August 1, 2025: Volume XCIII, No. 15

FEATURING 369 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children’s, and YA Books

KENNEDY RYAN PROMISES A HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER FOR ALL

The bestselling romance novelist headlines our special Romance Issue

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

ROMANCE IS BLOOMING

IF THERE’S ONE bright spot in the book world these days—despite the rise of AI, the proliferation of book bans, and the creeping decline in general readership—it’s the blooming of the romance genre. Once the butt of stupid jokes and snobbish literary condescension, romance today draws all kinds of readers with all kinds of tastes, and specialty bookstores like the Ripped Bodice (with branches in both Los Angeles and Brooklyn) cater to readers and forge community. Romantasy by the likes of Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J. Maas may dominate the headlines (and the bestseller lists), but that subgenre is really just the tip of the iceberg. Says Ripped Bodice owner Leah Koch, “Alongside the dragons and fae, we’re seeing major love for superseasonal romance. Readers

want books that match the mood of the moment, whether that’s sandy beach reads or cozy fall flings. Right now, One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune and Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood are flying off the shelves—people love a messy, sun-soaked love story.”

You’ll encounter a wide variety of characters in today’s romance, too, reflecting a diversity of race, gender expression, and body type once unheard of in the genre. As novelist Kennedy Ryan, who appears on the cover of this issue, puts it, “I’m going to write about people who may not see themselves in a traditional happily-ever-after but still deserve one.”

Hendrix Barry, the protagonist of Ryan’s latest novel, Can’t Get Enough (Forever, May 13), certainly isn’t your stereotypical

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romance heroine: She’s a successful Black professional, childless by choice, who’s caring for a mother with Alzheimer’s. She gets her HEA, but not at the expense of her ambitions or life choices. Says Ryan, “Hendrix is an auntie, she takes care of her mom, she takes care of her friends, she takes care of her community, and she’s putting so much love into the world. She’s one of the most certain and self-contained heroines I’ve written.” Read the full interview with Ryan on p. 16.

Christopher William FitzWilliams Winterthrope, the Right Honourable Earl of Eden, is hardly a typical romance protagonist, either. The hero of TJ Alexander’s A Gentleman’s Gentleman (Vintage, March 11), set in England in 1819, is a “man of unusual make”—what today we’d call transgender—whose quiet country life is upended when he receives a solicitor’s letter informing him he must marry before his 25th birthday or forfeit his inheritance. And then there’s the troublesome matter of Christopher’s new valet, James

Harding, who’s handsome to “an incredibly annoying degree.” Our review calls it a “charming, compelling, and very queer Regency.”

No setup is off limits for a romance these days. In Mallory Marlowe’s Love at First Sighting (Berkley, August 12), social media influencer El Martin experiences a UFO encounter while livestreaming with her Instagram followers, soon attracting the attention of Agent Carter Brody of the Private Intelligence Sector. The romance between these too is all too human—no paranormal activity here—but the result is “X-Files meets Hype House,” according to our reviewer, with “enough fast-paced action, clever banter, and sizzling chemistry for even the most skeptical nonbeliever.”

You’ll find many other terrific romance novels in this issue, including ones for young adult and even middle-grade readers. We hope to keep you reading happily ever after.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson TOM

Contents

The Romance Issue

OUR FRESH PICK

ISBN: XXX-X-XX-XXXXXX-X

Co-Chairman

HERBERT SIMON

Publisher & CEO

MEG LABORDE KUEHN mkuehn@kirkus.com

Chief Marketing Officer

SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com

Publisher Advertising & Promotions

RACHEL WEASE rwease@kirkus.com

Indie Advertising & Promotions

AMY BAIRD abaird@kirkus.com

Author Consultant

KEELIN FERDINANDSEN kferdinandsen@kirkus.com

Lead Designer KY NOVAK knovak@kirkus.com

Magazine Compositor

NIKKI RICHARDSON nrichardson@kirkus.com

Director of Kirkus Editorial ROBIN O’DELL rodell@kirkus.com

Kirkus Editorial Senior Production Editor

MARINNA CASTILLEJA mcastilleja@kirkus.com

Kirkus Editorial Production Editor

ASHLEY LITTLE alittle@kirkus.com

Copy Editors

ELIZABETH J. ASBORNO

LORENA CAMPES

NANCY MANDEL

BILL SIEVER

KENNETH WALSH

Mysteries Editor

THOMAS LEITCH

Co-Chairman

MARC WINKELMAN

Editor-in-Chief

TOM BEER tbeer@kirkus.com

President of Kirkus Indie

CHAYA SCHECHNER cschechner@kirkus.com

Fiction Editor

LAURIE MUCHNICK lmuchnick@kirkus.com

Nonfiction Editor

JOHN McMURTRIE jmcmurtrie@kirkus.com

Young Readers’ Editor

LAURA SIMEON lsimeon@kirkus.com

Young Readers’ Editor

MAHNAZ DAR mdar@kirkus.com

Editor at Large MEGAN LABRISE mlabrise@kirkus.com

Senior Indie Editor DAVID RAPP drapp@kirkus.com

Indie Editor ARTHUR SMITH asmith@kirkus.com

Senior Editorial Assistant NINA PALATTELLA npalattella@kirkus.com

Senior Indie

Editorial Assistant

DAN NOLAN dnolan@kirkus.com

Indie Editorial Assistant

KATARINA YERGER kyerger@kirkus.com

Contributing Writers

GREGORY McNAMEE

MICHAEL SCHAUB

Contributors

Colleen Abel, Jeffrey Alford, Stephanie Anderson, Kent Armstrong, Mark Athitakis, Kit Ballenger, Colette Bancroft, Carole Bell, Nell Beram, Kazia Berkley-Cramer, Elizabeth Bird, Christopher A. Biss-Brown, Sarah Blackman, Elissa Bongiorno, Jennifer Brough, Jessica Hoptay Brown, Ana Cackley, Kevin Canfield, Timothy Capehart, Hailey Carrell, Tobias Carroll, Charles Cassady, Sonia Charales, Ann Childs, Alec B. Chunn, Amanda Chuong, Carin Clevidence, Rachael Conrad, Adeisa Cooper, Jeannie Coutant, Kim Dare, Cathy DeCampli, Dave DeChristopher, Kathleen Deedy, Elise DeGuiseppi, Suji DeHart, Amanda Diehl, Steve Donoghue, Anna Drake, Robert Duxbury, Gina Elbert, Lisa Elliott, Chelsea Ennen, Ilana Bensussen Epstein, Rosalind Faires, Joshua Farrington, Brooke Faulkner, Eiyana Favers, Margherita Ferrante, Catherine Foster, Mia Franz, Harvey Freedenberg, Jenna Friebel, Jackie Friedland, Robbin Friedman, Jackie Garcia, Laurel Gardner, Amanda Gefter, Sydney Geyer, Chloé Harper Gold, Amy Goldschlager, Melinda Greenblatt, Michael Griffith, Vicky Gudelot, Tobi Haberstroh, Silvia Lin Hanick, Peter Heck, Lynne Heffley, Ralph Heibutzki, Bridey Heing, Katrina Niidas Holm, Terry Hong, Kristen Jacobson, Wesley Jacques, Kerri Jarema, Jessica Jernigan, Danielle Jones, Betsy Judkins, Jayashree Kamblé, Deborah Kaplan, Lavanya Karthik, Ivan Kenneally, Colleen King, Maggie Knapp, Andrea Kreidler, Susan Kusel, Alexis Lacman, Megan Dowd Lambert, Carly Lane, Chelsea Langford, Christopher Lassen, Tom Lavoie, Maya Lekach, Seth Lerer, Elsbeth Lindner, Coeur de Lion, Barbara London, Patricia Lothrop, Sawyer Lovett, Georgia Lowe, Michael Magras, Joan Malewitz, Thomas Maluck, Collin Marchiando, Gabriela Martins, J. Alejandro Mazariegos, Dale McGarrigle, Kathleen McLaughlin, Cari Meister, J. Elizabeth Mills, Chintan Modi, Tara Mokhtari, Rebecca Moore, Andrea Moran, Rhett Morgan, Molly Muldoon, Jennifer Nabers, Christopher Navratil, Liza Nelson, Therese Purcell Nielsen, Ari Nussbaum, Katrina Nye, Erin O’Brien, Tori Ann Ogawa, Mike Oppenheim, Nick Owchar, Emilia Packard, Megan K. Palmer, Bethanne Patrick, Deb Paulson, Tara Peck, Rebecca Perry, John Edward Peters, Justin Pham, Jim Piechota, Christofer Pierson, Vicki Pietrus, William E. Pike, Carolyn Quimby, Bridget Quinn, Judy Quinn, Kristy Raffensberger, Kristen Bonardi Rapp, Kristen Rasmussen, Matt Rauscher, Darryn Reams, Peter Richardson, Alyssa Rivera, Lizzie Rogers, Lloyd Sachs, Sydney Sampson, Bob Sanchez, Gretchen Schulz, Gene Seymour, Jerome Shea, Sadaf Siddique, Linda Simon, Wendy Smith, Leena Soman, Margot E. Spangenberg, Allison Staley, Allie Stevens, Mathangi Subramanian, Jennifer Sweeney, Deborah Taylor, Desiree Thomas, Bill Thompson, Dick Thompson, Renee Ting, Lenora Todaro, Martha Anne Toll, Nancy Tolson, Jenna Varden, Francesca Vultaggio, Caroline Ward, Kimberly Whitmer, Angela Wiley, Kerry Winfrey, Marion Winik, Bean Yogi

EVERYBODY GETS A ROMANCE

DUKES, WEREWOLVES, surgeons, hockey players, ranch hands, librarians, even billionaires (though I thought they were going out of style): This year’s crop of romances has something for everyone. Let’s dive right in:

Fan Service by Rosie Danan (Berkley, March 11): Devin Ashwood isn’t a werewolf, but he played one on TV. So why has he woken up naked and howling, growing fangs and claws? The only person who might help him figure out what’s going on is Alex Lawson, the self-proclaimed weirdo who moderates his fan archive website. “The paranormal elements in this story are fun, and Devin’s wolfishness makes the spicy scenes extra delicious,” our review says. “Both playful and thoughtful, with extra appeal to readers involved in fandoms.”

Gabriela and His Grace by Liana De la Rosa (Berkley, August 26): The Luna sisters were sent from their native Mexico to England by their parents when the French defeated the Mexican army in 1863. Their parents just want them to be safe, but their uncle, a diplomat in London, is happy to have their surreptitious help with

the war effort. Now, with older sisters Ana María and Isabel happily married off, Gabriela has decided it’s time to go home. But she hadn’t expected to see Sebastian Brooks, the Duke of Whitfield, aboard the ship—or to realize, once she gets home, that she’d rather be back in England, leading to a delicious “only one cabin” situation with the duke. Our starred review calls the book “a complex, compelling story that celebrates the embrace of family alongside the thrill of true love.”

Unlikely Story by Ali Rosen (Montlake Romance, March 1): Imagine You’ve Got Mail , except instead of mail it’s a Google doc shared between Nora Fischer, a New York therapist who writes an anonymous advice column

for a London newspaper, and her copy editor, whom she’s falling in love with though, somewhat unbelievably, she knows him only by the initials “J.W.” Then Nora gets a new neighbor, Eli Whitman, a British man whose girlfriend dumped him in the middle of a therapy session with Nora. For which he blames her… which makes him quite prickly…though handsome. “Eli is a dashing crankster with a backstory, Nora is a therapist with vulnerabilities, and J is the mysterious perfect man who always knows what to say—and readers will be eating it up happily,” according to our starred review.

I Think They Love You by Julian Winters (St. Martin’s Griffin, January 28): Denzel Carter’s family business is event-planning, so naturally

the Carters are all perfectionists. When Denzel’s father announces his retirement and the race begins to succeed him, Denzel impulsively decides the best way to convince everyone he’s mature and committed enough for the job is to make up an imaginary boyfriend—and find someone to fill the role. His first choice falls through, but then he runs into Braylon Adams, the college boyfriend who broke his heart; now Braylon has reasons of his own for agreeing to fake-date Denzel. “A deeply romantic story wrapped in a conceit that speaks to the complicated history between its characters, with rich flashbacks sprinkled throughout,” says our reviewer. “Fun, messy, and tender.”

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.

LAURIE MUCHNICK

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

Two lady novelists are haunted—and not just by thoughts of each other. Lady Georgiana Cleeve has had enough. She and her mother gave up everything to escape her abusive father, and her writing career keeps them afloat, but lately every time she writes a novel, it’s plagiarized before it’s even published by someone calling herself Lady Darling. When she stakes out Belvoir’s Library one morning at dawn, she discovers to her horror that Lady Darling is Catriona Lacey, the daughter of her family’s former butler, with whom she was once “hopelessly infatuated.” It turns out that Cat—shocked to see the aristocratic girl she used to pine for—also depends on writing Gothic romances to support her family.

Unfortunately, after they part ways in the worst of tempers, they almost immediately see each other again at their publisher’s office, and then at a haunted churchyard, and then, somehow, at a haunted house in Wiltshire where both expected to find inspiration for their next novel. They agree to stay out of each other’s way, but in just a few days, their chemistry has fully reignited. Their first kiss is the “most erotic” experience either has had, but after their second kiss, they find a dead body in the probably haunted garden— and things only get stranger from there. And despite the supernatural happenings and growing danger, they can’t keep their hands off each other, leading both to wonder if a future together might be

Hating

possible. The third story in the Belvoir’s Library series starts in the bookstore and then, as the women face being haunted by both the paranormal and their pasts, comes alive against the eerie setting. Georgie and Cat are tempted into plenty of scorching-hot moments no matter where they are, and

they forge a gripping emotional connection as well. The satisfying ending is topped only by the excellent author’s note, in which readers will be delighted to learn how much of the story was drawn from the historical record.

A top-notch, spooky Regency page-turner.

Kirkus Star

Happy New Years

Arad, Maya | Trans. by Jessica Cohen

New Vessel Press (350 pp.) | $18.95 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9781954404342

After decades of bad choices, a woman reveals who she is beyond an inveterate optimist.

Leah Zuckerman, an Israeli emigree to the United States, tells her story starting in 1966 through 50 years of New Year’s letters to schoolmates. Each letter is embellished by a postscript, most to her friend Mira, disclosing more private information. Leah lands in Worcester, Massachusetts, as a young woman to take what turns out to be a nonexistent job as a Hebrew teacher. We watch her become a wife and then mother to two sons, and cycle through a series of failed relationships with men—some that fizzle out, others that are disastrous. We suspect Leah is an unreliable narrator but we’re not sure why or how. Is she a husband stealer? Blind to her own actions? As her personal life fluctuates from man to man and place to place, her letters bring us into the lives of her friends and frenemies, and into her unceasing efforts to reinvent herself. Her older son breezes through school and the job market, while her younger drops out and becomes an addict. Themes the author explored to great effect in The Hebrew Teacher (2024) are at play here: the push and pull between homeland and adopted country, the struggle to create an identity apart from mother and homemaker, the challenges of getting a foothold in a new country and extreme financial precarity take place against sweeping changes in American culture. Unexpected—and satisfying—turns at the end of the book disclose what Leah has been hiding, revealing her to be more lovable and complex than her yearly letters have suggested. A life replete with grit, optimism, and mystery is created through the simple artifice of a series of New Year’s letters.

Kirkus Star

My Friends

Backman, Fredrik | Trans. by Neil Smith | Atria (448 pp.) | $20.99 May 6, 2025 | 9781982112820

An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it. Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-yearold artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to

their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.” A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.

Lake Song: A Novel in Stories

Bannatyne, Lesley Pratt | Mad Creek/Ohio State Univ. Press (248 pp.) | $22.95 paper September 1, 2025 | 9780814259542

Generations of a small town’s families love, lose, and misunderstand each other across a century. This insightful, often drily witty novel-in-stories is set in the town of Kinder Falls, in the New York state region known as the “burned-over district” because it was a center of religious fervor in the 19th century that birthed the Book of Mormon, the Shakers, and Spiritualism. These stories are set from 1906 to 2006, and their characters are shaken not by religion but by the desires, cruelty, and sometimes-surprising comfort common to the human experience. The first story, “Coaxing Sugar From the Trees,” is about Mavis Staunch, an independent young woman who refuses to sell her family land to the Epps brothers, who want to cut down the maple trees she taps to make a living. That refusal sets off a cascade of terrible events that leaves her dead and a boy named Harley Tuttle gripped in a lifetime of guilt. “The Stone House” finds Harley a grown man who works carving gravestones. An encounter with a suave bootlegger and his charming niece will change Harley’s life in shocking ways. “Galen, on the Clyde River” centers

The misadventures of a crime family forged in Las Vegas in the 1960s.

CROOKS

that niece, Lily, now living with Harley in 1938 in a nearby town and supporting them both as a palm reader. In another story, back in Kinder Falls, Harley’s sister Annalee plans to leave town forever with a gentleman full of promises. He’s not as clever as he thinks he is. The next group of stories jumps to the 1950s, picking up the lives of Mitchell Epps, descendant of those greedy brothers, and his wife, Carol, who are trying to be good parents to their angry, sex-crazed teenager Sharon. The stories move on through the generations to “The Final Girl,” set in 1994, with wild girl Sharon now a scary old drunk. She crosses paths with Marlena, a young single mother and descendant of the Staunch family. In the last story, “Six of Swords,” set in 2006, Lily, the palm reader, is over 90 and living amid her ghosts. All of these finely crafted stories are haunted, though, not just by the dead but by missed connections, bungled romances, and links broken between parents and children. These well-wrought miniatures add up to an engrossing multifamily epic.

Trip

Barrodale, Amie | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) | $28 September 2, 2025 | 9780374617349

A mother and son undergo simultaneous odysseys in the realms of the living and the dead in this hallucinatory debut novel. Sandra, a divorced documentary news producer, is about to fly out to cover a “Death and Denouement” conference when her ex-husband, Vic, throws a

wrench in the works: He isn’t up to solo parenting their autistic teenage son, Trip, during her month long absence. When Trip’s therapist proposes that they address their son’s behavioral issues by sending him to a summer intensive at a facility called the Center, Sandra reluctantly agrees and heads off to Nepal. There, amid a peculiar mix of scholars focused on dying and the afterlife, Sandra dies unexpectedly and begins experiencing the liminal, pre-reincarnation period described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. As she drifts through time and place, Sandra discovers that Trip is in the middle of his own misadventure, having hitchhiked away from the Center with Anthony, a recovering addict headed to the Florida Keys in advance of a hurricane. There are few topics more emotionally rousing than the endurance of love beyond the grave, which makes the novel’s flatness all the more curious. Neither Sandra nor Trip demonstrate much narrative agency and Barrodale’s prose relies heavily on short visual descriptions (i.e., “The man looked like a Nepali David Cross”) and litanies of physical action, denying characters interiority and readers lyricism. Barrodale has clearly taken great care with the novel’s metaphysics (there are footnotes attributing ideas to real-life Buddhist practitioners throughout), but the quotes seldom contribute to clarity or propulsion—as Sandra herself responds to one, “He was making sense, but hard to understand.” There are two spectacular, disquieting sections near the start of the novel—Sandra’s death and a visit to a Nepalese shrine—and the resolution has a bittersweet profundity, but the middle is a muddle. A maternal meditation on life and death that can’t quite live up to its cosmic ambitions.

Crooks: A Novel About Crime and Family

Berney, Lou | Morrow/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $30 | September 9, 2025 | 9780063445574

The misadventures of a crime family forged in Las Vegas in the 1960s, with a focus on their five children in the ’80s, ’90s, and 2010s.

“Mercurios don’t play by the rules.”

So says small-time criminal Raymond “Buddy” Mercurio as he rises through the ranks of the Vegas mob and courts and marries Lillian Ott, a glamorous salesgirl and nimble pickpocket. Ten years and four kids later, they’re on top of the world when Buddy gets a midnight phone call: “Go.” They escape a shootout and retreat to Lillian’s hometown of Oklahoma City. With another baby on the way, it seems like a place where they can lie low “till [they] get back on [their] feet.” Then, a comedy of errors during a restaurant robbery elevates Buddy as a local hero, and he capitalizes on his celebrity by opening up a disco that becomes a surprising hit. Gangsters be gangsters, though, and when one of his investors discovers Buddy’s skimming from the profits, it looks like it could be time to cut and run—until he realizes it’s his wife behind the takedown. After a chase, a gunshot, and a heavy kiss in the freezing rain, they make up (in full view of the children). The rest of the novel follows each of the five children and the effect of their unconventional upbringing on their own choices and paths in life. From beautiful idiot hustler Jeremy to restless adrenaline chaser Tallulah to staid and earnest mob enforcer Ray to tight-laced strategic planner Alice and lonely writer Piggy, they’re all shaped by their criminal parents in different ways. They also move in and out of each other’s stories in appealing ways, emphasizing their loyal bonds even as they keep getting pulled back into their own versions of criminality. As is almost always true in anthology-style works, some stories are more engaging and effective than others, but Berney continues to expand the genre

of Western noir with style, humor, and a deep understanding of human frailty and flaw.

Another original from the prolific Berney.

Marce Catlett:

The Force of a Story

Berry, Wendell | Counterpoint (176 pp.) $27 | October 7, 2025 | 9781640097759

Kentucky farmer and writer Berry continues his cycle of Port William stories. Marcellus Catlett, 43 years old, is a tobacco farmer, noble and stoic, out in the fields before dawn. It’s 1906, and he’s hauled in a fine crop, “prizing at last the cured and graded, appraised and cherished leaves into hogsheads that he sent by the railroad to the auction warehouse in Louisville.” Alas for Marce, James B. Duke’s American Tobacco Co. has cornered the market and is paying less than it costs to grow the stuff. “Its purchase, properly named, was theft,” writes Berry. It’s up to Marce’s young son, Wheeler, grown to manhood, to enlist the aid of the government to organize a farmers cooperative to wrest a fair price for their crop. Berry, as always, writes in simple but elegant language, celebrating rural lifeways: “Wheeler grew into the love of farming. He loved the days he worked to the end of, and from there looked back at the difference he had made.” Wheeler, like Marce, is also a born leader, brilliant and diligent, qualities that pass along to his descendants all the way up to the present day, when, Berry allows, tobacco isn’t much farmed anymore, given its carcinogenic qualities. Berry’s novel is very much of a piece with his celebrated essays on culture and agriculture, almost to the point of didacticism; what saves the book from becoming an extended sermon (“The industrial replacement of neighborhood by competition and technology moves everything worthy of love out of

Elegiac and elegant, with a profound sense of all that has been lost.

MARCE CATLETT

reach”) is Berry’s ability to construct a good story that circles through time, beginning and ending in the faraway past and showing plainly the habits of mind and work that have been undone by corporate rule, divorce from nature, and simple greed, “a mortal disease.” Vintage Berry, elegiac and elegant, with a profound sense of all that has been lost.

August Lane

Black, Regina | Grand Central Publishing (336 pp.) | $29 July 29, 2025 | 9781538767528

A washed-up country singer returns to his hometown, where he’s forced to confront his first love, who also secretly wrote his biggest hit.

Luke Randall, a Black country singer, can’t face most of the people in his life. What began as a promising career has devolved into a weekly gig in a dive bar, where people come just to hear him play the one hit he’s known for, and he can’t stand it. When he’s approached by the agent of his musical idol, legendary Black country singer Jojo Lane, and invited to perform with her at an upcoming festival, he can’t afford to say no. Unfortunately, the event requires him to return to his hometown in the Arkansas Delta, where he must confront Jojo’s daughter, August, the first girl he ever loved. She’s also the one who wrote the lyrics to the song that made him famous, but he never credited her. It’s no surprise she hates

him now. Luke is finally ready to return to make things right. Back in town, he’s determined to tell August truths he never shared, but she doesn’t want to hear it. Meanwhile, he’s also trying to repair his relationship with the brother he’s been estranged from for years and to forgive the mother who got everything wrong. Whether any of these wounds can be healed is unclear. The book follows Luke in a close third-person narrative, shifting periodically to August’s perspective and also alternating between two timelines: 2009, when they were in high school, and the present day in 2023. With an emotional plot that touches on childhood trauma, domestic abuse, alcoholism, and neglect, the novel also explores issues of race in country music. Luke is a frustrating protagonist, wavering between self-pity and passivity while slowly trying to earn his redemption. August fares better, but her motivations feel underexplored, especially given the emotional weight she carries. Still, there are moments of real tenderness and hard truth, particularly when the novel examines the country music industry’s treatment of Black artists. Finally, while the story’s trajectory is fairly predictable, the final chapters deliver an emotionally impactful payoff, if the reader is patient enough to get there. An uneven but ultimately satisfying story about regret, race, and redemption.

For more by Regina Black, visit Kirkus online.

Six Weeks by the Sea

Byrne, Paula | Pegasus (256 pp.) | $28.95

August 5, 2025 | 9781639369256

An Austen scholar imagines a love affair for the famous literary singleton.

“One of the questions I am most frequently asked about Jane Austen is ‘Did she ever fall in love?’ Surely, people say, the world’s most famous and beloved author of romantic novels—the creator of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth— must once have been in love herself?”

Byrne, the author of multiple nonfiction books about Jane Austen and her world, answers the question posed in her afterword with a cleverly imagined love story woven over a scaffolding of fact. Austen’s family did indeed visit the seaside town of Sidmouth for six weeks in the summer of 1801, and her adored brother Frank did join them on shore leave from the British navy. His friend Capt. Peter Parker, however, whom he hopes to introduce to Jane, is Byrne’s invention, while the lawyer Samuel Rose, another candidate for Jane’s attentions, is inspired by a real person who never crossed paths with Austen. “He was undoubtedly attractive—darkhaired with a fine, aquiline nose, and the bluest of eyes. She noted, with a half-smile, that his complexion was flushed like the rose of his name.”

There’s a catch though: He’s a lawyer and Jane wants nothing to do with lawyers since she had an ill-fated flirtation with one when she was 19. However, since any good Austen-style romance has its roots in furious antipathy, the reader may suspect that Mr. Rose’s chances are better than they first seem. Byrne uses her knowledge of the period to weave in two themes not usually associated with Austen: homosexuality (about which no more can be said without spoilers) and racism. Jane eventually bonds with the blue-eyed lawyer over their shared belief in abolitionism, and also becomes

involved with a biracial child one of the locals has brought home from his time in Antigua. All the real details supporting these matters are clarified in the excellent afterword.

The Jane Austen beach book fans have been waiting for.

The Literati

Coll, Susan | Harper Muse (400 pp.) | $18.99 paper | September 9, 2025 | 9781400346653

A young woman comes into her own amid the chaos of the literary workplace and the mysteries of the LSAT.

Coll enthusiasts will remember sweet Clemi, a clerk in the Washington, D.C., bookstore that’s the setting for Bookish People (2022). The daughter of a powerful literary agent and a famous alcoholic poet whom she met for the first time in that earlier book, 26-yearold Clemi is still trying to figure out her future, having left the bookstore and taken a job at an organization that’s had to change its name to “WLNP: Washington Literary Nonprofit” due to scandals in its past. Her first week at work is so unsettling—her boss disappears; the office is ransacked; a huge cat shows up; the annual prize banquet is days away and the caterer has not been paid, because, uh-oh, the organization’s bank accounts have just been emptied—that she stops by the bookstore to pick up a study guide for the LSAT. A logical reasoning question about clowns spirals into a classic Coll subplot, with clowns turning up around every corner. Like Bookish People, the novel sparkles with kooky details plucked from literary culture. Coll’s naming of characters and titling of their books is a schtick that never gets old, nor does a gleeful running joke about a man who looks exactly like Malcolm Gladwell. Will there be a lost car-key subplot? Of course there will. At the heart of the hijinks is dear, self-effacing Clemi, who keeps getting mistaken for

somebody’s nanny, most currently the 8-year-old genius son of this year’s prizewinner. Though the boy is notorious for having caused $52,000 worth of damage at the Hôtel du Cap in Antibes, he will prove to be another example of Coll’s ability to find redemptive qualities in even the most obnoxious characters—a key gift for this chronicler of the egomania, foolishness, and undimmed aspirations of the modern literati.

A comedy of errors that gets it just right.

Sharp Force

Cornwell, Patricia | Grand Central Publishing (400 pp.) | $30

October 7, 2025 | 9781538773963

A Christmas bout between Kay Scarpetta and the Phantom Slasher.

But first, Scarpetta, Virginia’s chief medical examiner, has to figure out how software designer Rowdy O’Leary died. Fished from the Potomac River on Christmas Eve six years after a hit-and-run driver left him permanently disabled and a week after he plunked down the cash for a pricey emerald ring, he fell off his fishing perch and drowned—or did he? Scarpetta’s examination of his body is cut short by two disturbing developments: the discovery of an unidentified woman’s remains buried on the grounds of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital, and celebrity TV reporter Dana Diletti’s report that the red-eyed ghost associated with the Slasher’s three murders has floated through the window of her home. She’s got video, too, and the apparition looks real and scary. The final blow to Scarpetta’s plans for a Christmas getaway with her husband, Secret Service forensic psychologist Benton Wesley, is an attack on an Alexandria home that kills Mercy psychiatrist Georgine Duvall, who used to treat Scarpetta’s niece, Lucy Farinelli, and nearly kills graduate student Zain Willard, White House intern and

nephew of presidential candidate Sen. Calvin Willard. This time the Slasher’s ghost has been spotted on the scene by none other than Pete Marino, head of investigations for the medical examiner’s office and Scarpetta’s longtime sidekick. Cornwell’s use of Robbie, Zain’s robotic dog, and Janet, Lucy’s AI companion, integrates the futuristic elements she favors more successfully than in her recent outings. But the solutions to all these mysteries will leave fans of the venerable franchise pursing their lips rather than gasping in awe. Come for the forensics, stay for the nonhumans.

Kaplan’s Plot

Diamond, Jason | Flatiron Books (320 pp.) $29.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9781250385918

Having flamed out at a California startup, Elijah Mendes returns home broke to be with his cancer-stricken mother in Chicago, where he uncovers dark secrets about his Jewish family.

His mother, Eve, an acclaimed poet working on her memoir, has avoided learning about the criminal activities of her Russian-born father, Yitzhak “Yitz” Kaplan. But Elijah’s research reveals he was the murderous head of a Jewish Maxwell Street mob. In alternating chapters, the novel traces Yitz’s rise from errand boy for head mobster Avi Kaminsky to the equally ruthless killer who deposes him. Yitz’s more-reserved younger brother, Solomon, is happiest running his classy butcher shop, but his place in infamy was secured when as a boy he saved Yitz from an attacker by lethally shoving a wooden stick into the assailant’s neck. The women in the story, including Eve’s ill-fated mother, do not have a happy time of it. Elijah, whose late lawyer father “was a Hispanic Jew or Moroccan or something,” ultimately finds connections between his (Elijah’s) empty existence and that of his grandfather, whose corpse “continued the lonely

existence that the man who once inhabited the body experienced every moment of his life.” First-time novelist Diamond does a solid job of tracing the rise and fall of the Jewish mob in Chicago, highlighting their dealings with the Irish (who didn’t learn “to respect the Jews”) and the Italians (enemies with “flair and style”). You can’t go wrong with characters named Izzy the Trout and Jerry Knish. It’s too bad Elijah is such a bland protagonist and that the novel contains so few surprises or revelations— though Elijah’s dis of Hyde Park may qualify as one for certain readers. An ambitious novel with a better backstory than contemporary one.

Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way

Feeney, Elaine | Biblioasis (320 pp.) | $18.95 paper | October 7, 2025 | 9781771967044

A family caught in history. Claire O’Connor is living alone in West Ireland when her former boyfriend, Tom Morton, moves nearby. He’s writing a book about Irish men in extreme sports, he explains, and plans to conduct interviews. The two had not seen each other for a few years, ever since Claire’s mother died and, grieving and angry, she left London to return home. Tom’s arrival discomfits Claire, and sets in motion the plot of Feeney’s dark novel, which explores personal loss, intergenerational trauma, political violence, and women’s victimization in a patriarchal society. Claire struggles, at first, to decide if she wants to see Tom again: She loves him, but she doesn’t know if she can reconcile his world (well-heeled, educated

England) with hers (hardscrabble rural Ireland). It’s terrifying, she reflects, “to think of all the worlds you inhabit, or once inhabited, all being in the one space for ever.” Feeney moves back and forth in time, from 2023 to the 1920s, as she traces Claire’s history in the context of Ireland’s tumultuous past. Claire grew up poor, with an angry father who abused his wife and could not accept one son’s homosexuality. Leaving home as soon as she could, she earned a doctorate and became a college teacher, hardly reconnecting with her family. Now she’s back in the family house, haunted by memories of her mother—and also by memories of famine, cruelty, and atrocities perpetrated by the British Black and Tans against the Irish a hundred years ago. Feeney confronts Claire with contemporary issues, as well: climate change, Trumpian politics, capitalism, the Covid-19 lockdown, and feminism. Alerted to the trad-wife subculture, Claire finds herself oddly fascinated by a trad wife’s bubbly internet posts. Although mostly absorbing, the narrative is marred at times by stilted dialogue. A dramatic saga.

Kirkus Star Circle of Days

Follett, Ken | Grand Central Publishing (704 pp.) $35 | September 23, 2025 | 9781538772775

A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge. In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates

You can’t go wrong with Izzy the Trout and Jerry Knish.

KAPLAN’S PLOT

the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful. Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.

Arson

Freudenthaler, Laura | Trans. by Tess Lewis | Seagull Books (244 pp.) | $25 September 5, 2025 | 9781803095615

Two people struggle to come to terms with the world burning around them.

Austrian writer Freudenthaler’s new novel follows the inner lives of two obsessive people as they face an Earth being ravaged by climate change. One is an unnamed journalist who’s struggling with her inability to dream (“Maybe there’s just no place for dreams anymore”)—and beginning to isolate herself from her friends, family, and an increasingly unrecognizable world. The other is her friend Ulrich, a scientist suffering from insomnia who spends his days poring over wildfire data and his nights cataloging his own sleep data. While discussing a potential career change with his sleep doctor, Ulrich says he can neither live with or without the flames: “We became pyrophytes long ago. We can’t live without fire and it will destroy us.” Though his job—like the fires—is ruining him, he can’t tear himself away. When the narrator leaves the city for the countryside, she becomes increasingly lost in her own thoughts and drawn to nature—which is rapidly shifting and changing before her eyes. At times, the interiority of the characters feels strange and oppressive—though this serves as an apt metaphor for the impending and all-consuming climate crisis. Freudenthaler’s fragmented and poetic prose can make it hard for the reader to get their bearings. Once they plant their feet, the tense or perspective shifts—or the vignette suddenly ends—and a new, seemingly unconnected one takes its place. The novel blurs dreams, reality, and time in a way that feels like wading through smoke. Near the end of the novel, Ulrich says: “Everything now is in a state we never knew.” The data and models and warnings will be of no use in this new world; there is nothing to be done but to

watch what burns—and hope something, anything, can grow in its wake. A challenging, sometimes alienating, slow burn of a novel.

The Frequency of Living Things

Fuller Googins, Nick | Atria (336 pp.)

$28.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9781668056066

A painful, but also drolly original, excavation of family trauma through the perspectives of three sisters and their old-school activist mother. Jojo and the Twins is a band named after members Emma and Araminta Tayloe, identical twins so similar that Emma attends Ara’s therapy sessions, plus their younger sister, Josephine—who isn’t in the band but might as well be, given her genetic, familial, and self-selected role as everyone’s savior. “Everyone” includes their geographically and emotionally distant mother, Roberta, or Bertie, who when the central dilemma of the story takes place is at sea with a ship full of supplies for refugees in Gaza. Josie, a passionate student of entomology who never finished her doctorate, now cohabitates idly with childhood friend Dean and works at a local butterfly and reptile exhibit. Mostly she keeps tabs on her sisters, whose blockbuster hit “American Mosh” made them rich— until they let the money slip through their fingers along with the years. Now in their mid-30s, Emma and Ara try to get by on occasional paying gigs, and Emma acts as Ara’s bagman, doling out bumps of heroin the way a mom might dole out animal crackers to a toddler. But when Ara and her ex-husband, Roman, try a quick scam, both wind up in jail, Ara in the nearby women’s prison the sisters could once see from their childhood backyard. She’s taken under protection by Bertie’s old friend Janice, in for life due to crimes with the Weathermen in the 1970s, and while Josie spins out with anxiety over Ara’s drug use and Emma’s

For more by Ken Follett, visit Kirkus online.

brain starts to spin with a new concept album titled Jailbreak, Ara gets clean and sober. She’s finally ready to detox from family enmeshment—and then gets tangled up in her bunkmate Kyla’s custody drama. The author’s quick pacing and pitch-perfect details, down to the sisters’ preferred Boston diner, will sustain readers through the anger and loss, on to a satisfyingly real resolution. Some novels consider what makes a family; this novel instead asks how families of choice function.

Kirkus Star

The Book of I

Greig, David | Europa Editions (192 pp.) $26 | September 9, 2025 | 9798889661276

The debut novel from a muchheralded Scottish playwright. There are many ways to go about writing historical fiction. Two of the most common are situating the reader in the past by using archaic language and imagery—or language and imagery that feel archaic—and helping the reader find commonality with characters situated in the past by letting them speak and behave in ways that feel familiar. Each of these stylistic choices has its own pleasures and pitfalls. Greig has chosen the latter path, and the resulting story is a small treasure. The “I” of the title is the island now known as Iona, the tiny dot of land off the Scottish coast where St. Columba founded an abbey in the sixth century. We first see the holy isle through the eyes of a Viking called Grimur as the ship he’s aboard approaches the shore. The resulting raid is a real disappointment. Killing unarmed peasants and monks who desire martyrdom is no fun, and the only treasure Grimur finds is the best mead he’s ever tasted. But his deep appreciation of that mead will leave him so incapacitated that his fellows will bury him on the island before they leave. When he crawls out of his premature grave, Grimur will find that the only

other human inhabitants left on the island are Una, the mead-maker, and Martin, a monk who hid himself in the latrine during the raid. Left alone, these three survive by forming a community in which they help each other achieve what they need. Grimur finds peace and family. Una experiences life without an abusive husband. And Martin finds purpose as the lone steward of Christian faith after the raid left the abbey without inhabitants. If this sounds tidy or precious, it is neither. The story is messy in the ways that being human is always messy. And it’s messy in ways that make the ninth-century Hebrides feel real. A bloody and beautiful sojourn in the distant past.

A Dog in Georgia

Grodstein, Lauren | Algonquin (304 pp.) $29 | August 5, 2025 | 9781643752358

Seeking purpose and some distance from her “impossible rogue” of a husband who may have been unfaithful again, Amy Webb leaves New York for Georgia— the country, not the state—in search of a lost dog.

Angel isn’t just any dog, but a heroic mutt that sees schoolchildren safely across the road in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Amy, a 46-year-old pet lover, has been making donations to a rescue group seeking to solve Angel’s mysterious disappearance, and after the latest flare-up with her husband, Judd, she responds impulsively to an online chat with a woman at the rescue group and heads to Eastern Europe, hoping to trace the hound herself. Once arrived, though, the MacGuffin of locating Angel takes second place to reflections on a whole range of issues challenging Amy’s perimenopausal sense of self, alongside an update on Georgian politics. The year is 2023 and Georgia bears some comparison with Ukraine, suffering Putin’s constant pressures. There are demonstrations in the streets. More personally, Amy is grappling with her dormant sexuality, prompted by

the presence in the chaotic household where she’s lodging of piercingly blue-eyed Russian deserter Andrei. Events and conversations also raise the topic of male infidelity, both generally and specifically, and then there’s the question of parenting. Amy’s own father disappeared when she was 2. How did this influence her choice of Judd? What about her stepparenting of Judd’s son, Ferry, whose mother is dying after years of addictions? Simultaneously comic, earnest, and travelogue-ishly descriptive of Georgian food, folk, and history, the novel largely succeeds in treading the tightrope of delivering entertainment while winding its issues into the storytelling. Some sideswipes at American naivety add to the amusement, and as Amy comes to understand her own truth, so one canine mystery gives way to another. A comforting tale of female self-empowerment littered with doggy distractions.

Kirkus Star

Amity

Harris, Nathan | Little, Brown (320 pp.) $29 | September 2, 2025 | 9780316456241

A smartly imagined Western with a different sort of hero.

“Time seemed to slow as June witnessed his death—saw the blood upon his shirt, his wound like a water pump given one weak draw, a small breath let free before a full flow that drenched his entire chest and face.”

In a sense, Harris’ latest is a rejoinder to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985), with plenty of bloodshed and a villain who’s Holden and Glanton all rolled up into one. Coleman is a young New Orleanian who, newly emancipated, still works as a servant in the household he grew up in. The paterfamilias, Wyatt Harper, has taken off for the desert of northern Mexico, then under French rule, in the hope of finding his fortune building a railroad; he has taken Coleman’s sister, June, with him, and with evident intent for

her to do more than keep house. June escapes, falling in with a guerrilla band made up of Black and Native American men and women. Resourceful and smart, she fits right in, but now Harper is on the hunt for her, employing a grandiloquent ruffian to bring Coleman to him in order to persuade June to return. Misadventures ensue, with Coleman, shy and bookish, slowly discovering that he, too, is not without inner strength. Harris’ characters are fully realized, and while some are familiar types, such as a sharp-tongued woman who could be an understudy for Mattie Ross from True Grit, most are freshly cast. A nice touch is Coleman’s attachment to the Harper family dog, who plays a strong role in the proceedings. To top off a skillfully constructed plot, Harris has a gift for vivid imagery (“The sun loomed overhead like a penny spat clean”) and period language (“We thieved—we killed, yes—but who in this day and age, forced into such dark corners of this world, might not?”).

A memorable, impeccably written tale that engages the reader, with its twists and turns, from beginning to end.

The Academy

Hilderbrand, Elin & Shelby Cunningham Little, Brown (432 pp.) | $21

September 16, 2025 | 9780316567855

A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!

Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her

daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.

A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.

Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out.

THE ACADEMY

The Elopement

Hornby, Gill | Pegasus (400 pp.) | $27.95 October 7, 2025 | 9781639369652

An affecting, and even somewhat feminist, return to the world of the Austen family and its offshoots.

Fanny Knight—Jane Austen’s niece and a principal character in Hornby’s Godmersham Park (2022)—appears early in this pleasingly long ramble through the life cycles of two families, the Knights and the Knatchbulls. When she accepts Sir Edward Knatchbull’s proposal of marriage, she becomes stepmother to his five children as well as the tie between her family’s modest estate, Godmersham Park, and her husband’s grander one at Mersham-le-Hatch. But the heroine of this third volume based on Jane Austen’s relations is Fanny’s stepdaughter, Mary Dorothea Knatchbull. Just 13 when her father remarries, Mary conducts a war of détente with Fanny that might have impressed Napoleon, peppering their infrequent exchanges with deadly pauses: “… Ma-ma.” As Fanny falters under her husband’s defenses of the status quo, Mary Dorothea lives with the Knights for a bit and discovers a happier lifestyle, becoming close to Austen’s nieces Louisa and Cassy. There’s a method to the author’s impeccably researched look at 19th-century manners: Not only does she get to the titular event (never fear, there’s an Austen-worthy young gentleman involved), but she shows the choices available to the era’s women. For every mother of five or seven or even 15 (like Austen’s niece Lizzie, who lived to “a long and happy old age”), there’s an interfering Lady Banks, a coquettish Lady Elizabeth Bligh, or a stalwart helpmeet like Miss Cassandra Austen (who, in real life, burned many of her brilliant sister’s letters after Jane’s death). Fortunately, as Mary grows into her own, readers will find observations from her and others that underscore changing notions of how women can gain a

measure of control, even if it’s only over whom to marry. At her coming-out dance, Mary thinks: “It was almost as if humans only truly examined their own selves, and took little to no notice of others.” Austen herself would approve. Janeites, rejoice! This novel is long enough to suit the largest pot of tea, and non-Janeites might like it, too.

Kirkus Star

Heart the Lover

King, Lily | Grove (256 pp.) | $28 October 7, 2025 | 9780802165176

A love triangle among young literati has a long and complicated aftermath.

King’s narrator doesn’t reveal her name until the very last page, but Sam and Yash, the brainy stars of her 17th-century literature class, call her Jordan. Actually, at first they refer to her as Daisy, for Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, but when they learn she came to their unnamed college on a golf scholarship, they change it to Jordan for Gatsby’s golfer friend. The boys are housesitting for a professor who’s spending a year at Oxford, living in a cozy, book-filled Victorian Jordan visits for the first time after watching The Deer Hunter at the student union on her first date with Sam. As their relationship proceeds, Jordan is practically living at the house herself, trying hard not to notice that she’s actually in love with Yash. A Baptist, Sam has an everything-but policy about sex that only increases the tension. The title of the book refers to a nickname for the king of hearts from an obscure card game the three of them play called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, and both the game and variations on the moniker recur as the novel spins through and past Jordan’s senior year, then decades into the future. King is a genius at writing love stories—including Euphoria (2014), which won the Kirkus Prize—and her mostly sunny

A love triangle among young literati has a long aftermath.

HEART THE LOVER

version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, since nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears. That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.

What We Left Unsaid

Li, Winnie M | Emily Bestler/Atria (368 pp.) $28.99 | August 19, 2025 | 9781982190880

Three estranged Taiwanese American siblings reunite to drive iconic Route 66. Bonnie, the eldest Chu sibling, lives in Boston with her wealthy husband and three sons. Kevin lives in Chicago with his wife and two children, and Alex, the youngest, who’s just turned 40, lives in London with her wife, who’s pregnant with their first child. Their parents still live in the Asian American enclave where they raised their children in Southern California. When their mother has a stroke and needs surgery, she insists her children pause their busy schedules to visit. Not only that, but she also demands they first see the Grand Canyon together before arriving in Orange County. More than three decades earlier, the family had tried to take a road trip there but were thwarted and never reached their destination. The story unfolds between the past, slowly revealing what transpired on that long-ago family vacation, and the

present lives of this trio experiencing all the costs and benefits of middle age. This structure proves as powerful as it does elegant, magnifying how a single moment in the life of a family, a single secret kept whether intentionally or by omission, can ripple out into each member’s future. The parallel tracks of the road trip from the siblings’ childhood that ended in a mysterious incident they all remember bits and pieces of and their present adventure along Route 66 create an immersive rhythm. The novel also examines how family bonds change as parents become elders and children become parents with a new perspective on their own upbringing. Bonnie, Kevin, and Alex play to type in both timelines: the perfectionist, responsible eldest daughter; the resentful middle sibling and proud only son; and the rebellious baby, ever the black sheep. A few history lessons and plot devices feel shoehorned into the narrative, but overall, Li’s evocative writing and commitment to exploring the romance of the open road and the many Americas that have existed through time and space win the day.

A novel that embraces and questions the lure of Americana.

Mothers

Lozano, Brenda | Trans. by Heather Cleary | Catapult (208 pp.) | $27 October 7, 2025 | 9781646222537

The lives of two mothers in Mexico City are upended in different ways in the latest novel by awardwinning Mexican author Lozano.

In 1946, as Mexico is “plagued by a wave of kidnappings,” 2-year-old

Gloria Miranda Felipe disappears from the front yard of her upper-class home. The police are understaffed and underpaid, but by enlisting the media and offering a large reward, her desperate family makes the case a cause célèbre. Elsewhere in the same city, another mother has finally adopted a child after trying for years to conceive. Lozano’s interests lie in large questions—societal expectations of mothers and the corresponding pressures to conform, how economic inequality determines who matters in a crisis. Lozano has a good eye for detail—she describes a minor character with “an explosive laugh like that moment when a plate breaks in a restaurant and everyone turns around.” Nuria, the mother unable to conceive, “had gotten used to the sensation of being the one left standing in a game of musical chairs.” Lozano’s wry humor threads through the book. “I wouldn’t want you thinking I was some male omniscient narrator,” she announces early on. “I’m not a third-person know-it-all who controls the story…I’m a woman, and also a third-person narrator. This is my job.” And as in her earlier books Loop (2021) and Witches (2022), she plays with narrative and point of view as the story expands. Though at times the larger themes feel less than fully developed, the initial mystery of Gloria’s disappearance gives way to deeper mysteries, taking the reader to unexpected places. Another ambitious and original work from a writer who is always worth watching.

Fade In

Mills, Kyle | Authors Equity (336 pp.) $29.99 | July 29, 2025 | 9798893310399

Fade is a badass operator whom even a coma can’t stop. Salam al-Fayed is an ex-SEAL, ex-CIA, and ex-Homeland Security agent, an American of Arab descent who takes out an entire Black

Ops team that’s charged with either “recruiting him or burying him.” You can call him Fade, as everyone else does. He’s a brave warrior and antihero who tries to help a girl in distress and gets stabbed and shot in the melee. He winds up in a coma from which he may never awaken, but of course he does. Then he may be destined to spend “the rest of his life rotting in a prison hospital bed,” but of course he doesn’t. After being pumped full of meds and blood from ethically questionable sources, he recovers and undergoes extensive rehab. But since the internet thinks he’s dead, his colleague and former friend Matt Egan tells him he’s now Frederick Abdel Darwish (so you can still call him Fade). All this is a creative setup for what is otherwise a standard thriller. Legendary warrior that he is, greater powers intend to use him for their own questionable purposes. Enter the obscenely wealthy Jon Lowe, who’s decided that the world’s so messed up he has no choice but to take it over. To make it a better place, of course. There’s also a Chinese scientist who engineered Covid-19 to target people over 70, whom he believes are useless. He’s going to try again, by creating a weapon of mass destruction from the building blocks of life. Reports of a secret lab bring a team including Fade to Madagascar, where they find a drought-stricken village that criminals are robbing of food aid. In the wilderness, Egan sets a challenge to a five-man team including Fade in which only four of them can possibly succeed. The unexpected result adds another dimension to Fade’s personality—he’s not a cardboard-cutout killer. One may sense that Mills began with a title and then built a character and story around it, but that’s fine. In time, a beautiful woman is assigned to share his apartment and watch over him, subject to terms and conditions. For example, sex no more than seven times a week. With that, the reader might expect at least one vivid sex scene. Alas, no. One person notes that Fade, pushing 40, was half nuts even before the coma. Apparently, that doesn’t change.

Plenty of action, plenty of fun.

Little Movements

Morrow, Lauren | Random House (256 pp.) $28 | September 9, 2025 | 9780593736753

A choreographer getting her big break faces professional and personal complications.

Layla Smart has spent 33 years following her mother’s injunction not to fulfill stereotypical notions of what someone born poor and Black is like and what she can achieve. She’s worked in PR at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for nearly a decade while slowly building a career as a choreographer. She and husband Eli have been together for eight years, and although he not-so-covertly resents her determination to move on from a recent miscarriage, he declares himself thrilled at her opportunity to be choreographer-in-residence for nine months at Vermont’s prestigious Briar House. Layla is not thrilled to realize, in her first conversation with Briar House’s director, that she has been pigeonholed as “the next great hope of the Black dance canon” and is expected to create a piece about “everything happening in the world right now…The pain. The injustice.” That’s emphatically not Layla’s style; she claims the right to have diverse influences and to make dance that’s “abstract, more concerned with shape and musicality than specific themes.” As Morrow’s well-written debut moves forward, however, we see that Layla’s resistance to stereotyping may be holding her back artistically. The abrupt replacement of one of her dancers is the first indication that there’s a lot going on under the surface at Briar House, and there will be more.

Layla shares the author’s personal background in dance studies at Connecticut College and PR work at BAM, to the benefit of absorbing scenes chronicling the development of her Briar House piece and a smart understanding of how the media operates, demonstrated by the key role a New York Times article plays in the cleverly plotted denouement. But this is more than autobiography transplanted into fiction; psychologically astute

KENNEDY RYAN

The author lets all kinds of readers be seen in her romance novels—and yes, they can’t get enough.

BY KERRY WINFREY

THERE ARE CERTAIN things romance lovers expect from the genre. The most important, of course, is a happily-ever-after, but bestselling author Kennedy Ryan is focused on challenging who gets those happily-ever-afters.

“I’m always interrogating who deserves joy, and that means writing identities and experiences that are sometimes edged out of the traditional happily-ever-after,” Ryan tells Kirkus over Zoom. “I’m going to write about neurodivergent people. I’m going to write about people with chronic illness. I’m going to write about people who are plus size. I’m going to write about people who may not see themselves in a traditional happily-ever-after but still deserve one.”

In her latest novel, Can’t Get Enough, Ryan wraps up her megapopular Skyland trilogy with Hendrix Barry’s story. Hendrix is a vivacious and successful businesswoman who’s working on getting a client’s television show made, running a venture capital fund that focuses on Black female–led businesses, and navigating her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis—in other words, she’s not exactly sitting around waiting for a man. But then Maverick Bell shows up. He’s an unimaginably wealthy tech tycoon, although that’s not what draws Hendrix to him. He’s also kind, thoughtful, and relates to Hendrix’s experiences with her mother.

Ryan’s love of romance started early, although reading the books at home could be difficult. “My mom is a preacher, so she vehemently objected to me reading romance,” Ryan says. “I had to smuggle them into my house. I hid them in the mattress, under the bed, and in my closet. But it’s a common story that, when you go to college, you

The romance genre is the safest place for heavy discussions because you’re guaranteed joy at the end.

start reading ‘serious’ books and you put the romance down.”

Perhaps that’s why her initial career aspirations focused on a different type of writing—journalism. Ryan started writing for her city’s newspaper in her senior year of high school. “I had a lot of opinions, and for some reason they trusted a 17-year-old with an editorial,” Ryan says with a laugh. “I eventually got my degree in journalism and thought I was going to be reporting from war-torn countries.”

When her son received an autism diagnosis, Ryan found herself writing in the autism advocacy space. But, craving an outlet of her own, she returned to an old friend: romance novels. “I really wanted something for myself,” she says. “I started reading romance again in my 30s and remembered how much I’d always loved it. And eventually I had the thought: If I love reading it, and I’m a writer, what if I tried writing romance ? I was 40 years old when I got my first book deal.”

Ryan’s happily-ever-afters are never without struggle and complexity. “The entire Skyland series interrogates some of the assumptions that we make in romance. You know you’re going to get a happily- ever-after because it’s a romance novel, but in the first book in the series [Before I Let Go], the love interests are divorced and they have to find their way back to each other. There’s so much healing and therapy. In the second book [This Could Be Us], the main character starts out married to someone else, and then for half the book she dates herself. There’s an emphasis on self-love in preparation for what’s next.”

Hendrix is proudly child-free, something that was important to Ryan. “From the beginning of the series, Hendrix has said that she doesn’t want kids,” she notes. “But I didn’t realize how relevant that decision would be when the book came out—this cultural conversation started popping off about women who are childless by choice with the whole ‘childless cat lady’ thing. It became even more important to me that I clearly state that this is an issue of bodily autonomy. You don’t get to tell me how I move this body of

Can’t Get Enough

Kennedy, Ryan

Forever | 448 pp. | $29

$17.99 paper | May 13, 2025

9781538706855

mine through the world. You don’t get to define me by my womb. You don’t get to define me by my reproductive choices.”

It’s a decision that struck a chord with her readers. “One of the most moving experiences from Can’t Get Enough ’s release was so many women who are childless by choice telling me that they had rarely seen a heroine who is childless by choice and clearly articulates it,” Ryan says. “That sense of being seen is something that runs throughout my catalog. I wanted women who are ambitious and child-free and 40 years old to see themselves. Yes, you can have all of those things and you can still get a happily-ever-after and you still deserve joy. Hendrix is an auntie, she takes care of her mom, she takes care of her friends, she takes care of her community, and she’s putting so much love into the world. She’s one of the most certain and self-contained heroines I’ve written.”

One of Hendrix’s biggest challenges is coming to terms with her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Ryan explores the subject with sensitivity, realistic detail, and even a sense of humor, so it’s no surprise to learn that this is a

personal topic for her. Her grandmother died from complications of dementia only a week after Ryan turned in the manuscript of Can’t Get Enough to her editor.

“It’s probably my journalism training, but interviews are a big part of my process,” Ryan says. In addition to drawing from her family’s experience, she talked to other caregivers in similar situations. “The heart of the book came from a lot of the interviews and hearing the heartbreak of this gradual loss and the ongoing grief. But there are also these flashes of humor where you have to laugh, because this stuff is hard .”

Ryan excels at blending the heartbreaking details of Hendrix’s life and the hilarious conversations she has with her girlfriends. “I think that the romance genre is the safest place for heavy discussions,” Ryan says, “because you’re guaranteed joy at the end. I can say, Yeah, this is going to be hard, but there’s going to be healing and there’s going to be a happily-ever-after. Life is never in a vacuum. On the same day that life is really, really difficult, it can also be very, very funny. And I can have a conversation with my friends while we’re laughing and then we’re crying because we’re vulnerable and we’re sharing layers of ourselves with each other.”

Much like Hendrix, Ryan has a full and busy career. Next up? There’s the Peacock adaptation of Before I Let Go, although she can’t share much: “We’re working hard behind the scenes, and I hope that we can share what we’ve been working on soon. It takes time, and it’s a fragile process. Until I actually see it on screen, like they say in romance novels, I’m not going to release the breath I didn’t know I was holding.”

And then there’s her next book, Score. The follow-up to 2021’s Reel , it’s part of her Hollywood Renaissance series, which she describes as “a love letter to Black creatives.” She says she’s been waiting for years to write this book, and it’s safe to assume that her legions of fans are ready to read, laugh, and cry right along with her.

Kerry Winfrey is the author of Waiting for Tom Hanks and other books.

Stephanie Hewitt

AWARDS

Winner of the 2025 PEN/Malamud Award Revealed

David Means won the prize given annually to a short story author.

David Means is the winner of the 2025 PEN/ Bernard and Ann Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced in a news release. Means made his literary debut in 1991 with the short story collection A Quick Kiss of Redemption, following that up nine years later with Assorted Fire Events , which won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. His other collections include The Secret Goldfish, The Spot, Instructions for a Funeral, and, most recently, Two Nurses , Smoking. He is also the author of a novel, Hystopia

Jung Yun, the chair of PEN/Faulkner’s

Malamud committee, said, “[Means’] six collections to date serve to remind readers how finely observed, emotionally compelling, and formally inventive a short story can be, particularly in the hands of a craftsperson like Means who possesses such a clear understanding of the powers and pleasures of the form.”

In a statement, Means said, “The short story feels intrinsic to the human condition, as natural as drinking water or sharing love. It’s a singular tool for probing the human experience, illuminating the universals of who we are.”

The Malamud Award was established in 1988. Previous winners include Edwidge Danticat, Lydia Davis, John Edgar Wideman, and Jhumpa Lahiri.

—MICHAEL SCHAUB

For reviews of

David Means

David Means’s books, visit Kirkus online.

IN THE NEWS

Frederick Forsyth Dies at 86

The thriller author was known for bestsellers including The Day of the Jackal.

Frederick Forsyth, the English novelist known for bestselling thrillers including The Day of the Jackal and The Fourth Protocol, has died, Penguin Random House announced. He was 86.

Forsyth, a native of the English town of Ashford, joined the Royal Air Force and became its youngest pilot at the age of 19. After his military service, he embarked on a career in journalism, reporting for Reuters and the BBC. He made his literary debut in 1969 with The Biafra Story, a nonfiction account of the Nigerian Civil War. Two years later, he published The Day of the Jackal , a spy thriller about an assassin hired to kill French president Charles de Gaulle. The novel was adapted

into a 1973 film as well as a television series that aired last year. He would go on to write more than a dozen more novels, including The Odessa File , The Dogs of War, The Fist of God , and The Kill List . G.P. Putnam’s Sons plans to publish Revenge of Odessa , a sequel to The Odessa File co-written by Forsyth and Tony Kent, in November.

Forsyth’s admirers paid tribute to him on social media. On the platform X, author Tony Parsons posted: “You top man, Frederick Forsyth. Rest in peace and thank you for the cracking stories.”

—M.S.

For reviews of Frederick Forsyth’s novels, visit Kirkus online.

Frederick Forsyth

portraits of Layla’s evolving relationship with Eli, her mother, and her past make her decision at the end to choose fresh artistic and personal paths well earned and satisfying.

A thoughtful, engrossing first novel.

Bog Queen

North, Anna | Bloomsbury (288 pp.)

$28.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9781635579666

An American anthropologist in northern England becomes entangled in emotional and literal quagmires after identifying an ancient body in a bog.

Agnes has a way with people—but only if they’re dead. A gifted student, she graduated from high school early and powered through university and doctoral studies to become a forensic anthropologist. Feeling oppressed by her doting father’s omnipresence and a too-comfortable boyfriend, Agnes decides to take a postdoc position in Manchester. She is called in to assist with the identification of what authorities believe is a murder victim killed by her husband in 1961 and buried in a peat bog, but Agnes immediately sees, and soon confirms, that this is a body older than any she (or, for that matter, almost anyone) has ever unearthed. In the novel’s first narrative track, Agnes attempts to conduct an excavation at the bog, caught in a web of conflicting interests that includes the peat company, the press, the niece of the still-undiscovered murder victim, a bioarchaeologist and her precocious teen daughter, and a group of environmental activists intent on rewilding the peat. The book’s second narrative belongs to “the druid of Bereda,” a Celtic priest from ancient Europe who navigates her diplomatic and spiritual duties during the fraught beginnings of the Roman Empire’s expansion. (The moss narrates briefly, too.) North’s previous novel, Outlawed (2021), turned the Western genre on its head, and here she tackles historical

fiction, swinging for the fences by taking on an ancient culture (and one that largely lacks written records). Perhaps it’s inevitable that the character of Agnes cannot help but be less magnetic than the regal druid. Nevertheless, this is a memorable tale of the unexpected linkages of history, land, and female power.

North widens her range with this layered mystery-meets- ancienthistory mashup.

Royal Gambit

O’Malley, Daniel | Little, Brown (416 pp.) $30 | July 15, 2025 | 9780316568104

An undercover agent gets drawn into a paranormal murder investigation involving the British royal family that tests her personal loyalties and her own extraordinary abilities.

Alexandra Dennis-Palmer-HudsonGilmore-Garnsey, also known as the 12th Lady Mondegreen, never asked to join the Checquy Group, a secret government agency that protects British national interests from supernatural threats. When she was a child, her parents allowed the Checquy to take Alix and help develop her signature gift—the ability to energetically shatter bones—so she could become a Pawn, a special operative. Since Alix grew up close to the royal family and had occasionally worked as a bodyguard for them, it seemed only natural to appoint her as lady-in-waiting to her childhood friend Princess Louise after the mysterious death of her brother Edmund, the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne. Alix’s job with the Checquy Group has suddenly become far more difficult: Not only is she now tasked with actively protecting Louise as the next British monarch but she’s also investigating Edmund’s demise as a supernatural murder. Clever, complex, and fast-paced, this fantasy thriller’s greatest strength is the imaginatively crafted world in which

events take place. Everything is possible here in the alternative universe O’Malley creates, including characters who routinely defy all empirical laws by turning into trees and stegosauruses and unusual modes of death involving energetically implanted brain cubes. The occasional borrowed tiara on her head, Alix moves through an environment where nothing is ever quite what it seems. The closer she comes to finding Edmund’s killer, the more Alix uncovers about the secrets surrounding her position within both the Checquy Group and the royal family.

A smart fantasy thriller that deftly mingles the paranormal with the bureaucratic and mundane.

Florida Palms

Pan, Joe | Simon & Schuster (480 pp.) $29.99 | July 22, 2025 | 9781668052181

Two young Florida men make a series of poor decisions in this debut novel. The year is 2009, and best friends Eddy and Cueball have just graduated high school in Palm Bay, Florida. The Great Recession has ensured that the world is not their oyster: “The crazy-ass life they’d imagined for themselves post-graduation—epic parties and mailbox baseball and fumbling sex in the back rows of the dollar theater—had quickly buckled under the unforgiving gravity of food costs and bills, as they were now expected to pay their own way through life.” They both take jobs moving furniture for Cueball’s father, Bird, an ex-con who moves in a circle of “honest larcenists, skippers of child support, casual bigots, hustlers, abusers of chemicals, and even a few killers.” Bird decides to shift his business from moving furniture to moving a new designer drug called shank, and Eddy and Cueball agree to come on board. The money is great, but so are the risks—both young men make a series of bad decisions, along with the rest of the

crew, and it doesn’t take long for cracks to appear in the foundation of the criminal enterprise. This leads to a series of internecine rivalries, betrayals, and increasingly violent acts, which Pan writes about with gusto. The action barrels to an ending that isn’t quite shocking, but absolutely necessary. Pan makes effective use of suspense that he undercuts with passages of background that go nowhere—this book is about 100 pages too long, and Pan’s prose is occasionally a bit too purple. Nonetheless, the dialogue is good, and Pan displays some sharp instincts. This is so close to being a successful novel, it just doesn’t quite get there—but keep an eye on this author.

A gritty but uneven debut.

Kirkus Star

Cécé

Prophète, Emmelie | Trans. by Aidan Rooney | Archipelago (180 pp.) | $18 paper September 23, 2025 | 9781962770415

A young woman strives to get ahead in chaotic modern Haiti.

Cécé, the narrator of this stark, unflinching novel from veteran novelist Prophète, opens her story nine months after the death of her grandmother. That event represents not just the loss of a loved one but the disruption of her entire social order: Her mother, an addict, died when she was 2, and her only remaining relative is an alcoholic uncle. That leaves her at the mercy of the gangs in her town, the Cité of Divine Power, as she struggles to make ends meet through prostitution and selling possessions. With some extra money, she finds her way online, inventing a persona, Cécé la Flamme, that’s critical of the slums and attracts thousands of followers. That influence gets the attention of area gang leaders and profiteers, who are determined to exploit her social media reach. The novel can be read as a parable about the perils of influencer culture, as Cécé inevitably falls afoul of the people

A woman is hounded by accusations of witchcraft in 16th-century Denmark.

THE WAX CHILD

who pay her to support them, or as those supporters suddenly vanish. But it’s most bracing as a portrait of the consequences of a young woman’s relentless abuse, in the tradition of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets or The Bluest Eye. Prophète’s prose captures Cécé’s desensitization, while still rich in observational detail: The city is filled with the sound of “shots fired in broad daylight to frighten a shopkeeper who didn’t want to pay the fee to the gang of the moment that was extorting him, radios on full volume, each broadcasting a different program, neighbors arguing, screams of children getting beaten,” and so on. The violence is often brutal—one gang leader earns the nickname Cannibal 2.0—but Prophète is never merely exploitative. The brutality is woven around Cécé’s character, compelling the reader to witness her slow erosion.

A bleak, clear-eyed vision of a woman, and society, in collapse.

Kirkus Star

The Wax Child

Ravn, Olga | Trans. by Martin Aitken New Directions (144 pp.) | $19.95 paper September 2, 2025 | 9780811238830

A woman is hounded by accusations of witchcraft through 16th-century Denmark in this historically based novella.

“I am a child shaped in beeswax,” is how the narrator of this breathtaking short novel introduces itself. The narrator means this literally—it is a wax child, only “the size of a human forearm.” Its

beloved maker, who it misses with a “bottomless, shaft-like longing,” is an impoverished Danish noblewoman named Christenze Kruckow, who lives in the luckless household of Anne Bille. Embittered by an unbelievable series of miscarriages or stillbirths, Anne accuses Christenze of witchcraft, the punishment for which is a gruesome death. Christenze flees to the larger town of Aalborg, taking the wax child with her. In Aalborg, Christenze, who never married, joins a lively society of women who gossip, sing, and repeat the folk lessons they have learned from their mothers as they perform the grueling labor of their lives. The wax child, who is present at many of these gatherings in the guise of a child’s toy, reports both the women’s talk and the feelings that seethe behind it—Christenze’s attraction to the “effervescent” Maren; the claustrophobic resentment of foolish Elisabeth, whose husband, the pastor Klyne, abuses her; the proud independence of the one-eyed widow Dorte; the cunning spirit of Apelone. Yet, in spite of the small protection afforded by her noble birth, the label of “witch” is not so quick to fall away from a woman content to live on her own. Spurred by the witch-hunting mania of King Christian IV and fanned by accusations from the malignant Klyne, Christenze is again accused of witchcraft and is thrown into the dungeons, along with Maren, Dorte, and Apelone, to await trial. Throughout it all, the wax child—who narrates from the distant future, the past, and the brutal present of the novella all at once—spins its own spellbinding tale of loss and longing as the true story of Christenze Kruckow weaves through language that makes what happened to her, and to so many other women like her, pulse with a clarity more real than fact. A magnificent book. A true masterpiece of both substance and style.

A giant boy with colossal gifts is born in a Wisconsin Amish community.

LIFE, AND DEATH, AND GIANTS

The Missing Pages

Richman, Alyson | Union Square & Co. (416 pp.) | $18.99 paper

October 14, 2025 | 9781454953210

Historical fiction entwining the fate of a bereaved Harvard student and the late Harry Elkins Widener. Harvard’s Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library was endowed by his mother in memory of her son, who was just 27 years old when he went down, along with his father, on the Titanic. Lore has it that he parted from his mother in the lifeboat to go back to his stateroom for a priceless book; Richman’s tale grows out of her notion that this was not the real reason. Oh yay, another doomed love story on the Titanic! To wend her fictional way to that watery heartbreak, the author has invented a lonely Harvard junior named Violet Hutchins, who gets a job as a page at the Widener in 1992, the fall after her boyfriend, Hugo, drowns while they are out for a swim, and also breathes life back into Harry Widener himself, now a spirit who lives in his eponymous library and uses his considerable ghostly powers to set Violet on the trail of a story no one has ever known, the story of his secret love. “The one thing a ghost learns rather quickly is that the living fail to appreciate subtlety when it comes to receiving otherworldly communications,” Harry says, before chucking books off the shelf and filling the air with the scent of his pipe tobacco to get Violet’s attention. Richman also weaves in the true story of vandalism at the Widener in the 1990s, blame for which shifts toward poor Violet, who’s making everyone

nervous with her Ouija board and her growing interest in communicating with the dead. The progress of her investigation unfolds in tandem with Harry’s account of his doomed love, moving more slowly than would be ideal, but finally snapping together as one thought they might. The novel has a YA feel and indeed might be shared with a history-minded young reader. A pleasantly bookish ghost story.

Kirkus

Star

Life, and Death, and Giants

Rindo, Ron | St. Martin’s (336 pp.) | $29 September 9, 2025 | 9781250375339

A giant boy with colossal gifts is born in a Wisconsin Amish community. Rindo’s second novel, following several story collections, reveals a writer at the height of his powers. Its title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem; at the center of the tale is a well-worn book of Dickinson’s work. Passed to an Amish woman, Hannah Fisher, in a cedar chest of her mother’s things she receives when the older woman dies, it represents a secret rebellion against the strictures of their faith via Dickinson’s humanist spirituality. As the book opens, Hannah’s daughter, Rachel, is in the throes of labor, and her 17-year-old son, Jasper, brings her to the local veterinarian, Thomas Kennedy, for help, but she dies shortly after delivering an 18-pound infant, Gabriel. Rachel has never named the father of either boy, and she’s long been excommunicated for keeping her silence.

Thomas Kennedy and Hannah Fisher are among a group of four residents of rural Lakota, Wisconsin, who pass the narrative torch in this gorgeously constructed and written novel. The other two are Billy Walton, the proprietor of the local bar and sponsor of the T-ball team where Gabriel will begin his protean sports career, and Trey Beathard, a disgraced college football coach who takes over the local high school program and becomes one of Gabriel’s mentors.

Each of them has a unique voice; Hannah’s is particularly beautiful and captivating: “Each morning since my baptism at age seventeen I have awakened from the soft death of sleep, and my first thought, always, has been: Lord, Thy will be done. I do not say it for my own credit. It has not been easy.” And it’s only going to get harder as her grandson Gabriel’s life unfolds. Gabriel himself is a mythic creation: Suckled on goat milk, he has a profound bond with animals, and his legend grows as quickly as he does, reaching a size of almost 9 feet and 600 pounds. Rindo’s writing about animals and nature, about Amish faith, about art and sports—including pro wrestling!—is extraordinary. At the heart of his concerns is the battle between good and evil as expressed in human kindness and human weakness, embodied in unforgettable characters. With its profound portraits of both Amish and secular characters and their luminously real community, this is a must-read.

Buckeye

Ryan, Patrick | Random House (464 pp.)

$30 | September 2, 2025 | 9780593595039

Two couples confront the consequences of infidelity in small-town, post–World War II Ohio. Over a span of more than 30 years, the small fictional town of Bonhomie provides the setting for this quiet story about the lives of two families irrevocably

changed by a brief affair. Cal Jenkins, precluded from military service by a congenital orthopedic condition, marries hometown girl Becky Hanover and takes a job managing her father’s hardware store. Becky discovers that she possesses the power to communicate with the afterlife and conducts free seances in the couple’s home. Their otherwise unremarkable lives are forever upended after a brief encounter between Cal and Margaret Salt in the store on VE Day leads to a romantic entanglement. Margaret and her husband, Felix, arrived in Bonhomie in 1939, when his employer brought him there to help manage its aluminum plant, but as the war in Europe reaches its end they’ve been separated for more than two years by Felix’s decision to enlist in the Navy and his assignment to a cargo ship in the Pacific. Ryan skillfully explores his characters’ emotional vulnerabilities, among them Calvin’s insecurity about his physical impairment and his disappointment over his inability to serve his country; Becky’s ambivalence about her spiritual gift; Margaret’s psychological scars from having been abandoned by her mother mere days after her birth and a childhood spent shuttling between an orphanage and foster homes; and Felix’s issues with his sexual identity. The fallout from Calvin and Margaret’s brief affair reverberates through the lives of these families in a booming postwar America as each goes on to raise a son who must face the prospect of serving in the Vietnam War. In subtly different ways, Ryan creates considerable sympathy for each of his characters while taking care not to tip the scale in favor of any one of them. The novel’s only flaw is a deliberate pace that may leave many readers wishing it had proceeded more swiftly to its undeniably moving final scenes. An earnest and empathetic family drama.

First Time, Long Time

Silverberg, Amy | Grand Central Publishing (304 pp.) | $28 | July 22, 2025 | 9781538726471

A young woman grapples with her brother’s death while starting a relationship with an older man in this debut novel.

Allison is 28, living in Los Angeles, teaching writing at a community college after having dropped out of graduate school when her brother died two years earlier in what may have been an accident. She feels directionless as she tries to decide what she wants to do in life and whether she wants to pursue a writing career. One night at a bar she meets Reid Steinman, a shock jock famed for crass jokes about women and beloved by dads, including her own volatile father, whom she calls “The Problem.” She and Reid, who’s much kinder than his radio persona would suggest, start dating, even though he’s about her father’s age. But when Allison meets his daughter, Emma, she finds herself falling for the aspiring comedian, throwing her into even more turmoil over the direction of her life. As Emma begins returning her feelings, Allison finds herself in a love triangle just as news of her relationship with Reid hits the tabloids. This hard-to-pin-down novel tackles too much—a tough childhood, difficult parents, an age-gap romance with a famous person, questions of sexuality, mourning— without enough charm or depth to pull it off. While a few of these topics might have made for an engaging quarterlife-crisis novel, none of them has room to breathe here, and the author gives too much space to subplots that don’t add much, such as Allison’s side gig facilitating book clubs for rich women. Allison often seems much younger than 28 as she fumbles and passively engages with her own circumstances. Combined with frequent flashbacks, it adds up to a story that falls flat.

A novel with many threads that never quite come together.

The Island of Last Things

Sloley, Emma | Flatiron Books (272 pp.)

$28.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9781250329240

In the not-too-distant future, two women working at the world’s last zoo form an electric bond as they work to save its endangered occupants.

Located on Alcatraz Island off the coast of San Francisco, in a world that’s rapidly falling apart due to irreversible climate change and a frighteningly believable fast-acting disease that killed untold numbers of animals and birds, is the world’s last remaining zoo. Lauded by the general public, ridiculed by resistance groups, and targeted by animal trafficking cartels, the zoo is home to birds of prey, jungle cats, farm animals, and an incredibly rare and important elephant named Titan. It’s also where Camille Parker—a rather unremarkable young woman who’s learned to keep her head down and prefers the company of animals to humans—both lives and works.

Camille’s quiet, uneventful, animal-filled day-to-day schedule is upended when Sailor Anderson, an enigmatic zookeeper from Paris, arrives looking for work. Sailor is the opposite of Camille in every way, and while she’s familiar with the dangers that the outside world holds for the zoo and its occupants—animal or otherwise—she quickly butts up against the rigid rules of the place. The more time the women spend together, the more Camille finds herself drawn to Sailor. When word reaches them of a secret sanctuary that could provide freedom and safety for some of the zoo’s most prized animals, Camille must choose between the life she knows or take a risk on Sailor and the unknown that the outside world holds in store for them. Told in chapters that alternate points of view between the present as told by Camille and the past as told by Sailor, this novel is a moving and elegiac cautionary tale about the state of the world, and the beauty that we so often take for granted.

An all-too-plausible look at what the future might hold for the natural world and the people who strive to protect it.

Self Care

Smith, Russell | Biblioasis (224 pp.) | $24.95 paper | September 16, 2025 | 9781771966245

A young Toronto woman finds connection with the most unlikely person.

At the start of Smith’s novel, freelance writer Gloria is living the millennial dream. She barely makes a living at a website where she writes a weekly column called “Daily Self Care”; has fallen into a power-unbalanced situationship with Florian; and is trying her best to navigate the horrors of the professional world and dating world alongside her best friend, Isabel. When a chance encounter on a subway platform puts her in the direct line of Daryn, an incel attending an anti-immigration rally, she finds herself intrigued and horrified. Under the pretense that she’s interviewing him for a story, Gloria starts to prod Daryn earnestly and sarcastically about his life, especially his horrifying views on women and modern dating. At one point, she aptly tells him his warped world view is simply narcissism: “You tell yourself you are hated because it makes you very sad and noble and romantic. And it gives you all kinds of excuses to do violent things and think hateful thoughts. But nobody thinks about you enough to hate you.” Despite her sometimes-cruel delivery, she realizes this stunted man will do anything she says and she takes the opportunity to do something new: dominate someone. She’s both drawn to and repulsed by Daryn, and their confusing relationship becomes increasingly intimate as they blur sexual boundaries. As Gloria spends her days working and nights with Daryn, she notices that Isabel is growing distant—posting provocative photos from hotel rooms and often unavailable for their gossip sessions. When an unimaginable tragedy befalls the girls, Gloria must try to hold her shattered world together as Daryn grows increasingly paranoid, angry, and abusive. Though hard to stomach at times, Smith’s writing is at its best when he’s skewering the often

performative nature of sex, dating, and politics, as well as the solipsistic delusion of 21st-century life.

An uncomfortable, disturbing, and timely examination of relationships between men and women.

Flashout

Soloski, Alexis | Flatiron Books (288 pp.)

$28.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781250883643

A drama teacher’s mysterious past comes back to haunt her.

In 1972, New York college student Allison Hayes attends an eccentric performance by Theater Negative, an avant-garde troupe that pushes the boundaries of what’s considered art. She’s immediately mesmerized and finds herself regularly sneaking out of her dorm to go to the group’s meetings, eventually becoming a member under the name Alice Haze when the leader mishears her name. In 1997, Allison is an English and drama teacher at a rich high school in Los Angeles, making enough to take care of her mother and get by. When the school institutes a new method of communicating with parents—email—Allison starts getting anonymous messages from someone who insinuates that they know her from her Theater Negative days, and that they know what she did “that night.” Now Allison must discover who from her past is still around, and still alive, before her old life destroys her new one. Soloski drives the narrative forward by switching almost every chapter between the past and the present, so the reader gradually discovers what happened in 1972 while Allison continues her search for Theater Negative members. Both storylines drop tantalizing hints while pushing forward to their respective climaxes. Although a woman at risk of exposure from her mysterious past might not be the newest idea, the story of Theater Negative— from the strange, cultlike nature of its members to its peculiar

performances—is at once completely original and heartbreakingly familiar. The dramatic irony of watching young Allison head into danger from a distance of 20 years later is a gut punch. The pacing hits just right as both revelations—what happened “that night” and the identity of the emailer— wash over the reader.

An intriguing mystery of youth, folly, and theater.

Hollow Spaces

Suthammanont, Victor | Counterpoint (384 pp.) $28 | August 5, 2025 | 9781640097117

Siblings try to figure out whether or not their father committed murder—but the real mystery lies in that man’s broken sense of self.

