story collection, Show Don’t Tell (Random House, $28, 9780593446737), novelist Curtis Sittenfeld ( Prep , Romantic Comedy ) mines midlife—the cringey moments and also the unexpected shifts in perspective. “One of the surprises of adulthood for me

Longtime Sittenfeld fans will be pleased to encounter Lee Fiora, the main character from Sittenfeld’s debut novel, Prep, in “Lost But Not Forgotten.” Lee, now 48, returns to the tony Massachusetts boarding school where she once felt so out of place for her 30th reunion. As with the collection’s other stories, “Lost But Not Forgotten” excels in its close observation of characters—a gesture that reveals a class detail, or the performative small talk of a reunion—though the story’s real strength is in revealing Lee’s shift in perspective over time. Likewise, “Show Don’t Tell” focuses on one night at the Iowa Writers Workshop, before zooming forward 20 years to reckon with the unpredictability of which writers succeed and what kind of people the classmates have become. This telescoping of time gives these stories the feel of tiny novels.

If some of Show Don’t Tell’s stories are more slice of life than big drama, that’s

OK. It’s a cohesive, often dryly funny, occasionally heartbreaking set of stories, and a satisfying report from the front lines of middle age.

—Sarah

McCraw Crow

I Leave It Up to You

By Jinwoo Chong

POPULAR FICTION

This isn’t a spoiler, but at the very end of Jinwoo Chong’s I Leave It Up to You (Ballantine, $28, 9780593727058), the narrator and protagonist, Jack Jr., runs after a bus. After spending so much time with this son of Korean immigrants, you know exactly why he wants to catch this bus, and there’s nothing you can do but cheer.

The story opens with Jack Jr. (it’s important to him that everyone remember the Jr.) emerging from a two-year coma. He’s been on a respirator, so you may first assume that he’s a victim of COVID-19. That isn’t the case, but COVID does play a surprising role in the story later on. Once he’s finally awake, his family rushes to the hospital. They’re his mother, Ari, his father, Jack Sr., and his brother, James, with whom Jack Jr. has never gotten along. James is seven years older than Jack Jr., and the father of snarky, lovable, 16-year-old Juno.

Jack Jr. learns quickly that the world has changed. James has a second son, a baby, born while his uncle was still comatose. Jack Jr.’s old job, old apartment and old relationships are gone. He has to move back in with his parents and resume working at the family restaurant he abandoned when he was a teenager. It’s a sushi restaurant, which, if you’re familiar with the history of Japan’s colonization of Korea, is noteworthy. Jack Sr.’s father swore he’d never speak to him again if he went to Japan to become a sushi master, but Jack Sr. went anyway. This was the beginning of the tangled paternal and filial expectations, the pull between selfactualization and familial obligations, that bedevil this fractious but loving family.

Chong, author of Flux , is masterful at presenting his characters and describing their world. Much of I Leave It Up to You is set during a New Jersey winter, and his depictions of ice, snow, frost and freezing cold might make your teeth chatter. His description of Jack Jr. struggling out of his coma is alone worth the price of admission.

You won’t forget this big-hearted, beautifully written book.

—Arlene McKanic

H Red Dog Farm

By Nathaniel Ian Miller

COMING OF AGE

In Nathaniel Ian Miller’s gritty yet tender sophomore novel, Red Dog Farm (Little, Brown, $28, 9780316575140), Orri is on the horns of a dilemma—or would be, if the cattle he helps raise in the Borgarbyggð region of western Iceland actually had horns. He’s at that awkward crossroads where deciding about higher education, finding your way around relationships and becoming an independent adult all collide. After a term at college in the big city (Reykjavík, population 140,000), Orri returns to the struggling family farm on early “vacation” to lend his father a hand. Pabbi—dad in Icelandic—is said to be suffering from depression, though he is loath to admit it.

While a farmer’s job is by no means easy even in the most fertile of settings, Iceland’s short growing season, frequently inclement weather and scarcely arable volcanic landscape seem almost perversely designed to conspire against a farmer’s success. As Pabbi tells his son, trying to disabuse him of the romance of farming, “It’s not cuddly lambs and horses shaking their manes in the afternoon light. It’s grit and misery.” Undeterred, Orri works alongside, if not exactly with, his father as spring stretches into summer.

One evening, while trolling the internet for a potential partner for a neighbor, Orri comes across Mihan, a part-time student and fellow fan of a “semi-obscure Kiwi musician.” If the match wasn’t made in heaven—no one would confuse the internet with that—it certainly piques Orri’s fancy. Who wouldn’t be charmed by an online profile that declares, “If you tell me to smile I will stab you in the face.”

So now Orri has two potentially exclusive interests competing for his attention, and, each in their own way, his affection. How he navigates a path toward fulfillment lies at the core of this heartfelt coming-of-age story. It’s fitting that Red Dog Farm is being released in France as Dans Nos Pierres et Dans Nos Os (“In Our Stones and in Our

Bones”), because that’s exactly where it’s coming from. Miller’s evocative depiction of life in rural Iceland is note-perfect.

—Thane Tierney

Fagin the Thief

By Allison Epstein

HISTORICAL FICTION

Meet Jacob Fagin, pickpocket extraordinaire of 19th-century London. He lives in an abandoned property on Bell Court with a cluster of proteges: children who, with no roof over their heads, no food to eat and no family to turn to, ended up on his doorstep. He is, through one lens, a hero to be admired. Through another, he makes his living breaking the law, harboring and shaping the next generation of criminals. In Fagin the Thief (Doubleday, $28, 9780385550703), Allison Epstein’s greatly imaginative retelling of Oliver Twist, it’s left to the reader to wrestle with their verdict.

After losing his beloved mother to illness, 16-year-old Jacob is thrust into thievery as his only method of survival. The orphan has just begun to settle into a ragged routine when he meets Bill Sikes, another young thief. Having fled an abusive home, Bill struggles to find his place in the world, and as he becomes a notorious housebreaker, he develops an increasing anger that scares Jacob and his circle. Eventually, a burglary gone wrong breaks the precarious company into irreparable pieces when, for the first time, Jacob’s exceptional instincts for selfpreservation prove insufficient.

In Charles Dickens’ original portrayal, the character of Fagin is a famously anti-Semitic caricature. In Fagin the Thief, Epstein reclaims the character’s Jewish identity, threading his upbringing and customs throughout the book, along with the discrimination he faces. This context adds nuance to her depiction—Jacob’s compassion towards his community is even more meaningful in the face of this adversity, yet he remains a morally ambiguous character. It’s an empowering, humanizing portrayal.

Jacob frequently wonders how to classify his relationships with Bill and all the other members of his makeshift group, but to the reader, it’s clear that what they share are the unconditional bonds of family. Painful as it is to watch each of them make their mistakes, it’s impossible not to love these characters through it all.

