June 2024 BookPage

Summer READING

18 books to tote to the beach and beyond

ALSO INSIDE

• Four Pride Month must-reads

• Critic Ann Powers on Joni Mitchell

• K.A. Linde’s urban romantasy

• Rollicking animal picture books

EDITORIAL POLICY

BookPage is a selection guide for new books. Our editors select for review the best books published in a variety of categories. BookPage is editorially independent; only books we highly recommend are featured. Stars (H) are assigned by BookPage editors to indicate titles that are exceptionally executed in their genres and categories.

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Two illustrated stories explore LGBTQ+ identity and self-acceptance

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Meet Toni Yuly, the author-illustrator of The Pelican Can!

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The Last Murder at the End of the World

In Stuart Turton’s post-apocalyptic thriller, The Last Murder at the End of the World (Sourcebooks Landmark, $27.99, 9781728254654), the world as we know it came to a cataclysmic end some 90 years back, when a malevolent insect-infested fog engulfed the globe, killing everything in its amorphous path. Only a handful of survivors on a remote Greek island are still alive. The leader of the island is an older (17 decades’ worth of older) woman named Niema, who developed the means to keep the fog at bay, albeit too late for everyone in the world save for the island’s 122 villagers and two of her fellow scientists. And there they sit, living out the peaceful existence that somehow eluded humanity in all the millennia leading up to the end times. But there is trouble in paradise, as the narrator (a disembodied female voice eerily reminiscent of HAL the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey) lets the reader know from early on. The unthinkable is about to happen on the island—a murder, the resolution of which is key to saving the island from the fog, which has begun to penetrate the defenses that Niema set up all those years ago. If you like some sci-fi with your murder, or conversely, some murder with your sci-fi, you have come to the right place. It’s a locked-room mystery expanded to island-sized dimensions, with a narrator who may be putting a finger on the scale that will determine the continuing existence of humankind: Y’all ain’t seen nothin’ like this before.

The Last Note of Warning

Call it the Jazz Age, the Prohibition era, the Roaring ’20s; whatever you call it, it’s Vivian Kelly’s golden ticket to the naughtiness and revelry denied by her strict Irish upbringing before she emigrated to America. Her venue of choice is the Nightingale speak-easy, where she works pouring drinks for the high society clientele. The Last Note of Warning (Minotaur, $29, 9781250325792) marks Vivian’s third appearance in Katharine Schellman’s popular series, in which atmosphere doubles as a character and murder abounds. This time out, the murder hits rather closer to home: The prime suspect is none other than Vivian Kelly herself, the damning evidence being wealthy businessman Buchanan’s dried blood on her hands. Luckily for her, some well-placed friends come to her rescue, but the best deal they can broker puts Vivian in the unenviable position of having to serve up the real killer within seven days’ time. The mystery grows, um, mysteriouser when Vivian starts to suspect that someone intentionally framed her for Buchanan’s death. And heaven knows there is no shortage of shady types hanging around the Nightingale. The characters are colorful, the story is deliciously well-spun and the ambiance will make you wish that you too had been a-struttin’ in the Jazz Age.

H When We Were Silent

Auspicious debut alert: Fiona McPhillips’ When We Were Silent (Flatiron, $28.99, 9781250908230) is the strongest first novel I have read in ages, right up there with Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising, my go-to example of first-timer excellence. If you attend Dublin’s prestigious Highfield Manor private school, the first thing you learn is “What happens at Highfield stays at Highfield,” even if it involves episodes that border on the unspeakable. Louise Manson is haunted by one such episode, even though it’s been nearly 40 years since her time at the school. By most measures, she didn’t really belong at Highfield. She was working class, inhabiting the same hallowed halls as the elite by virtue of a scholarship, not old money and familial connections. And she was not there for the prestige: She was there to exact revenge for her best friend’s suicide and to take down those she deemed responsible. Not to give away anything here, but this endeavor did not go too well. Spectacularly badly, in fact, and decades later Louise is still dealing with the fallout. But now in the modern day, thanks in part to that unwritten Highfield code of silence, she may have a second chance at retribution—or she may face fallout that far surpasses that first time around. When We Were Silent is not always a comfortable read, but you didn’t come here for comfortable, did you?

Farewell, Amethystine

Easy Rawlins is 50?? How the hell did that happen? When we think of him, we think of a young Denzel Washington from the film Devil in a Blue Dress, adapted from the book that introduced Walter Mosley’s iconic private investigator to the world way back in 1990. But hey, even Denzel is past 50 now. As Farewell, Amethystine (Mulholland, $30, 9780316491112) opens, the 50-year-old Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins of 1970 is, by comparison to his younger days at least, less the firebrand and more the respectable businessman. That said, when a gorgeous young Black woman with a sad story enters his office, an event that has taken place with some regularity over the years, he can still be coaxed into action, and it is a fair bet that he will acquit himself much as he did in his younger days. Amethystine Stoller is missing one husband, and she appears convinced that Easy Rawlins is the go-to guy to find him. Which, of course, he does in short order, but the husband is sadly quite dead. Normally, Easy would tap his cop buddy, Melvin Suggs, to give him a hand with the parts of an investigation that only the police have access to. But at the moment, Suggs is in the wind with problems of his own. Do those problems include another beautiful woman? Well, yes. And will those disparate story lines have some points of connection? Seems likely. And will Mosley wrap it all up better than pretty much anyone else in the field? A resounding yes on that.

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.

H James

In James (Random House Audio, 8 hours) Percival Everett retells one of America’s most beloved and most controversial novels, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from the point of view of the escaped slave Jim. Everett subverts Twain’s depiction of Jim as the passive witness of Huck’s adventures, and instead reveals Jim, who goes by James, to be the increasingly dynamic subject of his own story.

Voice is crucial to this reenvisioning, as James deliberately changes his diction depending on whether he is speaking to white people, to other enslaved people, or addressing himself. Dominic Hoffman’s deft performance of James’s many voices reveals his complexity and humanity with more immediacy and power than simply reading the words on the page could.

—Deborah Mason

Grief Is for People

Grief Is for People (Macmillan Audio, 6 hours) is a dual story of loss from the perspective of author and audiobook narrator Sloane Crosley. In 2019, in quick succession, Crosley’s home in New York City was burglarized and her best friend, Russell, died by suicide. In the months that follow, the two tragedies meld together in Crosley’s mind, and she pursues the recovery of her stolen items with the fervor of someone trying to bring back the dead. Crosley’s narration is frank and articulate, a perfect complement to the wit and candor of her prose. Grief Is for People is Crosley’s personal story of processing, but also an homage to Russell, to his talent and his legacy and the gaping hole left behind by his death.

—Jessica Peng

H The Unclaimed

Much has been written about the recent epidemic of loneliness in America. The Unclaimed : Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels (Random House Audio, 9.5 hours), an impeccably researched collaboration by sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans, traces that epidemic to its tragic and perhaps inevitable conclusion, as it follows the stories of four individuals whose bodies are unclaimed and destined for county disposal after their death. Nan McNamara’s direct and compelling narration mirrors the clarity of the text, which combines personal narratives with historical and cultural context, including the not insignificant task of explaining the bureaucratic apparatus surrounding death. The extensive afterword is worth a listen, too, to understand and fully appreciate the complexities of the issue and the work involved in creating this heartbreaking but essential project.

Soak up the SOUNDWAVES

—Norah Piehl

READ BY LIPICA SHAH

BY GABRA ZACKMAN

READ BY DANNY PINO READ BY EMILY PIKE STEWART

FATES AND FURIES

Rebellious women face a family curse in Marcela Fuentes’ debut novel .

In Malas, the legend of La Llorona (the Weeping Woman) ties together the stories of two women from different generations in a Texas border town. When the two meet in the ’90s, their connection— including a shared love of Selena—threatens to surface buried town secrets.

Malas is your first novel. Can you tell us a bit about your writing process for the book? When did you start writing it and where did your inspiration come from?

Malas began as my attempt to write a fairy tale for a fairy tales course during my M.F.A. The first thing that came to me was a young and very pregnant Pilar being confronted by an elderly woman claiming to be her husband Jose Alfredo’s ‘real’ wife. I was in Iowa at the time, buried in snow, which made me vividly recall the other extreme—the merciless heat of a south Texas summer, and the dreamlike quality of those still, hot afternoons, perfect for the apparition of this old woman in the street. But though I set out to write a villain, I ended up digging into a lot of vulnerability. I wrote about 40 pages, the opening to the novel, and didn’t turn in my fairy tale after all because the story would not end. Probably six months later, another big chunk came to me, in the form of Gen-X teen Lulu running around at night, full of hurt and rage at her father. Looking back, I think my inspiration came from the style of storytelling I’d heard all my life, a family or local history that might pass for folklore.

of the beholder, and also, the idea that overcoming generational trauma might sometimes be related to not accepting a fate-driven narrative. Another preoccupation in Malas was the idea of stories, romanticized or folkloric, taking the place of factual events, because people are prone to mythologizing, even family histories.

An intergenerational saga, Malas moves between different decades, from the 1940s to the 1990s. What was it about this time period that interested you?

I am very interested in the period before the Civil Rights Movement in Texas, the history for Mexicans and Tejanos, the strictures they dealt with, but also the strength and creativity of this community. Malas is a music novel too, and the 1950s is when Tejano, like many genres of music, began to be influenced by rock ’n’ roll, which very much started the trajectory that led to the “Tejano Boom” of the 1990s, and Selena’s unique sound. The history of Tejano music is the history of this place.

H Malas Viking, $29, 9780593655788

HISTORICAL FICTION

Lulu is an avid music fan and aspiring punk singer, and the book is peppered throughout with musical references, particularly to Tejano and norteño bands. If you were to create a soundtrack for readers to listen to while reading Malas, what songs would you include?

For sure, “Hey Baby, Que Paso” by The Texas Tornados, “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” by Selena, and so much Pedro Infante.

This book brims with colorful descriptions and vivid imagery. Your description of the dusty border town of La Cienega was particularly captivating, lending Malas a very precise sense of place and cultural richness. Did you draw at all upon your hometown of Del Rio, Texas, when developing the setting for this book? Certainly there’s a lot of Del Rio in my novel, but I also drew on other small border towns I’m familiar with, and Laredo, which is my mother’s hometown. I considered setting the novel in an actual place, but ultimately there was more freedom in a fictitious one. I wanted to respect the individual histories of those actual towns, while retaining an authentic sense of the complexity of these communities.

One powerful scene in the book occurs when Lulu’s father educates her about the various types of gritos in Mexican music and teaches her how to perform one. Could you tell us more about the importance of the grito?

“[O]vercoming generational trauma might sometimes be related to not accepting a fate-driven narrative.”

One surprising thing about Malas is that although it begins rooted in the supernatural, it evolves into a story that is more grounded in reality. Can you discuss how you approached that balance and made the choice to shift it over the course of the novel?

I would say that there are different realities for different people. Pilar has a perspective that might be more susceptible to a belief in the supernatural, and to a certain extent Lulu’s father does too. One of the things I wanted to explore was this idea of reality being very much in the eye

A grito is a vocal eruption of emotion—joy, grief, rage, love, pride—and sometimes the sound of rebellion. In music, it’s a cathartic yelling, amping up the emotion. And, as Lulu says in the novel, it’s a war cry. There’s a highly mythologized account of the “grito de Dolores” the cry of a priest to call his congregation to arms on the eve of Mexican Independence. The scene in the book is an important moment between Lulu and her father because music is one thing that remains a bond between them. Fraught as their relationship is, the heartbreaking thing is they actually love each other very deeply and they are quite similar personalities. I wanted this to be a moment of that love, a bit of closeness and vulnerability for both of them. He’s handing down a heritage to her, and it is a heritage of rebellion, though he doesn’t realize she wants to use it to rebel against him.

Throughout the book, we observe Lulu grappling with the transition between girlhood and womanhood, something that is also

symbolized by her impending quinceañera. What did you find the most challenging about telling the story of a protagonist who is navigating this particularly complicated time in one’s life? The most challenging part was going to that emotionally vulnerable place and trying to forget my adult consciousness, placing myself in the headspace of an angry, hurt kid. I kept having to remind myself that a 14-year-old can morph from child to adult, even moment to moment. Lulu’s a smart girl, overconfident in her abilities and toughness. Her feelings, much as she disavows them, are ardent and immediate and she doesn’t have the maturity or the parental guidance to process them.

With your debut novel under your belt, can you tell us what you’ll be working on next?

I’m finishing a linked story collection called My Heart Has More Rooms Than a Whorehouse. It follows the members of an extended Latinx family and explores the pressure points of familial obligations and the complexities of love. A young boy from the barrio settles a wager his dead father made with a rich man. A sister tries to make sense of her brother’s career as a bull rider. A group of kids search for the bogeyman haunting their grandmother’s house. A suburban wife aches to understand her volatile husband. The people in these stories navigate the web of family allegiances while trying to find breathing space for themselves.

You are a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and now teach Creative Writing at Texas Christian University. What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve received and now give to your students? The best piece of advice I got was that my writing community, writer friends, were the best thing I’d get from my M.F.A. I have a group of writer friends. I trust their eyes on my work, as they trust mine on theirs. I tell my students the same thing: find your writer friends. You’ll keep each other writing no matter what life throws at you.

—Stephenie Harrison

The

to become the book of the summer is on

Meet the season’s airport companions and poolside stalwarts .

June 4

One Deadly Eye by Randy Wayne White Hanover Square, $28.99, 9781335013606

Doc Ford is back, and this time he must navigate a prison break, a gang of thieves and a Category 5 hurricane in White’s latest suspense novel.

The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent

Bramble, $29.99, 9781250343154

In the highly anticipated sequel to The Serpent & the Wings of Night, human princess Oraya and vampire king Raihn forge a secret alliance to save their kingdom.

June 11

Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand

Little, Brown, $30, 9780316258876

Bestselling author Hilderbrand concludes her Nantucket novels with a story of the arrival and disappearance of an elusive, wealthy family.

Moonbound by Robin Sloan

MCD, $29, 9780374610609

Sloan’s new sci-fi novel incorporates fantasy elements as a sentient AI narrator tells the tale of Ariel, a young adventurer in search of glory.

June 18

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

William Morrow, $30, 9780063003101

After dazzling readers with The Guest List and The Paris Apartment, Foley sets her latest murder mystery at a luxury resort hidden deep in the forest.

June 25

Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman

Del Rey, $28, 9780593723128

The bestselling author of Bird Box returns with a chilling horror novel, perfect for fans of Coraline. An entity called Other Mommy demands entrance into 18-year-old Bela’s heart, and takes increasingly terrifying measures when Bela refuses.

Husbands & Lovers by Beatriz Williams

Ballantine, $30, 9780593724224

Williams maps the lives and loves of two women who face morally complex challenges in modern-day New England and 1950s Cairo, respectively.