Jane Leigh— whose late husband, John Lo, was acquitted of killing a colleague at the law firm where he was a partner—is dying of cancer. When her children, Hunter, a reporter, and Brennan, an attorney, re-engage with each other during Jane’s final days, brother and sister realize they disagree on their father’s guilt. Their decision to try to solve this stone-cold case soon disrupts their schedules and psyches, and readers will find their sleuthing sound, if a little serendipitous, such as when an old family friend gives them access to confidential files. However, the best and most haunting writing in lawyer Suthammanont’s debut concerns John Lo himself, a first-generation Chinese American whose parents came from the region of Teochew culture. John recalls that his father expressed satisfaction (“pride was an overstatement”) with him only twice, when he graduated from college and when he got into law school: “John knew that was because it meant that his life would be better than his father’s.” His father gave John a springboard for success, but also the titular hollow spaces in his makeup—areas of dissatisfaction and longing that John unfortunately fills with alcohol, then

with an affair with gorgeous associate Jessica DeSalvo, whose murder shatters his life. Chapters alternate between Then (before and after the murder) and Now (when Hunter and Brennan join forces), and while this is surely meant to destabilize readers, it also puts into stark relief how separate the experiences of an outsider parent can be from those of their multiracial children. While John Lo dealt with macro- and microaggressions from people in most areas of his life, Hunter and Brennan move through the same New York City world without friction, yet saddened and confused by their father’s deeds. It’s an intriguing, if ultimately slightly muddy, combination of sleuthing and character study from a talented writer.

Come for the murder mystery, stay for the lyrical passages on love and loss.

Kirkus Star

Archipelago of the Sun

Tawada, Yoko | Trans. by Margaret Mitsutani New Directions (256 pp.) | $16.95 paper September 2, 2025 | 9780811239790

Tawada’s band of multinational, multiethnic, and multitalented pilgrims continues (and perhaps concludes) its journey to discover what happened to the homeland of one of its number in the third volume of a whimsical trilogy, following Scattered All Over the Earth (2022) and Suggested in the Stars (2024).

Still in search of Hiruko’s ostensibly obliterated homeland of Japan, the travelers start their journey on a surreal decommissioned mailboat in the Baltic Sea. Intriguingly, several of their fellow shipmates could be the ghosts of literary figures. Traveling from port to port, the group comes face to face with shifting borders and national identities, many of which have changed over time due to military and political developments. Observations about the impermanent nature of the concept of “country,” made

of paper and promises, versus the permanence of “towns,” which endure beyond the shifting of borders, lead to a discussion of what happens when a house is destroyed. Tawada’s frequently explored themes of identity and belonging, transitions, and the barriers and bridges built by language are on display here, along with commentary on current immigration issues. This ultimately leads Hiruko—who may never determine what has become of her birth county—to a very personal, and literal, solution to where her “house” will be. As Hiruko, and the others she refers to as a “private U.N.,” come to the realization that the route they are on is unlikely to get her any closer to her homeland, decisions must be made about who is going ahead and with whom. The tale’s ending leaves room for conjecture about the question of destination, but not the bonds created within the group of wanderers. Tawada’s usual spirit of cheerful speculation creates a believable, but impossible, set of circumstances for her appealing characters to muse upon, argue over, and learn from.

Proof that thoughtful novels of ideas can be fun as well as provocative.

Kirkus Star

Minor Black Figures

Taylor, Brandon | Riverhead (320 pp.) $29 | October 14, 2025 | 9780593332368

A painter struggles to reconcile identity, money, art, love, and sex.

Taylor’s contemplative and sensuous third novel concerns Wyeth, a young gay Black painter in New

York who’s hit an artist’s block. During the pandemic he enjoyed a brief bit of Instagram-driven fame with a stark painting of a dead Black man, which observers assumed was a post–George Floyd commentary on race. But he was mainly tinkering with a composition he admired in an Ingmar Bergman film, and he bristles at identity politics. Still, Wyeth’s principled distancing has mostly just made him anxious and impoverished, working at a gallery and for an art restorer to afford a fifth-floor walkup. A random meeting with Keating, a white man who’s recently abandoned the Catholic priesthood, suggests an opportunity for positive change—if Wyeth isn’t too ambivalent and self-abnegating to pursue it. In broad strokes, the novel has the shape of a romance—boy meets boy, boy ghosts boy, etc.—but it’s also a fine social novel, thick with urbane particulars. Taylor writes about the meticulous details of lithograph restoration with the same kind of erotic, graceful attention he lavishes on Wyeth’s assignations, and the novel has a seductive intellectual energy, as Wyeth struggles to find a way to be a Black artist without feeling burdened by racial interpretations—and wonders why that should feel like a burden. (“You are of the world, are you not?” a confidante asks, challenging him.) Some of Keating and Wyeth’s exchanges can feel like potted, podcast-y discussions, but more often Taylor is onto something rich and appealing—a story unafraid to foreground love and lust, and that treats emotional ambiguity as a starting point, not as the fuzzy ending common in literary fiction. A piercing, precise, and affecting tale of young love and high art.

A precise and affecting tale of young love and high art.

BLACK FIGURES

Wilderness of Mirrors

Terry, Olufemi | Restless Books (256 pp.) | $17 paper | September 9, 2025 | 9781632063984

An intelligent debut about how young adults negotiate the intricate politics of race and identity in contemporary South Africa.

Emil, a Creole man in training to be a neurosurgeon, needs a break, and his politically connected father urges him to visit the town of Stadmutter, in the Deep South, to reconnect with his less cosmopolitan cousins. There, Emil finds he’s mostly on his own. His aunt, a widow, is busy at work and pursuing a romance that keeps her away from home. The cousin he expected to bond with, Torrance, who resembles him physically and in ambition, has moved out in part to make room for Emil, leaving Andres, who collects disability and devotes himself mostly to video games with a friend and small-time schemes and drug dealing. Left to his own perilous aimlessness, Emil ventures into a club, and immediately falls under the sway of Bolling, a Haitian German philosopher/ gadfly who has both sexual and intellectual designs on him. Emil is befriended, too, by Tamsin, a psychology Ph.D. student who like him is a child of ambivalent privilege, and they get entangled, erotically and otherwise. They soon encounter an enigmatic quasi-protege of Bolling, Braeem Shaka, leader of an upstart Creole political movement that seeks reparations and is viewed as a threat by the governor. Eventually, Shaka becomes a hunted outlaw, and Emil finds that he has been drafted by the absent Bolling into being Shaka’s protector—a role into which he recruits Tamsin. The result is a novel of dreamy indolence and big ideas: When and where will Emil find himself when at last he emerges from the haze of uncertainty, when he decides who and what and where he’s going to be? Novels of passivity and bewilderment are hard to make work, but Terry does a nice job of dramatizing

the lives of young intellectuals adrift in a chaos of possibilities. A novel about awkward coming-of-age in a country negotiating the same bewildering passage.

Duet for One

Toll, Martha Anne | Regal House Publishing (234 pp.) | $19.95 paper May 6, 2025 | 9781646036004

The death of a classical pianist prompts reflections from those closest to her.

Toll’s latest novel opens with news of a death in Philadelphia. Adele Pearl is survived by her husband, Victor, who was also her creative partner, and their 37-year-old son, Adam. As word spreads through the classical music community, including the music school where she taught, we learn more and more about how her death has affected the people in her orbit. In addition to her grieving husband and son, these include Dara Kingsley, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose marriage has just imploded. Years earlier, she’d been in a relationship with Adam that ended because she couldn’t keep up with him musically. In reflecting on his mother’s exacting standards, Adam begins rethinking his connection with Dara—and whether he’s happy in his current relationship with Patti Lee, a talented musician who studied with his mother. In reviewing his mother’s papers, Adam discovers evidence that his parents’ marriage was more complicated than he believed—or, as Toll writes, “Adele had a private life that she kept

from Victor.” The novel gradually broadens its temporal scope, encompassing Adam and Dara’s early days as a couple and exploring how the time Adele and Victor spent traveling for concerts affected their connection to their son. This expansion echoes an observation Victor makes about his chosen vocation: “Time was everything to a musician, the driving structure behind music, even more than melody or harmony.” This is a measured novel, which seems in keeping with its characters’ affability, and in the end it comes together like a seamlessly programmed night at the symphony. A thoughtful consideration of legacies artistic and familial.

The Second Chance Cinema

Weiss, Thea | Atria (320 pp.) | $29 October 7, 2025 | 9781668080405

An engaged but troubled couple stumbles on a magical cinema that shows movies of their past lives. Ellie and Drake live in a slightly whimsical world—a nameless city where you can have a fancy lunch with your agent but then drive to a smaller town where a man might ride past on a bicycle with a glass bottle of milk in the basket. A place with enough endangered vintage establishments for Ellie to make a career writing them out of obscurity. And, importantly, a place with a small cobblestone alleyway that leads to a decrepit movie theater that comes alive only once in a while for a couple that needs a push. When Ellie and Drake stumble upon it, showing a movie called

The death of a classical pianist prompts reflections from those closest to her.

DUET FOR ONE

The Story of You, they’re reluctant to attend the 10 screenings over 10 weeks that they’re given tickets to. Though they love each other, they have not been forthcoming about their pasts. Ellie in particular has a dark spot she wants to revisit but is afraid for Drake to see. She also, for all her professed love for places and things, has a snarky demeanor. At their first meeting, she decides that she likes Drake because he is “a beer guy without being a sports guy, a denim guy without being a horse guy.” A prickly calculation. Later, she muses that she can use their meet-cute for the article she’s meant to write about the bar in which they made their acquaintance. It’s a hard sell for something that’s meant to turn into true love and, indeed, they need the cinema to prod them into a better and more honest relationship. Eventually, they see the tragedy in Ellie’s past and she is able to reckon with it, very touchingly, with Drake by her side. But the snark is there to stay. The boutique hotel on the verge of closing that Ellie finds for a wedding venue “looks like a cake….A cake you’d never want to eat.”

The highlight here is the cinema itself: funny, beautiful, and surreal.

Under the Stars

Williams, Beatriz | Ballantine (368 pp.) $30 | July 29, 2025 | 9780593724255

Williams returns to the fictional Winthrop Island with this contemporary story wrapped around a 19th-century shipwreck mystery.

In 1846, Providence Dare writes a painfully detailed Account of the Wreck of the Steamship Atlantic. Traveling under a false name, she’s on the run after the death her employer, famous painter Henry Irving, for whom she’d served as muse with benefits since his wife’s death. As a storm kicks up not far from Winthrop Island and survival at sea seems increasingly unlikely, Providence realizes she’s been followed aboard by a detective with a warrant for

her arrest—for murder. Is she a victim or a predator? The detective’s feelings for her are as complicated as hers for Mr. Irving. (Providence is fictional, but the Atlantic was a real ship that sank in Long Island Sound.) Excerpts from the Account wind around events taking place on Winthrop in 2024, where Williams fans will encounter characters from previous novels; new readers will find the introductory family tree essential as names and connections pile up. Audrey Fisher, a chef who recently lost her restaurant after her business partner husband absconded with all their money, returns to the island for the first time since she was 3. She’s chaperoning her mother, Meredith Fisher, a famous actress with a drinking problem. Meredith has returned to sober up in private on Winthrop Island, where she grew up, always desperate to leave. Soon Audrey meets her father, Mike Kennedy, for the first time since she was a kid, and begins falling in love with a nice man. Then some paintings show up in a trunk and a stranger appears to confront Meredith about her past, and before long all hell breaks loose. The parallels that abound between the two narratives—strange fires, selfish artists, characters on the run, dark-haired men, lies about sex and death—are fun. But with the exception of Meredith, to whom Williams gives layered complexity, cliched characters march through familiar plotting. Carefully constructed, utterly predicable.

Kirkus Star

The Final Score

Winslow, Don | Morrow/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $30 | September 16, 2025 | 9780063450424

A collection of six short stories about crimes both planned and accidental, the collision of dreams and reality, and the things people do for love.

John Highland, for example, faces a lifetime in prison.

But if he can do one “Final Score” before turning himself in, at least he can set up his beloved wife for the rest of her days. His plan is impossible to pull off, which is even more reason to do it—a brilliant finale to his criminal career. Another tale takes the reader to Rhode Island, where liquor sales are banned on Sundays. One liquor store maintains a secret “Sunday List” of thirsty patrons and their liquid requirements to get them through the Lord’s Day. Some stories are more serious—a drunk kid kills a young woman in a DUI and is headed to prison. But the kid’s cousin, a cop, worries he may not survive long in the general population. If only the kid could get assigned to the “North Wing,” where a mob boss prisoner protects its inmates. “True Story” is sharp, funny, and one hundred percent dialogue. Guys swap wacky crime stories in a diner. A sample: “Listen—Angela, for all her fine qualities, was no Rose Scholar, either.” But then in “The Lunch Break,” Dave is hired to watch over the spoiled actress Brittany McVeigh and make sure she shows up on set sober and on time. She is only 5-foot-3, but “bad things come in small packages” and she’s a “drunken, drug-addled, promiscuous little diva” who claims she’s being stalked. In the final tale, “Collision,” life is darn near perfect for an upwardly mobile white family of three. Brad McAlister is a highly talented hotel manager. Upper management invites him and his wife to a fancy restaurant and offers him his dream promotion. But in a squeal of tires in the parking lot, their lives change forever. Will the McAlisters’ deep love for each other survive? Each of these stories has clever plotting and sharp dialogue, a hallmark of all the author’s work. Winslow had previously announced his retirement, but maybe that collided with his love of writing. Gritty little gems.

For more by Don Winslow, visit Kirkus online.

Romance Novels That Will Make You Swoon

Book to Screen

Nicole Kidman To Star in Girls and Their Horses

The Prime Video series will be based on Eliza Jane Brazier’s 2023 novel. Eliza Jane Brazier’s Girls and Their Horses is headed

to the small screen, with Nicole Kidman on board to star, Variety reports.

Brazier’s novel, published in 2023 by Berkley, follows a wealthy Southern California family that becomes involved in the cutthroat world of equestrian showjumping. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Brazier makes us feel for her characters, rich and poor, and delivers a blue-ribbon story of the haves and have-nots. Horses and young riders are center stage, but dysfunctional adults steal the show in this moody mystery.”

Prime Video is developing the series, which will be produced by Legendary Television and Amazon MGM

Studios. Kidman, known for her roles in multiple literary adaptations, including Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, and The Perfect Couple, will star in the series and executive produce alongside Brazier, who will write the pilot. Jenna Lamia ( Awkward., Good Girls) will serve as showrunner.

Brazier’s novel It Had To Be You (2024) is currently being developed as a film, which she is writing and

executive producing. Variety reports that her two other novels, If I Disappear (2021) and Good Rich People (2022), are also being developed as television series.—M.S.

For a review of Girls and Their Horses, visit Kirkus online.

Nicole Kidman

Picking Up the Pieces

Abbott, J.B. | Crooked Lane (304 pp.)

$29.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9798892421614

Who could be better at solving a murder than a group of jigsaw puzzle addicts?

Abbott’s first novel explores the connections between the two activities.

In fact, the connections, which involve searching for missing pieces while you keep the big picture in mind, don’t run very deep. But both activities seem to start with a frame. When Elena Larsson, Katie Chambers’ stressed-out colleague at Washington state’s Cedar Bay Puzzle Company, is found dead on a nearby street, suspicion falls first and foremost on Katie’s widowed father. Jim Chambers, head librarian at the Cedar Bay Public Library, met with Elena shortly before her death, and even though Lt. Daniel Crozier, who’s in charge of the case, is an old school friend of Jim’s, he seems more interested in marking the case closed than in giving his buddy the benefit of the doubt. Convening the members of the South Island Jigsaw Crew, Katie quickly develops a list of four suspects: Ian Trembley, the senior puzzle designer who saw Elena as a rival; Harold Beck, the competitor who accused Elena of stealing his designs; Mystery Married Man, Elena’s possible lover; and Jim Chambers himself. As the crew zigzags toward an eminently forgettable solution, Katie encounters threats and attempts against her life from someone the authorities refuse to believe actually exists. Along the way, Abbott strews her path with countless tropes from social-club mysteries—from Katie’s demanding cat to Crozier’s son Connor, Katie’s high school sweetheart, now a firefighter whose heart still burns for her—with an artless innocence that suggests the pseudonymous author came up with them themself. The perfect cozy for someone who’s never read another, or someone who’s read so many that it doesn’t matter anymore.

A

mystery, travel

book, and writing tutorial in one.

JUST ANOTHER DEAD AUTHOR

For Duck’s Sake

Andrews, Donna | Minotaur (320 pp.) $28 | August 5, 2025 | 9781250894380

As Meg Langslow’s town of Caerphilly, Virginia, prepares for its seasonal Mutt March, murder is on the march too, or at least is out for a leisurely stroll.

The Mutt March is an annual parade of rescue animals—mostly dogs, but other species are welcome, too—through the center of town in order to raise money for local shelters and encourage citizens to adopt their favorites as companions. As executive assistant to Mayor Randall Shiffley, Meg would naturally be involved in the festivities even if it weren’t for her long history with animals established by 37 bird-themed titles. As usual, however, the most innocuous animal-oriented event spells trouble. Mayoral cousin Aaron Shiffley, excavating a site for a duck pond on the property Meg’s brother, Rob, bought from 90-year-old widow Iris Rafferty, unearths what looks like a human arm. Other body parts are disinterred under the expert eyes of Meg’s father, who’s the medical examiner, and Caerphilly College archaeology expert Dr. McAuslanCrine, who thinks they’ve been buried for at least 30 years. But whose bones are they? A 5.24% match with the DNA of the late Eustace Pruitt suggests that the corpse, shot through the head, is that of another of the despised Pruitts, who used to run the town in the bad old days. But it’s hard to gather more conclusive evidence when the only Pruitt still living in town is Eustace’s elderly Aunt Ethelinda. As if she knows how slowly the story is unfolding, Iris Rafferty disappears, but the pace still remains leisurely, the stakes low, and the big reveal distinctly anticlimactic.

Andrews’ once-snippy heroine, whose wit has certainly mellowed over the years, now makes a better neighbor than sleuth.

Just Another Dead Author

Bivald, Katarina | Poisoned Pen (384 pp.) | $17.99 paper August 12, 2025 | 9781728295794

Bivald offers a murder mystery, a travel book, and a writing tutorial all rolled into one. Junior agent Sally Marsch neatly sums up the vicious circle writers face: If their sales slump, they look for ways to freshen their writing. But to offset falling revenues, their publishers ask them to produce more books on shorter timelines, giving them less time to develop work that’s more innovative. Bivald confronts this dilemma in her tale about Emma Scott’s writing retreat, designed to bring aspiring writers together with veteran authors, agents, and publishers at Château de Livres in the scenic French countryside so they can develop the craft that for some borders on obsession. Bivald shows ingenuity by livening an old chestnut— the murder of a thoroughly disagreeable established professional at a gathering of colleagues who hate him—by demonstrating techniques they teach (such as how to create memorable characters) at appropriate times in her own narrative. Where she fails is in follow-through. No sooner does veteran author Berit Gardner lecture on dramatic plot twists than Bivald lands a whopper of her own. But she quickly abandons both of the characters most affected by the revelation, begging the reader to ask, “What was the point?” She also ignores her own dictum

that good writers show rather than tell what their characters think and feel. She describes almost no mentoring between teachers and their students, although some manage to produce sellable projects anyway. One wonders how.

The title says it all.

Tour de Force

Brand, Christianna | Poisoned Pen (320 pp.) | $15.99 paper September 9, 2025 | 9781464237676

Inspector Cockrill’s last novel-length case, first published in 1955, takes him on a package tour to San Juan el Pirata, a Mediterranean island paradise of sun, sand, and murder. Cockie’s companions include irresistible Louli Barker, who clings helplessly to him as their airplane begins its descent; Cecil Prout, of the fashion house Christophe et Cie; Leo Rodd, forced out of his career as a concert pianist by the loss of his right arm; Helen Rodd, the wealthy wife who continues to support him; spinster Edith Trapp, whose wardrobe Mr. Cecil openly admires; introverted Vanda Lane, who enjoys gaining power over other people; and Odyssey Tours guide Fernando Gomez. Soon after their arrival, Vanda is stabbed to death in her hotel room as everyone else lounges on the beach, their alibis attested by the watchful Cockie himself, though they can’t extend the same courtesy to him. The investigation demanded and at first directed by El Exaltida, the suavely tyrannical Grand Duke of San Juan el Pirata, who’s determined to arrest one of the interlopers, reveals that every one of the vacationers is harboring some dark secret ranging from adultery to masquerade to embezzlement. Fending off his own arrest, Cockie eventually figures out which of those secrets is most toxic en route to half a dozen false climaxes and a remarkably well-timed unmasking. Along the way, Brand (1907-88) distributes puzzle pieces as dexterously as a Las Vegas dealer and wisely springs her biggest and most

jaw-dropping surprise halfway through in order to give dazed readers plenty of time to accommodate themselves to its messy implications.

A late-blooming Golden Age gem that fully lives up to its title.

Death at an Irish Village

Brannigan, Ellie | Crooked Lane (336 pp.) $29.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9798892422581

Two cousins must fight long odds once again to keep their Irish castle. Rayne McGrath inherited McGrath Castle from her Uncle Nevin, with the proviso that Ciara Smith, his illegitimate daughter, stay on to manage the place. He gave them 12 months to get in the black or sell and split whatever money is left. Rayne was a successful bridal designer in LA who was doing very well until her boyfriend stole all her money plus a bunch of wedding gowns. Now the cousins, who had no idea the estate was in such bad shape, are nearly broke and are trying various schemes to make money. Rayne’s still designing bridal gowns and selling off valuable handbags. Ciara works with estate opportunities like raising sheep. Most of the villagers are old, and the cousins would love to attract younger people by refurbishing a bunch of cottages and fixing up a row of storefronts. But their attempts to save the village by modernizing meet with opposition. Although they’ve refurbished the castle as a wedding venue, their first booking ended in murder. As they wait for the next one, a project to clean up a cemetery leads them to a grave they think is in the wrong place, judging from some letters and photos they had found in an old trunk in the castle. Back at the cemetery the next day, Rayne’s dog discovers the body of a man named Aiden Dennehy slumped on the mystery grave, right next to a jewel that Rayne thinks the dog probably chewed out of her Jimmy Choos. More research indicates that the men in the photos were probably fighting in the

revolution and involved in a secret society that may have stolen valuable jewelry. In addition to a murder with surprising suspects, Brannigan supplies historical tidbits and back-and-forth romance.

The Mango Murders

Burdette, Lucy | Crooked Lane (288 pp.)

$29.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9798892421652

A Key West food critic and her boss are literally blown out of the water while trying out a plan to increase circulation.

Hayley Snow works for the e-zine Key Zest, which covers all things related to the popular tourist destination. In an attempt to boost viewers, her boss, Palamina, has hired the Pilar Too, a Hemingway-themed catamaran, for a sunset cruise including food and drink. The caterers, Hayley’s mom and stepfather, are providing mango-based snacks and Hayley is working the crowd when they suddenly hear cries of “Fire!” The next thing Hayley knows, she’s in the water helping people get to rescue boats that will take them ashore when the Pilar Too explodes, leaving an unidentified person dead.

Hayley’s husband, Nathan, is one of the police officers investigating an accident that’s eventually blamed on a propane tank exploding. Or was it really an accident?

Hayley’s already extra busy planning an 85th birthday party for a friend whose houseboat is next to theirs. Miss Gloria is dearly loved by her friends, though not so much by some starchy relatives who are coming to the party. But Hayley’s had a hand in solving more than a few murders, and her streak of curiosity encourages her to look into this one, especially since her mother is a suspect. With so many people on board the catamaran, there could be many motives, and once she begins poking around, Hayley begins to find out things she never knew. She can tell she’s getting close when she and her sleuthing mother-in-law become targets of a biker. When she refuses to give up, bullets fly.

A colorful background and fun for foodies enliven a tale of jealousy and revenge.

A powerful, creepy mystery steeped in history.

THE SKELETON IN THE ROSE BED

A Lonesome Place for Murder

Chase, Nolan | Alcove Press (304 pp.) $29.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9798892423021

T he discovery of an unidentified corpse leads to a complex investigation and a slew of painful memories for a solitary lawman.

In the little border town of Blaine, Washington, police Chief Ethan Brand and his most senior officer, Brenda Lee Page, are out looking for a missing chestnut horse when they come upon a body in a tunnel. An old photo found in the victim’s pocket features Tyler Rash and Ethan’s disreputable father, Jack. Many people jump to the conclusion that the victim is Rash, but Ethan’s not so sure. In balanced prose as straightforward as its protagonist, Ethan’s second case unfolds as a detailed police procedural with a large cast of supporting characters, including Royal Canadian Mounted Police and state border patrol agents as well as Ethan’s own small team of officers. The investigation proceeds step by measured step as Ethan and Brenda Lee question many in Rash’s orbit, putting together a picture of a troubled past. If he’s not the dead man, it’s very possible that he’s the killer. An interview with Rash’s mother, Emily Heller, who bitterly blames Jack Brand for most of her son’s troubles, complicates the case further. Flashbacks paint an increasingly vivid picture of Ethan’s scarring past with Jack. The investigation answers baffling questions about both Rash and Jack as it subtly builds to an explosive climax. Chase’s nuanced portrait of a small, intricately interwoven community draws the reader into both the lives of its inhabitants and the solution to the puzzle.

A masterfully muted crime yarn with a compelling protagonist.

The Skeleton in the Rose Bed

Clare, Alys | Severn House (256 pp.) | $29.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781448313020

A n 1882 case exposes Lily Raynor and Felix Wilbraham, partners in the World’s End Bureau, to a diabolical serial killer. Lily, happy that she’s gotten rid of an annoying tenant and replaced her with two scholarly spinsters who are thrilled to be under her roof, greets three nervous elderly people who arrive at the office: Alethea Fetterplace and her siblings, Frances and Thomas. They explain their ancient lineage, their home near the Tower of London, and their discovery of a body, its skull detached, buried in their rose bed. Though they’re obviously withholding details, they hint that the gold chain and expensive fabric with which the skeleton is adorned indicate that it might be someone of great import. Made uneasy by some noises and lights near their garden at night, they’re eager for advice about what they should do. Felix has a bad feeling, and with reason: When he visits the area, he’s noticed by a dangerous man. With help from journalist Marmaduke Smithers and his erudite friends, they learn that their clients think the body is that of Anne Boleyn, and they may be right. When Felix goes for a look at the skeleton, he’s attacked and left for dead. Only careful nursing by all the inhabitants of Lily’s home saves Felix’s life. In the meantime, Lily realizes that they’re dealing with a great evil. Research supports the suspicions of her friend, waterman Tamáz, that a man may have been killing women all over England and dumping their dismembered bodies

in waterways. Now their attention is focused on the serial killer, who has Lily in his own sights.

A powerful, creepy mystery steeped in history, with a very effective climactic surprise.

Lessons in Crime: Academic Mysteries

Edwards, Martin. | Poisoned Pen (368 pp.) | $15.99 paper August 19, 2025 | 9781464237645

Fifteen tales out of school, originally published between 1904 and 2000, that show how much more was happening in and out of British classrooms than you realized. Edwards’ editorial apparatus is oddly hit-or-miss: His introduction is mainly a survey of full-length novels set in Oxford, Cambridge, or English boarding schools, and his brief biography of Ethel Lina White, whose alert governess foils a kidnapping here, never mentions White’s best-loved novel, The Wheel Spins, memorably filmed as The Lady Vanishes. But with a few exceptions—E.W. Hornung’s dated theft by A.J. Raffles, Malcolm Gair’s snappy anecdote whose title provides a major spoiler, prolific Herbert Harris’ inverted story about a killer who anticipates all possible missteps but one—the stories are worth staying after school for, as Jacqueline Wilson’s imperious instructor forces a dyslexic pupil to do with dire results. A scrap of paper holds the key to Henry Wade’s missing undergraduate. Wine salesman Montague Egg, Dorothy L. Sayers’ second-string sleuth, briskly identifies the culprit who bashed an antireligious master to death. Joyce Porter’s ignorant, irascible DCI Wilfred Dover more or less figures out which of the eight adult students murdered their teacher. Colin Watson shows the predictably disastrous outcome of the fake murder a pair of boys stage to prank a dull-witted schoolmate. In the three best stories, Miriam Sharman presents a high-stakes battle of wits between a retiring

headmaster and the actor whose thieving son he expelled; Michael Innes, clearly reveling in academic jargon, uses a few moments of darkness to replace a cadaver with the much more recently deceased instructor of an anatomy class; and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Adventure of the Priory School” is just as much fun to read for the 10th time.

Warning to teachers who read this: Watch your back, and check the current beneficiaries of your life insurance.

Tails From the Crypt

Fox, Sarah | Severn House (224 pp.) | $29.99

September 2, 2025 | 9781448315765

Two special pups help an animal lover solve the murder of a cat hater.

Georgie Johansen has a heart for all creatures great and small, which is why she gave up life in the big city to help run an animal sanctuary on her Aunt Olivia’s farm in Twilight Cove, Oregon. So Genevieve Newmont’s threat to poison Hattie Beechwood’s cats for digging up her garden does not go down well. Nor does Georgie appreciate Genevieve’s attempt to buy a plum role in Twilight Cove’s annual Pumpkin Glow Halloween event with a hefty donation. Normally, Georgie wouldn’t spend much time worrying who killed Genevieve and left her body in the park—only the police regard Georgie’s best friend, Tessa Ortiz, as their prime suspect. Unlike the animals who roam freely across Aunt Olivia’s acreage, Fox keeps a tight rein on her narrative, moving the investigation forward briskly while keeping the Halloween festivities, the wildlife drama, and even Georgie’s budding romance with ex–MLB player Callum McQuade firmly in the background. She even lets her spaniels’ supernatural gifts appear low-key, allowing them to use their power of invisibility, for example, to sneak clues off the investigating officers’ desk without becoming objects of scrutiny themselves. The result is a well-balanced small-town

cozy offering a hint of romance and a whiff of local color while allowing readers to enjoy seeing justice triumph. For cozy fans who like their mystification with a little magic.

The Girl in the Green Dress

Fredericks, Mariah | Minotaur (336 pp.)

$29 | September 2, 2025 | 9781250367518

A retrospective look at the death of real-life journalist Morris Markey. Fredericks takes a cue from Markey’s own words—“It lies within the very nature of a mystery story that it must be told backward.” Beginning with Markey’s corpse sprawled in the front hallway of his home in Halifax, Virginia, she scrolls back 30 years to 1920, where the 21-year-old Markey, fresh from serving with the Red Cross on the front lines of the First World War, is looking to make a name for himself writing for the New York Daily News. In real life, Markey investigated solo, but Fredericks gives her fictionalized reporter a pair of co-sleuths: Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. These icons of the Jazz Age give the story its heartbeat. As Markey searches for a mysterious, strikingly beautiful young woman in a dollar-green dress he sees briefly outside Joseph Elwell’s home the night before the playboy’s murder, the Fitzgeralds take the young reporter under their wing, escorting him to high-octane parties and super-swank clubs, drinking up a storm, and generally raising hell. Markey’s intense but platonic relationship with Zelda is particularly compelling: Fredericks’ Zelda all but dances off the page. But when it returns to the 1950s, Fredericks’ narrative fails to fulfill the mission Markey teases. Looking backward gives a vivid picture of the Markey Fredericks imagines in his whirlwind tangle with the Fitzgeralds, but this retrospective excursion sheds scant light on how 30 years later he came to be lying cold and still in his front hallway. It’s all fun and games until the music stops.

A Slowly Dying Cause

George, Elizabeth | Viking (656 pp.) | $32 September 23, 2025 | 9780593493588

Inspector Lynley and Sergeant Havers decamp to Cornwall, where mayhem has come a-calling.

George’s latest installment in the Lynley-Havers series opens, as ever, with a “devastating pool of blood”: A middle-aged metalworker, Michael Lobb, has been stabbed again and again and has decidedly shuffled off his mortal coil. First on the scene is Geoffrey Henshaw, whose backstory is a touch scandalous, having fallen in love with a high school student and been relieved of his teaching job for his troubles; now, pining for her, he’s working the Cornwall countryside for a mining company that wants to buy the Lobb property, a perfect site for a lithium processing center. “They’re willing to pay serious money to be able to do that,” says Michael’s brother Sebastian, who owns a 40% stake in the property and is eager to sell, even as Michael resisted. That’s two people with motive. Then there’s Michael’s young wife, who just happens to have taken out an insurance policy on her husband not long before his untidy demise. But of course there’s more, and, as ever, George complicates her already complicated plot with unseemly side excursions—sexual abuse of children, adultery, and so forth. Most of the initial digging is done by Inspector Beatrice Hannaford, with Lynley and Havers not turning up until 120-odd pages in, and with a handy excuse for heading to Cornwall: Lynley, it turns out, is heir to a crumbling estate there, “the country pile that accompanied the cringe-worthy title he’d inherited from his father.” The fuzz put their heads together to sort out poor Lobb’s situation, and, as ever, the solution emerges in a perp who’s been there all along but has been overlooked. The book is, also as ever, too long by a quarter, but it’s got plenty of intriguing twists and turns that will leave the reader guessing. Trademark George, with a satisfying resolution that’s a long time coming.

Grisham tries out a whodunit.

THE WIDOW

Which Witch?

Green, Simon R. | Severn House (208 pp.)

$29.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781448313532

T he curse of the Scottish Play claims new victims.

Actress Diana Hunt’s new production of Macbeth is plagued with so many annoying incidents that some cast members blame them on witchcraft. The group is rehearsing in a decrepit London theater and staying in the hotel next door, both of which the play’s backers own. Richard Sutton, the director who’s set the play in the future, has just come off the fantastically successful run of a musical based on The Swiss Family Robinson, and the entire cast is primed for fame and fortune if his new endeavor succeeds. Since the Holy Terrors—that is, Diana and her boyfriend, Bishop Alistair Kincaid—have a reputation for solving murders with ghostly undertones, Diana calls on Bish to help uncover the human saboteur. Bish slowly meets the cast and crew, many of whom are spooked by misdeeds they fear could turn dangerous. First, King Duncan’s throne is sabotaged, though luckily the man himself is not badly hurt. Next, Banquo is wounded when a prop dirk—a kind of knife—is sabotaged. The producers continue to support the play despite a series of ever more nasty and dangerous tricks, including the encirclement of Diana with a ring of fire. Someone knows the backstage area well enough to pull tricks and avoid capture, but when the actor playing Lennox is poisoned right before their eyes, the sabotage turns deadly, and Bish, Diana, and the police, who don’t believe in witchcraft, must dig deeply into possible motives to catch a clever killer. Theater lore, plenty of suspects, and a soupçon of witchy activity add up to a delightful puzzle.

The Widow

Grisham, John | Doubleday (416 pp.) | $30 October 21, 2025 | 9780385548984

After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.

Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will.

That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a

wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal. Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.

Earthquake Shack

Hara, Susie | Arte Público (200 pp.) | $19.95 paper | September 30, 2025 | 9798893750218

The second Sadie García Miller mystery finds her prowling around San Francisco in search of a missing…house?

Don’t call Sadie a private investigator: She’s a self-described “finder of lost objects.” As the story begins, she’s at her storefront office when she gets a visit from Al and Ruth Miller—“my New York gangster cousins.” They want to hire Sadie to track down Ruth’s missing 38th Avenue home: According to Al, “They hauled away her house when she was out of town on a business trip.” (OK, it’s not a house house: It was originally one of the cottages that were set up in refugee camps following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.) Although Sadie could use the cash, she doesn’t want the job: When she was a teenager, her grandfather warned her about Al (“Two words: Jewish Mafia”). But Al makes Sadie an offer she can’t refuse: He says her long-dead union-organizer father “didn’t die in a car accident. Do this job for us, and we’ll tell you who murdered him.” It’s not just this mystery’s San Francisco setting that conjures Dashiell Hammett: Like a classic-noir regular, Sadie is a hard drinker and a just-as-hard smoker who stays fit boxing at the gym. Then again, classic noir isn’t known for its bisexual Mexican Jewish sleuths, nor is there anything hard-boiled about Sadie’s narration: She’s a chatterbox, especially about local color and family matters; one strand of the novel finds her dealing with her tía Gloria’s decline. All this makes Sadie an inspired mashup. On the downside, the resolutions to the novel’s two big questions—how did Sadie’s father die, and who stole the earthquake shack?— aren’t exactly, well, earthquaking.

Readers may occasionally be a step ahead of Sadie, but they’ll still have fun skulking around San Francisco with her.

Kirkus Star

A Special Interest in Murder

Harrison, Mette Ivie | Severn House (224 pp.)

$29.99 | September 2, 2025 | 9781448316434

A 24-year-old autistic woman displays a remarkable talent for detection in this novel by an autistic author.

Ada Latia built a cosmetic company that her ex-husband, the ironically named Rex Friendly, stole when he divorced her “eight months, two weeks, and three days ago,” marrying her best friend two months later. Now, forwarding her an article about the death of an autistic schoolgirl, Rex insults her by saying that autistic people aren’t really human. Despite her pain, Ada is drawn into the story by the accompanying picture showing a body that seems to be posed. The girl’s death has been called an accident, but Ada is sure that it’s murder. Her efforts to get the case reopened are fruitless until she leaves a message on the FBI public line. Then she gets an unexpected call from her schoolmate Henry Bloodstone, an FBI agent, who remembers both her quirks and her prodigious talents. Conversations with neurotypical people are always difficult for Ada, but she agrees to work as Henry’s unofficial consultant, and they travel to the victim’s school in Idaho to investigate. The child who died, Ella Kimball, came from a wealthy family, and her high-priced tuition was helping to support the school. At the time of her death, she was with one of the two autistic sons of the school director, Soledad Sanchez, who’s willing to let her son take the blame for an accidental death in order to save the school. Meeting Ella’s parents, especially her furious mother, is so traumatic for Ada that she goes into a meltdown. Interviewing everyone who works at the remote school, she and Henry find that Ellie was an extremely difficult

child. But who wanted her dead? Despite the difficulty of the investigation for Ada, it will lead to life-changing events. A clever series kickoff featuring a sleuth who opens the often misunderstood world of autism to a wider audience.

Kirkus Star

Murder Takes a Vacation

Lippman, Laura | Morrow/ HarperCollins (272 pp.) | $27 June 17, 2025 | 9780062998101

An ordinary woman finds extraordinary adventures on a river cruise on the Seine. Muriel Blossom acknowledges that she’s a “no-frills” person, a trait that served her well when doing surveillance for Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan. When she gets an unexpected upgrade on her British Airways flight to Paris, she finds herself not only in business class, but on the other side of the looking glass. Allan Turner, a handsome stranger, befriends her in the Chesapeake Lounge, which her upgrade allows her to access. She misses her connection at Heathrow because of the weather, so he invites her to share his luxurious suite in a London hotel, paid for, he insists, by his firm. Then he sends her off on the Eurostar train to reach Paris via the Chunnel in time for her ship’s departure. Once in Paris, she meets another stranger, younger but equally attentive. Danny Johnson takes her to a friend’s atelier in the Marais where the plus-sized Muriel can find the fashionable clothing she deserves. A mysterious man in a bellman uniform knocks on her hotel-room door and invites her to leave her luggage in the hallway so it can be transferred overnight to her ship, but of course she realizes that’s nonsense. She also receives the news that Allan died in a fall from his balcony the night after she left London. When Danny turns up on her cruise, she knows something’s off, but she can’t put together the pieces. That’s

because Lippman is unrivaled in her ability to lay out clues in a way that makes them seem not only mysterious, but downright surreal. Only at the end does everything fit together so naturally that it all seems blazingly obvious. Like Muriel, who’s patient and sensible to the end, you’ll just have to wait. Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.

Death in the Countryside

Malone, Maria | Crooked Lane (336 pp.)

$29.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9798892421591

A police officer goes above and beyond to solve her community’s problems. Sgt. Ali Wren and her springer spaniel, PD Wilson, are settling into Heft, her hometown in North Yorkshire. The place somehow seems busier than Harrogate, the much bigger city where she was stationed before, perhaps because people keep calling on her for matters unrelated to police work. One of the problems is a rivalry between Evelyn Hooley, whose bakery is a staple in Heft, and the owners of Rise, a new bakery just across the street. On a rare day off, Ali and PD Wilson hike to the Black Stone, where young Tom Masters went missing years before. It’s on her way home that Ali runs into Brian Bright, who reports his wife Melody missing. Oddly, Brian has pictures of his late first wife all over his house, making Ali wonder about the state of his current marriage. Ali’s husband, Nick, a location manager for a popular TV cop show, knows Brian as a reliable supplier of cars to the film industry. Even though she thinks that Melody may have just up and left, Ali agrees to investigate. As the bakeshop rivalry progresses toward minor mischief, Melody’s sister claims to know nothing of her whereabouts, though she does mention an old boyfriend. When Melody is found dead at a beach house Brian didn’t know she owned, that old boyfriend becomes a

person of considerable interest. Meantime, Ali looks into the old Masters case and unearths new evidence that helps PD Wilson find what’s left of him. Since plenty of mysteries remain for her to solve, it’s lucky that she can rely on PD Wilson’s feelings about suspects to figure everything out.

An excellent procedural featuring a likable heroine and her talented canine partner.

The Magician’s Deception

Miller, Carol | Severn House (208 pp.)

$29.99 | September 2, 2025 | 9781448310562

A s usual, the tarot cards are correct in their warning of danger from a mysterious stranger. Hope Bailey and her sister, Summer, are helping their grandmother Olivia Bailey, who’s joining her boyfriend, Morris Henshaw, for a weekend trip to his 50-year high school reunion. Each of them has packed enough for an around-the-world cruise. Olivia is going to miss the Halloween party the family usually holds at their mystic shop in Asheville, North Carolina, but which this year, as a favor to their friend Megan, Hope and Summer are giving as a joint party with her boyfriend’s restaurant, the Green Goat, which has been having financial problems. As Olivia gets ready to leave, she’s uneasy because Hope’s only tarot reading for the day turned up The Magician, a rarely seen card. Just as Olivia’s heading to the airport, two camper vans arrive, one carrying Lucas Deering, a friend from the sisters’ teen years. Morris’ son, Dylan, a down-toearth doctor, doesn’t like Lucas flirting with Hope. He likes it even less when he learns that Lucas is a conspiracy theorist chasing down creatures like the chupacabra and sasquatch. The other van contains three people: quiet Erik, Collin, and his wildly jealous girlfriend, Amber, whose dish-throwing fight brings the arrival of Summer’s boyfriend, Nate Phillips, a police detective whose work

could well clash with the family’s magical skills. All these conflicts pale in comparison to Hope and Dylan’s unplanned meeting in the Green Goat’s basement with Megan and her boyfriend, Daniel Drexler, who discover Collin’s body in a pool of blood. Who most wanted Collin dead: his jealous girlfriend, a fellow conspiracy theorist, or someone who didn’t want him investing in the Green Goat? The motley crew must use all their skills to find his killer.

A touch of romance and magic combine with detection in this charming cozy.

The Diary of Lies

Miller, Philip | Soho Crime (304 pp.)

$29.95 | August 12, 2025 | 9781641296991

Fresh off her award for Scoop of the Year for unmasking the undercover dealmaking behind Brexit, freelance Edinburgh journalist Shona Sandison lands an even bigger, and more dangerous, scoop.

At the award ceremony in London, Shona is chatted up by Reece Proctor, of the Dovetail think tank, who promises her a sensational story if she’ll go to a local sex shop and ask for bondage. The trip makes her queasy, and the documents she picks up at the shop offer no more than hints. Meanwhile, Shona’s former colleague Hector Stricken, now working as media officer for a new agency called Capacity and Resilience (Scotland), gets wind of a secret project codenamed Grendel and jots down a few notes. After he mistakenly swaps briefcases with his old pal Adam Rokeby following an epic drinking bout, Eric Kapp, his superior at Alacrity House, dresses him down because not even the slightest hint about Grendel, which is more than Hector knows himself, can reach the public. All the while, a retired civil servant who’s taken the name Benjamin Wolf is keeping a diary filled with cryptic references to an eventful past linked to Shona’s previous two adventures by the

discovery of the corpse of art expert Thomas Tallis. Readers thinking this sounds a lot like the murky government intelligence tales of Mick Herron’s books about the agents farmed out to Slough House are on the right track. But Grendel turns out to be something bigger and scarier than anything Herron’s Slow Horses have encountered, or than the predictable surprises that awaited Shona in those other two cases.

Miller’s greatest gift is to get you to care about his characters long before you’ve figured out what they’re looking for.

Gray Dawn

Mosley, Walter | Mulholland Books/ Little, Brown (336 pp.) | $29 September 16, 2025 | 9780316573238

The redoubtable, unstoppable Easy Rawlins has more on his plate than usual in the 17th novel of this epoch-spanning— and epochmaking—series of detective fiction.

The start of this latest chronicle in the volatile life of Ezekiel Rawlins finds him in a deep funk, a “June gloom,” as he describes it to his adopted daughter, Feather, who’s calling long-distance from France where she’s traveling with a high school student group. One would think Easy would find life, well, pretty easy now that he’s in a fulfilling romance with the alluring Amethystine “Amy” Stoller, his extended family is at peace, and his private detective business is thriving. Still, it’s 1970s Los Angeles and, successful or not, Easy is still a 50-something Black man navigating his way through a world that continually sees him as a threat, even when he’s just trying to do his job. One of those jobs comes from a “beast man” in grimy overalls and clodhopper boots all but demanding that Easy find his missing “auntie.” Easy takes the case with little to go on beyond a suspicion that Lutisha James may be mixing domestic work with some gambling. The more questions Easy asks about Lutisha from longtime friends like the homicidal Raymond “Mouse”

Alexander, the more ominous the task becomes; a suspicion confirmed when he finds three family members tortured and killed in a house that was one of Lutisha’s last-known whereabouts. Even through the complications of this case, Easy finds time to help his secretary and fledgling detective Niska Redman with her own missing-persons case and help his adopted son, Jesus, get clear from a pair of corrupt federal agents. It’s a lot of pins to juggle at once, even for the resourceful Easy. And while he’s got plenty of help from friends to cope with cops and other irritants, he can’t outrun the vestiges of his East Texas past, as a jolting surprise awaits him at the other end of his search for Lutisha. By now, it’s tempting to take Mosley’s inimitable blend of taut lyricism and evocative landscapes for granted. Don’t.

Kirkus Star

The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective

Nichols, Jo | Minotaur (352 pp.) | $28 August 19, 2025 | 9781250356543

A group of neighbors band together to solve two murders.

Golda Bakofsky owns the Marigold Cottages, six charming Craftsman-style buildings set on a flower-filled lot in Santa Barbara. Her tenants are an eclectic bunch: secretive Nicholas Perez; Lawrence Hamilton, who’s afraid to leave his house; Ocean Mistral, a lesbian with two children; frightened Sophie Gilman; compulsive Lily-Ann Novak; and most recently Anthony Lambert, whose criminal past will lead to a murder hunt. Mrs. B herself is an eccentric, warmhearted person whose needy tenants love her in different ways and worry when she takes in Anthony, a silent, thuggish-looking type. During one of the cottagers’ group chats, Sophie, who’s had PTSD ever since she was stalked, warns the tenants about Anthony. When Sophie finds a dead body under a bush, DS Vernon and almost everyone else fasten

on Anthony as the guilty party. Mrs. B, who’s absolutely certain of Anthony’s innocence, organizes the other tenants, even Ocean’s children, to help prove his innocence, forcing them all into deeper relationships. The dead man is James Dedrick, who, along with Gregory Ybarra, wanted to buy Marigold Cottages, which is now worth millions, but Mrs. B refused their offers, just like all the others. The tenants are all hiding deep, dark secrets that could put them in jeopardy and provide rich material for a play Sophie’s writing. Superb characterizations and a denouement that leaves you still unsure who’s guilty make for a brilliantly quirky mystery.

The Man Who Died Seven Times

Nishizawa, Yasuhiko | Trans. by Jesse Kirkwood Pushkin Vertigo (288 pp.) | $16.95 paper August 19, 2025 | 9781805335436

A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.

Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-yearold Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls “the Trap,” replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before

moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies— never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”

A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.

Kirkus Star

A Killer Wedding

O’Leary, Joan | Morrow/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $30 | September 23, 2025 | 9780063432215

Debut novelist O’Leary breathes new life into the sad oversupply of murder-stricken weddings by the simple expedient of stuffing her entry to the bursting point with subplots and villains.

Christine Russo is thrilled when her boss, Sandra Yoon, the editor-in-chief of Bespoke Weddings, sends her to the Ballymoon Castle Hotel to cover Jane Murphy’s marriage to pediatric oncologist Graham Ripton. Thrilled, but not surprised, since, as Sandra suspects, Christine’s insinuated herself into the good graces of Gloria Beaufort, Graham’s maternal grandmother, and offered herself as the perfect person to cover the year’s biggest social event. Arriving at the converted Irish castle, Christine predictably finds herself surrounded by members of the dysfunctional Ripton family, among other guests. There are Graham’s parents, Trey and Clementine; his older brother, Ben, the alcoholic general counsel to Glo, the family

Kirkus Star

cosmetic firm; Lyle, Ben’s wife of two years; and chronically bikini-clad Hollywood star Raquel Williams, the new face of Glo, who’s one of Jane’s bridesmaids. Before the ceremony can proceed, Gloria is found shot to death. Spooked by the possibility that bad publicity could tank their brand, the family unites in the epically dubious decision to hide news of her murder from the 350 guests and the authorities until the bride and groom have tied the knot and departed on their honeymoon. Given the surpassing awkwardness of keeping the reason for Gloria’s absence secret, it’s hardly surprising that O’Leary fills the hours before the nuptial vows with a dizzying array of flashbacks that painstakingly reveal so many secrets that everyone in attendance, and the castle itself, is hiding that the result reads like the wedding-cruise version of Death on the Nile

Not to be missed, even if you hate weddings and wedding mysteries.

Ink Ribbon Red

Pavesi, Alex | Henry Holt (320 pp.)

$28.99 | July 22, 2025 | 9781250755957

Death brings a long-standing annual tradition to an ignominious end.

For many years, Anatol, an antiques dealer, has been hosting his friends—five

idiosyncratic Londoners—at his house in Wiltshire on the occasion of his birthday. It’s now 1999, and a few weeks before Anatol is to turn 30, his father dies at the house; as one of the friends, who has volunteered to share the news with the group, explains to another, there was “an accident…He electrocuted himself in the bath, listening to the radio.” “But that doesn’t sound like an accident at all,” observes another friend (channeling the reader), who can’t resist remarking that Anatol stands to come into an inheritance now. Anatol soldiers on with hosting the gathering, although from the jump, readers are informed that “the

weekend would end with Anatol’s death, early on Monday.” The key questions— how did Anatol die, and was his father murdered?—are teased across the length of the book, which has a jagged chronology, a leap-about point of view, and a mountain of misdirection thanks to the truth-averse cast and a parlor game of Anatol’s twisted invention in which players must write stories about one another’s hypothetical deaths. Which of the scenes reproduced herein are the products of Anatol’s game, and which scenes actually happened? The novel will likely divide readers: While the story requires much mental exertion, the ending doesn’t quite live up to the setup’s Christie-esque promise, and yet Pavesi is a fiendishly good, deliberate, and entertaining writer who augments his whimsical-macabre narrative with wordplay, amusingly barbed exchanges, and menacing figurative language—a typewriter makes “the sound of mousetraps snapping shut.”

This book is a workout, but for many readers it will be worth it.

Gone in the Night

Schaffhausen, Joanna | Minotaur (320 pp.) $30 | August 12, 2025 | 9781250904171

Private eye Annalisa Vega and her on-again husband, Det. Nick Carelli, go up against the vigilante who’s evidently hellbent on eliminating every abusive man in Chicago.

Joe Green, a fellow inmate of Annalisa’s brother Alex, the Lovelorn Killer she put away, was convicted of murdering attorney Cyrus Merriman 13 years ago on the testimony of Gwen Beaufort, who saw him at the crime scene while she was walking her dog. But he still swears he’s innocent, and Alex wants his pregnant sister to help him. Even though Annalisa is skeptical, she works so efficiently to poke holes in the story of Gwen, who’s never even owned a dog, and to connect Cyrus’ death to that of several other victims

found with the same Berkanan rune stabbed into their bodies, that he’s released with an apology. Evidently somebody isn’t satisfied, though, for three days later Joe’s body is found in Lake Michigan, just like the others before him—but this time without that telltale rune. Further investigation links the murders to Ruby’s Place, a shelter for abused women, and the kidnapping of Eve Collier, a child who disappeared from the 1986 Chicago Christmas parade. Annalisa and Nick work tirelessly, sometimes together, sometimes at odds with each other, to figure out which of the staunch-hearted stalwarts associated with Ruby’s Place is actually a serial killer. Annalisa will have to solve both this compellingly complex mystery and the unrelated and much less interesting case of the valuable engagement ring that elderly widow Effie Christos has reported missing before she’ll be free to deliver that baby. The unearthed tale of revenge served cold is more satisfying than the story of its discovery.

The Dead Come to Stay

Schillace, Brandy | Hanover Square Press (368 pp.) | $30 August 5, 2025 | 9781335121875

Josephine Jones— an autistic American editor transplanted to Yorkshire—finds her stint as a landlady getting off to a rocky start, more or less literally.

The morning after her very first lodger, real estate developer Ronan Foley, checks into Netherleigh Cottage, the building that’s become the choicest remnant of the Ardemore estate ever since a fire destroyed the principal dwelling in Jo’s inheritance (The Framed Women of Ardemore House, 2024), she gets a shocking piece of news from the Abington police: Her inaugural guest has been found bashed to death. DCI James MacAdams’ inquiries into Foley’s background produce frustratingly little information. Jo’s friend Tula Byrne,

innkeeper of the much more desirable Red Lion, reports that Ronan never tried to make a reservation there. Stanley Burnhope, Ronan’s employer in Gallowgate, maintains that he didn’t know the man well at all, and Stanley’s wife, classical musician Ava Burnhope, insists that she’s never heard of him despite repeated calls Ronan placed to their home from a burner phone. Ava and Sophie Wagner, Stanley’s partner in Fresh Start, an agency that settles refugees from abroad, can talk of nothing but their charitable work. And someone evidently packed the corpse in ice for at least part of the few hours it took to find it. As Jo and her sounding board, Gwilym Morgan, who plays “neurodivergent Watson to Jo’s Sherlock,” labor to unpack the many echoes of her troubled family past in the present mystery, MacAdams puzzles over the few facts he knows, which seem logically inconsistent with each other. Somebody, he reasons, must be lying about something important. Indeed, somebody is, and it’s a whopper likely to fool readers for as long as it fools the endearing detectives.

Less original than the heroine’s striking debut, but still a superior puzzle.

Kirkus Star

The Librarians

Thomas, Sherry | Berkley (368 pp.) | $30 September 30, 2025 | 9780593640456

Moving between Austin, Singapore, and Madeira, Thomas’ first contemporary mystery delivers an irresistible ensemble and a raft of surprises as crime-solving librarians solve double murder mysteries while guarding their own secrets.

Building on her bestselling and critically acclaimed Lady Sherlock historical mystery series and historical romances including My Beautiful Enemy (2014), Thomas conquers the art of genre-blending contemporary crime fiction. When her husband disappears under a cloud of major

A fast-paced and intricate yet emotionally moving mystery.

THE LIBRARIANS

financial malfeasance, Hazel Lee trades her Singapore penthouse for the peace and comfort of life as a library worker in Austin, Texas. With warm memories and her beloved grandmother close by, her childhood hometown seemed like the perfect refuge. But just days after she starts her new job, two patrons are found dead in suspicious circumstances and suspicion weighs heavy on her and her colleagues, every one of whom has something to hide. Sophie, the uber-professional head librarian, is a single mother who worries that a criminal investigation could break her vulnerable family apart. The second in charge, Jonathan, is a lovelorn gay military veteran who’s carrying some heavy scars. Astrid fears that her strange secrets and lies and intimate connections to one victim could land her in the detectives’ crosshairs. And Hazel is weary, having already fled the stench of scandal and police suspicion in one country. Soon the core four are bonding together to solve the mystery before one of them ends up in prison (or worse). Thomas weaves the multicultural ensemble’s stories together seamlessly with vivid and frequently beautiful writing. The single drawback is the occasional reliance on coincidence. Between the intrigue flowing from complex cryptocurrency and other gray-market sleights of hand and a kind of serial serendipity regarding the personal connections among the central cast, plot contrivances sometimes border on convoluted. But the setting and the relationship scenes—whether focused on the friendships among the librarians or between the librarians and their family members or romantic interests—are finely observed every time. This knockout mystery mixes the camaraderie of The Thursday Murder Club with the chic family and romantic drama of Crazy Rich Asians

Thomas’ virtuosity shows in this fast-paced and intricate yet emotionally moving mystery.

Murder at the Black Cat Café

Yokomizo, Seishi | Trans. by Bryan Karetnyk Pushkin Vertigo (224 pp.) | $17.95 paper September 9, 2025 | 9781805335511

A pair of baffling mysteries feature an iconic Japanese sleuth. Set in the 1940s and written in the 1970s, this is the eighth of the prolific Yokomizo’s many novels to be translated into English. The meta strain of this volume’s title mystery begins with a mind-bending prologue in which a letter to Yokomizo from Kosuke Kindaichi, the fictional detective in his long-running mystery series as well as the two stories here, is followed by the author’s announcement that this first mystery is a “faceless corpse” type rather than a “locked room” or “double role” type. Though he doesn’t appear as a character, Yokomizo casts himself as the Watson who documents Kindaichi’s cases. Digging in a garden near the title restaurant reveals a naked, faceless corpse with the body of a jet-black cat nearby. Constable Hasegawa and veteran Det. Murai doggedly investigate. Every interview of a new person of interest shifts the plot like a Rubik’s Cube. Illustrations are provided to help armchair detectives, but the case won’t be solved until the inimitable Kindaichi arrives. The second mystery, Why Did the Well Wheel Creak?, springs from the tangled family history of the wealthy Honiden clan, set forth in intricate detail. After this foundation, the story is presented through a series of letters between family members supplemented by newspaper articles. Kindaichi makes an eleventh-hour appearance, identified as the genius who solved the crime.

Playful puzzles solved by a brilliant, laconic sleuth.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

The Singular Life of Aria Patel by Samira Ahmed (Little, Brown)

Mafalda: Book One by Quino, trans. by Frank Wynne (Elsewhere Editions)

The Last Sweet Bite: Stories and Recipes of Culinary Heritage Lost and Found by Michael Shaikh (Crown)

Audition by Pip Adam (Coffee House)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Heathen & Honeysuckle by Sarah A. Bailey

Maya Blue by Brenda Coffee

Fully Booked

Ain’t no party like an end-of-life party: Grace Flahive’s Palm Meridian is a queer jamboree. BY MEGAN LABRISE

EPISODE 430: GRACE FLAHIVE

On this episode of Fully Booked , Grace Flahive joins us to discuss Palm Meridian (Avid Reader Press, June 24), an exuberant debut set at a queer Florida retirement community circa 2067. After receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, popular founding resident Hannah Cardin decides on a medically assisted death—but not before throwing a clubhouse blowout to celebrate her extraordinary life.

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise. Palm Meridian

Flahive was born and raised in Toronto. She studied English literature at McGill University in Montreal before moving to London, in 2014, where she’s lived ever since. Here’s a bit from Kirkus’ review of Palm Meridian: “‘It was the second half of the twenty-first century and everything was flavoured with apocalypse. And yet—this gelato-coloured place, its rolling lawns riddled joyfully with lesbians, flush with bisexual women, blessed by a bevy of trans and non-binary people—how could you leave a home like this?’ Hannah Cardin, 77, has nonetheless decided the time has come. She’s spent the last 10 years of her life in this lezzie paradise, a place that bobs along on the surface of the climate disaster that’s submerged the state partly due to the environmentally friendly cooling system supergenius Hannah invented in her 20s. It’s been a bright and busy decade, but now that she has a terminal cancer diagnosis, Hannah’s chosen to close it with a bang of a party, then check in for euthanasia in the morning. In addition to all her beloved pals at the resort, she’s invited her old business partner, Luke, and her great lost love, Sophie. Will they show?...There is much to enjoy in Flahive’s high-spirited debut.…The funnest

Flahive, Grace Avid Reader Press | 256 pp. | $28.99 June 10, 2025 | 9781668065457

book about death and post-apocalyptic living to date.”

Flahive describes the great big party she threw for the U.K. launch of the book—at the iconic gay bar Royal Vauxhall Tavern—and her eager anticipation of the U.S. launch on June 24. We talk about the people Palm Meridian serves, medically assisted death, living funerals, Flahive’s former career in publishing (digital marketing, nonfiction), cli-fi, our shared love of surprising language, and much more.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, John McMurtrie, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

Editor at large Megan Labrise hosts the Fully Booked podcast.

Robin Silas Christian

To listen to the episode, visit Kirkus online.

An epic fantasy about how stories from the past can shape our future.

THE EVERLASTING

Exiles

Coile, Mason | Putnam (224 pp.) | $28 September 16, 2025 | 9780593851630

E arth’s attempt to colonize Mars meets with sabotage. If all goes to plan, Officer Gold and her crewmates, Captain Blake and Officer Kang, will be the first humans “to live and die on a planet other than Earth.” After a lengthy “extend-sleep” aboard the Valiant, the shipmates are nearing Mars, where three robots have spent years assembling the mission’s base, dubbed Citadel. Those same robots are supposed to help the Valiant ’s landing pod touch down smoothly and in the correct location, but when the time comes, Blake’s radio calls go unanswered. The crew executes a harrowing manual descent, only to discover that something has destroyed Citadel’s lab. Worse, their access codes don’t work on any of Citadel’s doors, and their suits are low on oxygen. Desperate pounding summons a badly damaged Robot Two, who lets them in and then retrieves Robot One from “her” hiding place. It seems all three robots have gendered (and named) themselves during their stint on Mars, in addition to pondering the meaning of life, the nature of death, and the existence of God. Unequipped for coping with such thoughts, Robot Three, aka Alex, went mad, forcing Robot One (Shay) and Robot Two (Wes) to exile him from Citadel. Wes asserts that the damage was Alex’s doing, but Shay believes an alien is responsible and intends further harm. Regardless, something clearly wants to kill them, and returning home isn’t an option. Straddling the line between

horror, science fiction, and locked-room mystery, this posthumously published novel from the pseudonymous Coile is lean, mean, and propulsively paced. Although Coile’s characters are hastily sketched and a few of the tale’s more bizarre twists falter under scrutiny, Gold’s terse first-person narration and the claustrophobic setting conspire to amplify the high-stakes plot’s inherent tension. Nerve-shredding space whodunnitry with a side of existential dread.

The Everlasting

Harrow, Alix E. | Tor (320 pp.) | $29.99

October 28, 2025 | 9781250799081

A patriotic historian in the grand nation of Dominion is sent back in time to make sure that events play out the way they’re supposed to in Harrow’s ambitious fantasy.

As a historian, Prof. Owen Mallory’s area of focus—or, more accurately, obsession—is Una Everlasting, the legendary knight who bravely served Queen Yvanne and helped her form the great nation of Dominion. While working on a manuscript he hopes will get him a fellowship, Mallory receives an old book in the mail. As he translates it from an older version of Dominion’s language, he comes to suspect that it’s a firsthand accounting of Una Everlasting’s death, which, if real, would be an enormously significant finding. Before he can figure out if the book is genuine or who sent it to him, Mallory is summoned to the office of Dominion’s Minister of War, the imposing Vivian Rolfe, who reveals that she sent the book as a test to see if he’d sell it or if he’d respect and

protect it. Satisfied with Mallory’s dedication to Una Everlasting (and therefore to Dominion itself), Rolfe asks Mallory a simple question: “Are you the man who will save [Dominion]?” When Mallory answers yes, Rolfe stabs her letter opener through his hand, and as he bleeds onto the book’s pages, he’s sent back in time to Dominion’s ancient past, where he comes face to face with the real Una Everlasting. Mallory realizes that the book is a magical object that can send anyone anywhere in time when they give it their blood. He also realizes that Rolfe doesn’t want him to translate a book about Una Everlasting—she wants him to write it himself. Harrow has set up a complex and deeply compelling world in Dominion, where Mallory’s devotion to his country is complicated by his fixation on the myth of Una—and his growing love for Una as a human being. Una is beautifully drawn as a real person struggling to live up to the weight of becoming a legend, and Rolfe is a great villain; with each appearance, her knavery becomes so much more fascinating and devious that readers will turn the pages just to see what she’ll do next.

An epic time-travel fantasy about how stories from the past can shape our future.

Kirkus Star

Automatic Noodle

Newitz, Annalee | Tordotcom (160 pp.)

$21.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781250357465

In this semicozy tale set in a dystopian near future, robots open their own restaurant, build an unusual found family, and achieve personal growth. A few years after the war that led to California’s secession from the United States, four robots awake in the flooded San Francisco takeout place where they were contracted to work, abandoned by the restaurant owners, who skipped town to avoid fraud charges. Needing to pay off their

contracts and seeking a purpose, they decide to reopen as a noodle shop, even though their limited civil rights mean what they’re doing isn’t entirely legal. Why is it so important to make tasty food when robots can’t eat? To what degree should they pander to human comfort to make this place a success, and more seriously, prevent the authorities from noticing that robots are running a restaurant without human supervision?

As they confront these weighty issues as well as the logistics of developing their enterprise, an online review-trolling campaign from “robophobes” threatens to downgrade them out of business. On the surface, this novella could be viewed as the SF equivalent of Travis Baldree’s cozy fantasy Legends & Lattes (2022), about an orc’s quest to establish a coffee shop. But this richly flavored bowl of noodles offers additional toppings, such as edgy social commentary about climate change, PTSD, and the ways in which social media and apps like Yelp and DoorDash gatekeep restaurant publicity, ratings, and sales, creating a distorted depiction of a business with little resemblance to its physical reality. The robots also serve as a metaphor for transgender people specifically and minorities in a general sense, as the story explores the uneasy balance between attempting to assimilate to get along and trying to feel at ease in one’s own body and personhood. Effectively both heartwarming and pointed.

Among the Burning Flowers

Shannon, Samantha | Bloomsbury (288 pp.)

$26.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9781639736010

After 500 years, the Grief of Ages is a distant memory—until dragons hellbent on destruction begin to wake again.

In this relatively brief prequel to the epic The Priory of the Orange Tree (2019), the kingdoms of Virtudom have experienced centuries of relative peace. Marosa Vetalda, the

Princess of Yscalin, spends her days behind castle walls under the gaze of her overprotective father, awaiting the date when she’ll be wed to Aubrecht of Mentendon, her ticket to freedom. While the book’s main focus is initially on the political threads weaving the Western kingdoms together, the frailty of best-laid plans is exposed when evidence of the reemergence of draconic beings reaches castle ears. These tales often come from the cullers who make their living slaying these creatures, and who are often blamed for intentionally waking them for profit. No one alive remembers the Grief of Ages, so no one’s prepared when Fýredel, the great High Western dragon, surfaces from the volcanic mountain that towers ominously over Yscalin’s capital city of Cárscaro. What follows is the backstory of how the devoted Yscali kingdom comes to shift allegiance to Fýredel and his master, the Nameless One, a main catalyst to events in The Priory. Overall, this book reads more like history lesson than fantasy adventure, but the sheer terror that befalls the Yscali people as they face Fýredel’s pure evil is both powerful and relevant. Marosa’s plight further solidifies her as a hero worth remembering; her strength and defiance shine through as hope for the future she’s dreamed of slowly flickers out. Devoted series fans will appreciate the added pieces to this expansive narrative puzzle.

Minds in Transit

Slonczewski, Joan | Caezik SF & Fantasy (270 pp.) | $24.99 paper July 29, 2025 | 9781647101732

In the longawaited sequel to Brain Plague (2000), Chrysoberyl of Valedon, an artist with a colony of sentient microorganisms in her brain, is again awash on a sea of troubles (sometimes literally). Chrys and her micros, the creative strain known as the Libertines, are somewhat overcommitted these days.

While they collectively work on Chrys’ controversial light paintings, they are also responsible for multiple large architectural projects, including an entire floating city on the ocean moon of Shora—if she can only manage to get approval for her design from multiple stakeholders. Chrys is also hoping to remodel the Underworld, the lower layers of her city of Iridis, inhabited by the poor and desperate. The nobles of Valedon would simply prefer to bury the Underworld and relocate its inhabitants, as so-called “cancerplasts” are rooting there, causing earthquakes that shake the city and threaten to undermine it permanently. Meanwhile, the masters—micros that seek to take over their host, not work with it—have mutated into Traders, capitalists that use financial incentives to encourage their hosts to succumb to their control and who are no longer as easy to detect. In order to flush them out, Chrys has incorporated microscopic quantum computing units within herself, which collectively threaten to achieve sentience in their own right, which many see as a threat. And this barely scratches the surface of all the intrigue connected to the continuing fight for nonhuman sentient rights and political shakeups on both Valedon and Shora. Slonczewski is fond of overloading her characters with difficulties, but this story seems to take that tendency to an extreme. There is almost no letup to the implausible amount of burdens and responsibilities that others pile upon Chrys; she is allowed very little time to enjoy her unique position as a successful artist and a wealthy woman with a fascinating creative collective in her brain. Perhaps it’s her micros that prevent Chrys from having a nervous breakdown, even as they add to her stress. Ultimately, these tensions build to a crisis point, but the resolution afterward is rife with dangling and even expanding plot threads, suggesting that the author has merely chosen a place to rest, not to conclude. Presumably we won’t have to wait another 25 years to find out?

A welcome but less than satisfying reunion with beloved characters and their universe.

Witch of the Wolves

Archer, Kaylee | St. Martin’s Griffin (368 pp.) | $20 paper

September 30, 2025 | 9781250393074

A witch discovers her true lineage after she’s abducted by a handsome werewolf in this dark Victorian romantasy. All her life, Cordelia Carter has believed that she’s descended from a line of powerful witches—and that’s true, but now that she’s moved in with her aunt Lenora in London following her mother’s death, certain traits, such as her heightened sense of smell, ability to see at night, and increased appetite, have brought up lingering questions. After crossing paths with a handsome, top hat–wearing stranger, Cordelia quickly uncovers the truth. She’s a lycan, someone who happens to be both part witch…and part werewolf. The latter half she inherited from her father, an Alpha werewolf who’s just sent his second-in-command, Bishop Daniels, to abduct her and return her to her rightful place at Trevelyan, the estate belonging to the Albion Pack. Unfortunately, Cordelia’s father also has more nefarious intentions for her, and they start with forcibly marrying her off to Bishop, his intended successor, in order to ensure the Pack’s strength continues for generations to come. Surrounded by dangerous werewolves at every turn and unsure of whom she can really trust, Cordelia has been restricted from using her magic to save herself—and she can’t challenge her father’s authority as Alpha, either. Under Bishop’s guidance, she begins training to understand her

new lycan abilities, but she’s also confronted with her increasing attraction to her father’s strongest lieutenant. Archer’s debut romance is a quick, diverting read, but it struggles to balance heavy themes with more lighthearted ones. The will-they, won’t-they tension between Cordelia and Bishop contributes to some of the book’s best scenes, but their building romance sits in sharp contrast to some pretty dark twists that may take readers by surprise. The ending hints at the clear possibility of a stronger sequel with the two characters positioned as a united front against multiple antagonists, and there’s the potential for an already rich supernatural world— consisting of witches, werewolves, demons, necromancers—to be built out even more extensively.

A fast-paced, action-packed paranormal romance that teases a more promising sequel.

Sweet Heat

Babalola, Bolu | Morrow/HarperCollins (496 pp.) | $19.99 paper | September 2, 2025 9780063306967

C ollege sweethearts turned exes reunite in Babalola’s scorching sequel to Honey & Spice (2022). When readers first met Londonbased university student Kikiola “Kiki” Banjo in Honey & Spice, she was the smart-talking radio personality behind the show Brown Sugar. Almost a decade later, Kiki is reeling from having been pushed out of her own podcast and is looking for her next big career move.

A witch learns her true lineage after she’s abducted by a handsome werewolf.

Meanwhile, her boyfriend, Bakari, a tech mogul more focused on sales than on remembering Kiki’s favorite flowers, just popped the big question. Not the marriage question—which Kiki finds herself alarmingly thankful about—but instead a work proposal: come work with him and forget about her impractical music-industry dreams. Kiki is unwilling to compromise her happiness, vocationally and romantically, so she and Bakari decide to take a break. Just as well, because Kiki’s best friend, Aminah, is newly engaged, and the semi-bridezilla needs Kiki’s full attention for her maid of honor duties. First step: Learn how to speak to the best man again. It’s been three years since Kiki experienced the worst heartbreak of her life from Malakai Korede, and suddenly the Hollywood-bound director is back in her orbit. When Kiki and Kai first got together at Whitewell College, they were inseparable; now, she can barely say his name. But she’s Kiki Banjo, and no man is going to ruin her fun, especially if he’s going to stick around for the wedding in six months. She can handle the occasional run-in and fake smile—that is, until a popular musician enlists Kiki as producer and Kai as director for her latest documentary. Can Kiki and Kai keep the past hidden as they work together, or will old feelings resurface? And when that old spark inevitably returns, will Kiki be able to recover if it ends in heartache? Babalola is an artful and lyrical writer, and her prose is a feast for readers. Kiki is a strong, sexy heroine who’s full of heart, and Malakai is a worthy contender for both her temper and affection. Fans won’t want to miss their second-chance love story.

A sweet and spicy treat for fans of Babalola’s characters.

For more by Bolu Babalola, visit Kirkus online.

The Devil She Knows

Bellefleur, Alexandria | Berkley (336 pp.) | $19 paper | October 21, 2025 9780593952504

A woman makes a deal with a demon to win back her ex, but is her perfect match actually from another dimension?

Samantha Cooper may be having the worst day of her life. After her girlfriend, Hannah, swiftly and brutally rejects her proposal—at a restaurant, no less—she gets stuck in an elevator with a strange, unsettlingly beautiful woman. Despite her perfectly coiffed blonde hair and pretty pink dress, Daphne is a demon, and she’s here to make a deal: In exchange for her mortal soul, Samantha will be able to make a total of six wishes. Anything she wants in life, or love, can come true, once she signs her name on the dotted line. After getting past her initial doubts, Samantha attempts to exploit an obvious loophole and use one of her wishes to get Hannah back, but Daphne’s fulfillment of each wish comes with its own less-than-desirable consequence, forcing Samantha to use more wishes to get one step closer to ultimate happiness with Hannah. Naturally, it also turns out that Daphne has her own motives: Samantha’s is the last of the thousand souls she needs to collect to free herself from the deal she made thousands of years ago that turned her into a demon. As Samantha comes to the realization that getting everything she wishes for isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and faces the possibility that repairing things with Hannah won’t lead to the happiness she always imagined, her mixed feelings about Daphne give way to something much more complicated. Bellefleur’s latest romance is her most ambitious yet, with a conceit that puts a welcome sapphic spin on the classic Faustian tale. While the story is a bold, fun blend of paranormal and contemporary, the pacing does a disservice to the book’s ultimate pairing, as Samantha spends so much time plotting to win her ex back and pining over what could have

been that there isn’t enough time spent on the evolution of her superior, devilishly entertaining dynamic with Daphne. A wickedly fun romance that doesn’t quite live up to its potential.

The Fallen & the Kiss of Dusk

Broadbent, Carissa | Bramble Books (576 pp.) $29.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781250367815

Asar and Mische reunite to steal the power of a god in the fourth installment of Broadbent’s Crowns of Nyaxia series. After the dramatic conclusion of the previous novel, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone (2024), Mische is dead and in the underworld. She’s greeted by Vincent, the long-dead vampire king of the House of Night, who shows her how the underworld is literally cracking at the seams. It’s supposed to be a safe place, where souls are judged and pass through on their way to the final oblivion of true death. But the underworld Mische finds herself in is filled with monsters that eat souls, and she sees literal tears in reality that bleed like physical wounds. As Vincent explains, when Mische saved her lover, Asar, from being sacrificed at the end of the previous book, important relics that were holding the underworld together wound up being destroyed. Asar, meanwhile, has been imprisoned by the gods of the White Pantheon. Instead of killing Asar, the botched sacrifice gave him a god’s power, and the other gods aren’t interested in sharing. Except for one god, whom Vincent refuses to name, who has offered Mische a chance to rejoin Asar so they can both escape the White Pantheon’s clutches. If Mische accepts this offer of help, there’s a chance that she and Asar could outrun the gods long enough to secure Asar enough power to repair the underworld and obtain true divinity. If they fail, the problems afflicting the underworld will eventually spread, the mortal and vampire worlds will also crumble, and Mische will slip back into death—permanently.

Broadbent has a solid technical grasp on writing action and romance scenes and keeps a firm track of characters and space as the head-spinning action progresses. As a vampire-themed dark fantasy, the book has lots of dramatic violence and plenty of monsters, but it all flits by without much narrative consequence because there’s simply so much going on. Less is more, even in epic fantasy romance.

Love Walked In

Chamberlain, Sarah | St. Martin’s Griffin (352 pp.) | $18 paper September 2, 2025 | 9781250894748

An American consultant clashes with, and then falls for, the owner of a storied London bookshop. Mari Cole helps indie bookstores become successful. Her latest gig is London’s Ross & Co., a once-famed family business with roots in pre–World War II Germany. She’s raring to fix the store’s problems but hasn’t counted on Leo Ross, the store’s manager and part owner, who’s grieving his charismatic grandfather’s passing. Leo is also mourning a two-year-old divorce, and despite Mari’s can-do attitude, he balks at making changes to the store. After some initial skirmishes—including Leo’s snarky comments about romance novels—and one particularly acidic exchange, they reach a détente when Mari has a severe bout of the flu, during which Leo nurses her back to health. The episode turns them into allies working together to bring the bookshop back to life, and sexual attraction replaces antipathy. But Mari’s childhood abandonment issues were aggravated by a breakup with a cheating girlfriend, and Leo has to recover from his own failed relationship and rediscover his youthful passion for art. There’s a subplot about the mysterious sense of familiarity Mari feels for another bookstore employee (the reveal is unlikely to be a surprise to the

reader), and an obligatory dark moment that is quickly overcome after they both get past their hangups. The novel is a paean to independent bookstores, the movie Notting Hill , and genre fiction, with reading recommendations peppered throughout.

A comfort read for lovers of books, Richard Curtis movies, and romance with a touch of enemies-to-lovers.

Julia Song Is Undateable

Lee, Susan | Canary Street Press (304 pp.) | $17.99 paper | October 28, 2025 9781335402523

Childhood neighbors Tae and Julia reconnect when he agrees to be her dating coach. At 30, Julia Song has a thriving professional life. Four years after she founded Starlight Cosmetics in Santa Monica, California, the company is eyeing possible investors for global expansion. Julia’s romantic life is nonexistent, though, and she’s determined that her propensity for being bluntly honest, her inability to make small talk, and her reluctance to downplay her career ambitions have made her undatable. But while Julia might be fine with giving up on love, she believes her family won’t be fully impressed with her life choices until she has a “fat diamond engagement ring.” At her grandmother’s 80th birthday party, these fears are confirmed when Halmoni tells Julia that the doctor “found something” and it is her dying wish for Julia to get married. Unable to say no to her beloved grandmother, Julia agrees to be set up on three dates by her family. But how can she make sure they go well? Enter Julia’s childhood neighbor, 25-year-old Taehyung Kim. The dutiful son has dropped everything to return home to his parents in Irvine after his father’s cancer diagnosis. When selfless Tae reconnects with Julia—on whom he’s been nursing a crush since childhood—he agrees to become her dating coach, helping her overcome the

interpersonal pitfalls that have kept her from finding The One. As they grow closer, sparks soon fly, but navigating their disparate life circumstances—Julia the wealthy chief executive, Tae the unemployed son living with his parents—might nip their growing attraction in the bud. The novel’s main conceit—that Julia’s family cares more about marrying her off than they do about her wildly successful career— chafes against modern sensibilities, and this belittling behavior is not deeply interrogated. But author Lee navigates Tae’s questions about purpose, ambition, and carving his own path with nuance and heart.

A swoonworthy rom-com about finding true love—and finding your true self along the way.