—Sydney Hankin

H Crush

By Ada Calhoun

POPULAR FICTION

“Crushes were how you stayed a little bit in love with the world even though you had a husband,” explains the protagonist of Ada Calhoun’s debut novel. She’s an excellent flirt who can draw even the quietest men out of themselves, a skill that her husband, Paul, admires. But she’s content with her marriage and with the rest of her life—her child, her career as an author and ghostwriter.

Then Paul suggests they open the door of their marriage, just a crack. What if they tried kissing other people? She loves kissing, and it really isn’t his thing, a limitation she’s accepted. She cautiously accepts—and everything changes.

Even as she falls into an all-encompassing crush, the narrator is focused on maintaining her marriage. She and Paul promised themselves to each other, and she intends to keep that promise. But her email exchanges with another man light her up, making the surrounding world seem more vibrant. Time with her son, her work, even sex with her husband become more meaningful. And her relationship with Paul is fine. This “consensual nonmonogamy,” as he calls it, was his idea, after all.

In Crush (Viking, $30, 9780593832028), Calhoun captures the giddy high of desire. This romp through a middle-aged crush is as smart and sharp as you’d expect from the author of Also a Poet (one of BookPage’s best nonfiction titles of 2022).

Calhoun’s quick-paced story invites readers to lose themselves to the possibility of love taking unexpected shapes, while also providing a jumping-off point for exploring art and culture. On a single page, Calhoun invokes theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, philosopher and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, the band the Bangles, writers William and Henry James and their cousin Minny Temple, fashion designer Elizabeth Hawes, author Madeleine L’Engle, the band Erasure and the saint Padre Pio. The fun continues on Calhoun’s website, where she offers a Spotify playlist to pair with the novel. (Playlists are available for her other books, too.) Regardless of how readers engage with the story, they will find in Crush an opportunity to view the world through a new lens.

—Carla Jean Whitley

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lifestyles

by laura hutson hunter

H Defining Style

The ingenuity of Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style: The Book of Interior Design (Phaidon, $69.95, 9781838667818) is its treatment of interior design as a matter of personal style. When viewed through such a subjective, unique lens, interiors become places to explore, not just items to tick off a list or add to a shopping cart. Past its beautiful sunburst cover, Defining Style is organized into sections that you might not immediately associate with interiors. A chapter called Biophilic, for example, incorporates images, colors and forms of the natural world: Think Frank Lloyd Wright’s nautilus-inspired Guggenheim Museum or Dan Mitchell’s Balinese home, which is pictured here in a gorgeous photograph and features a handwoven hammock that swings out into the middle of the spacious living room. This is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.

Phenomena

If you open Phenomena: An Infographic Guide to Almost Everything (Thames & Hudson, $39.95, 9780500028650) expecting a traditional guidebook, you’re going to be shocked by how sweeping and strange it is. You’re more likely to discover something you had no idea existed, like the principles of proxemics (the relationship between people and space), the Fermi paradox (if aliens exist, where are they?) or singing sand (the sound waves caused by wind moving across sand dunes). Aside from the clear, concise, highly inventive writing by author Camille Juzeau, the book’s most noteworthy feature is its vibrant design, with illustrations both minimal and bold. Each page is fully saturated with deep blacks and brilliant neons, and the illustrations wouldn’t be out of place in a retro edition of Popular Mechanics. Phenomena is a cabinet of curiosities, containing things you never even knew you were curious about.

The Fishwife Cookbook

Fishwife founders Becca Millstein and Vilda Gonzalez have done what many would consider impossible—they made tinned fish cool. With The Fishwife Cookbook: Delightful Tinned Fish Recipes for Every Occasion (Harvest, $30, 9780063382527), the duo provides all the tools to make tinned fish into more than just girl-dinner staples. Meals like smoked salmon and caramelized shallot pasta with creme fraiche and kale wouldn’t be out of place at a fine dining establishment; a spiced mackerel pâté will be the standout at any cocktail party. Because all the recipes include tinned fish as their star ingredient—everything from slow-smoked mackerel with chili flakes to Cantabrian anchovies in EVOO—they’re deceptively easy to pull off. The other MVP of Fishwife is illustrator Danny Miller, who creates Fishwife’s playful packaging imagery and decks out the volume with his signature vibrant cartoons.

Laura Hutson Hunter is a writer, curator and the arts editor of the Nashville Scene

H Memorial Days

By Geraldine Brooks MEMOIR

On Memorial Day weekend in 2019, Geraldine Brooks received a life-changing phone call from a brusque hospital resident. Her husband of more than three decades, the writer Tony Horwitz, had died suddenly while on his book tour. In Memorial Days (Viking, $28, 9780593653982), Brooks describes the confusing and difficult weeks that followed: the sleepless first night, her reaction to his public obituaries and the headlong rush into the endless details that suddenly needed her attention. She intersperses these vivid renderings of grief’s early days with the story of her subsequent retreat three years later to Flinders Island, a remote island near Tasmania where she sequestered herself to finally, at last, grieve.

Brooks, who is the author of 10 books, including 2005’s Pulitzer-winning March, paraphrases the writer Jennifer Senior, whose

H No Less Strange or Wonderful

By A. Kendra Greene

ESSAYS

Have you ever thought about kidnapping a snowman’s butt? If you have, the essay “By Degrees” in author-illustrator

A. Kendra Greene’s No Less Strange or Wonderful: Essays in Curiosity (Tin House, $28.95, 9781963108088) will leave you feeling very seen. If you haven’t, you may want to once you’ve experienced Greene’s chronicle of a weeklong, snowstorm-induced Texas power outage at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Greene quips that “there is a particular adrenaline to driving no more than ten miles per hour” on icy roads. She observes that “house after house, the rain chains were frozen exquisitely, wholly enveloped, long and bumpy and clear like the plastic icicle ornaments I hung with my mother on the Christmas trees of my youth.” On Greene’s fifth day without water, she considers melting snow in a bucket, and delivers a wonderfully operatic snowman-centric internal monologue: “Surely

essay “On Grief” compares survivors of loss to passengers on an airplane that crashes on a mountaintop. The passengers emerge injured and each must travel down the mountain alone. This is the story of Brooks’ own journey down. With her in this dramatic and solitary landscape are Tony’s journals and books in which he’d written marginal notes, including Joan Didion’s acclaimed memoir about grief, The Year of Magical Thinking , which Tony, who was a judge on the National Book Award committee that year, found “name dropping” and “padded.” Brooks, reading his comments in her own moment of grief, wishes he’d given Didion a break.

pilfering knows some bounds and one of them is robbing a snow bottom. Surely you cannot just take a tuchus. . . . Surely, to do so is a kind of kidnapping, of wonder and innocence, along with the weather-dismembered rump.”

