July 1, 2025: Volume XCIII, No. 13

JULY 1, 2025 | VOL. XCIII NO. 13

FEATURING 322 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children’s, and YA Books

ALISON BECHDEL PUTS THE COMIC IN COMICS The creator of Fun Home and Spent headlines our special Graphic Lit Issue

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

“YOU’RE RUINING

the original.”

So complain the literary purists, according to novelist Ben H. Winters, when a cherished work of literature is adapted for a graphic novel (or TV series, Broadway musical, etc.). Here the offending remake is Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business (Pantheon, May 20), a pulpy comic book based on the classic detective story, adapted

by Arvind Ethan David and illustrated by Ilias Kyriazis, with colors by Cris Peter.

Winters, who contributes the foreword, isn’t buying this specious objection: “It should go without saying that it is impossible to retroactively ruin a piece of art,” he writes, “especially a great work of art.”

This graphic retelling makes a few changes to Chandler’s original—it opens, for

example, with a sequence from the childhood of the femme fatale—and brings a lurid cartoon style and sepia color palette to its portrait of 1940s Los Angeles. Redheaded Harriet Huntress is as curvy as Jessica Rabbit, her long cigarette holder practically an appendage. Detective Philip Marlowe is appropriately stone-faced and laconic, a lit cigarette drooping from his mouth in almost every frame; he’s a “war hero who knows how to wear his hat,” in the words of Anna Halsey, the heavyset, deskbound detective who hires him on the case ($25 a day, with a guarantee of $250 if he solves it). This isn’t Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep—but it’s definitely a Chandleresque mood all its own.

If Paul Auster’s 1985 novel, City of Glass, and its follow-­

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ups were themselves a postmodern gloss on the noir detective story perfected by Chandler, then why not give them a graphic adaptation of their own—this time in black and white? A trio of artists contributes to Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy (Pantheon, April 8), each bringing a unique style to the project: David Mazzucchelli’s “crisp, confident lines” in City of Glass; Lorenzo Mattotti’s “sumptuous shading” in Ghosts; and Paul Karasik’s “inventive paneling” in The Locked Room. Our reviewer calls this omnibus an “engrossing marriage of literature and pulp.”

Does genre fiction lend itself more naturally to graphic adaptation than other books? A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel (Clarion/ HarperCollins, March 11) certainly captures the fablelike poetry of Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1968 fantasy classic; in a starred review, our critic calls it a “beloved cornerstone of the genre brought vividly to life through striking illustrations.” As he explains in the

interview on p. 136, illustrator and adapter Fred Fordham sought a more painterly, less cartoony style of artwork for the novel: “I try mixing textures and things to make it feel like an actual piece of art,” Fordham told Kirkus.

“You don’t need to make something look like a comic for it to have all the benefits of the medium.”

More fantasy fiction geared to young readers (but to be enjoyed by all ages): The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel (Viking, August 5) is an adaptation by Stephanie Williams of Maggie Stiefvater’s 2012 YA novel, illustrated by Sas Milledge, with colors by Abel Ko. Our reviewer found that far from ruining the original, Milledge’s “expressive and nostalgic artwork” lent “extra life and added dimensions” to this beloved tale of psychics, schoolboys, and ancient magic. Take that, naysayers!

TOM BEER K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Illustration by Eric Scot t Ander son

FROM PROSE TO PICTURES

Contents The Graphic Lit Issue

FICT ION 4

Editor’s Note

5

Reviews & News

14 On the Cover: Alison Bechdel 45 Booklist: Graphic Novels You Shouldn’t Miss

CHILDREN ’ S One of the most coveted designations in the book industry, the Kirkus Star marks books of exceptional merit.

OUR FRESH PICK Birth of a violent nation.

Read the review on p. 47

NONFICT ION 46

Editor’s Note

47

Reviews & News

PURCHASE BOOKS ONLINE AT KIRKUS .COM

84

Editor’s Note

85

Reviews & News

98 Q&A: Raina Telgemeier & Scott McCloud 127 Booklist: Bedtime Tales To Guarantee Sweet Dreams

YOUNG ADULT

128

Editor’s Note

56 Q&A: Denali Sai Nalamalapu

129

Reviews

136

Q&A: Fred Fordham

69 Booklist: Books To Read Outdoors

143 Booklist: Disability Pride Month Reads

83 On the Podcast: David A. Graham

INDIE 144

Editor’s Note

145

Reviews

ON THE COVER: Self-portrait by Alison Bechdel. Background by Galina Kamenskaya via iStock.

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Co-Chairman HERBERT SIMON

Co-Chairman MARC WINKELMAN

Publisher & CEO MEG LABORDE KUEHN mkuehn@kirkus.com

Editor-in-Chief TOM BEER tbeer@kirkus.com

Chief Marketing Officer SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com

President of Kirkus Indie CHAYA SCHECHNER cschechner@kirkus.com

Publisher Advertising

Fiction Editor LAURIE MUCHNICK lmuchnick@kirkus.com

& 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 Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH

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, Autumn Allen, Stephanie Anderson, Jenny Arch, Mark Athitakis, Carole Bell, Nell Beram, Elizabeth Bird, Christopher A. Biss-Brown, Sarah Blackman, Elissa Bongiorno, Sally Brander, Nastassian Brandon, Melissa Brinn, Jessica Hoptay Brown, Ana Cackley, Kevin Canfield, Charles Cassady, Ann Childs, Alec B. Chunn, Rachael Conrad, Jeannie Coutant, Michael Deagler, Dave DeChristopherm Kathleen Deedy, Elise DeGuiseppi, Lisa Dennis, Amanda Diehl, Steve Donoghue, Melanie Dragger, Robert Duxbury, Gina Elbert, Elaine Elinson, Lisa Elliott, Lily Emerick, Chelsea Ennen, Kristen Evans, Joshua Farrington, Margherita Ferrante, Katie Flanagan, Mia Franz, Jenna Friebel, Robbin Friedman, Roberto Friedman, Amanda Gefter, Sydney Geyer, Chloé Harper Gold, Carol Goldman, Danielle Galván Gomez, Emily A. Gordon, Melinda Greenblatt, Vicky Gudelot, Tobi Haberstroh, Sean Hammer, Silvia Lin Hanick, Alec Harvey, Lynne Heffley, Ralph Heibutzki, Loren Hinton, Zoe Holland, Katrina Niidas Holm, Julie Hubble, Kathleen T. Isaacs, Wesley Jacques, Jessica Jernigan, Betsy Judkins, Jayashree Kamblé, Deborah Kaplan, Ivan Kenneally, Tasmiha Khan, Lyneea Kmail, Andrea Kreidler, Megan Dowd Lambert, Carly Lane, Christopher Lassen, Maya Lekach, Seth Lerer, Elsbeth Lindner, Coeur de Lion, Barbara London, Patricia Lothrop, Sawyer Lovett, Wendy Lukehart, Kyle Lukoff, Michael Magras, Joe Maniscalco, Michelle H Martin, Gabriela Martins, J. Alejandro Mazariegos, Kathleen McLaughlin, Zoe McLaughlin, Cari Meister, Kathie Meizner, Carol Memmott, Clayton Moore, Andrea Moran, Rhett Morgan, Christopher Navratil, Liza Nelson, Rachael Nevins, Dan Nolan, Ari Nussbaum, Katrina Nye, Tori Ann Ogawa, Connie Ogle, Hannah Onstad, Mike Oppenheim, Emilia Packard, Nina Palattella, Hal Patnott, Bethanne Patrick, Tara Peck, Rebecca Perry, John Edward Peters, Jim Piechota, Vicki Pietrus, Shira Pilarski, Carolyn Quimby, Kristy Raffensberger, Kristen Bonardi Rapp, Stephanie Reents, Nancy Thalia Reynolds, Julia Rittenberg, Alyssa Rivera, Amy Robinson, Lizzie Rogers, Oisin Rowe, Gia Ruiz, Lloyd Sachs, Bob Sanchez, Caitlin Savage, Will Schube, Gretchen Schulz, Gene Seymour, Jerome Shea, Kerry Sheridan, Sadaf Siddique, Danielle Sigler, Linda Simon, Margot E. Spangenberg, Allison Staley, Allie Stevens, Mathangi Subramanian, Jennifer Sweeney, Deborah Taylor, Desiree Thomas, Bill Thompson, Renee Ting, Lenora Todaro, Katie Vermilyea, Gnesis Villar, Francesca Vultaggio, Angela Wiley, Kerry Winfrey, Marion Winik, Jean-Louise Zancanella

LAURIE MUCHNICK

GREATER THAN THE SUM OF THEIR PARTS

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JULY 1, 2025

utterly beguiling: throw in a magic cube to complicate the storyline, and while it may not make much sense, it doesn’t really have to if the reader suspends disbelief long enough to listen to an eagle trying to make sense of an iPhone. Superb graphic art meets an exceedingly odd tale, and to wonderful ends.”

Yudori has drawn her sexually charged debut novel, Raging Clouds (Fantagraphics, May 27), entirely in black and white, evoking the 16th-century Dutch setting—­and the erotic lives of her female characters—with elegant simplicity. The book opens on a full-page drawing of an unhappy-looking woman with the text, framed as if it were a painting, saying “Amélie was a brilliant girl.”

Her main interest is in studying the mechanics of

flight. The first time Amélie’s husband, Hans, shows up, he’s chewing on a chicken leg and the words MUNCHMUNCHMUNCH are repeated in three rows all the way across the page. When he comes home with an enslaved Asian woman to serve as his mistress, “Sahara” and Amélie first resent and then interest each other. Our starred review says, “Yudori’s tale is captivating…with her illustrations elegantly depicting everything from complex emotions to the erotic contours of the female form. The plot and characters are engagingly complex, and the pacing deliciously brisk.

A rich, engrossing tale that manages to be both concise and expansive.”

Mattie Lubchansky’s Simplicity (Pantheon, July 29) is set in 2081 and opens on a drawing of an exhibition

labeled “What was…THE HUDSON RIVER?” Lucius Pasternak, a young trans academic, is commissioned by the Museum of the Former State of New York to study the hippie community that’s been living in the upstate town of Simplicity since the 1970s. The residents don’t trust him at first, but as he works beside them, the sense of freedom they exhibit “seduce[s] him into becoming a participant,” according to our review. “When Lucius arrives in Simplicity, the colors on the page transition from the gray and radioactive neon of the city to yellow sun and green plant life.…Intense, imaginative visuals pair well with the futuristic fight between idealism and oppression.”

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.

K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Illustration by Eric Scot t Ander son

GR APHIC NOVELS AREN’T

just novels that have been illustrated; at their best, the text, artwork, lettering, and design work together to tell a story that transcends its individual pieces. Here are some recent examples worth seeking out.

In Tongues: Volume 1 (Pantheon, March 11), a retelling of the Greek myth of Prometheus, Anders Nilsen makes full use of his oversized pages. On most of them, individual panels are put together in intriguing geometrical shapes, looking like Magna-­Tiles shifting into ever-­changing configur­ ations, while some drawings take up entire pages or even two-page spreads. A striking sequence has the Prisoner’s organs spreading red tendrils around the panels as he dreams of pulling a young girl from the earth; when he wakes up, his body is nearly swallowed up by green plants that are drawn to look almost like circuit boards. Every day, an eagle eats his liver and sometimes also plays chess with him. Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus stops by, and they debate the fate of humankind. “The whole narrative has a decidedly otherworldly sense to it,” says our starred review, “and it’s

FICTION

EDITOR’S PICK The award-winning author of Flamer (2020) offers his first book for adults.

Curato begins his latest graphic novel by following a young man as he walks into a gay bar for the first time. AJ is naïve, close to broke, and just beginning to explore the possibilities of Seattle in the early aughts. Curato uses images to give readers a glimpse of the familial conflict that drove his protagonist from upstate New York to the Pacific Northwest.

AJ catches a break when a drag queen named K takes him under her wing and introduces him to her closest friends. The Boy Luck Club includes John, who is more comfortable connecting with people through a screen than in person, and his roommate,

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star

Steven, who uses his reputation for promiscuity to hide his inner struggles. As AJ experiences the frustrations of looking for love on a dating site and the inevitable disappointments of dating in real life, his friends and mentors are always there to catch him. (Their interventions include a terrific scene in which they rescue AJ when a white date takes him to Chinatown—a sure sign of a white guy who has a fetish for Asian men—and a screening of The Joy Luck Club). This is—more than anything, perhaps—a story about how the family we’re born into may compel us to create a chosen family, and how our own experiences might inspire us to expand our circle of care. Because he’s a

Curato, Mike | Algonquin | 384 pp. $32 | June 3, 2025 | 9781643755120

neophyte himself, AJ is an excellent guide to his new world. More worldly-wise characters explain the nuances of being gay and Asian in a way that feels organic while offering an invitation to readers who aren’t familiar with this world themselves. Curato’s drawing

40

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16

7

5

42

Pitcher Perfect

By Tessa Bailey The Unveiling

By Quan Barry

40

The Austen Affair

By Madeline Bell

8

Moderation

By Elaine Castillo

9

The Book of Guilt

By Catherine Chidgey

K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Gaysians

Amanda

By H.S. Cross Gaysians

By Mike Curato

11

The Wilderness

By Angela Flournoy

13

Daikon

By Samuel Hawley

13

Clown Town

By Mick Herron

style is economical. He’s able to convey a lot of meaning with a minimum of lines, and the page layouts are varied enough to hold our interest.

He also makes good use of his medium, often letting pictures tell the story.

A tender and compelling coming-of-age story.

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19

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Songs for Other People’s Weddings

By David Levithan With Jens Lekman

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27

17

22

Badlands

By Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

28

Culpability

By Bruce Holsinger It Had To Be Him

By Adib Khorram

17

Will There Ever Be Another You

By Patricia Lockwood

What We Can Know

By Ian McEwan People Like Us

By Jason Mott Ten Incarnations of Rebellion

By Vaishnavi Patel

To the Moon and Back

By Eliana Ramage Indian Country

By Shobha Rao A Resistance of Witches

By Morgan Ryan Mercy

By Joan Silber

29

Boy From the North Country

By Sam Sussman

JULY 1, 2025

5

FICTION

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) Alameddine, Rabih | Grove (336 pp.) | $28 September 2, 2025 | 9780802166470

A gay Beiruti man comes to terms with his mother issues.

Alameddine is gifted at finding the humor in what for most writers would be singularly traumatic themes, including AIDS (Koolaids: The Art of War, 1998), the Lebanese Civil War (An Unnecessary Woman, 2014), and the plight of Middle Eastern migrants (The Wrong End of the Telescope, 2021).

Here, he applies his sardonic wit again to the Civil War as well as the calamities of Covid-19, Lebanon’s banking collapse, and the 2020 Beirut port explosion. But before all that, the title characters are bickering. Raja, a respected philosophy teacher with one acclaimed book to his credit, has been living with his elderly mother in a small apartment made even smaller by the presence of more extended relatives.

Exasperated with being reduced to his mother’s “homosexual nonbreeding son,” as well as her dangerous involvement in antigovernment protests, he seeks a respite, and one finds him: an all-expenses-paid residency at an institution in the United States. This may be too good to be true (note the title). But before exploring that, Raja relates the story of his two-month captivity at the hands of an acquaintance during the 1975 Civil War. That period includes all the degradations of a kidnapping, but Raja also depicts it as a case of Stockholm Syndrome, with his captor becoming a sexual and emotional confessor. Did the experience inspire his interest in cross-dressing and philosophy? It’s an open question, but it seems to have given him the kind of sass and self-­ deprecating humor that complicates his character and enlivens the story.

Raja’s fatalism is well honed by his period of torment, but also by the everyday annoyances of his family.

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On both levels, it’s a peculiar but lively and humane book.

A sharp exploration of resilience in dark times.

Night Comes Down Aronowitz, Richard | Guernica World Editions (250 pp.) | $21.95 paper September 1, 2025 | 9781771839785

The carving out of a railway branch line brings dramatic shifts to a rural English valley.

Set in the mid-­ 19th century, Aronowitz’s novel vividly evokes the impact of the industrial revolution on a traditional community, as the new rail track is dug and blasted across the Herefordshire countryside. For 17-­ year-­old Grace Matthews, a member of the Anti-Railway League and self-styled “guardian of the woods and fields who had to defend nature from attack,” this development, like “the factories, the coal-black smokestacks, the stagnating canals,” is ruining the natural world. It’s also adding to the fury she already feels towards her father, a doctor (and rail supporter) whom she blames for the death of her mother from breast cancer, and who now treats his daughter as an unpaid cook and maid. For Sean McClennan, one of the Irish navvies— laborers—doing the backbreaking physical work for the rail company, the job generates money to send back to Ireland, to help the faltering family farm. Inevitably, these two figures will experience mutual attraction and meet.

Meanwhile, Grace has begun to punish her father, using her knowledge of herbalism to infect his snuff with hallucinogenic dried mushrooms, leading to manic episodes, and eventually to the novel’s second time stream, set some seven years later, which finds Grace incarcerated in Hereford’s Insane Asylum for her crimes against her parent. Although absorbingly detailed, the book’s narrative terrain is a tight and relatively static one which

Aronowitz circles repeatedly—the timeless beauty of the natural world, the violent damage to the landscape, Sean’s homesickness and financial need, Grace’s anger. Moreover, Grace is a cool, rebarbative, and somewhat anachronistic figure. She spies on Sean at the navvies’ camp, boldly walks into his digs uninvited one day, and elsewhere calls an innkeeper a “stupid bigot.” The mismatched romance similarly lacks conviction, as does the tale’s abrupt, open-ended cessation.

A sincere environmental message is underserved by flawed storytelling.

Archipelago Bakopoulos, Natalie | Tin House (224 pp.) $17.99 paper | August 19, 2025 | 9781963108309

Bakopoulos’ third novel finds an American trans­ lator participating in a residency program on a Croatian island.

“I attribute all that summer’s disquiet to an encounter with a man on the ferry, an encounter that was as destabilizing as it was strange.” So begins this novel narrated by an unnamed middle-aged translator who was raised in suburban Detroit but has been living in Greece for several years. The ferry ride is one leg of her journey to “a Croatian island off the Dalmatian coast,” where she is to attend a two-week translators’ residency at an international arts center.

While she’s walking around the island, a man she hasn’t seen in years spots her, and as they chat, he repeatedly calls her by the wrong name. The narrator plays along (“I marveled at how natural it felt to be this woman, to answer to this name”), and the two embark on a casual romance. After the residency ends, the narrator rents a studio near the translators’ center and continues her romance with the man; their overnight stay with his wealthy friend carries a hint at drama to come (“This is going to be a very strange weekend, I said, isn’t it”), but it never does. Likewise, toward K IR KU S R E V IE W S

FICTION

A luxury cruise to Antarctica goes horribly wrong in Quan Barry’s latest.

THE UNVEILING

the book’s midpoint, something odd occurs, after which nothing of corresponding consequence happens. The narrator’s invitingly confiding tone, lovely descriptions of her surroundings, and thoughtful reflections on translation, swimming, aging, borders, and male menace can do only so much to offset the narrative’s lack of story. The “disquiet” promised by the novel’s opener turns out to be nothing more than the everyday surprises and irritants of life, albeit in a dazzling setting. For some readers this may be enough.

More of a travelogue interspersed with story than the other way around.

Kirkus Star

The Unveiling Barry, Quan | Grove (320 pp.) | $28 October 14, 2025 | 9780802165350

A luxury trip to Antarctica goes horribly wrong in Barry’s triumph of literary horror.

Striker isn’t surprised to be the only Black passenger on the cruise to Antarctica. She’s used to being the only Black person in a given space, having grown up with white adoptive parents. While her fellow tourists are wealthy sightseers, Striker is on the ship for business; she’s a location scout for the film industry, hired for a production company making a film about the disastrous Shackleton expedition. As the group is taken on kayak trips and history lectures, Striker observes her extremely privileged fellow passengers with the same wry detachment as the local wildlife. But when a K IR KU S R E V IE W S

freak accident leaves the group stranded on one of Antarctica’s many remote islands, and they regroup in a shelter left by some long-forgotten expedition, the natural environment quickly turns against them. For Striker, who came to Antarctica burdened with heavy secrets and is now surrounded by the remains of stranded explorers, the past and present start to melt together as she has terrifying visions of shipwreck survivors resorting to unspeakable acts of violence. Barry’s desolate setting perfectly reflects Striker’s memories of growing up Black surrounded by whiteness, and the ways in which her identity was always reflected back at her through the warped lens of systemic racism. The line between what can be attributed to the supernatural, with the past literally coming back to haunt the survivors, and what is simply Striker losing her grip on reality is wisely kept blurry as the reader begins to question their own senses.

A terrifying must-read set at the ends of the Earth.

The List Berry, Steve | Grand Central Publishing (384 pp.) | $29 | July 22, 2025 | 9781538770870

A paper mill in Georgia uses murder to buoy its bottom line.

Killers hunt down and kill a retiree while he’s peacefully fishing.

No one suspects foul play, as the poor man apparently hit his head on a low branch and drowned. Attorney Brent Walker is hired to be assistant general counsel for the Southern Republic Pulp

and Paper Company, where his longtime friend Hank Reed is a union official.

They are not privy to the company’s biggest secret, and this story is about what they learn and what they do about it. A small cabal at the top of the company has a creative approach to cost-saving: They’ve created something called the Priority program, which identifies and eliminates expensive employees and retirees. Critically for the plot, the company is self-insured. So how can it stay profitable if it must pay out big claims for, say, cancer or Alzheimer’s patients? Maybe an employee stays healthy but has a child with a lifelong debilitating illness. The solution for this company lies in the untimely deaths of these troublesome claimants. “Terminal care was particularly expensive. An almost bottomless pit.” Top management has a long-standing arrangement with a group of professionals who expertly make deaths look natural. There is a mysterious list of nine-digit numbers, unaccompanied by any explanation. The obvious guess is that they are Social Security numbers, which may or may not be what they are. Walker and Reed intend to learn their significance, and their sleuthing could end up with—well, people dying. In fact, the killings become much less subtle as the action reaches a crescendo. Meanwhile, the bad guys are acutely aware of their culpability—if anyone finds a certain set of secret folders, there may be “enough evidence to indict us all for mass murder.” One of their hired killers is dying from cancer and wishes to partially repent, though he knows “his soul was beyond saving, his eternal fate sealed.” But maybe he can keep Priorities off future lists. The author is an attorney familiar with Georgia’s paper industry, so he’s clearly well suited to the topic, and readers will recognize the similarities to John Grisham.

Plenty of intrigue and action for crime fans.

For more by Steve Berry, visit Kirkus online.

JULY 1, 2025

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FICTION

Kirkus Star

Moderation Castillo, Elaine | Viking (320 pp.) $29 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593489666

A jaded content moderator gets more than she bargained for, on the job and off.

Having been a content moderator at social media site Reeden for an unheard-of 10 years, 30-something Filipina Girlie Delmundo excels at her job. Girlie works in the company’s Vegas location, where her family relocated after her mother and aunts snapped up pricey real estate and then lost everything in the 2008 stock market crash, forcing Girlie’s mother to sell their family home in Milpitas and saddling her with a million dollars in debt. Sardonic, prickly, “battle-hardened bisexual” Girlie uses the money she earns to buy her materialistic mother designer goods and pay down the family debt. In conjunction with L’Olifant, a French company known for its historical theme parks, Reeden acquires virtual reality company Playground, and Girlie meets William Cheung, one of Playground’s first employees and current Global Head of Content Moderation. William offers Girlie a promotion (and a massive raise) to join the Playground team moderating content in real time in the company’s virtual reality landscapes. Playground’s goal is not strictly realism but “larger than life. Realer reality. Sensory overload,” as Girlie observes. As Playground grows, regulatory troubles and scandals—there’s a lingering mystery surrounding the death of Edison Lau, Playground’s founder and William’s friend—swirl around the company. These developments, along with the horrifying realization of the mutual attraction growing between her and the aloof William, threaten the meticulous construction that Girlie has made of her career and her life. With this novel, her second after America Is Not the Heart (2018), Castillo raises the 8

JULY 1, 2025

bar for writing about tech and virtual reality, family stories, and workplace romances. Castillo’s gorgeous prose infuses both the real world and the virtual reality landscapes with life.

Girlie is an exceptional protagonist, defined by her cutting humor and dogged, almost maniacal independence and rounded out by her fondness for her exuberant, naïve cousin Maribel, the rawness of her feelings for William, and her yearning for true happiness, if she can find a way to let it in.

A brilliant novel with much to say about work, family, excess, identity, and love.

Muscle Man Castro, Jordan | Catapult (272 pp.) | $27 September 9, 2025 | 9781646222773

A disaffected literature professor interrogates the provenance of his alienation.

Now that Harold is done teaching for the day, he can’t wait to hit the gym “and think single-­ mindedly about his muscles.” Unfort­ unately, he can’t leave the Shepherd College campus until after his department’s monthly meeting, which isn’t for another 20 minutes. Food would give him “something to do in the present, then more energy to use later in the gym,” but he didn’t pack a lunch, the staff refrigerator is empty, and he can’t find the snack stand because the building he’s in was purposefully designed to disorient. (Per the architect, “real education” requires an “abnormal, dizzying” setting.) Harold doesn’t want to sit and look at his phone, as it probably just holds more work-related emails he’ll delete unread. Casey—the only colleague who doesn’t irritate or discomfit Harold, and who introduced him to weightlifting—is nowhere to be found. And Harold’s attempt at heroism backfires when the suspicious-looking knapsack he surreptitiously steals from a student turns out to contain nothing more sinister than a rolled-up “Faith Group for Marginalized Identities” poster. When the meeting

finally commences, Harold zones out, instead ruminating on perceived slights, his failed career, and the purloined backpack. (Also: “Where [is] Casey?”)

Harold knows he’ll feel better once he becomes “one with the pump.” But as he later discovers, focus proves rewarding in situations other than bodybuilding.

Castro’s latest unfolds over the course of a single afternoon, gently satirizing American academia and modern masculinity via Harold’s scattered, deeply insecure inner monologue. Though the tale feels too long given the plot’s austerity and the narrative’s intentional but nevertheless exhausting verbosity, the nuanced character arcs satisfy and inject an unexpected dose of optimism.

Existential dark humor shot through with heart.

Maria La Divina Charyn, Jerome | Bellevue Literary Press (336 pp.) | $17.99 paper September 16, 2025 | 9781954276482

The tempestuous ups and downs of Maria Callas are captured in the latest of Charyn’s fictionalized celebrity portraits.

Preternatural artistic force, persecuted diva, emotionally abused daughter, demanding lover—they all are on display in this reimagined life of the ultimate diva. The novel opens in Athens, where 13-yearold Maria Kalogeropoulos has moved with her mother and sister from poor circumstances in New York to study with the once-notable Spanish coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo. Maria’s vocals immediately astound, especially coming from such a physically unprepossessing girl. With her hulking looks and headstrong personality, she must overcome the snippy disfavor of critics and fellow students. But with the Nazi invasion of Greece as a backdrop, her star rises through her relationships with powerful men including Aristotle Onassis—the love of her life, who sends her into deep despair by dumping her K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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for Jackie Kennedy. All of these events and encounters and settings (including Venice) speed by in Charyn’s nonstop narrative, daring the reader to keep up.

Winston Churchill, incontinent and prone to violent fits, makes an appearance. So does Grace Kelly, whose smile, through Callas’ eyes, is “fictitious” and who “could barely string together two sentences that made sense.” Charyn is at his best getting inside the creative process, offering insight into Callas’ mastery of bel canto and the unfixable “wobble” in her throat that helped define her. We learn how her poor vision prevents her from seeing the conductor’s baton and requires her to memorize where everything is placed onstage. And then there’s the key role played by her beloved canaries, singing partners to the end.

More can be less in this overstuffed account, but it should be fine with Callas devotees.

Kirkus Star

The Book of Guilt Chidgey, Catherine | Cardinal (304 pp.) $30 | September 16, 2025 | 9781538774076

In this gripping novel with elements of a fairy tale, Chidgey examines the lives of parentless children in an alternative Britain that feels frighteningly plausible.

Imagine World War II ended in a treaty without winners or losers after Hitler’s assassination by German conspirators in 1943; since then, British scientists have had access to studies “of immense scientific value” made in “the camps,” as they are called with pointed vagueness. In 1979, this history is taught to 13-year-old triplet brothers—mercurial William, softhearted Lawrence, and thoughtful, watchful Vincent, who narrates most of the book. They live in a group home for boys, part of the Sycamore Homes program K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Imagine that World War II ended in a treaty without winners or losers.

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established by the government in 1944 to raise parentless children.

Doted on by a threesome of Morning, Afternoon, and Night mothers, taught from the encyclopedic Book of Knowledge (an actual publication) and in weekly ethics discussions, the Sycamore boys have had happy if isolated childhoods marred only by incessant sickliness. Those who recuperate from “the Bug” get to move to “the Big House in Margate,” which, according to the brochure, is a wonderful place next to an amusement park. Only the triplets still remain when a new Conservative government decides to discontinue the Sycamore program to cut costs.

Soon the Prime Minister puts the well-meaning but clueless Minister of Loneliness in charge of rehoming the triplets. But where? That these children have been part of a creepy scientific experiment is obvious early on, but one shocking, horrifying surprise follows another in what is, at its most basic, a cat-and-mouse thriller. Meanwhile, Chidgey forces readers to delve into moral questions concerning science (and by extension, technology), pragmatism, personal responsibility, and institutional evil. Then there’s the novel’s unavoidable, disquieting contemplation of just who is given equal right in any given society (including ours). Chidgey, a New Zealander, borrows elements from Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, but the character Vincent most resembles is Pinocchio. Broad themes and issues become deeply personal as his coming-of-age becomes a monumental struggle toward self-discovery.

Eloquent prose, rich characterizations, and knotty concepts—an emotional and intellectual tour de force.

Kirkus Star

Amanda Cross, H.S. | Europa Editions (336 pp.) $26 | September 23, 2025 | 9798889661351

In 1926 England, two people—a young woman desperate to avoid her former lover and that former lover, equally desperate to find her—struggle with despair and spiritual doubt.

Marion and Jamie—both known by several names in a book where identity is fluid and characters enjoy sexual role-play—have not seen each other since Marion left England the year before.

Now she has returned and begun a temporary job as a governess. Outwardly competent, she carries on a disturbing internal dialogue about her past—a girlhood in Ireland that ended in abusive sex and violence, her escape to a new identity in Oxford, the ecstasy of her love affair with Jamie—along with her current guilt, regret, and fear of mental illness.

The reader is uncertain just how damaged Marion is when Jamie’s narrative takes over. He too is clearly competent in his professional life. The boarding school that was central to Cross’ first and second novels, Wilberforce (2015) and Grievous (2019), plays an ancillary role here; while engrossing, Jamie’s efforts to solve the school’s problems take a backseat to his emotional turmoil. Bedeviled by various forms of guilt about his past, especially during the war, he struggles to connect with his ailing Anglican Bishop father, whom Jamie assumes disapproves of him.

Above all, he is baffled by why Marion disappeared from his life and is obsessed with finding her. His optimism about JULY 1, 2025

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their possible future together initially seems in sharp contrast to her resistance.

Is he delusional too? Gradually, though, the separate dark stories of their emotional crises evolve into a love story that verges on romantic comedy, complete with miscues, disguises, and the bishop’s manipulations. Along the way, Cross tackles such small issues as faith, the Easter Rebellion, and British classism.

The elliptical style isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort. That Cross’ voice—some combination of Edna O’Brien, Muriel Spark, and maybe a pinch of Jane Austen—comes from a contemporary American writer is hard to believe.

Mesmerizing, haunting, hopeful.

Your Name Here DeWitt, Helen & Ilya Gridneff | Dalkey Archive (600 pp.) | $24.95 paper September 23, 2025 | 9781628976267

An ouroboros— and a big one at that—of a postmodern yarn that threatens to swallow itself at any moment.

Rachel Zozanian is a “notorious recluse misanthrope,” author of the decidedly centrifugal tome Lotteryland, which just happens to share a display table at the local chain bookstore with Helen DeWitt’s Your Name Here. The two share more than that: There’s an alter-ego dimension here as DeWitt and her co-author, Australian journalist Gridneff, play off Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation. As is her wont, announced in her brilliant debut novel, The Last Samurai (2000), DeWitt ranges across time to pepper her pages with references to the greats: Foucault, Homer, Debord, the X-Men. The dominant second language throughout is Arabic, reflecting the author’s current passions—to say nothing of statistics, the classics, and “Habermasian ideal speech situations.” If there’s a plot, it hinges on efforts to shake Rachel out of her torpor, on a slowly declining film director’s attempts to figure out how to film the unfilmable (“Forget Lotteryland,” says one interlocutor, “have you seen Your Name 10

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Here, the new novel by Helen DeWitt? I was talking to Johnny Depp and he loves it, he’d love to work with you, what are you waiting for?”), and on DeWitt and Gridneff’s attempts via email to wrestle down whatever the hell their collaboration is supposed to yield. Call it high-pomo hijinks, where the story gives way to layered language, graphics, and meta-references (“And then there’s the engagement of the characters with Arabic, something that would have been unthinkable fifty, even ten years ago”); though, as if in a nod to traditional form, there is a surprise plot twist that relieves Rachel of her preoccupations. To call the book experimental is to understate, however, as Gridneff brightly notes late in the text, only if one isn’t up on “those 18th-century prepostmodernist time travellers Sterne and Diderot.”

At once bewildering and beguiling, and a groaning-table feast of words.

Whites Doten, Mark | Graywolf (160 pp.) | $17 paper | August 19, 2025 | 9781644452905

Fair warning: Never underestimate the self-­ importance of delusional white people. Or, just white people.

After tackling authoritarian-­ doomed near-­ futures in two pyrotechnical novels, Doten turns his lens on the real perpetrators of postmodern collapse. These 14 dynamic stories take a jaundiced look at the most comfortable, most privileged demographic in all of history—from their perspective, to acid effect. The book opens with a grotesque monologue by Elon Musk in “Even Elon on Human Meat,” while later in the book, his so-called boss tosses around the idea of using nuclear weapons

against Covid-19 in “Open for Business.”

Doten takes a different approach to the idea of both sides in “Pray for Q,” in which a queer artist meets his conspiracy-minded mother for a tense meal, only to flip over to her deranged mindset for the story’s fatal back half. Meanwhile in “Dying but It’s Something Else,” a son on the verge of a nervous collapse and his casually racist father talk about everything, anything but the truth. There are young voices, too, if strange and misguided ones, from the basement-dwelling white nationalist in “Banana Bunch Challenge,” to the unstable podcaster in “I’m Wide Awake It’s Jumpman” who leans into a modern patois of gamespeak, on-mic persona, and cultural schizophrenia. Every whitey is welcome here, from the Greek chorus of “J6ers” to self-delusional expats in “Fifty Thousand Gringos” to the self-described “Worst Karen Ever” in the title track. These venomous, discomforting stories may soon feel “of their time,” but what a time.

Imagine the white malaise of Sam Lipsyte and the heightened satire of Gary Shteyngart shot through with a tab of Mark Leyner’s hyperstylized metafiction.

Maybe that’s the right frame of mind to ask what white people are really made of, these days.

A consciously caustic critique of white fragility that means to leave a mark.

Happiness & Love Dubno, Zoe | Scribner (224 pp.) | $27 September 2, 2025 | 9781668062951

A wryly amusing debut novel about pretentious New Yorkers acting pretentious.

Here’s the setup: A young writer is back in New York City, at a party “surrounded by the very people

An amusing debut novel about pretentious New Yorkers.

HAPPINESS & LOVE

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that [she has] spent the last five years avoiding” (by going to Europe, of course). Sitting on a white linen couch in her hosts’ fabulous Bowery loft, where she once lived as a guest of the couple she now despises, she excoriates her frenemies and enemies in a long, acerbic, and sometimes very funny rant: rich art owners (like the hosts) who think that by buying art, they become the “sole authority on the work” and then destroy it by licensing it for advertisement or squirreling it away; “people who called themselves artists and directors but in fact worked as content creators and creative directors”; conceptual artists whose pieces interrogate “notions of whateverthehell”; and rich people who cannibalize the taste of poorer friends, remaking their shabby home decor in fancier materials.

No one is spared: not the narrator herself, who thinks she’s finally made it when she starts writing articles for fashion magazines about emerging artists and “the things that they cannot live without”; not the host, a mediocre multimedia artist whose love of art “was a trompe l’oeil patina painted with shit onto the sparkling bronze bust that was his inner idiocy, his enduring alcoholism, and…his sex-pestiness”; not the narrator’s more famous writer friend, who wears shabby clothing “in keeping with his idea of himself as a serious person” and reads only contemporary American literature and nothing in translation because he has “so much prose in the original to get through.”

That some writers and artists would trade their eye teeth for a chance to earn a living doing something vaguely creative might belie the book’s investment in a very small, rarefied corner of New York intelligentsia and artiness. The narrator’s funny and self-indulgent meltdown about how guilty and morally compromised she feels accepting a paid assignment to review a luxury hotel in Miami will resonate with some readers. Others will have their bags packed before you can say “real artist” or “real writer” ten times fast.

A minefield of a novel, whose cutting and often brilliant observations will delight and terrify those in the know.

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Bind Me Tighter Still Ehrlich, Lara | Red Hen Press (216 pp.) $34.95 | September 9, 2025 | 9781636282824

The relationship between Ceto—a siren who left her sisters and the ocean behind— and her 15-yearold daughter, Naia, is tested when Sirenland, their seaside burlesque attraction, is threatened by the untimely death of a guest.

Tucked somewhere along the coast, amid harsh limestone cliffs overlooking the sea, is a renowned and intensely popular roadside attraction known as Sirenland.

This glorified boardwalk amusement park is where Ceto, Naia, and several other women live and work as mermaids, performing every day in a large tank and along the beach for hordes of onlookers.

The difference between Ceto and her staff, however, is that she’s not just donning a sequined mermaid tail for show—she actually is a siren. Keen-eyed readers might recognize her name from Greek mythology, as Ceto is known to be a primordial goddess and mother of sea monsters. As time passes, Ceto begins to recognize her own animalistic hunger reflected in Naia (whose name has its own ties to mythology) and keeps her sequestered away from the world and the people who could hurt her or lure her away from Sirenland. But as the constraints Ceto places on her daughter grow tighter, Naia, like all teenagers eventually do, begins to question her mother’s authority and whether or not she actually knows what’s best. When Naia discovers the body of a young woman during one of her performances, it threatens the already tenuous relationship with her mother and the safety of her fellow sirens. Packed with simmering female rage and a sense of hunger—both in a physical and metaphorical sense—Ehrlich has crafted a modern-day fairy tale that is both ghastly and beautiful, and that would give The Little Mermaid a run for its money.

A thought-provoking and often intense exploration of motherhood, sisterhood, and the ties that bind.

Kirkus Star

The Wilderness Flournoy, Angela | Mariner Books (304 pp.) $30 | September 16, 2025 | 9780063318779

A web of friendship among millennial Black women stretches across several decades.

Desiree, Nakia, January, and Monique grew up together. They haven’t all known each other since childhood, but they came into adulthood together, navigating the tumult of their 20s, 30s, and 40s. At the opening of Flournoy’s novel—the first since her acclaimed debut, The Turner House (2015)—Desiree is 22. The year is 2008 and she’s traveling to Zurich via Paris with her grandfather, who plans to die the next day through assisted suicide.

Her grandfather is all the family she has; her mother is long dead, her father long absent, and her relationship with her older sister, Danielle, deeply strained.

She feels herself adrift and without prospects, but as it turns out, Desiree’s destiny is, in large part, as the anchor of her friend group. Flournoy toggles back and forth in time and perspective across the women, a structure that makes the book feel more like linked stories than a novel with a typical narrative throughline. This enables each woman to be deeply, prismatically rendered: Monique is a librarian-turned-influencer; January is a melancholic mother of two sons; Nakia is a lesbian restaurateur.

(Desiree’s sister, Danielle, receives a narrative interlude, as well.) They endure hookups and breakups, Covid-19, financial woes, careers, caregiving—“the wilderness of adult life.” It’s easy to marvel at Flournoy’s precision with character, the heart of the novel, but it’s the book’s hard look at social and political realities that give it its teeth. By setting select scenes—including the novel’s shattering climax—in the near future, Flournoy seems to warn that the violence and oppression characteristic of 21st-century American life can be JULY 1, 2025

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mitigated only by community, care, and the families we choose.

Elegant and unsettling, this novel evades the expected at every turn.

All We Trust Galloway, Gregory | Melville House (256 pp.) $19.99 paper | July 8, 2025 | 9781685891817

Two men entangled in a criminal enterprise face the prospect that they could betray each other.

Several key elements of this novel will be familiar to readers of Galloway’s previous book, Just Thieves (2021)—close friends are embroiled in the lower levels of a criminal enterprise, sketchy on the details, until one of them throws a wrench into their joint existence. The two men here, widower Al and divorced father Peck, are also half brothers. Al’s hardware store and the Flying F, a bar Peck used to own but where he now just works, are two pieces in a money laundering scheme overseen by a man whose name is represented by a long black bar. Things are OK if tense until Al’s hard drive, reportedly containing $7 million worth of cryptocurrency, disappears, and Al is convinced Peck stole it, because he gave Peck the passwords years ago—and the drive may also contain incriminating information that Al was prepared to hand over to the district attorney at Peck’s expense. Then Al himself is in the wind, and Peck has to become the leader and not the follower, an uncomfortable role: “I wasn’t sure I could be on the other end of the leash, the one needing to take control when necessary.” The first-person narration

switches between Peck and his 16-year-old daughter, Sara, wise to her father’s criminal enterprise beyond her years, who has her own ideas of how to unstick her father and uncle from their situation. Galloway’s latest noir has a lot of stuff going on—family drama, betrayal, poisonings, kidnappings, jaunts to Mexico—but the narrative proceeds at a more halting pace.

Characters talk at and around each other in rapid exchanges almost as much as they talk directly to each other. Readers who like their noir thrillers extra heavy on the thrills may want more, but when the novel ends, rather abruptly, they’ll also find the characters easy to miss.

A family-driven crime novel with literary sensibilities that rounds many a corner, if not always at top speed.

Behind Sunset Gordon, David | Mysterious Press (400 pp.) $26.95 | July 22, 2025 | 9781613166536

A 20-something transplant from Queens, New York, learns that in Los Angeles, there are even worse jobs than writing copy for a porn magazine.

Though Elliot Gross is just an associate editor at Raunchy, he finds himself getting plum assignments like interviewing plastic surgeon Gary Kishkewicz, vagina sculptor to the rich and famous. Maybe the magazine’s publisher, Vic Kingman—who started out selling dirty playing cards on the Brooklyn subway— sees him as a kindred spirit.

Whatever the reason, when Vic asks Elliot to track down his latest girlfriend, Crystal Waters, who’s disappeared

An empathetic chronicle, both tender and comical.

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leaving only a sex tape to remember her by, Elliot is stumped. He reaches out to Farah Foxxx, “the closest thing he had to a source,” who writes Raunchy’s “Dear Slut” advice column. Before she can get a line on Crystal, though, Farah turns up dead in her Hollywood apartment. More people die, including a talent manager who was wearing Elliot’s Raunchy logo jacket when he was killed in a drive-by shooting at a concert in Pasadena. Eventually, Elliot’s shenanigans piss off enough people to get him fired. He ends up working with his childhood friend Pedro Plotkin for Melody Bright, a New Age mystic who channels the 1000-year-old spirit Zona to an army of believers across the globe.

Elliot’s exploits get zanier and zanier, but there’s always a sly wink behind Gordon’s prose (is it really a coincidence that the name of Melody’s deity is Hebrew for “whore”?) that lets the reader know it’s all gonna come together in the end. It does, but only when you’re done laughing your ass off.

Hardboiled Hollywood, as only a New Yorker could write it.

The Phoebe Variations Hamilton, Jane | Zibby Books (342 pp.) | $27.99 September 23, 2025 | 9798991140287

A young woman searches for a self.

Phoebe Hudson is about to graduate from high school and go off to college when her adoptive mother, Greta, decides she should meet her birth family, the Dahlgrens.

Phoebe is reluctant, afraid “for reasons [she] didn’t want to consider, reasons [she] didn’t know how to consider.”

Nevertheless, the two set out for Wisconsin, on a trip that proves fateful for both. Looking back at her life many decades later, Phoebe recalls herself as a teenager, wanting “something, anything, to happen.” What does happen on the fraught road to adulthood involves friendship and betrayal, love and self-discovery. Hamilton K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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provides a handful of likely characters to accompany Phoebe on her journey: a best friend—in this case, the privileged Luna Barker; a boy—actually, a horde of them, the assorted, quirky O’Connor brothers; and a wise woman, the acerbic Hertha, a German immigrant, who cleans house for Greta, the Barkers, and the O’Connors, casting a knowing eye on all. As Phoebe feared, the visit to the Dahlgrens unsettles her, leaving her feeling unmoored and betrayed by Greta. She runs away, taking shelter with the O’Connors, who have so many children that she’s sure she won’t be noticed. The brothers do notice her, though, and contrive a farcical event that propels her into a new sense of her identity and her future. At one decisive point, Phoebe remembers lines from Charlotte Brontë that seem to echo her angst: “What was I doing here alone…? What should I do on the morrow? What prospects had I in life? What friends had I on earth? Whence did I come? Whither should I go? What should I do?” They could serve aptly as an epigraph for Hamilton’s perceptive rendering of a young woman’s growing pains.

An empathetic chronicle, both tender and comical.

Kirkus Star

Daikon Hawley, Samuel | Avid Reader Press (352 pp.) $29.99 | July 8, 2025 | 9781668083055

As Japan teeters on the abyss of doom, a strange American bomb falls into its hands.

In 1945, B-29s turn Japanese cities into fiery hell­ scapes, but Japan fights on in a hopeless cause. A U.S. bomber nicknamed Wicked Intent crashes and kills its crew. Japanese civilians who discover the wreckage don’t know what to make of the puzzling object that had been inside and is buried in the dirt nearby, looking “like a big black daikon radish.”

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They conclude it’s the biggest bomb anyone has ever seen. Inside the device are rings of metal no one recognizes, but a simple chemistry lab test shows it to be uranium. Army Lt. Col. Shingen Sagara understands the significance. He knows about Japan’s own unsuccessful efforts to enrich uranium. To figure out how to make the stray bomb workable to unleash horror on enemy forces or even on America itself, he recruits the U.S.-educated physicist Keizo Kan, who has been working in his garden. The scientist despises war, and he desperately wants to find his beloved American-born wife, Noriko, who has been arrested and detained for unknown reasons. Having lived in the San Francisco Bay area, they share a deep fondness for U.S. movies: “Taylor loves Garbo,” he tells her before the war.

“Garbo loves Taylor,” she responds with a kiss. From a distance Sagara witnesses the fireball over Hiroshima, and he knows what it is. He will do everything in his power to have the discovered bomb loaded onto a plane to smite America. Nagasaki soon follows, as history confirms. But the fictional third atomic bomb might still deliver a devastating blow. Meanwhile, there is talk of a coup to overthrow the “defeatists” who want to surrender. The plot feels entirely plausible, and none of the characters fit any obvious stereotypes. Sagara, the antagonist, is addicted to Philopon, a methamphetamine that drives his relentless work. (This was a real product considered so dangerous that Japan banned it after the war.)

Were it up to him, every Japanese citizen would “eat stones”—fight to the death. The author’s research is impressive as he describes how the bomb is designed to work, the tensions within the Japanese power structure, and details of Japanese culture.

An engrossing and thought-provoking novel.

For more by Samuel Hawley, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

Clown Town Herron, Mick | Soho Crime (352 pp.) | $29.95 September 9, 2025 | 9781641297264

A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.

As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran— whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business.

Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?

The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.

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ON THE COVER

ALISON BECHDEL

How does a celebrated lesbian cartoonist make art during challenging times? She keeps it fun.

BY MEGAN LABRISE WHEN YOU’RE ON the cover of Kirkus Reviews, an artist draws your portrait. Very cool.

To grace the cover of our Graphic Lit Issue, you draw yourself. That’s extra.

“It’s a great honor,” says Alison Bechdel, the Eisner Award–winning author and illustrator of Fun Home, Are You My Mother?, and The Secret to Superhuman Strength, who made her name with the cult-classic comic strip “Dykes To Watch Out For,” which ran in LGBTQ+ and feminist newspapers from 1983 to 2008. A Broadway musical based on Fun Home was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2014.

“I’ve had fun drawing my self-portrait,” she says of our cover image. “I’m definitely putting on an air of grandeur.”

When pressed, Bechdel says the portrait might be inspired by Rembrandt (“I guess, just because he did so many self-­portraits”). But I think she’s serving poet Marianne Moore (the stateliness, the hat). Furthermore, I think her new comic novel, Spent, should be noted for its “formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit,” which is how the MacDowell Foundation characterizes Moore’s poetry.

“I like that,” Bechdel says of the Moore quartet, when asked what she’d like her work to be remembered for. “I think the formal innovation might be a little questionable, but I could probably come up with an argument.”

So could Kirkus: “Bechdel is such a master of her craft that it might take a little while to appreciate what she does here,” we write in a starred review of Spent, the story of a critically acclaimed, commercially successful middle-aged lesbian cartoonist who lives on a pygmy goat farm in Vermont with her partner. That Alison—based on Bechdel’s actual self, but not actually Bechdel—is at work on her next book. Meanwhile, she’s reckoning with artistic integrity, doomsday headlines, online orders, large animal vet bills, and her friends’ activism and affairs. “Alison and her friends are beautiful and ridiculous and ridiculously beautiful,” we note, calling this witty tale of their travails “incisive, tender, and funny—often at the same time.”

Bechdel spoke with me via Zoom from her home in Vermont. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Spent: A Comic Novel Bechdel, Alison

Mariner Books | 272 pp. $29.99 | May 20, 2025 9780063278929

How’d you get going on Spent?

It was going to be a straightforward memoir of me examining my privilege, culture under capitalism, and a political system that’s been taken over by money.

I wanted to talk about money, but then it just really did seem too depressing— and, more to the point, too boring to research. I didn’t want to have to read books about economics. I didn’t want to have to read Marx. I just wanted to make little riffs on Marx. So it turned into a book about someone trying to write a book about money, which was much more fun.

When it comes to acknowledging one’s privilege…?

Look at it, feel the discomfort, and keep going.

What were some of your favorite elements to draw in this book?

It’s funny, because you do have to keep drawing certain things over and over again. I did have a lot of fun with the cats. There’s five cats and six or seven goats, and I had to keep drawing them and keeping track of their patterns and stuff. [She begins flipping through a copy of Spent.] I like drawing—sorry, I’m just now just seeing all the mistakes I made in the book!

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You know, it was really fun drawing my old characters from “Dykes To Watch Out For,” who reappear in this book as my friends down the hill in Burlington. I got to imagine how they’d all aged. When I last drew them, it was 2008; now they’re almost 20 years older.

I liked figuring out exactly how much weight they had put on, and how gray their hair had gotten.

This book doesn’t shy away from how messed up the world has gotten in the last 20 years: politically, socially, economically, environmentally. In light of this dumpster fire we’re dealing with now, can you tell me why we should keep making art?

Oh, man, I don’t know. One theme of the book is how difficult it is to focus on anything, let alone trying to write or draw. Alison [the character] has this problem concentrating, not just because of all the usual attention-­ grabbing distractions, but the news, the horrible upheaval that we’re living through, this crazy—I don’t even know what to call it.

I wrote the book before the last election, of course. I didn’t know how that was going to turn out, so I had to sort of leave it open. But whatever happened, I knew: We’re in deep trouble. We have a lot of very intractable problems that we’ve got to figure

out how to solve, and we need to do it together. We need to do it in the same room, and we need to stop bickering.

I’ve been trying to think of some uniting force, some idea to rally around. To me, there are the people who think that other people are people. Then there’s another group of people—and I must believe that it’s a smaller group—who think they’re better than other people. Who see others as less than.

I mean, they don’t even see others. I think that’s exactly it: There’s a failure on the part of many people to see others.

I feel really lucky to have turned out to be a lesbian. In my youth, once I became, essentially, an Other to the mainstream, it was like a gift. I could see everyone. I could see the way power was structured, and the way that certain people were left out.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how—in the whole course of my work, from “Dykes To Watch Out For,” through my memoirs about my parents, to this current book—I’m always trying to figure out the relationship between myself and other people on a political level. Looking at the ways people are oppressed on an intimate level, in families and relationships. Looking at the ways we have a

Elena Sieber t

People can be a pain in the ass, just as Alison’s friends in the book are.

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hard time understanding other people.

How we can make them into projections of ourselves, rather than letting them have their own subjectivity.

Rather than having mutuality.

There’s a great fear of other people among a certain segment of the population. I mean, you know, I say that, but—I too just want to go in my room and watch Netflix. Sometimes I don’t want to be around people.

People are difficult. People can be a pain in the ass, just as Alison’s friends in the book are. They kind of get under her skin, but she also really loves them and enjoys being with them.

Who do you hope picks up this book?

When I stopped drawing my comic strip in 2008, ironically, I had just started to reach a broader audience, beyond the lesbian or the queer audience. I was starting to get more of a general progressive audience, which was very exciting to me, because—even though, yes, most of the characters are queer—why shouldn’t everyone read this? You know, I’m watching shows about straight people all the time. My great hope for this book is that it reaches as many different people as possible.

Editor at large Megan Labrise hosts the Fully Booked podcast.

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If you are not already hooked on Holsinger, it’s time to join the club.

CULPABILIT Y

Kirkus Star

Culpability Holsinger, Bruce | Spiegel & Grau (380 pp.) $30 | July 8, 2025 | 9781954118966

A family heading to their son’s high school lacrosse game is thrown into chaos when their self-driving minivan is involved in a fatal accident.

Medieval historian-turned-­ novelist Holsinger seems to have created his own subgenre of psychosocial thriller, spinning super-smart, propulsive page-turners out of zeitgeisty worries like ultracompetitive school admissions (The Gifted School, 2019), disaster relief (The Displacements, 2022), and now, to absolutely crushing effect, artificial intelligence.

On the Cassidy-Shaw family’s way to a weekend tournament on the Eastern Shore of Delaware, paterfamilias Noah is working on a legal memo in the front passenger seat; his 17-yearold son, Charlie, is at the wheel. In the back seat are Alice, 13; Izzy, 11; and their mom, Lorelei, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner who studies the ethical concerns raised by AI. And one is about to unfold before their very eyes when Alice suddenly screams, Charlie jerks the wheel, and they crash into a Honda Accord coming in the other direction. After this explosive opener, the complexities just keep coming—each person in the car has reason to believe the accident was really all their fault. Meanwhile, the Delaware state police have their own ideas about that, ones they continue to pursue even after the family retreats to 16

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a vacation rental on the Chesapeake Bay for a week. AI threads through the plot in so many fascinating ways—one of the kids is confiding all her secrets to a chatbot; the vacation rental is a smart house located across the cove from the over-the-top compound of a billionaire AI entrepreneur; a search-­a nd-­rescue is managed by drones; almost every time something bad happens, someone staring at a phone was involved.

Cleverly threaded through the story are excerpts from Lorelei’s monograph, “Silicon Souls: On the Culpability of Artificial Minds,” that sharpen the philosophical and moral issues of the novel.

If you are not already hooked on Holsinger, it’s time to join the club.

Before the Fact Iles, Francis | Poisoned Pen (368 pp.) $15.99 paper | July 15, 2025 | 9781464237614

Iles’ pioneering psychological thriller, filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Suspicion, returns from its first publication in 1932 to confront its myriad offspring.

When she first catches sight of Johnnie Aysgarth, youngest son of an impoverished aristocrat, Lina McLaidlaw is instantly swept off her feet by his playful insouciance and his exclusive focus on her to the neglect of everyone else on the scene. After a whirlwind courtship, they wed and enjoy a blissful honeymoon. It’s not till the couple returns to Dellfield, the spacious home Johnnie’s rented in Dorchester, that Lina, who

stands to inherit £50,000 on her father’s death, learns that Johnnie doesn’t have a penny of his own or any idea how to make a living. She seeks to stem his endless cycle of borrowing greater and greater sums from anyone who’ll lend them by persuading him to take a job managing the estate of his distant relative Captain Melbeck, but then learns that he’s continued to gamble despite his promises to stop. In fact, Lina slowly comes to realize, she can’t believe a single word from her alluring, solicitous husband’s mouth. The pseudonymous Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893–1971) paces the rising false notes with surgical precision, revealing Johnnie as a liar, a cheater, a gambler, a thief, and ultimately a murderer. The most telling development here is not of Johnnie, who smilingly declines to change, but of Lina, who evolves from his target to his victim to his accomplice. Modern readers may well shudder at her willful obliviousness, but fans who recognize the persistence of this formula to the present will acknowledge the power of this indispensable template for three generations of brides-in-distress that followed.

The mother of all stories about women who unwittingly marry charming sociopaths and gradually awaken to their peril.

Christina the Astonishing Leone, Marianne | Akashic (240 pp.) | $28.95 September 2, 2025 | 9781636142616

An awkward, spiky Italian American teen navigates family chaos, Catholic school, and misogyny in 1960s Boston, with brio.

Christina Falcone thinks she doesn’t have much going for her. Her hair is wild, her breasts slow to grow, no one believes in her academic ambitions— but worst of all, she’s lonely, especially as high school begins and her former best friends turn to K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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cheerleading, which she considers “fun for the feeble-minded”; she’ll crank up her Joan Baez and Simon & Garfunkel albums instead. If that sounds like a YA novel, be assured it’s not, with author Leone’s close third-person narration providing a knowing, ironic tone. Chapters feel as different, and occasionally as uneven, as rough gems in medieval crowns. Christina has a thing for the saints of that era; she devours their stories and obsesses over the ones who supposedly endured multiple torments. When she discovers the never-canonized St. Christina the Astonishing, who preferred birds to people, she knows she’s found her own idol. If only her 11th-grade teacher Sister Coronada could see that Christina dreams of the kind of attention the holy martyrs have, and convince Joe and Rita Falcone that their unusual daughter should go to college instead of staying at home working until she’s married. Leone, who played Christopher Moltisanti’s mother on The Sopranos, knows her Catholic-guilt territory, but she also nails the working-class Beantown ethos, with students addressing nuns as “S’tah,” frequent jabs at the Irish from the Italians and vice versa. As you commiserate with Christina and laugh at her very small world’s idiosyncrasies, you’ll almost smell the Sunday sauce on the Falcones’ stove. As Rita says, “Eat. God wants you to eat. It’s not a sin. It’s a sin to waste food.” That could mean anything from an overstuffed sandwich to a slice of ricotta pie, so why not have both? In other words, this brash, witty, slice-of-life book is a feast.

Think Adriana Trigiani writing with a sharpened nib, and pray to your own saints that we’ll read more from Leone soon.

For more by Marianne Leone, visit Kirkus online.

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Kirkus Star

Songs for Other People’s Weddings Levithan, David with Jens Lekman Abrams (320 pp.) | $28 | August 5, 2025 9781419778124

A Swedish wedding singer struggles with his love life when his girlfriend moves to America.

J is a “somewhat successful Swedish singer-songwriter.

If you live outside of Sweden, it’s unlikely you’ve heard any of his songs on the radio…unless you are one of the bookish, folkish sort who listen to bookish, folkish stations that play bookish, folkish ditties.” Because he wrote a song called “If You Ever Need a Stranger (to Sing at Your Wedding),” he’s started a lucrative side hustle singing at the weddings of mostly strangers (and a few friends). But he’s a unique sort of wedding singer—instead of simply singing covers of popular songs, he writes an original song for each couple. His own love life, though, is complicated. His girlfriend, V, works for a buzzy startup that requires her to move to New York. J, used to being the one who leaves for tours and gigs, is at loose ends without V around, and their communication suffers with an ocean between them. When he gets a wedding gig in New York, he eagerly hops on a plane, only to find that V is not so eager to see him. As his relationship goes through a slow and painful breakdown, J continues playing weddings—some for people who are truly in love, and some for couples whose foundations are built on shaky grounds. Through it all, he keeps writing original songs for each couple, even as the lyrics are suffused with his own heartbreak. The concept is immensely clever: The story is written

by Levithan, best known for his YA work, with original songs written by Swedish singer-songwriter Lekman, also a part-time wedding singer—and who actually wrote a song called “If You Ever Need a Stranger (to Sing at Your

Wedding).” As J plays wedding after wedding, emotions take center stage.

The languid pace fits J’s quest to find out if love really can conquer all, if marriage even matters, and if there’s any hope for his relationship with V.

Much like a good love song, this story demands to be felt.

Kirkus Star

Will There Ever Be Another You Lockwood, Patricia | Riverhead (256 pp.) $29 | September 23, 2025 | 9780593718551

In the wake of a disorienting illness, a woman attempts to write “a masterpiece about being confused.”

What on earth is happening to the unnamed protagonist of this novel? She suffers from “bizarre nonsense dreams,” feels there is “a secret number between two and three,” and sees “a zigzag” in the corner of her eye that she refers to as “the angel.” Has an unnamed illness “stolen her old mind and given her a new one?” We’re told she “first got sick” in March 2020, and because the details of the protagonist’s life and work track so closely with the author’s, we assume it is Covid-19, which left Lockwood in a post-Covid fog, described in an essay for the London Review of Books. This is no straightforward illness diary, but a “mad notebook” capturing the sensory experience and psychic state of a character in extremis. It opens with a family trip to Scotland, seemingly before the pandemic—but never mind, linearity and narrative are beside the point. In Scotland, the protagonist suddenly believes in fairies; throughout the book she is obsessed with changelings, doppelgängers, knockoff Cabbage Patch Kids, cloned sheep, Mrs. Doubtfire, a potential TV adaptation of her memoir, Priestdaddy, and all manner of facsimiles that point toward the existential question of the title.

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Somewhat incidentally, she reads and feverishly analyzes Anna Karenina, tries her hand at metalworking, and, after her husband undergoes emergency surgery that leaves him with 36 staples in the abdomen, finds herself “in charge of the Wound.” Wherever this phantasmagoric book takes us, it is shot through with a poet’s love for the slippery absurdities of language and abundant laugh-out-loud gags. Can we hope for a one-woman show?

There is only one Patricia Lockwood, and this surreal, silly, and sneakily profound book could only be hers.

The City Changes Its Face McBride, Eimear | Faber & Faber (336 pp.) $29 | August 26, 2025 | 9780571384211

Two lovers navigate the legacy of an event that threatens to define both their relationship and their identities.

Readers familiar with McBride’s novel The Lesser Bohemians (2016) will recognize this book’s main characters: Eily, a drama student who turns 20 midway through the novel’s timeline, and her 40-year-old lover, Stephen, an established actor in the London scene who is currently directing an autobiographical film about his traumatic past. Told in interwoven storylines—the Now in which the couple dances around a painful conversation, and scenes from the past which has led them here—the book is narrated through Eily’s skintight stream-of-consciousness voice, which leaves very little room for autonomous perspectives. At times, this may render Eily an untrustworthy narrator, but her acrobatic, muscular prose lends such depth and nuance to the world she inhabits that the reader may be startled to resurface from the spell of her voice only to realize they are indeed in the same Camden flat watching Stephen eat the same cheese sandwich which he has been picking at for the vast majority of the current-time storyline. As an exercise 18

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in language, the book sings, illustrating the logic behind the many comparisons of McBride to modernist innovators like Joyce. More problematic is the way McBride’s investment in the immensity of Eily’s interior world is put into service of the plot. The event that has come to sever Stephen and Eily’s intimacy is clearly broadcast throughout the book, yet, when it is revealed in all its gory horror in the final 50 pages, it has very little impact on a reader already emotionally exhausted by Eily’s relentless telling. The freshness of the Modernist project to overturn traditional modes of storytelling doesn’t work in a novel that presents its climactic moment in a more conventional manner, as an epiphany, but arrives there in such discursive fashion that Eily’s darkest secret feels like reiteration rather than revelation.

Not even Eily’s frank, electric eroticism can enliven the novel’s overwhelming sense of stagnation as it explores a story that has already been told by characters who have already lived, and relived, its main events.

McBride is a consummate stylist whose individual sentences shine far more brightly than her novel as a whole.

The Last Illusion of Paige White McCausland, Vanessa | Crown (320 pp.) $28 | June 10, 2025 | 9780593799949

In this compelling, gothic-­ tinged novel, an Australian influencer is found dead, drawing her childhood friend home to investigate her death.

Paige White’s body is found shortly after she posts a haunting photo on social media showing herself lying in shallow water. Jane Masters, who went to high school with Paige nearly 20 years ago, is now a successful Sydney journalist. She’s pulled back to her rural hometown on a lake to mourn her friend but also to write a story about social media darling Paige. Perhaps

inspired by Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (2002), McCausland imagines Paige ruminating from a limbolike place about the picture-perfect but inauthentic life she experienced through her social media feeds. The author expertly portrays influencers’ obsession with beauty and perfect photos and the way many social media users depend on their feeds for affirmation of self-worth.

For Paige, all the pretense becomes exhausting. How, she wonders, “did it all come down to a little love heart or a thumbs-up or a smiley face?” There’s more to this story, though, because details surrounding Paige’s death unearth long-kept secrets from the past.

Alternating among chapters narrated

by Paige, Jane, and another high school friend, Audrey, who struggled more than most with self-esteem, McCausland examines with a fresh eye the complicated and competitive relationships among teenage girls and their messy relationships with their parents. Murder suspects include Paige’s husband and an online poet who may not be who he says he is. It’s an emotional mystery that McCausland fires up with forbidden romance, the heartbreak of a motherless child, and a surprising denouement.

Social media takes a dark turn in this intriguing tale of regret.

Kirkus Star

What We Can Know McEwan, Ian | Knopf (320 pp.) | $27 September 23, 2025 | 9780593804728

A gravely post-apocalyptic tale that blends mystery with the academic novel.

