May 2025 BookPage

HOMEWARD

Celebrating AAPI Heritage Month s with 3 children’s books that treasure s the ties of family, including Julia Kuo’s s Home Is a Wish . s

SPITFIRES

These American women had to join the British to fight in WWII.

New releases from Ron Chernow, Harlan Coben, Emily Henry & more. DISCOVER YOUR NEXT

MIRA GRANT

The latest from the horror writer . . . and alien abductee?

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CONTENTS

is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Celebrate with three heartfelt children’s books exploring the ways we connect with one another.

FEATURES

behind the book | mira grant

The horror author used her own disappearance as inspiration for her disconcerting new take on the body-snatcher story.

feature | magical academia

Try dark academia’s enchanted cousin—spells are on the syllabus. interview | aaron john curtis

The bookseller and debut novelist found power in telling his protagonist’s story through “the voice of the rez.”

The author unearths the long-buried history of the American women pilots who served in World War II. feature | social media thrillers

These two dizzying, page-turning reads get their edge from the paranoia-inducing panopticon of social media.

| k . ancrum

In The Corruption of Hollis Brown, the YA author explores a kind of intimacy that expands beyond romance.

| meet the author

by bruce tierney

South of Nowhere

As Jeffery Deaver’s taut sixth Colter Shaw thriller, South of Nowhere (Putnam, $30, 9780593717493), opens, the levee above the northern California town of Hinowah starts to give way to a roaring river fueled by unseasonal snow melt. Three drivers attempt to scramble across before it collapses completely. The first, a young woman unfamiliar with back roads, nurses her low-slung Camaro across the mud-slicked pathway; an impatient contractor in a Ford pickup tailgates as closely as he dares. Bringing up the rear is an SUV carrying a squabbling family. In an instant, the levee gives an earthquake-like heave. The Camaro barely scoots across—the two vehicles behind plunge into the roiling water. Private disaster coordinator Dorion Shaw rapidly assesses the situation and calls in her brother, the aforementioned Colter, to conduct an emergency search-andrescue operation or, more grimly, a body recovery mission. As the hours drag on, it becomes evident that the levee may have been intentionally sabotaged, and perhaps a second explosive wave, both figuratively and literally, is in the offing. A handful of handy suspects are, um, at hand: the organic farmer and the duplicitous miner, feuding over water rights that have been contentious since before California was a state; the dodgy real estate developer; a Native American elder who speaks softly but carries a big gun. As with all Deaver novels, the pacing, dialogue and characters are spot-on and there is never a dull moment. Seriously, not even one.

Season of Death

Scottish “private enquiry agent” Cyrus Barker and his partner, Welshman Thomas Llewelyn, return for adventure number 17 in Season of Death (Minotaur, $28, 9781250343604). In late Victorian-era London, it is not uncommon to see marriages of convenience between wealthy American socialites and impoverished minor royals or house-poor aristocrats. One such couple—Lord and Lady Danvers—engages our heroes to find the bride’s sister, who has been missing for months. Miss May Evans’ vacation luggage arrived at her Italian hotel, but she never showed up to claim it. A suitor was questioned, one perhaps more enamored with May’s rumored seven-figure dowry than with her, but he was dismissed as a suspect early on. Meanwhile, a separate investigation leads the sleuths to a young homeless woman nicknamed Dutch, who’s working as a lookout for a band of early morning thieves. For a brief moment, it appears Dutch may be the missing heiress, but when May’s sister provides a photograph, it is immediately clear that they are not the same person. Nevertheless, the two cases will ultimately dovetail, and the denouement will be a surprise to one and all. If you have been jonesing for something to read after plowing through all the Sherlock Holmes stories, look no further.

H The Children of Eve

There are three writers I look to when I am in the mood to read a mystery with a touch of the paranormal: Colin Cotterill, T. Jefferson Parker and John Connolly. Cotterill’s are more whimsical, Parker’s and Connolly’s are darker, but all three service that supernatural itch that at times simply must be scratched. Connolly’s latest Charlie Parker novel, The Children of Eve (Emily Bestler, $29, 9781668083949), starts off in Mexico, documenting the grisly murder of a dealer in illegal antiquities; the female perpetrator is more than a little otherworldly. Half a continent away in Maine, the ghost of Parker’s daughter, Jennifer—who was murdered in the first book of the series, Every Dead Thing—plays a spectral role in what follows. The mystery surrounds four abducted children: Parker is searching for Wyatt Riggins, an artist friend’s missing boyfriend, who may have been involved with the abduction of the kids, who themselves may be family of a Mexican cartel boss. The liberal use of the word “may” in the previous sentence is purposeful; there is a fair bit of uncertainty throughout. I should note, however, that Connolly’s focus is on the mystery, and the supernatural is but an element of that mystery, not in any way a distraction. I have read the entire series and will continue to do so until he stops writing them, or until I get snatched up by ghosts myself.

H Nobody’s Fool

Reviewers of mystery & suspense novels often engage in a game: Figure out “whodunit” before the author shares the “big reveal.” After 30-some years of reviewing, I have gotten pretty good at it— except with Harlan Coben books. I don’t even try anymore. And that’s OK, because I wouldn’t have figured out his latest, Nobody’s Fool (Grand Central, $30, 9781538756355), either. The book starts off with a flashback to 25 years ago: Sami Kierce, recent college graduate doing the then-compulsory postgrad Euro-trip, is dancing the night away with a lovely girl named Anna in Costa del Sol, Spain. And then he wakes up to bright sunshine: “I made a face and blinked and lifted my hand to block my eyes. Except my hand felt wet. Coated in something wet and sticky. And there was something in my hand. I slowly lifted it in front of my face. A knife. I was holding a knife. It was wet with blood. I turned toward your side of the bed. That was when I screamed.” Years later, while teaching a course for future detectives, Sami sees Anna once again, or thinks he does, inexplicably alive and seated in his class. When their eyes meet, she turns tail and runs. Go figure. I think that’s all I’m gonna say about it, except to point out that there are more twists than a Jenga tower of Philly soft pretzels. There is a reason that Harlan Coben is known as the King of the Thrillers: Read Nobody’s Fool, and you will know why, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

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.

Let the stars be your guide

After an unsettling astrology reading, Leah Lockhart, the level-headed heroine of Jessie Rosen’s All the Signs (Putnam, $19, 9780593716076), finds herself on the quest of a lifetime. Intent on debunking the world of astrology, Leah hopes to locate other people across the globe who share her star chart in order to see how they’re faring. With stops in Istanbul and Venice, Leah’s far-flung travels bring her closer to her mother and open up the prospect of romance with an old friend. The novel’s brisk plot, authentic characters and themes of personal transformation will inspire lively dialogue among readers.

Books That Inspire

Take your book club on a cosmic journey with an astrologyinspired novel

Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Riverhead, $18, 9780525541349) takes place in rural Poland, where Janina Duszejko serves as caretaker for the properties of affluent summer visitors. Known as an eccentric introvert, Janina spends her free time poring over astrology charts and the work of William Blake. After a neighbor is found dead, Janina is drawn into a murder investigation that changes her life forever. Filled with plot twists and idiosyncratic characters, Tokarczuk’s novel is a profound exploration of justice and community that defies easy categorization.

A past romance is rekindled in Alexandria Bellefleur’s astrology-inspired Count Your Lucky Stars (Avon, $18.99, 9780063000889). When Margot Cooper crosses paths with former flame Olivia Grant, old feelings resurface. But Margot isn’t interested in commitment— especially not with Olivia, a successful wedding planner who broke her heart years ago. Yet there’s no denying the powerful chemistry that arises between them, and soon Margot must decide if she should let her guard down for love. In this smart, sexy novel, Bellefleur delivers an exhilarating portrait of reunited lovers and the complexities of modern-day relationships.

Set in 1866, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries (Back Bay, $21.99, 9780316074292) tells the story of Walter Moody, who travels to New Zealand to join the gold rush. When he happens upon a nighttime gathering of 12 men, Moody becomes involved in mysterious dealings that involve a drug-addicted prostitute and a stockpile of gold. Catton has created an ingenious astrological underpinning for this atmospheric narrative. Numerous characters are connected to the signs of the zodiac, and each chapter includes an astrological chart. Topics like fate, gender identity and female agency make the novel a rewarding pick for book clubs. A BookPage reviewer since 2003, Julie Hale recommends the best paperback books to spark discussion in your reading group.

The act of mothering

For Mother’s Day this year, we’re thinking about “mother” as a verb: the process of becoming one, of adjusting to the new reality of being one, of providing care to another while balancing desires of your own .

Detransition, Baby

Becoming a mother is loaded with cultural baggage. It takes over your body and your life. And if you have a co-parent—or two—it fundamentally changes your relationships. Torrey Peters’ brilliant first novel, Detransition, Baby (One World, $18, 9780593133385) pitches readers into the turmoil of impending parenthood for an idiosyncratic trio. Katrina has unexpectedly become pregnant with her subordinate Ames’ baby. There are real feelings behind their workplace romance, but there’s a lot Katrina doesn’t know about Ames. Until he recently detransitioned, Ames was Amy, sharing the joys and pains of trans womanhood and a deep intimacy with her ex-girlfriend, Reese. While they were together, mothering a child was Reese’s dream, and now, Ames wonders if he could heal his heartbreak over Reese, and regain the closeness they lost, by raising this baby with her and Katrina both. That is, if either will agree to a version of motherhood that neither envisioned.

—Phoebe, Associate Editor

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

In Shannon Chakraborty’s joyride of a historical fantasy novel, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Harper Voyager, $19.99, 9780062963512), the titular pirate captain is enjoying a peaceful retirement. But when Amina is offered a job that will reward her with untold riches, she takes it, thinking that the fortune could afford her 10-yearold daughter, Marjana, security for the rest of her life—but also that this is her last chance to get back to the open seas. That tension persists throughout the novel, as Amina savors the excitement and satisfaction of returning to the work she excels at, while also missing her daughter and wondering whether she can ever unite the two halves of her life. Chakraborty lets this question simmer (Amina wouldn’t be much of a pirate if she were paralyzed by such existential worries), before bringing it to the surface in a rousing, deeply heartwarming ending that still makes me smile just thinking about it.

—Savanna, Managing Editor

The Round House

At first, The Round House (Harper Perennial, $18.99, 9780062065254) by Louise Erdrich seems like a coming-ofage novel following 13-year-old Joe Coutts’ summer adventures on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. However, the narrative takes a devastating turn when Joe’s mother, Geraldine, suffers a brutal sexual assault. While the police and Joe’s father move cautiously, Joe and his three best friends set out to find his mother’s attacker. As Geraldine locks herself away from the world in hopes of healing, Joe and his father grapple with daily life. Joe spends many nights with extended family as his mother retreats into herself and his father digs up cold leads. But while the novel is undeniably heavy, it also celebrates the mothering found in community, with aunts, uncles and grandparents stepping in when Joe needs them most. Ultimately, Erdrich shows the resilience a mother possesses, and how, even when shattered, Geraldine finds the strength to show up for her family.

—Rebecca, Marketing Manager

The Fourth Trimester

As a first-time mom, postpartum is a time that no one can really prepare you for: the loneliness of those early days, the extreme guilt you feel for needing a break from your baby and—once you get it—the extreme longing you feel to be reunited with your child. Kimberly Ann Johnson’s The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions, and Restoring Your Vitality (Shambhala Publications, $19.95, 9781611804003) was particularly helpful when I was navigating the emotional pingpong of the post-birth hormone drop. I was exhausted, trying to figure out how to take care of a newborn, but at the same time I needed to give myself time and space to heal. This book helped me understand what was going on with my body, my mind and my emotions. It made me feel connected to all the mothers who had come before me and helped me to feel a little less crazy during the craziest time of my life.

—Meagan, Brand & Production Designer

lifestyles cooking

by laura hutson hunter by becky libourel diamond

Prose to the People

In her foreword to Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores (Clarkson Potter, $26.99, 9780593581346), the late poet Nikki Giovanni praises a life spent in pursuit of stories—from listening to her mother’s songs while in the womb to getting her first library card to driving straight to a bookstore after passing her driver’s exam. Giovanni’s foreword acts as a kind of benediction to Katie Mitchell’s book, which is overflowing with photographs, oral histories, essays and interviews. Each of the bookshops profiled specializes in Black publications, as opposed to being merely Black-owned. These parameters give Mitchell freedom to deeply explore an array of bookstores that are much more than storefronts. Prose to the People is an important addition to any library, but especially for book collectors interested in Black culture and the power and influence of independent bookstores.

Modern Floral

I’ve never considered myself to be particularly drawn to floral decor, but Charlotte Coote’s remarkable Modern Floral: Timeless Interiors Inspired by Nature (Thames & Hudson, $45, 9781760764791) has changed all that. “The interiors that have always stayed with me are, more often than not, those that feel confident,” she writes in the book’s opening pages. “The best rooms are those that don’t seek your approval.” From that clever beginning, I knew I was in good hands with Coote, an Australian interior designer with a knack for bringing big ideas down to earth. Under her guidance, readers will recognize that the natural world has been celebrated in interiors since ancient times and continues to inform homes that feel grounded and bold. It’s all fascinating stuff, and is complemented with lush watercolor illustrations, interviews with experts and various multipage spreads of textiles stacked like collage.

Interiors of a Storyteller

Stephanie Sabbe’s Interiors of a Storyteller (Gibbs Smith, $50, 9781423667643) is as much a memoir as it is a book about design. Sabbe is from West Virginia, but she built her career as an interior designer in Nashville, Tennessee. Her affinity for Southern storytelling is clear: Woven throughout the photographs of beautiful homes are personal stories about an absentee dad, a dying mother, even an FBI raid of an uncle’s marijuana crop. “The world around me was literally going up in smoke,” she writes, “and I lay in the treehouse with a smile on my face, staring up at the sky, dreaming of my next construction project.” Each home is different, but one cohesive element is the presence of books. “Books, books, and more books,” Sabbe writes. “My clients as a whole are a pretty literate group.” Interiors of a Storyteller will delight Southerners, designers and fans of storytelling of all stripes.

Snacking Dinners

“Girl dinner,” a name coined for when you eat snacks as a meal, first went viral on TikTok in 2023, and riffs on the idea that women appreciate a low-effort, grazing-style meal made of bite-sized portions. Snacking Dinners: 50+ Recipes for Low-Lift, High-Reward Dinners That Delight (Hardie Grant, $30, 9781958417706) by Georgia Freedman takes this idea one step further, referring to snack dinners as the “ultimate form of self-care.” Freedman’s recipes are nourishing and delicious, yet easy to prepare and even a little decadent, covering all the snack bases. A deconstructed winter fruit fattoush uses pita chips to scoop up the flavorful Middle Eastern salad. Lovely photographs help cooks visualize the final recipe and give inspiration for plating and serving, too.