We won’t spoil whether Greene completes that heist, but will note that the other 25 essays in No Less Strange or Wonderful possess a similarly heady mix of insightful contemplation nicely tinged with wackadoo humor and poetic poignancy. She comments on both politics and winged insects in “Ted Cruz Is a Sentient Bag of Wasps,” teases out snobbery in “Speaking of Basheis” and pulls back the curtain on the annual Twist and Shout balloon twisters’ convention in “Until It Pops.”

Fans of her 2020 debut, The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, will be glad to know Greene shares museum tales here, too, from dressing up Rusty (a model of a sloth) in holiday garb to pondering the concepts of extinction and collection. Museums, she writes, are places where “we might stumble on something so stunning it takes us out of ourselves for a moment, compels us in some manner, and leaves us changed—leaves us better, I hope.”

The hope, ’tis true, of essayists as well. Readers who enjoy books rife with curiosity and curiosities, with artistry of word and illustration, will delight in No Less Strange or Wonderful. It’s an aptly titled gem of a read.

—Linda M. Castellitto

There is both humor and sorrow in these pages, and Tony emerges as an interesting and complicated figure, someone who loved life and was deeply driven. Following his wishes, his ashes were tucked inside a baseball mitt and buried in the field where he played weekly ballgames. Memorial Days, a title which at once pays homage to the date of Tony’s death and the duration and purpose of Brooks’ solitary retreat, is another place of grief and memory. In its spare and direct pages, Brooks honors the man that she loves, and she offers her own story as a companion for others who are walking grief’s lonely path.

—Kelly Blewett

Daughter of Daring

By Mallory O’Meara

BIOGRAPHY

Hollywood film historian Mallory O’Meara specializes in recovering the lost feminist history of filmmaking. O’Meara’s celebrated 2019 biography of Milicent Patrick, original designer of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, uncovered the true story of how Patrick’s achievements in cinema were co-opted by male coworkers. In Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman (Hanover Square, $32, 9781335007933), O’Meara tells the thrilling story of Hollywood’s first and best stuntwoman. In the early years of Hollywood, Helen Gibson starred in hundreds of silent serial pictures, known as The Hazards of Helen. Gibson jumped onto trains and out of planes, and took rodeo tricks to an entirely new level of daring and general badassery. Unlike today’s stuntworkers, Gibson wore no safety devices and had no mentors; all she possessed was a love for adventure and a drive to be something

other than a domestic drone. What’s even more remarkable about Gibson’s story is that she wasn’t unique. The 1910s were something of a golden age for women writers, directors, producers and actors.

O’Meara’s great achievement lies in capturing this brief chapter in Hollywood history, before the studio system and censorship board asserted control over the film industry and marginalized the achievements of women like Gibson, Helen Gardner, Lois Weber and Marion E. Wong (director of the first all-Chinese American made film in 1916). Establishing the parallels between the suffrage movement, the “New Woman” era and the Wild West cowboy shows that gave Gibson her start as a stuntwoman, O’Meara provides a well-researched guide to a heady cultural moment.

The experiences of these artists continue to reverberate today: Women and filmmakers of color still struggle for a seat at the Hollywood table, and the #MeToo movement of the 21st century uncovered scandals and abuse that echo what O’Meara’s subjects endured in the 1920s. O’Meara is not only invested in film history but also in its future. Entertaining and educational, Daughter of Daring will attract and inspire readers of all ages.

—Catherine Hollis

H Sucker Punch

By Scaachi Koul

Sucker Punch (St. Martin’s, $28, 9781250270504) is Canadian culture critic Scaachi Koul’s second collection of essays. Although it can be read on its own, it’s best read as a response to Koul’s 2017 debut collection, One Day, We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, a series of essays on Koul’s experiences as the Canadian-born daughter of Indian immigrants. While One Day addressed many critical social issues (rape culture, misogyny, online trolling), Koul also wove in the story of her parents and her relationship with her white, Canadian boyfriend throughout the essays. Moving in with him caused a mighty rift between Koul and her father, but the collection ended with the promise that reconciliation is possible, and that her hard-fought-for love will endure.

And then it didn’t.

The “punch” in the title of her new memoir occurs when, very soon after her extravagant and expensive Indian wedding, Koul realizes

her marriage was a terrible mistake. Instead of love triumphant, her romance has become a battleground. Worse, the COVID-19 pandemic forces them into shared isolation. Meanwhile, Koul’s parents are marooned in India because of travel restrictions, and her mother endures several serious health crises. Eventually, Koul and her husband divorce, further straining relationships in her own family.

Sucker Punch is a visceral book: These essays practically throb with fury, guilt, sorrow and regret. But, Koul being Koul, they are also witty and frequently hilarious. And while deeply personal, they are also universal. Her ex-husband’s betrayal of their marriage has implications that extend beyond the usual heartbreak into the territories of misogyny and racism. Koul’s complex relationship with her mother leads to a deeper understanding of both the strength of feminine forbearance and the fiery power of feminine rage. Caring for her mother’s fragile body, Koul experiences the common fear of a parent’s mortality, which reminds us that we, too, are mortal. Finally, Koul affirms that grief and anger can create opportunities for reconciliation and forgiveness with her mother, her family and, at last, herself.

—Deborah Mason

Saving Five

By Amanda Nguyen

MEMOIR

In Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope (AUWA, $27, 9780374615918), Amanda Nguyen recounts her painful but ultimately triumphant trajectory from experiencing assault as a college student to co-drafting the Sexual Assault Survivor’s Rights Act that passed unanimously in U.S. Congress in 2016.

As a Harvard undergrad in 2013, Nguyen is more focused on preparing for her dream job at NASA than on campus activism. All that changes after she is raped by a fellow student, and gets firsthand experience in how the American legal system leaves survivors adrift. At the hospital just after the assault, she is asked if she wants her rape kit filed anonymously. Confused and traumatized, she says yes. Still in school and hoping to secure a job before committing to a yearslong legal battle, Nguyen eventually learns that anonymous kits are destroyed by the state of Massachusetts after six months, unless an arduous extension process is undertaken semiannually. Her life

becomes an increasingly unsustainable balance of a nonprofit day job, CIA and NASA job interviews, and a slew of paperwork and meetings required to preserve the kit in order to allow the possibility, one day, of pursuing charges against the rapist.

“The worst thing that happened to me wasn’t being raped,” Nguyen writes. “It was being betrayed by America’s criminal justice system.” Tired of the miles of red tape and labor required to keep her anonymous “Jane Doe” rape kit from being destroyed, Nguyen puts her astronaut dreams on hold and teams up with Harvard Law faculty, feminists and fellow assault survivors to create a bill of rights that would keep others from undergoing the same suffering.

Nguyen’s tenacity requires healing, though, both from her assault and from the hardships of her childhood in an unsafe home. Woven throughout her memoir is a modern fantasy tale in which her adult self and her younger selves (named by their ages 5, 10, 15 and 22) must journey through the stages of grief in order to confront both their own pain and that of their flawed parents.