What Fury Brings

Levenseller, Tricia | FEIWEL (368 pp.) | $31.99 September 23, 2025 | 9781250379375

A woman from a matriarchal society kidnaps a prince from a neighboring kingdom, planning to force him into marriage. Five hundred years ago, the wife of the abusive king of Amarra prayed to her goddess for mercy; in return, the goddess granted every woman in the country the ability to rule over men. Amarra’s queens have governed with vengeance ever since, creating a fiercely violent matriarchy. Now, 21-year-old Olerra Corasene, a gifted military strategist and powerful general, is competing with her cunning and devious cousin, Glenaerys, to be the next queen. Since Glen is trying to secure the throne by currying favor with the wealthy nobles, Olerra decides on a different tactic, the time-honored Amarran tradition of kidnapping a husband. Her target is a good-looking younger prince from the neighboring country of Brutus, but she accidentally and unknowingly nabs Sanos, the king’s eldest son and heir to the throne. She drags Sanos back to Amarra, where he’s

treated with all the contempt for men that is normal in her society: He’s dressed as a sexual plaything, forced to shave his beard and body hair, leashed and restrained for bad behavior. Olerra can’t understand Sanos’ objections to this treatment, and the ensuing power struggle makes up most of the plot. Marketed as romantasy, Levenseller’s first adult novel falls flat as both romance and fantasy. There is little connection or chemistry between Olerra and Sanos, and since both are more caricature than character, neither experiences the kind of growth that creates challenging or interesting romantic relationships. In addition, the worldbuilding is paper thin. Amarra is a world built on reverse misogyny, but the motifs, imagery, and scenes often read more like a brainstormed list (a penis guillotine!) than a fully realized attempt to say something meaningful about women’s rage. A book about revenge that’s more punishing than purposeful.

Road Trip With a Vampire

Levine, Jenna | Berkley (416 pp.) | $19 paper September 23, 2025 | 9780593819913

A vampire with amnesia embarks on a road trip with a witch struggling to control her powers. Grizelda Watson used to be known for her wild pranks, but, at more than

400 years old, the witch is reinventing herself. Going by just Zelda now, she teaches yoga on the California coast and tries not to use her magic. Vampire Peter Elliott awoke with no idea who he is other than what his ID says, a bag full of cash, a journal, and an urge to visit California. When the pair meet, instant attraction sizzles. Ominous letters arrive for Peter beckoning him to Indiana to complete a job (doing what, he has no clue), and it just so happens to coincide with Zelda’s idea to get out of town for a bit; lately, if she doesn’t use her elemental magic every day, it goes awry, so she decides some experimentation—away

from her house and business—is in order. They decide to make pit stops along their trip to the Midwest at the wonderfully random places mentioned in Peter’s journal in hopes of jogging his memory. Silliness abounds on the pair’s journey as they discover truths about themselves and deepen their connection with each other. Zelda’s first-person narration is often hilarious and gives the story loads of charm. Peter’s characterization is less developed both due to his amnesia and because readers only get his perspective in small snippets (mostly flashbacks), but he’s still lovable, particularly in the deliciously spicy scenes that magnify his appeal. Emotions throughout aren’t particularly deep and some plot points are more enjoyable when just taken at face value rather than questioned, but readers who are looking for an easy, funny romance with a paranormal bent will be pleased.

A breezy, zany, immortal love story.

The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah

Meltzer, Jean | Harlequin

MIRA (352 pp.) | $18.99 paper October 21, 2025 | 9780778334422

Exes are reunited during a chaotic, miraculous Hanukkah season in Manhattan.

Evelyn Schwartz is at the top of her game at work, and all her effort and long, thankless hours have led to a project that will let her truly make a name for herself: executive producing a live televised musical of A Christmas Carol, which will have her working all through Hanukkah. When an injury lands her in the studio’s medical bay, she’s shocked—and infuriated—to see her ex-husband filling in for the usual on-set doctor. David Adler hasn’t seen his wife since he left her two years ago, moved out of the city, and started an animal rescue farm. Despite their unresolved history, they agree to be

Exes are reunited during a chaotic, miraculous Hanukkah season in Manhattan.

THE EIGHT HEARTBREAKS OF HANUKKAH

professional and get through this production. When Evelyn encounters the ghost of a former co-worker, she thinks she must be hallucinating even though that’s never been a symptom of her chronic migraines before. Throughout the eight days of Hanukkah as Evelyn counts down to her show, solving one problem after another, more spectral and outlandish visitors appear to show her eight heartbreaks of Hanukkah past. As Evelyn relives the things that brought her and David together and then tore them apart, her love for him is reignited. It’ll take a Hanukkah miracle, though, for them to work through their past heartache. Meltzer blends the deep, somber emotions of heartbreak and loss with moments of pure hilarity and adds a dash of holiday-season magic to create an affecting, heartfelt story. Tough topics are deftly handled with tenderness, care, and compassion, while the characters are allowed to be realistically messy and complex. Evelyn’s growth as she faces her grief feels more substantial than the romance, although the two meaningfully weave together and the couple’s happy ending is well earned.

A moving, magical holiday romance.

Claiming the Princess

Michaels, Charis | Avon/ HarperCollins (400 pp.) | $9.99 paper October 28, 2025 | 9780063280175

The Hidden Royals series concludes with the romance of Danielle Allard d’Orleans, a French princess exiled as a baby and raised unaware in Kent, England.

When Capt. Luke Bannock, a smuggler, unexpectedly became a national war hero, he made a plan for what he’d ask of the Prince Regent as his reward: betrothal to the Princess d’Orleans. His surrogate father was taken prisoner by a French captain who also wanted the hidden princess in order to claim the lands included in her dowry; Luke doesn’t actually care to marry, but he wants to use the princess as a bargaining chip. When he meets Dani, though, she is passionate about her village and has no clue about her heritage—not at all what he expected. Luke must change his plans, quickly. Luckily, the prince gave him an estate, and it’s just what Dani needs to revitalize her town and provide jobs to the locals. Luke knows he has to tell her the truth of who she is and what he wants from her, but as they start to fall for each other, he also wants to protect her. Although hesitant about the engagement at first, Dani becomes fond of Luke, but she can tell he’s holding back, and she won’t abide secrets. The majority of the book is tightly focused on the first few days after Luke and Dani meet, leading up to their quick wedding, with a lot of introspection for them both. The story’s reliance on their lack of communication feels tired, but Dani’s indignation and willfulness when the truth comes out feels gratifying. Distinct characterization and the intriguing setup propel the plot, and the final act turns into exciting action as the couple embarks on a daring rescue. Luke’s groveling and deep admiration and love for Dani by the end is delectable.

A character-driven historical romance that slowly builds to a rewarding ending.

Kirkus Star

Grace & Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon

Norman, Matthew | Dell (336 pp.) | $18 paper | October 14, 2025 | 9780593975053

Two people who recently lost their spouses bond through the magic of holiday movies. Grace White’s husband, Tim, died of cancer, leaving her with a bar to run and two young children to raise. One thing she’s not interested in—finding a new guy. Everyone in her life, however, wants to set her up with every eligible man they know. Henry Adler’s wife, Brynn, died in a plane crash and he’s been sleepwalking through life ever since—avoiding the house where they lived and taking a forced “vacation” from his advertising job. But when their meddling mothers force the two of them together, they realize that maybe they can be partners in sadness—as Grace puts it, “We’re the only people who know what it’s like to be us.”

After Henry tells Grace that he and Brynn always had a holiday movie marathon, one thing leads to another and soon Grace and Henry are watching The Family Stone together. They make their way through many of the classics, occasionally with Grace’s kids, as they slowly rebuild their lives and face their grief. But as they begin to rely more on each other, they have to ask themselves if they’re ready for second chances. Norman balances sadness with hope to create a lovely romance that feels

like it could fit into the best sort of holiday film. It’s impossible not to root for Grace and Henry, two immensely likable characters who deserve to find happiness. The Baltimore setting comes alive and the vibrant supporting characters make this one a joy to read. A winning, bittersweet love story that has just as much hope as it does heartbreak.

It’s Different This Time

Richard, Joss | Dell (432 pp.) | $17.99 paper September 30, 2025 | 9798217093656

A New York City brownstone brings together a pair during two different stages of their lives. When her TV show gets canceled, Los Angeles based working actor June Wood finds herself between gigs hoping to make ends meet. An intriguing but vague email implores her to visit New York City with news about the brownstone she used to rent. She returns to her former home and is shocked to learn that not only has she inherited the multimillion dollar place from her former landlord, but she co-owns it with her old roommate, Adam Harper, a man she lived with for six years but hasn’t seen since she left five years ago. It’ll take a month for all the paperwork to get in order, and, in the meantime, June and Adam are once again living under the same roof. If there’s any hope of repairing their relationship, they’ll have to look back at the events that led them to this point and

Two people who recently lost their spouses bond through holiday movies.

confront their unresolved feelings. The narrative jumps between the present and past, both through June’s engaging first-person narrative. In the past timeline, June dreams of being on Broadway and Adam aspires to become a great chef. They barely know each other when they become roommates but over time become best friends with the possibility of more constantly lingering as they grow together and support each other through the highs and lows of careers, family, and other relationships. This slow-burn romance is propelled by the question of what happened to tear them apart, and while that reveal doesn’t entirely land, all the small, tender moments between June and Adam are what will captivate readers. Debut author Richard crafts emotionally complex characters full of yearning, and the lush New York setting adds extra appeal.

A deeply felt, passion-filled, dual-timeline love story.

Play You for It

Saldivar, Samantha | Dell (352 pp.) | $18 paper | October 21, 2025 | 9798217092598

A newly promoted basketball coach and a sports reporter face off against one another on the court, in the media room, and between the sheets.

When Jordan

D’Amato is promoted to be interim head coach of a Division I men’s college basketball team, she becomes the first woman in that position. Because of her boss’ sexism and fear of public fallout, her future with the team is contingent on clinching a win. As a former college athlete and WNBA player, she’s used to a challenge. What she isn’t ready for is Caroline Beck, a journalist who’s no stranger to the microaggressions and misogyny Jordan is up against. Beck also happens to be a former college basketball player from a competitive family. Determined to

A Mafia heiress falls in love

with

the man sent to assassinate her.

HUNTSMAN

get the first one-on-one interview with Jordan, Beck challenges the coach to a flirty game of horse and wins. She’s sure the interview will help her dig out of the trenches she’s been working in for years, but instead, her boss, Easton Prescott, tries to take the interview away from her. Jordan refuses to do the interview with anyone but Beck, which places a bullseye on the reporter’s back in the newsroom. The women’s attraction to one another is a conflict of interest that, if acted upon, could brick both their careers. The attraction between Beck and Jordan is written with masterful restraint, which unfortunately means that the romance sometimes lacks emotional depth and takes a distant backseat to the sports. Not quite a slam dunk, but a solid layup that scores.

Huntsman

Simone, Naima | Bramble Books (320 pp.) $19.99 paper | October 7, 2025 | 9781250352941

In this Snow White retelling, a Mafia heiress falls in love with the man sent to assassinate her.

Eshe Diallo’s family controls the Mwuaji, a matriarchal Mafia family headquartered in Boston. The family is led by Eshe’s aunt Abena, who came to power after Eshe’s mother was murdered when the girl was 16. Now 25, Eshe believes the rumors that Abena was responsible for her mother’s death, but without hard evidence she can do little to confront Abena and take her rightful place as the head of the family. That changes when Abena hires the notorious

assassin known as the Huntsman to kill Eshe. When the Huntsman arrives at Eshe’s secluded cottage in New Hampshire to carry out the job, she turns the tables and captures him instead. It turns out Eshe has been long fascinated by him and has learned everything about his past, including his real name, Malachi Bowden. After he escapes, Malachi is more determined than ever to find Eshe and complete his task, but he can’t help but be impressed by her beauty and her bravado. Eventually, they become lovers and team up to dethrone Abena, with the help of seven women who are Eshe’s best friends and lieutenants. Simone’s novel is propelled by violence and mayhem rather than careful characterization and plotting. The same Eshe who cleverly anticipated Malachi’s every move rushes headlong into several of her aunt’s traps; the same Eshe who spent years carefully and methodically uncovering Malachi’s long-buried past did nothing to uncover the secrets in her own family. Eshe’s desire for revenge is the emotional driver of the book. Her insta-love relationship with Malachi feels more like a tool in her arsenal than an attempt to say anything interesting about love and loyalty in a broken world.

A blood-fueled revenge fantasy more interested in violence than love.

Anywhere

Sprinz, Sarah | Trans. by Rachel Ward LYX (464 pp.) | $18.99 paper

October 14, 2025 | 9798893310832

W hile searching for clues to her father’s whereabouts, a young woman falls for a fellow student at an elite boarding school.

For more by Naima Simone, visit Kirkus online.

Emma Wiley and Henry Bennington first meet while catching the same flight from Frankfurt to Edinburgh, neither knowing as they sprint toward their gate that they’ll soon be classmates at Dunbridge Academy. Henry is a returning student and Emma is studying abroad for the year. Emma’s parents met at Dunbridge, but since their divorce, Emma’s father has essentially dropped off the face of the planet and she wants answers. She hopes that attending Dunbridge will offer some insight into her dad and where he’s gone. This is a standard high school drama, like something one might see adapted for the CW: New girl feels like a fish out of water among her popular and/ or wealthy classmates while trying to solve a personal mystery. Something worth mentioning is that Henry already has a girlfriend, who arrives at the Edinburgh airport to pick him up. Grace is immediately welcoming to Emma, the newcomer, which makes the central romance hard to accept. Henry and Emma’s friendship quickly becomes romantic; both are overnight boarders at the academy, while Grace lives at home and attends school during the day. There are the usual scenes of Henry and Emma sneaking out of activities and having clandestine meetings at night, but keep in mind that both are aware that Henry has a girlfriend. It can be hard to root for a romance when infidelity is at its foundation, even though Emma and Henry are only 18 and especially since Grace is so supportive and likable. The only compelling part of the book is the inviting community environment cultivated at Dunbridge. There are touching scenes of mentorship, tearful reunions, and blossoming friendships. A by-the-book high school romance with a main couple that’s hard to root for.

Nonfiction

JOHN McMURTRIE

THE LOVE LIVES OF OTHERS

EVERY COUPLE HAS its everyday challenges.

Whose turn is it to take out the trash? Who was the last person to shop for groceries? And: Who’s going to kill these baby turtles since we have nothing left to eat after that whale destroyed our boat, leaving us alone on this tiny raft in the Pacific Ocean for months on end?

That’s one of the many questions that Maurice and Maralyn Bailey must ask as they ponder their fate in Sophie Elmhirst’s suspenseful and surprisingly tender and uplifting debut book, A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck (Riverhead, July 8).

Few couples have ever been put to such a test. But it seems that Maurice and Maralyn were a perfect match from the get­ go. Tired of their suburban lives in Derby, England— about as far as one can get from the ocean in Britain—the pair decided to find their bliss in New Zealand. And so in 1972 they set sail in a 31­foot boat, opting not to bring a transmitter that would have let them radio for help after the leviathan sank

their vessel off the coast of Panama. Despite their grueling and grim circumstances, the Baileys stayed strong by helping each other, telling stories and playing cards and taking turns fishing. Just how devoted were they to spending time together in the face of danger? Not long after they got back to England, they took to the high seas again.

In her famous solo flights, Amelia Earhart also tempted fate, until she went missing over the Pacific in 1937. What’s less known about the legendary aviator, long a popular feminist figure, is the story of her love life. In The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon (Viking, July 15), Laurie Gwen Shapiro

recounts how publishing magnate George P. Putnam, in the words of our reviewer, “became her wily manager, tireless publicist, and, in 1931, after repeated proposals, her husband.”

Countless love stories, of course, have never been told. Elizabeth Lovatt unearths some of them in Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line (Legacy Lit/ Hachette, May 27), about an English phone service that, beginning in the 1970s, helped women who had questions about their relationships—and their attraction to other women. “Lovatt builds a chosen family from this archive, sorting through decades of phone logs to report their stories,” our reviewer writes. “Due to repression, much of lesbian history is hidden history, and Lovatt writes that she felt like ‘an

amateur lesbian sleuth’ uncovering the queer past.” There is, too, the love that one can feel for a beloved pet. In Ubac and Me: A Life of Love and Adventure With a French Mountain Dog (S&S/ Summit Books, July 15), Cédric Sapin ­Defour takes a philosophical approach to the affection he felt for the Bernese Mountain Dog of the book’s title. “When you love a different category of living thing with a shorter lifespan, logic dictates that the day will come when the newborn catches up with your age, exceeds it and dies,” he writes. “The fact remains that this happiness has an expiry date, try as you might to spend each day slowing your dog’s life or speeding up your own.”

John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

The renowned singer and actor—and so much more—recounts a life full of unexpected turns.

In the kinder, gentler 1970s, Blades traveled, as a singer in Ray Barretto’s famed band, to Puerto Rico, where an immigration agent asked the native of Panama for his passport. “I told him I hadn’t brought it because I didn’t think I needed it to travel to Puerto Rico,” Blades told him. “He looked me in the eye for an instant that seemed an eternity and finally let me board the plane.” Good thing, because Blades’ career would soon explode, and he became one of the bestknown exponents of Latino music in the country.

Along the way, he also became an actor, featured in such films as  The Milagro Beanfield War  (which, curiously, he mentions only in passing) and  Once Upon a Time in Mexico, often, as he notes, playing cops. That’s fitting, for, as Blades writes in this ruminative memoir, he trained as a lawyer in Panama, taking a special interest in recidivism at one of the world’s last remaining prison colonies. Political repression drove him out of the country and brought him to the U.S., but he has since returned to Panama to serve as, among other things, head of the national tourism agency. This spry memoir recounts dozens of chance

Life’s Little Surprises: A Memoir

Blades, Rubén | Knopf | 352 pp. | $30 November 11, 2025 | 9780593318058

encounters that shaped Blades’ multifaceted life: friendship with Gabriel García Márquez, co ­writing with Bob Dylan (“Bob fucking Dylan was in our house,” he exults to his wife after the first session) and Lou Reed, standing up to ripoff record executives. All

of this leads up to the biggest surprise of all, expertly sprung at the very end of the book, and a payoff well worth the wait. Elegantly written, eminently readable, and one of the best show-business autobiographies in recent memory.

Following the money trail that shapes Silicon Valley.

The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience

Alaqad, Plestia | Little, Brown (208 pp.) | $18.99 paper September 30, 2025 | 9780316597456

Piercing observations from a displaced Palestinian journalist. After college in Cyprus, Alaqad returned home to Gaza, where she played tennis, socialized with other young Palestinians, and weighed her professional options. Her life was forever changed on Oct. 7, 2023, when Israel, responding to horrific attacks by Hamas, launched its ongoing war in Gaza. Alaqad’s account of the ensuing carnage is raw and brave. Citing historical precedents, she explains why Palestinians’ greatest fear is “having to forcibly leave our homes.” This fear became reality when an Israeli bomb hit her building that October, forcing her family to seek refuge in a hospital and, later, with relatives. In the weeks that followed, several of her loved ones and colleagues would be among the tens of thousands of Gazans killed by Israel. Alaqad was still a student when she decided to become a reporter, determined to “inform the world” about life in Gaza. After the war started, she filed reports for foreign news outlets and shot footage for social media, amassing 4 million Instagram followers. Her book’s diary­style entries contain harrowing imagery—ice cream trucks filled with corpses, a child so badly injured he cannot be identified, a baby’s bottle “under the rubble, full of milk.” She also witnesses remarkable community­mindedness. As Gazans aid displaced neighbors, a cabby gives Alaqad a free ride, asking only that she publish his photo and ask readers to pray for him “when I get killed.” She captures the

mindset of a terrorized populace, describing how “a part of me is happy” when Israel bombs a hospital because it might mean the war is ending: “Which lives are left for you to target?” This is an important record of unfathomable brutality, which Alaqad describes with clarity and candor.

An arresting personal history of loss and survival in besieged Gaza.

Tech: When Silicon Valley Remakes the World

Alexandre, Olivier | Univ. of California (344 pp.) | $27.95 | September 23, 2025 9780520413740

Delving into the history and culture of Silicon Valley. Alexandre, a research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research, applies sociological methods to explore the layered cultures, traditions, and practices that define Silicon Valley. Also a deputy director of the Center for Internet and Society, Alexandre immersed himself in the community— interviewing, observing, and participating in its day­to­day life. In a work that hovers between academic and popular appeal, he follows the money trail to reveal the forces that shape Silicon Valley: a relentless focus on growth, the pressure of product life cycles, and the continual demand for fresh entrepreneurs and venture capital. Charts and diagrams help map out these intricate flows and relationships, accompanied by striking statistics. Despite the focus on startup success, 4% of IPOs fail. Alexandre notes that “a startup is less an organization than an ethos” embedded in an “innovation­focused culture.” Although his research includes nearly 150 interviews and

a survey, the book isn’t centered on well­known tech leaders—and many respondents chose to remain anonymous. The perspectives of workers, hiring managers, and entrepreneurs reveal a deeply secretive work environment governed by nondisclosure agreements. While organizational size—whether a nimble startup or a more established firm—clearly influences workplace culture and the practice of programming or entrepreneurship, Alexandre largely sidesteps this distinction. He embarks on a side quest into the history and culture of Burning Man, the desert festival that has significantly influenced the tech world. Nevertheless, academics and seasoned insiders will find new perspectives in studying this intricate ecosystem of blended work and leisure—a place and a culture that has created technologies with an outsize impact on our lives.

A fascinating study of Silicon Valley as multiple complex, overlapping communities.

This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web

Berners-Lee, Tim | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (400 pp.) | $30 September 9, 2025 | 9780374612467

An idea that spanned the globe. Berners­Lee describes how he invented the World Wide Web and laments that his creation, exploited by “monopolistic players,” isn’t “in such great shape.” The British computer scientist explains complex technology in accessible language, leaving room for ample self­puffery. Berners­Lee was working at CERN, the celebrated Swiss physics lab, in the 1980s when he sought “to encourage new and unexpected relationships between pieces of information.” A version of the internet already existed, and “by layering hypertext links onto” it, “we could connect” people everywhere, he realized. He was celebrated for persuading CERN to publish his

source code instead of patenting it, part of his decades­long effort to make information “accessible and open.” The book’s first third is excellent. Along with his web breakthroughs, Berners­Lee lovingly describes how his mathematician­parents nurtured his creativity. He built a “homebrew” computer in high school and an intercom for his family’s house. The web made Berners­Lee famous—Time magazine dubbed him one of the 20th century’s most influential people—and his book doesn’t skimp on the fruits of his renown. He writes of being name­checked by Bono during a U2 show and lunching with Queen Elizabeth II: “Her Majesty seemed to enjoy my presence.” He won awards, enough that “I was used to giving acceptance speeches.” Quoted at length, Berners­Lee’s wife calls him “openminded, fair, resourceful and very kind,” an “obviously brilliant” person who has “complete respect for humans and nature.” Canonization awaits, evidently. Today, Berners­Lee works on initiatives to make the internet more humane, to protect users’ privacy, and to urge governments to be more transparent. Artificial intelligence will be “transformative,” and it’s up to citizens to help “define the terms that will govern” the future of technology. A tech pioneer recalls creating the web—and asks users to help safeguard its future.

The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit, and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty

Borman, Tracy | Atlantic Monthly (448 pp.) $30 | November 4, 2025 | 9780802165909

Detailing a watershed moment in English history.

The Tudor family’s reign in England lasted 118 years and saw five monarchs on the throne. When the last Tudor, Elizabeth I, died in 1603 without a direct heir, the Brits turned to James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, uniting the kingdoms and beginning a new dynasty with the Stuarts.

Those are the historical facts. In her latest history, Borman tells the fascinating story of palace intrigue, forgery, and other shenanigans behind those facts. After decades of waiting for Elizabeth to name her successor, and hundreds of letters between Elizabeth and James dancing around the issue, there was still no clear claim to the throne as Elizabeth lay dying. Council members reported that on her deathbed Elizabeth named James as her successor, quoting her as saying, “I’ll have none but him.” But James’ hold on the throne was tenuous. His grandmother, Margaret, Henry VIII’s sister, and her descendants were specifically excluded from the throne under Henry’s will. James desperately wanted validation, not only for himself but for his son to succeed him. That validation came from historian William Camden’s well­known biography of Elizabeth, which includes the story of the succession choice. New technology examining Camden’s handwritten manuscript shows that key passages were pasted over and rewritten. “Elizabeth’s last­gasp naming of James as her heir was a work of fiction,” Borman writes. The manuscript was published in 1615 in Latin, suggesting that it was aimed at a limited audience, and the English language version was not published until 10 years later, two years after Camden’s death, blurring the extent of his complicity in the treachery and deceit.

An entertaining and highly readable story of a falsehood that has lasted 400 years.

The Story of CO 2 Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World

Brannen, Peter | Ecco/HarperCollins (512 pp.) $32 | August 26, 2025 | 9780063036987

The “very stuff of life.” Carbon dioxide and its energy, says journalist Brannen, author of The Ends of the World , have lifted living standards, unleashed new food supplies, lengthened lifespans,

and spread literacy worldwide. “Today, as in the beginning, life is still made out of carbon dioxide,” Brannen writes. “And the world’s problems are made out of carbon dioxide as well.” The natural forces that have driven the global carbon cycle for millions of years are now out of whack, governed no longer by volcanism but by economic and geopolitical systems. Today, hundreds of millions of years’ worth of energy has been unleashed in a “geological nanosecond.” As he walks the floor of Death Valley amid stones that are 120 times older than the Grand Canyon—“a half­billion years [before] the first dinosaur evolved”—the author confronts the fact that all geologists face: “Time is big.” He envisions ice four miles thick in places and sea level dropping a mile. What followed was the most extreme of climate catastrophes, much of the chaos still left written in Death Valley. And then, “All hell broke loose, and when it ended—for some reason—the riot of animal life exploded.” Eventually, Brannen brings us to “our millisecond tenure on this planet,” where we lounge in a time of “extremely misleading stability.” Don’t get comfortable—this golden age is coming to an end, which pushes us to the urgency to get off fossil fuel use at a time when “we’re still going to need lots of energy.” But the market cares little about the planet. “In summary,” writes Brannen, “we’re in deep shit.” This book, though, isn’t a rant against modernization. It’s a rich geological history and an overdue examination of the costs and benefits of what humans have built with our extravagant use of a chemical compound. A thrilling exploration of Earth’s tumultuous history, its tenuous present, and a future in grave doubt.

One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle Over an American Ideal

Buccola, Nicholas | Princeton Univ. (448 pp.) $35 | October 7, 2025 | 9780691230306

A study in contrasting political philosophies. For nearly a decade spanning the 1950s and ’60s, two visions of American life developed in tandem, each articulated and embodied by a charismatic leader. Martin Luther King Jr. gained international prominence as a high­flown orator of the Civil Rights Movement committed to progressive social justice; Barry Goldwater, the blunt­spoken Arizona senator who ran as the Republican candidate for president in 1964, rallied conservatives to the cause of “extremism in defense of liberty.” The pair engaged in a “years­long debate over the meaning of freedom, without ever being in the same room,” writes Buccola in this successor to his earlier dual biography, The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America (2019). The author sifts through speeches, interviews, and writings by King and Goldwater to elucidate the ideologies that continue to hold sway—and divide Americans—to this day. For Goldwater, freedom meant “no Federal regulation of any segment of our free economy…or any aspect of our lives as citizens”; this conception grew from his background as a businessman who was opposed to “Big Labor and Big Government.” While the author asserts that Goldwater was not a white supremacist, the senator found common cause with that group’s championing of states’ rights, a pressing issue as the federal government was called upon to enforce desegregation in the South. King, of course, saw things differently: State’s rights, he argued, “are only valid as they serve to protect larger human rights.” The minister would ultimately urge “every Negro and every white person of good will” to vote against Goldwater, who

suffered a stunning electoral defeat at the hands of Lyndon B. Johnson. The conservative movement, however, was just gathering steam.

This readable and relevant intellectual history is grounded in a dramatic narrative of American politics.

Republic and Empire: Crisis, Revolution, and America’s Early Independence

Burnard, Trevor and Andrew Jackson

O’Shaughnessy | Yale Univ. (320 pp.)

$35 | September 16, 2025 | 9780300280180

Their revolution preoccupies Americans but was only one of many problems facing Britain, says this history.

O’Shaughnessy is professor of history at the

University of Virginia; Burnard was professor of slavery and emancipation at the University of Hull, England. In their insightful history, they point out that Britain possessed more than twice as many Atlantic colonies as the 13 that would become the United States. Focusing on world affairs, they view the American Revolution as an imperial event during a clash of imperial powers after which the independent United States embraced British­style imperialism, racing west to conquer their own empire at the expense of Spain, Mexico, and Indigenous people. Unlike traditional U.S.­centric accounts, the book maintains that the 1756 ­1763 Seven Years’ War dominated the century. Britain won a smashing victory over rival powers (mostly France, Spain, and Austria), acquiring Canada, many West Indian islands, and dominance in India, but it was crushingly expensive. Ironically, the losers’ primitive bureaucracy enabled them to repudiate debts, but Britain’s advanced banking system permitted no such option. The authors describe Britain’s efforts to govern and defend a burgeoning empire while paying off the cost of acquiring it. Irish and West Indian gentry relied on Britain’s army for

protection against their tenants and enslaved people and willingly paid more taxes. India’s wealth, till then enriching the private East India Company, was reclaimed for the empire. American colonists, having driven most Indigenous tribes beyond the Appalachians, felt little threat, detested British soldiers, and believed that their unpaid militia was all they needed. The authors remind readers that when France and Spain declared war after 1778, Britain withdrew much of its army from the colonies to fend off its major rivals, which it accomplished so successfully that the loss of the colonies turned out to be a temporary glitch in an expanding empire that did not peak until the following century.

A convincing argument that the 13 colonies were part of a vast imperial system—but not the most important part.

Kirkus Star

Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President

Carroll, E. Jean | St. Martin’s (368 pp.) $30 | June 17, 2025 | 9781250381682

Breezily barbed account of the author’s years battling Donald Trump in court.

“Donald Trump’s entire defense rests on calling everyone a liar,” says one of Carroll’s battery of lawyers before an entranced jury. Trump is, of course, the centerpiece of Carroll’s story, a mix of legal transcripts and memoir hinging on her heavily publicized civil suit against him for assault and defamation. But subject to just as much of Carroll’s abundant wit, well honed as a humor writer over many years, is Trump lawyer Alina Habba, Esq.—Carroll adds the “Esq.” every time—who comes in for a shellacking each time she enters the scene. Scene 1: Habba Esq. is grilling Carroll on the number of sexual partners she’s had. “She is stupendous!” Carroll exults.

“Dark, with a broad forehead, cheekbones like pickleball paddles, wide­set eyes as lovely as a baby seal’s.” After enumerating a very short list, Carroll recounts a series of idiocies in legal discovery on the part of the defense and a very smart campaign by the plaintiff’s attorneys: for example, a dotty psychiatrist who is “brave enough to take $750 an hour off Donald Trump…to report back on (1) how clinically insane I am, and (2) how big a malingerer (i.e., liar) I am” and the transformation, through well­chosen clothing and haircuts, of someone “too old and unattractive to attack” into the one­time beauty queen who had a proven horrific encounter in a department store dressing room. Carroll is a keen observer of all that goes on, with her sardonic title taking on great significance at a key moment. Alas for Trump, he’s now on the hook for more than $100 million, with 9% interest compounded daily, on which Carroll, in a knee­cutting envoi, signs off: “I beat Trump twice. I could not have done it without Alina Habba, Esq.”

An unexpectedly entertaining tale that neatly damns the sitting president with his own ill-chosen words.

Creative Ozone: The Artists of Westbeth

Chaiken, Miriam | Empire State Editions/ Fordham Univ. (208 pp.) | $29.95 October 7, 2025 | 9781531511777

An iconic artists’ community. Anthropologist Chaiken turns her attention from villages in Asia and sub­Saharan Africa to a unique vertical village in Lower Manhattan: Westbeth, the largest and oldest site providing affordable living and workspace for people in the arts. Drawing on interviews, oral histories, and archival documents, Chaiken, whose aunts and uncle lived at Westbeth, creates a vibrant portrait of the community. It opened in 1969, renovated by recently graduated architect Richard Meier from a maze of

A nuanced history of Asian American empowerment.

WATER MIRROR ECHO

buildings, ranging from two to 13 stories, that once housed Bell Labs. In various­sized residences, tenants could configure their spaces according to their needs. The basement housed music and painting studios; the first tenant in one of the commercial spaces was the Merce Cunningham dance company and school. Prospective residents needed to meet low­income levels and provide three letters of reference from people in the same field. An evaluation committee included the director of MOMA, Julliard, the La MaMa Theater company, and established artists, such as Sol LeWitt and Elaine de Kooning. Soon, there was a long waiting list—some applicants waited decades for housing to open up. Well­known residents included poet Muriel Rukeyser, actor Vin Diesel, and photographer Diane Arbus. For children who grew up at Westbeth, the community, as one woman put it, seemed “kind of magical but also insane.” They witnessed drug use, mental illness, and “wildly dysfunctional families.” The area, blighted by urban decay, empty warehouses, and crumbling piers, was derelict and dangerous. Although residents feared break­ins and muggings, they cherished the immediate neighborhood of small shops and restaurants—a genuine village. Chaiken examines the impact on Westbeth of AIDS, Hurricane Sandy, 9/11, the Covid­19 pandemic, and the High Line, which has led to rampant gentrification. Still, the community flourishes.

An intimate cultural history.

Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America

Chang, Jeff | Mariner Books (560 pp.)

$35 | September 23, 2025 | 9780358726470

Martial arts mastery, big­screen immortality. This expansive biography of an iconic actor doubles as a nuanced history of Asian American empowerment. Chang, the author of books about hip ­hop and race, adeptly shows how Lee’s magnetism and physical talents, showcased in Enter the Dragon and other beloved action movies, helped spur “an awakening among racialized minorities.” Lee, whose father was a stage performer, was born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, then a British colony, where he learned gung fu —“kung fu” is an Americanization, Chang explains—and appeared in numerous films as a child. He moved back to the U.S. as a young man, hoping to become an esteemed martial arts teacher. His students included Steve McQueen and Roman Polanski. After his “spinning kicks” and “oneinch punch” impressed Hollywood stars attending a 1964 California martial arts tournament, TV came calling. In a period when white actors frequently portrayed Asian characters, Lee’s appearance as a superhero’s butt­kicking chum on ABC’s The Green Hornet was a breakthrough, though he was discouraged that Hollywood remained mostly closed to Asian American actors. Lee’s eventual fame in Hong Kong–produced movies made him a hero to many, among them Asian Americans shedding “the reflex to obliterate themselves in the presence of

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whites.” Since the actor died from brain swelling in 1973—and notwithstanding his family’s objections—his renown has been leveraged in so ­ called Bruceploitation movies with titles like Bruce Has Risen . Chang relates these details against a shifting set of crisply depicted backdrops, from 1960s Asian American student activism to the stylistic debates that shaped martial arts during Lee’s time. Chang perhaps overdoes it when contending that Lee “has come now to represent the necessity of solidarity and the fight for freedom everywhere,” but such minor exaggerations don’t diminish this insightful book’s appeal. A rousing portrait of a charismatic actor who redefined global stardom.

Kirkus Star

When All the Men Wore Hats: Susan Cheever on the Stories of John Cheever

Cheever, Susan | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (400 pp.) | $30 October 28, 2025 | 9780374600990

The daughter of the acclaimed fiction writer revisits her father’s life and work many years after his death.

Forty years after Home Before Dark (1984), her compassionate memoir of her father, John Cheever, Susan Cheever—herself an accomplished author—returns with deeper perspective on their relationship. Her earlier book first disclosed that her father lived a double life— suburban family man with secret gay encounters—revealed through journals she read after his 1982 death that were later published in abridged form in 1991. In graceful prose, her latest work probes deeper, examining their relationship and his internal landscape through his short stories, over 200 published mostly in the New Yorker from the late 1930s onward. By turns affectionate and admiring but also

clear­sighted and unsparing, she focuses primarily on six of his most memorable stories, including “The Five­Forty­Eight” (1954), “Reunion” (1962), and “The Swimmer” (1964), all included in the appendix. She reveals how their daily family lives often anchored his fiction, with family members serving as character inspiration. “The little girls in his stories were not me, he insisted—although they looked like me and thought like me and did what I did,” writes Cheever. “The confusion between life and art created a painful tension for him as well as for us, his subjects and family, who were first exploited and then caught up in a process that—he often reminded us—was greater and more noble than our hurt feelings.” Regarding his hidden sexuality, she also brings modern insight to a subject that was considered so taboo at that time. “Did living a lie help him create the lie that is the truth of fiction? The best lies, as he well knew, are the ones that sail closest to the truth. The best fiction is fiction that seems to be real.”

An eloquent and fully immersive portrait of a renowned author.

Into the Weeds

Davis, Lydia | Yale Univ. (152 pp.) | $20 September 16, 2025 | 9780300279740

Thinking about creativity. Essayist, translator, and fiction writer Davis contributes to Yale’s Why I Write series, based on the Windham ­ Campbell Lectures, with a

recursive meditation on motivation and process. The enigmatic question “why I write” proves more difficult for Davis than the question “how I write,” which she answers by revealing the experiences or ideas that evoked several of her stories. The death of an elderly friend, for example, resulted in a story about Davis’ lifelong project of improving her German, even though her knowledge of German will die with her. When it comes to why she writes, she finds it easier to talk about why she doesn’t write: “I don’t write to convey a message, and I don’t write stories to achieve any particular purpose,” she asserts. Nor does she write for any particular audience, or to move someone. Instead, she writes “for the pleasure of it”: the discovery of material, shaping it, seeing it in print, and sharing it. Admitting that her stories are inspired by “something outside coming in,” she writes “to figure out something I don’t understand.” As she circles around the question of motivation, she turns to other writers: George Sturt, for one, author of the richly detailed The Wheelwright’s Shop ; Knut Hamsun for his memoir On Overgrown Paths ; and poets John Ashbery, John Clare, Walter Raleigh, and Russell Edson. She considers writers who risk being tedious or strange, such as Gertrude Stein, Laura Riding, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. Finally, she reaches a conclusion: She writes, she says, to relieve herself “of the burdens of strong feelings, by taking them out of myself and putting them in an objective form, a form that can also be shared by others out in the world.” Intimate revelations, delicately conveyed.

Writing “to figure out something I don’t understand”—not to “convey a message.”

INTO THE WEEDS

Surviving Paris: A Memoir of Healing in the City of Light

Davis, Robin Allison | Amistad/ HarperCollins (304 pp.) | $29.99

September 16, 2025 | 9780063353138

Unexpected challenges for an expat. After she was overlooked for a job promotion, Emmy Award–winning journalist and television producer Davis moved to Paris in 2016, hoping to escape from her “good but routine” life and embark on a fulfilling career. As she recounts in her candid debut memoir, the move thrust her into a starkly challenging reality. Before applying for what she hoped would be her dream job, she went back to school, earning a master’s degree in global communications at the American University of Paris. But despite having strong credentials, she was faced with a dismal job market, forced to take short­term low­paying internships just to maintain a visa. Housing was another problem: What she found were tiny, seedy apartments—one infested with mice; by 2020, she was in her fifth apartment. But her biggest challenge was medical. In 2018, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The title Davis chose for her memoir refers to physical as well as emotional survival: nine surgical procedures over five years in a health care system that made her feel unheard, “dragged along without agency over my body, my health,” she writes. After a mastectomy, reconstruction, and removal of lymph nodes, impending chemotherapy and radiation finally incited her to speak up. Fearing that chemotherapy would compromise her fertility, she insisted on freezing her eggs. Davis also writes about dating and forging a sense of community as a Black woman in a new culture. “Living in France,” she notes, “I’d had my fair share of ‘Was this person racist to me or just

rude?’—even more than I did in the US.” Still, she has persisted, determined to survive and thrive in a place she has grown to love. A frank chronicle of pain and hardwon recovery.

Kirkus Star

Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System

Degroot, Dagomar | Belknap/ Harvard Univ. (368 pp.) | $32 October 28, 2025 | 9780674986503

Taking the wide view. From the ancients to the Newtonians, humans found comfort in the regularities of the heavens—the rising and setting of the sun, the steady light of the fixed stars. But the invention of telescopes in the 17th century revealed more erratic changes in the cosmos, arrhythmias in the scheme of things that spurned the steady cycles of wake and sleep, sow and harvest. In this gorgeously illustrated, richly researched book, Degroot, an environmental historian at Georgetown University, explores the ways in which “real or perceived changes in cosmic environments shaped affairs on Earth.” In the late 1700s, the astronomer William Herschel discovered that the sun’s brightness is inconstant and that changes in solar output can affect our weather and food production. Solar storms turned out to wreak havoc on technology. A 1967 burst of radio waves that scrambled U.S. radar stations left Air Force officers thinking the Soviets had jammed their equipment. Space weather can mean the difference between war and peace, but, on the flip side, Degroot suggests, our understanding of space is itself a reflection of earthly sociopolitical and cultural concerns. Tracing fascinating tales of astronomers, scientists, and reporters who conjectured the existence of

massive cities, forests, and even beavers on the Moon, Degroot reveals that they were seeing their own zeitgeist through their telescopes. When, for instance, scientists saw canals on Mars, powerful El Niño and La Niña events on Earth were causing massive droughts that killed millions. “The idea that Martians had engineered their planet to survive the ultimate drought naturally captured widespread attention, and, for a while, convinced many scientists,” Degroot writes. His historical analysis is so persuasive that, when he espouses a kind of techno­utopian vision of space exploration at the book’s end, it’s hard not to read that, too, as a reflection of the hopes and anxieties of our present age. A sweeping, stunning account of our place in the cosmos and its place in us.

The Onion Story:

How

a Band of Misfits, Dropouts, and Sad Sacks Built the World’s Most Trusted News Source

Dikkers, Scott | Matt Holt/BenBella (288 pp.) $30 | October 28, 2025 | 9781637747513

A longtime editor of the fake­news standard­bearer would like to correct the record. Humor writer Dikkers (Trump’s America: Buy This Book and Mexico Will Pay for It, 2017, etc.) knows that he has a negative reputation in Onion circles. He absorbed the blame for the popular humor publication’s divisive 2011 move from New York to Chicago, resulting in mass staff firings, and he’s direct (if a bit officious) about his role in it: “The principles I’d pioneered and championed for twenty years were kept alive with great devotion in my absence,” he writes. “Then, suddenly, I became the enemy.” So his book is less a yuk­fest, or even an autobiography, than a series of defenses: an explanation of his role in setting the paper’s editorial direction, his noble efforts on behalf of writers before things went

south, and a celebration of his accomplishments in comedy outside of the Onion. Dikkers more or less stumbled into the editor’s chair of the paper, founded in 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin, where he helped to sharpen its AP­parody voice, got the publication on the web, and spearheaded the classic collection of spoof Page Ones, Our Dumb Century. Dikkers presents himself as a multimedia comedy maestro, pushing the Onion brand onto the radio and online video, but his own movie efforts were modest successes at best. Christine Wenc’s history, Funny Because It’s True, puts the Onion story in more perspective, and while Dikkers’ version of events doesn’t contradict Wenc’s, it does lack True ’s high­spirited humor. More often, Dikkers postures as the person who truly understood the Onion ’s brand, bristling at others’ lowered standards. His book emphasizes his point that good comedy is hard work, but it doesn’t make for particularly funny, or fun, reading. A surprisingly sour take on a comedy icon.

Fever: The Complete History of Saturday Night Fever

Donohue, Margo | Citadel/Kensington (288 pp.)

$29 | August 26, 2025 | 9780806543925

A behind­thescenes story of the classic disco drama. Saturday Night Fever, the film that became a surprise hit in 1977, occupies a somewhat unusual place in the history of American cinema. Because

many viewers have only seen the bowdlerized television edit of the movie, some still don’t realize what a relentlessly dark film it is. As podcaster Donohue writes, “We hear racial and homophobic slurs, witness awful sexual encounters….This film is downright UGLY at times, and yet—it is so relatable.” (Your mileage on the relatability front might, and probably does, vary.) Donohue’s book chronicles the origin of the film, which was based on a New York magazine article by Nik Cohn; the British journalist has since admitted the piece was fiction. The movie as we know it was essentially the brainchild of producer Robert Stigwood, who wanted a project that would showcase his clients, the Bee Gees; Donohue’s book covers the hiring of director John Badham, screenwriter Norman Wexler, and the film’s star, a popular sitcom actor named John Travolta. Donohue dives into the shooting of the film, including the famous dance club sequences, filmed at the 2001 Odyssey disco in Brooklyn, New York—the crew added the now­iconic disco floor for the shoot. Based on her interviews and those of others, Donohue covers nearly every aspect of the movie, notably its still­inescapable soundtrack, outsize effect on popular culture, and memorable choreography. There are interesting facts here, but the book feels rushed, and its structure is messy, as are quotes that Donohue uses, which are riddled with unedited “you know”s and non sequiturs: “I asked [actor Joe Cali] as a white, straight man how he felt about disco back when he was filming the movie, ‘Disco was a big part of my life. I love disco. You know? Donna Summer’s a queen. The best.’” Strictly for disco completists; others will want to take off their boogie shoes.

“This film is downright UGLY at times, and yet—it is so relatable.”

Coyote: The Dramatic Lives of Sam Shepard

Dowling, Robert M. | Scribner (448 pp.)

$31 | November 4, 2025 | 9781501195730

A sturdy, revealing biography of the playwright, actor, and musician Sam Shepard.

“Sam Shepard,” an acquaintance once observed, “was a ‘sworn enemy of stasis.’”

Raised by an alcoholic, abusive father and a patiently encouraging mother, he grew up in the Mojave Desert, a place he called “just a dead end.” As Shepard scholar Dowling notes, that background shaped Shepard’s plays, in which characters “crash around in this space for a while making a certain kind of rough music and then disappear again.” An intelligent interpreter of Shepard’s work, Dowling blends lightly worn literary criticism with plenty of dish, for Shepard lived a rough­music, messy life. His title, for one, comes from Joni Mitchell’s song of the same name, written in the aftermath of a brief fling while on Bob Dylan’s storied Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Shepard was just coming off of a relationship with the emerging rock star Patti Smith, whom he met while he was playing drums for the psychedelic jug band called the Holy Modal Rounders (having previously played in a band presciently called Heavy Metal Kid). Said musician T­Bone Burnett, also on the Dylan tour, “Sam Shepard is an incredible drummer, among other things….If you take rhythm out of his plays, there’s nothing left.” Those plays, of course, are now classics—True West, Fool for Love, A Lie of the Mind , the list goes on—often with characters who are brothers in conflict, about which Dowling sagely remarks, “The bipolar nature that’s reflected in his work was very much represented in the man.” Shepard’s own personal inconstancy and unrelenting angst can be attributed in part to his reliance on alcohol and, in his younger years,

drugs (he kept up with Keith Richards, after all), and in part to a restlessness that kept him on the move over a long, productive, but always troubled life. Readers will emerge with a deeper understanding of the roots of Shepard’s plays, and of an endlessly complex man.

House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home

Edge, John T. | Crown (272 pp.) | $30 September 16, 2025 | 9780593241028

The distinguished Southern food writer delivers a thoughtful memoir of his life and work.

“As a boy, all I knew was the good guys wore gray,” writes Georgia­born Edge. His mother, a bohemian intellectual with a wild streak (“Bravado was her calling, in much the same way that other mothers were good at needlepoint”), fed that notion, instructing him that defeat in the Civil War “connected our hometown to other failed and beautiful places,” not least of them ancient Rome. His father, meanwhile, was a diligent student of barbecue, using his job as a federal probation officer to travel the state looking for new “houses of smoke” to haunt, a clear gateway drug for his son, who writes fondly of a local spot where a bag of white bread was the centerpiece of every table and sweet tea arrived in “a tall plastic tumbler.” Edge would soon come to reject the good­guys­in­gray mythology, writing, “Hundreds of thousands of Lost Cause narratives fed the grand cultural lie the white South told itself about what went wrong. The lie my family told me. The lie I learned to tell myself.” His devotion to his terroir remained, however, and he fulfilled his interests in history, literature, and food by becoming the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. That brought him into an ever­deepening appreciation for Black

food traditions, and out of that grew the aim of sponsoring “honest conversations about slavery and its legacies” with food as an instrument of healing. Results didn’t quite work out as hoped: Edge found himself challenged by activists such as the Nigerian ­ born chef Tunde Wey, who told him, “You have endorsed and celebrated the appropriation of Black Southern food without consequence.” The denouement finds Edge recognizing the justice of that statement without self­pity and committing himself to “my ongoing reconstruction.” An insightful consideration of food, race and racism, and sins historical and contemporary.

Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right

Eisgruber, Christopher L. Basic Books (304 pp.) | $30 September 30, 2025 | 9781541607453

Proceed with caution. Eisgruber, a constitutional law scholar and the president of Princeton University, weighs in on the challenges to free speech on college campuses. Drawing on his knowledge and experience, he argues that free speech is not free for all. We need, he argues, “political processes and social virtues that enable reason to prevail in public discussion.” “Good counsels,” he writes, should “prevail over evil….The power of reason [should] govern human affairs.” Eisgruber therefore proposes a way of both enabling and regulating speech. He uses words such as “politeness,” “civility,” and “professional standards.” Academic freedom, he claims, needs rules of engagement. The current generation of undergraduates needs an education in ethical behavior and in consensus building. We need to be weaned off cancel culture. He admits that we cannot say things we used to say.

And yet, those limitations do not compromise free speech. “Free speech does not entitle people to say whatever they please without bearing responsibility for it. On the contrary, the purposes of free speech include enabling discussions about what is true and just.” Eisgruber retells a series of campus encounters, both at Princeton and elsewhere, that illustrate the dangers of uncivil discourse and cancellation. Undergraduates, today, are angry about a lot of things. They communicate differently from previous generations. They often live on the intersection of what the authors of Gen Z, Explained call “moral panic and technological advancement.” In the end, this book is less about free speech than about cultivating a moral character and a sense of civic, and civil, responsibility. It is a book of calm reflection trying to address an inflammatory age. In his tone, his arguments, and his narrative evenhandedness, Eisgruber comes off as the adult in the room. A reasoned, quiet argument for civil discourse in an unreasonable, loud time.

Carole King: She Made the Earth Move

Eisner, Jane | Yale Univ. (280 pp.) | $28 September 16, 2025 | 9780300259469

The making of a pop icon. Journalist Eisner contributes to Yale’s Jewish Lives series with a biography of songwriter, performer, and environmental and political activist Carole King (b. 1942). Raised in working­class, Jewish Brooklyn, Carol Joan Klein expressed interest in music as young girl: She began playing piano at the age of 4, went to Broadway shows with her mother, and appeared on television at age 8 in The Children’s Hour, then on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour. In high school, she organized a four­person doo­wop group. When she landed her own contract, she added an “e” to her

name to distinguish her from another Carol Klein in high school. A precocious student, she entered Queens College in 1958 at 16, and before she was 18, she was pregnant and married to fellow student Gerry Goffin, who became her long­standing lyricist. Their breakthrough occurred when they wrote “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for the Shirelles; their fame peaked with “Natural Woman,” for Aretha Franklin. The couple had two daughters, but the marriage unraveled as a result of Goffin’s drug use and adultery; he was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Eisner examines King’s dubious romantic choices (her third husband was an addict who abused her for years) and her retreat to remote Idaho, where, with the man who became her fourth husband, she lived in a remote one­room cabin and home­schooled her two youngest children. A winner of four Grammy Awards for her 1971 album Tapestry, she was twice inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Famously averse to celebrity, King nevertheless sat for interviews during her career; these, King’s memoir, and a thorough knowledge of King’s musical output inform Eisner’s sensitive investigation. Portrait of a complex artist.

Kirkus Star

The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding

Ellis, Joseph J. | Knopf (240 pp.) | $30 October 28, 2025 | 9780593801413

The distinguished historian examines America’s two original, foundational sins. By Ellis’ account, the Founding Fathers oversaw and overlooked “two unquestionably horrific tragedies.” The first, of course, was slavery. Virginia, home to Washington and Jefferson, had the largest enslaved population, some 40% of its people. Jefferson, as a junior

politician, floated an act that would allow owners to free enslaved people without first petitioning the governor or legislature, but he asked a senior colleague to introduce the bill, only to discover that “anyone even suggesting that emancipation was on the political agenda in Virginia was committing political suicide.” Even though Black soldiers made up some 10% of the Continental Army during the American Revolution—“the only occasion when Blacks and Whites served alongside one another in integrated combat units until the Korean War”—no serious consideration was given to freeing them after the war. The second great tragedy beset the Indian nations of the East, with Washington himself saying that “a truly just Indian policy was one of his highest priorities, that failure on this score would damage his reputation and ‘stain the nation.’” A case in point was the Creek Nation of the Southeast, increasingly pressured after the Revolution, as indeed were other nations beyond the Appalachians, by white encroachment, “a relentless tide that swept all treaties, promises, excellent intentions, and moral considerations to the far banks of history.” The Creek leader, Alexander McGillivray, was of mixed blood, a freedom fighter who held slaves, a power broker and skilled negotiator, but “resolutely anti­American,” and it was only a matter of time before conflict broke out—pitting federal authorities against state militias in an early hint of the Civil War—and the Creeks were removed. Ellis closes with the apt observation that the white supremacy inherent in both tragedies is very much with us today in the “thinly disguised racial prejudice” of the MAGA movement.

A provocative, revisionist view of the first years of the Republic.

Things That Disappear

Erpenbeck, Jenny | Trans. by Kurt Beals New Directions (96 pp.) | $15.95 paper October 7, 2025 | 9780811238113

A n ethereal collection of memories, delicately rendered before their inevitable crumbling away.

In 31 short vignettes, Erpenbeck (Kairos, 2023, etc.) grasps at hazy recollections that cumulatively form a body of work akin to an abstract mosaic. Each two­page section focuses on a particular fixation: One recalls construction at her son’s preschool, another celebrates prewar coal stoves, and another considers Berlin’s sanitation workers and the heirlooms they encounter while disposing of the city’s trash. An underlying sense of helplessness pervades as Erpenbeck attempts to concretize these recollections into something lasting. But “there’s so much to inherit these days,” she laments, “so many memories, it’s just too much to bear.” While some stories feel like futile attempts at archiving a personal history, others seek to accept the unavoidable losses of forgetting. “The farewells are what I remember,” she writes of the death of a loved one. On the disappearance of a friend’s ex­husband, “It remains astonishing that thin air can sometimes have just as much weight as something that is really there.” Writing about New Year’s Eve, she thinks of time moving “backward and forward” and wants to “believe in the ethereal web, the floating landscape of time, whose paths run between birthdays, weddings, deaths, and other anniversaries, instead of between houses.” One curious story mourns the bastardization

How the Founding Fathers oversaw “two unquestionably horrific tragedies.” THE GREAT CONTRADICTION

of the traditional Splitterbrötchen pastry. Erpenbeck dreams up an argument with a baker (“No! The whole roll looked different, it wasn’t layered!”) before reaching an ominous meditation. “For the first time,” she writes, “it strikes me that the word disappear has something active at its core, that there is a perpetrator in the word who makes things I know and cherish disappear: Dismantle, discard, disband, disparage, discredit, disembowel, disuse.” Erpenbeck leaves it to her readers to assemble these enigmatic fragments into a meaningful whole. Those who indulge her idiosyncratic prose will be rewarded, finding in this slim book a wistful record of memory and loss. Ephemeral musings, both peculiar and poetic.

Unabridged: The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary

Fatsis, Stefan | Grove (416 pp.) | $30 October 7, 2025 | 9780802165824

A romp in the land of lexicography. Journalist Fatsis, author of the kindred book Word Freak, talked his way into the headquarters of Merriam­Webster in Springfield, Massachusetts, after learning that “the company was overhauling its foundational book, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged.” The last major revision had occurred decades earlier, in 1961, totaling some 465,000 words—and, given that speakers of the English language were coining words (“Doomscrolling one year, cheugy another, rizz the next”) far faster than the dictionary could keep up with, there was plenty to do. Yet, as Fatsis chronicles, Merriam­Webster was the last dictionary standing: Its competitors had folded their tents, and even though alone in the field, even Merriam­Webster was forced to lay off employees as Google and Wikipedia became go­to sources for information, albeit at far lower quality.

Fatsis writes engagingly of lexicographic heroes such as Madeline Kripke, who amassed perhaps the finest language library in the world but died of Covid­19 before that new word could be added. He gamely wades into linguistic controversies, one being the inclusion of the “n­word,” which occasioned a boycott in the late 1990s and a sage but unpersuasive reply from the publisher that “to remove the word from the dictionary would simply mislead people by creating the false impression that racial slurs are no longer part of our culture, and that, tragically, is not the case.” And Fatsis, who crafted 90 definitions for M­W (alt-right, burkini, microaggression), and who begins his book by wondering whether human editors are on the way out in favor of artificial intelligence, reckons that AI is “good at some things, bad at others, and, as of the publication of this book’s first edition in late 2025, not a threat to completely upend the last gladiators of commercial lexicography.” An entertaining, instructive look into how words make their way into the dictionary.

Kirkus

Star

Native America: The Story of the First Peoples

Feder, Kenneth L. | Princeton Univ. (440 pp.) $39.95 | August 5, 2025 | 9780691220451

An archaeologist’s tour of the history and culture of the original inhabitants of North America.

Archaeologists trace the earliest human settlement of the Americas to the late Ice Age, when a land bridge connected Alaska and Siberia. Those early migrants made their way south, leaving their stone arrow­ and spearheads in the southwestern U.S. more than 20,000 years ago—often associated with the bones of mammoths or other extinct animals. People soon occupied every environmental niche of their new continent, from the Arctic tundra to the

southwestern deserts, the eastern woodlands, and the Pacific coast. As anthropologist Feder shows, distinctive cultures emerged in each of the areas they inhabited, making use of local resources, whether game animals, edible plants, or mineral deposits. In­demand items that were found in limited areas—copper, for example—became the basis for trade. Not even corn, often thought of as the staple of native diet, was universally cultivated. Feder also makes it clear that any notion of Indians as “primitive” or “savage” is contradicted by the evidence of such sophisticated cultures as the Midwestern mound builders or the Pueblo dwellers of the Southwest. The author looks at how Europeans treated Indigenous peoples, from outright warfare to the eradication of their culture in “Indian schools.” He adamantly denies that Europeans “discovered” anything in the Americas—it was all well known to those already here. Feder provides copious photographs, usually his own, of art and artifacts, along with archaeological sites. Frequent personal anecdotes and popular culture references help to lighten the tone; it’s not hard to believe that his college students thoroughly enjoyed his lectures—as most readers will this fascinating book.

An entertaining and enlightening survey of what archaeology tells us about the first Americans.

Our Fragile Freedoms: Essays

Foner, Eric | Norton (496 pp.) | $35 September 2, 2025 | 9781324110613

Peering into the past for a “mirror of the future.”

Foner, a distinguished historian, offers trenchant reflections on slavery and its legacy—and how they bear on the current crisis of American democracy. In this collection of almost 60 book reviews and opinion pieces, he examines the work of his colleagues and reflects on what he

THE KIRKUS Q&A: OSITA NWANEVU

A political writer diagnoses U.S. democracy— and offers some remedies.

BY BRANDON TENSLEY

OSITA NWANEVU, a contributing editor for the New Republic and a columnist for the Guardian , freely admits that his new book sprang from a deep sense of frustration. He was tired of how U.S. journalism compels writers to circle around important questions—“What does it mean to be an American?…How much inequality can or should a society abide?…What is democracy, anyway?”—in what he argues are “thin, repetitive, ephemeral, and social media–optimized ways.”

With The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, Nwanevu injects more complexity into the political discourse on democracy and its uncertain future in our multicultural country. And that starts, he explains, by not assuming that democracy is a simple or straightforward concept.

“It is neither,” Nwanevu warns. “To take democracy for granted as an ideal is to leave it vulnerable.”

In a starred review, Kirkus calls The Right of the People “a resounding, persuasive call for a truly inclusive government of the people.” Nwanevu and I recently spoke over Zoom about his book. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You write that U.S. journalism has “failed to meet this political moment.” What are some of those failures? I started writing professionally during the 2016 presidential election. Then, even more than is normal, people were really chasing headlines moment to moment: What’s Donald Trump doing? What’s going to happen in D.C. today? What’s going to happen on the campaign trail tomorrow? And it seemed to

me that we were in the middle of some really big changes in U.S. politics and society, and if you were just metabolizing the day in, day out, you weren’t getting a chance to zoom out.

That frustration with the limitations of daily journalism only intensified as the Trump years wore on and as it became increasingly obvious to me that there were fundamental tensions over what democracy means. You

were hearing more and more open challenges from Trump and the right, attacking democracy and democratic principles. You were hearing more and more defenses of democracy, broadly speaking, from Democrats. But it seemed to me that we were not getting to the core of what democracy actually means. People were using that word in all kinds of ways. It was not really well defined. And I wanted to sort of dig into that. I wanted a good response to people who say, “Well, we’re not a democracy. We’re a republic, and that’s better. We shouldn’t believe that majorities can make good decisions.”

You talk about historian Eric Foner’s notion of a “new founding” and write that U.S. democracy is due for another constitutional revolution. What should this revolution look like?

I think that some people are going to read this book as me saying, “Well, tomorrow we should have a constitutional convention and just change everything, and it’ll be great.”

That’s very much not what I’m saying. There are ideas in the book—both political and economic reforms—that I think are worth exploring, but the ideas are advanced in order to start a conversation.

I’m taking you through what I think democracy means, thinking through some ways we can improve the system. But, really, change on the scale that I think is required is going to take a lot of convincing, a lot of organizing, a lot of political work over many years to get people on the same page about what democracy is and why it’s important.

I see this constitutional revolution as a gradual process, which I think many of the great changes in U.S.

Emily Wilson

society are—whether it’s the Civil Rights Movement or the LGBTQ+ rights movement or the women’s rights movement. It was not necessarily a specific amendment or specific court ruling that did everything all at once.

And when I think about making the U.S. a real democracy for the first time, I think that it’s that same kind of iterative, gradual process. But the fact that it’s iterative and gradual does not make it any less revolutionary. In my mind, I think that we’re working toward a new kind of country. And that should be seen as a kind of galvanizing and ambitious vision.

Many would say that the first time the U.S. had a true democracy—a multiracial democracy—was in 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. How do these kinds of milestones figure in your analysis? Even the gains that we made during the Civil Rights Movement—like providing political rights to Black Americans—are under attack right now, partially as a consequence of inequities in our political system. I think that democracy is always an ongoing project. I don’t know if we’re ever going to reach this utopian state.

Still, that’s an ideal worth striving for, and we are so far afield, even compared with our peers in Europe, of that ideal that I think that we ought to be more self-critical about where we are. You say 1965, but some people say that the project of democracy was finished in 1787—we didn’t need to do much more than that. That’s not a realistic way of thinking about politics.

Even just in terms of reaching voters who are disillusioned and dissatisfied with the political system as it is, when they hear from politicians, “No, no, no. We’ve got a system that works. We just have to tweak this or elect this other person,” and then they see these surface-level changes,

but the system doesn’t seem to represent them anymore and we still seem unable to solve our very basic problems—that erodes trust. That erodes faith in the American project.

Being more honest with ourselves about how much we still have to do is a way of connecting with those voters.

Change is going to take a lot of convincing, a lot of organizing, a lot of political work.

The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding

Nwanevu, Osita

Random House | 288 pp. | $31 August 12, 2025 | 9780593449929

I think that it’s more exciting to hear that you can have a hand in transforming this country and making it what you think that it ought to be—in collaboration with your fellow citizens. That’s much more exciting than “this is a thing that was finished by guys in powdered wigs a couple hundred years ago, and we just have to dust it off every so often.”

What was the biggest challenge of exploring a topic of this scope?

Far and away, the most difficult thing was taking concepts that had been talked about in academia and trying to whittle them down into a form that anybody who generally follows politics would still be able to pick up and understand without losing the content of the idea, without oversimplifying things.

There’s something ironic in the fact that a lot of people who I think are very deeply committed to democracy in academia and who will write these beautiful papers about why more people should be allowed into the democratic process and why we should have faith in democracy communicate those ideas in such a way that ordinary people wouldn’t be able to access them.

I wanted to take these debates that I think are important and invigorating and can challenge our preconceptions about democracy—I wanted to take them out of the ivory tower and bring them to more people. And that took a lot of work.

Brandon Tensley is the national politics reporter at Capital B.

IN THE NEWS

Former Biden Press Secretary Angers Dems With New Book

In an announcement for Independent , Karine Jean-Pierre said she’s left the Democratic Party.

Karine Jean-Pierre, who served as former President Joe Biden’s press secretary from 2022 to 2025, has stoked the ire of Democrats after she revealed, in a press release for her forthcoming book, that she has left the Party.

Legacy Lit announced that it will publish Jean-Pierre’s Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines in the fall. The press release said that Jean-Pierre has chosen “to embrace life as an Independent.”

“Jean-Pierre didn’t come to her decision to be an Independent lightly,” the publisher says. “She has served two American presidents, Obama and Biden. In 2020, she joined Biden’s campaign as a senior adviser, becoming [Kamala] Harris’s chief of staff and then, two years

later, White House press secretary. She takes us through the three weeks that led to Biden’s abandoning his bid for a second term and the betrayal by the Democratic Party that led to his decision.”

Democrats were quick to criticize Jean-Pierre for the announcement. Axios quoted an unnamed “former Biden communications official” as saying, “The hubris of thinking you can position yourself as an outsider when you not only have enjoyed the perks of extreme proximity to power—which...bestows the name recognition needed to sell books off your name—but have actively wielded it from the biggest pulpit there is, is as breathtaking as it is desperate.”

Independent is scheduled for publication on October 21.

—M.S.

Karine Jean-Pierre

Andrew Leyden/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Memoir by Charlie Sheen Coming This Fall

The actor will tell the story of his life and career in The Book of Sheen.

Charlie Sheen will tell the story of his life and career in a memoir, People magazine reports.

Gallery will publish The Book of Sheen this fall.

“Charlie Sheen should not be alive to write this book,” the press says.

“But in The Book of Sheen, the movie and TV star, who has defied the odds, finally presents his story, in his own words.”

Sheen, the son of actor Martin Sheen and brother of actor Emilio Estevez, first broke through in the 1984 film Red Dawn and went on to star in Platoon, Wall Street, Young Guns, and Major League. He earned four Emmy nominations for his role in the sitcom Two and a Half Men, on

which he appeared from 2003 to 2011.

He was fired from the series after insulting its creator, Chuck Lorre, and had a public meltdown, telling radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, “The only thing I’m addicted to right now is winning.”

In the memoir, Gallery says, Sheen “delivers a clear-eyed narrative of his highs and lows with humor, candor, and a vivid, captivating writing style that is uniquely his. The Book of Sheen reads like a far-fetched, overstuffed novel of Hollywood life— yet it is all true.”

The Book of Sheen is scheduled for publication on September 9.—M.S.

Charlie Sheen

For more celebrity memoirs, visit Kirkus online.

calls his major preoccupations: slavery and antislavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. The book devotes a section to each concern, then adds one more on general topics in American history and another on notable historians and the role of history in public life. Intended for general audiences, these clear, polished, and discerning essays originally appeared in major newspapers and journals of opinion, mostly on the left, beginning in the early 1990s. Taken as a whole, they support Foner’s claim that American civil liberties, whose breach affected his family during his youth, are more fragile than most of us imagine. Slavery was the ultimate violation of that ideal, and Foner notes that no part of U.S. history has been studied more intensively or outstandingly during his lifetime. Yet he maintains that his profession’s preoccupation with slavery stands in stark contrast to the national desire to forget it. He also connects his most persistent concerns with “the current crisis of American democracy, reflected in intense political polarization, the weaponization of base prejudice, and refusal to accept the outcomes of elections. This situation is not unprecedented. American democracy has always been a terrain of conflict.” Foner’s body of work reminds us that freedom, that elusive ideal, has long been contested: sometimes bitterly, sometimes brutally, but never decisively. Lively and judicious critiques of American historians and their work.

1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe

Fritzsche, Peter | Basic Books (592 pp.) $35 | September 23, 2025 | 9781541603219

How global conflict made a world of outcasts. Churchill and Roosevelt had signed the Atlantic Charter in August 1941, promoting a robust defense for free trade and promising national self­determination.

Jim Harrison, “the sort of man who gets invited to a thirty-seven-course lunch.”

DEVOURING TIME

However, not all of the charter’s consequences were intended. The more conventional aspects of this study focus on the three main theaters of war: El Alamein, Guadalcanal, and the Battle for Stalingrad—the latter accounting for 10% of all battlefield deaths during the entire war. The less conventional aspect leaves the exclusively military story not so much ignored as supplemented. Cultures that were previously almost unknown to each other fought side by side or clashed—often, both. With the exception of continental Europe, most action was overseas, with over 1 million men at sea. One sixth of the American population was mobilized, and in addition to producing munitions, battleships (one per week), and B­52s (one per hour), they changed the sheer speed and scale of warfare. The enormous shipyards in Richmond, California, drew migrants from the South, and with them, the lingering heritage of Jim Crow. Recruits needed dental care and education. Literacy rates were surprisingly low. “The war effort nationalized America’s race problem,” writes Fritzsche, a University of Illinois historian. The Japanese invasion of Singapore led to the collapse of Burma and added fuel to the “quit India” campaign. The British Empire, home to a quarter of the world’s population, began to seem contingent rather than inevitable. Fritzsche tells of the effects of war in South Africa, the Philippines, and China. Along with India, China suffered famine as a result of prioritizing military rather than civilian provisioning. Back in Europe, those beneath the bombings were left homeless and destitute. Jews were evicted and deported. Mass labor shortages pressed occupied territories into slave labor, promoting increased resistance. Migration becomes the main thesis of the book. Certainties and political structures

crumble, Fritzsche argues, when everyone is from somewhere else.

An admirable and useful addition to the history of World War II.

Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life

Goddard, Todd | Blackstone (586 pp.)

$28.99 | November 4, 2025 | 9781799902362

A biography of Jim Harrison, the writer’s writer.

“It’s a long road from a childhood in rural Michigan to being the sort of man who gets invited to a thirty­seven­course lunch.” So wrote Jim Harrison, who, late in a long and not always successful career, talked his way into an assignment—his first—with the New Yorker about that storied meal, one that cost more than a midsize sedan. Harrison was a fireplug with the strength of a linebacker, a man of the country who came to enjoy the blandishments of the metropolis without ever wanting to live there. Goddard, his first biographer, proceeds along a predictable path: youth, the garret days, the halcyon days, the long decline. However conventional the structure, Goddard does a good job of connecting long­standing themes in Harrison’s life and work with his earliest years. Perhaps best known to magazine readers in the 1980s as a trencherman, for example, Harrison, by Goddard’s account, grew up in a family that appreciated good food, and the fresher and wilder the better. Harrison committed to being a poet when he was a junior in high school, and he lived up to it; his last act in life was to write a poem, and Goddard notes at the

outset that Harrison was definitively “a hard­living, hard­drinking outdoorsman who crafted exquisite poetry.” There are plenty of not­suitable­for­work episodes here, mostly when Harrison had enough money for a diet of cocaine and Canadian Club, but Goddard is also nicely sensitive to Harrison’s many virtues as a thoughtful, even sophisticated writer. Readers will better appreciate many aspects of Harrison’s work after reading Goddard’s sturdy biography, as well as Harrison’s constant devotion to his craft—or, as he told Anthony Bourdain, to being “completely tenacious and write in disregard for every outside circumstance that there is.”

Without the spark of Harrison’s own autobiographical pieces, but a reasonably complete portrait of a complex man.

Matisse at War

Gorham, Christopher C. | Citadel/ Kensington (452 pp.) | $29 September 30, 2025 | 9780806544168

The art of war. In his latest book, lawyer and educator Gorham (The Confidante, 2023) deftly explores the life of Henri Matisse in the years surrounding World War II, when the artist lived and worked in the collaborationist south of France. While the artist has sometimes been accused of sitting out the war in relative comfort and safety, Gorham skillfully builds a case for just what was at stake for Matisse, for his family, and for art, and how the artist reckoned with all three. The book opens with a portrait of Matisse on the eve of war as the comfortably plump bourgeois loser in the battle of the avant­garde— ostensibly won by the cubist brio of his rival, Pablo Picasso. Gorham is especially adept in his handling of broader history, particularly in complicated aspects of war and international politics. Similarly, he brings Matisse’s relationship with his family and lovers into crisp, empathetic relief. The book is less sure in examining

Matisse’s art, made more difficult without the benefit of illustrations (though, as they say, Google exists). Although there are many places to find explications of Matisse’s art, Gorham offers a different view, such as an utterly understandable assessment by Matisse’s much­painted wife, Amélie: “You may be a great artist, but you’re a filthy bastard!” Matisse, complicated, enduring, and a force of humanist will against a tide of fascist brutality, manages to emerge as admirable in Gorham’s narrative, even as the stakes of resistance were much higher for his adult children and estranged wife. In some ways, Matisse’s daughter, Marguerite, is the real hero of this gripping story of art, love, and war. And yet, by the end of Gorham’s excellent account, Matisse is a quiet hero too, one of art and of age. A stirring tale as much for history buffs as for art lovers.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy in the Age of Airplanes

Gottlieb, Anthony | Yale Univ. (224 pp.) $28 | October 21, 2025 | 9780300180473

Mind over manner.

The Austrianborn philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889­1951) transformed the ways in which we think of language’s relationship to mind, to the things in this world, and to the patterns of behavior that guide our lives. Famously irascible, difficult to read, and the scion of one of the wealthiest European families of the 19th century, Wittgenstein has become an archetype for the professional philosopher, straddling worldly and unworldly landscapes. This biography by author and book critic Gottlieb sees Wittgenstein largely as a product of his family and his social milieu. The father was a great industrialist, the Carnegie of Austria. The siblings were musicians and aesthetes, almost incapable of living in reality (three of his siblings killed themselves). Music was central to the Wittgensteins (Brahms

was a family friend), and this book illuminates the ways in which the Viennese aristocracy sought social advancement through music patronage and appreciation. Wittgenstein’s life was largely spent renouncing the precious world of his family. He studied engineering, turned to philosophy under the guidance of Bertrand Russell, and spent most of his years moving between the heights of university intellection and the depths of self­annihilating isolation and menial jobs. He fell in love with young men who rarely understood him. What we learn from this book—part of Yale’s Jewish Lives series—is that philosophy, for Wittgenstein, was less a set of tenets than a habit of mind: a way of coping with the problems we make for ourselves and trying to understand what we mean when we say something. Like others in his family and social class, Wittgenstein (hereditarily Jewish but converted) had a conflicted understanding of his heritage. Less important than Judaism was his rare spirituality—he once said that if he had not been a philosopher he would have been a monk.

A deft biography of a staggering mind, told through his all-too-human relationships to family, friends, and lovers.

Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock

Gould, Jonathan | Mariner Books (512 pp.) $32 | June 17, 2025 | 9780063022980

A warts­and­all biography of the New Wave legends. Gould (Can’t Buy Me Love, 2007) begins his biography of art­rock legends Talking Heads with an account of the band’s first show at legendary New York club CBGB, writing that the performance didn’t call “attention to their musical virtuosity, for the simple reason that they had none.” Maybe not, but a few pages later, he allows that the band’s “combination of talent, originality, discipline,

self­awareness, and steely artistic ambition would form the basis of a major musical career.” Gould writes about their formation, when drummer Chris Frantz asked singer David Byrne if he wanted to start a band. “I guess so,” was Byrne’s halfhearted answer. He chronicles the band’s early successes, which started with their debut album, Talking Heads: 77, and first hit song, “Psycho Killer,” and continued through seven more studio albums. The portrait of the band that emerges is one marked by acrimony, with Frantz, bassist Tina Weymouth, and keyboardist Jerry Harrison never quite sure what Byrne was going to do; Gould partially attributes Byrne’s caprice and lacking communication skills to his apparent Asperger’s syndrome. (Weymouth, at one point, attributed it to Byrne being “a bully and a coward.”) That the band would break up in 1991, after 16 years, does not come as a surprise; Gould writes about the band’s dissolution with a sense of inevitable sadness that isn’t leavened by their awkward, occasional reunions. The book is necessarily hampered by the fact that none of the Heads was willing to talk to Gould, which might be why he indulges in a series of odd tangents, writing about New York’s political history and, bizarrely, a series of stunts involving the city’s skyscrapers. Nonetheless,it’swellwrittenandinformative— not the last word on the Talking Heads, but a respectable try. Fans of the band will find much to appreciate here.

The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces

Harp, Seth | Viking (368 pp.) | $30 August 12, 2025 | 9780593655085

The dark side of one of the nation’s top military bases. Harp, an investigative reporter, focuses on Fort Bragg, the North Carolina installation that is home to the Joint Special

Operations Command, which the author calls a “secret killing machine” at the center of U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Troops stationed at Fort Bragg, he says, have shown a disproportionate rate of deaths by drug overdose, suicide, and homicide. The book examines several cases involving Special Forces soldiers based at Fort Bragg, veterans living in the nearby community, and civilians in the drug trade. One case involved the off­ base shooting of one soldier by another following a drug­fueled weekend. Both the local police and military authorities accepted the shooter’s claim of self­ defense and, the author says, kept the victim’s family and outside investigators in the dark—a pattern he says is typical of cases involving Fort Bragg troops. The high rate of drug use, Harp notes, is in part caused by the reliance of combat troops on painkillers and stimulants to get them through the stress of life in a war zone. When the war zone was Afghanistan—a center of opium production—heroin became more prevalent. Drug dependency continued when troops were rotated home, and a supply network (predictably) arose. The book unflinchingly faults presidential administrations that have ignored the PTSD and devaluing of human life that the “targeted assassination” operations create among troops caught up in a “forever­war paradigm.” An unsettling read, the book will nevertheless enlighten anyone concerned about U.S. foreign policy and the role of the military in it. A scathing exposé of drug trafficking, homicide, and suicide in the U.S. military.

No Ordinary Bird: Drug Smuggling, a Plane Crash, and a Daughter’s Quest for the Truth

Henderson, Artis | Harper/ HarperCollins (240 pp.) | $29.99

September 2, 2025 | 9780358650270

A bittersweet memoir of loss takes a dark turn into the ugly history of U.S. covert geopolitics. Henderson, whose first book Unremarried Widow concerned the loss of her husband in the Iraq War, begins this book with the incident that killed her father. In 1985, when she was 5 years old, a plane her father was flying crashed shortly after takeoff from their family farm in North Georgia; she was the only passenger and was seriously injured. Her father, Lamar Chester, had grown up poor not far from where he died and strove mightily to reach the middle class, first in the military, then as an airline pilot. A bit of a daredevil, Chester found he could make a lot more money smuggling drugs from Jamaica and Colombia to South Florida. Within a few years, he owned 500 acres in Georgia and several islands in the Bahamas, where he built luxurious homes with accommodations for his business’ Cessnas. Henderson had sweet memories of boomeranging between estates, being doted on by parents, grandparents, stepsiblings, and the mysterious people working for the family business. As the crash grew dimmer in memory, she became increasingly bothered by the realization that her father’s “business” was criminal and had almost killed her: “I want to resent him

A writer realizes that her father’s “business” was smuggling drugs. NO ORDINARY BIRD

for creating a life that put both strangers and the people he loved in danger,” she writes. “But I can’t make myself feel any of that. All I feel is an overwhelming sense of loss.” The first three parts of this book mix together Henderson’s naïve memories and family lore with news stories about the legal troubles her father faced when his empire started crumbling in the Reagan years. It comes as a shock when Henderson’s suspicions about the true nature of the “accident” that killed her father begin to prove warranted. Modest and restrained storytelling that packs an unexpected punch.

Kirkus Star

Frank S. Matsura: Iconoclast Photographer of the American West

Ed. by Holloman, Michael | Princeton Architectural Press (168 pp.) | $40 September 9, 2025 | 9781797232812

America through an immigrant’s eye. Japanese immigrant Frank S. Matsura (1873­1913) arrived in Seattle in 1901, and a few years later took a job as a handyman at a hotel in the small river town of Okanogan, in northern Washington. There he pursued a career in photography, leaving an abundant trove of images. Little is known of his early life: Born in Tokyo, after both parents died he lived with an uncle; by the time he left for America, he had learned English. In Okanogan, he bought an expensive camera, and the hotel’s owner gave him space for a darkroom. For the next 10 years, he documented life in his adopted home and beyond. Many in the local Indigenous population came to his studio for personal portraits; he photographed landscapes and celebrations; he photographed himself with his Native friends. He created and sold newly popular picture postcards. Art historian Holloman provides an introduction and conclusion to four essays analyzing and

assessing the life and career of the enigmatic, energetic, and—judging from self­portraits—quite dapper Matsura. Laurie Arnold, a professor of Native American studies and a member of the Colville Confederated Tribe, gives an overview of tribal history and the establishment of the Colville reservation, praising the “dynamism and inclusivity” of Matsura’s images. Film and media studies scholar Glen Mimura analyzes Matsura’s photographic archive, “a comprehensive visual record of the region’s colonial settlement” including “construction of Conconully Dam, installation of electricity and waterworks, planting of orchards, extension of the railroads, and arrival of automobiles.” Unlike his contemporary, Edward S. Curtis, Matsura did not romanticize Native Americans; unlike Jacob Riis or Lewis Hine, his style, Mimura writes, was “neither aesthetically nor socially didactic,” but the expression of a truly “culturally hybrid, adaptive citizen.”