H Birding With Benefits

Birding with Benefits (Gallery, $18.99, 9781668037836) by Sarah T. Dubb is a refreshing love story about growing, changing and the natural resistance to both. Fortysomethings Celeste and John are both a bit tattered by life when a mutual friend asks Celeste to partner with John at a bird-watching event. On a whim, Celeste decides to continue doing so for the entire six weeks of a contest John’s entered. The commitment-wary pair grow closer, and finally succumb to their attraction. But can their friends-with-benefits relationship end painlessly once the contest is over? Filled with everyday moments and a marvelous sense of place— the author’s hometown of Tucson, Arizona—readers will lose their own hearts to playful Celeste and solid John, both authentic, well-meaning people you’d like to join for a coffee or a hike. Middle-aged characters don’t star in a lot of romances; how fabulous that these two get top billing in this top-notch romance.

Wake Me Most Wickedly

Felicia Grossman’s Wake Me Most Wickedly (Forever, $9.99, 9781538722565) is a genderswapped spin on Snow White set in the Jewish community of 1832 London. Hannah Moses has dedicated herself to giving her younger sister a better life, and is building a sizable dowry for her by selling secondhand goods and information to unsavory characters. Simon Weiss is similarly loyal to his brother, a banker trying to secure a spot in the gentile world through baptism and marriage. When Hannah and Simon meet, sparks fly and trouble begins. Simon is sure of himself and his feelings, but Hannah knows she can be nothing to him beyond an occasional lover thanks to her criminal activities. Grossman’s second Once Upon the East End romance is a wonderful story filled with adventure, love and, above all, passion.

All’s Fair in Love and War

A Regency governess gets a man in Virginia Heath’s All’s Fair in Love and War (Griffin, $18, 9781250896070). Continually passed over for employment due to her plain-spoken ways, Georgina Rowe can only say yes when a desperate naval officer needs someone to watch over his rambunctious nephew and nieces. Harry treasures order and stability and Georgina provides—well, not that. Not only does she have unconventional views about how children should learn, she’s personally challenging his vow to never fall for a woman again. After a career-disrupting engagement years before, Harry savors his solitary state . . . until he realizes how much he enjoys family life and the irrepressible Georgina. Readers never tire of a down-on-her-luck heroine and a hero who needs to lighten up, and Heath provides both in this entertaining romp along with puckish children, busybody servants and mischievous dogs.

Romantasy, but make it dystopian

K .A . Linde’s new urban fantasy is set in a monster-filled New York City

Bold thief Kierse gets more than she bargained for when she breaks into a terrifying creature’s home in The Wren in the Holly Library.

This novel takes place in a fantasy version of New York City. How many nooks and crannies in the novel are based on real locations? Does the shop that sells Kierse’s favorite cinnamon babka actually exist? I wrote it as monster New York City and based it off of my experiences in New York. After I finished, I spent a week with my husband walking the streets of the city, riding the subway and taking photographs. Then I came home and edited the entire book in one fell swoop to bring all the reality of Manhattan to the locations. So everywhere is real or based on something, including the history of Five Points, Track 61 and yes, Kierse’s bakery! It’s based on William Greenberg’s bakery on the Upper East Side. It’s one of my favorite places.

you’ve gleaned from it?

Probably my favorite kernel of truth is from Roald Dahl’s The Witches, the idea that monsters live among us and even ordinary people can seem scary. Which parallels the story, but also suggests that you never really know what anyone is going through.

The Wren in the Holly Library

Entangled: Red Tower Books, $32.99

9781649374073

Kierse is tough and capable, but she also embraces her sensuality and openly relies on others. Were you consciously trying to avoid stereotypes?

Kierse being both strong and vulnerable mimics how so many women have to go through life. To quote Barbie, “It is literally impossible to be a woman.” It’s important for her to be three-dimensional, for people to be able to relate to her because she’s not a blank slate or entirely larger than life.

The central motto of the society of The Wren in the Holly Library is “Monsters not magic.” Do you have any personal mottoes?

The banter is so enjoyable! Where do you draw inspiration for your witty dialogue? Honestly, I just have a very vivid imagination, and I’m inherently sarcastic. Kierse has to know how to handle herself, and a lot of it comes down to using banter to control a situation. Which Graves obviously likes.

Do you have a favorite folk tale from childhood? What is the “kernel of truth” that

I love “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Help people, bring people up with you, raise your voice for the things that you believe in. And in the same vein, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” We’re helping each other out. We’re not competing with each other.

This book launches a new series. How would you describe the sequel in one short phrase? Trust issues. —Jessica Peng

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

Before they were famous

Raised by genteel, churchgoing parents, actress Geena Davis was a shy young woman while she was growing up, but over time, she found her true self as an artist and feminist. She chronicles her personal evolution in her companionable memoir, Dying of Politeness (HarperOne, $18.99, 9780063119147). With wit and honesty, Davis takes stock of her time as a model, key film roles (including Thelma & Louise ), important relationships and motherhood. She also considers the difficulties of being a woman in Hollywood. Throughout this vivid book, Davis proves a skillful storyteller with hard-won wisdom to share.

When it comes to summer reading, nothing beats a celebrity memoir.

Singer and actor Billy Porter opens up about his difficult childhood in Unprotected (Abrams, $18, 9781419746208). As a gay Black kid in 1970s Pittsburgh, Porter was harassed at school and abused at home. But he found empowerment in performing and—thanks to his remarkable talents— went on to achieve professional success. From living with HIV to starring on Broadway, Porter candidly covers personal tests and triumphs. His frankness as he delves into topics like gay rights, racism and the redemptive power of art make his memoir a rewarding book club pick.

H The Heirloomist

Packed inside The Heirloomist: 100 Heirlooms and the Stories They Tell (Chronicle, $27.95, 9781797224404) are photographs and stories of 100 items belonging to everyday as well as famous people. Their treasures might be a Rolex watch or a Rolleiflex camera—or simply scribbled notes and ticket stubs.

After becoming curator of her family’s important items, Shana Novak turned to other people’s stuff. No matter their financial value, she writes, “all are priceless, precisely because their stories will play your heartstrings like a symphony.” Take, for example, the daughter of a New York City firefighter who died on 9/11. Several years after that tragedy, she found an old Magna Doodle, on which her father had written: “Dear Tiana, I love you. Daddy.”

The Heirloomist is meant to be shared with loved ones. They may even start rummaging through their stuff with a freshly appreciative eye.

—Alice Cary

All You Need is Rhythm & Grit

Cory Wharton-Malcolm joyfully makes room for people to bring their full selves to the track in All You Need is Rhythm & Grit: How to Run Now—for Health, Joy, and a Body That Loves You Back (Pegasus, $27.95, 9781639366606).

The book is refreshingly real about the pains and the joys of running; one feels a sense of “I can do this, but it’s going to be tough.” Though his base pace as a beginner was 13 minutes per mile, Wharton-Malcolm now thanks running for meeting his wife, finding purposeful work and tapping into what he calls “cardio confidence.”

Comedian Jo Koy explores his biracial background in Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo (Dey Street, $17.99, 9780062969972). From an early age, Koy—the son of a white father and Filipina mother—struggled to find a sense of self. Inspired by figures like Richard Pryor, he decided to become a comedian. On the path to success, Koy contended with racism and his own sense of uncertainty. In this bold yet vulnerable book, he shares fascinating details about his creative methods and growth. Themes of identity, the immigrant experience and racial stereotyping will kick-start lively dialogue among readers.

With Finding Me (HarperOne, $17.99, 9780063037366), Oscar winner Viola Davis offers an unflinching account of her difficult journey to stardom. One of six children, Davis grew up in a poor family with an abusive father. At Rhode Island College and The Juilliard School, she studied acting and laid the groundwork for an acclaimed career on stage and screen. In her memoir, she traces her development as an actress, reflecting on the challenges of being typecast and the lack of substantial film roles for Black women. Inspired and revealing, Finding Me gives readers insights into the mindset of a legendary actress.

A BookPage reviewer since 2003, Julie Hale recommends the best paperback books to spark discussion in your reading group. book

Wharton-Malcolm, who is a large-bodied Black man, argues for a more inclusive sport. He undeniably achieves much in this slim volume: encouragement, connection and tips to nudge any would-be runner off the couch and into the world.

—Kelly Blewett

Project UrbEx

While Ikumi Nakamura is best known as a Japanese video game artist and developer, Project UrbEx: Adventures in Ghost Towns, Wastelands and Other Forgotten Worlds (Thames & Hudson, $50, 9780500026946) reveals she’s also an adventurous photographer who has long traveled the world to explore and capture unusual and hidden locations.

This volume includes images from Nakamura’s explorations in North America, Europe and Asia accompanied by short, evocative essays and captions. The photos range from an old Italian garment factory, a decaying theme park in Bali and the ruins of military planes baking in the Mojave Desert sun. A few depict Nakamura herself in precarious positions as she attempts to capture a shot.

It is unfortunate that the text is printed in bright orange, which readers may find difficult to read. Otherwise, this beautifully designed book is an intriguing conversation starter that may inspire photographers to undertake their own explorations.

—Deborah Hopkinson

GO WITH THE FLOW

Five books to read as you soak, float and ride the waves .

MY LIFE WITH SEA TURTLES

Marine biologist and ecologist Christine Figgener was in an undergraduate research program in Egypt when she encountered her first sea turtle and, mesmerized, watched it swim through the waters of the Red Sea. With zeal and passion, Figgener shares a wealth of information about these creatures in her captivating My Life With Sea Turtles: A Marine Biologist’s Quest to Protect One of the Most Ancient Animals on Earth (Greystone, $28.95, 9781778400582).

Early in her career, Figgener moved to Costa Rica to work as a research assistant in an organization devoted to saving endangered leatherback sea turtles from extinction. Figgener recounts this early research with urgency that brings you right into the moment with her, peering at a sea turtle as she lays her eggs in the sand. Part memoir, part science reporting and part conservationist tract, Figgener’s illuminating My Life With Sea Turtles sheds light not only on the beauty and mystery of sea turtles, but also on the urgent need to save them.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

SWIFT RIVER

Essie Chambers’ debut novel, Swift River (S&S, $27.99, 9781668027912), is a mesmerizing account of inherited trauma in what was once a sundown town. In 1987 in a fictional New England mill town, 16-year-old Diamond—the only nonwhite resident—lives with her unemployed white mom. They have been alone since the mysterious disappearance of Diamond’s Black father near the river seven years ago.

Diamond feels like a misfit in both society and her family, noting of her maternal lineage, “I am a break in their pure Irish stock; the first Black person, the end of the whites.” Her understanding of her father’s family blossoms when the teenager receives a series of letters from Southern relatives. Black people once ran Swift River’s mills, until escalating racist hostility forced all but one to flee to Georgia.

Diamond is a gutsy girl with a keen intellect and an irrepressible, hopeful outlook, and her often-humorous narration is the novel’s central, propelling force. Chambers masterfully delivers the message of Swift River: “Our instincts, our deepest intuitions, are really our ancestral memory; our people speaking through us.”

—Alice Cary

HOT SPRINGS

In her immersive and beautifully photographed debut, Hot Springs: Photos and Stories of How the World Soaks, Swims, and Slows Down (Ten Speed, $30, 9781984859372), Maine-based photojournalist Greta Rybus ushers readers to 23 soaking spots worldwide via 200-plus images of ethereal landscapes, ruddy-cheeked bathers, striking architecture and even a blissed-out monkey.

The book is steeped in steam and serenity, conveying the author’s lifelong reverence and enthusiasm for these “geological marvel[s]” that “giv[e] us a sense of belonging to each other and the earth.” From

Mexico to Iceland, Japan to India, Alaska to Italy, Rybus shares fascinating details about each spring’s historical, cultural and spiritual significance, and reflects on their interconnectedness with the communities surrounding them.

Whether they’re looking for a vacation destination or their next book to savor in the (hot) bath, readers are sure to join Rybus in marveling at “What a miracle a hot spring is: an earthly riot, a terrestrial bonus, an unexpected geologic twist!”

—Linda M. Castellitto

FIRE EXIT

A white guy with ties to Maine’s Penobscot Nation, Charles Lamosway, the protagonist of Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit (Tin House, $28.95, 9781959030553), lives right across the river from the reservation. From his side of the water, he can see the house of his ex-girlfriend Mary and their adult daughter, Elizabeth. Elizabeth, raised by Mary and Mary’s husband, Roger, doesn’t know that Charles is her father. Charles thinks it’s time for her to find out.

Fire Exit is Talty’s first novel, following his 2022 short story collection, Night of the Living Rez. It is beautifully written, sometimes funny, often heartbreaking and hopeful against all odds. Reminiscent of the work of Raymond Carver, Fire Exit features working class characters bedeviled by money troubles, drink, mental illness and difficult relationships. But in Talty’s writing, the particular history of the Penobscot Nation is always present. One reason Mary doesn’t want Elizabeth to know about Charles is that she wanted to raise her as a Native, supported by a community and traditions that Charles just can’t provide. As he puts it, “I knew . . . what it was like to both not belong and belong, what it was like to feel invisible inside the great, great dream of being.”

—Arlene McKanic

THE GREAT RIVER

It should come as no surprise that a book about the legendary Mississippi River covers centuries of history, tons of mud, hundreds of levees and a rogues’ gallery of characters. Boyce Upholt turns it all into an absorbing tale in The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi (Norton, $29.99, 9780393867879).

Upholt traces the river’s history from its use as “a watery highway” by Indigenous people, to the Army Corps of Engineers’ building of the longest levee in the world, to the challenges presented by climate change as epitomized in Hurricane Katrina. The life of the river goes on. Mud is dredged here and moved there. Industrial pollutants irrevocably change ecosystems. Engineers continue to construct, deconstruct, rearrange, recreate, divert and revert the waterway. Our attempts to control the wild Mississippi are an endless pursuit.

Upholt manages to wrestle a staggering number of details into a narrative that is at times a challenge to read. But thanks to his concise yet lively writing style, The Great River is worth the effort. It compellingly pays homage to a waterway worthy of its moniker.

—Priscilla Kipp

The Hottest Christian Fiction of the Season

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS

The three best thrill rides of the season are here .

DARLING GIRLS

Sally Hepworth’s Darling Girls (St. Martin’s, $29, 9781250284525) is a feverish thriller that’s perfect for fans of Freida McFadden or Loreth Anne White.

Jessica, Norah and Alicia grew up in the same foster home, Wild Meadows, with a seemingly perfect foster mother, Miss Fairchild. When the novel opens, the now-adult women are all struggling thanks to what they endured in Miss Fairchild’s “care.” But when Wild Meadows is demolished and human remains are found underneath it, the ensuing investigation forces the three sisters to excavate their own complicated memories of what happened there.