This intimate, grit-infused true story is a testament to the power of honesty in the face of great challenges. In just over 200 pages of briskly paced personal narrative, Nguyen launches clear and exacting critiques of a culture of victim-blaming and the often-insurmountable red tape that delays or precludes justice and allows serial assailants to continue harm. Nguyen powerfully demonstrates how she used her energy and connections to launch systemic change, both in Congress and in the creation of a social coalition.

In a time where disenfranchisement and suffering may feel increasingly inevitable, it’s vital to witness and embrace the possibility of a better world. With Saving Five, Nguyen insists you join her in doing so.

—Annie Harvieux

H Lorne

By Susan Morrison

BIOGRAPHY

The 50th anniversary season of Saturday Night Live is the perfect time to release this definitive biography of the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels. In Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live (Random House, $36, 9780812988871), New Yorker articles editor Susan Morrison uses meticulous research and pleasurably crisp

MEMOIR

writing to tell the life story of a man who has shaped pop culture for a half-century.

So many biographies are weighed down by ponderous recollections of a subject’s early years. Morrison wisely spends only a few chapters on Michaels’ childhood. She includes important contextual details, like how Michaels’ father died when Michaels was a teenager and how his mom was tough and distant. But Morrison knows what we want to hear about: SNL!

Lorne Michaels understands comedy—and comedians— more than perhaps anyone in Hollywood.

And boy, do we. Morrison has unparalleled access to the workings of SNL, from cast auditions to the writing room, costumes and makeup, and the sometimes sublime, sometimes sweaty minutes of live airtime. She conducted hundreds of interviews, including with many of the show’s stalwarts, like Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Bill Hader and Chris Rock, to name just a few. (If only we could hear stories from late cast members like Gilda Radner, John Belushi and Phil Hartman. . . .) Most importantly, she interviewed Michaels extensively.

Lorne offers a fascinating blow-by-blow of the sometimes harrowing months leading up to SNL’s 1975 premiere. Belushi played hard to get, but ultimately wanted to be on the show more than anyone. Chevy Chase was initially hired as a writer, but with his preppy good looks, he quickly became the first anchor of Weekend Update, signing on each week with, “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not.” Morrison does not shy away from the less endearing aspects of Michaels’ persona. A known name-dropper, he casually mentions “dinner with Paul” (leaving one to wonder, Simon or McCartney—he’s dear friends with both). He’s also notoriously conflict-averse, leaving firing and other tough managerial decisions to others on his staff.

It’s been observed that everyone says Saturday Night Live was best during the years they were in high school. Yet Morrison gets to the heart of why the show has survived all these years despite such naysayers: Lorne Michaels understands comedy—and comedians—more than perhaps anyone in Hollywood. “One of Michaels’s rules is ‘Do it in sunshine,’ which means, don’t forget that comedy is an entertainment,” Morrison writes. “Colors should be bright, costumes flattering. He likes hard laughs, he says, because ‘I search for anything that makes me feel free.’ ”

—Amy Scribner

reviews | nonfiction

Love and Need

By Adam Plunkett

LITERATURE

For many readers, Robert Frost looms large as the American poet who captured the rhythms of New England life and the patterns of nature in poems like “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Celebrated for capturing ordinary speech in his poetry, Frost incorporated influences such as Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as philosophical influences from Ralph Waldo Emerson to William James. In his moving and insightful Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry (FSG, $35, 9780374282080), literary critic Adam Plunkett performs elegant close readings of Frost’s poems as a way of mapping the poet’s development, his struggles with selfdoubt and his relationships.

Born in San Francisco, Frost moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1884, following his father’s death. Always curious about the natural world—he kept hens in his yard in San Francisco—he composed one of his first poems, “My Butterfly,” when he was 20. As Plunkett observes, at the time Frost had been reading Francis Thompson’s 182-line poem “Hound of Heaven” as well as Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.” “My Butterfly” writes Plunkett, “reads like a spell that conjures the experience of grace as the poem describes its having passed.” Frost’s first collection, A Boy’s Will (1913), which he wrote following the death of his mother and his son, resembles Tennyson’s elegy “In Memoriam” and, Plunkett argues, forms Frost’s spiritual autobiography.

Plunkett’s brilliant readings of Frost’s bestknown poems offer refreshing, alternative interpretations. For example, rather than being a sentimental reflection on hopes lost or chances not selected, “The Road Not Taken” is a poem about friendship, “the kind that can witness your deepest uncertainties and remember you as you were, long after you have forgotten yourself.” The struggle between the spiritual and the natural animates all of Frost’s poems, and a “measured sense of transcendence touched all things in the best of his poetry like intimations of gold in nature’s first green.”

Plunkett’s refined prose and his astute readings of Frost’s poems in Love and Need offer a candid portrait of the poet’s enduring creative genius.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

feature | women’s history

Six celebrations of trailblazing women

Becoming Spectacular

By Jennifer Jones

Amistad, $26 99, 9780063270374

In her vulnerable memoir, Jennifer Jones maps her emotional, trailblazing journey of becoming the first Black Radio City Rockette.

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf

By Rebecca Romney

Marysue Rucci, $29 99, 9781982190248

Rare book dealer Rebecca Romney explores Jane Austen’s literary muses and investigates the disappearance of these writers’ work.

The Rebel Empresses

By Nancy Goldstone

Little, Brown, $35, 9780316419420

Historian Nancy Goldstone documents how the empresses of France and Austria, Eugénie and Elisabeth, rebelled against tradition and ruled during the tempestuous 19th century.

Thirty Below

By

Cassidy Randall

Abrams, $28, 9781419771538

Cassidy Randall recounts the adventures of the “Denali Damsels”—the first all-woman team to ascend North America’s tallest mountain peak.

Love, Queenie

By Mayukh

Sen Norton, $29 99, 9781324050810

Biographer Mayukh Sen celebrates Merle Oberon, the first actor of color to receive a performance nomination for an Academy Award, and reveals the complicated history of race exclusion in Hollywood.

Rebel Queen

By Susan Polgar

Grand Central, $30, 9781538757291

The awe-inspiring first female Grandmaster and only player to earn all six crowns charts how she defied the odds and became one of the most decorated chess champions in the world.

—Hailey Pankow

Expect Great Things!

By Vanda Krefft

WOMEN’S

HISTORY

In 1950, about 3% of lawyers and 6% of doctors in the U.S. were women. The great majority of women who wanted professional careers were in fields then regarded as best suited for them, such as nursing, K-12 teaching and library work. Even in those crucially important jobs, salaries were low and advancement was tough.