A generously illustrated volume celebrates a remarkable artist.

Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, From Revolution to Autocracy

Ioffe, Julia | Ecco/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $35 | October 21, 2025 | 9780062879127

Russian women take one step forward and two steps back in their struggle for equality. A tenet of the Russian Revolution— ignited, writes Moscow­born American journalist Ioffe, by a strike of women textile workers in 1917—was that women were to be emancipated. They had the right to vote, the right to abortion, the right to no­fault divorce. More than a million women, Ioffe notes, fought alongside men in the Red Army, and when Ioffe’s mother entered medical school in 1977, “70 percent of doctors in the Soviet Union were women.” For some men, these rights

were immaterial: The head of the secret police, Lavrentiy Beria, was a known serial rapist whom Stalin tolerated even while forbidding his daughter to go to the Beria residence. Beria secured the silence of his victims “with threats of execution or the prospect of their families being sent to the Gulag,” even as other Soviet brass “used their power and access to scarce resources to, essentially, purchase sex.” The statutory freedoms and rights of women have since steadily been whittled away, Ioffe holds, and for numerous reasons. The regime of Vladimir Putin, at once neo­Stalinist and, at least in its nominal devotion to the Orthodox Church, tsarist, has restored women to second­class citizens, with his own wife as his first test case: “He was the leader, and she his eternally obedient subject, his first before he acquired 143 million more.” But some women, Ioffe observes piercingly, are complicit in their own subjugation, in part because men are now a scarce resource themselves, many succumbing in early middle age to deaths of despair, “with only 60 percent of Russian men surviving to the age of sixty.” The shortage of men, “an endangered species,” has yielded desperate competition among women, even as Putin’s draconian regime is considering taxing childlessness to combat one of the world’s lowest birth rates.

A pensive account of a revolution betrayed.

Yves Saint Laurent and Photography

Ed. by Janssen, Elsa | Phaidon (160 pp.) $69.95 | September 10, 2025 | 9781838669423

Images from an illustrious career. Famed couturier Yves Saint Laurent (1936 ­2008) is celebrated in a sumptuous volume of photographs drawn from an exhibition at the Arles Photography Festival 2025 and the holdings of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris. Photos include portraits of Saint Laurent; shots of couture,

ready­to ­wear fashion, and runway shows; Polaroids, personal photographs (even one of the designer as a baby), and contact sheets. Commentary by art historians, curatorial specialists, and museum staff testify to Saint Laurent’s intimate relationship with photography. “My greatest asset,” he once remarked, “has been the eye I have for the time I live in and for the art of my time.” As Christoph Wiesner, director of the Arles Photography Festival, observes, for Saint Laurent, “working with photographers was a means of exploring his own limits, of giving his clothes another life beyond the purely material one.” Saint Laurent had been assistant to Christian Dior at the time of Dior’s sudden death in 1957; immediately, he was thrust into the public eye, with critics and fashion doyennes alike anticipating his creations. From his first show, in 1961, his evolution as a designer was documented by photographers who included some of the most famous names in the field: Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, William Klein, Lord Snowdon, Horst P. Horst, Inge Morath, Cecil Beaton, and Annie Liebovitz, all represented here. His models, too, were renowned: Audrey Hepburn, Twiggy Lawson, Jean Shrimpton, Paloma Picasso, Catherine Deneuve, among many others. He was much photographed himself, with portraits revealing a well­ curated “cool masculinity” as well as changes in dress, hair style, and affect—most notably in 1971, for the launch of his men’s fragrance, when he posed nude, his long hair tousled, wearing nothing but his signature black glasses.

An elegantly produced homage.

Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography

Kaplan, Hester | Catapult (256 pp.) | $27 October 14, 2025 | 9781646223091

A father comes into focus. How do you write the biography of a biographer?

The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery

Kara, Siddharth | St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $30 | October 14, 2025 | 9781250348227

For more on Yves Saint Laurent, visit Kirkus online.

Kaplan, the daughter of the acclaimed literary biographer Justin Kaplan, finds her father’s personality written between the lines of other lives. Focusing on his two award­winning biographies (of Mark Twain and of Walt Whitman), Hester looks for her father’s voice in the writing. She interrogates his choice of subjects, realizing, for example, that “when he writes about Twain facing east to begin his life as America’s Greatest Writer, he feels how far away the real world can seem when he’s in his study thinking about another life in another time. He understands he has a responsibility to be of the moment, that no art can seal itself off from real life, and that this distancing from the present is a form of luxury that piques his lifelong sense of guilt.” The daughter has learned much from the father: how to craft a sentence, how to find a self in syntax, and how to recognize that reading and writing about other lives helps us to shape our own. Less a memoir of daughter and father, this is really a book about books. It chronicles a highly curated, literate life filled with famous writers dropping by and bookshelves overflowing with tomes. The father’s publications changed his life and the life of his family. In a beautiful reminiscence of a trip to New Mexico together, Hester reflects on reading in isolation, on the power of the landscape, and finally, on how her father’s work (in his own words) “may have less to do with stalking the naked self to its burrow than with the tensions between the familiar, shared life of human beings.” This is a story of that familiar, shared life, written in a rich, evocative language that never bleeds into pretense or pomposity. A daughter’s searching memoir, reflecting on the perils and promises of biography and the art of reading the self.

Mass murder aboard a slave transport, halfforgotten today but an iconic event.

Historian Kara, author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, reminds readers that slave commerce began in Africa, where tribes made war on neighboring tribes and sold captives to European and American entrepreneurs at fortified depots rented from African rulers along the west coast. He opens in Britain, 1780, when trade was hobbled by American rebels and their European allies whose privateers were seizing British ships. The Zorg, the book’s subject, was a Dutch merchant vessel captured by the British. (“Zorg” means “care” in Dutch—“an unintended irony,” Kara writes.) Purchased by a slave entrepreneur, it was crewed by 17 men of varying competence, carelessly stocked with food and water, and vastly overcrowded with 442 captives. This might not have mattered, but bad weather and navigation errors prolonged the crossing, and when the water supply seemed critically low, the crew threw 130 Africans overboard. Readers may cringe, but no problem arose until the owners asked their insurer to reimburse them for the drowned Africans, and the company refused. The owners sued, and a British jury decided that the insurer must pay. That might have ended matters, but an article appeared in a London newspaper describing these events. No abolition movement as such then existed, yet a scattering of individuals were working to that end, including Kara’s hero, Granville Sharp, a civil servant and polymath who sprang into action and, in cooperation with the insurers, succeeded in obtaining a new trial. Kara hails their victory but deplores the judge’s opinion. The Africans had been drowned because of crew incompetence, he ruled. That was

unacceptable. Had the ship been stocked and navigated properly it would have been OK. Despite this, the publicity converted many Britons to abolition; the British slave trade was finally outlawed in 1807 and the empire’s slavery in 1838. A vivid historical footnote, but also a milestone.

The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity 1869-1939

Ed. by Katz, Jonathan D. & Johnny Willis

The Monacelli Press (368 pp.) | $74.95 July 16, 2025 | 9781580936934

T he print companion to a Chicago queer history art exhibition curated by Katz and Willis. Born out of the editors’ desire to “redress a long history of disinterest, ignorance, and/or active censorship around questions of gender and sexuality in art history and museum culture,” this lavish book by queer art historians Katz and Willis accompanies an exhibition at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago. It’s a project composed of a wide array of educative, informative, and opinionated essays alongside visually striking artwork illuminating the origin of queer identity evolving in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The representation of queer culture by a variety of talented artists and writers is on exquisite display; the book captures a period immersed in the struggle for greater queer visibility through the art of its era. Among the book’s more than 300 images—including paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs—are works by Berenice Abbott, Jean Cocteau, Thomas Eakins, and John Singer Sargent. A series of intellectually astute essays examines the origins of the word “homosexuality,” lesbian visibility in the arts, and the emergence of gender nonconformity in both the East and the West in the second half of the 19th century. The essays, many by culture experts, additionally analyze how the earliest artistic articulations of gender, sexuality, transgender identity,

How the facets of empire still inform the West.

THE SHORTEST HISTORY OF ANCIENT ROME

and same­sex desire and relationships would bloom into an emerging queer revolution of visibility, representation, and change. Organized geographically, provocative (frequently explicit) drawings, oil paintings, sculptures, and accompanying text vibrantly tell the story of a forgotten age in emerging queer history and how art became an escape and a method of survival for burgeoning homosexual populations across the globe.

A vivid, masterfully produced art history keepsake.

The Shortest History of Ancient Rome: A Millennium of Western Civilization, From Kingdom to Republic to Empire―A Retelling for Our Times

King, Ross | The Experiment (272 pp.) | $16.95 paper | September 9, 2025 | 9798893030587

Even the mightiest empires fall.

In this latest installment in the Shortest History series, King achieves an uncommonly dense work of compression, telescoping events and fashioning brief character studies in surveying the arc of ancient Rome, from its origins to its collapse. But he also demonstrates how the facets of empire still inform the West: in our politics, cultures, laws, and self­image. Author of numerous books on Italian, French, and Canadian art and history, King opens with a quote from the second­century­B.C.E. historian Polybius, who wondered how anyone would not want to know how Rome rose to such unprecedented power and reach. The question is just as relevant today, says King, who sets about answering it, from

the mythic folktale of Romulus and Remus to the fall of empire. Literary tradition tells one story, archaeology another. We get the emperors and chroniclers, generals and legions, builders and artists, stabilizers and insurrectionists, the mad and the bad responsible for rise and ruin—all written with a historian’s attention to detail and the fluid storytelling of a novelist. His is also a fascinating etymological tour of modern words derived from Latin. Although King is arguably inconsistent when it comes to accepting the evaluations of men’s characters drawn from traditional sources, most often he views these traditions with a skeptical eye. He is well aware of the pitfalls of judging early cultures through the lens of modern sensibilities. The range of contradictory accounts by contemporaries—not unlike today’s polarized biases—underscores just how unreliable is much of the tradition we have of Rome specifically and the ancient world in general. However, the author does his best to parse the probable from the improbable and rarely takes things at face value. A brisk but immersive historical account.

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

Kingsnorth, Paul | Thesis/Penguin (368 pp.)

$29.99 | September 23, 2025 | 9780593850633

A n extended neo­Thoreauvian polemic against a culture of despoliation, consumerism, and urbanism. The world, writes English novelist and environmentalist Kingsnorth, is dominated by “a metastasizing machine which is closing in around you, polluting your

skies and your woods and your past and your imagination,” the world of nature increasingly replaced by “a left­brain paradise, all straight lines and concrete car parks.” One aspect of this destructive machine, by his account, is the steady decline of religion—not in itself necessarily a bad thing, but, given that nature abhors a vacuum, “when a culture built around such a sacred order dies then there will be upheaval at every level of society,” and given the absence of that sacred order, the door is wide open to its replacement by things other than the two that we need, “meaning, and roots.” By Kingsnorth’s lights, the origin of so much of the world’s current crisis is an “ongoing process of mass uprooting,” not just from one’s native place (as with China’s relocation of Tibetans and Uyghurs) but also our cultural uprooting from our traditions and our divorce from nature. Kingsnorth often paints with a brush that may be a few hairs too wide: He condemns science, for instance, as “an ideology posing as a method,” when science is likely the only thing that might rescue the world from the worst consequences of climate change, and his insistent view of cities as doomed and soulless places devoted only to profit too often slides into cant. Still, a little fire and brimstone never hurts an argument against things as they are, and if decrying the “the holy effort to which all human will, skill and energy is now bent: making money ” gets a little shrill, his closing invocation of a culture in which “people, place, prayer, the past” are rediscovered resounds nicely.

A spirited—sometimes too spirited— critique of the empty suit that is late capitalism and its trappings.

Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Philosophy of the Original Cynic

Kuin, Inger N.I. | Basic Books (304 pp.) $30 | November 11, 2025 | 9781541606470

Finding Diogenes, a philosopher who thought outside the box.

University of Virginia classics professor Kuin puts her own witty spin on the oft­quoted, witty Greek Cynic philosopher. Telling his story is “difficult” because no works by him survive. Stories about him are often hard to believe. And yet, she argues, he was “antiquity’s most independent and original mind, and his vision of simplicity, autonomy, and living in accordance with nature has much to offer in our contemporary world.” He’s a slippery fish to pin down—“A traveler and a stranger wherever he went but never at a loss for words.” She believes the debated famous meeting between Alexander and Diogenes did occur. He was probably born around 410 B.C.E. in northern Turkey and as a young man was exiled to Athens, where, Kuin believes, he lived in a big earthenware pot in a marketplace, using his cape as a blanket, living off alms and dinner invitations and comparing himself to a mouse. Plato, with whom Diogenes often disagreed, nicknamed him “the Dog.” A disinterested agnostic, he lived to “redefine the nature of philosophical inquiry,” often with morbid humor. Kuin sees his key values as the rejection of social norms; physical training; and shamelessness (he was known to pee and masturbate in public). His approach to “human pleasures, needs, and desires,” which he

Calling for a culture that embraces “people, place, prayer, the past.”

AGAINST THE MACHINE

denied himself, “was entirely new” and “would prove enormously influential in later periods.” For Diogenes, freedom is “achieving self­reliance” through askesis –ascetic practices. He had a fearless irreverence toward rulers. The author calls him the “founder of modern cosmopolitanism,” in which all humans are considered equal members of a world community, and believes he was a unique “lone voice against slavery” who ridiculed and rejected the idea of an afterlife. Kuin concludes by looking at his impact on others, including Erasmus, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Foucault, and even, perhaps, Jesus.

A crisp, accessible, and engaging portrait of the enigmatic philosopher.

10,000 Ink Stains: A Memoir

Lemire, Jeff | Dark Horse (192 pp.) $54.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9781506744834

A profusely illustrated memoir that traces a cartoonist’s success in the comics industry. Twenty­five years into his prolific career, Lemire (Minor Arcana, 2025, etc.) humbly reflects on his expansive bibliography and guides readers through his progression from producing his own self­published zines to inking production deals with Netflix. Each chapter primarily focuses on one book’s genesis and is packed with character studies, sketches, and archival photos. Lemire worked constantly, committed himself to his craft, and held on to stories and ideas for years before finding the bandwidth to develop them. Starting in the mid­’90s, he recounts self­publishing and distributing his own comics while living in Toronto. (His first zine, Ashtray #1, is reprinted in full in the book’s appendix.) He won a Xeric Grant in 2005 for his book Lost Dogs, which garnered the attention of small publishing houses. While working on his Essex County books in 2007­2008, DC Comics showed interest and opened a door that led to multiyear runs of

mainstream comics like Trillium, Animal Man, and Sweet Tooth (now a Netflix series). After leaving DC for a disappointing stint at Marvel, Lemire now prioritizes his creator­owned serials. His memoir is written not as a comic but as a straightforward text, and frequent clichés suggest that, compared to the taut action of his comics, this format might require more words than Lemire is accustomed to working with. His early years were “a roller coaster of exciting things”; writing volume 2 of Essex County was “just…incredible.” While at DC, “learning how to write mainstream comics was only half the battle,” and a pitch meeting was “just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what stuck.” On his initial breakthrough with DC/Vertigo, he says, “Talk about being at the right place at the right time.” Despite some clunky prose, the book’s lavish trove of behind­the­scenes lore and Lemire’s unbridled energy are capable of inspiring budding cartoonists. A generous production for fans.

Bloody Crowns: A New History of the Hundred Years War

Livingston, Michael | Basic Books (592 pp.) $40 | October 21, 2025 | 9781541607705

A well­trodden subject in expert hands. Military historian Livingston, author of Never Greater Slaughter: Brunanburh and the Birth of England , writes that the Hundred Years War traditionally is understood to begin in 1337, when Philippe VI of France declared that he ruled Englishheld lands in France, and end in 1453 with the French capture of Bordeaux, the last extensive English holding. It’s an England­centered view featuring three of its great victories (Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt) and a great defeat, Joan of Arc’s 1429 relief of Orléans. Livingston emphasizes that

this was less an episode in the interminable wars between the two nations than “France’s struggle to define itself: its borders, its powers, its place in the world.” England played the major role, but it was often joined by Burgundy, Brittany, the Low Countries, the Holy Roman Empire, and other statelets. There was no shortage of sovereigns arguing that they had a better claim to the French throne than England’s king or even France’s. Making his case, the author moves the war’s beginning back to 1292, when bloody battles broke out between English, Norman, and Gascon trading ships off the French coast, and the English king (technically a mere duke in his French possessions and owing fealty to the French king) refused to take responsibility. Livingston pushes its conclusion out to 1492, when, in the Treaty of Étaples, England acknowledged France’s familiar borders. Doing the math, he promotes it to a 200 ­year war. Livingston easily keeps track of royal dynasties teeming with innumerable Philips, Edwards, and Charleses. With few and mostly unreliable eyewitnesses, the iconic battles pass quickly; not so his skillful accounts of tortuous dynastic and diplomatic maneuvers, as well as the campaigns that occasionally featured battlefield fireworks but more often fizzled when money ran out or disease killed too many participants. Solid traditional history on a multigenerational conflict.

The Buddha: Biography of a Myth

Lopez Jr., Donald S. | Yale Univ. (256 pp.) $28 | September 2, 2025 | 9780300234275

Was there ever a living person behind the religious/spiritual figure of the Buddha?

Lopez, one of the foremost living scholars of Buddhism, ventures that the Buddha (“the awakened”) as we know him today is a

demythologized “product of nineteenth­ century Paris and the work of Eugène Burnouf (1801–1852), who saw the Buddha as a figure of history in a land of myth.” From Marco Polo down nearly to the present, European scholars viewed the Buddha as either a real person or as a pagan idol; Lopez focuses in particular on Gustave Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony, which portrays the Buddha as, at moments, much akin to Jesus. By Lopez’s account, there is abundant reason to believe that a figure called Jesus who was executed under Roman law actually existed; Lopez goes deeply into the possible historicity of the Buddha, examining evidence on either side while observing in passing that it is “authentically Buddhist” to “renounce the search for a self that was never there.” But was he never there? Lopez’s book is as much a lesson in how to evaluate scriptural, archaeological, historical, and genealogical evidence of any sort as it is an account of a search for the real‚ or not real, Gautama Buddha, whom Flaubert endowed with near­miraculous abilities to do just about anything a person could do, from knowing bird sounds to dyeing cloth and performing mathematical calculations. Along the way in this lucid but challenging book, Lopez also offers useful observations on the nature of Buddhist doctrine, such as it is, given Buddhism’s split into many schools: “Indian Buddhist philosophy is above all a theory of causation, showing how all things are constructed in the process of cause and effect, that behind this tenuous and transient construction there is no essence, no identity.” It’s a fitting approach to what might be an ultimately unanswerable question. A deeply learned, provocative investigation into history and myth.

For more on Buddhism, visit Kirkus online.

Science Under Siege:

How To Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World

Mann, Michael E. & Peter J. Hotez PublicAffairs (368 pp.) | $32 September 9, 2025 | 9781541705494

Pursuing science and truth in the age of disinformation.

On the tail of a historic deadly pandemic, in the midst of a climate crisis that threatens the world, perhaps the greatest danger is the overwhelming rise of disinformation that threatens to crush and diminish science that might save us. With that, two renowned scientists— climatologist Mann and pediatrician and global health expert Hotez—who are veterans of the disinformation wars have come together to create a work that seeks to provide a way out. The authors identify what they call “the p’s”—five key forces creating a dangerous modern realm of antiscience: “the plutocrats, the authoritarian petrostates (assisted by polluters and the politicians who advocate for them), the ‘pros’ who use their professional (or in some cases scholarly) credentials to deceive or promote unsupported contrarian views, the propagandists who amplify them on social media and other venues, and, increasingly, the press, including even the mainstream press.” The narrative reveals, in compelling detail, how these forces weave a complicated web of public deception and political danger in the face of some of humanity’s greatest challenges.

With clear­ eyed prose moving through chapters that explain each of these actors, the authors provide a clear, persuasive road map to fight back against the forces that diminish and dismiss science. The result is an empowering work in a world that can often feel lost to untruths. “While there is urgency —unlike any we’ve ever known—there is still agency,” they write. “We can still avert disaster if we can understand the nature of the mounting anti­science threat and formulate a strategy to counter it.”

A necessary and propulsive argument that offers optimism in the face of one of the world’s most destructive forces.

On Antisemitism: A Word in History

Mazower, Mark | Penguin Press (352 pp.) $29 | September 23, 2025 | 9780593833797

The world in a word.

Anti­Jewish sentiment and action have been part of Western culture for thousands of years. “Antisemitism,” however, is a term of recent coinage, originating in the legal and social strictures of late­19th­century Europe. This richly researched book shows how antisemitism became part of modernity itself. Its diffusion recalibrated concepts of nation­state citizenship, of liberal democracy, and of patriotism. By the middle third of the 20th century, “the Jewish question,” in the words of the Nazi Reich press office, became “the key to world history.” Antisemitism and the rise of the emancipation of Jews

A persuasive road map for fighting against forces that dismiss science.

went together. Mazower writes, “As a movement against Jewish emancipation, antisemitism fundamentally involved a critique of the idea that the law should treat all alike.” The impact of antisemitism, then, went beyond laws discriminating against Jews. It created a world in which law and national identity became inextricably linked. In a postwar world, could Jews be “true patriots?” Mazower, professor of history at Columbia University and author of Hitler’s Empire, also argues that the emergence of the state of Israel as a world power reshaped both the social and the legal positions of Jewish communities throughout Europe and America. “With the secularization of American Jewry and its embrace of ethnic politics, antisemitism was gradually becoming more and more linked to the question of Israel.” While Mazower declines to equate anti­Zionism with antisemitism, he recognizes that, increasingly, some do. Mazower concludes his book with a reflection on student protests in the wake of Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza. The word “antisemitism” has become ammunition that fits many different guns. “To clarify terms like it,” he writes, is to make us aware of the “hidden depths” behind its modern history and, in the end, “make ourselves participants in the process of change in the world.”

A fluently argued history of modern antisemitism by one of America’s leading historians of power and identity.

History Matters

McCullough, David | Simon & Schuster (208 pp.) | $27 September 16, 2025 | 9781668098998

Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past. McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and

occasional woman) of long­ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old­fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short­range pessimist and a long­range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”

A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.

Damaged People: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons

McGinniss Jr., Joe | Avid Reader Press (288 pp.) $29 | October 21, 2025 | 9781668004852

A writer examines the inherited legacy of fatherhood and dysfunction from his successful writer father. In this deeply personal if occasionally uneven memoir, novelist Joe McGinniss Jr. (Carousel Court, The Delivery Man) explores his relationship with his father, Joe McGinniss, who by the time of his son’s birth in 1970 was already established as a hugely ambitious, bestselling nonfiction author. McGinniss Sr. would go on to write three acclaimed truecrime thrillers, including Fatal Vision (1983) and Blind Faith (1989), all adapted into television miniseries, before his career and personal life were derailed by a scathing New Yorker piece by Janet Malcolm, and his later work faced harsh critical attention claiming shoddy research and reporting. Along the way there was increasing alcohol and substance abuse, a legacy that went back to his own father and beyond. “He knew firsthand from his parents what addiction and depression looked like,” writes the author. “He knew the damage they could do to a child.” Moving between the 1970s and ’80s, when the author was a young boy anxious for his father’s attention, and the 2000s, when he’s grappling with being a father to a young son, McGinniss Jr. draws comparisons between who he was becoming and who McGinniss Sr. was as a writer and father. “Writing came first for him, always and ahead of everything—family, money, and stability.” By comparison, his aim is “not to write, like my father. But to be a father who writes.” The memoir succeeds as a portrait of cyclical family dysfunction but sometimes feels more cathartic than crafted. McGinniss Jr.’s prose compellingly relates his father’s career trajectory, yet the emotional register can become overwrought when

addressing his own present circumstances. While his determination to break generational patterns resonates, the execution often favors raw confession over genuine insight into his inherited trauma and artistic ambition. Sincere family reckoning at times undermined by therapeutic processing over storytelling discipline.

Kirkus Star

Letters in Exile: Transnational Journeys of a Harlem Renaissance Writer

Ed. by Hefner, Brooks E. & Gary Edward Holcomb | By Claude McKay | Yale Univ. (512 pp.) $38 | September 2, 2025 | 9780300276473

T he journeys of a Black literary modernist. Claude McKay (1889­1948) is remembered for his poetry, journalism, memoirs, and fiction. His output also includes a prolific crop of letters. His correspondents were prominent intellectuals, artists, and activists such as Alain Locke, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, James Weldon Johnson, H.L. Mencken, Nancy Cunard, and Max Eastman, among many others. From widely dispersed archival sources, literary scholars Hefner and Holcomb have gathered McKay’s letters from 1916 to 1934, years he spent traveling in the Soviet Union, Europe, and North Africa. In a brief biographical summary sent to literary agent William A. Bradley, McKay wrote that he was born in Jamaica, came to the U.S. in 1912 to attend Tuskegee Institute, and left after six months, when he enrolled at Kansas State College. In 1914, he made his way to New York, where he ran a cabaret and, when that failed, took on odd jobs. Money troubles recur in his letters— sometimes he doesn’t eat for days—as does alienation. McKay, the editors assert, felt like an “outsider to national and cultural ideologies,” a severe critic of capitalism and “Imperial

For more by David McCullough, visit Kirkus online.

Reading Up on Literary Lives

C.M. Kushins

abomination.” Black, queer, politically radical, he “spent most of his life searching for what ‘home’ meant to him.” The letters reveal an intense, uncompromising man: “Life fascinates me in its passions,” he wrote to writer and socialist Eastman, a close friend. They reveal romantic and sexual liaisons, friendships made and broken, and his take on national character—he finds Russians warm­hearted and Arabs “curious and eager like keen knife blades.” Most definitely, his literary work consumes him. Judiciously annotated, introduced by a detailed biographical essay, and appended with a glossary of names, the collection will be an indispensable source for readers and researchers.

Letters cohere into a multifaceted portrait of a man and his times.

The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers

McKissack Daniel, Cheryl with Nick Chiles Black Privilege Publishing/Atria (288 pp.)

$28.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9781668033999

T he head of an eminent Blackowned construction firm recounts her family’s long history in the building trades.

McKissack

Daniel opens her memoir, which moves fluently from present to past and back again, with a distant ancestor who, at the age of 11, crossed the Middle Passage and, enslaved, was named Moses. William McKissack, the owner, “trained his slaves to be expert artisans in areas like carpentry and bricklaying,” and they were so much in demand for their skills that, with Moses now a foreman, they traveled with some degree of freedom throughout the South. The following generation of McKissacks relocated to Nashville, with Moses II building the Maxwell House Hotel and, after emancipation, becoming a construction entrepreneur in a time and place where the KKK was vigorous in attacking

Blacks who “showed too much independence.” Fast forward to 2002: The author is the head of a firm that, although successful for generations, had to reckon with institutional and societal racism at every level—for example, during the Jim Crow era, when Blacks were barred from building for white customers and were forced to “carefully calibrate their demeanor…to ensure that they projected the proper deference.” By the author’s account, plenty of hurdles still remain. For instance, her firm was “grandfathered” past a New York state requirement that architecture businesses be owned 100% by licensed architects (as hers had long been) but then had its license revoked after white firms objected, angered by another requirement that they give 10% of their contracts to minorityand women­owned businesses. “In America,” she writes, “so­called ‘progress’ often drops you off right where you started.” Undeterred, she writes of pressing on all the same, taking part in a massive Brooklyn rebuilding project, branching into international markets, and bidding on new contracts that promise to keep the company busy for years to come. A well-crafted story of intergenerational striving on the path “from cruelty to commerce.”

The Last Time We Spoke: A Story of Loss

Mechanic, Jesse | Street Noise Books (160 pp.) | $20.99 paper September 19, 2025 | 9781951491420

A graphic memoir about a man contemplating the consequences of his mother’s untimely death. Mechanic was 14 years old when his mother died of cancer. Before she died, the family took a trip to the Bahamas so she could undergo an experimental treatment. By the time they got home, though, it was clear that the treatment had not worked, and that his mother was on the verge of death. When she did die, Jesse, devastated, was

unable to function. He neglected his schoolwork, not because he wasn’t interested in learning, but because he couldn’t concentrate—a situation that may be partially a result of “ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and intrusive thoughts,” all of which are issues that persisted throughout his adulthood. Eventually, Mechanic found a community of fellow “bad kids,” all of whom “went through something” that “dented our innocence.” Mechanic is convinced that these peers, along with punk and hip­hop, saved his life. After high school, the author worked at a bookstore, cultivating a love of literature and eventually graduating from college with honors. Years later, he became a father and saw his mother’s death in a new light, understanding how much it must have hurt to lose her chance to know her children as they grew older. Mechanic’s illustrations are vibrant and richly detailed, and his use of patterning is especially impressive. This is a raw account of grieving. While the prose feels overwritten at times, overall it’s a tender and frank memoir that will resonate with readers.

A raw and eloquent graphic memoir about the shifting nature of grief.

The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II

Nasaw, David | Penguin Press (496 pp.)

$35 | October 14, 2025 | 9780593298695

The greatest generation suffered terribly— and in many ways—in World War II and its aftermath.

“The men and boys who returned home,” writes historian Nasaw, “were not the ones who had left for war.” Many harbored intense psychological trouble, suffering from the PTSD that would not be diagnosed properly until the Vietnam era. “Battle fatigue,” as it was called, was a source of shame; in that time, going to a psychiatrist would have been

a source of shame in itself, an admission of weakness. And so, as William Wyler’s brilliant, ironically titled 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives depicted so well, the vets returned and suffered, mostly in silence. Divorce rates spiked during and after the war, Nasaw writes, with more than 1 million GIs leaving or being left by their spouses by 1950. Alcoholism soared, and everyone, it seems, smoked, an outcome of the distribution of cigarettes in every ration issued: As Nasaw writes, Bob Dole, the future senator who would be badly wounded in Italy, was a nonsmoker who began puffing away, reasoning, “If the cigarettes weren’t good for us, the army wouldn’t put them in our food containers.” Nasaw observes that Black soldiers suffered from these and other maladies and often found themselves treated even more poorly than they were before the war, as Southern whites in particular were fearful that Black veterans, having served in combat, would resist Jim Crow. The homefront suffered too: Veterans often failed to connect emotionally with children who had been raised while they were away, many suffering from accelerated rates of anxiety and fear, although “they had no such problems bonding with children who were born after their return.” Nasaw digs deep into history, even connecting the declines in Joe DiMaggio’s and Hank Greenberg’s batting scores to their years away in uniform. An eye-opening view of a war whose devastating consequences reverberate.

Mothership Connected: The Women of Parliament-Funkadelic

Neblett, Seth | Univ. of Texas (340 pp.) | $34.95 September 30, 2025 | 9781477332672

An oral history of the unsung women in the P­Funk universe. Neblett is personally invested in this story: His mother, Mallia Franklin, was a backup singer with George Clinton’s

A journey through horse history that begins more than 5,000 years ago.

HORSES

pioneering acts Parliament and Funkadelic and was later a member of the spinoff women­led group Parlet. But the family connection doesn’t incline him to soften a story that, especially by the end of the ’70s, was consumed by infighting, power plays, and epic levels of drug abuse. Before that drama, though, P­Funk was a vibrant and pathbreaking commune, and women played a substantial part in it. Franklin introduced Clinton to bassist William “Bootsy” Collins, who deeply influenced the P­Funk sound; Lynn Mabry and Dawn Silva were veterans of Sly and the Family Stone and would later front the Brides of Funkenstein, Clinton’s most successful and critically admired offshoot. Neblett worked on this project for years, and he spoke to seemingly every relevant person in the P­Funk universe, from Clinton and Sly Stone and Collins to hangers­on and businesspeople. The book may be too bulky and filled with insider chatter for a casual reader, and the oral history structure restricts Neblett’s ability to put the P­Funk story in the context of larger trends in pop and R&B at the time. But the book is entertaining in itself, mainly on the strength of everybody’s candor. Misogyny was rampant, which was clear to anybody looking at Parlet and Brides record covers. (In theory, the visuals were meant to support Clinton’s Afrofuturist vision, but Franklin mocks the imagery as “space hoes.”) The disposability of the women extended to the groups’ ever­shifting lineups, in which they functioned mostly as backup singers, which is unfortunate; Neblett’s book suggests that a saner, more sober environment could have made the women stars. As Clinton succumbed to ever­deeper cocaine abuse, the women jumped (Mother)ship.

A brash and thorough accounting of a crucial element of the funk firmament.

Horses: A 4,000-Year Genetic Journey Across the World

Orlando, Ludovic | Trans. by Teresa Lavender Fagan | Princeton Univ. (288 pp.) | $29.95 September 9, 2025 | 9780691264127

T he unbreakable bond between horses and humans. The sudden and mysterious death of the legendary Australian racehorse Phar Lap in 1932 has spawned decades of documentaries, theories, and lore. With the offer of a hair from the animal’s tail for study, Orlando, a French expert in ancient DNA, launches into the findings of a global investigation of the relationship between humans and horses that has shaped modern societies. His journey through horse history begins with the horses of Botai, a 5,000­plus­year­old pastoral society in northern Kazakhstan, thought to be the source of the human domestication of horses. But the team encounters surprising findings: Genetic research reveals that Botai is not the place of origin of all domesticated horses; rather, this was just one spot in the world where horses were shaped and evolved to work with humans. The adventure, also a study in effective science communication, continues through Russia and the Ukrainian steppe, Central Europe, Tibet, and elsewhere, carefully guiding the reader around the world of horses through deep DNA research, selective breeding, and genetic adaptations while presenting scientific findings in lively prose. Combing through artifacts and data, the author weaves together centuries of global history, following the beasts across nations as they accompany

humans in pursuit of war, trade, food, and pleasure.

A captivating, smooth ride through the history of a relationship that molded modern societies.

Equality Is a Struggle: Bulletins From the Front Line, 2021-2025

Piketty, Thomas | Yale Univ. (248 pp.) | $28 September 23, 2025 | 9780300282757

A gathering of the noted economist’s columns for the French daily Le Monde “We can’t effectively address today’s social and climate challenges if we don’t start by taxing the wealthiest in a clear and significant way.” So writes Piketty, who has made a distinguished career of explicating the whys and wherefores of inequality and its multiple causes. Much of Piketty’s writing here digs into that project, and it’s a credit to Le Monde ’s readership that they’re not afraid of tables and hard data. Yet Piketty also writes with admirable clarity about several ideas that are key to his extended argument—and, in at least a sense, these columns forge a single argument in favor of democratic socialism. He observes, in that regard, that the unprecedented prosperity of the 20th century came about precisely because the “hyperconcentration of ownership and class privileges that characterized European societies before 1914” had been broken, with massive investments in human capital and decommodification of the social marketplace. Given the rise of Trumpism and its congeners worldwide, Piketty counters that those values should be restored, and by nobody better than the European states that showed the way in the first place, emphasizing “parliamentary democracy, the social state, and investment in the future.” Voilà: We come full circle to taxing the rich in order to fund health care, education, welfare, and

When 1 million ethnic Mexicans living in the U.S. were moved to Mexico.

BANISHED CITIZENS

states that observe “the rule of law and democratic pluralism.” Admittedly, Piketty writes, those states are mostly European, whose social economy is far ahead of that of the U.S. There’s some inside baseball—or perhaps soccer— here in Piketty’s essays on and against the Macron government and like causes, but most of these pieces will be intelligible to American readers without much background in contemporary French politics.

Piketty’s science is rarely dismal, and his outlook for a social democratic future is lucid and refreshingly optimistic.

Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation

Ramírez, Marla A. | Harvard Univ. (368 pp.) $29.95 | October 14, 2025 | 9780674295940

A tragedy of trampled human rights.

Historian Ramírez examines U.S. immigration policy by focusing on the plight of Mexicans during two decades following World War I. At a time of economic stress—first a postwar recession and then the Great Depression—Mexicans, whether or not they were citizens, were targeted as “economic scapegoats allegedly dependent on social services and unable to assimilate.” Fueled by “anti­Mexican hysteria,” 1 million ethnic Mexicans living in the U.S. were moved across the border to Mexico. Sixty percent were U.S. citizens, and most were women and children. Their removal

from the U.S. was abetted by Mexico, where they were deemed assets in nation building and modernization. Drawing on oral histories, family papers, and interviews, Ramírez profiles four banished families who succeeded in reestablishing themselves in the U.S., whose experiences are representative of many others. Trinidad Rodriguez, for example, was 5 years old and a citizen—born in the U.S. to an American mother—when she was banished along with her stepfather. Reclaiming her citizenship for herself and her children took 47 years; they were considered undocumented because she could not produce her own birth certificate. Many banished Mexicans either left their birth certificates when they were hastily deported or found that the document had been confiscated by immigration authorities. Ramírez argues persuasively that punitive and irrational immigration law “racialized discourses, and banishment” profoundly affected generations of families. Banished U.S. citizens were unable to pass on their citizenship to their descendants, robbing families of financial inheritance, blocking their upward mobility, and cutting them off from political power. The profiled families recommend reparations that include official apologies from both the U.S. and Mexico, financial remunerations, and adding the history of coerced removal to school curricula.

A timely and powerful book that exposes a shameful history.

For more on Mexico, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap

Reiner, Rob with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean & Harry Shearer | Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) | $35 September 9, 2025 | 9781668079140

’Twas the creation of a classic film. Spinal Tap— “England’s loudest band”—has been quiet of late. With good reason. It turns out that the not­so­clever musicians “documented” in the cult spoof This Is Spinal Tap (1984) have had it out for Marty DiBergi (the film­within­a­film’s director, played by Reiner). “You seemed to only focus on the negative stuff, the mishaps,” says lead singer David St. Hubbins (McKean) in the in­character oral history portion of this hilarious book, whose publication coincides with the release of a movie sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Referring to the group getting lost backstage before a concert—“Hello, Cleveland!”—bass player Derek Smalls (Shearer) adds: “There were dozens of gigs where we found the stage straightaway. We didn’t see that reflected.” There’s another reason for the band’s low profile: Smalls was in rehab for addiction—internet addiction. Guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Guest) says, “I remember when I heard about this. I wrote him an email. But he didn’t answer.” Smalls replies: “I wasn’t allowed. It’s terrible. It gets ahold of you, and before you know it, you’re looking at cats waterskiing.” Any fan of the film will savor these exchanges. Tufnel once rented a castle in Lichtenstein that was surrounded by emus (“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, they’re going to kill me.’ But emus, they’re quite nice.”), his dad and granddad sewed “top­line” windsocks for airports, and St. Hubbins got his “waxing done” during Tufnel’s hourslong solos. In the book’s first section, Reiner recounts the making of his initially misunderstood movie. Gems abound: Backstage at an AC/DC concert, the actors noticed that a “huge wall” of amps was for show (none were plugged in).

Guest included a musical quote from Luigi Boccherini in Tap’s song “Heavy Duty.” And you’ll just have to read the book to learn of the origins of that cucumber—actually, a zucchini—found in a pair of trousers. This book doth rock.

True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen

Richardson, Lance | Pantheon (736 pp.) $40 | October 14, 2025 | 9781524748319

A sprawling biography of the renowned nature writer and novelist. Peter Matthiessen is perhaps best known for his 1978 book The Snow Leopard, an account of an arduous journey into the Himalayas in search of the big cat that blended science with mysticism. Though widely considered a classic today, it never sold as well as Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; Matthiessen scorned author and text as “a hateful child­destroying egomaniac and an intelligent yet dull book.” A Zen practitioner and roshi himself, Matthiessen, as biographer Richardson notes, harbored jealousies and rivalries, and while he lived several lifetimes (an excuse, in its way, for this very long but readable narrative), he was never quite satisfied with himself. And what lifetimes they were: Matthiessen was a world traveler, a onetime CIA agent, co­founder of The Paris Review, a champion of Cesar Chavez and Leonard Peltier, a writer of extraordinary grace, an “LSD pioneer,” and—perhaps least known of his aspects—a firm believer in the existence of the giant creatures called Yeti and Sasquatch. James Salter, his Hamptons neighbor and friend, noted that people often asked him to introduce them to Matthiessen, adding, “But the thing that is hard to know is which Peter Matthiessen they would like to meet.” Richardson doesn’t shy away from the less attractive traits and episodes, some born of having been raised to perform “the socially sanctioned role of a ‘well­brought­up

Wasp.’” Estranged from his father early on, Matthiessen had trouble connecting with his own children, with son Luke calling Matthiessen’s devotion to Zen “a way of tuning everything else out…a way of him escaping,” and daughter Rue saying, “He did not respond well to need.” All the same, Matthiessen enriched the literature of his time and beyond, leaving luminous books such as Killing Mister Watson, Wildlife in America, and, of course, The Snow Leopard

A comprehensive, compelling life of a man of many parts.

Perpetua: The Woman, the Martyr

Ruden, Sarah | Yale Univ. (208 pp.) | $28 September 2, 2025 | 9780300273717

Close reading of a martyr’s tale. Scholar and translator Ruden offers her observations—as well as her own translation—of a classic early Christian text, The Suffering of the Holy Perpetua and Felicitas. Perpetua and Felicitas, or Felicity, were young Christians, both mothers to infants, who were executed by Rome in a public spectacle for their refusal to recant their faith. Their story is recounted by Perpetua herself, in a short document that was soon after augmented by an editor/redactor. Ruden approaches the story of Perpetua with reverence, but primarily with the eye of a scholar. Her treatment is far from a hagiography or even a work of Christian history but instead serves as a close literary examination of this ancient text. Perpetua is seen as a truncated, overlooked, and even exploited female author, her own account, riveting and meaningful on its own, touched up, added to, and misused by others over time. “In forty years of studying ancient literature,” Ruden notes, “I have never seen an author so openly shoved to the side, shushed, and interrupted.” Ruden’s efforts seem aimed to clarify Perpetua’s role in the eyes of fellow academics. She exposes those forces in the church and in culture who have misrepresented and misused Perpetua (Augustine of

Hippo is an example), while also diving headlong into a level of literary analysis that the lay reader may find unhelpful. A page and a half devoted to Perpetua’s use of the word ego (“I”), in reference to herself, is an example. Ruden notes in conclusion that “it is high time to move [Perpetua’s] story into the brighter light she powerfully deserves.” Ruden’s treatment does not, unfortunately, move Perpetua into that brighter light for the average reader.

A worthy addition to scholarship; a lackluster approach for the nonspecialist reader.

The Giant Leap: Why Space Is the Next Frontier in the Evolution of Life

Scharf, Caleb | Basic Books (368 pp.) $32 | October 21, 2025 | 9781541604179

Life launches into the unknown.

Some 3.7 billion years ago, life awoke on our rocky blue planet and, slowly but surely, oozed, swam, scuttled, and crawled into every ecological niche it could find. Eventually, it leapt right off the face of the Earth. Scharf, an astrobiologist and senior scientist at NASA, tells the awesome story of biology’s boldest migration—from the thinkers who cracked the mathematics of motion, mechanics, and gravity to the engineers who built spacecraft and robotic probes and solved the challenges of astro­navigation and communications. Now, citizens of more than 48 countries have ventured into orbit, not to mention chimpanzees, dogs, rabbits, wasps, tortoises, cockroaches, and jellyfish. Scharf casts this outward movement as an evolutionary imperative— the “expansion of living things into a narrow shell around the Earth and along a tiny thread of space to the Moon”—that will inevitably press onward to Mars, asteroids, and beyond, just by nature doing what it does. Consider, for example, that any water on the Moon may have been produced on Earth by photosynthetic organisms and scattered to the lunar soil by solar winds back when the Moon was

closer. Through electrolysis, that water could be decomposed into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for breathing. “If humans end up harvesting that water for the exploration of space,” Scharf writes, “it will be a case of life providing its own means to move beyond the confines of a single planet and its natural satellite.” This makes for a compelling narrative—but the thing about evolution is that we evolved to live here. Already in Low Earth Orbit, Scharf notes, astronauts aboard the International Space Station suffer “puffy head, bird legs syndrome,” scarring of the heart tissue and “space diarrhea,” and that’s just from the change in gravity. Far harsher conditions await us farther from home. Scharf may be right that “life’s relentless, mindless impetus to extend itself” will culminate in what he calls the Dispersal with a capital D. But as the fossil record shows, extending beyond your niche can also land you extinct. It was for good reason that Goldilocks, having found the bed that was just right, stayed there.

A deeply researched, expertly written account of the fascinating interplay between evolution and exploration.

The Eternal Forest: A Memoir of the Cuban Diaspora

Sheppard, Elena | St. Martin’s (288 pp.) $29 | September 30, 2025 | 9781250287687

Documenting a family’s complex relationship with Cuba.

Cuban American writer Sheppard describes herself, her mother, and her grandmother as a set of “Russian nesting dolls, sized by generation.” By this, she means that their histories are both vastly different and intensely intertwined. Sheppard’s grandmother, Rosita, grew up in Cuba. Although Rosita traces her heritage to Spain, by the time she was born her family had lived in Cuba for multiple generations. Rosita’s daughter, Margarita, is Sheppard’s mother. Rosita brought Margarita to the United States when Margarita was 8 years old and Margarita’s

older sister was 15. The family fled because the new government considered their father, Rosita’s husband, Gustavo, “a sympathizer, anti­Castro, antirevolution, a threat.” Because Sheppard was born in the United States, she developed a complex relationship with her homeland that is equal parts curiosity and guilt. Similarly, her mother, Margarita, feels like she is “Ni de aquí, ni de allá / Neither from here, nor from there,” because her relationships with her birth and adopted countries are equally tenuous. Rosita, on the other hand, harbors a deep nostalgia for her homeland, which, Sheppard believes, she never intended to leave for good. To better understand the positionality of her mother, her grandmother, and herself, Sheppard excavates her family history, contextualizing the memories she uncovers within the island’s political history, which, in many ways, is Fidel Castro’s personal history. Sheppard’s narrative voice is both conversational and lyrical, and her love and curiosity for her family leaps off the page. While the book at times feels more descriptive than introspective, this is a fascinating read.

A Cuban American writer’s absorbing account of exile.

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

Silverman, Jacob | Bloomsbury Continuum (288 pp.) | $30 October 7, 2025 | 9781399419987

Financial reporter Silverman digs deep into why the richest part of wealthy California has swung to the extreme right. There was a time when Elon Musk threw his money behind progressive candidates, when, supporting LGBTQ+ equality, he said, “People should be free to live their lives where their heart takes them.” That was before Democrats and progressives began talking about taxing the rich, anathema to the rich, of course, and after 2022 Musk threw himself far to the right, “his public

persona utterly transformed,” now opposed to transgender people (including one of his children), undocumented immigrants, and wokeness in general. Just so, the less visible David Sacks put money into Gavin Newsom’s gubernatorial race, but then suddenly jolted to the right, funding a recall election. Some of the fascination with the right has to do with Silicon Valley’s commitment to disrupting things, whether moribund industries or government; but then, Silverman writes, Silicon Valley has always had its share of people on the far right, such as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who’s been all in for Trump to the extent that he bought into the movement to overturn the 2020 election results. The rightist movement, Silverman notes in a cogent argument, has been freshly awash in new money from the likes of Peter Thiel and a bunch of Saudi princes; it has used those funds to boost the MAGA movement and Trumpism in various ways, but it has also bought its way into government through defense­industry contracts, DOGE, and outright bribes, all with an eye to deregulating, undoing the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, and liberating supporters from the burden of having to pay their fair share. It makes for an ugly picture altogether, with a decided undercurrent of despair about our “rut of societal stagnation, decline, corruption, and mistrust.”

A book that should trouble your dreams.

Hitchcock and Herrmann: The Friendship & Film Scores That Changed Cinema

Smith, Steven C. | Oxford Univ. (296 pp.)

$39.99 | October 1, 2025 | 9780197681282

The inside story of one of cinema’s most prolific director­ composer collaborations. Theirs was an unlikely union. Alfred Hitchcock “was a Catholic from London who loathed conflict,” whereas composer Bernard Herrmann “was a volatile Jew from New York’s East Side,” a man who

was known to shout at musicians, “Hey you! Play what’s written,” yet whose “mastery at conveying character psychology in music found its ideal vessel in film scores.” In this appreciative biography, music scholar Smith chronicles their decade­long professional partnership, from The Trouble With Harry (1955) to Marnie (1964). The goal of this book, Smith writes, is to show “Hitchcock’s filmmaking process from beginning to end” and “eavesdrop on discussions between director and composer, as they discuss a film’s flaws that music may help.” Their work together began when Hitchcock, needing a composer who could match Harry’s “offbeat blend of macabre humor, lyrical imagery, and romance,” was introduced to Herrmann, the temperamental, twice­divorced Juilliard grad who learned “how to depict psychology in music” from Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. The results were legendary, with Herrmann’s music deftly accentuating the tension in Hitchcock’s films, from his use of atonality and “low­string harmonics” to match the off­kilter sensations of Vertigo, to the Fandango dance theme he invented for North by Northwest, to the discordant, all­strings score of Psycho. Smith borrows liberally from previous books, yet those unfamiliar with Hitchcock and Herrmann will learn much, such as that Hitchcock originally wanted no music over Psycho’s famous shower scene. He changed his mind, and Herrmann created perhaps the most famous music in cinema history, “three E­flat notes, in the first violins’ highest register” that are then “joined by shrieking second violins, playing E­natural,” with the notes “played with hard downbow strikes and leaping glissandos,” a simple solution that proved terrifyingly effective. A well-researched portrait of a fruitful creative alliance.

Dead and Alive: Essays

Smith, Zadie | Penguin Press (352 pp.) $27 | October 28, 2025 | 9780593834688

A take on the world.

In a gathering of 30 essays and talks from 2016 to early 2025, Smith reflects on arts and politics, aging and craft. Several pieces were informed by dismaying political events: Receiving a literary award from Kenyon College three days after the 2024 American election, Smith talked about the need to protect vulnerable people; in Austria, in 2018, when that country was turning to the political right, she spoke about multiculturalism, exemplified by the makeup of the British World Cup team. At a rally in London, she spoke about climate change denialism; and in an essay written before the July 4, 2024, British election, she reminded her readers about what the Labour Party should stand for, in light of increasing inequality. Politics and history infuse an essay on Kara Walker’s “mode of relating to the ruins of the past” and her forewords to reissues of Gretchen Gerzina’s Black England and James Weldon Johnson’s Black Manhattan Smith offers moving obituaries for writers she admires and has learned from: Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, and Hilary Mantel. The movie Tar inspires Smith to think about artistic monsters; artist Celia Paul’s memoir of her relationship with Lucien Freud elicits an essay about being, or resisting being, a muse. Smith reflects on her own writing in her foreword to her novel The Fraud, in an interview with a Spanish journalist, and in a talk on craft for a fiction workshop. She extols her beloved Kilburn, in London, and pays homage to New York, where she observes an unexpected sense of community when diverse New Yorkers jump in—silently and efficiently—to help a young mother whose baby carriage suddenly breaks. In that essay and others, Smith seems cautiously optimistic that “moral intelligence” will prevail in hard times. A thoughtful, deft collection.

For more on Alfred Hitchcock, visit Kirkus online.

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History—And How It Shattered a Nation

Sorkin, Andrew Ross | Viking (400 pp.) $35 | October 14, 2025 | 9780593296967

An affluent age abruptly ends. Sorkin’s chronicle of economic calamity is well­versed in the language of high finance and laser­focused on the rich and influential. Bankers and lawmakers share the limelight with actors and statesmen seeking Wall Street wealth. The countless unsung Americans wrecked by the October 1929 stock market crash and its aftermath are seldom heard from. This may frustrate some readers, but it’s not an oversight, as Sorkin unapologetically—and not unreasonably—opts to concentrate on power players. As the New York Times columnist and CNBC host explains, the “bloodbath” was triggered by chicanery, “easy credit” and the market’s “general opacity.” During the run­up to the crash, bankers and affluent investors formed “stock pools.” These were a legal but “devious and unfair” way to furtively accumulate “shares in a given company,” “artificially” raising the stock’s value. Some market speculators tried to boost profits by “luring small­time speculators into” their “elaborate market schemes.” By the early 1930s, thousands of banks had failed, leaving many millions unemployed, homeless, or hungry. It’s a feature, not a bug, that this large group of people remains in the background. Sorkin announces this narrative choice at the outset, presenting a cast list dominated by bankers, politicians, regulators, and other well­ connected sorts—those whose fingerprints were on the collapse. His leading figures are prominent men whom history has rendered one­ dimensional, verdicts Sorkin aims to reveal as incomplete. Banker Charles Mitchell’s maneuvering got him in legal trouble and was blamed for the crash, but

Sorkin suggests he merits “more nuanced consideration.” Senator Carter Glass was celebrated for 1933 legislation that protected less­wealthy bank customers by disentangling commercial and investment banking. But he only grudgingly OK’d “key elements of his own bill.” For their part, Groucho Marx and Winston Churchill took a bath when the crash came. It’s a narrow segment of society but one whose experiences Sorkin capably recounts. A nimble history of the stock market’s collapse centers on the upper crust.

The Web Beneath the Waves: The Fragile Cables That Connect Our World

Subramanian, Samanth | Columbia Global Reports (120 pp.) | $18 paper October 14, 2025 | 9798987053782

Diving into a world of perils. Beneath the surface of the world’s oceans lies a vast network of subsea cables and underwater infrastructure—an extraordinary system pulsing with light, transporting the bulk of the world’s data. Journalist Subramanian takes readers on a fascinating journey across distant Pacific islands and into coastal cable landing stations, which guard the endpoints of this hidden global network. Draped across jagged seafloor ridges and deep ocean canyons, these cables are an evolving technology originating in 19th­century telegraph cables connecting Britain to mainland Europe. Subramanian provides rich historical context for the development of these slim yet powerful threads of glass fiber, steel, copper, and tough plastic— cables that now carry over 95% of the world’s data traffic, far outpacing the capacity of satellites. In 2022, a volcanic eruption severed a cable and took the island nation of Tonga offline, triggering a cascade of consequences. Tongans were unable to conduct business, contact family, access bank accounts, or travel—highlighting just how deeply modern life depends

on this infrastructure. Subramanian underscores the cables’ critical role in global business, finance, communication, and mobility, warning that failures could cause severe disruption even in the most connected countries. The pressure on this infrastructure continues to grow as data centers and artificial intelligence increase demand. As “the agent of globalization,” writes Subramanian, the cables raise urgent questions about control and privacy. Today, a small number of tech giants manage much of the data coursing through these networks, which are vulnerable to surveillance, vandalism, and state­sponsored attacks. Geopolitical tensions—from the Ukraine war to territorial disputes— mean cable sabotage is an escalating concern. Subramanian’s profiles of the people who build, repair, and maintain these deep­sea arteries offer a glimpse into an unseen and essential global community. A gripping look at the hidden infrastructure that binds the modern world—and the chaos that follows when it snaps.

Kirkus Star

All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now

Tandoh, Ruby | Knopf (304 pp.) | $29 September 9, 2025 | 9798217207862

British baker and cookbook author Tandoh dives into the world of food and predilection. Most of us live in a world of abundance, and there’s a problem there, writes Tandoh, in the paradox of plenty: “The more we have, the less we seem able to enjoy it.” That gives rise to diet fads, and “weird culinary nationalism,” and a certain unbending devotion to certain foods at the expense of others. That plenty comes in information as well as food, with recipes available everywhere and with food trends (one, she notes, being smashburgers) spread worldwide thanks to the internet. Even so, she adds, most home cooks will tend to “cycle through the same couple of dozen

recipes for the rest of our lives.” Part of Tandoh’s evident purpose is to shake those cooks out of complacency and try something new, even playful—for which she praises fellow cookbook writer Yotam Ottolenghi—and fun. One possibility: sausage and gochujang pasta, the latter being a Korean chili paste that renders an orange sauce—and orange, says one chef, “makes people hungry.” Tandoh is a great explainer with a gift for a memorable turn of phrase, as when she renders judgment on bubble tea as representing a story “about displacement, ruin and growth,” noting along the way that bubble tea is dominated by corporate chains because the machinery to produce it is expensive, lending a certain sameness to bubble tea shops. As to home entertaining, Tandoh says, smartly, “Delusional thinking transcends class,” meaning that any such gathering is likely to blow any budget and produce entirely too much food, procured from the surfeit of massive supermarkets around the globe: “So many temples, and just one god.” Tandoh’s knowing classification of the three types of cookbooks is worth the price of admission alone.

An entertaining, endlessly instructive look at why we like what we do in our “anarchic web of desire.”

Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War

Tapper, Jake | Atria (336 pp.) | $30 October 7, 2025 | 9781668079447

The unusual prosecution of an avowed terrorist.

The busy CNN host’s second nonfiction title this year unravels the complexities behind a “unique” criminal case against a jihadist who killed American service members. Tapper’s narrative moves at pace, skillfully blending combat scenes, investigative breakthroughs, and courtroom conflict. In June 2011, Ibrahim S. Harun, a passenger on a ship transporting migrants in the Mediterranean Sea,

approached an Italian Green Beret and confessed that he was in al­Qaida and had killed American troops in Afghanistan. Italian authorities took Harun, also known as Spin Ghul, into custody but refused to extradite him if the U.S. planned to try Harun by military commission. To Italian leaders, such proceedings upheld illegal interrogation practices employed by the U.S. Fearful that Harun would be released and participate in another attack, federal prosecutors and FBI agents prepared for a criminal trial in civilian court. Investigators used a military database of items recovered from battle sites to place Harun at the scene of a 2003 ambush of U.S. soldiers, two of whom—Jerod Dennis and Raymond Losano—were killed. A Quran found there bore Harun’s fingerprints. Though Tapper occasionally bogs down in the backgrounds of relatively minor figures, he’s sharp on the political considerations that informed the Justice Department and President Obama’s decision to try Harun in federal court in Brooklyn. Harun was convicted of multiple charges in 2017 and later sentenced to life in prison. Tapper carefully unpacks legal precedents, explaining how “the distinction between terrorism and warfare” became “blurred” after 9/11. This helped enable a prosecution that some believe should have remained in the military’s purview. Remarkably, the judge who sentenced Harun, while not doubting his guilt, tells Tapper that the proceeding “felt like a show trial.”

A smart page-turner about the atypical trial of an al-Qaida member.

The Romans: A 2,000-Year History

Watts, Edward J. | Basic Books (720 pp.) $40 | October 7, 2025 | 9781541619814

Rome’s lasting power. Watts, professor of history at the University of California, San Diego, has devoted a career to this subject, including six earlier histories of the period. He writes well and is not

shy about expressing mildly startling opinions. Scholars and Romans themselves date Rome’s beginnings to the eighth century B.C.E.; Watts agrees but discards its traditional end, 1453, when the Turks conquered Constantinople, arguing for 1204, when European Crusaders sacked and conquered Constantinople. He moves quickly through the first 500 years, when a tribe along the Tiber fought other pugnacious tribes and expanded its influence so that by 280 B.C.E. its power encompassed all of Italy. Surviving accounts emphasize war and bloody political infighting, invariably preceded by long speeches—inspirational by heroes and devious by villains—which the author quotes at length without endorsing their accuracy. Readers will perk up when the republic, a clunky but effective democracy, conquers Europe, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Loot, trade, and immigration brought wealth as well as rich culture to Rome, providing irresistible temptation to ambitious men. By 100 B.C.E., corruption, coups, and civil wars had so blighted the Republic that Julius Caesar, who destroyed it, comes across as an admirable figure, along with his adopted son, Augustus, who launched the Empire on a high note in 27 B.C.E. Watts agrees with three centuries of scholars who dubbed 27 B.C. to 180 C.E. the Pax Romana, an era of peace and prosperity, but dislikes the description of what followed as “decline and fall.” He argues that during those 1,300 years the empire flourished under talented emperors such as Diocletian in the third century and Alexius I Comnenus in the 11th, but there is no doubt that incompetents outnumbered them.

Edward Gibbon and Mary Beard lead a crowded field, but this is a fine addition.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

The Trouble With Heroes by Kate Messner (Bloomsbury)

In the World of Whales by Michelle Cusolito, illus. by Jessica Lanan (Neal Porter/ Holiday House)

The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog: And Other Serious Discoveries of Silly Science by Carly Anne York (Basic Books)

Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven (Penguin Press)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

We Need You in the Locker Room by David Kaufman

The Boughs of Love by Nathan Kitchen

The Carpenter and the Apprentice by Grace Zacaroli

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.

Fully Booked

Queer elders of color tell stories that shine in Caro De Robertis’ So Many Stars BY MEGAN LABRISE

EPISODE 429: CARO DE ROBERTIS

On this episode of Fully Booked, Caro De Robertis joins us to discuss So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color (Algonquin, May 13). In a starred review, Kirkus calls this groundbreaking oral history “a colorful tapestry of potent, radiant, and relevant testimonials from queer people of color.”

De Robertis is an award­winning writer and literary translator whose honors include two Stonewall Book Awards and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. They are the author of six novels, including 2019 Kirkus Prize finalist Cantoras, The Palace of Eros, The Gods of Tango, and The President and the Frog. They teach at San Francisco State University and live in Oakland, California, with their two children.

Here’s a bit more from our starred review: “Novelist De Robertis assembles insightful and educative life experiences from interviews in 2022­23 with 20 multicultural transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, genderfluid, butch, Two­Spirit, transfeminine, and transmasculine people. Each personal history is notable in its own scope and perspective, but collectively these voices representing elder queer generations of color become extraordinary. Generous anecdotes about what coming out queer or questioning gender was like three, four, or five decades ago form the crux of several stories.…Each story—from trailblazing trans activists and advocates to pioneering community leaders to a trans Latine immigrant business owner to cultivators of queer culture—reflects on how the joys and pains of living authentic queer lives formed the people they have become. The lasting impressions each of them has made on society beautifully amplify the heartbeat of queer trans life.”

So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color

De Robertis, Caro Algonquin | 320 pp. | $32 May 13, 2025 | 9781643756875

De Robertis shares the genesis of their project to interview queer elders of color, which began with a grant from the Baldwin­ Emerson Elders Project, established by award­winning author Jacqueline Woodson. We discuss the book’s structure and delve into the 20 elders’ tales of claiming their identities, resisting political violence, building community, and continuing to evolve. We touch on the humor, heart, and generosity of De Robertis’ subjects and imagine the ways queerness may continue to reshape our world.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, John McMurtrie, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

Irene Young

To listen to the episode, visit Kirkus online.

Children's

GOING WILD FOR ANIMAL TALES

I’VE SPENT THE better part of 2025 spellbound by Jackie and Shadow, a pair of eagles in Southern California’s Big Bear Valley whose activities are livestreamed by webcam. I’ve watched as the couple maintained their nest, incubated their eggs through rain and snow, and reared their young. I’ve even found myself projecting human traits onto these birds of prey. Surely Jackie must have mourned when one of her hatchlings didn’t make it through a particularly frigid night? And did I detect a hint of patriarchal pride in Shadow’s eye as the surviving eaglets finally took flight?

Scientists have historically looked askance at such anthropomorphism; after all, we never truly know what animals are feeling. But that mindset has been evolving in recent years as zoologists have discovered how much we share with our wild brethren: empathy, altruism, the capacity for grief.

That shift has been reflected in the world of kid lit. While animal nonfiction was once dominated by straightforward, photo­heavy fare, over the last decade, I’ve noticed authors getting more

creative. Several new picture books offer a captivating blend of fact and fancy, portraying the fauna we love as thoughtful, funny, and affectionate—in a word, deeply human.

An encounter with sperm whales was literally breathtaking for Fred Buyle and Kurt Amsler; while swimming with the majestic marine mammals in 2014 in the Azores, the freedivers made frequent trips to the surface for air—an experience chronicled in Michelle Cusolito’s In the World of Whales (Neal Porter/Holiday House, June 17), illustrated by Jessica Lanan. The book’s protagonist—a stand­in for Buyle—witnesses a pod welcoming a newborn into the fold. Graceful visuals and verse keep the tale rooted in fact while underscoring the whales’ tenderness toward their youngest. And as the

animals notice the diver, something special occurs: a rare moment of communion between humans and whales.

In 2016, a Māori octopus named Inky escaped from the National Aquarium of New Zealand. “Nobody knows just how Inky chose the path that he traveled that night, or what went through his brain,” writes Thor Hanson in The Escape Artist: A True Story of Octopus Adventure (Greenwillow Books, July 22), but his portrait of a pensive cephalopod plotting his way to glorious freedom is utterly convincing. Galia Bernstein’s illustrations are anatomically correct yet ultra­expressive; though lacking a mouth or brow, Inky somehow chuckles, frowns, and gazes in contemplation. We’ve long known that octopuses are profoundly intelligent; after reading this tale, youngsters will surely add playful , soulful,

and even philosophical to the list of adjectives describing these wondrous creatures.

“Caw-caaaaw! / We must sound like witches to you,” acknowledge the corvids who collectively narrate Leslie Barnard Booth’s I Am We: How Crows Come Together To Survive (Chronicle Books, September 9). Alexandra Finkeldey’s shadowy images of birds with piercing red eyes set an appropriately eerie tone, but readers also get a glimpse of these animals’ more vulnerable side. In a world rife with “dark­seeing, night­feeding, crow­eating creatures,” watching out for one another is imperative, and Barnard Booth’s bewitching verse speaks to these birds’ collaborative spirit and persistence in the face of near­constant peril.

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

An aspiring 13 ­year­ old ghost hunter takes on her first real case.

A month ago, The Incident upended Luna Catalano’s life. She exposed her home improvement influencer moms—who claim to flip haunted houses—for faking the hauntings. That’s how the family ended up in Ohio, living at 5753 Shadyside Avenue: “the least haunted house Luna had ever seen.” But she finds that looks can be deceiving. As well as dealing with her irritable bowel syndrome, which is aggravated by stress, she keeps experiencing odd, disruptive occurrences. First, a strange voice keeps saying,

“Welcome home.” Then, Luna sees “GET OUT” written in blood on the ceiling. The mysterious happenings continue, and eventually, the house’s very real ghosts turn violent. With help from sibling neighbors Dani and Mateo Moreno, can Luna save her family—and herself—before it’s too late? Pucella Winans’ latest is a love letter to ghost stories and those who believe in them—especially queer kids. The five embedded short stories are pitch­perfect in tone, slowly building the novel’s eerie lore alongside the unfolding plot, which contains occasional humor. Through her art, Luna realizes that she might like

A Little Too Haunted

Pucella Winans, Justine | Bloomsbury | 272 pp. September 30, 2025 | $17.99 | 9781547616343

girls—growth that beautifully mirrors Dani’s coming out as nonbinary. Dani’s strict adherence to the scientific method also teaches Luna valuable lessons about jumping to conclusions when it comes to

friendships. The Morenos are Latine. Luna is cued white, like one of her moms; her other mom has Italian and Brazilian heritage. Sweet meets spooky—and it’s absolutely spectacular. (Horror. 9-12)

Lola M. Schaefer; illus.

By Sandra Neil Wallace; illus. by Nancy Carpenter

92 Clara and the Man With Books in His Window

By María Teresa Andruetto;

by Martina Trach; trans. by Elisa Amado 92 Pocket Bear

By Katherine Applegate; illus. by Charles Santoso

A charming

and action-packed romp with a powerful historical perspective.

MOKO MAGIC

Kirkus Star

Clara and the Man With Books in His Window

Andruetto, María Teresa | Illus. by Martina Trach | Trans. by Elisa Amado | Greystone Kids (56 pp.) | $19.95 | May 20, 2025 9781778402517 | Series: Aldana Libros

W hen Clara’s hardworking mother asks her to deliver clean laundry to the man in the big house, the young girl opens the door to a transformative friendship.

The man in the big house stays there—he’s a mysterious recluse who never goes outdoors. In exchange for her mother’s work, he leaves payment for Clara under the doormat. When curious Clara peers into the window, the man asks her name and whether she can read. Next time she visits, Clara finds a book tucked under the mat as well. Clara begins to spend more time with the man, browsing his bookshelves, reading quietly on his floor, and getting to know him. She learns that he was once in love with another man, but when his love decided to leave, the man wasn’t brave enough to go with him. The man explains the meaning of the word courage and the importance of living openly as one’s true self—a complex lesson that will nevertheless reverberate. Trach’s somber yet mesmerizing sepia­toned pencil illustrations are layered in collage­style textures, amplifying this Argentinian import’s minimal text, translated from Spanish. Clara and certain important visual subjects are brightly colored, while background scenery is depicted sparingly, and other objects are sketched only in pencil outline. Clothing and houses imply a rural early­20th­century

setting; Clara’s pale­skinned, while the man is rendered in gray, as if in shadow. A stunning ode to the power of books, friendship, and the authentically lived life. (Picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Star

Pocket Bear

Applegate, Katherine | Illus. by Charles Santoso | Feiwel & Friends (272 pp.) | $17.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781250904362

Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.

Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war­torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor— the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first­ ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky

Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black­and­white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.

Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)

Ghoul Summer

Badua, Tracy | Storytide/HarperCollins (240 pp.) $18.99 | September 2, 2025 | 9780063347052

A tween boy begrudgingly agrees to help the ghost who’s haunting his family’s vacation rental. Twelve­year­old Barnaby Vargas was looking forward to a fun summer of gaming with his friends, but instead, his parents are dragging him and his younger brother, Leo, to the beachfront town of Sunnyside for three weeks to help their grandfather, who will be moving in with them. When they arrive at Warner Place, the home they’re renting for their visit, Barnaby discovers that his room is already occupied by someone—the ghost of a boy named Maxwell Warner, who died in 1984 and wants Barnaby out of his room. After several unsuccessful attempts to banish Maxwell’s spirit that only seem to increase the ghost’s power, Barnaby agrees to help him resolve his unfinished business in exchange for leaving him alone. As Barnaby digs through Maxwell’s past, he forms a tentative friendship with the ghost and learns more about Sunnyside. The mystery surrounding Maxwell’s death is compelling, with well­balanced moments of humor. Badua deftly weaves in complex themes of family, friendship,

and community organizing. Barnaby’s character growth is touching, as is the new bond he develops with Leo as they work together to help Maxwell. Though the story wraps up rather quickly, with some threads left unresolved, the ending is heartwarming. Barnaby and his family are Filipino American. A gently spooky ghost story that’s equal parts funny and heartfelt. (Paranormal. 8-12)

What Medicine Can Do

Gabrielle |

Lot

Penguin Workshop (48 pp.) | $19.99 October 7, 2025 | 9798217051243

What is medicine, and how can it help us when we feel “bahrumph”?

“Oh, blerg !” begins this funny and useful guide. A “very annoying, very itchy patch of skin” has left Raccoon feeling “prickly. And— ouchie!” “Who did this to me?” demands Raccoon. “Do I have an enemy? Who can I blame?!” Upon finding irritated red bumps on Raccoon’s leg, Great­ Grand­Raccoon diagnoses the youngster with poison ivy. Though the rash isn’t dangerous, Raccoon imagines taking comical measures: “Do I need a new leg? Do I need to wear armor?” Happily, Raccoon just requires some medicine; Great­ Grand­Raccoon also suggests a few other actions to provide comfort, like a cool bath. Raccoon’s pal Fox has more serious symptoms, and a friendly doctor diagnoses her with strep throat. Fox envisions options just as divertingly drastic before the doctor prescribes an antibiotic. Fox’s infant sister receives a vaccine, accurately and soothingly explained, and her baby babbles are amusingly translated for readers’ benefit. Later spreads show seven other ways to take medicine (among them pills and eyedrops) and four ways to stay healthy. Terms such as infection and germ are discussed in context and defined in a glossary. Lot’s cute cartoon characters in bright pastels add to the buoyant and

reassuring atmosphere; Balkan’s accessible text offers basic information while taking away some of the scary unknowns involved with being sick. Prescribed for young readers: this clear and appealing introduction to medical encounters. (Informational picture book. 3-6)

Moko Magic: Museum Mayhem

Baptiste, Tracey | Freedom Fire/ Disney (384 pp.) | $17.99

September 2, 2025 | 9781368075374

A trio of AfroCaribbean cousins in New York City come to terms with their powers in this sequel to Moko Magic: Carnival Chaos (2024). When Uncle Andrew gets the opportunity of a lifetime—being featured in an upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum—he explains to Aidan, his son, and Misty and Brooke, his nieces, that he’s hoping to incorporate one of the famed Benin Bronzes into his art. The cousins inherited moko magic, each gaining one­third of their Trini family’s fantastical legacy, which was passed down from a West African ancestor. While Aidan’s healing powers and Brooke’s ability to manifest purple bubbles of protection are helpful in their new adventure, the action kicks off with Misty’s visions and a mysterious familial connection to the bronzes, which were looted in the 19th century from present­day Nigeria. Baptiste cleverly and effectively deploys seemingly minor set pieces to build suspense and tension, presenting readers with an enchanting take on Pan­Africanism. Brooke’s budding interest in art activism and history offers a provocative primer on provenance and on colonizers’ pillaging and theft. A dangerous magical incident involving Uncle Andrew offers a smart metaphor for how anger can become all­consuming. Misty is an admirable and compassionate hero who, with help from her loved ones, ensures that

cultural and personal memories are not only preserved but cherished. A charming and action-packed romp with a powerful historical perspective. (author’s note, glossary) (Fantasy. 8-12)

We Match!

Barton, Chris | Illus. by Sharon Glick Astra Young Readers (40 pp.) | $18.99 July 15, 2025 | 9781662621062

Visitors to a dog park find common ground, even though they don’t look the same—or even belong to the same species.

Actually, Armando and Scurry—a border collie and a border collie mix, respectively—do resemble one another (“I mean,” says one, “we totally match.” “Yup. You said it”), but that’s the last time that mere looks come into play. Scurry and golden retriever Mango match up over their love of playing ball, Armando and fluffy little Lucille Snowball bond over a shared delight in sticking their heads out of car windows, and other dogs chime in: “Hey! Wet food or dry food?” “I’m on Team Dry.” “Hydrant? Or bush?” They don’t just break off into pairs, either; several like to do tricks or chase squirrels, while others prefer just to sit and watch. One isn’t even a dog, but a sweater­ clad ferret who silently but expressively “matches” with Armando after the latter asks tentatively, “Are you friendly?” Just to make the point explicit, terrier mix Button, holding a microphone, provides knowing commentary: “You can’t always tell right away, can you?” In Glick’s idyllic cartoon scenes, humans of diverse hue, including one who uses a wheelchair, stay in the background until the time comes for a group portrait and a collective “WE ALL MATCH!” Best of all, character cards for the eight animals at the end offer readers opportunities to keep making connections within, and perhaps beyond, the four­legged cast.

A fetching reminder to look for what brings us together. (Picture book. 5-9)

Balkan,

Illus. by Alberto

Rise x

A Fall Day for Bear

Becker, Bonny | Illus. by Kady MacDonald

Denton | Candlewick (40 pp.) | $18.99

September 9, 2025 | 9781536229493

Series: Bear and Mouse Adventures

Bear tries to jumpstart Mouse’s happiness amid seasonal changes. Bear awaits the usual “tap tap tapping” on his door, signaling a visit from “small and gray and bright­eyed” Mouse. Today the two of them will be going on a picnic. When Mouse runs late, Bear decides, “I will wait five minutes and then….” Becker’s sly text continues: “Bear didn’t really know what would happen then, but he liked the grumbly sound of it.” Worried, Bear sets out to meet Mouse. A fall wind blows away a pickle from Bear’s picnic basket: Has Mouse met a similar fate? Bear soon finds Mouse slumped on a tree stump, sad because so many things—the birds, the flowers—are leaving now that autumn is here. Bear tries to rally his friend with picnic food, even halving the remaining pickle, to no avail. If readers haven’t already been giggling at Mouse’s melodramatic poses, they will laugh aloud when Bear pretends to be the Autumn Fairy and begins to dance. As rain falls, Bear starts to share Mouse’s melancholy, vowing to head home and be sad by the fire. Denton’s greatly entertaining art shows Bear enduring a spectacular tumble into the mud. Mouse tries to stifle a laugh, and Bear bellows, “IT’S NOT FUNNY” as the friends navigate the trickiness of schadenfreude. The latest in this series is expectedly warm (and dry).

A cozy tale of pals weathering more than the weather. (Picture book. 4-8)

Goalkeeper

Bloor, Edward | Clarion/HarperCollins

(192 pp.) | $19.99 | October 14, 2025

9780063428324

Nearly three decades after his debut novel, Tangerine (1997), Bloor returns to Tangerine County, Florida, and his thoughtful, adaptable hero, Paul.

Paul is biding time at his new school until he can return to Tangerine Middle, where his soccer teammates eagerly await him. His brother, Erik, is under house arrest while their parents continue to delude themselves about Erik’s trustworthiness. A new family in the development where they live is roping neighbors into supporting their store opening. Bloor’s novel feels slightly overfull and disjointed, with the author exploring Paul’s relationships with his Tangerine Middle crew, his friendship with a Jewish kid (whom he supports when the boy is bullied), his aging grandparents’ visit to a nearby cemetery, and multiple interconnected crimes in town. As in the first book, Paul displays a firm moral compass and a loyalty to the underdog, both of which make him a sympathetic narrator. Despite his good intentions and the outsider experience he’s gleaned from years of being legally blind, he’s still unpacking his white, middle­class privilege, a concept his Latine friends at Tangerine Middle understand far better. Despite the novel’s overstuffed plot (and a storyline that may strain credulity for some), Paul’s appealing voice and the well­depicted soccer scenes combine for a propulsive read.

A page-turning reunion with a well-loved character. (Fiction. 10-14)

Celebrates both the value of teamwork and the strengths that comprise it.

Kirkus Star

The Day Leap Soared

Braverman, Blair | Illus. by Olivia When Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99 October 21, 2025 | 9780063238053

A small dog takes a huge leap. True to her name, sled dog puppy Leap spends her days bounding happily through blankets of freshly fallen snow, bouncily biding her time until she, too, can suit up for a run with the team. Each dog brings a different, equally essential skill to the work of mushing, and as tooyoung Leap greets the pack when they return from their daily hike, she worries—what if she lacks a special talent of her own when it’s her time to race? But when the much ­ anticipated day arrives and Leap clips in for her rookie run, her feet tippity­tap excitedly, any trace of self­ doubt eclipsed by her irrepressible enthusiasm. With their new addition in tow, the other dogs take off, buoyed as ever by a confidence borne from specialized expertise; they confront obstacles head ­ on, sailing easily along icy Northwoods terrain. That is until the team encounters a seemingly insurmountable hurdle, one that only their greenest member can clear. Dogsled racer Braverman’s sweet narrative builds a satisfying case for individuality as a community asset, celebrating both the value of teamwork and the discrete strengths that comprise it. Savvy readers will take pride in predicting Leap’s unique contribution, while canine lovers will delight in the revelation that the pups depicted are all real ­life sled dogs working in northern Wisconsin. When’s illustrations are equal parts spellbinding and precious, deftly balancing compositional simplicity with masterful color work. The result is peerless. An absolute pleasure. (author’s note) (Picture book. 6-9)

An endearing lesson in information literacy.

DROPBEAR

The Christmas Sweater

Brett, Jan | Putnam (32 pp.) | $19.99 November 25, 2025 | 9780593533918

A child and a dog make their way home, thanks to a Christmas sweater. When Theo’s Yiayia (Greek for Grandmother) gives the youngster’s pug, Ari, a gaudy red sweater bejeweled with jingle bells and other sparkly accoutrements, the pooch “sniff[s] it once and step[s] away.” Theo, however, is delighted with Yiayia’s gift of snowshoes, and the child takes the sweater­ clad pup on a hike to Echo Lake. Along the way, and unbeknownst to Theo, Ari’s Christmas sweater gets snagged on a branch and begins to unravel, dropping bells and other decorations into the snow, the red thread extending out behind them. Brett’s signature decorative frames provide visual foreshadowing and emphasis for key points in the narrative as it unspools, with woodland creatures such as curious magpies making appearances. When Theo gets lost, there’s something of a Hansel and Gretel resolution in the works as the child finds the way home to Yiayia not by a trail of stones or breadcrumbs, but by following the red thread and the fallen bells and baubles. Brett’s legions of fans will delight in this new Christmastime story, with plenty to pore over in the detailed, wintry illustrations. Theo and Yiayia are pale­skinned and of Greek heritage; readers with a grounding in Greek mythology will note parallels between Brett’s tale and the legend of Theseus escaping the Minotaur’s labyrinth with the aid of a ball of thread given to him by the princess Ariadne.