McEwan’s first narrator, Thomas Metcalfe, is one of a vanishing breed, a humanities professor who, on a spring day in 2119, takes a ferry to a mountain hold, the Bodleian Snowdonia Library. The world has been remade by climate change, the subject of a course he teaches, “The K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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Politics and Literature of the Inundation.” Nuclear war has irradiated the planet, while “markets and communities became cellular and self-reliant, as in early medieval times.” Nonetheless, the archipelago that is now Britain has managed to scrape up a little funding for the professor, who is on the trail of a poem, “A Corona for Vivien,” by the eminent poet Francis Blundy. Thanks to the resurrected internet, courtesy of Nigerian scientists, the professor has access to every bit of recorded human knowledge; already overwhelmed by data, scholars “have robbed the past of its privacy.” But McEwan’s great theme is revealed in his book’s title: How do we know what we think we know? Well, says the professor of his quarry, “I know all that they knew—and more, for I know some of their secrets and their futures, and the dates of their deaths.”

And yet, and yet: “Corona” has been missing ever since it was read aloud at a small party in 2014, and for reasons that the professor can only guess at, for, as he counsels, “if you want your secrets kept, whisper them into the ear of your dearest, most trusted friend.” And so it is that in Part 2, where Vivien takes over the story as it unfolds a century earlier, a great and utterly unexpected secret is revealed about how the poem came to be and to disappear, lost to history and memory and the coppers.

A philosophically charged tour de force by one of the best living novelists in English.

Kirkus Star

People Like Us Mott, Jason | Dutton (288 pp.) | $30 August 5, 2025 | 9798217047116

Impudent humor, dark farce, and the looming threat of violence somehow merge in jittery tandem in this novel, along with a pair of storylines about Black writers on book tours—and in personal upheaval.

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The whole book seems the literary equivalent of a post-bop jazz performance.

PEOPLE LIKE US

On the one hand, there’s Soot, a Black writer who is “the age of early evening bedtimes and early morning ibuprofen.”

(In other words, 44 years old.) He’s visiting Minnesota in the dead of winter, away from home to promote his new book, and one senses from the start that it isn’t just the snowy, frigid air that’s making him shudder. On the other hand, there’s a younger, friskier National Book Award–winning Black writer, also on a literary tour, in the more temperate climes of southern Europe. Neither the latter’s age nor name are specified here.

But he’s perfectly OK with people who mistake him for Ta-Nehisi Coates or Colson Whitehead or even Walter Mosley. (“Turns out I can be anybody you want me to be if I’m just willing to say the words.”) These mercurial men are the dual (if not dueling) protagonists in this latest from Mott, a follow-up of sorts to his 2021 National Book Award–winning novel, Hell of a Book, in which Soot appeared in younger form, growing up in North Carolina. Soot spends most of his narrative here bouncing back in time to when he was still happily married, and his daughter was still alive. Inferences of the tragic calamity that took Soot’s daughter’s life intrude on the public and private moments of his tour. Meanwhile, the other author is having a time of it overseas as he’s embraced by a rich and famous Frenchman who offers him lasting wealth if he never returns to the U.S. As this transaction plays out, the author meets an enigmatic young man named Dylan who hates it when the author calls him “Kid” (and who also seems a carryover from Mott’s previous book) along with an effusive Black giant who loves H.P. Lovecraft and speaks with a Scottish brogue. The younger author is also being marked for death by a madman named Remus—the latter

development compelling the author to secure a firearm. Indeed, guns are the subtext that link both narratives, along with the trauma they instill in those who witness and survive their malign use.

The whole book seems the literary equivalent of a post-bop jazz performance, with oblique happenings that compel attention because of the book’s antic energy and lyrical passages.

A meta-novel that stings and touches the reader.

Curandera Okojie, Irenosen | Soft Skull Press (320 pp.) $27 | July 8, 2025 | 9781593767846

A striking tale of supernatural haunting, healing, and revenge.

In sanity-­ shattering mourning for her lost Baby, Zulmira, a gifted healer and disciple of the shamanic god Oni, sets off a string of strange events with her arrival in the 17th-century settlement of Gethsemane Cape Verde. Four centuries and a continent away, Therese is building a diverse crew of Oni Kin in contemporary London. Despite the distance, Zulmira and Therese share powerful connections.

As shamanic disciples of the omnipotent Oni, the women interact with the spirit world. They see things and know things that defy everyday reality and terrify the average human. While Zulmira’s new neighbors welcome her service, they’re wary of this willful woman who appears from nowhere and has no man to answer to. The skepticism is amplified as she moves in with and takes care of a respected local fisherman, Domingos; his JULY 1, 2025

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ailing wife, Marguerite; and their daughter, Sueli, in exchange for room and board. Though she seems to help, it’s increasingly clear that Zulmira is hiding something, and suddenly people are disappearing or turning up dead. Her evolution is fascinating to watch unfold.

While Zulmira is propelled by grief and jealousy, Therese’s motivations are less clear. She and her housemates spend their time trying to “move through dimensions” by ingesting peyote and a mysterious and grotesque psychedelic fruit. Eventually, Zulmira’s and Therese’s worlds bleed into each other, but that shattering of planes is the least interesting part of both tales. The greatest contribution of the contemporary stories is how they show off the fantastical consequences of Oni’s powers and how the events of Zulmira’s time reverberate.

Adding difficulty to an already byzantine dual timeline balancing religious mythologies and universal themes of love and survival, the writing alternates between finely poetic and so thick with obscure metaphor and symbol that the story becomes confusingly opaque.

Exquisite and esoteric, this literary horror story will confound many readers but may reward those who persevere.

Starlight and Moonshine O’Malley, Joseph | Delphinium (214 pp.) $27 | September 9, 2025 | 9781953002617

Grief manifests itself in unique ways throughout this sharp novel.

A newspaper entry from the Detroit News of March 25, 1980, reveals that a woman named

Hannah Fallon has died after crashing into a tree while driving home with a 0.3% blood alcohol level. The book unfolds from a dizzying array of perspectives, diving into the lives of the people affected by Hannah’s death: her husband, James; her adult children, Mary, Colleen, and Jack; and her sister-in-law, Adelaide. Jack seems to be the favorite among everyone in the family: “It’s not right to love one more than the others, but all mothers do really, no matter what they say,” Hannah says in a flashback of sorts. Addy imagines him a “leading actor in a movie,” but he spends his days cleaning the surgical intensive care unit at a local hospital, which is viewed as a waste of his talents. He spends his evenings napping, seemingly waiting for his grief to pass. Colleen, the middle child, is an aspiring chef working as a bank teller to save money for culinary school. Her mother’s death affects her the most traditionally, and she spends the days after the tragedy crying relentlessly. Mary, the eldest, yearns for the body of her new fling, Roman, wanting to be anywhere but home.

James spends his days and nights avoiding his children, seemingly too stricken with grief to interact with his family. James’ sister Addy lacks empathy, failing to understand why so much has changed in the aftermath of Hannah’s death. “And then she starts with the waterworks again, feeling sorry for herself like she’s the only one ever lost a mother,” she thinks harshly about Colleen. Each character is united in free fall, searching for whatever’s next, linked by a sadness that’s nearly palpable.

A testament to the power of the tableau, rather than a more traditional narrative.

There are more questions than answers in this dreamlike novel of dissociation.

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A New New Me Oyeyemi, Helen | Riverhead (224 pp.) $29 | August 26, 2025 | 9780593718773

A young woman with an identity for each day of the week must decide if her coping mechanism allows her to lead the life she desires.

For a little more than a decade, Kinga Sikora has taken it one day of the week at a time. The Kinga who manages Mondays, Kinga-A, is the designated “squad leader,” capable, efficient, and a little bossy. Kinga-B is a shrewd pessimist who resents Kinga-A’s condescension.

Kinga-C, an adventurous risk taker. In total, there are eight Kingas, including the original, currently in retreat. We meet each woman in the pages of their collective diary, where they record memories for the benefit of other iterations—everything from appointments with their psychotherapist to details about their jobs, crushes, and preferences.

Kinga-A frets that one identity is secretly plotting to take over for good on the occasion of their name day, forcing each successive Kinga to come clean about what they’ve really been up to with their time—and what they really want. This is Oyeyemi’s second novel set in Prague, and the city seems to have encouraged her trickster storytelling instincts. The book is a surrealist romp, filled with money-­laundering strip clubs, temperamental perfumers, handsome men hogtied in the pantry, and other oddities.

Meanwhile, the truth about why Kinga has chosen her segmented life flits in and out of the periphery, never quite coming fully into view. Ultimately, it seems, the original Kinga wanted the freedom to change her story, but she couldn’t accept that transformation felt forever out of reach. Oyeyemi offers us an existential farce that wrestles with what it means to reconcile all the pieces of yourself, especially when they’re in constant disagreement about how best to live a life.

There are more questions than answers in this dreamlike novel of dissociation— but that’s also part of its thrill.

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The Once and Future Me Pace, Melissa | Henry Holt (384 pp.) $29.99 | August 19, 2025 | 9781250358677

Virginia, 1954: A woman identified as Dorothy Frasier awakens on a bus en route to a psychiatric hospital. But does she belong there?

There are signs that Dorothy may not belong at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital, most notably her lightning-­ fast reflexes and her ability to quickly calculate everything from how to pick a lock to the best way to beat a creepy orderly. And then there are the flashes of “memory” that seem to jerk her back to the future: 2035, to be exact. Here she is identified as rebel leader Beatrix “Bix” Parris, and reminded that she’s been sent to 1954 in order to intercept a virus that will wreak havoc in her present time, decimating 90% of the population. Back in ’54, these “delusions,” as well as Dorothy’s general lack of compliance, lead to a “protocol” which consists of heavy sedation and multiple sessions of electroshock therapy until her husband, Paul, intervenes. In the future timeline, Bix meets her twin brother and is filled in on all the details of their lives, the virus, and their roles in the fight, including the fact that she has less than 24 hours to find her Hanover contact and take action to save the world, fighting to find her allies and evade her enemies—and possibly face some other upsets in the timeline. This novel is a cinematic ride. The genre mashup is a little daunting and overly dramatic in the beginning, but once the intrigue— and then the dystopian action—kicks in, you might as well strap in and suspend disbelief. What’s real? We don’t fully know—and it really doesn’t matter. Dorothy/Bix is a kick-ass feminist hero, and the novel comments on the horrors of 20th-century mental health “treatments” for women as well as the anarchic ravages of a virus-­ infested world. The word bedlam was derived from a mental hospital so K IR KU S R E V IE W S

infamous it now stands for absolute chaos. This novel is “bedlam” in every way.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets The Hunger Games—and what an offspring!

Kirkus Star

Ten Incarnations of Rebellion Patel, Vaishnavi | Ballantine (320 pp.) $29 | June 3, 2025 | 9780593874769

In an alternate India still under the thumb of Britain’s violent oppression, a headstrong young woman named Kalki Divekar, hellbent on freedom, strives to build a liberation movement.

The year is 1962, and 19-year-old Kalki Divekar lives in a city overrun by violence and British propaganda. In this alternate timeline, Mumbai—here called Kingston—is still colonized by the U.K. and rife with cultural repression. Driven by the memory of her late father, a rebel who was caught and executed when she was young, Kalki and her companions— friends, fellow students, strangers struggling to get by—set out to help liberate their home by working for the British, slowly destroying the empire from the inside. But freedom comes at a cost and revolutions—especially the effective ones—demand sacrifice, facts that Kalki swiftly learns as the revolution grows. Told through 10 moments in Kalki’s life that beautifully mirror the 10 avatars of Vishnu, also known as the Dashavatara—fish, tortoise, dwarf, axe warrior, king, and others all have designated chapters—Patel’s novel is a truly top-tier story of a people’s rebellion built from the ground up. The author closely examines the path to India’s independence and the anguish caused by British colonialism, the effects of which are still felt today, and she doesn’t hold back. Though the characters sometimes feel two-dimensional, Patel makes up for that with her rich exploration of Indian

mythology and her general compassion as the story unfolds. This is undoubtedly a novel that readers will be discussing for some time to come.

An epic and frighteningly plausible work of historical fiction.

Hotel Melikov Payne, Jonathan | CamCat Books (288 pp.) $19.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9780744311808

In this spirited farce, a fishmonger who somehow became Minister of Security in a fictitious central European country is caught between two sides of a civil war.

The book is a sequel to Citizen Orlov (2023), in which an unfortunate turn of events got Orlov, the fishmonger, implicated in the assassination of the king. Now desperate to return to his former life, Orlov is about to resign from the security post when revolutionaries stage a violent uprising following the coronation ceremony for the new sovereign. The intelligence minister, seated in a car next to Orlov, is shot in the head. The monarch is forced into hiding in a mountaintop convent. In dizzying fashion, the hapless Orlov is pressured first by the People’s Party—its deputy leader is a former colleague of his in the fish business—and then by royalists to spy on the other side. Back and forth he goes, double-talking his way out of trouble. As part of a group of government officials who disguise themselves in nun’s habits to make it safely to the convent, he is exposed to shocking realities. The actual Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow are not what they seem (the guns are a dead giveaway) and all of the fake nuns don’t seem to be on the same page with each other. The king, who was outfitted as “Sister Karla” to evade detection, is befuddled by the situation. “So, the prisoners are dressed as nuns and the nuns are dressed as prisoners?” he asks.

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satirical delights and hilariously absurd scenes. It’s a flawlessly entertaining read that raises expectations for the third installment in the series.

A very funny satire about men and nuns at war.

Ghost Fish Pennebaker, Stuart | Little, Brown (256 pp.) $17.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9780316587631

A young woman misses her late sister, now a ghost floating in a pickle jar.

Pennebaker’s debut novel opens like a stock big-city bildungsroman: The narrator, 23-year-old Alison, has arrived in New York from Georgia, where her grandmother, mother, and sister have all died separately but in quick succession. The last, an accidental drowning during a beachside party, hits the hardest, but Alison is determined to start over, taking a job as a host at a Manhattan hotel restaurant, going to parties, and flirting with a young hedge fund employee. But the past tugs at her emotionally and then physically—the sister’s ghost appears at her apartment in the form of a fish Alison keeps alive in a water-filled pickle jar.

Though the ghost never speaks, it serves as Alison’s conscience and confessor when dates with the hedge fund bro go sideways, her friendship with a co-worker deepens, and her loneliness intensifies. (“I was our family’s only remnant.”)

Pennebaker is a savvy observer of a restaurant’s peculiar workplace dynamic and, later in the novel, of the culture of Key West, Florida, which is at once oppressively touristy and inspiring. But the novel’s metaphysical elements feel like a mild layer of strangeness applied to a story of everyday 20-something concerns: Is this person worth dating? Should I stay in the big, expensive city? Who are my real friends? How much did my past shape me? Sally Rooney gives such questions depth by virtue of philosophical savvy and a willingness to drill deep into her characters’ flaws. Here, the 22

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conflicts don’t feel nearly as high-stakes, and the reliance on a ghost story feels more like a narrative gimmick than a window into Alison’s soul.

An earnest, mildly offbeat girl-meetscity tale.

Kirkus Star

Badlands Preston, Douglas & Lincoln Child Grand Central Publishing (368 pp.) $30 | June 3, 2025 | 9781538765821

Two strange deaths in the desert pose tough questions in this fifth Nora Kelly adventure.

In a remote section of New Mexico, a woman walks alone into the blistering desert heat. In a trance, she ignores her horrific thirst and discards her clothing, piece by piece, until she lies down and dies. Five years later, a video crew with a drone discovers her skeletal remains, which they promptly report.

Agent Corrie Swanson is part of an FBI team that heads out into the bleak badlands to investigate. She shares a photo with anthropologist Nora Kelly, who is especially intrigued by the pair of rare green lightning stones found under the skeleton. The woman died with perfect health, yet no one had reported her missing. DNA confirms the 40-ish woman was Molly Vine, an apparently vibrant person who “wouldn’t just throw her life away.” Then the FBI finds another body, another woman, same trail of clothing and pair of green lightning stones, but her death is much more recent. And that’s just the beginning of a tale that gets curiouser and curiouser with discoveries of ancient mass murders and modern mind control. Corrie and Nora are a perfect pair: smart and professional, and with bravery they will need in abundance. At one point, they compare approaches: As an anthropologist, Nora is trained not to judge; as an FBI agent, Corrie is trained to judge. As they delve into the investigation, Nora’s

younger brother, Skip, and his billionaire buddy, Edison Nash, complicate matters immensely. They decide to go camping and investigate on their own, and Skip reminds Nash that taking ancient artifacts like an obsidian arrowhead is a felony. But as strange shadows lurk around their faded campfire at night, they learn that getting in trouble with the law is the least of their worries. The landscape imbues a special flavor to this engrossing yarn—the adobe kivas with signs of thousand-year-old murders, the slot canyons, the changing terrain as desert yields to ponderosa pine—and the sandstorms that can abort a rescue. In this setting, an unknown enemy causes cringeworthy violence that the heroes may have to face alone. But as Corrie tells Nora, “We’ve got a gun. We’ve got a knife. Now we need a plan.”

Hair-raising fun!

Kirkus Star

To the Moon and Back Ramage, Eliana | Avid Reader Press (448 pp.) | $30 | September 2, 2025 9781668065853

As gifted as she is driven, a young Cherokee woman powers through trauma and turbulence to realize her astronaut dreams.

Two really excellent lesbian astronaut books in one year? Yes, it’s true, and may this one, an ambitious debut from a young Cherokee author, catch the wave created by Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere. Ramage’s version begins in June 1987, with 6-year-old Steph Harper in the back seat of a car driven by her mother, Hannah, picking shards of glass out of her little sister Kayla’s hair. The three are on the run from an incident that we won’t fully learn about till the end of the book, about 30 years and 450 action-packed pages later. The threesome stop and resettle in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, part of the Cherokee Nation, and it’s there that Steph begins to dream her K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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big dreams, applying to Phillips Exeter Academy, begging her mother to send her to Space Camp, and having to settle for a homemade version put on by Hannah and her boyfriend, Brett. The childhood section of the book is strong; the school play, in which Steph gets the part of the husband of her secret crush, Meredith, as their entire family dies on the Trail of Tears, shows off Ramage’s ability to serve the funny-sad combination with brio. Equally memorable is a later section set in a “hab,” an isolated residence in which an astronaut crew lives for a year to simulate space travel, and this particular one is surrounded by an encampment of protestors who object to NASA’s use of Indigenous Hawaiian lands. There’s much, much more packed into this John Irving– esque tragicomic saga. One of Steph’s girlfriends was the focus of a famous forced adoption case under the Indian Child Welfare act. Another witnessed a subway shooting as a child and now belongs to a New York–based group of queer Muslims. Steph’s sister, Kayla, becomes a top Indigenous Instagram influencer about the same time she becomes a teenage mom. Almost all the characters are obsessed with Native history and the lives of their ancestors.

And one character is…a shark. Yes, the kind in the ocean.

This author is as ambitious as her protagonist: There are three novels worth of material here, all good. The moon or bust!

Kirkus Star

Indian Country Rao, Shobha | Crown (432 pp.) | $30 August 5, 2025 | 9780593798959

An immigrant couple finds America a mystery, in more ways than one.

Rao’s second novel—following Girls Burn Brighter (2018)— concerns Sagar and Janavi, a young couple from K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Varanasi, a town on the banks of the Ganges River. Thrust into an arranged marriage, the two are ambitious yet uncertain of each other—Sagar is a hydraulic engineer, Janavi a worker supporting children in crisis. So, when Sagar lands a civil-service job in Montana, where he’s charged to coordinate the removal of a dam on the Cotton River, trading in a bustling Indian city for Big Sky Country is both a geographic and cultural change. Both experience racist microagressions from the locals, but both also find common ground with them: Janavi in learning about the often troubled women in the area, and Sagar discovering the Native American lore surrounding the river and its echoes of Indian lore. One of the people sharing that world with him is Renny, one of the workers on the dam-­ removal crew, and in due time Sagar is embroiled in a murder mystery involving tribal history, scapegoating, and an orphaned child. Rao’s novel is somewhat oddly bifurcated—what starts as a lit-fic immigrant tale soon acquires the plot and pacing of a crime yarn—but on both fronts it admirably undoes the conventions of the assimilation novel, focusing less on how Sagar and Janavi fit into their new country than on ways they find human connection outside of the notions of being an American.

Interstitial chapters feature fablelike tales of loss and death along rivers in India and Montana across history, suggesting that there are commonalities as deep and long-running as a river, but also buried like sediment and difficult to surface.

A lyrical and propulsive story that makes the most of its double-edged title.

We Loved To Run Reents, Stephanie | Hogarth (336 pp.) $29 | August 26, 2025 | 9780593448069

Six young women, competitive cross-­ country runners, strain to keep their lives on track.

On a Massachusetts college campus in 1992, there are no cheerleaders for the women’s cross-country team. The student-athletes have each other, and they are classic teammates: yoked frenemies and diehard loyalists. A collective narrator takes inventory of the top six: “Chloe is the fastest, and Kristin is the prettiest, and Liv has a boyfriend, and Harriet is the smartest, the most ambitious, and Patricia sees through the bullshit, and Danielle cares the most. She is the most responsible.” (Harriet is also a lesbian, and her subplot is worthy of its own book.) All crave food—unsurprising since the coaches do regular weighins—and both disordered eating and binge-drinking plague the team.

Reents focuses on the characters’ personal and athletic pain, so we don’t know much about their classes or career plans. But the runners, who are sharp and clever, take spirited positions on sexual politics, slippery language, Anita Hill, and Andrea Dworkin.

Over scenic practice runs and social breaks, subsets of the six try to solve each other’s problems, with mixed results. Given this tight focus, we rarely glimpse coaches, parents, professors, or non-jock friends. Team captain Danielle is mostly on her own as she tries to steer her teammates >>> toward top performance, good

A lyrical and propulsive story that makes the most of its double-edged title.

INDIAN COUNTRY

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AWARDS

Author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi won the prize for Heart Lamp.

Heart Lamp, written by Banu Mushtaq and translated by Deepa Bhasthi, is the first story collection to win the International Booker Prize, given annually to a work of fiction translated into English and published in the U.K. or Ireland.

The book, published in April by the independent press And Other Stories, is a collection of 12 stories that center on the lives of girls and women living in southern India. It is the first International Booker Winner to be translated from Kannada, a language spoken in southwestern India.

For more literary awards news, visit Kirkus online.

Booker Prize Foundation

Winners of 2025 International Booker Prize Revealed

Author Max Porter, the chair of judges for this year’s award, said, “These beautiful, busy, life-­ affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary sociopolitical richness of other languages and dialects. It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression.”

Accepting the award at a ceremony in London on May 20, Mushtaq said, “If I may borrow a phrase from my own culture, this moment feels like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky: brief, brilliant, and utterly collective. To even stand among these extraordinary finalists is an honor to me I will never forget.”

The International Booker Prize was established in 2005.

Previous winners include The Vegetarian, written

by Han Kang and translated by Deborah Smith; Flights, written by Olga Tokarczuk and translated by Jennifer Croft; and Kairos, written

by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Michael Hofmann.—M.S.

Banu Mushtaq, left, and Deepa Bhasthi K IR KU S R E V IE W S

B O O K T O S C R E E N // F I C T I O N

Book to Screen

Kaia Gerber To Star in Adaptation of The Shards Ryan Murphy will develop the series based on Bret Easton Ellis’ novel.

Tommaso Boddi/Get t y Images for Prime Video

Bret Easton Ellis’ The Shards is headed to the small screen with Kaia Gerber on board to star, Deadline reports.

Ellis’ novel, published in 2023 by Knopf, follows a character named Bret Ellis, a 17-year-old prep school senior who becomes obsessed with a mysterious new student and starts to suspect that he might have a connection with a serial killer. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a surprisingly seductive work of erotic horror.”

There is no word yet on what character Gerber, the actor known for her roles in the films Bottoms,

For a review of The Shards, visit Kirkus online.

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Saturday Night, and Shell, will be playing in the series.

The show will be developed by Ryan Murphy, the creator of series including Nip/Tuck, Glee, and Pose. Gerber previously worked with Murphy on the series American Horror Story: Double Feature and American Horror Stories.

Max Winkler, who directed episodes of those two series, will helm the Shards adaptation. Murphy, Ellis, and Winkler will be among the adaptation’s executive producers.

Ellis’ novels have been adapted for the screen before. Less Than Zero formed the basis for a 1987 film, while The Rules of Attraction was adapted into a 2002 movie. His controversial novel American Psycho was memorably adapted by Mary Harron in 2000, with Christian Bale starring. A new adaptation of the novel is in the works from director Luca Guadagnino with Austin Butler set to star.—M.S.

Kaia Gerber

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moods, and low drama. Of course, she too is a college student with pressures, and carries her own regrets. The story is told in three parts, two during the season and one as a flashback to Kristin’s previous summer in Boise, where she worked as a barista and met a suspiciously charming man in his late 20s. Here, Reents’ writing ramps up, and the stakes are high. Her descriptions of the Idaho landscape are bewitching, and the dialogue is rivetingly strange. A cross-country veteran herself, Reents brings suspense and precision to the running scenes, putting the reader in the center of the action. The novel’s resolution is anticlimactic, but the heroism of women with a common cause, in a world of men who think they know best, makes for a moving narrative.

A candid portrait of athletes’ endurance and women’s friendships.

The Understudy Richter, Morgan | Knopf (336 pp.) $28 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593685709

An opera singer who has finally gotten her big break is tormented by an understudy who might be trying to kill her.

You don’t need to be an opera fan to follow the plot of Richter’s new suspense novel, which is set in the New York opera world, but you do need to suspend more than a little disbelief. The story follows Kit Margolis, an aspiring singer, who has finally landed the title role in a new and adventurous adaptation of the 1960s Jane Fonda film Barbarella (actually kind of a fun idea) with a chamber opera company. Originally an understudy, Kit secured the part when the original star was cast in La Traviata at the Met. Not everyone in the company is sure Kit can play the part, but she’s determined.

Unfortunately, her sexy new understudy, Yolanda Archambeau, is equally set on ousting Kit from the role by any means necessary, starting with but not limited 26

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An opera singer is tormented by an understudy who might be trying to kill her.

THE UNDERSTUDY

to poisoning her tea and—maybe?— leaving a dead rat with a knife stuck through its body on Kit’s doorstep. As their rivalry escalates, Kit finds herself inexplicably drawn to Yolanda and pulled into her life. Then a murder rocks the opera company, and Kit takes on the role of crusading detective trying to unlock too many dangerous secrets. A character who refuses to go to the cops when she’s sure someone is trying to kill her is required for this particular plot to play out, and Kit’s unlikely behavior is almost certain to try the reader’s patience. What’s even harder to accept is that a struggling opera singer would jump into full detective mode for no particular reason or why she would feel compelled to help someone who has probably been trying to injure or murder her. The book is best early on, when Richter leaves you guessing about Yolanda’s actions, but as motivations become clear, the novel ends on a ridiculous note that falls sadly flat.

An interesting premise that relies too heavily on the reader’s ability to accept the preposterous.

Extinction Capital of the World Rigg, Mariah | Ecco/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $18.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9780063419971

Ten stories set mostly in contemporary Hawaii feature troubled family relationships and the hope of repair.

Rigg’s debut begins in “Target Island” with the detonation in 1948 of a 2,000-pound bomb on Kaho‘olawe. The shock hits a

family living across the channel in Maui: a mother thrown against a stove, a father knocked unconscious, and a baby, Harrison, somehow escaping injury from the shattered glass in his crib. For Harrison, the aftershock becomes his life’s work as he strives to reclaim and clear Kaho‘olawe of bombs, ultimately for his granddaughter, whom he hopes “will bring her own children to this place, will point at the bomb-free earth and say, ‘Your great-grandpa did this.’” Throughout the collection, this hopefulness runs alongside the characters’ sorrow over estranged or failed relationships and the despoiled ecosystems of Hawaii. Characters recur, sometimes as the parent or child of another character, sometimes peripherally, and often unnamed, and the resolution of one story turns out to be provisional in light of events in another. The turbulent mother-­ daughter relationship portrayed in “(Partheno)genesis,” for example, is surprising given the father’s perspective in an earlier tale, and the breakup that devastates a main character of the title story is triggered by the offstage reunion of two characters who had been separated at the conclusion of another story. Among the standouts are the last two entries. In “Poachers,” a young woman worries about an unexpected pregnancy given that her own mother’s love is “a feeling so fragile that she sometimes, in its absence, wondered if it existed”; while helping her boyfriend’s mother poach flowers for sale, she finds another source of love for herself and the child she may have. In the title story, this child, now grown, and her father attempt to reconcile from a falling out with the help of unnamed spirits.

These spirits proclaim that stories do K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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not end, an insight that this collection, refracted through different perspectives over many generations, skillfully illuminates.

This debut collection brilliantly and hopefully contests the finality of any story.

Buff Soul Romanova, Moa | Trans. by Melissa Bowers Fantagraphics Books (240 pp.) | $29.99 August 19, 2025 | 9798875000683

In Romanova’s autobiographical graphic novel, an illustrator joins her musician friend on tour for a kaleidoscopic exploration of growth, friendship, and addiction.

A 26-year-old Swedish illustrator, Moa takes the opportunity to join her friend Åsa’s band on tour through California and Texas. Åsa and Lina’s band, Shitkid, is playing punk shows in small venues. Before embarking on the journey, Moa talks with her friend Sarah about regrets over drunken behavior, and Sarah later shares her journey from no substances to some substance use. Regret over what happens while intoxicated continues to permeate Moa’s life as she continues the tour with Åsa and Lina, but drugs and alcohol are a constant of the touring musician life.

Romanova’s visual style recalls the underground comix styles of the 1970s, which fit well with the rock ‘n’ roll tour lifestyle setting of the story. After a rough night of brawling at a concert and getting driven back to their crash pad by cops, Moa’s debauchery starts to look less like youthful exploration and more like a serious problem. When Åsa disappears from her band duties, Moa recalls a time when she was part of a search party for a woman named Sofia who was found dead. When she finds Åsa and they go home, there’s no glamour left in the tour for Moa. She tries to address Åsa’s out-of-control behavior, but Åsa turns it back around on her friend. For Moa, it was less about K IR KU S R E V IE W S

the drugs and more about indulging in the chaos and inoculating herself from the consequences. Åsa and Moa reaffirm their commitment to their friendship and vow to regain stability. Though the characters skirt up to the edge of the addiction-related horror, they manage to help each other through sticky situations and get home mostly unscathed.

A thoughtful story about the dangers of addiction ends with a hopeful possibility of reinvention.

All This Could Be Yours Ryan, Hank Phillippi | Minotaur (368 pp.) $29 | September 9, 2025 | 9781250349996

While on a book tour, a bestselling author begins to realize the steep price of fame and fortune.

Three years after publicly quitting her job under the hashtag #Moms­ WithDreams, Tessa Calloway has not only spent more time with her young children, she’s also written a bestselling novel about the strong and feisty character Annabelle Brown. But weeks into a national tour, she’s starting to question the balance of what she’s lost against what she’s gained; every day brings a new flight, a new hotel, a new event, and then barely time to FaceTime her husband, Henry, and kids, Linny and Zack, before tumbling into bed and waking at dawn to do it all again. The crowds are flattering, but she’s sliding into overwhelmed. You can’t keep a good storyteller down, though, so when Tessa discovers a delicate locket holding a family picture inside a hotel nightstand, she uses her social media clout to see if she can find “Locket Mom.” Despite the immediate interest of her fans, no news arises, and then Tessa begins to notice odd little incidents that, taken together, seem to point to something possibly more sinister. For one, she keeps getting questions at her events about where she grew up, which is a closely guarded secret because of a “bad thing” in her past. Has someone found out the truth? And if so,

how far will they go to tear her down?

Tessa is a well-developed and likable character, but there’s something a bit off about the rhythm of the novel. It takes a long time to establish a true sense of threat and how it relates to Tessa’s shadowy past, and Tessa’s guilt and paranoia begin to feel wearying, rather than sympathetic. But once the blackmail plot gets going, the pace picks up and the story unspools smoothly. The novel begins by interrogating the “have it all” myth, but twists its way into a thriller by the end.

An uneven pace is elevated by a charismatic and complex main character.

Kirkus Star

A Resistance of Witches Ryan, Morgan | Viking (416 pp.) $30 | July 15, 2025 | 9780593831960

A talented young witch named Lydia Polk finds herself in a race against time to track down the Grimorium Bellum, a book of unspeakable magical power, before it falls into Nazi hands at the height of World War II. As a young girl, Lydia never expected to be accepted into Britain’s elite Royal Academy of Witches, let alone get a chance to use her innate magical abilities to help keep Hitler and his occult-obsessed Nazi followers from getting their hands on dangerous magical items. When an ancient and unspeakably powerful book known as the Grimorium Bellum (“The Book of War”)—rumored to contain spells with the ability to bring about a plague of madness and summon an army of spectral assassins—goes missing from an antiquities collection in the French countryside, it falls to Lydia to track down the tome before it’s too late. When a shocking act of violence sends the older members of the Royal Academy into a tailspin, Lydia is forced to make her way to JULY 1, 2025

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Once again, Silber has served up her unique flavor of reading joy.

Kirkus Star

Mercy Silber, Joan | Counterpoint (256 pp.) | $27 September 2, 2025 | 9781640097070

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France in search of the Grimorium Bellum with little information to go on and a coven of Nazi witches hot on her heels. It’s only with the help of Rebecca, a hotheaded French Resistance fighter, and Henry, a devastatingly handsome Haitian American art historian who wields his own magic, that Lydia learns just how powerful and dangerous the Grimorium is. With fasci­nating worldbuilding set against a rich and thoroughly researched moment in history, this debut novel is nothing short of wildly entertaining; it’s an excellent choice for anyone looking to dip their toes into historical fiction or fantasy, and its urgent pace will have readers in a white-knuckle grip from start to finish.

An exciting, fast-paced blend of historical fiction, spy drama, fantasy, and romance.

The Dance and the Fire Saldaña París, Daniel | Trans. by Christina MacSweeney | Catapult (256 pp.) $27 | July 29, 2025 | 9781646222452

In a pressure cooker of a city, three middle-aged survivors survey the wreckage of their adult lives.

Hallucinatory perception, the ephemeral nature of memory, and the intransience of art all come into play in this triptych of confessions from deepest Mexico. Here, Saldaña París leans less on the tragicomedy of the human condition to craft something a little darker and meaner about damaged people turning their 28

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hurt inward. The opener, “The Great Noise,” is narrated by Natalia, a disaffected and unhappy choreographer who often falls back on cruelty.

She’s back home in Cuernavaca, barely tolerating her lover, Martín Argoitia, an aging art star-turned-­ bureaucrat. She’s become obsessed with an artistic vision that encompasses, among other things, the British occultist Aleister Crowley, hysterical Swedish witch trials, the pioneering German dancer Mary Wigman, and medieval incidents involving a “dancing plague,” all of which she intends to transform into a groundbreaking performance. The pinball of her teenage relationships is explored in subsequent sections with darker and darker undertones. In “A Clear-Cut Vision,” we experience many kinds of suffering via Erre, a failed filmmaker and Natalia’s high school boyfriend, who has returned in the wake of his divorce, suffering from debilitating nerve pain. He’s a cheerful lot, logging his symptoms in a notebook and haunting Cuernavaca’s desiccated parks, now under threat from encroaching wildfires. Erre’s passage ends before Natalia’s performance, but the final section, “Bioluminescent Beach,” visits their childhood friend Conejo, who divides his time between caring for his blind father and retreating further from the world. What exactly happens during Natalia’s performance is a mystery, but weeks later, Conejo describes a country just now recovering from a mass dancing outbreak. It doesn’t make all that much sense but it’s dark as a bad dream and—let’s face it—its slippery nature is certainly part of the point.

The show’s over, ending with not much of an aftermath except ashes and regret.

Silber—the great chronicler of the webs of love and coincidence that connect people— turns her attention to drugs and sex and mercy.

Again here, in her 10th work of fiction, Silber uses her signature form—interconnected stories with a rotating point-of-view—to bound through time and around the globe. The central characters are two pairs of friends, connected by a tiny moment in the emergency room of St. Vincent’s, a long-gone hospital in Greenwich Village.

Ivan and Eddie were inseparable in their 1970s glory days, but part of their connection was that they were drug buddies, and this leads to Ivan making a mistake for which he can never forgive himself. Also involved was Eddie’s girlfriend Ginger, whose later glamorous trajectory projects her image into their lives for decades. The second pair is Cara and Nini, whose chapters glitter with Silberian wisdom about relationships.

When Cara looks back on her wild early romantic history, she notes that “lust was a big deal in the world around [her]; people believed in sex in a way that they don’t quite anymore.” Similarly, anthropology grad student and serial monogamist Nini can’t help but wonder, “How did anyone get anything done with love in the world?” This actually becomes her field of specialization, love and courtship in a group called the Mien based in Thailand and China. The question of whether Ivan and Eddie will reconnect hangs over the book, even as the meaning and limits of mercy are explored. It can be anything from finding you have accidentally stumbled on your guesthouse in Amsterdam after wandering the city’s streets in a stupor, to the grace offered by morphine and opium to the gravely injured, to an insight gleaned during a 12-step K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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meeting: “I’d listened to people overwhelmed by the relief of confessing, blessed by the mercy of untold secrets told.” So…does that mean they reconnect or not? What a sophisticated trick, to create this particular form of suspense and intellectual pleasure.

Once again, Silber has served up her unique flavor of reading joy.

Kirkus Star

Boy From the North Country Sussman, Sam | Penguin Press (336 pp.) $29 | September 16, 2025 | 9780593835050

Losing Mom: heartfelt autofiction from a man who just may be Bob Dylan’s son. “‘Un­canny, the way you look like him. Bob Dylan.

You know his music?’” As soon as you encounter the premise of Sussman’s debut novel, you will surely Google him, and see that his resemblance to the man who wrote “Girl From the North Country” is somewhere beyond uncanny. Sussman has also published an article in Harper’s Magazine that explains the real-life basis of the novel—his mother’s year-long relationship with Dylan and a later meeting nine months before he was born. He magicks this material into a gorgeous, emotionally thrilling first-person novel chronicling the death of the narrator Evan’s mother from cancer, a period during which she finally shares more of the truth about her connection with Dylan, as well as other stories of her life, some terrible and some amazing. All of this has been completely hidden from Evan till now, despite the fact that he and June were very close in his childhood. Their emotional intimacy was built on play-acting and storytelling, on King Arthur and Harry Potter (the Potter saga is a surprising and important touchstone throughout), and also fraught due to her stormy relationships with his stepfather and other men. Despite these romantic K IR KU S R E V IE W S

disappointments, and things far worse than disappointment, June persists in believing, and wanting her son to believe, that there is nothing holier than love. As the novel opens, she has called him in London—Evan has lived abroad since college—to tell him she has cancer, though she withholds the seriousness of her condition for most of the book, continuing to pursue both holistic and Western treatment. The night he arrives, she serves him an alfresco dinner of homegrown vegetables: “The eggplant lay gleaming on its browned back. Beets glowed blood red. Crisped collard and kale lay entangled in the baking tray. In the pan the bloomed popcorn was spiced and golden.” They recite poetry to each other to bless the meal. The love that swells beneath this scene, and every scene, will just about knock you over.

Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory.

Trigger Warning Townsend, Jacinda | Graywolf (360 pp.) | $18 paper | September 16, 2025 | 9781644453544

A woman’s early trauma spirals over decades until middle age, when impending divorce sends her on a cross-­ country journey to reconnect with her sister and their shared past.

Ruth’s red hair, freckles, and light skin often convince people she’s white, although she identifies as Black. She just doesn’t identify with her personal history. Even her attorney husband, Myron, also Black, and their nonbinary child, Enix, don’t know her true origins in California and their accompanying trauma, involving a sibling’s childhood death and her father’s murder by a police officer neighbor. Chapters from the perspectives of different characters, including Myron, Enix, and Ruth’s childhood friend Clarisse, who’s bipolar, slowly

reveal background—not for readerly suspense, but to demonstrate how distanced Ruth is from her past. She and her family live in Louisville, Kentucky, where Enix attends an all-girls private school that they chose but now loathe. The author highlights constant microaggressions the family faces partly through the lens of Myron’s best friend, Anthony, a white fellow lawyer who tries way too hard to seem Black—and whose friendship to both Myron and Ruth matters to the deliberately tangled plot. After Ruth and Myron’s house burns down, she files for divorce and takes Enix on a cross-country car trip so poorly planned and executed that the teen chooses to fly home to her father rather than meet her unknown aunt, Wendy, in Sacramento. Whether it’s Myron’s skepticism about his new girlfriend, Paulina; Clarisse’s boredom with a psych ward’s activities; or the loving welcome Wendy offers Ruth, each character’s attitudes and actions resonate with authentic observation that speaks to the author’s dedication page which lists several dozen names (including that of Breonna Taylor) “and the incalculable number of others who’ve suffered and died under the heel of state-sponsored terrorism since the very inception of the state. And for their families, and their communities, and all of us who struggle to heal.”

An unusual novel that will challenge readers and keep them alert to how complex PTSD can affect people years into the future.

Our Secrets Were Safe Trench, Virginia | Crown (352 pp.) $28 | July 15, 2025 | 9780593798522

Four women lived together at Yale.

Three graduated— and one died.

Twenty years later, it may be payback time.

Then: Sofia Eliades grew up on Nantucket, but without the trappings of wealth.

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When she met Caroline Archer one summer, however, her life changed, and for a few magical years, it seemed like she had found the friend—and more—of her dreams. But once Brooke Winters transfers from Brown and joins Caroline, Sofia, and their friend Jenna at Yale, Sofia sees her position supplanted by Brooke’s effortless wealth and class. So she hatches a plan to dethrone Brooke and get Caroline back, with the help of Caroline’s debauched artist brother, Leo. Now: Brooke and Caroline are struggling to find professional success—and Sofia is dead, killed in a car crash that also killed another woman. Jenna, a successful surgeon married to Caroline’s former boyfriend, is sitting on secrets of her own.

When they all begin to receive messages from “Sofia,” it’s clear that the sins of the past are finally coming home to roost. Though there is no suggestion of anything supernatural, the mystery of who is tormenting the women—who wants them dead—takes place simultaneously through both timelines. And as expected, every single character has a secret so dark, or perhaps a revenge wish so visceral, that they would kill for it. The twists and turns and reveals are skillfully paced, and despite leaning on some character tropes, the novel has a lot of salient commentary on relationships—particularly when it comes to toxic men. The women might be dissolute in various ways, but at least their personalities are not restricted to their flaws. We understand at least some of their motives and desires, while the men around them misbehave and get away with it. At the end of it all, Trench is calling the men to account—and to punishment.

A confident and wickedly sinuous debut.

Middle Spoon Varela, Alejandro | Viking (336 pp.) | $30 September 9, 2025 | 9780593835173

A married man in an open relationship grieves his first breakup.

National Book Award finalist Varela’s new novel is told primarily through letters from an unnamed narrator to his former boyfriend. At the behest of one of his therapists, he begins drafting the emails in an effort to navigate their sudden breakup. The narrator, who has never felt heartbreak before, is left entirely unmoored and devastated. The novel’s seemingly straightforward conceit begins to shift as the rest of the narrator’s life comes into focus: He is happily married to his husband, has two children (one of whom is nonbinary), lives in Brooklyn, has an active social life, and works as a public health researcher and professor.

Until recently, he was also in a polyamorous relationship with Ben, who likewise lives in Brooklyn and is nearly a decade younger. A whirlwind romance that deepened quickly into love, their relationship was great until the moment Ben dumped the narrator unceremoniously. Nearly swallowed by grief, he fills his overwhelmingly vulnerable letters with sorrow, pining, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, tangents, gay history, therapy speak, pop-culture diatribes, and everything in between.

In one of the earliest emails, the narrator posits: “Maybe there’s something worthwhile in unorthodox relationships and atypical family structures. Maybe the world should adapt to us and not us to it.” Brushing

A touching yet provocative queer love story about defying expectations.

MIDDLE SPOON

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up against social norms, the narrator dreams of a world that is not quite ready for them. In one letter, he remembers the half-serious joke his husband made about him wearing a T-shirt that says “My husband knows I’m cheating on him.” In another, he writes to his son about the bittersweet reality of being pioneers: “Those of us perched on the tips of branches have unique viewpoints of the forest.” The novel explores the beautiful complexity of unorthodox, progressive family dynamics with tenderness and humor in equal measure.

A touching yet provocative queer love story about defying societal expectations.

Lonely Crowds Wambugu, Stephanie | Little, Brown (304 pp.) $28 | July 29, 2025 | 9780316581332

An artist contemplates her complex relationship with her best friend.

Wambugu’s debut novel opens with Ruth, a successful painter, grappling with the absence of her friend: “When I met Maria, I learned that without an obsession life was impossible to live.” The rest of the novel moves back in time to unravel the roots of that obsession. Their story opens in their poor Pawtucket, Rhode Island, neighborhood when Ruth—the quiet, sheltered daughter of emotionally distant Kenyan immigrants—meets Maria, a gifted Panamanian orphan staying with her mentally ill aunt.

Nearly a decade later, the girls graduate from their Catholic high school and attend Bard College, a small liberal arts school in New York’s Hudson Valley, to study art: painting and film, respectively. As Maria carves out a space within the overwhelmingly rich and white social circles, Ruth finds herself on the outskirts of her friendship with Maria—and even her own life. When Ruth, Maria, and Sheila, Maria’s wealthy girlfriend, move to New York K IR KU S R E V IE W S

FICTION

City after graduation, a gulf begins to open between the friends. While Ruth struggles to make her art and a living, Maria continues to find professional and social success. Their hard-to-define relationship faces the ultimate test when they have to decide what, if anything, they are willing to give up for each other. The novel shows all the ways that their friendship—warm and cold, tender and terrible—exists in the area between extremes. Maria takes up an outsized space in Ruth’s life, and Ruth allows herself to be at the whims of Maria’s wants or needs. Despite hurting each other, they are bonded in a way that only long-term female friends seem capable of—and this novel distills this dynamic with devastating precision.

Writing beautifully about ambition, class, art, domesticity, identity, and complacency, Wambugu’s prose is as striking as it is sure.

A heartbreaking and penetrating coming-of-age debut.

Seven Reasons To Murder Your Dinner Guests Whittle, KJ | Sourcebooks Landmark (352 pp.) | $17.99 paper | September 9, 2025 9781464242403

A group of strangers find their lives irrevocably intertwined after each one receives a note at an anonymously hosted gathering with mortally chilling information.

When seven Londoners meet at a posh underground dinner party on a street “reek[ing] of disappointment,” most believe they have walked into a PR stunt. The party stops being entertaining when mysterious black envelopes appear in front of each guest containing cards inscribed with the age each person will be when they die.

In a narrative that shifts among the perspectives of the seven dinner guests, Whittle creates a story that probes her characters’ psychology as it pays homage to Agatha Christie’s classic K IR KU S R E V IE W S

An engaging whodunit that explores the deadly side of karmic retribution.

SEVEN REASONS TO MURDER YOUR DINNER GUESTS

1939 murder mystery, And Then There Were None. After three of the dinner party invitees die at exactly the ages predicted, one especially inquisitive and astute guest, Vivienne, surmises that the deaths—which at first seem tragically accidental—were more likely the work of a murderous mastermind.

Her hunch only gets stronger when she hypothesizes that the anthropomorphic depictions of the seven deadly sins she saw on each diner’s card offered a clue to the identity of the “devil” committing the crimes. She and the remaining guests scramble in quiet dread to “make the most” of the time before their number is up, never suspecting that the very person they fear is closer at hand and more aware of their secrets than they could ever imagine. Readers with a penchant for colorful characters, twisty plots, and surprise reveals will find this novel of suspense especially satisfying.

An engaging whodunit that explores the deadly side of karmic retribution.

Hothouse Bloom Wohlers, Austyn | Hub City Press (208 pp.) $24 | August 26, 2025 | 9798885740500

A young woman inherits an apple orchard and sets out to realign her life with the rhythms of the natural world.

Anna, a former painter in her late 20s, has inherited a remote apple orchard upon her grandfather Joe’s death. Joe was a distant figure, yet in the lush, permaculture farm Joe has left her, Anna finds not only traces of her grandfather’s

essential warmth, but also a path forward into a “world of immense gentleness” where she can “expand her understanding of a single instant out into infinitude.” In the solitude and constant labor of the orchard, Anna feels she is progressing toward a kind of perfection found in a deliberate and “fundamental rearrangement of the world.” This idyll is interrupted by the arrival of Jan, a peripatetic friend from her old life, and the lurking presences of Gil and Tamara, experienced neighbors who are helpful in running the orchard but also express a proprietary feeling toward her land and the way they think she should be farming it. Jan’s inability to understand the “inhuman anonymity with which [Anna is] living” destabilizes the psychic connection Anna feels with the orchard, yet the real threat to her new life comes when the practical needs of the harvest force Anna to bring more people in to work, reframing the land as a monetized business and changing Anna’s relationship to the beings who inhabit it. Gorgeous, erudite, and ungoverned, the book suffers from some of the same unhappiness as its main character. The demands it makes on the reader to navigate its often overwrought, or simply untranslatable, ethos betrays what seems to be its originating impulse: to resist the call to “decipher…the world” and instead let form and technique “leach waterily into one another, like salt and soil.” A little less—fewer similes, fewer flights of transcendental thought, fewer iterations of the orchard’s inhuman beauty—would have given the reader more to work with when the novel reached its conclusion.

Ambitious in scope, serious of purpose, yet lacking a distinctness that would have allowed all its facets to shine.

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SPONSORED CONTENT

SECOND LOOK

Indigo

Kwong, Chi-Ho

This review originally ran in the June 15, 2025 issue.

A niche journalist investigates her mentor’s murder in Kwong’s speculative graphic novel.

Ella Summer writes for an occult publication called Mars, covering urban legends, reptilian conspiracy theories, and other stories for which there is no proof. (As her editor likes to tell his reporters, “To have proof is called science, not the occult!”) When one of Ella’s former university professors dies mysteriously of apparent starvation, she drops what she’s working on to investigate. Professor Wilhelm was conducting research on humanity’s origins that challenged the theory of

evolution, and he shared a special quality with Ella: the ability to communicate telepathically with plants and animals. Could this ability have any connection to the suspicious circumstances of his death? Her investigation soon draws the attention of certain men dressed in black, who apparently visited Wilhelm shortly before his death; Ella’s editor warns her off the case, protesting that it’s too dangerous. With the help of her co-worker Gene, Ella presses on and discovers the professor’s notebook, which is filled with information about so-called Indigo Children— aliens sent from distant stars to

Illus. by Chi-Kit Kwong | Nakama Press | 216 pp. | $10.99 paper May 20, 2025 | 9781545819036

help Earth in some unknown way whose inability to adapt to the planet often makes them depressed or even suicidal. Could the professor have been one of these Indigo Children? Could Ella? And if she is, how is she meant to save the world—and would she even want to? The book’s standout feature is the truly transportive illustration work of Chi-Kit Kwong, which is both richly textured and filled with arresting, memorable imagery. Some of the author’s sentences are slightly awkward (case in point: “To have proof

is called science”), but the story is engaging and filled with fun twists, particularly once the outlandish conspiracy theories of the magazine begin to overlap with Ella’s quest to understand the professor’s death. Despite the nods to contemporary urban legends, this world feels entirely original, and it’s one that readers will want to return to after the volume ends.

A stunning, immersive, and thought-provoking mystery that plays with modern esoterica.

F I C T I O N // M Y S T E R Y

Nightswimming Anagnos, Melanie | High Frequency Press (322 pp.) | $19.95 paper June 26, 2025 | 9781962931151

A patrol officer hungry for advancement gets his first shot at detective work in 1979 Paterson, New Jersey.

As they’re closing down RJ’s Taproom after another routine night, co-owner Randall Low and waitress/dancer Cindy Kaczorek are shot to death. Their killer escapes without touching the cash register, leaving the Paterson Police Department to wonder whether something interrupted a planned robbery or the motive was something entirely different. Sgt. Gregg Bachman, who’s been handed the case, calls on Officer Jamie Palmieri to help out. Jamie’s job is to tag along on interviews, take careful notes, and keep a sharp eye out for anything Bachman might miss. After three years working patrol shifts, Jamie jumps at the chance to stretch his wings, and he proves his value by picking up the clues that lead to further witnesses. But none of them, from Connie De Carlo, Cindy’s high school drama teacher, to Sandy Santasiera, Cindy’s best friend, can explain why Cindy was shot before Randall Low. The most likely suspect—Cindy’s boyfriend, Brad Rogan—was in jail at the time of the shooting. And the apparently unrelated murder of Drew Steinle demands investigation by a unit that’s already overworked. The killer, who knows better than Jamie that the walls are closing in on him, follows the officer’s flashy car around and tracks him to the house his Aunt Ro left him, where he plans an attack on Jamie and Missy Hollum, the bar pickup he’s taken under his roof. The mystery isn’t that mysterious, but debut novelist Anagnos sweats so many procedural details of Jamie’s painstaking investigation that you’ll sweat along with him.

The real star of this show is Paterson, which feels as menacing, vivid, and multilayered as Walter Mosley’s Watts.

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Benn’s series grows in depth and complexity with every installment.

A BITTER WIND

A Bitter Wind Benn, James R. | Soho Crime (384 pp.) $28.95 | September 23, 2025 | 9781641296465

Could a military serial killer be hiding in plain sight within the ranks?

In U.S. Army Capt. Billy Boyle’s 20th adventure, more is more: more history, more mystery, a depiction of World War II that spans all of Europe, and deepening portraits of the series regulars. It all begins as a traditional whodunit, with the discovery of a body on the White Cliffs of Dover. Billy is stationed in France but spending the 1944 Christmas holidays in England with his girlfriend, Capt. Diana Seaton, who’s posted with the Royal Air Force in her homeland. They discover the body, still warm, while on a casual walk. Evidence points to the murder of Major Frederick Brockman of the U.S. Air Force, who’s recently discovered missing munitions.

Interviews to gather evidence follow, as does a second victim: Flight Sgt. David Cohen, who, like Brockman, was Jewish. Could antisemitism be the real motive? Series fans who miss Polish Lt. Piotr Kazimierz, Billy’s sidekick throughout all the previous installments, will rejoice when Kaz belatedly appears, offering solid support as well as reports of the war effort on the European mainland. Historical accuracy has always been an outstanding feature of the series, which provides information about the larger context of the war along with bits of interesting trivia. This time, the story is brightened

by RAF intelligence officer Jean Conan Doyle, a daughter of Sherlock Holmes’

creator, who helps Billy in his investigation, as well as a cameo appearance by an American B-24 pilot, South Dakota’s own George McGovern.

Benn’s hard-hitting series grows in depth and complexity with every installment.

Carved in Blood Bennett, Michael | Atlantic Monthly (384 pp.) $27 | July 15, 2025 | 9780802164544

Māori cop Hana Westerman, who quit the Auckland police force, rejoins it to find the man who shot her ex-husband.

Hana’s remarried (but still loved) ex, DI Jaye Hamilton, is critically wounded in a liquor store by a hooded assailant posing as a random holdup guy. He is quickly identified as Toa Davis, a young Māori, through the discovery of seemingly clear-cut evidence including a getaway car. After talking with Toa’s pregnant girlfriend, who angrily says he would never hurt anyone, that he’s a caring partner, Hana becomes convinced the shooting was a setup—that Jaye was targeted by someone who had it in for him, possibly from his days as an undercover cop. It’s all hands on deck as Hana teams up with ace senior cop Elisa Williams, a Samoan; wounded cop Stan Riordan, who has been overloading on steroids to pass a physical to get his detective badge back; and Hana and Jaye’s incorrigible, newly engaged daughter, Addison. They’re all strong characters, but the plot, which involves a nasty drug gang, often takes a back seat to appreciations of traditional Māori K IR KU S R E V IE W S

M Y S T E R Y // F I C T I O N

tattooing and information about the high incarceration rate of New Zealand’s Indigenous people, among other things.

But though Bennett, who is of Māori and Te Arawa descent, is more committed to celebrating family and community ties than crafting a suspenseful mystery, his lively and likable narrative style makes up for much of that. Fans of the series, including Return to Blood (2024), will look forward to the next installment, which promises to resolve this one’s dangling ending.

An entertaining novel that’s better at celebrating Māori culture than solving crimes.

Throwing Shadows Booth, Claire | Severn House (240 pp.) $29.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781448313884

A series of murders in a forest with a historically bad reputation gives Branson County, Missouri, Sheriff Hank Worth and his team all they can handle.

Hank has been dealing with family problems ever since his mother-in-law was murdered and he had to consider his father-in-law a suspect. When a motorist finds a hiker, Mingo Culver, raving in the road, Deputy Sam Karnes steps in to question him about the corpse he claims to have seen in the woods. Sam thinks he knows what the man is raving about. There’s a local spot known as Murder Rocks; most recently a hangout for local teens, during the Civil War it was a place where travelers moving north through the area were attacked, robbed, and murdered by infamous bushwacker Alf Bolin. The site has long been rumored to contain Bolin’s buried treasure, and although people have searched for it before, the podcast Hidden Hoards has unleashed a sudden influx of treasure seekers looking for a cache of gold larger than anyone had suspected. Hank and Sam find a bloody hatchet, but it takes dogs to find the body, which turns out to be two bodies. Both belong to people who were K IR KU S R E V IE W S

apparently searching the woods, and both their backpacks are missing.

Hank’s chief deputy, Sheila Turley, a computer wizard, is tracing the background of the legend and all those podcast fans, some of whom are well-prepared researchers and others treasure-seeking amateurs wandering the woods. Although the treasure hunters might seem to have greater cause to kill their competition, Hank thinks the situation is much more complicated.

A well-done police procedural whose historical background provides extra interest.

Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library Chapman, Amanda | Berkley (368 pp.) $29 | August 26, 2025 | 9780593818817

Agatha Christie, who died in 1976, returns to solve some present-day mysteries.

Tory Van Dyne, a book conservator at Manhattan’s Mystery Guild Library, lives in an apartment on the top two floors of the Greenwich Village townhouse left to her by her grandmother; the building also houses the library and Tory’s basement workshop.

When a woman claiming to be Mrs. Max Mallowan, aka Agatha Christie, appears in the Agatha Christie room—a replica of the author’s library in Devon—offering to solve a murder mystery, Tory thinks she’s a wandering nut job, albeit one who’s capable of trading esoteric Christie quotations with her. But in fact Agatha, who finds eternity dull, has been granted leave to solve a mystery, such as the one presented by Tory’s lookalike cousin, Nicola. Unlike the flamboyant Nic, Tory is quiet, and she’s no fan of Nic’s friend and fellow actress, the entitled Sailor Savoie. Nic thinks someone’s poisoned Bertram, her agent Howard Calhoun’s pug, and she suspects Sailor.

Nic, Sailor, and their mutual friend, Wren, had starred in the off-Broadway

version of Beauty and the Beast, and Nic’s desperate to land a part in the planned movie. Sharp-eyed Agatha notices that Nic’s wearing earrings made from the seeds of a plant that could have poisoned Bertram. When Nic turns up with handsome detective Sebastian Mendez-Cruz, Tory learns that Howard’s been pushed to his death in the subway. Eager for advice, Tory tells head librarian Adrian Gooding the story of Agatha, but he dismisses it as nonsense. Upon the death of Sailor, supposedly of food poisoning, Tory, Adrian, Nic, and eventually Sebastian get together with Agatha to explore means and motives.

Fans of the Queen of Crime will delight in this modernized classic mystery, heavily laden with Christie lore.

Deeds Left Undone Crosby, Ellen | Severn House (240 pp.) $29.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781448311613

A vineyard owner with deep roots in Virginia hunt country encounters another murder.

Between an impending storm and an accident that’s sidelined one of their right-hand men, Lucie Montgomery and her husband, Quinn Santori, have their hands full managing the grape harvest. Then another problem is brought to Lucie’s attention by Francesca Merchant, who runs the selling side of the operation. Frankie’s husband, Paul, has just had a disturbing meeting with Nash Blake, head of a family-owned home construction and design business. Nash wants the area’s dirt roads to be paved so he can build more houses, but others are fed up with the development creeping over Loudoun County, beloved by tourists and horse people. Paul had taken over the late Violet Rossi’s plan to have the roads put on the National Register of Historic Places, which infuriated Nash. When Paul is found dead in his pool, what at first looks like an JULY 1, 2025

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accident starts to seem suspicious to Lucie when she finds one clean glass in the kitchen and later a shard of another glass turns up, suggesting that Paul was not alone. Soon after Frankie gives Lucie a briefcase full of plans about the paving, Lucie agrees to take over Paul’s crusade. It seems odd that both Paul and Violet, who was in a car crash, died in accidents, and Lucie insists that Sheriff Bobby Noland, her best friend’s husband, take a closer look. Going through Paul’s briefcase, Lucie finds not only copious notes from Violet and Paul but also a picture and story about Nash Blake’s grandmother, an actress who died in a 1941 fire, another suspicious accident that may prove the key to solving several well-disguised murders.

The obvious motives may not be the answer, giving the heroine plenty to ponder.

There Will Be Bodies Davis, Lindsey | Minotaur (368 pp.) $30 | July 22, 2025 | 9781250906731

Beneath the detritus of Mount Vesuvius lurk corpses and dark secrets.

A decade after the devastating eruption in 79 C.E., veteran investigator Flavia Albia’s uncle Tullius Icilius has shrewdly obtained a promising property in remote Stabiae on the Bay of Neapolis at a bargain price. The acquisition of this fixer-upper is coincidentally a potential godsend for Flavia and her husband, Tiberius Manlius, whose building company teeters on the edge of insolvency. This property, though, requires more than the usual heroic measures, for chained to the walls inside the partially damaged villa are a number of corpses. The righteous Flavia is incensed by this clear evidence of murder, or at least inhumane and reprehensible behavior, but her outrage is met with indifference, fear, 36

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Beneath the detritus of Mount Vesuvius lurk corpses and dark secrets.

THERE WILL BE BODIES

and condescension. Not one to back down from a challenge, Flavia begins an ambitious probe to excavate the truth and discovers an even more ominous tableau suggestive of murder. Her 13th adventure is arguably her most complex and layered, grounded in a momentous historical event but also touching on issues of class, misogyny, and the tensions between urban and rural communities in addition to its central mystery. It is also Flavia’s first case set outside the city of Rome, providing Davis the opportunity to exercise her considerable research skills in offering a vivid picture of the wider Empire.

On the way to the intricate solution, Davis folds in several other subplots with historic roots. A detailed prefatory chart cheekily headed “Characters, mainly alive” helps immensely in keeping the tangled story and its large cast straight.

Historical fiction of high quality, propelled by an intricate whodunit.

Her First Mistake Elliot, Kendra | Montlake (347 pp.) $28.99 | June 10, 2025 | 9781662525773

Thirteen years after the unsolved murder of her husband, Noelle Marshall is back in a new role that comports uneasily with the old.

Derrick Bell seemed destined for great things even before he was elected to the California state legislature. His wealthy parents, Stan and Catherine Bell, had appointed him; his brother, Jason; and his sister, Lora, as

vice presidents in their company. The only blot in Derrick’s perfect portrait was Noelle, whom Catherine looked down on as a fortune hunter from the wrong side of the tracks. The family’s dreams crashed when Derrick was bashed to death in his palatial home outside Sacramento. FBI agents Alice Patmore and Oscar Wilson, who worked the case, could never convince themselves that Noelle, who also suffered a serious head wound that night, had arranged her own widowhood, and they were deaf to Jason’s insistence that Brendon Simon, who’d briefly been married to Noelle 24 years earlier, was the killer. By the time the authorities decide to reopen the case, Noelle, a detective with the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Department, would be an obvious choice to help on the case if she weren’t still a suspect.

Although Noelle’s close to her sisters, Eve and Lucia Marshall, nothing’s brought her any closer to her late husband’s family. In fact, the most promising relation she develops is with FBI investigator Max Rhodes. Elliot is clearly more interested in launching a new franchise than in spinning a tightly wound mystery, and some readers will be more puzzled about what happened on that fatal night after the big reveal than before.

Let’s hope the promised sequels will give the heroine more breathing room to investigate murders in other people’s families.

For more by Kendra Elliot, visit Kirkus online.

K IR KU S R E V IE W S

M Y S T E R Y // F I C T I O N

Death and the Librarian

The Rushworth Family Plot

Gilbert, Victoria | Crooked Lane (304 pp.) $29.99 | July 8, 2025 | 9798892420464

Gray, Claudia | Vintage (336 pp.) | $18 paper | June 17, 2025 | 9780593686607

A past disappearance may provide the impetus for a current murder in Taylorsford, Virginia.

In the time she’s not spending wrangling her 6-year-old twins, Taylorsford Library director Amy Muir is busy with an arts festival and the premiere performance of her husband Richard’s new dance company. The Friends of the Library association has invited true-crime author Maureen Dryden to speak at their book sale; her best-known book claims to have solved the still officially unsolved murder of a woman named Beverly Baron. Maureen is accompanied to town by her assistant, Sean Gordon, along with Terrell Temkin and Mindy LaSalle, podcasters collaborating on her new book, an anthology of cold cases including the disappearance of low-level drug dealer Edward Jaffe from the Taylorsford area.

She tells her audience that her research has turned up a couple of names—Delbert Frye and Karl Klass—and asks whether anyone knows them. That request will have fatal consequences.

Frye is a recluse who still lives in the area, and Klass, a former drug dealer, has transformed himself into wealthy art dealer Kurt Kendrick. Kurt is a friend of the Muirs and Amy’s Aunt Lydia, whose first husband, a famous artist, was Kurt’s close friend in their youth. When Maureen is found dead in her hotel room, the sheriff, suspecting that her death may be connected to the cold case, asks Amy to research Jaffe.

Maureen’s book on the Baron murder accused a man named Allen Cardullo, who then died by suicide, opening the possibility of a revenge killing. Amy’s investigation leads to threatening notes and reveals unwelcome connections to her own family.

A pair of unlikely sleuths face yet another murder in Regency England.

Born more than a century too early to be formally diagnosed, Jonathan Darcy, the son of Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Bennet Darcy, has all the hallmarks of autism spectrum disorder: dislike of noise and crowds, discomfort with social interactions, avoidance of eye contact. Fortunately, his family’s wealth and prominence keep his neurodivergence from damaging his value on the 19th-century marriage market. When his parents arrange an invitation for Jonathan to stay in London with Sir Thomas Bertram’s family while they tend to his injured brother, a bevy of eligible young ladies are eager to meet him at this season’s round of balls. Jonathan, however, is fixated on Miss Juliet Tilney of Gloucestershire, a young woman of superior intellect who has collaborated with the perceptive Jonathan in solving several crimes.