In that not-so-long-ago world, there was a lauded vocational school that took women’s aspirations seriously: the Katharine Gibbs School. It didn’t just teach typing, shorthand and grooming. University professors gave courses in academic subjects, and students were introduced to their cities’ cultural riches. If a woman could get a degree from one of the Gibbs schools in New York City, Boston or elsewhere, she had her choice of secretarial jobs. And along with her pillbox hat and white gloves, she had the skills, polish and confidence to rise in the business world or make her mark anywhere she chose.

Vanda Krefft’s inspirational Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women (Algonquin, $29, 9781643753171) tells the story of Gibbs and its 50,000 graduates, from its 1917 founding by the redoubtable Mrs. Gibbs, of course, to its 1968 sale by her son Gordon to a company that destroyed its ethos. More than a simple business tale, Expect Great Things! is a cultural history of women who were ambitious, but not rebels, advancing within a system by using the limited tools at hand. As Krefft writes, they “worked their way up step-by-step, rather than kicking down doors. They had to confront circumstances as they were, not as they wished them to be.”

Much of the book is a delightful compendium of minibiographies that show the widely diverse ways that Gibbs graduates used their education. To mention just a few of dozens: Katherine Towle became the first director of the Women Marines, aspiring actor Loretta Swit was a temp for a society columnist and assistant to a U.N. ambassador as she rose from bit roles to starring in M*A*S*H, and Joye Hummel wrote and oversaw production of many early Wonder Woman comics. Krefft notes that most graduates were white; Gibbs admissions policies were as unwelcoming to people of color as those of so many

schools of the era. But it did admit students from all economic backgrounds. Gibbs grads were, Krefft says, “fighting in the trenches” for decades. Pushing onward, they ultimately helped widen a path for their daughters.

—Anne Bartlett

H Mornings Without Mii

By Mayumi Inaba

Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori MEMOIR

It was summer 1977 when Mayumi Inaba first met Mii, “a teeny tiny baby kitten” stuck in a high fence on the banks of Tokyo’s Tamagawa River. Inaba brought her home and, as she reveals in her bracing and beautiful memoir, Mornings Without Mii (FSG Originals, $17, 9780374614782), set in motion a 20-year relationship deeper and more meaningful than she ever could’ve anticipated.

Mornings Without Mii—first published in 1999, now translated into English by Ginny Tapley Takemori—is a beloved classic in Japan, and Inaba, a poet and novelist who died in 2014, was awarded numerous prestigious prizes for her work. But her writing practice didn’t fully take form until after she opened her life to the calico cat. The fluffy little helpmeet stayed by her side through a divorce, as she moved to multiple homes and during the blossoming of her literary career.

In prose and poetry, Inaba earnestly and affectionately describes her enduring fascination with Mii, noting, “Whenever I saw a new expression on her face, I wanted to keep gazing at it until I tired of it.” Mii even inspires Inaba to purchase her first camera, because “it was no longer enough for me to follow [Mii’s] development with my eyes alone.”

Mii is also the impetus for the author’s early-1980s home purchase after yet another round of rental-hunting leaves her frustrated: “How impoverished this huge wonderful energized city called Tokyo was by the fact it had nowhere where humans and cats could live together!” The high-rise apartment lacks the greenery and space the duo had grown used to, but they establish a new routine: Every night, Inaba takes breaks from her writing to roam their building’s hallways and parking lot with Mii.

When Mii’s health declines, Inaba tends to her in the apartment, an experience she recalls in unsparing detail as she reflects on the cat’s suffering and her own grief, tempered by

gratitude for their time together. Suffused with honesty and emotional heft, Mornings Without Mii will resonate with readers who’ve communed with beloved pets like Inaba did with Mii: “Our intimacy was spun without words and in time formed into an unbreakable bond.”

—Linda M. Castellitto

Propaganda Girls

By Lisa Rogak

HISTORY

It might feel like the entirety of World War II has been mined for storylines in books, movies and video games, but in Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS (St. Martin’s, $29, 9781250275592), Lisa Rogak finds one more. Some of the stories of the disproportionately female workforce of the wartime Office of Strategic Services, a predecessor of the CIA, might be known by true spy buffs. (Future culinary star Julia Child was an operative, for instance.) Another famous recruit was German American actress and singer Marlene Dietrich, whose story plays a key role in Rogak’s book. Featured alongside her are three then-anonymous figures: Betty MacDonald, a reporter from Hawaii; Zuzka Lauwers, a multilingual Czech immigrant; and Jane Smith-Hutton, the wife of a naval attache in Tokyo.

Despite their diverse backgrounds, the women had a similar wartime experience, a common thread that ties their stories together in Propaganda Girls. Each was a highly skilled operator who overcame roadblocks instituted by patriarchal higher-ups to achieve a professional pinnacle that made postwar life feel insubstantial. All of the women used their skills to craft propaganda designed to discourage enemy troops and noncombatants. A single flyer rallying (or warning, or tricking) a certain subset of the opposing forces could directly result in hundreds of defections. Other times, their successes were less tangible, and they fought to have them recognized.

Rogak breezily tells their stories, with just enough backstory to establish a narrative foundation for each character. A more thorough interiority remains out of reach, however, given the book’s short page count and the incomplete archives Rogak had to draw from. What does fit into Propaganda Girls is a clean, compact story about four amazingly successful soldiers in one of our first information wars.

Stephen Elliott

H Banned Together

Edited by Ashley Hope Pérez

Illustrated by Debbie Fong ANTHOLOGY

Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights (Holiday House, $19.99, 9780823458301) is a vibrant, invaluable handbook for young adults about book bans, why they’re happening, and how they can be challenged. Editor Ashley Hope Pérez, whose novel Out of Darkness became one of the most banned books in the United States, has assembled an expertly curated collection of personal essays, poems, graphic art and fiction from numerous award-winning YA authors and illustrators. Early on, it’s noted that “from July 2021 to June 2023, PEN America documented a total of 5,894 book bans across 41 states and 247 public school districts.” Pérez writes in her introduction, “This collection says NO WAY. We’re bringing those writers’ voices back to readers.”