My (Half) Latinx Kitchen

Kiera Wright-Ruiz learned to cook from her parents, grandparents, foster parents and the bubbling cultures around her, and that’s how she found her identity. My (Half) Latinx Kitchen: Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American (Harvest, $35, 9780063292536) is a cookbook of (mostly) Latin American dishes emphasizing Mexican-, Cuban- and Ecuadorian-inspired recipes, such as menestra de lentejas, a deliciously flavorful lentil stew from Ecuador; ropa vieja, slowly stewed shredded beef and bell peppers from Cuba; and champurrado, a chocolaty corn-based Mexican drink. All are interspersed with witty stories and personal reflections, like her love letter to plantains and the culinary prowess of her “Aunt TT the Kitchen God.” My (Half) Latinx Kitchen is richly imagined with fun, full-color illustrations by Zyan Méndez and full-bleed photos of the dishes.

There’s Always Room at the Table

Although the concept of “farm to table” has been hugely promoted and popularized in recent years, the professions of farmer and cookbook writer don’t often go hand in hand. But this pairing is a perfect fit in Kaleb Wyse’s There’s Always Room at the Table: Farmhouse Recipes From My Family to Yours (Harvest, $35, 9780063345713). Crafted with insight, care and thoughtfulness, Wyse offers a huge collection of easy-to-follow recipes that resurrect old comfort-food favorites. Sauteed garlicky zucchini is a fitting complement for chicken and biscuits, layered spaghetti pie or “State Fair” pork tenderloin. Desserts range from brownies and raspberry oat crumb bars to the sophisticated “Grandma’s Special Occasion” cream puffs. Breakfast recipes take cues from hearty farm fare, with stick-to-your-ribs options like cornmeal pancakes with blackberry sauce and peach cobbler baked oatmeal. With its focus on beloved farmhouse recipes updated for modern tastes, There’s Always Room at the Table will stand out in any cookbook collection.

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

A food writer, librarian and research historian, Becky Libourel Diamond is the author of four books on culinary history and an avid cookbook collector.

CONFESSIONS OF A (POTENTIAL) CHANGELING

Mira Grant (the horror writing alter ego of fantasy author Seanan McGuire) got lost in the woods outside her grandparents’ house when she was 3 years old. While the future author returned safe and sound, Overgrowth’s Stasia Miller wasn’t so lucky.

• • •

When I was 3 years old, I got lost in the woods behind my grandparents’ house. We were living in Washington state at the time, and everything was green, all the time, forever. And oh, how I loved those woods. I wanted nothing more than to wander through them and see the green world all around me, with its secrets and its treasures. So one day, when I saw the opportunity, I took it, and I went.

When I came back, about four hours later, I found half the neighborhood at my grandparents’ house, all of them preparing to go looking for me. That’s the only thing I remember about that night. The lights in the darkness, the people frightened by the possibility of what might have happened to a child alone in the woods.

My time in the trees is gone. Not unusual, for a memory formed by a 3-year-old, but still, it’s a gap in what was otherwise a very memorable day. Everything after I got home is likewise me believing the things that were said to me about that day.

According to my grandmother, I was remarkably clean for someone who’d been wandering lost in the woods for hours.

According to my grandfather, I was totally unbothered by my time in the woods, not scared by the dark or the insects or the fact that I’d been alone in the cold for hours.

And according to my mother, I looked her straight in the eyes and said, “The aliens took your real baby, but it’s all right. I’m here now.” Did the aliens take her real baby? I honestly don’t know. Logic and reality tell me that they didn’t, but I don’t remember what happened

“According to my grandmother, I was remarkably clean for someone who’d been wandering lost in the woods for hours.”

while I was missing, and “Seanan came out of the woods an alien” has been family legend ever since. It probably doesn’t help that whenever I met someone new, I would inform them that I was the vanguard of an alien invasion.

I was a fun kid.

I also really liked to draw during that phase of my life, and for a while, I would draw these large, fantastic flowers with dragonfly wings for petals. When asked, I would say they were from the same planet I was, and they were going to help the other aliens find me someday. I stopped drawing them eventually, but I never stopped seeing them in my dreams.

So the question I wrote all this to answer was, “What brought you to this variation on the body-snatcher story?” And the answer, with all honesty, is, “I lived it before I wrote it.” This is my life story, just . . . pushed a little farther down the road, to show what might happen if the aliens actually did come back for the scout they left behind. When I told my mother it was coming out, she laughed.

“Finally ready to tell on yourself, are you?” she asked.

And I guess, in a way, that I am.

This is a story about a girl who got lost in the woods, and everything that followed.

—Mira Grant

H Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

With Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng (MIRA, $28.99, 9780778368458), Kylie Lee Baker catapults readers back to the chaos of the early COVID-19 pandemic. Early in the crisis, Cora’s sister, Delilah, was pushed in front of a train by a racist man who called Cora “bat eater.” Months later, in the summer of 2020, Cora thinks she’s being haunted by a hungry, destructive spirit, just as she and her coworkers begin to suspect a serial killer is operating in Chinatown. Baker impressively conveys the epic scope of pandemic fear alongside the singular worries of Bat Eater’s title character. What begins as a psychological drama soon morphs into a ghost story, then a serial killer thriller, before all three converge with remarkable, natural depth and texture.

—Matthew Jackson

Notes From a Regicide

In a dystopian world sometime in our future, 15-year-old Griffon, desperate to escape his abusive father, begs Etoine and Zaffre Keming to take him in. He’s met them before and feels a kindred connection with the trans couple, both of whom are trans, even though he’s unsure how to live out his own identity. Eccentric and brilliant, Etoine and Zaffre give Griffon the home he never had. After their deaths, Griffon begins to uncover the layers of his adoptive parents through Etoine’s diaries. Isaac Fellman’s enchanting, wistful and wholly original Notes From a Regicide (Tor, $27.99, 9781250329103) follows a nonlinear path as it reveals the full picture of the Kemings’ life. Through tales of revolution, prison and art, Griffon learns how these strange but captivating people became the parents who loved him.

—Chris Pickens

H The Radiant King

On the island continent of Kaus, there are six siblings who can never die. Blessed with magic called Radiance, the ever-living pledged a sacred vow: hold no thrones, wear no crowns and never give Radiance to mortals. When one of the ever-living, Eder, appoints himself head of a new twisted religion, his brothers, Faron and Sariel, form an alliance with Isabelle, a mortal princess with a righteous cause and mysterious powers of her own. David Dalglish’s The Radiant King (Orbit, $19.99, 9780316576673) is full of beloved fantasy tropes, but it’s his ruminations on the price of reincarnation that will truly draw the reader in. Each of the ever-living has a different perspective on immortality, all reflecting on their regrets and self-recriminations as each life comes and goes.

—Chris Pickens

feature | magical academia

Class is in session

Try dark academia’s enchanted cousin—spells are on the syllabus .

The Incandescent

When one of Doctor Sapphire Walden’s students goes too far and summons an 11th-order demon, it’s up to Walden to defeat it. But there’s another threat to Chetwood School, hiding in plain sight, and she may not see it until it’s too late.

Hugo Awardwinning author Emily Tesh returns to fantasy with The Incandescent (Tor, $28.99, 9781250835017).

H A Letter From the Lonesome Shore

Intricate world building, from the various academic orders of demons to the nitty-gritty of how invocation magic works, will please longtime fantasy readers and fans of Tesh’s previous work. Though the mundane details of running a boarding school may bog down the book’s opening third, the affection Walden has for those day-to-day tasks pays off in the final act.

An academic without an athletic inclination who knows how clever she is, Walden is far from the typical fantasy heroine, and readers will be charmed by how deeply she treasures both Chetwood and its students. And snarky and honorable security officer Laura Kenning is a standout example of the sword-wielding butch lesbian trope, even with her limited page time.

If you loved A Deadly Education and The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, The Incandescent will sear its way into your heart.

—Nicole Brinkley

romance by christie ridgway

Lured by the promise of discovery and the call of a mysterious dream, pen pals E. and Henery have found themselves trapped in an underwater city an unfathomable distance from home. But even as E. and Henery become accustomed to their new home, their siblings, Vyerin and Sophy, have not given up hope. Together, they’ve embarked on a quest to find E. and Henery and bring them back, regardless of the dangers.

A Letter From the Lonesome Shore (Orbit, $19.99, 9780316565554), the second book in Sylvie Cathrall’s Sunken Archive duology, is a cozy romantic adventure wrapped in the language of academia and manners. As the name suggests, the novel is told entirely through letters and journal entries from the often-panicked E. and the romantic academic Henery, as well as logs from Vyerin and Sophy’s search. The journal entries show how each character views themselves and give us a clear window into E. and Henery’s feelings for each other without requiring either to step (too far) outside their reserved personalities, showing how the smallest interaction can be butterfly inducing—as long as it’s with the right person. A Letter from the Lonesome Shore is a satisfying blend of mystery, romance and cozy academic adventure.

—Laura Hubbard

Visit BookPage.com for more magical academia recommendations.

H Serial Killer Games

Temp worker Jake Ripper finds himself fascinated with one particular colleague in Kate Posey’s stylish and clever debut, Serial Killer Games (Berkley, $19, 9780593818510). Jake and Dolores dela Cruz trade pointed barbs in the elevator and hot glances in the hallway as they both attempt to avoid the attention of a nosy HR consultant. But this is not your average workplace romance: There’s secrets and bodies and other dark things below the surface that are unveiled in wittily titled chapters. Jake and Dolores share an interest in all things death-related and needle each other with unrelenting and entertaining banter as they deal with roommates, family and a pet or two. Readers will be kept guessing until the surprising and very satisfying ending is reached. With its unforgettable setup, wonderful characters and great writing, Serial Killer Games is a fabulous thriller-romance hybrid.

Hardly a Gentleman

An intrepid heroine sets off to Scotland to avoid a scandal and ends up at the castle of a handsome widower in Eloisa James’ latest Regency romance, Hardly a Gentleman (Avon, $9.99, 9780063347465). The Honorable Miss Clara Vetry’s vivid, novel-influenced imagination pushes her to step in as “Mrs. Potts,” new housekeeper of Castle CaerLaven, but she very soon finds herself faced with real feelings for the laird himself, Caelan MacCrae. After events reveal Clara’s true identity, Caelan offers marriage. While Clara’s afraid she’ll never be his one true love, she cannot resist him and their powerful attraction. Though their love scenes are bawdy and passionate, it takes time for the pair to realize they share feelings as strong as those found in Clara’s favorite books. James always brings something special to her stories, and her references to real popular novels and poetry of the time add depth and meta fun on every page of this charming romance.

Seeing Red

In Seeing Red (Dell, $18, 9780593984000) by Bailey Hannah, bad boy Chase “Red” Thompson has had a crush on Cassidy Bowman ever since they were kids, but he’s always considered her too good for him. When she reels him in for a hookup to get revenge on her ex, Red is more than willing to go along. But then the one-time thing becomes a once-in-a-lifetime chance to step up and be a dad, causing Red to reconsider where he’s been and where he’s going with his life. Hannah deftly blends the accidental pregnancy and rough-cowboy-with-a-tender-heart tropes with a healthy dose of explicit sex scenes with raw language that are sure to raise the temperature in any room. As Cassidy and Red find their way past obstacles and old judgments, readers will enjoy a wild ride that provides an up-close view of pregnancy—and an even more up-close view of a relationship morphing from casual to carnal to loving.

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

H Tilt

In Emma Pattee’s Tilt (S&S Audio, 7 hours), an earthquake destroys Portland, Oregon. Annie, a woman late in pregnancy, must trek across a hellscape to save herself and her unborn child. Her journey forces her to confront her wasted talent, her uncertain marriage and her fears of motherhood—yet she also dares to hope in the face of a disastrous future.

Ariel Blake is an extremely talented narrator whose performance amplifies Tilt’s urgency and power. Blake’s Annie is introspective, honest about her shortcomings and surprised by the courage and camaraderie she can summon even in moments when humanity seems a dangerous luxury. In this skillful performance, Annie’s reborn hope is not only believable, but inevitable.

—Deborah Mason

Red Dog Farm

Nathaniel Ian Miller’s Red Dog Farm (Hachette Audio, 9.5 hours) is a poignant story that explores a man’s connection with the land he grew up on: his family’s cattle farm in rural Iceland. Orri has returned from university early to help his father, Pabbi. Along with a difficult relationship with Pabbi, he navigates a long distance online relationship and the lingering pull of Reykjavík—the city he left behind.

There is an organic quality to narrator Ólafur Darri Ólafsson’s voice that emphasizes the intensity of the Icelandic landscape, while underscoring the harsh realities of farming. Ólafsson’s gravelly tone is especially suited to the portrayal of Pabbi, whose increasing discontent and sense of depletion contrasts with the connection Orri feels with the land. Ólafsson’s deeply authentic performance breathes life into this emotionally rich tale, capturing both its stark beauty and its quiet heartbreak.

—Maya Fleischmann

H Wild Dark Shore

A woman washes up on the shore of a small, remote island, breaking the long isolation of Dominic Salt and his children—the only inhabitants of what was once a bustling research hub. Wild Dark Shore (Macmillan Audio, 9.5 hours) by Charlotte McConaghy is a sweeping story, and the audiobook’s multiple narrators (Cooper Mortlock, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld and Steve West) make it even more dynamic. The chapters alternate among different characters’ points of view, and together, McConaghy’s prose and the unique styles of each narrator make each perspective stand out, from Dominic’s gruff, experienced tone to the mystery woman’s aloof thoughtfulness. This contemplative, heart-wrenching story is a unique and engaging listening experience, made even more vibrant by its narration.

—Tami Orendain

READ BY ALMARIE GUERRA READ BY THE AUTHOR

READ BY RUPERT GRAVES READ BY BRITTANY PRESSLEY

READ BY STEVEN PACEY READ BY EDOARDO BALLERINI

READ BY JANUARY LAVOY READ BY PATTI MURIN

Debut novelist Aaron John Curtis found power in telling his protagonist’s story through “the voice of the rez . ”

Old School Indian, Aaron John Curtis’ audacious first novel, is poised to grab readers’ full attention. The release has been highly anticipated, and there’s an intriguing breathlessness to the early reviews. But on Zoom, Curtis appears unperturbed, his expression, at first, unreadable.