His frustration at being parted from Miss Tilney subsides temporarily when she too is brought unwillingly to the city by a parent hoping to find her a marriage partner. But not even a murder in Sir Thomas’ surprisingly chaotic household enables the pair to cement their relationship. Their investigation into the death of Sir Thomas’ disgraced sister Maria’s former husband, freely sanctioned by the overburdened London police, permits them frequent contact, but objections from both sets of parents prevent them from declaring their affection. Their latest adventure joins a whodunit to an exploration of what it takes to make a family, as the two quirky young mutual admirers struggle to create a lasting bond.

Given all those motives and possible killers, the librarian’s research is the key to solving the case.

K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Part Bridgerton and part Monk, Gray’s latest has something for everyone.

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes Jackson-Opoku, Sandra | Minotaur (336 pp.) $28 | July 29, 2025 | 9781250351906

A woman fights to keep her restaurant afloat against all odds.

Savvy Summers’ family was part of the Black migration from Mississippi to Chicago, and it’s her great-aunt Essie’s recipes that make Sapphire Summers Soulfood Café and Catering Company, aka Essie’s, a hit.

At the 50th anniversary party Savvy and her sous-chef, Penny, cater for Matilda and Grandy Jaspers, the food disappears faster than you can say “soul food.” But the gossip and longtime grudges that hang over the event make Matilda unhappy. Grandy, still bitter over disputed songwriting credits, is unashamed when pregnant young Shysteen Shackleford shows up, hinting that Grandy might be the father. The next morning, Grandy shows up at Essie’s looking ill, and after breakfast, he falls over dead. By the time Savvy caters the funeral, rumors are already spreading that her sweet potato pie was the cause of his death. To top it off, the Department of Health shuts down Essie’s while they investigate. But Savvy’s not about to give up, even though Noble McPherson keeps pressuring her to sell the restaurant and franchise it as a soul food brand. Savvy’s still suspicious about Grandy’s death, and the official ruling of heart failure doesn’t revive the business. To make matters worse, her alderman, Delbert Daily, who’s already under investigation for a multitude of crimes, won’t help her. When the real cause of Grandy’s death turns out to be an overdose of Viagra, Savvy turns to her ex-husband, police officer Fanon, and his ex-partner for help deciding which of a long list of people most wanted Grandy dead.

A surfeit of suspects in a charming mystery filled with quirky characters whose Southern roots influence their daily lives.

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Homemaker Knox, Ruthie & Annie Mare | Thomas & Mercer (300 pp.) | $16.99 paper June 1, 2025 | 9781662530906

Sometimes it takes a homemaker to solve a convoluted murder case.

Prairie Nightingale’s business card says “Homemaker,” but the divorced, sharp-­eyed mother of two has more ambitious plans for her life in Green Bay, Wisconsin. While waiting for her kids at school pickup, Prairie wonders why her former friend Amber Jenkins is carrying a very expensive handbag when her car has a broken taillight and her phone has a broken screen. Prairie used to be a member of a mothers’ group until she revealed that the popular Dr. Nathan Carmichael was sexually abusing his patients, causing a major scandal in Green Bay and turning Prairie into a pariah. She still has a good relationship with her ex-husband, Greg, but she’s realized that he took her considerable skills for granted during their unequal marriage. When local mom Lisa Radcliffe goes missing, Prairie gets a chance to prove her chops as an investigator. Why would someone as happy and well-off as Lisa disappear?

Although Prairie’s always liked Lisa, who made serious money as a person high up the line of people selling Kitty Blue products, she quickly learns that the people below Lisa are losing money and the FBI is investigating the business. She manages to get on the fringe of her former group by organizing a vigil for Lisa, where the police announce that they’ve found her vehicle but not her. Along the way, she catches the attention of attractive FBI agent Foster Rosemare. He warns her against sleuthing, but her keen eye and local contacts dredge up a lot of information he might never have learned, and their quixotic partnership leads to both a killer and a promising relationship.

Behind all those motives for murder is a clear-eyed look at the enduring inequality between men and women.

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Felonious thespians undertake their most daring caper yet.

THE FACE STEALER

A Ghostwriter’s Guide to Murder Mullet, Melinda | Crooked Lane (320 pp.) $19.99 paper | July 29, 2025 | 9798892422512

A ghostwriter who makes her home on the Thames makes a discovery that brings her personal life uncomfortably close to her fiction.

Though she’s not crazy about her current assignment, writing the 43rd installment of the Simon Hill mysteries for Harlan Oak, who suffers from early-onset dementia, Maeve Gardner is thankful that she can work from her home aboard the Writer’s Revenge, a boat moored in the Regent’s Canal. Her good luck seems to be mounting when she discovers £50,000 hidden inside a dock tire her dog, Captain Jack, is chewing on. Not taking any chances, though, she decides to tell the police about the hidden money. But when DS Kevin Dixon and DC Ayesha Gray come to look for the money, it’s gone; the only thing they find in the canal is the body of plumber Gavin Foster, who just happens to be Maeve’s ex-lover. Clearly, Maeve realizes, Gav had stashed the cash there and was killed when he returned to retrieve it. But that’s not at all clear to Dixon, who promptly arrests her for the murder, releases her when he’s pressed by solicitor Julian Davis, the brother of Maeve’s best friend, India Davis, and then arrests her again as the evidence mounts against her. Since her Wiccan neighbors in one adjoining slip will obviously prove no help, it’s up to Ashley Warren, the IT expert on the other side, to rescue her, first from the authorities, then from the killer. It definitely helps that Gav, who’d taken a new lover, tattoo artist Vicky Shaw, was also in bed with a bunch of

construction-connected crooks, and that Ash is an ex-cop whose dedication to the case is fueled by his secret love for Maeve.

None of the promising original touches Mullet supplies go anywhere.

The result is a sad lack of surprise.

The Face Stealer Rayne, Sarah | Severn House (288 pp.) $29.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781448314027

Felonious thes­ pians undertake their most daring and audacious caper yet.

Apparently, in 1909, the theatrical Fitzglen family has become as infamous for its thievery as famous for its performances, because a man named Mikhail Volkov comes to London’s Amaranth Theatre and sits through their mediocre performance of The Importance of Being Earnest as the prelude to a desperate appeal: He needs their help in locating a set of priceless Stone Heads (“You’ve given them capital letters,” says Jack Fitzglen) that were once locked away in a monastery in the Ural Mountains. Volkov, accused of stealing them, may face imprisonment if he can’t produce them. It’s quite an ask for author Rayne’s crazy clan, but they have an additional connection. In the latest of Rayne’s double-decker plots, Fitzglen ancestor “Highwayman Harry” is linked to the Heads in the 1770s. This backstory of the Heads is presented via Harry’s odyssey and the journal of none other than Catherine the Great, while the brash, hedonistic Fitzglens undertake the more recent adventure of snagging the Heads. In the first of many outrageous twists, Catherine and Harry become lovers. The audacity of counterpointing the exalted Russian empress with a band of earthy thespians is K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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fundamental to the novel’s appeal. The colloquial Fitzglen banter, studded with theatrical references, plays nicely against Catherine’s elegant literary style and the more formal third-person narrative of Harry’s quest. An illuminating author’s note adds historical perspective and insight into Rayne’s process.

A raucous mystery romp studded with historic flourishes.

Broke Road Spencer, Matthew | Thomas & Mercer (347 pp.) $16.99 paper | July 8, 2025 | 9781662512537

A Sydney sleuth solves a baffling murder and continues her charged relationship with an ambitious reporter.

New South Wales homicide detective Rose Riley is roused in the middle of the night to investigate a strangulation in remote Red Creek, a burgeoning burg outside Sydney that’s earning a reputation among wine connoisseurs. The victim is Penny Armytage, whose husband, Nigel, a mining geologist, came home from working late to discover her body. Riley’s second case follows a familiar template enhanced by its offbeat setting, a cast of crisply depicted supporting characters, and a handful of departures from the formula. Riley and her partner-cum-confidant, Priya Patel, have a buoyant chemistry that spills over from the professional to the personal. Can they trust overeager local cop Christian Rodrigues? Spencer devotes nearly equal time to the perspective of Adam Bowman, an ambitious writer who, aspiring to be a new Capote, is investigating on his own.

The prospect of a relationship simmers tantalizingly under Adam’s interactions with Rose. Armytage’s opposition to fracking may have provided a motive, and several forensic details suggest that she knew her killer. Riley questions an array of suspects linked to the victim through her job as a digital marketing freelancer and her personal life, but none emerges as a frontrunner. Theories abound; was K IR KU S R E V IE W S

environmentalist Penny chafing at Nigel’s work as a geologist? Riley knows she’s ruffling feathers when she notices that her room has been searched. An additional murder with a similar modus operandi accelerates the investigation.

This character-driven whodunit rolls slowly but ultimately satisfies.

An Enemy in the Village Walker, Martin | Knopf (304 pp.) $28 | July 1, 2025 | 9780593536643

Forget the latest sudden death in St. Denis. The real story here is the torching of police Chief Bruno Courrèges.

It’s Bruno himself who finds Monique Duhamel dead in her car, parked in an overlook near La Peyrière. The “super-concierge,” whose partnership provided a wide range of services to the owners of expansive estates, had increased her own wealth in every area except domestically. She’d recently suffered a miscarriage that would have provided a plausible motive for her suicide from an overdose of painkillers even if she hadn’t left behind farewell letters to her husband, Dominic d’Estringen; her attorney, Rebecca Weil; and her longest-standing partner, Laura Segret, together with a note of apology to whomever found her body.

The case seems so open-and-shut that it’s soon eclipsed by the many complaints of harassment women have lodged against police officer Roland Villon, whose uncle is head of the Dordogne gendarmes, and the ambush the local Green Party launches against Bruno when he accepts France Bleu radio host Marie-Do’s invitation for a live interview and the Greens flood the phone banks with hostile calls accusing him of crimes against animals. The cases come together when Maître Poincevin, Roland’s bottom-feeding attorney, says that Bruno’s “not a village constable, he’s a secret policeman”—all except for the death of Monique Duhamel. Bruno’s only hope for redemption is a barrage of evidence quashing the Greens’ campaign and a Christmastime stint as Père Noël. Walker’s

trademark accounts of memorable meals are slow to arrive but well worth the wait.

Christmas in the Vézère Valley, with a forgettable mystery thrown in to tease the unwary.

History Lessons Wallbrook, Zoe B. | Soho Crime (384 pp.) $25.95 | July 1, 2025 | 9781641295529

A history professor well versed in the abuses of the past turns her formidable skills to fighting the injustices of the present.

Although bringing up the way “nineteenth-century Belgian colonial administrators in the Congo dismembered indigenous Africans for the purpose of scaring local villagers into creating profit for their newly emerging rubber industry” turns out to be enough of a buzzkill to discourage potential dating partners, Prof. Daphne Ouverture’s encyclopedic knowledge of colonial history earns her the admiration of her students and the respect of many of her colleagues—excluding, of course, the ones who can’t distinguish her from sociologist Tiffany LaFleur, who also happens to be Black. Daphne is a powerhouse: perceptive, empathetic, and endlessly witty. Just listening to her dish with best friends Sadie and Elise is worth the price of admission. When a colleague is murdered, Daphne is drawn into the investigation, because moments before he was killed, he’d sent her a cryptic text message in French. Daphne proves herself as astute a detective as she is a scholar because, after all, what is history but discovering the past? What she finds is both shocking and all too predictable. In focusing solely on Daphne, Wallbrook misses an opportunity to highlight another interesting woman: Asma Ahmed, the police detective assigned to the case. Wallbrook allows occasional peeks into Asma’s interior life, but opening the door more fully into her secondary characters would move her into the first ranks of the mystery world.

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Readers should be on the alert for a follow-up to this promising debut.

Kirkus Star

Pitcher Perfect Bailey, Tessa | Avon/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $18.99 paper | September 9, 2025 9780063380837

Two ambitious athletes plus one fake-dating arrangement—what could go wrong?

Though it’s only his first season for the Boston Bearcats hockey team, Robbie Corrigan has a well-established reputation as a playboy. He’s got major skills on the ice, and he’s also much more likely to love ’em and leave ’em than he is to build any long, meaningful relationships. Naturally, he’s just met the one woman who seems completely resistant to his charm: Skylar Page, a Boston University softball pitcher.

When they meet over a friendly Saturday morning baseball game, Robbie instantly makes a poor impression by bragging to his teammates about his latest conquest within Skylar’s hearing. He thinks she’s gorgeous, though, and when he sets his sights on her, he’s surprised that she doesn’t seem to know it. Despite her initial distaste for Robbie, Skylar grudgingly confesses that she could use his help. If they pretend to date, maybe her current crush—her brother’s best friend—will finally sit up and take notice of her in a romantic way. The timing is less than ideal, since Robbie will have to team up with Skylar in the Page family’s latest wilderness competition, but it turns out that Robbie’s willingness to play fake boyfriend stems from some very real feelings. He wants to prove to her that he’s a changed man, and redeeming himself in her eyes starts with making sure she knows that she can really trust him. The latest addition to Bailey’s Big Shots series is a sexy, feel-good romance brimming over with the author’s trademark humor and dirty talk. While Skylar and Robbie’s dynamic doesn’t quite reach the level of enemies-­to-­lovers— 40

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he’s so head-over-heels for her that there’s no room for any real mean-spiritedness— their playful snark doubles as a welcome dash of foreplay in the lead-up to some seriously steamy scenes. Robbie’s efforts to show Skylar that he’s turned over a new leaf also result in some of the book’s best moments, emphasizing his commitment to becoming the type of man he knows she deserves.

Bailey hits it out of the park with her latest spicy romance.

Kirkus Star

The Austen Affair Bell, Madeline | St. Martin’s Griffin (336 pp.) | $19 paper | September 16, 2025 9781250373519

An actress and her uptight British co-star travel back in time to the days of Jane Austen.

Tess Bright is still reeling from the death of her beloved mother when she’s very publicly fired from the goofy teen soap she’s worked on for years—but her new project may be her salvation. It’s an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, which feels fated because Tess’ mother loved Austen. Tess needs this movie to showcase her best work, save her career, and honor her mother’s memory—but that’s difficult when her co-star, Hugh Balfour, will barely deign to speak to her. He looks down on her previous work and he’s grumpy—in other words, he’s a real Mr. Darcy. They need convincing onscreen chemistry, but the two of them can’t even be in a scene together without arguing. Then, when an accident causes an electrical shock, Tess and Hugh are sent back 200 years to the era of Austen. Suddenly, Hugh is living as one of his ancestors on the Balfour family’s estate, and Tess is forced to pose as a widow who is now Hugh’s betrothed. The two of them need to figure out how to make their way back to their real lives as quickly as possible, without creating too much suspicion around their anachronistic ways, but coming across an electrical shock is

rather difficult in a time when electrical features don’t exist. As they attempt to travel back to modern times, they must make the best of their current situation.

They attend balls, make friends, and get to know each other in a way they never did on set. Along the way, Tess realizes that Hugh’s gruff exterior conceals a man who is much more caring than she ever expected. Bell sprinkles in enough references to Austen’s works to satisfy any fan, but she also creates a love story that is genuinely moving in its own right. Tess and Hugh are both working through grief, which would present a relationship challenge even without the customs of the Regency period. The story blends the wit and stakes of an Austen novel with the steaminess of a modern romance.

A delightful homage to Austen with plenty of its own romantic charm.

My Best Friend’s Earl Bennett, Bethany | Forever (368 pp.) | $9.99 paper | August 12, 2025 | 9781538740507

A straitlaced earl is undone by an unruly bookseller.

For a small bookshop, Martin House is getting a lot of attention, thanks to Betsy and Constance, the lovely twin daughters of the family that owns it.

Now Constance has left her betrothed at the altar, and though she’s trying to avoid further gossip, when her friend Althea Thompson asks for help breaking her own engagement, Constance can’t say no. Oliver Vincent, Earl of Southwyn, suspects Althea isn’t interested in him, but feels he must marry her anyway to preserve their families’ neighboring estates. He seems to be a kind man, but that doesn’t stop Constance from coming up with a plan to drive him away from Althea, which seems easy enough given that he’s notoriously disciplined and unemotional and thus easy to irritate. But as Constance gets to know Oliver better, she keeps experiencing an inconvenient “fizzy pop of attraction,” which is second only to the intense K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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For a zombie story, it’s light, with only a smattering of blood and guts.

ZOMROMCOM

distraction she’s become to him since he first noticed the “teacup-size tempest” around town. After a slow burn, they do finally explore their mutual attraction, but she’s held back by her many insecurities and he’s worried about the future of the community that depends on his estate, so their scorching attachment may need to be permanently shelved. Fittingly for a romance set in a bookshop that does a brisk business in romantic novels, the charming story incorporates a wide range of beloved tropes, including an only-one-bed scene and a virgin hero. The fast-moving plot also includes cameos from the first book in the series, Good Duke Gone Wild (2024), and can be confusing at first, but after a few chapters the book can be read as a standalone. The story is especially strong when it addresses what Constance feels are her many failings; readers will quickly realize they’re actually symptoms of ADHD, which is later confirmed in an author’s note. Despite the classic Regency setting, the language is often surprisingly modern, but fans of bold heroines won’t mind at all.

A traditional Regency story enlivened by a well-drawn neurodiverse heroine.

Zomromcom Dade, Olivia | Berkley (416 pp.) | $19 paper August 5, 2025 | 9780593818206

In Dade’s first paranormal romance, two neighbors fight to stay alive as they hunt for answers during a zombie outbreak.

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beings, Eden Brandstrup has always assumed her neighbor Chad fell into the category of a hot space case. He’s pleasant to look at, but might not be a prime candidate for intellectual conversation. When a zombie appears in her yard, determined to make the oblivious Chad its next meal, Edie vows to save him. After having lost her parents to zombies 20 years earlier, she won’t allow another person close to her to suffer the same fate. However, the normally mild-mannered Chad drops the goofy personality and morphs into the stoic, prickly Gaston “Max” Boucher, a lethal vampire. He’s hidden his true identity from Edie, but it’s hard to keep up the ruse when threatened by a pack of zombies. As the two escape to shelter and notify the authorities, Edie barely has time to explore Max’s secrets as they discover that these zombies are only the start of a world-ending conspiracy. This is the classic romance formula in which a surly, protective hero spends most of his time intercepting the reckless heroine, who seems to have more courage than sense. For a zombie story, it’s quite light, with only a smattering of blood and guts. The couple’s banter and the slapstick scenarios sometimes border on cringe-worthy, such as when they try to defend themselves against a zombie attack with a burrito. Max and Edie’s growing contingent of allies is a bright spot—the book is filled with brilliantly quirky characters seemingly fated to star in subsequent books—­ and the mystery at the heart of the story keeps the momentum going.

This over-the-top reading experience resembles a fever dream that works mostly if you employ the principle of “yes, and…” thinking.

A fun romp in which everything feels more interesting than the romance.

The Build-A-Boyfriend Project Deaver, Mason | Avon/HarperCollins (384 pp.) | $18.99 paper | August 5, 2025 9780063394308

Hoping for a promotion, Eli Francis agrees to write an article detailing his effort to turn his disastrous date into a perfect boyfriend.

Eli has spent the past five years as an assistant at Vent, a website once known for its hard-hitting pieces but now mostly clickbait listicles. He dreams of becoming a staff writer and shepherding the outlet back to its roots, but his current day-to-day is filling coffee orders and trying to avoid his ex, who also works there.

When his best friend convinces him to go on a blind date, gay and trans Eli is cautiously optimistic, but Peter Park makes one mistake after another. When his boss finds out about the awful date, he offers Eli the reward of a possible promotion if he writes a piece about teaching Peter how to be a better partner. Secretly, Eli plans to write a different article influenced by Peter about growing up gay and Korean in the south without a queer community for support. Peter only knows about the second article, but agrees to go on fake dates with Eli as learning opportunities. Soon, though, the lines between fake and real are blurred, and Eli finds himself falling for his subject. Deaver’s adult debut is told solely through Eli’s point of view and features lovable characters, especially sweetheart Peter, whose journey to confidence is incredibly endearing. Eli’s job woes are relatable, but the double article plotline feels convoluted and leads to predictable, tedious drama. More rewarding is the thoughtfully done exploration of growing up queer in different types of communities and Eli’s affirming trans identity.

The queer characters at the heart of this romance make it shine.

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Heart Strings Fairbanks, Ivy | Putnam (352 pp.) | $19 paper | August 12, 2025 | 9780593851883

When two exes reunite to attend a weekend-long wedding in Ireland, old feelings resurface.

It’s been a whirlwind two years since Aidan O’Toole scored a record deal and landed a single on the radio. But after nonstop touring and pressure from the label to write a catchier, less “sad bastard” album, Aidan feels little inspiration to write another love song, especially when the muse behind his breakout tune wants nothing to do with him. Aidan and his ex-girlfriend, Cielo “Lo” Valdez, ended on rocky terms when he became famous, but no one can deny that all his lyrics are about her. At the time, Lo had just arrived in Ireland from Texas to attend medical school, and going on a cross-country tour with Aidan would have derailed her degree. After battling cancer as a teen and dealing with an absentee father, Lo had no room in her life for the instability of life with a celebrity. Instead, she’s now content to avoid listening to the radio and leave Aidan in the past—except for the fact that they’re both in the same wedding party. As maid of honor and best man, they’re thrown headfirst into party planning and faking smiles together, albeit unsuccessfully. A hen party results in a puddle of unresolved feelings and a stranded boat, and harmless ribbon cutting leads to unmistakable sexual tension. As Aidan and Lo spend more time together, Aidan realizes that his new album might be just the way to win her back.

Can Lo reconcile her fears and let Aidan in, or did their song end forever?

In Fairbanks’ second Love in Galway romantic dramedy, her characters experience love and heartache with a beautiful Irish backdrop. Aidan and Lo’s relationship brings the heat, and obligatory wedding hijinks offer breathing room amid more serious 42

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subjects like Lo’s health anxiety. Fans of Morbidly Yours (2024) will be happy to see Lark and Callum’s story continue with their wedding, and perhaps sneak a peek into the next Love in Galway chapter with Saoirse and florist Gabe.

A charming and spicy Irish romance.

Bad Luck Bride Guhrke, Laura Lee | Forever (368 pp.) | $17.99 paper | July 29, 2025 | 9781538722664

A notorious spinster gets lucky, but not the way she expects.

Lady Kay Matheson is finally getting married. After two false starts, and many years as the subject of the gossip columns, she’s found a man who seems likely to make it all the way down the aisle with her: Wilson Rycroft, one of America’s richest men. She’s not in love with him, but he seems kind, and he has enough money to pay off her family’s growing pile of unpaid bills and allow her younger sister the debut she deserves.

With the wedding only 10 weeks away, Kay goes to the florist at the Savoy hotel, but when she turns the corner to look for a gardenia, she’s shocked to see Devlin Sharpe, her first fiancé, now back in England after 14 years abroad.

He’s also shopping for wedding flowers, and though they still loathe each other because of the way their engagement ended, they manage to be cordial. And because the London season is too small for them to avoid each other, their paths continue to cross, each time reminding them of the reasons that they wanted to elope in the first place, all those years ago—especially as they each start to see another side of their respective fiancés. But it’s not until they finally kiss, and see their lives change instantly as a result, that they have to confront the slow burn that’s been building back up between them. In the third installment of the Scandal at the Savoy series, the famous hotel once again plays a pivotal role in the story,

and readers will be pleased to see the return of characters they’ve met in earlier volumes. Like the first two books, it’s a pleasure to read, with enjoyable characters, fun dialogue, and engaging historical detail. And, though it takes most of the book for Kay and Devlin to fully connect, once they do the spice level escalates quickly, leading to a slightly abrupt conclusion that is nonetheless satisfying, given all that the lovers have gone through to get there.

A Victorian romance that will thrill readers who love to see a second chance.

Kirkus Star

It Had To Be Him Khorram, Adib | Forever (384 pp.) $17.99 paper | September 2, 2025 9781538739556

A heartbroken man is reunited with his high school crush in Italy.

When 38-yearold Ramin Yazdani’s marriage proposal is turned down because he’s “boring,” he impulse books an extended vacation in Italy. He aims to become Interesting New Ramin by sleeping with numerous Italian men, but all his plans change when he runs into Noah Bartlett, whom he hasn’t seen in 20 years. Noah’s ex-wife is moving to Italy and they’re visiting with their 9-year-old son to let him decide if he wants to move with her or stay in Kansas City with Noah. Ramin remembers Noah as the surprisingly kind, popular wrestler who didn’t bully Ramin like other classmates for being chubby and Iranian. Bisexual Noah was fond of Ramin back then and is immediately attracted to him now. As they get reacquainted, their feelings for each other grow, but they both have insecurities to overcome. Just like Khorram’s I’ ll Have What He’s Having (2024), this bighearted tale features scorching hot yet deeply realistic sexual K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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moments and relatable, lovable characters. Lushly described wine, food, and Italian landmarks will have readers happily living vicariously through the story. Flashbacks to high school add context to this pair’s relationship and highlight the ways they have grown, yet also show how overcoming self-doubt is a continual work in progress as Ramin struggles with body dysmorphia and Noah is still learning about and exploring his queer identity while also trying to be a better parent than his own. Tension and conflict in the couple’s building relationship feels authentic and never overdramatic as they come to realize they deserve uncomplicated, steady, devoted love.

A pleasure-filled, wholeheartedly sincere second-chance romance.

Give Me a Reason Lee, Jayci | St. Martin’s Griffin (352 pp.) $19 paper | July 29, 2025 | 9781250907783

The course of true love does not run smooth for former sweethearts who meet again.

Anne Lee gave up her one true love in college, persuaded by her aunt that he was too young and directionless for her.

Splitting up with Frederick Nam broke her heart, but Anne convinced herself it was the right choice for her, saddled as she was with family responsibilities. Ten years have passed and Anne is back from her decade in Korea as a successful K-drama actress. While her father and older sister are as cold and self-centered as ever, Anne is now determined to live life on her own terms. Then she meets Frederick again in her cousin Bethany’s second grade class, where he’s telling the kids about being a firefighter. The encounter shocks them both but is followed by repeated meetings due to mutual friends. These social brushes, during which they are nothing but polite to each other, are interspersed with internal monologues in which they K IR KU S R E V IE W S

There’s enough sizzling chemistry for even the most skeptical nonbeliever.

L OV E AT F I R S T S I G H T I N G

relive old griefs and regrets. Readers familiar with Jane Austen’s Persuasion will know how the plot unfolds, with both characters pining and hoping for a different outcome to their romance. Lee centers her rewrite of the classic novel on a Korean family in Los Angeles, recasting Captain Wentworth as an ex-finance guy and fire department captain and Anne Elliott as a dutiful Korean daughter who is learning to trust her instincts. The novel sticks closely to the beats of its inspiration, but the lack of communication between Anne and Frederick becomes tiresome without the original’s powerful prose, especially after an abrupt sex scene. The device of including some of Frederick’s old email love letters plus the dual point of view belabors the fact that they love each other but do not trust that they are loved in return.

Die-hard fans of second-chance romance and the BBC adaptations of Persuasion might like this retelling.

Love at First Sighting Marlowe, Mallory | Berkley (352 pp.) | $19 paper | August 12, 2025 | 9780593640104

The X-Files meets Hype House in Marlowe’s silly, sexy sopho­ more romance.

When social media influencer El Martin goes live during an encounter with an unidentified flying object, her brand tanks and her fame-chasing roommates are eager for her to forget all about it and move on to her next sponsored post. Agent Carter Brody of the Private Intelligence Sector catches

her alien content, though, and it looks eerily familiar to him; he saw something like it as a kid, just before his father, also a PIS agent, mysteriously died. After getting the all-clear from his boss—who happens to be his father’s former partner, the chain-smoking pseudo uncle who raised him following his dad’s death—Carter is cleared to follow up on El’s sighting. El is used to being stalked by fans and paparazzi, so one hapless man in black is no match for her, but Carter eventually gets through her defenses and an unlikely and slightly hostile partnership is born.

What they find instead of the little green men they fear is a massive government cover-up linked to the death of Carter’s father. As the stakes grow higher, so does their intense attraction to one another. In the midst of car chases and B-list celebrity events, El finds that with Carter, she’s able to take off her public-facing mask. And after a lifetime of looking for a place to belong, Carter finds that El is as committed to making him finally feel safe as she is to helping him find the truth. While the book fails to deliver on the flying saucers promised by the cover, the action does not disappoint.

A wildly entertaining cast of secondary characters, steamy sex scenes, and pop-culture references add to the fun.

There’s enough fast-paced action, clever banter, and sizzling chemistry for even the most skeptical nonbeliever.

For more by Mallory Marlowe, visit Kirkus online.

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Graphic Novels You Shouldn’t Miss

2

1 Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy

By Paul Auster; adapted by Paul Karasik, Lorenzo Mattotti & David Mazzucchelli

An engrossing marriage of literature and pulp.

2 Final Cut

By Charles Burns

A striking celebration of cinema’s power and a chilling acknowledgment of its limitations.

3 Babe in the Woods

By Julie Heffernan

A sumptuous feast for the eyes and the mind.

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1

4

4

The Road

By Cormac McCarthy; illus. by Manu Larcenet

Read McCarthy’s novel first to appreciate the subtlety of Larcenet’s superb graphic adaptation.

5 Buff Soul

3

For more booklists, visit Kirkus online.

By Moa Romanova

A kaleidoscopic exploration of growth, friendship, and addiction.

5

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Nonfiction

JOHN McMURTRIE

OFTEN CALLED “the father of the motion picture,” Eadweard Muybridge is best remembered for his 1878 series of photographs that show a horse in motion, its legs off the ground for a split second as it gallops on a track in Palo Alto, California. The panels of these famous images are featured in Muybridge (Drawn & Quarterly, April 29), an exuberant graphic biography

by Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle. It’s an ideal pairing, as the book, too, is made up of panels, each vividly relating the eventful life of the English photographer who made his way to San Francisco after trying his hand as a bookseller—and escaping prison time for killing his wife’s lover.

Numerous biographies have been written about Muybridge, but Delisle’s approach is welcome be­cause it allows the author to visually depict a story that is centered on visuals: As an artist, Delisle has the freedom to jump across continents and time periods, showing his subject journeying by ship, hiking with his cameras in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and being thrown from a stagecoach, nearly dying.

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Muybridge took tens of thousands of photographs, but relatively few images of the photographer himself exist. So it’s a delight to see how Delisle pictures Muybridge, the photographer’s stern eyebrows and long and scruffy beard accentuating his grouchiness—and fury.

In their graphic biography, Will Eisner (NBM, July 15), author Stephen Weiner and cartoonist Dan Mazur also transport readers back in time to tell the story of another man made famous by his images: the beloved titular cartoonist. Whereas Muybridge photographed what he saw around the world, Eisner traveled in his mind, drawing imagined realms that took readers far from their own lives—as Weiner and Mazur show, Eisner grew up poor in New York City, finding an escape in adventure stories. Our

review calls the book “a heartfelt and absorbing biography of a master cartoonist, fittingly told in arresting images.”

Graphic storytelling has also proved highly liberating for authors exploring their lives in the context of those who came before them. Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir, Maus, is a masterpiece of the form, and as the Swedish cartoonist Joanna Rubin Dranger writes in her own stirring memoir, Remember Us to Life (Ten Speed Press, April 8), Maus is the book that made her want to know more about her Jewish past—and made her fall in love with visual storytelling. Rubin Dranger’s ambitious work, translated

by Maura Tavares, is “a beautifully introspective account of a Jewish author learning about her roots— and a dark side of Swedish history,” writes our critic.

And then there is the power of visual storytelling to chronicle present-day events, to act as journalism.

In The Dissident Club: Chronicle of a Pakistani Journalist in Exile (Arsenal Pulp Press, April 22), Taha Siddiqui, with an assist from illustrator Hubert Maury and translator David Homel, recounts his harrowing escape from armed would-be kidnappers—the journalist is targeted for having spoken out against the Islamic republic’s authoritarian rule. It’s a serious subject, but the tone of the book is often playful and funny, perfect for its genre: Autocratic thugs might want Siddiqui dead—they killed colleagues of his—but they can’t break his comic spirit.

John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.

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Illustration by Eric Scot t Ander son

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EDITOR’S PICK Birth of a violent nation.

In this trenchant graphic novel, the author is at home, lounging on a sofa in sweatpants, when his father walks in the door, having passed burning cars and a helicopter overhead. “You’re not on the street like everyone else?” the old man asks, wondering why his son isn’t protesting the police killing of a Black man. “Must think I have a death wish!” Passmore replies. “Get this cocoa butter condescension out of my house!” Beret-wearing Dad has his own powerful rejoinder: He slaps his son’s head with a book on Black liberation. The wallop sends Passmore back in time, taking him on an involuntary odyssey in which he witnesses injustices meted out to Black people

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star

throughout history—brutality that is met with resistance. It’s a shocking awakening for the young man, even if it takes time to sink in. “I’ve seen dudes get beat by cops already,” Passmore says when transported to a scene of police confronting Black men in New Orleans in 1900. “Why’d you bring me to caveman times for this?” Passmore soon finds out: One of the men is Robert Charles, who, after being clubbed, shot an officer—and was shot himself. Passmore dodges gunfire in the ensuing conflict. “Yo dad, beam me up!” he screams. “I’m not getting killed by Gone With the Wind bullets.” On his journey, Passmore sits in on a trial, attends Emmett Till’s funeral, and beholds 48

Guest Privileges

By Gaar Adams

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To Lose a War

By Jon Lee Anderson

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Taylor’s Version

By Stephanie Burt

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Storyteller

By Leo Damrosch

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Passmore, Ben | Pantheon | 224 pp. $22 | October 7, 2025 | 9780593316122

violent clashes. In a meta turn, he addresses a TV audience’s concerns that he left out this or that historical episode. The tone of the book—drawn in lively black and white and pink images—is alternately haunting and hilarious, as when Passmore, author of the comic book series Daygloayhole, imagines

Black Artists in Their Own Words Ed. by Lisa E. Farrington

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Mailman

By Stephen Starring Grant

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Dark Renaissance

By Stephen Greenblatt

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Paper Girl

By Beth Macy

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Black Arms To Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance

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Swifterature

By Elly McCausland

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Bird School

By Adam Nicolson

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A mordant and highly original graphic novel that has readers reconsider Black resistance.

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Joyride

By Susan Orlean

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The Big One

By Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker

We Survived the Night

By Julian Brave NoiseCat

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The Right of the People

By Osita Nwanevu

what Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech sounded like to terrified whites, the impassioned minister envisioning the South “transformed into a paradise of interracial whoopie!”

Black Arms To Hold You Up

By Ben Passmore

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Original Sin

By Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson

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Hark

By Alice Vincent

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Philip Roth

By Steven J. Zipperstein

Ubac and Me

By Cédric Sapin-Defour; trans.

by Adriana Hunter

JULY 1, 2025

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“Beavers get a bad rap….Most people consider them a nuisance.”

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Bringing Up Beaver: Two Orphaned Beaver Kits, Their Humans, and Our Journey Back to the Wild Aberth, John | Pegasus (304 pp.) | $27.95 August 5, 2025 | 9781639369331

Coming to the rescue.

In this educational memoir, licensed wildlife rehabilitator Aberth recounts the two years during which he and his wife, Laura, rehabilitated a baby beaver, or kit, in Vermont. In 2020, Aberth received a call about a beaver that had become orphaned when his colony’s lodge was crushed by a farmer trying to remove a dam. Aberth had never rehabbed a beaver, so he consulted an expert to give “BK” the best chance of survival. “Beavers get a bad rap,” Aberth writes. “If wildlife are the ‘persecuted minority’ of the animal world—to whom almost no laws protecting against cruelty to animals apply—then beavers are the persecuted minority of wild animals. They are in the same family as rats. Most people consider them a nuisance.” The author details the care that he and Laura provided the kit, including taking him on daily excursions to a stream to help him learn “beaver life skills.” When feeding the animal, Aberth writes, BK showed “us his belly as he begged for nuggets, which was terribly cute.” BK had company, too, with Aberth caring for a Dutch rabbit, snowy owl, baby weasel, and Cooper’s hawk. After several foiled attempts, the author found BK the perfect companion: “Mrs. Beaver.” Two years passed, and BK and Mrs. Beaver were ready to be released into the wild. “Finding a suitable release site was the hardest part of beaver rehab,” Aberth notes. The author’s writing is straightforward, if a bit flat.

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animals will find a short but useful manifesto at the end of the book. It includes this sensible belief: “All wild animals play a role in the earth’s ecosystem and thus have value. To demonize an animal is to define it solely in terms of human understanding, not as an integral part of the ‘web of life’ whose interconnections lie beyond our ken.”

An informative account of helping a creature both great and small.

Kirkus Star

Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East Adams, Gaar | Dzanc (302 pp.) | $27.95 September 17, 2025 | 9781938603303

An American expat relocates to the Middle East and finds himself immersed in the region’s stealth queer subculture.

“On a fraught, decade-long journey of dislocation,” Adams researched how queer people, mostly emigrants, survived and managed to thrive in the Persian Gulf States, where homosexuality is illegal and often punishable with hefty fines, a potential 10-year prison sentence, deportation, torture, and even death. In 2010, with a degree in Middle Eastern history from New York University, Adams relocated to the United Arab Emirates and began working as an academic researcher on cultural traditions. As a gay man, what he soon uncovered and focused more closely on was archiving life stories of queer people living in the UAE. Among the first interviews the author conducted was one with a Dubai-based, Pakistani Muslim competitive wrestler named Mohammed

and his dedicated, demanding coach, Prashant, an Indian Hindu. Through hushed inquiry, Adams discovered that both men were lovers, having cast aside their national and religious differences to embrace love for each other. Through a mesmerizing succession of intimate disclosures and vivid conversations, the author profiled members of a flourishing clandestine community. Despite the perils of living as their authentic selves “in a place that persecutes them,” Adams met many vibrant people, including a figure skater from Iran; Sri Lankan and Turkish girlfriends; Filipino aestheticians who threw furtive “ladyboy” parties; and parkour athletes who remained in the UAE despite having exhausted attempts at Middle Eastern citizenship. Throughout his travels, Adams became intimately familiar with the rigidly structured and carefully calibrated intercourse taking place among the Gulf’s queer subcommunities. In doing so, he internalized that group’s struggle to find community, identity, love, and a place to call home and became a better man for it.

A striking cross section of an imperiled queer community that calls the Persian Gulf home.

Kirkus Star

To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban Anderson, Jon Lee | Penguin Press (400 pp.) $30 | August 12, 2025 | 9780593493090

The noted journalist gathers his New Yorker pieces on America’s misadventure in Afghanistan.

American soldiers put boots on the ground in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, their mission to smash al-Qaida and hunt down Osama bin Laden, the architect of the attack on the U.S. Two decades later, Afghanistan’s “pliant… pro-Western regime” collapsed, replaced by the Taliban. Basing his accounts on numerous sojourns in the country over that two-decade stretch of the American war, K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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Anderson is particularly good with the small, revealing details of daily life, such as the interaction of the citizens of Kabul with the Taliban: “For the most part, they seemed to ignore each other, as if they came from different worlds but were forced to coexist.” Early in the war, he notes, the one man who knew where bin Laden might be hiding was assassinated. That would be a common theme, as tribal leaders across the nation were targeted by rivals; even so, Anderson observes, the government of Hamid Karzai, “built on uneasy alliances, accommodated a range of aggressive warlords and corrupt officials.”

Much of Afghanistan is “preindustrial,” governed by the rhythms and mores of rural life in small towns and villages where, the author writes memorably, “lambs are tethered next to men with long knives who slaughter them and hang the carcasses from hooks, hacking them into a steadily diminishing mess of blood and meat and bone and fat by day’s end.” One of the many flaws in American strategy there, it seems, was to assume that the country was more modern and ready for democracy than it was. Indeed, he remarks at the end of the book, “there is now no place on earth that is more oppressive for women than Afghanistan.”

Essential for understanding the futility of America’s longest war.

The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound Antrobus, Raymond | Hogarth (208 pp.) $29 | August 19, 2025 | 9780593732106

A poet who lives at the intersection of many worlds tells us what it’s like.

Antrobus, the author of three acclaimed collections of poetry, is the son of a Black Jamaican father and a white British mother, raised in East London and still living in England.

He was born with deficiencies in his hearing—he describes them as blackouts at certain frequencies and of certain syllables—which make it hard to say, even K IR KU S R E V IE W S

for him, whether he is Deaf (an identity), deaf (a physical condition), or something else, like “hard of hearing,” a term that usually applies to older people with a disability developed later in life. He was not diagnosed until age 6, and up to that time, and at some points since, he was simply assumed to be slow or dyslexic. He tells his complex story, with its parade of teachers, mentors, antagonists, comrades, and heartbreakers, alongside accounts of other deaf painters, musicians, and writers.

One is the Palestinian teacher of the deaf, Hashem Ghazal, father of nine children, six of them deaf. An ambassador for deaf people with a 2015 TED Talk, Ghazal and his wife were killed in a Gaza airstrike in 2024. Another sad story is that of Antrobus’s schoolmate Tyrone, who ended up hanging himself in jail when deprived of his hearing aids. At a peak moment near the end of the book, Antrobus gathers all these characters together on an imaginary ark: “I sometimes imagine an all-hearing God, a white cloud with one tiny ear and one giant ear, neither needing help from hear­ing aids, neither missing any sound, and this all-hearing God heard enough of the world and decided to destroy the all-hearing world in a great flood, and we mere mortals needed passage to the Deaf world, to integrate it into a world we must share.”

Illuminates a unique corner of experience with clarity and compassion, including compassion for the author’s younger self.

The Book of Sea Monsters: Leviathans of Literature Arasu, Prema | Bloomsbury (224 pp.) | $35 September 16, 2025 | 9781399414524

Creatures from the deep.

This beautifully illustrated anthology introduces us to, or reacquaints us with, passages or complete stories and poems about sea monsters. It presents the sources in chronological order “so as to trace a narrative of maritime and cultural history as sea monsters move from highly speculative, primordial entities to the

apocalyptic cryptozoologist imaginings in modern science fiction in the Western imagination.” To that end, we start with a Babylonian creation myth, excerpts from The Odyssey and The Aeneid, with ports of call in The Book of Jonah and Beowulf, all presented in readable prose translations.

We then move to more modern examples, including Victor Hugo, H.G. Wells, and Ezra Pound. The selections conclude with Arthur Conan Doyle. The extract from Moby-Dick tells us that Ahab recognized that a giant squid is not a whale, since he had read Erik Pontoppidan’s The Natural History of Norway, which—fortunately for us—is also included. Each text has a brief preface and is suitably illustrated by either a maritime reference (fish, boats, sea monsters) or a representation of the featured author. It functions as a sort of Great Books seminar for readers with a short attention span. The book reminds us of how great some of the poems are and where “water, water everywhere / and not a drop to drink” actually comes from. The anthology also prompts musings about erotic and psychological elements pertaining to sea monsters; an example may be a possible feminist critique of mermaids. Just as Thoreau escaped the desperate city for the desperate country, so humankind fled the monsters among us only to succumb to their nautical cousins—escaping the devil, so to speak, for the deep blue sea.

A wonderful aquarium of sea monsters.

Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times Batchelor, Stephen | Yale Univ. (320 pp.) $28 | August 26, 2025 | 9780300275490

A provocative case for exploring an increasingly urgent question: how to live a good life responsibly.

Batchelor, an author and scholar of Buddhism, argues that the state of our world requires new thinking and a reexamination of scholars from antiquity, notably Socrates and the JULY 1, 2025

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Finding similarities in the lives and approaches of Socrates and the Buddha.

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Buddha (Gotama). In the process, he turns up novel insights, bridging these teachers’ respective philosophies and applying them to the uncertainty and reactivity of the modern world. In his latest book, Batchelor explores the roots of both Socrates’ and Gotama’s teachings, which developed contemporaneously. He finds many similarities in their lives and approaches, each having pursued a life of questioning and self-examination, emphasizing ethics, and using reasoning to train others to think for themselves. Neither offered definitive answers. Batchelor suggests both may have suffered from being misinterpreted by well-meaning followers. He writes, “Over time Buddhist traditions have tended to emphasize contemplative skills…over the practical skills of creativity, work, and survival.” This moved the study of Buddhism toward mindfulness and away from the eightfold path, which resulted in the “fatal turn in Buddhism from ethics to epistemology, from care to transcendence.” Alternating chapters focus on Western philosophy, and Batchelor explores ethical thinking from ancient Greeks to the present day.

Interestingly, he finds the most alignment with the work of Hannah Arendt, who wrote extensively about the importance of both thinking and acting. Batchelor identifies 32 virtues that must be cultivated for a broader, ethical understanding. He writes: “The cartography that emerges from this archaeological excavation of scattered texts also provides a dynamic template for Gotama’s vision of a restored civic space.” The second half of the book details these virtues through the lens of both of these thinkers, offering a broad, interdisciplinary approach.

Engaging and thought-provoking pathway for cultivating an ethical life and helping bring about a better world.

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Nature and the Mind: The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being Berman, Marc | Simon Element (336 pp.) $28.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9781668058770

A densely detailed account of a promising new science.

The establishment of a new field of scientific inquiry is a noteworthy occurrence, especially when it holds the potential to benefit the entire human population. Such is Berman’s ongoing achievement in “environmental neuroscience,” a drive to understand the relationship between individuals and the environmental factors that influence them, specifically the natural and urban worlds. Berman, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and an engineer, demonstrates the ways in which our physical environment has a profound impact on our behavior and our brain development. “In study after study, we find that even secondhand or simulated contact with nature helps our cognitive, physical, and social health,” Berman writes. But immersion is best, whether in city parks or the wilderness. On the surface, this overarching theme seems like something John Muir could have set forth in a paragraph. But the subject is a great deal more complex, the issues urgent, and the proposed solutions requiring global engagement. Berman’s is a singularly significant book that is both fascinating and taxing. Although leavened with personal anecdotes, it reads at times like an unending stream of scientific studies related in numbing detail, intentionally but needlessly

repetitive, and too often constructed with paragraphs so long it makes you wish you were in nature, escaping the page. If intended primarily for a professional audience, all well and good. It’s brilliant and persuasive. If aimed at the intelligent general reader, it is something less than an unqualified success—which is not to say that it lacks clarity or an unshakable logic. Berman also projects what the future may hold in the field, while discussing how its discoveries can help us design better environments today.

Humanity and its environments are even more interconnected than we knew.

On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports Brennan, Christine | Scribner (272 pp.) $29.99 | July 8, 2025 | 9781668090190

Game changer.

Brennan chronicles a year in the life of “the most impactful player” in women’s basketball history, extolling Clark’s skills and character and limning the controversies that accompanied the high-scoring guard’s rapid rise. During Clark’s final season at the University of Iowa and her debut season with the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, her extra-longdistance three-pointers lifted the women’s game to record highs in attendance and TV ratings. The USA Today sports columnist calls this period—October 2023 to September 2024—“a magical joyride.” Brennan sees besotted fans of all ages and quotes observers who compare Clark to Elvis Presley, Batman, and Steph Curry. At times, Brennan flirts with hagiography, depicting Clark as wise, kind, accessible, and earnest yet fun-loving and defending her subject from the mildest of criticisms registered by older players. “This book came about quickly,” Brennan writes in her introduction. The pages that follow don’t lack for the sort of bland quotes found in game stories written on deadline. But Brennan pens a fascinating account of what one observer K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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calls a “wall of negativity” that greeted Clark’s move to the pros. Most WNBA players are Black; some, including three-time MVP A’ja Wilson, argued that Clark was glorified in part because she’s white. Brennan herself became part of the story. After her brief, apparently fairminded interview with a Black player who had accidentally hit Clark’s eye, the players’ union called Brennan “indecent and downright insincere.” To Brennan, this was one of several incidents that showed “just how unprepared the WNBA was for” this transformative player. Brennan’s look at the league’s growing pains is supported by informative background on Title IX and gender equity, the 1999 World Cup–winning U.S. women’s soccer team, and other milestones in women’s sports history.

An admiring look at a young hoop star’s effect on her game’s popularity.

Kirkus Star

Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift Burt, Stephanie | Basic Books (352 pp.) $30 | October 14, 2025 | 9781541606234

An exploration of what made Taylor Swift the phenomenon she is.

Poet and literary critic Burt taught a class about the songs of pop star Swift at Harvard University in 2024, with 200 students signing up to learn about the music and lyrics of the singer-songwriter. Burt’s book poses and explores a seemingly simple question: “Taylor Swift is a world phenomenon.

How did she get that way?” She proposes some answers: She mostly wrote her own songs; she is “both aspirational and relatable”; and she has an indefatigable work ethic. Burt dedicates a chapter to each of Swift’s 11 studio albums, starting with her self-titled 2006 debut, which Burt says is part of the pastoral tradition in literature and treated country music as “a set of tropes.” Burt goes on to analyze K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Speak Now, which she considers a Künstlerroman; Lover, “a mess” with “aspirational moments”; and Swift’s most recent record, The Tortured Poets Department, her longest and “saddest” album. The book closes with a chapter on Swift’s record-shattering Eras tour, which Burt got to see in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Burt’s book mixes close readings of Swift’s lyrics (she urges readers not to treat them as poems) with looks at Swift’s biography and accounts of Burt’s own travels in search of the country that made Swift. A self-proclaimed “Swiftie,” the author does an especially good job writing about the artist’s relatability: “If she’s a genius, that’s not because she stands apart from everyone else or pushes us away.” Burt isn’t afraid to criticize Swift (something of a rarity among her fans), and her refusal to treat the singer with kid gloves is welcome: She’s a fan, but a clear-eyed one.

This is an outstanding look at one of the world’s most beloved entertainers.

More than a fan’s notes: a smart, incisive look at the singer-songwriter who has captured the world’s imagination.

Surviving the 21st Century Chomsky, Noam & José Mujica with Saúl Alvídrez | Verso (224 pp.) | $19.95 paper September 30, 2025 | 9781804299517

The noted linguist and leftist stalwart meets Uruguay’s former president in wide-ranging conversation.

Chomsky, whom Mujica calls “the greatest crazy person left, in a world of great conformity,” grew up in the Depression, radicalized by his teenage visits to anarchist bookshops in New York City and a left libertarian ever since. For his part, Mujica was a Maoist guerrilla, but, as he tells moderator Alvídrez, after Uruguay’s military dictatorship ended, “we accepted the rules of liberal democracy.” Known as the “poor” president for retaining his austere lifestyle after being elected, Mujica has his eye largely on crises to come as the environmental situation worsens: He protests that he is

not poor, has what he needs, and adds, “the fact is that if the world does not learn to live with a certain sobriety, not to squander, not to waste, if it does not learn this soon, our world will not survive.” In their back-and-forths, Chomsky seems relatively less interested in climate and more in the collapse of democracy, but both agree on a number of points. One is that capitalism is the great enemy: Says Mujica, “Capitalism is a culture, and we must respond to and resist capitalism with a different culture.”

Another, with a nod to Chomsky’s long-standing commitment to anarchism, is that no form of authority is legitimate without the express consent of the people affected by it; Chomsky observes that rather than bail out the auto industry in 2008, President Obama could have turned it over to the workers and retooled it to produce high-speed trains, concluding, “If there had been sufficient education and organizing, different decisions could have been made.” Alvídrez does a good job of keeping the conversation moving along, and now that Mujica is no longer with us, it has a certain poignancy.

A valuable record of two contrarian political thinkers coming together to find common ground.

The Improbable Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and the First Woman To Run for President Collinsworth, Eden | Doubleday (304 pp.) $30 | September 2, 2025 | 9780385549578

The eventful life of a maverick.

Publisher, world traveler, and communications consultant Collinsworth takes on the notorious Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838-1927), spiritualist, suffragist, free love advocate, and daring iconoclast.

Born into poverty, she was the daughter of grifters—Collinsworth calls her father a “one-man crime spree”—who exploited Victoria and her younger sister, Tennie, JULY 1, 2025

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promoting them as “Amazing Child Clairvoyants.” At 14, she married a man twice her age, who turned out to be an alcoholic and morphine addict, and left him for another man who abetted her own scams. Claiming to have had a vision that she would become wealthy, famous, and the ruler of people, she ended up in New York, where she set up the Magnetic Healing Institute & Conservatory of Mental and Spiritual Science. Among her clients was Cornelius Vanderbilt, who paid her to predict stock market trends—tips, unbeknownst to Vanderbilt, that came from his eldest son. The grateful Vanderbilt agreed to back her when she and Tennie decided to open their own brokerage firm—the first founded by women. Other firsts followed: Victoria was the first woman to testify before Congress, on the matter of women’s suffrage, and, in 1872, the first to run for president. She touted her causes—suffrage and free love—in a newspaper column, “The Petticoat Politician,” and a weekly newspaper she and her sister published. Early admirers included Walt Whitman, Susan B. Anthony, and newspaperman Horace Greeley. But Victoria’s notoriety and arrogance undid her: She “hunted trouble and didn’t care where her foot landed,” Collinsworth notes succinctly. Anthony Comstock had her arrested twice. Mired in scandal, in 1877, she sailed for England, where, with stubborn determination, she reinvented herself.

A zesty biography of a colorful woman in the raucous Gilded Age.

Augustine the African Conybeare, Catherine | Liveright/ Norton (272 pp.) | $31.99 August 12, 2025 | 9781631498527

Caught between two continents.

St. Augustine’s influence on Western philosophy in general and Christian theology in particular can hardly be overstated, yet little has been made of 52

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his North African heritage—an oversight that Conybeare, a professor at Bryn Mawr college, has set out to redress. Aurelius Augustinus was born in 354 C.E. in Thagaste (present-day Algeria), a city founded by indigenous Amazigh (Berber) peoples, of which Augustine was one, and at the same time part of the larger Roman Empire.

This duality, Conybeare contends, characterized Augustine’s life and work. He grew up idolizing Roman culture, but when, at 28, he traveled to Rome to teach rhetoric, he felt “profoundly out of place,” especially when his students “sneered at his African accent.” Still, Augustine was appointed master of rhetoric in Milan, where he gave speeches in praise of the Roman emperor. While there, Augustine converted to Christianity, but he grew homesick for Africa, so he returned and was ordained as bishop of Hippo, where the contradictions piled up. He found himself stuck between two versions of Christianity: the Roman church in Africa and the African church. Augustine fought against the African church on behalf of the Romans, yet fought against the Roman view of original sin after a Roman deacon attacked Augustine’s African heritage. He defended local African languages, and at the same time only spoke Latin himself. Within these contradictions Augustine forged his doctrines of grace and free will and wrote masterful books, including Confessions and City of God. “Appropriated for a Western version of Christianity based in Europe,” Conybeare writes, these works “are read as if it doesn’t matter where they were written.” History buffs and Augustine scholars will be delighted by the level of detail here and impressed

by Conybeare’s own translations of the

Latin sources, while casual readers may find themselves lost in the weeds.

A scholarly biography that places Augustine’s ambivalence toward Africa at the center of his and Christianity’s story.

Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West Cozzens, Peter | Knopf (432 pp.) | $35 August 19, 2025 | 9780593537855

A rootin’-tootin’ history of the famed Western town.

Think of Deadwood, South Dakota, and you’re likely to conjure up an image of Wild Bill Hickok.

Cozzens wisely opens with Deadwood’s most famed citizen, but with a few surprises—for one, that Hickok had given up his old gunfighting ways, his eyesight failing, and was attempting to make his fortune more or less legitimately in a town that, Cozzens writes, was “journey’s end.” Alas, he was gunned down in a saloon while playing cards.

That’s fitting, perhaps, for, as Cozzens notes, Deadwood not only appealed to outlaws and drifters, but the town itself was “an outlaw enterprise,” founded against orders from the federal government to stay out of territory that was sacred to Native nations. Gold overrode such concerns, and in any event the government would soon wage war on those Native peoples. Deadwood spawned numerous characters who would become famous through popular culture (not least the HBO show of that name), among them the saloon keeper Al Swearingen and the prostitute Calamity

Deadwood appealed to outlaws and drifters, and the town itself was “an outlaw enterprise.”

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Jane, as well as a madam, Mollie Johnson, who “genuinely loved baseball, and she enjoyed treating her girls between Deadwood and Fort Meade,” where the girls would relieve soldiers of their pay. Yet Cozzens demonstrates that, for all its reputation as a den of iniquity, Deadwood was, in the words of a visiting New York reporter, “a remarkably quiet, orderly, law-­abiding town.” Some of that calm and prosperity came from deliberate action on the part of citizens who liked the place and wanted to make it something more than a mining camp. Today, of course, the town is a tourist draw—not least for its casinos—though its famed brothels were shut down years ago.

A vivid, and corrective, study of a place better known for its transgressions than its ordinariness.

Kirkus Star

Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson Damrosch, Leo | Yale Univ. (584 pp.) | $35 September 2, 2025 | 9780300268621

“Not born for this age.”

Damrosch is one of the preeminent literary biographers of our time, and this magnificent biography of Robert Louis Stevenson reveals much about a writer that we thought we knew. Details of childhood reading, adult adventures, and professional ambition abound. Damrosch shows how important Stevenson’s marriage was to the creation of his fictions. Fanny Stevenson and her sister, Nellie, come alive here in rich quotations from biographies and letters.

Nellie’s assessment of her sister and brother-in-law’s marriage is a fulcrum on which the book balances: “Her profound faith in his genius before the rest of the world had come to recognize it had a great deal to do with keeping up his faith in himself.” Theirs was a marriage of “anarchic excitement,” and Damrosch limns their life together with all the K IR KU S R E V IE W S

vividness of a 19th-century melodramatist. Family is one thing. Land is another: Scotland, California, Samoa. Damrosch makes the point that it was the physical environment that stimulated Stevenson— that his writing comes not simply from his own imagination, but from the interaction of that imagination with landscape. Stevenson’s best fictions, therefore, have all the realism and coherence of a great map. Treasure Island succeeds not so much on the depth of its characters but on the vigor of its realism.

Damrosch quotes Stevenson: “The great creative writer shows us the realization and the apotheosis of the daydreams of common men. His stories may be nourished with the realities of life, but their true mark is to satisfy the nameless longings of the reader, and to obey the ideal laws of the daydream.” Stevenson’s life and work meet at the intersection of reality and daydream, longing and satisfaction. Damrosch makes the real seem dreamed and the dreamed real.

A dazzling life of Robert Louis Stevenson, centering on family and landscape as the axes of his imagination.

A Perfect Harmony: Music, Mathematics and Science Darling, David | Oneworld Publications (288 pp.) $18.95 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9780861549856

The universal languages of math and music.

Darling (Equations of Eternity, 1993) tackles the history of music through a scientific lens in his latest book, which he says “explores how something that, ultimately, can be reduced to mere equations and wave patterns conspires to have such a powerful emotional impact upon us.” He begins with a look at the Divje Babe flute, possibly “the world’s oldest surviving musical instrument,” found in a Slovenian cave in 1995. This kicks off a discussion of how music began. “Did language or music come first, or did they develop together?” he asks, noting that a recent theory suggests

“that language evolved as a subset of music.” Further chapters cover the concepts of harmony, scales, and musical notation and the efforts of musicians such as Henry Cowell and Brian Eno to challenge prevailing musical convention.

An especially fascinating section looks at the introduction of electricity to musical performance, which may have begun in 1748 with the “clavichord-like” Denis d’or. (Or maybe not. As Darling writes, “In fact, it seems far more likely, if the strings were electrified at all, that the intent was to spring a practical joke on the unsuspecting player rather than enhance the quality of sound.”) The author examines musical dissonance and its “sense of tension” (exploring theme tunes of Jaws and West Side Story), while a chapter about music and the brain cites musicians who continued to perform after being diagnosed with dementia.

This is a wide-ranging book; its breadth of subjects alone proves Darling’s assertion that “music is part of the fabric of reality, an inherent component of the world around us.” Readers without a background in advanced mathematics might struggle to understand a few parts, but this is a mostly accessible—and quite interesting—work of science and history.

A genially written book that will appeal to general readers with an ear for music.

A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore Davis, Matthew | St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $30 | November 11, 2025 | 9781250285102

The contradictions of U.S. history through the lens of Mount Rushmore.

President Trump’s July 2020 visit to Mount Rushmore and his speech arguing for a “singular vision” of American history sparked author and journalist Davis’ interest in the monument and its past. Davis concluded that “the mile-high shelf of Harney Peak granite…which now stands as our most JULY 1, 2025

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visible piece of Americana, deserves to have its story told in full.” And yet the book is less a comprehensive “biography of a mountain” and more an interrogation of the contested and varied meanings of the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, and American history to different people over time. Davis begins with an account of the Black Hills and the Lakota people who inhabited the area at least as early as the 18th century. The federal government’s 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie promised the Lakota ownership of the land that included the Black Hills, but it was unscrupulously undone by the 1876 Manypenny Agreement. As Davis searches for the meaning of Mount Rushmore, he reveals that its creation was the result of happenstance, not an intentional federal or state effort to create an American memorial. In 1923, South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson had suggested that a sculpture of Lakota leader Red Cloud on one of the Black Hills’ granite “needles” might increase tourist traffic and help the state’s economy. When Robinson reached out to sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who had designed a memorial to Confederate leaders on a mountain face in Georgia, Borglum saw an opportunity to create a bigger, national version of Stone Mountain, and Robinson’s original plan was abandoned. Thus, this contested site owes its existence to the specific vision of Borglum, a first-generation American whose father was a Mormon convert from Denmark in a polygamous marriage to two sisters. The myriad executive orders of a second Trump administration have made portions of Davis’ work feel slightly dated, although the book was “reported on and researched” from May 2022 to May 2024. This is no fault of Davis’; indeed, it speaks to the fact that the very issues of history and meaning that Davis grapples with are so timely that they have

been shifting daily, sometimes hourly, under the present administration.

A meaningful read that wrestles with the complexity of American history and its presentation.

The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim’s Journey on the Great Wagon Road Dodson, James | Avid Reader Press (416 pp.) $32 | July 1, 2025 | 9781476746746

An amiable amble along Appalachian-fronting blue highways.

“The Great Wagon Road is probably the least known historic road in America,” writes Dodson, better known for books on golf than on the nation’s past. Yet, as he writes in this pleasingly informal travelogue, he comes by his passion for the GWR naturally, having been inducted by a scholarly father in the pleasures of visiting historical places. An aficionado of Revolutionary War history, Dodson hits on plenty of battles along his path, which stretches from Pennsylvania and down the Shenandoah Valley into the Carolinas and Georgia. Like so many historic roads, the GWR began as a Native trail, but it soon came to serve as a conduit for moving new waves of immigrants out of crowded cities like Philadelphia into unsettled places. On that score, Dodson serves up an apposite quote from Benjamin Franklin, who, in an intemperate moment, railed, “Why should Pennsylvania, funded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize

The original plan for Mount Rushmore: a sculpture of Lakota leader Red Cloud.

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us, instead of us Anglifying them?”

Many of Dodson’s historical subjects are those Germans, many others ScotsIrish, while his modern interlocutors come from all over, with one generous-minded local historian remarking, “The good news…is that many of the migrants we see coming here from Central and South America are hardworking folks eager to make a living.” Dodson touches on other current controversies, including efforts to remove Confederate statues from Southern historical sites and, of more specialist interest, the exact routes of the GWR’s numerous spurs. He writes with a light hand, talking with everyone who comes across his path and capturing some apt ideas, including one observation that in the colonial American melting pot, “the English built the houses, the Germans built the barns, and the Scots-Irish built the stills.”

Armchair travelers will enjoy Dodson’s wanderings—and may even be inspired to explore the road on their own.

Kirkus Star

Black Artists in Their Own Words Ed. by Farrington, Lisa E. | Univ. of California (416 pp.) | $34.95 paper | September 2, 2025 9780520384125

Making their voices heard.

Art historian Farrington has edited a comprehensive collection of statements from more than 60 Black artists, from the turn of the 20th century to the present, reflecting on their aesthetic goals, their connection to European and indigenous artistic movements, and their response to the call from the community to create a Black aesthetic. Some artists gained easy recognition; others struggled with poverty and bias: “The pathology of racism has affected most, if not all, of them,” Farrington reveals. Organized chronologically and thematically, the K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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collection begins in 1879 with Henry Tanner, the first African American to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Alain Locke, a leading Black intellectual and Howard University professor. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s is represented by 10 artists, including sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller, who studied with Rodin, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Romare Bearden, and Jacob Lawrence. Two sections are devoted to the Black diaspora: The first, which emerged as a sister movement of the Harlem Renaissance, aimed to foster international Black consciousness in the arts; the later movement, in the 1960s and ’70s, sought racial solidarity in the wake of decolonization. Other sections gather artists’ responses to abstract art, activism during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, Black feminist art, and conceptual art. A final section, titled “Rethinking Race,” features artists working at the turn of the 21st century who engage with—and argue about—the term “post-Black.”

Included in this section are some well-known figures: Jean Michel-­ Basquiat, MacArthur Fellow Kara Walker, and Obama portraitist Kehinde Wiley. The handsomely produced volume includes 14 color images and 21 black-and-white images. Each of the book’s nine sections is contextualized with a perceptive introduction.

An invaluable celebration of Black creativity.

Could Should Might Don’t: How We Think About the Future Foster, Nick | MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (272 pp.) | $28 | August 26, 2025 9780374619350

A futurist offers ways to improve the way we think about our decisions.

In his debut book, designer and writer Foster asks you to imagine the future. Whatever comes to mind, K IR KU S R E V IE W S

whether robots, glimmering gadgets, a sprouting civilization on another planet, or a grim wasteland where crops die and battles rage, may depend on what kinds of movies, books, ads, and media you’ve consumed. As a top designer at Google, Nokia, and Sony, Foster spent his career imagining next-generation spaces and products and offers up a framework for thinking about the present and future.