Hepworth cannily builds this novel around the understanding that childhood trauma doesn’t always make sense to adult eyes. Each of the sisters’ experiences with Miss Fairchild are horrific in slightly different, almost inconceivable ways, leaving readers feeling like they are participating in some kind of collective hallucination. All three sisters have memories of babies being brought into the home, then disappearing at night. All three claim to have lived with a toddler named Amy—except the only Amy that existed in the house, according to police, was a doll. As the tale of their spooky and bizarre childhood at Wild Meadows unfolds, we can’t help but wonder if the sisters’ odd experiences are a means of covering up their involvement in something dire.

seemingly unfazed Dr. Caroline is surprised when NYPD detectives arrive soon after, indicating they consider her a suspect in the missing-persons case of Ellen Garcia, a journalist who named her one of the “Top Ten Worst Doctors in Brooklyn.” Dr. Caroline is convinced that Nelson has somehow framed her for Ellen’s disappearance, and she soon embarks on her own covert investigation.

Dr. Caroline herself is no stranger to trauma. It’s what motivated her to become a psychiatrist, and what comes back to haunt her. She may well be unlikable— but is she also unreliable? Luna expertly keeps her cards close to her chest until nearly the nerve-wracking end of this engrossing, twisty character study of a complicated woman.

—Linda M. Castellitto

H ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS

Packed with nonstop action, globe-trotting adventure and laugh-out-loud humor, Rob Hart’s Assassins Anonymous (Putnam, $28, 9780593717394) is an absolute blast. We open as main character Mark is celebrating a year of sobriety in his 12-step program, but as he cleans up after the meeting, he’s violently attacked by a Russian man he’s never met. For Mark, AA stands for Assassins Anonymous, and he was celebrating a year without killing anyone—a vow he manages to keep even after his unknown assailant stabs him in the side.

Extremely dark without ever showing violence on the page, Darling Girls portrays the horrors of psychological abuse, but the novel also offers catharsis. With an emphasis on psychological versus physical terror, Darling Girls is a one-sitting read full of twists and turns.

—Elyse Discher

TELL ME WHO YOU ARE

In Tell Me Who You Are (MCD, $29, 9780374612795), her seventh book and first standalone thriller in nearly 20 years, Luna—known for her Alice Vega series, including 2023 Edgar Awardwinner Hideout—introduces an unapologetically confident and cynical New York City psychiatrist who favors white Alexander McQueen suits (“It’s not a fucking square dance; it’s work.”).

As Dr. Caroline breezily explains, she’s accustomed to deconstructing all manner of human flaws and foibles. So it’s just another day at work when a new patient named Nelson Schack tells her he’s probably going to kill someone they both know. A

Mark was once a government assassin known as Pale Horse, but a terrible mistake led him to quit the game and vow to never take another life again. That’s a lot easier said than done when someone is trying to kill him. Mark needs to figure out who wants him dead, and the list is not short. Complicating matters, he’s determined to accomplish this without sacrificing his sobriety: He can’t kill anyone, even the people intent on annihilating him.

Mark partners up with potential love interest Astrid, a trauma surgeon for the criminal underworld, and his much beloved cat, P. Kitty, is also in tow. The supporting cast really makes this novel shine, from Astrid’s wry reactions to Mark’s fellow Assassins Anonymous members to the colorful group of criminals and spies from his dark past.

Assassins Anonymous is hilarious and irreverent without ever falling into the trap of being ridiculous. With his dry sense of humor and self-deprecating nature, Mark is a fantastic narrator. Add to that some global intrigue and a dash of romance, and this novel is an immensely satisfying read.

—Elyse Discher

EMBRACE THE HEAT

You’ll fall in love with these fun and flirty romances .

JUST SOME STUPID LOVE STORY

What happens when the characters in a romance know that they’re in one? Rom-coms are screenwriter Molly Marks’ bread and butter, so she’s already well aware of the tropes at play when she sees Seth Rubenstein at their high school reunion. He’s her first love, high school sweetheart, the one who got away, the one whose heart she broke. She’s the snarky cynic who runs from anything that looks like love, and he’s the wide-eyed dreamer who throws himself headlong into relationships because he still believes in true love, despite his highly successful career as a divorce attorney. They’re hitting every beat for a second-chance, opposites-attract romance, but Molly thinks she’s too smart to fall into that trap. She makes a bet with Seth: They’ll pick five couples and use their expertise to predict whether they’ll last or fail by their next reunion. Whoever makes the most accurate predictions is the one who gets to say that they’re truly right about love. But the fifth couple Seth picks to go the distance? It’s them. In Just Some Stupid Love Story (Flatiron, $28.99, 9781250328090), author Katelyn Doyle (aka historical romance author Scarlett Peckham) takes her time with her characters. This isn’t a romance where perfect love is achieved in a matter of days. The timeline goes from Molly and Seth’s 15-year reunion in 2018 all the way to their 21-year one in 2023, including the height of the pandemic—which Doyle folds into the story very effectively, showing how COVID-19 acted as a pressure cooker for personal relationships. Seth and Molly’s relationship develops in fits and starts, often moving two steps forward and one step back even as their feelings for each other endure, sometimes painfully. Love doesn’t come quickly or easily in Just Some Stupid Love Story, and when it comes, it doesn’t fix everything. These characters legitimately struggle to overcome their fears, let go of their worst tendencies and show compassion even when faced with situations they don’t fully understand. While there are plenty of stories out there that say love conquers all, this one actually shows how and why. And that’s as surprising as it is satisfying.

H OUT ON A LIMB

beautiful writing, Out on a Limb (Dell, $17, 9780593872147) is a love story so sweet you’ll want to squeal with glee. Originally self-published, Hannah Bonam-Young’s lovable rom-com is a must-read gift to the genre.

Winnifred “Win” McNulty is used to forging her own path. Not one to tol erate being coddled for her limb dif ference, Win has spent most of her life trying to prove to everyone around her that she can make it just fine on her own, thank you very much. But that all changes one very steamy night at her best friend’s annual Halloween bash, when Win meets and then hops into bed with the very handsome Bo. Caught up in the moment, the pair relies on Win’s irregular use of birth control . . . and soon find themselves facing an unplanned pregnancy. Bo recently lost the lower part of one of his legs to cancer (he’s now in remis sion), and wasn’t sure if he’d be able to have children. So he’s elated at the news: shocked, of course, but genuinely excited. Meanwhile, Win decides to approach impending motherhood as a way to level up into adulthood after spending her 20s flailing. The two plan to navigate pregnancy and parenthood as friends only (no matter how good their night together was), because that’s what good, responsible future caretakers would do. But if Win and Bo have learned anything, it’s that things rarely go according to plan. Here is this reviewer’s romance hot take, the abso lute hill I will die on: I love a surprise pregnancy. That’s right, I said it. Out on a Limb perfectly deploys this tricky, often unpopular trope with two of the best main characters a reader could ask for. All the while, Bonam-Young winks at the reader, letting us know not to worry since Win and Bo secretly have big, tenderhearted feelings for each other. Both are softies who’ve had a bit of life thrown at them and, as a result, are scared of the possibility of a good thing. We watch them unlearn past hurts, often from time spent operating in an ableist society, and be seen for the very first time by a partner. It’s an incredible thing to bear witness to, and it makes for a powerful love story.

—Elizabeth Mazer

Filled with fun tropes, disability representation modeled after the author’s own experience and

“Isn’t that all we ever want? To be seen and heard?” Win says at one point. “Validated, even when we’re not able to ask for it?” In Out on a Limb, BonamYoung allows readers to feel all of those things alongside her characters, and the romance world is better, kinder and more expansive for it.

—Katie Garaby

MORE GIGGLES, LESS GRIMDARK

These tales of swords and sorcery look on the brighter side of life .

RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND

Avra Helvaçi is lucky, perhaps supernaturally so, but he refuses to believe that. Did he drunkenly traipse into a vault and steal the most powerful secret of the Arasti Empire without getting caught? Well, yes, but that could just be coincidence.

With copies of Arasti intelligence hidden on him, Avra flees to the high seas and back into the arms of his on-again, offagain partner, the intimidating pirate captain Teveri az-Haffar. Can they get to the Isles of Lost Souls to fence what Avra stole before the Arasti government finds them, the hot monk on the ship drives them mad or before the isles’ infamous cake competition concludes?

H DREADFUL

Dread Lord Gavrax has somehow lost his memory, and is unable to recall why he decided to become a Dread Lord in the first place. Gav, as he now calls himself, decides to change his life for the better by vanquishing his rage and toxic masculinity.

A standalone novel set in the world of author Alexandra Rowland’s A Taste of Gold and Iron , Running Close to the Wind (Tordotcom, $29.99, 9781250802538) and its self-proclaimed “silly little slut” of a narrator will have readers laughing on every page. Though some readers are sure to find Avra’s gremlin-esque behavior aggravating, the rest of the cast makes up for it. Standouts include the flustered yet noble Tev, knowledge-driven and rebellious monk Julian, secretly softhearted fence Black Garda and friendly sex worker Cat.

“Our Flag Means Death” devotees looking for a lighthearted solace after the show’s unfortunate cancellation and fans of whimsical main characters a la Alexis Hall’s Mortal Follies will enjoy Running Close to the Wind

—Nicole Brinkley

Throughout Caitlin Rozakis’ Dreadful (Titan, $17.99, 9781803365473), Gav faces several simple yet charming challenges, such as finding a way to save a starving village and undoing years of fear he instilled in his goblin staff. While Gav grows and learns from his and his former self’s mistakes, a series of sitcom-esque events nudge him onto the path of righteousness. His goblin cook, Orla, is thrilled to don an apron and cook truly good food—but she doesn’t know how. The village decides to throw a garlic festival to make up for the fact that all of their other crops failed. Dreadful never takes itself too seriously, so moments that could induce secondhand cringe become hilarious escapades instead.

However, Rozakis’ story is not all gags. Violence is still a reflex for Gav, and he must resist incinerating anyone who annoys him. He also must learn to choose other people and his dawning sense of morality over his own self-preservation. Rozakis unobtrusively guides the reader through Gav’s evolution via his inner monologue, never allowing the lessons to get preachy.

With its charming cast and unique mixture of slapstick and sincerity, Dreadful is an heartwarmingly earnest story about how to grow into a better person.

—Ralph Harris

FLASHES OF LIGHTNING

With the swiftness of a summer storm, the short stories in these three collections electrify and illuminate .

HBEAUTIFUL DAYS

There’s a quiet intensity to the way Zach Williams crafts short fiction, like a coiled spring ready to snap, or a snake about to strike. You can sense tension lurking in the careful prose and dreamy strangeness of his worlds.

There are no real limits to the subject matter of the 10 tales in Beautiful Days (Doubleday, $28, 9780385550147), Williams’ first collection. The settings shift from skyscrapers to secluded cabins, seductive bedrooms to the quiet house next door. In “Trial Run,” a man visits his office amid a snowstorm, only to find a storm of a different kind waiting inside. In “Red Light,” a sexually adventurous fitness buff finds himself in a particularly mysterious bedroom. And in “Wood Sorrel House,” which might be the most unsettling short story you read in all of 2024, new parents find themselves in a house outside of time, watching in horror as their baby refuses to age even as their own bodies fail.

What’s most striking about Beautiful Days, however, is not the premises of the stories, but the way in which the author lets them unfold at their own quirky pace, like alien insects inching their way out of cocoons. His prose is precise, witty and full of vivid imagery, with a gift for marrying tension and humanity that calls to mind John Cheever or Shirley Jackson. That makes Beautiful Days a powerful, unsettling, genuinely thrilling collection, one that singles Williams out as a must-read voice in fiction.

—Matthew Jackson

A CAGE WENT IN SEARCH OF A BIRD

Conceived as a tribute to Franz Kafka on the 100th anniversary of his death, A Cage Went in Search of a Bird: Ten Kafkaesque Stories (Catapult, $16.95, 9781646222636) features short stories by 10 contemporary writers in the idiosyncratic style of the literary genius. Watching writers that include Ali Smith and Tommy Orange apply their considerable talent to this task makes for a mindbending and consistently enjoyable reading experience. One of the principal pleasures of this project is the range of subject matter and variety of styles. In “God’s Doorbell,” for example, Naomi Alderman reimagines the biblical account of the Tower of Babel in a fashion that seems especially relevant to our current concerns

with artificial intelligence. Yiyun Li’s “Apostrophe’s Dream” is a whimsical piece featuring squabbling punctuation marks as its characters.

Screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman has acknowledged Kafka as an early influence, and so it’s fitting that the collection ends with his story, in which a novelist identified only as “I.” descends, after a disastrous launch event for his latest novel, into an ever more complex and seemingly inescapable literary labyrinth as his identity shape-shifts, blurring the boundary between fact and fiction.

A Cage Went in Search of a Bird is a roller coaster ride that will delight the adventuresome reader, even if the twists and turns of some of its most daring stories may challenge those who enjoy more conventional short fiction. Somewhere, though, it’s easy to imagine Kafka paging through these varied and deeply imagined tales and nodding in admiration.

—Harvey Freedenberg

NINETAILS

Myth and folklore intertwine seamlessly with the tumultuous lives of Asian women in Ninetails: Nine Tales (Penguin, $18, 9780143137894), a mesmerizing collection of stories. At the heart of these tales of strength and transformation is Ninetails, a fox spirit who helps women of diverse backgrounds and ages transcend the violence and turbulence of their lives.

The central story, divided into several parts, is called “The Haunting of Angel Island.” Set in the 1900s at the Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco Bay, it features Tye, a Chinese interpreter who witnesses the harrowing experiences of women detainees. Other stories follow a silicone love doll who yearns to be human, a Korean girl bullied in a land foreign to her, and two friends who have been cheated on by the same man. Unfolding with gripping intensity through author Sally Wen Mao’s vivid depictions of the gritty settings and sobering situations that confront her characters, each premise is made even more powerful by the magical element introduced when a fox spirit manifests to liberate the women from their misery, or inflict retribution for wrongdoings.

Some of the stories in Ninetails end abruptly and can feel a little disjointed; nevertheless, Mao’s compelling depiction of Asian women’s experiences is powerfully unsettling in its authenticity. Through themes of revenge and redemption, these stories illuminate our enduring capacity for resilience.

—Maya Fleischmann

REFLECTION POOL

Three writers share powerful personal experiences that are sure to inspire .

THE UPTOWN LOCAL

Shortly after Cory Leadbeater enrolled in Columbia University’s M.F.A. program in 2012, he landed any young writer’s dream job: personal assistant to famed author Joan Didion. The Uptown Local: Joy, Death, and Joan Didion (Ecco, $28, 9780063371576) is Leadbeater’s loving tribute to the iconic author, but it’s also a complex family drama and an often painfully revealing story of his early artistic and personal struggles.

Leadbeater lived in the back bedroom of Didion’s spacious and elegant apartment on the Upper East Side for the first two years of his employment. In addition to attending to her needs, he spent countless hours in her company, listening to Chopin and The Andrews Sisters, reading aloud W.H. Auden and other favorite poets, and accompanying her on walks and outings.