Curtis’ demeanor might convey the grateful exhaustion that follows an ultimately successful 10-year creative effort. This novel began as a short story, then, with feedback from his writing groups, grew into a novella and then blew up into drafts twice the book’s ultimate length.

“I’m an easy edit,” Curtis says with a laugh. Like the novel’s central character, 43-year-old Abe Jacobs, Curtis is an enrolled member of the Kanien’kehá:ka—specifically, the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, whose land lies between Ontario, Quebec and New York, though he now lives in DeBary, Florida, with his second wife, Michi. It was advice from a woman in his writing group that turned the page on his struggles with his roman a clef novella and opened the path to this revelatory novel. “I still had it in my mind that fiction had to be 100% fiction, or it didn’t count. So instead of Abe living in Miami, he lived in Tampa. Instead of being a bookseller, he worked in insurance. Everything was just a little different. She said just go full autofiction with it, just hit the gas!”

In Old School Indian, it is 2016, and Abe has left Miami and returned to his family home in Ahkwesásne, along the Saint Lawrence River. He has been diagnosed with a fatal autoimmune disorder called Systemic Necrotizing Periarteritis (SNiP), which bodies forth as suppurating skin sores and loss of sensation.

SNiP is an invention, but a similar disorder, Polyarteritis Nodosa, is real, rare, nasty but not fatal and, in Curtis’ case, now in remission. As Curtis tells it, some years ago he and his ex-wife went to visit her aunt in northern California. She lived in a geodesic dome on a steep piece of land, used solar power and connected her plumbing to a spring. She grew pot. “We were there 10 days. The plants had already been harvested and bag-dried, so we spent the time removing stems and leaves and re-bagging. I think we noticed the first lesion on day three.”

the first person provided. Curtis found a way to have both: He created a new character to narrate in first person, a man named Dominick Deer Woods who is an alter ego for Abe, and possibly for Curtis himself. “Dominick just popped out,” Curtis says. “I needed some distance. Abe has been in Miami so long he’s kind of lost his way. Dom is the voice of the rez.” In his telling, Dominick references depictions of and by Indigenous people in books, films and history, providing context for Abe’s experiences and challenging the reader on their assumptions. Curtis’ character Abe works in a bookstore, and likewise, Curtis has worked at Books & Books in Miami since 2004, though he’s now on leave to focus on his novel. His job title is Quartermaster, and he explains, “There was a time when any book you touched at Books & Books was a book I bought. My friend JC said, ‘You’re like the guy in the Army every soldier goes to when they want to requisition something, the quartermaster.’ In indie bookstores, we all wear a lot of different hats. Anytime someone takes on a new project, they add it to their business card and they end up with these little paragraphs on their cards that are just kind of silly. And it still doesn’t encompass everything you do. So, Quartermaster. It just stuck.”

H Old School Indian Hillman Grad, $28, 9781638931454

LITERARY FICTION

Writing about his illness was its own kind of pain, and in early drafts, written in the first person, “there was a lot of anger coming out.”

“I guess the picture in my head was a white reader,” Curtis says. “I don’t know if I was worried about that or if I was worried that I was going to die, and I would have all of these thoughts that never got to be expressed or acknowledged or listened to. So . . . it was very hostile to the reader. The people in my writing group, except for one, were all white. And they were saying, ‘Oh we don’t think like that! That’s not what’s going on when we read.’ One of them suggested I change it to third person to see what it unlocked.” But when a different, younger group of readers saw the change, they missed the “anger or passion” that

While visiting his family on the reservation, Abe gets terrible news from his doctors. His family urges him to go see his great uncle. Uncle Budge is a recovered alcoholic, a bit of a reprobate, a bit of a jokester and a healer. He has a deadpan sense of humor, and his relationship with Abe deepens as the healing progresses. Maybe Uncle Budge is the titular old school Indian? Maybe, Curtis says.

“The idea of a healer wasn’t in my first draft. Someone in my writer’s group said, what if there’s a healer, and I thought my God, that’s such a trope. Then I remembered that we have a healer in the family, and I thought I’d try to upend that stereotype of the mystic shaman sitting there burning sage by a fire. My Great Uncle Louis Burning Sky “Butch” Conners was a healer. I’ve seen him in action twice but have never availed myself of his services. Since talking about Medicine dilutes it, I couldn’t depict healing as it actually happens, so Abe’s Uncle Budge had to have his own way of doing things. I will say Medicine is almost mundane.”

Abe and Uncle Budge’s three healing sessions are exquisitely described, and each includes an exchange, a kind of spiritual payment. “I wanted people to get the idea that the richest Mohawk is the one who gives the most away, that you take the same herb to treat constipation or diarrhea, the same herb because it’s just treating your intestines. I hoped to get the smells, the sounds, the inner thrum of the heartbeat. As you’re tooling along writing, the characters sort of pop up and start talking to you. If I were only writing about my life, I’d just be taking dictation. But there’s magic in those moments. You feel like a conduit.”

“The characters sort of pop up and start talking to you. There’s magic in those moments. You feel like a conduit.”

His autoimmune disease isn’t the only threat to Abe’s well-being. His marriage is faltering. We learn about the ups and downs of his long relationship with his wife, Alex, beginning when they were college students, through funny, poignant flashbacks, including scenes of polyamorous sex—of which, Curtis says, “A lot of that was cut out in the editing!”

“It’s funny, I got a message on Instagram,” he adds. “I guess that happens. I would never go ‘Oh, John Irving has a new book out,” and email him and be like, ‘Hey!’ but it happens now. The person wanted to recommend the book to her reading group at work and wondered if it had graphic sex in it. And I was like, 10 years of putting your life and soul into it, and the question is about graphic sex? . . . My God, there is suicide [in the book], there’s childhood sexual assault, there’s involuntary sterilization! Awful, awful, awful stuff! To boil it down to a question of explicit sex just blew my mind.”

And here’s the nub of Old School Indian. For all its humor and drama, for all the powerful storytelling, for all the wonderful scenes of love, sex, healing and a brilliant depiction of the Jacobs family’s Thanksgiving, beneath the novel’s shimmering surface flows the anger and sorrow of a history of cultural trauma and erasure. These emotions are felt the strongest in poems by the narrator, Dominick, which are inserted between the chapters and tell very hard truths about oppression and white supremacy. The effect is electric, but Curtis says they were “the most difficult thing to write.”

“The desperation, the anger, the [fear] that my family stories would die with me just came out. It was my reckoning. I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to get the white supremacists.’ But I learned that sometimes a poem that arrives fully formed is a lie. It’s a roadblock sitting in front of the real poem. I had a poem that everyone liked. I thought it was good. I thought it was strong. At the last edit, it just didn’t feel right. Sometimes you’re saving your emotions even if you’re not doing it on purpose. You need to dig deeper and find the truth. I rewrote the entire thing and just sat there bawling.”

—Alden Mudge

With flying colors

Becky Aikman unearths the long-buried history of the American women pilots who served in World War II .

When Becky Aikman first began her research into the 25 American women who served in the British Royal Air Force’s Air Transport Auxiliary, results were not exactly forthcoming. The idea itself came from her mother: “I said, I wished I could write a book about people who deserved to be remembered,” Aikman recalls. “And she immediately said, ‘You should write about the American women who flew during the war in England.’ ”

It was a piece of history so long-buried that Aikman initially was unsure whether her mother had gotten it right.

“I’d never heard of such a thing,” she tells BookPage in a video call. “I thought maybe she had it wrong. And I started Googling to look for anything about them and couldn’t find anything for a while. And I said, ‘Are you sure

you’re not talking about the WASP?” referring to the short-lived U.S. organization of civilian women pilots. She said, ‘No, no, no, I remember them. They were so noble and glamorous. I wished I could do what they did.’ ”

Doubtful but curious, Aikman persisted, eventually finding “little threads” that she wove into Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger During World War II. “Because they were not well known,” Aikman explains, “there are not a lot of archives out there that traditional historians could rely on. It just shows how the history of women and minorities gets lost because it’s not a part of the normal historical coverage that happens. Someone has to really dig and find it and realize there is a real record of women flying in military planes long before anybody thought they were.”

Readers could be forgiven for being unaware of the service of American women overseas. During World War II, facing a staunch refusal from the U.S. Air Force to permit them to serve their own country, this group of American women were thrilled to receive a call for aid from the embattled Royal Air Force, who were desperately trying to hold off a vicious German aerial offense over the rooftops of England. It was an unusual arrangement born out of desperation.

The first pilot that Aikman stumbled across was Mary Zerbel. Just 21 at the beginning of her service, Zerbel was daring and romantic, marrying a fighter pilot who was tragically killed in combat, then later marrying another, against the better judgment of comrades who knew all too well the potential for heartbreak in falling for a fellow pilot in wartime. The newspapers, however, loved the drama and documented the life of the pretty young pilot.

And luckily for Aikman, Zerbel’s papers were collected and housed by the San Diego Air and Space Museum. “It blew my mind,” Aikman says. “She had written journals. Her story was so dramatic, so compelling. Her voice was right there. I feel like she came alive for me then. And I thought, wow, at least one of them is fascinating.”

From there, Aikman began tracking down family members of other pilots. “Wasn’t easy,” she says, dryly recounting a hunt for an “Ann Smith” that had her determinedly dialing up innumerable Ann Smiths to inquire after any daring female pilot relations. But finally, the dots began connecting, and family members came forward to tell their relatives’ stories. “I went to visit some of them and they had photographs, papers, diaries, things that had never been shared outside their family.”

One of the most prolific diarists was the reckless, flirtatious Winnie Pierce, who unflaggingly made a journal entry every single day—including the day that, after experiencing engine failure almost as soon as she lifted off the runway, she performed an aerial turn generally agreed to be impossible and almost certainly fatal. With no room for error, Winnie returned the plane to base before the disbelieving eyes of her higher ranking officers and, shaken, lived to record it all that night. I tell Aikman that I didn’t think writing in my diary would even be on my mind after something like that.

She laughs. “And Winnie was out there drinking hard! So she really did it no matter what.”

Slowly, the lives of the high-flying Americans in England began to reveal themselves to Aikman: Dorothy Furey, a jaw-dropping beauty whose haughty demeanor hid her impoverished Louisiana origins from the aristocratic men scrambling over one another to

© ELENA SEIBERT

court her. Ann Wood, the diplomatic elder sister of the group who fought to network her way into a postwar career in flying. Hazel Jane Raines, small of stature but unflappable when she crashed her failing aircraft into the roof of a thatched cottage and then, unbelievably to onlookers, rose from the wreckage to demand in her Georgia accent that they guard her plane—and then fainted.

interview | becky aikman

“There are people around today who think women are not as capable as men at doing this kind of work.”

There were many such crashes, and not everyone was as fortunate as Raines. As the war progressed, British resources became strained. Planes were repeatedly repaired and returned to use, even if they were not exactly airworthy. For some of the pilots assigned the task of flying such planes back to base, the consequences were fatal. Aikman recalls a particularly poignant moment when, working with an expert and reviewing surviving witness testimony, she uncovered the fact that, whatever the hurriedly written wartime report may have said, the accident that killed one 36-year-old woman was not her fault, but caused by an oil leak. Her final act had been to remain in her plane, rather than bailing out, to skillfully steer it away from a village full of people. “She did the best anyone could possibly do in that circumstance,” Aikman says. “I was very happy about that, and her family is happy about that.”

The book’s tense flying passages, full as they are both of exhilarating thrills and terrifying moments, are made all the more harrowing by Aikman’s expert handling of the mechanics of flying.

“I knew almost nothing about flying,” she says. “But I knew that, to make the flying scenes exciting, I had to tell them from the point of view of the pilots.”

Faced with cryptic records of crashes from the RAF Museum, Aikman knew it was time to call in the experts. “I developed a sort of kitchen cabinet of historic aviation experts who could advise me,” she recalls. “They could look at what I did find and help me interpret what was going wrong in that plane. If you were flying it, what would you do when that thing went wrong? What would be your options? Just crash and die? Try to get turned around and land on a flat field? What would they be thinking and deciding and doing?”

Though nearly 80 years had passed since the end of World War II, Aikman was able to find eyewitnesses to give their own accounts. This, she said, played an important part in assembling a fuller story than what threadbare RAF files offered up. One eyewitness, however, will especially amaze readers: the last living American ATA airwoman, Nancy Miller. At an astonishing 105 years old, Miller is completely deaf from engine noise. The centenarian pilot was not inclined to take visitors at first. Aikman, already armed with a little knowledge about Miller, managed to sweeten the deal by offering up a box of pastries and became the exception to Miller’s rule, to the delight of both parties. “Her memories of that era were strong and it was the highlight of her life, no question,” Aikman says. “She was so happy to talk to someone who was so familiar with it because she hasn’t had that chance in a long time. She said, ‘You know me better than I do.’ ”

With the publication of Spitfires, Aikman is a participant in the long project of reclaiming the history of women and minorities who served their country in the military. I asked Aikman what her research told her about the importance of recording these histories. Her tone grew firm.

“I think there are people around today who think women are not as capable as men at doing this kind of work. Part of that is that this sort of history has not been kept alive for people.

“Anybody who reads about these women knows that they were extremely capable,” she continues. “The accident rates for women in the [Air Transport Auxiliary] were actually better than those of men. I think it’s so important to keep this kind of history alive because without it, people can assume, well, I never heard about women flying in World War II, so I guess they’re not good at it. When in fact, they were flying in World War II, we just haven’t heard about it. It wasn’t part of the mainstream historical record. I would like to think that people who doubt [the abilities of women] could read a book like this and see that, wow, they were tough. They were strong. They were good at what they did.”

—Anna Christensen

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Celebrate with 20+ excellent reads—including literary fiction, romances, memoirs and more. Scan the QR code to see the full list on BookPage.com.

feature | social media thrillers

Someone is always watching

The paranoia-inducing panopticon of social media makes for dizzying, page-turning reading .

Julie Chan Is Dead

Liann Zhang’s Julie Chan Is Dead (Atria, $28.99, 9781668067895) is a darkly witty romp through the screen of a phone and into the heart of a mystery.

Chloe and Julie were separated as young children after their parents died. While Chloe was adopted by a wealthy white couple who only wanted one kid, Julie endured borderline neglect from a penny-pinching aunt. But after a mysterious phone call, Julie journeys to Chloe’s glamorous New York City apartment and discovers her twin’s rotting corpse. Julie quickly “becomes” Chloe, adopting everything from Chloe’s elaborate, documented skincare routine to her exciting life with a group of influencers known as the Belladonnas.

Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

Lisa Unger’s latest thriller, Close Your Eyes and Count to 10 (Park Row, $30, 9780778333364), tracks a livestreamed game of hide-and-seek with a $1 million prize. What could possibly go wrong?

As she did in books like Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six and The New Couple in 5B , bestselling author Unger ramps up a labyrinth of twists and turns from start to finish. Readers will find themselves rooting for struggling mother Adele, who desperately needs the prize money to provide for her teenage son and daughter. Her son, Blake, is excited for his daredevil mom to meet host Maverick Dillon, whose manic zest for extreme adventure is fueled by his colossal ego.

A former skincare content creator with a degree in psychology and criminology, Zhang brings her wealth of experience to this juicy thriller. Julie is a wonderfully complicated and entertainingly unreliable narrator, navigating newfound fame and its many façades while growing increasingly curious about what Chloe’s analog existence was really like. Julie Chan Is Dead doesn’t shy away from the brutality of Chloe’s and, now, Julie’s double life—made more complex by the fact that said life is stolen. Put down your phone, pick up this book and strap in for a wild ride.

—Lauren Emily Whalen

Pages turn quickly as Unger’s snappy prose explores a multitude of subplots, including the mounting financial, corporate and interpersonal pressures that threaten to destroy Maverick and his company. Throughout, Unger explores the increasingly blurry lines between the online and offline worlds, and the real hide-and-seek turns out to be the many secrets concealed by a number of the novel’s characters. While Close Your Eyes and Count to 10’s many narrators occasionally result in a somewhat disjointed feel, the windmilling foci of attention accurately mirror today’s compulsive online experience.

—Alice Cary

H My Friends

By Fredrik Backman

POPULAR

FICTION

There’s not a lot of beauty in Louisa’s world. She’s on the run from her foster home, a day away from her 18th birthday. Her best friend recently died, and the adults in their lives chalked it up as a predictable outcome for kids like them.

Life hasn’t treated her well, but Louisa carries a bit of beauty everywhere she goes: a postcard of the painting “The One of the Sea” by artist C. Jat. Most people are distracted by the title and the painting’s swaths of blue. But Louisa has gazed at her reproduction long enough to see something more. Tucked into the sea is a pier with three children sitting on it, vibrating with laughter. Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, dreams of not only being able to capture a moment that way but also of meeting the artist and hearing the story of those friends. After she sneaks into an art auction to

My Name is Emilia del Valle

By Isabel Allende

Translated by Frances Riddle

HISTORICAL FICTION

The greatest pleasure in reading My Name is Emilia del Valle (Ballantine, $30, 9780593975091) comes from the brilliant protagonist, Emilia del Valle Claro, the daughter of two schoolteachers living in late 19th-century San Francisco. While her mother, Molly, a former nun, is very religious, Emilia’s stepfather, Francisco, is a passionate scholar and feminist, and instills in Emilia a deep-rooted determination that guides her decisions throughout the novel.

After beginning to write dime novels under a pseudonym as a teen, Emilia uses her wit and tenacity to become the first woman journalist at The Daily Examiner. For years, her human interest stories are met with great acclaim. Then Emilia asks to travel to Chile to cover the ongoing civil war, where Congress has defected from the president. In Chile, Emilia meets her birth father and family for the first time, uses the Spanish she’s grown up speaking and publishes under her own name.

As always, Isabel Allende’s writing shines with precision and lyricism, most notably

see the painting in person, Louisa’s ambitions are fulfilled in ways she couldn’t possibly have imagined.

during scenes of Emilia and her colleague Eric’s experiences as journalists on the battlefield. Allende’s portrayal of post-war jubilation, in which the victors destroy homes and whole neighborhoods as soldiers lie dead in the streets, is hard to read and hard to reconcile with the beauty of the country that Emilia comes to fall for.

My Name is Emilia del Valle is a deeply informative historical novel that looks expansively at conflict; it’s made stronger by Emilia’s ever-growing consciousness as a writer. What is journalistic integrity? What is worth risking for it? In our time of 24/7 media and news consumption, such an exploration is uniquely pressing.

—Sydney Hankin

Run for the Hills

By Kevin Wilson FAMILY DRAMA

Whoever coined the idiom “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” likely never considered a tree like Charles Hill, alternately known as Chuck, Chip or Carl depending on which of his children you talk to. This perpetual deserter is at the center of Run for the Hills (Ecco, $28.99, 9780063317512),

My Friends is chockfull of observations that made this reviewer put down the novel to catch her breath: “Being human is to grieve, constantly.” “Art teaches us to mourn for strangers.” “Art is coping with being alive for one more week.” “The most dangerous place on earth is inside us.”

In My Friends , Backman again pays tribute to the forces that make an ordinary life extraordinary. By focusing his tremendous empathy on the power of art and friendship, he has created a novel that celebrates the beauty of being alive.

—Carla Jean Whitley

Bestselling novelist Fredrik Backman ( A Man Called Ove , Anxious People ) has built his career with idiosyncratic characters in stories that demolish a reader’s heart before stitching it back together. My Friends (Atria, $29.99, 9781982112820) may be the pinnacle of Backman’s heartbreaking powers. His writing is as smooth as ever, drawing readers into Louisa’s story with the easy ebb and flow of waves dissolving onto a shore. But this gentle storytelling belies the very real, deep struggles Backman’s characters face.

Kevin Wilson’s latest deceptively lighthearted examination of the American psyche.

The novel starts with Madeline Hill, nicknamed Mad, a 32-year-old woman from Coalfield, Tennessee. It’s 2007. Her father, Charles, walked out on the family when Mad was 9. These days, she and her mom run their farm and its Saturday roadside stand, which has been booming since features in Bon Appétit and Southern Living

One day, a PT Cruiser, “not a car that you saw in this area,” drives down their dusty road. The driver is Reuben Hill, nicknamed Rube. He tells Mad that he’s her half-brother from Boston, and that their shared father, whom he knew as Chuck, left his family 30 years ago.

Rube’s additional news is even more astonishing: “There’s more of us.” With a detective’s help, he has tracked down their siblings Pepper, a senior on the University of Oklahoma women’s basketball team, and Tom, an 11-year-old aspiring filmmaker growing up in Utah.

Soon, Mad joins Rube on his journey to “re-create the migration of our father as he moved westward to start new chapters of his life” and “meet the children he left behind.”

Wilson’s lively narrative is a combination road novel, domestic drama and snapshot of rural America. Amid the seemingly carefree attitudes are profound questions. What would lead a man to abandon not just one family, but several? And what would it feel like to discover that the only family you’ve ever known is not the only family you have?

reviews | fiction

Despite predictable moments, Run for the Hills raises these questions and more with endearing aplomb. Forgiveness is difficult, sometimes, but these newly introduced siblings give it their best in this colorful novel.

—Michael Magras

H The Names

By Florence Knapp

LITERARY FICTION

Florence Knapp’s debut novel, The Names (Pamela Dorman, $30, 9780593833902), grips from the outset. The book opens in the midst of a thunderstorm and presents a weighty dilemma: “tomorrow—if morning comes, if the storm stops raging—Cora will register the name of her son. Or perhaps, and this is her real concern, she’ll formalize who he will become.” What name will Cora choose for her infant, suspecting as she does that it will define his destiny?

This poignant premise underpins the narrative that follows, charting the journeys of Cora and her two children over a span of 35 years. We witness their lives unfold through a tapestry of different timelines, each shaped by the choice of a different name for Cora’s son. In one, he gets the name his 9-year-old sister, Maia, likes, Bear; in another, Cora gives him her own favorite name, Julian. Then, there is her husband’s selection, Gordon—a name passed down in his family that Cora fears will also transfer his legacy of anger and abuse to the boy. Each timeline reveals the long-lasting impacts of domestic violence on a family and a life.

The Names mesmerizes with writing that is both visceral and beautifully crafted, containing something of the timeless quality of Foster by Claire Keegan. Knapp’s economical language delivers powerful, full-bodied imagery that captures the stakes for the characters in every line. Readers will be immersed in Cora’s struggle to survive and in her children’s efforts to pick up and respond to even the subtlest family dynamics: Maia learns how to placate her father and her brother learns how to deflect attention from himself, understanding that doing what keeps the peace is sometimes necessary, even when it conflicts with doing what’s right. Masterfully working with all three timelines, Knapp presents a complex and deeply affecting story, at once heartrending and hopeful.

—Maya Fleischmann

Gabriële

By Anne Berest and Claire Berest HISTORICAL FICTION

Looking at our own family histories, we tend to imagine the roles our ancestors played in the events which shaped their times. How did they survive the Great Depression? If they immigrated, did they come through Ellis Island? Were they listening to the songs or reading the books from their time that are now classics? In Gabriële (Europa, $28, 9798889660897), sisters Anne and Claire Berest uncover their real-life family history and find a cavalcade of romance and drama at the heart of the European art world. Gabriële Buffet, the authors’ great-grandmother, was a bold and brilliant woman caught in a fiery love triangle: She married the Spanish artist Francis Picabia and also became the lover of the French artist and sculptor Marcel Duchamp (infamous for his sculpture “Fountain,” a signed urinal). The Berest sisters trace their great-grandmother’s life, limning her personal history with their family lore while simultaneously giving readers an intimate portrait of a transformative time in world history.

The Belle Epoque, the peaceful period right before World War I, was a progressive and hopeful time in Europe and around the world, which would prove the naivete of humankind. Though she certainly wasn’t naive, Gabriële Buffet was an idealist and artist. In 1908, at the pinnacle of the Belle Epoque, Gabriële is 27 and has moved to Berlin from France to complete her musical studies. She has already had several fateful encounters with history, including meeting Vladimir Lenin in Switzerland and hearing Claude Debussy play. Her brother, a painter, introduces her to Francis, who has been obsessing over Gabriële before even meeting her, spinning a life for her out of the stories told by her brother. Gabriële dazzles him even more in real life and, after hearing his exciting ideas about art, the two start a romance based on the life of the mind. In community with other artists, however, the couple starts to face problems, not the least of which being Gabriële’s obvious attraction to a rebellious younger artist, Duchamp. As each artist strives to create their masterpieces, and as the world grows increasingly unstable, this love triangle simmers and catastrophically erupts.

The most engaging part of Gabriële is the Berests’ prose: Early on, the authors note that they will be telling the story in the present

tense, to capture the feeling and energy of their great-grandmother. The result is a historical novel unlike any other.

—Eric A. Ponce

When the Harvest Comes

By Denne Michele Norris

LITERARY FICTION

In her debut novel, Denne Michele Norris, editor-in-chief of Electric Literature, explores the limits— and radical healing possibilities—of queer love. The book opens on the eve of a wedding: Davis, a Black violist, is about to marry his boyfriend, Everett, the son of a close-knit white family whose exuberance and easy camaraderie permeate the air they breathe. Davis has been estranged from his father, a reverend, since he fled his Ohio hometown for New York and has since mostly fallen out with his sister as well. He’s focused on his career in classical music and his relationship with Everett. He has no plans to revisit his traumatic past or his fraught family relationships, until his father’s death forces him to confront everything he’s left behind.

At times, When the Harvest Comes (Random House, $28, 9780593729601) can feel clunky, moving from revelation to revelation without lingering in the characters’ emotional interiority. Occasional short sections from the perspectives of minor characters, including Davis’ sister and Everett’s father, are somewhat jarring and distracting. It’s the steady love between Davis and Everett that carries the book: Their relationship, though not perfect, is the engine at the center of not only their lives, but the novel itself. Norris infuses these characters with so much warmth and tenderness for each other. Every time they interact—whether they’re at a family dinner, at home, having sex or even avoiding conversations they need to have—the depth of Davis and Everett’s love is the loudest thing on the page. It creates a kind of protective spell, and it is within this net of safety and acceptance that Davis begins to unravel not only the wounds of his past, but his dreams and desire for the future.

Though it deals with familial rejection, religious homophobia, grief and the impact that shame and secrets can have on a queer life, When the Harvest Comes is ultimately a triumphant book—an earnest, tender story about the courage it takes to let yourself be seen and loved for exactly who you are.

—Laura Sackton

The Pretender

By Jo Harkin

HISTORICAL FICTION

If you’re the sort of person who hangs on to every morsel of palace drama between Princes Harry and William, if you bingewatched every episode of The Crown twice, if your copy of Burke’s Peerage is dog-eared from overuse, then Jo Harkin’s sophomore novel, The Pretender (Knopf, $30, 9780593803301), should be right up your alley. On the other hand, if you can’t tell a Tudor from a Stuart, if your grasp of British history is limited to 1066, the Magna Carta and James Bond, The Pretender might still be right up your alley. Here’s why.

As we’ve learned from the massive success of Game of Thrones, the public has a virtually unquenchable thirst for watching royal dynasties die nastily. And things aren’t looking good for King Henry VII in 1485, despite his army having slain Richard III; forces are at play both abroad and at home to have his throne usurped by any of a number of pretenders.

The Pretender’s protagonist, introduced to us as John Collan, is one of them. Young John is spirited off from his father’s farm in the company of a mysterious nobleman and a priest, rechristened as Lambert Simons and told he is the rightful heir to the British throne. What could possibly go wrong? When Lambert inquires whether he will have to take the crown from Henry by violent means, his tutor-priest replies, “Oh no, I’m sure he’ll hand it over full apologetic. . . . Don’t be an ass.”

After his initial schooling in Oxford, Lambert continues on to Burgundy and Ireland, where he is steeped in the intricacies of etiquette and politics in a manner befitting a future monarch. It’s in the latter that he meets—and falls in love with—Joan, the proto-feminist daughter of the Lord Deputy of Ireland. He realizes, to his dismay, that such a match is out of the question, as he could marry her in neither of his two likely futures: king of England or disgraced (and possibly dead) peasant pretender.

But which of these two fates will befall him? What will become of his beloved? And there’s also the slight matter of England, whose fortune hangs in the balance. Harkin skillfully evokes the foreboding and intrigue that surrounds the throne with rough-hewn language and fistfuls of bawdy humor. Her rollicking saga of royalty, loyalty, lechery and

treachery is fit for a king . . . or a man who was merely told he would be one.

—Thane Tierney

A Sharp Endless Need

By Marisa Crane

COMING OF AGE

In 1973, a Cheech & Chong song called “Basketball Jones” made the charts—a parody of another hit called “Love Jones.”