“Our generation is experiencing technological and societal change at a rate and magnitude not felt by our ancestors, and the effects of this change can be bewildering,” Foster writes. But what if we considered the future more as an extension of today? With thoughtful descriptions of four mindsets, hence the book’s title, Foster blends history with current events to probe different ways humans tackle big issues, and the pitfalls and the positives of each. So-called “could” futurists, he writes, “harbor fantasies of incredible new worlds” and are “frustrated by pragmatism, rationalism, and skepticism.” Then comes “should” futurism, which Foster describes as a “strongwilled, opinionated, and cocksure confection.” Faced with a proclamation that this or that product or path will make things “better,” Foster suggests continually asking “why,” as a toddler would, to melt the “corporate gibberish” and reveal the “naked ambitions” beneath. “Might” futurists are broad thinkers but can be indecisive, whereas the “don’t” sector distrusts power and is drawn to negative consequences while exploring the full lifespan of an idea and its impact. Foster warns against sticking too closely to any of the four mindsets and begs readers to train themselves to think of the future in a way that is “less about what you saw in a sci-fi movie and more about where you buy your chewing gum.” Ultimately, the book strikes a hopeful note, as this GenX author points to us now entering “something of a golden age of dread about the future” and hails the younger generation for thinking about the future “from a position of responsibility and long-termism.”

Sage advice and a much-needed perspective on how to build a future that benefits our species’ survival.

Robin Hood Math: Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life Giansiracusa, Noah | Riverhead (256 pp.) $29 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593717875

Bounding through the forest of data, wielding math to right wrongs.

Giansiracusa, associate professor of mathematics at Bentley University, describes his newest work as an educational book about math, but those who freeze at the mention of mathematics can take heart—this reads like a good yarn. Full of engaging stories about how ideas about calculation took shape, it reveals how algorithms intersect with our everyday lives. Channeling Robin Hood, the 14th-century English outlaw and folk hero who took from the careless rich and gave to the deserving poor, the author tells us how we can all begin using math to take back control from large tech companies by educating ourselves on the tricks of data collectors.

Navigating a world increasingly shaped by the information they gather and algorithms they deploy, we find that math can be a helpful and empowering tool. In effect, “we honor Robin Hood’s spirit by taking math from the rich and giving it to the rest of us.” Numbers matter, and Giansiracusa urges us to play the numbers game strategically. He shows us how some common statistical techniques work under the hood, and he demonstrates how to create your own ranking systems, use the weighted sum concept to personalize your own inflation rate, and understand your credit scores and even the S&P 500.

Giansiracusa draws on wide-ranging examples from politics and history, including Nate Silver’s election predictions, the French Revolution, and World War II. We learn techniques for evaluating risk using math to clarify decision-making and how Bayesian formulas relate to how brains decide what to believe. The endnotes point to more stories primarily drawn >>> JULY 1, 2025

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THE KIRKUS Q&A: DENALI SAI NALAMALAPU A climate activist employs comics to tell the story of a local movement protesting a pipeline’s construction.

BY HANNAH BAE ANYONE CAN PLAY a role in the fight for climate justice.

How did Holler evolve from an idea to a book?

One of my favorite questions to ask myself as an organizer is, “Who am I missing?”

Movements can get caught up in talking to the same people all the time.

I was thinking about what we hadn’t done in terms of storytelling in the pipeline fight, and comics is what came to mind. There is such a range of reading ability in the movement, from young 56

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kids still learning how to read, elders who haven’t learned how to read comfortably, and busy single moms who don’t have time to read. There are groups of people who are coming up in this movement who might be interested in learning more through comics than by showing up to a protest.

As opposed to a 300page book in black-andwhite text, I wanted there to be something fun for

different people to pick up that had a certain degree of liveliness and color but also faces the issues in a pretty realistic way.

How did you come to graphic narrative as an art form?

I started drawing at a really young age. Between 5 and 7 years old, I started drawing cartoons after my mom gave me a book on how you can make anything that you see in the world into a cartoon.

I was so into cartoons for years and years. At the same time, throughout my life I’ve been a writer. Before I learned to write words, I would just scribble in journals and pretend I was a writer. All along, there have been these parallel tracks of illustration and writing, and this book is what brought them together.

Before, they felt distinct.

I thought comics would be a really interesting way

to tell the stories of these six incredible people in a much more accessible way than climate change is generally written about, inspired in part by my favorite graphic novelist, Lee Lai (Stone Fruit), who writes for [the comics publisher] Fantagraphics.

Tell us how you landed on the six people whom you profile in the book.

Throughout my career in climate communications— and through doing grassroots climate work alongside the people in this book—I’ve realized that it takes all different kinds of people to fight this fight.

We’re up against some of the richest and most powerful companies in the world, and their destruction of our planet has put into crisis every single aspect of the way we’re living, from food to our children’s K IR KU S R E V IE W S

L aura Sander s

That’s the message that climate organizer and comics artist Denali Sai Nalamalapu wants readers to take away from their inspiring debut, Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance.

“A poignant portrait of an Appalachian environmental movement,” according to our review, Holler follows Nalamalapu as they join an effort to halt construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline through southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia. The author interviews six subjects, “everyday people turned pipeline resisters” who found ways to protest the project’s environmental destruction.

Ranging from a seed keeper from the Monacan Indian Nation to a science teacher who used her 1970s Ford Pinto to block the pipeline’s path, “these are the leaders we must learn from,” Nalamalapu writes in the beautifully illustrated book.

Along the way, the author directly addresses readers, asking them to consider the power of direct action and how they, too, might become part of this polyphonic political story.

Nalamalapu spoke to Kirkus via Zoom from their home office in southwest Virginia, about 10 miles from the pipeline.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q & A // N O N F I C T I O N

future. My hope is that people can pick up Holler and find pieces of their family, their friends, or themselves and start thinking about how they want to protect the land or water around them.

More broadly, Appalachia is often depicted as a predominantly white region, which it is, but there are many immigrants and people of color and indigenous tribes and queer people here as well.

It felt important to weave in their stories as seamlessly as I myself experience interacting with diverse people.

I wanted a degree of balance between people from West Virginia and Virginia, and I wanted the story to be very intergenerational, because that’s one of the most beautiful parts of the MVP fight to me— that it includes everyone from students in college to grandmothers of five.

What was your process as you collected their stories?

Where did you start?

The first step was conducting oral history interviews.

Then I transcribed each of them and went through the text with a yellow highlighter to identify the aspects I liked most, what sparked enjoyment in me. From there, I looked at every chapter, and the order of the stories materialized, starting with Paula and her activism through her camera’s lens.

Then I moved on to the illustrations, which I started on printer paper, sketching them out very roughly in pen. I translated those sketches onto a drawing tablet, which saved my K IR KU S R E V IE W S

hand from fatigue. When I get started on a project, I become extremely absorbed, and it’s hard to stop, so it was helpful to use anything that would reduce pain in my hand.

Holler has such a distinctive color palette, and you switch up the accent colors for different

characters. How did you come up with that look?

I’m very fond of constraints.

With digital art, you can’t mix colors, so for Holler, I wanted to choose colors that would guide the reader’s eye. One of my favorite things about comics is that there’s so much you can look at. As a kid, my favorite books were

When I get started on a project, I become extremely absorbed, and it’s hard to stop.

Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance Nalamalapu, Denali Sai

Timber | 172 pp. | $29.99 (paper) May 13, 2025 | 9781643265230

ones that I could stare at endlessly because there was so much going on, like Where’s Waldo?

I wanted there to be an abundance of elements for the reader to look at, but I also wanted to guide them toward what was important to the story—where the shadows were on a person’s face, what their expression was. I started out with a pastel green color— Like the color of your walls and your shirt!

Totally. Then I chose the three different character colors [that I rotated among] based on complementary colors. The red I chose was complementary to the pastel green, then orange was a step over [in one direction on the color wheel], and purple was another step over [in the other direction]. I chose two colors for every chapter because of my enjoyment of constraint.

You’re a character in the book, too. How did you end up showing yourself interacting with the activists you interviewed?

Putting myself in there wasn’t something I ever dreamt of doing. I always dreamt of highlighting the work of other people and just being behind the screen with my own pen.

But as individuals who are writing these stories, we can be powerful guides. Readers can follow the different stories with me in a way that ties together the narrative more than if they were going from individual to individual without someone to walk beside them.

Hannah Bae is a writer in Brooklyn.

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Memoir by Susan Lucci Coming in 2026 The All My Children star will look back at her life and career in La Lucci.

Susan Lucci will write about her life and career in a new memoir.

Blackstone will publish the actor’s La Lucci, co-written with Laura Morton, next year, the press announced in a news release. It says the book “explores Susan’s journey through love, joy, reinvention, and resilience in the face of profound loss—both personal and professional.”

For more memoirs, visit Kirkus online.

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John Nacion/ Variet y v ia Get t y Images

SEEN AND HEARD

Lucci had bit roles in films and television series before being cast as Erica Kane on the soap opera All My Children. She played the role for 41 years, earning 21 Daytime Emmy Award nominations. Her failure to win the award multiple times was a sore point with fans until she finally took home the prize in 1999.

After All My Children ended, Lucci acted in series including Hot in Cleveland and Devious Maids. She is currently set to star in the forthcoming film Outcome, directed by Jonah Hill and also featuring Hill, Keanu Reeves, and Cameron Diaz.

Lucci announced the new book on Good Morning America, saying, “Fifteen years after my first book was released, I’m back to share new chapters in my life.…It’s an intimate glimpse into my life with stories I’ve never told before. This book is directly from my heart. I can’t wait for you to read it.”

La Lucci is scheduled for publication on February 3, 2026.—M.S.

Susan Lucci

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S E E N A N D H E A R D // N O N F I C T I O N

SEEN AND HEARD Pulitzer Prize Winner Says Debut Book Is Her Last Tessa Hulls has no plans for a follow-up to her graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts.

Gritchelle Fallesgon

Tessa Hulls just won the Pulitzer Prize for a book that she says will be her last.

Hulls, who became the second author in history to win a Pulitzer for a work of graphic literature, told Moira Macdonald of the Seattle Times that she has no plans to publish another book.

Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts was published by MCD/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux in March 2024. The graphic memoir tells the story of three generations of women in Hulls’ family as they are affected by political upheaval in China and the trauma that resulted.

For a review of Feeding Ghosts, visit Kirkus online.

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In a starred review of the book, which was also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, a critic for Kirkus praised the memoir as “a work that glimmers with insight, acumen, and an unwillingness to settle for simple answers.”

Feeding Ghosts will be her last book, Hulls said. “I always said, one and done,” she told the Times. “I’ve always been a multidisciplinary artist, (and) I knew that this project was going to require a dedication of both time and self that I would only be able to do once. I am very much at peace with the fact that I’m never going to do something in this exact format again.”—M.S.

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from the popular press, and an index makes this a handy reference.

A math teacher turns out to be a lively and engaging storyteller we all need to hear.

All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation Gilbert, Elizabeth | Riverhead (400 pp.) $35 | September 9, 2025 | 9780593540985

The author of the world’s most famous memoir returns to the form to tell the story of a great love.

“This book—its stories, prayers, poems, journal entries, photos, and drawings—is my very best effort to tell the truth about what happened between me and Rayya Elias—our friendship, our romance, our beauty, rage, and pain. It tells the story of Rayya’s addiction, her relapse, and her death. It also tells the story of my own addiction and my eventual surrender into recovery.” Gilbert (Eat Pray Love, City of Girls, etc.) brings her beloved Rayya vibrantly to life on the page, showing how and why the woman she met in 2002 as a hairdresser in the East Village was “a legend to all who knew her.” When Rayya was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2016, Gilbert ended her marriage (which by then had become a distant second fiddle to the relationship with Rayya), and the two became lovers. There was a good part, and then a very bad part in the months leading up to Rayya’s death in 2018. The book also follows the story of Gilbert’s subsequent recovery from sex and love addiction through devoted adherence to a 12-step program. Since she does not “have the heart to write out the excruciating details of the binge that I went on” after Rayya died, citing concern for the privacy of others, she focuses instead on the spiritual and emotional progress she has finally been able to achieve, documented in earnest poems and winsome doodles as well as well-written anecdotes.

“Readers of my earlier work may remember that I reached nearly this same 60

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level of peace and tranquility back when I was in India, in the middle of my Eat Pray Love travels, after months of disciplined prayer, meditation, and retreat.” The difference this time, she says, is that she has the support she needs not to “drive my life off a cliff all over again.”

A worthy addition to the literature of addiction and recovery, charming and harrowing by turns.

Mother of Methadone: A Doctor’s Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis Glenn, Melody | Beacon Press (240 pp.) $28.95 | July 22, 2025 | 9780807017760

Looking into the past of addiction science and treatment to find a more empathetic future.

On the heels of a harrowing first glimpse into the world of addiction treatment during an interview for a part-time position at a methadone clinic in Arizona, Glenn searches for answers in her own medical training and scientific study. Much of what she learned in medical school about addiction and those who suffer from it was rooted in judgment and stigmas, but the clinic showed another path forward in working with addicts. While diving into the history of methadone treatment, Glenn lands on a black-and-white photo of a woman in a Journal of the American Medical Association article commemorating the 40th anniversary of methadone treatment for addiction and its chief proponent. “She was about sixty or seventy, joy radiating from her eyes.

Perhaps this is what it looked like to be proud of your life’s work,” she writes. So begins a deep, compassionate exploration of the life and impact of Dr. Marie Nyswander, an American psychiatrist who studied and promoted the use of methadone in heroin addiction treatment protocols that still stand today.

Glenn, engagingly blending memoir, research, and fiction, seeks a role model

in Nyswander and her decades-old work.

“I had always craved a female boss or mentor in medicine, but they were hard to come by,” she writes. “Why did I get the sense that I was fighting the same battles, with myself, my patients, and medicine at large, that Marie had already fought more than fifty years ago?” The author then traces the past to learn how to understand her present. Facing a deadly opiate epidemic at unprecedented scale in the history of the United States, Glenn offers a look behind the curtain into addiction science, recovery, and what might be possible.

An absorbing blend of memoir, history, and fiction that explores the story of addiction treatment for a kinder path ahead.

Kirkus Star

Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home Grant, Stephen Starring | Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) | $29.99 July 8, 2025 | 9781668018040

A marketing whiz, waylaid by the pandemic, becomes a rural mailman in this winning memoir.

“I am behind schedule and this route is almost sixty miles long,” writes Grant early in his memoir. That route snakes out from Blacksburg, Virginia, one of the most technologically sophisticated cities in the nation; by its end, on unmaintained roads past sad trailer parks and weathered farmhouses, it’s a different world. Indeed, one of his first customers takes delivery of a sword paid for with his second pandemic check, a replica of “the blade that smote Sauron.” Another stop on his route leaves coffee in the mailbox for him in the freezing Appalachian winter, while Grant slugs down Gatorade in the boiling summer and advises cutting it in half with water, “because it’s actually too salty right out of the bottle.”

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That’s not the only bit of wisdom Grant dispenses: “If you think your letter carrier isn’t keeping a list of who’s naughty and nice, you are not living in reality.” Grant also observes the reality that few delivery people last long in the job: where the average on-the-job annual injury rate is 2.8 for every 100 employees, it’s 7 for postal workers, thanks to dogs, bees, weather, and off-kilter people. But, Grant adds, there are pleasures to the job, too, from seeing beautiful countryside to doing a public service: “When I carried the mail I was never just me, but something much larger.” Along the way, Grant muses about rural poverty, fractious politics, violence, drug abuse, and other issues, but he peppers his prose with funny aperçus: “It’s always the small dogs that start shit….When the universe arrives at its heat death, there will be nothing left but unread issues of the Economist….

Our delivery vehicles were like democracy, the worst of all possible vehicles, except for the alternatives.”

A charming book that’s guaranteed to make you think differently about the USPS.

Kirkus Star

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival Greenblatt, Stephen | Norton (336 pp.) $31.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9780393882278

Marlowe’s Renaissance.

From the pen of the award-winning scholar Greenblatt (The Swerve, 2011) comes this vivid biography of the Renaissance poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe. The son of a Canterbury cobbler, Marlowe won a place at his local school by dint of brains and energy, moved to Cambridge, where he distinguished himself in Latin learning, found himself recruited into a network of intelligence officers for Queen Elizabeth, K IR KU S R E V IE W S

AI development, writes Karen Hao, has become increasingly secretive.

EMPIRE OF AI

and then, at age 29, was mysteriously murdered in a bar fight. At the heart of Greenblatt’s book, though, is not just a familiar story but a new argument: that it was really Marlowe, rather than Shakespeare, who lit the flame under the literary Renaissance of Elizabethan England and, furthermore, that it was Marlowe’s brilliant schooling (rather than any lived experience) that fed his verbal imagination. Acting and action were everywhere in Marlowe’s world, and Greenblatt implies that it was his work as a spy that gave him an added sense of what it meant to perform. Marlowe “entered a world in which virtually everyone was in disguise, and it was fantastically difficult to know whom to trust. These professional role-players, operatives supremely gifted at inspiring confidence, whispered what one most hoped to hear and made one want to relax, open up, and reveal the truth.”

Greenblatt is describing the world of Elizabethan espionage, but he could well be talking about the power of the theater to make us open up, relax, and reveal the truth. In the end, Marlowe “made it possible to write in a new way about violence, ambition, greed, and desire. He offered poetic liberation.” In his hands, “the expressive power of the English language took a great leap forward.” In Greenblatt’s hands, literary scholarship, too, has taken a great leap forward.

A scintillating biography of Christopher Marlowe by one of America’s leading humanities scholars.

For more by Stephen Greenblatt, visit Kirkus online.

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI Hao, Karen | Penguin Press (448 pp.) $32 | July 15, 2025 | 9780593657508

A well-reported look at the frontiers of information technology as brought to the world courtesy of artificial intelligence.

“I think this will be the most transformative and beneficial technology humanity has yet invented,” Silicon Valley tech tycoon Sam Altman once exalted of ChatGPT, the AI engine built on a vast corpus of words. Hao, a writer for The Atlantic and other publications, takes a more measured view of the accomplishments of Altman and his OpenAI, a tech firm with significant transparency issues and a curious structure, part nonprofit, part for profit. Hao opens with Altman’s being fired in November 2023 at the hands of his board and his quick return to the company with few of those issues resolved, a drama that, Hao writes, “highlighted one of the most urgent questions of our generation: How do we govern artificial intelligence?” It’s an urgent question indeed, given that AI increasingly governs us in making decisions about judicial sentencings, college admissions, health insurance payouts, and so on. Moreover, Hao writes, AI development has become increasingly secretive, with the evolving product put to uses that “could amplify and exploit the fault lines in our society.” Against booster promises that AI will solve the climate crisis and discover a cure for cancer, Hao—who JULY 1, 2025

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found employees blocked from speaking with her “beyond sanctioned conversations”—looks at some unhappy realities: For one, data centers consume huge amounts of energy, with one planned facility using nearly as much power as New York City; for another, most of the corpus of AI’s large language models overlooks the developing world, where, not coincidentally, a great deal of AI-related grunt work is happening for low wages in places like Kenya and Chile.

A pointed account raises needed questions about how AI is to be regulated to do no—or at least less—harm.

The Royal Butler: My Remarkable Life in Royal Service Harrold, Grant | Pegasus (272 pp.) | $29.95 August 28, 2025 | 9798897100156

Few Americans share the British obsession with royalty, but this dive into patrician domestic service will hold their attention.

Harrold is a former butler to King Charles III and the United Kingdom’s “leading expert on etiquette,” according to the jacket description, but he makes a good impression and does well without a ghostwriter. The Crown plays a modest role in the lives of most Britons, but Harrold’s parents were genuine enthusiasts who enjoyed visiting country houses or attending ceremonies where anyone connected to the royal family appeared. Catching the bug, he shared their fascination. As a child, he sent chatty letters to the queen, and by adolescence discovered that butlers made a career of assisting royalty and vowed to join them. He loved his first experience, a two-week stint cleaning a country house for the shooting season, after which the owners offered him a job. Trainee butlers spend their time scrubbing, vacuuming, and making beds, but he also attended a college 62

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course on serving at table. After some years in a run-of-the-mill manor, he was interviewed repeatedly before joining the household of Charles, Prince of Wales and later king. As he rose to the top of his profession, he seems to have enjoyed every minute of it. There is less drama than readers familiar with Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey might expect, and history buffs will note the absence of obnoxious royalty.

He has little but praise for the aristocracy who seem to treat their staff well and even (in the younger generation) familiarly. Service in a noble household demands as much drudgery as skill, but he remains star-struck to the end as he recounts the camaraderie, friendship, and occasional horseplay of fellow workers, along with the perks—good food, celebrities, world leaders close-up, and first-class travel.

A royal servant’s diverting memoir.

Wound Man: The Many Lives of a Surgical Image Hartnell, Jack | Princeton Univ. (336 pp.) $39.95 | August 19, 2025 | 9780691243481

Tracing the origins and influence of a strange and archaic medical illustration.

Laden with a visual cacophony of deadly injuries such as a club to the skull and an arrow through the leg, the battered figure of Wound Man first appeared over 500 years ago in medieval medical manuscripts from Central Europe. Hartnell (Medieval Bodies, 2018) guides readers through a whirlwind history of medical illustrations, from bloodletting charts to Zodiac diagrams and urinalysis wheels, all to neatly situate Wound Man’s emergence on the precipice of major developments in both print and medical research. Wound Man introduced a new way of reading diagrammatically, beginning with an image: Surgeons could find a wound on the figure’s body and trace a line to a written entry that outlined suggested treatment. “This was

the medico-visual world from which the Wound Man would spring,” Hartnell explains, “one where medieval makers mined the relationship between image and information with precision to transform their diagrammatic figures into inventive and impressive carriers of knowledge.” Wound Men continued to appear in manuscripts over the following century, further influencing new realms of insight. Religious imagery adopted a similar visual tone, which effectively rebranded Wound Man into something more familiar and narrative; the figure emerged “as something of a pictorial empathy machine fueled by multiple associations with contemporary writings, characters, and their associated visual culture.” After the creation and popularization of the printing press, Wound Man found further life in the print sphere and was often simply used as an aesthetic illustration “for mass appeal as a pan-European visual phenomenon.”

Hartnell’s revelatory research and plethora of macabre illustrations make the book an unexpected treasure: It shines as both a morbid medical history and a curious record of the early years of information graphics.

An uncanny history of a classical oddity.

Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA Hillsberg, Christina | Citadel/Kensington (304 pp.) | $29 | June 24, 2025 | 9780806543499

A retired CIA analyst and field agent writes of an institution long marked by sexism and racism.

Hillsberg came to the CIA immediately after college, writing of East African geopolitics for “our premier intelligence product, the President’s Daily Brief.” Eventually she went out into the field, “collecting foreign intelligence of national security interest” and running cases with “clandestine assets.” She was far from the only woman in the spy business to do dangerous and K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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daring work, even though the widespread assumption for decades was that a woman in the CIA was a secretary or clerk. Profiling dozens of agents from the 1960s to the present, Hillsberg notes that CIA head John Foster Dulles ordered an equity report as early as 1953, discovering that women were absent from the senior staff and averaged four degrees in rank lower than men. Things began to improve over the years, when it was finally widely recognized that women made good spies precisely because so few men suspected that they were; one female agent remarks, “I think women are better listeners and better readers of character right off the bat.” One compelling story in evidence was a young woman posted to Moscow who, apparently invisible to the Soviet-era KGB, ran an effective underground network until it was compromised by double agents. Another woman at about the same time voiced suspicions about a certain male agent named Aldrich Ames but was ignored for her trouble, to disastrous ends. And casual use of the N-word at the Africa Division on the part of the bosses may explain why one pioneering Black agent left in 1989 after just three years in the service—and, by Hillsberg’s account, recruiting women of color remains difficult. Given the Trump administration’s anti-DEI stance, one wonders whether Hillsberg’s charges will prompt meaningful reform there.

An insider’s account that makes clear that America’s most famous intelligence agency is in need of an overhaul.

We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir Hopkins, Anthony | Summit/Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) | $35 November 4, 2025 | 9781668075500

The legendary Welsh actor pens his memoirs.

In 1949, when he was 11, Hopkins’ parents sent him to boarding school in southeastern Wales. He hated that “brick prison” and its “grim K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Charting his path from Wales to Hollywood (with help from Shakespeare).

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teaching staff,” yet the school gave him his first taste of Shakespeare when it screened Laurence Olivier’s 1948 film version of Hamlet. “I felt that Olivier as Hamlet was speaking to me, referring to some long-vanished, ancient part of myself,” he writes. In this charming if run-of-the-mill memoir, Hopkins charts his progression from the son of a baker who feared his son wouldn’t amount to anything, to a student who prompted headmasters to whack him in the head and claim, “Does anything go on in that thick skull of yours?” to one of the world’s most celebrated actors. Hopkins describes his career progression, starting with a fortuitous visit to the local YMCA and an offer to speak his first-ever line onstage. He recounts his scholarship years at the Cardiff College of Music and Drama, his acceptance to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, his struggles with alcoholism, his years working under Olivier at London’s National Theatre, and his first film role, which came about after Peter O’Toole encouraged him to test for The Lion in Winter. Much of the book’s second half is devoted to Hopkins’ cinema career, including the roles for which he won his Best Actor Oscars, as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and as the titular character in The Father (2020). Much of this material is the standard stuff one finds in celebrity memoirs: A solitary kid who hated school and didn’t fit in anywhere goes on to a distinguished career. Descriptions of film shoots can be sketchy. But Hopkins is an agreeable guide, and there’s ample humor here to entertain, as when he notes that, when his agent offered him the script for The Silence of the Lambs, he asked, “Is it a children’s film?”

A fun if by-the-numbers memoir from a cinema icon.

As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try To Erase Us Hurwitz, Sarah | HarperOne (320 pp.) | $32.99 September 9, 2025 | 9780063374973

Living and loving the faith.

There’s an old comic exchange between two men.

One says, “It’s hard to make a living.” The other says, “It’s hard to be a Jew.” The first replies, “It’s hard to be a mensch!”

This book explores just how hard it is to be a Jew in 21st-century America.

But more importantly, it explores just how hard it is to be a mensch of any faith—truly humane, open, and accepting, motivated by ethical principles and care for others. The struggle to embrace a heritage has been irrevocably complicated by the struggle to embrace a Jewish nation-state. In fluent, conversational prose, the author (a former speechwriter for the Obamas) outlines some of the major historical principles behind Judaism. In her account, Judaism is a story of survival, a constant reinventing of tradition for a changing world, and a commitment to preserving the past while living in the present. More than any specific list of laws, rules, or observances, this feature of Judaism lies at the heart of the author’s story. She writes from personal experience, from historical research, and from a truly literary perspective. Responding to the prevalence of anti-Jewish incidents after the Oct. 7, 2003, attack on Israel, she writes: “Relying on incident counts can be like trying to measure humidity JULY 1, 2025

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with a bucket, as if it were rain. You can wind up with an empty bucket and a lot of people proclaiming that it’s all in your head. Even as you stand before them drenched in sweat and feeling suffocated, they may still insist that you’re overreacting, even making it all up.” It may be uniquely hard to be a Jew these days. But, Jewish or not, it’s even harder to be a mensch.

A love letter to a religious and cultural inheritance, written without apology but with humility and care.

Becoming Baba: Fatherhood, Faith, and Finding Meaning in America Ismail, Aymann | Doubleday (272 pp.) $28 | July 8, 2025 | 9780385549615

A candid, searching memoir about growing up Muslim American and navigating faith, family, and belonging.

Ismail, a journalist and podcast host, begins his memoir with his mother cleaning their new apartment after a move from Newark, New Jersey, to the suburbs. From this sensory-rich start, he recounts the vibrant texture of his Egyptian American childhood, where Islamic tradition provides both structure and meaning. His mother emerges as the family’s spiritual compass—resourceful, devout, and determined—while his father remains physically present but emotionally distant. Through episodic chapters that move between family history and personal reflection, Ismail explores how Islam shaped his identity alongside American culture, offering him a moral framework even as he questioned certain practices and interpretations. The memoir thoughtfully examines the challenges of preserving faith in a sometimes hostile environment, especially after 9/11, when Muslim Americans faced increased scrutiny. Ismail writes with nuance about his Islamic schooling, which, despite occasional strictness, 64

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grounded him in values that would later become meaningful in his adult life.

His storytelling balances humor with reflection, showing how his spiritual journey evolved rather than disappeared as he matured. Particularly moving are the passages where Ismail reconnects with Islamic traditions as a father himself, finding renewed purpose in rituals and teachings that connect him to his children and his heritage. As much a celebration of faith’s enduring influence as it is an honest account of family dynamics, the memoir concludes with Ismail embracing a more intentional relationship with both fatherhood and Islam, discovering that the two journeys complement and strengthen each other.

A warm and insightful exploration of how faith sustains and evolves across generations.

For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising Jamalpour, Fatemeh & Nilo Tabrizy | Pantheon (320 pp.) | $30 | September 16, 2025 9780593701447

Two Iranian journalists chronicle protests against Iran’s oppressive Islamic Republic, and the regime’s repressive reaction.

Jamalpour’s and Tabrizy’s primary lens is the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, which sprang up forcefully following the 2022 killing of Mahsa Jîna Amini by Tehran’s morality police for her refusal to wear a hijab. While Iran’s decades-long transition from monarchy to democracy

to theocratic autocracy has led to numerous revolutionary efforts and calls for reform, this movement has been notable in its widespread multiethnic support and engagement of Gen Z. In this collaboration, the authors bear witness to atrocities that have been pitifully underreported, oversimplified, and misunderstood by international media, and they situate the demands of the “sixth generation of Iranian feminists” within the longer tradition of activism in their country. Jamalpour reports firsthand from the streets of Tehran, cataloging daily protest gatherings along with the humiliations, detainments, and arrests of her and her fellow protestors. Tabrizy’s coverage comes from the offices of the New York Times and Washington Post, where she is determined to counter disinformation in, from, and about her homeland.

Jamalpour’s nail-biting account of her protest attendance—told in straightforward prose—weaves with Jamalpour’s efforts to verify visuals and collect testimony from Tabrizy’s physically safe but emotionally fraught position within the diaspora. Both authors demonstrate deep love for their country and its diverse makeup and shed light on the tug of war between cultural expansion and contraction that has defined turbulent years of political conflict and economic desperation. Their respect for the nature and power of journalism in situations of conflict and oppression strengthens their storytelling resolve. In a project undertaken at great personal risk, the authors’ compiled historical context, frank personal reflection, and conscientious recordkeeping constitute a critically important “first rough draft” of a significant moment being ignored in real time.

Personally driven, historically necessary, and politically salient.

Two women bear witness to atrocities in Iran that have been underreported.

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Iosi, the Remorseful Spy Lewin, Miriam & Horacio Lutzky Trans. by Frances Riddle Seven Stories (384 pp.) | $23.95 paper July 22, 2025 | 9781644214572

The spy who came in from the heat.

Argentina has the fifth-largest Jewish population of any country outside of Israel, with Jewish immigration playing a major role in shaping Argentine society over the past century. While many people of Jewish heritage have risen to positions of power and respect, an undercurrent of antisemitism flows beneath the surface of official life. The story of José Perez, who becomes Iosi the spy, exposes the complex relationships among the Jewish community, the all-powerful military, and the administrative bureaucracy of Argentina. The Argentinian federal police officer recruited to infiltrate the Jewish community takes on a new identity. He learns Hebrew. He passes effortlessly in families and synagogues. The information he retrieves played a major role in two attacks on Jewish Argentina in the 1990s: one, the attack on the Israeli embassy in 1992; the other, the bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in 1994. This latter attack has become one of the most controversial events in recent Argentine history. Who was responsible? Who should pay? The real heart of this book, however, is a personal rather than a political story. Much of the book is told in the first person, as if by Iosi himself.

We get a story of recruitment and seduction as subtle and as disturbing as anything in a novel by John le Carré.

We get a vision of a democratic country that monitors its citizens. We hear the voices of Argentinians trapped between a love of their country and a duty to their heritage. The story of Iosi exposes duplicity and defiance in a modern nation. In the process, it makes us ask whether the United States is capable of such deceit.

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A gripping story of spycraft and intrigue, told with the flair of thriller fiction.

Self-Censorship Loury, Glenn C. | Polity (140 pp.) $15 | July 29, 2025 | 9781509567409

A modest treatise defending the right of untrammeled free speech in the face of efforts to silence unpopular opinions.

A public intellectual “of decidedly conservative leanings—and an African American one, no less!,” Loury recounts that he, like many others on university campuses, has faced pressure to temper his publicly stated views and go with the “progressive” flow on campus. That things cut both ways—that moderate Republicans, say, are shouted down in MAGA conclaves—he acknowledges somewhat more obliquely, and with an economist’s image: If Gresham’s law holds, he writes, that bad money will drive good money out of the marketplace, then “people with extreme views can drive moderates…out of a conversation.” The result is then an impoverishment of that conversation and scarcely any conversation at all over questions that demand reasoned deliberation. Speaking to what people want to hear is the definition of the self-censorship of Loury’s title: A speaker may couch opinions in ways that are meant to signal that he or she is on the right side of public opinion, or at least such public opinion as is in the room, or he or she may avoid speaking altogether out of fear of bullying. Again, the result is impoverishment, such that important social problems can’t be talked through without giving offense to someone somewhere. Loury uses an episode of recent history to make his point: Asked to speak at a synagogue in Florida, he “hinted publicly at my growing doubts about Israel’s actions in Gaza,” leading to a chain of angry

denunciation and calumny. He might have known, but he risked voicing the thought anyway. “It may well turn out that I couldn’t afford the social cost of speaking my mind on Gaza,” he concludes. “But one thing is certain: if I wanted to maintain my own self-­respect, I couldn’t afford not to pay that cost.”

Mostly evenhanded, occasionally aggrieved, and an interesting angle on the question of political correctness.

Kirkus Star

Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America Macy, Beth | Penguin Press (368 pp.) $32 | October 7, 2025 | 9780593656730

A small-town success story returns to her Ohio home to take account of profound changes.

“It’s not as if Urbana had ever been utopia for me.

I was among the poorest kids in my class, and I felt it.”

Macy, the author of Dopesick and other bestsellers, made her way out of poverty in the 1980s through a college degree funded by grants that largely no longer exist. Her latest nonfiction narrative chronicles her return home to try to see what would happen to a kid like her today, coming face to face with “the unprecedented forces that were actively turning the community I loved into a poorer, sicker, angrier, and less educated place.” Her reporting goes deep and wide, including her family members, old friends and teachers, and many new acquaintances. Central among them is recent high school graduate Silas James, one of the teens she identifies as “a modern-day me,” though Silas is trans and has more abuse and trauma in his background than the author. Also memorable are an ex-boyfriend, once the most liberal person she knew, now a strident voice on an array of far-right talking points; on the other end of the JULY 1, 2025

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spectrum is Brooke Perry, a deeply committed attendance officer whom she accompanies on harrowing rounds to try to get kids into school in a climate where education has lost its place as a tentpole of the American dream. The author does not shy away from tough personal stories, writing about a niece who was abused as a child by her stepfather. Macy goes into the toughest interviews with “trauma-informed advice,” reminding herself that connecting about shared interests and noncontroversial topics will keep these conversations going much longer— though sadly, it often doesn’t change the end result. Black-and-white photos of the interview subjects add an important dimension to the story.

By practicing the basic journalistic acts of listening and observing, Macy continues her noble work as a truth teller.

Does This Make Me Funny?: Essays Mamet, Zosia | Viking (256 pp.) | $28 September 9, 2025 | 9780593490563

Personal essays on the miseries, catastrophes, obstacles—and some joys—of being Zosia.

In the acknowledgments of her debut essay collection (she previously edited an anthology called My First Popsicle), Mamet reveals that her Pulitzer-winning playwright father counseled her never to read reviews of her own work because you remember only the bad ones. So she may never know that this review has some nice things to say about her book. About two-thirds of the essays are about being completely miserable as an adolescent and young adult, constantly struggling with “fears that I would never make it as an actress, that I would never be skinny enough to love, that I’d never escape the prison of high school, or anorexia, or my own mind.” These problems will be completely relatable to many readers, and her treatment of them is funny and moving.

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The more jaded will have read much on these topics in the past, but will join the fangirls in cheering when she delivers the satisfaction of also writing about finding a great love and a true best friend and, most distinctively, the hair-raising process of finding her place in the acting world. The best essay in the book is the one nobody but her could write—about playing Shoshanna on Girls. It’s very close to the end, and contains some of the best descriptions of acting since Al Pacino’s Sonny Boy. “Zosia went offline to make space for Shosh to take over for that period of time. She came out of me as if she had been a part of me forever, lying dormant just waiting for her time to arrive when she could come alive.” She concludes by saying she will never stop missing her, imagines her character’s life continuing somewhere, “a speed-talking energizer bunny who loves pink and is more than likely running a Fortune 500 company and on her second marriage to a highly successful fund manager.”

Generally lovable, with several standout moments.

Art Work: On the Creative Life Mann, Sally | Abrams (272 pp.) | $35 September 9, 2025 | 9781419780714

Doing art.

Photographer Mann looks back at a long career to reflect on creativity, inspiration, and the “decades of obsessive practice” she’s needed “to get shit done.” Now in her 70s, Mann aims her book at “young artists and writers, with the vain, and vainglorious, hope that some of it will make a difference in the way you organize (yes, I did say organize) your creative practice, or that it might help you avoid some of the pits into which I fell.” Twelve chapters address issues such as luck, rejection, censorship (including self-censorship), distractions, family, risk-taking, and, lastly, talent. Although from early childhood she was determined to choose her own path in life,

stubbornness did not ensure she’d achieve her goals. Luck played a big part, “as though there were a hidden pattern, a matrix of coincidence that invisibly undergirded my life.” And she worked hard. “Learn your craft,” she advises. “You learn it like you learned typing (or we should have) or baking a soufflé or driving a backhoe.” She encourages her readers to believe that “in all of us, the unique events and emotions in our past will have carved a trace in our soul.”

Moreover, “if you’re going to imitate, or steal, you’d damn well better do an irreproachable and transcendent version that is entirely your vision or voice.” In a book filled with anecdotes, among the most entertaining recounts her reluctant visit to Qatar, at the invitation of the emir, who wanted her to photograph him—a trip that turned into an unexpectedly rich adventure. Illustrated with her photographs, screenshots of journal entries, to-do lists, letters (many to photographer Ted Orland), and even a bankbook, the volume testifies to the evolution of a unique aesthetic persona.

Candid, irreverent, and engaging.

Kirkus Star

Swifterature: A Love Story: English Literature and Taylor Swift McCausland, Elly | Pegasus (384 pp.) $29.95 | November 4, 2025 | 9781639369898

A piercing look at an undeniable phenomenon through a literary lens.

English literature professor McCausland learned the hard way that haters are going to hate, hate, hate, hate, hate when, in 2023, journalists caught wind of her plans to teach a Taylor Swift–themed seminar at Ghent University in Belgium.

Her class was met with ridicule on the internet, and she received messages calling her “a moron, an idiot, a ‘big bitch,’ and a stupid woman.” Her book, she writes, is “the result of a massive free K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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association exercise that has been going on in my head since 2006” and seeks “to make historical English (by which I mean Anglophone) literature as relevant, accessible, and interesting to as wide an audience as possible” using Swift’s lyrics as inspiration. Each chapter dives into a different literary genre or conceit, tying Swift’s songs to classic works of literature.

In one, she discusses the dismissal of Swift’s success by would-be cultural guardians, comparing their disdain to the 19th-century scorning of novels popular among women: “The implication is that women and girls just cannot be trusted with culture. We take it too far. We become obsessive and emotional.” Other chapters deal with Swift as a poet, making use of conceits like anacoluthon (“when a speaker abruptly changes course”) and apostrophe (“a spontaneous exclamation directed at an absent person or an object”); the concept of the antihero (which is the title of one of Swift’s most beloved songs); and themes of grief and madness. McCausland discusses an impressive array of past writers: Aphra Behn, Laurence Sterne, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, to name a few. This relentlessly smart book serves as the perfect introduction to literary theory for Swift’s fans, as well as a fascinating exploration of the pop-music phenomenon to outside observers—you don’t need to be a Swiftie to enjoy it (though it can’t hurt).

Even if you’re a Swift aficionado, you’ll learn a lot from this enchanting book.

Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership McCray, Kenja | New York Univ. (256 pp.) $35 | August 5, 2025 | 9781479833047

Women fought for Black liberation while challenging sexism within the movement.

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been mischaracterized and ignored.

Historian McCray charges that their “shrouded existence” in the popular patriarchal history belies the crucial work they performed in the Black freedom struggle. With comprehensive research and intimate interviews, McCray delves into the complex and evolving role of women. These “essential soldiers” performed kazi leadership—­ “work-centered, people-centered, and African-American centered”—as they fought the triple oppression of race, gender, and class. The Black nationalist movement gained credence in the United States among young people who felt the pace of the Civil Rights Movement was too slow. Though borne out of racial oppression at home, it was greatly influenced by liberation struggles around the globe. Based on the principle of Kawaida, an African tradition of communitarianism and self-determination, more than 20 groups flourished in urban centers, from Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn to the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles.

By uplifting Black culture and fighting racial oppression, the diverse groups focused on strengthening the comm­ unity. Women were the backbone of these efforts. In food deserts, they started cooperatives providing fresh, nutritious groceries. Where public schools failed Black children, they taught academics alongside cultural pride. They were involved in producing the Black News, which reached a circulation of 50,000, and helping in broader political campaigns, including voter registration and economic boycotts. A basic principle of Kawaida was complementarity, which enforced gender roles identifying males as leaders and women as followers. Highlighting female activists who challenged this sexist formulation, like Amina Baraka and Tayari kwa Salaam, McCray traces the evolution of women’s thinking and practices, including the founding of their own organizations, like the Black Women’s United Front, which focused on domestic violence, rape, reproductive rights, and equal pay. They transformed both themselves and the movement.

A fresh perspective on the role of women in the Black nationalist movement.

Far From Home: An Alaskan Senator Faces the Extreme Climate of Washington, D.C. Murkowski, Lisa with Charles Wohlforth Forum Books (336 pp.) | $28.99 June 24, 2025 | 9780593728666

Between conscience and service: the Alaskan senator on ethical leadership.

In this incisive and thought-provoking memoir, moderate Republican Murkowski dives directly into her Senate career, beginning with her controversial 2002 appointment by her father, followed by four hard-won terms—including her historic 2010 write-in campaign victory against Tea Party candidate Joe Miller. Throughout, Murkowski offers shrewd insight into Washington’s complex and often shadowy political machinery, exposing power grabs within both parties. Stating her particular position as a Republican from the outset, she’s careful to delineate how her values often stand apart, and she also reflects her disdain for our current two-party system as being a somewhat forced construct that doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of the people, Alaskans in particular: “I am a Republican because I believe in personal responsibility, limited government, and individual liberty, but my party comes after my country, and Alaska is always first in my heart.” She crafts a nuanced portrait of Alaska’s uniqueness: a diverse population of approximately 700,000 spread across vast, challenging terrain, with substantial dependence on federal funding. Without excessive criticism of party colleagues, she does draw meaningful contrasts with figures like former Gov. Sarah Palin, who, she notes, “betrayed a weak command of issues and a shaky ability to connect sentences.” Addressing Alaskans’ “best interests,” she writes, “This cultural and political chasm between Alaska and Washington is the central challenge of my service. Alaska really is different. And I am different because I am Alaskan, to my core.” Murkowski touches on key >>> JULY 1, 2025

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3

2

For more booklists, visit Kirkus online.

4

5

5 Books To Read Outdoors 1 Submersed

By Matthew Gavin Frank

A fascinating voyage among the hidden tides shaping a social niche.

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2 Sea of Grass

By Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty

A welcome addition to the literature of America’s grasslands, which need all the champions they can get.

3 Is a River Alive?

4 The Place of Tides

5 Turning to Birds

Are rivers alive?

Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.

A quiet memoir of profound change.

A delightful celebration of the joys of birding—and how it leads one to look at the world in a new light.

By Robert Macfarlane

By James Rebanks

By Lili Taylor

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Gilber t Flores/ Variet y v ia Get t y Images

Book to Screen

Williams Sisters To Produce The Match Film The movie is based on Bruce Schoenfeld’s book about tennis players Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton.

Serena and Venus Williams are helping to bring Bruce Schoenfeld’s The Match:

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Althea Gibson and a Portrait of a Friendship to the big screen, Deadline reports.

Schoenfeld’s book, published in 2004 by Amistad/HarperCollins, tells the story of the relationship between Althea Gibson, a Black American tennis and golf player, and Angela Buxton, a Jewish tennis player from England. The pair decided to play together at Wimbledon in 1956 and won the women’s doubles title. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “The author is partic­ularly adept at recreating the tournaments Gibson and Buxton played, individually and together,

although he lingers overly long on the details of the matches themselves.”

The Williams sisters, both iconic tennis stars, will serve as executive producers on the film, which is being developed by entertainment companies 1Community, Access Entertainment, and Four Daughters. The script for The Match is being written by Liz Maccie, who will also executive-produce the film.

For a review of The Match, visit Kirkus online.

Emily Blavatnik and Danny Cohen of Access Entertainment said in a statement, “We are thrilled to be part of this groundbreaking project that not only celebrates the remarkable friendship between Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton but also highlights the profound impact of diversity in sports.”—M.S.

Serena Williams, left, and Venus Williams

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decisions reflecting moral conscience over party allegiance—notably her votes against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation and to convict Donald Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Murkowski positions herself as a bridge between two worlds— Washington politics and Alaska’s distinctive needs. Her message is both instructional and inspiring, subtly positioning herself as a role model for aspiring public servants, emphasizing that serving constituents transcends partisan victories and personal popularity.

An engrossing political testament from a uniquely independent voice.

Kirkus Star

Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood Nicolson, Adam | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (448 pp.) | $32 | September 16, 2025 9780374617370

A poetic study of birds and their place in the Anthropocene.

Nicolson grew up ignoring birds.

For the British naturalist and author, they used to be “a blank, a flicker of nothing much, like motes in sunlight.” To fill this gap in his knowledge, Nicolson decided to attend his own “Bird School”—a personal commitment to learning about birds, their behaviors, and their relationship to human beings.

To do so, he constructs an “absorbatory,” an observatory in his Sussex Weald farmland where he sought to “dissolve… the boundary between self and world.”

Most chapters use a common species to explore a wider topic: robins and how they mark their territory, tits and breeding, ravens and how they think and communicate. While birds are a hyperlocal interest, much of the knowledge he shares is broad enough that readers will learn about bird behavior in general. In a chapter on songbirds, for example, readers learn that birds alter their singing schedule to work around an 72

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Traditional and raucous stories of growing up in a Canadian Native nation.

WE SURVIVED THE NIGHT

airport’s loudest hours. In addition to a wealth of facts about bird behavior, Nicolson has access to an endless fount of lyrical descriptions to make birds come alive on the page: A blackbird sings as “if a cherry could sing…rounded and full and fleshy, that dark sugar-juice”; holding a dead raven is like “exploring a derelict house.” The final two chapters address the elephant in the absorbatory: As mankind has flourished, most bird populations have dwindled. Nicolson’s solutions may be more applicable to those who own large swaths of land or work in environmental policy, but the book’s wider point can inspire any of its readers: If we learn to pay attention to the world around us, we’ll become a part of it again.

An evocative ode to English birds that invites readers to look more closely at the world around them.

Kirkus Star

We Survived the Night NoiseCat, Julian Brave | Knopf (432 pp.) $29 | October 14, 2025 | 9780593320785

A member of a Canadian Native nation writes skillfully of daily life and the transcendent power of traditional stories.

Filmmaker and writer NoiseCat opens on a horrifying note: His newborn father was almost murdered at one of Canada’s infamous residential schools, “cast into the incinerator to be burned with the garbage.” Fortunately, a night watchman rescued “Baby X,” who returned to his band in British Columbia and its small reservation.

“Our rez looks the way you might imagine a rez looks,” writes NoiseCat, “cars up on blocks, free-­ranging dogs, horses here and there, the occasional cousin getting around on a bicycle pieced together out of spare parts.” His father would become a famed artist, but at the cost of leaving his family behind and, for many years, battling alcoholism. Drawing on “tspetékwll,” or etiological stories, NoiseCat portrays his father as Coyote, “a great creator, terrible demolisher, and downright hilarious hellraiser.” In other words, as the author elaborates, Coyote is neither all good nor all evil, just as life is something both to endure and to celebrate. And, he adds, Coyote was well aware, too, that “he was a failure and a laughingstock.” NoiseCat is both eloquent and plainspoken: When signing a condolence book at the death of Canada’s monarch, he writes simply, “You take care, Queen Elizabeth,” but his language more often sings: “If you know where to look and who to listen to, you might just run into some of the raucous Indian stories, new and old, to which this land and its humans truly belong.” Along with those traditional and raucous stories, NoiseCat recounts some key moments in modern Native Canadian history, including the successful campaign on the part of the Inuit to create a self-governing territory that takes in a third of Canada’s landmass.

Thoughtful, informative, often entertaining, and just as often saddening, NoiseCat’s is a book to remember.

For more about Native life, visit Kirkus online.

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Kirkus Star

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

New Republic political writer Nwanevu offers remedies for an ailing American democracy.

Democracy is in a bad way: That’s the well-worn thesis of so many books of political commentary these days. It’s so, Nwanevu ventures, in part because American democracy as it is now constituted has allowed undemocratic forces to seize it. If the “best-plain English…definition is still Abraham Lincoln’s,” promoting government of the people, by the people, and for the people, then we’re far from it, owing to anachronisms such as the Electoral College and to deep swamps of misinformation. It’s cheering to note, on the latter point, that by Nwanevu’s account, most of the polls decrying Americans’ lack of political knowledge are cherry-picked: Neutral polls suggest that a majority do in fact know that, for instance, the Cold War was a “fight against communism,” can name the three branches of government, and so on. Despair about the electorate is one reason, Nwanevu suggests, that the electorate so despairs about democratic institutions. Thus, although democracy “is fundamentally about competition— the right of the people to govern themselves through fair contests where majorities win,” the minority, with a Republican congressional delegation that represents 41.5 million fewer people than the Democrats, has for decades held sway over the majority.

Nwanevu proposes a number of steps to secure a truer democracy, including ridding politics of dark money, eliminating the Senate filibuster, and admitting Washington, D.C., and “willing territories” to statehood.

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wearied by how journalism “has failed to meet this political moment.” Yet his writing is vibrant, even optimistic, animated by a clear belief that self-governance is the best kind of governance, and damn the torpedoes.

A resounding, persuasive call for a truly inclusive government of the people.

Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama Okeowo, Alexis | Henry Holt (272 pp.) $28.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781250206220

A native daughter returns to Alabama, a state much misunderstood—and for plentiful reasons.

New Yorker staff writer Okeowo was born in Houston and lived there for her first six years, but her parents, Nigerian immigrants, felt more at home in Alabama. So does she: “Montgomery is the only place I consider my hometown, the place where the bare bones of my self grew and fused together and gently solidified.” Having reported for years in Africa, she finds Alabama a place similarly both “stereotyped and neglected.” There’s cause for that stereotyping, for Alabama harbors sharply antagonistic racial divides—as she wryly notes, every time her aspirational parents moved into a white neighborhood, the whites moved elsewhere, only to find that “Black people followed them there, too.”

The divides are real and persistent. One of Okeowo’s chief interlocutors is a descendant of secessionists who “has an unrelenting pride in his story…the kind of pride that still revered the indecency of his elders.” Even so, he tries to connect with her and she with him, “because that’s what you do down here.” Such connections are not always easy to make:

By Okeowo’s account, many of Alabama’s Native Americans, few but politically astute and relatively affluent, seem as wary of their Black neighbors as of their white ones, while the white mayor of Montgomery permitted the erection of historical markers relating to slavery only

because he reckoned that they would draw tourist dollars. Okeowo ventures theses that Alabamians and others will find fascinating and provocative, among them the thought that the Lost Cause myth was in good part crafted by “certain white women” and that much of the ugliness of Alabama’s past—“Indian removal, the slave trade, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow”—is absent by design from official histories and “public stories.”

Okeowo delivers a portrait of a past-haunted place that is at once empathetic, sad, and troubling.

Kirkus Star

Joyride: A Memoir Orlean, Susan | Avid Reader Press (336 pp.) $32 | October 14, 2025 | 9781982135164

A celebration of a supremely accomplished writing life, with a few lumps along the way.

The occasion for this look back at a sterling writing career, in part, was Orlean’s realization that the 25th anniversary of The Orchid Thief was fast upon her, a signal moment indeed. Yet, she demurs, she had always steered clear of writing a memoir: “I’m used to looking outward, not inward; I yearn to bring attention to hidden worlds, not to my own.” The hidden worlds of others have proved rich mines in the past, but so, too, Orlean’s own life turns out to be, from a nerdy, bookish childhood in Shaker Heights, Ohio (easy to lampoon for its suburbanness, but, she adds, also an unexpected locus for the Civil Rights Movement), to her first efforts at journalism and on to the glories and disappointments of the writer’s daily work. Orlean is often funny, especially when telling stories on herself, as when she had to have her nose cauterized after a snort too many, “which embarrassed me to no end”; she can also be steely, as when she recounts how she became a target for QAnon JULY 1, 2025

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after tweeting “I’m so tired of old white men” in response to the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. For all the pleasures and pains herein, though, the great value of this book is the MFA in nonfiction writing that Orlean packs into it, full of some of the most useful advice on craft that any budding (or long-practicing, for that matter) writer could ask for, such as when she writes, “Every significant move forward for me has occurred because I developed ideas for myself.

Story ideas are everything.” And on that note, how she got the idea for The Orchid Thief is a tale that alone is worth the price of admission.

A spry, entertaining memoir/writing workshop by a nonfiction artist at the top of her game.

Kirkus Star

The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics Osterholm, Michael T. & Mark Olshaker Little, Brown Spark (384 pp.) | $30 September 2, 2025 | 9780316258340

How to survive a plague.

One of the great mysteries of Covid-19 is how the virus sickened and killed millions of humans around the world, but some who were exposed and likely infected experienced no symptoms at all. With the danger of this stealth spread in mind, the authors guide readers through a thought experiment: The emergence of and global response to a new, as-yet-unseen pandemic of catastrophic proportions. The killer is first identified in a refugee camp in Kenya, with a baby becoming the earliest recorded death. Invisible, or asymptomatic, spread makes this deadly bug particularly dangerous.

Osterholm, an internationally recognized epidemiologist, and journalist Olshaker weave a tale that at 74

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The gripping story of what a far more deadly virus would mean for humanity.

THE BIG ONE

times borders on horror, interspersing the gripping story of the fictional virus with historical accounts of global pandemics and the experience of preparation and mitigation. But the story never veers too far into darkness without returning practical advice gleaned from real lessons, our current predicament, and clarity about how the world must plan for what lies ahead. When we truly experience “The Big One”—and the Covid-19 pandemic was not it—solid response according to evidence will be critical to human survival. Misinformation, politics, and human nature all stand in the way, as we’ve seen with Covid-19.

The authors write, “Nature will have the upper hand, and the success of our response will be directly tied to the extent of our preparation.”

A clear-eyed examination of pandemic fault lines and what must be done to fix them.

When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life Pinker, Steven | Scribner (384 pp.) | $30 September 23, 2025 | 9781668011577

Pinker continues his explorations of the hidden social functions of language and thought with this look at common knowledge.

Common knowledge, as cognitive science Pinker lays it out here, lends itself to the game theory beloved of economists and strategists: Do I know

something that you don’t? Can we agree, in order to produce best outcomes, that X means X and Y means Y? Pinker explains at the outset that “with private knowledge, person A knows something, and person B knows it. With common knowledge, A knows something, and B knows it, but in addition, A knows that B knows it, and B knows that A knows it”—a shared set of data, facts, and assumptions that enable not only cooperation but also coordination. That coordination, Pinker holds, is essential to the functioning of society: Our shared visions allow us to build economies, polities, communities, for which reason he adds that a better term for “common knowledge” would be “mutual knowledge,” which more easily accommodates agreeing on “nonphysical realities.” Pinker offers a vivid example when he notes that people don’t rise up against dictators easily because of the unspoken assumption that everyone else supports the regime, but things can get rolling when a public demonstration yields “the common knowledge needed to coordinate resistance.” Timely, that.

Common knowledge has its negative aspects, he adds, as when people come to consensus about some point or another by way of shared media and then move together to punish transgressors. The swiftest way to be misunderstood, he notes, is to use irony or indirect speech, much as they help disguise our intentions. Pinker writes fluently, though there’s plenty of arcana from neuroscience, linguistics, and other fields floating around here. While it’s not necessary to have read Noam Chomsky, Antonio Damasio, Daniel Kahneman, and other cognitive scientists to follow Pinker’s arguments, it helps.

A revelatory, if sometimes challenging, look at the traps and rewards that lie within our words.

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Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis―A Memoir Presley, Priscilla Beaulieu with Mary Jane Ross | Grand Central Publishing (336 pp.) $30 | September 23, 2025 | 9780306836480

Navigating life beyond the King’s shadow.

In the nearly half-century since Elvis Presley’s death, the public’s persistent fascination with the King of Rock ’n’ Roll has sustained attention for those within his orbit. Priscilla Presley, having gained renewed visibility following Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla—the latter based on her 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me—returns once more to this well-traversed narrative.

She recounts their courtship (beginning when she was 14 and Elvis 24) through their brief six-year marriage that ended with her quest to forge an identity beyond Elvis’ influence: “I left the love of my life because I could no longer endure our way of life. I had to find my own life before I could figure out how Elvis fit into it. I left as gently as I could, but there was no way to do it without pain.” The memoir eventually shifts focus, chronicling her subsequent journey—love affairs; an acting career that included roles on Dallas and in The Naked Gun movies; raising daughter Lisa Marie and son Navarone; her relationships with her four grand­ children (including actress Riley Keough); and profound family tragedies, including the deaths of her grandson Benjamin and Lisa Marie.

“The Presley family has endured a particularly painful kind of loss….For generations, we Presleys have had to bury our children.” While maintaining an engaging voice throughout and offering colorful anecdotes about her entertainment career and personal life, the memoir nonetheless reveals an underlying reality: Even decades later, her narrative and public identity remain inextricably tethered to her famous ex-husband, a connection this latest work both acknowledges and reaffirms.

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“The more than four decades of living without him have taught me how rare and extraordinary he was as a human being. How rare and extraordinary our love for each other was. I have never felt anything remotely like it since.”

A candid memoir that both embraces and remains captive to the Elvis legacy.

The Outward Path: The Wisdom of the Aztecs Purcell, Sebastian | Norton (272 pp.) $29.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781324020561

Aztecs bring to mind gold and human sacrifice, but it turns out they were a philosophical people.

Purcell, an associate professor of philosophy at SUNY-Cortland in New York, last published the first English translation of a long metaphysical discourse compiled by a 16th-century Spanish friar. In this book, he explains it. Beginning at the beginning, Purcell asks the question at the basis of Western philosophy: What is our main goal in life? Conventionally, it’s been the pursuit of happiness, a goal stated literally by Thomas Jefferson but previously given a nod of approval by Aristotle. Few take this literally, preferring to aim for a “good life.” To followers of most religions, it means obeying divine laws and achieving redemption after death. A few religions (Purcell emphasizes Buddhism) and serious philosophers (Purcell adds an entire school, Stoicism) emphasize that there is no divine plan. Life’s value isn’t in achieving grace but in the quality of our struggle here on earth.

Aztec thinkers asked, “What does life look like without the possibility of redemption?” Their answer, like that of Stoics and Buddhists (though for different reasons) is that you will be fine because everything of value is already present in a well-lived life.

Purcell’s first chapters will persuade most readers that ingenious insights lie ahead. They’ll be right, but Aztec

philosophy (like quantum physics, the Constitution, or evolution) is a complex subject. In a series of Lessons, a “Postface” summary, and three dense appendices, he maintains that Aztec ethics emphasize one’s role in society. It “challenges Stoicism, Buddhism, and other philosophies, which hold that by working on your own, inner self first, you’ll find a way to happiness and fulfillment.” To which Purcell adds, “What makes life worth living also makes it fragile. You are not after happiness, and you are not after invulnerability…but instead a life of meaning.”

Lessons on achieving the good life, from a surprising source.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: A Veteran’s Memoir Queen, Khadijah | Legacy Lit/Hachette (368 pp.) $30 | August 5, 2025 | 9781538771150

Finding herself on the high seas.

When Queen’s sister Linda’s drug addiction prevented her from properly caring for her children, her mother uprooted her and her sister, Naima, from Los Angeles to move to Michigan. Queen was forced to withdraw from the community college she attended in California and found it impossible to continue her studies at Eastern Michigan University. She felt trapped and hopeless until a Navy recruiter approached her at RadioShack, where she worked, and encouraged her to enlist. The promise of a fully funded education, combined with a ticket out of Michigan, was enough to motivate Queen to sign up, a decision that changed her life. In the Navy, Queen and her female colleagues faced intense sexual harassment. Queen is Black, so the harassment was accompanied by racism.

The author struggled with her physical health, suffering a painful miscarriage.

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Pregnant, she left her assigned ship, the USS Cole, before Yemeni troops blasted a hole through its center, killing some of her fellow sailors and traumatizing the rest. She emerged from her former life with a newfound sense of strength and confidence in her ability to navigate the future. Queen is the author of seven books of poetry and prose, and her narration glimmers with humor, frankness, and vulnerability. She beautifully balances empathy for her past self with a trenchant analysis of the systems that shaped her life story.

A poetic page-turner of a memoir about a Black woman’s time in the Navy.

Kirkus Star

Ubac and Me: A Life of Love and Adventure With a French Mountain Dog Sapin-Defour, Cédric | Trans. by Adriana Hunter | Summit/Simon & Schuster (224 pp.) $28.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9781668088265

An elegant, heartfelt meditation on life with a beloved dog.

“Getting a dog means catching hold of a creature who’s only passing through, committing to a full life that’s bound to be happy, inevitably sad, and in no way sparing.” Former gym teacher and mountaineer Sapin-Defour, whose memoir was a surprise hit in France in 2023, begins with the inescapable fact of death. Having lost one dog, heartbroken, Sapin-Defour spots an ad in a provincial paper announcing the availability of a litter of Bernese Mountain Dogs, overcomes all sorts of internal objections, and then makes a 200-kilometer trip to a remote village to have a look. “Dog people swear it’s the dog that chooses you and not the other way around,” he recounts. “The whole idea is nonsense.” Yet, sure enough, a beautiful puppy steps out of the swirl and selects him. The French being a systematic people, their version of the Kennel Club had decreed that 76

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puppies born in 2003 should have a name that begins with the letter U, and so Sapin-Defour chooses Ubac, “a term for a north-facing slope,” speaking perfectly to the puppy’s alpine origins and Sapin-Defour’s passions. Training the puppy is easy enough, though in a sense, as the author notes, Ubac is really training him how to understand a different reality: “I’ll never tire of studying his vision of the world to remind myself that my own is just one of many options.” Though the breed doesn’t live long—thus the meditation on death—Ubac enjoys 14 years of Sapin-Defour’s companionship, and vice versa. His death isn’t tragic as such, but the author’s account of it is quite moving, as is his thought that with every dog he pets henceforth he’ll really be petting two: “Perhaps one of them will pass on a message.”

A book every dog lover will cherish, celebrating the unbreakable bond of canine and human.

My Good Side: A Memoir Shay, Scheana | Grand Central Publishing (240 pp.) | $29 | July 22, 2025 9781538773352

A veteran reality television star tells all.

After 11 seasons on the Bravo network’s reality series Vanderpump Rules, Shay comes clean on her life and career in the Hollywood spotlight. Shay grew up in Southern California, “unintentionally” born to an American mother who was just 19 when she gave birth and a

Mexican American father who was disinterested in being a father. A self-confessed people-pleaser, she gushes about being a studious overachiever in school, juggling theater roles and sporting events, and focusing on elevating her appearance (“I was giving Kylie Jenner before she was a glimmer in Kris’s eye”), all despite harrowing instances of bullying and feeling the need to cloak her Mexican heritage. In college, Shay participated in a class-action lawsuit against Hooters, accusing a general manager of filming her (and several other women) in a changing area. A broadcast journalism degree couldn’t prepare her for a new life in Hollywood, partaking in hookups with married actor Eddie Cibrian and a host of others, and the ensuing tabloid-fodder melodrama that would follow her into her breakout role on reality television—where, she divulges, filmed material was “edited and packaged for the masses.” Her eventual role, at 26, as a cast member on the restaurant business series Vanderpump Rules put Shay on the star trajectory she had longed for. But the friendship betrayals, relationship troubles, fertility challenges, miscarriages, and OCD episodes, all delivered with breathless urgency, took their toll. Now, at 40, she acknowledges feeling the need to branch out in her acting career and focus on her OCD advocacy and motherhood.

Effervescent throughout, Shay doesn’t skimp on the insider details and is a naturally engaging storyteller, sharing the mostly amusing anecdotes of her on- and off-camera life with candor, youthful charm, wit, and gratitude for her fame and the many joys (and pains) it’s brought to her life thus far.

Shay’s fan base and Bravo junkies will garner the most from this harmlessly frothy confessional.

An alpine mountaineer falls for a puppy—and names him for a slope.

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Turf Wars: The Fight for the Soul of America’s Game Smith, DeMaurice | Random House (320 pp.) $32 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593729427

The contact sport of labor negotiations.

Smith, executive director of the NFL players’ union from 2009 to 2023, depicts an industry awash in bad blood. Players have “visceral disgust” for Commissioner Roger Goodell, the highly paid “Prince Valiant” for “narcissistic” team owners, who “hate one another” and view neither players nor “the general public as human” but as “commodities” and “customers.”

Smith took the job in what looked like a hopeful new era epitomized by Barack Obama’s presidency, but his “idealism” was destroyed by his dealings with the powerful men who run the game. Smith, who is Black, says a team owner called him “uppity.” A coach used racist language to mock him. The ensuing controversy over the latter, following George Floyd’s murder, “broke me,” writes Smith, recounting his awakening from “lifelong denial” about the scope of racial discrimination. In response, he’s “finished holding my tongue.” Indeed, Smith divulges that “a prominent owner confessed to me that the league had broken federal anti-trust laws by coming to a secret handshake agreement that, two years earlier, had denied players millions of dollars they were contractually entitled to.” Smith’s tenure included relative labor peace, thanks to his negotiation of a long-term collective bargaining agreement and breakthroughs on player safety, salary guarantees, and licensing revenue. Adding a game to each team’s schedule proved less popular with players, some of whom “turned on me.”