But even as Leadbeater’s affection for Didion blossoms in these quiet moments, he harbors an ugly secret: For several years, his father has been the subject of a federal mortgage fraud investigation that culminates in a guilty plea and five-year prison sentence. As Leadbeater joins his mother and brothers on monthly trips to a Pennsylvania penitentiary, he must deal with the shame of his father’s notoriety and come to terms with the realization that his costly private college education had been financed by criminality. Leadbeater also frankly relives the mounting frustrations of his early literary efforts, haunted by a murderous character named Billy Silvers from one of his four unpublished novels. Alongside these artistic challenges, he confronts his lifelong obsession with death, including persistent and frighteningly real thoughts of his own suicide. Leadbeater describes how only a few months before Didion’s death in December 2021, she experienced the pleasure of holding his newborn daughter. It’s a lovely moment of grace in a memoir that’s full of dark ones. Though Didion didn’t live to see this work, one senses she would have been equally delighted with her protégé’s literary talent and, not least, his unblinking honesty.

—Harvey Freedenberg

PRETTY

As the Texas legislature attempts to ban books; dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion; and threaten LGBTQ+ people with draconian laws, Texas poet and author KB Brookins’ debut memoir, Pretty (Knopf, $28, 9780593537145), arrives when we need it most. Brookins, a Black, queer and trans writer, poet and cultural worker, details their experience navigating gender and Black masculinity while growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, from their biological parents to their adopted family, from classmates to lovers, and from their gender transition through adulthood.

Brookins spent their youth challenging binary spaces and expectations. From early childhood to the present, they have desired to be seen as pretty, and this book is the search to find out what that means for them: “Though not gendered, we often associate prettiness with womanhood, femininity, and objects we see as dainty,” they write. “I’ve never been interested in womanhood, but I’ve always wanted to be treated softly, like a fat pleasantry to the eyes.” Through often striking prose and imagery,

Brookins questions the restrictions involved in those associations: “Who taught us that masculinity can’t be pretty? Who taught us that Blackness was devoid of prettiness and delicacy?”

While Brookins searches for answers to these questions, they continuously remind us of how hostile the U.S. is to Black and trans people: “As the perception of me changes before my eyes, I realize that it is a specific sadness—embodying patriarchal masculinity in a country that wants your blood more than it wants you to breathe.” By describing their movement through the world, Brookins simultaneously critiques the conditions that oppress Black and racialized people who seek radical self-acceptance, and refuses the state’s malicious attempts to criminalize gender and sexuality.

Pretty offers far more than just pretty words—Brookins tells their side of the story as an act of resistance against those who would silence them.

—mónica teresa ortiz

I SHOULDN’T BE TELLING YOU THIS

In I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: (But I’m Going to Anyway) (Hanover Square, $29.99, 9781335455079), Emmy-nominated comedy writer Chelsea Devantez recounts her rise to success through a series of moments that range from comical to harrowing. After coming up in Chicago’s highly competitive improv club The Second City, Devantez became the head writer of The Problem With Jon Stewart, but the road there was not easy. She toiled for years in the grueling improv/ comedy industry. Often when opportunity knocked, things never quite panned out. According to TV execs, she was too ethnic or not ethnic enough; too funny or not funny enough.

Devantez is no stranger to finding humor in the absurd and traumatic. Growing up in an often tumultuous family, Devantez learned how to make even the most difficult situations comedic. There were bright spots amid her personal and career woes: other women. Throughout her memoir, Devantez shows how she couldn’t have made it in the business or in life without the complicated women and girls who surrounded her. From Devantez’s mesmerizing comedy partner who broke her heart, to the gossipy adversary she aptly names Shitbitch, to her ever-supportive mother who often struggled to free herself from abusive men, each taught Devantez something critical about the world and herself.

Devantez excels at exploring the interiority of her mind while conjuring a colorful cast of characters. As her career and life develop, she’s inspired by drag queens, evangelizing Mormon girls and cruise ship theater troupes. Readers will also appreciate her frank discussions about money. In the memorable “Roger Roger,” Devantez proudly calls herself “glamorous trash” and examines the true cost of not benefiting from nepotism. Her adept critique extends beyond her lack of “a cousin who had a cousin who had a cousin who knew the accountant for Jennifer Aniston” but truly considers the reality of how race and gender play into comedy success. How does one “make it” in Hollywood—or anywhere—when you aren’t the type of person who usually does?

In I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This, Devantez answers this question and many others with acute honesty as she romps through personal embarrassments, traumas and triumphs, often proving that success is not only measured by what you do, but by who joins you along the way.

Pride and joy

Whether you want to dig into trans history, check out a new LGBTQ+ destination or celebrate love with a fun romance, we have the book for you

Experienced

Kate Young’s Experienced (Penguin, $18, 9780143137986) takes romance readers’ expectations and twists them into a wholehearted, fun exploration of dating and love in the 21st century. After her girlfriend Mei suggests they take a break so the newly-out Bette can get the full single experience, Bette goes on an awkward odyssey of first dates, in a silly, relatable journey that stays away from romance cliches—although that isn’t to say that the book doesn’t end happily.

Bette tries to be chill about the break. After a bit of confusion and hurt, she begins crafting her dating app profiles, and soon after, she starts dating a lineup of strange, sexy characters running the gamut of British lesbian baddies. The most memorable is Bette’s first date, Ruth, an experienced casual dater who gives Bette the recipe for success and, in a twist of fate, helps her realize what she really wants from a relationship.

Young’s charming British English pairs with a young millennial’s quirky, anxious interiority for a fun, surprisingly profound read. Romantics, if you’re lonely or even if you’re happily in love, this novel will be a treat.

—Eric A. Ponce

H The Other Olympians

Not long before the 1936 Olympic games, two top track and field athletes who had competed in international com petitions as women said publicly that they were men (we would say now that they had come out as trans). A handful of Olympic leaders, including Nazi sympathizers, immediately drew the wrong conclusions and called for mandatory medical exams to determine sex prior to sports competitions.

H Out in the World

Summer vacation has arrived, and with it the euphoric urge to pack a bag and hit the road. But what is a well-traveled LGBTQIA+ person (or ally!) to do when the same old vacation spots have gotten a bit too-well trodden? Let Out in the World: An LGBTQIA+ (and Friends!) Travel Guide to More Than 120 Destinations Around the World (National Geographic, $30, 9781426223501) guide the way.

In The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports (FSG, $30, 9780374609818), author Michael Waters sensitively tells this forgotten history, centering on those two athletes, Zdeněk Koubek of Czechoslovakia and Mark Weston of Britain. Koubek, Weston and other athletes profiled here never wanted to compete against women after their transitions. Yet an entire regimen of sex testing was built on the unfounded belief that men were somehow masquerading as women to participate in sports contests. Decisions made in the late 1930s created sports competition rules that still exist today, as debate over trans athletes rages in school board meetings, courtrooms and legislative sessions. Waters doggedly chronicles where the debate originated and calls for what he believes is overdue change.

—Anne Bartlett

Card-carrying, globe-trotting gays Amy B. Scher and Mark Jason Williams have assembled an impressive guide on where to go and what to do when you get there, whether you’re a rugged hiker, a small-town sightseer or simply looking to relax at as many vineyards as possible. Even better, they’ve done it with an eye especially for the queer traveler, compiling lists of LGBTQIA+ owned eateries, tour companies, bed and breakfasts, and shops. Divided into chapters with headings such as “Where No One Gets Hangry,” “Nature and Nurture” and “Our Favorite Small Towns With Big Pride,” Out in the World is packed with unexpected and delightful new places to explore while unabashedly being exactly who you are.

—Anna Spydell

H You Should Be So Lucky

Cat Sebastian’s latest queer historical romance is a love letter to resilience and the power of bravery. Set in You Should Be So Lucky (Avon, $18.99, 9780063272804) tells the story of shortstop Eddie O’Leary and journalist Mark Bailey, both of whom are in a slump. For the last year, following the death of his longtime partner, Mark has been on sabbatical from his role at Chronicle. But his break is over and his first assignment is writing a highbrow sports feature about Eddie, a struggling player on the new baseball team in town, the New York Robins.

Eddie needs to stay at least somewhat closeted to continue playing baseball, and Sebastian does an exceptional job of outlining the difficulties of living and loving as a gay public figure. Mark’s late partner had political aspirations that required the two of them to pretend to be platonic roommates, so Mark knows how to keep the personal parts of his life private. But as his relationship with Eddie evolves, he struggles to balance his feelings for Eddie with his desire to avoid having to hide them. Like baseball fans throughout history, You Should Be So Lucky roots for victory—even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

—Dolly R. Sickles

Illustrations by Lauréne Boglio from Out in the World © 2024 by Amy B. Scher & Mark Jason Williams. Reproduced by permission of National Geographic.

Joni Mitchell is one of us

By mapping Mitchell’s geographical, musical and personal journeys, Ann Powers frees the woman from the icon .

Ann Powers makes an unexpected revelation early in her new book, Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell. In the second paragraph of the introduction, “Drawing the Maps,” Powers cuts to the chase, writing, “I’m not a biographer, in the usual definition of that term; something in me instinctively opposes the idea that one person can sort through all the facts of another’s life and come up with anything close to that stranger’s true story.”

While we may be unable to know Mitchell’s true story, Powers crafts a rich and textured portrait of the artist many consider to be America’s finest songwriter. Though she did not speak to Mitchell for the book, Powers did interview Mitchell’s friends and collaborators, including Wayne Shorter, Judy Collins, Taj Mahal and Brandi Carlile. She also draws from archival interviews and several other books about Mitchell, including David Yaffe’s 2017 biography, Reckless Daughter.

Powers says she knew she wanted to add something new to the canon of Joni studies, and she relied on her instincts as a critic to guide her to fresh territory. They’re well-honed instincts, as Powers is the lead music critic at NPR Music and has contributed to numerous outlets throughout her multidecade career, including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times

diversions. (Powers literally drew a map of Mitchell’s travels, though that, unfortunately, did not make it into the book.)

“With Joni, because there is so much writing about her, I wanted to seek the critical context around her as well,” Powers tells BookPage. “And I needed to confront her as a public figure, as that much-overused word ‘icon,’ or ‘legend.’ She’s a much-beloved figure. I wanted to think about how she became that way, what she and her music offered, at different points in history, to her audience as her audience grew and changed . . . I wanted to have that freedom to be more mobile, as my subject is mobile.”

BIOGRAPHY

Traveling follows Powers’ 2017 book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music . Where that book snaked its way through scenes and subcultures to interrogate sexuality and race in American music, Traveling maps out Mitchell’s life through place, eschewing a neat timeline in favor of curious sightseeing, hitting all the must-sees while taking fascinating and enlightening

“I found spots that others hadn’t spent a lot of time in. Like Florida, for example,” Powers says, referring to Mitchell’s late ’60s idyll in folk enclave Coconut Grove. “That was really helpful—understanding her journeys, whether they were geographical or musical or personal. She went places the casual Joni fan isn’t as aware of, and I got really interested in that. I got interested in her byroads.” Powers says that she didn’t write the book in chronological order, instead beginning her writing journey by digging into the era Mitchell spent in Laurel Canyon, a music and counterculture enclave in the Hollywood Hills, where she was closely associated with acts like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. (“I just worked my butt off trying to be as good as she was,” David Crosby told Powers.)

Powers attended Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration in 2018, where a bevy of artists performed Joni covers, and she spoke to James Taylor and Graham Nash about their work with Mitchell and her still-unfolding legacy. Nash shares that when he and Mitchell were romantically involved, he “tried to give her as much space as possible” to make room for her brilliance. Taylor muses on the development of Mitchell’s rich inner life, which he theorizes owes, in part, to the quiet of her rural childhood.

“Obviously, I knew Blue very well, as so many of us do,” Powers says. “That’s our entryway, for a lot of us, into Joni’s story. I knew I wanted to write about, for that chapter, her relationship to those collaborators and friends and lovers that she had, and I wanted to try to really understand that scene. There had been a lot written about it. So, that’s where I dove in.”

“I needed to confront her as a public figure, as that much-overused word ‘icon,’ or ‘legend.’ ”

As that material developed, Powers “went backward and forward,” learning about Mitchell’s childhood while considering her spirituality as well as drawing connections to the American folk music revival of the mid-20th century. It was through this backand-forth movement that Powers discovered the book’s structure.

“That’s really when the metaphor of traveling kind of took hold,” she explains. “And that helped me center the narrative, in a lot of ways,

thinking about her literal life on the road and then, also, her spiritual life as a traveler, her artistic life as a traveler.”

Some pit stops include Mitchell’s childhood, of which Powers writes, “This girl was a real person, one who’d lain on prairie grass and gazed at the wide sky, an explorer in her own backyard who soon knew she’d have to flee far beyond it.” There’s Mitchell’s foray into jazz, on which Powers says she initially wrote 30,000 words and hopes one day to explore in greater depth. Then there was Mitchell’s 2015 aneurysm, which pulled her out of public life until her triumphant return to the stage in recent years.

Writing about a monumental figure who is still living and working—Mitchell performed at this year’s Grammy Awards, to rapturous acclaim—had its intimidating moments, Powers says, and she found solace in Geoff Dyer’s 1997 Out of Sheer Rage, in which he records his struggle to write a book about the complicated life and legacy of D.H. Lawrence.

“I needed that, sort of like having a good friend tell you a story,” she says. “Like, ‘Oh, you know, I relate to your problem. And let me tell you a funny and rich story about how I went through that.’ So, that would unlock some things for me. And one thing that unlocked was that it showed me that I could and should foreground my own struggles.”

Accordingly, many of the book’s more potent moments come when Powers shares her own personal experiences, finding connections or contrasts between herself and the artist. Mitchell placed her child, Kilauren Gibb, up for adoption in 1965, and Powers is an adoptive mother. Though Powers writes she “felt hesitant to make any conjectures about this most intimate connection” (and she doesn’t), she shares the story of a brief encounter with Mitchell in 2004 that connects the dots between them.

Nine months after adopting her daughter, Powers traveled to Montreal to watch Mitchell receive an honorary degree from McGill University. “Adrift in the dream state of sleep-deprived early parenthood,” Powers shared thoughts on Blue during a panel discussion, becoming emotional when remarking on “Little Green,” which Mitchell wrote for Kilauren.

As Mitchell and Gibb had only reunited seven years earlier, Mitchell was relatively new to parenthood, too, and Powers felt a complicated kinship with her, one that is still revealing itself today.

“Twenty years later, I can see that Joni and I were, in that moment, in one version of the same boat,” Powers writes. “We were both newly visible mothers negotiating uncommon definitions of that term.”

review | H traveling

What comes to mind when you think of Joni Mitchell? Is it her landmark 1971 album, Blue, or her foray into jazz? Her paintings? Her 2015 aneurysm? Ask a handful of people that question and you’re bound to get a different answer each time. Mitchell long ago transcended the status of a mere musician and became an icon, someone larger than life whose body of work is a cultural touchstone.

Leave it to critic Ann Powers to untangle the intricate web that Mitchell, 80, is still weaving today. In Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell (Dey Street, $35, 9780062463722), Powers traces the artist’s life from childhood to the present day with curiosity, context and compassion, using

Those anecdotes bring Mitchell’s story back down to earth, an impressive feat given her penchant for self-mythologizing. They remind us that Mitchell may have written “Both Sides Now,” but she’s still a human being, still imperfect and messy and seeking resolution to the same existential questions all of us have but none of us can answer.