Darkly

By Marisha Pessl THRILLER

Seventeen-year-old Arcadia “Dia” Gannon lives in Eminence, Missouri, gathering cobwebs alongside the objects in her family’s shop, Prologue Antiques. Then she finds a cryptic online posting for a summer internship at a foundation named for her hero, the late, legendary British game designer Louisiana Veda. Through her company, Darkly, Veda created complex board games infamous for macabre conceits and immersive gameplay. Despite Dia’s excitement, something feels off. Veda’s life and death were shrouded in mystery and controversy, and what Dia knows about Veda and Darkly does not square with the posting’s vague descriptions of “clerical work.” Still, Dia feels compelled to apply, and she wins one of the coveted spots. Dia and six others from all over the world arrive in London with no idea what to expect, but Dia learns her instincts were correct: The internship is not what it appears. Soon, she and her fellow interns are in mortal danger. Marisha Pessl’s Darkly (Delacorte, $19.99, 9780593706558) is a twisty, dreamlike puzzlebox thriller that’s slyly referential, like

In both style and substance, Banned Together is full of appeal. Each piece opens with a short bio and a portrait of its contributor by illustrator Debbie Fong (Next Stop), reinforcing the feeling of a shared conversation between readers and writers. Many of the pieces are moving and personal, guaranteed to help struggling teenagers and deepen empathy and compassion. Elana K. Arnold, for instance, writes about a sexual assault she endured in college and how it affected an old friendship decades later. Equally moving is Bill Konigsberg’s essay about how he was groomed

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory reflected in a horrifying funhouse mirror. Her signature surrealism, honed in adult bestsellers like Night Film, is on full display in this gothic narrative: The further the characters’ journey descends into unreality, the more delightfully disorienting the reading experience becomes. Unfortunately, the novel’s characters suffer from underdevelopment. Darkly is ambitious in scope, but even its 416 pages are not enough to fill out the seven interns beyond the bare outlines of personhood, which may frustrate fans of character-driven thrillers. However, Darkly’s central mystery is tantalizing; it’s sure to entice readers who love a puzzle and will reward their efforts with a delicious twist.

—Mariel Fechik

Beasts

By Ingvild Berjkeland

Translated by Rosie Hedger HORROR

Thirteen-yearold Abdi is on the run. Weeks ago, mysterious beasts appeared throughout Europe and attacked larger cities, viciously killing humans as they eventually spread into rural areas. After Abdi’s mother is killed in their home, he and

for several years by his high school English teacher. He notes, “What I wouldn’t have given, as a teenager, to . . . have known that I wasn’t alone in how I felt, and to have read a story where Mr. Thomas’s conduct was called out for what it was: predatory behavior.”

Banned Together is chock-full of resources such as reading lists, profiles of activists, explanations of book banning tactics and suggested strategies to counter book bans. This is a must-have anthology for libraries, as well as an invaluable personal resource for high school readers.

—Alice Cary

his little sister, Alva, flee, hoping to make it to a nearby port city and catch a boat to the Shetland Islands, where their father has been traveling for work.

Abdi must grow up quickly as he struggles to keep himself and his sister safe in Beasts (Levine Querido, $17.99, 9781646145133), a spare, thrilling novel by Ingvild Berjkeland, translated from the original Norwegian by Rosie Hedger. A sense of urgency simmers beneath every line of prose, relentlessly driving the characters—and the reader— forward. Trauma and terror force Abdi’s abrupt coming-of-age, as he is taken from the role of a typical older sibling to that of Alva’s sole protector. The beasts are terrifying in their inexplicability and lack of motive, but the story highlights another dark reality: When humans are threatened, some will resort to violent selfishness. Abdi and Alva must not only avoid the beasts, but also assess every person they meet for potential threats. Of course, there are also those who show decency and kindness during the crisis.

Beasts will appeal to readers of survival classics such as Hatchet with its realistic illustrations of Abdi’s dogged problemsolving, but will also please those who enjoy stories with supernatural antagonists in pursuit of their prey, like The Walking Dead or The Last of Us. Rippling with constant tension, Beasts is an eerie, quick read for readers who can handle a bit of horror and unease.

—Annie Metcalf

Finding hope in the desert

In GuoJing’s latest graphic novel, two children seek comfort in a discarded AI robot, while their mother labors in a factory to give them a better life

What inspired the desert setting of Oasis?

The desert represents vastness, harshness and emptiness. It also symbolizes the destruction of old ideas, ways of living and civilizations. The story follows two children who show strength as they struggle to survive in a lifeless desert and create their own natural oasis. This extreme desert setting becomes the backdrop for exploring the metaphorical oasis, highlighting the stark contrast between the sacrifices demanded by shiny, artificial progress and the core of human nature and the true essence of humanity.

What is your process when developing a color palette?

The children live in a forgotten and polluted city in the desert, which is also a landfill from Oasis City. It’s dry, chaotic and hopeless. Bright colors are obviously not suitable for this story, so I used low-key colors to express their mood and situation, and also the unique beauty of the desert.

JieJie and DiDi live alone while their mother tries to secure a way for them to join her in the city. This resembles many real-life immigration experiences, and Oasis is dedicated to the left-behind children of China. Can you speak about this?

[In China,] many migrant workers move to the cities in search of better opportunities or a brighter future. However, due to the hukou system—a household registration system similar to a local residence permit—children face significant challenges in accessing education and social benefits in urban areas. As a result, a large number of children are left behind in rural areas, often living with their grandparents. This has led to a growing crisis, with countless children raised without their parents, resulting in emotional distance and a breakdown of fundamental human connections. This situation deeply saddens me, and in my story, the two children represent those who are left behind.

The children find moments of happiness even while living in a brutal environment. For example, they enjoy the “beautiful pink color” of the sunset—despite it being a result of pollution. How did you maintain the gentleness in this story, despite its harsh circumstances?

I lived in Beijing for a while during the worst

of the smog. I still remember the sight of the beautiful pink sun, partly hidden by the fog. Its color was soft and magical. I also experienced dramatic sandstorms that, for just a few min utes at noon, turned the world dark, as if it were the end of the world. I’ve kept these images in my mind and used them in my story. In one scene, the pink sun represents the children’s longing for their mother—an unreachable wish, like a dream lost in the mist.

The story takes place close to the Mid-Autumn Festival (“moon festival” in the book). What does that festival mean to you?

The Mid-Autumn Festival, with a history spanning over a thousand years, is a day dedicated to family reunions, with the moon serving as a symbol of this togetherness. On this day, families gather to admire the moon together. In Chinese legends, the moon often represents family members who are absent. One such legend tells of a lonely beauty residing on the moon in a cold palace, longing to be reunited with her family. For me, the Mid-Autumn Festival is just as special as it is for any other Chinese person: It’s a time spent with my parents, grandparents and loved ones, filled with food, laughter and joyful talks.

H Oasis

Godwin, $21 99 9781250818379

MIDDLE GRADE

endowed with superpowers or magic like AI. Yet, for her children, she remains an irreplaceable figure. Her senses, smile, embrace, voice and even her scent cannot be replicated by AI. The true essence of motherhood is unique and incomparable. Since becoming a mother myself, I’ve felt this strength more deeply than ever. The AI robot may serve as a caregiver, a guardian and perhaps even a friend, but it can never replace the warmth and depth of a mother’s love.

AI robots in Oasis can build cities, or fight battles, or act as caretakers. What’s the significance of these different modes?

Does Oasis reflect our world’s labor realities?

In Oasis, which is an upside-down world, the children’s mother has no name. Instead, [she is referred to by] a number in a factory, while artificial intelligence provides the human emotions [in the story]. We see that humans have to work like machines, and having the most basic human emotions has become a luxury. This is not a plot in science fiction. We see it from [factory workers in real life] who fight for their family and a better future for their children.