Smith includes memorable glimpses of star players. He’d rather “run into traffic” than talk on the phone with Aaron Rodgers. When Smith visited Tom Brady’s house, he was offered his pick from a selection of Ugg slippers. Smith also shares fascinating anecdotes about the intrigue surrounding union votes and K IR KU S R E V IE W S

how some influential players are increasingly susceptible to “the misinformation virus.”

Receipts in hand, a longtime NFL players’ rep candidly recounts his battles with the league.

Milena and Margarete: A Love Story in Ravensbrück Strauss, Gwen | St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $29 | August 19, 2025 | 9781250285744

A “passionate friendship” shared by two women imprisoned in a concentration camp.

Grete Buber-­ Neumann, a German communist, was sent to Ravensbrück, the concentration camp for women, in 1940. Milena Jesenská, from a wealthy family in Prague, arrived two months later. The camp’s inmates were organized in a caste system, with so-called “asocials”—prostitutes, lesbians, Roma—at the bottom.

But as relatively privileged prisoners— Grete a “block elder,” Milena an office secretary—both had a “clear view of the sinister Nazi machinations” afoot.

Strauss knows that her subjects would not have identified as lesbians, but their loving relationship was nonetheless instrumental in “defeating the unbearable reality” of a wretched life in a slave-labor turned death camp. Their lives are well explored. Milena, a political journalist who played an important part in the Czech resistance to Nazi occupation, was an intimate of and correspondent with Franz Kafka and is now acknowledged as his first translator. Grete, a survivor of the Soviet gulag, wrote the postwar memoir Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler (1948), “compelled by her promise to Milena to ‘bear witness to the tragedy of my generation.’” Milena died at Ravensbrück in 1944; Greta was released in 1945 and died in 1989. All of the camp’s records were burned up before its liberation by the Red Army, so the lives of these two brave women

have been all but “erased from history.”

But Strauss’ research into and reimagining of their four years together amount to an essential rediscovery of this history. Her work is as alert to the tenderness of their connection as to the immense evil of their surroundings.

Queer history and Holocaust history converge in this remarkable account.

The Answer Is in the Wound: Trauma, Rage, and Alchemy Sundberg, Kelly | Roxane Gay Books/ Grove (288 pp.) | $27 | August 5, 2025 9780802164254

A memoir through essays by a woman changed, redefined, and reoriented by her experience of domestic violence.

Seven years after her courageous debut (Goodbye, Sweet Girl, 2018), Sundberg makes clear that leaving an abusive partner is only a piece of the story of recovering from that abuse. Her new collection of essays forgoes a linear tale of triumphant escape in favor of poignant reflections on specific episodes not only from within her abusive marriage, but also in her further past, in the years since her divorce, and in the social fabric holding us all. This combination allows her to explore themes of patriarchy and power, spirituality and magical thinking, and motherhood— single motherhood especially—as they press up against her personal love, loss, pain, and healing. Despite raising her son to the threshold of adulthood, building a successful writing career, and finding new love and intimacy, Sundberg knows that her newfound strength, trust of self, and defiant reclamation of her story is forged, at least in part, by desperation. It is the product of quiet, persistent struggle, clashing needs for both solitude and community, and a careening fall through numerous false bottoms of healing. So much of the author’s experience resists tidy explanations and clean-cut healing—“I cannot JULY 1, 2025

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unravel what happened to me. I cannot make it make sense,” she writes. With her signature openness, Sundberg leans into the complexity and opacity of her trauma, swirling the anomalous concoction of love for (and by) an abuser and squeezing the strangeness of heartbreak after abuse.

Along her erratic continuum of recovery, Sundberg’s investigation of and compassion for the identity-changing nature of her trauma grants the reader a powerful narrative that is raw, authentic, and full of fragile hope.

Excruciatingly, ragingly tender, written with reverence for the complexity of love, womanhood, and language itself.

Kirkus Star

Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its CoverUp, and His Disastrous Choice To Run Again Tapper, Jake & Alex Thompson Penguin Press (352 pp.) | $32 May 20, 2025 | 9798217060672

Why so few spoke up.

This tough yet fair account of an aging president’s inauspicious reelection campaign makes a strong case that voters deserve to know more about their commander-in-chief’s health. Joe Biden won in 2020 pledging to serve as “a bridge” to the next generation of Democrats, but his second-term bid, which promulgated “the lie” that he wasn’t experiencing “cognitive diminishment,” became “a charade that delivered the election” to Donald Trump. So say Tapper, a CNN anchor, and Thompson, an Axios political reporter. Their robust reporting—they interviewed about 200 people in and around the campaign— reveals that Biden showed worrying signs of age-related memory loss in 2019 and that, according to an unnamed insider, he was not always the sole boss during his presidency: “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was 78

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at best a senior member of the board.”

First Lady Jill Biden and a small group of Biden loyalists were among “the chief deniers of his deterioration.” His staffers shut down intraparty discussions about his fitness for four more years; scheduled far fewer interviews and press conferences than his recent predecessors; questioned the professionalism of reporters working on news stories about Biden’s memory struggles; and regularly withheld “bad news” from the president, even declining to show him polling that suggested he was losing to Trump. Why? Because “politics is addictive,” according to one prominent Democrat. Meanwhile, “no one wanted to be on the outside in case he did win,” said a party donor. The authors suggest that Congress should consider legislation requiring a doctor for sitting presidents to swear to give detailed medical reports. As one physician tells the authors, “the yearly letter from the president’s doctor is basically a tradition,” not a legal requirement.

An authoritative indictment of a denial-plagued presidential run.

Destroy This House: A Memoir Uhle, Amanda | Summit/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) | $29.99 August 26, 2025 | 9781668083444

An affecting portrait of a definitively dysfunctional family.

Uhle’s mother isn’t quite dead when Uhle walks into a florist’s and begins to make arrangements for a wreath, something

that appalls the flower people. But, writes Uhle, executive director of the publishing company McSweeney’s, “mourning my mother and father was an endeavor that started so long ago that I couldn’t properly recall it.” What she was really mourning, she adds, was “reality and sanity, the facts as they appeared to everyone on Earth except my parents.” The insanity comes in many forms, some developing over many years. Mom, raised in modest circumstances, was a hoarder who even saved the morphine that Uhle’s father, dying of cancer, was supposed to take but didn’t: “Mom’s interest in the morphine was as nonsensical as her interest in accumulating anything else.” Mom piled up fabric, clothing, and especially food that frequently went to waste—and this in a household perpetually in financial straits, so much so that at one point the parents sneak the family out of their West Virginia apartment in the middle of the night to skip out on rent owed, making a new home across the line in Pennsylvania for a time, always trying to stay a step ahead of the creditors and collection agencies. Dad turns out to be a great dreamer and schemer, always feckless—­and, in the end, criminal.

Uhle’s memoir is a car-wreck sort of book in which we crane our necks to see what awful thing is going to happen next to disrupt her and her siblings’ lives. The memoir is well written, if at times distractingly repetitive, perhaps because her parents’ behavioral problems play out in much the same way incident after incident.

Still, it has virtue in showing that no matter how odd one’s own family, there’s always someone, more often than not, who has an odder family still.

Although a little goes a long way, Uhle’s book will hit home with many readers.

How a group of Biden loyalists were among “the chief deniers of his deterioration.”

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A Silent Treatment: A Memoir Vanasco, Jeannie | Tin House (304 pp.) $26.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9781963108453

Suffering in silence.

As in her previous two memoirs, Vanasco focuses on pain—the pain she feels when her mother, who has moved into the basement apartment of her house, stops speaking to her and her ever-­ patient partner, Chris, for weeks, or sometimes months, at a time. In the five years she lived there, Vanasco reports, the silences have added up to a year and a half. With her mother’s permission, Vanasco engages in writing about the silent treatment, in an effort to understand her mother’s motivation for not speaking and her own emotional response to the silence and to the anger or anguish that evokes it. She consults friends, experts, and even her Google Home Mini, but finds their answers only partly helpful. One psychologist suggests that wielding silence is a kind of power: “When you highlight how their actions impact you, they’ll keep doing it to remain in control. The more out of control you appear to be, the more in control they feel.” She tries to connect the silent treatment to her mother’s being abused as a child, beaten for even the smallest infraction, and abused, as well, by her first husband.

Widowed after Vanasco’s father died, her mother was lonely, prompting the move. Now, she complains that she’s still lonely, unhappy living in the basement, and that she feels useless. But when Vanasco finds classes, a volunteer opportunity, and a book club, her mother is dismissive. In probing the history of their mother-daughter relationship, Vanasco reveals an unusual complication: Although the author calls herself Jeannie, her birth name is the same as her mother’s—Barbara—causing confusion for doctors, banks, the gym where they both are members— and, it appears, intensifying an K IR KU S R E V IE W S

interdependence that both women struggle to resist.

An elliptical, meditative portrayal of wounded women.

Kirkus Star

Hark: How Women Listen Vincent, Alice | Canongate (320 pp.) $19.95 | August 5, 2025 | 9781837260775

On the intimate art of listening well.

We raise girls to be good listeners in a world of men. As a music journalist, Vincent had made a career out of listening. She listened in clubs, at concerts, and to mostly male artists in her interviews.

Music was omnipresent, essential to her life as a teen and young adult. Now in her 30s, she found herself surrounded by silence. “If I tried to unpick how I’d grown from a girl who thrived among the dissonance of a punk record into a woman who preferred to be in silence, I got caught in tangles,” she writes. Then, into that silence came her baby’s heartbeat from a monitor. Later, she heard his cry. In this moving and brilliant book, Vincent examines not just sound but what it means to listen. She explores the quiet sounds of domesticity, motherhood, and the quotidian—often overlooked, feminine sounds. She reflects on what she hears at Beyonce’s Renaissance tour, in the near-mythic sound of the aurora borealis—which has been described as sheets of paper rubbing together—from national security translators, and in the practice of Deep Listening. “I want to make the quiet loud,” she declares, and that is exactly what she does. Her quiet is populated by many brilliant women, including researchers and scientists of sound, while her own journey of motherhood makes vivid the ways in which a mother’s biology is rewired to respond to their child’s sound. Speaking with a deaf artist, Vincent challenges her preconceptions that “being without sound was to

suffer,” instead learning “a different way of listening,” one rich in community and creativity. Though the book takes place in many quiet spaces, the reverberations are loud, and the author’s descriptions evocative. From excellent research on those elements of noise that are often overlooked yet build the fabric of our daily lives, Vincent weaves a tapestry of sound and understanding.

A profound lesson in how to hear the world anew.

The Origin of Politics: Human Nature and the Shaping of Political Systems Wade, Nicholas | Harper/ HarperCollins (288 pp.) | $32 April 29, 2025 | 9780063379787

A conservative treatise on power and politics as extensions of evolution.

“A society operates under two sets of rules,” writes science journalist Wade. One set has a basis in natural selection, and the other is created by politics. By Wade’s account, the two sets are now at war with each other: Whereas it is a biological imperative to keep the species alive, for example, world birth rates have dropped past the level of replacement, with the result that “almost every country outside Africa [is] on the path to eventual extinction.” This is all by way of prelude to Wade’s apparent larger purpose, which is to find fault with nearly every aspect of progressive politics, from DEI to women’s liberation, critical theory, and so forth. Although Wade paints himself into a corner by allowing that if conservatism has a biological/evolutionary basis, then there must be an adaptive advantage to liberalism as well, he insists on traditional mores: The family, he argues, is the primary social unit; socialism is in “fundamental conflict with human nature”; monogamy is unnatural (for males, in any event), while women “intrigue among themselves for the pick of available men.” Drawing on JULY 1, 2025

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sociobiology (which, he laments, was driven from the intellectual marketplace by censorious liberals), Wade looks at the politics of other primate species to conclude that while a chimpanzee may not understand why it’s better to be high-status than low-status, it will strive for the highest status it can attain. So, he proceeds, it is with humans, measured by strength and wealth. Naturally, this is the purview of men—real men, that is, and not “a small minority of people with variant sexual orientations,” and certainly not women, and especially not female academic administrators, whose “principal function…is to diminish the success of white male applicants in applying for faculty positions.”

Readers with a taste for aggrieved hyperventilation will find plenty of it here.

Mastery: The Transformation of Learning for the TwentyFirst Century Wagner, Tony & Ulrik Juul Christensen Basic Books | $30 | September 16, 2025 9781541601925

What is school for?

The authors of this manifesto argue that the goal of learning is “mastery”—the ability to take knowledge and direct it to the goals of personal advancement and social change. They outline three features of mastery learning. First, the focus of teaching should be “the development of essential and enduring cognitive and character skills needed for work, citizenship, and personal growth.”

Second, success in learning charts how students can “use the skills and knowledge they have learned.” Third, schools should build “character skills” as “an integral element of the learning process.”

The authors write in a breathless, revelatory style, somewhere between a Silicon Valley product rollout and a TED talk. Their approach fits well with the ideals of upper-middle-class American ambition: Don’t just succeed but become 80

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a better person and improve society in the process. Project-based learning becomes one pathway to reimagining the relationship between education and work. “Build a plan, implement it, and share with the community what [you have] learned and accomplished.” They offer a series of case studies of schools where students “become advocates for the land and its people….How do I build that confident cultural identity?” Such a question may motivate parents and their children in the rarified communities of social awareness. For the increasing number of first-generation students entering higher education, for adults looking to retrain for new careers, or for parents awestruck at the increasing costs of college, this book may offer little in the way of practical advice. For a nation increasingly skeptical of expertise, it will do little to convince Americans that knowledge is a good thing.

An argument for learning as a process of personal growth, keyed to the ambitions of those who can afford it.

The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity Wu, Tim | Knopf (224 pp.) | $30 November 4, 2025 | 9780593321249

It’s not just in your head—your online life is draining your wallet.

Have you noticed yourself spending more time immersed in social media, web searches, and purchasing? Wu, an award-winning author, professor at Columbia

University, and policy advocate, knows that is no accident. Technology has transformed our marketplaces into ubiquitous, addicting platforms, designed to capture our attention and extract wealth. “Wealth extraction” means taking money from everyone, on all sides of a transaction, raking in maximum profits for platform owners. Descended from the ancient city square, platforms including Amazon, Google, Meta, and corporations serving medical and housing needs are engineered to be both essential and unavoidable, extracting hidden fees. Wu takes a hard look at the intertwined political, economic, and technological histories that led to the rise of dominant platforms and their techniques to ensnare us and keep us engaged and buying.

Platform owners understand that resisting convenience is very difficult and leverage this to keep us online.

Early internet developers aimed to empower everyone, but large computer companies became mono­polies, requiring the creation of anti-­monopolistic policies to modulate their power.

Another alarming theme is the rise of ChatGPT and large language models.

To evolve, they require large quantities of data generated by human interactions with platforms—another form of extraction. Though he points to the dangers and unfairness of economic inequality, Wu doesn’t paint an entirely gloomy picture but does encourage us to recognize and take control back from platforms practicing excessive wealth extraction. Wu covers a lot of territory in this brisk, 30,000-foot view of platforms entwined with our economic lives. The message is to look up from our screens and be cognizant of the extractive environment that surrounds us. Plentiful endnotes and an index will guide those wishing to dig deeper.

Platform owners understand that resisting convenience is very difficult.

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A sharp and eye-opening introduction to how we arrived at platform capitalism— where no good click goes unmonetized.

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All Yudkowsky, Eliezer & Nate Soares Little, Brown (256 pp.) | $30 September 30, 2025 | 9780316595643

Making the unimaginable feel real, apocalyptic scenarios visualize AI’s potential to tip humanity into extinction.

As signaled by their alarming title, Yudkowsky and Soares issue a stark warning: Unless we act now to contain powerful superintelligent AI systems, humanity may not survive. Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and Soares, its president, target politicians, CEOs, policymakers, and the general public in their urgent plea.

The book opens with an accessible breakdown of what AI is, how it’s built, and why even its creators often can’t comprehend the accelerating complexity of their own systems.

Through parablelike vignettes, the authors expose the underlying realities of AI algorithms—advanced AIs are not engineered so much as grown, operating with opaque and unpredictable results, untethered from human values. The most chilling passages describe how AIs could escape computers and manipulate the physical and financial worlds, eventually repurposing Earth’s resources to serve alien objectives or replacing humanity with their own “favorite things.” The authors warn, “Nobody has the knowledge or skill to make a superintelligence that does their bidding,” arguing that world governments must cooperate to restrict or ideally halt AI research.

Policymakers have not yet grasped the full implications of these K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Exposing the underlying realities of AI algorithms, untethered from human values.

I F A N YO N E B U I L D S I T, E V E RYO N E D I E S

advanced systems, and the public hasn’t felt the impact in their lives, but the authors caution they must be persuaded to act immediately. While some scenarios seem extreme or unrealistic, including hoping global leaders can agree on defining the problem or collaborating on solutions, the book’s arguments that the risks are elevated and time is short are persuasive. There is excellent information and food for thought here, including links to resources for readers motivated to join the fray.

A timely and terrifying education on the galloping havoc AI could unleash—unless we grasp the reins and take control.

Kirkus Star

Philip Roth: Stung by Life Zipperstein, Steven J. | Yale Univ. (352 pp.) $28 | October 14, 2025 | 9780300251555

The life of a self-described “unchaste monk.”

In 1969, the Washington Post predicted that, for a long time, “we will judge our friends by what they say” about Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint.

Roth’s fortunes have oscillated over the past half-century, and Zipperstein’s well-modulated and immensely erudite biography of Roth charts the sine wave of his reputation. A scholar at Stanford University, Zipperstein tells the story of a writer through his books—a feat possible because Roth figured himself and his acquaintances through the many personae of his fictions. Against these

representations, Zipperstein arrays a range of documents, interviews, personal encounters, and literary criticism. Roth emerges here less as the magnificently libidinous creature of Blake Bailey’s flamboyant (and discredited) biography than as a writer of social intellectualism. Roth’s major questions are those of this book: What is the place of the immigrant in American society; how does the literature of the past shape our behavior in the present; is there a moral center to modern life; how does the writer draw on personal experience to create vivid character?

Zipperstein’s Roth is a writer largely concerned with the books he has read, and a high point of this biography is the sensitive reading of The Ghost Writer as a book about the books that make us.

Zipperstein does not shy away from chronicling Roth’s escapades and transgressions. And he does not shy away from calling out the good (Portnoy’s Complaint, The Ghost Writer, The Plot Against America), the bad (When She Was Good, The Professor of Desire), and the simply god-awful (The Breast).

Written with measured, scholarly detachment and rich with original research, this biography will introduce Roth to new readers as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century and one of the most influential voices in shaping American Jewish identity.

A thoughtful telling of Roth’s literary life, shorn of sensationalism, by a leading historian of Jewish culture.

For more by Steven J. Zipperstein, visit Kirkus online.

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P O D C A S T // N O N F I C T I O N

Fully Booked

A journalist offers an indispensable digest of Project 2025.

BY MEGAN LABRISE

EPISODE 424: DAVID A. GRAHAM

EDITORS’ PICKS:

An Immense World (Young Readers Edition): How Animals Sense Earth’s Amazing Secrets by Ed Yong, illus. by Rebecca Mills, adapted by Annmarie Anderson (Bright Matter Books) The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin by Daniel Brook (Norton) Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan (Pantheon) THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Dawnland by Tess Callahan Fully Booked is produced

by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.

Lis Ty roler Photography

To listen to the episode, visit Kirkus online.

K IR KU S R E V IE W S

On this episode of Fully Booked, journalist David A. Graham joins us to discuss The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America (Random House, April 22), a granular look at the modern American Christian nationalist playbook.

Kirkus calls Graham’s powerful work “essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of the Trumpian maelstrom.”

Graham is a staff writer at the Atlantic and an author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter. He previously reported for Newsweek and the Daily Beast, the Wall Street Journal, and the National in Abu Dhabi; he won the Toner Prize for Excellence in National Political Reporting in 2021 for his coverage of the 2020 presidential election. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Here’s a bit more from our review of The Project: “Atlantic staffer Graham dubs the authors of the Heritage Foundation–funded Project 2025 ‘contrarians,’ but they’re more than that: They believe ‘that the only way to deliver the Christian, right-wing nation they desired was a carefully organized assault on the U.S. government as it existed.’ That radical assault has four chief aims: to restore the man-headed family, dismantle the ‘administrative state,’ close the border and defend the nation’s sovereignty, and ‘secure our God-given individual rights to live freely.’ Trump claimed not to have heard of Project 2025 and its playbook, but as Russell Vought, an author of the platform who’s now the head of the Office of Management and Budget, proudly acknowledged, he and his Heritage cohort were busily writing executive orders long ago, a stack of them awaiting Trump in his first minutes in the Oval Office.”

The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America Graham, David A.

Random House | 160 pp. | $16 April 22, 2025 | 9798217153725

Graham and I dig into the main document of Project 2025—Mandate for Leadership—which details the Christian right’s plans for restoring “traditional” family structures, dismantling the administrative state, closing borders, and defending national sovereignty. Graham highlights key figures, including Paul Dans and Russell Vought, and their respective contributions to Project 2025. We note the sweeping nature of the plan—from trade policy tweaks to environmental regulation rollbacks— and emphasize the serious impact it’s already making.

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

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MAHNAZ DAR

Far too many adults still dismiss graphic novels as “too easy” or “not real literature.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In his 1993 work Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud (interviewed on p. 98 about his new book, The Cartoonists Club) offers a rousing defense of the format. He notes that comics are made up of images presented in sequence; it’s up to readers to infer what happens in between. McCloud writes, “Every act committed to paper by the comics artist is aided and abetted by a silent accomplice. An equal partner in crime known as the reader.” These books require active engagement from their audiences.

But skeptical parents and educators needn’t take my word for it—or McCloud’s.

The following selections offer proof that graphic literature is a rich format with immense educational and entertainment value.

A no-holds-barred boxing match; lurching zombies— with Chickenpox (Henry Holt, January 14), Remy Lai relies on clever visual metaphors that not only make for hilariously zany reading, but also result in a 84

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nuanced character study of 12-year-old Abby, who’s quarantined with her younger brothers and sisters.

Based on events from Lai’s own childhood in Indonesia in the mid-’90s, the tale captures an age-old conundrum: How is it that the same siblings who drive us to distraction one minute can be our strongest allies the next?

A standout example of nonfiction comics, Anne Lambelet’s I’m a Dumbo Octopus!: A Graphic Guide to Cephalopods (Graphic Universe, March 4) stars the adorable, enthusiastic Grimpy (“That’s short for Grimpoteuthis,” the scientific name for the dumbo octopus). Offering readers an introduction to the “coolest group of creatures in the whole ocean,” our host eventually begins to lose confidence.

“Isn’t there anything special

about dumbos?” Grimpy laments. Lambelet’s fetching, big-eyed cartoons ooze sweetness while offering clear depictions of a variety of species—and an empowering message for the insecure Grimpy.

Michael Emberley’s Night Light (Holiday House, April 15) is ideal fare for elementary schoolers still getting the hang of the format—and anyone nursing fears of the dark. To soothe a terrified child during a blackout, a parent scatters the stars from the sky across the youngster’s bedroom, but the little one is soon awakened by sobs from the anguished moon.

Emberley dazzles with a breathtaking palette and brilliant layouts. This world may be plunged into darkness, but it’s awash with a wondrous glow—and ablaze with true warmth as this empathetic pair seeks creative solutions.

Adults who grew up with the likes of Calvin and Hobbes or The Far Side know the joys of comic strips— though not as many Americans are acquainted with Quino’s Mafalda, published in Argentina between 1964 and 1973.

Happily, that will change with the release of Mafalda: Book One (Elsewhere Editions, June 10), translated

by Frank Wynne. Simultaneously precocious and realistically childlike, the titular 6-year-old attempts to make sense of current events while embarking on flights of fancy. Speaking to universal childhood experiences while also offering pointed commentary on Argentina’s sociopolitical climate during the ’60s, this is a wise, wickedly funny work.

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.

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Illustration by Eric Scot t Ander son

THE POWER OF COMICS

CHILDREN'S

EDITOR’S PICK This 50th-anniversary celebration of a literally timeless classic brings Babbitt’s novel to life in a graphic novel format.

Sticking closely to the storyline as she visually fleshes out its themes and characters, Woodman-Maynard serves up a sensitive reworking that invites readers to think about what they would do if they were given the choice between a normal, finite life and an endless one. It’s a choice that lonely, 10-year-old Winnie Foster is left to make after she meets the Tucks (who stopped aging after drinking from a hidden spring near her house 87 years before) and hears their perspectives on what it’s

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star 86

Absolutely Everything

By Damian Alexander

85

Tuck Everlasting

By Natalie Babbitt; adapt.

by K. WoodmanMaynard; illus. by K. Woodman-­Maynard K IR KU S R E V IE W S

like to watch everyone and everything they know change and die. The woodsy, small-­ town setting and the white-­ presenting cast—from exuberant, ever-17-year-old Jesse Tuck and his resigned mother, Mae, to the distinctively angular villain known only as “the man in the yellow suit,” and even a certain significant golden toad—are beautifully realized in the finely drawn watercolors. Along with incorporating atmospheric expository lines from the book into her scenes, the artist tucks in pinwheels and other circular imagery to evoke what melancholy father Angus Tuck describes as the ever-moving wheel of life and

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The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze

By Derrick Barnes

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Let’s Get Together

By Brandy Colbert

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A Change Is Gonna Come

By Sam Cooke; illus.

by Nikkolas Smith

94

Defanged

By H.E. Edgmon

100

The Escape Artist

By Thor Hanson; illus. by Galia Bernstein

102

Before I Lived Here

By Stacy S. Jensen; illus.

by Victo Ngai

104

The Last Resort

By Erin Entrada Kelly; illus. by Naomi Franquiz

105

Oh Give Me a Home

By Jane Kurtz

107

The Spy in the Museum

By Erin McGuire

Tuck Everlasting: The Graphic Novel Babbitt, Natalie | Adapt. by K. Woodman-Maynard Illus. by K. Woodman-Maynard | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 256 pp. | September 2, 2025 $22.99 | $14.99 paper | 9780374391850 9780374391867 paper

death: “You can’t have living without dying. So you can’t call it living, what we got.”

The book closes with a conversation between Babbitt’s daughter, Lucy, and the adapter, as well as

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The True and Lucky Life of a Turtle

By Sy Montgomery; illus. by Matt Patterson

110

My Home Is in My Backpack

By Eugenia Perrella; illus. by Angela Salerno; trans. by Sally Polson

111

The 13th Day of Christmas

By Adam Rex

114

Troubling Tonsils!

By Aaron Reynolds; illus. by Peter Brown

illuminating photos and process notes.

An homage navigated with confidence and care, as wise and wonderful as the original. (Graphic fantasy. 10-14)

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The Poisoned King

By Katherine Rundell; illus. by Ashley Mackenzie

115

The Witch in the Tower

By Júlia Sardà

116

Dear Acorn (Love, Oak)

By Joyce Sidman; illus. by Melissa Sweet

118

Interrupting Chicken Saves The Nutcracker

By David Ezra Stein

119

Scarlet Morning

By ND Stevenson

120

Shibu’s Tail

By Tess Thomas; illus. by Kamwei Fong

122

The Polar Bear and the Ballerina

By Eric Velasquez

123

Family Feast!

By Carole Boston Weatherford; illus.

by Frank Morrison

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Short and sweet, with an empowering message for all who pick it up.

I LIKE YOU SO MUCH

Kirkus Star

Absolutely Everything Alexander, Damian | Graphic Universe (216 pp.) | $17.99 paper September 9, 2025 | 9798765608524

“It’s not that I dislike school…

It’s just that sixth grade is the worst.”

Marcella never used to have trouble keeping up in school, but this year, between rotating classes and a heavy homework load, she feels like she’s being left behind. Her thoughts buzz too loudly for her to focus, and she has trouble filtering out visual and auditory stimuli in the classroom. On top of Marcella’s academic woes, Jen, her best friend since kindergarten, suddenly has new interests, “giggly friends,” and crushes on boys. As far as Marcella’s concerned, “Bunnies are cute. Boys are just people.” No one else seems to be struggling so much with all the changes. Embarrassed and overwhelmed, Marcella can’t figure out how to handle her stress alone. This coming-of-age graphic novel explores the multifaceted trials of transitioning to middle school and navigating undiagnosed ADHD. Marcella’s supportive dads and her favorite teacher, Miss Kimani, play important roles in helping her discover what she needs to thrive and validating her frustrations and concerns. Understanding her neurodivergence helps Marcella reconnect with her love of art, utilize coping strategies, and navigate shifts in her friendships.

Alexander’s artwork does more than 86

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just convey Marcella’s emotions.

Through color, movement, and dynamic perspective, he brings her imagination, intrusive thoughts, and internal progress to life. Marcella and her dads present white, and there’s diversity in the secondary and background characters.

A hopeful and validating story that excels in portraying a middle schooler’s ADHD journey. (author’s note) (Graphic fiction. 9-12)

Mom’s Busy Work Ardern, Jacinda | Illus. by Ruby Jones | Philomel (32 pp.) | $19.99 September 30, 2025 | 9780593692301

Former New Zealand prime minister Ardern explores the relationship between a working mother and her young daughter in this picture book based on conversations with her own child.

A bespectacled little girl reluctantly heads to day care on Monday morning, wishing she could stay home with her mother instead. The narrative unfolds through the child’s perspective as she processes her mom’s busy schedule and the time they spend apart over the course of a full week, from one Monday to the next. While the premise is relatable—reassuring children they remain their parents’ priority despite work obligations—the execution is wanting. The parent-child exchanges, though meaningful to the author, lack the appeal needed to resonate broadly. Moments clearly intended to be endearing or humorous land with a thud, as when the girl

flatly states, “We went to the playground and fed the ducks. Then we had a picnic, till a dog stole our lunch.

I think Saturday is too short.” What could have been a lively, amusing scene is instead reduced to a perfunctory report devoid of the spark or detail that would make readers laugh or truly understand. Jones’ iPad-rendered illustrations, while colorful, appear static, missing opportunities to add emotional depth or visually expand upon potentially humorous moments.

The characters are pale-skinned.

An earnest celebration of a parent-­ child relationship that fails to connect with its audience. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-7)

Clovis Meets His Match Aronson, Katelyn | Illus. by Benji Williams Page Street (36 pp.) | $18.99 September 16, 2025 | 9798890033062

The china shop–owning taurine star of Clovis Keeps His Cool (2021) and Clovis Suspects a Thief (2024) confronts a

rival business owner.

One morning, Clovis hears another shop being constructed across the street.

Alistair, the new store’s elephant owner, explains that his “modern” shop caters to “classy creatures,” unlike Clovis’ store, which sells “old-fashioned” merchandise “for grannies.” Alistair invites Clovis to his grand-opening soiree that evening. Clovis hosts his own event, which he’s certain his loyal customers will attend; nobody shows.

Clovis is undaunted: His “tea for Tuesday” event attracts crowds, but Alistair’s “Mocktail Tuesdays!”—featuring reminders that “Tea is for Grannies”—­fare better. Clovis attempts other unsuccessful tactics, including hurling a football at Alistair’s window.

He misses, then hides when Alistair brings his own granddad into his shop.

Alistair’s grandfather fondly recalls Clovis’ Granny. Clovis notes that he runs his business—once Granny’s—in K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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her memory. Clovis and Alistair now acknowledge that both shops once “coexisted. Run not by enemies, but friends.” They pledge cooperation and friendship thereafter. That evening, Clovis hosts a party; his friends bring their grandmothers, and Alistair returns with Granddad. This cozy story highlights the importance of comp­ romise, getting along, and, importantly, honoring elders. Some adult sensibilities will elude kids, such as a modern shop catering to hipsters and serving mocktails. Still, the colorful, dynamic digital illustrations deftly evoke the protagonists’ expressive personalities.

An homage to fond memories, friendship, the spirit of cooper­ ation, and love of grandparents.

(Picture book. 5-8)

I Like You So Much: Celebrating What Makes You, You! Avis, Heather | Illus. by Juliana Eigner Zonderkidz (32 pp.) | $19.99 June 3, 2025 | 9780310166597

Author, podcaster, and Down syndrome advocate Avis explains just what there is to like about you.

Filled with cute, bright, blocky illustrations that bring the affirming text to life, each page directly addresses readers, pinpointing something that makes them special, from their faces and bodies to their empathy and persistence.

Though Avis’ words can apply to nearly any child, they’ll be especially meaningful to young people with disabilities; the author praises “how you use the body you have to do exactly what your body can do,” and rather than mentioning spoken language, she lauds the way “you whistle, click, squeak, or hum.”

Eigner’s images portray racially diverse children, multiple youngsters with vitiligo, and several kids using wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, noise reduction headphones, and mobility canes (depicted as simple black lines). One K IR KU S R E V IE W S

figure, a young pale-skinned child with short blond hair—perhaps a reader stand-in—appears on most pages and is the only character whose thoughts are externalized in the illustrations. Though the tale is a shade purposeful, it’s also deeply reassuring; briefly written and encouraging, it’s a strong read-aloud option for parents, caregivers, or teachers seeking to buoy young people.

Short and sweet, with an empowering message for all who pick it up. (Picture book. 3-7)

Dear Jackie Bagley, Jessixa | Illus. by Aaron Bagley Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) | $24.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781534496583

Middle school pulls best friends in different directions in this latest collaboration from husband-wife duo the Bagleys.

Jackie and Milo have always been inseparable, spying on neighbors (and their dogs) and hiding from the world in their HQ. But as they enter sixth grade, middle school hits fast. The two begin to drift apart, with Milo joining the soccer team and making friends with the “dude brahs,” while Jackie is thrown together with Adelle, her mom’s friend’s daughter, who’s into fashion and makeup. As her classmates obsess over who likes whom, Jackie, who prefers video games and comics and appreciates a comfy hoodie, starts to feel like she’s doing girlhood all wrong. Her parents—loving but stuck in old-school ideas of femininity—aren’t much help. Jackie turns to Jabari, her college-age gender-nonconforming sibling, for advice on how they came to accept themself. Jackie also tries to alleviate the pressure from peers by typing herself a fake love letter on Jabari’s old typewriter—but her scheme causes more problems than it solves.

With lively, expressive art and the creative use of typewritten narration boxes to reflect Jackie’s unspoken thoughts, this graphic novel captures the

cringey, confusing mess of early adolescence. A diverse cast of side characters brings depth to a story that champions self-acceptance and individuality. Jackie and her family appear Black, and Milo presents East Asian.

A funny, heartfelt look at growing up and pushing back against narrow expectations. (author’s note, illustrator’s note) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

Lena the Chicken (But Really a Dinosaur!)

Bailey, Linda | Illus. by K-Fai Steele Tundra Books (56 pp.) | $18.99 October 28, 2025 | 9781774880135

One henhouse resident gets back to her roots.

Fiercely protective of her fellow fowl, Lena is one tough chicken. When the people who run the farm try to extract eggs from the coop, Lena henpecks them mercilessly. And when the hens are spooked by harmless things like boxes and frogs, Lena demands that they buck up. Unlike the other chickens, Lena understands something significant about her true nature. She’s a dinosaur, capable of terrifying intruders and protecting her kin. Her talents are brought to bear when a weasel sneaks into their pen one night. Lena’s primeval squawk sends the interloper scrambling, minus most of his whiskers.

Finally, Lena’s skeptics, avian and human alike, appreciate her particular gift. An excellent opportunity for a dramatic read-aloud, the narration is paced in a fablelike style with sprinkles of jokey speech-bubble dialogue and a few scientific facts thrown in for good measure—chickens are indeed among the closest living relatives to theropods.

Steele’s illustrations are a delightful match for Bailey’s story. Relying on loose, sketchy pencil drawings and splashes of watercolor that emphasize the narrative’s beats, she depicts overreactive hens huddled at the dinner table, a desultory weasel at his boudoir JULY 1, 2025

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mirror, and a puzzled human family bandaging their chicken-caused injuries. Lena’s owners are tan-skinned and dark-haired.

A silly, skillful, and scientifically grounded tale. (information on dinosaurs) (Picture book. 3-7)

A Place Just for Me Baldinucci, Loredana | Illus. by Melinda Berti | Trans. by Monica Meneghetti Greystone Kids (32 pp.) | $19.95 October 14, 2025 | 9781778402388

A rodent seeks a room of his own in this Italian import.

Silver resides in a lovely home under an old elm tree with his grandparents, parents, and five siblings. All have unique talents and have scouted out areas to explore them within the bounds of their burrow. But Silver—“the smallest mouse of them all”—wants a place that’s “quiet enough for him to do nothing at all.”

That’s hard to come by, so he strikes out, hoping to claim a spot at a friend’s home. But Mole’s house is too dark, Rabbit’s is even more bustling than Silver’s, and Bear’s snoring is too loud.

In a bit of a Goldilocks conundrum, with nothing feeling quite right, Silver heads home to discover that his mom has constructed a sweet little loft just for him. The emotional, intimate experience of looking for understanding everywhere and finally finding it in a warm familial hug gives Baldinucci’s simply told, well-paced story universal impact. Berti’s illustrations emphasize that the creatures’ homes are all deeply

special to them; the pages are filled with detailed visions of flowery fields and cozy domestic scenes, echoing nothing so much as the exquisite, naturalistic whimsy of Kaya Doi’s Chirri & Chirra series.

A homey tale with a classic storybook feel and a gentle, uplifting conclusion.

(Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Star

The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze Barnes, Derrick | Viking (272 pp.) | $17.99 September 23, 2025 | 9781984836755

A crisis forces a talented young football player to consider what he values most.

Henson Blayze, an African American 13-­year-­old, is looking forward to football season— he’ll be joining the high school team despite still being in eighth grade. The entire town of Great Mountain, Mississippi, which is mostly white, is excited about Henson’s bringing them a championship win. Henson’s fifth grader friend, Menkah Jupiter, who’s like a little brother, is eager to see his idol in action. Townspeople make T-shirts and signs supporting their “Great Mountain Messiah.” At school, teachers and students fawn over Henson, offering him special favors, while his friend Flowell Bridges, a “hive of magnetic personality,” regales all who will listen with stories of Henson’s heroics. But Henson’s vineyard owner father is less enthusiastic—sports have “never been of grave importance” to

A crisis forces a young football player to consider what he values most.

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him—and Henson’s longtime crush, Freida St. Louis, is more interested in social causes. The local news covers their first game—and Henson is outstanding from the beginning. But at halftime he learns that state troopers have badly beaten up Menkah, who’s been hospitalized, and he chooses to leave the game. Adulation quickly turns to fury when it becomes clear that Henson places justice above entertaining the town. Barnes has masterfully crafted a story that’s grounded in history and has fantastical elements woven into it.

Henson is an irresistible lead surrounded by a strong supporting cast, and his story sheds light on the reality of racial dynamics.

Bold, extraordinary storytelling: not to be missed. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-14)

The Apprenticeship of Andrew Wyeth: Painting a Family’s Legacy Barretta, Gene | Christy Ottaviano Books (40 pp.) $18.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9780316339087

An exacting account of how American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) embraced his own unique style.

Born into an artistic family headed by the successful children’s illustrator N.C. Wyeth, “frail” Andy went on to become part of “a new generation of artists.” The lengthy narrative contains ample detail about Andy’s creative early life and formal art education before diplomatically delving into the friction between father and son.

While the elder Wyeth savored the fantastical, his son found that “the most exciting characters, places, and stories to paint were the ones he lived with every day.” With eloquent quotes from Andy and his inner circle, Barretta has crafted a sensitive and nuanced portrait of a complicated parent/child relationship.

His holistic view provides a wealth of information about Andy’s burgeoning career, the tragic death of his father, and the wife and friends who steadfastly supported him, including the subject of K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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Christina’s World, one of five Wyeth works reproduced within the book.

Barretta’s watercolor and colored pencil images are pleasant; one standout spread beautifully summarizes Andy’s life and career with sketches from many different Wyeth paintings. The author/illustrator’s admiration for Andy shines in the backmatter, which includes a bibliography, information on the Wyeth family, a glossary of art techniques, and additional fun facts. Most people have pale skin.

A sincere and focused biography that will leave readers determined to paint—and live—their own way.

(Picture-book biography. 6-12)

Stella & Marigold: Mermaids and Mix-Ups: Book 2 Barrows, Annie | Illus. by Sophie Blackall Chronicle Books (116 pp.) | $15.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781797219714 Series: Stella & Marigold, 2

The sisters introduced in the remarkable Stella & Marigold (2024) tackle friendships and unnerving sirens.

When the siblings’ well-­ meaning cousin gives them each a journal, Stella discovers that the notebooks contain 25 lines where they can write in the names of their best friends. Both Stella, 7, and Marigold, 4, feel sharp pains of inadequacy at not having nearly enough pals. What follows are their attempts to make more friends, from their babysitter to their upstairs neighbor and their classmates. In one particularly fraught sequence, Marigold steals a disturbingly toothy (but very funny) mermaid candle holder from her upstairs neighbor; she plans to pretend to find it so he’ll be grateful to her. Of course, the heart of the series lies with the relationship between its titular sisters, and the two are as close as ever; a scene where they briefly contemplate running away from home cements their mutual dedication. While the text isn’t quite as hilarious as in the first volume, the art may actually be funnier (thanks K IR KU S R E V IE W S

to the mermaid), with its loving depiction of the realistically nuanced sororal relationship that made the first book a hit. Readers need not be familiar with the earlier installment to enjoy this latest. Both sisters present white; their community is diverse.

Some things may come and go, but sisterly friendship like this will stand the test of time. (Early chapter book. 6-9)

Billie Jean Peet, Athlete Beaty, Andrea | Illus. by David Roberts Abrams (40 pp.) | $19.99 | September 30, 2025 9781419775741 | Series: The Questioneers

The seventh title in the Questioneers picture-book series finds a second grader bouncing back following epic embarrassment on

the basketball court.

Billie Jean is the tuneless middle child in a musical family. She’s shown some talent for basketball, but she wins no hometown fans at the Shindig of Cheeses and Sports: After she takes a shot, “she jumps up and down, and her heart fills with pride… / which melts to a HORRIBLE feeling inside… / because she just scored… / for the opposite side.”

Later, the pale-skinned Billie Jean’s on-court shoelace mishap leads to a eureka moment, an attitude adjustment, and a newfound confidence that helps her make a last-second shot: “By mixing two things to make something brand new, / she found her own song in what she loved to do.” As in the other Questioneers picture books, the “be yourself” message goes down easy, embedded in a propulsive story and powered by zippy rhymes. As for the art, Roberts delivers his customary fastidious lines and sublimely detailed work: The faces of even the story’s bystanders, who are depicted in a wide range of skin tones, brim with personality, further enhanced by bespoke hairstyles. Beaty’s author’s note confirms what older readers may have already surmised: Billie Jean is named for another impressive athlete— tennis great King.

This dare-to-be-different story is another win from the Questioneers team. (Picture book. 5-8)

Quentin Blake’s Fantastic Journeys Blake, Quentin | Candlewick Studio (64 pp.) $19.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9781536245080

An intimate peek into the sketchbook of a legendary author/illustrator.

An introductory note makes clear that while Blake is drawn to pet themes and personally salient motifs, readers should expect to find neither thesis nor throughline connecting the vignettes ahead.

Instead, the eight sections that follow are entirely unrelated to one another, each filled with images that invite onlookers to both occupy the world as it’s been reimagined and construct its context. In “Trip Hazards,” clumsy bumblers topple mid-fall across four full-page spreads, while “Ten Things You Really Cannot Manage Without” features slice-of-life essentials like a “beach hut” and a “useful box.”

“Deliveries From Elsewhere” features suitably off-the-wall scenarios (characters ride grotesque monsters or pilot flying machines), whereas those in “Feet in the Water” prove perfectly ordinary. An art exhibition of sorts, this work is an introspective companion to the myriad others Blake has built his storied career on; the contents of this volume range widely, sometimes silly, often weird. Done in scribbly pen and ink over muted watercolor, his signature illustrations suit the sinister undercurrent that thrums drolly beneath his unique brand of oddball whimsy. As ever, this artist promises creative and madcap catastrophe, but readers can rest assured—the turn of each page offers unexpected (if occasionally macabre) delights, and the disagreeable stuff occurs squarely offstage.

An aptly named exercise in imagination. (Picture book. 6-12)

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The Boy, the Troll, and the Chalk Booth, Anne | Illus. by David Litchfield Templar/Candlewick (40 pp.) | $18.99 October 28, 2025 | 9781536243970

Creating art becomes an act of inclusion and friendship.

In a cave near a playground lives a “big fierce troll.”

Children keep their distance—except for a paleskinned, redheaded boy who asks the troll to come out. When the troll rebuffs his invitation, he tries another tactic. Gathering chalk, the boy draws incomplete pictures, including a flower with a missing petal and a tailless dog—tacit encouragement for the troll to participate. The artistic breadcrumbs pay off, and the troll is coaxed out of the cave but still remains gruff. In a last-ditch attempt at friendship, the boy draws himself with his hand extended.

The next day he returns to find an image of himself hand in hand with a “big scary troll.” “But you’re not a troll,” he says. “You’re a boy—just like me.”

He redraws the troll, depicting a smiling, brown-haired, pale-skinned youngster. Now that the troll’s true self has been revealed, the two begin to draw and are soon joined by other kids, all varying in skin tone. Litchfield’s illustrations are luminous, colorful, and tremendously appealing. More literal readers may be confused about the boy/ troll in the cave: Does he live there? Is he just in a bad mood? But there’s comfort to be found in the message of seeing and being seen, of showing up, and the inclusive power of art.

A glowing reminder that patience, creativity, and kindness can quiet even the meanest of trolls. (Picture book. 3-8)

For more by Anne Booth, visit Kirkus online.

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A glowing reminder that kindness can quiet even the meanest of trolls.

T H E B OY, T H E T R O L L , A N D T H E C H A L K

Serwa Boateng’s Guide To Saving the World Brown, Roseanne A. | Rick Riordan Presents/ Disney (288 pp.) | $17.99 | May 6, 2025 9781368102919 | Series: Serwa Boateng, 3

In this trilogy closer, a headstrong Ghanaian American hero takes on multigenerational family drama, supernatural upheaval, and the challenges of being a preteen with the fate of the world on her shoulders.

Serwa and friends find themselves trapped in the Compound of the Abomofuo, who wield divine wisdom against black magic, while Serwa exists uncomfortably at the intersections of both worlds. Serwa’s mom is pregnant (“just what every magical crisis needs—a newborn”) with another child who will pose a challenge to the magical status quo, her obayifo aunt remains a wild card with complicated allegiances, and her dad is being controlled by Nana Bekoe, who’s directing him to kill them all. Yet the gang of 12-year-olds manage an escape and, via elaborate clues inspired by African American history, track down the Keepers, a U.S.-based offshoot of the Ghanaian Abomofuo, who may be able to help. Serwa is determined to fix everything, but despite a supporting cast of besties, she’s often rash enough to think she has to go it alone. Serwa’s narration remains full of humor and charm, and in this entry, she matures noticeably. She finally comes face to face with her Big Bad of a grandmother, confronts the rage that makes them dangerously similar, and

experiences the growth necessary to make things right. Fighting the demons inside her becomes literal as Serwa saves the world and the relationships most important to her and establishes a new magical balance.

A clever, culturally attuned finale. (glossary, Adinkra dictionary) (Adventure. 10-13)

Mayhem at the Museum Brückner, Hannah | Trans. by Laura Watkinson | NorthSouth (40 pp.) | $19.95 September 23, 2025 | 9780735845855

The unthinkable happens during a museum visit.

Clad in a red cap, the tanskinned, dark-­ haired Yuri loves dinosaurs but fears birds. When a parakeet belonging to the coat check attendant flies off to make its nightly rounds, savvy readers might have a clue as to what’s in store.

Yuri is balancing on the railing surrounding two enormous skeletons and a third smaller one when it happens—“the really REALLY BIIIIG catastrophe….The kind of catastrophe that makes you think nothing will ever be right again. You feel so quiet. You feel so small.” Spotting the bird, Yuri flinches, and the exhibit is reduced to a pile of bones. The youngster is mortified, but luckily the other museumgoers—a diverse group of adults and children—toil all night, reassembling hundreds (maybe thousands) of bones. In the morning, the group admires their work. “Catastrophe. What catastrophe?” This Swiss import, translated from German, features orderly, elegant illustrations with fine black K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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sketchy outlines. A quirky tone creeps in as Brückner plays with the gutter and concludes her tale on a surprising, whimsical note; her dramatic but ultimately reassuring second-person narration highlights the tragicomic aspects of the story. Be sure to share this one before—or after—a museum visit.

Warmly witty fare that will elicit smiles from anyone who’s ever committed a public gaffe. (Picture book. 4-7)

Weiwei’s Winter Solstice: A Dōngzhì Story Chan, Michelle Jing | Bloomsbury (40 pp.) $18.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9781547614844

A young girl and her family unpack their feelings about a recent move with the help of a familiar holiday.

Weiwei wakes to an unusually cold Dōngzhì, a Chinese festival that marks the winter solstice. Soft blurred lines and deftly blended cool colors portray the dissatisfied Weiwei wrapped in a blanket as snowy hills loom outside her window. It’s a vast contrast from how she spent the holiday last year, and as she reminisces about her old home, readers see glowing scenes of Weiwei romping amid palm trees as she chases hummingbirds. Now, “it’s too cold for a screen on the door.” But with some prodding from Yeye (Grandfather), the family bundles up for a wintry stroll outside, where they see signs of hope springing eternal.

Brushes and splatters of colors add to the overall coziness as Weiwei enjoys the scenery and excitedly spots “méihuā, plum blossoms!” Back home, the family prepares tāng yuán. Chan’s gentle, sensory-rich narrative describes Weiwei and her family kneading black sesame, rice flour, and other ingredients into a “pillow of dough,” which is then served in a ginger broth. After honoring the ancestors, Yeye, who emigrated from China to the United States years ago, delicately acknowledges the struggles of moving, helping K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Weiwei realize the potential for making memories in her new home surrounded by family.

A delectable celebration that will warm readers from the inside out. (author’s note, recipe for black sesame tāng yuán) (Picture book. 5-8)

When Santa Wrote Back!

Christopher, Nathan | Illus. by Pablo Pino Sourcebooks Wonderland (40 pp.) | $12.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781464225253

A young boy initiates a lively correspondence with Santa.

Back-and-forth letters between Santa and Jake, expressed in bouncy rhymes that scan beautifully, comprise this epistolary story. Accompanying his wish list, Jake’s first letter emphasizes his good behavior and his desire for a wealth of gifts (“bring two of each present in case one should break”). Awaiting Santa’s reply, Jake sends another missive with a longer list. “’Tis better to give than receive,” writes back Santa. The elves will trim the list. Jake’s unpersuaded. “Receiving is slightly more fun,” he says, sending back a longer list. Impatient “S.C.” threatens Jake with coal. Jake doesn’t mind and, demonstrating his thoughtfulness, tells Santa to take a vacation.

Before heading to the beach, Santa chooses his stand-in—guess who?—and dispatches his red suit, sleigh, and reindeer. Unfortunately, Santa’s beard becomes firmly attached to Jake’s face, so he wears it to school, where his classmates tell him their Christmas wishes. Finally, Jake understands the meaning of Christmas because their wishes epitomize generosity. Was this Santa’s plan? Now Jake knows what he wants: the beard’s removal. Receiving the elves’ satisfactory report, Santa complies, then gives Jake something special. This delightful holiday story brims with humor, cheer, and warmth—and a fine message. Children will chuckle over the correspondence and the protagonists’ camaraderie. The colorful digital illustrations burst with

energy. Jake is tan-skinned; background characters are diverse.

A very merry Christmas story overflowing with plenty of ho-ho heart. (tips for writing to Santa) (Picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Star

Let’s Get Together Colbert, Brandy | Clarion/HarperCollins (304 pp.) | $19.99 | September 9, 2025 9780063092488

Two Black girls in Pasadena navigate the complexities of a newfound family relationship.

Eleven-year-old Liberty Perry has been a foster kid for as long as she can remember.

After years of moving around to different households, she’s happy with her new foster mom, Joey, and Joey’s cat, Hansberry. When Liberty begins sixth grade at her 10th new school, Biddy Mason Community School, the last thing she expects is to meet her doppelgänger. Like Liberty, Kenya Norwood has dark skin and striking hazel eyes, but the similarities end with their physical resemblance—and the girls don’t get along. After they get into a fight, Kenya’s father, Wes, comes to school and recognizes Liberty as Kalilah, his missing daughter. A DNA test confirms this fact, unraveling the twins’ family history and posing a question of reunification that complicates Liberty’s recent, joyful acceptance of an invitation to be adopted by Joey.

But the girls form a kinship bond despite their differences, and Kenya hatches a plan to make Joey and Wes fall in love so they can all stay together forever. The matchmaking schemes involve a luncheon, a Halloween trick-or-treat outing, a surprise Thanksgiving family dinner, and a camping trip, all leading up to a satisfying and realistic conclusion. The third-person perspective alternates between Liberty’s and Kenya’s points of JULY 1, 2025

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view. Colbert sensitively and age-appropriately addresses complex issues around mental health, substance abuse, and the foster care system.

A compassionate, emotionally intelligent story about family and belonging that will resonate widely. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)

Happy Friendsgiving: A Thanksgiving Celebration of Found Families Colleen, Marcie | Illus. by Laura Sandoval Herrera | Doubleday (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 23, 2025 | 9780593649923

An overview of a contemporary Thanksgiving spent with friends.

Arranged chronologically in sections ranging from “Friends Travel” and “Friends Prepare” to “Friends Help” and “Friends Love,” the bustling scenes are filled with people baking, making paper turkeys from traced hands, attending a parade, watching or playing football, feasting, and, at last, cleaning up. There are no references to pilgrims here; rather, the inclusive compositions feature characters who vary in skin tone, hairstyles, and facial features enjoying one another’s company and the holiday’s bounty. The warm, autumnal designs are reminiscent of Grandma Moses’ domestic tableaux with their disregard of traditional perspective in favor of showing everyone and everything, particularly in the views around the dinner tables. The text is descriptive and sensory, although without much attention to cadence: “Someone brought a card table. / The neighbors borrowed chairs. / It’s snug around our mismatched feast. / We wouldn’t have it any other way.” Judging from an image of what appears to be a Macy’s-esque parade, the urban setting is New York City and its environs. Rather than focusing on a single protagonist, the story centers on the hustle and bustle of the group. A nice touch involves first responders, health care personnel, and others who have to work receiving gratitude and treats.

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A modern-day depiction of holiday celebrations with a family of choice.

HAPPY FRIENDSGIVING

A delightful, inclusive, modern-day depiction of holiday celebrations with a family of choice. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Star

A Change Is Gonna Come Cooke, Sam | Illus. by Nikkolas Smith Little Bee Books (32 pp.) | $19.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781499816150

Acclaimed artist Smith honors Cooke’s legendary song with 1960s-­ inspired art.

A Black child spies a camera floating on a plank in the river near the shack where he lives, and when he grows up and migrates to a city, he brings the camera with him. Paired with lyrics from Cooke’s song—long considered a Civil Rights Movement anthem—scenes of urban life follow: signs proclaiming segregation, the funeral of Medgar Evers (an activist murdered in 1963 Mississippi), Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law as Martin Luther King Jr. looks on, people gathering for the March on Washington, a re-creation of a photo depicting Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali sitting at a lunch counter, and other milestones in the fight for racial justice. The man with the camera is present at many of these moments; a touching final spread portrays a Black child looking through photographs of those very scenes. Smith’s signature painting style lends energy to the pages with formidable linework, superb use of darkness and light, and strong compositions, inviting readers to linger, parse the images, and discuss what’s going on. Less a read-aloud and

more a window into history, this work offers a rich opportunity to introduce the topic to young people through art, music, personalities, events, and emotions, over multiple exposures.

Detailed backmatter supports comprehension.

Potent and deeply moving. (note from the estate of Sam Cooke, illustrator’s note, featured historical events and figures, QR code linking to a recording of “A Change Is Gonna Come”) (Picture book. 4-8)

Elvis & Romeo Davis, Jacky & David Soman | Illus. by David Soman | Aladdin (40 pp.) | $19.99 May 6, 2025 | 9781665948067 Series: An Elvis & Romeo Book

Unstoppable force, meet not-so-­ immovable object.

Grouchy bulldog Elvis and zippy poodle mix Romeo are about as different as two pups can be. Depending on whom you ask, a visit to the dog park sounds either torturous or heavenly, but that’s nonetheless where our protagonists meet one sunny day. Energized by eternal and oblivious optimism, Romeo instantly identifies a scowling Elvis as his pal du jour, making cheerful conversation and attempting to connect over shared pastimes.

Cloud-spotting doesn’t do the trick, nor do games of tag or hide-and-seek, but when an errant Frisbee is flung in the pair’s direction, Elvis’ true passion for play surfaces. Eager to introduce Romeo to the joys of fetch (and to jointly devise a recipe for the world’s tastiest sandwich), Elvis discovers that their differences may be more K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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complementary than they are incompatible. And, disagreements aside, both concur—no force proves more powerful than a shared love of treats. Though this tale of unlikely friendship treads familiar territory, it’s a pleasant enough jaunt to the dog park with charming illustrations to match, introducing likable canine characters and setting the stage for future odd-couple hijinks.

A worthy selection for pet lovers and sandwich fans alike. (Picture book. 5-8)

Elvis & Romeo Go To Dog School: Ready-ToRead Level 1 Davis, Jacky & David Soman | Illus. by David Soman | Simon Spotlight (32 pp.) | $18.99 August 12, 2025 | 9781665947978 Series: An Elvis & Romeo Book

A pair of pups embark on an educational journey.

The curtain rises on Elvis and Romeo’s latest adventure; this time, it’s the first day of obedience school for Elvis the prickly bulldog and his pal, a larger, chipper, curly-haired poodle mix. The latter, however, isn’t exactly ready to learn; instead, he’s eager to showcase the tricks he’s already mastered as the hounds wait for class to commence. But when instruction begins and the doggie duo are presented with a new task—a game of catch—Romeo demurs, insecure about his inexperience.

Under the watchful eye of his capable and encouraging friend, Romeo discovers that even the trickiest challenge isn’t insurmountable when broken into steps; Elvis’ guidance is proof that old dogs can, at least, teach new tricks. While Davis and Soman’s narrative models an actionable solution to overwhelming situations, and their language will prove accessible for new readers, the story is a bit tedious, its dialogue at times distractingly stilted.

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appealing expressiveness, in this outing, the compositions aren’t nearly as varied, giving them a more static feeling. The result is neither engaging enough to warrant a read-aloud nor comforting enough to enter bedtime rotation. Only the hands and arms of the dogs’ human trainers are visible; one is brownskinned, while the other is pale-skinned.

A pedestrian portrait of problem-­ solving for pooches. (Early reader. 4-6)

A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out Day, Nicholas | Illus. by Yas Imamura Random House Studio (304 pp.) | $19.99 September 9, 2025 | 9780593643877

A dramatic examination of both the immediate and long-term effects of recorded history’s deadliest, most titanic blast: the 1815 eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora.

“The word loud isn’t loud enough.

The word hot isn’t hot enough. The word— / None of the words are enough.” Award-winner Day offers readers a rousing recitation of the catastrophes resulting from this “unfathomable” natural disaster after the millions of tons of ash and sulfates belched out by the volcano created a worldwide “climate shock.” The results included floods, fires, crop failures, violent storms, disease outbreaks, and upended seasons: “A Feedback Loop of Bad,” as one chapter heading puts it. He also draws sweeping but plausible connections to less direct but no less consequential events, including Mary Shelley’s contemporaneous Frankenstein—he sees the book’s “transfixing weirdness” as “a story straight out of the madness that Tambora made”—and the beginnings of mass westward population movements in the U.S. and the development of modern meteorology.

Day includes reflection questions for readers in several places and points to

Tambora as a cautionary tale of what we will all face, climate-wise, if we don’t heed the warning signs. We’re inescapably part of our planet’s story, and “we’re not the main character.” Short chapters, a breathless narrative style, and spacious typography contribute to this work’s accessibility. Final art not seen.

Urgent and terrifying. (bibliography, source notes, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

No Sam! and the Meow of Deception Daywalt, Drew | Illus. by Mike Lowery Storytide/HarperCollins (176 pp.) | $15.99 October 28, 2025 | 9780063450059

Saving one of his owners from an obvious vampire is just one of the new challenges facing the fiercely protective pooch introduced in They Call Me No Sam! (2024).

Sam considers himself the “chief security officer” for a family of hapless humans (or “naked-monkey-things,” as he puts it). His favorite human, young Justin, has a new friend named Dean who claims to be allergic to sunlight and smells like fresh dirt, just like a vampire would! What to do? Taking a cue from a character on TV, who confusingly recommends using a “steak,” Sam springs into action.

Meanwhile, the household kitty, who can talk and has a genius IQ thanks to the genetic experiments of Justin’s scientist parents, is trying to sell their secrets to a pair of spies. Once again, even though everything comes round right at the end, the disconnect between what Sam sees and real life will induce general hilarity—as will his doggy advice to readers to, for instance, poop in their front yards like he does (“Liberating, right?”) and pee on their favorite toys, because “if you pee on something it’s yours forever.”

Along with amplifying the knee-­ slapping conceit with visual punchlines, Lowery’s many spot and paneled line drawings include images of the pudgy JULY 1, 2025

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pug’s hysterical approach to perceived threats and his winning, slobbery affection for “monkey-things” he likes.

Figures, human and otherwise, are the color of the paper.

A tail-wagger, with much afoot for both the two- and four-legged cast.

(Adventure. 8-12)

The Last Plum: A Mini and Milo Book Dimos, Venita | Illus. by Natashia Curtin Walker Books Australia (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781761601613

Friends plumb the depths of their relationship.

Mini the elephant loves two things: plums and winning. She’s eagerly anticipating an upcoming cooking competition, where she plans to enter her prize-winning plum pie.

Checking her ingredients, Mini counts nine plums; her pie requires 10.

Luckily, her BFF, Milo the rabbit, grows plums; Mini’s certain he’ll give her one. But Milo’s been waiting weeks for his last remaining plum to ripen, and he intends to eat it. Mini tries persuasion, to no avail; Milo wants what’s his. Miffed that Milo’s “not being a very good friend,” Mini is dismayed when the store’s plumb out of plums. When she attempts to steal Milo’s plum, Milo catches her. As the two tussle, Milo’s plum is smashed.

Mini apologizes, and together they find a way for Mini to enter the competition after all. First published in Australia and starring the likable characters last seen in Elephants Can’t Jump (2025), this sweet story suggests that even good friends sometimes face challenges, but conflict can be overcome when they talk through their differences. The softly colored, carefully composed digital illustrations present personable, sympathetic protagonists, with ample boldfaced type incorporated into the artwork for dramatic effect.

A delightful charmer about how friendships can blossom through compromise. (Picture book. 4-7) 94

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Kirkus Star

Defanged Edgmon, H.E. | Feiwel & Friends (240 pp.) $17.99 | September 23, 2025 | 9781250874009

A vampire runs away after his parents attempt to “cure” him.

Lux Priddy is obsessed with animals, eager to share his knowledge, and anxious about following rules. He and his best friend, Emma Neroni, are also vampires. Vampires started coming “out of the coffin” in the ’90s—but since Vampirism Sucks invented a Defanging cure, many anticipate a future without their kind, something Emma and her parents find abhorrent. Lux doesn’t mind being a vampire, so when his twelfth birthnight comes, and his parents take him to be Defanged, he flees to Nox Urbus, the fabled underground city of vampires in the sewers of New York City. For the first time, Lux gets to live in a world that’s made for him, and he learns about his history and potential.

But his disappearance ignites controversy in an anti-vampire society, and he’ll have to fight even harder for the right to be himself. Thoughtful details add realism to the vampires’ world, and the affection between quirky Lux and his compatriots brings fun and hope to a story that addresses serious, all-too-relevant issues. Lux’s autistic characteristics and the vampires’ legal and social status provide clear parallels to various marginalized groups’ struggles for civil rights. Many readers will see themselves in this work, and all will understand how propaganda

and institutionalized bias affect our lives. Lux and his family read white, and Emma and her family are brown-skinned.

A clever, perceptive read that’s full of love for those who are different.

(Paranormal. 9-12)

Millie of the Manor Evans, Karina | Illus. by Andrea Bell HarperAlley (208 pp.) | $15.99 paper September 2, 2025 | 9780063282483

A game night provides an avenue for pushing past social anxiety.

Amy would much prefer to be nose-deep in a good detective novel than socializing with her peers. Although she and her therapist work on strategies to help her calm down in panic-­ inducing situations and to step out of her comfort zone, things like class presentations send her spiraling. So she’s surprised when classmate Reagan invites her to a murder mystery–themed birthday party with three other schoolmates. As the game begins, Amy finds freedom in the detective work and in her assigned character, scientist Millie Morgan (“If I mess up or act weird, it can just be part of Millie’s storyline,” she reasons).

As the group looks for clues, Amy speaks up and finds herself leading the investigation. Though the experience isn’t without its challenges, it’s ultimately positive and rings true, and Evans realistically conveys Amy’s anxiety symptoms. And readers will have a blast solving the mystery.

A clever, perceptive read that’s full of love for those who are different.

DEFANGED

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Reminiscent of Raina Telgemeier’s or Remy Lai’s work, Bell’s cartoon illustrations establish the mood effectively. The costumes, palette, and setting fluctuate; when the game’s on, Amy and the other girls resemble their characters and seem to truly be exploring an old-timey manor. Panel backgrounds turn gray when Amy’s thoughts become overwhelming. The party guests are a sympathetic bunch and easily accept Amy’s sharing of her diagnosis. Amy has pale skin and black hair; the other kids vary in skin tone.

Both an enticing mystery and a satisfying emotional journey.

(Graphic mystery. 8-13)

Ava Lin, Super-Duper Happy Fang, Vicky | Candlewick (96 pp.) $16.99 | June 10, 2025 | 9781536229714 Series: Ava Lin, 3

A school fundraiser and a visit from Grandma in the same week— what could go wrong for Ava Lin? Six-and-a-halfyear-old Ava is about to have the BEST WEEK EVER. Her popo (Chinese for grandma) is visiting, and Ava is excited to show off her treasures, like a button, an acorn, and the inside part of a marker. Things go wrong almost immediately when Popo calls Ava’s treasures dirty and throws them away. But eventually, Ava and Popo find common ground and start to have fun together. Ava’s also preparing for a walkathon at school. She must find sponsors, strategize, and improve her stamina so she can win a gold medal.