Like the original, “Basketball Jones” described addiction, though in a flippant way. But in Marisa Crane’s aching sophomore novel, A Sharp Endless Need (Dial, $27, 9780593733653), there’s nothing flippant about protagonist Mackenzie Morris’ passion for her sport. As she puts it, “Basketball, I knew, was the only thing keeping me alive.”

Mack is the point guard for her high school basketball team and the all-area player of the year. Yet, all is not well. Her father, who dropped out of college to marry Mack’s pregnant mom and became his daughter’s greatest booster, dies early in the book. Mack meets her other great passion, Liv Cooper, at his memorial service. Liv also has a basketball jones, though she plays for a school outside of Mack’s conference. Liv falls just as hard for Mack, but in their community, gay is not OK. Because of this, their courtship is a prickly dance of passive aggression and slick basketball moves. Even the chapter titles are sports references such as “Pep Talk in the Huddle,” “Step-back Jumper” and “The White-Hot Heat of a Fast Break.”

Speaking of sports references, this reviewer knows nothing about basketball except that the player is supposed to throw a ball in a basket. Yet Crane’s descriptions of Mack’s nearly feral joy, passion and physicality as she plays are as thrilling as their depiction of teenage life in a run-down Pennsylvania town (with its underage boozing and drugging, precariousness and cringey attempts at sex) is unsparing. Though physically imposing, Mack is a creature of roiling emotions and excruciating vulnerability. She protects her confused and yearning heart from just about everyone: her loopy, New Agey mother, her town’s chowderheaded boys, the college sports agents who want to recruit her and even Liv. She is a little more forthcoming with her congenial coach, who reminds her of her father. But Mack Morris’ will is indomitable, even when the worst happens. A Sharp Endless Need is a book you’ll remember.

—Arlene McKanic

Awake in the Floating City

By Susanna Kwan

LITERARY FICTION

Susanna Kwan’s Awake in the Floating City (Pantheon, $28, 9780593701409) is set in a future San Francisco; the city is drenched in constant rain, and urban dwellers live a precarious life on the upper floors and rooftops of apartments. Bo, an elder-care homeworker, lives alone; her mother disappeared in a storm years ago. Bo’s uncle and cousin urge her to move with them to Canada, but something keeps Bo tied to the city where she was raised. When an elderly neighbor, Mia, slips a note under Bo’s door asking for help, that creates reason enough to stay.

An artist who hasn’t touched her pencils and brushes in years, Bo is inspired by Mia to take on a massive project: a visual record of Mia’s life, from her childhood in a Chinese village to her move to Hong Kong, and then to the Bay Area’s Chinatown. To accomplish this, Bo moves beyond her comfort level, embracing new media such as photography, film and an archive from what remains of the local library. The constraint, of course, is to complete this work before Mia dies or before Bo folds under the family pressure to leave San Francisco. With a gentle poeticism, Awake in the Floating City explores the gifts and trials of an intergenerational friendship while also reminding us of the multitude of histories embedded in the land around us. For anyone whose past is populated with long-gone landmarks in altered landscapes, Awake in the Floating City will strike a resonant chord.

—Lauren Bufferd

Great Big Beautiful Life

By Emily Henry

CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

Great Big Beautiful Life (Berkley, $29, 9780593441299) takes readers on a suspenseful romantic journey that echoes two of Emily Henry’s most beloved books. The sparkling dialogue and competitive enemies-to-friends-to-lovers frisson between celebrity magazine journalist Alice Scott and her literary darling rival, Hayden

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Anderson, harkens back to Henry’s adult debut, Beach Read, the first of five consecutive number one bestsellers for Henry. The smalltown setting and complex family connections echo Book Lovers, the novel that multiplied her fandom. But the epic, intergenerational story of fabulous wealth and heartbreak that Alice unpacks in pursuit of her career-making break in Great Big Beautiful Life is a substantially new spin on the usual Henry formula.

Alice is a Georgia-born and -raised, now Los Angeles-based writer covering the celebrity beat for The Scratch (modeled on New York magazine’s spinoff The Cut). Alice has a tight circle of fellow writer friends and a sister she loves dearly, but “not much else” going on in her personal life. As she bemoans, “I am not even officially the girlfriend of the man I’ve been dating for seven months.” An aspiring biographer, Alice is determined to secure her dream assignment: writing the life story of the elusive Margaret Ives—heiress, widow to a rock star, and recluse. Aside from her subject’s reticence, one thing stands in the way: Hayden, a writer with more experience and far more literary cache.

In addition to being competitors, Alice and Hayden have, at least on the surface, a grumpy-sunshine attraction of opposites. Where Alice seems perpetually friendly, smiling and eager like a golden retriever, Hayden has the aloof sleekness of a cat. But the reality is more nuanced. When Margaret decides they should stay a month to get to know her and vie for the assignment, the two are forced into proximity, and layers of personality and attraction are revealed. It’s an expert marriage of character and circumstance.

Great Big Beautiful Life boasts the perfect bone structure of a classic Henry rom-com— the banter and physical and emotional intimacy are exquisite—but there are also strong differences between this and Henry’s previous work, primarily the space given to Margaret’s past. Her painstaking, multicentury account of her illustrious yet tragic American family and Alice’s dogged investigation into the parts that Margaret holds back are intertwined with the love story. Margaret says this reflection on the past is crucial to understanding who she is, likening her life to a quilt. But Alice gets frustrated that Margaret won’t focus more on her own square in that rich pattern. This difficult balance is mirrored within the book itself. The compelling if expansive story-within-thestory at times threatens to overwhelm Alice and Hayden’s gorgeous, inexorable tumble into love. But their chemistry is just strong enough to sustain them both.

—Carole V. Bell

H Immaculate Conception

By Ling Ling Huang

DYSTOPIAN FICTION

The latest book from violinist and Natural Beauty author Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception (Dutton, $28, 9780593850435), begins as an examination of how humans interact with a techbased world where handmade art seems less and less viable. Then it becomes something else entirely, sweeping readers into a world of blurred boundaries with staggering existential implications you won’t soon forget.

Enka and Mathilde have been best friends since art school, when Enka decided to start hanging around the most talented artist on campus. In the years that follow, Mathilde’s stature in the art world grows to titanic proportions, while Enka’s work finds a path forward thanks, in part, to her marriage into a family of art-loving, tech-developing billionaires. Their world is one in which a new class system has been built via specially engineered screens dividing cities—and in which generative AI has robbed many aspiring artists of their apparent purpose.

For a long time, Enka wonders if her work has a place in Mathilde’s shadow, but when her friend suffers a strange and shattering trauma, the balance of influence shifts. Mathilde and Enka are placed in the midst of a technological revolution that will bring them closer than ever and leave them questioning where one artist ends and the other begins.

Though Huang’s tight focus remains on unfolding the story from Enka’s point of view and describing her internal life, the nottoo-distant setting is remarkably constructed. Huang’s ability to add depth and texture by casually introducing an entirely new system of technological control or expression is potent, and she does it with such grace that the reader often doesn’t realize these ideas will be central to the plot until they’ve turned the page, guided by taut, almost thriller-level pacing.

But it’s her characters who are the true keys to Immaculate Conception. Enka and Mathilde are twin souls in a world that seems to put less and less stock in simple human connection. Both are fully formed, layered and knowable. Then, through twist after twist, Huang makes us reconsider how well we really know them. This is a frightening, enlightening powerhouse of a book.

—Matthew Jackson

Sleep

By Honor Jones

LITERARY FICTION

Honor Jones’ debut novel, Sleep (Riverhead, $28, 9780593851982), opens with a scene from the past, a child in the middle of a summertime game of flashlight tag with neighborhood kids: “It was damp down under the blackberry bush, but Margaret liked it there; she was cozy, like a rabbit.” Sleep is the adult Margaret’s story. She’s recently divorced, a single parent of two little girls and living in a tiny Brooklyn apartment. But Margaret’s past keeps intruding on her present, as she tries to be a competent mother, cope with her ex-husband, Ezra, and new maybe-boyfriend, Duncan, while managing her difficult mother, Elizabeth. She feels like she’s doing adulthood all wrong, making the wrong decisions, saying the wrong things and not measuring up to the other Brooklyn moms. Margaret is beginning to come to terms with a trauma that she’s never told anyone about, not even her best friend, Biddy, who’s been Margaret’s confidant since childhood. Through flashbacks, the dysfunctional family dynamics of Margaret’s childhood unfold, particularly the self-absorption and cruelty of her mother and the secret behaviors of Margaret’s withdrawn older brother, Neal.

Sleep shines in evoking Margaret’s past, with compelling depictions of incidents from those years: the search for a neighbor’s lost pygmy goat, sleepovers with Biddy, Elizabeth’s odd response to Margaret’s first period. The novel’s portrayal of Margaret’s interactions with her daughters Helen and Jo are also strong— from mundane to funny to heart-stopping. The midtown mother-daughter lunches that the ailing Elizabeth insists on are excruciatingly well described, as is a scene late in the novel when Margaret begins to confront her mother about her cruelty. Sleep also beautifully depicts the confused yet tender interactions between Margaret and Ezra as they learn how to live and parent after divorce.

Still, the novel sometimes lacks forward motion, perhaps reflecting Margaret’s stuck state of mind, which can be a little frustrating. And some readers may wish for a little more resolution at the story’s end, though the resolution that the novel does provide feels true to life: There are things we never get to say and never get to hear from the people we love most.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

H Mark Twain

By Ron Chernow BIOGRAPHY

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow captures the remarkable life of a profoundly impactful author in his deeply researched and beautifully written Mark Twain (Penguin Press, $45, 9780525561729).

Drawn from a vast array of sources, including letters, diaries and Twain’s own published and unpublished writings, Chernow brings the Tom Sawyer author alive, whether in a steamboat, during a public performance or at home with his family.

Twain mastered an array of literary forms, including the novel, short stories, essays, travelogues and historical romances, and published thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. As one of the United States’ biggest celebrity authors, Twain led an eventful life. He was a cosmopolitan figure who lived abroad for over a decade; he met and

H Ginseng Roots

By Craig Thompson

GRAPHIC MEMOIR

When Craig Thompson and his siblings began reminiscing with their parents about their childhood work picking ginseng in their hometown of Marathon, Wisconsin, their mother commented, “You’re not gonna put none of this stuff in a BOOK, are you?” Of course he did, and the result, Ginseng Roots (Pantheon, $35, 9780593700778), is a graphic memoir that addresses not only Thompson’s childhood experiences, but also the history of ginseng cultivation, its production and use, labor and farming economics and global commerce—all in a particularly fascinating, cohesive way.

Fans of Thompson’s acclaimed coming-ofage memoir, 2003’s Blankets, which explored his struggle with fundamentalist Christian beliefs, will find similarly honest reflections here. And just as Thompson explored Arabic calligraphy and Islamic beliefs in his 2012 graphic novel, Habibi , he incorporates Chinese calligraphy, history and mythology in Ginseng Roots. While those books included black-and-white illustrations,

befriended many important cultural and political figures. His aphorisms were known throughout the world.

The events of Twain’s family life, before and after his great fame, are at the heart of Chernow’s narrative. He explores Twain’s most important relationships, such as with his mother, who inspired his passion for storytelling; his father, a critic of religion; his genteel wife, Livy, a discerning reader who edited Twain’s writings; their three daughters; and Twain’s close friends and associates.

Chernow traces how Twain invented and reinvented himself. The boy from Hannibal, Missouri, where Black people were enslaved

here Thompson also makes liberal use of red and orange tones, a technique that both enlivens and unifies its pages. What’s more, ginseng roots naturally have a humanoid shape, and Thompson cleverly personifies them throughout the book, including in its gorgeous endpapers.

As a child, Thompson spent 10 summers working in ginseng fields “swimming in dirt” instead of swimming holes. Ginseng is highly prized in China, and Marathon County happens to be the ginseng capital of the United States. In Ginseng Roots, he sets off to uncover why. Thompson interviews Marathon farmers, attends the Wisconsin Ginseng Festival and travels to Geumsan, South Korea (“the Disneyland of ginseng!”), and to China to learn more about the plant’s international production and commerce. Throughout, the narrative is highly personal, including details about a debilitating medical condition, fibromatosis, that affects his ability to draw. “Each new book depletes me,” he reveals.

Thompson’s prose is as evocative as his art; for instance, he describes the roots’ natural smell as “sweet, yet bitter, earthen . . . you can taste every essence of the soil, the minerals, and yes, that soft edge of maple syrup sweetness.” Often, Thompson draws both his adult and youthful image in one panel, highlighting how his outlook has changed. Ginseng Roots is a monumental graphic art achievement.

—Alice Cary

and treated brutally, later became a friend of Frederick Douglass; a staunch abolitionist; a supporter of Black causes, especially in the field of education; and the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was a fervent advocate for women’s rights. He became a conscience for American society.

A much-honored biographer, Chernow won a Pulitzer for Washington: A Life, though he is perhaps better known for his Alexander Hamilton, the inspiration for the Broadway musical. Now, Chernow has brought us as close to Twain as we are likely to get. This nuanced portrait of an often conflicted man is a triumph.

—Roger Bishop

Foreign Fruit

By Katie Goh

MEMOIR

Where do you come from? Where does anything come from? Those may seem like simple questions. Author Katie Goh was born in Ireland. But origin can be so much more complex than that. Goh was born in Ireland, but her heritage is a blend of Irish and Malay. And after a man shot six Asian women in Atlanta, Georgia, she became obsessed with not only her own origin story, but also that of a representative fruit: the orange.

“The morning after a white man murdered six Asian women, I ate five oranges.” Goh opens her hybrid memoir-cultural history with that sentence and returns to it as a touchstone throughout Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange (Tin House, $27.99, 9781963108231). The 2021 shootings occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, which had already upturned Goh’s career and, in some ways, her sense of self. Her livelihood had changed thanks to the economic uncertainty the pandemic brought on. She’d written, and written about herself, for years, often seeking to understand her identity as a mixed-race person from a region that was 99% white. But when

publications asked her to write a reaction piece to the shooting, Goh couldn’t bring herself to sell the story.

Instead, she threw herself into researching a very different project, tracing the orange’s origins in China before it traveled west, often blending with other citrus plants to create new hybrids. As she examines citrus plants in a Vienna orangery, Goh ponders their being. “It struck me as a precarious existence for these creatures: to rely on your appeal as foreign, exotic, different, to be worthy of care and not neglect. But was that not what I had done, when I turned myself, my heritage, and my identity into neat little packages of writing to be sold?”