It’s a point Powers makes early in the book, a few paragraphs after she shares her reluctance to write a straightforward biography. “Every legend is also one of us,” she writes, and in the following 10 chapters, she bears that out, bringing us into her complicated relationship with a complicated artist making complicated art in a complicated world.

With Traveling, Joni Mitchell becomes a little more “of us” than she’s ever been.

—Brittney McKenna

Mitchell’s often nomadic existence as a template to try to understand her life and legacy. She does this through interviews with those who know Mitchell best, like Graham Nash and Brandi Carlile, as well as through painstaking research into archival interviews and the myriad writings inspired by the “Both Sides Now” artist. Powers notably includes her own experiences with Mitchell throughout the book, too, as well as the difficulties and surprises she experienced while writing it. That real-time sense of grappling with Mitchell’s music and persona both grounds the book and offers food for thought, like when Powers tries to understand how Mitchell’s childhood bout with polio affected—or, crucially, didn’t

affect—her artistry. Powers favors nuance over easy answers, and the book is better for it.

As always, Powers, a longtime critic most recently known for her work at NPR Music, writes with precision and a healthy dose of the poetic, a combination that makes for an immersive and enlightening read. This is no dry biography. Traveling is hardly the first book about Mitchell and won’t be the last, but it fills a necessary gap in the library of tomes dedicated to her work. Powers has crafted a travelogue of one of the greatest artistic journeys ever taken, and it’s a pleasure to go along for the ride.

—Brittney McKenna

H Lies and Weddings

By Kevin Kwan

POPULAR FICTION

The rollicking Lies and Weddings (Doubleday, $29, 9780385546294) starts in Hong Kong before skipping to a tony estate in the English countryside, then on to a Kona clifftop in Hawaii. And that’s just in the first 22 pages.

Since Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan has been known for globe-spanning, culture-melding stories. In his delightful new novel, we meet Rufus Gresham, a handsome viscount whose father is the Earl of Greshamsbury and whose mother, Lady Augusta Gresham, is a former supermodel. Sounds impressive, but the Greshams are in crushing debt thanks to the family’s expensive tastes.

Enter Dr. Thomas Tong and his daughter, Dr. Eden Tong, both physicians who

One of Our Kind

By Nicola Yoon THRILLER

Bestselling young adult author Nicola Yoon’s first book for adults is a provocative mashup of body snatcher horror in the vein of The Stepford Wives, with the intraracial introspection of Ellis Cose’s The Rage of a Privileged Class.

One of Our Kind (Knopf, $28, 9780593470671) is built around the complex truth that while white liberal guilt is more remarked on in popular culture, the angst of the Black middle class is just as powerful. Jasmyn Williams is, in many ways, a lucky woman. As a public defender, she has work that matters, as well as a loving husband, an adorable 6-yearold son she cherishes and a second child on the way. And yet, as successful as both Jasmyn and her husband, King, are, they live in the shadow of racist violence. The solution King suggests is relocating to Liberty, a utopian Black enclave just outside Los Angeles.

Jasmyn finds Black folks in Liberty to be strangely culturally whitewashed and apathetic about Black lives outside their sphere. Even her one simpatico friend—a schoolteacher with a big Afro who’s married to another Black

live in a cottage on the Greshamsbury property. Thomas and the earl are best friends from their college days, and Thomas has helped connect his friend with a wealthy yet mysterious benefactor. Eden and Rufus have been best friends since they were children, but when they meet up in Hawaii for the wedding of Rufus’ sister, sparks fly in more ways than one.

Like every Kwan novel, Lies and Weddings is chock-full of scheming characters and breathtakingly lavish scenes. I’m not cultured enough to recognize all the brand names and jet-setting locations Kwan drops, but that doesn’t take away from the absolute pleasure of reading about rich and beautiful people behaving—for the most part—very badly.

Kwan remains a cheekily hilarious writer, with footnotes that give each chapter an extra kick: Eden and a friend eat lunch at a Los Angeles hot spot, and see “a certain British pop star who wants to be an actor having lunch with a certain A-list producer, a certain billionaire film investor kid, and also a legendary supermodel and her influencer daughter, and the daughter’s boyfriend, who also wants to act.” As the footnote tells us, “Out of respect for their privacy, these high-profile individuals will not be identified by their names (or their schools).”

I drank this book up like the chilled bottles of Sancerre these characters are constantly being served. Pure pleasure.

—Amy Scribner

woman—eventually succumbs to a conservative makeover that seems to rob her of her personality and racial consciousness. And something is decidedly off about the local Wellness Center. Yet, though Liberty harbors dangerous secrets, Jasmyn’s anxieties stretch beyond it. News of police killings seeps into her consciousness through her phone like poison, and feelings of threat are her constant companion. This puts her at odds with the other Black folks who came to Liberty to forget racial danger.

The paradoxes and discontents of the upwardly mobile Black bourgeoisie are territory the Jamaican-born, wildly successful Yoon knows intimately and draws with precision. Like Kiley Reid (Such a Fun Age and Come and Get It), Yoon vividly captures the racial and political zeitgeist that haunts the Williams family. The embodiment of striving Black middle-class anxiety, Jasmyn constantly judges herself and others, and is ambivalent even on vacation, feeling guilty “because how is this her life? Why should she have so much when others have so little?” As troubled as she is compelling, Jasmyn is a potent illustration of the effects of racial trauma.

At times, Jasmyn’s constantly watchful point of view feels painfully earnest. Still, while One of Our Kind lacks the humor of racial satires like Jordan Peele’s Get Out or Percival Everett’s Erasure, Yoon’s observations are bold and razor sharp even when she’s immersed in her characters’ failings.

—Carole V. Bell

H Enlightenment

By Sarah Perry GOTHIC FICTION

Sarah Perry’s new novel, Enlightenment (Mariner, $29, 9780063352612), opens on a late-winter Monday in 1997 in the office of the Essex Chronicle , a small newspaper in the English town of Aldleigh. Fifty-year-old Thomas Hart, who’s been quietly writing about literature and ghosts for 20 years, needs to write something new, his boss tells him, suggesting astronomy—the Hale-Bopp comet will soon be visible. That same day, Thomas receives a letter from the town museum with new information about the Lowlands ghost, who’s rumored to haunt the nearby Lowlands House, and who may be a 19th-century astronomer from Romania named Maria Vǎduva. These two events will send Thomas on a quest to fill in the details of Maria Vǎduva’s life and work.

Intertwined with Thomas’ story is that of 17-year-old Grace Macaulay, who’s linked to Thomas through their Baptist church. Grace stumbles into her first love, which sets off a series of complications that will rupture Thomas and Grace’s friendship. The story follows the two over the next 20 years.

But this plot description does little to give a real sense of Enlightenment. Despite its contemporary setting, the novel has a 19th-century feel, with an omniscient voice and a narrative peppered with letters, newspaper columns and (fictional) historical documents. And while it’s partly a ghost story, Enlightenment is also a novel about the love of astronomy. But mostly, this is a novel about friendship and belonging, the grief after a friendship is lost and the difficult path to forgiveness.

Many of Perry’s sentences are startlingly beautiful, creating an atmospheric sense of setting and character. If some of Enlightenment’s goings-on are a bit elliptical, and if some secondary characters feel a little wispy, not quite coming into focus, that too seems part of the novel’s aim and its charm. There’s a hint of the literary romance and mystery of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, though Enlightenment is more playful. Wide in its scope despite its narrow small-town setting, this gentle but insistent and inventive novel will tug on you in surprising ways.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

Godwin

By Joseph O’Neill

LITERARY FICTION

Soccer, like life, may be a beautiful game, but as in life, part of the beauty relies upon a key ingredient: cooperation. Introduce disharmony and the luster is tarnished. Readers will find plenty of corrosion in Godwin (Pantheon, $28, 9780593701324), Joseph O’Neill’s intellectual new novel centered, at least ostensibly, around the world of football. Godwin shifts between two narrators. The first is Lakesha Williams, one of the co-founders of the Group, a Pittsburgh cooperative for science and medical writers who want to be self-employed without the insecurity of freelancing. She’s dealing with an HR issue regarding writer Mark Wolfe, who got into a scuffle with a security guard and gave too-honest feedback to a client who didn’t receive a grant. Mark is a misanthrope who fantasizes about a future “when our kind no longer roams Earth and we shall at last have some peace.”

Mark is also our other narrator. In his private life, he lives with his wife, Sushila, and has a half brother named Geoff, a slippery character and aspiring sports agent who lives overseas. Geoff contacts Mark with an unusual request: He wants Mark to come to England

and help him find Godwin, a “special prospect” from somewhere in Africa whom Geoff wants to sign.

These two seemingly disparate stories converge in satisfying ways and include characters who may at first seem secondary but take on greater significance, among them a French scout who may know where Godwin is; Mark’s mother, who he feels robbed him of an inheritance; and a Group member who ingratiates herself into a position to affect the collective’s operations.

Netherland, O’Neill’s brilliant 2008 book, was not just a story about a Dutch expat protagonist’s incipient passion for cricket but, more than that, a commentary on postcolonialism. Similarly, while the search for a soccer player is the engine of Godwin’s plot, the book is really about power: those who have it, those who don’t and those who scheme to get it. O’Neill’s excellent novel builds to a cynical ending that may not comfort, but it’s an undeniably appropriate finish to a story of what can happen when idealism snags on the lure of capitalism.

—Michael Magras

H The Safekeep

By Yael van der Wouden

HISTORICAL FICTION

The Safekeep (Avid Reader, $28, 9781668034347), Yael van der Wouden’s debut novel, is set in 1961 rural Holland. At 30, Isabel is living in the house where she was raised, guarding her dead mother’s things, suspecting the maid of theft and fending off the attentions of a flirtatious neighbor. Of her brothers, Louis and Hendrik, she is closer to Hendrik, although she disapproves of his friend Sebastian, suspecting a deeper connection. Of Louis and the steady stream of girlfriends he introduces to her, she thinks even less. Until Eva.

The siblings meet Eva at a dinner out. With her clumsy manners and brassy dyed hair, she hardly impresses, and Isabel is shocked when Louis brings her to the house to stay while he goes away on business, showing Eva to their mother’s room. Even under Isabel’s watchful eye, things begin to disappear—a spoon, a bowl, a thimble. More alarming to Isabel is the overwhelming attraction she feels to Eva, an attraction that spills into an obsessive, intensely depicted sexual relationship.

As Isabel and Eva’s connection unfolds, Van der Wouden’s true subject comes into view:

how ordinary people were implicated in the ethnic cleansing that took place during World War II. Even in peacetime, Isabel and her peers are quick to notice people who appear different, with a fierce disgust that Isabel risks turning on herself as she comes to terms with her sexuality. A novel of redemption as much as revenge, The Safekeep has the pacing and twists of a thriller, while delving into the deeper issues laid bare by the Holocaust.

—Lauren Bufferd

Kittentits

By Holly Wilson

COMING OF AGE

There is nothing predictable about Holly Wilson’s debut novel, Kittentits (Gillian Flynn Books, $28, 9781638931089).

Relating the coming-of-age of a 10-year-old girl named Molly Sibly, Kittentits is set in 1992 on the outskirts of Chicago. Molly lives in a dilapidated Quaker co-op with her puppeteer father and a community-gardening evangelist named Evelyn, who is also Molly’s home-school teacher. With a mother who died shortly after her birth and no friends beyond a pen pal named Demarcus who never writes back, Molly’s life is rather lacking.

Blissfully unaware of the misfortune that surrounds her, Molly’s focused on the opening of the World’s Fair and a houseguest named Jeanie who is fresh out of prison and assigned to live in the co-op as her halfway house. Molly sets herself the following goal: befriend the thrillingly crass Jeanie, meet Demarcus in person and enjoy the opening day of the World’s Fair with her new best friends. Then a second goal emerges: open a spiritual portal at the Fair and find the ghost of her mother. I’ll say it again— there’s nothing predictable about this novel. And for this precise reason, Kittentits is nearly impossible to put down.

Narrated by Molly in the first person, the story is a fast-paced, filthy-mouthed adventure, told with an exuberance that can only be expected from a 10-year-old. There is a surrealism to everything that happens that is best not to question (the World’s Fair taking place in 1992 being the least of our worries).

While Molly clearly steals the show as the protagonist, Wilson also demonstrates exceptional artistry with the supporting characters, capturing the fundamental experiences of trust, friendship, love and loss.

—Chika Gujarathi

H Challenger

By Adam Higginbotham

AMERICAN HISTORY

Adam Higginbotham’s international bestseller, Midnight in Chernobyl, chronicled the disastrous 1986 nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine that was caused by a Soviet program plagued with a toxic combination of unrealistic timelines and dangerous cost cutting. His new book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space (Avid Reader, $35, 9781982176617), describes a surprisingly similar catastrophe that very same year, this time at the hands of NASA: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger that killed all seven people aboard. Hefty, compelling and propulsive, Challenger overflows with revelatory details.

Reading this book is like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion. One can’t help but hear a drumbeat of dread while getting to know the astronauts—Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee and Michael

American Diva

By Deborah Paredez

PERFORMING ARTS

When Deborah Paredez describes the women she awards diva status as “extraordinary, unruly, fabulous,” she is just getting started. In tributes as impassioned and exuberant as any of her subjects, the college professor and poet offers a diverse collection of women to be celebrated and emulated.

American Diva: Extraordinary, Unruly, Fabulous (Norton, $27.99, 9781324035305) is the grand platform Paredez creates for her stars as she tells their stories, bedecked with her own scintillating flourishes.

Paredez memorializes divas at a propulsive pace. Here is the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz; the effervescent and doomed Selena; Tina Turner performing “Proud Mary” with “inimitable ferocity”; Rita Moreno, on-fire dancer and vengeful victim in the movie West Side Story; Venus and Serena Williams, “defying the naysayers” and dominating the courts; Aretha Franklin, “a queen bee dripping with so much nectar” at Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration. These iconic women, both here

Smith—and their families. Details will stay with readers long after they close the book: McAuliffe’s appearance on The Tonight Show, her husband’s increasing anxiety at launch time, the horror and disbelief of the families as they watch their loved ones die, the grim details of the recovery efforts and the attempts of professionals both to warn against the mission and to bring to light why it failed.

Among the latter is engineer Roger Boisjoly, who, over a year before the explosion, wrote a memo voicing fears to senior management, stating, “It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action . . . we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch facilities.” Unbelievably, in the hours just before the mission commenced, Boisjoly and a team of 13 other engineers unanimously advised against the launch, yet their concerns were not

and gone, have earned their diva status and, Paredez insists, stand as beacons of feminism for future generations.