Torn between spending time with Popo and completing her walkathon plan, Ava is overwhelmed and starts to cry. With help from her family, however, Ava finds that there’s enough time in each day for everything she wants to do. Black-and-white illustrations—made up of spot art and comics-style panels—add humor, while the simple vocabulary and story structure are ideal for newly K IR KU S R E V IE W S

independent readers. As in previous titles in the series, Ava’s big feelings are realistic and validated; adults express frustration without being dismissive and offer coping skills like mindful breathing to help Ava calm down. Ava and her family are of Chinese descent; other characters are illustrated with a range of skin tones.

Now in its third installment, this series continues to charm. (Chapter book. 5-8)

A Method for Magic and Misfortune Farmer, Craig Kofi | Roaring Brook Press (368 pp.) | $17.99 | September 9, 2025 9781250900289

A tween discovers the magic of conjuring and the power of community.

Twelve-year-old Marcus Pennrider is a Black boy from Grand Park, New York. His role model, and possibly even his “favorite person alive,” is local store owner and community leader Mr. O, who helped save Marcus and his little sister, Ariana, from their abusive widowed father. The siblings often took shelter in Mr. O’s Orisha Corner Store, and he even helped the kids’ aunt Donna gain custody. One day, Marcus unintentionally unleashes magical powers he didn’t realize he possessed, damaging the apartment. In his desperation, he confides in Mr. O, who informs Marcus that he has the gift of Divination—the ability to wield the powers of the gods. Mr. O takes Marcus on as an apprentice. Initially, Marcus finds purpose in his training, but it monopolizes his time and energy, straining his relationships with those who care about him. Can he find his own way and forge his own path to what really matters to him? Farmer’s strong character development and worldbuilding bolster this fantasy story that centers on a majority Black cast and feels firmly anchored in realistic concerns. First-person narrator Marcus

is an appealing lead, and readers will become entwined in his journey of self-discovery. Even supporting characters prove to be interesting boons to the plot.

Has strong appeal for readers seeking magic-infused stories grounded in well-rounded characterization. (glossary of illustrations) (Fantasy. 8-14)

Candy Corn Christmas!

Fenske, Jonathan | Little Simon/ Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) | $10.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781665973663

Halloween confections learn they’re not obsolete.

When fall’s over, the candy corns are relegated to the pantry along with the cranberry sauce and a jack-o’-lantern trick-or-treat bucket. The orange, yellow, and white candies feel unwanted. Unlike some foods, they don’t spoil or rot; they just sit around “feeling bored and kind of stale.” But a new holiday’s coming, and new smells are everywhere! Investigating, the corns discover exciting new trappings in their house: a giant decorated tree, wrapped gifts, hung stockings, and more! A sugarplum reveals all: “It’s Christmas!” The corns quickly horn in on the action, cavorting over the Yule log, diving into the egg nog, and leaving “sticky fingerprints on candlesticks and ornaments.” An angry candy cane demands that they skedaddle: “You had YOUR holiday. Now SCRAM!” They start to leave, but pale-skinned Santa’s arrival puts things into perspective. After nibbling a corn, the jolly old elf announces that the candies “fit right in!—and “Christmas is for EVERYONE!” Softening, Cane exhorts the corns to stay and acknowledges their similarities—they’re all striped, sweet, and sticky. This adorable holiday tale, told in well-executed, rollicking verse, delivers a fine message about Christmas inclusiveness, puts a new spin on the holiday season, and belongs on both post-Halloween and Christmas-book display shelves. The JULY 1, 2025

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bustling, cheery illustrations feature characters bursting with personality and lots of dialogue set in speech balloons.

A holiday winner sure to be in demand come spooky season or Yuletide. (Picture book. 4-8)

The Faraway Forest: Wally’s Route Fong, Debbie | Chronicle Books (88 pp.) | $12.99 | September 9, 2025 9781797230412 | Series: The Faraway Forest, 1

A quartet of interconnected tales starring a raccoon postal worker.

Wally is responsible for delivering mail across the titular forest, where he lives with best friend Bo, a white rabbit. Working together, they bring letters and packages to a variety of animals. An encounter with Mr. Sternbill, a grumpy storklike bird who resides in the hills high above the community, frustrates Bo, but Wally reminds Bo of one of his personal mottos: “To all you meet, be good and kind—you never know what’s on their mind.” He shares others as the narrative continues: “Patience is a virtue: A little waiting will not hurt you.” “Rain, sleet, snow or shine! Every house, every time!”

These philosophies guide the first three chapters, which may be low on action but excel at quiet worldbuilding. A resolution of sorts comes when Wally’s hard work on a rainy day results in a cold. The forest neighbors surprise the ailing mail carrier, adding a new motto to his board—a reminder to take care of himself, as his work is vital. Fong’s depictions of cozy woodland settings filled with softly rounded, squat anthropomorphized animals are enchanting. Added features, such as a seek-and-find game and a brief drawing guide, enhance the story’s appeal; youngsters looking for a gentle read will be pleased with this whimsical graphic novel.

Delightfully adorable with a great message. Readers will eagerly await the next volume. (Graphic fiction. 6-9)

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Little Boo

Grin

Frost, Maddie | Clarion/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $18.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9780063267831

Gillespie, D.W. | Delacorte (272 pp.) $17.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9780593814888

With a bit of perspective, a ghost learns to accept a baby sibling.

Big Boo, who narrates, enjoys a blissful few early months with Little Boo, “a sweet and adorable baby.” Things are easy enough when Little Boo is too small to do much of anything; Little Boo listens as Big Boo talks, and Big Boo ferries the younger spirit around. Then comes the day when Little Boo learns to crawl, then float, and, at last, talk. Little Boo becomes an annoying, constant presence whose declarations of love are trying. Big Boo’s werewolf friend Howl, on the other hand, has a sibling who seems enviably calm (and who shares Big Boo’s love of literature).

Howl points out that “Little Howl is a little monster,” but Big Boo nevertheless accepts a sibling trade. Oops…what a mistake! Maybe Little Boo isn’t such a trial after all? The cute and relatable plot is only half the attraction. Readers will pore over countless details in the Boo household: the alligator chairs and dining table, Little Boo’s owl highchair and hollow-pumpkin bassinet, the snake chandelier, the Venus fly trap desk lamp, the bat bathmat, and the candy corn–chomping squirrels rapturously hailed by Little Boo as “Kitteez!!!” Graphic novel–esque panels and speech bubbles, as well as simple but frenzied linework, give Frost plenty of scope for clever comic effects to fuel rereading.

Playing video games can be bad for your health— even deadly.

Thirteen-year-old gamer and horror fan Danny Dawson is psyched to be spending the week with his eccentric uncle, who owns a retro arcade. Unlimited snacks, “endless video games, pinball, Skee-Ball, and light guns”: heaven for the self-professed nerd. Danny’s thrilled when he’s invited to help unbox Grin, an incredibly rare game that’s rumored by Danny’s favorite YouTuber, Mr. Griller, to be “so cursed that most people think it’s not even real.” Strange things start happening immediately. Danny hears menacing voices, and, making real the parental refrain that excessive screen time begets bad behavior, the players become violent and aggressive. When Grin begins to control Uncle Bill, Danny and his friend Jodi take action. With the help of Mr. Griller, they deduce that the game’s haunted by the spirit of a serial killer who uses players to escape into the living world.

The three devise a dangerous plan to destroy the game, ending the reign of terror once and for all. This high-octane narrative is an excellent choice for readers who are ready for something with real bite.

Gillespie references some actual vintage games, including Polybius, which people say “the government built to test out mind control”—a nice touch for avid gamers who know their urban legends. Danny and Jodi are cued white.

A hauntingly funny tale of family love.

(Picture book. 4-8)

High-stakes action and imminent danger will satisfy young horror fans. (Horror. 9-13)

An excellent choice for readers who are ready for something with real bite.

GRIN

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Found You!

Taro Gomi’s Big Book of Verbs

Godwin, Jane | Illus. by Sylvia Morris Charlesbridge (40 pp.) | $17.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781623546182

Gomi, Taro | Chronicle Books (32 pp.) $18.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781797230214

During a game of hide-and-seek, a youngster worries that he’s concealed himself too well.

In this Australian import, four kids scatter while another counts to 10 before shouting the familiar childhood phrase: “Coming! Ready or not!”

Archie, a tot in a bright red pullover, sneaks into a cupboard. One by one, each child is found until only Archie is left. In his hiding spot, Archie wills himself to stay calm and not make a sound. But then the others go outside to search, and Archie’s cupboard starts to feel constricting.

The house is quiet, and Archie wonders if they’ve stopped searching. “I’m still here,” he whispers.

“Come back. Find me.” It’s thrilling to be the last one found, but the joyful game also has its scary moments. Many kids will relate to Godwin’s exploration of Archie’s emotional arc. Morris’ muted palette gives her artwork a serene feeling, but the layouts add dramatic tension. Several pages feature smaller panels showing hiding spots, as well as a zoomed-out look at the entire house that shows others being found. The darkness is also heightened in many scenes, with slivers of light serving as the sole saving grace in the increasingly ominous-looking cupboard. The kids have light tan skin; two (including Archie) appear to be East Asian.

A gently reassuring look at the big feelings elicited by a classic childhood game. (Picture book. 3-6)

For more by Jane Godwin, visit Kirkus online.

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In this Japanese import, children’s book author and illustrator Gomi, best known for Everyone Poops (1977), tackles more than 300 verbs in crowded scenes reminiscent of Richard Scarry’s work.

On each layout, a new story unfolds in a different setting—an amusement park, an ice-skating rink, a swimming pool, and more. Each spread is framed by a numbered list of 34 verbs, each of which corresponds to a specific image. Kids can read each verb and then find the corresponding number or start with an image and scan the list for the appropriate word. Each page feels as though someone’s hit the pause button on a busy scene. The school, for example, features over 80 different children and adults engaged in all sorts of activities: playing instruments, crying, fighting, hitting, tickling, building, and reading (among many, many others). The verbs range from simple ones, like talk, to rich vocabulary such as devour and ascend and even more colloquial words including freak out. Some kids may notice discrepancies. In a camping spread, for example, children are seen riding horses and playing in a stream (daylight activities) while another is sleepwalking (a nighttime activity). Still, readers will love poring over the details. Nearly all of the people in Gomi’s simplified illustrations are brown-skinned and black-haired.

Chaotic, silly, and fun. (Picture book. 4-6)

The Power of Your Name Gopal, Jyoti Rajan | Illus. by Olivia Sua Union Square Kids (48 pp.) | $18.99 August 26, 2025 | 9781454947424

An ABC book that celebrates that sweetest of sounds: your name.

Climbing a rock wall, sailing across

a starlit sea, and gamboling through floral landscapes, the diverse characters who populate these pages proclaim that your name is “the snap pop / of your essence / your presence / your superpower.” Infused with alphabetically arranged positive descriptors (“Your name is Alive. / A melody of letters,” “Your name is a Gift / Plucked from your family tree”), Gopal’s rhyming text builds to a rousing crescendo of everything that makes you “zesty zingy zen-sational you.” Quieter verses offer readers space to consider the origins of their names and to reflect on “your true self / and your place in this world.” The use of made-up terms—vibrosonic, wonderific—feels a bit out of place in a book centered on the alphabet, though the words don’t detract from the uplifting message. On each page, the main word appears prominently, styled in inventive ways: electricity presented in a jagged font, set against a sky filled with lightning; knowledge spelled out on a classroom blackboard. Sua’s cut-paper artwork creates dynamic lines as well as movement that follows the rhythms of the text. An author’s note advises readers to take special care to say people’s names the way they would like; Gopal and Sua also explain the meanings of their own names.

Bolstering and affirming.

(Picture book. 4-8)

Into the Bewilderness Gordon, Gus | HarperAlley (192 pp.) $15.99 paper | July 8, 2025 | 9780063246119

A tentative venture into the Big City doesn’t go at all well for two rustic cabin mates.

A big furry sweetie for all his willingness to chow down on unwary birds and squirrels, Luis the bear is full of both tough philosophical questions (“If the early bird gets the worm, why do good things come to those who wait?”) and affection for his acerbic mole roomie Pablo. “There’s SO much that I don’t know, Pablo.” “I know.” Yearning >>> JULY 1, 2025

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C H I L D R E N ' S // Q & A

THE KIRKUS Q&A: RAINA TELGEMEIER & SCOTT McCLOUD Two celebrated comics creators discuss their collaboration on a graphic novel for young people.

BY DOUGLAS WOLK

Scott McCloud Raina Telgemeier

The Cartoonists Club

Telgemeier, Raina & Scott McCloud

RAINA TELGEMEIER AND SCOTT MCCLOUD are very different cartoonists. Telgemeier is the creator of a string of bestselling middle-grade graphic novels including Smile, Drama, and Guts, while McCloud is known for his pioneering analyses of the medium, Understanding Comics and Making Comics. But the two have been friends for decades, and when Telgemeier’s young readers demanded a guide to creating their own comics, she turned to McCloud.

Their collaboration, The Cartoonists Club, was published by Graphix/Scholastic in April. Formally, it’s in the mode of Telgemeier’s other books: a story about four kids, Makayla, Art, Lynda, and Howard, who figure out together how they can turn blank pages into comics. What they discover, though, is very much derived from McCloud’s work. He and Telgemeier wrote the book together; she drew its characters, and he drew those characters’ creations.

McCloud and Telgemeier talked to Kirkus about The Cartoonists Club over Zoom from their homes in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, respectively. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve just finished the first leg of the tour for The Cartoonists Club. How has 98

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it been received?

SCOTT McCLOUD: We’ve had big crowds, very warm

and very excitable. When we ask for participation, their hands are bopping in the air. The sense of kinship that I saw in the eyes of parents and kids was really something. And we’re also beginning to see kids give us art—actually hand things to us that they’ve made—and that’s tremendously exciting.

RAINA TELGEMEIER: Being able to recognize that kinship as a two-way gaze is very rewarding. It’s a full-circle experience.

McCLOUD: There’s that key moment in our presentation when Raina shows a piece of art that she did herself, when she drew the Baby-Sitters Club cast.

TELGEMEIER: As an 11-year-old!

McCLOUD: That completes the circuit beautifully, because the kids are seeing that this adult was that kid noodling out this rough draft for how the universe could be, and now that universe is real. When we’re giving voice to the creative aspirations of kids, it’s not as if we just handed this to them out of thin air. It was already there. We just handed them the key to unlock it.

TELGEMEIER: We just received some comics, a couple of days ago, from a very young creator whose parents were also very excited that she was creating.

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Telgemeier : Scholastic; McCloud: Joanna Degeneres Photography

Colors by Beniam C. Hollman | Graphix/Scholastic 288 pp. | $24.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9781338777222

Q & A // C H I L D R E N ' S

She handed us her work, and Scott and I both looked at it and went, Oh, this is good. Like, this is really good. You’ve got it.

McCLOUD: We never say that in so many words, of course.

TELGEMEIER: Right.

McCLOUD: We see it in each other’s eyes. We catch the parents’ eyes, and then we say things like, “Keep going” [laughter].

You’ve talked about Raina’s similarities to Lynda and Scott’s similarities to Art, but how did Makayla and Howard develop?

TELGEMEIER: I’ve kept meeting the same [types of] kids over and over again in my workshops, signings, presentations, school visits—there’s the one who has the big, big, big ideas but doesn’t have the focus or the tools to really sit down and start. And there’s the kid who likes to draw funny pictures but doesn’t know how to take those funny ideas and turn them

into a story. I mean, I’m a memoir cartoonist. I journal, I keep notes, I draw kids when I see them in my sketchbook. These kids have existed for a long time.

McCLOUD: I have my pet theory that there are four passions or campfires that people return to: knowledge and learning and experimentation; or story and imagination; or iconoclastic rule-breaking and skewering power; or pursuing craft.

So as soon as I had four characters, I thought, I know what boxes I’m going to put them in. But one of the wonderful things that happened is that when Raina had the insight, about halfway through, of having Lynda find her story, it kind of broke my rules, and I knew I had to let that take its course.

TELGEMEIER: For each character, the kid is half of the character, and what they create is the other half. I feel like I knew who Makayla was, but I didn’t know what she was writing and

When we’re giving voice to the creative aspirations of kids, it’s not as if we just handed this to them out of thin air.

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drawing. And I leaned on Scott for that, because I don’t have that kind of imagination. I don’t have a big fantastical writerly brain.

McCLOUD: I might politely disagree—I think you have a tremendous imagination, but I do know what you’re describing. I had to imagine the artistic persona of each kid and impersonate them on paper.

Lynda was the hardest of all, because Lynda is a young artist without a lot of experience but with a lot of natural talent. And I’m an old artist with tons of experience but very limited natural talent. So that was a very, very hard thing for me to put onto paper.

Over the course of the story’s multiple drafts, what other surprising things came out of your collaboration?

TELGEMEIER: There’s a really big one: Our story originally had Raina and Scott in it. We were main characters, teaching a class, and explaining everything.

And the feedback we got from the editorial team was, “It doesn’t quite feel like a Raina book, and it needs to feel more like a Raina book.” At the time, that felt like non-advice: I don’t know how to be more me! But I had a heavier hand in the second draft, and it was only 30 pages into rewriting it that I realized Raina and Scott probably shouldn’t be in this at all. That felt like a tiny dagger to the heart, but it made sense to everybody.

McCLOUD: I think your insight and bravery—and my natural irascible rebelliousness—led us to isolate the problem: that the book felt a little didactic and wasn’t

kid-centered enough. Which did, in the end, make it feel more like a Raina book, but also more like the book that was struggling to get out, which is a story that originated from the kids rather than a case of adults handing down the wisdom.

Both of you have always had an eye for what’s on its way in comics.

What are you seeing from the kids who’ve been coming to your readings all these years?

TELGEMEIER: A lot of them are working on WEBTOON, and a lot of them are self-publishing. I’ve had a lot of young School of Visual Arts grads who’ve followed in my wake, and I always feel a special kinship with them.

McCLOUD: The generation that began with reading Raina’s work is really coming of age now. I find it hard to believe that their work will not be quite socially and politically intense. I think that their storytelling chops are probably going to be tremendous. I think we’re seeing the victory of the kind of pacing that Raina has been doing that very few people did before her, the idea of emotion as action. One of the things that scares me is that the diversity of output that we’ve seen to this point may go in retrograde because of a political environment that discourages diversity. But it’s going to be an exciting time. It just may be a little more fraught than we would have liked.

Douglas Wolk is the author of All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told.

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for a true cultural experience, the two make their way from the remote but comfy Bewilderness to the faraway “Big City,” bantering all the way like animal versions of Laurel and Hardy. A rumor that zombie chickens prowl the mean streets doesn’t dissuade them, nor does Luis’ strange dream involving a gang of angry urban squirrels with big spoons.

The bustling streets do prove free of chickens (at least the undead sort) and punk rodents, but the crowds and a string of mishaps are still stressful enough to drive the nervous Pablo into a meltdown that opens a rift between the two. But, demonstrating that even the tightest friendship can sometimes benefit from a timeout, the two ultimately end up closer than ever. Contrasting dispositions make Luis and Pablo an amusingly appealing pair in the neatly drawn panels, leading a winsome animal (and cryptid) cast.

Urbane, goofy fun. (Graphic fiction. 10-13)

Wanda Hears the Stars: A Blind Astronomer Listens to the Universe Hansen, Amy S. with Wanda Díaz Merced Illus. by Rocío Arreola Mendoza Charlesbridge (40 pp.) | $18.99 August 19, 2025 | 9781623544874

Astronomer and co-author Díaz Merced explains how, after going blind, she used sound to make a groundbreaking discovery.

In Gurabo, Wanda’s Puerto Rican hometown, the rainforest hid the stars. So when 9-­year­old Wanda witnessed a meteor shower, she “lit up with wonder.” Her curiosity persisted; in college, Wanda studied physics and “aimed for the stars.” But in Wanda’s third year, she went blind as a result of diabetes, and “the stars had dimmed, too. How could she study what she couldn’t see?” Fortunately, a friend introduced Wanda to radio waves that captured sounds from space, and “she heard a path to the sky.” At NASA, Wanda used sonification—the conversion of visual data into sounds—to 100

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A jolly time for Cretaceous and Christmas lovers alike.

S A N TA C L AW S

study the stars. Still, she worried about keeping up with her colleagues.

Through sonification, however, Wanda discovered oscillations in a star’s energy, something nobody else had noticed— confirming that “using sound didn’t mean she had less information. It just meant she had to work differently.” The onomatopoeia-adorned text includes Spanish dialogue and concludes with a rousing invitation: “Look up! ¡Mira arriba! The stars belong to everyone!”

Arreola Mendoza’s vibrant cartoon illustrations, with dark, jewel-toned hues evoking the night sky, convey Wanda’s fascination and determination and the beauty of space. Extensive backmatter provides further details about sonification and Díaz Merced’s adaptation to blindness. Most figures, including Wanda, have brown skin.

Uplifting and informative. (glossary, authors’ notes, more information on Díaz Merced, timeline, resources, biblio­ graphy) (Picture-book biography. 6-9)

Kirkus Star

The Escape Artist: A True Story of Octopus Adventure Hanson, Thor | Illus. by Galia Bernstein Greenwillow Books (32 pp.) | $19.99 July 22, 2025 | 9780062676474

In this tale based on real-life events, a Māori octopus in a New Zealand aquarium makes a break back to the sea.

Inky lives a cushy life, housed between a sea turtle enclosure and a tank that holds several seahorses. He’s well cared for and playful, “but a tank can’t contain an octopus brain,” and the innately curious Inky has many questions: Why does he breathe

underwater when the turtles surface for air? And could he live outside his tank?

Inky isn’t unhappy, but he’s not complacent, either, and when someone carelessly leaves the lid to his tank ajar, he seizes the opportunity, squeezing his substantial but spongy body through the gap. Suspense builds: Out of the water, he doesn’t have much time. But he slides dramatically down the glass, across the floor, and through a drain, pulling himself through a pipe 164 feet to the sea. Hanson’s lively rhymes, a pleasure to read aloud, vary their rhythm without stumbling and adeptly convey information while telling a captivating story. Bernstein’s colorful illustrations realistically portray the aquarium and sea animals while also allowing Inky’s eyes full cartoon scope to express his personality, emotions, and intelligence. Clever endpapers depicting Inky’s escape calculations will amuse adult readers. Backmatter with info on octopuses and the real-life Inky add educational depth. Human characters vary in skin tone.

Certain to grab nature lovers.

(Informational picture book. 4-8)

Elephant Bowling and Other Animal Play Haynes, Richard | Illus. by Stephanie Laberis | Candlewick (48 pp.) | $18.99 August 12, 2025 | 9781536230901 Series: Animals Do What!?

A look at the games animals play.

In the introduction to this posthumously published companion to Orangutan Hats and Other Tools Animals Use (2021), Haynes observes that wild creatures play for many of the same K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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reasons that human children do: to hone their abilities and to release “happy hormones.” Laberis’ accompanying illustrations cement the parallel between humans and animals, showing a diverse array of youngsters racing about and hiding. The rest of the narrative focuses on more than 20 games, organized into two segments: activities that build skills (tug of war, wrestling) and those that are pure fun (sliding down snowy hills, bodysurfing). Cheerful, cartoon-style animals cavort across the pages, not entirely anthropomorphized but clearly smiling and having a good time. Mongooses play hide-and-seek underground, while Arabian babblers—birds native to the Middle East—offer each other a King of the Hill challenge in the trees. Kangaroos, hares, and rabbits play pat-a-cake, young orangutans “dress” themselves in vines and twigs, and chimpanzees dance to the rhythm of a waterfall. Haynes packs a lot of information into a text that doesn’t talk down to readers. A map of six continents shows where these various species play—all over the world.

Readers will be surprised and pleased to see just how closely animal behaviors mirror their own. (glossary, bibliography, index) (Informational picture book. 5-10)

caregiver looks on. The same scene is played out at shopping malls every December, now given a prehistoric twist.

Brisk rhyming text riffs on holiday motifs as everyone plays their part. Pachycephalosauruses are the elves, while Pterosaurs pull the sleigh. Snoring Mosasaurs waiting for Santa will induce giggles, while the Gallimimuses trimming the trees are especially endearing. A couple of hiccups in the rhyming text make for awkward moments in a read-aloud (quarrel rhymed with girls, dens paired with begins), but they’re easily overlooked, and the creatures’ exuberance is infectious. The anthropomorphized animals are generally illustrated in gentle browns and greens, except for the Pterosaurs, with their bright orange wings. Pops of red and white in the Santa hats, stockings, and tree decorations create a nice balance between a spotlight on the holiday season and the dinosaurs themselves. Complex dino vocabulary is well integrated into the bouncy verse.

Younger kids will enjoy the ride; older children can explore the backmatter, which offers more information on the creatures referenced.

A jolly time for Cretaceous and Christmas lovers alike. (Picture book. 3-6)

Santa Claws

Dragon Flower

Heos, Bridget | Illus. by Galia Bernstein Henry Holt (40 pp.) | $18.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781250909497

Hong, Chen Jiang | Trans. by Alyson Waters New York Review Books (42 pp.) | $19.95 September 16, 2025 | 9781681379531

Dinosaurs frolic through the holiday season.

As the book opens, a T. rex known as Santa Claws—the Saint Nicholas of the dinosaur world—dandles a bug-eyed baby Pterosaur while the youngster’s

A young girl must find a magic flower that will cure her mother’s illness.

Watercolorlike illustrations evoking Chinese brush paintings set a fairy tale–like scene as a small wagon

A young girl must find a magic flower that will cure her mother’s illness.

DRAGON FLOWER

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hitched to a horse carries Mae, her parents, and their belongings. They’ve been traveling for months in search of the mysterious flower. Mae’s mother tells her that it’s very rare, growing in a “secret place guarded by monsters.”

One night, an odd light wakes Mae, who follows it into a deep forest, where she finds a field of the ruby-red flowers she seeks. But a huge, furious dragon is waiting. Bold Mae explains her predicament to the dragon, who makes her a bargain. If she can rescue the dragon’s child from a deep crevice in the mountain, she can take the flowers.

Mae, both kind and brave, makes her way down into the narrow passages— but can she complete the quest?

Translated from French, this thrillingly told and original tale is steeped in Chinese visual traditions and lore, giving readers a taste of long-ago myths and legends. Against the muted backdrops, the bright-red dragons and Mae’s blue dress draw the eye, while Mae’s expressive face and movements will engage readers.

Modern and classical storytelling styles combine to create a compelling narrative. (Picture book. 4-8)

Street Puppy, Masjid Cat Hossain, Moniza | Illus. by Wastana Haikal Little Bee Books (32 pp.) | $18.99 October 7, 2025 | 9781499817560

A sweetly spoiled cat and a pup living on the streets form an unlikely bond through the neighbor­ hood mosque’s call to prayer.

These two animals’ lives couldn’t be more different. The tuxedo cat snoozes cozily inside the masjid (mosque), while the tricolor pooch sleeps outdoors.

While the cat is coddled with treats and affection, the downtrodden dog unsuccessfully begs for scraps. One day at dusk, their paths cross when the Islamic call to prayer rings out, drawing their attention and bringing the puppy to the mosque. The imam notices the cat’s icy reception and admonishes the JULY 1, 2025

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feline: “All animals need kindness and care.” Sharing a meal and playing together, the cat and the puppy become fast friends and fall asleep together, safe and sound. Hossain’s story emphasizes the importance of treating even those different from us with compassion—an important lesson further extended in an author’s note with details about Muslims’ duty to show mercy to all creatures, which will resonate with animal lovers young and old. Her pleasant rhymes engage with a lyrical cadence, making for a great read-aloud.

Haikal’s vibrant, energetic artwork, illustrated in sunset tones, features irresistibly adorable animals; human characters are diverse. The backmatter also includes a helpful glossary.

A charming, tenderhearted tale with lovable characters and a message of care. (Picture book. 3-8)

Fa La La Family Hoying, Scott & Mark Hoying | Illus. by Steph Lew | Henry Holt (40 pp.) | $18.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781250853349

Pentatonix vocalist Scott Hoying and his husband, Mark, a marketing professional and music manager, dive deep into the emotions of the winter holiday season.

Christmas celebrations can mean many things, from lights and wreaths to presents and more. In this warm tale, everything circles back to the phrase “family is love.” Spotting calendar pages in the art, readers will eagerly find themselves counting down the days till December 25 as diverse families gather and observe various traditions. Lew’s bright digital illustrations are filled with crackling fireplaces, illuminated trees, crisp snowy days, and lots of hugs and food. On one spread, snapshots and Christmas cards present the word family in various languages (“Pamilya!”

“Familia!” “Usapho!” “Ohana!”). On other pages, musical notes swirl as harmonies fill the air—the most prominent one being the “fa la la” refrain 102

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An affirming story about just how tricky it can be to speak up.

ZARA IN THE MIDDLE

of the text, of course. The authors offer a notably inclusive depiction of the holiday: Family can be “your mom and you. / Maybe it’s a dad or two. / Maybe it’s a furry friend. / Family is love, whoever you are!” Amid the hustle and bustle, two fathers, one who presents white, the other who appears East Asian—likely stand-ins for the authors—and their baby appear throughout. Sheet music and lyrics for the titular song are included in the back, along with a QR code that links to a recording of Scott and Mark performing the tune.

Cozy and filled with love.

(Picture book. 3-6)

I’m Very Busy: A (Nearly Forgotten) Birthday Book Jeffers, Oliver | Philomel (32 pp.) | $17.99 October 7, 2025 | 9780593622308

The story of a birthday party that almost didn’t happen.

Bridget invites her friends to celebrate with her, but everyone is busy. Hilariously adult phrases roll off the other kids’ tongues. Rodney has to “see a man about a dog,” Penelope is “up to her eyes,” and Regis is “washing his hair.” Young listeners might miss some of the text’s dry humor, but they’ll definitely get the visual jokes. Rodney’s dog is nonexistent (or perhaps invisible).

Penelope is literally up to her eyes in a very large hole, and Regis is bald.

Adults will appreciate the absurdity of the excuses (and may even squirm in recognition). Disappointed, Bridget heads home to celebrate with a motley crew of stuffed animals and other toys, most of whom appear as disconsolate as

she is. Although her friends have, in fact, completely forgotten her birthday, all is not lost as they scramble to provide all the elements of a terrific party. Quirky illustrations, droll humor, and an amusing twist elevate this concisely told tale. Bridget and her friends each appear in a different, fantastical hue, including teal, pink, blue, lavender, green, and orange.

Simply drawn faces convey a wealth of emotions. Sporting distinctive articles of clothing, each character sprouts exaggeratedly skinny arms and legs.

Backgrounds are minimal, with a few key details standing out against the abundant white space.

Cleverly avoiding the predictable, this jaunty tale nonetheless offers a happy ending and celebrates the joys of friendship. (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Star

Before I Lived Here Jensen, Stacy S. | Illus. by Victo Ngai Neal Porter/Holiday House (32 pp.) $18.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9780823452231

Travel back through time to see how the landscape in a Colorado neighborhood evolves through the ages.

As the story opens on a luminous full-bleed spread of the Rockies, a child narrator reflects: “I see the mountains from my house…But my house wasn’t always here.” With that revelation, debut author Jensen invites readers to consider that history happens under their own feet. The book then moves backward chronologically. Some jumps are short, showing the house being K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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constructed “two years ago.” Others, like a scene set 66 million years in the past that depicts Triceratops and Edmontosauruses roaming tropical jungles, are staggering. Beyond the fascinating geological shifts, Jensen also unflinchingly addresses Colorado’s thorny human history. The Homestead Act of 1862 led to settlers establishing “cabins and corrals…built on stolen land” belonging to the Ute tribe. A final stop “one billion years ago” brings the narrative full circle as a frenetic page of tectonic activity shows the majestic mountains that opened the book first “burst[ing] through the earth.” Ngai’s precisely lined, radiant mixed-media illustrations pull readers into each moment, from an image of an unperturbed cow gazing outward to sepia-­ tinged depictions of the Ute camp and an exquisite rainbow scratchboard revealing shadows of the past. Complex yet comprehensible and suffused with rich science and social science content, including an excellent glossary, this is an invaluable resource for educators and curious youngsters alike.

Jensen’s tour through time is a tour de force. (author’s note, websites, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 5-9)

Zara in the Middle Jones, Erika Lynne | Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99 | July 8, 2025 | 9780063234239

A tug-of-war with two tough grandmas turns into a triumph of self-expression.

Zara is lucky to live right in between both her grandmothers. The only problem? The two (very opinionated) grandmothers can never agree on anything. Grandma Jane wants Zara to have a unicorn birthday party, but Grandma Gladys thinks it should be mermaid-themed. Zara is worried about hurting their feelings, so all she can think to say is, “I don’t know.”

Rather than offend either of them, she tries to please both and ends up wearing mismatched clothes and two different hairstyles, one on each side of her head K IR KU S R E V IE W S

(Grandma Jane likes florals and an Afro, but Grandma Gladys prefers geometric shapes and braids). Zara is so anxious about making them both happy that her tummy starts to hurt. Finally, enough is enough, and she admits that sometimes she wants to do things her own way.

Both grandmothers are stunned but ultimately supportive, and the trio work together to create a mood board to bring to life Zara’s vision of her perfect birthday. Jones’ painted, mixed-media, cut-paper figures and objects are bold and inviting, set against a white background.

The images are visually flat, with the collage style lending the characters an appealing, paper-doll feel; this is a gentle yet powerful lesson for people pleasers everywhere. Zara and her grandmothers are Black.

An affirming, multigenerational story about just how tricky it can be to speak up. (Picture book. 4-8)

Scientists Like Me: Stories, Advice, and Inspiration From 25 Trailblazers With Experiments To Try at Home Kamin Science Center & JaNay Brown-Wood Illus. by Kristen Uroda | Workman (224 pp.) $19.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781523516780

These profiles of 25 noteworthy leaders in their fields demonstrate that scientists don’t have to be straight, white, and male.

The concept of this book is sound, and the range of people profiled is broad, including household names (Alan Turing, Temple Grandin, Jane Goodall) and lesser-known figures. The entries are organized into five branches of science: formal (such as mathematics and computer sciences), physical, life, social (including archaeology and law), and medical. In each section, one of the profiles highlights a scientist from the past, such as Chinese-born physicist Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997) and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963).

Others are still young, like Mariah Gladstone, who studies the environment

and food systems, and ornithologist Corina Newsome, both born in 1993.

Each profile includes an appealing, full-color portrait by Uroda and a biography of two to three pages, punctuated by text boxes titled “Question for YOU,” “Science YOU can explore,” and “Did YOU Know About…” Each of the five sections ends with several robust activities. Sadly, the exposition in the profiles ranges from pedestrian to actively awkward. Phrases containing discrete ideas are strung together into long sentences that may daunt the intended readership. The selected biographical details don’t bring the subjects to life, and the book contains a few inaccuracies. The strongest portion is the final chapter, “Explore More!,” which explains myriad paths to becoming a scientist.

Wooden writing undermines this collective biography for the scientifically curious. (references and resources, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 9-12)

So-Hee and Lowy Kang, Anna | Illus. by Christopher Weyant | Two Lions (40 pp.) | $18.99 April 22, 2025 | 9781542036658

An allergy-prone youngster finds the perfect non-­f urry pet.

So-Hee lives in a bustling apartment building but is lonely. She has no siblings, and the other kids are frustrated with her inability to keep up during athletic games. Her allergies prevent her from adopting a cute animal to keep her company. One day, however, the pet store advertises a “Giant Non-Furry Pet Sale,” and she finds the ideal companion: a huge yellow snake that wraps around her whole body several times.

She names the serpent Lowy and brings her home amid nervous glances from the neighbors. Friendship blossoms as the two spend their days with stuffed animals, sunbathing, riding the carousel, cycling, and taking bubble baths. But when the weather cools into JULY 1, 2025

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winter, Lowy is nowhere to be found.

The ensuing building-wide search for (and panic over) a snake on the loose brings the apartment community together. And best of all, So-Hee meets a like-minded young neighbor who also has a pet reptile. Kang has crafted a cute and lighthearted tale of forged connections, while Weyant’s bold and cheerful cartoons capture the absurd humor and charm of So-Hee and Lowy’s friendship. So-Hee presents East Asian; her community is diverse.

Sweetly encouraging fare for anyone who’s ever longed for a true companion— furry or otherwise. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

The Last Resort Kelly, Erin Entrada | Illus. by Naomi Franquiz | Scholastic (240 pp.) | $17.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781546132431

After her estranged grandfather dies, an 11-year-old girl learns that she can not only see ghosts, but also communicate with them.

Lila Clement is always being accused of being too much—too dramatic, too intense, or just taking up too much space. When Grandpa Clem passes away, the family sets off on the long drive from Phoenix to Castle Hill, Ohio. They’ll be staying in the inn he owned for a few weeks, sorting out his affairs. Lila meets Grandpa Clem’s young neighbor, Teddy Hamad, who quickly becomes her confidant after she shares with him that she saw the ghost of her grandfather— who said he was murdered and needs her help. In turn, Teddy reveals that Castle Hill Inn contains a portal for spirits of the departed to pass through to the other world. Teddy, Lila, and her younger brother, Caleb, must solve the murder, help the good ghosts resolve their unfinished business so they can cross over, and stop the malevolent spirits who stand in their way. In this 104

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clever series opener, Newbery Medal– winning author Kelly examines fear and grief through memorable characters and fast-paced chapters. The book contains puzzles and augmented reality elements (accessed via QR codes and integrated with Franquiz’s eerie, full-page illustrations) that allow readers to interact with the ghosts and conduct their own investigations. Lila and Caleb are Filipino and white, and Teddy has brown skin.

Hauntingly good and sure to possess any horror aficionado. (Paranormal. 8-12)

All the Cats Kent, Nicola | Andersen Press USA (28 pp.) $18.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9798765688694

A slew of felines take part in various daily activities.

“Short cat” and “tall cat” are the first pair presented in this whimsical picture book. “Thin cat” and “fat cat” are the only other opposites who appear.

Bright watercolors against stark white offer warm visuals. The rhyming text is black, large, and spare, laid out seamlessly with the illustrations, making this an ideal option for younger children building their vocabulary. Readers will giggle at the antics of “really needs a poo cat,” seen from behind leaping through a cat door. Sweet and docile “bed cat” and “chair cat” are balanced by “really doesn’t care cat,” an adventurous orange kitty soaring out of a trash can. Though the text contains a predictable cadence throughout, it also offers some refreshing breaks to catch readers’ attention. Notably, on one spread, readers are invited to find “the matching cats” on a grid pattern of 12 felines. In another, a playful longhair (“awful lot of hair cat!”) jumps out of a laundry basket after an easy game of hide-and-seek, adding to the joyful celebration of feline personalities and quirks. The earnest arrangement spells satisfaction, making this a quick and easy pick for cat lovers.

Playful, like its subject matter.

(Picture book. 2-4)

Trailblazers: The Unmatched Story of Women’s Tennis, Young Readers Edition King, Billie Jean with Jolie C. Matthews Illus. by Alexandra Badiu | Andrews McMeel Publishing (64 pp.) | $21.99 August 12, 2025 | 9781524883607

Spanning the globe and more than a century, this young readers’ edition of tennis champ King’s adult title offers a whirlwind tour of other powerhouse female players.

After a brief introduction to the sport and an exploration of how Title IX affected women’s athletics, the authors dive into one- to two-page biographies accompanied by stylized portraits in dynamic poses. King and Matthews have selected a wide range of players, from international celebrities such as Venus and Serena Williams to potentially less recognizable names including Maria Bueno (known as the São Paulo Swallow) and pioneering wheelchair tennis player Esther Vergeer. While the breadth of information is inspiring—avid tennis fans will find many new names to research and admire—the biographies themselves offer simultaneously too much and not enough detail. Many entries provide lists of championship titles and awards won, which become difficult to differentiate within the context of so many elite players. King and Matthews also highlight players’ work off the court, such as championing racial equality, mental health awareness, and disability inclusion.

But the profiles often don’t explain how the women achieved their various social impacts, as in the entry lauding co-author King for strides in pay equity without mention of the persistent lobbying, sponsorship deals, and threatened boycotts she deployed to accomplish her purpose.

Tennis fans will find some aces here, but this collective biography struggles to balance the stats with the social change. (Collective biography. 7-12)

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The Digger and the Christmas Tree Kuefler, Joseph | Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $19.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9780063427396 Series: Digger

In this latest in Kuefler’s popular Digger series, the titular vehicle observes the Yuletide season.

On this snowy Christmas Eve, Digger and the rest of the construction crew are putting up lights and hanging wreaths. They’re pleased that the town resembles a “Christmas village.” Digger rounds up the trucks for their last chore, their favorite—decorating the town’s tall Christmas tree. But Hauler’s all out of decorations! The trucks glumly conclude that with no tree, Santa won’t come— and there will be no gifts. Digger’s at a loss, but a passing chipmunk proposes that they use pine cones, so off the vehicles go to find some. Other animals make more suggestions, like berries and twigs (which make a wonderful star topper). As the gang cheers, Digger gushes: “The critters saved Christmas.”

(A 90-degree page turn here will delight kids, and they’ll agree.) As everyone admires the beautifully trimmed tree, Digger adds a rousing message about Christmas’ true meaning: “Friends are the best gift of all.” Everyone heartily concurs, celebrates, and waits for you-know-who to come along. This holiday winner about friendship and cooperation is also notable for encouraging the use of natural objects as colorful, eye-catching holiday decorations. The perky illustrations add much to the story’s sparkling spirit.

A cheery charmer for truck aficionados and anyone who loves Christmas. (craft suggestion) (Picture book. 3-6)

For more in the Digger series, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

others’ emotions. This youthful perspective makes Kurtz’s recollections from years ago feel fresh and immediate.

Oh Give Me a Home Kurtz, Jane | Catalyst Press (240 pp.) | $21.95 paper | July 8, 2025 | 9781960803207

In this eloquent verse memoir, a young girl’s understanding of home evolves.

Kurtz offers readers a deeply personal vision of her unique childhood. Thanks to her World War II veteran father, a Protestant minister, she was raised in Maji, a small village in the mountains of Ethiopia, where she was home-schooled by her mother. A white girl born in America, young Janie had a happy and full life in Ethiopia. She played with her four sisters, concocted schemes to procure a pet, and reveled in sensory experiences specific to her rural East African childhood—a misty waterfall, aromatic spices, sour breads, and encounters with wild animals. At the same time, she remained conscious of her parents’ concerns, especially her mother’s anxiousness as her belly grew with a new pregnancy. Jane, in turn, began to worry that change was imminent—and it was soon confirmed that the family would return to America for a year. The memoir’s latter half chronicles their long journey to their temporary home in Idaho, where Jane entered third grade and experienced a deep sense of displacement: “In Boise, / I look like I belong. / I sound like I belong. / But I’m different, too. / Different on the inside.” Free verse perfectly captures Janie’s thought processes—wistful, scattered, at once self-centered and keenly attuned to

A buoyant, beautiful explication of cultural adjustment as seen through a child’s eyes. (Verse memoir. 8-12)

Archibald and the Furry Dinosaurs Lang, Suzanne | Illus. by Max Lang Random House Studio (40 pp.) | $18.99 September 2, 2025 | 9780593811962

This hairy tale has been a long time coming.

Dinosaurs used to be covered in hair: “There were short-haired dinosaurs and long-haired dinosaurs. Fluffy, curly, bearded, dreadlocked, and shaggy dinosaurs.”

Except one. Archibald, a red bipedal dino, had hair once, but he’s now “as bald as a boulder.” Where did his tresses go? Archibald sets out on a quest to find his lost locks. Along the way, his lack of hair comes in handy. Pursued by the fierce Woollyciraptors, he escapes by dashing through a thicket of brambles (the raptors’ wool gets them tangled up).

Sunlight gleaming on his smooth top blinds the hungry Haironodons eager to make a meal out of him, and a voracious but hirsute Furannosaurus becomes overheated while chasing him. Archibald even saves a few new friends along the way. These actions begin a hair-shaving trend among his furry contemporaries.

The story’s dry humor and intricate digital illustrations work in harmony to deliver a charming story that will amuse budding paleontologists. From stocky, sweetly guileless Archibald to his

A buoyant explication of cultural adjustment seen through a child’s eyes.

OH GIVE ME A HOME

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preening peers to the predators with their gaping maws, the caricaturelike depictions of the dinos will delight.

While some details and colors may be a hair too subtle for large-group storytimes, the book is a fine choice for lap reads anywhere—especially barbershops.

film. Aspiring chefs will enjoy the appended kid-friendly, no-bake recipe for Mama Moon’s Beach Crumble.

Moreira relies on a palette of muted earth tones and teals, pairing nicely with the seaside setting and effectively portraying a diverse cast.

Witchycakes #1: Sweet Magic

Witchycakes #2: Changing Magic

LaReau, Kara | Illus. by Ariane Moreira Random House (80 pp.) | $15.99 August 5, 2025 | 9798217025855 Series: Witchycakes, 1

LaReau, Kara | Illus. by Ariane Moreira Random House (80 pp.) | $15.99 August 5, 2025 | 9798217025862 Series: Witchycakes, 2

In the seaside town of Shellville, a blue-haired witch in training and bakery employee makes delicious deliveries.

At Witchycakes, Mama Moon whips up beachy treats, from sandy-witch bread to raspberry sandbars. Accompanied by a sea gull familiar named Gully, tan-skinned Blue, who uses they/them pronouns, ferries their mother’s wares all over town. Along the way, Blue attempts to use magic to help the customers they encounter: a young boy who’s afraid to tell his two dads that he’s lost his guinea pig, a mother run ragged by her four kids, and a grocer mourning his beloved dog. But magic often causes more problems than it solves. Though Blue makes frequent mistakes, they quickly pivot to new solutions, offering young readers a welcome lesson in resilience. LaReau has created an idyllic, homey world populated by warm, neighborly characters who encourage Blue’s growth each step of the way. The witchy protagonist, gently told story, and sleepy, small-town setting feel heavily inspired by Kiki’s Delivery Service; its fans are likely to be thrilled with this new series, while young readers will hopefully find a natural path to the original book and anime

During the autumn equinox, a blue-haired young witch in training learns that not all change is bad.

While baking seasonal treats, Witchycakes business owner Mama Moon teaches her child, Blue (who uses they/them pronouns), the art of mise en place— or “having everything you need organized and ready before you start.”

Later, while delivering baked goods around the seaside village of Shellville, Blue bemoans the end of summer, but their avian best friend and familiar, Gully, points out the lovely sensations of autumn: Mr. Cliff’s fragrant butternut squash ravioli, branches fluttering in the wind, and the foliage that graces the trees. Along the way, Blue uses magic to help a variety of other townspeople struggling with change: two siblings struggling with their weekend job at the Nautilus Inn,

Hair-raising fun that will leave readers combing bookshelves for more. (Picture book. 4-8)

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A charmingly cozy fantasy helmed by an endearing queer protagonist.

(Chapter book. 6-9)

a young child upset about the prospect of becoming a big sister, and the agoraphobic owners of a successful online crafting company hoping to open a brick-and-mortar shop. As in the series opener, Moreira’s warmtoned illustrations depict a diverse and supportive community; Blue and Mama Moon are tan-skinned. LaReau has crafted a cozy, feel-good tale that evokes the comforting idea that anyone can cope with change as long as they have the resources to succeed.

The concept of mise en place helps to drive home that theme, and the book concludes with a five-step plan for a “Magical Mise en Place.”

Sweet and hopeful—and tinged with magic. (Chapter book. 6-9)

Jed Greenleaf Larwood, Kieran | Illus. by David Wyatt Faber & Faber (448 pp.) | $18.95 September 9, 2025 | 9780571392049

In an alternate England in 1736, an orphan foundling learns he has magical powers.

In the middle of taking a beating from cruel Sam Gigglemug, the bullied, constantly ill orphan Jed is shocked when his skin becomes tough and impenetrable, like “the bark of his favorite oak tree.” Some weeks later, Madame Stump, an enormous, muscular woman, appears. She clouts him about the ear with her cane until his protective, barklike skin reappears; satisfied, she announces that she’s taking him to live at Yggdrasil House.

Apparently Jed is to be recruited into

A charmingly cozy fantasy helmed by an endearing queer protagonist.

WITCHYCAKES #1

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the Guild of Leaf, whose members practice plant magick as one of the six magickal guilds of Grand Albion. Leaf is diminished and weak, like the guilds Feather, Bone, and Claw; only Fire and Iron ever win the annual contest to choose Albion’s prime minister. Lord Cromwell, the current prime minister, is the master of Iron. Jed surprises everyone with his unexpected levels of Leaf magick—and when he accidentally discovers the wicked secret of Fire and Iron, he needs both magickal and mundane allies to save his new family.

Jed’s tale, which jumps between expected story beats, shortchanges the less exciting aspects of character and plot development, but once he’s in constant danger, the prose hits its stride.

Most characters are cued white, and many, both villains and heroes, are portrayed with disabilities or physical differences that Jed sometimes perceives as grotesque.

existing only “to fund the corporation”? Let the search for the pins’ mysterious maker begin! Meanwhile, twins Sophie and Becca work to mend fences with the support of their “mama bears,” while guilt-stricken Angela does the same with Skylar after copying their pin designs without permission, and Travis humorously fails to conceal his crush on bestie Rhyan from his friends or even his accepting Gramps. In Lawrence’s narrative, which features frequent text message exchanges, the plot doesn’t really pull its weight. Still, individual quandaries and stresses in the cast of predominantly Black characters are common and relatable enough to carry readers along past a mildly suspenseful climax to smoother waters on both the relationship and corporate skullduggery fronts. Cacao’s occasional monochrome illustrations depict figures with diverse body types.

In Search of the Pinmaker: A Fantasy Pin World Adventure

Not Like Every Day: Finding Calm During School Lockdown Drills

A slow start builds up to an excitingly perilous race against time. (map) (Fantasy. 8-11)

Lawrence, Briana | Illus. by Joanna Cacao Andrews McMeel Publishing (224 pp.) $12.99 paper | June 24, 2025 | 9781524880729 Series: Fantasy Pin World, 2

Emotional rapids complicate the frantic efforts of four teens to counter an evil scheme centered on a nearby theme park’s grand new plans.

The magic enameled pins that Sophie, Angela, Skylar, and Travis received in the series opener gave them special powers that helped them become their best selves. But can they use those powers to stop the shadowy corporate overlords of FUNTASTIC PLAINS from passing out another sort of pin that will brainwash everyone who comes to the upcoming opening of the theme park’s Princess P and Swanson T Swan expansion into K IR KU S R E V IE W S

A lightweight sequel that will satisfy returning fans. (Fantasy. 10-13)

Lucianovic, Stephanie V.W. Illus. by Gabrielle Grimard Random House (40 pp.) | $18.99 September 2, 2025 | 9780593652220

A young boy worries during a school lockdown drill.

Told from a first-person perspective, the tale makes Henry’s inner turmoil seem immediate and authentic. The evocative language—his stomach feels “twisted in the middle like a bunch of tissue paper butterflies”—creates vivid imagery that captures the emotional weight of the experience. As Henry struggles to remain small, still, and quiet despite his mounting anxiety, the rhythmic, flowing text mirrors his journey from fear to gradual calm, guided by his attentive teacher, Ms. Betancourt, who introduces breathing exercises and

sensory-awareness techniques. The reassuring narrative pairs perfectly with Grimard’s soft-lined illustrations in a comforting, pleasing palette that visually conveys Henry’s emotional state throughout this challenging experience. Henry is dark-haired and appears to be of East Asian descent, while Ms. Betancourt is brownskinned, and the other kids vary in skin tone and hair types, all rendered in a gentle mix of watercolors, gouache, pencil, and crayon. Particularly valuable are the helpful resources provided by school psychologist Dr. Christina Chester, including discussion questions and mindfulness resources for adults to use when preparing children for these unfortunately necessary drills.

A compassionate resource for those seeking to support children through school safety preparations. (discussion questions, additional resources) (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

The Spy in the Museum: How Rose Valland Saved Art From the Nazis McGuire, Erin | Beach Lane/ Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) | $19.99 September 16, 2025 | 9781534466173

An unlikely spy sets out to save priceless stolen artwork from the Nazis.

Rose Valland, curator at Paris’ Jeu de Paume Museum, especially loves modern art for its departure from convention and expectation. To Adolf Hitler, however, modern art is “contaminated” and “degenerate.” As World War II spreads through Europe, Hitler helps to pay for his expensive war by stealing and selling valuable artwork. Upon arriving at Rose’s museum, soldiers order everyone out except for Rose, who stays on as manager. Little do they know that she secretly speaks German and listens in on their nefarious plans. Unwittingly, Rose JULY 1, 2025

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becomes a spy. As the Nazis catalogue and hide their treasures, Rose documents the movements of every piece of art she can, passing information to the French Resistance and putting her own life in grave danger. Richly detailed, painterly illustrations highlight the gravity of Rose’s work and some of the lesser-known struggles and losses of World War II. Particularly outstanding spreads depict an intricately detailed museum facade, a glowing cityscape, and a haunting, swirling bonfire where works of art are tossed like kindling.

An appended historical note discusses the theft of innumerable treasures also stolen from Jewish people during the war, in addition to those plundered from museums like Rose’s.

A visually stunning account of a fearless woman and her fight against the Nazis’ war on art. (sources, author’s note) (Picture-book biography. 6-8)

Outfoxed McMullen-Ciotti, Elise | Scholastic (256 pp.) | $7.99 paper | August 5, 2025 9781339014876 | Series: Wish

After rescuing a baby fox from a trap, a 12-year-old Cherokee girl from Oklahoma is determined to find the poacher.

Skye Hunter, along with little brother Leo, spends every summer in Verdant, Massachusetts, with her aunt Lynne, uncle Pete, and park ranger cousin Braeden. Skye, with help from Braeden, rescues a baby fox from a trap baited with poisoned meat in the state park adjacent to their family diner. She names the injured fox Kitcat. At the veterinary clinic, Skye meets a girl named Ivy, who’s a new arrival to Verdant from Saskatchewan and is a member of the Nakoda First Nation.

McMullen-Ciotti (Cherokee) has created two intriguing main characters, both of whom are dealing with loneliness. Skye, who has moved a lot and struggled to make friends, slowly 108

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In the annals of true animal rescue tales, this one delights and uplifts.

THE TRUE AND LUCKY LIFE OF A TURTLE

grows close to Ivy, even as the girls search for the identity of the poacher, documenting clues while sharing aspects of their respective Indigenous cultures. Suspenseful (but not too scary) moments involve a spooky oddities shop and a search for leads at the public library. The effective combination of animal rescue and sleuthing with themes of friendship and family life make this a strong and appealing choice. Skye’s passion for natural science, Ivy’s skill in caring for animals, aspiring comedian Leo’s humor, and the storytelling of the girls’ uncles round out the story.

A charming and engaging tale with special appeal for nature and animal lovers. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Star

The True and Lucky Life of a Turtle Montgomery, Sy | Illus. by Matt Patterson Clarion/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99 September 9, 2025 | 9780063325166

The Sibert Honor–winning creators of The Book of Turtles (2023) recount the true story of a snapping turtle whom they both had a hand in rescuing.

The chronological account of Fire Chief’s life begins with a dramatic spread—his mother lays her eggs near a tree with giant roots that both shelter and appear poised to walk away.

Child-friendly descriptions make clear the vulnerabilities of the newborn turtle, who was “almost as small as a quarter— so small that even a fish could swallow him.” Montgomery gently folds in the

notion of his being “lucky” for having survived such challenges as predators and a road he must cross to reach his winter pond. As the town changes, Fire Chief’s road becomes a highway, leading to his pivotal “unlucky” collision with a car. The Turtle Rescue League tends to his wounds, builds him a wheelchair for indoor exercise, and gives him time to grow strong. Montgomery asks a crucial question: “Would he be fast enough to beat whizzing cars? Is any turtle?” The mostly white-presenting rescuers and local wildlife lovers come up with an ingenious solution; the backmatter reveals Montgomery and Patterson’s own involvement in the story—a poignant surprise. Patterson’s lifelike illustrations pour love on the book’s star: Fire Chief’s penetrating orange-brown eyes and bemused smile charm, while the folds of skin on his legs and chin look like landscape portraits in and of themselves.

In the annals of true animal rescue tales, this one delights and uplifts. (further information about Fire Chief and snapping turtles, photographs, resources) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Your Crown Shines: For Ketanji Brown Jackson and You moore, jessica Care | Illus. by Dare Coulter Amistad/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99 June 24, 2025 | 9780063311398

Encouragement to reach for the stars, just as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did.

Opening with a close-up of brown-­ skinned, sock-clad legs, this tribute to Jackson—the first African American woman appointed to the Supreme K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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Court—pairs verse rife with references to the justice’s life and storied career (supportive parents, a guidance counselor who warns that “YOUR SIGHTS ARE SET TOO HIGH”) with images of a pigtailed Black girl who “speaks her dreams into existence.” Both Jackson and the pictured youngster are part of a long line of women who persisted despite others’ doubts, among them Harriet Tubman and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Suffused with glowing purples and golds, Coulter’s ethereal, glittery images feature frequent stars and crowns amid images of Black women and girls proudly supporting one another. Scanned excerpts from legal documents—such as Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation speech and opinions—comprise many of the backgrounds, underscoring her deep passion for the law. Kids may have questions: Is the girl at the center of the book a young Ketanji? Or is she a child inspired by her worthy example? They also likely won’t recognize all the names of the women adorning the spines of the oversize books that the girl leans against (Oprah, Viola, Angela). Adults will want to offer some context, but the uplifting message comes through loud and clear: “Find a smile in the darkest tales. / Dust off that gold. / Adjust your crown. / We see you.”

Affirming and warm. (Picture book. 4-8)

Piggypine Morris, Richard T. | Illus. by Charles Santoso Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum (32 pp.) | $19.99 October 28, 2025 | 9781665925303

Piggypine is definitely not invited to be part of this story.

Someone drew poor Piggypine— who’s part porcupine and part pig—on a scrap of paper and shoved him inside a book that isn’t even about him. It’s supposed to be about a pale-skinned, pigtailed young girl named Ruby and her search for a pet dog. But roly-poly Piggypine likes this new story and demands to be included, much to the unseen narrator’s dismay. The story of Ruby and the dog goes off the rails as K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Piggypine makes a case for why he deserves to be in this tale. He can spell the word cat—“W-A-F-F-L-E!” His favorite food is paper towels soaked in honey! He can fly…well, not quite. Just when it seems like there really is no place for Piggypine, Ruby decides that instead of a dog, she wants a pet piggypine. This laugh-out-loud interactive picture book consists of several voices—those of Piggypine, the narrator (who relates Ruby’s story while also pausing to interact with Piggypine), and Ruby—all identifiable by different type styles and careful text placement. Digital illustrations with a sketched colored pencil feel rely on a spare layout that leaves room for sweet, chubby-cheeked Piggypine to shine without creating confusion among the alternating voices.

Half pig, half porcupine, and all personality—this prickly protagonist is sure to become a storytime star.

(Picture book. 4-8)

The Box Full of Wonders Newson, Karl | Illus. by Emily Hamilton Andersen Press USA (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 9, 2025 | 9798765688670

On moving day, a small child finds a box and embarks on an adventure through the imagination in this U.K. import.

The box turns into “an airplane. A tractor. An iceberg. A whale. It’s even a shell I can wear like a snail.” This game of make-believe is a high point in a day fraught with tension. Though the text never refers to a stepparent or step­ children, the multimedia and collage illustrations make clear that the move coincides with the merging of two families—and that it hasn’t been easy.

The young narrator’s two new siblings, playing with their own moving box, usually appear as black-and-white intruders in the protagonist’s colorful escapades; our hero resolutely refuses to share and even lashes out (“Your box is broken…it’s going NOWHERE!”).

When the narrator’s beloved box is thrown out, the siblings generously offer to share theirs, and the adventures continue. Created in a childlike style, the images depict the second box becoming a cave of treasures, a boat, and a train. Employing a light touch and ending on an idyllic note, with a bedtime scene including all the children, this pleasing read-aloud will especially resonate with kids navigating newly blended families. The family at the center of this tale is multiracial; the protagonist is brown-skinned, while the new kids are pale-skinned.

Puts a positive spin on a potentially stressful familial experience. (Picture book. 4-7)

The House Next Door Oh, Ellen | Harper/HarperCollins (192 pp.) $18.99 | September 30, 2025 | 9780062875822

Two 12-yearold boys join forces with unexpected allies to defeat malev­olent creatures.

Japanese American Rory Parker watches uneasily as movers unpack his new neighbors’ belongings next door. The house has a tragic history—and it’s haunted. Rory’s former BFF Joey used to live there, and Rory saw a ghost and other small shadowy beings skulking around with his own eyes. Though reluctant to enter the house, Rory becomes fast friends with its new inhabitants, Korean American Jack and his younger sister, Mira. When Rory discovers that the same evil that afflicted Joey years earlier is targeting Mira, he resolves to keep her and her family safe.

Rory and Jack will need the help of Jack’s plucky corgi, Rory’s ragdoll cat, and the benevolent spirits residing in the house to vanquish the monsters living beneath it. Oh, founder of the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books, treads familiar territory, offering an inspired take on the haunted house trope and delivering a message that friends working together can defeat the greatest of challenges. Her JULY 1, 2025

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A touching tribute to love and the endurance of the human spirit.

MY HOME IS IN MY BACKPACK

novel is rife with creepiness and peril, leavened by moments of levity, making this an ideal tale for newcomers to the genre. Elements of Japanese and Korean culture are integrated, especially through detailed descriptions of foodways.

Spooky fun for novice horror fans.

(Horror. 8-13)

Kirkus Star

My Home Is in My Backpack Perrella, Eugenia | Illus. by Angela Salerno Trans. by Sally Polson | Floris (32 pp.) $18.99 | October 7, 2025 | 9781782509257

A child’s understanding of home evolves during a Latine migrant family’s journey to safety.

In this translated import from Chile, written by Argentinian author and journalist Perrella, Papá, Mamá, big brother Pedro, Coco the dog, and narrator Clara follow the many others who have already left their unspecified home country. Joining a stream of travelers, the family traverses a rural tropical landscape by foot and rowboat, hiding from guards and sleeping in a tent. Papá reassuringly reminds them that, while they’ve left their house behind, “our home is special: it is made from the people we love and the things that we love doing,” prompting Clara to engage with other children. Drawing pictures of what’s special to them— Sofía’s fireflies, Tomás’ dominoes—­ heightens Clara’s awareness of “the invisible things they carry in their hearts.” This gentle story, which highlights natural beauty and children’s engagement with their immediate world, is an age-appropriate 110

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introduction to complex, traumatic events. Salerno’s delicate graphite pencil illustrations feature a rosy palette that reflects the narrative’s warmth, complementing Polson’s smooth, readable translation. Thoughtful touches add richness and depth, such as outlines of imagined items and notebook sketches that appear superimposed on real objects as well as two-page spreads at the beginning and end that mirror one another, with small differences indicating the passage of time.

Both poignant and buoyant: a touching tribute to love and the endurance of the human spirit. (creators’ note) (Picture book. 5-8)

Me & Lavender Peugh, Melody C. | Illus. by Eve Farb Flashlight Press (32 pp.) | $18.95 May 6, 2025 | 9781962269230

A child and a toy elephant enjoy a blissful day, fueled by imagination.

A bouncy pachyderm leaps into curly-haired Ella’s bed one morning. Ella dubs the newcomer Lavender, and they proceed to eat pancakes, clean up, and set out for the day. Though they’re both eager to play, Ella laments, “I need to stay tidy, as clean as can be. Mommy is hosting an afternoon tea.” So Lavender proposes “a leisurely stroll.” Despite the best of intentions, they both end up playing hide-and-seek among the trees, having a garden hose water battle, and making mud pies—which leaves them both a soggy mess. Mommy ultimately spots and gently chides them. After baths for both (Lavender, back to his toy form, is placed in the washing machine), it’s time

for tea and, eventually, bed. Relying predominantly on shades of pink and purple and depicting her characters with cherubic features, Farb effectively evokes an idyllic suburban setting, from the well-ordered garden to the prim and proper tea party. Lavender changes shape regularly, emphasizing the creative power of make-believe; readers who don’t pay close attention to the title page (which depicts the elephant as a toy sitting on Ella’s windowsill) may be briefly confused by his transformations.

Treading familiar territory, Peugh makes use of upbeat rhyming text that pairs well with the artwork. Ella is tanskinned and rosy-cheeked; Mommy is slightly lighter-skinned.

A sweet tribute to youthful creativity.

(Picture book. 4-7)

Hurricane Heist Ponti, James | Aladdin (320 pp.) | $18.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781665932561 Series: The Sherlock Society, 2

Young sleuths tackle a decidedly cold case when a hurricane exposes remains that have been buried for over half a century in this sequel to The Sherlock Society (2024).

Budding detectives Alex, Zoe, Lina, and Yadi embark on another investigation in Miami. After Hurricane Clyde makes landfall, devastating the area and causing widespread flooding, a mystery comes to light: The skeleton of bell captain Ignacio Gonzalez, who worked at the Moroccan Hotel, appears. He was the prime suspect in the disappearance of a trove of gems and art stolen from the hotel during Hurricane Cleo in 1964; no one had seen him since the theft. But now it’s abundantly clear that the real culprit has yet to be identified—and the Sherlock Society, with help from the retired journalist grandpa of siblings Alex and Zoe, springs into action. Chapters set in 1964 and information on hurricanes K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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and how to prepare for them set the stage. Various associates, including a newly recruited gaggle of retired federal agents from an assisted-living facility, participate in fascinating rounds of assembling evidence, reconstructing events, making logical connections, testing theories, and evaluating potential suspects. Once he gets readers past the long setup, Ponti tracks the case’s twisting course with impressive speed and fluency before reaching a satisfying closure.

Yadi is cued Latine, and the other members of the society read white.

show well to a large storytime.

Portis provides extreme close-ups that give the artwork a surreal, Cubist feeling. Blrg’s and Zrk’s amorphous faces may initially confuse perceptive readers—the number of eyes on the aliens varies from one to two—but the visual gag is addressed in the text. UFO lovers will find this tale heavenly.