In Foreign Fruit, Goh offers a thoroughly researched exploration of these origin myths and their complexities, drawing parallels between the fruit’s complicated past and her own heritage. She moves easily among her research, the fruit’s travels and her own family stories. At times, the reading may be slow for those who aren’t enamored by history. But those who claim both history and memoir as favorite genres are likely to adore this hybrid work.

—Carla Jean Whitley

Poets Square

By Courtney Gustafson MEMOIR

“Sad Boy appeared each night like the moon, rising large and white over our roof.” Beside him sat Lola, his wife, who acted as his protector and companion.

Sad Boy and Lola were two of the 30 cats Courtney Gustafson was surprised to find in her yard when she moved into a rental house in the Poets Square neighborhood of Tuscon, Arizona.

Gustafson’s puzzlement quickly turned to a desire to help. The cats were starving, many of them sick. She was strapped for cash; her job at a nonprofit food pantry couldn’t cover her medical debt, let alone cat food. Gustafson recounts her adventures with these cats and many others in her poignant, beautifully written debut memoir, Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats (Crown, $28, 9780593727614), a book that will change the way readers think about feline and human nature alike. As she describes her growing relationships with the cats and her journey to becoming a caretaker, trap-neuter-return practitioner and social media content creator, she

weaves in anecdotes from her past experiences with relationships, identity, trauma and family.

Gustafson deftly relates the story of Sad Boy and Lola alongside that of her first romantic relationship with an emotionally abusive older man. MK, who mistook another adult cat, Georgie, for her kitten, presents an opportunity for Gustafson to process her mother’s cancer treatment. In some cases, the cat stories overtake the more memoiristic parts of the book, and readers might be tempted to rush through them. But when Gustafson hits the balance, her essays sing.

What makes Poets Square stand out among other animal welfare stories is Gustafson’s insistence that the suffering of domestic animals often mirrors the suffering of the people who care for them, especially those who are stymied by poverty, mental and chronic illness, homelessness and a host of other societal problems over which they lack control. “Feral,” she writes, “just means that an animal was abandoned by the system that created it,” the same systems, we can surmise, that abandon people.

A necessary read for those who work in animal welfare, Poets Square is also a loving tribute to the way animals can provide “bright thriving spots of hope in the world.”

—Erica Ciccarone

H On Muscle

By Bonnie Tsui SCIENCE

From age 5, thanks to her super fit, martial arts expert father, Bonnie Tsui knew what it was to be strong. “As far back as memory serves, my brother and I were drafted to join our father in training sessions,” she recalls in On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters (Algonquin, $29, 9781643753089). “Exercise was fun in our house.”

Those sessions became tinged with sorrow when her grandfather died, and her father became “preoccupied with outrunning death.” And when she was in high school, he left their New York home for his native Hong Kong, creating a gulf between them that’s troubled the author ever since.

Tsui displays the journalistic prowess and love for sport that made 2020’s Why We Swim a bestseller as she considers how muscle powers and supports us via fascinating interviews, experiential research and scientific exploration of the mind-body connection. She also

movingly shares her experience of parental estrangement: Can her finely tuned muscles help her to emotionally stretch, flex, endure? Remarkable interview subjects include Jan Todd, the first woman to lift Scotland’s Dinnie Stones (773 pounds). Tsui visits Dan O’Conor, who in June 2020 began daily jumps into Lake Michigan and became a social media sensation, exemplifying how “the body can lead in elevating the spirit.” After a devastating car crash, Minneapolis-based adaptive yoga pioneer Matthew Sanford strove to engage his entire body, contrary to doctors’ recommendations to ignore the parts of his body left paralyzed. As Tsui learned, his work indeed helps students of varying abilities experience “the wisdom of bodies as a continuum.”

On Muscle will help readers attain that wisdom, too, thanks to its multifaceted celebration of muscles’ importance to body and mind, physicality and identity. Tsui has crafted an appealing, enlightening guide to understanding and appreciating our own strength.

—Linda M. Castellitto

Earthly Materials

By Cutter Wood

SCIENCE

Ever wonder why our bodies create mucus? Or how many breaths we produce in a lifetime? How about what really happens to our blood after we donate it? All of these topics and many more are put under the microscope in Earthly Materials: Journeys Through Our Bodies’ Emissions, Excretions, and Disintegrations (Mariner, $29.99, 9780063048607), Cutter Wood’s uniquely structured compendium of effluvia.

Most of us are concerned about what we put into our bodies, but what about the things that come out? Wood covers 12 of the biggies, from substances that might seem gross or even gory, such as feces, vomit and blood, to others deemed less repulsive, such as breath, hair and tears. Admitting that the human body is a “messy organism . . . and so, it is a messy book,” Wood’s goal is for the reader to ponder all the materials we leave behind while going about our business as Homo sapiens.

Each chapter focuses on one of these excretions, churning science, history and statistics into a cohesive, innovative narrative that’s animated by real-life anecdotes. For example, the chapters on flatulence and semen offer examples from Wood’s own adolescence

interspersed with scientific explanations of exactly how gas and sperm are produced by the human body. And the chapter on breast milk skips through the real life story of Formula Mom, the Florida business that was busted for selling stolen baby formula, before trekking way back in evolutionary time to the development of mammary glands.

Wood cleverly leans into his creative nonfiction background. For example, the way he compares humans with worms in the feces chapter is brilliant: “In very general topological terms, the human body is a tube. At one end of the tube is a mouth, at the other an anus, and everything else—the hands, the liver, the brain—is just window dressing. We are all variations, by this thinking, on the theme of earthworm.” Earthly Materials is a fun, imaginative read that will delight both the little kid and curious adult in all of us.

—Becky Libourel Diamond

Second Life

By Amanda Hess MEMOIR

When I was nearing the end of my first pregnancy, a friend asked what I’d been reading to prepare for my child to arrive. After listing two thrillers, a horror novel and a biography, I realized they were asking if I had read any parenting books. I hadn’t. My instinct was to trust my instincts, consult my physician when I had questions and maybe do an occasional internet search. What I hadn’t thought about was that the ease of Google searches and digital tools would expose me to an all-new algorithm where I was marketed my worst anxieties. New York Times culture critic and longtime Internet Lady Amanda Hess explores this modern element of being a parent—and many perplexing aspects of pregnancy and birthing—in Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age (Doubleday, $29, 9780385549738).

The book starts with Hess’ use of a period app before shifting to a pregnancy app; then Hess moves to the experiences she had while searching for answers to an abnormality discovered during an ultrasound. She covers a lot of aspects specific to modern parenting: an assessment of the surveillance tools to monitor the baby’s every move, a brief history of parenting influencers, how ableism and racism play into medical bias and the decisions we make as parents—plus some personal anecdotes, including

text exchanges with her neighbor, that illustrate how inflexible some parents can be. Hess’ memoir surveys the so-called wisdom of the apps on our phones, the “gentle parenting” Instagram accounts, the unassisted birth movement and more, and then attempts to cut through the noise to show what people birthing and parenting experience in the pursuit of being a “good parent.”

Second Life is very much a memoir—not a self-help or parenting book. But Hess’ tale is cautionary: Her warnings about the gamification of parenthood and the tech that’s thrust on parents when they’re at their most vulnerable make this an instructive text that reads as the ruminations and research of your funniest, smartest parent friend.

—Amanda Haggard

H The Hollow Half

By Sarah Aziza MEMOIR

Sarah Aziza’s debut memoir, The Hollow Half (Catapult, $29, 9781646222438), is a vulnerable account that interlaces her recovery from an eating disorder with her journey to reconnect with a family history that spans generations of violent displacement. With stunning prose, Aziza, a Palestinian American who hails from a family of Gazan refugees, navigates effortlessly between geographies, timelines and languages to parse trauma and refuse the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Early on, Aziza describes her father’s “informal archive,” a collection of items—programs from Aziza’s college graduation, report cards, old IDs—that document his life, from his birth in Gaza to present day. Aziza creates her own archive as she seamlessly moves between personal narrative, journalism and history. From the opening pages, we are introduced to her life as a journalist, her eating disorder and her attempts to maintain bodily autonomy within what she experiences as a carceral recovery clinic. Depicting the multiple ruptures that have occurred in Aziza’s life, The Hollow Half and is haunted not only by her present fight to recover her physical body, but also by her ancestral past. At the same time, the memoir is infused with Aziza’s family legacy of refusing occupation and displacement, and practicing life and faith. Throughout the memoir, Aziza discovers the ways language and history resuscitate her Palestinian grandmother Horea’s spirit.

Aziza’s embodied narration travels from her childhood in the heat of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to the cold U.S. Midwest, to her present adopted home in Brooklyn and her return to her homeland of Palestine. Aziza also figuratively returns to this homeland through recounting her grandmother’s and father’s lives, embracing her inherited legacy of survival and love. We follow the rhythm of her explorations of the past in English and occasional Arabic, which is quite easy to understand in context and facilitates a deeper understanding of Aziza’s family and culture.

As she tracks her movements through memory and dreaming, Aziza invokes the Palestinian poets Ghassan Kanafani and Mahmoud Darwish, as well as Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake, which examines Black life and survival in the afterlife of slavery. Brilliant and surprising, The Hollow Half conveys memory as a “fight that accelerates your return.”

—mónica teresa ortiz

H Medicine River

By Mary Annette Pember HISTORY

From the mid19th century to the late 1930s, nearly 500 Indian Boarding Schools operated in the United States, some run by the government and others by Christian missionaries or the Catholic Church. Tens of thousands of Native children were forced or coerced to attend; there, they were made to reject their own language and culture. Abuse was rampant. In the past decade, the trickle of truth about the grim realities of boarding schools has become a mightier stream, in part due to the pen of Mary Annette Pember, whose mother landed in a Wisconsin boarding school after being abandoned by her parents. Part memoir and part journalistic expose, Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools (Pantheon, $29, 9780553387315) is a mustread for all people who long to see justice flow. Pember, who is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, contextualizes her mother’s stories of trauma within the wider history of boarding schools as tools of Native control and forced assimilation. She mourns the cultural identity and connection that her mother didn’t have, and she returns to her extended family to learn more about what happened to her mother and to reconcile her own trauma.

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All of this is tremendously personal. But Pember sets her account against the history of boarding schools writ large: the many abandoned and hidden graves of children, the ongoing refusal of the Catholic Church to relinquish documentation that might help families learn what happened to their loved ones, the beginning of reparations in Canada and the long road ahead. Pember’s willingness to share how her own life was shaped by the boarding schools, while simultaneously reporting on the phenomenon of boarding schools historically and how we reckon with their existence today, makes Medicine River an unforgettable read.

—Kelly Blewett

H Slither

By Stephen S. Hall SCIENCE

“Why does a snake cross the road?” In Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World (Grand Central, $30, 9781538741337), that’s not just a twist on the age-old riddle— it’s the impetus for an experiment conducted by scientists curious about snake behavior upon encountering a road and how they might react if a pickup truck sped by.

As science journalist and author Stephen S. Hall explains, that experiment revealed differences in various snake species’ willingness to cross the road and their surprising unanimity upon traversing it: “every snake that crossed the road did so at a 90-degree angle . . . they somehow perceived (or intuited) the shortest distance to the other side and made a perpendicular beeline to safety.”

That’s just one of myriad revelations in Hall’s impressively wide-ranging survey of and tribute to the sinuous creatures. As a child, he experienced “a relationship built of equal parts fascination, fear, admiration, and perhaps a secret sentimental affinity for a particularly wild and despised form of Otherness” after holding a snake for the first time. Now, he informs and inspires as he explores how snakes have been depicted in art, culture, mythology, religion and history. After all, “they’ve been around for some 130 to 150 million years,” during which they’ve been centered in religious texts a la the Garden of Eden, coiled their way around art both ancient and modern, famously terrified filmdom’s Indiana Jones and more.

Hall’s plunge into snake-centric science blends detailed data and engaging anecdotes

with writerly aplomb. At the Bronx Zoo, he ponders the evolution of herpetology, and at Mount Holyoke College, he learns about snake courtship and sex. When he joins a Burmese python hunt in the Florida Everglades, the effects of invasive species are top of mind, as is the evolution of the creatures, who withstood a historic deep freeze there in 2010. Snakes “grace us with . . . the unearthly, eternal beauty of survival,” the author marvels, and we have much to learn from them, if only we can swap fear for curiosity and disgust for appreciation.

—Linda M. Castellitto

The Golden Road

By William Dalrymple

ANCIENT HISTORY

The Silk Road, a collective of ancient overland trade routes from China to the Mediterranean, is currently having its moment in the sun. But according to William Dalrymple in his magisterial The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World (Bloomsbury, $32.99, 9781639734146), that trade pales in comparison to the cascade of spices, gems, religious and cultural ideas, and cosmological and mathematical discoveries that flowed from India across the globe on ships vast enough to transport elephants, tigers and other precious cargo.

From 250 B.C. to 1200 C.E., India created an “empire of ideas,” an “ ‘Indosphere,’ where its cultural influence was predominant.” The Indian peppercorn, for example, became a mainstay spice for Roman legions in Britain and caused grumpy Pliny the Elder to grouse about its taste and complain that the pepper trade was depleting the Roman treasury; grains of Indian pepper were even discovered in the nose of the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses II!

Taking advantage of powerful monsoon winds, Indian merchants traveled swiftly away and, after a seasonal interval, home. India of this era was the source of rhubarb and chess, the concept of zero, accounting systems and accurate calculations of planetary orbits. Along with the merchants and their goods came their religions and ideas. Dalrymple tracks the spread of Hindu thought and practice to the rest of the East. He narrates the amazing story of the terrifying Wu Zetian, the only female Chinese Emperor, who championed Buddhism over traditional Confucianism, making Buddhism China’s state religion for a

while and creating “an Indic renaissance at the heart of China.”

Dalrymple is an energetic and learned historian of India. In The Golden Road, he draws from siloed compartments of scholarship and synthesizes a new understanding of an age when “Indian culture and civilization transformed everything they touched.”

—Alden Mudge

H This Is Your Mother

By Erika J. Simpson

MEMOIR

This Is Your Mother (Scribner, $27.99, 9781668024034), a debut memoir by the supremely talented Erika J. Simpson, is an eloquent reminder that there are many complicated dimensions of mother-daughter relationships, some tender, some funny, some fraught with pain. Simpson urgently invites the reader to follow daughter and mother from Simpson’s turbulent childhood in Atlanta, to a coming of age that both separates and further entangles them and finally to the inevitable, heartrending conclusion of their relationship. Simpson was raised by Sallie, her larger than life, highly educated, often unemployed, Bible-toting single mother. Sallie’s undiagnosed bipolar disorder disrupted their everyday existence with hunger, evictions, repossessions and arrests. Yet seen through her child’s eyes, Sallie also had magic: She once created a Christmas tree out of green construction paper taped to a wall, decorated with pine cones. She escaped many a jam—like steep, unpayable taxi fares—by testifying, spontaneously sharing her Bible. Simpson was paying attention, and the writer propels their story with pseudo Bible quotes, as in “Book of Sallie Carol 1:2: The only things that matter, and the order of their importance, are food and rent.”