Divas, by Paredez’s definition, are “strong, complicated, imperfect, virtuosic women who last and last and last.” But competing definitions of divas have made their way into the culture. Newsweek cautioned parents against “Generation Diva” in 2009, and divas, “once synonymous with virtuosity, became symbols of vitriol.” Meanwhile, tween icons like Miley Cyrus—whose exploits as Hannah Montana came “adorned with sparkly merchandise”— were on the rise. Young girls have learned to dress, dance and perform as the stars they yearn to be. Paredez wonders, has a diva instead become “a means of convincing girls that singing along to a power ballad in a sequined T-shirt emblazoned with ‘Li’l Diva’ equals actual power”? The downside to such youthful appropriation becomes clear by contrast: The women whose careers Paredez showcases in American Diva are real and powerful in their sheer fearless embrace of their own best selves—rendering moot any worshipful imitation.

Paredez doesn’t hold back, and is especially startling in her candor about her own impetuous coming of age. Bookending this star-studded lineup is the author’s own beloved Lucia, the aunt who introduced her to all things diva: Dress up, dance, sing or ace your serve—and always accessorize. The

even sent up the command chain. After the explosion, physicist Richard Feynman sought to bring clarity to the commission tasked with investigating the tragedy. The scientist noted that “the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product to the point of fantasy.”

Higginbotham excels at delineating not only the science, technology and history of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, but also the bureaucratic snafus and mismanagement that led to the catastrophe, including economic pressures and a nonstop race to get people into space. As with Midnight in Chernobyl, Challenger proves Higginbotham is a master chronicler of disasters, demonstrating an unflinching ability to pierce through politics, power and bureaucracies with laser-sharp focus.

—Alice Cary

rest—success, money, fame, love—will happen only if you are strong enough to make it so.

—Priscilla Kipp

Morally Straight

By Mike De Socio

SOCIAL SCIENCE

Mike De Socio loves the Boy Scouts. In Morally Straight: How the Fight for LGBTQ+ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts—and America (Pegasus, $27.95, 9781639363858), De Socio, an Eagle Scout, details how Boy Scouts gave him, a nerdy misfit, the space to thrive. He is also queer, having come out while in college in 2015, the same year that the Scouts lifted its ban on gay leaders and two years after it had lifted the ban on gay Scouts. De Socio learned he was not alone: Boy Scouts had provided a safe haven for many other queer Scouts, a haven that was repeatedly taken away because of a policy that they had no idea even existed.

Taking its title from the Boy Scout Oath, Morally Straight weaves detailed journalism and De Socio’s deeply personal memories in its recounting of the effort to lift bans on

LGBTQ+ Boy Scouts and their leaders. It starts with the story behind Dale v. Boy Scouts of America, the 2000 Supreme Court case that allowed the Scouts to discriminate against queer boys and men.

At the heart of De Socio’s book is the work of Scouts for Equality (SFE), an activist group formed in 2012 after the Scouts expelled lesbian den leader Jennifer Tyrrell. Headed by Zach Wahls and Jonathan Hillis, two straight Eagle Scouts, SFE evolved into a broad-based alliance of LGBTQ+ and straight Scouts, parents and supporters that eventually persuaded the Scouts to rescind their policies.

Under Wahls and Hillis’ leadership, the SFE became a juggernaut. In their early 20s, both men were uniquely qualified to take on the BSA. The son of two lesbian mothers, Wahls was already a LGBTQ+ activist and the author of My Two Moms. Hillis was a prominent youth leader at the BSA’s national level. Ironically, both credit the Boy Scouts with developing the moral courage and leadership skills that made SFE possible.

Morally Straight is both clear-eyed and optimistic. BSA is now a broader tent, accepting gay, trans and even female Scouts. But, as De Socio’s own experiences show, it still grapples with how to give its members the space and tools to remain true to who they are.

—Deborah Mason

H Rewire

By Nicole Vignola SELF-HELP

Each section of neuroscientist and corporate coach Nicole Vignola’s Rewire: Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts and Create Lasting Change (HarperOne, $29.99, 9780063349797) is titled with phrases that will sound familiar to readers bent on self-improvement: “Ditch the Negative,” “Shift Your Narrative,” “Boost the Positive.”

While those imperatives may not be new, the author’s explanations of how one might actually achieve those goals—via understanding and taking advantage of the brain’s neuroplasticity—feel remarkably fresh, thanks to her knowledgeable, approachable voice and gift for making the complex clear.

An edifying mix of scientific research, personal anecdotes and real-world examples of rewiring done right provide aha moments galore as Rewire leads readers on a path

toward change. Herself a reformed “stressy messy,” Vignola explains that we ignore the fundamental interplay between physical and mental health at our peril (or at least frequent frustration): “The brain is your hardware, and the memories, thoughts, habits and behaviors within it are the software.” For example, someone who’s not eating properly or getting good sleep will run on “low-power mode,” making it especially difficult to overcome negative selftalk, a tendency toward rumination and other long-held habits.

Similarly, while social media is vital to Vignola’s coaching practice and educational endeavors, it’s become a serious energy drain for so many—and a brain without ample rest or space to daydream isn’t receptive to rewiring. “Imagine you were on a treadmill for eight hours a day . . . and then in your lunch break you move on to the stationary bike . . . you’re not actually taking a break,” which stymies “brain energy renewal.” However, planned “strategic breaks” shore up the overworked brain; exercise releases myokines, which “aid in alleviating depressive symptoms, improving anxiety,” and more; and visualization techniques boost adaptability, as exemplified by Olympian Michael Phelps.

Vignola firmly believes that once armed with a deeper understanding of how the brain works, even non-Olympians are capable of effecting positive and lasting change. In Rewire she provides a “neuroscientific toolkit” rife with practical strategies and tips, data and experience to back them up, and an unwaveringly supportive refrain: “You can, if you so wish, create yourself. Whoever you want to be.”

—Linda M. Castellitto

Always a Sibling

By Annie Sklaver Orenstein FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

Growing up together means our siblings understand “not just who you are but why you are,” as author Annie Sklaver Orenstein writes. Sometimes the “why” is even a direct response to the siblings themselves; we may follow in an older sibling’s footsteps or rebel against expectations set by their example.

We expect siblings to not only grow up with us but also grow old alongside us; even when relationships are strained or barely existent, siblings share history, and their family experience may most closely mirror one another’s.

When a sibling dies early, it can be a devastating, isolating loss. But there aren’t a lot of resources for sibling-specific grief. Orenstein has learned this firsthand in the 13-plus years since her oldest brother’s death in Afghanistan when she was 25.

In Always a Sibling: The Forgotten Mourner’s Guide to Grief (Hachette, $29, 9780306831492), Orenstein addresses this gap in resources by providing tips, related reading and exercises to help readers face their grief after a sibling’s death. A researcher and oral historian, Orenstein puts her skills to use by collecting stories of sibling loss, braiding anecdotes and data with her own experience with grief.

Her plain-spoken, direct style ensures that the research she shares remains relatable. Sometimes she names too many interview subjects and their siblings, leaving the stories at risk of running together. But at their best, the stories help readers feel seen. For example, Orenstein recounts a woman at a party who opens up after hearing that the author is working on this book. The woman quickly warms to the subject and asks, is her experience normal? Or are the feelings she’s faced since her sibling’s death just her own?

And that’s Always a Sibling’s greatest triumph. There are grief support groups and resources for parents, spouses and kids whose parents have died. But it isn’t often that young (or youngish) adults encounter others who share sibling loss. Orenstein shows her readers that they aren’t alone. Their feelings and reactions aren’t unusual. And their grief matters, too.

—Carla Jean Whitley

H Undue Burden

By Shefali Luthra

SOCIAL SCIENCE

For over a decade, health care journalist Shefali Luthra has been reporting on reproductive rights for Kaiser Health News and The 19th. In Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America (Doubleday, $29, 9780385550086), she details the public and private chaos that commenced when the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in its 2022 decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Immediately after the Supreme Court issued Dobbs, the right to a safe and legal abortion was no longer protected by federal laws. Even before then, however, many states

had been chipping away at reproductive rights, making access to abortion care nearly impossible and Roe almost meaningless. After Dobbs, state legislatures began passing increasingly draconian statutes illegalizing abortion. With clarity and passion, Luthra describes how Dobbs put American lives, health and autonomy at risk.

Luthra does an excellent job explaining the complex legal and political history of the anti-abortion movement, and her analysis of the impact of Dobbs is meticulously documented. But at the heart of Undue Burden are the stories of dozens of patients who sought a safe abortion in a post-Dobbs world. She focuses particularly on four people to illustrate the major themes of her book: Tiff, a high school student whose inability to access a timely abortion in Texas changes her life indelibly; Angela, a single mom who knows that another baby will make it impossible to provide her young son with a stable future; Darlene, whose pregnancy threatens her life, but whose Texas doctors cannot give her the care she needs; and Jasper, a trans man from Florida forced to make a crucial decision before the state’s 15-week deadline kicks in.

Luthra also gives voice to the providers whose stories are rarely heard. We meet nurses and doctors hopping on and off planes to provide safe abortions to pregnant people desperate for their help, and doctors whose colleagues have been harassed and even murdered. Their dedication to their patients is both remarkable and inspiring.

In her empathetic book, Luthra capably zooms in on private stories and zooms out on the laws that have irrevocably changed lives, proving the feminist adage: The personal is political. Undue Burden is a rigorous and compelling condemnation of the unnecessary pain and sorrow Dobbs left in its wake.

—Deborah Mason

This Is Why You Dream

By Rahul Jandial SCIENCE

Dr. Rahul Jandial spends a great deal of time delving into the human brain—both literally, as a neurosurgeon, and figuratively, as a researcher, professor and author of the international bestseller Life Lessons From a Brain Surgeon and the memoir, Life on a Knife’s Edge.

In his engaging and information-packed new book, This Is Why You Dream: What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life (Penguin Life, $29, 9780593655719), Jandial enthusiastically explores the slumberous state, offering tips to help readers use dreams to reach their full potential around the clock. “By interpreting your dreams,” he asserts, “you can make sense of your experience and explore your emotional life in new and profound ways.”

“Your dreams . . . change with the seasons of your life.

Understanding the sleeping brain’s whimsy isn’t as simple as consulting a dream dictionary—which, by the way, Jandial does not recommend. That’s because dream dictionaries “cleverly offer a mix of vagueness and specificity that make it easy to shape your personal circumstances to fit any of [their] interpretations.” Rather, “Your dreams are the product of your brain at this particular moment in your life, and they change with the seasons of your life. To expect them to fall in line with others because they share the same central narrative, or the same visual element, is simply not realistic.”

We bring our unique experiences to the hours when the brain’s Executive Network, “responsible for logic, order, and reality testing,” turns off and the unfettered, judgment-free Imagination Network kicks in. But Jandial also reveals that surveys conducted 50 years apart in four different countries found that broader concerns (e.g., being chased, sexual experiences, school or studying) remained consistent in dreams across time and geography. This is evidence, he believes, that “the characteristics and contents of dreams are baked into our DNA, as a function of our neurobiology and evolution.”

For those in pursuit of personal evolution, Jandial says we can turn to dreams for harbingers of health challenges, including worsening symptoms of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, addiction and depression. Creativity can be boosted by training ourselves to remember dreams and “focusing outward when we awaken.” And advanced dream-wranglers will revel in two chapters devoted to lucid dreaming, another way in which Jandial believes readers can gain self-awareness, boost happiness and make our dreams even, well, dreamier. This Is Why You Dream is a fascinating, eye-opening dispatch from the world of neuroscience.

—Linda M. Castellitto

We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky

By Mara Kardas-Nelson

SOCIAL SCIENCE

Who wouldn’t want to keep reading a book that opens with these lines: “Yabom was lucky. She heard one flat tone, then an abrupt pop. A moment of silence, then the flat tone again. Thank God , she thought. The phone was ringing.” With the brisk pacing of investigative journalism, Mara Kardas-Nelson’s revelatory We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance (Metropolitan, $31.99, 9781250817228) probes the perils and promises of microfinance for women in developing countries.

The idea behind microfinance originated with Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus, who theorized that microcredit could end poverty. He believed that by giving women a few dollars, they could start small businesses and take care of themselves and their families. When Kardas-Nelson moved to West Africa in 2015, she started hearing about it a lot.

Drawing on interviews with more than 350 people, from policy makers to aid workers and loan recipients, Kardas-Nelson focuses on the stories of women who’ve taken microloans in hopes of pulling themselves out of poverty. Aminata, for example, took out a loan so she could make and sell yogurt, but she lost all her goods in the chaos that led up to the 2023 Freetown, Sierra Leone, elections. Kadija has used her loan to support her work as a hairstylist; while she complains about the high interest rates and fees, she feels lucky to be able to borrow at all. Yabom, whose phone call opens the book, and this review, has not been seen or heard from since she was brought to the police station for failing to pay back her loan. As Kardas-Nelson points out, “microfinance is remarkably unremarkable: just another source of debt woven into a complex tapestry of lending and borrowing, an expensive, burdensome appendage they’ve learned to live with.” Yet, she observes, “Women are terrified of the loans and their consequences. And they are also terrified of life without them.”

With riveting storytelling, We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky reveals the often heartbreaking human dimensions of international monetary policy.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Take Back Your Brain

By Kara Loewentheil SELF-HELP

Before creating her popular podcast Unf*ck Your Brain , Kara Loewentheil was already ambitious and accomplished: Her accolades include a degree from Harvard Law School, a clerkship for a federal judge and a job as a litigator. “I had it all,” she writes, but “the problem was that my brain did not seem to share this understanding. . . . I felt like I was being held hostage by a voice that was a cross between a middle school bully and a disapproving English governess.”

Through working with a life coach, Loewentheil learned cognitive behavioral techniques to challenge her unproductive thoughts and emotions, but even after getting certified as a life coach herself, something was still missing. “What we needed to really change our lives—and therefore change the world—was feminist coaching.” Loewentheil’s literary debut, Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head—and How to Get It Out (Penguin Life, $29, 9780593493953), examines how sexist and patriarchal messages impact women’s thoughts and emotions and undermine our self-esteem and self-confidence. What’s more, she offers practical advice for living well despite those long-standing messages.

The book’s first section, “Reclaim Your Brain,” walks readers through the ways pervasive, sexist beliefs play into unconscious emotional and mental cycles. Loewentheil offers a written exercise called the “thought ladder” to help readers move from a negative or debilitating thought to a neutral or even positive thought. The book’s second section, “Reclaim Your Life,” covers body image, self-esteem, romantic relationships, money mindset and time. Each chapter is grounded in cultural and social history or reportage and offers practical exercises and prompts. Throughout, Loewentheil shares anecdotes and quotes from clients and the missteps and successes that make up her own story.