A merry choice for Christmastime. (Picture book. 4-8)

The Right To Play: How Jane Addams Fought for America’s Playgrounds

Brown, Elizabeth | Illus. by Olga Lee

Whitman (32 pp.) | $18.99

August 7, 2025 | 9780807570746

Relentless activist Jane Addams advocates for children’s rights and the importance of play.

At 5 years old, Jane watches her friends run and play while she sits at the window, her spine crooked from tuberculosis. Eventually, she learns that playing outside actually makes her body stronger. The power of play informs much of Jane’s adult life. Spurred by a visit to a settlement hall in London that provides housing and services for immigrants, she opens a similar facility in Chicago, Hull House. She helps develop safe programming for kids and coordinates the construction of one of the first model playgrounds in America, inspired by outdoor gymnasiums she’d seen in Europe. She goes on to design accessible playground equipment for kids with disabilities, is elected to the Playground Association of America, and even helps pass federal child labor laws. Jane is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. The cheerful, colorful cartoon illustrations will attract younger readers but do little to portray the story’s somber moments, with barely any distinction among characters’ facial features and expressions. Readers will be interested to know about the activism behind the first public playgrounds, though this account is bogged down by clunky writing and too many details. Not without its flaws, this picturebook biography draws the blueprints for an important message: Play matters. (author’s note) (Picture-book biography. 6-8)

Dropbear

Bunting, Philip | Charlesbridge (40 pp.) | $17.99 | September 9, 2025 9781623547264

Don’t let gossips get the drop on you! In a dark forest, an unseen narrator draws readers’ attention to an old gum tree that looms creepily among the clouds. A sign below echoes the narrator’s warning: “Beware! Dropbear!” And just what is a dropbear? “They say…Dropbear is mean. Dropbear is rude. Dropbear smells like stinky old food. It lingers up high…then drops from its tree. Its favorite dish? That’s you…and me!” But who is that unspecified “they”? A “little birdie” with a healthy sense of skepticism is eager to get to the bottom of things and discovers that the dropbear is just a koala in need of a good hug; those rumors were the result of ignorance and fear of the unknown, as well as a way to battle boredom. Bunting slyly infuses his text with both clever wordplay and a message about not believing gossip; educators and caregivers will find the tale a useful tool for dispelling misconceptions. The author/illustrator’s signature mixedmedia images are adorable, depicting solemn, saucer­eyed Australian creatures. With teeny­tiny fangs, the dropbear cuts a cute figure from the outset, lightening the ominous mood set by the swirling clouds and shadowy night. Bunting concludes with an author’s note about the dropbear, a mythical Australian creature said to tumble out of trees onto unsuspecting passersby. An endearing lesson in information literacy. (Picture book. 4-8)

Humor and heart entwine in this hilarious and wildly creative adventure.

THE INK WITCH

Brianna Banana, Worst Surprise Ever

Button, Lana | Illus. by Suharu Ogawa

Orca (96 pp.) | $8.95 paper | October 14, 2025 9781459843196 | Series: Orca Echoes

What’s meant to be a happy day turns into something far more complex thanks to an unexpected substitute teacher. After spotting her teacher writing her name on the board as the next day’s Helper of the Day, Brianna (mocked by almost everyone as “Brianna Banana”) comes to school decked out in her favorite outfit. But she’s greeted by a substitute teacher named Miss Dee, who knows nothing of the class’s Helper of the Day traditions. Brianna also astutely realizes that Miss Dee is new to her occupation, a fact made quite clear as the sub responds to her students with a mixture of anxiety and uncertainty. Meanwhile, Brianna responds to casual bullying with rage and, occasionally, physical confrontations. It’s a testament to Button’s skills that despite Brianna’s repeated poor choices, she’s engaging and sympathetic—the kind of kid you root for. In the end, Brianna wins over both Miss Dee and readers. Along the way, the author reveals even more about Brianna’s parents’ breakup (something Brianna is either blithely innocent or willfully ignorant of).

Ogawa’s gentle black­and­white art helps to temper the protagonist’s more caustic side. Brianna presents white, while her class is diverse. Big feelings and deep breaths abound in this deft portrayal of an unlikely hero. (Chapter book. 6-9)

Setting the Stage

Champion, Lindsay | Pixel+Ink (208 pp.)

$18.99 | October 21, 2025 | 9781645953289

Series: Cast vs. Crew, 1

In this series opener, Champion introduces readers to the chaotic world of middle school theater through the eyes of the often­ overlooked stage crew.

When eighth grader Ella Amani finally gets her dream job as stage manager for Curie: The Musical , she discovers that managing both temperamental cast members and her ragtag crew is harder than she expected. The premise is fresh: Most middle ­ grade theater novels focus on aspiring actors, but this one showcases the unsung heroes who make productions possible. The story rotates among multiple narrators: perfectionist Ella; her best friend, Levi Jacobson, who’s crushing on the show’s star; Sebastian Diaz, a sixth grader dealing with his own crush on Levi while his sister headlines the production; and rainbow­haired Willow McCloskey, a sarcastic New Yorker doing crew as punishment. The cast vs. crew conflict provides solid dramatic tension, and the characters tackle real issues such as learning differences, foster care, family issues, and the feeling of being the new kid. Though chapters are labeled with character names, the voices feel largely interchangeable. It takes most of the book to distinguish among speakers, making emotional investment difficult for those not already interested in the topic. Still,

Champion clearly knows her theater. The Broadway references, technical details, backstage dynamics, and crew hierarchy feel authentic and will delight drama kids, and the cliffhanger ending will leave them eager for the next installment. Names and other cues in the text imply racial diversity among the characters. Theater enthusiasts will appreciate the insider knowledge and behind-thescenes perspective. (Fiction. 10-14)

Salmon Run: An Epic Journey to the Ocean and Back

Chen, Annie | Red Comet Press (38 pp.)

$19.99 | November 4, 2025 | 9781636551654

“On a crisp autumn day, a Pacific salmon is born.”

Chen’s straightforward, chronological account of the life cycle and migration of a coho salmon begins with an egg in the Duwamish River in Washington state. The egg’s development unfolds across the course of the first half of the book (each page marks the passing of time) as the embryo becomes an alevin (a newly spawned fish, with the egg’s yolk still attached), a fry, and, by day 560, a full­ grown fish with “a deep instinct to travel west” to the Pacific Ocean. These stages of life are clearly illustrated in a lush palette of blue and green washes, with splashes of salmon orange. As the salmon gets closer to the ocean, Chen carefully describes how her body adapts for the journey, including developing “a silvery sparkle” on her scales to camouflage her from ocean predators. The salmon will spend up to several years in the ocean until, “guided by an internal compass,” she feels the urge to return home to spawn, a journey depicted by lovely swirling currents framed by underwater flora. The soothing narration, reminiscent of a voiceover in a nature documentary, notes that this cycle

will repeat with each new salmon egg. The backmatter includes further information about coho salmon but disappointingly makes no mention of the challenges salmon face, such as habitat loss, overfishing, climate change, and pollution.

A gentle, lucidly told nature story. (author’s note, QR code linking to further information on the coho salmon) (Informational picture book. 6-9)

Kirkus Star

The Ink Witch

Cherrywell, Steph | Little, Brown (288 pp.)

$17.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9780316585941

Stunned to learn she’s a witch, trans girl Rebecca Slugg goes questing for magical ink ingredients to free her bespelled mother. Though Becca yearns for an exciting life, her “timid little noodle” of a mother, who runs the Cape Disappointment Beach Inn, seems determined to keep things as boring as possible. Then dramatic Aunt Malatrice— previously unknown to Becca—swoops in, casting a spell that gets Mom to sign a document allowing Malatrice’s Ascension to Witch­ Queen. An astonished Becca learns that witches exist, they create magic with ink, and that she herself is a witch. Also, the tarantula living by the dumpsters is her mother’s familiar, Natalya, and the ice troll Oddvar lives in the motel’s ice machine. With her robotlike mother stripped of her free will, Becca goes in search of mermaid caviar, powdered troll tooth, and the Witch­ Queen’s treasure. With these items, Natalya promises, they can make ink to restore Becca’s mother to normality—if they don’t die in the process, that is. This fast­paced, laugh ­ outloud fantasy will appeal to fans of Roald Dahl and Terry Pratchett. Overflowing with evocative sensory descriptions, the top ­notch

worldbuilding includes unique creatures and locations and a creative magic system. The characters are distinct, flawed, and delightful—or delightfully awful. Adding thoughtful ballast to the hijinks are environmental messages, Becca’s feelings about being trans, and questions about what it might mean that she sometimes agrees with the power­hungry Malatrice. Human characters read white. Humor and heart entwine in this hilarious and wildly creative adventure. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Don’t Eat Eustace

Cho, Lian | Harper/HarperCollins (48 pp.)

$19.99 | October 14, 2025 | 9780063321847

A luncheon morsel talks his way out of a hungry bear’s stomach—and into the animal’s heart. A lighthouse keeper named Bear (who uses they /them pronouns) adheres to a strict daily routine, which includes fishing for lunch. Today, they catch two things: a multicolored patchwork sail and a fish by the name of Eustace. Eustace repeatedly pleads not to be eaten (“I have a girlfriend waiting for me at home”), but every time he does, Bear offers empty reassurances (“I would never ”) while popping Eustace into a cooking pot or adding deliciouslooking vegetables. The two are interrupted by a heron and a shark, both of whom need help that only the sail (and Bear’s sewing skills) can provide. When the sail is almost entirely used up, Eustace accepts his fate, but helping others has given Bear a sense of empathy that was previously lacking. Bear declares that dinner is tomato soup, and after seeing the heron and shark devouring other fish in the sea, Eustace decides that living with Bear is far preferable to returning to the ocean. Cho milks maximum hilarity out of the dichotomy between Bear’s words and

actions (readers will put as much stock in Bear’s assurances as Eustace does). Panels outlined in rope amid gouache and colored pencil imbue the narrative with a nicely nautical feel. A foe is tricked into friendship and everyone’s a winner in this fresh and funny tale. (Picture book. 3-6)

Bread Days

Chung, Hannah | Astra Young Readers (40 pp.) $18.99 | September 30, 2025 | 9781662621017

A young girl finds a way to honor her father’s memory. It’s Bread Day, and Nara and Papa set about feeding their sourdough starter, affectionately named Paolo. “One bubble. Two bubbles. Soon, Paolo fill[s] his jar with bubbles.” Expressive cartoons are rendered with a soft pastel palette and peppered with charming details as Nara and Papa knead the dough; finally, Papa scores the loaf, replicating a crayon drawing from Nara. But the gentle narrative takes a melancholy, somewhat abrupt turn when Bread Day rolls around again. Papa’s not here, and Mama tells Nara that they won’t be baking bread. Nara sadly places Paolo in the fridge. Cool grays and blues are deftly incorporated into the scenery as Nara struggles with grief; though Chung never states what has happened to Papa, it’s heavily implied that he’s died. The kitchen is now too clean and tidy, sharpening Nara’s pain. Eventually, she takes action, pulling out the ingredients and covering the cabinet doors with her father’s notes and her drawings. Mama’s there to offer a hug when Nara becomes distraught, believing that Paolo has gone, too. But as Paolo revives, so do Nara’s memories of her father. This delectable tale concludes with mother and child enjoying a warm loaf; a touching author’s note closes out the work. Nara and her family read East Asian. A lovingly crafted tale, baked in with tender memories. (Picture book. 5-8)

Nuanced and inspiring.

THE UNEXPECTED LIVES OF ORDINARY GIRLS

The Sneakiest in the World!

Clanton, Ben | Simon & Schuster (88 pp.) | $12.99 | October 28, 2025 9781665964302 | Series: Tater Tales, 3

C an Rot Poe Tater scare the snot out of Snot, his irritating big brother? Maybe with help from friends!

Tired of being the victim of his sib’s mischievous pranks, Rot, an anthropomorphic potato, is determined to turn the tables. Unfortunately, Snot seems to have eyes in the back of his head (no surprise, considering that he’s a potato), and even with a new pair of sneakers, Rot just can’t get the drop on him. Where can Rot learn to be even sneakier? Spy school, of course! Though Rot makes a hash out of lessons in keeping secrets and other spy skills, he finds classmates with complementary talents willing to help dish up a plan clever enough to startle the smirking older spud into a spectacularly gooey sneeze. And rather than mashing down his booger­blasted little bro, Snot gives him grudging props. Rot and pals rush to celebrate over a plate of only slightly slimed cupcakes (yum!), and the tale closes with a roguish final twist. The art, peeled down to the essentials and made with a mix of earth­toned paints, digital effects, and potato prints, adds to the episode’s air of mildly decayed charm. Will draw more eyes than ever to the antics of this tuberous twosome. (nature facts, pranking guidelines, drawing lesson) (Graphic fiction. 6-8)

The Unexpected Lives of Ordinary Girls

Coats, J. Anderson | Atheneum (272 pp.)

$17.99 | September 23, 2025 | 9781665968614

In 1910 Cold Creek, Colorado, Stanislava Razpotnik forges her own path in life.

The 12 ­year old’s worldview widens after she picks up a book from the penny library about Katinka, another daughter of immigrants, who attends college. Katinka Americanizes her name to Katie, which inspires Stanislava to ask people to call her Sylvia. Identifying with Katie, Sylvia hungers to attend college and leave behind Bohunk Town, the derogatory name for her Slovenian community, where her father works at the smelter. But Sylvia’s dreams are disrupted when her older sister, Stina, forced to leave school to do housework and child care, boldly elopes with a Protestant mine geologist in defiance of her Catholic parents. Now Sylvia’s parents expect her to take Stina’s place. Instead, Sylvia audaciously stows away on a train to Denver, seeking refuge with Stina and her new husband—but she finds herself alone, hiding out in the large public library. Although Sylvia’s eventually discovered, a librarian offers her a short­term job as an interpreter assisting with library outreach to local Slovenians. There, she finds sympathy and support. Sylvia is an appealing lead: Her conflicted feelings about her background, combined with her sophisticated understanding of subtle and overt prejudice, cultural differences, and her parents’ sacrifices, have contemporary relevance. Readers will also admire her sense of

adventure, yearning for education, feminist sentiments, and tenacity in living independently.

A nuanced and inspiring adventure centering on a valiant tween. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)

A Season for Fishin’: A Fish Fry Tradition

Courtney, Pamela | Illus. by Toni D. Chambers Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.) | $18.99

May 20, 2025 | 9780374390907

A large extended Black family introduces a youngster to a longstanding Louisiana tradition.

The protagonist—affectionately referred to as Cher by the rest of the family—is thrilled for Fish Fry Friday. “Sister Wind brushes curtains against my cheek,” and “Ol’ Sun peeks, then winks at me” as the child awakens and gets ready to go fishing at Cane River Lake with Papere. Cher has GreatPere’s cane pole (“He won beaucoup contests with this pole,” notes Papere), but a successful day’s fishing also requires the child to stay quiet—a difficult task on such a thrilling occasion. Still, Cher patiently waits until…triumph! “Not just one catch, / a whole batch of bream for Mamere.” Alas, twirling in excitement, Cher spills the bucket of fish, which flop into the lake. But, as Cher and readers both learn, Fish Fry Friday isn’t just about the food that Mamere prepares. The “hush in the water,” the chatter of kinfolk—these are all the things that Cher is proudly a part of. Simultaneously classic and contemporary, Chambers’ serene digital illustrations emulate pastel brushes, drawing readers into the setting and pairing well with Courtney’s text, rich with dialect and flavored with onomatopoeia. The tale closes with an author’s note and a glossary of words of French origin commonly used in Louisiana. A celebration of those things that nourish us most: food, family, and fishing. (Picture book. 3-7)

Fore more by Ben Clanton, visit Kirkus online.

Just One Owl

Crimi, Carolyn | Illus. by Janie Bynum | Holiday House (32 pp.) | $15.99 | October 28, 2025

9780823459650 | Series: I Like To Read

Noticing happy pairs all around, solitary Owl longs for a friend.

Wide­eyed Owl perches on a slender tree branch. “Two squirrels [sit] nearby. Two squirrels. Just one owl.” Gliding away, Owl wonders, “Where is a friend to talk to?” Owl comes across more duos: leaves, deer, and even stars. But always, “just one owl.” Crimi brings the tale to a funny, unexpected, but deeply satisfying and sweet conclusion as Owl spots a pair of eyes in the dark and finds a pal at last. Repetition and the use of contrast (“Two leaves. Two deer. ‘One owl,’ said Owl’”), as well as slight variations in Owl’s dialogue (“Where is a friend to fly with?” “Where is a friend to play with?”), will build confidence among emergent readers navigating the inconsistencies of the English language—in particular, the phonics­defying phrase “One owl.” Owl’s final encounter before the story’s end (“Two big. Two smiles”) practically demands a homophone lesson around the words too, two, and to. Bynum’s expressive cartoon art pairs well with the text and layout, resulting in a tale that works equally well as a bedtime or naptime read­aloud. In fact, pre­readers will point to pages and recite the text as if reading it. Simple and engaging. (phonics features) (Beginning reader picture book. 3-5)

Thank You, Old Oak

Crow-Miller, Britt | Illus. by Amy SchimlerSafford | Barefoot Books (32 pp.) | $17.99 August 26, 2025 | 9798888596579

she crashes to the ground, causing Owl, who lives in her trunk, to take flight. A dozen squirrels assemble and thank Old Oak for the “acorns, leaf buds, and catkins” that she had supplied. “An eclipse of moths” and many bright butterflies express their appreciation for the homes the tree provided. Rabbits, deer, bears, possum, and acorn weevils pay tribute, joined by wild turkeys and other assorted birds who create “a symphony of crowing, whistling, and lively trills.” But even after falling, Old Oak still has a crucial role to play as creatures find a home in her downed trunk (known as a nurse log); as the book closes, a new generation of seedlings spring up amid the light pouring through the breached canopy. Schimler­Safford’s colorful, stylized, mixed­media art emphasizes textures: striated owl feathers, squirrels’ brindled fur, and, especially, the rough oak bark, set against yellow, green, purple, and orange leaves and flowers. The final pages provide information on the importance of oaks, their life spans, the nurturing work of nurse logs, and how to read tree rings. An accurate presentation of forest ecology mingles with anthropomorphized forest creatures, who gather with conscious gratitude to celebrate Old Oak’s countless contributions to their lives.

An arboreal appreciation, told with sensitive prose and detailed illustrations. (Informational picture book. 6-8)

The World’s Wonders: Ready-To-Read Level 2

Cruz, Gloria | Illus. by Clarice Elliott Simon Spotlight (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 16, 2025 | 9781665973274

Series: Kids Around the World

The fall of a mighty tree is an epochal event, but not a sad one.

After flourishing for over 400 years, Old Oak is understandably tired, and one morning,

A whirlwind tour of prominent landmarks worldwide, both natural and manufactured. Giving future world travelers a good start on their bucket lists, this tally of tourist destinations begins

with archeological sites such as the 13,000 ­mile­long Great Wall of China and the pyramids in Egypt. Cruz goes on to cover distinctive modern structures like Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper and finishes with the Grand Canyon and three other natural wonders. For all its brevity, the commentary generally conveys a good sense of each entry’s backstory and what makes it worth seeing—whether to look for moonbows at Victoria Falls, marvel from the air at ancient Nazca geoglyphs in Peru, or imagine what the Parthenon might have looked like in its glorious heyday. Readers inspired to find out more about any of the 13 highlighted sites may be disappointed by the lack of leads at the end, but an appended simple building project using glue and Popsicle sticks does add a hands­ on element. Capped by a bulletin board hung with snapshots and memorabilia, Elliott’s cartoon illustrations add a mix of scenes featuring visitors diverse of age, race, and culture with schematic diagrams and pulled­back views to convey broader perspectives. Highlight-reel tourism that’s reasonably inclusive and informative. (glossary) (Nonfiction. 6-8)

Berry Parker Doesn’t Catch Crushes

Davis, Tanita S. | Harper/HarperCollins (336 pp.) | $18.99 | September 16, 2025

9780063284791

A 12­year­old swims against the tide of her friends, who are obsessed with crushes, while she navigates a shifting relationship with her mother.

Beryl “Berry” Parker has an unconventional relationship with her mother. She’s lived with her surgical nurse dad full­time since she was 3; her mother manages a “giant resort hotel” near South Lake Tahoe, many hours’ drive away. Berry spends three weeks every August getting

reacquainted with her mother, all the while secretly hoping they can be reunited as a family. But this summer, Berry is dismayed to learn that her mom wants to follow a man she’s involved with to England, where he has a new job. Berry’s relationship with her best friend, Lia, feels distant—Lia is obsessed with their classmate Miguel, and she switched to French class without telling Berry. Now Berry, who only signed up for Latin because Lia wanted to take it, feels left behind. In fact, a lot of her friends are changing, and crushes seem to be the culprit. This emotionally intelligent novel will resonate with readers who have experienced shifting relationship dynamics. Berry is a compelling protagonist, and Davis portrays the arc of her growth authentically. The author cleverly uses colors to evoke artistic Berry’s different moods and her perceptions of how she and others are feeling (wearing a tangerine tank top, Berry expresses “fizzy warmth and happiness”). Berry and other central characters are Black. An introspective, insightful look at the uncomfortable changes of early adolescence. (Fiction. 9-13)

Home for Margaret

Davy, Denise | Illus. by Bérengère Delaporte Groundwood (32 pp.) | $19.99 October 8, 2025 | 9781773067766

A blueprint for compassion in action.

It’s a frigid day in Cherry Hill Forest; powdery drifts blanket the ground, migrating geese honk overhead, and Emma and her mom, a social worker, stroll along a secluded trail. Emma stumbles upon a camping tent much like those she’s seen in other parks. A woman emerges, and the trio exchange niceties before Emma asks her visibly chilled neighbor, “Don’t you get cold?” Margaret’s affirmative answer prompts mother and daughter to act, but when Mom’s outreach efforts to neighborhood shelters yield few solutions, Emma takes matters into her own hands.

Emptying her coin bank, she assembles a kit of essentials and, later, prepares a plate of Christmas dinner for Margaret, learning over a shared meal more about the experiences that have discouraged the woman from seeking placement in a shelter. Emma and her mother listen attentively, attuned to their own privilege; by the time winter arrives again, the pair have identified a potential new home for their friend, a gesture borne from informed empathy. Necessarily narrow in scope, this text offers a jumping­off point for further dialogue. Canadian journalist Davy offers a frank, age­appropriate introduction to housing insecurity, broaching complex systemic realities with digestible tenderness. Delaporte’s appealing art, too, softens the challenging content without minimizing its impact. An author’s note provides additional actionable context for the true story on which the book is based. Mom and Margaret are light­skinned; Emma is tan­skinned.

An effective conversation starter. (Picture book. 5-8)

A Summer of Dragonflies

Deen, Natasha | DCB Young Readers (244 pp.) | $14.95 paper | September 13, 2025 9781770868007

Twelve­year­old Gupta “Guppie” Persaud is the outlier in her family of outgoing Guyanese Canadians living in Calgary, Alberta. She’s bookish and friendless and barely speaks in public. Her sole companions are the imaginary dragonflies that silently guide and encourage her. Faced with the prospect of a yearlong move to New York with her parents and brothers, Guppie finds her anxiety manifesting as a frightening dragon only she can see. Inspired by a teacher’s advice, Guppie draws up a checklist of heroic qualities in characters from books and sets herself the task of acquiring them. But over the course of their road trip, Guppie discovers that

becoming a hero and standing up to that dragon might be harder than she thought. Can she really become “Gupta the Brave” if she’s hiding from her “so cheap, it’s embarrassing” parents the fact that she got her brothers involved in a social media contest to win coveted cell phones? The brisk pace falters in the middle, and an abrupt transformation at the end feels unconvincing, but Deen’s engaging tale explores finding courage and embracing challenges, as well as noting the difference between hearing and listening. Guppy, with her wry voice and sarcastic commentary, is a likable narrator; readers will become invested in her troubles. The Persauds’ strong bond shines through in their amusing banter and the siblings’ reactions to their mother’s tall tales and overprotective nature.

An entertaining take on the hero’s journey, with well-developed characters on a road trip to remember. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Star

The Stolen Songbird

Eagle, Judith | Illus. by Jo Rioux Walker US/Candlewick (288 pp.) | $18.99 December 2, 2025 | 9781536242683

A young girl, a pet rabbit, a best friend, a postwar London setting, and a puzzling mystery animate and entertain in Eagle’s latest. Caro Monday, 12, lives in London with her mother, Jacinta, who’s famous for her whistling, and her second mum, Jacinta’s partner, Veronica “Ronnie” Rudd, who owns the pub where they live. Caro is happy. She has her white­and­ginger rabbit, His Nibs; her best friend, Horace Braithwaite, who aspires to be the next Yves Saint Laurent; and the Rubbles, an abandoned area that’s “half bomb site, half junkyard, full of stuff to build with, and no grown­ups to bother you.” The two are outsiders—white­presenting Caro for having two mums and Horace for being

Black and Bajan. But when Jacinta fails to return from an overseas whistling tour (not the first time she’s gone missing) and Ronnie’s sister up north needs help, Caro ends up staying with the detested Gam, or Great­Aunt Mary, who raised Jacinta until she ran away at 16. Arriving at Gam’s house with her few possessions, Caro finds the imperious Gam as awful as she’d imagined. While unpacking, Caro discovers a small painting of a bird hidden in Mum’s old suitcase—a painting that turns out to be by an old master, and stolen to boot. 1950s London comes to life in the evocative descriptions and Rioux’s utterly charming, full­page illustrations. The twisty plot and taut, assured writing deliver a story that immediately engages. Assured and atmospheric: a winner. (Mystery. 8-12)

Dinky the Tinysaur

Edkins Willis, Maggie | Beach Lane/ Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) | $19.99 October 7, 2025 | 9781665957960

Lofty expectations lead to dinosauric disappointment. The siblings at the heart of this tale aren’t like other kids. Other children, the pair scoff, dream pedestrian dreams, fantasizing about pet unicorns and personal dragons; we, they boast, yearn for a Tinysaur, a precious, pint­size creature that’s almost certainly outside the bounds of paleontological reality. But miraculously, when the Dino Adoption Fair rolls through town, they’re in luck! One such critter peers timidly from her enclosure, a cardboard box with the totally reassuring, not­suspicious­at­all label “100% Definitely a Tinysaur.” Cue the delightful montage that captures life with Dinky: trips to the beach, bike rides, and games of dress­up. Everything is enhanced by the Tinysaur’s presence until one day, Dinky transforms, no longer a teeny Tinysaur, but a behemoth. Disappointed by this surprising development but loving Dinky all the

same, the kids grapple with what it really takes to cultivate unconditional friendship. Edkins Willis’ first­person account offers sweet, light insight into what it feels like to set expectations— and see them upended. Her narrative underscores the value of adaptability and acceptance in the face of change, and her art lends an accessible, authentically childlike aesthetic to the effort. Extensive details in the artwork, including endpapers evocative of a kid­assembled collage, lend a whimsical touch. The protagonists have light­tan skin, and one sibling uses a wheelchair; secondary characters are relatively diverse. A quirky balm for life’s minor letdowns. (Picture book. 4-8)

Hopeful Heroes

Engle, Margarita | Illus. by Juliet Menéndez Godwin Books (48 pp.) | $18.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781250313942

Well­known and potentially less familiar Latin American artists, scientists, and more step into the spotlight in this companion volume to Bravo! (2017).

In a brief introduction, Engle adds intent behind this “brief sampler of poems” on “independent thinkers who serve as role models for determination or creativity.” Surveying the Americas, the author considers figures from eras as far back as the 15th century—see the fierce poem “Proud” on Anacaona, the brave leader of the Taíno people—to contemporary times. Historical trailblazers such as the revolutionist Simón Bolívar and chroniclers Martín de la Cruz and Juan Badiano stand beside the athletic might of Cuban Olympic winner Ramón Fonst Segundo

Short biographical notes at the end offer a few more clues for readers to explore further on their own. Menéndez’s watercolor artwork shines throughout each hero’s double­page spread, depicting these immense figures in bold form against mostly monochromatic backgrounds of warm colors.

Worthy songs of praise for Latine legends. (Collective biography/ picture-book poetry. 8-12)

Range (Adapted for Young Readers): How Exploring Your Interests Can Change the World

>>> and renowned soccer player Pelé. About half of the featured heroes are women, including the Indigenous Peruvian resistance leader Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua and wartime healer Mariana Grajales Cuello. Each vaguely biographical poem amounts to a few stanzas, ranging from the sublime—see “Courageous,” a powerful ode to modern Indigenous environmentalists—to the perfunctory, like in “Movie Star” for Juano Hernández: “Many years later, in 1949, I receive / a Golden Globe nomination for my role / as the star of Intruder in the Dust, a movie.”

9780593624036

A young readers’ adaptation of Epstein’s adult title, which made a strong counterargument to the notion that early hyperspecialization is the best path to success.

The 2019 original dismantled the general theory that world­class professionals must be trained

Lofty expectations lead to dinosauric disappointment.

DINKY THE TINYSAUR

Epstein, David | Adapt. by Catherine S. Frank Illus. by Berat Pekmezci | Viking (208 pp.) $18.99 | September 16, 2025 |

THE KIRKUS Q&A: G.F. MILLER

Why this children’s author believes middle-grade readers are the perfect audience for romance fiction.

BY ILANA BENSUSSEN EPSTEIN

“THERE’S A REAL BEAUTY beneath how vicious they can be,” says children’s author G.F. Miller. She’s speaking about 14 ­year­ old girls, and how she balances the darkness and joy of adolescence in the voices of her characters. Miller’s latest outing for the age group is What If You Fall For Me First?, a Pygmalion ­inspired middle­grade romance. The novel follows Sofia and Holden as they stumble their way through the age­ old unlikely love story of quiet girl meets rebel guy. A familiar tale it may be, but, as Miller explains, “Everything is fresh to young readers.” We spoke to the author over Zoom from her home in Chandler, Arizona, to learn more about executing the genre for a middle­grade audience. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The romance genre is generally associated with YA and adult readers. What’s your perspective on writing love stories for a middle-grade audience?

There was never a time in my life when I was more interested in reading about romance and relationships than when I was in sixth or seventh grade. As an age group, middle-grade readers know that something’s bubbling, and it’s right outside their reach. You wait your whole life for your turn to get in on this thing—being part of a couple with someone else. In a way, you’re at the very beginning of that romance journey. But in another way,

you’ve seen it in the adult world, and you’ve played house when you were a little kid, and when you hit 11, 12, 13, you’re really interested in how it works.

But because it’s an adult and YA genre, there’s a lot of content that kids just aren’t ready for. Inevitably, that means reading about people who are older than you. I’ve been reading YA for a long time now, and the protagonists are always 17 or 18. Occasionally you’ll find a 16-year-old. The content of those books about 18-year-olds has become more and more and more mature, I’d say, and it’s left behind some of those 11-, 12-, and 13-year-

old girls who really want to read about and imagine themselves in these scenarios in a safe way. Most of us don’t really want to experiment with sex or dating at that age, but we’re really interested in thinking about it and pretending. Romance that’s geared toward that age group is a genre that really fills that gap. It helps them think through what relationships and friendships and romance can be like, without actually having to take risks in the real world before they’re ready.

When you were 13, what were you reading? How did you approach romance literature when you were that age?

Oh man, where do I start? I was a huge fan of Lois Duncan. She wrote paranormal YA with light romance way back in the

day, and I discovered those books in my school library when I was in junior high, and I read the covers off them. Then, the summer between seventh and eighth grade, my best friend and I would walk to the library, check out stacks of Harlequin romance novels, and just sit and read them. It didn’t take very many before I had the formula down, so then we would play games like, I bet I could, without looking, turn to the page where they kiss first. Or Find a fight—go! Some of those novels are pretty sweet, and some of them get a little spicier than you’d expect when you’re 13, and then you’re like, Where should I hide this? [Laughs.] Right around that time, too, I started reading Jane Austen. I decided I was going to read her books out loud to my mom. She would be in the kitchen doing stuff

and wasn’t really interested, I don’t think, but she was like, “OK, you can read it to me.” I remember sitting in the kitchen reading Austen with my mother at that age.

I was thinking about Austen, because it seems like a lot of the ways to build tension and chemistry in a middle-grade romance follow the same rulebook of restraint that we find in Regency romances. Junior high is the perfect place to set things for that kind of tension, because every look is so loaded, and there’s so much going on in your mind, like, OK, he looked at me like that; what could that mean? Every slight touch is mind-blowing—you brush someone’s hand, and it’s a big deal! You

just don’t have that in adult romance these days, but that’s part of what we love about Jane Austen, that there was so much structure that she had to work within.

Junior high is also perfect for the wild antics of the classic ’90s rom-com. Things that are absolutely ridiculous when you put grown-ups in the situation—like How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days ; you watch that movie and it’s somewhat entertaining, but it feels absolutely ridiculous. But make them both eighth graders and it’s perfect; it makes perfect sense.

This book exists in the same world as your previous book, Not If You Break Up With Me First , in which Sofia and Holden

There was never a time when I was more interested in reading about romance and relationships than when I was in sixth or seventh grade.

played supporting roles. How did you land on them as the protagonists for this installment?

I landed on Holden first. In the previous book, Holden was just kind of classically skeezy; he wasn’t acting right. The funny thing was that all the adults who read the book were like, That kid! I hated that kid!, and all the junior high girls who read it were like, That guy? He was just a normal junior high guy. That made me really curious. I wanted to explore a little more of what was going on with him and why he was behaving the way he was. As I dug into who he was and what was going on with him, it became clear that Sofia—who was this character who always

What If You Fall for Me First? Miller, G.F. Aladdin | 368 pp. | $19.99 June 10, 2025 | 9781665966436

insisted on seeing the best in everyone—was the one person at school who would draw out the best parts in him.

It’s interesting to hear you describe the different responses you get from adult readers and young readers. I was struck by how natural and accurate the voices of your teen characters feel.

Madeleine L’Engle said, “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” She described this process of reaching back into our own experiences, being able to access the thoughts of our younger selves. I remember so viscerally feeling like, I hate everything about myself. Those things don’t change. Kids still go through the stage of feeling all that; if anything, it’s much worse now with social media. I think it can be cathartic for us grownups to read and remember those things. A lot of us are still carrying around some scars from junior high—the things that people made fun of you for, or the things you felt really self-conscious about. I still, to this day, could name the exact things I got teased about in seventh grade. I hope for kids reading my books, they’ll help them take it all a little less seriously. To be able to laugh at ourselves relieves so much of the pressure we feel to get it exactly right.

Ilana Bensussen Epstein is a writer and filmmaker in Boston.

SEEN AND HEARD

Children’s Book by Jalen Hurts Coming in 2026

This is the first book by the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback.

NFL star Jalen Hurts will make his literary debut with a children’s picture book.

Flamingo Books will publish the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback’s Better Than a Touchdown, illustrated by Nneka Myers, next year, the press announced in a news release. It calls the book “an empowering story about friendship, the power of teamwork, and achieving goals together.”

Hurts played college football at the University of Alabama and the University of Oklahoma before being drafted by the Eagles in 2020. In February, he led Philadelphia to a national championship, beating the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl, 40-22. He was named the Super Bowl MVP for his performance in the game, scoring three touchdowns.

Better Than a Touchdown, Flamingo says, tells the story of a boy named Jalen, who is excited to try out for his school’s football team, then devastated when he learns the program has been cut. He and his friends join forces to save their football dreams. The press says that the book “carries a message we can all learn from: that by working together, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.”

Hurts announced the news of his book in an Instagram video, saying, “It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of love put into this book. It’s very heartfelt, because without the lessons learned, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Better Than a Touchdown is slated for publication on March 10, 2026.—M.S.

WITH BACKPACKS RATS

For more celebrity picture books, visit Kirkus online.

Jalen Hurts

Book to Screen

HBO Casts Lead in Harry Potter Series

Dominic McLaughlin will play the boy wizard in the new adaptation.

The upcoming HBO series adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books has found its lead.

The series will star Dominic McLaughlin as Harry Potter, Warner Bros. Discovery, the owner of HBO, announced in a news release. Other stars include Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger and Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley. All three actors are newcomers.

Rowling’s bestselling seven-book series of children’s fantasy novels launched in 1997 with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and concluded in 2007 with

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows . The novels follow Harry, a boy wizard, and his friends as they navigate life at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The novels were adapted into a series of eight films, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Emma Watson as Hermione, and Rupert Grint as Ron; all were box-office hits.

Francesca Gardiner and Mark Mylod, two of the series’ executive producers, said in a statement, “After an extraordinary search led by casting directors Lucy Bevan and Emily Brockmann, we are delighted to announce we have found our Harry, Hermione, and Ron. The talent of these three unique actors is wonderful to behold, and we cannot wait for the world to witness their magic together onscreen. We would like to thank all the tens of thousands of children who auditioned. It’s been a real pleasure to discover the plethora of young talent out there.”—M.S.

Dominic McLaughlin

For reviews of the Harry Potter books, visit Kirkus online.

starting from childhood; in this work, Epstein and veteran adapter Frank directly address younger audiences feeling the pressure to make career decisions as early as possible. Though golfer Tiger Woods and Hungarian chess players the Polgár sisters do show that focused instruction from early on can lead to stellar performances (Woods was handed a club when he was 7 months old, for instance), others, including tennis star Roger Federer, painter Vincent van Gogh, Nintendo video game designer Gunpei Yokoi, and Girl Scouts of the USA CEO Frances Hesselbein, made false starts. Such people explored a range of interests and occupations before settling on one, or for various reasons they turned out to be late bloomers. “Switchers are often winners,” the co­authors write, urging readers to take the time to look for a “match quality” between their passions and their actual abilities. A section touting the advantages of learning methods that encourage classroom students to make thoughtful connections rather than relying on less flexible procedures adds to the academic spin of this edition, as do the discussion questions at each chapter’s end. The cast of profiled figures is racially diverse. Readable and persuasive. (afterword, glossary, notes, index) (Nonfiction. 11-18)

Kirkus Star Keeper Chance and the Dubious Doppelgänger

Evanovich, Alex | Simon & Schuster (336 pp.)

$18.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9781665960076

Series: Evil Villains International League, 2

A secret agent who can look like anyone leads a young villain in training and his questionably evil associates on a merry chase. It seems that Showboater—a sequin­shedding Elvis impersonator with the superpower of going unnoticed

(“the more flamboyant he was, the more he disappeared”)—has vanished, along with a certain very important file. Now, the rival Evil Villains International League and the Heroic Elite Reconnaissance Organization are anxious to get him, or at least the file, back. As it turns out, they aren’t the only ones. Tongue resolutely in cheek, Evanovich pits 16 ­year­old E.V.I.L. trainee Keeper Chance, his technologically adept best friend, Toby, and other parties (loyal allies or otherwise) against agent­for­hire Ditto. But Ditto is frustratingly able to stay a step ahead, thanks to both his own “doppelgänging” ability and a supportive trio of teenagers who can manipulate time in various ways. The ensuing hilarious misadventures add to the pleasure of watching the antics of superheroes with evocative monikers like Chaos and Joy Sucker (though the most fearsomely powerful of all is Toby’s mom) while contemplating the curiously narrow ethical gap between the tale’s villains and heroes. Better yet, having strung readers along through nearly two episodes about the exact nature of Keeper’s own mysterious superpower, the author finally sneaks in a credible suggestion toward the end. The cast largely presents white. Super sly, super fun. (Superhero adventure. 10-14)

Mei Mei get away with it? No, Mei Mei’s guilty conscience makes enjoying Ama’s cake impossible, especially with Mimi’s accusing stares. Mei Mei runs off to hide in the closet. When the youngster finally comes clean, Ama reveals that she has a talent for fixing things. She points out that “every patch and every repair tells a story.” Her favorite cup now has a rich story to tell. Fang’s digitally colored pencil artwork uses an innovative mix of compositions to advance the narrative’s emotional arc. Mei Mei’s vivid imaginings (“What if Ama yells at me? What if Ama kicks me out?”) are depicted in panels, while well­placed close­ups and dramatic perspectives capture the child’s inner turmoil with cinematic flair; an especially effective scene intercuts Mimi’s silently judgmental face with images of the cake. Laudably, Fang makes room for both laugh­ out­loud humor and moments of genuine empathy; rife with homey details, her softly rounded illustrations exude warmth. A common childhood experience, conveyed with an uncommon mix of sensitivity, mirth, and heart. (Picture book. 4-8)

Lion in Bed

Farrell, Darren | Illus. by Maya Tatsukawa | Dial Books (40 pp.) | $18.99 October 21, 2025 | 9780593857281

Broken

Fang, X. | Tundra Books (48 pp.) | $18.99 October 14, 2025 | 9781774882009

After accidentally breaking a relative’s treasured possession, a child worries about facing the consequences. While playing with Mimi the cat, Mei Mei, a youngster of Chinese descent, bumps a table and smashes a cup belonging to Ama (Grandmother). Mei Mei runs off, terrified. But Ama isn’t mad; she blames the incident on Mimi and sets about serving tea. Will

A lion does everything he can to get his cub out of bed. Papa Lion has a lot in store for his day with Little Lion. But Little Lion doesn’t want to get up, no matter what Papa Lion suggests—breakfast in bed, a surprise party in bed, even New York City in bed! With each proposal, a group of big cats arrives to fill their adorable little house to overflowing. Nothing works, because it turns out that all Little Lion wants is to snuggle with Papa Lion. Papa Lion appears to be a single father, but the pair are surrounded by extended family and

Kirkus Star

community. At times the rhyme and meter work well, giving the text a wonderful musical rhythm when read aloud, but it’s inconsistent, sometimes vanishing with a thud and disrupting the flow. The off­and­on rhymes are clearly intentional, but the meter is also often awkward. Nevertheless, Tatsukawa’s full­page illustrations are incredibly cute and lively, depicting a bevy of adorable tigers, lynxes, cheetahs, and other cats in gentle colors. Each spread is full of funny details (and cats) for readers to find. A sweet and funny reminder to slow down and enjoy the little things. (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Star

Dead Ends!: Flukes, Flops & Failures That Sparked Medical Marvels

Fitzharris, Lindsey & Adrian Teal Illus. by Adrian Teal | Bloomsbury (160 pp.) $19.99 | October 14, 2025 | 9781547615025

In the vein of their Plague-Busters! (2023), Fitzharris and Teal round up wild examples of medical trial and error.

Arguing that “success and failure are often two sides of the same coin,” the coauthors demonstrate that mistakes have often resulted in groundbreaking medical breakthroughs. A 19thcentury surgeon unable to patch up a hole in a patient’s side was afforded the rare opportunity to observe digestion up close; deaths from the first blood transfusions led to the discovery of blood types. Fitzharris and Teal present fascinating content, writing in an easy­to ­digest, conversational tone while occasionally slipping in some gallows humor. The promise of grotesque medical tales will lure readers, but the authors also make some profound, even moving conclusions: Failure is a key part of learning, and medicine has come a long way over the years. The material is

organized by body parts, with delightfully punny chapter titles: “Racking Your Brains,” “No Guts, No Glory.” “A Taste of Their Own Medicine” sections between chapters are ripe with tales of dark irony and people getting hoisted by their own petards. Teal’s black­ and­white images use pops of bright red to spice up the visual gags and caricaturelike portraits of scientists and doctors. The subversive, gory humor is transgressive and fun for young readers without being so graphic as to disturb any but the most sensitive. Extensive backmatter will reward those with the guts to delve deeper. Macabre, madcap, and surprisingly wholesome in its positivity. (selected sources, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 9-14)

The Clock

Fong, Pam | Union Square Kids (40 pp.) $18.99 | October 14, 2025 | 9781454955009

A magnificent timepiece witnesses a train station’s transformation into an art museum in this blithely told tale.

Chronicling the true story of the

Gare d’Orsay’s renovation into the Musée d’Orsay, Fong focuses on the station’s only permanent resident: a clock. In Paris at the turn of the 20th century, the elegant clock is charged with keeping everything on schedule. At a time when few people could afford watches, “the clock [keeps] a station humming, and the world moving.” Yet as decades pass, the station is abandoned and, with it, the

clock. It could easily have been reduced to rubble if people hadn’t been dedicated to saving it. “There were those who remembered the clock…. Who admired the clock for withstanding time.” Under their guidance, the clock—never anthropomorphized—is repaired, refurbished, and put on display as the train station finds new purpose as a museum. Surprisingly poetic, even philosophical, language peppers the pages: “This clock keeps a world­ class art museum humming… and stops the world from moving.” The clock and station are rendered with pride and dignity; Fong captures soaring steel and glass arches and striking facades, though human figures, who diversify over time, are drawn with less personality than their surroundings. Backmatter offers additional details about the Gare d’Orsay and the clock; no bibliography or further reading is included. A joyful traipse into the past. (Informational picture book. 4-7)

Howdy! Welcome to the Grand Ole Opry!

Frans, Emily | Illus. by Susanna Chapman | Abrams (32 pp.) | $19.99 September 16, 2025 | 9781419774249

Shout “Howdy!” from the hallowed halls of one of the cornerstones of country music: the Grand Ole Opry. It’s time for your grand entrance! A smiling, personified Opry House welcomes readers inside to perform among a star­studded cast of country music legends: Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, DeFord Bailey, and many more. Grab your backstage pass, enter

Makes room for both laugh-out-loud humor and moments of genuine empathy.

through the special entrance just for performers, and get swept up in the whirlwind of performers preparing for the big show. Check out your special “Into the Circle” dressing room, reserved just for debut Opry performers. Finally, it’s showtime! Take your spot onstage, marked with a circle of wood from the Ryman Auditorium (the original location of the Grand Ole Opry). The curtain is coming up, and away you go! Zippy second­person prose narrated by the Opry House gives the story some pep, but Chapman’s eye­catching illustrations take center stage. Photos, cut paper, watercolors, and gouache are layered in collage for a dazzling, pop­art effect. Illustrated figures are racially diverse, while overlaid photos show a variety of actual Opry performers, almost all of them white. This book will be of most interest to Tennesseans and those already interested in the genre, but newcomers will find much to enjoy as well. A toe-tappin’ tour of Opry history that will hit the right notes for curious music fans. (more information on the Grand Ole Opry) (Informational picture book. 5-8)

King Winter’s Birthday

Freedland, Jonathan | Illus. by Emily Sutton Pushkin Children’s Books (40 pp.) | $19.95 October 7, 2025 | 9781782694670

Hooray! It’s King Winter’s birthday!

King Winter wants only one thing: to celebrate with his siblings, all monarchs devoted to the various seasons, whom he hasn’t seen since childhood. They convene at King Winter’s home to feast, lovingly depicted in a warm, vibrant spread full of food and flora. With all the seasons in one place, however, chaos ensues outside the icy fortress. Leaves and plants quickly bloom and wither away, confused animals are unsure when to hibernate, and conflicting weather patterns cause both too much water in some parts of the world and not enough in others.

After realizing that their reunion is the cause of the pandemonium, the siblings quickly disperse and things go back to normal. Though King Winter realizes that he and his loved ones can’t be together, he’s comforted by the memories of their gathering. Inspired by an original fairy tale written by author Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz while fleeing persecution from Nazi Germany, Freedland tells a straightforward but complex story that speaks to both the inevitable changing of the seasons and the extenuating life circumstances that keep many families apart despite their love for each other; this is a muchneeded tale in today’s world. Sutton’s intricate art showcases vast landscapes, affected by the monarchs’ celebration. King Winter and Queen Spring are pale­skinned; King Summer and Queen Autumn are dark­skinned.

A modern fairy tale that speaks to our unsettled times. (information about Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, photograph, illustration from Boschwitz’s unpublished manuscript) (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Star

Giselle

Retold by Charlotte Gastaut | Illus. by Charlotte Gastaut | Trans. by EdwigeRenée Dro | Tate Publishing (44 pp.) $26 | September 2, 2025 | 9781849769488

Gastaut transforms the classic ballet into a visual feast, creating a book that dances as gracefully as its tragic protagonist.

Giselle, a peasant girl, falls for a nobleman disguised as a villager, only to discover that he’s engaged to another. Her heartbreak leads to madness and death,

but the story continues as she joins the supernatural Wilis—vengeful spirits of betrayed women who compel men to dance to their doom. When her former lover faces this fate, Giselle’s forgiveness saves him from the ghostly ballet. Newcomers will be mesmerized by both the timeless themes and Gastaut’s innovative presentation. Her retelling, translated from French, is faithful to the source material, but her innovative paper engineering makes this version distinctive. Her technical mastery transforms storytelling into something as much about movement as narrative—curtains billow across the page in gossamer transparency, flowers appear to sway and bloom, and delicate clouds drift through the spirit world as intricate paper cuts create exquisite details that draw readers into Giselle’s world. The palette shifts from warm village scenes to cool, ghostly blues as the story progresses from romance to betrayal to supernatural redemption. Each page turn reveals new visual surprises through clever use of die­ cuts and overlapping translucent pages. The physical act of turning pages becomes part of the dance itself, with readers uncovering hidden elements and watching scenes transform before their eyes. Characters have paper­white skin. A stunning, timeless marriage of story and craft. (Picture book. 6-9)

Rain and the Reading Horse

Gianferrari, Maria | Illus. by Hannah Salyer Clarion/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99 October 7, 2025 | 9780063257252

Equine therapy takes center stage in this tale of a youngster who needs a little help learning to read.

An empathetic tale for anxious readers everywhere.

RAIN AND THE READING HORSE

Due to a new school program, tan­skinned Rain will be reading to a horse regularly. Trouble is, she’s never read to one before, and at first it isn’t easy. She gives it her all, but soon enough her heart quickens, her neck flushes red, and the words get stuck in her throat. Fortunately, Rain’s been paired with a gentle, nonjudgmental creature named Snow. True, in the early days, Rain spends more time mucking out Snow’s stall and brushing her coat than reading. Yet each time she tries, Snow is there. On some days, Rain doesn’t read at all; on others, she makes a concerted effort. By the end, girl and horse have worked up enough of a rapport for Rain to finally read without worry or fear. Gianferrari and Salyer marvelously capture the stop ­and­go nature of stress and anxiety. Salyer’s illustrations, made from a combination of colored pencils and chalk pastels, have a tactile quality. Meanwhile, the quiet patience of a horse as listener is perfectly echoed in Gianferrari’s text, with its repeated phrase of “Ears twitching, tail swishing.” Backmatter includes links to national therapy horse programs. Read this book to a horse, a dog, a cat, a sibling, anyone! An empathetic tale for anxious readers everywhere. (author’s and illustrator’s notes, websites for national horse therapy programs) (Picture book. 4-7)

The Tree That Was a World

Goldewijk, Yorick | Illus. by Jeska Verstegen Trans. by Laura Watkinson | Eerdmans (88 pp.) $18.99 | October 14, 2025 | 9780802856500

An ancient tree is home to a menagerie of creatures grappling with existential questions in this quirky collection of interconnected vignettes. Each chapter focuses on a different animal inhabiting the towering tree, from a spider who can’t bring himself to eat the flies caught in his perfect web to a despondent barn swallow searching for

something she’s lost but can’t identify (“Well, emptiness apparently weighs quite a bit”). Goldewijk’s characters spend most of their time complaining, philosophizing about their perceived insignificance, or desperately trying to convince others of their importance. A lovelorn pike shares a small water hole with another pike but doesn’t communicate its feelings until the very end; Annie the aphid struggles with cannibalistic urges toward her siblings. The tone veers between absurdist humor and melancholy. Many of the smaller creatures meet their ends, reflecting the natural life cycle of insects rather than gratuitous darkness. Although a couple of vignettes drag on, Goldewijk maintains an engaging balance of whimsy with deep themes about self­acceptance, as when a little owl realizes, “I get to decide for myself who I am.” Verstegen’s stunning, atmospheric portraits of the creatures are by turns intimate and cosmic. Only in the final chapters do the creatures begin to find hope and connection, culminating in a community celebration. The morbid undertones of this Dutch import may not suit all readers, but those drawn to its strangeness will find genuine charm. Weird yet wonderful. (Fiction. 8-14)

Sketch

Goldstyn, Jacques | Trans. by Helen Mixter Greystone Kids (88 pp.) | $19.95 October 14, 2025 | 9781778402777

Series: Aldana Libros

An especially artistic child seeks and finds his peers. Sketch is born, well, sketchy. He’s scruffy, like a drawing’s first draft. He spends his formative years at home, exploring his world under the guidance of his loving parents. But his town prizes conformity and order, and at school, most of his teachers look askance at his unorthodox handwriting and his active imagination. Sketch finds solace in the art room, where the teacher reassures him that his art is vitally important.

Often lonely but always devoted to his craft, Sketch enters high school and draws strength from his bonds with other young artists: a muselike dancer named Flow, a shadowy silhouette called Muddy, and Doodle, an amorphous adolescent made up of squiggles. Sketch’s story celebrates the artist’s journey: a deep­seated urge to create that starts early and supersedes other pursuits, and the world’s need for that gift. Arguing that the creative drive is a talent that only grows greater when lovingly nurtured, this Canadian import, translated from French, will appeal to a broader age range than its picture­book format might suggest. Also making the case for wider readership are candid moments depicting childbirth, newborn Sketch’s nudity, and urination. Goldstyn’s characters’ nervy energy, especially Sketch’s, feels happily indebted to René Goscinny and Jean­Jacques Sempé’s endlessly playful Le Petit Nicolas. Sketch has paper­white skin; other characters vary in skin tone. A whimsical ode to prolific natural artists. (Picture book. 6-10)

Refugee: The Graphic Novel

Gratz, Alan | Illus. by Syd Fini | Graphix/ Scholastic (176 pp.) | $14.99 paper October 7, 2025 | 9781338733969

In this graphic version of Gratz’s bestselling 2017 novel, three groups of refugees in different eras face bitter hardship and persecution in the course of desperate searches for safety. Set respectively in 1938, 1994, and 2015, the accounts involve a passenger ship full of German Jews, a throwntogether group of Cubans on a leaky boat, and a bombed­out Syrian family striking out for the E.U. The original novel folded in actual experiences and, in some cases, real people, unspooling three storylines in short, interleaved

chapters; this new edition preserves that structure. It’s a tossup whether the change in format offers any real advantages. On the one hand, actually seeing expressively posed characters and the period details around them brings both the cast and the settings sharply to life, moments of crisis and terror have cinematic impact, and racial and cultural differences remain strongly present. On the other, though, because the graphic “chapters” are only three to five pages each, and all the art is done in a similar style and palette, the dozens of switches from one storyline to the next come with dizzying frequency and can’t help but impede the narrative flow. Still, after skillfully interweaving his three powerful stories together at their ends, the author urgently invites readers to contemplate their contrasts, parallels, and ever­cogent common themes. An effective adaptation, still relevant and likely to find a fresh audience. (afterword) (Graphic historical fiction. 10-13)

Pearls in the Sand: Protecting Sea Turtles in Oaxaca

Gutiérrez Hernández, Beatriz Godwin Books (40 pp.) | $18.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781250257789

A poacher turned protector teaches his grandchild about sea turtle preservation.

An Ezra Jack Keats Illustrator Honor recipient, Gutiérrez Hernández draws from her own experiences visiting Oaxacan turtle sanctuaries to craft an intimate portrait of conservation work, seen through the eyes of young Gabriela, who joins Papá Grande on nighttime beach patrols as he watches over transported “nidadas” (sets of eggs laid by turtles). The author doesn’t shy away from the challenges; when beetles destroy a nest, leaving only broken shells, the moment provides authentic emotional weight that distinguishes this tale from more sanitized nature books. Papá Grande’s transformation from turtle hunter to

“tortuguero” (turtle enthusiast) reflects the real stories of many Mexican coastal communities that shifted from exploitation to protection. The lovely gouache and colored pencil illustrations capture both the magical nocturnal world of nesting turtles and the methodical work of egg collection and hatchery maintenance. Rich blues and teals dominate the underwater scenes, while warm oranges and pinks highlight moments on the beach. The art particularly shines in depicting the four turtle species that visit Oaxaca’s coast. Extensive backmatter elevates this work beyond a simple story: A comprehensive glossary, detailed life cycle information, a map of conservation sites, an author’s note with photographs, and additional resources make it invaluable for reports or curious readers wanting deeper knowledge. A satisfying blend of storytelling and science that honors both sea turtles and the people working to save them. (glossary, life cycle information, map, author’s note, additional resources) (Picture book. 4-8)

Moonleapers

Haddix, Margaret Peterson | Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins (320 pp.) | $19.99 September 16, 2025 | 9780063392564 Series: Moonleapers, 1

In this duology opener, strange text messages and a mysterious old book lead a preteen to a startling revelation. When 12­yearold Maisie gets her first phone, she’s initially thrilled, even if it is a hand­medown from Great­Aunt Hazel. But then her parents share disappointing news: She and her family must move from Ohio to Maryland for the summer so her mother can help Hazel, who’s moved into a nursing home, while Maisie babysits her two obnoxious younger siblings. When mysterious texts begin to arrive from an unknown number containing riddles for Maisie to

solve, she’s confused and frustrated. The Guide for Moonleapers, a mysterious book her great­aunt has also left her, contains blank pages, which is just as annoying. But as Maisie slowly starts to piece together the puzzle, she discovers an incredible secret: As a moonleaper, or time traveler, Great­Aunt Hazel helped save the world by changing history— and she’s planned for Maisie to follow in her footsteps. Connecting with both the future and the past, Maisie must help change the world before time runs out for her great­aunt. Disjointed time travel episodes and overly explained plot points drag down this first installment, but Haddix’s unique talent for conveying the middle­grade voice shines through nevertheless. Main characters present white.

A twisty if slightly uneven story celebrating the power of connection. (author’s note) (Science fiction thriller. 8-12)

Bones and Berserkers: 13 True Tales of Terror From American History

Hale, Nathan | Abrams Fanfare (128 pp.) $15.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9781419773204

Series: Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales

Author Hale’s namesake—spy and Revolutionary hero Nathan Hale—huddles with compatriots beneath a gallows as they regale one another with ghoulish tales drawn from history, literature, and legend.

Hale’s latest set of Hazardous Tales begins, as it really needs to, with a cautionary note: “Are you a second grader reading way above your age level? If so, set this book down. It’s not for you.” Indeed, the book doesn’t skimp on the disturbing bits. With evocative titles like “The Demon Cat” and “The Head in the Jar” to provide at least a little warning, the author gathers a variety of terrifying tales; three involve the Jersey Devil, while one centers on a butler going bloodily berserk in a house built

Compromise and collaboration are the keys to holiday joy in this outing.

HOLLY JOLLY KITTY-CORN

by Frank Lloyd Wright. Others feature the discovery of a haunted well filled with the corpses of soldiers killed in a Civil War battle, gruesome revenge, and monsters like the Boo Hag, a skin changer who sucks blood through sleepers’ noses. All these tales, eerie as they are on their own, are cranked up into screamer territory by Hale’s two­tone illustrations, which, with indecent relish and fanatical attention to realistic detail, depict fresh and not­so­fresh corpses, a radiation victim’s rotted face, a man’s buttocks being hacked off with a sword, leering skeletons, chopped­off limbs, and creepy night creatures with big, sharp teeth. The cast of storytellers, horrified onlookers, and all­too­often mutilated victims is racially diverse. Not all true, but truly nightmarish. (bibliography) (Graphic nonfiction/ horror. 10-14)

Holly Jolly Kitty-Corn

Hale, Shannon | Illus. by LeUyen Pham Abrams (48 pp.) | $19.99 | September 23, 2025 | 9781419768798 | Series: Kitty-Corn

What’s the merriest time for a kitty­ corn? Christmastime!

Kitty is thrilled to share the holiday season with her new bestie, Unicorn. Previous books saw Kitty longing to be a unicorn and Unicorn wishing he could be a cat; together, these “kittycorns,” as they dub themselves, are determined to have the best Christmas ever. Unicorn’s favorite part of the season is the music, but his tunes put Kitty to sleep. Kitty adores making

gingerbread houses, but Unicorn’s messy creation ends up knocking over Kitty’s gingerbread village. Determined to agree on something, they decide that a tree is actually the best part of Christmas. Though Kitty prefers a smaller tree, she assumes Unicorn wants a huge one. The two attempt to decorate their unwieldy tree, with predictably messy results. Both friends are disheartened, but eventually they realize that they have plenty in common after all as they nestle together for more carols and cocoa. This latest saga relies on the ingredients that made the earlier installments pure magic: BFFs who support each other despite conflict, commentary from pals Gecko and Parakeet (who serve as a sort of Greek chorus), and kitty­ corn sweetness. In Pham’s airy illustrations, big­ eyed pink Kitty sports a unicorn’s horn, while Unicorn wears kitty cat ears. An original Christmas carol, with music, rounds out the package.

Compromise and collaboration are the keys to holiday joy in this inviting outing. (Picture book. 3-7)

Help Me Find My Hamster!

Hartman, Brooke | Illus. by Anna Süßbauer | Page Street (32 pp.) | $18.99 October 21, 2025 | 9798890033109

Readers are invited to locate a missing rodent, while encountering many other animals along the way. The unseen narrator is distraught from the very start: “I LOST MY HAMSTER! My snuggable, huggable

hamster!” But the hamster’s distinct characteristics (“fuzzy floof ears,” “nibble nubbin nose,” and “bitty brown tail”) should make it very easy to find the lost pet. Suddenly, two pink ears stick up from the edge of the page (one might even say “fuzzy flaps of floof”). The narrator joyously shouts, “MY HAMSTER!” But a page turn reveals that the ears belong to…a hippo. The narrator advises readers to back away slowly. Soon after, an extreme close­up of a nose (perhaps a “nubbin” one) has the narrator confidently shouting, “MY HAMSTER!” But instead, it belongs to…a naked mole rat. Once the joke is established, kids will have fun shouting out what animal might be next. Hartman’s narration is chatty and a bit over the top: “You’re probably starting to think I made this whole thing up. Maybe I don’t have a hamster. Maybe hamsters don’t even exist.” Pudgy, adorable animals (who look sweet even when they’re baring sharp teeth or glaring menacingly) add to the silliness. Ridiculous, participatory fun. (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Star

Xolo

November 4, 2025 | 9781646147021

The Aztec god of lightning, death, and misfortune gets a much­needed reevaluation in this wonderfully rousing retelling of humanity’s origins. After all life perishes on Earth, the gods move to revitalize the planet. Each deity claims mastery over an element. The mighty serpent god Quetzalcoatl chooses the wind; his dog­headed twin brother, Xolotl, takes lightning, hoping for a sliver of brotherly affection. “Shouldn’t my own twin notice me for once? But Quetzalcoatl never did.” Adopting an affectionate tone, Newbery Medalist Higuera frames the narration around

Higuera, Donna Barba | Illus. by Mariana Ruiz Johnson | Levine Querido (192 pp.) | $19.99

Xolo’s self­effacing voice, a prolonged plea for compassion that will reverberate with readers. When the outcast god of the Underworld threatens to prevent humanity’s return, the other deities make a temporary sacrifice by hurling themselves into a volcano. Too fearful to go through with it, Xolo finds himself ostracized, but he summons the courage to resurrect humanity, with help from his brother, who gets all the glory for their joint act. Wistful in tone, this reshaped myth skillfully deconstructs its unsung hero. With great success, Higuera explores very human issues such as self­doubt, social isolation, and the nuances of community through these larger­than­life figures; her work rings out with a powerful sense of emotive resonance. Inspired by the Codex Borgia—a pre­Columbian Aztec manuscript—Ruiz Johnson’s artwork blooms with vibrant colors, imposing characters, and evocative landscapes. A magnificent spin on a well-known Aztec legend. (author’s and illustrator’s notes) (Mythology. 7-10)

Kirkus Star

Yellow Is a Banana Himmelman, John | Abrams Appleseed (40 pp.) $16.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9781419776809

In Himmelman’s clever exploration of how young minds categorize the world, two siblings engage in a hilarious battle of semantics as they name colors and objects.

The premise is elegantly simple. Pointing to a fruit, one child insists, “That YELLOW is a banana,” while the other corrects with, “This BANANA is yellow,” launching a color­naming comedy that spirals delightfully out of control. (“This RED is an apple.” “No, that apple is RED.”) Spare, clean lines and a deliberately limited palette allow each featured hue to pop against white backgrounds. The visual storytelling shines in the characterizations of the two siblings. The younger child’s

A thoroughly researched glimpse into one of WWII’s most brutal battles.

WORLD WAR II CLOSE UP

unconventional color naming drives the older one to distraction; the elder kid’s mounting frustration is brilliantly conveyed through body language and hair, which transforms from a neat ponytail into an increasingly frazzled explosion of tangles. The bare­bones artistic approach mirrors the straightforward text, creating space for preschool humor to flourish. A funny concept book is rare; even rarer is a funny concept book that generates chortles from both adults reading it aloud and the children in the audience. Young readers will recognize the authentic sibling dynamic and giggle at the linguistic confusion, while adults will appreciate the subtle lesson about perspective and language development. The repetitive structure builds comedic momentum, culminating in a satisfying resolution when both children finally come to an agreement. The kids have skin the white of the page.

A winningly simple concept executed with precision—perfect for preschool lovers of silly wordplay. (Picture book. 3-6)

Outside

Holm, Jennifer L. | Scholastic (240 pp.)

$17.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9781546138143

A spirited 12­year­ old contends with her cloistered life after an apocalypse. Over 10 years ago, the Great Poisoning killed most humans. Razzi lives in an old mansion named the Refuge with her parents, 7­year­old brother, Bing, and a handful of other adults and children.

The kids are rarely allowed Outside, especially not since 12­year­old Ollie, a curious risk­taker, had a terrible accident and died while trying to explore. Razzi injures her knee during a game of Chase, which leads to a checkup and a serious diagnosis—she learns that she must have a heart transplant. Luckily, Refuge resident Saul is a Surgeon, and he successfully implants a greyhound’s heart into Razzi. After the surgery, Razzi feels different: Her senses of hearing and smell are keener, and foods she used to love, like chocolate, now sicken her. When Razzi makes the momentous decision to run away, she learns that the world outside the Refuge is bigger than she could ever have imagined. Holm’s adventure is riveting and appealing, featuring a relatable cast of characters and unfolding against a post­apocalyptic backdrop with zombie story vibes. Holm’s mastery of pacing and her explorations of intergenerational trauma and forgiveness resonate, ensuring that they’ll stay with readers long after the final pages. Razzi presents white, and names cue ethnic diversity in the supporting cast.

An ambitious and thrilling examination of survival, trauma, and connection. (author’s note) (Speculative thriller. 9-12)

Taking the Long Way Home

Hope, Jake | Illus. by Brian Fitzgerald Scallywag Press (32 pp.) | $18.99 August 5, 2025 | 9781836300151

W hen Uncle Jerome picks the children up from school, a trip home turns into a thrilling adventure. Usually, Daddy takes the young narrator and sister Zarah home from

school, and they all zigzag hurriedly, relying on shortcuts to make the journey as quick as possible. Uncle Jerome, however, proposes taking the “LONG way home.” Impatient Zarah’s reluctant, but as they tromp through the woods listening for crows, Uncle Jerome’s vivid imagination enlivens the trip—look, pterodactyls flying overhead! Crocodiles lurk in the river, the family spots yeti tracks, and as they creep through the tall grass, a tiger looms. Even the ice cream truck offers an opportunity to let their imaginations run wild—the strawberry sauce is surely dripping vampire bat blood! Hope’s text uses excellent sound words such as crunch, scrunch, and click clack, making this an ideal read­aloud, anchored by the refrain, “Anything can happen on the long way home.”

Fitzgerald’s illustrations depict Uncle Jerome’s visions, his dark red trench coat always shown mid­movement as it billows behind him. The narrator and Zarah have light brown skin and curly puffy black hair; their father and Uncle Jerome are darker­skinned; their mother, seen at the conclusion, is tan­skinned and orange­haired.

A playful reminder to find joy in the mundane. (Picture book. 4-8)

World War II Close Up: They Battled in Blizzards

Hopkinson, Deborah | Scholastic Focus (224 pp.) | $25.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781338882360

A soldier’s­eye view of the snowy Battle of the Bulge—“the largest single battle ever fought by the U.S. Army.” Sticking entirely to the Allied side (but consulting a great range of reports and oral histories), Hopkinson presents a kaleidoscopic view of the immense conflict, which stretched out over six weeks beginning in December of 1944 and involved (on both sides) over 1,000,000 soldiers. Voluminous backmatter joins sheaves of battlefield photos and drawings and a few schematic

maps and general comments to provide glimpses of the big picture, but rather than attempting to tell the full story, her goal is to “share the true stories of just a few soldiers who were there.” This emphasis on localized, personal stories brings two main themes into sharp focus: the fog of confusion and uncertainty as unready GIs suddenly found themselves facing (and sometimes surrounded by) massive numbers of German troops and tanks, and the courage, cohesion, and optimistic spirit that fueled the eventual Allied victory. The veteran, much­lauded author of nonfiction and historical fiction draws various kinds of servicepeople (including women, immigrants, and Black people) into her large cast of eyewitnesses and participants; some she follows all the way to the ends of their (often long) lives, reinforcing the personal angle and providing a valuable complement to traditional military and political histories.

A thoroughly researched, unusually close-to-the-ground glimpse into one of World War II’s most notoriously brutal battles. (timeline, resources and links, bibliography, source notes, photo and illustration credits, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

The Found Things

Horácek, Petr | Candlewick (32 pp.) | $17.99 August 12, 2025 | 9781536241303

Creative design elements enhance the story of a young rabbit getting dressed. When Rabbit awakens, only her head and part of a foreleg are visible through a die­ cut hole that allows readers to peer through the foliage of the first spread onto the right­hand page of the second. After the page turn, the scene shifts from outside to inside Rabbit’s cozy home; the die cut has now flopped to the opposite side to show the sun shining through from the first spread onto her home. Her full body now visible, Rabbit wears no clothing, but as an anthropomorphic animal, there’s no sense of silliness or

shame over her nudity as she declares, “I must get dressed” and immediately notes that she can find only one sock. This problem propels the rest of this joyfully interactive book as Rabbit seeks her sock, finding other garments along the way. Each item is first spied through additional die cuts from one page turn to the next, and the outfit she assembles would make Ian Falconer’s Olivia proud. One by one, Rabbit dons a teal pompom hat found under the bed, a pink tutu from the wardrobe, a green plaid scarf that she spies over the tub, and, finally, her lost yellow­and­ orange­polka­dotted sock, found in the bushes outside by friends Squirrel and Mouse.

Getting ready to face the day has never been so fun. (Picture book. 1-3)

How To Free a Jinn

Idil, Raidah Shah | Salaam Reads/ Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) | $8.99 paper November 4, 2025 | 9781665982627

In this debut, a young Malay Muslim girl confronts difficult choices as she grapples with her matrilineal legacy—an inherited bond to jungle spirits called jinn.

Twelve­year­ old Insyirah Abdullah is not happy. Her mother’s decision to uproot her from Sydney, Australia, and return to Malaysia is causing her anxiety to peak beyond its normally high level. Nenek, her widowed maternal grandmother, needs more help, which is understandable—but things are already tense between Nenek and Mama, and Kuala Lumpur is insufferably hot and humid. Plus, there’s Nenek’s and Mama’s unnerving talk about “the unseen realm” and spirits that have the power to harm as well as protect. At least school begins well. Syirah makes two new friends who are also outsiders: Nadia (who’s Indian Muslim) and Kai Xin (who’s Chinese Malaysian). But things

quickly deteriorate as she discovers that her school is haunted, her mother got entangled with a spirit as a young woman, and Nenek is hiding something serious. With help from Ari, a youthful spirit, and her aikido teacher, Sensei Bilqis, who’s a part­jinn master of exorcism, Syirah steps up to fight for freedom, equality, and peace. In the process, she redefines an ancient bond her family has with a special guardian spirit. This delightful coming­ of­ age tale weaves humor, deep family bonds, steadfast faith, and mythology into a wholly believable narrative. Cultural elements, including mouthwatering descriptions of Malaysian food, enrich the story. An intriguing exploration of mysticism and religion, centering on a strong and deeply relatable girl. (Fantasy. 9-13)

Bear Loves His Home

Jameson, Karen | Illus. by Ishaa Lobo Yosemite Conservancy (32 pp.) | $18.99 August 26, 2025 | 9781951179380

Who wouldn’t adore this unspoiled, welcoming landscape?

A cinnamoncolored North American black bear cub moves through a wild place described in smoothly metrical verses with repeated rhymes. To Bear, the countryside is a wellstocked ursine cupboard; his crepuscular foraging provides seeds, grubs, trout, honey, and berries. Throughout the story, the light changes as the day wanes until Bear falls asleep in his mother’s arms. Lobo’s warm illustrations, simplified but still realistic, rely on varied perspectives and accurate details. Young viewers will enjoy spotting Bear’s mother, who keeps a close eye on her cub from a discreet distance, and identifying the other creatures with whom Bear shares his beloved home, among them deer, a fox, raccoons, lizards, and a turtle. Little ones will surely clamor for repeat readings, which will allow them to take in the more subtle elements of the artwork.

Backmatter discusses black bear anatomy, habitat, diet, and behavior; Jameson also advises readers on how to spot bears and how to behave near them. She employs rich vocabulary (whimsical, gorges, and ravenous) in the story, while the backmatter references hibernation and habituation, though this section doesn’t offer details on the supporting cast of fauna.

A lovely evening in the life of a black bear, perfect for nocturnal sharing among humans.

(Informational picture book. 3-6)

The Big Cheese Presents: Have Yourself a Cheesy Little Christmas

John, Jory | Illus. by Pete Oswald Harper/HarperCollins (48 pp.)

$15.99 | September 16, 2025

9780063437869 | Series: The Food Group

In John and Oswald’s latest in their food­centric series, the Big Cheese throws fabulous Christmas celebrations each year—until a household catastrophe on party day requires a friend’s help. The Big Cheese hosts great shindigs and isn’t afraid to brag about them, from the splendid decor and scintillating party patter to the unmatched gifts and eyepopping surprises. One annual party eclipses the next…until this year. Mid­preparation, strange noises begin emanating from the Big Cheese’s washing machine, which floods the house, short­circuiting the electricity. What will become of the party now? Frantic, the protagonist calls Wedge Wedgeman, a modest, practical friend who’s happy to host instead. The

gathering at Wedge’s is cozy, understated, and fun; friends converse, eating chili and sipping cocoa. A phonograph plays music, a fire crackles, and the evening ends with a group photo. Everyone leaves with a holiday card from Wedge (in contrast with the Big Cheese’s over­the­top gift bags). The Big Cheese and Wedge share a high­five, a hug, and ideas about co­hosting next year. Walking home, the Big Cheese realizes that Christmas is simply about sharing time, music, and food with friends. Naturally, though, the Big Cheese reserves rights to future extravaganzas: “Hey, it’s not like my personality changed in a day.” John captures his hero’s endearingly braggadocious voice, while Oswald delivers cheerful cartoons, comically telegraphing the Big Cheese’s gazillion emotional states.

An appealing holiday confection from a sturdy brand. (holiday cards) (Picture book. 4-8)

The Other Side of the Rocks

Kazemi, Nahid | Enchanted Lion Books (64 pp.)

$19.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9781592704583

A frog considers an unfroglike question: Is there more to life than the pond she calls home?

Froggy is perfectly content with her predictable existence until a wise fish relays some life­changing news: “Beyond those rocks lies another universe, with creatures unlike any you’ve ever seen!” Following a few days of contemplation, Froggy sets off and discovers a place where she’s greeted by bugs, birds, and other critters who appear “to be welcoming her and

A cheery tale of a shared winter tradition that connects many hearts.

COMMUNITY SNOWMAN

celebrating her leap into the unknown.” But over time, Froggy finds that the unknown is becoming less so. Still, as much as she loves her new environment, she feels “an old, familiar aching in her heart: the call of home.” Can she bring her two worlds together somehow? This invigorating immigration parable—an inventive repurposing of the Persian poet Rumi’s work—is drenched in blues and greens reflecting Froggy’s two competing lures: familiar waters and expansive skies. With their gauzy earthiness and cool tones dappled with counterpoint colors (the blunt red of the wise fish in the pond, the lemony sunshine lighting the sky, and so on), Kazemi’s illustrations are strikingly original; adult readers will struggle to find similar titles. While some youngsters may need help to make sense of the tale’s larger themes, all will appreciate winsome Froggy’s journey. An immigration allegory for kids old enough to get it; a perky frogexplores-the-world story for those who aren’t. (quote from Rumi) (Picture book. 5-8)

We Carry the Sun

Keller, Tae | Illus. by

Rachel Wada

Norton Young Readers (48 pp.) | $18.99

June 17, 2025 | 9781324031123

Newbery Medalist Keller traces humanity’s evolving relationship with solar energy across cultures and centuries. From ancient passive solar homes to contemporary biodegradable solar panels, this informational picture book considers the development of solar technology through the efforts of individual innovators and global collaborations alike. Keller’s strength lies in demonstrating how ideas grow across people, places, and generations, from Augustin Mouchot’s 19th­century solar steam engine to Shi Zhengrong’s modern Chinese solar company. The lyrical text includes compelling scientific details that will intrigue young readers, such as selenium being found in sunflower seeds

or how Japanese engineers put tiny solar panels in everyday objects “so anyone / can hold the sun.” But the narrative occasionally presents complex energy issues in stark black­and­white terms, particularly when contrasting solar innovators with personified fossil fuel companies: “Like false prophets / of profit, / oil companies prey / on human weakness / and pay politicians to keep digging. / They bury truth deep / and bury us deeper.” Environmental activists will praise the messaging, while those seeking a more nuanced exploration of this complex topic may be disappointed by the us vs. them framing. Wada’s illustrations employ strategic use of light and shadow—golden rays emanate from innovators, while darker, angular compositions frame industrial scenes. The art effectively uses sun imagery as both literal illumination and metaphorical enlightenment, and the text and images are well balanced across spreads, preventing visual chaos.

An advocacy-focused journey through centuries of solar development. (author’s note, timeline) (Informational picture book. 7-12)

Community Snowman

Kerbel, Deborah | Illus. by Tine ModewegHansen | Groundwood (32 pp.) | $19.99 October 8, 2025 | 9781773069517

T he neighborhood comes together on a snowy day in this wordless picture book, originally published in Canada.

A brown­skinned youngster tumbles out of bed, sees flurries of white from the window, and excitedly rushes outdoors. Soon the child has begun to build a snowman, with other kids joining in to help push the large balls of snow. When they need assistance to lift the head into place, a newcomer—a teenager or perhaps an adult—happily lends a hand. Other grown­ups, wearily trudging through the winter weather, pause at the sight. One by one, each contributes an item: a pickle for the nose, flowers for the

Zeyna Lost and Found

Khan, Shafaq | Carolrhoda (336 pp.) | $19.99 September 9, 2025 | 9798765639139

In 1970 London, while living an uneventful life and silently enduring bullying at school, 12­year­old Zeyna Akhtar dreams of becoming a detective. She longs to fit in but has trouble making friends, feels alienated as a British person of color, and struggles to embrace her Pakistani roots. Her immigrant parents, Saleem and Zubaida, don’t seem to appreciate her observation and pickpocket skills and ignore her alarm over a menacing stranger who’s begun to follow them and even breaks into their home. A sudden family trip to Pakistan, plus Mum and Papa’s strange behavior, make Zeyna increasingly suspicious. Soon after Zeyna finds a ruby in Mum’s purse, the police accuse her parents of stealing the Shirin Jewel, a Persian heirloom—but they’ve disappeared. With younger brother Mahir, who’s adept at designing gadgets, and their quick­witted cousin Amina in tow, Zeyna sets out to find her parents and prove their innocence. The children embark on an eventful journey

>>> hair. The crowd also grows: large, diverse, and loving. Smiles break out and laughter erupts as bagel halves are added for ears and other accessories appear. The final touch is a poppy pin from a veteran (a potentially less familiar detail to a U.S. audience that may get overlooked). Modeweg­Hansen’s twitchy lines add movement and joy, while a light blue wash over the sky harkens a slushy, wintry shiver. Luckily, the kindhearted ending envelops readers in warmth, reminding everyone of the happiness that spontaneous community connections can bring. Watching strangers’ lives intertwine in unexpected ways is a delight. A cheery tale of a simple, shared winter tradition that connects many hearts. (Picture book. 4-7)

Sweet and inclusive romances for teens!