An engrossing caper with a cerebral tilt. (map) (Mystery. 9-13)

When Science Stood Still: How S. Chandrasekhar Predicted the Existence of Black Holes

To Activate Space Portal, Lift Here

Rao, Shruthi | Illus. by Srinidhi Srinivasan McElderry (40 pp.) | $19.99 October 14, 2025 | 9781665949965

Portis, Antoinette | Neal Porter/ Holiday House (56 pp.) | $18.99 October 7, 2025 | 9780823459858

Diplomacy is easy—if you don’t look hungry.

Opening this book, savvy readers will spot the words power and auto translate in the bottomright-hand corner of each double-­ page spread, with a colorful dot by each indicating the battery life of the device…er, book. Within a few page turns, a portal opens to reveal two extraterrestrial friends, yellow-­ skinned Blrg and orange-skinned Zrk. While the alien duo initially worry that readers are here to eat them, these concerns evaporate when they notice those “very tiny teeth.”

While some messages get a little garbled (“What is your planet called?

Planeturth? Never heard of it”), the interaction is mostly pleasant, and a colorful menagerie of extraterrestrials come to gawk before the book’s power level drops enough that the portal must close. Overall, it’s an amusing plot device, and one that will generate a lot of giggles from a receptive audience. Thickly outlined in black, the bold illustrations will K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Zany, out-of-this-world fun.

(Picture book. 4-7)

A 19-year-old astrophysicist’s idea about the formation of black holes was long scorned by the scientific establishment before it eventually earned general acceptance.

Rao doesn’t directly claim that racism played a role when Indian math prodigy Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar’s theory was greeted with mockery when he first proposed it in 1935—even by his previously supportive white sponsor, Sir Arthur Eddington—but the implication is clear enough. In this matter-­offact profile, Rao takes “Chandra” from childhood in Madras to a Britain-bound ship where the insight first came to him (“BOOM!”), and from there to a long and distinguished career in America. For over 30 years, however, “the science of stars stood still” when it came to black holes, until at last the science caught up with him and could continue “leaping forward.” In Srinivasan’s illustrations, the brownskinned, bright-eyed lad grows to dignified adulthood amid images of laughing (but ultimately applauding) white colleagues and swirling celestial clouds. The author closes with expanded biographical details, a list of sources, and a timeline, plus a

lucid explanation of how stars form and die for readers who are a bit hazy on the details.

A brisk tribute to a thinker who was ahead of his time.

(Picture-book biography. 8-10)

Kirkus Star

The 13th Day of Christmas Rex, Adam | Neal Porter/Holiday House (48 pp.) $18.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9780823456536

We all know the story of the “Twelve Days of Christmas”—but what about the messy aftermath?

A partridge in a pear tree appears on the lonely protagonist’s doorstep—a thoughtful Christmas gift from a faraway true love, Trudy. Twelve days later, our hero’s bombarded by the wackiest assortment of presents imaginable: lords-a-leaping, maids-a-milking, and birds…so many birds! The loving gesture now feels like a cruel joke. On day 13, the protagonist and the ragtag entourage accidentally start a parade, delighting onlookers and picking up new friends along the way: “fun-­ runners running, electric bikers biking, skateboarders leaping.” The read-aloud set will find themselves intuitively singing certain passages to the classic tune thanks to the clever, rhythmic prose. Tongue-in-cheek graphic novel–style panels are complemented by full-page painterly spreads in Rex’s recognizable style.

This heartfelt, extra-long picture book puts a weird, wacky, and wonderful spin on a familiar Christmas song.

Rex’s signature snarky humor will appeal to both elementary schoolers and their grown-ups. The protagonist presents white and male, while the cast of characters is diverse. In a subtle feminist nod, Trudy—brown-skinned, with a partially shaved head—appears in the final pages to propose marriage.

This quirky take on a Christmas classic is the gift that will keep on giving, long after the 13th day. (Picture book. 4-8) JULY 1, 2025

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JESSE BYRD IS LIVING THE DREAM With a new graphic novel series called Dream Warriors and a new son, the author is feeling genuinely grateful.

BY MICHAEL SCHAUB THIS SPRING, for Jesse Byrd, was a dream come true.

When did you first become interested in writing?

I grew up in a writing household. My mom quit her job working for the government when I was 12

and went into writing adult fiction novels. Her first book didn’t work out, but she had an idea for another novel, and that one sold extremely well and got her a book

deal. When I realized that I wanted to go into storytelling myself, I had this information from my mom’s journey. Even for someone who grew up in the business, it still took me seven years to find my agent, Regina Brooks of Seren­ dipity Literary Agency. It was extremely hard work.

Nothing was quick or overnight—and I’m genuinely grateful for that.

How did you come up with the idea for this book?

My great-grandmother on my dad’s side is Indigenous, and we’re still trying to track down exactly which nation she was a part of. One of the things I was thinking was, What if you took an actual dream catcher and made that into an action sequence? If the dream catcher’s function is to catch the bad dreams, then what would happen if that

were a battle? What if the bad dreams didn’t want to get caught? Then it got into some other things from there—What is the core of bad dreams? What is the core of fear?—which is why the book ended up taking me 10 years. I wanted to make it accessible enough for kids to be able to enjoy it and grasp it without being too heady or preachy.

Khi’s backstory is heart-wrenching. Was it emotionally difficult to write about what happened to him before he ended up in Cloud 9?

I wanted it to be something where, in the end, Khi could also learn from his journey and get some perspective on it. There’s really no evil for evil’s sake. Everything comes from something; every behavior pattern comes from somewhere.

I’m not saying that you need

Paw Prints

The author, onetime college basketball player, and former Google employee was finishing up work on his next book, a middle-grade graphic novel titled Dream Warriors: A New World, when he welcomed his first son, Atlas, into the world—a few weeks earlier than expected.

Byrd wasted no time in introducing Atlas to the important things in life: his beloved Golden State Warriors and an even more beloved book from his own childhood. “The Phantom Tollbooth is my favorite children’s book,” Byrd says. “It’s the very first book that I read to my son, when he was a week old.”

The Phantom Tollbooth makes a cameo appearance in Dream Warriors, the first installment in a planned series of middle-grade graphic novels, illustrated by Berto Santiago, about a group of beings who protect sleeping people from bad dreams. One of the new warriors is Khi, a 12-year-old boy who’s arrived in the magical land of Cloud 9 after being put into a coma by a bully—a bully he must now protect against nightmares. And Cloud 9 is about to come under attack from evildoers who want all people subjected to bad dreams.

Atlas is one of three children to whom Dream Warriors is dedicated, alongside two of Byrd’s godsons, Judah and Mekhi.

Byrd says he wants these kids to see themselves reflected in the books they read. “When I think about legacy characters in children’s books, I can find more animals than Black kids,” he says. “Clifford the Big Red Dog. Mo Willems’ pigeon. Curious George. But legacy characters of color who are African American? There’s such a dearth of them.”

We recently spoke with Byrd about Dream Warriors by telephone from his home in Los Angeles, with Atlas babbling in the background. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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to justify [evil], but it does come from somewhere, and it’s often a place of hurt. I felt like Khi getting assigned to his bully would be a way to humanize the person that he had seen in one light the entire time.

What do you see as the value of graphic novels specifically?

Graphic novels are the most cinematic of any medium in print. Artists step into the brains of cinematographers, screenwriters, and directors for multiple panels per page and sometimes hundreds of pages per book. I can’t tell you how many of my favorite action movies I watched, on loop, to gain inspiration for fight choreo and heart-racing sequences. Then I wrote notes to the illustrator describing every duck, punch, roll, kick, escape, and capture.

Eighty percent of what I

wrote in the final script isn’t even intended to be read by the reader.

What makes graphic novels so limitless is that their appeal isn’t limited by their form. I imagine most of us would, at a glance, label picture books as being largely for kids. But in the way that animation isn’t exclusively for kids, the same goes for graphic novels.

How did you come to work with Berto Santiago?

Berto is a gift. He was a referral from another illustrator. My company, Jesse B. Creative, represents Mónica Paola Rodriguez. She had a friend, Berto, who traditionally works in animation for Disney and other places.

When I looked at his work, I thought we’d be lucky to have someone who’s a real director, a cinematographer.

You see it in the shots, the angles, the lighting, the way he captures drama and

action and sadness. I write a line or a description about how the character feels in a certain panel, but it’s really up to him to depict that.

What was it like collab­ orating with Paw Prints Publishing and Moonbeam Literary & Media?

Paw Prints was an incredible collaborator on this book. They trusted us completely throughout the creative process and gave us as much time as possible to imagine, reimagine, develop, and deliver the final files. It was a gift to work with them.

Our synergy stems from our values and reason to be.

Paw Prints has a mission to expand the range of stories for kids and families while preserving and increasing quality. Moonbeam was created to amplify stories and intellectual property in children’s media from artists around the world, prioritizing those who less often get the

chance to break through and grow in print and visual media. We search for the “chefs” and help them develop their “dishes” to the point where they’re ready to go in front of a mass production and distribution partner, like Paw Prints, who will get those dishes out into the world. It’s symbiotic in the healthiest way.

Have you started work on the next installment yet?

Our team had a super-wild sprint getting this book in, especially with me having a son in the last leg and Berto falling under the weather coming down the homestretch. Now, we’re taking a little breather, but I’m super excited for Book 2. Obviously, the siege of Cloud 9 is underway. It took me a while to envision where this plane is going to land, but now I’m really excited.

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.

What makes graphic novels so limitless is that their appeal isn’t limited by their form.

Dream Warriors: A New World Byrd, Jesse | Illus. by Berto Santiago

Paw Prints Publishing | 152 pp. | $23.99 | October 28, 2025 | 9781223187129 | Series: Dream Warriors, 1

CHILDREN'S

Kirkus Star

ending is 100% otherworldly—a marvelous moment of twisted logic.

Troubling Tonsils!

Reynolds, Aaron | Illus. by Peter Brown Simon & Schuster (88 pp.) | $13.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781665961080 Series: Jasper Rabbit’s Creepy Tales!

What terrors lurk within your mouth? Jasper Rabbit knows.

“You have stumbled your way into the unknown.” The young bunny introduced in Reynolds and Brown’s Caldecott Honor–winning picture book, Creepy Carrots (2012), takes up Rod Serling’s mantle, and the fit is perfect.

Mimicking an episode of The Twilight Zone, the book follows Charlie Marmot, an average kid with a penchant for the strange and unusual. He’s pleased when his tonsils become infected; maybe once they’re out he can take them to school for show and tell! That’s when bizarre things start to happen: Noises in the night.

Slimy trails on his bedroom floor. And when Charlie goes in for his surgery, he’s told that the tonsils have disappeared from his throat; clearly something sinister is afoot. Those not yet ready for Goosebumps levels of horror will find this a welcome starter pack. Reynolds has perfected the tension he employed in his Creepy Tales! series, and partner in crime Brown imbues each illustration with both humor and a delicate undercurrent of dark foreshadowing. While the fleshy pink tonsils—the sole spot of color in this black-and-white world—aren’t outrageously gross, there’s something distinctly disgusting about them. And though the book stars cute, furry woodland creatures, the spooky surprise

Extraordinary introductory terror, beautiful to the eye and sure to delight younger horror enthusiasts. (Early chapter book. 6-9)

Steam Train, Dream Train: Next Stop, Christmas!

Rinker, Sherri Duskey | Illus. by AG Ford Chronicle Books (40 pp.) | $18.99 October 7, 2025 | 9781797227030 Series: Steam Train, Dream Train

The beloved Steam Train is freighted with holiday cheer.

A rabbitlike creature sits up in surprise as a distant train approaches over the frozen landscape. A crew of cartoon monkeys, kangaroos, a purple elephant, a dinosaur, an extremely long-necked giraffe, and more load the boxcars with crates, and the train lifts off into the sky. An enthusiastic tanker team stirs some dubiously varied but sweet-smelling ingredients into a magic brew whose fragrance wafts through the air, lifting the hearts and spirits of those below. The festive music that the creatures play spreads joy as decorations rain down, and “every bauble, bow, and strand / creates a Christmas wonderland.” The rhythm occasionally falters, but the robust rhymes keep the stock rolling. Rinker’s text avoids the commercial side of Christmas, instead highlighting the emotional meaning of the holiday—“what you cannot hold or touch,” “laughter, love, and memories,” “the joy of friends and families,” and “faith in what is strong and sure”—as

Beautiful to the eye and sure to delight younger horror enthusiasts.

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the train circles the Earth, “wreathed / in peace and love.” The illustrations bring dazzling magic to the narrative, with stars and snowflakes early on, then gusts of golden glitter—the freight carried and showered down— giving a sparkle to every page.

A starry and heartfelt journey that will carry many rapt children through pre-Christmas bedtimes.

(Picture book. 3-5)

Woody’s Words: Woodrow Wilson Rawls and Where the Red Fern Grows Rogers, Lisa | Illus. by Susan Reagan | Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers (32 pp.) $18.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9781662680298

The story of a boy, initially uninterested in reading, who went on to write a classic work of children’s fiction.

Born in Oklahoma in 1913, Woodrow Wilson Rawls (called Woody) was a country boy with a penchant for telling stories. Yet it wasn’t until his mother read him Jack London’s The Call of the Wild that he became a reader—and became inspired to write his own books. In and out of jail for theft during his young adulthood (food was often hard to come by during the Depression), Woody married, settled down, and, dismissing his writerly aspirations as impractical, burned his manuscripts. But when he shared his dreams with his wife, Sophie, he began to believe in himself, the result being his 1961 novel Where the Red Fern Grows.

The overall theme of this biography isn’t the power of persistence, as one might think, but rather finding someone to believe in you and returning to your dreams. Reagan’s watercolors render both the gentle ripples of a slow creek and the violent conflagration that destroys Woody’s books with equal aplomb. Direct quotes from Rawls about his life, interspersed throughout, are all properly sourced. Rogers’ appended note acknowledges that Rawls would fictionalize parts of his own K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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autobiography, a fact that places both author and illustrator in a position of telling the story of an unreliable narrator.

What is reliable is the book’s dedication to the idea of writing from the heart.

A poignant tribute to the power of story. (bibliography, photos, picture credits) (Picture-book biography. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

The Poisoned King Rundell, Katherine | Illus. by Ashley Mackenzie | Knopf (304 pp.) | $15.99 September 11, 2025 | 9780593809907 Series: Impossible Creatures, 2

Following the events of Impossible Creatures (2024), a devoted Guardian teams up with a brave princess to fight her power-­ hungry uncle and save the Archipelago’s dragons from a strange new threat.

Jacques the dragon summons Christopher Forrester back to the Archipelago from the human world: Dragons are dying, and no one knows why. Meanwhile, on the island of Dousha, Princess Anya’s grandfather, King Halam, has been murdered, and her father accused—though she knows he’s innocent. When Christopher and Anya take refuge on the islet of Glimt, the Berserker Nighthand helps them see how their twin missions to save the dragons and free Anya’s father are connected. They work together to create an antidote for the poison that’s killing the dragons and to keep Anya and her father safe from her murderous uncle.

Meanwhile, Nighthand and Irian, the part-nereid ocean scholar, pursue their own important secret mission. Divided into three parts—“Castle,” “Dragons,” and “Revenge”—and containing elements of fairy tales, fantasy, and Shakespeare, this story continues the storyline established in the series opener, yet because it introduces new characters and obstacles, it could also stand alone. Dark-blond Anya (“five feet tall and all of it claws”) is a match K IR KU S R E V IE W S

for white-presenting Christopher, who, though he still misses Mal, finds that “it made a difference to have someone to move through the world with again. A friend changed the feel of the universe.”

Mackenzie’s delicate, otherworldly art adorns the text.

A spectacular return to a magical world. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-15)

When Auggie Learned To Play Chess Rusu, Meredith | Illus. by Stephen Costanza Anne Schwartz/Random (48 pp.) | $18.99 September 9, 2025 | 9780593710814

Sometimes a gambit is all it takes.

When 7-yearold Auggie moves from the seaside to the country with his father, he feels like he’s in an entirely new world. There are no beaches here—just (very smelly) cows and corn as far as the eye can see. As Auggie explores his new home, he stumbles across his father’s chess set, a treasured heirloom. Enchanted by the wooden pieces and their elegant designs, Auggie asks if he can learn to play. It’s something pleasant to look forward to as he endures a rough first day at school. As the father and son play, Auggie begins to see his classmates as chess pieces running through the halls. A lesson on taking risks, known in chess terms as a “gambit,” helps Auggie break the ice with fellow student Luke. Costanza’s digital illustrations enhance Rusu’s narrative, and the subtle shading around Auggie’s eyes underscores the frustrations he feels while finding his way at school and learning to play chess. Costanza concisely captures the moves of the game, so readers intrigued by the story can learn the basics of the game.

Auggie and his father are of Romanian descent; a pronunciation guide for “Tatâ” (Daddy) and “Bunicu” (Grandpa) would have helped readers unfamiliar with the terms. This quibble aside, Rusu offers youngsters a

solid road map for navigating new places and new games. Auggie’s classmates are diverse.

A well-played account of a newcomer learning to roll with the punches.

(Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

The Witch in the Tower Sardà, Júlia | Candlewick Studio (64 pp.) | $19.99 | September 2, 2025 9781536243017 | Series: The Three Sisters

Feeling excluded by her friends, a melancholy youngster sets out on a walk in search of solitude—and finds herself along the way.

Happening upon a lone tower, Carmela becomes bewitched by its denizen, a heavily mascaraed hag with a propensity for mind-reading and a welcome tinged with menace. As the pair busy themselves brewing an elixir meant to heal Carmela’s heartbreak, the girl hesitates.

This recipe feels familiar. A grand tour of the tower’s turret, too, inspires a sense of possibility. By the time the duo open their doors to a coven of similarly kooky misfits, it’s wildly apparent that this space—be it physical, spiritual, or something else entirely—is where she belongs…and where she can create space for others, too. With the second installment in her Three Sisters trilogy, Sardà has struck gold. Both narrative and aesthetic ooze style, coolly occupying the intersection between cautionary folktale and coming-of-age fantasy epic.

And while the story underscores just how powerful individuality can be when it’s made inclusive, Sardà reserves swaths of space for interpretation: What is imagined? What is reality? And does the difference matter? Readers will benefit from keeping a dictionary handy, since lofty vocabulary words appear throughout. The breathtaking beauty of Sardà’s illustrations, too, defy description—at once psychedelic, eerie, and Miyazaki-esque in their enchanting detail, JULY 1, 2025

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they demand poring over. The result is singular, not merely a modern classic but one for the ages. Carmela and the witch are light-skinned.

Utterly spellbinding.

(Picture book. 6-12)

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?: A Hard-Boiled Mystery Sayres, Brianna Caplan | Illus. by Mark Fearing | Holiday House (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 16, 2025 | 9780823458271

A sleuthing chicken follows a trail of clues to try to solve an age-old question.

For her very first case, Inspector Poulet’s friends bring her a big one: Why did the Chicken—who, with her sister the Egg, rules the roost at the henhouse—cross the road? With each new tip or clue, Inspector Poulet gets closer to solving the mystery, but a twist lands the plucky investigator at the center of the solution. Eagle-eyed readers will pick up on hints to the story’s ending by paying close attention to the illustrations. The text is littered with chicken and farm puns, and though they’re admittedly well used, there are so many that they become a distraction. The central mystery is very tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a convoluted push to arrive at the story’s ending.

Inspector Poulet wears a chicken-size brown trench coat and flower-adorned fedora. The chickens have large, round eyes with long eyelashes that are largely responsible for conveying their expressions. Setting the scene well with cartoon artwork and making effective use of light and shadow, Fearing relies on varying page layouts and perspectives; some images are split panes, while others are inset in larger illustrations. Though the storyline is muddy, youngsters will enjoy discovering new clues on repeat readings.

A somewhat scrambled mystery that still offers some farmyard fun.

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The Winter of the Dollhouse Schlitz, Laura Amy | Candlewick (400 pp.) $18.99 | September 2, 2025 | 9781536236088

A shared interest in dolls and dollhouses forms the foundation of an unexpected intergenerational friendship.

Tiphany Stokes, a preteen, and Szilvia Rózsahegyi, a self-described “old bat,” are new to town, and both are lonely. So when Tiph does the old woman a good turn outside the dollhouse store whose window she haunts, the ensuing conversation leads to a business arrangement: Tiph will walk Ms. Rózsahegyi’s dog and clean her cat’s litter box. Her new employer instructs Tiph to call her Szilvia Néni, the Hungarian for “Aunt Szilvia,” which Tiph instantly Americanizes to Néni Szilvia, and a friendship grows. In interleaved chapters, another begins between two antique dolls, Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, who find their way from the dollhouse store to Néni Szilvia’s house: Red as part of the old woman’s project to restore the dollhouse her father built for her decades ago and Gretel in Tiph’s pocket. By night, the two dolls explore their new environs, “daredevil” Red coaxing the more timid Gretel out of her comfort zone. Schlitz tenderly develops her characters, giving each a rough-edged complexity. Her portrayal of Tiph’s relationship with her stepmother is especially skillful. Tiph is a basically decent kid, but she’s far from perfect. It’s Schlitz’s clear-eyed portrayal of Tiph’s emotional inner life that anchors this cozy fantasy, with the dolls’ nocturnal adventures providing lift.

Main characters present white.

More character study than anything else, this book delves deep. (Fantasy. 10-12)

Kirkus Star

Dear Acorn (Love, Oak): Letter Poems to Friends Sidman, Joyce | Illus. by Melissa Sweet Clarion/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99 September 2, 2025 | 9780358334767

In this collab­ oration from Newbery Honor winner Sidman and two-time Caldecott Honor–­ winning Sweet, epistolary poems give voice to natural pairings in ecosystems and human-made environments—­ bubbles to sky, bricks to school, and more.

Comprising 16 poems, the collection blends various forms to capture a series of conversations, each revealing deep truths about interdependence and perspective.

From the sandy shore comes a baby turtle’s rhyming plea: “Dear Ocean, / We’ve waited and watched / till the moon grows bright, / till the night grows cool / and the time is right.” In another, an oak reassures its acorn, calling it a “plump promise.” The book’s genius lies in Sidman’s ability to transform these everyday connections into profound exchanges, creating lyrical dialogues that will prompt readers to see the world through curious eyes. Sweet amplifies the verse with her signature mixed-media collages, strategically using color to establish emotional resonance and varying scale to emphasize the difference in size between each of the paired voices.

Sweet’s layering of materials visually reinforces the theme of interconnectedness, with compositional choices that

An imaginative and insightful masterpiece of poetic correspondence.

DEAR ACORN (LOVE, OAK)

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guide the eye between corresponding elements. Sidman concludes with accessible instructions for aspiring writers to create their own poems and correspondences—a thoughtful addition that extends the work’s impact beyond its pages. Humans depicted are diverse.

An imaginative and insightful masterpiece of poetic correspondence that invites readers to discover new connections.

(Picture book/poetry. 4-8)

Candace, the Universe, and Everything Smith, Sherri L. | Putnam (336 pp.) | $18.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781524737931

A 13-year-old Black girl’s locker find leads her into an unlikely intergenerational friendship that widens her horizons.

Candace Wells is beginning eighth grade with a friendship crisis.

Her Filipino American best friend, Deen, has been spending more time with Candace’s “next best friend,” Becca, who’s Black and biracial, leaving Candace feeling like the odd one out.

When Candace opens her new locker, a bird shoots out. Deen and Becca walk away arm in arm, leaving her to clean up. As she disinfects her locker, Candace discovers a purple composition notebook with handwritten notes. The friendship advice feels especially relevant: “These People Are Not Your Friends.” The next chapter transports readers to 1988, where Black eighth grader Tracey Auburn is arguing with her best friend, olive-skinned Dia Andres, when a bird flies into her school locker. Her purple notebook and pen go missing from her locker—only to reappear with a drawing of the bird and the signature “Candace.” Candace tracks down Tracey, who’s a professor at a local college, and the two eventually locate Loretta Spencer, the Black woman who had the locker back in 1948 and who studied physics. The trio, K IR KU S R E V IE W S

connected by the mysterious locker, bird, and notebook, examine the strange phenomena. Smith offers nuanced portrayals of the well-rounded characters and their relationships, combined with enjoyable fantasy elements. Each lead character’s storyline offers accessible connection points, keeping readers engaged.

A heartwarming adventure that explores courage, self-belief, and dreams. (Fantasy. 10-14)

My Name Is Benny: Vol. 1 Sokomin | Graphix/Scholastic (224 pp.) $24.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781546174448

It’s the little things, really.

Originally serialized online through WEBTOON, this omnibus of cartoon strips introduces readers to Benny, a happy-­go-lucky girl who constantly sports a gas mask. She’s joined by best friend Timothy, her neighbor Isaac, and her classmate Fae. The individual entries, which range from one to three pages, throw readers into Benny’s world with little introduction and feature short, often comedic moments from her interactions with peers. The humorous scenarios vary but primarily focus on a combination of Benny’s immaturity, laziness, and imaginative flights of fancy, which are often juxtaposed against the actions and responses of her friends. There’s not enough material in the fast-paced stories to enthrall readers looking for belly laughs and deep witticisms, but those amused by slice-­of-life moments might enjoy meeting Benny and seeing her offbeat interactions. The artwork makes use of watercolorlike textures and tones and minimalist backgrounds. Some of the jokes seem to be aimed at older readers, such as references to infomercial pitchman Billy Mays and the marshmallow test and an incident involving a massage chair. Diehard fans of the web series may appreciate owning a book

that collects many of Benny’s adventures. Characters are light-skinned and largely present white.

Amusing but light on substance.

(Comic strip. 10-14)

Just Shine!: How To Be a Better You Sotomayor, Sonia | Illus. by Jacqueline Alcántara | Philomel (40 pp.) | $18.99 September 9, 2025 | 9780593206294

A Supreme Court justice offers guidance on how to brighten the world—and an ode to her late mother.

Beginning with an excerpt from the Homeric Hymns, Sotomayor presents a graceful tribute to her mother, Celina, whose compassion and generosity still linger with her. The lessons Celina imparted form the crux of this story, shared in brief, stylized snapshots that underscore how “she lit up everyone around her.” In the sugar cane fields of Puerto Rico, young Celina summoned the bravery to steer her confused, sick mother back home amid the night’s darkness.

Growing up alongside her strict older sister, Celina beautified their home through her daily hard work. Other examples—Celina befriending a lonely elderly woman, nourishing a nephew’s artistic dreams, leveraging her nursing skills to heal others—come together for a portrait of a woman who “showed her love and brought brightness to her family, her community, and the world.” Sotomayor punctuates each glimpse of a good deed with an explicit affirmation, and though Celina occasionally comes across as an almost overly idealized, uncomplicated subject, on the whole, this is a timely reminder that a remarkable sense of community can emerge through ordinary means. Alcántara’s dreamy, ornate marker-and-gouache artwork emphasizes the beauty of kindness.

A thoughtful primer on the transformative power of goodness. (Picture book. 4-8)

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Interrupt your holiday hustlebustle for this delightful read.

INTERRUP TING CHICKEN SAVES THE NUTCR ACKER

The Experiment Stead, Rebecca | Feiwel & Friends (288 pp.) $17.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9781250374769

What if almost everything you knew about your life was part of a different story?

Sixth grader Nathan’s existence is disrupted when something unusual happens: He grows a tail. It seems to have a mind of its own, and he names it Tuck.

Nathan’s parents refuse to call themselves aliens—they’re “Visitors” from the planet Kast. They’ve had extensive training in Earth culture, language, and gestures, and they closely monitor Nathan, logging his food and controlling his activities. Nathan’s best friend, Victor (who’s the Calvin to Nathan’s Hobbes in their favorite comic book character alter egos), knows nothing about any of this until Nathan and his parents are suddenly recalled to the Wagon, the place where they were raised on their journey to Earth. The family’s visit to the Wagon—which is disguised as a storage unit facility outside Altoona, Pennsylvania—leads Nathan to suspect that something is very wrong. His discovery of the exploitation of sentient beings by a coldhearted experimenter nearly leads to his permanent expulsion from Earth.

Stead’s narrative focuses on the likable, gentle Nathan, but also offers perspectives from Victor, Nathan’s mother, family cat Toto, Tuck, and even the villain. The pacing is superb, neatly blending family dynamics, friendship, and tween romance with page-turning mystery, adventure, and horror.

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Earthly skin tones”; his skin is “a few shades deeper” than that of his crush, golden-skinned Izzy.

Compelling and page-turning.

(Science fiction. 9-13)

Kirkus Star

Interrupting Chicken Saves The Nutcracker Stein, David Ezra | Candlewick (48 pp.) $18.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9781536207798 Series: Interrupting Chicken

She’s baaaack… just in time for holiday hijinks.

Chicken and Papa are off to the ballet. Although Chicken has her tutu and ballet shoes with her, when Papa asks if she’ll interrupt the performance, she promises to behave. Readers familiar with Stein’s previous Chicken stories won’t believe her for a moment. In short order, she interrupts The Nutcracker three times: to show Clara her tutu, to stop Fritz from bullying poor Clara, and to save the Nutcracker from the Mouse King’s sword. Each interruption startles performers, annoys audience members, and mortifies poor Papa—while also inviting readers to laugh at Chicken’s slapstick, well-intentioned shenanigans, enhanced by clever visual gags in the multimedia illustrations. A fourth and final interruption occurs after Chicken and Papa are kicked out, and Chicken absconds with the Nutcracker, which Papa says she must return so the show can conclude. Here enters the bookwithin-a-book conceit from prior Chicken stories as she gives the narrator onstage a new script to read, explaining how the Nutcracker returns to Clara.

Stein’s metafictive narrative is sidesplittingly funny, capturing with aplomb young children’s endearingly exasperating tendency to speak up when it’s least convenient. Post-show comments from the audience (“What a great show!”

“I’ve never seen a Nutcracker like that!”) will doubtlessly be echoed by those reading this book, the series’ most successful offering since its original 2011 Caldecott Honor title. The human performers vary in skin tone.

Interrupt your holiday hustle-bustle for this delightful read. (game) (Picture book. 3-7)

We Are Already Haunting Here!

Sterer, Gideon | Illus. by Charlie Mylie Union Square Kids (40 pp.) | $18.99 July 15, 2025 | 9781454960478

A ghost seeks spooking territory.

“They say every ghost needs a place to haunt, and if you can’t find one, you’re not even a real ghost,” explains our narrator, who wears a little brown top hat and carries a matching briefcase.

The protagonist floats down a city street bathed in dark purple tones, casting round-as-a-button eyes high and low.

But the other phantoms are fiercely protective of their hard-won spots, from nearby houses to a mailbox to the sewer.

Just when the protagonist is about to give up on finding a place to inhabit, a cheerful black bird points out a derelict little shed—a true fixer-upper. At last, the tale comes full circle, with the ghost—now a proud homeowner— deciding to embrace the spirit of generosity as another uncertain young spirit shows up, asking for a place to stay. Throughout the story, the narrator’s fears (“What if I’m not any good at haunting?”) will resonate with old and young alike. The scenes are reminiscent of the job or house hunt, but the ghosts’ jitters also mirror the emotions many kids experience on the first day of school. Mylie’s swirling, K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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muted pastels feature visible strokes, with high contrast between the white of the ghosts and the black or purple backgrounds. While the color scheme sets an ominous tone, the smiling protagonist will reassure youngsters— as will Sterer’s gently determined text.

A warm tale sure to conjure up smiles.

(Picture book. 3-5)

Kirkus Star

Scarlet Morning Stevenson, ND | Quill Tree Books/ HarperCollins (432 pp.) | $19.99 September 23, 2025 | 9780063210349 Series: Scarlet Morning, 1

Two lonely children find adventure on the high seas.

On the desolate salt-strewn land of Caveat in Dickerson’s Sea, Viola and Wilmur lived with their ill-­tempered caretaker, Hestur. She told the children all about how the salt came to ravage the land following a cataclysmic event called the Great Blow, which transpired after a bloodthirsty pirate known as Scarlet Morning murdered the beloved queen, Hail Meridian, and stole her crown.

After waking up one day to find Hestur gone, the children grew up in isolation. When a pirate ship, the Calamary Rose, captained by the delightfully snarky Cadence Chase, arrives on Caveat’s shores, Viola and Wilmur decide to join them. They soon find themselves on an epic, swashbuckling journey replete with revelry, drama, secrets, cursed (and very creepy) sea gulls, and (perhaps their most difficult challenge) separation from each other. Acclaimed graphic novelist Stevenson shines in his prose debut; his worldbuilding is clever and highly immersive, conveying an atmosphere that’s completely novel while also nostalgic. With its pirates, magic, adventure, friendship, and found family, this middle-grade K IR KU S R E V IE W S

gem comes very close to achieving the impossible—having something for everyone. The edge-of-your-seat cliffhanger ending will leave readers panting for the next series entry. Fluid, atmospheric spot art and full-page illustrations punctuate the text, adding to the dramatic tension. The artwork shows Wilmur with light skin and a shock of spiky hair and Viola with dark skin and Afro-textured hair.

Engaging, exciting, and enthralling in equal measure. (Fantasy. 8-12)

The Interrupted Plans of Mango and Nan Tahboub, Hala | Clarion/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $19.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9780063254213

When plumbing problems thwart the plans of a young boy and his grandmother, they seek a creative solution.

Mango and Nan are about to head into town for vanilla ice cream cones when they hear the plopping sound of a leaky faucet. Nan tells Mango that they’ll have to stay home and fix the drip: “We can’t let water go to waste. It’s not good for the planet.”

What follows is a convoluted storyline in which Mango suggests fastening a fantastically long hose to the faucet so that it will retain all the drips (“Not a plop will go to waste,” declares Nan); the two of them hold the nozzle and let the hose snake behind them as they walk into town, sharing their water with those they encounter. They water their neighbors’ hedges, top off the swimming pool, and cool down hot sunbathers—all of which betrays the story’s internal logic by compromising Nan’s water-conservation ethos. Water pressure builds, and the pair soon lose control of the hose. They lament the wasted water, but when the skies open up, they “celebrate having made rainplops for all the town’s trees”—a confusing moment, given that Mango and Nan aren’t responsible for the downpour. Humorous illustrations

outshine the text, with playful details and a great sense of movement. Mango and Nan are light-skinned; their community is diverse.

Fun to look at but hard to follow.

(Picture book. 4-7)

What Makes You Happy?

Tawwab, Nedra Glover | Illus. by Candice Bradley | Rocky Pond Books/Penguin (40 pp.) $18.99 | September 23, 2025 | 9780593620250

Licensed therapist and bestselling author Tawwab offers words of wisdom to young people-pleasers.

Avery, a young Black girl with long curly hair, loves to make people happy—so much so that she often puts others’ needs before her own. When it comes time to plan her birthday party, she asks friends and family what she should do. Her friend Simone suggests going to an amusement park.

Rides make Avery queasy, but she wants Simone to have fun, so she considers it. Avery’s brother wants a superhero theme. Avery doesn’t particularly like superheroes, but others might, so she decides that it’s a possibility. Kylie asks a question that makes Avery pause: “What kind of party sounds fun for you?” Avery doesn’t consider her own feelings very often, so she’s not sure what to choose. With eyes shut tight, she eventually lands on the perfect theme for her party. Bradley’s generous use of pastels softens the turmoil that Avery faces while also employing fuzzy-edged thought bubbles to highlight her introspection. Tawwab includes a note to caregivers at the end to help kids find their own voices. Guiding questions, affirmations, and simple scripts will help children and adults become more comfortable with growing their own self-confidence. Avery’s classmates are a diverse bunch.

Gentle guidance for kids seeking to stay true to themselves. (Picture book. 4-7) JULY 1, 2025

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Kirkus Star

Shibu’s Tail Thomas, Tess | Illus. by Kamwei Fong Levine Querido (48 pp.) | $19.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781646145737

After attempts to downplay his feelings make him miserable, a cat learns that freely expressing them is key to his well-being.

Bristling when he’s angry, shielding him when he’s afraid, and offering “hug after hug” when he’s happy, Shibu’s tail is a reliable indicator of his mood. After noticing that his big feelings attract undue attention from the other cats, he decides to stifle them. Shibu represses his joy over the milk delivery, his rage over a broken toy, and his fear during a lightning storm. These pent-up emotions take their toll: “Shibu started to feel like he was going to explode! And then, suddenly…He did.” Fong renders Shibu and his voluminous tail via a multitude of tiny black ink hatches, which increase in volume and intricacy. The illustrator depicts the veritable explosion of Shibu’s tail as a stormy cluster of cresting waves that leave the feline dripping wet.

Understanding that sharing “what’s on his mind and in his heart” allows him to feel his best, Shibu begins to help his cat friends communicate their own sentiments. As Shibu’s tail offers a thumbs-up, Fong playfully surrounds him with equally demonstrative felines—and tails.

Thomas’ cogent text and her focus on emotional intelligence will resonate with caregivers, while Fong’s quietly comic pictures will tickle everyone.

A winning blend of crisp design, child-appealing illustrations, and positive messaging about self-expression. (Picture book. 3-7)

For more animal stories, visit Kirkus online.

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Just the ticket for unstoppable makers with big dreams.

SUPA NOVA

Supa Nova

Floor It!

Timothy, Chanté | Nosy Crow (160 pp.) $9.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9798887771335 Series: Supa Nova, 1

Tobin Fine, Bex | Illus. by Federico Fabiani Random House (40 pp.) | $18.99 September 16, 2025 | 9780593904992

Ecological concerns prompt a young Black inventor to create a plastic-­ eating creature.

This STEM-­ centric romp introduces Nova, a science-loving child with a big personality, a pesky preteen big sister, and a gigantic underground lab.

Having learned that scientists are working on mushrooms and mealworms that will consume the multiple islands of waste plastic floating in the ocean, Nova decides to help out.

Unfortunately, Chomp, the little being she creates by zapping a mix of random ingredients, including her sister’s used gum (“IT’S ALIVE!”), doesn’t stop with eating the odd toothbrush and other small items—and Chomp grows bigger the more it consumes. Young readers may be confused by the disconnect between Nova’s claim that Chomp just eats plastic; in the loudly hued cartoon scenes, the pink, blobby behemoth ignores piles of plastic rubbish to instead chow down indiscriminately on everything else, from kitchen cabinets and cardboard to hovering helicopters. Still, Nova’s insight that acetic acid dissolves chewing gum is a nugget of actual chemistry, and Timothy brings the tale to a suitably thrilling climax that involves sisterly bonding, creative problem-solving, and wildly entertaining antics. Science for the win!

An infant’s crawl across the living room turns into a fantastical, perspective-shifting racing adventure.

A red-helmeted baby races across a living room that’s been recast as an epic racetrack, with furniture and other ordinary objects becoming forests, mountains, and waterways. Encouraged by an older sibling (“Baby, start your engine… crawl!”), the determined infant navigates obstacles, makes pit stops, and presses onward to the finish line. Tobin Fine’s racing terminology (straightaway, stalls) creates an effective sports-­ announcer rhythm that propels the narrative forward, while the consistent rhyming text keeps the momentum going throughout. Fabiani’s childfriendly mixed-media illustrations skillfully depict the dual perspective— both the actual living room and the way the baby sees it. The compositions play with scale, transforming a parquet floor and fluffy carpeting into vast terrains from Baby’s viewpoint. In one particularly effective spread, Fabiani frames Baby’s vision through a helmet-shaped portal with dashboardlike indicators below, cleverly simulating how the world might appear through a racer’s visor, reinforcing Baby’s imaginative point of view while maintaining the book’s racing theme. Worth noting is the text’s consistent use of they/them pronouns for the baby and nongendered descriptions of family members (“Parked right on their parent’s knee, / Baby’s where they’re meant to be”). Characters are pale-skinned.

Just the ticket for unstoppable young mixers and makers with big dreams. (character drawing lessons) (Graphic science fiction. 7-9)

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Buckle up for this intrepid crawler’s quest—a rhyming ride with a racing twist. (Picture book. 3-7)

Paisley & Peck: Jurassic Farm Torres, J. | Illus. by Mike Deas | Owlkids Books (48 pp.) | $16.95 | September 16, 2025 9781771476409 | Series: Paisley & Peck, 1

A dramatically inclined young chicken has an identity crisis.

Paisley the pig and Peck the chick are both square pegs on their farm.

Paisley’s a bit fancier than his fellow hogs—a gourmand among trough feeders— and Peck wants to be anything but a living alarm clock when he grows up. When Peck, Paisley, and their mouse pal Turnip discover that chickens evolved from dinosaurs, Peck decides to run with this idea.

At first he attempts to impersonate a fierce T. rex, roaring, squawking, and causing a ruckus. When it becomes clear that the little chick isn’t fierce enough to be a mighty thunder lizard, Peck pivots to personifying a friendly dinosaur, imitating the Barney surrogate he spots on the farmhouse TV. The enterprise is played for comedic effect, leaning heavily on Peck’s chirpy cuteness and blossoming self-confidence while poking fun at Paisley’s increasing exasperation with the miniature monster he’s unleashed. Similar to popular pairs such as Elephant and Piggie or Narwhal and Jelly, the lightly sardonic yet ultimately affectionate

relationship between the protagonists will feel familiar and fun.

Deas’ illustrations match the story’s playful energy, setting jumpy, erratic Peck and well-mannered Paisley against a comfortable backdrop of muted farmhouse tones in yellows, greens, and reds.

A jokey, spirited barnyard yarn.

(Graphic fiction. 5-8)

Christmas Under Construction Tupta, Frank | Illus. by Josh Cleland Running Press Kids (32 pp.) | $12.99 October 14, 2025 | 9780762489657

With Santa’s workshop blown away in a windy storm, will anyone get presents this year?

The elves begin to fret: What will happen to Christmas?

Luckily Mrs. Claus has a plan—and some blueprints. Reindeer drive in on rumbling construction trucks and get to work. “But there’s no wood to make the walls,” exclaims one observant elf. “How will we ever deck these halls?” With large slabs of gingerbread, of course! Jaunty rhymes add a kick to the construction process. “Dasher and Dancer tuck the points. / Sugary mortar fills the joints.”

But who will help when the roof is too heavy to lift? Good ol’ Phil, the abominable snowman. Once the workshop is functional again, the present-making resumes in full force. Christmas is saved!

Chaotic bursts of colors from patterned elf caps, sugary candy, and bright lights add to Cleland’s overstuffed illustrations, filled with swirling snow and frenetic energy. The panic is palpable, but everyone pitches in and works together to

A tale of Yuletide calamity that showcases the power of cooperation.

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come up with some creative solutions.

This may not be the best winding-down, cozy-bedtime story, but those seeking holiday drama will find it here. Santa and his wife are light-skinned, while the elves vary in skin tone.

An enticing tale of Yuletide calamity that showcases the power of cooperation. (Picture book. 3-6)

The Witch of Hagstone Hill van Veen, Johanna | Illus. by Raquel Lagartos | McElderry (272 pp.) | $13.99 August 26, 2025 | 9781665973922 Series: The Triplets Grim, 1

Three sisters confront the evil beldam—a witch who’s taken their aunt captive.

Ten-year-old Nell Grim is the oldest of a set of triplets, and when her sisters, Hannah and Annet, fall deathly ill with typhoid fever, she strikes a deal with the beldam of Hagstone Hill: something precious of Nell’s in exchange for her sisters’ recovery. All appears well until the beldam comes to collect, and she announces that she’ll take the sisters’ primary caregiver, Aunt Lena. The girls summon ghosts, call on goblins, and embark on an epic journey to find what they need to stop the beldam and save their aunt. Van Veen’s otherworldly story is fully engrossing and well imagined.

The beldam is terrifying, with her sharp teeth and wicked nature. Nell is a quick­witted, fiercely loyal, and hot-tempered girl who’s foolish enough to get into danger but also creative and determined enough to find her way out. Ghost boy Cornelis is a scene-stealing, likable character who’s delightfully chivalrous and eager to assist. Lagartos’ smatterings of evocative black-and-white illustrations bring pivotal scenes to life, pairing well with the style and tone of the text. The pacing never lags, and readers will be on the edges of their seats wondering whether Nell and her family will escape unscathed. Hannah has a limb difference due to an injury sustained during birth. Characters present white.

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Compelling and imaginative: a thrill to devour. (Horror. 9-12)

Kirkus Star

The Polar Bear and the Ballerina Velasquez, Eric | Holiday House (40 pp.) $18.99 | October 14, 2025 | 9780823449187

A fantastical testament to the joy of seeing yourself in the art you seek out.

Rooted in the beauty of the ballet, this epic urban sojourn begins at New York City’s Central Park Zoo. Three Black dancers, all tutu-wearing members of the Harlem Children’s Ballet, smile broadly before an aquarium enclosure and pose for promotional photographs as a bemused polar bear looks on with interest. Night falls, and the bear heaves itself from its tank and happens upon the signature accessory of our prima ballerina, a cherry red scarf blown from her neck or, just as likely, left behind as a clue.

Eager to return the lost treasure, the Arctic creature heads uptown— drawing the ire of cabbies for jaywalking—until it reaches Lincoln Center. Much to the animal’s chagrin, a sign forbidding polar bear patronage has been plastered to the box office plexiglass, but when the bear’s bereft yowl reverberates into the rehearsal space, its resonance draws Red Scarf Girl from her warm-up and into the crowd. Once she’s led the creature to a velvet-swathed seat facing center stage, he sees another familiar face prominently featured in a backdrop alongside the performers—his own.

This title is almost entirely wordless, but the captivating balance that Velasquez strikes between realism and ultra-expressive emotion makes a magical meal of the story. The book opens with (mostly true) zoological information about polar bears and 122

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closes with a biography of Chloe Maldonado, the fictional ballerina at the center of the story..

Dreamy. (Picture book. 5-8)

Body Beautiful Verde, Susan | Illus. by Steph Littlebird | Abrams (40 pp.) | $19.99 September 23, 2025 | 9781419777462

Your body is many things all at once.

Opening with an assurance that “your body is beautiful,” Verde tells readers that “you were born from another beautiful body, who was born from another beautiful body.” Most subsequent spreads begin with the phrase “Your body is,” followed by an uplifting adjective (unique, miraculous, expressive). Verde’s lyrical work encourages readers to respect all bodies, including their own, and to honor their connection to the world around them. Littlebird (Oregon’s Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) showcases a diverse array of children of different sizes, skin tones, and abilities, set against and sometimes integrated into colorful bursts of natural elements. On a spread that proclaims that our bodies “[mirror] the wonders in nature,” two children’s seated forms make up the bases of gloriously green trees. On another page, the curves of a joyfully pregnant person’s belly mimic the swirls of the planets and stars in a seemingly unending galaxy. In addition to exploring body positivity and bodily autonomy, Verde implores readers to listen to their bodies while staying

active to the best of their abilities.

Her melodious text combines with Littlebird’s vibrant artwork for a joyous read-aloud.

Respectful, empathetic, and exuberant. (author’s and illustrator’s notes) (Picture book. 4-7)

Phantom Academy Virnig, Christine | Aladdin (272 pp.) $18.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9781665980364

After being killed by a falling coconut, 12-year-old Finn finds himself in a spectral boarding school, where he joins other young ghosts yearning to revisit their families.

Virnig seems undecided as to whether to let her tale’s farcical elements take charge over its more poignant themes, and the sudden mood swings can be disorienting.

Still, there’s plenty to snicker over at Phantom Academy, a “School for Underage Ghosts,” from gross but obligatory meals of ogre boogers and brown mush that “smells like rancid fish sautéed in dog poop” to animated wall paintings of a mysterious lady with a bushy mustache and a farting dragon (with a realistic rotten egg smell). From the moment he arrives, Finn, who’s cued white, sharply misses his beloved family. So, while learning the rules of ghostiness, often the hard way (yes, ghosts poop; no, they can’t walk through walls), he undertakes a determined search for a rumored portal back to the Land of the Living. In the end, Finn has second thoughts after interactions

A testament to the joy of seeing yourself in the art you seek out.

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with a wise teacher suggest that his return might do more harm than good. But, considering how the author opens a floodgate for potential sequels by strewing this volume with tantalizing mysteries and exciting possibilities for ghostly explorations of both the spirit and earthly worlds, Finn’s future looks anything but dim.

A heartfelt ghost story with a promising setup, although the highs and lows work at cross purposes. (Supernatural. 9-12)

On Our Way With Mr. Jay Wallace, Chelsea Lin | Illus. by Thyra Heder Neal Porter/Holiday House (48 pp.) $18.99 | July 29, 2025 | 9780823457045 Series: School Heroes

The first in a new series shines a spotlight on a fixture of many students’ school experiences: the bus driver.

Wordless spreads introduce Mr. Jay, who starts his morning by taking public transit.

With breakfast in hand, Mr. Jay inspects his own vehicle—School Bus 3—“from hood to tread.” After he establishes that all is in tip-top shape, his route begins. The bus travels across all manner of terrain, stopping at various houses to let students on. But, amid twists and turns, can Mr. Jay pick up all 18 young passengers and make it to school before the bell chimes?

The ever-present clock makes the passengers nervous, but Mr. Jay is on it. Despite a few surprises—from a sickly student to a mishap with a diorama—Mr. Jay repeatedly comforts the children with a consistent “That’s okay!” Wallace’s text echoes his statements with “We’re on our way!” An unexpected reveal at the end of the workday makes clear that bus driving runs in Mr. Jay’s family. The expressive, full-color illustrations depict students who vary in skin tone.

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A route worth taking—and a gift for classrooms everywhere.

O N O U R WAY W I T H M R . JAY

pale-skinned Mr. Jay in a safety vest makes for a delightfully jovial archetype. Speech bubbles effectively give voice to the large cast of characters without detracting from the engaging rhyme scheme.

A route worth taking—and a gift for classrooms everywhere.

(Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

Family Feast!

Weatherford, Carole Boston | Illus. by Frank Morrison | Crown (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 23, 2025 | 9780593898291

A festive, multigenerational family gathering is rooted in soul food and familial love.

Big Ma and Pops wake early to begin preparing a meal that will bring everyone together from near and far. While Big Ma peels apples “for her famous pie,” Pops “dresses the fish to fry.” Throughout Weatherford’s lively, rhyming story, the refrain “Tastes like home when family meet; / a bond so warm, so strong, so sweet” gives the book a musical quality. The menu for this amazing dinner includes black-eyed peas, collard greens, rice and beans, candied yams, a pineapple-ringed ham, biscuits, cornbread muffins, and more. Joy abounds in each scene, and Morrison’s action-packed oil paintings offer a plethora of details for young readers to notice. During a scene where the family cooks together in the kitchen, youngsters will spot a visibly pregnant relative wearing a “Baby on Board”

shirt, a matriarch removing a pot’s lid to sniff its contents, and a little one who can barely see over the counter giving Pops the side-eye as he salts the contents of a big bowl. Dog lovers will enjoy observing the beagle, ever hopeful for handouts. Morrison’s illustrations of this close-kit Black family highlight distinct personalities through creative clothing choices, different hair styles, dramatic facial expressions, and elongated limbs that suggest constant motion.

A triumphant and utterly inviting gustatory celebration. (Picture book. 4-8)

Detective Duck: The Mystery at Emerald Pond Winkler, Henry & Lin Oliver | Illus. by Dan Santat | Amulet/Abrams (80 pp.) | $14.99 September 30, 2025 | 9781419780486 Series: Detective Duck, 3

Willow the duckling sleuth and the rest of the Dogwood Pond crew head to nearby Emerald Pond for the Spring Games.

Hosted by Maxwell the mallard, the events include Bat Ball and the Slither Slide, and everyone gets into the swing of things—except Willow’s best friend, Sal the salamander. Jealous Sal sulks, stews, and snarks as Willow swoons over the charismatic Maxwell. As usual, Snout the predatory weasel lurks until Maxwell tackles him, saving a duckling from his jaws and sending him packing—an act of heroism that makes Sal feel small.

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jealousy and help Willow to find him.

As in actor Winkler and co-author Oliver’s previous installments, environmental stewardship is a key part of the plot: The characters comment on the plastic refuse humans dump into the pond, and the litter is ultimately linked to Maxwell’s disappearance. Caldecott Medalist Santat’s plentiful, colorful, lively vignettes and larger illustrations help lighten the atmosphere, even when the air is charged with bad feelings.

Events move briskly, while characterization is effectively broadcast through the action. Compared to the earlier titles in the series, this tale leans less heavily on humor and whodunit elements as the stakes become more serious; nevertheless, Willow’s fans will be rapt.

Danger and emotional tension sub in for mystery in the latest in this eco-friendly series. (authors’ note) (Chapter book. 6-8)

The Moon Rabbit Wong Nava, Eva | Illus. by Jason Chuang | Candlewick (40 pp.) | $18.99 August 5, 2025 | 9781536238914

A family shares the story of the Moon Goddess.

On the evening of the Mid-­ Autumn Festival, a youngster named Meifung—apparently of Chinese descent—sees the shape of a rabbit in the moon and asks Mama to tell the story of Chang’e. Mama’s told the tale hundreds of times before, but she happily obliges, describing how, long ago, when 10 suns blazed in the sky, a beautiful woman named Chang’e and an archer called Houyi fell in love.

When Chang’e lamented the scorching heat, Houyi used his magical arrows to shoot down nine of the suns. The Earth was now a perfect temperature, and the Queen Mother of the West rewarded Houyi with a potion for long life. Unwilling to live forever without his beloved, Houyi 124

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hid the potion away, but one day, the curious Chang’e found it and, not knowing what would happen, drank it. She rose up into the sky until she was one with the moon. Gazing up, Houyi often saw his wife chasing a rabbit; people today say that the rabbit and Chang’e “became one and the same.” They call her the Moon Goddess, blessing everyone from above. With this serenely told story complete, the modern-day family heads out to celebrate the holiday with lanterns that float up into the sky. Chuang’s accompanying artwork is a colorful blend of traditional Chinese and modern styles, depicting lush and magical scenes befitting the grand legend.

A handsome introduction to the Chinese Moon Festival’s origins and celebrations. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)

Piccolo Yaccarino, Dan | Christy Ottaviano Books (40 pp.) | $18.99 | September 30, 2025 9780316574563

Get ready to embark on an enchanting trip through Bella Città (Beautiful City).

The splendors of Italy are on full display as dapper shrew Piccolo decides to enjoy a day dedicated to visiting his favorite places. An initial trip to Miss Dolce’s Gelateria is interrupted, however, when he hears cries for help from his vulpine pal, Mr. Rosso. The fox needs to move his painting to the museum, and since the institution is on Piccolo’s list of places to visit, he’s more than happy to assist. What

follows is a series of sequences in which Piccolo aids friends and neighbors, visiting a fountain, the ancient ruins, a theater, and a garden along the way. A more fervent picture-book tribute to Italy may not exist. Yaccarino’s bold artwork makes excellent use of texture and shading; small joys abound, too, as in the clever references to famous artworks found in the book’s art museum (note The Vitruvian Man depicted as an octopus). Italian words appear throughout; translations are included at the book’s end, though some might take issue with gelato being equated with ice cream, as the two are made differently. Even so, this paean to Italian lands, culture, and food is a perfect read for anyone planning a trip there or for those who simply wish to read their children a tale soaked in the sights and sounds of the country.

A love letter to Italy at its best and a snazzy charmer of a book through and through. (Picture book. 3-7)

The Dinosaur Seed Yankey, Lindsey | Beaming Books (40 pp.) $18.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9798889830337

An ordinary day at the playground in the park turns into anything but when a group of imaginative kids meet up.

G-pa gives Cece 10 more minutes to play, but what a 10 minutes they are! At first, Cece slides and swings on the monkey bars but gradually turns to the group in the foreground: three children—Flora, Victor, and Wyatt—by a tree, one of whom has just found a “dinosaur seed”

A love letter to Italy at its best and a snazzy charmer of a book.

PICCOLO

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(in actuality, a rock). After cursory introductions, each of the children put their own spins on the imaginative interlude—a spooky robot, a hot lava tree—except Victor, who hangs on the periphery watching insects and insisting that rocks don’t grow…until Flora lends Victor a pair of binoculars that help the previously skeptical youngster see a gigantic dinosaur bug.

One spaceship ride later, the kids gradually shed their pretend play to help the spooky robot, aka G-pa, catch his dog. As the older man listens to the kids recount their adventure, he comes up with a quest to occupy Cece on their walk home. Yankey’s characters wear bright colors and patterns that pop against the sepia backgrounds. As the children’s imaginations take off, the pages fill with color that again leaches out as they return to reality.

G-pa and Cece are brown-skinned, and the supporting cast is diverse. Rereads are definitely necessary—the pictures reveal something new every time.

Sure to inspire many a flight of fancy.

(Picture book. 3-8)

One Can Be Zietlow Miller, Pat | Illus. by Annie Cron Beaming Books (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781506499932

Making a change for the better often starts with a single person.

A brownskinned child with hair in a bun enjoys spending time alone reading books, painting, and generally being solitary. (“One. / Alone. / No one else nearby. // One. / Needs peace. / Sometimes.”) After recharging in the garden (a place where “one can breathe. / And grow”), the youngster is drawn to a group of diverse kids playing at the park across the street and hesitantly decides to forge new connections. The young people bond, and soon the child shares plans to build a Little Free Library in the neighborhood. The protagonist’s solo efforts haven’t panned out, but with a K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Inspiration for both keen-eyed nature lovers and gardening families.

M Y P O L L I N AT O R G A R D E N

little elbow grease and teamwork, everyone works together to make their community a better place. Zietlow Miller has crafted a sensitive tale that depicts a young introvert striking a balance between finding time for solitude and reaching out to others.

The use of short, staccato sentences gives readers an opportunity to slow down and sit with the words, which ably capture the protagonist’s quiet yet determined voice. Cron’s retro-style illustrations, with their bright, washed-out pinks and greens and some spreads set against stark white backgrounds, convey feelings of serenity and optimism.

An empathetic tale that proves anyone can make a difference.

(Picture book. 4-7)

My Pollinator Garden: How I Plant for Bees, Butterflies, Beetles, and More Zwetchkenbaum, Jordan | Illus. by Kate Cosgrove | Holiday House (40 pp.) $18.99 | May 27, 2025 | 9780823454983 Series: Books for a Better Earth

A child’s introduction to gardening for pollinators.

Reserving the explicit introduction of concepts such as bio­ diversity and evolution for the brief author’s note, Zwetchkenbaum builds the narrative atop them. The pollinators covered in the book and the blooms the creatures visit are all native to North America, mostly the Northeast. An orange-tipped wood digger sips from a white beardtongue blossom; a red trillium lures a cloud

of fungus gnats with its carrion scent. For each creature-and-flower pair, the organisms’ Latin names appear in italic type beneath their common names in easy-to-read labels. A simple narrative, presented in larger type and voiced by a Black-presenting, ponytailed child, also unfolds, often explaining the special relationship between the pollinator and flower in question: “Butterflies can…reach nectar in long flowers. They need a place to stand.” Coupled with Cosgrove’s brushy-textured illustrations, Zwetchkenbaum’s straightforward prose will help children understand how the wild bergamot and the spicebush swallowtail are well suited to each other. Cosgrove’s depictions are accurate enough to depict the principles but not so detailed that children will likely be able to identify, say, an unequal cellophane bee or a spring beauty miner bee in the wild. No matter; the bibliography includes both books and websites that support further exploration. These adult-oriented resources will encourage intergenerational engagement. A thorough index is evidence of this deceptively simple book’s informational heft.

Inspiration for both keen-eyed nature lovers and gardening families.

(Informational picture book. 6-8)

For more by illustrator Kate Cosgrove, visit Kirkus online.

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2 1

Bedtime Tales To Guarantee Sweet Dreams 4

1 Bright Lights and Summer Nights

By Shauntay Grant; illus. by Zach Manbeck

5

Few reads offer a more enchanting bedtime experience.

2 Where the Deer Slip Through

By Katey Howes; illus.

by Beth Krommes

A visual and auditory delight.

3 Sleep Tight, Disgusting Blob

By Huw Aaron

A pleasurably spooky nighttime read.

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4 Lights at Night

By Tasha Hilderman; illus. by Maggie Zeng

Comforting and snoozy, just right for bedtime reading.

5 A Monstrous Bedtime

For more booklists, visit Kirkus online.

By Kerilynn Wilson

A creature feature worthy of every child’s nightly routine.

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Young Adult

LAURA SIMEON

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appealingly dramatic, largely monochromatic artwork features expressive salmon highlights.

Season of the Roses by Chloé Wary, translated by Jenna Allen (Fantagraphics Books, March 25), is an eye-catching French import that won two awards in 2020. Soccer player Barbara and her friends live in a multicultural suburb of high-rise apartment buildings, a setting that’s worlds away from the stereotypical, sanitized Paris that U.S. readers typically encounter. Colorful felt-tip pen illustrations lend energy to this tale of battling sexism in sports even as a winning girls’ team is forced to forfeit an opportunity in favor of prioritizing the boys’ team.

In Nordlys, a bestselling, multiple-award-winning fantasy series opener from Norway by Malin Falch, translated by Olivia Lasky (Inklore/Random House, May 13), a girl on the cusp of adulthood wants to keep enjoying the freedom and adventures of nature instead of settling down into staid village life. A Peter Pan–like figure pulls her into another world, where she encounters creatures from Nordic mythology and ends up in perilous circumstances. Her adventures are portrayed through cinematic illustrations.

Arcana: The Lost Heirs (Feiwel & Friends, June 24), by debut author/illustrator Sam Prentice-Jones, immerses readers in a London-based, tarot-influenced society of witches that’s responsible for monitoring magical activities.

Eli Jones is working in a coffee shop, completely unaware that he is a witch— or that there are others like him. Being recruited by Arcana offers him belonging and purpose. The remarkable artwork, which is both cozy and otherworldly, distinguishes this series opener, which celebrates its diverse and inclusive cast.

In a stirring, heartfelt collaboration between author SJ Sindu and illustrator Dion MBD, a teen struggles to connect with the mother she doesn’t remember. Tall Water (HarperAlley, August 12) follows Nimmi Campbell, who’s been raised by her white American journalist father and separated from her Sri Lankan mom by visa issues and the ongoing civil war. She and her dad finally make it back, but they barely settle in before the 2004 tsunami wreaks havoc on the orphanage run by Nimmi’s amma.

Illustration by Eric Scot t Ander son

VISUAL STORYTELLING—as evidenced by cave paintings and petroglyphs—predates written language by thousands of years. Many of the world’s languages still have no written form, preserving heritage through speech and physical culture. From coats of arms to emojis, we’ve long been drawn to communicate meaning through images. So it should be no wonder that graphic novels—despite decades of overt prejudice from those who denigrate them as not “real books”—are flourishing, attracting stressed-out, overscheduled young readers who might not have the time or energy for reading tradi­ tional prose. This year, we see the release of YA graphic novels richly varied in artistic style and content.

Following her splashy 2022 graphic memoir debut, Messy Roots, Laura Gao returns with Kirby’s Lessons for Falling (in Love) (HarperAlley, March 4), a coming-of-age story with a queer opposites-attract romance. After an injury sidelines Chinese American rock climber Kirby Tan, she embarks on a new extracurricular to raise her English grade.

Skeptical Kirby coauthors the student paper’s astrology-­ themed romance column with true believer Bex Santos. The

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.

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Y O U N G A D U LT

EDITOR’S PICK Two Maryland brothers unearth their mother’s tale of survival during the Guatemalan civil war in Leon’s harrowing graphic novel.

One day at school, José learns of the genocide trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, igniting his curiosity about his mother Clara’s past, even though she shuts down questions about her homeland (his dad missed home and moved back). His older brother, Charlie, also discourages José’s curiosity.

But news of the trial rattles José’s mom enough that she decides to finally share her story. In the early ’80s, Clara lived in her peaceful Qʼeqchiʼ Mayan village, blissfully

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star

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untouched by the raging war—but everything changed with the arrival of the Guatemalan army and their brutally violent “full-blown scorched-earth operation.” Thanks to her fierce queer sister, Elena, Clara escaped, but the girls were forced to separate. Clara eventually headed to the U.S. alone. Deeply affected by their mother’s story, José and Charlie reflect on their family roots, embarking on a mission to determine their long-lost aunt’s fate. Split into four chapters that share the perspectives of the central characters, Leon’s testament to the power of historical memory movingly explores how the echoes of

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Sisters in the Wind

By Angeline Boulley

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And the Trees Stare Back

By Gigi Griffis

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Silenced Voices

By Pablo Leon

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The Story of My Anger

By Jasminne Mendez

Silenced Voices: Reclaiming Memories From the Guatemalan Genocide Leon, Pablo | HarperAlley | 240 pp. | $18.99 paper | September 2, 2025 | 9780063223554

trauma continue to reverberate across the Guatemalan and Indigenous diasporas, often spanning generations. The unflinching, grounded artwork, which emphasizes the characters’ expressions

and emotions, offers a few moments of levity amid the mostly unseen acts of violence.

A beautiful, timely reminder that hope is never out of reach. (author’s note) (Graphic fiction. 14-18)

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By Sonora Reyes

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By Eugene Yelchin

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A powerful story of family, belonging, and identity with thriller elements.

SISTERS IN THE WIND

From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides: A Latinx Comics Anthology Ed. by Aldama, Frederick Luis & Angela M. Sánchez | Mad Creek/Ohio State Univ. Press (224 pp.) | $22.95 paper | August 13, 2025 9780814259481 | Series: Latinographix

The vibrant cover art depicting a luchador eating a taco is the perfect teaser for what this anthology has in store.

Editors Aldama and Sánchez divide the work into two major sections—“Cocinas” and “Sports y Locura”—each of which contains chapters that group works together by themes, including “Building Bridges, Building Community” and “Belonging…Dolor y Alegría.” The authors and illustrators run with the inspiration provided by food and sports, exploring the nuances of diaspora culture and belonging through the lens of their diverse Latinx heritages. The varied artistic styles include both full-color and black-and-white illustrations.

While the central focus on Latinx identity is strongly developed throughout, some of the entries feel too similar to one another to stand out on their own, making this collection better for dipping into and browsing than reading cover to cover. Some stories are brief and humorous while others are longer, more thoughtful pieces reflecting on serious topics. The strongest narratives are the ones rooted in memoir and family history, such as Valerie Martínez Cabrera and Andrés Vera Martínez’ “Lamesa” (a story of enduring Chicano cultural pride in mid-20th-century Texas, which features atmospheric, 130

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sepia-toned illustrations) and “El Limber” by Rafael Rosado (a charmingly buoyant slice-of-life tale set in 1970s Puerto Rico).