While some of the book’s cognitive-behavioral techniques may be familiar to readers who’ve seen therapists, the feminist framework is a welcome approach for our still-evolving 21st-century society. And Loewentheil is an engaging, straightforward guide.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

The Hamilton Scheme

By William Hogeland

AMERICAN HISTORY

The difficult task of establishing a government for the United States required the development of a stable national economy that could deal effectively with a huge debt and other critical concerns. William Hogeland chronicles the twists and turns of the early years of the new republic in his drama-filled and insightful The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding (FSG, $35, 9780374167837). The first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, had an approach he thought could not only save the country from catastrophe but also move it to become an imperial power. Hamilton’s plan, however, favored the elite, and failed to benefit the broader population that sacrificed much in the war. A scheme, Hogeland notes, “can mean simply a plan or design. But it can also mean a secret plan or design for nefarious ends.”

Hogeland writes of Hamilton’s biggest boosters and adversaries. Readers will not be surprised to see George Washington among these supporters. On the other hand, the “flamboyant war profiteer” Robert Morris may be new to many readers. Morris believed that the key to national greatness was “a consolidation of wealth and government.” His influence on the young treasury secretary was so strong that Hogeland contends that “without him the United States probably wouldn’t exist.”

Among those who disagreed with Hamilton was Albert Gallatin, “a brilliant, abstemious Genevan émigré” and treasury secretary to Jefferson and Madison who “[wore] himself down to the nub in the fetid summers of barely built Washington, D.C., trying to discover the antidote to Hamiltonianism.” Another was Herman Husband, an idealist, abolitionist and objector to the conquest of Indigenous North Americans’ land who was “so highly regarded by ordinary people in the remote western regions where he lived that he was . . . ranked by Hamilton as a danger above all others.” These finely drawn characters bring The Hamilton Scheme to life and show the divisions in postwar economic philosophy that are still at play today.

The Hamilton Scheme covers a lot of ground, sometimes at too fast a pace.

However, it should be of special interest to readers who want to know about the beginnings of America’s economic history.

—Roger Bishop

Invisible Labor

By Rachel Somerstein

SOCIAL

SCIENCE

Rachel Somerstein experienced a traumatic cesarean section with the birth of her first child. When the epidural failed, she felt every moment of the surgery, which continued while she screamed and was restrained by nurses. After her daughter was born, Somerstein spent years trying to make sense of what had happened.

No wonder, then, that Somerstein dove into the topic of the most common surgery in the world. The result is Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section (Ecco, $32, 9780063264410), a sobering and deeply interesting look at the history of and debate around C-sections. Though they may account for one third of births in the United States, Somerstein’s research makes clear C-sections are still largely viewed as an inferior way to give birth.

“When it comes to birth, the term ‘natural’ is at once fuzzy and imprecise,” Somerstein writes. “Does it mean vaginal? Vaginal and unmedicated? At home? In the water? Regardless of the definition—which changes depending on who you ask—it most definitely doesn’t include C-sections. . . . On multiple levels, the rhetoric around natural birth implies that C-sections are bad, and the mothers who have them are bad, too.”

While judgment and lack of support can impact a new mother’s well-being, Somerstein also explores an even more insidious side of C-sections: Women of color are more likely to feel pressure from their provider to have a C-section, given how birthing experiences and outcomes are worsened and complicated by systemic racism in medical settings.

This is a provocative and well-researched book. New motherhood can be a profoundly joyful time, yet it also can be isolating, painful and shameful, and Somerstein writes that she wrote it for mothers looking to “see themselves reflected in the story of birth.” But Invisible Labor also makes clear that we still have a long way to go in adequately supporting women’s health, and therefore, it is of value to us all.

—Amy Scribner

H Lockjaw

By Matteo L. Cerilli HORROR

When her friend and classmate Chuck Warren dies in a “tragic accident,” Paz Espino knows the real culprit: a monster that’s been haunting the town of Bridlington. But the more she talks about the monster, the more the citizens of the town ignore her, calling her a liar and a troublemaker. So Paz and her friends set out to kill the monster themselves, determined that no more kids will die—but their hunt reveals that this strange, mysterious force is much stronger than they first thought.

Matteo L. Cerilli’s debut novel is an ambitious horror, and it succeeds in telling a story that’s both scary and profound. Lockjaw (Tundra, $17.99, 9781774882306) is absorbing and disorienting, with shifting perspectives and the slippery, charismatic voice of its third-person narration. Foreshadowing recurs and truths are turned on their heads, leaving readers constantly unsure of what’s coming next.

The Wilderness of Girls

By Madeline Claire Franklin THRILLER

In her eerie and engrossing debut, The Wilderness of Girls (Zando, $19.99, 9781638931003), Madeline Claire Franklin invites readers to ponder the sometimes blurry line between belief and delusion, and to consider what it means to be free. Sixteen-year-old Rhiannon Chase’s financier father is neglectful and angry, and her stepmother’s cruelty has led to Rhi’s decade-long eating disorder. But suddenly, salvation: Her father is arrested for numerous crimes, her stepmother flees and Rhi is taken in by her late mother’s brother, Uncle Jimmy. She barely knows him, but he’s kind and secures her a part-time job at the Happy Valley Wildlife Preserve.

Rhi feels alive as she rambles through the woods. But when she encounters four wild young girls surrounded by a pack of protective wolves, she doesn’t know what to think, although “her throat aches to join them.”

Franklin reveals the girls’ astonishing story one tantalizing layer at a time via rotating perspectives, flashbacks, news articles and

This twisted storytelling centers on the people of Bridlington. Everyone has a mask they show to others, from Paz, the “weird” kid who insists monsters are real; to Asher, the odd but charming newcomer to Bridlington; to Caleb, the all-star son of the town’s police chief. Cerilli doesn’t go easy on his characters—no one comes out of Lockjaw unscathed. The story demands they undergo not only deep personal reflection, but also actionable change.

Which points to the message at the heart of the book: The burden of trauma, healing and forgiveness requires a great amount of personal responsibility and nuance. This is especially true in Bridlington, which has been built on decades of exclusion, its outcasts not only shunned, but also often forgotten. Cerilli navigates the balance between believing people can change and holding them accountable.

other narrative moves. She deftly builds tension as the girls warily contend with a host of new experiences, from eating with utensils to being placed with foster families. As Rhi helps care for the girls, her fascination with their past grows. Was Mother, the man who raised them, a brainwashing kidnapper or a mystical prophet? Could Rhi be “the fifth sister” prophesied by Mother?

Magic, folklore and contemporary society collide in The Wilderness of Girls as it sensitively explores the pain of trauma, the beauty of found family and the possibility that “There is room for so much more than any of us had ever dared to imagine.”

—Linda M. Castellitto

H Not Like Other Girls

By Meredith Adamo THRILLER

Jo-Lynn Kirby’s always been one of the boys: “I was loud and fun and untouchable, always hanging with the guys—no girls allowed but me.” It was a thrilling surprise when she and Maddie Price became best friends, and together reveled in their popularity at Culver Honors High School—until

Everyone must answer for their beliefs and their actions, and that makes for a very satisfying story that handles serious themes with exceptional care: For example, Cerilli refers to slurs only vaguely, such as, “thing that rhymes with—,” depicting harmful bigotry with honesty without making it painfully explicit for readers.

This candor, when coupled with the supernatural horror, makes the book thrilling from start to finish. Questions abound: What is the monster? Why won’t the adults acknowledge it? Why is Paz a town outcast? Lockjaw’s creative storytelling will keep you guessing, while its full-bodied characters will keep you reading. A horrifyingly honest tale with a hopeful ending, this engrossing novel is sure to get hearts racing and leave readers reflecting upon their own place in their communities.

—Tami Orendain

Maddie abruptly dumped Jo at the end of ninth grade. Jo was deeply hurt, but she’d be fine with her guy pals, right?

As Meredith Adamo’s masterful debut Not Like Other Girls (Bloomsbury, $19.99, 9781547614004) opens, it’s senior year. But instead of celebrating upcoming graduation, Jo’s in survival mode. Last fall, private nudes were stolen from her phone and sent to her classmates. Her grades plummeted, she was labeled “Senior Slut,” and even her supposedly lifelong buddies now bully her. Jo’s dismissive parents and brother also lack sympathy, and a safe place feels like a distant concept. When Maddie goes missing, Jo decides to investigate. She’s aided by her classmate Hudson, who proposes a faux romance to get Jo back into the popular clique. As the two ferret out information, Jo also plumbs her own murky memories, unearthing truths that provoke fresh pain but also bring her self-image—and the motivations of those around her—into sharper focus.

Jo’s senior year is rife with revelations that change her life and offer hope for her future— which Not Like Other Girls is likely to also do for its readers as it delivers a fiercely feminist take on rape culture. Whether crafting authentic narration, spinning a sweet and sexy fake-dating storyline, or building a suspenseful mystery, Adamo proves herself to be absolutely an author to watch.

—Linda M. Castellitto

In living color

Two authors combine expressive art and writing to offer poignant explorations of LGBTQ+ identity, relationships and self-acceptance .

HThe Deep Dark

On top of trying to finish high school, Magdalena Herrera works a part-time job and is the sole caregiver for her grandmother. Every night, Mags goes down a trapdoor in her house, emerging drained in more than one way.

Then her childhood best friend, Nessa, shows up for the first time in a decade, and starts asking questions the Herreras don’t want anyone to ask. What’s more, Nessa is stirring up feelings that Mags long ago accepted people in her family can never have.

Homebody

The Deep Dark (Graphix, $16.99, 9781338840018) is a moving and eerie graphic novel exploring identity, generational trauma and queer love. Molly Knox Ostertag expertly fuses magical realism and mystery into an adorable love story with nuanced characters and natural, impassioned dialogue. Stunning art captures the expressive cast and beautiful Californian setting. Ostertag twists comic conventions, coloring the present almost exclusively in black and white, while flashbacks are in full color, making it apparent how Mags’ life has been gray since Nessa left. Throughout, Ostertag’s dynamic illustrations provoke emotional responses.

The Deep Dark leaves some questions unanswered, but that’s the point: Such intricate conflict can’t be wrapped up neatly. As Ostertag says in her author’s note, this graphic novel follows the “first careful steps of unraveling,” and you’ll cheer for Mags and Nessa to keep taking those steps.

Theo remembers feeling uncomfortable from a young age with how the world saw them. Frustrations built up: Boys assumed they couldn’t play chess; and they were forced to cut their own hair because hairdressers always insisted on more feminine looks. Eventually, Theo realized they feel most at home identifying as nonbinary.

Homebody (HarperAlley, $26.99, 9780063319592), by debut author Theo Parish, is a delightful, beautiful graphic memoir celebrating the journey they took to discover their gender identity. Reading it feels like receiving a warm hug. Parish generates gorgeous imagery through a color palette of pinks and blues, sometimes blending the colors together. Throughout, Theo is drawn with a literal house for their body, an extended metaphor that is powerful and charming.

This book truly matches the sweet nature of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, while also being exceptional in its own way as a nonfiction offering. While Parish includes musings concerning general transgender and nonbinary identity, Homebody is foremost centered on Parish’s specific coming-of-age in England. Still, through this deeply personal exploration of gender identity, many who traditionally have been left out of narrative storytelling may see their own experiences reflected, as Parish “[shines] a beacon of hope to those yet to flourish.”

—Emily Koch

Coming home

For his debut novel, Anton Treuer wanted to write a Native story centered on healing .

I should not know my Native American culture or language. But I am alive. I live my culture. I speak and dream in Ojibwe.

My grandmother, Luella Seelye, was taken from her parents on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota and sent to boarding school as a child, where she was forbidden to speak Ojibwe. She came back to Leech Lake, married and raised a family. Something profound survived the war on our culture, but something beautiful was severed too.

I grew up at Leech Lake watching my mother, Margaret, become the first female Native attorney in Minnesota. By middle school, the cabin of my younger years (with no running water or electricity) was replaced with a beautiful modern home. Through it all, we harvested wild rice, made maple syrup and hunted. I grew up with books, as well as a burning sense of justice and ambition.

I went to high school with lots of Native students and many more white students. The racism was inescapable. I wanted to leave and never come back. I shocked everyone I knew, myself most of all, by getting into Princeton University. I shocked them again when I graduated from Princeton with a plan to come home.

I lived with one of our tribal elders, Archie Mosay. He was a teenager the first time he saw a white man, and in his 30s the first time he saw a car. I emerged from that experience fluent in our language and committed to our spiritual and ceremonial life. I have been serving Ojibwe communities in that capacity ever since.

I went to graduate school and became a professor of Ojibwe. I have nine children. My world has been filled with elders and

children alike. I am so grateful for all the blessings and beauty in my life.

Where Wolves Don’t Die (Levine Querido, $18.99, 9781646143818) is the story of Ezra Cloud, a 15-year-old Ojibwe boy who is trying to find himself, while looking for clues to a murder. His family sends him to the Canadian wilderness to run a trapline with his grandfather, where he stumbles into a transformational self-discovery and learns more about his family, his culture and himself. The book is both a tense thriller and a tender coming-of-age story.

I wrote Where Wolves Don’t Die to turn Native fiction on its head. We have so many stories about trauma and tragedy, with characters who lament the culture that they were always denied. I wanted to show how vibrant and alive our culture still is. I wanted to create a story that was gripping but where none of the Native characters were drug addicts, abused or abusing others—one more like the Native life that I know. The oppressions Natives have endured are real, so I kept my work unflinching, but focused on healing. Where Wolves Don’t Die doesn’t just profess, but demonstrates the magnificence of our elders, the humor of our people and the power of forgiveness and reconciliation. I have written over 20 books, but this is my first novel. And it’s the best thing I’ve ever written.

—Anton Treuer

© MANGESHIG PAWIS-STECKLEY

H My Daddy Is a Cowboy

By Stephanie Seales

Illustrated by C. G. Esperanza

PICTURE BOOK

Quietly and sweetly, before the sun rises, a father finds his daughter already awake in anticipation and places a cowboy hat on her head. This will be a “just us” morning: They will ride the streets of their cityscape on horseback, Daddy on his longtime mare, Power, and our young narrator on her pony, Clover. Along with the rest of the city, Mommy and the girl’s little brother are still asleep, but Abuelita is up first as usual, her coffee brewed strong. She gives the narrator a paper bag of apple slices and sends the two on their way. They travel by motorcycle to a backyard ranch in the middle of the city, complete with horse stalls and hay. The narrator splits her apple slices between Power and Clover,

H Bibsy Cross and the Bad Apple

By Liz Garton Scanlon Illustrated by Dung Ho

CHAPTER BOOK

With Bibsy Cross and the Bad Apple (Knopf, $16.99, 9780593644416), Liz Garton Scanlon launches a new chapter book series starring a lovable protagonist “with a whole lot to say.” Eight-year-old Bibsy loves school and learning (especially about science), and she has adored all of her teachers—that is, until her third grade teacher, Mrs. Stumper, who “doesn’t seem that keen on Bibsy either.” Bibsy enjoys sharing with her class, but Mrs. Stumper thinks Bibsy’s interjections are often “a stone too far.”

Fortunately, Bibsy is resilient. When the upcoming science fair gives Bibsy a chance to flex her creativity and enthusiasm for learning, Bibsy might just gain the courage to speak up for herself—and encourage Mrs. Stumper to change her approach to discipline.