Along with Sallie’s many eccentricities, Simpson chooses to remember her mother’s steadfast beliefs in education, hope and the power of God’s love. Battles with brain and breast cancer, and, finally, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, didn’t stop Sallie from sending her two daughters to college—and then begging them for money she knew they didn’t have to save her from another arrest or eviction. Whenever the phone rang, Simpson had to decide whether to answer. This Is Your Mother is another kind of answer, honoring what became of their eternal, unbreakable bond.

—Priscilla Kipp

H Death in the Jungle

By Candace Fleming HISTORY

In November 1978, the world was shocked to learn that over 900 Americans had been discovered dead in Guyana—members of a cult who had poisoned themselves by participating in what their leader, Jim Jones, referred to as “revolutionary suicide.” How could such a tragedy happen? In reality, this was murder, the culmination of the physical and mental control that Jones exerted over his followers in a community he called Jonestown. This story, which is likely unfamiliar to younger generations, is explained in riveting detail in Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown (Anne Schwartz, $19.99, 9780593480069). Award-winning author Candace Fleming is more than up to the task as a prolific chronicler of a wide variety of subjects, ranging from Amelia Earhart (Amelia Lost), to the Loch Ness Monster (Is It Real?), to a 1924 child murder committed by teenagers (Murder Among Friends).

In addition to drawing upon what she terms “an avalanche of primary source material,” Fleming gathered a trove of personal details by interviewing nine survivors of the tragedy, as well as three additional family members

H This Thing of Ours

By Frederick Joseph COMING OF AGE

Ossie Brown is ranked the third-best high school basketball player in the country and seems set to follow in the legendary footsteps of his late father, until a devastating knee injury ends his promising career. Six months later, Ossie starts his senior year without basketball or his ex-girlfriend, Laura—who ditched Ossie when he lost his star status—to get him through the alienating experience of being Black and working class amid the predominantly white, wealthy student body at Braxton Academy. Ossie’s former teammates now distance themselves, while his classmates freely let him know they think he doesn’t belong: “You’re just a welfare baby from the ghetto,” one says.

of victims. “Their hope is that stories from their youth will resonate with today’s young audience— readers who might be particularly susceptible to peer pressure, charismatic leaders, and undue influence,” she writes. Fleming encourages readers to “recognize destructive groups in their own midst,” and begins her narrative with a discussion of cults, listing characteristic elements to watch out for.

Fleming skillfully chronicles numerous victims who succumbed to Jones’ spell, explaining how they were lured in and continued to believe his outrageous fabrications. Jones, born in 1931, was charismatic despite his chaotic, forsaken childhood and, as a boy, studied the oratory techniques of Adolf Hitler. As an adult, Jones, who was white, perfected an appropriation of the religious and civil rights ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and posed as a “black messiah advancing black liberation.” In Indianapolis, and later in San Francisco, he eventually isolated

hundreds of followers and sent them to Guyana, leading them to falsely believe that their integrated, socialist community would be a tropical paradise. While heavily medicating himself with illicit drugs, he used violence, sex, drugs and misinformation as a means of radical control. Warning that the CIA was launching guerrilla warfare to wipe out their community, Jones claimed that only he, their “Father,” could save them.

Fleming spares few of the horrific details, while filling her account with mesmerizing yet respectful insights. Photographs are included (although not of the bodies). In Death in the Jungle, Fleming helps readers understand how hundreds of victims could be so fatally brainwashed by a lying, egotistical cult leader. Contemporary readers might be certain that such a thing could never happen to them, but lessons about the dangers of groupthink, mind control and misinformation remain all too relevant.

—Alice Cary

But Ms. Hunt, an English teacher, sees that Ossie has other talents, too, and she encourages him to apply last-minute to the school’s prestigious creative writing program. Ossie’s resulting heartbreaking essay depicts basketball as his lost hope for breaking his family out of a cycle of poverty that has spanned generations, from sharecropping in Georgia to their present life in the South Yonkers projects: “Boys like me aren’t given the sky and whatever is beyond it. Boys like me are told that we’re too dark to fly any closer to the sun.”

The creative writing program becomes a space where Ossie’s burgeoning artist’s voice flourishes, as Ms. Hunt introduces the students to Black writers like Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, who—despite being considered among the greatest writers in American history—are not given proportional weight at Braxton. Although this opens exciting avenues of creativity for students like Ossie and his new friends Luis and Naima, other students take to social media and leverage their potent connections to smear Ms. Hunt’s “woke agenda,” drawing national attention

and leading to a conflict that spirals with dizzying intensity.

Frederick Joseph constructs a true roller coaster of a narrative in This Thing of Ours (Candlewick, $18.99, 9781536233469), painting Ossie’s complex struggles in language that is both poetic and engaging for a young adult audience. Impressively, the plot’s momentum stays strong even when dipping into the stories of the other characters, such as Naima, whose father was viciously beaten by police, and Luis, who has not yet come out as gay to his homophobic parents.

Joseph’s depiction of powerful, seemingly unstoppable forces determined to block the teaching of iconic literary voices for the reason of being too “diverse,” and Ossie and his friends’ fight against them, is almost frustratingly realistic, with moments of vivid despair. However, This Thing of Ours doesn’t lose sight of its hopeful heart, and readers will be moved by the thoughtful, unexpected ways in which Joseph develops Ossie and his journey to be heard.

—Yi Jiang

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE STORY

In The Corruption of Hollis Brown, K . Ancrum crafts an intimacy between her characters that expands beyond romance .

To hear young adult novelist K. Ancrum speak about her work is like stumbling upon a rare illuminated manuscript. The text itself stands alone as a beautiful and precious thing—but its marginalia reveal secret paths to new lenses through which to view the world. It’s like swimming after Ariel into her grotto of treasures, spinning in wonder as the shelves of fascinating whosits and whatsits extend beyond your line of sight.

Though Ancrum claims to be “a little bit precious when it comes to over-analyzation of what [she’s] doing” as an author, she is also visibly excited to delve into the intricate web of what makes an Ancrum book tick. She is an academic and a Tumblr kid, as giddy discussing Sherlock Holmes analysis as she is Marvel fanfiction. Though Ancrum mainly writes contemporary stories, there is a sense of something timeless underlaying her writing. “I consider everything that I write to be a parable,” she says. “My dogma as a writer is that I’m very focused on ‘the idea of,’ as opposed to ‘the story of.’ ”

However lofty this approach may sound, it does not detract from the potency—nor the sense of humor—of her stories. Ancrum does not wield the lessons she hopes to convey like a cudgel, nor does she expect adherence to one way of thinking. Rather, she offers stories of real people with real feelings, creating a treasure map to truth.

Like Ancrum’s other novels, such as Icarus, The Corruption of Hollis Brown features characters that feel familiar and real before you even get to know them. On its surface, it’s a queer love story between 17-year-old Hollis and Walt, a long dead ghost

who’s taken possession of Hollis’ body. Her inspiration? The Tom Hardy superhero movie Venom Ancrum says, “I saw it in the the-

over his body. Though initially at odds, the pair decide to remain together and spend their shared life fighting crime. “I was like,

H The Corruption of Hollis Brown HarperCollins, $19.99, 9780063285835 YOUNG ADULT

ater, and people did not like it. I thought it was delightful.”

Based on the Marvel comic of the same name, Venom follows an investigative journalist who becomes symbiotically bonded with an alien life form that takes

‘I’m gonna write about that.’

Like, a divinity in the very act of being known,” says Ancrum.

“The ultimate declaration of love would be if somebody is able to see all of the parts of you, and you are unable to hide

anything—not stuff that you think is embarrassing, not your dark, sticky secrets, not your weaknesses—and they’re like, ‘Ehh, this is fine. Don’t worry about it,’ ” she says, laughing. “It’s what I imagine—as a Catholic— it would feel like to be face-toface with God.”

On her website, Ancrum says her novels are a way for her to focus“on the preservation of the queer experience,” and are “designed to showcase important lessons about queer community, the resolution of generational trauma, and queer resilience.”

Ancrum drafted her first published novel—the critically acclaimed The Wicker King—at 19. Now 33 and publishing her sixth book, she says, “I’ve been out for a very long time, and I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the history of LGBTQ+ acceptance here in this country. I noticed that it very much does a crest and valley sort of thing.”

She continues, “When I decided to start actually taking [writing] seriously and going into publishing, I was like, if I’m given the rare opportunity to write mass media for my marginalized group, I want it to be able to take care of us during those valleys. So when I’m writing for the children of today, I’m also writing for the children of a future that may be worse than the present.”

Ancrum came of age in the early 2000s, an era that she describes as a “very isolated” one for queer people. This is reflected in her work, which Ancrum says is coming “from the perspective of somebody who was forced to . . . understand their own desire and understand what love means for them by themselves.” Even today, she says, “we live in a world of a thousand legends to teach us what

interview | k. ancrum

heterosexuality is. . . . With queer content, there isn’t much of it. So it forces introspection.”

At one of the book’s pivotal turning points, Walt expresses fear at how the world at large will perceive him and Hollis—“We’ll be a monster,” he says. And without missing a beat, Hollis replies: “We’ll be something new.” With Hollis and Walt, Ancrum invokes “the grotesque,” the longstanding artistic descriptor for subjects that evoke wonder, fear, fascination, revulsion and awe all at once, often involving hybrid creatures or metamorphosis. “The grotesquerie can exist in an environment that is designed with love to support that difference—the grand queer metaphor,” Ancrum says, almost cheekily.

But Ancrum’s stories are never about just one thing. “The Corruption of Hollis Brown is ultimately about American resilience,” Ancrum says. “And it is about this very specific kind of small American town where everyone is equally socially impacted by economic devastation, where there’s only one place to work and that place no longer existing is so devastating that it almost feels biblical.” This is the case for the unnamed Michigan lake town where Hollis lives, which, like many Rust Belt cities, has existed in a liminal space between survival and success for generations, an all too familiar situation that Ancrum says is “one of the ultimate heartbreaks of the American dream.” A place of “powdered eggs, canned chicken,

penny-pinching, crust-saving,” its insular and close-knit families are figuratively haunted by the specters of crumbling, abandoned neighborhoods and factories, as well as literally haunted by the ghosts from the nearby settlement of Rose Town, which was abandoned in the 1940s. Yet many people still decide to stay and fight for their friends and future. That faith in your community being able to find its way is what Ancrum hopes to underline.

While this is a ghost story, it’s also about a “love that is foundational and has allowed for these communities to exist for years and years.” Ancrum explores not only the love between Hollis and Walt, but also the different types of love that exist among the characters surrounding them, such as Hollis’ relationships with his best friends, Yulia and Annie. In her books, Ancrum presents an aspirational vision of platonic intimacy that shows characters aside from the romantic leads frequently touching, entirely comfortable with physical closeness. Hollis and his friends hold hands and play with each other’s hair for the sole purpose of expressing affection, because Ancrum believes “that’s the way people want to feel with their friends,” even if this kind of physicality in non-romantic relationships is rare in reality.

Often, this level of touch is used by other authors to build

romantic or sexual tension, so Ancrum needed to “create a new language of intimacy” when differentiating the relationships in her novels that do escalate into romance. Often, she’ll focus on specific gestures, such as locking pinkies or holding a cigarette to someone else’s mouth, and amplify their descriptions to build “an expression of . . . true love” that distinguishes the bond between her romantic leads.

According to Ancrum, fully understanding intimacy requires one to realize it’s about more than just sex. One way to think of it is the common experience of being drunk in college, throwing up violently and having someone to take care of you: “It’s like, yes, I feel horrible, but also there’s somebody here to hold my hair back.” She considers this level of human connection to be “the primordial intimacy,” stemming from “the way that we probably were during the proto-hominid era, with the fear of the dark, the intimacy of a shared space and silence.” It’s the juxtaposition of loneliness and interrelatedness that the first humans to watch the stars must have experienced.

Ancrum’s novels achieve their distinct atmosphere because they take that prehistoric sense of isolation, and mix in platonic connection, “the gut viscerality of intimacy” and the “language of romance.”

“This is all that we are,” Ancrum says, describing not only her book and its combined layers of queerness, love and community; but also the universe. “The only thing we have is each other.”

For Ancrum, building connections with others is “our birthright.” She feels “that we were designed for pleasure and love, and the ability to create it in a communal way—safety and love and all of the stuff that allows us to be human—is something that was inherent for us and is a gift.”

—Mariel Fechik

US Poet Laureate JOY HARJO

A picture book celebration of a girl’s journey through life

WHERE THE HEART IS

For AAPI Heritage Month, settle down for a nostalgic read with three children’s books that explore the ways we connect to each other .

Midnight Motorbike

On a blistering hot moonlit night in South India, a girl and her mother ride together on a motorbike to beat the heat and take in the sights in Maureen Shay Tajsar’s lush, atmospheric Midnight Motorbike (S&S, $19.99, 9781534418509). “On a night like tonight,” the girl’s Amma tells her, “we are in the belly of the Indian moon.” Their ride is a luxuriant lullaby, a time of togetherness as well as a feast for the eyes and the senses.

Young readers will be transported by “flashes of snake eyes and bougainvillea in our motorbike headlight.” The pair pass silk shops, temples and an elephant who gives the narrator a kiss—which her mother tells her is good luck. Tajsar’s prose provides a sensory travelogue as the young rider smells “steaming silver-cupped chai, spicy potato-stuffed masala dosas, and the warm hay of an elephant’s bed.”

Ishita Jain’s art vividly evokes the night sky with a deep blue background, against which big splashes of vivid color pop. Amma’s bright orange sari swirls into the

air, framing the sunset over the Bay, while the huge white moon looms like a giant in the sky. Throughout, Amma’s orange sari and the motorbike’s orange headlights help light the way, providing a line of focus on this fascinating tour of a South Indian night.

While this mother-daughter adventure ignites the senses, as the narrator is finally lulled to sleep by the end, it also becomes a poignant salute to the love between parent and child. Midnight Motorbike is an exciting and ultimately comforting ode to adventure, observation and love.