“An engaging opposites-attract queer romance…”

“…a cozy but cathartic read about love, anxiety, and rebuilding community…”

— E.M. Anderson, author of The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher

Lonely in Happy Town

Kristopher Mielke

PB | 9781459420038

HC | 9781459420045

EPUB | 9781459420052

— Kirkus Reviews

“…a high/low book with appeal both to reluctant readers and to any readers who appreciate a sweetnatured love story.”

Not Not Normal

By Peter E. Fenton

PB | 9781459419315

HC | 9781459419322

EPUB | 9781459419339

—Booklist

“A Sapphic sports romance for reluctant readers with appealing leads.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“Highly recommended.”

— CM: Review of Materials - 5/5

Line Drive to Love

By Angel Jendrick

PB | 9781459419582

HC | 9781459419599

EPUB | 9781459419605

“This heartfelt story crackles with authenticity and sparkles with joy.”

— Michael Thomas Ford, author of Suicide Notes and Every Star That Falls

Dogs Don’t Break Hearts

‘Nathan Burgoine

PB | 9781459420069

HC | 9781459420076

EPUB | 9781459420083

“Dominic and Sunil’s relationship is gentle and charming, and they are easy to root for. The novel also contains a much-needed depiction of teens who both know that they are queer and are still figuring some things out.”

— Kirkus Reviews

Summer with Sunil

By Alison Lister

PB | 9781459419285

HC | 9781459419292

EPUB | 9781459419308

Tweens Read Romances, Too

Kathleen Gros

By K. O’Neill

along the Hippie Trail through Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. Following Saleem and Zubaida’s clues, they crack codes and solve riddles, chase international thieves, uncover family secrets, and stay one step ahead of their pursuer. While the story sags in the middle, the book maintains a brisk pace overall. Readers will enjoy the layered and engaging characters and the ways the kids outwit the adults they encounter. Debut author Khan also explores issues around racism, identity, and belonging.

An entertaining cross-border adventure, sure to thrill readers. (map, author’s note, resources, discussion questions, glossary) (Mystery. 9-13)

Bud Finds Her Gift

Kimmerer, Robin Wall | Illus. by Naoko Stoop

Allida/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99

September 2, 2025 | 9780063324428

A young Indigenous girl who is “very good at noticing” embraces that gift. Youngest child Bud realizes that she’s the only member of her family who doesn’t have “something important to do.” So Nokomis (Grandmother) takes her on a walk in the nearby woods. There, Nokomis thanks the morning “for the gift of this day.” When Bud is underwhelmed, Nokomis encourages her to “notice more” the next day. Slowly, Bud begins to hear the flora and fauna celebrating their gifts: “Everyone, from the day of their birth, / was given a gift to share with the Earth. / Being soft and green is what I do best. / So I share with the birds to make a warm nest,” the moss chants with shaky scansion. The things Bud notices all share their own songs, each beginning with the same awkward opening couplet and concluding with another that is specific to them. Children will likely giggle at the song of the robin’s poop, but other than that moment of levity, this outing is more earnest than engaging; fans of Kimmerer’s (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) adult nonfiction

work Braiding Sweetgrass (2020) may appreciate the story, but it will be lost on little ones. Stoop’s illustrations depict a dewy­eyed, olive­skinned Bud in plaid shirt and overalls, surrounded by friendly critters. Overall, they’re bland and pretty, befitting the praiseworthy message about ecological harmony but adding little. Likely to appeal to fans of the author’s work for adults rather than to children. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Star

Nunu and the Sea

Kung, Isabella | Knopf (48 pp.) | $18.99 October 14, 2025 | 9780593812723

An emotional journey of epic proportions. Nunu, an Asian­presenting child with red glasses, angrily shreds a paper house on her desk; the yellow scraps pop against the grayscale background of her room. “It is all too much,” an unseen narrator explains as Nunu lies on the floor, sobbing. Like Max in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1963), Nunu discovers another world in her room—a vast, steely ocean dotted with yellow scraps. Aboard a folded paper boat, Nunu fixes her gaze far away from her unhappiness, but soon the waves swell around her tiny boat until she’s swept into a giant whirlpool. Nunu is alone. “Or so she thinks.” A spirited paper crane escapes from her backpack, and Nunu folds more paper to add to her menagerie. With the vessel becoming overcrowded, she must sacrifice her boat to create something new for herself. Kung subtly introduces a soft pastel palette as Nunu finds her way back to calm waters and her home, where,

evoking Sendak’s work again, warmth and love await her. Kung has deftly folded her own magic into evocative prose and mesmerizing artwork that enchants in its simplicity. The author/illustrator invites young readers to confront big feelings and to ride them out, with the promise of acceptance and reconciliation upon return. An author’s note offers parents a starting point for beginning these important conversations with children. Captivating. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Star

Haru: Fall

Latham, Joe | Andrews McMeel Publishing (304 pp.) | $14.99 paper | October 28, 2025 9781524897666 | Series: Haru, 3

Can Haru’s hope eclipse Blight’s despair? Jumping right in where its predecessor concluded, this third volume finds the endearing blue bird Haru navigating a frightening and unfamiliar realm known as the Inbetween. Undaunted by the Inbetween’s nightmarish denizens, Haru, who uses they/them pronouns, forges on. They meet Hecate (“but you can call me Cate”), a ghost cat who guides them through the Inbetween to the next realm. Meanwhile, Haru’s friends, firefly Frei and mushroom Herb, along with Haru’s brother, Goose, are trying to stop the nefarious Blight, whose rageful anguish manifests as angry red skies with tentacled clouds. As the final confrontation looms between heroes and foes, can Haru’s optimism subdue Blight’s pain? Exploring themes of grief and loss

A gently spiritual paean to the power and pleasure of dancing without fear.

juxtaposed against hope and kindness, Latham’s latest graphic fantasy thrills. Despite its weighty subjects, the masterful visual storytelling and numerous lush, wordless panels keep the pages flying. The softly hued scenes contain vibrant splashes of color, creating a dramatic effect. Haru’s journey and transformation resonate, and the narrative nuance brings accessible complexity to what might, deceptively, appear to be a simple tale. Those familiar with Haru’s previous adventures will find satisfying resolutions to longstanding questions in this dreamy and luminous trilogy closer. Engaging, uplifting, and beautifully imagined. (Graphic animal fantasy. 8-12)

Dance in the Desert

L’Engle, Madeleine | Illus. by Khoa Le Farrar, Straus and Giroux (32 pp.) | $19.99 October 21, 2025 | 9780374391287

L’Engle’s 1969 retelling of the biblical tale of the flight into Egypt finds new life on the picture­book page.

“Once there was a night in the desert when nobody was afraid and everybody danced.” As the story begins, danger looms, and a family of three—Mary, Joseph, and a toddler­aged Jesus, though they go unnamed—seek to cross the desert in a caravan. They’re refused passage by a number of caravans, but one deigns to pick them up. One evening, as members of the caravan play different instruments, a lion appears. Unafraid, the child approaches, and the two begin to dance. Soon the lion is followed by a veritable zoo of animals, including everything from penguins and pelicans to adders and ostriches. At long last the youngster sleeps, and the dawn breaks. “The dance was over. The journey would continue.” Though abridged, L’Engle’s lilting text still features the literary embellishments of the earlier edition, as when she notes that a desert is like an ocean: “And then suddenly there is nothing, nothing but waves of sand shifting and sliding in the wind, stretching out to eternity on every

side.” Le’s ethereal illustrations evoke both beauty and whimsy as beasts and birds cavort upon the sand. The result will please both parochial and secular readers. Most characters are tan­ or brown­skinned.

Take a turn beneath the stars with this gently spiritual paean to the power and pleasure of dancing without fear. (Picture book. 4-7)

All the Things We Found

Levy, Joanne | Orca (248 pp.) | $14.95 paper September 16, 2025 | 9781459839533

Feelings are complicated. Twelve­yearold Ruthie is consumed with raging emotions stemming from the loss of her baby brother three years prior.

Other changes have also turned her life upside down. Her parents divorced, and she only sees her dad on weekends. Her mom remarried, and now Ruthie has a stepfather and two older stepbrothers, who aren’t Jewish like Ruthie’s family. When her mom announces that she’s pregnant again, all of Ruthie’s difficult emotions come roaring to the surface. She’s angry, resentful, confused, and deeply sad. But most of all, she’s terrified that this new baby will die—and her mother as well. Ruthie tells her own story, and readers are privy to her thoughts even though she doesn’t talk about her feelings with anyone. They consume her—but she just goes deeper into herself, allowing herself joy only when she’s with her dog, Izzy. Her best friend, Jenna, is a constant source of comfort in her life, and the girls act out events from their favorite fantasy unicorn books. But Ruthie is devastated when they learn that publication of the next book in the series has been canceled—she needs that fantasy world. Another traumatic event brings Ruthie to her lowest point, but a surprising friendship helps her eventually be able to hope again and experience happiness, bit by bit.

Emotionally raw and well worth reading. (Fiction. 9-13)

Britannica All New Kids’ Encyclopedia: Updated Edition—What We Know & What We Don’t

Ed. by Lloyd, Christopher | Illus. by Mark Ruffle & Jack Tite | Britannica Books (424 pp.) | $35 September 2, 2025 | 9781804661505

T he second edition of a wide­ranging, single­volume encyclopedia tailor­made for browsing and discovery. While the “all new” part of the title may be an overstatement—this is essentially a reprint of the 2020 edition with updated timelines and other minor changes—both the design and content offer curious readers any number of rewarding dips into topics ranging from the Big Bang and the effects of climate change to a current list of the world’s wealthiest people. The entries, arranged by topic into sections—“Universe,” “Earth,” “Matter,” “Life,” “Humans,” “Ancient & Medieval Times,” Modern Times,” and “Today & Tomorrow”— frequently contain “see also” references directing readers to related topics. The meaty but easily digestible blocks of information appear in both narrative and list form. Throughout, in text boxes labeled “Game Changer,” readers will find profiles of notable individuals. Imagination­stretching features headed “Known Unknown” explore aspects of a topic that remain theoretical or inscrutable. Interviews with subject experts and a pop quiz close each of the eight general chapters. Generous quantities of photos and graphic images, another strength, invite viewers to peer into deep space or a plant cell, contemplate the range of human facial expressions, witness income inequality in São Paulo, or marvel at the haute couture worn to the 2024 Met Gala. Broad in scope and enticing throughout. (source notes, glossary, index, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 9-13)

Kirkus Star

Croco

López, Azul | Trans. by Kit Maude Tapioca Stories (40 pp.) | $18.95 October 28, 2025 | 9798988749974

W hen a crocodile tumbles into a deep hole, a parade of well­meaning animals offer advice about how he might escape.

López’s deceptively simple premise unfolds with perfect pacing as a snake suggests that Croco wrap his body around a tree trunk, birds recommend that he flap his (nonexistent) wings, and monkeys encourage him to leap out—all techniques that work brilliantly for the advisers but prove useless for a crocodile. Translated from Spanish by Maude, this Mexican import builds suspense through repetition and escalating frustration until Croco’s tears become the key to his salvation. The visual storytelling is extraordinary; López employs compositional dynamics that create tension and release. Croco’s position at the bottom of each spread emphasizes his predicament, while the helpful animals perch safely above, creating a clear visual hierarchy between the trapped and the free. The palette—dominated by jungle greens, vibrant oranges, and sunny yellows— practically pulses with tropical energy. The scaly orange endpapers immediately establish texture and tone, while brushy, organic illustrations give weight to every leaf and blade of grass. The tactile quality of the vegetation contrasts beautifully with Croco’s red scales. The story captures both individual character and collective community effort, showing failed collaboration giving way to successful self­reliance without undermining the value of the friends’ attempts to help. This is picture­book creation at its finest—creators who understand their audience completely, crafting a tale that works equally well for storytime groups and one­on­one sharing. Publishes simultaneously in Spanish. Three cheers for this resourceful reptilian! (Picture book. 4-9)

Will both soothe and stimulate the scared or stymied creator.

CREATIVE WRITING WITH MISS MARY MAC

The Wonders of the First Christmas: Explore the Birth of Jesus Through History, Archaeology, and Art

McGuire, Andy | Zonderkidz (32 pp.)

$18.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9780310170211

The story of the first Christmas, interspersed with facts that will surprise readers of all ages. Addressing Joseph’s occupation, McGuire notes that “the Bible uses the word carpenter more broadly to mean ‘builder.’” Joseph likely worked with stone, the material that most buildings in the Middle East were made from. Similarly, the manger in which the baby Jesus was laid was probably a large stone hollowed out to hold feed for animals. And the stable where Mary gave birth? It was more likely the first floor of a house, where animals were kept so that their warmth could heat up the rest of the home. The author discusses the donkey Mary rode into Bethlehem, the camels that carried the wise men through the desert, and the Awassi, a common Middle Eastern breed of sheep. Each spread advances the traditional tale while adding background details that will enrich readers’ understanding of everything from the shepherds and angels to the Roman Empire, which controlled Judaea (referred to here as Israel) at the time; McGuire even touches on the linen that swaddled the newborn Jesus. A map depicting the area between the Nile and Jordan Rivers precedes a lengthy bibliography—a testament to the author’s detailed research. Showing beautiful use of light, the earth­toned spreads are filled with soft colors and

adorable animals. Most characters are olive­skinned and dark­haired. An edifying and wholly original take on the Nativity. (Picture book. 4-10)

Creative Writing With Miss Mary Mac: A Handbook for Young and Future Authors

McInerney, Mary | Illus. by Rivkah LaFille First Second (176 pp.) | $15.99 paper October 28, 2025 | 9781250216885

An impassioned teacher reflects on the joys of self­ expression. Setting out to celebrate writing as an art form rather than a technical craft, Miss Mary Mac—an endlessly observant, spritelike woman and a stand­in for real­life educator McInerney—wanders through theaters and studios, catching glimpses of artists at work: dancers, painters, and, of course, writers. But how do authors create the tales that so move us? Miss Mary Mac urges readers to think big, relish small details, and notice everything. She also suggests sources of inspiration, including life experiences and literary influences. Moving intuitively through a variety of ideas to spark and sustain creativity, she concludes by encouraging the prospective creator to simply write—after all, one becomes a writer only by committing to the act of creation. LaFille’s illustrations are essential to communicating McInerney’s message, immersing readers in both artistic and sensory experiences. In one memorable scene, the author encourages readers to imagine the sensations of consuming a fresh, juicy orange—a vivid exercise to help aspiring writers visualize imagery. Rendered in elegantly dreamy

pastels, this book will both soothe and stimulate the scared or stymied creator; it’s an ideal text for creative writing instruction and a surprising treat for unsuspecting casual readers. Mac is pale­skinned; other characters, including the creators whom she observes, vary in skin tone. An eloquent and gently inspirational writing guidebook. (Graphic nonfiction. 9-15)

America Gives Thanks

McKinnon, Bob | Illus. by Thai My Phuong Penguin Workshop (48 pp.) | $19.99 August 5, 2025 | 9780593658819

T he titular character of America’s Dreaming (2024) returns for a class trip to the nation’s capital. Amid the other students’ grousing (“My dad says all they do in Washington is fight”), America’s teacher Mr. Downs urges the youngster to find examples of how complaints have had positive effects in history. As the children visit typical landmarks—the Supreme Court, the Lincoln Memorial (“where people often come to complain together”)— America hears whispers of wisdom from historical figures such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lessons about making change for the better reverberate with America, who later shares lunch with a classmate who didn’t bring one. While the overall tone is uplifting, McKinnon’s stiff text often relies on stilted turns of phrase (“We should always stand with anybody who stands right”). Discussions of significant figures and eras are oversimplified; readers will need background knowledge on, for instance, segregation in order to understand the impact of Marian Anderson’s 1939 performance on the Lincoln Memorial steps, and those unfamiliar with Roosevelt likely won’t be moved by his words on “the test of progress.” Nor does the author’s note provide further context. Phuong’s illustrations set a breezy tone with a muted earth­toned palette, depicting historical figures in ghostly blue. America’s class is diverse, and Mr. Downs

is light­skinned; America isn’t portrayed (scenes are instead presented from the protagonist’s point of view).

A feel-good but vague attempt at cultivating an appreciation for U.S. history. (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Star

Kindred Dragons

Mensinga, Sarah | Abrams Fanfare (208 pp.)

$24.99 | October 14, 2025 | 9781419771163

Series: Kindred Dragons, 1

A girl dreams of a dragon of her own.

Poking around on Prince Edward Island under her grandmother’s watchful eye, Alice is sullen as her friends begin to receive dragon eggs to care for. In Alice’s world, heavily inspired by Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908), dragons are linked to “kindred” humans for life; they work as a team and ultimately even die together. Being a kindred runs in families, however, and because Alice’s grandmother adopted her children, she won’t pass down the gift.

But with the help of Brim, an elderly dragon skulking around the nearby woods, Alice discovers that she possesses a unique talent—one that will help her protect Brim as he grows ill. This graphic novel offers an intricate vision of early­19th­century rural Canada. With grace and consideration, Mensinga touches on relationships between women and girls, concepts of adoptive and found family, and class conflict. Her illustrations are a joy; muted pastel drawings invoke both the quiet beauty of rural life and the lyrical elegance of dragons at rest and in flight. Middle­grade readers seeking meaning and adventure will appreciate Alice’s steadfast commitment to defending and caring for these majestic beasts. Alice has pale, freckled skin, her grandmother is brown­skinned, and their community is diverse.

At once tender and bold, a thoughtful, lovely fantasy. (Graphic fantasy. 9-13)

Kirkus Star

First Ascent: The Epic Yosemite Rock-Climbing Rivalry of Royal Robbins and Warren Harding

Messner, Kate | Illus. by Stevie Lewis

Yosemite Conservancy (54 pp.) | $19.99

August 5, 2025 | 9781951179335

The Messner/ Lewis team ascends to dizzying, breathtaking heights of text and art.

Climbing rivals Royal Robbins (1935­2017) and Warren Harding (no relation to the president, 1924 ­2002) are wonderfully evoked characters. Quiet, buttoned­down, book­loving Royal serves as a foil for loud, partying, wild­haired Warren. But as youngsters, both struggle to find things they excel at—until they become mountain climbers. Especially intrigued by the peaks of Yosemite National Park, they team up and discover that, confronted with a real obstacle, neither of them can give up. But they’re pitted against each other in their efforts to reach “first ascent,” the first documented climb to the peak of a mountain. When Royal wins on Half Dome, Warren sets his sights on El Capitan, widely thought impregnable. After harrowing trials, he triumphs, but the competition only intensifies. Happily, age brings some revealing (and universal) wisdom.

Lewis’ slightly simplified line and subtle color illustrations are vivid and precise, giving readers a strong sense of setting—and potentially vertigo. Rivaling any photo, these images convey nail­biting, awe­inspiring feats. Messner’s riveting prose deftly distinguishes her subjects, zeroing in on differences in personality and philosophy while also paying attention to the environmental ramifications of their choices (Royal believed climbers should leave behind few traces of their presence; Warren didn’t care). The pair’s struggles, disappointments, and successes make them complex heroes.

An edge-of-your-seat story of human dedication and daring, in dramatic circumstances. (author’s note, information on climbing, profiles of “other rock stars of Yosemite National Park and beyond,” resources, selected sources) (Informational picture book. 7-10)

Curlfriends: Back in Business

Miller, Sharee | Little, Brown Ink (232 pp.) | $12.99 paper | October 7, 2025 9780316591492 | Series: Curlfriends, 2

In this second series entry, a problem­solving 12­year­old attempts, with the help of her friends, to solve her mother’s financial problems.

Nola Washington is a fashion­forward Black tween who dreams of becoming a hairdresser like her mother and inheriting the beauty shop her grandmother founded. After Ella once again surprises her circle of friends by signing them up for something without asking— this time committing them to dancing in the school talent show—Nola, who’s used to being the fixer in their group, agrees to be their leader. But Nola’s vision of talent show success hits a snag when she asks for money for a new outfit and Mom only hands over $20. She’s always had a rock­solid relationship with her mother—whom she sees as “living proof that women can have it all. A thriving business, a daughter on the honor roll, and the best wardrobe in town”—but her mom’s attempt to hide their financial problems affects their relationship and spills over into Nola’s grades and social commitments. After she turns to her friends for support, they brainstorm a grand plan to turn the salon around. While Nola’s storyline is the focus of the narrative, each character within the friend circle has a distinct voice. Miller effectively uses the graphic novel format to offer a nuanced portrayal of Nola’s awareness of adult financial stressors while also keeping the solutions she proposes kid­centric. A heartfelt cross-generational look at vulnerability and the need for community. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

A tender tale of community, connection, and family.

A FRIEND FOR LUCY

A Friend for Lucy

Molineaux, Jen-Ai Elena

Levine Querido (48 pp.) | $19.99

September 16, 2025 | 9781646145690

Ghostly Ana worries about her elderly sister Lucy’s isolation and resolves to find her a companion.

Lucy’s life has grown progressively smaller as she’s aged. She doesn’t go out much anymore, and she has no one with whom to share life’s little pleasures: “a slice of banana cake” or a “movie…before dinner.” Her sister, Ana, a floating, translucent perpetual youngster, is concerned. Lucy needs a friend. Though no adult can see Ana (including Lucy), a child named Leah can, and Ana facilitates a get­together between elder and youth. With ghostly encouragement, Lucy and Leah bond over card games and cake. As they reminisce over elegantly etched photos of Ana and Lucy’s 1940s childhood, Ana knows they’ll make a perfect pair. Their story is sweetly extended with endpapers that become a new photo album showcasing Lucy’s expanding social circle. This tale might have been somber—one of the characters is a dead child, and Molineaux relies on a dark, tawny palette—but Ana’s determination to help her sister feels so authentic that light and optimism shine through. Told in graphic novel–style panels, the sequences are extremely easy to follow, and the agreeable third­person narrative flows well alongside the speech bubbles. Vintage­style sepia drawings made from scratchy charcoal lines and digital coloring feel appropriately timeless. A handwritten typeset adds a personal touch but might hinder younger

readers. Most human characters have brown skin; Leah reads Black. A tender tale of community, connection, and family. (Picture book. 5-9)

The Night Before Christmas

Moore, Clement C. | Illus. by Hayden Goodman | Henry Holt (32 pp.) | $14.99 October 14, 2025 | 9781250349941

Young urbanites encounter St. Nick on Christmas Eve. In this version of the classic poem, Moore’s language is untouched while a new visual story unfolds, courtesy of Goodman. The familiar opening lines (“’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse”) are paired with an image depicting a cozy street blanketed by snow and filled with brick apartment buildings. Inside, residents wrap gifts and prepare cookies. Others throughout the premises are nestled in various shared bedrooms, shown in a patchwork diorama. A physically imposing St. Nick swoops in with a lush gray­white beard and gobs of mischief in his eyes. He surprises and delights several children and even offers a cheerful red gift box to a trio of curled­up mice. The age­old rhyme chugs along to its conclusion, where a smattering of characters introduced earlier bid the sleigh a good night. Goodman offers a fun and clever spin on the beloved Yuletide tale, changing up settings from a suburban neighborhood to an urban apartment building. Kids will revel in determining or imagining the relationships among all the people and in playing seek­and­find games in the busy spreads. The muted warm palette is inviting and calm,

evoking the feeling of a good winter’s rest. All characters are brown­skinned. A warm and welcome retelling. (Picture book. 4-8)

Cat’s Christmas

Murray, Alison | Bloomsbury (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781547617593

A feline dreads the holiday season. Cat is a simple if crotchety creature—a lover of peace and a seeker of quiet. And nothing proves more disruptive to this cantankerous kitty than Christmas. He hates every bit of the needless frivolity: the extravagant decor, the treacly treats, and the loathsome callers, especially the dippy dachshund who arrives costumed for the occasion, eager to occupy Cat’s rightful place in his pale­skinned young human’s lap. One evening, in an act of Scroogely rebellion, Cat haughtily recuses himself from the holiday cheer and steals into the cold wet Christmas night, seeking a cathartic yowl and a moment of much­needed solitude. But his sour disposition sweetens when, perched atop a tree branch, he bears witness to an awe­inspiring cosmic display that inspires renewed appreciation for the loveliness of life on Earth, Yuletide trappings and all. Murray’s text amusingly elucidates the longstanding feud between feline and fir, though the narrative ascribes occasionally contradictory motivations to Cat’s behavior; some may wonder whether he acts out of spite, frustration that others don’t understand the true meaning of Christmas, or merely the desire to restore the cozy snugness of his pre­holiday home. But Murray’s vibrant illustrations charm, and pet

lovers will especially enjoy a Christmas evening spent with Cat. Eagle ­ eyed adult readers will enjoy the illustrative homage to Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day A perfectly sweet Yuletide treat. (Picture book. 4-6)

Kirkus Star

Electric Birds of Pothakudi

Naïr, Karthika | Illus. by Joëlle Jolivet Tate Publishing (52 pp.) | $21.99 October 7, 2025 | 9781849769150

In this work inspired by a true story from the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, people sacrifice comfort to protect a family of birds.

In Pothakudi, many villagers lack electricity at home, relying on streetlights after dark. So, when a pair of vannathikuruvis, or magpie­robins, build their nest in the streetlight switchboard box, the residents face a dilemma. They need the lights—Leela Maami’s granddaughter is teaching her to read, Deepa’s father plays cards at night—but Karuppu Raja, who’s in charge of the streetlights, wants to protect “Mr. and Mrs. VK.” He texts bird photos to his circle, and people gather. Clamoring children name the birds they know only from photos or stories, persuading the disgruntled grown­ups. When Mrs. VK lays “a tiny turquoise oval with chocolate flecks. Bright as the summer sky. Fresh as daybreak,” the villagers, united by this marvel, creatively protect the birds and keep one another safe at night. FrenchIndian poet Naïr’s award winner, originally published in French in 2022, is both evocatively grounded in a well­rendered cultural setting and

A remarkable story of compassion and cooperation.

ELECTRIC BIRDS OF POTHAKUDI

universally relevant in its exploration of humans’ impact on nature. The sophisticated text evokes the timeless feeling of a fairy tale. Jolivet’s striking art resembles block prints—heavy black lines and exuberant colors convey emotion, accentuate the beauty of birds and foliage, and immerse readers in Pothakudi’s inky nights and sun­ drenched days. A remarkable story of compassion and cooperation. (background notes, glossary) (Picture book. 7-11)

Cats and Us: A Ten-ThousandYear Fascination

Pantaleo, Marta | Trans. by Debbie Bibo & Yvette Ghione | Groundwood (40 pp.) | $19.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781779460394

A tribute to a domestic association measured in millennia.

“It isn’t easy to figure out what is really going on in [cats’] heads,” writes Pantaleo with commendable accuracy, but in this Italian import, a companion to last year’s Dogs and Us, she gives it a go. She retraces felines’ history with humans— from pest control for early farmers to revered icons in ancient Egypt—their place in legends and stories from around the world, and their modern role as comfort animals who can “make us feel special.” Still, there’s no question who’s boss in the relationship: “Over the centuries, [they’ve] taught us their language.” The journey is conveyed more in pictures than words; readers wondering about the origins of the sailors watching nautical cats chasing rats away from an oared galley or about the waving cats in a classical Japanese setting are left to guess or look elsewhere. Brief notes in a closing gallery that recaps the 36 breeds appearing here do provide some answers, though, along with comments about each breed’s origins, temperament, and special qualities. In the art, the human cast is thoroughly multiracial and multicultural. Will leave younger cat lovers appreciating their kitties even more for sticking around so long. (Informational picture book. 5-9)

North for the Winter

Podesta, Bobby | First Second (352 pp.)

$23.99 | $14.99 paper | September 2, 2025 9781250838230 | 9781250838223 paper

Searching for a lost reindeer sends two new friends on an adventure they’ll never forget.

Grieving Virginia Kay spots a reindeer out her car window during a move from Arizona to Colorado just three days before Christmas in 1955. She tries to tell her dad what she saw, but he gets distracted and almost crashes the car. When they arrive at Aunt Frances’ apartment, Virginia meets her friendly new neighbor, the chatty Benny Alvarez, who’s always up for snacking. After they spend the day together, Virginia decides she can let Benny in on her secret. Benny declares “We’re in this together,” and the magical twists and turns begin as they team up to search for the reindeer. The Continental Air Defense Command Center is tracking it, too, trying to identify the suspicious flying object. Meanwhile, another plotline following a separate reindeer tracker unnecessarily complicates matters. Still grappling with her mother’s loss, Virginia hopes she can reunite the lost reindeer with Santa. Will she and Benny find it in time to save Christmas? The fast­paced story comes to life on the page through Podesta’s artwork, which features expressive facial expressions, vividly rendered action scenes, and the effective use of color. Virginia and her family present white, and Benny and his family are cued Latine. Family, friendship, and shenaniganfilled bravery take flight in this Christmas tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

Lost and Found Hanukkah

Preble, Joy | Illus. by Lisa Anchin

Chronicle Books (44 pp.) | $17.99

September 23, 2025 | 9781797216096

Upon relocating to a new community, a child struggles to make a holiday celebration special. “I love Hanukkah. I love how it is always the same,” says Nate. But his family’s recent move changes everything. When his beloved menorah goes missing, his two fathers (Daddy and Abba) take him to a Judaica shop, where they meet shop owner Amy and her cat, Kugel. While Nate attempts to find the right menorah, Kugel runs into the street. Nate mounts a search campaign, passing out flyers and, at last, coming up with an ingenious way to find the cat. In the process, he discovers the inspiration for his own special menorah. Preble’s elegantly told, engaging story celebrates the joy of observing long­standing traditions and making room for new ones; her tale also draws deft connections with the Hanukkah story: “The Maccabees didn’t give up, Nate,” Abba tells him. “And neither did you.” Anchin’s warm, detailed, and expressive illustrations draw readers in. The artwork depicts a variety of Jewish experiences, including multiple types of head coverings, a wide variety of creative menorah designs, and a shop featuring a large assortment of Jewish ritual objects. Nate is tan­ skinned, Daddy is pale ­ skinned, and Abba is brown­ skinned.

A heartwarming holiday tale about finding friends and creating new beginnings. (author’s note, glossary and explanation of Hanukkah history and traditions, latke recipe) (Picture book. 3-6)

Two Ballerinas… and a Moose: Ready-To-Read Level 1

Preller, James | Illus. by Abigail Burch Simon Spotlight (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 23, 2025 | 9781665948821

Series: …And a Moose

A clumsy would­be dancer seizes the spotlight. Though the title doesn’t reveal what kinds of anthropomorphic animals the two ballerinas in this early reader are, Burch’s colorful, cartoonlike illustrations depict them as a beaver and a hippo, “one in red. One in blue.” Their subdued dancing in “fancy clothes” and on “pointy toes” is interrupted when Moose intrudes on their balletic reverie. “Me too! I want to dance too!” exclaims Moose, whose attire is all wrong and whose moves are anything but graceful. The two ballerinas aren’t cruel, but they don’t seem all that invested in helping Moose. After initially exclaiming, “This is…a MESS! Please sit down, Moose,” the omniscient narrator shifts to encouragement: “Don’t give up, Moose!” With that, Moose eschews ballet but doesn’t abandon dancing. A rejuvenated Moose busts a move, dancing “a happy, snappy dance.” In fact, the dance looks so fun that the two ballerinas can’t resist joining. Together, the trio dances “as if no one is watching.” This familiar line delivers a pleasing end to the simple story, with the big full moon gazing down on the characters in a bit of humorously ironic counterpoint between text and illustration. Will dance its way into new readers’ hearts. (Early reader. 5-7)

Sly, silly fun with political and class-war overtones.

THE ADVENTURES OF CIPOLLINO

Snowshoe Kate and the Hospital Built for Pennies

Abrams (48 pp.) | $19.99 | October 28, 2025 9781419756719

A warm tribute to a Wisconsin country doctor and the community spirit that launched an unusual fundraiser. Harking back to the days when doctors made house calls, Newbery Honor–winning author Preus retraces the career of Kate Pelham (later Newcomb, 1885­1956), who came out of retirement to serve her scattered rural community—including, the author notes in the backmatter, the local Lac du Flambeau band of Chippewa—for many years and in all weather conditions. She also inspired a much­needed hospital built from what started as a casual classroom discussion of what a million of anything might look like. That discussion kindled a penny drive that went on to attract international attention; by 1954, it had raised over $110,000. Aware that big numbers figure prominently in this story, Zollars outdoes herself in the illustrations; she includes a full spread of 300 individually drawn babies to represent the thousands that Dr. Kate delivered, an intricately illustrated page filled edge to edge with minuscule pennies, and scenes of coins piled by the bazillion in the school’s gym for people to climb, play on, and marvel at. Images of the pale­skinned Dr. Kate are interspersed with racially diverse scenes of local residents. Along with photos and further details about the doctor and her legacy, the backmatter includes a plea from the author to recognize the commitment and courage of all health care workers, today and everywhere.

Memorable pictures of what a worthy life, and a million pennies, might look like. (illustrator’s note, bibliography) (Picture-book biography. 6-9)

Moby Duck

Raymundo, Peter | Dial Books (40 pp.)

$18.99 | October 14, 2025 | 9780593531341

Anchors aweigh, play­mateys! Raymundo’s metanarrative opens with Captain Herman and avian first mate Mr. Plume in hot pursuit of their titular pal; Moby Duck proves a worthy adversary in a game of nautical hide and seek, and besting him won’t be an easy feat. But readers anticipating an immersive, swashbuckling epic will find those expectations soon subverted when a shift in perspective reveals that the seemingly open seas are actually confined to a porcelain tub, and these sailors are really bath toys at the destructive mercy of a sudsy, lightskinned tot, who’s a stand­in for (and doppelgänger for) Captain Herman; the title character is a cheery­looking rubber ducky. The brief tableaux that follow offer more punny patchwork than plot, introducing (and quickly resolving) trials like the Forest of Eye­Stinging Bubbles and the Wall of FAH­SET. Herman alternatively appears as intrepid mariner and splashy bather, at once the cause of and good­natured victim of imaginative chaos. And juvenile Melville­heads need not fret—the infamous whale winked at throughout makes an appearance, too. Raymundo is at his best when realizing moments of chuckle­inducing self­awareness— of which there are many—but while his premise is strong, his execution is somewhat stymied by uneven pacing. This flaw is forgivable, given the

narrative’s mimicry of imaginative bathtime play, but it yields a less satisfying conclusion than more traditional adventure narratives. Nonetheless, hesitant bathers will appreciate the creative inspiration. A buoyant seafaring escapade. (Picture book. 4-8)

The Adventures of Cipollino

Rodari, Gianni | Illus. by Dasha Tolstikova

Trans. by Antony Shugaar | Enchanted

Lion Books (256 pp.) | $29.95

October 28, 2025 | 9781592704163

Common types of garden produce repeatedly thwart their upper­ class fruit and veggie overlords in this droll translated classic, originally published in Italy in 1951 and selected by Hayao Miyazaki as one of his 50 favorite children’s books.

Hans Christian Andersen Award–winner Rodari’s Pinocchio­style picaresque features an intrepid young onion who’s bent on obeying his father’s instructions to go out into the world and study the ways of scoundrels. Repeatedly imprisoned (“But what else can you expect,” remarks the puckish narrator; “When you’re born an onion, you’re bound to come to tears”), Cipollino nonetheless makes fools of choleric nemesis Cavalier Tomato, insatiable gourmand Baron Sweet­ Orange, and other aristocrats with help from sympathetic housemaid Strawberryette and other humble allies. Tolstikova’s watercolor­style illustrations, which are new for this first English edition, brighten nearly every spread with scenes of anthropomorphic figures topped by fruit or vegetable heads and joined by the occasional animatedly talking spider, mole, or other animal. Soldierly Ponderosa lemons march back and forth, and in one chapter the despicable Prince Lemon cruelly mistreats some cucumber horses, but in general the episodic tale has more satire than violence. In the end, a Republic is proclaimed, the prince

Preus, Margi | Illus. by Jaime Zollars

winds up with his head in a dung pile, and a castle is turned into a playhouse. Just deserts all round. Sly, silly fun with political and class-war overtones. (cast of characters) (Illustrated fiction. 9-14)

Mystery James Digs

Her Own Grave

Russell, Ally | Illus. by Devin Forst Delacorte (320 pp.) | $17.99 September 16, 2025 | 9780593896914

Thirteen­year­ old sleuth Mystery James must find a missing object to help save her family’s business. Mystery lives with Tía Lucy, her Puerto Rican adoptive aunt, who found her as an infant in the Olde Ellis Town Cemetery. Mystery, who has “bronze­brown” skin, longs to know more about her birth parents and how she ended up left behind a tombstone, swaddled in a blanket embroidered with the words “Baby James.” When local philanthropist Lady Ellis dies, her son Owen entrusts Tía Lucy’s business, Garcia Graves & Funeral Home, with her interment. But before Lady Ellis can be buried, Mystery, who’s comfortable with the dead, receives the fright of her life when the old woman’s spirit speaks to her. According to her wishes, Lady Ellis was buried with an heirloom necklace, so when a mysterious person sells it to an antiques dealer after the funeral, Owen accuses Tía Lucy of stealing it—even insinuating that she’s been robbing other clients. To clear Tía Lucy’s name, Mystery sets out to find the real thief, accompanied by best friend Garrett and new friend Eliza, Lady Ellis’ granddaughter, who may hold the answer to another supernatural mystery. The book includes illustrated pages from the notebook where Mystery records important information. Readers who enjoyed Daka Hermon’s Hide and Seeker (2020) will delight in this novel, which combines strong character development and

relationships with a well­ drawn small­town setting that’s both creepy and quaint.

A fast-paced and deliciously thrilling duology opener. (map) (Horror. 10-14)

Kirkus Star

If You Like Butterflies

Schaefer, Lola M. | Illus. by Gabi Swiatkowska Christy Ottaviano Books (40 pp.) | $18.99

May 13, 2025 | 9780316337670

Three inquisitive children study butterflies in the wild.

The youngsters notice that each type of butterfly is a different size, with various colors and markings; even their wings are differently shaped. The kids frolic through a meadow, gleefully observing how butterflies drink nectar and carry pollen from flower to flower. In Swiatkowska’s illustrations, the children’s movements cleverly mirror the butterflies’: One kid drinks from a straw as a butterfly uses its long proboscis to suck nectar from an open bloom. The children learn about the butterfly’s life cycle, including its caterpillar larvae beginnings, chrysalis, and final transformation. Readers will pore over the painstakingly detailed artwork, which lovingly nods to art nouveau scientific diagrams. On one spread, individually labeled butterfly eggs are neatly spaced across the page, each one an absolute feast for the eye: some shiny and smooth, others rough or hairy, each a different shape, color, and texture. Brimming with information,

Schaefer’s melodic prose lets readers float from beginning to end as if on butterfly wings, landing on engaging backmatter that includes instructions for planting a butterfly garden. One child is pale ­ skinned and blondhaired; another is brown­ skinned with dark curly hair; the third presents East Asian. Sure to set butterfly lovers’ hearts aflutter. (a butterfly’s life cycle, information about butterfly migration, additional resources)

(Informational picture book. 4-7)

Sky Luck

Schlaikjer, Erica Lee | Illus. by Dagmar Smith | Blue Dot Kids Press (32 pp.) | $18.95 September 30, 2025 | 9798989858866

A child frustrated by his inability to spot any shooting stars discovers that they aren’t the sky’s only wonders. As others around him marvel at a meteor shower’s streaks of light, the unnamed boy sees only a full moon smiling down, the “creamy dots” of the Milky Way, a satellite “twinkletwinkling gently, like a lullaby.”

“Nothing special ,” he thinks. His uncle disagrees. “Sky luck comes in many forms, all of them amazing in different ways.” Take the moon, he goes on, the “biggest and brightest object of the night,” strong enough to make tides rise and fall. Or beyond that, think of billowing clouds that look like ancient animals, of “creamsicle” sunsets and shimmering northern lights. Sky luck is infinite, and it’s all around us, too. Sure enough, when the boy next looks up, he sees with new eyes: “The whole sky [is] full.”

A cleareyed and realistically funny depiction of sibling dynamics.

Light­ skinned like his uncle, the lad stands beneath broad, starry expanses in Smith’s open rural settings, looking thoughtful and solitary even when surrounded by a diverse group of family and friends. A starter list of further wonders, from dawn and dusk to rainbows and thunderstorms, caps this quietly lyrical invitation to understand how rewarding it can be to simply look up. A celestial insight, simple but profound. (Picture book. 6-9)

My Sister the Apple Tree: A Refugee Story of Hope and Resilience

Scott, Jordan & Jamal Saeed | Illus. by Zahra Marwan | Random House Studio (40 pp.) $18.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9780593808412

An apple tree provides solace when a family must leave their homeland. The book’s young narrator wants a twin, but Mom points out that the child does have a sibling of sorts—the apple tree that Mom and Dad planted in the yard on the day the youngster was born. The protagonist begins plying the tree with snacks, playing with her, and sharing secrets with her; each night, the little one wraps her in a blanket. When the village is attacked, the family must flee, but the child refuses to leave the tree behind. Digging the tree up, the child carries her through fires and dust and onto a plane as they leave their homeland forever. The protagonist replants the tree, and she thrives in a new environment, though the youngster yearns for home. Feelings of longing permeate this tender story, though it’s also infused with hope as the youngster continues to confide in the tree. Marwan’s soft artwork, rendered in watercolor and pen and ink, leans into the playful kinship between child and tree. Shifting from greens and blues to darker shadows, the palette embodies the

sense of loss. Hints in the artwork suggest an Asian or Middle Eastern setting, though no specific region is mentioned. The authors and illustrator share their own migration stories in the backmatter.

A poignant look at the human cost of wars and forced migration. (Picture book. 5-9)

Pennies

Senf, Lora | Illus. by Alfredo Cáceres

Atheneum (384 pp.) | $17.99

September 23, 2025 | 9781665967242

Series: Blight Harbor, 4

Twelve­year­old Mae Von Rathe and her friends are on a dangerous mission to find people who have disappeared into the otherworldly Dark Sun Side of Blight Harbor. In a return to the series, this stand­alone prequel takes place during the summer of 1921 and is narrated by Mae, the great­great­aunt of Evie Von Rathe from 2022’s The Clackity. When friends Mae, Lark, Claret, and Brigid discover that Brigid’s cousin Emmi has disappeared, they’re sure that her creepy on­again, off­again boyfriend, Johnny, is responsible. Soliciting the help of ghosts and relying on some magic and supernatural powers of their own, the friends enter a hole in the ground that takes them to the Dark Sun Side, where they face off against magical creatures, ghosts, and threads of the evil that plagued Evie in the original trilogy. Returning fans will enjoy references to the books, but no prior knowledge is required for new readers to enter this haunted world, which comes to life through Senf’s rich, atmospheric writing. The spooks offer high stakes that are framed in a way that’s appropriate for the target audience. Above all, the sisterhood among the girls is touching and feels believably nuanced, highlighting bonds that only time and trust can forge. Cáceres’ eerie black­and­white

illustrations appear throughout, helping to bring scenes to life and matching the tone of the story. Lark has light brown skin, and the other girls are cued white. A compelling and imaginative bookend to a strong series. (Horror. 9-12)

How To Drive Your Brother Bananas

Shore, Diane Z. | Illus. by Laura Rankin Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.)

$5.99 paper | October 14, 2025

9780063395855 | Series: I Can Read

A little sibling’s guide to annoying a big brother. Introduced in the creators’ early reader How To Drive Your Sister Crazy (2008), Bradley Harris Pinkerton is now stuck with a less ­than­ enthusiastic babysitter: older brother Liam. Bradley seems to have decided that negative attention from Liam is better than no attention. Directly addressing readers in a conspiratorial tone, Bradley offers a few tips for driving big brothers bananas: hiding behind the couch and secretly messing with the remote control while your big sib attempts to watch TV, playing tricks during a game of hide­andseek, and lulling your older brother into a false sense of security with an offering of popcorn…before playing a prank involving underwear. The comic­style illustrations infuse humor into what could otherwise be read as a story of sibling disconnect, with mischief toeing the line of meanness, complete with some references to tighty­whities thrown in for good measure. By book’s end, there’s no cozy, idealistic resolution of sibling love, just a matterof­fact acquiescence to mostly playful rivalry. Younger siblings will especially relish seeing Bradley get the upper hand. Both Bradley and Liam are pale ­ skinned and brown­haired. A cleareyed and realistically funny depiction of sibling dynamics. (Early reader. 5-8)

A soothing combination of timeless wisdom and atmospheric art.

THE MIXED-UP OWL

Unreal: Can You Tell Fact from Fake?

Simpson, Kate | Illus. by Leila Rudge Annick Press (72 pp.) | $24.99 October 28, 2025 | 9781834020136

Galleries of improbable flora and fauna offer readers opportunities to separate real from fake. To the sure delight of budding naturalists, dozens of oddball wonders take star turns here, from the fictive likes of the hoop snake and the chupacabra to the verifiably real platypus and Venus flytrap, the zombie­ant fungus, and certain Mexican snakes that hang from cave ceilings to snare passing bats. A section headed “Hoaxes and Jokesters” spotlights “stories of deception,” such as the Piltdown Man (bones supposedly belonging to a previously undiscovered hominid species) and photographs of the Cottingley Fairies (produced by two young girls who only owned up to the hoax decades later). But though Simpson opens with valid guidelines for telling actual facts from the “alternative” sort, such as carefully checking sources, she goes on to ignore her own precepts by labeling each organism she profiles “real” or “unreal” on the next page without evaluating, or even citing, her own sources for the judgment. The author does point to the hazard of unconscious bias and pairs the Loch Ness monster with Bigfoot in order to make the important point that “science isn’t about ‘proof,’ it’s about evidence.” In Judge’s animated illustrations, a light­skinned young curator sorts beady­ eyed, suspiciously lively­looking

specimens and portraits into thematically linked exhibits.

Better if it practiced what it preaches, but a stimulating excursion along the borders of credulity. (index) (Informational picture book. 7-10)

Kirkus Star

You Were Made for This

World: Celebrated Indigenous Voices Speak to Young People

Ed. by Sinclair, Stephanie & Sara Sinclair Tundra Books (120 pp.) | $21.99

July 29, 2025 | 9781774882566

A collection of letters and art from a constellation of renowned Indigenous creators, addressed to Native youth.

Acknowledging that many Native people have “grown up at some distance from their ancestors’ stories,” editors Stephanie and Sara Sinclair (who are of Cree, Ojibwe, and German/Jewish heritage) celebrate the ways that “being Indigenous is a journey toward reclamation and continuance of language, knowledge and nationhood.” They structure their work like a “medicine bundle, with each letter representing a traditional medicine— water, tobacco, cedar, sweetgrass or sage.” Deeply personal, eloquent, and insightful entries explore topics such as ancestral pride, political advocacy, connection to land, and healing from colonial trauma. Tasha Spillett, who describes herself as “an Afro­Indigenous person with mixed European ancestry,” confides that when she was younger, she

saw her identity as a “mosaic of fragmented pieces” but that she now views herself as “a complete person, formed by all those I came from.” Métis artist Christi Belcourt contributes an intricate painting of beadwork—just one example of the striking images paired with each letter, illustrating the beauty of Native traditions and expression. Young readers will gravitate toward this collection for its wide range of voices and perspectives on Indigenous identity, fortitude, and creativity. Like the sacred items in a medicine bundle, these entries reverberate powerfully, both individually and as a whole. (contributor bios, artist note on cover art, credits) (Anthology. 8-12)

Kirkus Star

How the Word Is Passed (Adapted for Young Readers): Remembering Slavery and How It Shaped America

Smith, Clint | Adapt. by Sonja Cherry-Paul Little, Brown (272 pp.) | $18.99

September 2, 2025 | 9780316578509

Cherry­Paul presents an adaptation for young readers of Smith’s 2021 original, a riveting exploration of the lasting impact of slavery in the United States.

The author, a New Orleans native, grew up surrounded by “the echo of enslavement” but without being fully aware of his “hometown’s relationship to the centuries of bondage” that had shaped it. After witnessing the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from downtown New Orleans in 2017, he decided to investigate the history of slavery and “how it is remembered.” This work documents his visits to the Monticello Plantation, the Whitney Plantation, Angola Prison, Blandford Cemetery, Galveston Island, New York City, and Gorée Island, off the coast of Senegal. At Monticello, Smith spoke with visitors who were grappling with

their newfound knowledge of Thomas Jefferson’s history of separating families and other abuses. At Angola, Smith uncovered racial disparities in incarceration and the slaverylike conditions the prisoners continue to endure. In New York City, Smith took a walking tour of the Underground Railroad and learned the jaw­dropping fact that New York City was home to the second largest slave market in the U.S. This lyrical, moving, and engrossing investigation offers readers outstanding examples of ways to engage with and talk about the history that shapes our present­day lives, whether we’re aware of it or not. Readers will approach their own visits to historical sites with a more sophisticated understanding and awareness. An important and phenomenally executed book. (author’s note, about this project, glossary, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

The Mixed-Up Owl

Sowa, Marzena | Illus. by Joanna Lorho Hippo Park/Astra Books for Young Readers (80 pp.) | $18.99 | July 29, 2025 9781662640933

A spell of insomnia leaves an owl wakeful at the wrong time. Sprawled untidily on a branch in Lorho’s appealingly misty illustrations, Owl gazes up at the moon and wonders if anyone else is awake—just as he does each night. As he explores, he finds the hushed forest “a total snooze fest”; all the squirrels and birds are catching some z’s. Owl wonders: Is everyone supposed to sleep at night? He eventually drifts off, and when the sun rises, he clumsily tries to ask the now­bustling creatures about their sleeping habits and gets reactions ranging from a curt brushoff to open hostility. Young readers likewise subject to untimely bouts of wakefulness will relate to poor, confused Owl and will perhaps take comfort from

the way things eventually work out for him, thanks to a grumpy hedgehog. Come nighttime, the hedgehog leads Owl to a forest floor alive with busy mice, raccoons, and other small nocturnal creatures while delivering a version of an old Zen saying: “When I get hungry, I eat. When I’m bored, I like to play. When I’m tired, I go to sleep.” Anxieties allayed, Owl takes that advice, and when next the dark forest brightens, not even a feathered herald’s stentorian “Good morning!” causes owlish eyelids to twitch.

A soothing combination of timeless wisdom and atmospheric art. (Picture book. 5-7)

The Bookshop at the Back of Beyond

Sparkes, Amy | Illus. by Ben Mantle McElderry (304 pp.) | $18.99 | $8.99 paper September 30, 2025 | 9781665971935 9781665971928 paper | Series: House at the Edge of Magic, 3

In this third series entry, the traveling house carrying orphaned young pickpocket Nine and her motley housemates lands in the town of Beyond, where magical traps and powerful witches lie in ambush.

Narrow squeaks and desperate ploys abound as Nine’s ongoing search for clues to her parentage is complicated by pursuers with scarily apt names like Ophidia the Unpredictable and Gazillion the Unstoppable. Sparkes has again concocted a setting as beguiling as the frequent ruckuses, with events leading to wild magical battles in a warehouse filled with secret memories contained in fragile glass jars and a bespelled bookstore that won’t allow customers to leave until they’ve located the book it’s recommended to them. At least the House itself continues to be a safe refuge—notwithstanding its giggling, fugitive toilet and its troll housekeeper, Eric, whose gray, bone­filled pancakes are best avoided.

Better yet, the author adds a bit of nuanced character development in the form of her plucky protagonist, with Nine experiencing new pangs of conscience while making a secret bargain that abuses the trust of her housemates. One final escapade brings the helter­skelter episode to a close, with rising stakes, a fresh clue, and a chancy new passenger pointing tantalizingly to further adventures. Mantle’s spot art adds humor and charm to the chapter headers. Characters read white.

More brisk brouhahas. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Kirkus Star

Make New Friends

Stein, Joshua David | Illus. by Mariachiara Di Giorgio | Abrams (40 pp.) | $18.99

September 9, 2025 | 9781949480559

An imaginative kid makes new friends—literally. New student Tomasso is struggling; his classmates are perfectly polite, but few are truly welcoming, and even fewer seem interested in genuine friendship. Each evening, Tomasso’s father asks whether the boy’s made new pals; Tomasso promises that he hasn’t yet but will soon. Then, during one particularly lonely recess, Tomasso takes a novel approach. Sketching friendly faces onto kickballs, à la Cast Away, Tomasso makes two new pals, Roland and Barry. Every passing day offers new opportunities for inanimate intimacies: Coco, a smiling carton of milk; Henny, a paper bag with a wicked sense of humor; Karen, a grinning eraser. Now flush with buddies, Tomasso answers Dad’s dinnertime query in the affirmative, prompting his father’s excited suggestion—perhaps they’d like to join the two of them for pizza on Thursday! Stein’s text captures the experience of loneliness with uncomplicated empathy, and the dynamic he establishes between the single father and

son is simply lovely. The narrative’s climax delivers affirmation with a just­right sweetness; this portrait of vulnerability offers both guidance to adults seeking to support the youngsters in their lives and reassurance for children. Di Giorgio’s artwork conveys a coziness that teems with authentic detail. Tomasso and his father are tan­skinned; the boy’s class is diverse. A tender, unexpected portrait of familial acceptance. (Picture book. 5-8)

Monster Blood

Stine, R.L. | Adapt. by Maddi Gonzalez Illus. by Maddi Gonzalez | Colors by Wes Dzioba | Graphix/Scholastic (160 pp.)

$24.99 | September 2, 2025 | 9781338879438

Series: Graphix Goosebumps, 2

A dangerous substance livens up a family visit in this latest comics adaptation of one of Stine’s Goosebumps books. Evan’s less than thrilled to be spending the next few weeks with his formidable great­aunt Kathryn; she greets him with a bloody knife in hand (she was slicing beef, she tersely explains), and she ominously intones that they’ll have to do something about Evan’s dog, Trigger, when he clashes with her cat, Sarabeth. Evan quickly befriends a girl named Andy after she rescues him from the bullying Beymer twins. Enter a can of the titular substance, sold at an antiques store. The green slime seems harmless, but when it grows and begins coming to life, who will stop its rampage? And what secrets are Kathryn and Sarabeth hiding? The tale’s first half is deliberately paced; apart from some foreshadowing, the scares don’t really start until the monster blood begins threatening lives midway through the book. Gonzalez’s cartoon artwork balances pleasant scenes of Evan and Andy hanging out in their suburban neighborhood with forays into a dark, creepy basement and dramatic confrontations with supernatural beings. Exaggerated character reactions keep the energy level high. Though the story

contains some spooky moments— like Evan’s body­horror nightmares in which he and Trigger transform into huge monsters—the scares are never overwhelming. Most characters present white; Andy is Black. Low-key chills, ideal for horror noobs and Goosebumps stalwarts alike. (Graphic horror. 8-12)

Daybreaker: Ilustra, Book One

Tadiar, Tori | Colors by Diana Sousa Disney-Hyperion (256 pp.)

$24.99 | September 16, 2025

9781368089661 | Series: Ilustra, 1

A girl who’s attuned to ancient Filipino spirits must work together with classmates to break a curse. Mahika “Mika” Marisol grew up listening to stories about spirits from Lola, her recently deceased grandmother. Now in junior high and still believing in those stories, she’s known at her boarding school as “Mika­tastrophe,” someone who brings chaos and bad luck wherever she goes. With no friends, family, or home to return to, Mika plans to stay on campus over summer break, but a clumsy mistake gets her thrown into a weeklong detention with varsity sipa team vice­captain Halle Santos and choir soloist Mateo Madrigal. When Mika hears her grandmother’s voice speaking to her from a moth, she discovers she has the ability to communicate with spirits. After Mika accidentally casts magic that binds her to Halle and Mateo, the trio must find a way to break free. They encounter good and evil spirits along the way, and Mika awakens unimaginable powers, discovering she’s more involved with the spirit world than she knew. During her adventure­filled journey, Mika experiences new friendships, loss, and betrayal and develops a deeper understanding of family. Tadiar’s expressive illustrations, enhanced by Sousa’s rich, luminous colors, beautifully showcase the

Philippines’ diverse landscapes as well as various cultural elements. Inspired by Filipino mythology and folklore, Tadiar incorporates Baybayin, a centuries­old Filipino script, and the culture of the Indigenous peoples who live in the mountains.

A bright beginning to a new graphic fantasy series. (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

Cupig Saves Christmas

Tattersfield, Claire | Illus. by Rob Sayegh Jr. Flamingo Books (40 pp.) | $14.99

October 14, 2025 | 9780593693452

When Santa falls ill one year, Cupig must deliver the presents. Still clad in heart­dotted underpants, the plump, porcine hero introduced in Cupig: The Valentine’s Day Pig (2023) also sports fuzzy mittens and a woolen hat now that winter is here. She’s looking forward to Christmas…but then she receives alarming news. Santa has come down with a dreadful cold, and the other holiday helpers are unavailable (the Tooth Fairy has a dentist appointment, and the Easter Bunny’s on vacation). So Cupig must save the day. After a brief orientation, she sails off into the night sky on Santa’s sleigh, but her Christmas knowledge is a bit lacking, and she makes some blunders along the way. She thinks that the twinkle lights that many people have put up are a fire hazard and takes them all down, and, worried that the treats left for Santa will attract pests, she cleans them all up properly. Cupig is so distracted by the disasters that she forgets to deliver many of the gifts. Santa isn’t pleased when she returns with a sleigh still full of presents. But when Cupig goes back to right her wrongs, she adds a special Valentine touch—a little bit of extra love. Tattersfield’s rhymes, which tumble along merrily, add momentum to Cupig’s adventure, while Sayegh’s artwork, rendered in collage and digital painting, oozes sweetness and charm. Another holiday enlivened by this bumbling, lovable piggy protagonist. (Picture book. 3-6)

Pasta Girls

Tracy, Taylor | Quill Tree Books/ HarperCollins (336 pp.) | $18.99 September 9, 2025 | 9780063326866

Romeo and Juliet retold with two neurodivergent girls in New York City’s Little Italy.

The annual weeklong Feast of San Gennaro brings a muchneeded revenue boost to the neighborhood restaurants. Thirteen ­year­ old Julianna “Jules” Cangelosi typically avoids the festival’s intense crowds, but she’s been working with her therapist to push herself beyond the comfort zone that’s easier for her autism and anxiety. Fourteen­year­ old Romea “Ro” Marino can admittedly get pretty intense sometimes, but it’s part of being “a poet at heart” and having ADHD. She wants to enjoy this festival with her best friends, Merissa and Leo, as usual, but Merissa abandons them at a party that Ro didn’t even want to attend. After Ro helps a cute girl get a cooking oil stain out of her shorts at the party, they ride a Ferris wheel, where they each experience their first kiss. How was Ro to know that this girl—Jules—was the daughter of her father’s restaurant rival? The dispute pits Jules’ father’s traditional family recipes against Ro’s father’s Italian American culinary experimentation. Can the girls follow their feelings while avoiding their fathers’ feud? Tracy retains some key characteristics of Shakespeare’s story and inserts literary references—gelato by any other name “would taste just as sweet”—but this tragedy­free version is a feel ­ good romance. The introspective, fully fleshed ­ out lesbian leads share the narration, which at times is unnecessarily repetitive and detailed, but overall, this is an engaging read.

An inclusive, well-characterized reimagining of a classic. (Fiction. 10-14)

Another holiday enlivened by this bumbling, lovable piggy protagonist.

CUPIG SAVES CHRISTMAS

A-Ztec: A Bilingual Alphabet Book

Valtierra, Emmanuel | Levine Querido (64 pp.)

$19.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9781646145676

Explore the ABCs from axolotl to zapata Incorporating words in Spanish, Nahuatl, Mayan, and languages from other Mesoamerican cultures, Valtierra’s idiosyncratic alphabetical walkthrough invites readers to engage with the sounds and images found therein. Broadly familiar words such as chocolate, guacamole, and jaguar mingle alongside potentially lesser­known ones, like the active stratovolcano Popocatépetl, the Wixárika people, and yollotl, a Nahuatl word meaning heart. Short, upbeat verses in both English and Spanish accompany each word, generally mirroring each other in mood and tone. Different meanings often emerge between the two verse forms nonetheless, making them more easily accessible to bilingual readers. Valtierra maintains a pleasant cadence from verse to verse thanks to an evenhanded approach, ranging from softly deferential—such as her ode to the Quetzalcoatl (“The Aztecs knew him, kind and true, / With beautiful feathers, green and blue”)— to dizzily humorous, like his entry on a bundle of food known as itacate to take on a journey, which can include “tamales, tacos, anything delicious, / Don’t eat too much or you’ll feel nauseous!” Pronunciation boxes also supplement the concepts and mythological figures showcased in the story. Of course, the occasional word might pose a challenge to readers—for instance, the courageous god of war, Huitzilopochtli (“wee tsee loh POHCH tlee”)—but

overall, this alphabet chronicle shares its enthusiasm for language rather generously. Employing an Aztec codex style, the artist injects an anarchic spirit into his colorful artwork.

Merrily edifying. (author’s note, pronunciations and etymology, information on glyphs, QR code linking to more information on the words and artwork) (Picture book. 4-8)

Caitlin Clark: Shooting Star, a Biography

Wainer, Erica | Illus. by Claudia Marianno HarperPop/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $14.99 October 7, 2025 | 9780063459205

From backyard ball with her brothers to buzzer­beaters on the big stage, watch WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark rise to basketball stardom. As a child in Iowa, Caitlin loves playing sports with her brothers. Whether she’s involved in basketball, soccer, softball, track, or even golf, she’s fiercely competitive. Her dad becomes her first basketball coach, and soon it’s her favorite sport. College coaches begin watching Caitlin play when she’s only a middle schooler, recognizing her bright future. Later, breaking college records and winning countless awards as an Iowa Hawkeye, Caitlin becomes so well known that she fills the Kinnick Stadium with the most people ever to watch a women’s basketball game. She leads both NCAA women and men in scoring during her senior year and lands a spot as the number one draft pick for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever. Wainer highlights Clark’s many impressive accomplishments, but the book may

have benefited from some balance by featuring more obstacles overcome or challenges faced. Clark’s many fans will be eager to pick this one up, but the strictly expository writing and basic digital illustrations—though vibrant and inviting—add little depth to her story. A slam-dunk subject, but the writing rarely leaves the bench. (Picture-book biography. 5-7)

Soup’s on Around the World

Waissbluth, Denyse | Illus. by Chelsea O’Byrne | Greystone Kids (40 pp.)

$19.95 | October 14, 2025

9781778401671 | Series: Taste the World

A brimming bowlful of appreciation for many of the kinds of soup associated with diverse countries and cultures. This savory companion to Teatime Around the World (2020) touches down first in Thailand for a taste of spicy hot tom yum goong. Waissbluth then spoons out tributes to 19 more soups, from the widely served likes of Spanish gazpacho and Mexican (originally Aztec) pozole to a sweet Christmas fruit soup known in Finland as sekahedelmäkeitto and Australian pie floater (a mixture of meat pie and pea soup often served with a squirt of ketchup on top; it’s rooted, the author frankly acknowledges, in British colonialism). Her focus is mainly localized, though she does note that chicken soup, despite being sometimes called “Jewish penicillin,” has actually been “a favorite for ages, from ancient Greece to China.” Rather than provide full recipes, she tallies enough common ingredients and flavorings to convey a taste of each entry’s distinctive character, with a comment or two about historical or cultural connections for extra flavor. O’Byrne underscores the inclusive spirit with scenes of broadly diverse groups large and small, in mixes of modern and traditional dress, happily slurping away in a range of public and private settings. The author and illustrator each

close with a favorite recipe. “Soup’s on. / Time to eat. / A world of flavors, / where friends meet.”

Delicious and nutritious. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 6-9)

Kirkus Star

Rock Star: How Ursula Marvin Mapped Moon Rocks and Meteorites

Wallace, Sandra Neil | Illus. by Nancy Carpenter | Paula Wiseman/ Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) | $19.99 October 14, 2025 | 9781534493339

A giant among geologists breaks new ground. Ursula Marvin (1921­2018) was an intrepid adventurer from the start. A Vermonter by birth, she skied over icy potato fields and marveled at the moonlit mountains beyond, positive her future held something far more exciting than the humdrum tedium of scientific inquiry. But by the time she entered college, the field of planetary geology had captivated Marvin, and she was entranced by the information that rare earth minerals and moon rocks could communicate. Her curiosity about these other worlds brought Marvin to the ends of ours. Sharp, capable, and undeterred by the sexist stumbling blocks meant to thwart her, Marvin became the first female scientist to hunt the harsh landscape of Antarctica for meteorites, chasing the adventure she’d hungered for since childhood. But achievement at such scale is rarely won without adversity, and this feat was no

different. Hampered by environmental challenges and plagued by self­doubt, Marvin nevertheless stayed the course, eventually becoming the preeminent expert on the first meteorite discovered on Earth and, ultimately, the much­deserving namesake of geological wonders earthside and beyond. Wallace’s text uses technical terms in context and renders the less glamorous labor that makes thrilling scientific discovery possible. Charming details peppered throughout add a personal texture to Marvin’s impressive figure. Carpenter delivers stunning visuals to match, her two­page spread capturing the glow of the midnight sun especially enchanting. A luminous tribute befitting a brilliant trailblazer. (author’s note, excerpts from Marvin’s journals, facts about Antarctica, timeline, quote sources, bibliography, photos) (Picture-book biography. 8-12)

Rus and Moose

Wang, Chuchu | Yonder (40 pp.) | $19.95 September 2, 2025 | 9781632064097

A trucker and a moose take a journey together. While driving through Maine in the dark of night, Rus sees a moose and brakes to a stop. Moose faints and gets tangled up under the truck’s front hood but miraculously is unscathed. In a moment of kindness, Rus pulls him out and tucks him into bed in the truck’s cab. Moose awakens to find himself cruising down the road in an 18 ­wheeler bound for Florida. Serving as both road buddy and cheery pet, Moose helps Rus navigate sticky situations and switch containers at the shipper’s

A simple and unique road trip tale, at once jubilant and calming.

RUS AND MOOSE

warehouse but also licks Rus’ face and sticks his enormous antlered head out the cab window to enjoy the breeze. A delightful surprise, this story celebrates the work of long­haul trucking, often considered an unglamorous, even rough profession. Rus’ cab contains exquisite blankets and pillows and occasionally fills up with fanciful cascades of flowers. The truck passes through rain and bright sun, through cities and to the sea, depicted in seamlessly presented, often breathtaking sequences. The story’s success is due in no small part to Wang’s creative experimentation; she even makes the delivery of freight and the workings of a container depot appear colorful and compelling. Pale­skinned, dark­haired Rus presents East Asian; the author draws affectionately from her experiences traveling with her truck­driver husband. A simple and unique road trip tale, at once jubilant and calming. (Picture book. 4-8)

Leif’s

Gift

Wang, Michael | Illus. by Lenny Wen Norton Young Readers (40 pp.) | $18.99 June 10, 2025 | 9781324052784

W hen a young boy’s beloved plant collection overtakes his bedroom, he must figure out how to turn things around. Leif’s family lives in one of several apartments above their cafe. “Mom bake[s] the treats and Dad brew[s] the beans. But Leif prefer[s] to grow plants in his bedroom with his pal Hortus.” The droll, rather sophisticated text describes the boy’s obsession: Leif’s sole holiday requests have always been for specific foliage, he reads up on plant care, and he carefully places poisonous flora out of reach of Hortus, a turtle. When asked how many plants he has, Leif responds, “Not enough,” while his parents say, “Too many.” Leif’s successful nurturing results in his plants twining themselves around the

A

whimsical offering that will encourage creative interpretations.

YEAR ROUND

furniture and spilling across the entire house. After Leif’s watering can and library book disappear amid the jungle that’s consumed his home, the ultimate crisis occurs: Hortus goes missing. Leif adamantly refuses to remove any plants but does acknowledge the problem. Leif quickly solves the problem (indeed, the swift resolution may be a bit unsatisfying for readers), leading to benefits for the entire urban neighborhood. Wen’s colorful, stylized illustrations are a wonderful complement to Wang’s quietly amusing text and include ethnic diversity in group scenes; Leif and his family present East Asian. Backmatter offers helpful instructions about plant propagation, plus a list of pet­friendly houseplants. Required reading for budding phytophiles. (Picture book. 4-8)

Year Round

Weber, Audrey Helen | Neal Porter/ Holiday House (48 pp.) | $18.99 October 14, 2025 | 9780823457205

Dividing the year into “Winter Questions,” “Spring Feelings,” “Summer Wishes,” and “Fall Thoughts,” Weber takes a decidedly offbeat look at the seasons.

A diverse group of children playfully cavort through various seasonal ruminations; some are straightforward, such as a winter query: “Can you peel a clementine all in one go?” Others take a more reflective approach, as when the author/illustrator reflects on anxiety: “Bouts of butterflies, fluttering

thunder.” Weber’s gouache and acrylic paintings in pastel colors have a light, almost delicate feel, and the rounded figures of the children and curves of the objects and landscapes convey a comforting ambiance. The simple, loose rhyming text at times feels a mite obscure (“I know the Earth is big and round, and what has gone might come again”), but it offers moments for curious listeners to reflect and pose their own questions. The book is framed by a scene at the beginning of each season; as the “Winter Questions” begin, a trunk and four drawers stand alone in what appears to be a schoolroom setting. As the seasons progress, the contents are deconstructed, and their uses become ever more multifaceted as the active children grow and learn.

A whimsical offering that will intrigue the inquisitive child and encourage creative interpretations. (Picture book. 4-8)

A Quick Trip to the Store

Wedelich, Sam | Knopf (48 pp.) | $18.99 November 11, 2025 | 9780593905982

A mother and child both hate going to the grocery store but for distinctly different reasons. The family is out of bananas. To the dreaded store the pair must go, even as Mom contends that “it’s difficult to shop with children” while the youngster counters, “It’s difficult to shop with moms.” Both concur: “What a perfect way to ruin a Saturday morning.” Mom at least allows the protagonist to ride the mechanical horse in front of the Oinkly Doinkly,

but the youngster is quickly distracted by a more tempting alternative. While Mom’s busy chatting with a friend, the child’s attempts to return an errant shopping cart result in quite the solo adventure. At least the bananas are eventually located! Bruised they may be, but they’re perfect for whipping up banana bread for the harried store employees. Wedelich transforms a quotidian task into a rambunctious escapade, albeit one infused with kids ­ don’ttry­this ­ at­home messaging. Her vibrant cartoonlike illustrations bleed off the pages, overflowing with an impossible ­to ­ contain energy— particularly when it comes to that rolling shopping cart. The artwork is rife with eye ­ catching details (a bag of “Tooth­Rotter Chee ­ z Doodles”) and enhanced with perfect comedic timing; at book’s end, a banana peel—a comedic staple—causes delightful kitchen havoc. Mom is tan­ skinned, while the child is slightly paler; Wedelich populates the grocery store with widely diverse shoppers and staff.

A dreaded chore presents an opportunity for irresistible fun. (Picture book. 3-8)

straight toward a nearby babbling brook. In a moment of ill­ advised curiosity, Pippo opens the door and plunges straight into the water. He clambers atop his now­unmoored front door and drifts breathlessly downstream. Once safely ashore, he makes a serendipitous discovery— his home and its wares are sitting gleaming in a glen, largely immobile, functional, and only slightly worse for wear. Inspired by the week’s whirlwind, Pippo plops down to write, settling into a routine but now much more open to the unknown. Cosmic horror for nervous kids, Wen’s text dramatizes the departure from the predictable with an emotional reality that many anxious readers will recognize. Twee, vintage ­feeling illustrations prove just spooky enough to emphasize how disconcerting change can be; the aesthetic complements the narrative’s kookiness without straying far from Pippo’s hygge ideal. Frequent onomatopoeia makes for an appealingly immersive storytime experience. An affirming adventure. (Picture book. 6-8)

Wolf in the City

Wen, Lenny | Clarion/HarperCollins (48 pp.) $19.99 | October 28, 2025 | 9780063288959

An unusual week disrupts a mole’s peace. Pippo’s world couldn’t be comfier. Each day, he sips his tea and types up his stories; his is a life of routine. But one morning, he wakes to find tentacled purple plants dangling from his ceiling and leaking liquid, undeterred by his insistent pokes of disapproval. The next day, Pippo happens upon his previously inanimate belongings hightailing it away. Perhaps strangest of all, on the third morning, the stump that he calls home sprouts four creepily gnarled legs and sidles

Wolf, Rachel Tilda | Scallywag Press (32 pp.) $18.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9781836300106

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. In the center of a “tired” town square, “on the edge of a vast and magnificent city,” stands a statue of a lone white wolf. Wolf is stuck in a rut,

observing the daily routines of the residents but ignored by everyone except Pigeon, who poops on her daily. Yearning to live among the majestic statues in the city center, she boards a bus in search of a new perspective. After being rebuffed by the sculptures in the museums and realizing that the monument dedicated to battle might not be her thing, she aimlessly wanders the city, lonely and confused. Wolf sheepishly returns, sparking elation as the residents celebrate the return of their missing statue and making her feel right at home. Debut author/illustrator Wolf (no relation) has crafted a fantastical tale that balances the desire for new experiences with the need to be appreciated. Traveling through brightly colored bustling city scenes, Wolf endures a range of emotions, making her journey all the more relatable to young readers unsure of their place in life. Store signs and local landmarks imply an Italian setting; town residents are diverse in age and skin tone. A sweetly satisfying reminder that there truly is no place like home. (Picture book. 4-7)

Victor and the Giant

Yockteng, Rafael | Trans. by Elisa Amado Aldana Libros/Greystone Kids (56 pp.)

$19.95 | August 26, 2025 | 9781778400841

Series: Aldana Libros

In this tale translated from Spanish, a voracious behemoth spells doom for a peaceful city.

The day starts like any other. A bespectacled, tan ­ skinned young

A sweetly satisfying reminder that there truly is no place like home.

WOLF IN THE CITY

Pippo’s Perfectly Peculiar Days

boy named Victor enjoys his milky hot chocolate as his mom runs out the door, late for work. Things take a turn, however, when the earth shakes and everything falls to the floor. The cause? A green ­ skinned, hairy, nude giant (covered up by strategically placed clouds) has eaten the whole city—except Victor. After getting the full ­ bellied, napping creature’s attention, Victor explains that cities aren’t meant to be eaten but to be lived in. The solution to getting everyone back while still filling the giant’s hungry tum comes down to our hero’s ingenuity. While the book harkens back to classic tales of boys and giants, like Pete Seeger and Michael Hays’ Abiyoyo (1986), it deviates somewhat; rather than outwitting the foe, our protagonist plays upon the creature’s sympathies. Meticulously rendered art brings to horrendous life everything from the bumps on the giant’s tongue to its individual nose hairs. Alas, the book finishes on an oddly clunky note, contrasting wildly with its prior polished presentation. Even so, kids will revel as much in the logistics of confronting such a large antagonist as they will with the tale’s inevitable vomiting sequence. Publishes simultaneously in Spanish. A jolly green delight of a tale, ideal for those young readers with outsize appetites for a good tale. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kat & Mouse: I Like Cheese!

Yoon, Salina | Bloomsbury (64 pp.) | $12.99 September 16, 2025 | 9781547612420

Series: A Kat & Mouse Book

Lunch dates get a little sweeter when two friends bring the art of compromise to their menus. Kat (a blue feline) and Mouse (a darker blue rodent) are getting together for lunch. Kat has packed “the most

Ideal for those young readers with outsize appetites for a good tale.

VICTOR AND THE GIANT

delicious sandwich! It has BACON, LETTUCE, and TOMATO.” Kat dubs this feast “the BLT.” Mouse has brought a delectable meal, too. “Only the BEST food there is! CHEESE!” Over the next few days, the pair again meet to share mealtimes. Kat totes increasingly elaborate picnic setups and sandwiches, while Mouse packs a modest, star­ speckled lunchbox of flavorful cheeses. Sensitive to Kat’s perception of this apparent monotony, Mouse worries: “Maybe I’m boring.” After a trial lunch apart proves “AWFUL” for Kat and makes Mouse’s blue cheese taste “bluer than usual,” the pair agree that their happy mix of habits makes for a healthy friendship. Brightly colored digital art with thick outlines frames the gentlefaced, cartoonish characters on visually clean backgrounds in a variety of page layouts; some pages are divided into graphic novel–esque panels. Beginning readers will find the minimal text helpful; it appears in a bold font within clearly attributed and color­ coded speech bubbles (pink for Kat, green for Mouse). This cheery series starter shares the tender social ­ emotional lessons of similar titles starring animal pals, like Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie series or Ben Clanton’s Narwhal and Jelly tales. A satisfying choice for picky readers. (Early reader. 5-7)

For more by Salina Yoon,

Sleep Here, Wake There

Zero, Caio | Trans. by Polly Lawson Floris (36 pp.) | $18.99 | October 21, 2025 9781782509271

A child solves a bedtime conundrum. Intrigued by aliens—as evidenced by a tiny, three ­ eyed green stuffie on the bed and the extraterrestrial books scattered all around—César, who’s brownskinned with tight dark curls, has a nighttime mystery to solve: “Every night I [go] to sleep here, in my house. And every morning I [wake] up there, in my aunty’s house!” Is César sleepwalking? Perhaps the bed contains a magical portal. Or are aliens responsible? While brainstorming the many possibilities, the child begins drawing on the wall— much to Mama’s consternation—and the investigation is cut short. There’s only one way to learn the truth: stay up all night. As the tale comes to a sweet conclusion, we learn that each evening, Mama, who works nights, drops César off at Aunty’s place. In an author’s note, Zero notes that the story is rooted in his own childhood memories. Bright pinks, greens, and blues saturate this Brazilian import— a testament to the “it takes a village” mindset—while smaller details on each page are inked in black but not filled in. César’s heartwarming realization will resonate with any kid who’s ever wondered about the strangeness of life: “Even though there was a simple answer to my big mystery, it still felt magical to me.” A warm exploration of curiosity and family. (Picture book. 3-6)

visit Kirkus online.

Young Adult

THE PLEASURES (AND DANGERS) OF LOVING BOLDLY

SOMETHING fundamental unites all romance novels, despite the sheer variety of subgenres and tropes: They explore some of the most vulnerable and powerful moments of human connection. This is especially true when you’re a teenager navigating a tremendously self-conscious stage of life. Daring to fall in love involves showing someone who you really are and risking the pain of rejection; what could require more courage or promise a greater reward? The romance genre represents human resilience and optimism and offers a balm for the soul during troubled times. Look for these stellar examples of a genre that’s diverse enough to offer something for nearly every reader.

In The Romance Rivalry by Susan Lee (Harper/HarperCollins, May 13), readers meet Irene Park and Aiden Jeon, new college students with large social media followings for their romance book reviews. They’re total opposites who rarely agree about what they read—so when they’re paired for an English literature assignment, irritation vies with their undeniable mutual attraction. They enter a friendly competition involving popular dating tropes, adding to the fun of this charming story about building trust and communication.

In Lynette Noni’s latest, Wandering Wild (Blackstone, May 20), Australian teen Charlie agrees to take her sick best friend Ember’s place on a

wilderness adventure reality TV show with Zander, the American actor Ember adores. Charlie can’t stand him, though she refuses to tell him why. Following a scandal, Zander’s trying to rehabilitate his image by connecting with a fan. Readers will swoon as they traverse the Blue Mountains, facing physical dangers and prying cameras, their awkward discomfort morphing into something more.

Marissa Meyer’s heartwarming, body-positive graphic novel We Could Be Magic, illustrated by Joelle Murray (Feiwel & Friends, June 3), goes behind the scenes of Sommerland, a Disneylandlike theme park. Since childhood, Tabi has dreamed of playing a princess and sharing the happilyever-after magic that brightened her life with other fans. But after getting into the park’s high school summer program, Tabi quickly realizes that some people can’t imagine a fat girl in a princess role. Still, she

perseveres—and even finds her own handsome prince.

Lakita Wilson explores socioeconomic differences with care and nuance in Pretty Girl County (Viking, July 1). Modest family finances make Sommer’s dream of attending Spelman College a stretch. Her former bestie, Reya, catapulted to wealth with her mother’s role on The Real Housewives of Potomac —but money can’t buy her admission to Fashion Institute of Technology. Reya falls for a girl who works at Sommer’s parents’ bookstore, and Sommer gets caught in a love triangle with boys from completely different backgrounds, forcing both girls to reflect and grow.

A misdirected text leads to love for two lonely goths in You’ve Goth My Heart by L.C. Rosen (Little, Brown, September 9). In this witty, often hilarious story, the boys agree to remain anonymous until a big video-call reveal on Halloween. In the meantime, they bare their souls to one another: Gray recently broke up with his closeted boyfriend, and the anonymous texter he names “My Future Murderer” in his contacts is upset about having to leave the city and move to a small town.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.