The mother “works like a robot,” while the AI mom performs the actions of a human mother. How would you describe the dynamic between human and robot in this story?

The human mother is simple and ordinary, not

AI can become whatever we choose it to be, depending on how we use it. It holds the potential to either help or harm us. In my story, while an insecure human society creates technology driven by its own fears, two children demonstrate how they repurpose the same technology to play a different role, ultimately benefiting the core of humanity.

Do you envision a hopeful future with AI? Despite advancements in technology, why have our most basic and simple needs become luxurious and out of reach? Why are people feeling lonelier and more indifferent? Like the ending of the book, I hope AI evolves beyond a tool for the wealthy; I wish for it to help humanity reconnect with its true nature, embrace each other and support those in need.

—Yi Jiang

H Cassi and the House of Memories

By Dean Stuart MIDDLE GRADE

Dean Stuart makes a stellar debut with Cassi and the House of Memories (Viking, $24.99, 9780593351123), a graphic novel about a girl whose beloved grandfather suffers from dementia. It’s a sensitive, informative portrayal of how the disease might affect a loved one, but it’s also an exciting adventure story.

Cassi and her grandfather enjoy time together in his garden, but she is puzzled by some of his behaviors, especially when he suddenly doesn’t seem to recognize her. He confesses, “Sometimes I find myself in the dark” and “alone and confused.” When her grandfather wanders off, Cassi begins to search but suddenly finds herself in a mysterious place, which turns out to be what Grandpa calls “his memory palace.” Cassi finds herself rambling through Escher-like structures of stairways,

H Good Golden Sun

By Brendan Wenzel

PICTURE BOOK

In the opening pages of Caldecott honoree ( They All Saw a Cat ) Brendan Wenzel’s radiant new picture book, Good Golden Sun (Little, Brown, $19.99, 9780316512633), the sun’s rays just barely glint over the hilly horizon, tinting a deep purple night sky with the first shimmering roses and violets of dawn. A bee, still a shadowy silhouette in the early daylight, approaches a flower whose newly opened petals have been transformed to a luminous gold. The bee sips from the flower and voila! It too has taken on the sun’s golden hue.

On subsequent pages, bee makes honey, bear eats honey, mosquito bites bear, bird eats mosquito, and on and on. As each takes on the sun’s golden glow, readers can visualize, in the most beautifully evocative way imaginable, the transfer of the sun’s energy to all of Earth’s living things, including, as the sun recedes into twilight, a young human.

Wenzel’s gorgeous artwork, rendered in cut paper and other mixed media, accompanies a series of questions posed by each character

windows and doors, and also a huge portrait gallery that allows Cassi access to events from her grandfather’s life.

Stuart’s distinctive illustrations are painterly in the very best way— distinct from the comicbook styles found in many other middle grade graphic novels— and full of both action and beauty. He cleverly distinguishes between the present, Grandpa’s memories and the haze of confusion that sometimes overtakes Grandpa’s brain. Stuart’s use of color and pattern is particularly adept. Many colors that should be bright are muted throughout, accentuating the book’s exploration of fading memory. Cassi’s striped dress helps readers keep track of her in each scene, as does the red sweater Grandpa wears in his old age.

Throughout, an elusive, colorful blue butterfly helps steer Cassi through the chaos. In an afterword, Stuart explains that his own father suffered from dementia, and that his goal with Cassi and the House of Memories “was to make a story about connecting.” Cassi learns to appreciate the many dreams, disappointments and events of her grandfather’s life— aspects such as his musical talent—and even manages to alter a past tragedy during an action-packed circus episode. Cassi and the House of Memories is a moving depiction of a grandparent and grandchild’s enduring love and continued understanding in the face of dementia.

—Alice Cary

to the sun. These questions reflect particular concerns. For example, the mouse asks questions stemming from justified fears: “Good golden sun, / are you up there staying safe? / Do you think about the scary things that sometimes lie in wait?” On the other hand, the grain crops, baking under the midday sun, ask “Good golden sun, / could you take a tiny break? / For your rays are scorching hot / and so often there’s no shade.”

Good Golden Sun shows it’s possible to integrate STEM topics in an age-appropriate way that doesn’t sacrifice lyrical language, discussion-sparking philosophical questions, gorgeous artwork or moments of humor. This is a joyful ode to the Earth’s interdependence, one that grows alongside readers.

—Norah Piehl

The Gift of the Great Buffalo

By Carole Lindstrom

Illustrated by Aly McKnight

PICTURE BOOK

The Gift of the Great Buffalo (Bloomsbury, $18.99, 9781547606887) is a thrilling adventure story and an excellent history

lesson about Métis-Ojibwe culture all wrapped up in one. The author of We Are the Water Protectors, Carole Lindstrom, who is Métis and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, explains in an author’s note that although she grew up enjoying Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, “being portrayed as a ‘savage’ in a book where I felt an actual kinship to Laura Ingalls was very difficult for me to understand. It felt as if I were being hurt by a friend.”

Lindstrom wrote The Gift of the Great Buffalo to let readers know that “before there was a little house on the prairie, there was a little tipi on the prairie.” The book follows Rose, a young Métis girl accompanying her family to a big gathering for a twice-a-year buffalo hunt. Readers will be fascinated to see how the group hunt is organized, with “strict laws that were enforced by the captains, to ensure order and fairness.” Lindstrom skillfully incorporates other historical context as well, noting that European settlers had already eliminated most of the buffalo. Aly McKnight’s illustrations capture the close relationship between Rose and her family, the sense of community fostered by the hunt and the excitement of the big gathering. She wonderfully depicts tangible objects, like a steam locomotive—an invention that hastened the demise of the

buffalo—as well as the spiritual connections Rose and her family have to the land and the animals they hunt.

When Rose’s father, who is a captain, and others have trouble finding buffalo, Rose takes matters into her own hands in a daring show of female empowerment. While the story is both compelling and satisfying, the actual hunt is not portrayed—which is understandable, although its omission feels somewhat glaring. Overall, The Gift of the Great Buffalo offers a meaningful look at Métis-Ojibwe history, and will have broad appeal for young readers.

—Alice Cary

Wind Watchers

By Micha Archer

PICTURE BOOK

What does the wind know? How will the wind blow? Follow along as three siblings discover the answers to these questions and much more in Micha Archer’s Wind Watchers (Nancy Paulsen, $18.99, 9780593616550). In Spring, Wind ruffles flower petals and nudges rain clouds. In Summer, Wind fills sails and sends kites soaring. “Some summer days, when it’s too hot to move, we beg Wind to bring us a breeze.” Fall brings Wind scattering seeds and leaves, before Winter arrives and Wind forces us inside to watch for swirling snow.