—Alice Cary

Another Word for Neighbor

The protagonist of Another Word for Neighbor (HarperCollins, $19.99, 9780063334915), Han, only likes his tea, the newspaper and his plants—the latter because they can’t talk. So it’s not exactly a match made in heaven when young Kate and Olly, who happen to be especially chatty, move in next door. No matter how much Han ignores or chastises the pair, they persist in knocking on Han’s door, climbing up his peach tree, committing federal offenses by opening up his mailbox and asking lots of questions. These questions are mostly silly ones about Han’s hair, until one day Kate asks about the portrait of a woman prominently hanging on Han’s wall.

Han stares

ahead in grief as he tells the children that the woman was his late wife, Lan.

Later, the children bring an orchid to Han in an effort to cheer him up, prompting Han to remember how Lan valued hospitality. Han invites the children in and begins to open up to them, sharing snacks, stories about Lan and even a recipe for his favorite food, pho, which he hasn’t made since her death.

Angela Pham Krans, whose picture book Finding Papa was an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature honoree, depicts the growth of this intergenerational relationship with charming, witty prose that young readers will find both educational and humorous. Han is described as “old and mostly ornery,” which the narration clarifies as meaning “grumpy.” On the other hand, “Kate and Olly were inquisitive adventurers. Those are words for never giving up!” The sweet, cheerful atmosphere is complemented well by Thai My Phuong’s soft color palette and expressive characters, which inhabit a detailed, lively world of lush greenery and friendly cats, dogs and birds—animals just as curious as Kate and Olly. Another Word for Neighbor balances its heartfelt depiction of grief and isolation with all the warmth of a steaming bowl of pho.

—Yi Jiang

H Home Is a Wish

Stories about moving from one home to another are a staple of children’s picture books, but many just skim the surface, showing a flurry of moving boxes and an eventual settling in. In contrast, Home Is a Wish (Roaring Brook,

$18.99, 9781250881328)

is a deeply felt story told from a child’s point of view. It’s one of the best this reviewer has seen.

Readers don’t learn any specifics about the relocation of the narrator’s family, though the plane depicted suggests that the narrator has moved to a different country. This accentuates the sense of dislocation that young children are apt to feel, while adding to the universality of the reading experience. Julia Kuo’s sparse narration and engaging illustrations get right to the heart of the matter: those topsy-turvy feelings erupting from the move.

Fans of Kuo’s Let’s Do Everything and Nothing and When Love Is More Than Words know how well she conveys meaningful sentiments without resorting to schmaltz. In Home Is a Wish, shades of purple, peach and orange lend a dreamy, bright feel to the narrator’s apartment as they pack up and leave, “not knowing if we will ever be back.” Kuo’s graphic style and use of color are particularly engaging, and the book is anchored by dark, deep blues depicting the night and the ocean. The new apartment is in the midst of a bright, bustling city surrounded by snow-capped mountains. “I see and feel every little thing in this strange, new place,” the narrator says, while standing on a balcony and peering out at this intriguing new home, which is filled with an array of pastel colors and billboards showing cheery fish. Scenes from outside the new apartment let readers peer through its windows at the grandmother and the mother unpacking, while the lonely child sits outside, wondering, “How can this be our home?”

One yearning, dreamlike spread sees the narrator paddling a canoe from the family’s old apartment building to their new one. But as the weather warms and flowers bloom, Kuo depicts fun family outings, including a new best friend, Carmen, and the narrator realizes, “Now I see there are different homes for different times: a home from before, a home for now, even a home for later. Home is a wish that comes true when I can say, I’m from here now.”

Home Is a Wish is a gorgeous book that allows readers to feel both the emotions of displacement and the comforts of home. It’s an ultimately reassuring story that encourages empathy and invites discussion from young readers.

—Alice Cary

meet Julia Kuo

Julia Kuo is the author-illustrator of Let’s Do Everything and Nothing and Luminous. As an illustrator, she has also collaborated with other authors such as Martha Brockenbrough and Grace Lin (I Am an American) and Livia Blackburne (I Dream of Popo). She is based in Bellevue, Washington. Home is a Wish explores what it’s like for a child to start over in a different place, with all its unfamiliar sounds and people. But with the help of a new community, perhaps home can become “a wish that comes true.”

© ERIN DREWITZ

H The Burning Season

By Caroline Starr Rose MIDDLE GRADE

On Opal Gloria Halloway’s 12th birthday, as Mom and Gran present her with a cake made from Great Aunt Dor’s time-honored recipe, Opal thinks, “This is the day I begin.” Fire season is afoot, and it’s time for her to become the fourth link in a familial chain of female fire lookouts in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest. Dor became the first one in 1915; now, Mom and Gran will teach Opal “the skill of spotting smokes / to find the patience needed / to track a fire / to its beginnings.”

But as Caroline Starr Rose’s compelling novel-in-verse The Burning Season (Nancy Paulsen, $17.99, 9780593617939) opens, Opal is feeling conflicted. She longs to move to nearby Cielito to live with family friends

H Please Pay Attention

By Jamie Sumner

MIDDLE GRADE

Sixth grader Beatrix (Bea) is thriving. She and her adoptive mom Maxine (Max) have a strong bond, and they find support in their neighbors Lucius and Aaron, who have built a ramp for Bea, since she has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get in and out of the duplex they share. And Bea loves the tightknit community at Cedar Crest Presbyterian school, especially her firm but kind teacher, Mrs. Canelli, and Josie, her “Little,” the shy and anxious kindergartner she is mentoring for the year.

But all this is shattered in a matter of minutes after a shooting at Cedar Crest. Bea survives, but in the aftermath, she is traumatized and devastated by the damage done to her community. She also blames herself for being unable to follow her teacher’s lockdown directions due to her disability: “I am not a person / who can be trusted / to escape the bad things.” Friends and family around her respond by speaking out against gun violence, but Bea retreats into herself. Perhaps a visit to a nearby horse farm specializing in accommodations for disabled riders could allow her

and attend middle school with her BFFs, the Trujillo twins. She also wants to try life at ground level instead of in a tower 10,000 feet up Wolf Mountain.

There’s another problem: her fear of fire, induced by several incidents over the years. When she was 5, her firejumper dad died in a wildfire. At age 8, she, along with Mom and Gran, barely escaped a fire via airlift. And at 10, she witnessed “horrible burning, the fire destroying / the home I loved, my wilderness.” How will she succeed if she’s deeply afraid?

Opal’s mettle is dramatically tested when Gran goes missing in the forest. Mom is stranded in town after a trail washout, so Opal must strike out alone to search for Gran while

to regain her self-confidence and her love for the world.

Inspired by the death of a friend in the 2023 Nashville, Tennessee, school shooting, Jamie Sumner’s Please Pay Attention (Atheneum, $17.99, 9781665956079) is written in free verse in Bea’s first-person voice. The poetic language makes the horror of school violence clear without depicting it in a graphic way. In the end, Bea’s courageous recovery will prompt readers of all ages to examine whether school lockdown policies truly accommodate all students—and consider the possibility of a more peaceful world where such policies can be a relic of the past.

—Norah Piehl

H Don’t Trust Fish

By Neil Sharpson

Illustrated by Dan Santat

PICTURE BOOK

Fish are super cool, right? For starters, they can breathe underwater; they come in a glorious array of sizes, shapes and colors; and they’ve starred in beloved animated films, too. But the narrator of the wonderfully hilarious Don’t Trust Fish (Dial, $18.99, 9780593616673) thinks we shouldn’t be so

tracking an ongoing fire she spots along the way. Rose expertly builds gripping suspense as she conveys Opal’s state of mind and the peril she faces with breathtaking immediacy. “What if this fire wins? / My life, what if—” Opal thinks. Can she protect the wilderness and rescue Gran before it’s too late?

Readers will root for Opal to prevail against fire and fear in this insightful, exciting read bolstered by Rose’s research into the history of wildfire management, which is detailed in an author’s note in the back matter. The Burning Season is a masterful, memorable coming-of-age tale that sensitively explores the power and pressures of family legacy.

—Linda M. Castellitto

quick to praise our fishy so-called friends, instead warning in big bold letters, “DON’T TRUST FISH!”

It’s not easy to craft a laugh-out-loud story, but Irish playwright and novelist Neil Sharpson gets it just right in his picture book debut. As does National Book Award-winner and Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat, with witty illustrations sure to inspire even more giggling as readers eagerly discover why the aggrieved narrator insists we should not trust fish.

At first, the narrator calmly shares facts about mammals, reptiles and birds that are accompanied by photorealistic illustrations, as one might expect in a guide to animals. But it soon becomes clear the narrator just can’t get over the otherworldly mystique and unpredictability of fish. As the illustrations grow more colorful and their lines more relaxed, sedately scientific language is peppered with warnings like, “Some fish eat poor, innocent crabs who are just trying to have a nice time in the sea.” Things escalate: “Fish spend all their time in the water. Where we can’t see them. . . . Are they plotting our doom?”

By the time readers realize the narrator is (surprise!) an indignant crab with an unshakable anti-fish fixation, they’ll have learned and laughed many times over. Don’t Trust Fish is an educational and highly entertaining delight sure to inspire interest in oceanography and ichthyology—and lots of rereads. (Just don’t tell any crabs you may know!)

—Linda M. Castellitto

H Where Are You, Brontë?

By Tomie dePaola

Illustrated by Barbara McClintock

PICTURE BOOK

A tender tribute that expresses the weight of loss after the death of a pet, the late Tomie dePaola’s Where Are You, Brontë? (S&S, $19.99, 9781534418509) is brought to life by Barbara McClintock, whose illustrations vividly complement dePaola’s heartfelt text.

From the memorable day dePaola’s beloved dog, Brontë, first arrived, flying to dePaola “on an airplane from Chicago,” to their simple, quiet days spent together, the picture book beautifully conveys the depth of their bond. Despite his eventual aging and blindness, Brontë continues to navigate his world with resilience. The text acknowledges Brontë’s death with a simple yet profound line: “The day you left me, I knew I would miss you.” McClintock poignantly illustrates dePaola’s grief through his gazing at an empty dog bed. Yet the story closes on a note of hope and love, as dePaola finds comfort in a rainbow reminding him that Brontë is “still with me, in my heart forever.”

The illustrations masterfully salute dePaola’s legacy, blending McClintock’s own style with his iconic clean lines and vibrant palettes. She divides the story into panels similar to those dePaola often used, accelerating the narrative’s pace while capturing the beauty of each moment. In one panel, a celebratory feast features some of dePaola’s beloved characters, reinforcing the idea that Where Are You, Brontë? not only honors a pet, but also delivers a reverent homage to dePaola’s life and artistry.

—Julie Danielson

As Pencil begins, curly green shavings tumble down a stark white backdrop, transforming into leaves on a tree that is eventually joined by more trees of different colors, textures, shapes and sizes. Together, they form a forest rife with intricate details and reveling animals.

When the trees are chopped down, a host of exquisitely rendered winged creatures sallies forth: Sparrows curve here, mallards soar there, crows swoop by and an owl flaps along, too. They follow along as the logs are transported to a factory that Kim depicts with a grayscale palette and angled edges, which stand in sharp contrast to the curvy organic shapes of flora and fauna.

At the factory, hard-hatted workers run machinery to remake the logs into pile after pile of colored pencils that eventually take up residence at an art supply store, which is patronized by an expressive little girl who uses her new pencils to decorate tree stumps.

In Pencil, Kim artfully blends the fanciful and the practical as she invites readers to ponder cycles of destruction and renewal, creativity and inspiration. Her focus on a pencil’s life cycle casts an everyday object in an interesting new light while prompting reflection on what can happen when nature is not nurtured.

A list of helpful tips in the back matter titled “How to read a silent book” offers strategies for immersing oneself in a wordless tale like this one. “When you close the book, have a moment of silence to give everyone the space to reflect on the experience,” Kim suggests, offering the perfect segue to further contemplation and creation.

—Linda M. Castellitto

The Bear Out There

By Jess Hannigan

By Hye-Eun Kim

PICTURE BOOK

What is a colored pencil? Is it just an artist’s tool? In Pencil (TOON, $18.99, 9781662665530), debut author-illustrator Hye-Eun Kim wordlessly—and beautifully—conveys to readers all the possibilities that a pencil can signify.

PICTURE BOOK

The woods can be a dangerous place, especially when there are bears around. But luckily, a young host is here to invite scared wanderers into a cottage. They warn you about the signs of a bear: “The hair on your arms stands straight up. You feel a pair of great big eyes watching the back of your head. Your feet get suuuuper itchy.” But when a bear shows up at the door, it throws everything the host says into question. Who really owns this house . . . and who really knows the truth of what’s in the woods?

Spider in the Well author-illustrator Jess Hannigan returns with The Bear Out There

(Quill Tree, $19.99, 9780063289482), an eccentric riff on the Goldilocks fairy tale. Filled with snarky commentary, witty imagery and slapstick comedy, this picture book will keep readers giggling. Hannigan’s characters talk directly to the reader, often contradicting the reality depicted in surrounding illustrations. Her iconic paper-cut artwork is bubbly, colorful and expressive—perfect for this backand-forth pull between text and image. The Bear Out There will delight any reader looking for retellings that challenge traditional perspectives and anyone who enjoys subversive picture books like I Want My Hat Back —Nicole Brinkley

H Words With Wings and Magic Things

By Matthew Burgess

Illustrated by Doug Salati

PICTURE BOOK

Have you met an alligator on a train? Glimpsed fairies out of the corner of your eye? Do you feel the roar of a tiger inside you? Open this book and dare to pass through a portal leading to a dream world where pinatas breathe fire, where sneakers have jetpacks and where you might just travel through time on a wave of slime.

In this delightful collection of poems, Words With Wings and Magic Things (Tundra, $19.99, 9781774880289), Matthew Burgess takes us on a wild adventure, with poems ranging from silly to sensitive, nonsensical to insightful. Caldecott Medalist Doug Salati’s bright and lively illustrations add movement and personality to each poem, creating a fantastical dreamscape of full moons and flying whales. Utilizing both limited color palettes and full-color spreads, these illustrations take the reader on a visual adventure alongside the lyrical experience of the text. Words With Wings and Magic Things will captivate all ages and is a perfect introduction for young readers to the whimsy and wonder of poetry. Parents who grew up with Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends will love reading this collection to their children, and readers will pick this book up again and again and find something new each time they do. Words With Wings and Magic Things is sure to inspire readers to seek bold and courageous adventures. Many will likely even pick up a pen and create their own poetry.

—Callie Ann Starkey

H Pencil