LAURA SIMEON

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

At her father’s secluded Martha’s Vineyard home, an 18-year-old becomes entangled in his messy world in this stand-alone novel set in the world of We Were Liars (2014) and its prequel, Family of Liars  (2022).

Smart, serious gamer Matilda’s flighty mother has left her behind in Los Angeles and followed her newest boyfriend to Mexico City. Matilda, hurt, vulnerable, and somewhat emotionally adrift, is surprised to receive an email from Kingsley Cello, the father whose name she’s never even known. He’s a reclusive, world-famous artist, and he’s inviting her

to stay with him in Massachusetts. Though Kingsley is away when Matilda arrives, she’s drawn in by her queer half brother, Meer, and the other residents. Two other young men live at the sprawling estate with Meer and his mother, June, a Japanese American textile artist and herbalist: former child actor Brock and gorgeous but mean Tatum. Though Matilda is uneasy about the unconventional situation and the rambling, decrepit house and frustrated that her father asked her to come, only to disappear, the three boys’ exuberant strangeness and the bonds she forms with them keep her there.

We Fell Apart

Lockhart, E. | Delacorte | 320 pp. | $22.99

November 4, 2025 | 9780593899168

Series: We Were Liars

Through her nuanced characters, who are both smart and vulnerable, Lockhart explores art, responsibility, and feminism. She also weaves an appealing romance and gothic, fairy-tale, and classical references into the

worldbuilding that’s stylish and detailed but handled with a light touch. Other than June and Meer, most characters present white. Atmospheric and emotionally rich. (map, series note, family tree, author’s note) (Fiction. 13-18)

Champion: A Graphic Novel

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem & Raymond Obstfeld Illus. by Ed Laroche | Ten Speed Press (128 pp.)

$26.99 | September 2, 2025 | 9780593835746

A young man’s sports obsession shifts when he’s required to research the off-court life of his hoops hero in this work co-written by basketball legend Abdul-Jabbar and prolific author Obstfeld.

Monk Travers, African American star basketball player and team captain, gets caught vandalizing a rival school’s mural. Fortunately, the security guard calls his coach instead of his parents or the police. Coach Blaine suspends Monk, assigns him an all-school presentation on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and orders the team to clean up the damage. But there’s one catch: Monk must focus on Abdul-Jabbar beyond his basketball career. As Monk delves into his idol’s story, it feels as if Abdul-Jabbar is by his side, sharing visions of his life. When Coach demands to see his progress, Monk can’t find his work—it’s gone missing. Just when things can’t seem to get any worse, Coach meets with Monk’s parents, who are now also concerned about his single-minded focus on getting into the NBA. Eventually, Monk gains insight into the events that contributed to Abdul-Jabbar’s passion for activism and writing, leading him to fulfill the assignment in an original way that highlights his own talents. The co-authors skillfully weave biography, Black history, and realistic fiction into a cleverly conceived story about a Black teen who’s lost his focus. Monk has a strong support system of people who guide him toward appreciating a broader life journey. Laroche’s dramatic illustrations skillfully complement the storytelling. An engaging blend of sports fiction, history, and real-life issues. (Graphic fiction. 12-18)

A witty mystery where drama unfolds on and off the stage.

SHOWSTOPPER

Korean Pop Culture: The New Global Obsession

Allen, John | ReferencePoint Press (64 pp.)

$33.95 | August 1, 2025 | 9781678210885

Traces the rise of Hallyu, or the Korean Wave. Divided into five parts, this short but informative book is a solid introduction to Korean pop culture. The globalization of Korean culture spans music, television, food, and fashion, boosting South Korea’s economy. Allen describes the deliberate strategy behind the nation’s rise from being “one of the world’s poorest nations” 50 years ago, lagging behind even North Korea, to its present-day success as a major exporter of culture and entertainment. Refusing to allow language to pose a barrier, the government decided that South Korea would “be the coolest country in the world—the only non-English-speaking nation ever to successfully export its pop culture,” according to journalist Euny Hong. A pivotal moment was PSY’s viral 2012 hit, “Gangnam Style,” and K-pop’s popularity has only grown since. K-dramas, which have benefited from government subsidies, appeal to global audiences thanks to their “inventive storytelling and glossy production values.” Allen also covers Korean cuisine and the spread of mukbang, or livestreamed videos of people eating large quantities of food, and the fever for K-fashion and K-beauty products. Ample full-color photos punctuate the text, adding to this entertaining and instructive work’s appeal. Informative text boxes add valuable context.

An engaging and easy-to-follow guide to a subject of wide interest. (source notes, further research, index, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Showstopper

Anderson, Lily | Henry Holt (320 pp.) | $19.99 September 30, 2025 | 9781250370396

Seventeen-yearold Ofelia “Faye” Abernathy has always played it safe at the Ghostlight Youth Theater Camp. Faye, whose dad is Black Puerto Rican and mom is white, has ended up typecast in roles such as Cinderella and Glinda the Good Witch. But now that she’s attending camp for the final time before aging out of the program, she wants to make a change. She stops bleaching and straightening her hair into “nice-girl dullness,” instead embracing her Afro-Latina heritage and feeling like a more authentic version of herself. Faye dreams of being cast in the role of Veronica in the camp’s musical production of Riverdale and going out with a bang. However, she finds herself at odds with bestie Kai Tufo over the role, intrigued by a charming new camper, and publicly accused of murdering another one—and she realizes that this summer at Ghostlight will be memorable but not necessarily in the way she hoped. Anderson’s refreshingly diverse cast of characters includes kids of various cultural, racial, and LGBTQ+ identities, who are socially stratified as leads vs. ensemble members. Faye wrestles with self-doubt over her ability to break free from the mold she feels trapped in, and she struggles to balance loyalty to her friends with being true to herself. In this love letter to theater life, the joy and passion derived from the art form shine through brightly.

A witty summer camp murder mystery where drama unfolds both on and off the stage. (Horror. 14-18)

Into the Deep Blue

Archer, Jennifer E. | Marble Press (304 pp.)

$19.99 | September 30, 2025 | 9781958325377

Grief and love intertwine in this emotional love story.

Oregon teens Fiona and Nick met in a grief support group, where each was trying to cope with the sudden death of their mother. Their bond runs deep, but as they grapple with their losses, moving beyond their best friend status proves complicated. In the liminal period between high school and college, Fiona must deal with her distant father, job troubles, and a close friend who thinks Nick is really cute—and is acting on her feelings. For his part, Nick must accept his family’s attempts to move on and the fallout of his own mistakes. A road trip to Monterey for Fiona to explore her mother’s past leads to things heating up between the friends, who present white. Archer’s debut is a heart-wrenching romance that pulls readers along on the characters’ journey through grief, showing all the ways they can—and can’t—support each other. Archer beautifully portrays the push and pull of love and loss through Nick and Fiona’s dual points of view; both teens yearn for and yet fear connection. The well-written depictions of the sensations of grief will resonate with many readers. Romance lovers will swoon over Nick’s and Fiona’s growing feelings as their slow-burn relationship deepens. Swoony and sad. (Romance. 13-18)

House of Hearts

Arndt, Skyla | Viking (288 pp.) | $19.99 September 2, 2025 | 9780593693193

Violet Harper enters the prestigious Hart Academy with one goal: to learn what happened to her late best friend and enact revenge. Last year, Emoree Hale was reported to have tragically fallen from a tower, but Violet knows she’d never have taken her own life. Not long before her death, Emoree admitted to having feelings for the headmistress’ son Percy Lockwell. Now Violet is sure Percy killed her friend—and that his mother is covering for him. But Percy has disappeared by the time Violet arrives on campus, so she pursues his siblings for information instead. Both Calvin and Sadie are members of the campus club known as the Cards, an exclusive group with great privileges and mysterious intentions. Calvin, in particular, becomes Violet’s target: He’s a notorious playboy who clearly knows more about Emoree’s death than he lets on. But even as Violet uncovers the truth, more questions arise, and ghosts and vicious curses come into play. She must battle an undeniable connection to Calvin and a host of supernatural horrors before she completes her mission. Calvin and Violet’s chemistry and the moody setting will propel readers despite the uneven pace and somewhat predictable lore of the curse. The lead characters are cued white, and there’s racial diversity in the supporting cast.

Solid dark academia that’s strongest in its spooky, enchanting atmosphere. (Paranormal mystery. 14-18)

Kirkus Star

The Hidden Girl

Bassett, Louise | Walker Books Australia (352 pp.) | $19.99 October 7, 2025 | 9781761601644

Fueled by a drive for vengeance against her best friend’s murderer, a girl becomes entangled in a society that harbors supernatural secrets.

A stolen journal launches two Australian teens on a quest for truth and justice. Melati Nelson is doing her utmost to stay out of trouble in Year Eleven at Chisholm School for Girls in

Melbourne, leaving behind disastrous adventures at her previous school. She’s especially keen to go on the class trip to Indonesia to explore her grandmother’s home country and learn more about her heritage (the rest of Mel’s background is white). But she loses her cool when the class bully, Libby Hartnett, physically attacks a fellow student; Mel avoids expulsion, but both girls must meet with the school counselor. In his office, Mel discovers an intriguing diary in Indonesian, written by a girl named Devi. She takes it on the class trip, not realizing the import of this decision. Once Mel and Michael, a new Australian friend she meets in Jogjakarta who’s cued Indonesian and white, begin translating the entries, they realize that Devi is being held captive as a sex worker in Melbourne. They team up, hoping to locate and free Devi, a monumental task that proves to be more complicated—and dangerous—than they anticipate. This gripping page-turner sheds light on a modern-day horror in a non-preachy manner that will appeal to young readers. Mel is gritty, yet sensitive; fierce, yet flexible. Her personal growth as the story unfolds is admirable while remaining realistic. A thoughtful, nuanced work that explores justice, bullying, and finding one’s place in a complicated world. (Thriller. 14-18)

Make Me a Monster

Bayron, Kalynn | Bloomsbury (320 pp.) | $19.99 September 30, 2025 | 9781547615865

A teenage mortician’s assistant discovers that the dead don’t always stay that way. Seventeen-yearold Meka is no stranger to death, having grown up working in her parents’ Ithaca, New York, funeral home. Though the morbidity of her job unsettles some of her friends, Meka is passionate about her family’s business, and she has the full support of

her boyfriend, Noah. But despite her comfort with death, she’s haunted by a recurring nightmare about her mother dying—a dream she desperately hopes won’t come true. When Meka’s life is rocked by a completely unexpected tragedy, strange things begin happening: She sees shadowy figures lurking, a mysterious gift arrives on her doorstep, and fragments of a buried memory resurface. As Meka slowly pieces together the truth, what she finds forces her to question everything she knows about life and death—and her own family. Bayron crafts a page-turning, atmospheric homage to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, balancing unnerving horror with tender romance. Teens familiar with the original novel will enjoy the modern twist, and the layered mystery will also appeal to reluctant readers and those without prior knowledge of Shelley’s work. The foreboding narrative starts out at a slower pace and builds to an action-packed conclusion, though readers may be left with some unanswered questions. Meka and her family are cued as Black. Chilling yet romantic; explores the complexities of death, love, and grief. (Horror. 14-18)

If Looks Could Kill

Berry, Julie | Simon & Schuster (448 pp.)

$21.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9781534470811

In an alternate Victorian era, unlikely allies confront monsters and murders. It’s 1888, and misogynist Jack is on the prowl in Whitechapel, London, butchering women and consuming their organs, which he hopes will “restore him to health and life.” After one murder, he’s approached by a Gorgon, a snake-haired monster from Greek mythology with a gaze that turns people to stone. But Jack isn’t affected by her petrifying powers; he runs away and continues his murder spree. Fleeing the police, Jack boards a ship heading across the Atlantic. In New York City, Pearl Davenport and Tabitha

Woodward are members of the Salvation Army, spreading God’s word. They’re roommates who have a contentious relationship—rigidly pious Pearl clashes with more easygoing Tabitha. Wanting to help Cora, a distressed girl they briefly cross paths with, Pearl and Tabitha ask investigative reporter Freyda to help locate her. Pearl falls ill while Tabitha scours the city, seeking answers and receiving assistance from surprising sources, including handsome bartender Mike and Miss Stella, a secretive older woman. All the while, an evil lurking in the city is growing closer. Berry’s exploration of Jack the Ripper’s motivations is intriguing. But the evolving relationships among the largely white-presenting characters—particularly the one between Pearl and Tabitha as they confront horrors that are softened by the compassion they encounter— offer the real appeal, accentuating the best and worst of human nature. A powerful exploration of human connection during nightmarish times. (historical notes, bibliography) (Historical paranormal. 12-18)

Kirkus Star

Torchfire

Buffini, Moira | Storytide/HarperCollins (452 pp.) | $19.99 | September 23, 2025 9780063358263 | Series: The Torch Trilogy, 2

The war between the Aylish and the Brightlings continues in this sequel to Songlight (2024). Knowledge of the earlier volume is a must as readers are immediately plunged back into the action. Peace talks in Northaven have gone horribly wrong. Fleeing the carnage, Elsa, her mother, Heron, and Kingfisher head into the dense Brightland forest. Unbeknownst to Elsa, her love, Rye Tern, has escaped from a Chrysalid House; the metal headband blocking his ability to communicate using songlight is still

attached. Meanwhile, Piper, Elsa’s estranged brother, is questioning his loyalties, but he continues to work for Lord Kite, Brightlinghelm’s new leader, whom Queen of Propaganda Sister Swan also serves. Elsa’s friend Nightingale, who’s a prisoner of Sister Swan, tries to convince Swan to use her influence over the Brightlings to further peace with the Aylish, while she secretly communicates with Elsa through songlight. Diary entries from 17-year-old Petra of Sealand, a remote island with a technologically advanced society, appear throughout; she’s traveling on the airship Celestis as part of a surveillance mission, seeking new land where her people can expand. This volume, which sets events up for the trilogy closer, deftly explores a range of human differences against the backdrop of a lush, immersive world populated by characters who are diverse in appearance and culture. The whiplash of experiencing heartache and hope in rapid succession leads to thought-provoking questions, and a revelation that has unforeseen consequences will leave readers eager for the next volume.

Heartbreaking, heartening, wondrous. (Dystopian. 14-18)

Lemons and Lies

Castellanos, Alexis | Bloomsbury (288 pp.) | $12.99 paper September 16, 2025 | 9781547614080

A teen proposes a mutually beneficial fake-dating relationship to persuade her reluctant classmate to tutor her.

Valeria Morales’ senior year isn’t going well: Her popular twin brother, Adrian, isn’t speaking to her, their mutual friends have abandoned her, and she’s about to fail Algebra II, which threatens her graduation. To get her grade up, Cuban American Valeria needs a student tutor—and the only one available is Gage Magnussen, a white-presenting

boy who’s battling Adrian for valedictorian. But Gage has his own issues—he’s supposed to be planning a charity auction with his cheating ex-girlfriend, Ginger, who wants to get back together, even though their breakup led a miserable Gage to neglect his studies and allow his GPA to drop. Valeria proposes a deal: She’ll help Gage with the auction and pretend to be his girlfriend—keeping Ginger at bay and allowing him to focus on school—if he helps her with math. But as they spend more time together, and Valeria’s family drama increases with the return of her estranged mother, the lines between real and pretend blur. Filled to the brim with beloved romance tropes and delicious treats (the Moraleses run a popular bakery), this cute stand-alone work set in the world of Guavas and Grudges (2024) returns readers to the small-town Olympic Peninsula setting of Port Murphy and centers on secondary characters from that earlier outing. A sweetly affirming story about family, food, and finding your own path. (recipe) (Romance. 12-18)

Kirkus Star

These Bodies Ain’t Broken

Ed. by Dyer, Madeline | Page Street (384 pp.) $18.99 | September 23, 2025 | 9798890033024

Reimagining a genre that’s often known for representing characters with disabilities as villains, this horror anthology reveals the power held within disabled bodies. Encompassing a wide variety of subgenres, including dystopian, gothic, and body horror, this volume offers readers stories exclusively written by disabled authors. Some characters’ conditions are explicitly named, like Type 1 diabetes in “Ravenous” by Carly Nugent, the story of Linden, a whitepresenting Australian 18-year-old who’s unhappy about her family’s move to Vancouver Island, Canada. There she’s

greeted by a tree monster, who gives off the sweet scent of ketoacidosis. Some narratives reflect the experiences of nonwhite characters, like Thai American Monti from Pintip Dunn’s “What This Locket Holds,” who has fibromyalgia, and neurodivergent Maitreyi from “Us, of the Water” by Anandi, which has a historical South Asian setting. Other protagonists live with the ramifications of diagnoses that affect multiple body systems. In editor Dyer’s “The Weepers and Washerwomen of Loch Lomond,” Bianca, a Scottish girl who reads white, impersonates her twin. She’s been diagnosed with several diseases, including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, POTS, and mast cell activation syndrome, and plans to join a mysterious kickboxing tournament. Each entry closes with an informative author’s note that deepens readers’ understanding of the story, its creator, and the disabilities that appear. The contributors include popular authors, such as K. Ancrum and Lillie Lainoff, as well as newer voices whom readers will enjoy discovering. Authentic and broadly diverse representation enhances this uniformly strong collection. (content warning, author bios) (Horror anthology. 14-18)

Love Stories

Eulberg, Elizabeth | Scholastic (272 pp.) | $12.99 paper | October 7, 2025 9781546176732 | Series: The Taylors Version, 1

A cozy, concertthemed celebration of friendship, first crushes, and fresh starts. Four middle school friends in Indiana—Taylor “Teffy” Bennett, Taylor “Tay Tay” Johnson, Taylor “TS” Shaw, and Taylor Perez—all named after the famous singer, start high school together in this upbeat, Taylor Swift–inspired novel. Though they differ in personality, from confident gymnast Tay Tay to introverted bookworm Teffy, the Taylors have a strong bond that’s being tested by

changing interests, new relationships, and big dreams. The chapters alternate among the girls’ perspectives. Teffy, a white-presenting aspiring songwriter, nurses an unspoken crush on longtime neighbor Liam Yoon. Aspiring class president Taylor, who’s cued Latine, catches the attention of suave senior Hunter Brown, whose intentions are unclear. Cheerleader Tay Tay, who reads Black, juggles friendship and a crush on her biology partner, Reece Matthews. And TS, who presents white, pushes toward her varsity soccer goal while discovering a sweet romantic connection with new teammate Gemma Walker, a Londoner. The tone is bright and energetic, filled with references to albums and fan culture, but the book’s emotional core is its thoughtful attention to shifting friendships and growing self-awareness. The breezy yet sincere prose matches the heartfelt subject matter, and the narrative balances group dynamics with each girl’s individual arc. Readers will find themselves rooting for the Taylors as they navigate the thrills and stumbles of high school life.

A sparkling, big-hearted tribute to girlhood, ambition, and finding your voice. (Fiction. 12-16)

Can Posters Kill?: Antisemitic Propaganda and World War II

Faivish, Jerry with Kathryn Cole Second Story Press (100 pp.) | $17 paper October 21, 2025 | 9781772604290

Faivish, a son of Holocaust survivors, and co-author Cole weave together an analysis of antisemitic propaganda posters and the history of World War II. This work critically analyzes images from 1933 through 1946, dividing them into three sections covering the periods before, during, and after the war. Each segment opens with a one-page historical

overview followed by two-page spreads featuring full-page, full-color reproductions of the posters (with captions providing translations) and a facing page containing one or more explanatory paragraphs explaining the antisemitic tropes at play. Many of the posters emerged from Paul Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda. During the war, as Nazi reach expanded, they designed the posters to win the sympathy of non-Germans, and the book contains examples from France, Poland, Serbia, and other countries. The formal analysis of the images will help readers understand the ideologies the posters promoted, hone their visual literacy skills, and gain historical insights that they can apply to the present day. Additionally, the book provides brief overviews of key concepts, including the ideological and economic systems of communism and capitalism, and references other maligned groups, such as Black, Romani, and LGBTQ+ people. Terms defined in the glossary appear in bold in the main text. The book ends on a hopeful note with an afterword that urges readers to use their awareness to “be good and steadfast doves who bring blessings and hope to the future.” A necessary overview that’s rich in analysis and insight. (timeline, glossary, poster credits) (Nonfiction. 14-18)

Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science Around Us

Frankel, Felice | MITeen Press/ Candlewick (128 pp.) | $21.99 November 4, 2025 | 9781536234893

Photos of everyday objects taken from extreme close-up perspectives introduce readers to fascinating discoveries.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher and science photographer Frankel seeks out visual patterns in our physical world. Using a Nikon digital SLR or just her camera phone, sometimes through a microscope, she photographs everyday objects. This

volume contains a selection of her photos with narrative descriptions that convey her enthusiasm. The book is organized into five sections: “Light and Shadow,” “Form,” “Traces,” “Transformation,” and “Surfaces.” Each category opens with a teaser photograph—an intriguing image of something that’s tricky to identify. A page turn reveals what the object or scene is—a close-up of silk fabric or bubbles, for example. Each photo is accompanied by two paragraphs of text, one labeled “Moment,” which describes what caught Frankel’s eye, and one called “Phenomenon,” which explains the science behind the image. The author uses and defines terms like tessellate, capillary action, viscosity, and diffraction in an easily understood way. She often references explanations from her friends in STEM fields who contribute context about the phenomena she photographs, modeling professional collaboration and encouraging readers to reach out to others. This visually stimulating book dives deep into beautiful, rarely seen patterns of the natural and human-made worlds and the science behind them. Exquisitely highlights the oftenignored beauty surrounding us, igniting scientific curiosity. (about the chapter openers) (Nonfiction. 13-17)

Hekate: The Witch

Gill, Nikita | Little, Brown (352 pp.) | $19.99

September 16, 2025 | 9780316596763

Series: Goddesses of the Underworld, 1

Hekate quests across the Underworld to discover her purpose and power in this trilogy opener set in the world of Greek mythology. Born to Titan parents during a war between the old and new Gods, violet-eyed Godling Hekate spends infancy with her mother, Asteria, in a hidden walled garden. As the war draws to a close, the victorious Olympians breach their sanctuary, pursuing mother and daughter across land and sea. They cross the world seeking safety but

find only ash and rubble; all the Titans who opposed Zeus have been enslaved or imprisoned. Desperate, Asteria brings Hekate to the Underworld. There, she appeals to the River Goddess, Styx, and the young God-King of the Underworld, Hades, to protect Hekate. Reluctantly, they agree. As centuries pass, Hekate grows weary of her isolated existence: She’s safe, yes, but it’s clear that much is being kept from her, including the truth about her power. She’s meant to be a Goddess, but the Goddess of what? In a perilous journey across the realms of the Underworld, Hekate builds new friendships and confronts old horrors to claim the answers she seeks. Poet Gill’s recognizable voice anchors this work as much in mythology as in the perils of modern girl- and womanhood; alongside the familiar narrative beats of an adventure story, she explores with care generational trauma, sexual violence, and the cost of war. The characters are fantasy-diverse in appearance. Fiercely feminist, this reimagining of a lesser-known goddess crackles with magic. (Verse fantasy. 14-adult)

Wild Song

Gourlay, Candy | Carolrhoda (280 pp.)

$19.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9798765662632

A Filipino girl travels to America to take part in the 1904 World’s Fair and finds herself confronting uncomfortable truths in this story based on real events.

In the U.S.-controlled Philippines, 16-year-old Luki finds herself pushing against the rigid gender expectations of her Bontok community; she’s a skilled hunter and has no desire to marry, although a romantic relationship has blossomed between her and childhood friend Samkad. When members of Indigenous groups, including the Bontoks, are recruited to travel to America to “live in a village built specially” for them at the St. Louis World’s Fair, she jumps at the

Fiercely feminist, this reimagining crackles with magic.

HEKATE

opportunity. Luki is initially awed by the grandeur of the fair and swept up into a friendship with a charismatic white American woman. But the luster begins to fade as the Filipinos are expected to perform their cultures to suit the expectations of American audiences. As Luki learns unsettling truths, she’s forced to question her place in the fair—and what her life will look like when it ends. The narrative examines the exploitation of Indigenous peoples and the commodification of culture, expertly framed by the moving story of a young woman longing to pave her own path in life. This stand-alone novel revisits characters from Bone Talk (2019) and will be welcomed by fans of Gourlay’s work and new readers alike.

A powerful coming-of-age story exploring identity and exploitation during a little-known historical moment. (note to readers, note on terminology, historical notes, discussion questions) (Historical fiction. 13-18)

Loudmouth: Emma Goldman vs. America (A Love Story)

Heiligman, Deborah | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) | $20.99 September 16, 2025 | 9781250823076

When 16-year-old

Emma Goldman, who was born into a Jewish family in present-day Lithuania, emigrated in 1885, she couldn’t have imagined that by her 20s, newspapers would dub her the “Queen of the Anarchists.”

Settling in Rochester, New York, she faced prejudice, low pay, and crowded factory conditions. She had a history of speaking out against injustice, but it was

the 1886 Haymarket incident, in which eight Chicago anarchists were framed for a riot that killed labor strikers and police officers, that set her on the path to anarchism. Goldman argued that injustices should be addressed through equality and community rather than hierarchical power structures. Relocating to New York City, she joined a group of radical thinkers. Despite terrible stage fright, she was a gifted speaker, drawing crowds in the thousands. Whether speaking on police brutality, birth control, gender inequality within marriage, or conscription, she encouraged people to challenge the status quo. The passion Goldman brought to her speeches and essays carried over into her personal life: She loved dancing and believed in free love, enjoying relationships with many different men. While most of Goldman’s circles seem to have been white, Heiligman weaves in mention of some racial issues of the time. This well-researched and comprehensive but slightly dense account of a fascinating and courageous woman’s life will feel relevant to contemporary teens.

Vividly portrays the life of a champion who stood up—loudly—to injustice. (content warning, notes, bibliography, index) (Biography. 14-18)

Running Back to You

Henning, Sarah | Aladdin (304 pp.) | $18.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781665970181

A scrupulously honest teenager finds love at the track. High school freshman Millie panics and fibs about having kissed a boy before, something that goes against everything she’s stood for since her mother lied about

having an affair. Her best friend, Hannah, schemes to help her nab a first kiss from Caleb, Millie’s twin brother’s best friend—and the girls join the track team to get closer to him. But Millie finds herself growing closer to another track team member: helpful, considerate Logan. This sweet story has a straightforward structure; where it stands out is in its well- observed emotional details. Millie, who narrates her story in a conversational tone, is keenly aware of her peers’ behavior and is committed to remaining levelheaded (most of the time, anyway). But her emotional control is tenuous, considering all she contends with—parents who are estranged from one another, an annoying brother, a boyfriendobsessed best friend, and a growing passion for hurdling. Henning takes adolescent experiences seriously, and the story’s satisfying combination of daily minutiae and major changes will ring true for many readers. Scenes set in study hall, at a rained-out track meet, and in a local ice cream shop feel both lived-in and cinematic. Main characters present white. A thoughtful, resonant take on early teen romance. (Romance. 12-16)

Astral Panic

Hicks, Katie | Flying Eye Books (192 pp.) | $21.99 paper | October 7, 2025 | 9781838742089

A new friend gives an anxious young man plenty of opportunities to step outside his comfort zone. Gale is chronically embarrassed about many aspects of himself, including his copious perspiration, lack of self-confidence, and fondness for drawing wizards. To cope, he follows lifestyle advice from the Simply Pear app, though its messages don’t actually make him feel any less anxious. Neither do the multitude of Simply Pear canned drinks he consumes or the dancing, talking pears populating every square inch of his brain space. Enter

adorable walking catastrophe Aiden, Gale’s new roommate, who seems impervious to shame. Aiden enlists Gale’s help with his job hunt. He also introduces Gale to the members of his band, Astral Panic; they’re preparing for their “first show with an audience.” The invitation to draw the band a poster may pull Gale further out of his shell—if he can survive the “cycle of pain” brought about by his spiral of self-consciousness and panic attacks. The book’s psychedelic, mostly pink-and-green color scheme suits the retro art style and expressive, cartoonish characters (who seem to be college students). Kaleidoscopic details add plenty of interest, helping readers visualize Gale’s anxious, nonstop inner monologue. Readers, many of whom will identify with Gale’s struggles, will easily forgive the fact that the story is more about feelings and aesthetics than plot. Gale has light skin and jet-black hair, Aiden presents white, and two band members are brown-skinned.

A wryly humorous and brightly creative representation of intense anxiety. (Graphic fiction. 14-18)

My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser

Hoang, Jamie Jo | Crown (384 pp.) | $19.99 September 23, 2025 | 9780593643006

Sixteen-year-old

Paul spends a summer in Vietnam tracing the life of his long-absent mother, who was a wartime refugee. Back home in San Jose from Vietnam, Paul is ready to tell his skeptical sister, Jane, what he learned about their estranged mother, Ngọc Lan. Thirteen years ago, Ngọc Lan walked out on them and their father, causing trauma that Jane continues to process in therapy. It’s 2008, nine years after the events of My Father, the Panda Killer (2023), when Jane was on the cusp of going to college, leaving Paul to contend with their abusive father alone. At that time, Jane recounted to Paul their father

Brimming with romance, plot twists, and delightfully horrid creatures.

NETTLE

Phúc’s raw, hyperreal tale of escape from Vietnam—a harrowing journey through pirate-infested, shark-filled waters. In this poignant companion novel that Hoang calls “history adjacent,” Paul and Ngọc Lan’s stories alternate, their family lore satisfyingly converging. The novel follows Paul as he explores Vietnam’s vibrant streets, searching for clues to his mother’s past. His journey sharply contrasts with Ngọc Lan’s emotional departure from her homeland in 1975. The dual narratives are united through a guiding spirit that swims by “like a mermaid painted with undefined brushstrokes.” Vietnamese superstitions and the complexities of knowing who’s related to whom—and what to call them—form a humorous and informative backdrop, adding bright cultural insights that lighten the somber impact of war’s profound grief.

A haunting, compassionate tribute to the children of war. (content note, character guide, honorifics, resources, author’s note) (Fiction. 13-18)

Nettle

Hogan, Bex | Tundra Books (272 pp.) | $19.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781774888759

Nettle has always felt out of place in her village; when she accidentally falls into the faery realm, she must do everything she can to get back home to her grandmother.

All her life, Nettle has heard Grandma’s stories of the beautiful and deceptive faeries—as well as fierce warnings to stay away from the forest and ignore the bewitching voices calling to her from it.

But when Grandma falls ill, Nettle pleads with the fae folk for a way to save her. Transported to the land of the faeries, Nettle discovers a glamorous world with one crimson moon and one silver and a sky filled with scarlet stars—and no apparent way home. Locryn, King of the Moorland offers her a deal: He’ll help Grandma and send Nettle home if she completes three tasks for him. But a desperate Nettle quickly realizes the tasks are anything but simple. As Nettle is pulled deeper into the alluringly glamorous—and dangerous—faery world, she becomes torn between fellow human Conor, who’s Irish, and the mysterious shadow faery Ellion. Nettle must determine where and with whom she truly belongs. This adventure is brimming with romance, plot twists, and delightfully horrid creatures. The strong plot and quick pace are complemented by endearing characters, including prickly Nettle, gentle Conor, and protective Ellion. Nettle and Conor present white, and Ellion has brown skin and black hair. Dark and enticing; an atmospheric, folklore-infused fantasy. (faery plants) (Fantasy. 12-18)

Break Wide the Sea

Holland, Sara | Wednesday Books (336 pp.) $20 | November 11, 2025 | 9781250854490

A cursed young woman must decide who she can trust and how to save herself and her siblings. Annie Fairfax watched her parents die when the fae known as the finfolk sank their whaling ship in revenge for their hunting of the

magical Livyatan whales. Annie and two other children—Silas and August—survived but returned cursed, like many who encounter the finfolk. Now 18, Annie leads the Fairfax Whaling Company of Kirkrell while hiding the heartbreak curse that takes a toll on her body and mind. She’s engaged to August, who may covet her business more than her heart. Silas, now the feared captain of the Cursed Crew, is rumored to be part finfolk. When the trio embark on a dangerous expedition to the far north to establish a new whaling outpost, Annie begins to question August’s intentions. On the voyage, Silas is Annie’s confidant, offering the hope of meeting the finfolk and lifting her curse. Holland blends fantasy with themes of legacy, identity, and moral awakening as Annie fights for survival and reckons with everything she’s been taught. Despite a slightly bumpy ending, the writing is rich and immersive, the pacing sharp, and the characters are deeply compelling. Their flaws and deep, often unexpressed, feelings contribute to their well-rounded characterization. This duology opener explores what it means to do the right thing, even when it means turning against your past. Most characters are cued white. An extraordinary work teeming with magic, intrigue, and strong emotion. (Fantasy. 13-18)

The Others

Isaacs, Cheryl | Heartdrum (336 pp.) | $19.99 September 16, 2025 | 9780063287440

In this sequel to 2024’s The Unfinished , a new horror emerges from the black water—and it’s coming for Avery. Two weeks after defeating the black water and saving Key, Avery is leaning into getting her “Perfect Summer back on track,”

attending parties and the annual FallsFest. But she can’t shake the feeling that things are askew. Key acts eerily out of character, losing himself as he gazes into mirrors and blaming his distance on exhaustion. The fountain in the town square has suddenly filled with water for the first time in decades, and everyone seems strangely drawn to it. Soon Avery begins to see disturbing reflections— and something tells her that whatever it is won’t remain trapped within mirrors for long. It’s up to her to set things right before it’s too late. Avery confronts more than just the Big Pond, and the truths she uncovers about her family’s connection to the black water are expertly delineated and truly affecting. The strength of her relationships and her newly felt connection to the stories of her Kanyen’kéha (Mohawk) heritage may become her best weapons. Already a uniquely eerie enemy, the black water’s significance deepens further as a new world of lore emerges. Isaacs (Mohawk) compellingly juxtaposes supernatural horrors with Avery’s journey to accept truer versions of herself and those close to her and keeps readers hooked with shocking twists.

A deeply rewarding sequel that’s equal parts uncanny and moving. (Kanyen’kéha glossary, note from Cynthia Leitich Smith) (Supernatural. 13-18)

The Forgotten Teachers: How Nature Wrote the Story of Life

Isett, Brian | Illus. by Claudia Biçen Unruly (104 pp.) | $24.99

September 30, 2025 | 9781592704118

A ppealing watercolors accompany text that emphasizes the interconnectedness of life, highlighting natural influences on the development of life on Earth.

Scientist and poet Isett explores forces that have “left indelible lessons in our DNA and taught each species a particular piece of the story that unites

Evolutionary science concepts wrapped in philosophical and spiritual entreaties to value interconnectedness. (artist’s note, bibliography) (Illustrated nonfiction. 12-18)

Death of a Pop Star: Vol. 1

Karim, Violet | WEBTOON Unscrolled (288 pp.) | $18.99 paper | September 2, 2025 9781998341467

An up-andcoming idol makes a deal with the Grim Reaper for a second chance at life. Eighteen-yearold Sophie Lim, who presents East Asian, has devoted her life to training for pop stardom. But a fall down a flight of stairs brings

>>> all of life.” The book is divided into chapters covering “Ocean,” “Air,” “Theia,” “Sun,” “Plants,” and “Symbionts.” Ocean was “the first mother of us all,” but life forms moved to live on land; when we breathe Air, it “connects us to an ancient cycle of growth, sustenance, and decay.” Collision with the planet Theia 4.5 billion years ago created Earth’s circadian rhythms. The author frames natural history in poetic terms—Sun conveys “one ancient, shining lesson: this is a place worthy of being seen”—and emphasizes the bonds among all living things—as in the mutually beneficial “dialogue” Plants have with animals. The chapter on Symbionts exemplifies the book’s blend of scientific concepts (like mitochondrial DNA, which carries “a story of mutual dependence”) with philosophical musings. Biçen’s watercolors in saturated pastels flow organically across the pages, supporting the central themes through radiant illustrations of the natural world, from double helixes to towering mountains. Eyes and hands appear often, symbolizing “the ubiquity of awareness and…the universe’s capacity to manifest life.” Crossing arbitrary divisions between art and science, the book closes by asking readers, “What story will you choose to tell?”

Kirkus Star

THE KIRKUS Q&A: EBONY L aDELLE

The YA romance novelist is on a mission to give teens the tools for healthy relationships.

BY LAURA SIMEON

WRITING YA ROMANCE is like “planting seeds,” says author Ebony LaDelle. The author of Love Radio (2022) wants her novels to offer young people compassionate guidance for healthy dating wrapped up in swoony love stories. Her latest, This Could Be Forever, came out in the spring. The story is this: When Deja, a Black girl from small-town North Carolina, visits the Maryland college where she plans to study chemistry and soil science, she makes a spontaneous stop to get a celebratory tattoo. Sparks fly when talented artist Raja, a second-generation Nepali American boy who’ll also be attending the University of Maryland, designs a custom sunflower tattoo for her. Both teens deeply value their families, making it all the more painful to navigate some older relatives’ fears about their cultural, religious, racial, and social class differences. Juggling college dreams, first love, selfdetermination, and delicate family bonds takes all of Deja’s and Raja’s care and communication, but with support from siblings, cousins, and friends, they trust in love—and one another. The teens’ grandparents, who forged their own paths, also prove to be valuable role models. LaDelle spoke with us over Zoom from her home in the New York tri-state area; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

should be doing, but I’m too scared to. And those are the very things that I’m telling other authors to do―even just consistently posting [on social media] and making sure that your readership knows where you’re at. I read manuscripts for acquisition, and I did edit a book at Simon & Schuster, but the whole production aspect was completely new to me.

Was the one you edited YA?

You worked as a marketer in the publishing world. What surprised you the most about becoming an author? Even when you’re in the same industry, it’s completely different. The writing piece involves a lot of self-discipline, which, for me, wasn’t the hardest part, but you’re very much by yourself. Especially for Love Radio —no one even

knew I was a writer. There are times where I miss the camaraderie of getting behind a project with a full team. I miss the collaboration. I think that was most shocking, just how different that that vibe is day to day. The other thing I would say is the anxiety of publishing your book: I am a marketer, there are a lot of things that I know I

No, it was adult [nonfiction], Muslim Girl by Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, but it was a coming-of-age book. I had to learn what an editorial letter was, how you write it, and what comes of it. You [can] get caught in your head— oh my God, I’ve never done this before but it got a New York Times book review, which I never expected. I’m happy that I was a part of that project, and I do think it helped me as I was writing my books.

YA romance authors have so much privilege and responsibility: Their readers have been exposed to many societal messages about relationships, not always healthy ones, and their life experiences are limited. As adults, sometimes you’re backtracking [around] some of the unhealthy dynamics you witnessed growing up that you’ve internalized. How about if we give teens tools to have a healthy relationship—as healthy as possible, whether it’s for two weeks or two years— so that when they come out of it, they’re not damaged? There’s a lot of shame that comes from making bad decisions, so what I’m trying to do is plant ideas. You might use some this

year. Maybe two years later, you’ll think back on the book and view it with fresh eyes.

Did you start off with the characters of Deja and Raja, or did you first have the general idea for the plot? The idea came first, because I was in a young, interracial, intercultural relationship, and there were a lot of things that I was trying to understand. Moving to New York, starting my publishing career, meeting people from across the globe—a lot of my friends were women of color dating men from different cultures. There [was] a connectedness to the things we were experiencing. It was a story that I knew I wanted to tell, but I needed years to really understand: Thinking of young Ebony, what would I

want her to know? I knew some of the throughlines; then, because of what I wanted to discuss and the time frame, I needed to write insta-love. So it was more like, What does Deja want? Who is she as a person? I crafted her story, and then from there, I realized how I needed Raja to be for her.

I despair when I see social media accounts monetizing multiracial/multicultural couples in exoticizing ways. You go beyond superficial soundbites to dig into things that are so real. I think about [comments] like, “Oh, your baby’s going to be so pretty,” when people see an interracial couple. That always grinds my gears. It’s really distasteful and gross. All babies are beautiful. I have seen some of the content,

I didn’t want the book to be superficial, and that’s one of the reasons why it needed time to cook in my head.

and I’m sure I was thinking about it because I wanted to subvert all that. When you think of interracial relationships, you don’t necessarily think of a Black woman; it’s usually a Black man who’s dating someone outside of his race. I wanted Deja to be very dark-skinned and have very short hair—she’s gorgeous, she knows it, and Raja knows it. I wanted to talk about dark-skinned people across cultures, and our issues with colorism globally. I wanted to showcase food. It’s one of the ways I’m always connecting with other cultures, and I think when it’s done properly, it’s very much showing respect. That was really the intention, to highlight the beauty of both cultures in different ways. I didn’t want the book to be superficial,

This Could Be Forever LaDelle,

Ebony

Simon & Schuster | 384 pp. | $19.99 May 20, 2025 | 97816659488678

and that’s one of the reasons why it needed time to cook in my head.

Have you had any especially meaningful interactions with readers?

It’s been great to hear from readers who are from different cultures talk about how, even though they’re not Nepali, they really see themselves in the story. Another surprising response that I’ve gotten is from Black girls and women from the diaspora, talking about how they saw themselves in both Deja and Raja, and [that] felt like a complete experience. That’s been amazing.

Was there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like to say?

Queen [Deja’s grandmother] and Baba [Raja’s grandfather] were defying expectations, going against the grain of tradition, and that’s something we always need to think about: whether something feels right or wrong. Question why—and if you know in your heart of hearts that it isn’t fair, it’s OK to make a little noise. Emotions get high, people say things that they can’t take back, and a lot of times it’s from fear. It might require you to take things in stages. I was writing this book and thinking about my own grandmother, who endured so much being Black in this country and still persevered and fought. That inspired me to write Queen. But there were people in all our lineages who had things way worse than we do, and they were able to get through it. If they could, so can we.

her face-to-face with Eli, the Grim Reaper—a pale, slender young man with gray hair, who also happens to be a huge fan of her music. To dodge death, Sophie bargains with Eli: The next time she dies, she’ll become his bride, forever in limbo, reaping souls. After Sophie miraculously awakens from her coma (with no memories of the deal), Grace, who’s her aunt and manager, puts her on a yearlong hiatus from performing. But leading a normal life as a college student is hard when you’re famous—not to mention that she seems unusually prone to near-death experiences. Karim packs a lot into this volume, which compiles episodes 1-22 of the popular WEBTOON series: budding romance, social conflict, family issues, a motley crew of friends, a mystery, and more. The quick pace fits with the story’s energy, and fans of shōjo manga and K-drama romcoms will enjoy the humor and heart. Karim’s clean and expressive illustrations energetically convey the hijinks, particularly the comedy in Sophie’s attempts to adjust to college life. The volume ends abruptly, with a cliffhanger reveal that will leave readers in suspense. A fun and funny series starter. (Graphic romance. 13-18)

Grave Flowers

Krause, Autumn | Peachtree Teen (352 pp.) $19.99 | September 2, 2025 | 9781682636497

In this work that’s loosely based on Hamlet and the saga of the Boleyn family, a princess becomes entangled in power struggles and travels to a foreign kingdom on a deadly mission.

Princess Madalina Sinet prefers tending to her grave flowers—the magical (and occasionally carnivorous) blossoms that are unique to her kingdom of Radix—over getting drawn into her politically ambitious twin sister Inessa’s plotting and scheming. But after Inessa is sent to Acus, a more powerful neighboring kingdom, as the intended

wife of Prince Aeric Capelian, Madalina’s life gets complicated. Inessa’s ghost appears to her, revealing that she’s been poisoned in Acus and asking Madalina to avenge her. Their father, who’s involved in machinations of his own, also has plans for Madalina: He wants her to become Prince Aeric’s replacement bride and then poison him on their wedding night. Madalina has always shied away from the Sinets’ violence and brutality, but she knows she must act in order to save her family and her kingdom—as long as she can avoid falling in love with Aeric. As elaborate and ambitious as the Boleyn family’s own intrigues, this gothic fantasy’s many twists and turns may occasionally leave readers feeling overwhelmed, but the roughly familiar storyline coupled with the fascinating worldbuilding makes this an engrossing read. Madalina and Inessa are cued as being fantasy-world biracial, and the Acusan people have light, sun-bleached hair.

An ornate and thrilling tale of loyalty and betrayal. (author’s note, glossary) (Fantasy. 14-18)

Kirkus

Star

I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm

Lockington, Mariama J. | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (352 pp.) | $19.99 | October 14, 2025 9780374388904

In Lansing, Michigan, two high school seniors have clear goals—but they need money to make them a reality.

Following a traumatic incident with her mother, who suffered a breakdown, 8-year-old Lyric Watkins was placed into foster care; Grammy Viv gained custody two years later. Grateful for the stability, Lyric works as an online beauty influencer to help with bills and save up for a local cosmetology program that will allow her to stay close to home. Lyric’s classmate Juniper Jones longs to

take a gap year and “do something wild and wonderful,” traveling the country and being in nature, where she’s happiest. However, after reuniting following a separation, her moms are on shaky ground, and Juniper is afraid her plans will fall apart along with her family. When Lyric, seeking content for her BeautyStarz social media account, runs into Juniper by the Capitol Christmas tree and asks her to pose for a photo, she doesn’t expect it to go viral. The two Black girls decide to make the most of its success by fake dating to earn enough to fund their respective dreams. Their calculated plan quickly spirals into something far more complicated as the line between pretend and reality blurs. Alternating between Lyric’s prose chapters and Juniper’s verse ones, the story moves at a steady, slow-burn pace that effectively keeps the pages turning. Lockington carefully and sensitively explores themes of dealing with anger, grief, and fear of abandonment. An emotional, engaging story of love and growth. (Romance. 12-18)

Kirkus Star

Fall of the Fireflies

McCall, Guadalupe García | Tu Books (352 pp.) $23.95 | October 21, 2025 | 9781643796994

Series: Seasons of Sisterhood, 1

After a supernatural attack leaves their father near death, two sisters pursue the culprit in this trilogy opener set in the world of 2012’s Summer of the Mariposas

Fifteen-year-old twins Delia and Velia Gonzales-Garza used to be “so synchronized, [they] finished each other’s sentences,” but Delia has watched Velia change. Now they disagree on everything, including whether they should participate in their father’s Tejano band tour. But their differences take a backseat when a monster steals Papá’s tonalli, or “first soul,” the seat of one’s identity. As the Mexican American girls investigate with their friends Mochi Salazar and Hernan

Molina, they’re drawn deeper into Aztec magic and myth, each guided by the god she mirrors: Velia by Quetzalcoatl, “the one with the voice,” and Delia by “fiery and passionate” Xolotl. Their mission to save their father leads them to the death goddess Mictecacihuatl, who presents the girls with an offer to become creature-hunting warrior women. This story inspired by Sophocles’ Antigone seamlessly blends coming-of-age themes with folklore. McCall respectfully integrates well-researched Nahuatl vocabulary and Aztec mythology as she explores sisterhood, cultural identity, and blended family dynamics. The supporting characters enrich the story through their realistic and relatable interactions. Readers will appreciate the nuance and emotional depth of the relationships, especially the one between Delia and Velia.

A rich, mythic story about selfhood and soul-deep family ties. (glossary of Nahua words, author’s note, sources) (Fiction. 13-17)

The Map That Led to You

McLeod, Ella | Yellow Jacket (376 pp.)

$25.99 | $14.99 paper | September 16, 2025 9781499817959 | 9781499817942 paper

Two queer Black teens living many years apart search for home in McLeod’s dualnarrative sophomore novel. In the historical timeline, Levi, the skirt-wearing, nearly-16-year-old son of a pirate captain, feels adrift. While his sister, Vega, knows the origins of her birth as a fallen star, Levi’s mother died when he was a baby. When an unexpected loss leaves Levi with even more questions, the siblings join forces with an ungendered nymph named Kano, journeying to the Caribbean-inspired Pirate Republic of Sheta Island. There they hope to learn more about Levi’s origins and the possible existence of a magical land known as Xaymaca. In present-day New Shetatown on Sheta Island, 16-year-old Reggie Hornigold feels like an outsider. Bullied

by classmates, she feels lonely until she’s paired with new girl Maeve O’Neill for a class assignment. Exploring their island’s history for their project, the two embark on their own voyage of discovery—of their home, each other, and themselves. McLeod uses the second person for Reggie’s chapters and the third person for Levi’s. Slightly clunky and self-conscious verse interludes provide further background, and a tidy conclusion weaves the dual timelines into one. While the worldbuilding and narration sometimes feel overcrowded, readers will root for the engaging protagonists and their found families. Most main characters are Black, and Maeve, who’s white, is cued Irish. A complex decolonial romantic fantasy steeped in Afro-Caribbean mythology and queer acceptance. (Fantasy. 14-18)

Porn Is Not Sex Ed!: A Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to Debunking Sexuality Myths

Melendez, Jessica | Illus. by Remy Alva Jessica Kingsley Publishers (96 pp.) $19.95 paper | September 18, 2025 | 9781805013259

Sexual health educator Melendez invites teens to engage with this accessible, interactive journey to learning why pornography isn’t an adequate source for discovering the ins and outs of safe, consensual sex. The author, who appears throughout the illustrations with light-brown skin and long, dark brown hair, introduces herself as Jess. She’s a welcoming guide, who opens by describing her goal of “normalizing the conversation about porn,” which “nearly 3 in 4 teens” have been exposed to.

Throughout the book, she encourages readers to discuss the contents with a trusted adult. The nine chapters cover a broad range of topics: “What Is Porn?”, “Porn Usage,” “Body Image,” “Anatomy,” “Consent and Communication,” “Sex Education,” “Safer Sex,” “Is It Assault?”, and “Can We Use Porn Safely?” Melendez explains how the male gaze, fetishization of people, and gender stereotypes are problematic. Workbook elements that allow readers to actively interact with the material, including checklists, writing prompts, and puzzles, elevate this work. The overview of safe sex focuses primarily on barrier methods and uses genderinclusive language. A segment on media literacy adds a thoughtful and important piece to this nuanced treatment of a complex topic. The book unfortunately is missing citations or a bibliography. Alva’s illustrations portray people with different skin tones, most of whom are thin; there’s one person who uses a wheelchair. A broad, straightforward, and engaging primer on bodies, sex, and the media. (glossary, activity answers, sexual health resources, note to adults) (Illustrated nonfiction. 12-18)

Bad Boy: A Graphic Memoir

Myers, Walter Dean | Adapt. by Guy A. Sims Illus. by Dawud Anyabwile | Quill Tree Books/ HarperCollins (128 pp.) | $16.99 paper September 30, 2025 | 9780063099920

Sims presents a graphic adaptation of late children’s literature giant Myers’ 2001 autobiography, in which he describes his adventures growing up in New York City.

Illustrator Anyabwile effectively captures the 1940s and ’50s Harlem

An emotional, engaging story of love and growth.

I’VE GOT MY LOVE TO KEEP ME WARM

setting, using a bright, expressive color palette offset by sepia tones and background details to immerse readers in the life of a Black boy who wrestled with how to fit into his environment. Young Walter was influenced by boys whose mischievous energy took him down the wrong path and distracted him from school—too, his own quickness to anger often got him in trouble with teachers. A frequent visitor to the local library, Walter’s great love of books (he tells readers, “When I began to read, I began to exist”) became part of his internal and external battles. He often found solace in reading but still faced stressors at home and engaged in risky behaviors. Literary characters from classics by white authors filled his imagination—he notes that he was taught nothing of the Harlem Renaissance—and he began to find satisfaction in writing his own poems and short stories. Yet Walter kept getting pulled back into the bad boy life. Finally realizing that he needed a change, at 17 he enlisted in the army. This compact, accessible volume may entice readers to pick up the prose version, where they’ll find more insights into Myers’ struggles, feelings, and motivations.

Solid and visually appealing, although no match for the nuance of the original. (Graphic autobiography. 13-18)

Cry Out Loud

O’Connor, Tara | Random House (256 pp.)

$24.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9780593125533

After an Irish girl is suspended, her mother sends her to live with relatives on an island where she discovers she’s targeted as the next victim of a centuries-old tradition of sacrifice.

Nell has a strained relationship with her ma, and after getting in trouble at school, she’s sent to stay with family she’s never met before. Nell arrives at their ultramodern house, an “eyesore” in the remote countryside, where her aunt, who had been living in the States, is

unnervingly polite (and, oddly, gets Nell’s ma’s name wrong); her uncle, who’s English, has an unusually hot temper; and her cousin, Theo, barely speaks. The villagers, other than lighthouse keeper Caoimhe, are unwelcoming. Nell hears strange noises and sees a ghostly girl. Even worse, she eventually learns that she was brought there to fulfill an ancient blood sacrifice. With Caoimhe’s help, Nell must outrun her fate. This fast-paced graphic novel infused with Irish folklore elements expertly builds the tension through small clues and an ominous atmosphere. Nell is a sympathetic character, escaping her angry mother only to be betrayed anew. The side characters’ backstories offer insight into their decisions. O’Connor also explores the impact of traditions and generational trauma, clearly conveying the characters’ emotions, including anger, remorse, and heartbreak, through her illustrations. She effectively uses the landscape and elements, such as rain and wind, to enhance the storytelling. Characters present white.

A heart-pounding thriller about a terrifying legacy with a lush, welldeveloped setting. (pronunciation guide, story notes) (Graphic horror. 13-18)

Wavelength

Plett, Cale | Groundwood (406 pp.) | $17.99 paper | October 7, 2025 | 9781779460295

A camera-shy singer and an angry punk rocker find a common bond. Sasha and their brother, Augustus, form the pop duo Admirer—but Sasha is tired of fame. For years, they’ve worn a helmet with a reflective visor in public, even while performing, and it’s become part of their brand. They even pretend to date Isabelle, their actor friend—it’s great for the algorithm. But when Augustus is arrested, Sasha is expected to reveal their face and defend him on a talk show to drum up popular support before the trial. Sasha, who

believes Augustus is in the wrong, decides it’s time to disappear. They head to a “nowhere city” to start over—and finish high school. There, nonbinary Sasha meets bisexual Lillian, who’s still reeling from a recent breakup, as well as her bandmates, Cyprus and Quinn, who’s gay and transgender. Lillian immediately feels pulled toward the mysterious Sasha, and they connect over their deep love of music—although Sasha is clearly hiding something. The story unfolds in Sasha’s and Lillian’s alternating first-person perspectives and includes songwriter Lillian’s lyrics. Plett shows the power of music to express one’s feelings and form connections with others, and they emphasize the importance of having safe spaces to exist unapologetically and explore being queer. Quinn and Cyprus are strong side characters, contributing to the overall affirming and celebratory atmosphere. Most main characters present white, and Quinn is cued as having Middle Eastern ancestry. An emotional, heartwarming debut filled with queer joy. (Fiction. 13-18)

Tiffany Aching’s Guide To Being a Witch

Pratchett, Rhianna & Gabrielle Kent Illus. by Paul Kidby | Harper/HarperCollins (224 pp.) | $21.99 | September 2, 2025 9780063399907 | Series: Discworld

An introductory guide to witchcraft, penned by Discworld’s Tiffany Aching (with a little help from her friends). Though Tiffany’s story came to a lovely, bittersweet conclusion in Terry Pratchett’s last book, the posthumously published The Shepherd’s Crown (2015), she and her witch colleagues are sorely missed by their legions of fans. This guidebook for “an apprentice witch looking for extra guidance on the future” offers a little extra time with the Discworld witches. Tiffany’s voice, straightforward and occasionally snarky, is assisted by marginal notes, scribbles, and annotations from her closest friends.

There’s the joyous lechery of Nanny Ogg, the helpful pragmatism of Miss Tick, the well-earned self-satisfaction and irascible snark of Mistress Weatherwax, and the anarchic, misspelled chaos of Rob Anybody, one of the Nac Mac Feegle. Rather than expanding on Discworld lore, Terry’s daughter, Rhianna, and co-author Kent present material that draws upon the original content; Tiffany summarizes information from the series about witchcraft and the Disc’s witchy adventures. The “root and heart and soul of witchcraft,” as Granny Weatherwax puts it, is “helping people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like.” The basic principles come down to practicality, placebos, and hard work. Abundantly illustrated by Kidby, Terry’s longtime collaborator, this is a visually lovely volume, with subtly colored, marbled backgrounds and handwritten notes on paper that evokes antique vellum. A charming and comforting return to the world of Terry Pratchett’s witches that will delight completists. (book and character guides) (Fantasy. 12-16)

The Crimson Throne

Raasch, Sara & Beth Revis | Sourcebooks Fire (368 pp.) | $19.99 | October 7, 2025 9781464236136 | Series: Spy and Guardian, 1

A fae guardian and an English spy must team up to protect Scotland from magical invaders. In the world of this duology opener, Scotland and the fae realm are magically linked; peace in the former ensures peace in the latter. So it’s up to Alyth Graham, daughter of the fae prince and lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, to protect the barrier that keeps the bloodthirsty Red Caps, fae who rebelled against the Seelie Court, out of Scotland. But when Red Cap weapons turn up in the Scottish court—and in the hands of Lord Darnley, Mary’s scheming husband—Alyth knows something is very wrong. Samson Calthorpe,

Roach carefully draws out the suspense, pulling readers into this story.

SEVEN FOR A SECRET

illegitimate son of William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth’s secretary (who in this universe assumes Sir Francis Walsingham’s role as spymaster), was cursed in childhood by fae magic that causes him to black out and commit violent acts. Samson is among the few humans who knows the fae are real. When Cecil offers him a chance to be rid of the curse in return for spying on Mary, Samson agrees. A chance meeting throws Samson and Alyth together. Their attraction is immediate, but Alyth senses he’s hiding something. As danger mounts, the two work together and begin to care for each other. Samson’s and Alyth’s alternating first-person narratives keep the pace moving. The court intrigue, set against lush descriptions of Scotland, is wellbalanced with the fantasy elements. Most characters are cued white.

An atmospheric fantasy brimming with intrigue and heart. (content warnings, historical note) (Historical fantasy. 14-18)

Seven for a Secret

Roach, Mary E. | Disney-Hyperion (320 pp.)

$18.99 | September 30, 2025 | 9781368114608

A young woman returns to the Maryland island town where she once lived in Sister’s Place, a group home from which many of her friends vanished.

Seventeen-yearold Nev, who’s cued white, was 12 when she was sent away from Avan Island to another group foster home that also failed her. After she finds the dead body of Charles Aisley—Sister’s Place board member, detective, and church

elder—drowned in the Patuxent River, she feels pulled to return to Avan Island to unwind the mystery of what happened to the neglected girls people claimed had simply run away. Interspersed with newspaper articles and an eerie collective perspective in chapters titled “Sisters,” Nev’s first-person voice burns with determination and a piercing rage toward those she knows harmed her friends. She feels a welcome kinship with journalist Roan, a young whitepresenting woman who also lived at Sister’s Place, and with Roan’s boyfriend, Merrick, who reads Black, as well as with the diverse group of former residents who soon come forward. Just as quickly, bodies begin piling up around them. Roach carefully draws out the suspense, and her strong pacing allows the details fall into place, pulling readers into this story of vulnerable young women and the impact on their lives of powerful men with status in their community. A grimly atmospheric and unsettling mystery. (content warnings) (Mystery. 14-18)

You’ve Goth My Heart

Rosen, L.C. | Little, Brown (384 pp.) | $19.99 September 9, 2025 | 9780316575553

Nothing is scarier for a gay goth teen than an unexpected romance. When Gray receives a text from an unknown number, he quickly bonds with the anonymous person over music. They text throughout the summer, opening up about everything except their true identities. Gray wonders if the exchange may be a ploy from his

closeted ex to win him back—or could the texter be the serial killer who’s connected to the missing local gay teens? As their correspondence grows increasingly flirtatious, the boys decide to reveal themselves over FaceTime on Halloween. Gray and his pagan, “eldergoth” moms have a winning streak in the local Halloween house-decorating contest; Gray plans to take this year to the next level and impress his secret paramour. He’s got competition, though, from new classmate Malcolm, a cute but condescending goth, who’s famous online for his drag persona, Amanda Lash. Rosen deftly weaves romance, a touch of spookiness, and morbid humor into a story that’s filled with heart and hope but acknowledges the challenges of being different from society’s norms. Fun fashion details, the cozy autumnal setting, and a delightful group of talented friends add to the charm and appeal. The missing teens subplot adds a dash of danger and intrigue, although Gray is mostly confident in his non-serial killer explanation for what’s going on. The leads present white (Malcolm’s family is “Jewish but barely”), and there’s some racial diversity in the supporting cast. An enticing mashup of dark humor and light romance. (Romance. 14-18)

Pushing Hope: An Illustrated Memoir of Survival

Santana, Raymond | Illus. by Keith Henry Brown | Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers (288 pp.) | $24.99 October 28, 2025 | 9781662680397

This account by one of the Exonerated Five is an inspiring story of one man’s fight against institutional racism. In 1989, 14-year-old Raymond was arrested and accused (along with Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Korey Wise) of assaulting and raping a woman in New York City’s Central Park. Although he, like the others, was

innocent, the police used intimidating and manipulative interrogation techniques, and public opinion was against them. Raymond was convicted and imprisoned, receiving a conditional release when he was 21. Following the 2002 exoneration of the Central Park Five, Santana, who eschewed bitterness, sought refuge in art. This moving first-person account of his life emerges from interviews conducted by Carolyn P. Yoder, Editorial Director at Calkins Creek Books. It shows the ways racial profiling, entrenched within American society, has life-altering consequences for people of color (Santana’s father came from Puerto Rico, and his mother was AfroLatina). The text is succinct and punchy, printed in large, bold, colorful type. Brown’s dynamic art, which often covers wordless two-page spreads, transports readers to 1980s Harlem (shown as a place filled with art and music), through gut-wrenching prison scenes, and into Santana’s rocky transition to a new life as a fashion designer and activist. Despite the suffering he endured as a boy and young man, the book’s overall tone is one of optimism.

A searing critique of the justice system with a narrative arc that turns despair into hope. (photos, photo credits) (Illustrated memoir. 14-18)

Star

Truth Is

Sawyerr, Hannah V. | Amulet/Abrams (480 pp.)

$21.99 | September 23, 2025 | 9781419776830

A Philadelphia teen chooses to have an abortion and finds strength and community on her slam poetry team. It’s Truth Bangura’s senior year of high school, and she’s applied to Penn State despite mediocre grades and her mother’s repeated refrain: “You know

you’ve never been good at school.” An ambitious immigrant from Sierra Leone, Truth’s mom had her own law school aspirations cut short by her unplanned pregnancy, which has always made Truth feel as if having her “was her biggest mistake.” After unprotected sex with her ex-boyfriend, Cameron, leads to a positive pregnancy test, Truth opts for the abortion pill. Her confidence regarding this choice—“Ready to make a decision / that belongs only to me”—despite being judged by her privileged, high-achieving best friend, Zariah, offers readers a satisfying, nuanced depiction of the importance of trusting oneself. Truth’s viral slam poetry performance raises the stakes in a gripping way, making her private choice a very public matter that sends ripples through her relationships. Sawyerr’s sophomore novel uses the verse format stunningly to highlight the complexities woven into each of Truth’s authentic and compelling relationships. The book deftly addresses restrictive policies related to abortion access while prioritizing Truth’s talent, goals, and growth in a humanizing and inspirational way. Writing prompts interspersed throughout the text support readers’ deep engagement. An unforgettable, dynamic, and emotionally resonant novel in verse. (author’s note) (Verse fiction. 14-18)

Love and Video Games

Sergi, Zachary | Running Press Kids (288 pp.) $19.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9780762489039

The summer before college, Keegan earns a spot in his favorite game’s first big tournament—but what about his chronic pain? Keegan’s only close friends are people he’s never met in real life: his Epic Hearts teammates on the game Pantheonic. His favorite is Alix, the boy on whom he has a massive crush. Keegan’s thrilled and terrified when the Epic Hearts earn a spot in the

Kirkus

augmented reality tournament featuring Pantheonic’s best players. Luckily, all goes well: Keegan, who’s cued white, and Alix, who’s trans and presents Latine, are vibing. Keegan opens up about his health struggles, and Alix explains the trauma of emancipating from his family when he came out as trans. After 10 months of treatments, physical therapy, and being treated as “an irrational mess” or “overdramatic and oversensitive” by awful medical workers because he has chronic pain without a known cause, Keegan finally gains insight into a diagnosis when a teammate gives him a book explaining that his pain comes from “repressed emotion.” He feels guilty for seeking treatments that cost his parents money, and he believes the book’s advice that he “must resume all normal physical activity” and that when he has devastating pain, he should just tell his brain that he doesn’t “need a physical response to anxiety.” While some readers may find this advice useful, for others it may come across as shaming, not to mention medically dangerous. Gaming joy and gay romance marred by an impassioned denunciation of teens seeking medical care. (Fiction. 14-18)

A Raging Heart

Smith, Kaylie | Disney-Hyperion (544 pp.) $18.99 | July 29, 2025 | 9781368108874

Series: A Ruinous Fate, 3

Calla and the fellow Blood Warriors seek to end the Witch Queens’ tyranny once and for all in this trilogy closer. Having finally accepted her Siphon self and found her soulmate in Gideon, Calla is prepared to finish her Rolls of Fate and embark on the foretold Fates’ War. But with more Blood Warriors to find; her best friend, Delphine, still trying to reunite with the rest of the group; and her other best friend, Hannah, fighting the trauma and dark magic within her, the return from the dead of Calla’s ex,

Stella’s intimate narrative is a moving story of grief and family bonds.

ALL THE WAY AROUND THE SUN

Prince Ezra Black, is a mixed blessing. She also has the support of their former enemies, the Valkyries. As Calla struggles to gather her allies and finally defeat the Witch Queens, she and her friends split up, embarking on separate missions across the land that culminate in the final war. With multiple main characters to track, the rotating points of view at times distance readers from character growth and romantic developments, diluting the tension that should have heightened with every move closer to the war’s beginning and making the battle itself slightly anticlimactic. While the discussions of power, inequity, and control are intriguing, if slightly lacking in depth, the overarching themes of love and friendship continue to be strong. A central romance alternates between playful but repetitive banter and scenes that are at times supportive and at others awkwardly out of sync with the tone of the story as a whole. The cast members read fantasy-diverse. A satisfying enough conclusion for returning fans. (character glossary) (Fantasy. 13-18)

All the Way Around the Sun

Tian, XiXi | Quill Tree Books/ HarperCollins (304 pp.) | $19.99 September 30, 2025 | 9780063086074

In her sophomore novel, Tian explores life after loss for high schooler Stella Chen. Moving from rural Illinois to San Diego, California, and entering a new school midway through

senior year feels less than ideal to Stella, who already navigated emigrating to the U.S. from Xi’an, China, when she was in elementary school. But Baba thinks change is what the family needs. It’s been eight months since Stella’s older brother, Sam, died in his dorm room at Harvard, under circumstances her parents won’t reveal, and nothing’s been the same since. The promise of going off to college should be something to be excited about, but it fills Stella with fear. What if the pressure and the silencing of her emotional struggles prove to be too much? When Stella’s parents must unexpectedly travel to China to help family members, Stella’s forced to tour California colleges with the one person who might just get her to open up: her estranged childhood friend, Alan Zhao. Stella’s intimate narrative is a deeply moving story of secrets, grief, belonging, and family bonds. Her inner monologue includes chapters in which she directly addresses Sam, heartbreakingly unveiling memories from their childhood, changing relationship, last moments together, and more. Tian explores diasporic identities and family dynamics, particularly the experiences of satellite babies and how spending early childhood separated from one’s parents can shape relationships. The conclusion is satisfying and comforting without tying everything up too neatly.

A stirring emotional journey.

(Fiction. 13-18)

For another book about grief, visit Kirkus online.

Fireblooms

Villasante, Alexandra | Nancy

Paulsen Books (304 pp.) | $19.99 September 30, 2025 | 9780525514053

In an alternate California, 17-yearold Sebastian Ascencio moves to a new town that was built in the wake of devastating forest fires.

New Gault houses TECH, the company that created the allencompassing software that tracks the town’s students’ word use, imposing a monthly limit. Any “word infractions” lead to a reduction in their word-data banks—all in the name of preventing hate speech and bullying. The town is also home to Sebas’ estranged mom, whose cancer diagnosis was the impetus for him to leave his Mexican American dad in San Marcos and move in to help her. Classmate Lu Hernandez, who describes themself as “Latinx with the added bonus of being comfortingly white-presenting,” loves TECH and the safety it represents. Life in New Gault comes with free access to food, healthcare, and advanced technology— all for the low price of total compliance. Sebas, who’s unwilling to sacrifice his privacy and freedom, clashes with his mom and Lu over these expectations. Villasante creatively illustrates the opposing viewpoints, presenting a relevant ethical quandary. But the characters’ shifting relationships comprise the true heart of the book: Her portrayal of Sebas’ emotional challenges as he navigates friendships, romance, and family crises is deft and sensitive. If the promising speculative premise of TECH is left behind along the way—the dark underbelly of such an authoritative system is lightly

developed—readers will still be amply rewarded by the poignant conclusion. A tender, intelligent love story. (Romance. 13-18)

The Last Hawk

Wein, Elizabeth | Union Square & Co. (136 pp.) | $9.99 paper | September 16, 2025 9781454962731 | Series: Everyone Can Be a Reader (War Birds Cycle)

In 1944, a young German pilot makes a series of hard decisions for the sake of her safety and her conscience.

Seventeen-yearold Ingrid Hartman, who speaks with a stutter, tries to avoid being noticed, especially by local Nazi officials. Ingrid’s late mother was a nurse at the Ulmenhain Youth Hospital, where children with learning disabilities were sterilized and neglected; some of them died. The survivors were eventually taken away, along with other disabled children in the community, supposedly to be cared for. Ingrid’s father fears for her safety in a society where disabled people are called “a disgrace to Germany.” With her cousin’s help, Ingrid becomes a safety pilot at a flight school, hoping to prove her usefulness to her country. Ingrid’s hero, test pilot Hanna Reitsch, recruits her for “a propaganda tour,” performing demonstrations to recruit young men for secret missions that Ingrid suspects are death sentences. While many people unquestioningly support their country’s cause, Ingrid’s childhood friend Emil Bruck shares information from a Swedish leaflet about the labor and concentration

An action-packed exploration of courage and loyalty.

camps. He urges Ingrid to get out, and she faces a difficult, lifethreatening decision. Ingrid is a sympathetic character who’s observant and astute; Wein portrays her as courageous and decisive, particularly in critical moments. The accessible text, which will sustain the interest of reluctant readers, is printed in a dyslexia-friendly font. Full of courage, heart, and perceptiveness. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 13-18)

Firebird

Wein, Elizabeth | Union Square & Co. (144 pp.) | $9.99 paper | September 16, 2025 9781454962724 | Series: Everyone Can Be a Reader (War Birds Cycle)

A young Soviet pilot must defend her loyalty to the Motherland in this entry in a series that’s thoughtfully designed for struggling and reluctant readers.

Anastasia Viktorovna Nabokova, a recent high school graduate working as a flight instructor at the Leningrad Youth Aeroclub, longs to follow in her mother’s footsteps and serve her country as a spy. When World War II arrives in Leningrad in June 1941, she tries to join the air force but is told she’s needed to train more pilots. But as the Germans continue to bombard her country, Nastia and other young women end up at the Soviet air force academy. After landing her plane behind enemy lines to help her downed mentor, the woman she calls the Chief, Nastia faces the challenge of defending her actions and proving her unwavering loyalty. According to Stalin’s Order Number 227, anyone who retreats or is taken prisoner is assumed to be guilty of treason and faces the death penalty. Wein conveys vivid imagery of intense battle scenes and the war’s devastating impact on the Soviet people, including starvation and loss, in a deeply moving way. Nastia’s fierce loyalty to her

country and commitment to her work shine through, supporting the engrossing and fast-moving plot with depth of characterization. An action-packed exploration of courage and loyalty. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 13-18)

White Eagles

Wein, Elizabeth | Union Square & Co. (144 pp.)

$9.99 paper | September 16, 2025

9781454962748 | Series: Everyone Can Be a Reader (War Birds Cycle)

Following the Nazi invasion of Poland, a young pilot and a Jewish child escape on a journey across Europe. In 1939, as World War II looms, 18-year-old twins Leopold and Kristina Tomiak serve as flight instructors at the Vistula Aeroclub near Warsaw. Kristina is selected to be a liaison pilot in the Polish Air Force Reserve, transporting people and messages and taking aerial photos. Sunny, positive Leopold’s turn will come later. When the nearby village of Birky goes up in flames just a couple of weeks after the Nazi invasion, everyone knows the airfield is in imminent danger. Leopold takes down a Nazi plane, and a German officer brutally shoots him in front of Kristina and the others at the captured aeroclub. But Kristina manages to take a small plane, where she discovers Julian, an 11-year-old stowaway, hiding in the rear cockpit. The little boy’s parents were murdered by the Nazis, and the grieving but determined pair flee across the continent, encountering both the best and worst of humanity. This slim, gripping, and tightly woven novel effectively introduces characters who are full of heart and resilience. Written and formatted to be accessible to readers with learning differences, this fast-moving and compelling story will draw in both reluctant readers and others who enjoy historical fiction, especially those who appreciate a focus on personal heroism in the face of war’s brutality.

Strongly paced and emotionally resonant. (map, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 13-18)

The Hearthlord

Werbaneth, Beth | Sterncastle Publishing (254 pp.) | $14.99 paper | September 13, 2025 9781960120175

A newly rediscovered religion acts as a catalyst for an era of political manipulation and upheaval. Silas, a trapper, discovers a hidden altar from an ancient religion in a tunnel deep within the frozen ground. His prayers to the Hearthlord summon Senya, a girl with healing powers, who emerges from a supernatural portal. He becomes a priest—Father Silas—and as the religion grows, angels known as the Hearthborn arrive through the portal to free the Hearthlord from the tundra, leaving Senya behind in the cold. Meanwhile, in her homeland, a gradual shift is taking place from religious to political power—and warfare. Senya returns home to serve the Hearthlord, teaming up with Siegfried, a dispossessed soldier from Feracht House, and Nell, a rogue princess from Aesterland. The novel opens with plodding worldbuilding framed by an origin story and little exploration of characters’ emotions before eventually exploding into the horrific devastation of war. Shifting third-person points of view provide detailed backstories and clues about the central characters’ roles as victims of political power plays. Eventually, these perspectives come together even as the leads confront individual losses in their world’s new and dangerous landscape. Some plot points are left unresolved, leaving room for a sequel. In a white-presenting world, Senya stands out for having deep bronze skin, pale eyes, and white hair.

Patient readers who stick with this will find solid character development and an emotionally resonant plot. (map) (Fantasy. 13-18)

The House of Quiet

White, Kiersten | Delacorte (304 pp.) | $19.99 September 9, 2025 | 9780593806579

A girl seeks her sister at a facility for young people struggling with psychic abilities.

Sixteen-year-old Birdie has been working since she was 10 so her family could afford a procedure that unlocks special abilities for her younger sister, Magpie. But when Magpie doesn’t come home, Birdie manipulates her way into a position as a maid in the House of Quiet, hoping to find her there, receiving help with her newfound power. But everywhere Birdie looks, she finds more questions. The patients aren’t as expected— they’re from families who are too wealthy to need the procedure, rather than the ones seeking social mobility whom she expected to find, and fellow new maid Minnow is keeping secrets. The plot moves slowly in the first half, which introduces the gaslight-era setting with its oppressive class structure, a country involved in a mysterious geopolitical conflict, and the isolated House of Quiet, which is surrounded by a peat bog. White unveils magical abilities and sinister mystery in dreamy, disorienting passages. The third-person narration occasionally follows other residents of the house. Once the teens start building relationships— Birdie develops a friendship with Minnow, and each has a love interest among the upper-class residents—the intrigue picks up and the fragmented clues come together in an explosive, satisfying finale. Birdie presents white, and Minnow has light brown skin; Minnow’s same-sex relationship is framed as remarkable only for crossing the class divide. Atmospheric, trippy, and loaded with empathy. (Fantasy. 12-adult)

For another fantasy exploring class divides, visit Kirkus online.

Book to Screen

Lionsgate Adds to Cast of Sunrise on the Reaping

Glenn Close and Billy Porter are the latest actors to join the film adaptation.

Glenn Close and Billy Porter are the latest additions to the upcoming film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping, Deadline reports.

Collins’ novel, the fifth book in her Hunger Games series of young adult dystopian novels, was published in March by Scholastic. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the book, a prequel to the three original Hunger Games novels, as “a heartbreaking crescendo and another grimly irresistible chapter in the saga of this interlocking series.”

For a review of Sunrise on the Reaping, visit Kirkus online.

The film adaptation will be the sixth Hunger Games movie. The series of films launched in 2012 with The Hunger Games; the most recent installment, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, was released in 2023.

The Sunrise on the Reaping adaptation will be directed by Francis Lawrence, who helmed five of the previous Hunger Games films. Billy Ray (Shattered Glass, Captain Phillips) is writing the screenplay.

Close (Fatal Attraction, The Wife) will star as Drusilla Sickle, an evil escort to the Hunger Games tributes; Porter (Pose, American Horror Story: Apocalypse)

will play her husband, the stylist Magno Stift.

Previously announced cast members include Joseph Zada, Whitney Peak, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Mckenna Grace, Ralph Fiennes, Elle Fanning, Kieran Culkin, Lili Taylor, Maya Hawke, Ben Wang, and Jesse Plemons. The film is slated for release on November 20, 2026.—M.S.

From left, Billy Porter and Glenn Close

Rhonda DeChambeau

Indie

LOVE IN UNEXPECTED PLACES

A VERDANT FOREST, a chaotic emergency room, a roaring Formula 1 raceway…these settings may not be what comes to mind when one thinks of romance, but they’re the colorful backdrops for these recent swoonworthy Indie love stories.

A good man is hard to find; perhaps that’s why Jane Armstrong, the aging protagonist of D.J. Abear’s The Heart in the Forest, falls for the solicitous sasquatch who rescues her after she suffers an accident in the woods. He greets Jane with a hearty “SAFE!” This unusual opening gambit puts the grieving widow at ease (pickup artists, take note). As the two get to know each other, they notice that they have some things in common, like an appreciation for the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. (This is surprising, as Bigfoot seems more like an Ogden Nash kind of guy.) Jane and Oomin, as he is called (almost “human”?), have also both lost mates and are facing old age; finding a soul connection only gets more difficult in the twilight years, and the sylvan sweethearts decide not to let a few extra pounds

of body hair come between them. Our reviewer notes the novel’s skillful combination of “compassion, humor, and a dash of suspense”—it’s never easy, is it?

Out of the trees and into the weeds of a 1970s-era emergency room: Rachel Callaghan’s novel Pain Killers follows the travails of Mary Grace Kelly, a young nurse with family issues who overcomes her initial trepidation to embark upon a relationship with brash, arrogant physician David Korn (one assumes his abrasive manner is a defense mechanism stemming from being professionally known as “Dr. Korn”). Mary Grace and David find their burgeoning romance threatened by the ghosts of Mary Grace’s traumatic past

as a reckoning with her abusive father looms. Our reviewer notes the effectiveness of the hospital setting, which provides “great opportunities for gallows humor and hint[s] at the social issues medical workers face.” The inherent stakes of medical drama can significantly heighten a love story’s impact (just ask Meredith Grey), and readers will melt as these healers make their own emotional recoveries. There are few venues more fast-paced and high-stress than a hospital ER, but one that qualifies is a Formula 1 racetrack. That’s the setting for A.G. Starling’s Checkered Hearts, an enemies-to-lovers tale full of hairpin turns and heart-stopping reversals. Rocco Vittori is a fading star of the circuit struggling to

ARTHUR SMITH

reclaim the pole position; Nico Angelini is a fiery young talent determined to prove that a woman can rise to the top of a profession overwhelmingly dominated by men. Sparks fly between the hotheaded rivals as they find themselves on the same team; the two share a passion for speed—as well as scars from past traumas—but can they reconcile their tender feelings with their fierce dedication to being first across the finish line? Spicy dialogue (“Doesn’t Rocco mean dick in Italian?”) and simmering sexual tension fuel this high-octane romance, praised by our reviewer for its “deft portrayal of ambition, its exploration of gender dynamics in maledominated spaces, and its examination of the redemptive power of trust.”

Arthur Smith is an Indie editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

A gay man gets roped into taking care of an obstreperous, AIDS-stricken co-worker and finds the drudgery unexpectedly fulfilling in this mordantly funny novel.