As with many of Archer’s previous picture books, Wind Watchers is deeply rooted in nature and how we interact with it. While the narrative follows the siblings on their explorations through the year, it is Wind who is truly the main character of this story. Wind comforts, plays, sings, surprises. “ ‘Some days I like to be WILD!’ Wind roars.” Some days, Wind is so calm that readers might wonder, alongside the siblings, “Are you there?” The lyrical text moves slowly and gracefully, with subtle uses of alliteration and snippets of dialogue between the children and the wind itself. Wind Watchers begs to be read aloud again and again.

Archer’s signature collage illustrations bring the adventures of these three siblings to life in a way only she can. Like in Wonder Walkers (2021), Archer’s use of full spreads for every illustration allows a sense of wonder and playfulness with scale. Whether an intimate close-up of the siblings looking through a window, or a zoomed out view of the siblings next to a vast ocean, each picture captures a

distinct moment in time and carries feeling and wonderment.

A breathtaking journey through the seasons, Wind Watchers is a perfect companion to Wonder Walkers. Readers will be filled with joy and whimsy and be inspired to get outside, no matter the season, to explore and experience the wind once more!

—Callie Ann Starkey

H The Peach Thief

By Linda Joan Smith

MIDDLE GRADE

The Peach Thief is absolutely a story any fan of The Secret Garden will devour: It features magic walled gardens, characters with mysterious pasts and girls on their own. It’s no surprise then that Linda Joan Smith cites Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic as an inspiration for her delicious middle grade debut, set in Lancashire, England, in 1850.

Smith has written nonfiction gardening books, and her detailed knowledge shines through this tale inspired by actual Victorian garden practices. The novel opens with a map of the Earl of Havermore’s kitchen garden, a place irresistible to hungry 13-year-old workhouse orphan Scilla for its promise of treasure—not gold, but peaches. She’s had a bite of one and wants more, and there just might be peaches growing here in the earl’s greenhouse. Scilla sneaks into the garden at night, wearing boys’ clothes with her hair cut short, only to be caught by Mr. Layton, the gruff head gardener with a tragic past. To avoid being hauled off to the magistrate, Scilla gives her name as Seth Brown and talks herself into a job scrubbing garden pots.

Scilla, now nicknamed Brownie, discovers she loves the work. Scilla is earnest and likable; readers will cheer her on as she tries to keep her identity secret and find her place. But Smith also gives her young protagonist some significant faults and challenges. Not all her choices are good ones, and readers will find themselves urging Scilla to be careful whom she trusts. Scilla gets unexpected help from Mr. Layton’s housekeeper, Mrs. Nandi, who has come with him from Calcutta, and from Mr. Layton himself. But Smith avoids sentimentality, wisely giving the reader only hints of what this brave young girl has come to mean to them both.

This lovely, well-drawn novel will appeal to historical fiction fans and kids who love plants,

and will make a great bedtime read-aloud. And adults, be forewarned: You may cry at the end.

—Deborah Hopkinson

H Okchundang Candy

By Jung-soon Go

Translated by Aerin Park

MIDDLE GRADE

School breaks were an especially happy time for young Jung-soon Go. She got to enjoy not only the respite from studying, but also time at her wonderful grandparents’ home. As the South Korean author and illustrator recalls in her debut, Okchundang Candy (Levine Querido, $21.99, 9781646145140), a graphic memoir translated by Aerin Park, her grandparents welcomed little Jung-soon for “summer lingering,” which included dyeing each other’s nails with crushed flower petals, lounging in front of a fan and snuggling together at bedtime.

Grandpa was a boisterous sort, who “sang me my cartoon theme songs in his own particular way, not even close to the original,” while Grandma was shy and relied on Grandpa as her only friend. They were kind to the tenants that lived in their house (“bar ladies” no one else would rent to) and cleaned the alleyways every weekend in an effort to foster community. And they offered Go safe harbor: “I think I loved watching my grandparents being so sweet to each other because my own parents were so busy fighting back home.”

Go’s finely detailed illustrations in pencil and watercolor are as sweet as her words, especially when depicting her grandparents’ affection for each other. The spreads transform into touching evocations of remembered pain as she reflects on her grandfather’s illness and eventual death from lung cancer, followed by her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.The author is honest about the grief she felt over her grandfather’s decline and the devastating changes in her grandmother, who now lived in a nursing home, drawing circles over and over. Could it be that she was thinking of the round shape of her favorite treat, the okchundang candy, which held special significance for the couple?

Okchundang Candy won the Special Prize in the 2023 Korea Picture Book Awards. It is a beautifully rendered remembrance of grief and loss, and a moving meditation on the bonds of family and the power of everlasting love.

—Linda M. Castellitto

meet JASHAR AWAN

Jashar Awan grew up outside of Washington, D.C., and has always loved drawing and reading. Awan, who lives in Ohio with his wife and son, made his picture book debut with What a Lucky Day! and is also the creator of books including Only Ants for Andy and I’m Going to Build a Snowman Every Monday Mabel follows little Mabel on her favorite day of the week: Monday. Every Monday, her favorite thing in the world arrives. Just what is Mabel so excited about? Her family members don’t seem to understand, but Mabel patiently waits.

H Every Monday Mabel

The adorably precocious star of Every Monday Mabel (S&S, $19.99, 9781665938150) is the opposite of famously cranky cartoon cat Garfield: She loves Mondays.

As Jashar Awan conveys via punchy, vivid art and wryly humorous text, Mabel’s Mondays have a ritual. She rises early, dresses, drags her chair through the house—stopping to get herself a bowl of Cocoa Os—and sets up shop at “the top of the driveway. The perfect spot to sit and wait.” Suspense builds as Awan traces Mabel’s path through her home: What is she doing? Mabel’s parents and sister engage in their own morning rituals, too. Older sister Mira reads and listens to music as she rolls her eyes at Mabel doing “the most boring thing.” Plant-loving Mom waters an indoor tree and smiles as Mabel “does the cutest thing.” And sports jersey-clad Dad drinks coffee as he watches her do “the funniest thing.” Mabel steadily eats her chocolate cereal until the object of her admiration appears, with a “RRRRRRRRRRRRR!” and a “HONK HONK!”: the glorious garbage truck. It’s big and bright, and it makes trash disappear. What’s not to like? She marvels at the green behemoth’s impressive attributes (“The hubcaps shine! The engine roars! The brakes squeak! The lights flash!”) as a bright, sunny yellow background heightens five wonderful pages of intense excitement.

Awan, the creator of Towed by Toad and several other picture books celebrating childlike exuberance, uses a high-contrast palette, fuchsia action lines and skillfully employed onomatopoeia to create eye-catching visuals and fodder for fun read-alouds. Sure to be a favorite reread for kids and grown-ups alike, Every Monday Mabel is an enthusiastic, delightful tribute to public services and the many, many people who value and appreciate them. “GAH-DUMP!”

—Linda M. Castellitto

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