Scanlon’s story, which is written in conversational free verse, combines an exuberant protagonist with an empowering,

enjoying Power’s “soft, velvety nose,” and Clover’s mane that “looks kind of like the hay she eats but feels softer.” Then they brush, saddle up and ride through the streets of the sleeping city until the sun rises and the city wakes up.

There is so much to love about My Daddy Is a Cowboy (Abrams, $18.99, 9781419760815), a gorgeous book that celebrates Black urban horsemanship. The illustrations by C.G. Esperanza are breathtaking, awash in color with bold swaths of paint that make sharp contrasts between the dark predawn and the splashes of color from Daddy’s purple jacket, the narrator’s hair beads and her little leather cowboy boots.

Their facial expressions are captured so perfectly: You can see the wonder on the child’s face as they ride, as well as the love in Daddy’s eyes as he watches his little cowboy continue a sacred tradition. Readers can look at their faces and call to mind someone they love dearly, remembering all the times they shared together over something special and intimate—something for “just us.”

This book hits all the high points of Black cowboy culture and will be a must-have on the shelf for all budding enthusiasts eager to see themselves represented authentically and beautifully. Giddyup!

—Lisa Bubert

STEM-focused plot. Ho’s cheerful blackand-white illustrations are punctuated with bright spots of red that are as bold as Bibsy’s personality. Readers who fall in love with Bibsy are in luck: Knopf is simultaneously publishing a second novel in the series about Bibsy’s attempt to win the library’s bike-a-thon. Hopefully many more adventures will follow.

—Norah Piehl

There Was a Shadow

By Bruce Handy

Illustrated by Lisk Feng

PICTURE BOOK

A child heads outdoors into a verdant landscape as the sun rises and a shadow appears as the “last hint of night.” Thus begins an evocative exploration of shadows, both literal and metaphorical, in There Was a Shadow (Enchanted Lion, $18.95, 9781592704064), written by Bruce Handy and illustrated by Lisk Feng. Handy examines the omnipresent big and small shadows of the natural world, from the noontime shadow a tree casts, to the subtle shadows that land on a face or water. Feng’s delicate, fine-lined illustrations bring these depictions to brilliant life on the page.

A “thinking shadow . . . you could feel but not see” also plagues the protagonist: the feeling of worry. But it soon darts away. As all the children head home, the shadows of late afternoon stretch until they disappear altogether with the setting sun. Feng gives readers a peek of the night landscape with a palette of deep, rich cobalt and sapphire blues, while Handy closes the book with a satisfying and thought-provoking question about memories and dreams.

Handy tells this multilayered story with tenderness and reverence for the interior world of children. There Was a Shadow flows like poetry and sparkles as Feng’s beautifully wielded, sun-dappled illustrations impart mood and mystery. It’s easy to get lost in these shadows.

—Julie Danielson

Until You Find the Sun

By Maryam Hassan

Illustrated by Anna Wilson

PICTURE BOOK

By day, Aminah stays busy seeing friends and eating mangoes while basking in the sunshine of her tropical home; at night, she enjoys cozy readaloud times with her grandfather, Da. Aminah’s world suddenly changes when her

parents announce they are moving and Da will stay behind. “I am always with you,” he advises. “You will find sunshine wherever you go.” Debut author Maryam Hassan writes in a realistic, reassuring way about displacement in Until You Find the Sun (Interlink, $18.95, 9781623716936), a story that will appeal to a wide audience of young readers.

Despite Da’s encouragement, Aminah struggles to find any sunshine in the cold, bustling city of her new home. Her only source of joy comes from calls with Da. Anna Wilson’s buoyant art energizes every page, highlighting the stark contrast between Aminah’s hometown—bathed in colors and “full of sparkles”—and her dreary new world, drenched in dark blue shadows. Eventually, a new winter coat, as bright as the sun, gives Aminah “a new glittering glow in her heart,” while a new friend further rejuvenates her, and an overnight snowfall opens her eyes to fresh types of beauty. Wilson uses patterns and shades of bright orange and yellow as motifs that connect Aminah to her native land and Da. Toward the end, Aminah gazes with anticipation at her vision of a wintry castle high on a hill: a symbol of new adventures in wait.

Until You Find the Sun is a joyful book that celebrates new adventures while acknowledging the challenges that transition may bring. It’s also a reminder of the powerful bond between grandparent and child.

—Alice Cary

H Emergency Quarters

By Carlos Matias

Illustrated by Gracey Zhang

PICTURE BOOK

Emergency Quarters (Katherine Tegen, $19.99, 9780063271456), written by Carlos Matias and illustrated by Gracey Zhang, takes us back to the days without cell phones, kicking off with a perfectly worded note for those young enough to not remember technology-free days. It’s Ernesto’s first week of going to and from school without his parents. Before he heads out to walk with his friends, his mother gives him a payphone quarter to tuck safely away. Full of independence and responsibility, but not completely immune to temptation, Ernesto may be a child of the ’90s, but the essence of his story is timeless.

Carlos Matias narrates skillfully, conveying the thoughts of a child with lines like “But I got emergencies.” Ernesto comes across as generally thoughtful, observant and sincere;

he’s an adorably funny character you can’t help but like. Matias uses descriptions, alliteration and assonance to craft a story perfect for reading aloud: just the right length, with good variety between dialogue and narration, and natural flow and rhythm.

Gracey Zhang’s illustrations make Emergency Quarters feel retro in the best way. Its comfortable mix between Sesame Street and Jack Prelutsky will be instantly recognizable to those who grew up in that era. Wonderfully messy with imperfect lines and wonky angles, Zhang’s art is filled with more details than you could ever absorb. Every page is so alive and full of energy, you’ll want to visit Ernesto’s world. From Ernesto’s house to the busy sidewalks, Zhang fills the neighborhood with kind, expressive faces.

While Emergency Quarters feels like a tribute to older generations, its story will resonate with kids of all ages. Spending time with friends and sharing that little bit of independence. Hearing our parents’ reminders in our heads as we make decisions. And sometimes slipping up, knowing that even if the quarters aren’t plentiful, the love absolutely is.

—Jill Lorenzini

Joyful Song

By Lesléa Newman

Illustrated by Susan Gal PICTURE BOOK

From the awardwinning team of Lesléa Newman and Susan Gal comes Joyful Song (Levine Querido, $18.99, 9781646143702), a cheerful contemporary story celebrating Jewish naming traditions. Zachary is a new big brother—and especially proud to be pushing the carriage holding his new baby sister as he and his moms make their way to the synagogue. As they walk, the family greets neighbors curious about the new baby. Zachary is careful to explain that the baby’s real name won’t be announced until later that very day—at her naming ceremony. Before long, friends join in to accompany the family in a happy parade. At the synagogue, Zachary steps up to play a leading role, reciting the words he has been practicing to get right, announcing that the baby will be called Aliza Shira, which means “joyful song.”

Gal’s bright, exuberant palate is filled with brilliant golds and luscious coral and orange shades, and her always-vibrant art brings a natural warmth to the array of characters

depicted throughout. In an author’s note, Newman provides information about naming traditions and Hebrew translations are provided for several names as well. A final question in this heartwarming book opens the door to further conversations: “Everybody’s name has an interesting story. What’s the story of yours?”

—Deborah Hopkinson

H Itty Bitty Betty Blob

Written by Constance Lombardo

Illustrated by Micah Player

PICTURE BOOK

Picture Day at Ghoulington Academy is here, but Itty Bitty Betty Blob (Hippo Park, $18.99, 9781662640148) is frustrated at her inability to strike the perfect photo-ready pose. The problem? In a world where scariness reigns supreme, Betty is an outlier: a smiley, bright pink monster who’s more sweet than scary. To her classmates’ irritation and teachers’ consternation, “Betty rejoiced at rainbows,” and, even worse, “During Chorus, her GRRRs turned into GRRRA-LA-LAAAs!”

In an effort to ease Betty’s nervous anticipation, her supportive mom gives her a fashionable yet frightful gown to wear, but Betty can’t help fretting as she follows the winding forest path to school.

Everything changes when a tiny adorable pink puff appears, beckoning Betty deeper into the woods to a “place as bright on the outside as she felt on the inside.” The multicolored oasis is populated by puffs of many hues, all eager to make Betty’s dress reflect who she really is via an exuberant makeover montage.

Constance Lombardo’s straightforward, sweetly witty prose will have readers rooting for Betty as well as nervously holding their breath on her behalf as she dares to embrace being different. Micah Player’s boldly drawn, emotion-infused illustrations expertly embody everything from Ghoulington Academy’s imposing gothic architecture to the puffs’ extreme cuteness and manic energy. There are lots of fun little details for itty bitty bibliophiles to discover upon rereads, too.

Itty Bitty Betty Blob’s nicely balanced combination of humor, emotion and inspiration makes it an absolute treat of a read—a warm and wonderful reminder to celebrate our differences and dare to share our joy with others.

—Linda M. Castellitto

CRITTER FRIENDS

Whether it’s rowing down a river, buying bread at the bakery, playing before bedtime, or just figuring out how to get out of a funk, the charming adventures of these little animals will put a smile on your face

H Little Shrew

Little Shrew lives a life similar to most people: He wakes up, goes to work and comes home to do his daily chores. But certain ordinary things are exciting enough to disrupt his neatly maintained schedule: solving his Rubik’s Cube, finding an old television set for sale and having friends visit his house. Soon, Little Shrew has a dream to leave behind his mundane life and visit a tropical island, “a beautiful place, like the one on the television.” But can the life he has continue to enchant him until that day?

and their film adaptations like Paddington and Winnie the Pooh

—Nicole Brinkley

Moon Bear

Akiko Miyakoshi (I Dream of a Journey) quietly charms with Little Shrew (Kids Can, $19.99, 9781525313035), a deeply cozy collection of three stories in which muted visuals in a rustic palette—created with Miyakoshi’s signature mix of wood charcoal, acrylic gouache and pencil—are paired perfectly with soothing yet sparse text, truly setting the mood of each story.

Though Little Shrew dreams of going somewhere grand, it is the small things in his life that shine brightest. The best part of his day is when Little Shrew “buys two rye bread rolls and one white roll,” inspiration for an illustration that will immediately make readers long for a bakery. He lists beloved gifts from friends, which are as meaningful as any trip: “A jar of cherry blossom honey harvested in the spring. Mushrooms and chestnuts gathered in autumn. Fancy chocolate bars.”

Little Shrew feels calm and grounded in a way that few picture books do. Readers will ering the quiet, moments they can the humdrum of Little Shrew will be a beloved addition to the shelves of readers who loved Phoebe Little Witch or Yeorim

It’s Ok, Slow , or fans of cozy classics

As long as there are bedtimes and children who’d like to avoid them, there will be picture books there to help: Moon Bear (Frances Lincoln, $18.99, 9780711291010), written by Clare Helen Welsh and illustrated by Carolina T. Godina, is an excellent addition to the fold.

Godina’s gouache and colored pencil illustrations introduce young Ettie as she cleans up, bathes, puts on pajamas and enjoys a story with her mother. But the comfort of her bedtime routine dissolves as soon as her mother turns out the light, leaving Ettie in the dark with a flashlight. The almost wordless format gives emerging readers the chance to interpret the story as they see it, and with its soft palette and gentle spirit, Welsh and Godina’s collaboration is sure to be loved by children and caregivers alike.

Godina varies her layouts throughout, sometimes utilizing a comic book style to demonstrate bedtime moments over multiple panels, other times illustrating full spreads, as when Ettie’s fearful face peeks out of the covers in her darkened room. When twinkling light begins streaming through the break in her cur tains. Ettie gets out to explore, testing the light tentatively before pulling it around to draw beautiful designs. Looking out the window, she notices how certain stars form the shape of a bear and connects them with the magical light, bringing the bear to life. At first shy, the bear soon starts to play with Ettie, trying on her slippers and testing her paintbrushes.

Before long, they are both fast asleep, and when morning comes, Ettie can’t wait to start her day. The final pages show her rushing excitedly through her day, even announcing, “Time for bed, Mommy,” as

the clock on the wall shows her to be 45 minutes ahead of her normal bedtime. With nods to such favorites as Frank Asch’s Moonbear and Eric Rohmann’s Clara and Asha, Moon Bear is a quiet reminder of the power of a child’s imagination.

—Sara Beth West

H Mouse on the River

After sharing a year with Mouse in Mouse’s Wood, readers can now enjoy a day on the river with Mouse on the River: A Journey

Through Nature (Thames & Hudson, $19.95, 9780500653289), a quiet picture book full of charm. As the titular hero spends the day rowing down a river that eventually meets the sea, the most dramatic event is a passing rainstorm—making this a good choice for a soothing bedtime tale.

William Snow’s rhyming text moves the story along as Mouse begins his solo journey early in the morning, while fellow anthropomorphic friends wave goodbye from the dock. This is very much an experiential book, with a multitude of details to scour, beginning with the full-spread map showing Mouse’s planned route. Numerous die-cut flaps encourage keen observation as they reveal cozy, detailed interiors of buildings along the way, including a floating house, a café and a tree

are chock-full of details: squirrels having tea inside a bright cafe; a fox waiting on a customer in a well-stocked bakery; Mouse camping snugly in the rowboat underneath the stars. The book brings to mind another one that quickly became a favorite in our house when my girls were young: Welcome to Mouse Village, written by Gyles Brandreth and illustrated by Mary Hall.

Mouse on the River is a wellplanned, enchanting adventure worthy of repeat enjoyment.

—Alice Cary

A Tiny Difference

A little bird is in a funk. But that’s OK, a grown-up bird reminds them. It’s OK to feel a little bit off sometimes: “No need to try to fix everything, but let’s move a few things around.” You never know what might make a tiny difference. In A Tiny Difference (Katherine Tegen, $19.99, 9780063114159), with the help of their grown-up and lots of friends, our little bird learns new techniques to connect with their body. To breathe, to stretch, to wiggle, to dance! At the same time, our friend also begins to reconnect with their mind, imagining everything from hot air balloons to aliens to a hug from a friend.

Writer and illustrator June Tate presents a tender poem from the perspective of a kind and loving adult, encouraging readers with simple, relatable language. Rather than telling us to breathe, Tate writes “fill up your rib cage” and “open up like a window.” Rather than reminding us to stretch, she tells us to “reach to the sides of the room” in order to “get out those crunchy bits.” The picture book concludes with the narrator listing all the traits that make the little bird special, reminding us as readers that we too are loved by those in our lives.

Made with colored pencils, markers and watercolors, Tate’s illustrations are remi

meet Toni Yuly

Toni Yuly is the author of many children’s books, including the ALA Notable Children’s Book Early Bird, and Thank You, Bees , which won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. She studied painting at the University of Washington and worked for years as a librarian. Yuly lives in Bremerton, Washington, where she often drives to the shore to watch the brown pelicans—whose lively antics and fishing abilities are celebrated in The Pelican Can! (Little, Brown, $18.99, 9780316497817).

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