Willett’s novel unfolds in Manhattan circa 1986, where 27-year-old bookstore supervisor Eric Summerfield feels himself a failure as a gay man: He dresses unstylishly, stays home watching TV with his cat at night because he finds socializing an ordeal, and is so awkward during sex that he’s been celibate for four years. Bookstore clerk Dale Corcoran, a flamboyant social butterfly, is Eric’s only friend, but he undermines Eric so consistently— he invites him to a party, then greets him at the door with “you look a little

haggard”—that Eric starts avoiding him, too. But when Dale contracts AIDS and is abandoned by friends and estranged from his family, he calls Eric for help in dealing with the ravages of the illness. Fighting his urge to flee, Eric nurses Dale through vomiting and diarrhea, hospitalizations, progressive blindness, creeping dementia, and relentless wasting—and finds that the burden fitfully drags him out of his isolation and reinvests him in life. (Further perking him up is Dale’s replacement, a gorgeous young man who is ostensibly straight but seems to hint at other proclivities.) Willett depicts Dale’s illness in unflinching detail but avoids maudlin sentimentality—almost until the end,

Pauline Chow

Kathryn DeRossitt

A Friend of Dorothy’s

Dale remains a spirited, bitchy, shrewd, and charismatic man, and his and Eric’s recollections paint a vibrant portrait of gay life in the late 1970s. Writing with a hangdog wit (“was it maybe true that the only way Eric could feel relaxed at a party was if the host had a terminal illness?”), Willett manages

the difficult task of making an AIDS story funny; then, through a skillful accretion of matter-of-fact details, he vividly conveys the pathos of Dale’s decline and Eric’s fumbling, tender response. Readers will be laughing through their tears. A captivating tragicomedy that celebrates the lives lost to AIDS.

Kamryn Kingsberry

Jonathan R. Miller

Michael Pronko

Richard Willett

Prison Doctor: Avenger of Blood

Alexander, A. “Mississippi” with Lisa Dobry Self (472 pp.) | $29.99 | $19.99 paper

February 18, 2025 | 9798218981358 9798218981341 paper

In Alexander and Dobry’s novel, a prison doctor’s revenge plan becomes more complicated when it involves a legendary inmate.

James Johnson is the newly hired physician at Thornton State Prison in Illinois. His job is, of course, tending to prisoners’ illnesses and injuries, but he also has a hidden agenda. Specifically, he yearns for vengeance against an incarcerated man, Steven McAdams, who murdered one of his loved ones and then received just a seven- to 10-year sentence. However, his plans may not be as secret as he thinks. A powerful inmate at the same prison, known as The Book, assigns hedge fund manager Jeffrey “Cipher” Jones to surveil James at the doctor’s home. Cipher’s late father once worked for The Book, who sent him coded messages involving biblical verses. This Bible code allowed The Book to sway events that made him, and Cipher, financially successful. Spying on someone, though, is definitely an unusual order from The Book. At the same time, it turns out that a government agency (or agencies) is monitoring James, as well. The doctor knows that getting to his target won’t be easy, even though he’s an employee at the secure prison. However, The Book may be willing to help—and Cipher isn’t the only person whom he has working for him. The Book’s name is very well known among people inside and outside the prison, and he always seems to have a way of getting things done. However, as James pursues his plan, various secrets are revealed, upending both James’ and Cipher’s lives. Also, The Book has another scheme cooking, which could help himself—a wrongly convicted man who’s serving two life sentences for murder. This crime story is leisurely paced, but it has plenty of surprises to keep

readers’ attention. The Book is a delightful enigma who has a geniuslevel IQ and innumerable connections. Even when more details about him come to light—his name, the crime that landed him in jail, and elaboration of his Bible code—there’s enough residual mystery to keep the character enticing. Unexpected ties between characters pop up, as do new antagonists and occasional betrayals. The Book, like most of the vibrant cast, is Black, and racism plays a significant role in the story. Overall, Alexander and Dobry present a grim perspective on the American prison system; most of the prisoners James sees are known to readers only by their numbers. There are also quite a few subplots throughout the novel, including one involving a burgeoning romance between James and the instantly likable prison doctor Amanda Perkins, and another about a potential “rat” at Cipher’s firm. A few minor storylines don’t lead anywhere, as the narrative instead favors scenes of James’ downtime, showing him golfing or enjoying the beach. However, the final act takes a significant turn that results in several additions to the cast and alters James’ plan, although his motive stays the same. The novel ends on a satisfying note, but some characters could easily carry on in a sequel or spinoff.

A dynamic cast effectively drives this deliberately paced tale of vengeance.

The Cold Kid Case

Barden, Rosalind | Poodle Productions (302 pp.) $12.99 paper | September 22, 2018

9798989280803 | Series: A Sparky of Bunker Hill Mystery, 1

A Depression-era orphan falsely accused of murder launches her own investigation in Barden’s YA historical novel, one in a series. It is 1932 in Los Angeles.

Tough, orphaned street kid Sparky had planned the perfect way to celebrate

her 11th birthday: She intended to grab her secret candy stash, find her favorite park bench up on Bunker Hill, and chow down while watching the sun rise. (The only blight on the view is the sight of City Hall below, “full of the types who liked to round up the likes of me and throw us in ‘homes.’”) But somebody is already on Sparky’s bench, and that somebody, a little girl, isn’t moving. In fact, the little girl is dead. Within minutes, Sparky is on the run, accused of killing the child. Public hysteria builds: Sparky is wildly cast as a serial killer, a Prussian spy in disguise, a demon, and one responsible for millions of war dead. Her suspenseful efforts to dodge police and seekers of the ever-increasing reward money for her capture lead her to the mansion of Tootsie, a rich, reclusive former star of the silents, and her devoted butler, Gilbert. There are shades here of “Little Orphan Annie” and even a bit of Sunset Boulevard , but Tootsie isn’t locked in the past—she uses her theatrical talents to engage with Sparky’s world, joining the girl’s perilous investigation into the little girl’s death. There’s fun to be had, but little sugarcoating, in this wild, often chilling murder mystery. Barden’s vivid characters also include Spooky, a shellshocked World War I veteran; the glad-handing mayor at the mystery’s center; Mug, a big, intimidating cop; Whisper-Whisper, the mayor’s sadistic fixer; Doctor, who helps Tootsie with her “nerves”; and a disturbing character known simply as “the bad man,” who lures kids into his orbit in order to threaten them with violence and humiliation. If and when Sparky is caught and hanged, he says: “I will watch as you drop, twist, and choke. And I will laugh.”

A resourceful hero under threat, memorable villains, some gritty violence, and fast-moving suspense.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

Shadows of Vietnam

Boatwright, Alice K. | Firefly Ink Books (274 pp.) $15 paper | July 3, 2012 | 9798986434490

Three novellas explore the heartbreaking effects of the Vietnam War.

Boatwright’s triptych examines characters who are in some way shaken by the conflict in Vietnam, with a particular focus on how the war results in emotional ripples that ultimately engulf not only veterans and their families, but others as well. The first novella, 1968: Getting Out , follows Toby Woodruff, a 20-year-old anti-war activist who enlists in the Navy to avoid being drafted. But when Toby receives orders to go to Vietnam, he attempts suicide. He is then placed under medical supervision in a hospital ward with hopes of eventually being discharged from the service. Initially, Toby refuses to speak to anyone. As he slowly opens up, he confronts some realizations about himself and his beliefs. The second work, 1982: If I Should Stay, centers on a married couple, Raz and Jane Carter, as they spend Thanksgiving with Jane’s family. The two have known each other since childhood. Despite their history, things have been fraught between Raz and Jane, primarily due to Raz’s drinking. Jane’s two brothers are similarly coping with tough issues: Charlie’s wife left him, and Tom has never been the same since returning from service in Vietnam. Finally, the third novella, 1993: Leaving Vietnam , explores a freelance photographer on assignment in Vietnam. Sarah has never really coped with the death of her brother, Walter, who was killed in the war. His untimely death stopped her from deepening her connection with others. Boatwright’s three works are evocative and highlight how people’s lives often vary from what they expected or desired. For example, while in the ward, Toby muses:

“I’m just a guy who wanted to go to college and become an architect and make nice places for people to live…I thought maybe I might be able to do some good in the world, but I screwed up and screwed up and screwed up, and I lost everything.” Through simple but redolent prose, the author also examines how war affects a wide range of souls. Sarah sees the consequences in 1990s Vietnam. Jane and Raz—despite never going to Vietnam themselves—are tragically affected and altered by the war. Overall, Boatwright’s tales are stirring and engrossing, never shying away from uncomfortable subjects. An engaging and moving collection about the tragic consequences of war.

Becoming Sarah

Botnick, Diane | She Writes Press (256 pp.) $17.99 paper | October 28, 2025 9798896360001

Botnick’s multigenerational historical novel chronicles the life of a woman born and orphaned in 1942 in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Sarah’s mother dies during childbirth. The women living in her mother’s Auschwitz bunkhouse nurse and tend to the fragile infant (“because in night’s meat locker a baby took up little room and gave off much heat, soon there was a queue of women”), who, miraculously, remains undiscovered by the camp guards. Somehow, she survives the bitter cold and endemic starvation, and as the Allies approach victory, Auschwitz is liberated and the little girl without a name is taken to Birkenau and then to the Displaced Persons camp in Bergen-Belsen. There she remains, a troublemaking loner, until she is adopted in 1948 by Herr and Frau Vogelmann, a German couple from neighboring Celle, Germany. During her time in BergenBelsen, she picked up the name Sarah, which in Hebrew means “Princess” (it is a

popular name among the young camp survivors); now, she becomes Sarah Vogelmann (which she later changes to Sarah Vogel). She is satisfied: Finally, she has a family, an identity—until she turns 15 and is handed over to Herr Weiss (she rooms in his attic and is forced to study the New Testament and lap up “night’s milk” from Weiss’ stomach). In 1961, when Germany is divided, she runs away to Berlin. It is the beginning of the long journey that, in 1963, brings her and Sasha, her young daughter, to Queens, New York. The traumas and emotional scars she has accumulated along the way remain with her throughout her long life, and, in turn, are reflected in her daughters and granddaughters. First, there is Sasha, born in Germany, a well-behaved child until she uncovers some of Sarah’s lies. As an angry teenager, Sasha becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter, Malcah, who Sarah raises as her own after Sasha leaves home. Then there is Ruth, a surprise blessing born to Sarah in 1990, when the protagonist is 48 years old. And finally, there is Ruth’s daughter, the whip-smart Moll, born in 2020.

Sarah is a complex and tragic hero, a Holocaust survivor with a hardened outer shell and a fierce determination that keeps her moving forward despite suffering multiple tragedies. She is also damaged, trapped in the lies she has created to fill in the blanks of a family and heritage she never had a chance to know (even her name is a fabrication). Lyrically and meticulously composed, Botnick’s novel plumbs the emotional depths of the Vogel women, from childhood through adulthood. Not a traditional Holocaust story, Botnick’s narrative examines the effects of the detritus left behind by the great atrocity on those who survived as well as their offspring. The novel is rich with early postwar historical detail, spotlighting the lingering virulent antisemitism in both Europe and America. With its 100-year time span, ending in the not-too-distant future, the story revisits a century’s worth of major historical events and then adds a bit of futuristic whimsy, which is entertaining but a bit of a narrative jolt. Painful, dramatic, and ultimately triumphant.

No Borders for Truth

Brown, Martin J. | Austin Macauley

Publishers (180 pp.) | $13.95 paper

November 8, 2024 | 9798891557482

A young CIA operative engages in a love affair with an Iranian nurse during the turbulent early 1980s in Brown’s novel. In the Shah’s Iran, Shideh Ghasemi lives in a safe world with a loving family. Her mother keeps a framed photo of Empress Farah, the queen; “it was a tacit understanding that we were modern, and now with the king and queen’s reforms in place, the world was ours.” Shideh’s mother is a devout Muslim, but her father is not religious—even so, they are a good match, but things become more complicated at the start of the Iranian revolution. In the United States, Richard Holmes attends high school in New Jersey, where he is a standout track star. He scores a scholarship to Villanova and seems well on his way to a bright future. In Iran, the situation grows more unstable, and Shideh suffers a horrifying family tragedy. Wracked with grief, she leaves Iran to enter a nursing program at Georgetown University. America is a foreign and sometimes-baffling place, but she finds the people to be kinder than she expected. She meets Richard when he drops his younger sister off at Georgetown, and the two begin a relationship. Richard has an uncle at the FBI who enlists him to help on a sting, but he settles on a job in banking and later pursues a career at the CIA; Shideh returns to Iran at a dangerous moment out of concern for her family and her country. Brown’s narrative offers remarkable insights into the many troubling occurrences in Iran in the 1970s and 1980s and highlights troubling connections to the American government. Shideh’s personal story effectively serves as both a history lesson and a plea for fairness while emphasizing the importance of family. Richard’s path to the CIA is also

intriguing. However, the leads’ romance is stunted due to Shideh’s reticence, and the story doesn’t give them much room to grow as a couple. A rich, layered novel about political upheaval, family tragedy, and the hope for reconciliation and healing.

Wicked Onyx

Cassidy, Debbie | Page & Vine (368 pp.) $19.99 paper | February 10, 2026

9781964264295

A young sorcerer enters an intense and brutal training academy to restore her powers and learn the truth about her family in Cassidy’s fantasy novel. Twenty-oneyear-old Anamaya Onyx’s matriarchal side has been cursed for generations. Her great-great-grandaunt, Dharma Onyx, committed the heinous crime of destroying an incantor’s bloodline, compelling the ruling Arcanum Imperium to lock away the sorcerous powers of the entire Onyx bloodline. Dharma’s crime made the Onyx name an anathema; Anamaya and her mother Ariana have adopted the fake surname Denton in order to avoid complete ostracization. After Ariana dies following a long battle with a terminal illness, Anamaya finds Dharma’s journal, in which the disgraced ancestor claims she was framed and that a book called the Libra Veritas will prove her innocence. The Libra Veritas, according to Dharma’s journal entries, is hidden away in the library vaults at Nightsbridge Academy. Anamaya discovers a law that prohibits allowing an Arcanus (magical) bloodline to die out in order to protect all Arcanus bloodlines’ connection to the central source of magic known as the Weave. As Anamaya is the final member of the Onyx bloodline, she realizes she can make a case to have her powers restored. To do so, as well as learn the truth about Dharma Onyx, she’ll need to go to Nightsbridge Academy—a

fortress and training center that conscripts members from certain magical and human bloodlines to contain and control the Horrors that have crept into their world. Anamaya attends classes on combat, Horrors, and the history of Nightsbridge, but her last name stokes the ire of many at the academy, and the Horrors seem to be targeting her, specifically. Cassidy delivers a spellbinding fantasy story that incorporates traditional lore from a plethora of cultures alongside original creatures and magic systems. Readers will be captivated by the author’s meticulous and richly detailed worldbuilding and entertained by narrator Anamaya’s wry humor (“Serendipity, you beautiful bitch”); the supporting characters are equally engaging. While the main story is compelling, readers may find a romantic subplot, which often relegates the otherwise self-sufficient protagonist to damsel-in-distress status, to be predictable and cliched.

A well-developed and thoroughly entertaining fantasy novel that combines traditional and original lore.

Kirkus Star

Chasing Moonflowers

Chow, Pauline | Ghastly Goings-On Press (310 pp.) | $17.99 paper | July 1, 2025 9781964733036

A teenage girl uncovers dark secrets—both earthly and supernatural—in an attempt to rescue her brothers and clear her uncle’s name in Chow’s novel.

The year is 1925, and teenager Ling Shaw works at her uncle Dabak’s medicinal herbal shop in colonial Hong Kong. Tensions are high as the Canton labor strikes are just beginning, and a rash of child disappearances has swept the island. One night, Ling witnesses a woman murdered by a horrific vampirelike creature who rips out the

victim’s eyes and stuffs her mouth with mysterious petals. When Dabak is accused of the crime, Ling sets out alongside her best friend and a shady gang member to find the truth. The stakes become even higher when Ling’s twin brothers disappear, and the suspect is none other than the city’s resident oracle—an old woman who may know more than she is letting on. Interspersed with Ling’s story is a series of flashbacks to the year 1923, where a mysterious man encounters visions and voices in the Guianas as those around him die of a  mysterious “blood disease.” As the connection between the two stories crystallizes, Ling is forced to make a painful choice that could change his life forever. Chow’s complex character study is part supernatural tale, part historical drama. She deftly moves from the intricacies of real events (like the Canton labor strikes)—and their effects on different characters—to graphic horror scenes that would feel at home in a Stephen King novel: “Rage sent his hands deeper into the beast’s head. Putrid sludge oozed from the obliterated skull. Crimson streamed from the punctures in his own chest. The other shadows slithered closer…” A smooth narrative flow, realistic dialogue, and brisk pacing all conclude with an open-ended but somehow deliciously satisfying ending. Chow ultimately fuses themes of identity, family, and nationality with a terrifying vampire story—all resulting in a bloody good read.

A dazzling blend of fantasy intrigue and historical drama that will haunt readers long after the final page.

Finally Home

Cino, Cortney | Illus. by Tim Deberd Whimspire Books (32 pp.) | $18.99 $12.99 paper | May 6, 2025 9798988925163 | 9798988925187 paper

Sarah, a little girl with long brown hair in a red bow, fair skin with rosy cheeks, and wearing a yellow dress, narrates the story of the day Daddy comes home. Sarah has put sprinkles on Daddy’s favorite cupcakes and then helps her big brother Lucas put finishing touches on a “Welcome Home” sign with a drawing of Daddy and the American flag. When it’s time to go, Sara, Lucas, and Mommy get in the truck and drive to the base where many other families are already waiting to see their returning loved ones. Inside the hangar at the base, there are children playing, a buffet with cookies, and a lot of excitement. Eventually everyone goes outside to watch as five planes touch down, one after the next, and taxi in formation toward the hangar: “Tiny green figures climb down onto the pavement. The butterflies in my belly are fluttering faster now.” Daddy spots his family, and the reunion is filled with hugs and tears of joy. Deberd’s realistic illustrations in muted tones seem shrouded in an almost dreamlike haze, like snippets of memory rendered in watercolor. While the illustrations don’t add a lot to the storytelling, they keep up with the pace of the narration, capturing the family’s excitement punctuated by busy work and waiting. Cino’s prose is in first-person present and in Sarah’s voice, which is as descriptive as it is emotional and introspective. For example, when waiting in traffic, Sarah counts the cars ahead of them: “Butterflies flutter in my belly as I stare out at the other cars. I wonder if the people inside them feel as nervous and impatient as I do.” The narrative is simple—it’s just a few hours in the day of one family—without a lot of characterization or embellishments. Daddy is coming home and that’s the only thing that matters.

A poignant family reunion story but also a telling glimpse into the lives of military families.

Cybersecurity

Checklist for Business Owners: Executive Battle Plan to Survive Cyber Threats

Clements, William | divum (154 pp.) | $14.99 paper | May 20, 2025 | 9780976224815

A family prepares for Daddy’s return from military service in Cino’s picture book.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

A thorough introduction to commercial cybersecurity. Clements, the founder of the Chicago Technology Group, a cybersecurity firm, notes that both threats to businesses’ technology assets and the costs of prevention are on the rise. Per the author, most small businesses don’t have a comprehensive cybersecurity program, or even a full-time IT staff, and as a result are likely vulnerable to attack. While Clements ultimately recommends the application of professional expertise, before this stage a business can still conduct a wide-reaching (if preliminary) review of its cybersecurity, including an inventory of vulnerable assets, sensitive data, and various “attack surfaces,” entry points open to illicit incursions. The core mechanism of such a self-assessment is a cybersecurity checklist that provides a panoramic survey of business risks paired with “action plans,” strategies to increase a business’ ability to minimize and respond to those risks. In this impressive synopsis of a complex subject, Clements covers a broad spectrum of topics, including expected subjects like firewalls and wireless networking, in addition to more esoteric considerations, such as the dangers of outsourced labor. The highlight of the book—and there are many useful aspects to this exceedingly practical volume—is the discussion of cybersecurity insurance and its central importance to a general security strategy. This treatment is helpfully paired with an exploration of compliance regulations and industry safeguards—and the steep costs associated with their neglect. The author includes many concrete examples that lucidly illustrate his points. The book’s language is largely free of hypertechnical jargon and is accessible to readers with minimal knowledge about the subject.

There are now many such introductions to cybersecurity available, but Clements’ contribution to the literature is an attractive option for the business owner looking for a brief but detail-rich primer. A valuable resource for business owners—especially those whose businesses are “heavily digitized.”

Other People’s Kids

Culbertson, Kim | Sibylline Press (344 pp.) $21 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9781960573438

Three educators at different points in their careers navigate life and work in a small town in Culbertson’s novel. After an entitled parent accosts her in her prep school’s parking lot (“he shoved me into my car door and split open my forehead”), 45-year-old Chelsea Garden flees her life and 12-year teaching career in the San Francisco Bay Area for her hometown of Imperial Flats in Northern California. For Chelsea, Imperial Flats holds a lifetime of memories that have haunted her since she left, including an antagonistic relationship with her mother and a not-quite romance with her best friend and first love, Evan Dawkins. Failed musician Evan has moved home to care for his ailing father and teach music at the high school that both he and Chelsea attended. A chance meeting at the local supermarket reignites the spark between the two educators, and they attempt to reconstruct their relationship while navigating the complications of middle age, including the presence of Evan’s 9-year-old daughter. Meanwhile, the school principal, Nora Delgado, is feeling the weight of a decadeslong career and coping with her recent divorce. When a dedicated but burnedout English teacher resigns from the high school, Nora offers Chelsea a job as a long-term substitute, and the lives of the three lead characters become ever more entwined. Written by a career educator, this story offers a rare glimpse into the complex lives of teachers,

engaging readers in a middle-aged coming-home narrative and inviting them to reflect on the struggles faced by contemporary teachers nationwide. Culbertson’s prose is enthralling without being melodramatic and witty without being overly lighthearted. Every character is lovingly constructed with empathy and imbued with complexity, making them relatable and likable. Readers will get lost in the story and come away having learned a few of the hard lessons that our teachers were trying to impart all along. A gripping, cozy drama about the careers and lives of teachers.

Kirkus Star

Wild River

DeRossitt, Kathryn | Self (411 pp.) May 4, 2025 | 9781234567890

A kaleidoscopic history-invignettes of Memphis, Tennessee. In her nonfiction debut, DeRossitt looks at Memphis across a broad swath of its history, aiming to give her readers “true tales of the nation’s first truly American city” (a description that will raise eyebrows in Boston and Philadelphia). The author presents a series of historical vignettes, varying in length from a paragraph to a page, that illuminate, in flashbulb moments, all kinds of people in all kinds of situations ranging over more than a century of the city’s history. Most of these vignettes seem to have been chosen for their vividly dramatic nature; in 1915, for instance, Geoffrey Inman, the 27-year-old captain of a steel firefighting boat, was having an affair with a woman named Frances Wilson, who ended up shooting him dead. The trial featured a letter from Inman’s mother: “That woman will kill you and then laugh about it.” Then, there’s 28-year-old Will Latura, who, in 1908, walked into a “negro saloon,” shot four patrons dead, and, while in custody, matter-of-factly said: “I shot ’em and

that’s all there is to it.” At every point in this book’s lengthy text (over 500 pages), DeRossitt includes small personal stories that are immensely engaging in their own right and highlight various aspects of Memphis history, from race relations to women’s rights to the economic growth of the city over the years. The author doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of the city’s racist past—DeRossitt instead balances the ugliness with wonderfully rendered human elements. Her decision to stagger the chronological arrangement of her subjects is at first jarring, but her storytelling talents more than compensate for any disorientation, and the two-stepsforward-one-step-back reading experience that results is probably more involving than a strictly chronological approach would have been.

An odd and wonderfully impressionistic history of Memphis.

Mercy: Tears of the Fallen

Dillon, Chance | Illus. by Robert Trotea, Omar Tunc & Jack Shepherd | LightSeeker Media (531 pp.) | July 20, 2025 | Series: Mercy, 1

A debut epic fantasy follows two unlikely allies who fight to find the tools to forestall doomsday.

As Dillon’s novel opens, the lands of Maetlynd and Taldreas and other territories are still fragmented. They are reeling from a great conflict called the Reckoning, in which the powerful, mystical objects known as Tears were scattered so they could never fall into the wrong hands again. As the story begins, a man named Harglon, who before the Reckoning had been part of an order whose members used mystic Runestones to augment their physical powers, has been tortured and transformed into a relentless killer. He and his men track down Alevist, a former knight of the Nine Runes, and brutally murder his wife and family. The tragedy is so bitter that it seems to turn Alevist into a different person. “The paragon his mother had spoken of wouldn’t have

done that,” thinks a character of Alevist after hearing an unsavory account about the former knight. “The paragon from the stories told in the early days of his time as a Kaledar—he wouldn’t do that.” Harglon and Alevist had clashed prior to the Reckoning. Now, the two find themselves on opposite sides again, this time in a growing conflict that pulls in the rest of Dillon’s cast, primarily Erevayn, a man wounded by his own tragedy when readers first meet him hunting fugitives. Later, he allies himself with Alevist. “So much of the history was filled with deceit and manipulation, but also sacrifice,” Erevayn realizes at one point. “So much of what he had learned, now revealed to be false.”

In the book’s “About the Author” section, a mention is made that some of Dillon’s writing influences include Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series and Joe Abercrombie (presumably his First Law trilogy). Readers familiar with those authors will see them all over this fast-paced series opener. The usual trappings of epic fantasy are present— maps, glossaries, etc.—but they’re amply augmented by some of the hallmarks of grimdark fantasy, including bouts of gory violence and the liberal deployment of expletives. The characters wield magic in a world of supernatural beings, but most of them sound distinctly contemporary in language and attitude. The novel is also characterized by a great deal of the cynical nihilism that fills the books of the author’s storytelling predecessors. Dillon takes the risk of front-loading his narrative with the intricate vocabulary and proper names of his story, and despite the presence of glossaries at the front and back of the novel, this gamble doesn’t entirely pay off. Readers unfamiliar with the shotgun-style worldbuilding of the Dungeon Master’s Guide may find themselves swamped by the tale’s arcane terminology. But the author usually overcomes this lack of punchy exposition by keeping readers hooked the old-fashioned way, with well-developed characters and smoothly realized dialogue. Alevist dominates the bulk of the story so completely that it’s fortunate he’s drawn as compellingly as he is, a deeply wounded man who’s nonetheless emotionally honest. But even

A touching story of navigating grief for readers seeking solace.

THE ROAD TO YESTERDAY

the tale’s main villain, Harglon, often manages to be more than a simple, one-dimensional bad guy. In his first novel, Dillon accomplishes the crucial feat of making his readers want to move on to his next book.

A gritty and fast-moving fantasy from a promising new voice.

The Road to Yesterday: A Memoir

Donovan, Maryellen, Gina Frangello & Emily Rapp Black | She Writes Press (248 pp.) | $17.99 paper | September 9, 2025 | 9781647429560

A woman overcomes immense personal loss as she builds a life for her sons and herself in Donovan’s memoir.

At 25 years old, Maryellen Donovan met Steve Cherry, a handsome financier on Wall Street who swept her off her feet. They married and had two sons, Brett and Colton. Their world crashed down on Sept. 11, 2001; Steve worked in the Twin Towers and was a victim of the horrific terrorist attacks. At 37, Donovan was a widow, navigating her own grief while trying to raise her two sons (Colton was still only a baby). Donovan describes the wonderful family and friends she had around her, and her love for them really shines through in co-writers Black and Frangello’s telling of her story. She is honest about the fact that Steve was married when they met and about the misguided meddling of her mother-inlaw, Sharon. (Sharon conspired to throw Donovan into the path of Russ, Steve’s kindhearted stepbrother, who developed an incredible bond with her sons;

Donovan and Russ would marry.) The memoir recounts Donovan and Russ’ difficult marriage, her loss of Russ to cancer, and her own battle with breast cancer. These sections reveal a stoic fighter focused on creating a magical and loving life for her boys. Though the text was written by Black and Frangello, the memoir does make it feel like it’s Donovan’s voice that is being heard—she has such a seamless, conversational, and introspective way of recounting her story that the fact that she didn’t directly put pen to paper is quickly forgotten. Though the epilogue could perhaps have been split into multiple chapters, it looks forward to the future with Donovan’s established frankness as she admits to mistakes while also fully demonstrating that her “desire is to shine a light in the darkness for others.” A touching story of navigating grief for readers seeking solace.

Burning With a Blue Flame

Dureaux-Russell, Sebastian | IngramSpark (322 pp.) | $19.95 paper | October 5, 2023 9798218236649

Derring-do and skullduggery abound in Dureaux-Russell’s historical novel of the Jazz Age. The year is 1925 and the setting is Daytona Beach, Florida. Elmer (Elm) Darrell was an aviator in the Great War—an ace, in fact. Humboldt (Bolt) Bratka, who did not serve, is making a name for himself in auto racing. Raw and taciturn Elm was a farm kid; darkly handsome (Gary Cooper, meet Rudolph Valentino) Bolt comes from faded aristocracy. They meet at an exhibition

pitting plane against race car and are immediately, almost electrically, attracted to each another. The narrative then introduces Lady Veronica (Roni) Van De Vord (the aristocratic name says it all). She is also a race car driver, and a model as well—she’s a vixen and a spitfire who knows Elm and Bolt probably better than they know themselves. These three and their coterie are creatures of the Roaring ’20s, disillusioned and out for a good time. They carouse almost past human endurance, and to top it off, Bolt intends to set a new world speed record on the famous sands of Daytona Beach while Elm aims to set an altitude record. Of course, it’s the Prohibition era, so throw in rum-running and the mob. This is Dureaux-Russell’s debut novel and readers may hope for sequels (Elm and Bolt and Roni in Hollywood?). The author endeavors to make the story a believable period piece, including details of the planes and cars involved, and of the speakeasy scene, with its passwords, cross-dressing emcees, and gin drinkers gyrating to the Black Bottom. Some anachronistic expressions slip in (does the wisecracking formulation of “And this concerns me, why?” really go back 100 years?), but he makes good use of period songs that reflect the ongoing action. Roni pithily sums up the ethos: “The war is over and it’s damn time to have some fun!” It’s the philosophy of the moochers who show up at Gatsby’s wild parties, hangovers be damned. An impressive evocation of a time and place.

Give First: The Power of Mentorship

Feld, Brad | Ideapress Publishing (154 pp.)

$18.95 paper | June 24, 2025 | 9781646871322

A prominent entrepreneur and investor shares his philosophy of generosity. Feld is a prolific author, tech entrepreneur, early-stage investor, and co-founder of Techstars, a venture fund and startup accelerator that matches

A poetic, grounded, and empowering remembrance.

MIDWIFE

OF THE SOUL

founders with experienced mentors. His book focuses on how mentorship is implemented at Techstars and how it fits into Feld’s “Give First” philosophy in business and other contexts, sharing stories that highlight the ways in which he has applied it in his life. The text presents and elaborates upon the “Techstars Mentor Manifesto” created by founder David Cohen, a set of 18 guiding principles including “be authentic,” “listen, too,” “guide, don’t control,” and “know what you don’t know.” The book is organized in four sections. “Part 1: Give First” is an overview of the concept’s meaning and origin, the author’s professional background, and how to use the book. “Part 2: Mentoring,” the longest section by far, provides a series of detailed discussions of each of the key principles in the manifesto. “Part 3: Navigating Give First” covers some of the difficulties mentors may encounter and offers advice for dealing with them, such as setting firm boundaries. Finally, in “Part 4: Entrepreneurial Tzedakah,” Feld places the practice of “Give First” within the larger context of charitable giving, calling angel investing “for-profit philanthropy.” Each chapter includes a definition and description of a specific point illustrated by anecdotes and lessons drawn from the author’s personal experience. The author defines the Give First philosophy as the “willing[ness] to put energy into a relationship or a system” without a specific expectation of reward, distinguishing it from pure altruism (where one expects no reward), “transactional” notions such as “paying it forward” or “giving back” (where one has already received something), and simply doing favors. He stresses the many ways the practice is, in fact, rewarding, even though the form of the reward may not be foreseeable. Feld’s writing is clear and direct, conveying a wealth of material in less than 150 pages. The stories taken from his experiences include frank admissions

of mistakes, burnout, and bouts with depression as well as impressive successes; they are easy to relate to, even for those without tech-startup experience or hundreds of millions of dollars to throw around. The author’s guidance on mentorship, focusing on listening, empathy, honesty, being a role model, and supporting mentees (without solving their problems for them or telling them what to do) will undoubtedly be useful to coaches, managers, advisers, and other mentors in contexts far beyond Silicon Valley or Wall Street. While much of the counsel is common sense, there are a few surprises, such as the author’s flat refusal to sign on to nondisclosure agreements, which he calls “lightweight fiction,” writing, “a legal document doesn’t create trust or meaningful recourse.” Feld is a passionate and persuasive evangelist for the Give First philosophy, calling it “a guiding principle in my life” and asserting, “I strongly believe that giving without expectation of return is the most effective way to achieve many goals.”

An inspiring, generous life and business philosophy treatise that deserves a wide audience.

Midwife of the Soul: A Teaching Memoir Through the Lens of an HSP Psychotherapist

Friedman, Shira | Atmosphere Press (322 pp.) $20 paper | July 1, 2025 | 9798891326804

A psychotherapist transforms an account of personal trauma into a soulful guide to healing, selfacceptance, and spiritual growth. Friedman blends personal storytelling with therapeutic insight to create a memoir

that will serve as a healing companion for highly sensitive persons (HSPs) and those supporting them. Using a mix of reflective vignettes and prescriptive wisdom, she retraces her journey from childhood abuse to a life of embodied self-awareness and purpose. Framing her story as one of “spiritual midwifery” (“deeply listening, perceiving, and compassionately responding to the needs of my soul”), Friedman draws eclectic inspiration from Jewish mysticism, somatic therapy, Hinduism, and holistic practices to depict the process of healing as a sacred rebirth. Her prose is warm, lyrical, and immersive, guiding readers through her memories of her early sensitivities, her feelings of disconnection, and her long search for meaning and belonging. Chapters move fluidly between memory and instruction, exploring such topics as energy regulation, creative expression, ecotherapy, and the psychosomatic roots of trauma. One section describes how dance and movement helped her to reclaim personal agency and reconnect with her body. Throughout, Friedman emphasizes that sensitivity is not a disorder to be cured, but a trait to be honored and nurtured. She presents a range of spiritual tools, including emotional reframing, grounding exercises, body-centered awareness, and naturebased healing, as accessible avenues for transformation. Although some themes, such as emotional alchemy, childhood wounding, and ego detachment, may feel highly metaphysical to readers unfamiliar with these concepts, the author explains them in plain language to reinforce her core message. Friedman’s narrative will likely be especially resonant for those whose sensitivity has been misunderstood or those navigating recovery. The result is both intimate and instructive, offering a thoughtful blend of memoir and mentorship.

A poetic, grounded, and empowering remembrance that views sensitivity as a transcendent strength.

Then Came Morning

Grand, James | Vanguard Press (208 pp.)

$12.99 paper | October 31, 2024

9781837943784

In Grand’s novel, the love between two teenage boys is a dangerous proposition at the height of the Dirty War in Argentina.

In the late 1970s, Argentina is dominated by imperious generals who terrorize the population into fearful subservience. People are often kidnapped by the government’s thugs in broad daylight and then secreted off to be interrogated and tortured, never to be heard from again. (“Everyone knows people who have been taken away.”) Seventeen-year-old Paul Casales lives a quiet, unassuming life in a modest apartment with his mother, who is terrified of drawing attention to them and warns Paul to eschew all things political. She works at a nearby hotel and loses herself in books, avoiding the news, which, she assumes, is nothing more than mendacious propaganda. She counsels Paul to avoid the military—his father was an officer who died before Paul was born—and its destruction of individuality. Paul becomes infatuated with another boy his age: Marco, the son of Miguel Campora, an affluent and high-ranking government official who rabidly hates liberals. In this haunting tale, Paul, still unsure of his burgeoning sexuality, falls in love with Marco, who requites his affection. However, Paul begins to worry that Seńor Campora mistrusts his influence on Marco and may suspect that Paul harbors subversive views, suspicions that could get one killed. With impressive literary precision and quietly understated dramatic power, the author follows the boys’ adolescent attraction from its innocent inception to its dark consequences. Grand’s prose has a peculiarly muted strength—the complete absence of melodrama, bombast, or any flourishes of poetic embroidery gives the writing terse power. This is a relatively brief novel, but the eventful plot, which spans eight years, is artfully unfurled

without haste. A macabre portrayal of Argentina emerges as a cowed population anxiously expects the worst to be visited upon them at any time, completely unannounced and without reason. In the midst of this tyranny, Paul simply wants to be a teenager, with everything that routinely entails, and especially to be freed from his mother’s loving but obsessive control. Seńor Campora, a domineering presence in the novel, vividly illustrates the smug sense of historical importance, and its attendant nihilism, that characterizes the ruling elite. As he explains to Paul, the violence of the times is a necessary and fleeting means to a noble end: “The bombings, kidnappings and other terrorist acts will soon be history, and the capital will soon enough regain the grandeur of its past.” Grand swings quickly and deftly from the personal to the political, demonstrating how complete the collapse of the former into the latter is under a despotic regime. Paul tries to carve out his own personal space in this claustrophobic cosmos with Marco, just as his mother’s self-imposed hermitage in her apartment was her ironic attempt to secure a measure of freedom. This is a beautifully disturbing book, one that sings with a profound forlornness.

A mesmerizing look into the heart of a queer romance in a terrifying historical period.

Search for the Deveraux: A Mystery From the Saturn System

Hendrix, David | Self (362 pp.) | $14 paper May 13, 2025 | 9798992565317

In this SF mystery, a valuable mining company ship, missing in Saturn’s rings for more than a decade, attracts the attention of an amateur sleuth when one of the craft’s escape pods is recovered with a freshly slain corpse inside.

In Hendrix’s second installment of a series, Alejandro “Al” Detweiler is the proverbial farm boy (the family farm is

on the moon) who left for the more adventuresome opportunities in Saturn’s wide-open environment. A culture has risen there via enterprising (and corruptible) humans, mining the precious substance “transactinide.”

Though an “Aerospace Guard” on search-and-rescue assignments, Al tends to be present when criminal mischief occurs and he has something of a reputation as a detective. Such is the case with a clue involving a 12-year-old mystery, the enigma of the Deveraux. This was an elite corporate vessel, supposedly carrying a fortune in contraband, that suffered inexplicable guidance malfunction and plunged into the chaos of Saturn’s primary ring and disappeared. Now, a fresh space shipwreck, the Anderson, is found with half of the crew missing—and an escape pod from the Deveraux floating in space nearby. Inside the pod is an Anderson crewman—stabbed to death. Was the Anderson on an unauthorized treasure hunt for the Deveraux and its legendary bonanza? Appointed to assist the investigation, Al probes decade-old secrets, imposters, smugglers, and scoundrels. The hero narrates in a fairly dispassionate style—neo-gumshoe hardboiled stuff is only in trace-element doses (“The System Police had done more than remove everything not bolted down. Forensic technicians had examined this room since I was last here, going through with scraper, lens, and brush”). The setting is one where “gravity reigned throughout the Saturn System, holding all to its will. In some places its touch was light, in others its grip as harsh as frozen stone.” Yet the prose eschews heavy astrophysics jargon. Readers comfortable with crime fiction who have a military/naval/JAG background might feel at home here, more so than typical SF fans. What could dampen their jets, though, is an ambiguous ending (more of a howdunit than a whodunit overall), with loose ends, some nefarious characters offstage, and dark repercussions for Al down the line. Future installments of this smart, engaging, genre-crossing series are planned.

A clever, intricate, and low-key SF thriller about a space treasure hunt gone bad.

Hive

Hovannisian, Garin K. | SmallPub (238 pp.) $19.99 paper | June 12, 2025 | 9798992590302

In Hovannisian’s metanovel, a “canceled” writer faces a reckoning on a mysterious island.

Adam is in a slump: Once a successful bad-boy author (think Bret Easton Ellis), he floundered when the tides turned against his brand of misogynistic fiction. Adam now teaches at a Los Angeles college, but he may not get tenure due to a scandal; after accusing him of sexual misconduct, his student, Mandy, commits suicide. Adding to his stress, Adam’s wife, Neve, wants a baby, but he doesn’t. When a black envelope arrives in his faculty mailbox containing an invitation to a Greek island to work on his next novel, he accepts. On a yacht, Adam meets five other men bound for the same destination. Will is a lifestyle influencer, helping men “get made, get paid, and get laid.” There’s a wealth manager, Camillio, and a formerly popular guru, Hari Rajneesh. Maxim is a conspiracy theorist, and River is an itinerant musician. The men discover their destination has caves in the hills resembling a honeycomb and is ruled by a queen. The area’s largely populated by attractive women (“belles and barbies and big bad bitches”); Adam is apprehensive, recalling the Agatha Christie mystery And Then There Were None. Hovannisian has composed an intriguing work of meta-fiction about an author writing about writing a novel—a form of literature described by her own character Adam as “contemptible.” The author’s characters reveal other surprising dimensions: gentle River, who rescues a bee that’s stuck in honey, reveals a dark secret; Neve alternates between being manipulative, sweet, and self-pitying; Adam, an unreliable narrator, keeps readers in doubt about what truth is. (He claims to have cared about and been kind to Mandy, but he also believes he’s embattled by a hostile environment, a “culture of castration.”) Like Adam, LA is ambiguously portrayed; it’s both radiant yet seedy, with a beautiful sky “like a robe of purple and gold,” yet it’s a place where “there

is nothing to distract you from the smog of your own soul.” The protagonist’s worldview may be toxic to many, but satisfying twists await readers able to make it through. A morally ambiguous, serpentine, character-driven puzzle.

Kirkus Star Star Fruit

Kingsberry, Kamryn | IKB Press (244 pp.)

$28.99 | $14.99 paper | June 1, 2025

9798992202717 | 9798992202724 paper

T hree diverse teens struggle with relationships, family drama, bigotry, and the politics of high school theater in Kingsberry’s YA novel.

Ari, Ya, and Atlas are seniors in their final semester at Baldwin Hills High. In honor of Pride Month, the high school’s theater club has chosen to put on a student-produced play. Ari (Arielle), a brilliant wordsmith who is Black, autistic, and gay, has written a queer adaptation of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool.” However, after several rounds of edits, the club decides to produce a more hetero-centric play (“the committee took no issue with centering a hetero-romance”). Led by Ya (Sonya), a cishet young woman and an ally, the three friends endeavor to produce their play with Atlas (a transgender teen) as the star and their classmates as cast and crew. As the play becomes more of a reality, the friends must struggle with a transphobic PTA, raising a seemingly impossible amount of money, and teenage romantic drama—all before opening night. As the trio fights for their play’s right to exist, they must also come to terms with issues of identity and allyship. In many ways, Kingsberry’s novel falls into the category of standard teen fiction. However, the author’s commitment to representing the lives of often marginalized teens—be they Black, Latine, or LGBTQ+—and doing so without falling into the standard “troubled teen” trope sets the book apart from the rest of the genre. Characters are three-dimensional; they’re

witty and engaging, but also as aggravating as many teens can be. The themes of love, friendship, and unwavering loyalty shine through the muck and mire of contemporary bigotry, highlighting the queer “glimmers” identified at the start of the book. The inclusion of neurodiverse characters is also gratifying, making this a novel that should appeal to most teen readers, regardless of their identities. A truly honest and authentic YA narrative.

The Long Shadow of Murder

Kuhns, Eleanor | Self (245 pp.) | $15 paper May 15, 2025 | 9798312662825

Series: Will Rees Mysteries, 12

In the 12th book in Kuhns’ historical mystery series, Will Rees and Constable Rouge are called upon to solve the murder of a traveler from out of town. This installment returns readers to the Will Rees and his wife Lydia’s farm, adjacent to a Shaker community in Durham, Maine, in 1802. Rees and the constable find an out-oftown farm owner named Hans Bergin, dead in the trees along the side of the road; he was apparently bludgeoned to death. Notorious for his interest in young women, Bergin had upset members of the local Shaker community by insisting on seeing the “naked ladies dancing” there, even though the existence of such a spectacle was just hearsay. With little information to go on, Rees, Rouge, and Rees’ spouse set out to solve what almost becomes an increasingly complicated case. As more murders come to light, it becomes clear the investigation is necessary to ensure the safety of all the

townspeople. Just when it seems the case might never be solved, an important missing piece of the puzzle is discovered, and an unlikely killer is revealed. Kuhns’ suspenseful historical whodunit features fast-paced action, but it also compellingly addresses important topics with sensitivity and depth, including post-traumatic stress disorder, war, infidelity, religion, and sexual assault. These elements effectively add to the plot without overwhelming it. Kuhns also includes well-researched facts about the American Revolutionary War, the Shaker community, and traditions of the era. The novel provides details about the Battle of Minisink, as well, which is vital to a large portion of the plot and especially important to the development of Shaker Ephraim Sewall’s character. Lastly, Lydia Rees is a refreshing presence in a setting in which women were often sidelined; she uncovers key evidence the men overlook, crucial to solving the case. This well-researched mystery series entry will please fans and newcomers alike.

Of Sturgeon and Carrie Bradshaw

Leon, Luna M. | Self (206 pp.) | $9.95 paper April 4, 2025 | 9789090399386

A laid-off Siberian journalist shakes himself out of his career doldrums in this novel from Leon. Based in “the fifth-largest city in the Siberian Federal District,” Dmitry Pogodin, 42, struggles with his TV glitching to Sex and the City with “incomprehensible subtitles—Japanese or

A broad novelistic commentary on Russian life with an absurdist edge.

OF STURGEON AND CARRIE BRADSHAW

Korean?” instead of his fishing show. He also just squabbled with his Chechen-Warconscript-turned-unemployed-engineer neighbor, who suggests they steal sturgeon to sell its prized roe. Dmitry, too, has had “years of idleness and the sting of unemployment,” having lost his newspaper columnist job “as the digital age dawned and paper faded.” He also still mourns the departure of his girlfriend, Yuliana, the local caviar king’s daughter, back to Moscow. After seeing the out-of-reach cost of Moscow train travel on a billboard, Dmitry caves to his neighbor’s plan. Later he hooks up with visiting Muscovite Ekaterina, whose mental state merits a session with his “social security psychologist,” and he runs into Yuliana at the hospital, leading to a party full of surprises. Dmitry, however, is now inspired by Carrie Bradshaw—and finally starts writing his own novel: “Nothing jump-starts a creative awakening quite like an existential crisis and unsolicited life advice from a fictional New Yorker in designer heels,” is one of many pithy asides in this striking yet occasionally puzzling tale (whither the roe money?) fusing modern angst with Russia-specific pain and paranoia. Ekaterina is both burdened and blessed, for example, by an early affair with a political “VIP,” although “any assumption that this might subtly allude to Vladimir Putin is purely speculative and entirely at your own risk.” It is amusingly appropriate indeed in this strange world that an HBO series serves as muse for Dmitry. A broad novelistic commentary on Russian life with an absurdist edge.

Feud

Michel, Berry | Page Publishing (244 pp.) | $19.95 paper September 9, 2024 | 9798891578814

A politician finds herself endangered by a quarrel going back centuries in this engaging supernatural thriller. This rivalry begins in the American South in 1850. Aaron, an

enslaved person, plans to escape the Virginia plantation on which he toils and start a new life in the North. Plans don’t work out for him, however. He’s attacked on the night he escapes and is left for dead by a giant beast. During the attack, the “beast,” a werewolf, changed Aaron into a werewolf. Now nearly invincible, Aaron kills the cruel plantation owner and his wife—vengeance, in part, for whipping Aaron’s beloved mother. Perhaps unwisely, the escapee spares their 8-year-old son, James. Following the Civil War, James becomes a vampire and later leads a clan of all-white vampires, which wars with Aaron’s pack of Black werewolves. Since both groups need to exist in shadows, they agree to a truce: neither will turn victims of the opposite race. This truce holds for decades, until an inexperienced werewolf attacks and turns Ally, a white congressional aide from South Carolina. Aaron stalls while deciding how to handle this unique situation. But the two sides begin slowly but inexorably slipping toward war as the werewolves attempt to protect Ally while the vampires try to kill her. Michel deserves credit for finding a different slant on an overused trope. Usually, vampires are portrayed as highbrow and the werewolves lowbrow, but Aaron’s pack is classy and stylish. Also, injecting racism as the dividing line between two types of monsters is inspired. The long-standing grudge that James holds against Aaron only ramps up the tension. The character who evolves the most is Ally. She starts as a conservative eager to pass a voting-restriction bill. But time spent with Aaron’s pack, as well as peril to her family, impacts her perspective on race and life. Characters other than her and Aaron aren’t as well developed, however. But altogether, this is a fascinating new take on old monsters, one that Michel has set up to continue as a series. A riveting, fresh interpretation of monsters.

Kirkus Star

Animal Control

Miller, Jonathan R. | Self (300 pp.) | $11.99 paper | June 18, 2025 | 9798284208939

In Miller’s novel, a disaffected teenager receives a bizarre power that may be the key to changing her grim reality.

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Shay Garner is a 17-year-old living in a hostile world. At home, she must contend with her abusive, alcohol-addicted mother, who hurls insults but never offers love or support. At school, with her two best friends, Opal and Santana, she has joined an after-school group to work on community service, but all three girls agree that petitions and picking up garbage will do nothing to reverse the environmental disasters and extreme poverty around their home of San Jose, California. “Every single moment, even this one, is a gift,” Shay thinks, adding, “No part of her believes that statement fully.” However, an unbelievable gift does, in fact, come Shay’s way. An odd figure named Corvus P. Capra with mechanical pincers for hands saves her from a man harassing her in the street; he then wordlessly offers her a black clamshell, which displays messages so that he can communicate with her. The item also gives its new owner the ability to control animals with her mind. Shay’s disbelief quickly gives way to amazement, and then a flurry of questions, as she realizes that she can compel cockroaches, spiders, cats, and dogs to follow her orders with merely a thought. Shay trains with Corvus at night, but he remains aloof about the power’s ultimate purpose: “Time is little,” he tells her. “Few questions, fine, okay. Many, not good. It is pesky.” As her abilities grow, she finds herself able to manipulate zoo animals and even people. Shay withdraws from the people close to her, just as Corvus finally reveals his intentions to use the power to stave off an environmental disaster. However, before long, she and her friends set off down a strange path to understanding what it really means to change the world.

Miller’s heavily philosophical approach doesn’t shy away from dark themes, violence, or language. The novel’s detached tone quickly alerts readers to the deadly serious stakes, even as some wacky plot elements emerge; the reveal of what Corvus truly is, for example, seems too bizarre to be believed, but somehow feels logical. Shay’s sheer intelligence will win readers over early; the probing questions she asks about her new powers make her feel genuine, while also pushing at the limits of the unusual situation. There’s a pervasive sense of despair that Miller renders beautifully, and it places readers squarely into the mindset of young people who feel powerless to fix problems, either at home or in the world at large. The novel’s excellent twist is that when they get power, it only creates more perplexing questions with unclear solutions: “There is a growing hollowness beneath it,” Shay thinks after one victory, “a sense of incompletion.” The protagonist’s story feels light-years from the typical hero’s journey, consistently focusing on more existential themes—and the result is something unusually unsettling and unforgettable. A strange, inventive tale that evolves into a challenging and rewarding odyssey.

The Last Wizard

Mizgailo, Alex | Self (486 pp.) | $17.99 paper July 1, 2025 | 9798287293208

Series: The Land of Amun Saga, 1

A dwarf, an elf, and a young soldier arrive in the mystical town of Springdale looking for quests, which leads them to the dark center of an underground world in Mizgailo’s fantasy novel. In the Lands of Amun, the aftermath of the Total War has “decimated most of the intelligent species or driven them to the brink of extinction.” After the war, humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs “now dominate this world” in which bandits, villains, and general unease prevail. Banded together by necessity, a trio comprises an “elf in pursuit of knowledge,

a youngster in search of himself, and a burly dwarf embarked on his own mission to change the world.” In the story’s first half, the action is centered in Springdale’s sole tavern. As the trio become familiar with its patrons and proprietor—who’s also the leader of the village—they pick up mapmaking jobs and other odd quests in exchange for money, beer, and meals. Unbeknownst to the three, the titular unnamed wizard secretly oversees their quests and other local activities. Occupying an abandoned house, he’s prevented from materializing in the flesh, due in part to his ailing health: “My best tactic is to remain invisible, all while quietly pursuing the most unique artifact—the Aard of Being—deep within the dungeons.” With a Blood Moon on the horizon, a missing villager returns as a zombie that heralds necromancers and other dark forces converging. The trio discover a hidden dungeon entrance and embarks on their most dangerous quest yet, with the help of a fallen, a satyr, and a healer, to discover hidden artifacts and origins of evil.

Mizgailo’s presents readers with a lengthy read that’s divided between accounts of village life and tales of subterranean exploration. The scenes in Springdale’s tavern are full of banter and bawdy characters, lending the characters’ relationships a greater depth. Grampy, the oft-disgruntled dwarf, provides much of the humor in his desires for riches and alcohol: “Any free beer makes me happy.” The plucky boy soldier is engaging as he questions the elders in an attempt to learn more than the Warrior Guild permitted. In an addled dream sequence, his mind inspires some of the novel’s stronger prose: “His flame reflected from the moon, illuminating the tortured continent that was slowly devoured by darkness, calling for dawn.” The elf’s loss of faith is also a brief but compelling plot point. As the explorers descend into different dungeon levels, they encounter room after room of unholy creatures—each as deadly as the last. Readers familiar with role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer, will enjoy reading about grisly battles and learning the complex, unfolding rules of the Lands of Amun. For others, the scenes may become somewhat repetitive, particularly when a second troop is dispatched to investigate the same area.

The wizard provides an effective anchor for exposition, but this long and sometimes-convoluted tale may not engage some casual readers.

A sprawling story of fantastical creatures whose greatest strength lies in the comedic exchanges between its core cast members.

GirlChild

Morenike’ | Self (196 pp.) | $12.99 paper December 2, 2024 | 9798218462499

A Black woman who feels alienated from her relatives may need to come to their rescue in this novel.

A group of ancestors watches over the Singleton family on Huguenot Island in South Carolina. In 1987, Sparrow, the family’s young rebel, wants nothing more than to leave the island. The Singletons are Gullah, and the teen views their culture as backward: “Sparrow often challenged authority, did not hold her tongue, and openly denounced the Gullah way of life at every turn. The ancestors considered her to be destructive.” She gets into some trouble when she sees a spirit one night and protects her sister, Little Dove, from it. Sparrow then saves some money and runs away. The story picks up 10 years later with Sparrow in New York City. Since she fled the South, the island has become touristy. Little Dove, who has suffered many miscarriages, gives birth to a baby girl named GirlChild, an event that spurs Sparrow to come home. The ancestors intervened to save GirlChild, who was stillborn, and they know God will still need a sacrifice. Indeed, Little Dove suffers an embolism and dies a few days later. As a godmother, Sparrow desires at least partial custody of GirlChild. Little Dove’s husband wants no part of that. Worse, Sparrow’s white boyfriend, David, is the one who revealed her plans concerning GirlChild. David is already on thin ice with the family for being ignorant and a bit mocking of Gullah customs. In a way, David is a symbol of

the central conflict within Sparrow, who says she loathes the Gullah but really hates herself. Meanwhile, there’s a land developer who’s snooping around the Singleton property to try to buy it. Will Sparrow save her family’s land and culture and reconcile the conflict in herself? This peek at the Gullah culture via Sparrow’s conflict with her heritage is intriguing. The ancestors continue to hover over the Singletons’ lives throughout the imaginative novel; usually they give their opinions without intervening, perhaps because interceding sometimes ends in tragedy. Unfortunately, some of the descriptions of Gullah culture are a bit clunky and take the form of lectures to outsiders. (And the developer remains cartoonishly evil.) Still, Morenike’ delivers an engrossing story with rich characters and a striking protagonist. A compelling journey to self-acceptance.

A Tail of Twirls: Kittina and the Starlight Ballerina

Once Upon a Dance | Illus. by Stella Maris | Self (33 pp.) | $9.99 paper May 1, 2025 | 9781955555975

A little cat discovers her inner dancer in this picture book by Once Upon a Dance. In an alley in Pirouette Pines at night, Kit the cat finds her way into a mysterious building. As she moves through the space, which is decorated with dance posters, Kit meets a magical talking mirror who declares the feline a born dancer and begins to teach her ballet (“I thought there’d be more… twirling and tiaras,” Kit complains). Night after night, Kit returns for her lessons until finally the mirror declares she is ready to twirl. When Kit returns the next night, the mirror has disappeared. In its place: a mop and bucket. Kit begins to clean, and as she cleans, she dances; as she dances, other animals gather to watch. Kit vows to share what she’s learned and opens a dance school for all the residents of Pirouette Pines. Maris’ whimsical watercolor illustrations conjure the enchanted

ambience of the moonlit purple night and the enigma of the abandoned dance studio. The narrative has a classic fairy-story feel, infusing Kit’s reality with the magical elements of the story. The prose has a musical quality and leans on the illustrations for elaboration—the hard work of rehearsing ballet fundamentals is expressed through a one-page montage showing Kit in various positions. The text includes illustrated and annotated ballet choreography, adding an interactive component for budding dancers.

A magical celebration of curiosity and commitment.

Sustainable Ambition: How to Prioritize What Matters to Thrive in Life and Work

Oneto, Kathy | Greenleaf Book Group Press (344 pp.) | $29.95 June 10, 2025 | 9798886452945

A thoughtful and empowering self-help guide that aims to let readers redefine success on their own terms.

Life coach and public speaker

Oneto offers a refreshing alternative to the hustle culture that defines much of modern professional life and can often lead to feelings of burnout. While drawing on personal experience and her own coaching insights, she challenges readers to reconsider how ambition is defined, what it means in practice, and how it can support, rather than sabotage, one’s well-being. The book, at its core, is both radical and comforting in its assertion that ambition isn’t inherently unhealthy, but simply needs recalibrating. To that end, Oneto introduces readers to the Sustainable Ambition mindset, which reframes ambition as something not directed at a specific target, but as a kind of personal compass; this, in turn, leads into her Sustainable Ambition Method, which suggests “aligning the right ambition at the right time with the right effort.” The author’s tone is neither prescriptive nor preachy, which sets the book apart from

some others in the genre; instead, she invites readers into a place of reflection on their senses of truth and purpose, while providing prompts, exercises, and practical tools throughout. A particularly resonant aspect of the work is her call to “reclaim” ambition as a source of fulfillment, rather than one of self-erasure. Oneto doesn’t promise easy answers, nor does she make claims that seem too good to be true about her mindset or method, but she does offer a clear roadmap for sustainable growth that respects individuality. The book shows a clear intention to guide and support, and it may allow readers to develop a new way of thinking about one’s goals—especially at times when their motivation is low. An engaging read for professionals, creatives, and anyone else interested in reexamining their aspirations.

The Crimson Spire

Parker, Shawn F. | Parker International (542 pp.) | $14.99 paper | April 8, 2025 9798998502804

A high fantasy novel offers magical powers, high-stakes duels, and competing kingdoms. In this first installment of a series, Prince Gerard Caltheos, 17, is undergoing some intense training. Gerard is, at the behest of his alcoholic father, Genthar, attempting to unlock something called the Flame. Flame is one of the powers that the Thaumas wield: magical abilities that are present in the land of Tamaria and include Cold, Wind, Water, Earth, and Light. It is all new territory for Gerard and Genthar, as they are not from Tamaria but a nearby kingdom that has not always had peaceful relations with its neighbor. Gerard’s training is a dangerous endeavor. What’s more, it is conducted in secret. Meanwhile in Tamaria, a tournament takes place where contestants utilize the powers in duels. The winner will become the next High Thauma, an important rank of distinction that even comes with some land. Cobain Scott of Greyhill, 22, really wants to win, yet his

efforts fall short in his final duel. Nevertheless, he is rewarded for getting so far in the tournament by being assigned to protect King Norwin Zakarian’s family. This new gig puts Cobain in direct contact with the beautiful Emillira, the monarch’s daughter. Emillira’s father is in poor health and her brother, Dane, is set to inherit the throne. While Norwin is keen on keeping the peace with neighboring Averose, Dane advocates for a more combative stance. Elsewhere, it is rumored that a different magical ability is being put to use: the power of Dark. It is something that has not been seen in decades and certainly spells trouble.

Readers meet a multitude of intriguing characters, all with their own concerns and motivations, from the get-go. And these players are not ones to sit idly by. There are marriage considerations, troop movements, and discussions of war, to name just a few topics. Even with so much in motion, Parker’s story unfolds in a digestible manner. While it may take readers a few pages to understand the Thaumas’ powers, they are revealed without too much extraneous explanation. Likewise, the concerns about an upcoming major clash are summed up nicely by Dane: “We grow too complacent.” Once the conflict is in play, readers are kept in suspense as to how it will all end, particularly with moments like “The air was thick with the scent of death, the lingering smoke of burnt flesh.” Many characters also have backstories that add to their depth, such as Cobain’s strained relationship with his father. Still, at times the swift pace is slowed down by details and comments that are not entirely necessary. Discussing the many differences between Dane and his sister, the story notes: “Where Dane wielded words like reckless strikes, Emillira wielded them like a physician’s scalpel—precise and careful.” At other times, individuals simply state the obvious. During a battle, someone comments: “I wish I was out there fighting.” Such assertions do not add much to a story that, though extensive and expansive, still manages to be under 600 pages. And despite some clutter, those pages provide a nuanced take on the high fantasy genre.

Epic in scale, this enticing adventure features plenty of tense moments and striking characters.

Upon This Rock

Perry, David Eugene | Pace Press (404 pp.)

$17.62 paper | September 15, 2020

9780941936064

Perry’s mystery incorporates ecclesiastical intrigue, queer love, and centuriesspanning secrets.

Newly arrived from San Francisco, couple Lee Maury and Adriano Llata de Miranda settle into the Italian hill town of Orvieto for a sabbatical meant to provide healing after the death of their friend Brian. But their quiet retreat is soon interrupted by a mysterious suicide of a deacon, cryptic clergy, and Vatican secrets buried for centuries. “Who knows what we’ll find here,” Lee muses early on in an ominous foreshadowing of the dark revelations to come. Perry deftly intertwines timelines (alternating between present-day Orvieto and the post–Sack of Rome papacy of Clement VII), offering readers a blend of rich history and contemporary suspense. The author’s reverence for the setting is clear: “Orvieto didn’t so much dominate the surrounding countryside as preside over it with a stone-hewn patience girded by over three millennia of human habitation.” The narrative drips with atmosphere, from the chill of “late-autumn, prewinter breeze” to the candlelit corners of ancient churches. Lee and Adriano’s relationship is portrayed with warmth and familiarity, offering levity and intimacy amid the mystery. Their banter (“I’m not a closeted anything, as you well know,” Lee quips) brings relatable humanity to a plot otherwise dense with papal history, ecclesiastical politics, and esoteric symbols. (The author allows their queerness to be present without sensationalism; their love is simply a fact, not a device.) One of Perry’s greatest strengths is his characters: From the gregarious expat food writer Peg (“White wine, si?” she demands, already ordering for the table) to the coldly formidable cafe matron La Donna Volsini, each is rendered with theatrical flair and narrative purpose. While the plot occasionally slows under the historical exposition, the mystery

remains taut, with surprising emotional resonance: “Brian,” Lee whispers to his husband as they place his late mentor’s ashes in a bookcase in one of several quiet, aching moments that elevate this novel beyond a mere Vatican thriller.

A richly atmospheric, genre-blending mystery that balances historical depth with modern intrigue.

Kirkus Star

A Guide to Jazz in Japan

Pronko, Michael | Raked Gravel Press (288 pp.) | $19.99 paper | April 30, 2025 9781942410379

American expatriate professor Pronko presents a richly detailed guide to jazz venues, musicians, and more in Tokyo and Yokohama. The author, a teacher of American literature and culture at Meiji Gakuin University by day, describes his book as “the product of nearly thirty years of listening and reporting on Japanese jazz”; he’s written on the topic for the Japan Times and Newsweek Japan, in addition to publishing online reviews. Rather than categorizing clubs by location or the specific types of music they specialize in, Pronko has opted for a more vibes-based arrangement, highlighting small places where listeners pack in, calm and unassuming neighborhood spots that are coffee shops by day, and slick corporate venues where the staff speaks English, among others. (There are additional sections about places and musicians that play music from a few other, related genres, such as the blues.) In addition to venue names, locations, phone numbers, cover charges, relevant websites, and directions, the entries provide catchy, one-line sketches, such as “Funky basement room for wild jazz” or “Hammond B3 Organ Heaven” before describing each place in depth. Pronko then lists notable musicians worth checking out (drummers, pianists, trombonists, singers, and others) before launching into a fascinating section on jazz kissaten: small coffee shops that play

recorded jazz, costing “just the price of a cup of coffee for hours of listening”; patrons can make requests or even bring in their own music to play. The book concludes with some stellar commentary by the author, offering a rich history of jazz in Japan and how it took root there. Not only do these essays offer wonderful background detail, but they also definitively show that Pronko’s affable, professorial style is the book’s best feature, setting it far above anything one might simply look up online. There’s always the danger that guides like this can feel snobbish or exclusionary, but here, Pronko effectively welcomes readers into the Japanese jazz experience, which will appeal to tourists and armchair travelers alike. An excellent book for readers interested in international jazz and Japanese culture.

The Lost Coast: The Revenge of Mad River Billy

Robinson, Daniel | Self (284 pp.) | $7.99 paper | February 17, 2025 | 9798639024191

In Robinson’s horror novel, the massacre of a Native American tribe in California prompts its sole survivor to embark on a 100-year campaign of revenge. The story opens with the murder of 250 Wiyot people by knife-, hatchet-, and axe-wielding white settlers on Feb. 26, 1860, in California’s Humboldt County during the tribe’s annual World Renewal Ceremony. Kinetitah, the lone Wiyot survivor, comes up short in his brief quest for justice at the local sheriff’s department. No matter, though, because Kinetitah, known as “Mad River Billy” to locals, has an ace up his sleeve that the massacre’s ringleader, Timothy Hurley, can never hope to play. Kinetitah happens to be a superpowered shaman who’s attuned to the brightest and darkest forces of nature. He wastes no time summoning their energies, which enable him to transform at will into a horrible, 15-foot beast and embark on a grim murder spree of his own. Only then do Hurley and his murderous accomplices grasp the effect

of their horrific deeds, but it’s too late to undo what they’ve done, and they—and, years afterward, their descendants—begin to vanish at a dizzying rate. About a century later, it’s up to troubled University of California, Berkeley professor Wes Cravenfish to connect the relevant dots as people in his orbit meet terrible fates, which throws dark shadows on his own past. A grudge that never relents, a curse that won’t die until every last condition is fulfilled— these provide the spark of Robinson’s latest offering, which burns with intensity from the opening page. Over the course of this novel, Robinson has fashioned a suitably dark, Gothic cocktail, driven along by a heightened tone (“The earth remembers. The spirits remember”) as well as unyielding action, once Mad River Billy goes about his monstrous business. Kinetitah’s monster form is armed with tentacles and mandibles that seem straight out of an H.P. Lovecraft horror story, and he has vows to match: “I will feed on your souls as the next payment for your atrocities.” Revenge tales have rarely felt so vicariously thrilling as they do here. A fiery tale of vengeance that keeps the tension high.

Maya, Dead and Dreaming

Sabarwal, Lana | Self (340 pp.) | $9.99 paper | June 10, 2025 | 9798992617818

In Sabarwal’s novel, a letter threatens to reveal long-buried secrets, 14 years after a young woman in a small Pacific Northwest town died tragically.

“Why Maya Had to Die,” reads the envelope that 36-year-old Munna Dhingra finds outside her office door at a university in Shogie, Washington, in 1952. Maya, Munna’s former childhood friend, drowned more than a decade ago. The death and ensuing investigation rocked the small town of Shogie, back then, but it was determined to have been accidental. So why, then, does the letter state “She didn’t kill herself. She couldn’t have”—and why was it sent to Munna in the first place? Not trusting the police that apparently bungled the original investigation, Munna works

with acclaimed psychoanalyst Karenina to investigate the mystery. As it happens, Munna knows more than she’s letting on—and, seemingly, so do others in Shogie, where everyone seems to know everyone’s business. Munna must separate gossip from fact to find out what really happened to Maya: “Ask yourself—who was angry with her? ” reads the letter at the heart of the mystery. “Ask or soon death will come again.” As Munna digs further, she starts to realize that Maya’s heart may have led her into terrible trouble. Sabarwal’s novel is a gripping, atmospheric murder mystery that features elements that effectively call to mind such small-town whodunit TV series as Twin Peaks and the cozier Midsomer Murders. Munna is a smart, relatable protagonist who’s easy to root for, and Sabarwal offers a sharp portrait of growing up as an Indian American woman of color in a predominantly white small town. The secondary characters are fully developed and believable, as well, and it all adds up to a clever and suspenseful page-turner. An often thrilling whodunit that’s aided by fine characterization.

@UGMan

Sarvas, Mark | Itna Press (260 pp.) | $18 paper | June 24, 2025 | 9798988282983

A man addicted to social media depicts his frightening reality in Sarvas’ unsettling novel.

“I have nowhere to go, and too much to hate right in front of me,” announces the narrator, explaining why he walked away from his life in order to spend his days in a dark room, naked and glued to his computer screen. It’s not a sense of online community that keeps UGMan (his Twitter handle) from engaging with the real world (in fact, he calls other perpetually online users “mouthbreathers”); he is instead driven by compulsion and a deep-rooted anger at perceived enemies like a right-wing, bow-tied commentator or a duplicitous senator, just two on his ever-growing list of “Those Who Must Die.” Over the course of UGMan’s

different tirades, narrative threads emerge, including unhappy memories from his childhood, the loss of his daughter and wife, and his ill-fated time playing guitar in a cover band—but UGMan’s reflections on the real-world connections he has lost are constantly punctuated by notifications pulling him back to the virtual. The senator he hates dies (“Much speaking ill of the dead, I note with approval,” he observes), and the right-wing commentator goes missing. Could this all have something to do with the only person ever to like one of his tweets? Is the FBI really looking for him, or did his sleep-deprived brain imagine that? UGMan never quite earns the reader’s sympathy, but Sarvas certainly earns respect for the stunning complexity of his protagonist—UGMan’s narration achieves great highs of wit and literary reference before plummeting down to the most basic references and internet-speak. That same rollercoaster is reflected in his fractured psychology; as UGMan ricochets from self-aware to complete delusion and paranoia, the reader also starts to question reality. The novel boldly avoids following any of the more predictable plot threads developing on the periphery of UGMan’s perspective—Sarvas has made UGMan’s acerbic mind the primary focus. It is a striking creation, but the novel’s relentless intensity leaves little room for readers to feel anything other than despair. As UGMan himself says, “It’s all quite unpleasant, isn’t it?”

A chilling, flawlessly executed, and emotionally taxing portrayal of a broken psyche.

Little Bear and the Big Hole

Seal, Jennifer | Illus. by Mirjam Siim Starfish Bay (32 pp.) | $18.95 April 4, 2025 | 9781760362324

In Seal’s picture book, a young bear faces the hole his father’s death has left in his life. Having recently lost Papa Bear, Little Bear lives with a large hole in his life that contains everything that could have been. Readers can see this hole at

Little Bear’s feet, but none of the other animals do until Squirrel arrives; her sister also died, she explains, and she understands what Little Bear is going through. The two sit beside the hole in quiet contemplation before eventually writing letters that they bury inside. This act brings some relief; Little Bear and Squirrel pour music into the hole by playing a guitar and a flute. They are surprised to see the hole shrink in size until it transforms into sun-soaked fertile ground where a beautiful new tree can grow. (“And the tree must have opened something that sadness had blocked because Little Bear felt Love flowing through him again.”) The narrative is a tender exploration of grief and its changing forms. In simple, child-friendly language that literalizes Little Bear’s emotions, Seal demonstrates that, while grief may not disappear entirely, healing is still possible. Siim’s use of watercolors in the illustrations evokes the soft edges and murky nature of Little Bear’s emotions, relying on calm earth tones to convey a sense of peace and natural progression. An empathetic meditation on grief that will speak to readers of any age.

The Spoils

Thompson, Colin | Onion River Press (264 pp.) | $18.99 paper | February 25, 2025 9781957184944

In Thompson’s novel, a 31-year-old man in Los Angeles with few career prospects begins coaching middle school lacrosse. It’s 2014, and Ryan Wilson is a 31-year-old aspiring screenwriter who’s become disenchanted by the film industry and upset about his general lack of success: “I was supposed to have things…Tennis lessons and Aesop hand soap.

New restaurants I just had to try. The finer things. Thread counts.” This leads him to accept a position as a lacrosse coach at the private Brentwood School. He’s immediately annoyed by the self-important athletic director, Keri, as well as his co-coach, Colby Cuthbert, who lacks appropriate experience and seems more concerned with performing his best approximation of a coach in between comedy gigs. Despite his initial misgivings about the job, Ryan quickly takes to his preteen charges, building a rapport and giving them unique nicknames. He establishes a similar bond with a few of the parents—most notably, Camilla Tourney. Ryan is instantly taken with her, particularly after he learns her husband is a major producer and director. As their friendship, which begins as flirtatious banter, transforms into a full-blown affair, Ryan is torn between his desire for Camilla and his desire to sell a script. Later, the lacrosse team, which has improved under Ryan’s tutelage, makes it to the championship. However, despite Ryan briefly having everything he wants within reach—team victory, romance, a genuine career opportunity—he can’t help but get in his own way. Indeed, as a protagonist, Ryan frequently seems at odds with himself; his internal monologue is full of hyper-specific references (“Venice, California is the Wilco of Los Angeles neighborhoods”), yet in dialogue, he’s mostly vague, though affably irreverent. Thompson’s tale of one man’s downward spiral into adulthood is, by turns, charming and cringe-inducing—the latter mainly when readers see Ryan falling headlong into a bad decision. However, the novel can be slightly frustrating at times, as some of the more esoteric references during scenesetting could warrant further explanation: “a guy who looked like he produced Doug Liman movies…was probably working at Lakeshore or Bad Robot or HoneyBucket.” For the most part, though, the story’s cultural references are its greatest strengths, as when one character notes how he’d be OK if his wife cheated on him with the

An earnest, welcoming view of spiritual concerns.

actor Matt Dillon: “He’s just threatening enough to be bummed out about but for some reason I could get over it.” However, the dense prose gives the story a meandering fell, and sometimes even undermines the jokes. For example, after a disastrous sexual experience, Ryan muses about Camilla, and his aside lessens the impact of his one-liner: “She finally got the nerve to adulterize—yes, yes: it’s not a noble practice but at the very least the impudent act takes some gall—and all she got was the second to last verse of ‘Desolation Row.’” Thompson is obviously talented, but his constant, fastidious quips sometimes detract from the heart of the piece.

A funny and charming Hollywood tale, but one that could have been tighter.

Spiritual Flint: The Sparks of Enlightenment

Tutt, Gregory | Self (169 pp.) | $12 paper March 4, 2025 | 9798304508247

A spiritual commentator offers an alternative path beyond traditional religious dogma in this treatise. Inspired by “a vision of a flash of light in dusk’s growing darkness” to write this book, Tutt says that his intended readers are those who are “determined to find the light, warmth, and comfort that only the spark of that flint could give.” The book takes a universalist approach, beginning with a discussion of the nature of the divine force that many call God and arguing that, by creating the universe and the life that inhabits it, “God became a part of the fabric of both.” The author likens God to a battery that stores infinite potential, expressed as love, but he asserts that it’s “The Spirit” who serves as God’s “ambassador” by creating, nurturing, and guiding life. In focusing on The Spirit, this book offers practical advice on how to tap into the divine forces around us to find love, healing, and acceptance in our own lives. The book’s universalist approach emphasizes that one’s sexual orientation, social status, and/or physical

being do not “define you spiritually,” and that world religions and philosophies for centuries have tapped into the “universal truth” shared by The Spirit, including the Golden Rule of loving others as one loves oneself. In addition, the author doesn’t give doctrine-based religions a pass, arguing that “ancient traditions should be considered obsolete and even harmful” if they cause their faithful to “cling to outdated thoughts and values” related to human equality. The book’s description of religious dogma as immaterial “fluff” may rankle devoutly religious readers, even those who share the book’s underlying emphasis on equality and love. By promoting the notion of “a single tribe of humanity,” however, this well-intentioned book will strike a chord with those seeking a sense of harmony with others. Written in a down-to-earth style that eschews theological and philosophical jargon, this is an accessible work that’s relatively brief—fewer than 160 total pages in length—making it an ideal volume for readers of all levels of familiarity with spiritual philosophy. An earnest, welcoming view of spiritual concerns.

Salamander Man: Mohamed Idris’s Search for Meaning

Wolter, James A. | Self (422 pp.) | $12.10 paper | April 15, 2025 | 9798315565819

Wolter’s historical novel chronicles the life of a disabled young man in Southeast Asia. Idris’ life changes forever in 1943 when he contracts polio as a 4-yearold; unable to walk with his twisted legs, he crawls along the dusty ground. In his small fishing village of Kuala Terengganu in Malaya, peers mock him as “Salamander Man,” and many adults also behave unkindly, believing Idris has been cursed by the evil eye. The primary school headmaster won’t let Idris attend, stating “School isn’t for his kind.” Though he’s crushed, Idris educates himself, starting with a series of English school books decommissioned during the

1940s Japanese occupation of Malaya. Idris inserts himself into the stories of Andy, Betty, and their dog Cookie as a friend who is accepted despite his nonworking legs. Learning that Idris has again been rejected by the primary school, Uncle Rashid, a secondary school teacher, offers to tutor the boy in Islamic studies, literature, and geography. Idris also acquires two more mentors: Father Chao teaches him Chinese, and an English bank manager, Mr. Chadwick, becomes a personal friend. Idris becomes fluent in several languages, reads great works of literature like The Iliad and Ulysses, and receives a life-changing gift from Mr. Chadwick, but what he yearns for most seems unreachable—friends his own age (and, as he gets older, a girlfriend). Idris’ story could easily become sentimentalized, but Wolter portrays his main character as a flawed person, not a saintly martyr. (Idris gets angry with Father Chao and God for not fixing his legs and enjoys the revenge he takes on some mean older boys; he also sits in a tree, creepily spying on undressed women.) The book provides an intriguing snapshot of Idris’ village in the country then called Malaya as villagers wearing sarongs wash outdoors, children climb trees for fun, and Idris ingests turtle eggs and goat’s milk. After the introduction of Maimum, the most beautiful woman Idris has ever seen, the story edges into melodrama, but Idris, who loves books for “transporting [him] to other times and other places,” leaves a lasting impression. An empathetic tale that captures its time and place.

The Saundra Gray Affair: A Novel of Politics

Yager, Daniel | RealClear Publishing (360 pp.)

$28 | August 5, 2025 | 9798891385382

In Yager’s political drama, a beautiful congressional intern disappears, raising suspicions about the congressman with whom she was having an affair. In the 1980s,

J.D. Clay is an ascending political phenom, a Democratic congressman

from Iowa who quickly becomes a leader among his party’s moderate centrists. J.D. checks all the boxes for stardom: He’s the former lead singer of a rock band, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War (“He was awarded the Silver Star after he risked his life by flying his helicopter into heavy enemy fire to evacuate the wounded aircrew of a downed helicopter”), and handsome to boot, resembling Gregory Peck. However, he also has a serious flaw—a weakness for younger women that becomes all but unmanageable after a robbery-involved shooting disables his wife, Faith. J.D.’s devoted chief of staff, Wally North, tries to manage his boss’ furtive proclivity by making a secret arrangement with a local brothel. However, that solution doesn’t fully satisfy J.D.’s appetites, and he begins an illicit affair with his intern Saundra Grey, who is young enough to be his daughter. Saundra suddenly vanishes, and as a result it becomes increasingly difficult for J.D. to conceal his affair with her—his stubborn reticence likely impairs the search for the young woman. With impressive restraint, the author portrays the “cynical game of politics” in which both J.D. and Wally partake and deftly explores how moral principles and idealism can cohabitate with situationally convenient disingenuousness. In this morally astute narrative, the role of the press is examined as well—an ace reporter, Isaiah Stone (a self-professed “total apologist” for J.D.), is compelled to come to grips with the ways in which his admiration for the congressman affects his journalistic objectivity. Yager has composed a remarkably nuanced novel about political sensationalism that is never itself sensational; it raises profound moral questions without ever surrendering to the allure of facile answers. An enthralling portrayal of the morally murky waters of American politics.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

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