Many readers will find a story that resonates with them in this broad-ranging anthology. (contributor bios) (Graphic anthology. 12-18)

Leaving the Station Arlow, Jake Maia | Storytide/ HarperCollins (304 pp.) | $19.99 August 19, 2025 | 9780063078772

After a disastrous start to her college career, an 18-­ year-old takes a cross-­country train trip home for Thanksgiving.

Zoe Tauber hasn’t been going to classes, has fallen out with the fellow queer friends she made during orientation, and is unsure whether she wants to be with her boyfriend or be like him. The long journey from New York to Seattle seems like the perfect chance to escape into anonymity, but as the train chugs along, Zoe finds herself feeling more known than ever when she meets Oakley. As Zoe, who’s Jewish, alternates between reminiscing about the past few months and embracing the joy Oakley suddenly brings to her life, she learns about Oakley’s struggles as a lesbian in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Shared revelations— that Zoe has a boyfriend and that Oakley is considering returning to the church—result in the pair’s veering away from each other just as they’re on the verge of creating the community they both long for. Brief discussions of

queer issues and Zoe’s gender dysphoria make for compelling and sympathetic hooks, but they’re overshadowed by Oakley’s sanctimonious musings and by banter between the white-coded leads that comes off as far too argumentative to be endearing. The escalation of Zoe and Oakley’s relationship over the course of a few days feels rushed and unearned, undermining the book’s attempts to deliver a genuine emotional payload.

Intriguing in places but underdeveloped. (Fiction. 16-18)

Kirkus Star

Sisters in the Wind Boulley, Angeline | Henry Holt (384 pp.) $19.99 | September 2, 2025 | 9781250328533

A wary teen wonders if she should run when people come looking for her.

Lucy Smith was raised by her white father, who said little about her mother.

Following his death and her stepmother’s abandonment, Lucy entered the foster care system at 14. Her stepmother revealed that Lucy’s birth mom was Native American, but her social worker urged her to keep that quiet.

Battered by her time in the foster care system, it’s no wonder that 18-year-old Lucy is cautious when she’s approached by a man who says he’s an attorney who helps Native American foster kids connect with their families and communities. He introduces her to a friend who reveals to Lucy that she knows her Ojibwe maternal relatives— but a wary Lucy refuses her offer to learn more. Someone is stalking her, after all, and the FBI is investigating the bomb that went off in the diner where she worked—an event she’s sure targeted her. This stand-alone from bestseller Boulley, who’s an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, includes characters her fans will recognize from K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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previous works. The action scenes are mediated by ruminations on the failings of the foster care system and strong portrayals of Lucy’s relationship with her father and her complicated identity. Ardent book lover Lucy is a sympathetic narrator whose strong sense of justice is coupled with a deep acceptance of others.

A powerful story of family, belonging, and identity interlaced with thriller elements. (content warning, author’s note) (Thriller. 14-18)

Espada: The Will of the Blade Colazo, Anabel | Trans. by Diego Jourdan Pereira | Oni Press (184 pp.) | $19.99 paper | May 6, 2025 | 9781637157596

In this translated graphic novel from Spain, a princess must find her own way through conflicting stories about who wields power in her kingdom.

Ania is the heir to the throne—and the magic—in a land where bas-reliefs in old ruins tell of a sword-wielding hero who defended people from a demon and granted them “great power intended to guide them to do righteous things through magic.”

These days, however, the version of the story that people tell is different—and it’s one that concentrates magical powers in the hands of the queen, Ania’s mother. At her behest, Ania embarks on an official mission to the north to investigate a forest where medicinal herbs grow; form diplomatic bonds; and “seize the day to reflect upon your power.” Ania sets off, accompanied by Elisa, a healer who has been living in the palace with whom she has a sweet romance.

Ania also takes the mysterious sword she found while exploring one day that has brought a strange presence into her life. In the lead up to a major battle, her understanding of what it means to be a ruler is tested. This artistically rich work offers reflections on power and peace, but the depth and complexity of the lore and worldbuilding feel overwhelming at times.

The lush flora, opulent palace, and stylized, K IR KU S R E V IE W S

white-presenting human cast add to the fablelike atmosphere.

A visually and narratively complex fantasy adventure.

(Graphic fantasy. 12-18)

Confronting Suicide Currie-McGhee, Leanne ReferencePoint Press (64 pp.) $33.95 | August 1, 2025 | 9781678212148

Disheartening rates of teen suicide make this book’s clearly presented information valuable.

Currie-McGhee identifies mental health challenges as a serious issue, particularly among young women, Native populations, veterans, Black teens, and LGBTQ+ youth. She argues that “one of the biggest barriers to addressing youth suicide among all groups is the stigma surrounding mental health”: Sharing stories and resources can save lives. The book explains that mental health troubles are often hidden, treatment doesn’t always prevent suicide, feelings of guilt can complicate grief, and suicide loss survivors can experience physical distress.

Numerous moving anecdotes lie at the heart of the book, describing youths who struggled and many who offer models of recovery and change. The eight brief chapters also cover surviving an attempt, warning signs, research on risk factors, and healing processes. The chapter discussing suicide’s devastating effects on family and friends is especially powerful.

The emphasis on helping others closes the book on a much-needed positive note.

The author advocates persuasively for seeking help, from both professionals and close personal connections, and offers readers abundant practical advice on doing so; she also includes ideas on how to respond to those in crisis. Text boxes highlight key quotes, and stock photos depict racially diverse people.

A brief, somber, and potentially life-saving resource. (source notes, getting help and information, index, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 13-18)

Trance Denman, K.L. | Orca (128 pp.) | $10.95 paper | August 19, 2025 | 9781459841321

Her best friend, Brigid, is in a coma, and Kira knows why—but can she figure out what it will take to bring her back?

It began at a sleepover four years earlier, when Brigid tripped, grasped Zoe’s hand, and then fell into a trance. After Zoe took Brigid’s hand again, she returned to consciousness from what she described as a “misty place,” where she’d seen Zoe’s great-grandmother dispatch a bear with a frying pan. Zoe’s mother confirmed this had really happened—and all the other girls wanted to hold Brigid’s hand and hear more of her visions. Kira has made an app for Brigid’s readings and persuaded her to charge a fee. The two redheaded besties keep the readings secret from Brigid’s devoutly Christian mother, who sees evil everywhere.

When, in a freak accident, someone drives a truck into the bench they’re sitting on, Brigid’s client Laney is killed, and Brigid and Zoe are injured. Now, Laney can’t take Brigid’s hand and bring her back from her trance state. Kira, along with Laney’s family friend Max, seeks to awaken Brigid before her mother ends life support. Their search uncovers clues to the source of Brigid’s gift. This story for reluctant readers features an intriguing premise but feels unfinished thanks to the thin and sketchy plot and generic characters. Removing two pivotal characters early on hampers the depth and development of the story, requiring narrator Kira to fill in plot holes with exposition and flashbacks.

A miss. (Supernatural thriller. 12-18)

For another thriller for reluctant readers, visit Kirkus online.

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Sugar Crash

Marisol Acts the Part

Di Lorenzo, Melinda | Orca (128 pp.) | $10.95 paper | August 19, 2025 | 9781459840249

Gonzalez Rose, Elle | Joy Revolution (320 pp.) $19.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9780593900529

Stranded on a mountainside, a teen who has Type 1 diabetes must find a way to work with her former best friend to survive.

Seventeen-­yearold Zoe Harmon missed the bus for her overnight senior class field trip because of an episode of low blood sugar. Knowing that her graduation will be in jeopardy if she can’t write the required essay about the experience for English class, where she’s already struggling, Zoe does the unthinkable—she asks her nemesis, Vic Niels, for a ride. What was supposed to be a shortcut to the camp turns disastrous when Vic’s car careens off a mountain road and into a tree in the middle of a surprise snowstorm. A battered Zoe locates Vic, who’s in bad shape, too—and the realization that she’s in serious trouble sets in as she discovers that the backpack containing everything she needs to manage her diabetes is missing. Now the teens must overcome their animosity and work together. With compact, plot-driven chapters and realistic teen dialogue geared toward reluctant readers, this thrilling survival story has Zoe facing one calamity after another. As someone living with Type 1 diabetes, Di Lorenzo lends an authentic voice, providing ample information about navigating an invisible disability while also tackling topics such as mixed feelings over the loss of friendship and the rekindling of romantic feelings. Both protagonists present white.

An 18-year-old actor is determined to prove her worth.

Marisol Polly-Rodriguez, who’s bisexual and Puerto Rican, became famous starring alongside her real-life boyfriend, Miles Zhao, in a high school drama for four years. But when Miles lands a role on prestigious, award-winning television show The Limit, he dumps her, explaining that they’re moving in “different directions.”

Wanting to prove she can do serious work, too, Marisol nabs a recurring guest role on The Limit. The caliber of the show isn’t the only change, though.

Leaving California, adjusting to life in New York, and moving in with her largely absent dad (a gay man who helped out his friend, Marisol’s mom, by donating sperm when she decided to become a solo parent) is hard enough; work on set is difficult and frustrating for Marisol under a volatile director. Her new co-star, the distractingly attractive, brown-skinned Moroccan American Jamila El-Amrani, quickly becomes her daily bright spot. As their friendship blossoms into something more, and Marisol builds new relationships with family members, she starts to regain her confidence. With influences from Legally Blonde, this lighthearted rom-com features fun peeks into celebrity life—and some valid critiques—while staying grounded in a realistic comingof-age narrative. The romance is sweet, but there’s little development or tension until the third act; the plot is propelled more by Marisol’s inner growth, which is ultimately rewarding. Secondary

A highly engaging, nail-biting adventure with much-needed representation and a touch of romance. (diabetes resource) (Adventure. 12-18)

Speculative, unsettling, and intensely emotional.

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characters are largely one-note, but big-hearted, exuberant Marisol shines.

A breezy Sapphic story with a fabulous lead. (Fiction. 12-18)

Kirkus Star

And the Trees Stare Back Griffis, Gigi | Holiday House (368 pp.) $19.99 | May 27, 2025 | 9780823459124

In 1980s Estonia, the grip of the USSR is beginning to loosen even as one girl’s attempt to save her sister exposes a dark reality.

Five years ago, in 1984, Viktoria made a horrible mistake—during a moment of distraction, she let her 5-year-old sister disappear in the bog behind their house, a place where such events are common. Now Anna has returned, but she hasn’t aged. She can’t explain where she’s been, and the bog seems to call her back. With the oracle cards she carries as a guide, 16-year-old Vik desperately tries to figure out what to do while navigating turmoil with her closest friend, Liis, and facing the hostile villagers, who turn on her family.

Although the Estonians’ language and culture have survived decades of Soviet oppression—which is loosening—some people are more interested in assimilating with Russians. The influence of Vik’s maternal uncle Silver, who supports the Soviet way of thinking and runs the government asylum just outside of town, looms large. In this politically astute story filled with skillfully incorporated background information about a fascinating and complex historical period, Vik’s quest authentically and thoroughly incorporates her struggles with OCD and complex PTSD (which Griffis explains in a mental health note but aren’t diagnosed in-world). Liis has a limb difference, and Vik’s mother has PTSD, too. This gripping, deeply human, and eerie mystery has parallels to current events that will provoke readers to think.

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Speculative, unsettling, and intensely emotional. (historical note) (Horror. 14-18)

Exploring Environmental Sciences Careers Howard, Sherry | Twenty-First Century/ Lerner (64 pp.) | $14.99 paper | August 1, 2025 9798765684887 | Series: Career Quest

A wide-angled survey of green careers.

In this concise work that’s divided into five main sections, Howard begins by filling in some historical background about the modern environmental movement, including the impact of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and George Washington Carver’s influence on agricultural conservation (she also frankly notes that in terms of both race and gender, environmental science fields are still some of the least diverse). Taking as her purview a range of career fields broad enough to involve “most skill sets and interests,” she offers a mix of typical job descriptions with average salary ranges and canny advice, beginning with self-analysis of one’s strengths and interests. She also covers suggested coursework, military and civilian training programs, and higher education requirements. The careers include some that readers may already have considered, such as park ranger, but so many scientific and industrial occupations have environmental aspects—from public health and civil engineering to wind turbine maintenance—that they will learn about many others that are sure to be new. In Chapter 5, “The Future,” Howard discusses the impact of climate change, growth in clean energy, and AI on environmentally related careers. The book’s bright design and conversational tone add to its appeal. The stock photos include images of racially diverse people.

An accessible work that’s rich in both helpful tips and possibilities. (glossary, source notes, bibliography, further information, index, image credits) (Nonfiction. 12-18) K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Exploring Gaming Industry Careers Howard, Sherry & Mari Bolte Twenty-First Century/Lerner (64 pp.) $14.99 paper | August 1, 2025 9798765684894 | Series: Career Quest

A cursory review of options and opportunities for young gamers who are thinking about turning their passion into a career.

Surveying a huge, competitive, and rapidly changing industry in a relatively brief series entry is no small challenge. The authors divide their work into six main chapters, covering an overview of the gaming industry’s origins, programming and engineering roles, creative careers, jobs related to the development and post-production aspects of games, professional gaming, and ways of breaking into the industry. Due to the sheer number and variety of possible career paths, the qualifications range all over the map from simple raw talent and an extraordinary work ethic for aspiring professional gamers to formal education from high school diploma to MBA for the rest. The authors offer more detailed descriptions for select occupations, including average salaries, but much of the advice is applicable to preparing for careers in any field (for example, networking, interning, volunteering, and developing good communication and teamwork skills). The book’s positive tone is supported by stock photos of smiling, racially diverse people. Text boxes cover topics such as the marginalization of women in the gaming industry, concerns about the use of AI, and the gamification of military training. While this work barely scratches the surface, it may encourage readers to explore further on their own.

A basic introduction to a popular field. (glossary, source notes, bibliography, further information, index, image credits) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Scorched Earth Jensen, Danielle L. | Tor Teen (752 pp.) $19.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781250290823 Series: Dark Shores, 4

The Dark Shores series concludes with largescale political, military, and magical conflicts.

Beginning right where Gilded Serpent (2021) left off, Jensen tosses readers right back into the action; they would benefit from rereading previous installments for reminders on the well-populated landscape.

After facing Rufina, Killian struggles with his love for Lydia, although the Corrupter has twisted her so she’s “barely recognizable.” Meanwhile, Marcus’ desperate flight through a dangerous number of xenthier jumps leaves him vulnerable, and Teriana must deal with villainous proconsul Cassius to find a way to save both him and her people. The pages are densely packed, covering internal conflicts within the various nations of Reath (such as intrigues over Mudamora’s crown), the inventive strategies and tactics of various military operations (the Thirty-Seventh Legion demonstrates how threatening the Celendor Empire is to every other nation), and attempts to counter the supernatural blight (in a more mystical storyline).

The characters’ relationships anchor the complicated goings-on: Fate constantly conspires to keep the point-of-view couples apart in logical, natural ways, so that when they culminate in (tastefully) spicy scenes, it’s deeply romantic. While certain story beats and betrayals are predictable, the theme of good versus evil is given nuance through characters’ making mistakes and seeking redemption. The high-stakes, high-cost climax resolves on an optimistic note.

Diversity is widespread and casually accepted, except for Celendor’s preference for those of “Cel blood.”

A big, bold send-off for beloved characters. (map) (Fantasy. 14-adult) JULY 1, 2025

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A compelling drama that stuns with its strikingly beautiful writing.

THE STORY OF MY ANGER

Starstrike Lee, Yoon Ha | Delacorte (368 pp.) $19.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9780593488379 Series: Moonstorm, 2

Hwa Young pilots her lancer for the rebel clanners while figuring out where her loyalties should lie in this follow-up to 2024’s Moonstorm.

Now regarded as traitors to the Empire of New Joseon, Hwa Young and her fellow pilots are helping the rebel clanners secure their freedom.

Their treasonous act—destroying the Empire’s bomb that would have created a “ravenous black hole”—has left them disoriented and grieving the loss of one of their own. Hwa Young is desperate to reconnect with Commander Aera, her clone-mother, and convince her to allow a mission to rescue her best friend, Geum—zie is being held prisoner on the Imperial flagship for helping Hwa Young. But the closer she gets to repairing her relationship with Mother Aera, the more Hwa Young loses her identity.

As time passes, Hwa Young realizes the clanners aren’t much different from the ruthless Empire: Nothing in this political war over space and technology is as it seems. Amid shifting loyalties and easy betrayals, Hwa Young must figure out whom she can trust even as she struggles with her identity and sense of belonging. While the scheming and fight scenes keep things interesting, the detailed worldbuilding slows the story down at times. The characters in this Korean-inspired fantasy world are diverse in gender and sexuality and 134

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include nonbinary and transgender cast members.

Returning fans will enjoy this solid sequel, which continues the high-tech intrigue. (map, character guide) (Science fiction. 12-18)

Blood Moon Lewis, Britney S. | Page Street (384 pp.) $18.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9798890032294

A new college student discovers that there may be some truth to her hometown’s werewolf legends.

All her life, Mirabella “Mira” Owens has heard the strange tales about Timber Plains, Kansas: Years ago, werewolves came to the small town to defend humans from a horde of vampires. Now 18-year-old Mira, who’s still coping with the mysterious disappearance of her mother five years prior, is beginning her first year of college at a local university. There, she meets Julian Santos, an attractive classmate who harbors an unexplained animosity toward her. Despite his initial coldness, a bond grows between them after Julian miraculously saves Mira from a steep fall in the nearby forest. As the two draw closer, Mira discovers that there’s more to the local stories than she realized—and that she’s stumbled into a magical war that’s brewing with which her own family history is intricately entwined. Though many elements of the story will feel familiar to experienced paranormal romance readers, unexpected twists and complex lore keep the narrative fresh. The pace meanders for much of the book, but the

momentum eventually builds to a riveting conclusion that will leave readers invested in the next installment.

Mira is Black, Julian is Latine, and there’s additional racial diversity among the supporting cast.

A thrilling series opener that readers will be eager to sink their teeth into. (author’s note) (Paranormal. 14-18)

Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire Martin, Don | Page Street (336 pp.) | $18.99 August 5, 2025 | 9798890032706

A teenage witch goes up against the evil king of the mountain to save a cursed village.

Witch-in-­ training Verity Vox has spent a year apiece in different villages, helping in any way she can as she learns her art. When it’s time to move on, she receives a sign that shows her where to go next. When the latest sign appears in the form of a note begging for help that floats down on a leaf, she’s eager for the challenge. Verity winds up in Foxfire, a village in the Appalachian mountains that’s been magically cut off from the rest of the world for years, leaving its people close to starvation.

The root of their suffering is a man they know as Earl, who lives in the hills and strikes deals with the townspeople that ultimately cause crops to wither, folks to disappear, and the only bridge out of the valley to crumble. Verity is determined to change the villagers’ fortunes, but to do so she’ll have to face off against not just Earl but the ancient power of the mountains itself. Loosely based on the Germanic Erlking legend and told in a voice reminiscent of folktales, the story features a queer romance and a cast that presents white.

The convoluted magic system undercuts the strong themes of reciprocity, poverty, and privilege, but Appalachian readers will instantly recognize home.

A sweet if muddled tale of the magic of Appalachia. (Fantasy. 13-18)

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Mistress of Bones Medina, Maria Z. | Wednesday Books (336 pp.) $20 | August 5, 2025 | 9781250888235

In a fantasy setting inspired by Spain, a young necromancer will stop at nothing to raise her sister from the dead.

Nineteen-yearold Azul del Arroyo lives in a world built on the bones of ancient gods. She has a rare and powerful gift: the ability to bring the dead back to life—as long as she has possession of their bones. It’s magic she has used only sparingly. The first time, when she was 10, she resurrected her beloved sister, Isadora. But when, in search of adventure, the two journey to Valanje, the land of the Lord Death himself, tragedy strikes and Isadora dies again.

Determined to help her sister defy death a second time, Azul sets out to reclaim Isadora’s remains. Standing in her way is Virel Enjul, Emissary of the Lord Death, who considers necromancy unnatural. They come to a shaky truce after Azul agrees to help him find another necromancer that he’s seeking. The novel offers a compelling premise and a rich foundation for a fantasy tale. However, the worldbuilding, while imaginative, often feels muddled and inconsistent, leaving key elements underexplained.

Frequent shifts in perspective among the large cast of characters and a nonlinear timeline that jumps between past and present add to the confusion and may leave readers struggling to piece together the broader narrative.

A debut based on an interesting premise that’s unfortunately lacking in clarity. (Fantasy. 14-18)

For another fantasy with a European setting, visit Kirkus online.

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Kirkus Star

The Story of My Anger Mendez, Jasminne | Dial Books (336 pp.) $19.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9780593531877

Texas high schooler Yulieta Lopez learns to channel her anger into activism.

Yuli, a Black, second-generation Dominican American junior, experiences racism in her school’s drama program. Her beloved Ethnic Studies teacher, Mr. Gonzalez, who’s Mexican American, faces censorship of his curriculum and classroom library. Yuli often feels that her rage is impossible to contain. Although initially unsure about speaking out—“I’m an actor…not an activist…”—she’s angered by the injustices she endures and witnesses and is further galvanized by her family’s revolutionary spirit and past. Encouraged by her brother, Yunior, who reminds her that “Art IS activism,” Yuli organizes guerilla theater resistance protests with her friends, supported

by Mr. G., who becomes the faculty sponsor for their club, A.C.T. NOW, or “Activism. Collaboration.

Transformation. Now!” Although they face setbacks, Yuli’s story demonstrates the power of persistence and tapping into your passion to make change. Mendez fluidly and creatively tells Yuli’s story through a variety of formats, including a play script, group text chats, and verse. A powerful love letter to finding and using your voice, this story will resonate deeply with those who struggle to feel seen and nurtured, particularly young women of color. Fans of Elizabeth Acevedo and Amber McBride will devour and delight in Mendez’s latest, which centers on a racially diverse cast and explores timely topics like racism, book banning, and censorship in schools.

A compelling drama with a firecracker protagonist that stuns with its strikingly beautiful writing. (author’s note) (Verse fiction. 13-18)

The L.O.V.E. Club Min, Lio | Flatiron Books (368 pp.) | $20.99 August 5, 2025 | 9781250359827

Three Chinese American teens fight for their lives inside a video game.

High school senior O has been a shadow of her former self ever since her friend group, the L.O.V.E. Club, fractured three years ago. First, ringleader Elle mysteriously disappeared, and then Liberty and Vera moved away, leaving O to fend for herself in their Chinese immigrant community in Calendula, a California desert town (Liberty, who’s trans, has a white mom). But when Liberty and Vera suddenly show up at school, something unreal happens. In the secret study room in their old middle school library where they used to hang out, the girls discover a video game called Morning Glory, which seems like a clear reference to Elle’s obsession with flowers. After O impulsively decides to play, they’re transported into the game.

They find themselves battling surreal monsters and hostile landscapes formed from their memories. The game, seemingly created by Elle, forces them to confront raw wounds from their time together and apart. Each girl’s story unfolds in turn, painting a heart-­ wrenching picture of how generational trauma has affected their friendships.

Armed with a notebook that can bend the fabric of the game, O must write the story of their journey to healing. Min’s sophomore novel is full of vivid and imaginative action and horror elements, but its true heart lies in the mystery (and gut-punch reveal) of the circumstances behind Elle’s disappearance.

An emotional thriller that explores themes of memory and friendship.

(Fantasy. 14-18) JULY 1, 2025

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THE KIRKUS Q&A: FRED FORDHAM How the artist, known for his graphic novel adaptations, approached an all-time classic of young people’s literature.

BY TOM BEER

You didn’t read A Wizard of Earthsea when you were given it as a child. Did you encounter Le Guin’s work again later in life?

When I was at university, I studied philosophy and came across a short story that Le Guin wrote, “The Ones Who Walk Away From 136

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Omelas,” which is just a lovely philosophical thought experiment. That’s a big part of Le Guin’s appeal, I think—being a poet and a philosopher first, and then a storyteller who makes those things interesting and palatable. I do consider myself a real fan now.

How did this graphic novel come about?

Theo got in touch with me in 2020. The original idea was to do one of his mother’s big science fiction novels, The Dispossessed or The Left Hand of Darkness. I read them and thought they were extraordinary, but both books would have involved so much worldbuilding and so much time that we probably couldn’t make the maths add up for a publisher.

At first, there was some apprehension about A Wizard of Earthsea because it has a complicated history with adaptation. [The author disliked a 2004 miniseries that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel.—Ed.] But then it did have the practical benefit—alongside being an extraordinarily poetic story—of being relatively short and also having enough of a devoted fan

base that it wouldn’t seem quite so crazy for a publisher to take a chance on it. By this point, Theo and I had been in touch for quite a while, and I considered him a friend. We trusted each other and had similar instincts.

What do you look for in a book you might want to adapt?

Can I make it look interesting? Earthsea has got the potential to be visually spectacular. Then there’s the question of whether it could plausibly work in sequential storytelling. One of the trapdoors under a graphic novel adaptation is essentially doing the text with illustrations. But there’s something about comics and graphic novels as a medium that’s different to prose literature and different to film. I still don’t feel intelligent K IR KU S R E V IE W S

Camille Johnston

WHEN FRED FORDHAM was a child, an aunt gave him a copy of A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic fantasy novel from 1968. The book was a favorite that his aunt read to her own children. “I didn’t read it at the time,” Fordham says, “it got left on the shelf. I was a shade too young for it.”

Years later, Fordham—today an accomplished artist who has created graphic novel adaptations of classics like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World—was approached by Theo Downes-Le Guin, son of the author, who died in 2018. Would Fordham be interested in adapting one of his mother’s books?

The result, after several years of work, is A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel, which Clarion Books published this spring. In exquisite, painterly images, Fordham retells the story of Ged, a lowborn boy with magical abilities who must grapple with his own pride and folly—not to mention a dark spirit that he has inadvertently unleashed—before coming into his inheritance as a powerful mage. In a starred review, a Kirkus critic said it was “a beloved cornerstone of the genre brought vividly to life through striking illustrations.”

With Downes-Le Guin’s blessing, Fordham dedicated the book to his aunt. “Sadly, she died while I was working on this graphic novel, so she never got to see it,” Fordham explains.

“There’s a real poignancy to it.”

On a Zoom call from his home in London, Fordham, 39, discussed the brilliance of Le Guin’s writing and the unique challenges of presenting the story in a visual format. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q & A // Y O U N G A D U LT

enough to wax philosophical about it. Have you ever read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics?

Funny, we interviewed McCloud for this issue as well. [See page 98.— Ed.] But I haven’t read that book, no.

I do recommend it to anyone interested in storytelling— it’s the best analysis of the medium that I’ve read. But the answer to your question is that it does depend on the text. In the case of Earthsea, it’s tricky, because it doesn’t have much dialogue—­ it’s told very like a fable.

Whereas, with To Kill a Mockingbird, it was so straightforward. There’s so much beautiful dialogue that you just draw the narration and have the characters say the lines, and that’s kind of it. But we thought that Earthsea, so long as we kept the narrator’s voice, could work sequentially and look spectacular. It could be a

slightly unconventional graphic novel. And I think that comes out in the art style, where we moved away from the traditional line art.

I wanted to ask you about the artwork. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not conventional, as you say. Is it watercolors?

It’s almost all digital, actually, although I do mix in watercolor washes and things. I come from a traditional painting background. This is just a purely personal aesthetic bias, but I don’t particularly like that slightly plasticky look that you get with some mainstream comics.

I like texture. I like something that looks like it could exist in the real world. So I try mixing textures and things to make it feel like an actual piece of art. I’ve come to realize that the thing that really matters is the story.

You don’t need to make something look like a

comic for it to have all the benefits of the medium.

This adaptation is not beat-by-beat storytelling, which the cartoon style of drawing lends itself to. It’s much more gently paced and philosophical, and so this painterly style felt like it worked.

In the case of a realistic novel like To Kill a Mockingbird, there’s historical research you can do to recreate the world. How do you go about creating the look of Le Guin’s imagined world?

Le Guin had written quite a few notes that Theo shared, which were very, very helpful. She didn’t want the Viking machismo or fairy twee of conventional swords-and-sorcery fantasy. Earthsea is a preindustrial fantasy world, so anytime from ancient Rome to the late Middle Ages and, I suppose, up until the Industrial Revolution—but it had to feel real.

I didn’t have to do lots of elaborate conceptual research. I could mostly just look at historical clothing and paintings to use as reference. The other helpful thing is that she didn’t want the magic to be all kinds of pyrotechnics and garishness, either. It ended up being a relatively grounded thing.

What do you hope readers take away from your treatment of the book?

For people who already love the original, I would hope that this feels like a sincere effort to faithfully portray the story in a new medium. Le Guin’s prose is so poetic; I hope that some of that tone has been captured. As for new readers, I suppose it’s the same thing: I hope that it does something like what the original novel does, and I hope that it feels visually exciting enough to stand as a worthy accompaniment.

I’ve come to realize that the thing that really matters is the story.

A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel Le Guin, Ursula K.

Adapted and illustrated by Fred Fordham | Clarion/HarperCollins 288 pp. | $26.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9780063285767

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Readers struggle alongside Cesar on his heart-wrenching journey to self-love.

THE GOLDEN BOY’S GUIDE TO BIPOL AR

AI and Deception: Plagiarism, Deep Fakes, and More Mooney, Carla | ReferencePoint Press (64 pp.) $33.95 | August 1, 2025 | 9781678210663

An alarming overview of the uses—and misuses—to which artificial intelligence is already being put.

For readers who might be hazy on the general differences between concepts like weak vs. generative AI or what often-heard terms like deepfakes or natural language processing might mean, Mooney lays out the basics in simple, low-tech language. But when it comes to specific examples or details of technology or technique, this work is less robust, going more for rehashed reports of news services and other companies that were caught using AI improperly interspersed with ominous but vague references to increasingly sophisticated scams and disinformation campaigns by shadowy bad actors. The chapter on plagiarism and cheating discusses AI in academia and efforts to detect or prevent it, by, for example, creating assignments that cannot be completed with AI; students rightly or wrongly accused of misconduct chime in with brief, cautionary quotes. The final chapter, on synthetic identity fraud, describes this rapidly growing crime and preventative measures. The author’s barrage of warnings, underscored by suggestions that new ways to abuse AI are emerging far more quickly than efforts to counter them, insistently and cogently conveys the message that the threat is real, and its level is 138

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rising. Stock photos showing racially diverse individuals punctuate the text.

Topical and accessible, but mostly useful as a jumping-off point. (source notes, organizations and websites, for further research, index, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Exploring Engineering Careers Morkes, Andrew | Twenty-First Century/ Lerner (64 pp.) | $14.99 paper | August 1, 2025 9798765684870 | Series: Career Quest

Useful guidance for career-minded young makers who may wish to pursue engineering.

Folding in statistics on average salaries and projected growth rates, Morkes offers a broad overview of select pursuits covered by the umbrella term engineering—from spaceship, roller coaster, and software design to criminal forensics— and makes the cogent observation that not all of them require costly graduate degrees. To broaden the field’s appeal a bit further, he also points to the essential role of engineering in glamorous developing technologies, like virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and lists distinguished people, including a president (Herbert Hoover) and several astronauts (Mae Jemison, Ellen Ochoa, and Neil Armstrong), who trained as engineers. For readers who are already thinking seriously about turning themselves into attractive job candidates, the author provides a helpful set of questions to ask at informational interviews, identifies engineering organizations that have youth outreach

programs, and evaluates the pros and cons of different training paths, including higher education, apprenticeships, and the military. Depicting a diverse cast in action, the stock color photos are scanty but relevant, and the backmatter features generous annotated lists of useful print and web resources.

A concise, information-packed overview with an emphasis on helpful practical advice. (glossary, source notes, bibliography, index, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

The Secret Investigator of Astor Street: A Piper Sail Mystery Morrill, Stephanie | Blink (384 pp.) | $18.99 August 5, 2025 | 9780310175810

A recent high school graduate from a well-to-do family investigates the gritty underworld of 1920s Chicago.

Piper Sail has a lot on her mind.

Still mourning the loss of her best friend, Lydia LeVine, whose kidnapping and murder she solved, Piper is grappling with what to do with her life: “If only that were a career option for women—being a detective.” When Louisa Dell, a student at Piper’s alma mater, Presley’s School for Girls, asks Piper to look into her brother Clarence’s supposed suicide, Piper launches herself into another investigation. She navigates the social restrictions of the time with aplomb, while also continuing her romance with handsome detective Mariano Cassano, much to her status-conscious family’s chagrin. Readers will enjoy Piper’s tenacity and her unwillingness to be socially pigeonholed even as she takes risks and courts danger. Morrill nicely depicts Piper’s growing independence as she steps into adulthood, while realistically showing that a young woman of means would face blowback for entertaining the unconventional career of private investigator. The author presents several potential K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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suspects, keeping readers on their toes right alongside Piper, who’s an engaging and sympathetic protagonist. The exploration of shifting family dynamics and looming adulthood feels relatable, no matter the time period. Most characters are cued white.

A twisty story that will keep armchair sleuths guessing—and rooting for its appealing amateur sleuth. (historical note) (Historical mystery. 13-18)

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Ost, Kat | Rhiza Edge (128 pp.) $11.99 paper | August 12, 2025 9781761112577 | Series: Rhiza Shorts

A 15-year-old Australian girl’s life as a baking influencer is anything but a piece of cake.

Becca has appeared in baking videos with her mum, who owns a patisserie, since she was a toddler. Baking used to be fun, but with the constant pressure of brand partnerships, collaboration with other content creators, and the overbearing presence of Aunt Jane, her social media manager, @BeccaBakes has spiraled into an unwieldy monster.

There’s no easy recipe for balancing teenage insecurities, a slipping follower count, and schoolwork. It only gets worse when Aunt Jane, who believes that Becca has gained too much weight, rebrands the account @BeccaBakesBetter and pressures her to shift her focus: “Still baking but a healthier, diet-conscious platform.” Poetry lover Becca begins posting anonymously in an online form, Poet’s Portal, where she finds a new friend who truly understands her. As the pressure on Becca to succeed intensifies, she must choose between what her family wants for her and what she wants for herself. This concise story with a simple yet compelling narrative, told in language that’s accessible to reluctant readers, is utterly heartwarming. The short chapters open with Becca’s social media statistics and a rating of her mood, fun details that help readers track both her online status K IR KU S R E V IE W S

and emotional state. Through her deeply relatable characters, Ost authentically depicts modern teenage experiences.

Characters read white.

An appealing and uplifting story about finding your way to what you love.

(Fiction. 12-18)

Dead Girls Don’t Talk Paul, Sandra J. | Skyscape (377 pp.) | $16.99 paper | July 29, 2025 | 9781662531897

A dead girl gets to tell her side of the story—but even death can’t guarantee the truth​.

This dual-­ perspective psychological thriller invites readers into the fraught lives of two girls who are caught in a spiral of secrets​, guilt​, and betrayal​. Told in the voices of Syl Jameson, a 17-year-old​who dies in a suspicious car crash, and Viola Harrison, also 17, her estranged former best friend and prime suspect​, the book deftly balances the paranormal with gritty emotional realism. Syl’s ghostly narration pulses with quiet intensity as she pieces together what happened and why, while Viola’s voice exposes the complex impact of friendships, privilege, and trauma that defined their relationship. The smalltown American setting of Lovell (ironically nicknamed Love Hill) feels like a character in its own right. The heavily Christian community, established in the late 1600s “by white supremacists,” pushes queer residents into hiding. This work by Belgian author Paul, who wrote it in English, features sharp, emotionally resonant​, and deeply atmospheric prose. The structure of the book, which lets readers choose whose version to read first, cleverly emphasizes the subjectivity of truth but can at times lead to repetitiveness. Even though some revelations lack depth, the narrative maintains a steady pace and will linger long after readers turn the last page. All characters read white.

Haunting and heartfelt. (Thriller. 15-18)

Kirkus Star

The Golden Boy’s Guide to Bipolar Reyes, Sonora | Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $19.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9780063358409

In this stand-alone companion to The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School (2022), Cesar Flores heads into the new year with confidence and high hopes— but things don’t go as smoothly as expected.

Cesar has great friends and a lovingly overbearing sister, Yami.

There’s also Jamal, his “ex-boyfriend/ current best friend.” Kissing Jamal had crossed his mind, but when things go wrong with the New Year’s Eve fireworks they bought, and they end up in each other’s arms again, they’re forced to address the elephant in the room: the fact that they still love each other. But it’s complicated—last year, Cesar, who’s bisexual, confessed their relationship to a priest at school, accepted that being with Jamal was a sin, and broke up with him as his penance.

He doesn’t want to go to hell.

Although he has many sources of support, his religious struggles bubble up as intrusive thoughts.

Still, he’s going to therapy and taking his meds, so he’s fine...until he stops taking his meds and isn’t so fine anymore. Cesar’s father, who was deported to Mexico, reaches out after a long silence to say that he believes that a “brainwashed” Cesar has chosen “this lifestyle over family, and over God.” This harsh judgment affects all aspects of Cesar’s life, including his relationship with Jamal and his own inner narrative. In this immersive tale that looks unflinchingly at difficult truths, readers struggle alongside Cesar on his heart-wrenching journey to self-­ acceptance and self-love.

Deeply cathartic. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14-18)

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Exploring Building Trade Careers Robison, Greg | Twenty-First Century/Lerner (64 pp.) | $14.99 paper | August 1, 2025 | 9798765684863 | Series: Career Quest

A compact guide offering ideas for middle and high schoolers looking for careers that won’t take years of training or leave them saddled with student debt.

“Every day is a new adventure when you are a plumber.”

However unrealistic it may be to promise readers salaries in the high five to six figures without having to earn a college degree, Robison does show the appeal of the building trades by positioning them as creative, non-office-based occupations that allow for a healthy work-life balance, which in turn contributes to greater happiness. He describes in very general terms what these trades are, from welding and masonry to urban design and environmental consulting, and lays out suggested courses of preparation, such as finding part-time or summer jobs while still in high school, developing communication and other soft skills, interning, apprenticing, job shadowing, and volunteering. It all feels a bit theoretical, since he doesn’t interview or profile actual workers, but the bright stock photos show a racially diverse assortment of people employed in various settings, and the lists of print and online sources for further information at the end have a practical bent.

Shining with positivity; offers suggested first steps toward making realistic and fulfilling life choices. (glossary, source notes, bibliography, index, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Water in Her Veins

Lady Dragon

Schuren, Shannon | Viking (368 pp.) $19.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9780593621431

Strickland, A.M. | Feiwel & Friends (352 pp.) $19.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9781250325907

Mysterious small-­town lore haunts an ailing teen’s relocation to the mountains.

Lola Boyd is devastated to leave her small Michigan hometown as well as her best friend, Bryn, who’s nonbinary, for a new start in Claret Creek, Colorado. Her mom has remarried the unlikable Kurt (“my new step-dick’s superpower is the ability to make me feel invisible—even when the conversation is about me”), and at his urging the three are pursuing a new adventure. They’re moving into Boyd Manor, Lola’s late father’s childhood home, which she’s set to inherit when she turns 25. Lola’s battle with a debilitating and hard-to-explain chronic illness worsens when she arrives in Claret Creek, and she starts to experience otherworldly hallucinations that seem to be channeling people’s memories and revealing moments from the town’s past. New friends Clare, Sage, Emory, and Fletcher offer Lola help in understanding her mysterious family connection to Claret Creek’s history, which involves revered local physician Dr. Clarett and an alleged witch who had a connection to Boyd Manor. Although the cliffhanger chapter endings build suspense throughout, inconsistent characterization hinders the believability of the cast members’ motives. The complex events of the past, which are explored by the contemporary characters, lead to a neatly wrapped up conclusion that strains credulity. Most characters present white, and siblings Sage and Clare are Latine.

Human and dragon princesses navigate ancient magic and forbidden attraction to save their world.

To maintain diplomatic relations between dragons and humans, Kirek, a draconic princess, is sent in her human form from the dragons’ mountain keep to meet the human Queen of Andrath and her 18-year-old heir, Samansa. Although interspecies pairings are prohibited, the princesses are drawn to one another. When their stolen kiss breaks the Heartstone, which facilitates human-dragon communication, and forges a pair bond between them, the princesses are forced to travel across the realm to uncover the secrets that separate their kinds in the hope of uniting against a growing threat. Although both societies are matriarchal, the worldbuilding features high contrasts between the rugged, utilitarian dragon realm and the soft, lush human one, distinctions that are embodied physically and emotionally in the princesses themselves. Elements of Strickland’s fantasy world feel reminiscent of medieval Europe. The carefully plotted action sequences and battles between dragons result in carnage and aren’t for the squeamish.

There is ample LGBTQ+ representation among the main and supporting characters, and the book explores timely topics, such as gender expression, sexism, reproductive freedom, and acceptance of transgender people.

Pale, redheaded Samansa, who’s “short and soft and plump,” presents white, and Kirek, in her human form, has purplish gray hair, silver eyes, and pale skin. There’s diversity in skin tone among the supporting characters.

Creepy and suspenseful but ultimately dissatisfying. (Paranormal thriller. 14-18)

Dramatic and well-wrought, with strong crossover appeal for adult readers.

L ADY DR AGON

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Dramatic and well-wrought, with strong crossover appeal for adult readers. (author’s note) (Fantasy. 15-adult)

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Exceptional: underpinned by strong but restrained feelings.

I WISH I DIDN’T HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS

The Whisperings Sutherland, Joel A. | Tundra Books (288 pp.) $17.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781774881019

Haunted families find peace.

Seventeen-­yearold Joana Guest is used to feeling like an outsider.

Her itinerant father, Jack, moves her and her 13-year-old brother, Peter, around the cities and towns of Vermont, staying in each place for just a short time before they pick up and go again. Jack is plagued by what he calls the Whisperings—voices that only he can hear and that seem to threaten his family. Lured by the prospect of steady handyman work for Jack, the small family moves into the basement of a decrepit Victorian mansion in Burlington that’s owned by the slightly batty Mrs. Cracknell. But they soon learn that the house is as infested with ghosts as their own lives are. Joana begins seeing things, including the spirit of her late mother, who was murdered, and after she suffers a head injury, her father’s ability to see and hear the Whisperings transfers to her. The “ta-tump” of Joana’s heartbeat, mimicked by the tapping of the deathwatch beetles living in the walls of the Guests’ new home, is a recurring motif. The family has to unravel the mystery of the house’s violent past, as well as resolve the unfinished business from their own tragedy. The story is marked by an eerie sense of unreality, as hallucinations and dreams interweave with very real danger, and the on-page gore outweighs more emotionally wrought scares. Most characters are cued white.

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Vern: Custodian of the Universe Waiters, Tyrell | Flying Eye Books (176 pp.) $20.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9781838742744

The new custodian of a multiversal research facility must help clean up an interdimensional mess.

Burned out after a fruitless job search, Vern, a young Black man, drives home to Florida from San Francisco, eager to rest. But his grandmother has gotten him a job with her former employer. Quasar Industries researches the multiverse, hoping to find a new home for humanity. As their new custodian, Vern cleans up unexplainable messes, like blue multi-eyed interdimensional goo (“begone, weird eyeball dudes”), while getting lost in rooms that open to different dimensions. In one such room, he finds a strange machine that transports him to the edge of the multiverse when he plugs it in. There he meets the Void, who repeatedly asks him, “What is the point?”

Unable to answer, Vern is dispatched to an alternate dimension—the Void promises to recall him for an answer after he’s had a little time to think. However, Vern has unwittingly sparked a catastrophe that could end humanity—and it’s up to him to stop it. This engaging, entertaining story has an intriguing plot and a fairly passive protagonist in Vern. Fortunately, Waiters’ experimental art brings Vern’s adventures to life, playing with form and color to creatively represent his movements through time and space. The story balances topics like climate change, late-stage capitalism, and humanity’s self-sabotaging actions with a hopeful outlook, humorous tone, and a dash of family intrigue.

An imaginative multiversal adventure.

(Graphic science fiction. 14-adult)

Kirkus Star

I Wish I Didn’t Have To Tell You This: A Graphic Memoir Yelchin, Eugene | Candlewick (432 pp.) $22.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9781536215533

Following upon his acclaimed illustrated middle-­ grade memoir, The Genius Under the Table (2021), Yelchin switches to a graphic format to continue his account of growing up in the Soviet Union.

This entry covers events from 1980 to 1983, when the young artist received hard-won permission to depart for the U.S. In spare text and grayscale illustrations, this episodic narrative records a period of tumultuous emotional ups and downs. On the one hand, Yelchin experienced the triumph of finding professional work in stage design and the thrill of an increasingly close, if sometimes awkward, relationship with visiting American student Libby, who changed his life. He also experienced the shock of losing a refusenik Jewish friend to what was likely a KGB assassination and was confined in a Siberian psychiatric hospital, where he was heavily drugged and physically restrained, after tearing up draft notices. In the artwork, blurry background scenes of snowy streets and photos of Leonid Brezhnev’s jowly face on TV strongly evoke the feeling of living in a repressive, authoritarian state, while figures, particularly those with speaking roles, stand out against the drab backdrops. The young leads make a particularly engaging couple—one small, pretty, and expressive, the other lanky, hunched, and limp-haired. Yelchin has such a gift for depicting faces with distinctive character that everyone here, from struggling artists to scowling soldiers and functionaries, will leave as strong an impression on readers as the oppressive setting.

An exceptional work: atmospherically illustrated and underpinned by strong but restrained feelings.

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Disability Pride Month Reads 1 Interabled

By Shane Burcaw & Hannah Burcaw

A welcoming and inclusive celebration of love.

1 5

2 All the Noise at Once

By DeAndra Davis

An atmospheric gridiron tale that highlights the complexities of team sports, friendship, and bias.

3 And the Trees Stare Back

By Gigi Griffis

Speculative, unsettling, and intensely emotional.

4 Climate of Chaos

By Cassandra Newbould

An exciting, high-stakes story offering relevant social commentary.

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2 6

5 Every Borrowed Beat

By Erin Stewart

3

Alternately heart-wrenching and heartwarming.

6 Daughter of Doom

By Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem; trans.

by Kristen Gehrman

For more booklists, visit Kirkus online.

4

Atmospheric and thought-provoking.

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Indie GRAPHIC LITERATURE for adults has, of course, a very long history. In fact, the earliest known example of visual storytelling was created some 50,000 years ago, in an Indonesian cave painting of a pig and humanoid figures.

Some modern-day graphic novels have been cited as among the greatest works ever written, including Art Spiegelman’s harrowing, Pulitzer Prize–winning Holocaust saga, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, serialized in the magazine Raw from 1980 to 1991, and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Hugo Award–winning Watchmen, a kaleidoscopic deconstruction of superhero comics that inspired film and television adaptations.

Countless writers and artists have used the graphic-lit form to create boundary-pushing works in all genres. Here are three engaging examples, all recommended by Kirkus Indie: Author/illustrator Alison Garwood-Jones’ Kirkusstarred I Miss My Mommy: 150 Portraits of Orphaned Adults (2024) is aimed specifically at readers over the age of 50 who’ve lost both parents. It presents a series of brief, one-page sketches of fictional individuals at various stages of the grief process, from “The Shell Shocked” (“Alex finds 144

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loud noises unbearable”) and “The Deniers” (“Jana still can’t believe everyone in her photos is gone”) to “The Survivors” (“Chris has made it this far because of his friends”) and “The Grateful” (“Louis says his parents exist in him all the time. Remembering them makes him purr”). Cartoon-art aficio­ nados may be reminded of Jules Feiffer’s work. Kirkus’ reviewer called it “a unique book with more than a few profound philosophical moments that evoke peace and foster emotional healing.”

Caravaggio: A Light Before the Darkness (2020) by writer Ken Mora and illustrator Cyrus Mesarcia offers a sometimes-brutal tale of Italian Baroque painter Michelangelo Caravaggio. As the story begins in 1591, the artist and his male lover,

Mario, decide to flee Milan after their friend, convicted of sodomy, is burned at the stake. To do so, Caravaggio must collect outstanding debts, which results in violent confrontations. In Rome, the artist gains fame for exquisite paintings, but his short temper creates dangerous enemies. Our reviewer praised how the creators depicted Caravaggio as a “queer, swashbuckling adventurer,” noting how images of the artist’s “muscled figure against shadowy, gothic backdrops call to mind a fantasy hero more than a historical figure, while the story and exquisite artwork deliver one actionpacked scene after another.”

Barbara Slate provides an entertaining way to experience a daunting government publication in The Mueller Report Graphic Novel (2020), which presents fully illustrated excerpts from the 448-page, two-volume Report

on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In Slate’s condensed interpretation, our reviewer noted, “Readers can learn all about Russian spies’ posing as Donald Trump supporters on Facebook; the infamous meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian agents in Trump Tower; Trump’s asking for United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ resignation; and Trump’s many colorful tweets.” The author’s simple, lighthearted caricatures of powerful figures are sharp throughout, in the grand tradition of political cartooning. It’s a lively use of a comic-book format to clarify relevant, real-life events, and it goes to show how versatile works of graphic literature can be.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.

Illustration by Eric Scot t Ander son

PICTURE THIS

DAVID RAPP

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INDIE

EDITOR’S PICK In Fox’s YA mystery, a teenager must piece together the truth behind her apparent suicide—and the events leading up to it—from beyond the grave.

Sixteen-year-old Nicole Benson wakes up confused and disoriented on a bright platform floating in an abyss, surrounded by a group of kids her age and younger, many of whom have horrific injuries that disappear soon after she sees them. They’re taken to “Substation Fifteen,” where they are welcomed and assigned mentors to support and guide them as they prepare for “The Evaluation,” which they must pass in order to move on to their next destination. Nicole’s mentor, Grace, explains that Nicole is dead and that Substation Fifteen is for those who have died by suicide. (“Lemon-yellow

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star

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lights illuminate a larger area. ‘This is the simulation center devoted to viewing memory projections.’ We’d better get YouTube and Netflix or I’m definitely leaving.”) Though Nicole comes to remember falling to her death, she can’t recall the events leading up to it…but she’s absolutely certain that she didn’t do it on purpose. Sure, her life wasn’t perfect: Her mother died when she was a baby, she’s insecure about her looks, and the object of her infatuation, Alex Traynor, is dating her frenemy, Cassie Church. Still, Nicole knows that she didn’t kill herself. As the 30-day countdown to The Evaluation ticks by, Nicole begins to master skills, like entering the dreams of her loved ones, telekinesis, astral traveling, and even materializing before the

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The Little Things That Kill

By Annie Fox

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The Little Things That Kill: A Teen Friendship Afterlife Apology Tour Fox, Annie | Electric Eggplant | 322 pp. $27.99 | $16.99 paper | February 13, 2024 9781943649099 | 9781943649082 paper

living. In doing so, she starts to reclaim her memories from her final day. Fox’s captivating mystery explores adolescent friendships, betrayals, and suicide with cleverness and an abundance of compassion. The characters are well developed, distinctive, and compelling. (Nicole, a gifted singer-songwriter, guitar player, and actor, is sympathetic and relatable;

Ash & Feather

By Sharon Frances

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The Unofficial Batman: The Animated Interviews, Vol. 2

By W.R. Miller

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she’s also judgmental and a bit conniving.) Readers will enjoy the author’s imaginative worldbuilding and exploration of the supernatural and will be especially enthralled by the dizzying twists and turns as the circumstances surrounding Nicole’s death are revealed.

A compassionate exploration of friendship and betrayal wrapped up in a true page-turning mystery.

Ezarah and Elyse: Starlit Ballet

By Essence Neely; illus. by Hameo Pham

159

In My Father’s Tire Tracks

By Jack Sheedy

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INDIE

A fresh take on well-being with clear, easy-to-follow self-help elements.

THE HAPPINESS EXPERIMENT

Aaker on Branding: 2nd Edition: The Playbook to Building Strong Brands Aaker, David | Morgan James Publishing (200 pp.) | $18.95 paper | May 6, 2025 | 9781636986654

Aaker updates this comprehensive overview of brands, outlining their strategic significance and the ways in which they should be established and managed.

The author here assesses the seismic shift in the ways in which brands are understood—they have been reinterpreted as assets, a reimagining that “started a dramatic and far-reaching cascade of change.” Aaker not only charts this grand historical change (and its organizational ramifications); he also meticulously details the proper way to create and manage a brand portfolio. At the heart of his brief but comprehensive take are the “5 Bs”: brand equity, brand relevance, brand image, brand loyalty, and brand portfolio (each element is crucial to the whole). As the author contends, a brand is much more than an identifiable name or logo—it’s a “promise” to consistently deliver to costumers a product or service, as well as something more intangibly personal (“It is also a journey, an evolving relationship based on a customer’s perceptions and experiences whenever he or she connects to the brand”). The manager of a brand must find ways to differentiate it from its commercial rivals, and this includes crafting a kind of personality, one buoyed by creating “signature stories” that break through “media clutter, information overload, and audience skepticism.” (Aaker also discusses “signature social programs” that express a brand’s moral conscience.)

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branding is painstakingly and convincingly made—the author identifies 16 ways a brand adds value to an organization.

This new edition adds more illustrative case studies—this exacting study is relentlessly concrete—and condenses Aaker’s considerable body of work on the subject found in other books. The author’s writing is always clear and mercifully absent the technical jargon and New-Age cant routinely found in books of this kind. This is precisely what one wants from a single-volume study aspiring to be authoritative—the work is lucid, thorough, and empirically straightforward.

A valuable resource filled with edifying information and actionable insights.

High Hopes Abel, Anne | She Writes Press (256 pp.) $17.99 paper | September 23, 2025 9781647429720

Abel offers a memoir about how her decision to follow Bruce Springsteen on tour in Australia led to a transformative journey of healing and hope.

Having struggled with depression since she was a teenager, 59-year-old Abel had tried dozens of antidepressants, electro­ convulsive therapy, psychiatric hospital stays, and even transcranial magnetic stimulation—all with very limited success. However, when she reluctantly attended her first-ever concert in 2012, in her hometown of Philadelphia, the music of Springsteen helped her feel better than she ever had before. One year later, she quit her teaching position at a community college and flew to Australia to attend eight Springsteen concerts in an attempt to keep her depression from

relapsing. On her trip, Abel experienced travel difficulties, found unexpected friendships, and made connections between music and everyday life, as when she compares skillful, steady drumming to a functional family: “A good family offers steady, reliable support to its members so that they can go off and try things, take risks, figure things out.” The things that she learned while abroad have an enormous impact on her life back home, prompting her to reevaluate certain relationships and challenge herself in new ways, as when she co-hosted a radio show as a guest.

Over the course of this remembrance, Abel’s narrative voice is unadorned, but it’s always warm and honest—a reflection of the keen insights about life that she discovers through her journey.

Some concert details (“Jake Clemons had a solo. Tom Morello had a solo”) are likely to interest only Springsteen fanatics. However, Abel largely grounds her story in her emotional discoveries, which gives the narrative a feeling of undeniable energy. She ultimately delivers an inspiring memoir for anyone questioning whether they have what it takes to move forward.

An earnest and straightforward personal account that serves as a reminder that it’s never too late to heal.

The Happiness Experiment: A Revolutionary Way to Increase Happiness Barney, Carl B. | Greenleaf Book Group Press (300 pp.) | $24.95 July 8, 2025 | 9798886452891

Barney, a succ­ essful educational entrepreneur and founder of the Prometheus Foundation, tells how a near-death experience led him to inves­ tigate what happiness is and how to achieve it.

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from Reno, Nevada. Eerie silence ensued, and the author’s thoughts turned toward his loved ones, and his gratitude that they were in his will. He envisioned them in a “formal, cold meeting,” he says, listening as his last will and testament was read to them by an attorney. Thinking about this grim scene, he realized that he “didn’t like this picture one bit. There had to be a better way”; he wanted to see the most important people in his life “experience the pleasure and happiness” of his bequests while he was still alive. He then shares how he created and conducted what he ultimately coins the “Happiness Experiment,” in which he offered money—not bequests, but what he calls “pre-quests”—to his loved ones with explicit directions that they work with a Happiness Coach and create a Happiness Plan; this, he says, would ensure that they spend their funds in ways that bring them true joy. With each pre-quest, he revised his ideas about joy, ultimately learning that “the way to achieve real, lasting happiness is through values and virtues.” Backed by the author’s own expertise in Aristotelian thought and his work in education, this book clearly provides readers with intriguing concepts about happiness, taking off from the notion that “few people take enough time to think about what would make them happier [and] few intentionally create a plan to pursue it.” The “Lives Transformed” portion, which shows the impact that his experiment had on his loved ones’ lives, is particularly compelling.

Throughout, the author’s inclusion of conversations with his business partner makes his thoughts easy to follow. An accompanying workbook and pre-quest guide effectively provide further explanation and an action plan.

A fresh take on well-being with clear, easy-to-follow self-help elements.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

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Forever, Cedar Key Bobbitt, Michael Presley Aphroditois Books (268 pp.) | $24.99 June 7, 2025 | 9798218668853

Bobbitt offers a post-apocalyptic sequel about the surviving residents of Cedar Key, Florida, as they defend their home island and disappearing way of life.

Roughly a year after the nuclear meltdown that precipitated the events of Godspeed, Cedar Key (2024), the remaining few hundred residents of the titular locale—about a quarter of its former population—are slowly rebuilding their economy and infrastructure.

Despite damage from nuclear fallout and extreme weather, the locals have managed to start breeding chickens again and have even mastered using slow-burning wood to create fuel for cars and boats. Although the once-­ central clamming industry is no longer viable, some fauna have returned to the island, including a bounty of white shrimp. The story opens with the marriage of Cedar Key’s Luke Buck to a woman named Kinsey from Sumner, on the mainland. Their wedding symbolizes a tenuous peace between the two communities, who came to blows over old grudges and dwindling resources in the early days of the “new world.”

As it happens, the wedding isn’t the only cause for celebration, because Col. Robert McCloud—long assumed dead—returns in a dramatic crash landing after more than a year on the mainland. Sent out from Cedar Key for reconnaissance, the colonel was shot down in the wilds of Florida, surviving only by using his old Marine Corps training. He discovers in short order that he was shot down by Isaac Skipjack, a known entity on the island and the son of Buddy Skipjack, a fisherman who was caught stealing clams in the late 1990s and later died in the back of a police car. Now, years later, Isaac is leading a Coast Guard

ship full of other mainlanders, with violence on his mind.

Bobbitt’s follow-up to his debut offers a reading experience that many readers will find similar to that of the first installment, which is a very good thing.

Like its predecessor, this novel brims with characters whose attachments to one another feel real and carry emotional weight. For example, Mark David—a Cedar Key fisherman and the father of young mayor Hayes David— took young Isaac in years ago, but the boy soon discovered that Mark may have been involved in his biological father’s death. In addition, the author’s expertise about the culture and geography of the part of the country in which the series is set makes for a richly detailed, authentic-feeling read: “When the bay is glassy calm, and the tide is low, it’s easy for the farmer to think big thoughts about what everything means, to find allegory in a diving cormorant, metaphor in the interplay of light and water.” Such vivid prose abounds in these pages, and the action scenes studded throughout the story—most especially, the gun and naval battles in which characters on both sides of the conflict fight and die—­ make for a propulsive narrative through which readers will be happy to travel.

A heartfelt, page-turning tale that effectively stands on its own while also living up to its predecessor.

Before the Birds Sang Words Bruce, Ken | Self (396 pp.) | $30 January 1, 2023 | 9798218241063

Bruce offers a detailed history of the development of Disneyland’s influential Enchanted Tiki Room attraction.

In his jovial introduction, writer/director Brad Bird says that the author’s investigation into Disney’s Tiki Room is “about all the blood, sweat, tears, innovation and will that go into spell-weaving.” For Bruce, the Tiki Room, which debuted its JULY 1, 2025

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singing mechanical birds and on-trend Polynesian design to the public in 1963, represented midcentury America’s “ultimate expression of all things exotic.”

The author has gone to great lengths to back that claim up, delving deep into the history of Walt Disney himself and the myriad influences that converged for the creation of the Tiki Room to explore Disney’s idiosyncrasies, the creation of Disneyland itself, and the cultural and technological explosions of the time. Bruce begins with a much younger Disney as he first discovers mechanical toys in Europe, leading to an obsession with miniatures and dioramas that set the foundation for what would become Disneyland. The fascinating story of the struggling postwar Disney studios, desperate for a hit, plays out in the background as Disney animation fuels Walt’s vision of opening his park. The author consistently expands his point of view, zooming out from Disney to explore the style and atmosphere of the 1960s in general. The text includes a stunning amount of detail; Bruce writes with the confidence of an expert. In his exuberance, however, it does sometimes feel that he leaves his main subject behind, getting lost in specific details about Walt Disney the man, but he eventually ties his various threads together into one engrossing narrative of the Tiki Room’s artistic evolution and opening. The author covers a lot of ground and does so with consistent good-natured humor: “One hundred and sixty acres of orange groves in Anaheim, California, never knew what hit them,” he writes about the opening of Disneyland; readers discovering these stories for the first time will likely feel the same.

A sprawling, charming look at Disney, amusement parks, and mid-20th-century Americana.

Odyssey Moscow: One American’s Journey From Russia Optimist to Prisoner of the State Calvey, Michael | The History Press (272 pp.) $21.99 paper | April 29, 2025 | 9781837050277

An American businessman recounts his experiences as a Russian prisoner in this debut memoir.

In February 2019, Calvey was awakened in his Moscow apartment by officers with the Federal Security Service (the successor organization to the Soviet Union’s secret police, the KGB) who had burst through his front door. “In the course of a few surreal, terrifying hours,” he writes in the book’s preface, he had “morphed from one of the most successful Western businessmen in Russia into a prisoner of the state.” The co-founder of Baring Vostok, a private equity firm with billions in assets, Calvey was charged with embezzlement stemming from a corporate dispute with two minority shareholders whose claims, he states, were “bogus and without substance.” As a wealthy American businessman, his arrest and subsequent trial made international headlines. In this book, he offers a first-hand account of corruption, abuse, and political intrigue in 21st-century Russia. He compares the Russian Investigative Committee to George Orwell’s dystopian “Ministry of Truth” and details inmate hierarchies inside cell 604, where his fellow prisoners included a former Deputy Minister of Culture. Calvey acknowledges the advantages his American citizenship

A haunting look at contemporary Russia.

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and personal wealth granted him in contrast to his Russian-born comrades in prison: Not only could he afford one of Russia’s best criminal lawyers, he had the support of the U.S. Department of State during both the Trump and Biden administrations. (“My wrongful detention was raised by them and others in almost every bilateral meeting held between the US and Russian government officials from 2019 and 2022,” he writes.) While he was initially found guilty and sentenced to house arrest, he was allowed to leave the country, and he was reunited with his loved ones in Oklahoma. His company would fully disinvest from Russia following the invasion of the Ukraine, and his conviction was ultimately vacated in 2024. The author’s intimate, gripping writing style, as well as his expertise on contemporary Russian politics and business, paint an accessible, troubling portrait of a nation increasingly reliant on authoritarian, state-sanctioned violence and intimidation.

A haunting look at contemporary Russia from the perspective of an American prisoner.

Secrets at the Aviary Inn Clarke, MaryAnn | Nymphaea Press (444 pp.) $24.99 paper | May 19, 2025 | 9780994950796

In Clarke’s novel, a newly minted Canadian university graduate travels to England to uncover the secrets of her mother’s mysterious past.

Sophie Groenveld has finished her undergraduate studies in Toronto. She and her boyfriend, Marc-Antoine, are in York, England, a stop on their grand European tour. Sophie is here against her parents’ wishes, but she is on a mission.

The only thing she knows about her mother’s background is that she was born and raised in York; she is determined to learn her mother’s full history. After an argument at a local pub, Marc-Antoine deserts Sophie, mistakenly taking her backpack with him instead of his own.

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Now, she is without money, passport, and rail pass. Desperate for funds, she scores a job as the night-desk clerk at The Aviary Inn, owned and managed by the enigmatic Mrs. Ava Roxtoby, who is at times efficient and alert and at other times appears to wander in a daze. Sophie detects an underlying sadness in the woman and feels an urge to connect. (She explains early on that she is “drawn to people, curious about them, and involved in their stories.”) Gradually, Sophie also begins to suspect that her mother has a connection to this Inn, with its quirky collection of stuffed birds and its assortment of live feathered friends in its unique private aviary. Clarke’s coming-ofage novel tracks Sophie’s summer-long interactions with a cohort of Inn employees; an elderly, mercurial Inn resident; and a growing circle of friends (including a couple of potential romantic partners) as she hunts down clues to her mother’s origins and tackles her own troubles. The story is slow-paced, but the prose, peppered with a variety of local accents, terminology, and customs, is engaging, and there are enough twists and turns to maintain readers’ interest.

As secrets unravel, there are only a few surprises, but the plotline is addictive and Sophie is a sturdy, likeable protagonist.

A pleasant, entertaining read, light on tension.

A Million YES’s Corchin, DJ | Illus. by Dan Dougherty The phazelFOZ Company (50 pp.) | $17.99 September 1, 2025 | 9781732864634

A girl learns that saying “yes” isn’t always the right thing to do in Corchin’s picture book.

When her friend needs help, a young girl (unnamed in the text) doesn’t hesitate to offer her a large, literal word “YES” from the pile she maintains. (“It was a BIG YES. I can spare it, she thought.”) The kinder the girl is to others, the less kind she is to herself, and the less able she is to provide meaningful assistance as she struggles to keep up with the growing list of people asking for her K IR KU S R E V IE W S

help. One day, the people disappear, and the girl retreats to her home in defeat, feeling exhausted, lonely, and empty. She decides to take a step back and cultivate a small, unique YES just for herself. Armed with this YES, the girl learns to face a world full of problems in a healthier way.

This follow-up to A Thousand No’s (2020) is a concise tale about setting boundaries that demonstrates healthy emotional habits in a way that children of a variety of ages can follow. The girl’s eventual solution will offer a glimmer of hope to any young readers feeling overextended.

Dougherty’s illustrations bring a quirky, fantastical Victorian aesthetic that highlights all the YES’s in color; the characters and backgrounds are rendered as black-and-white drawings.

A thought-provoking, positive guide to understanding boundaries.

An Ugly World For Beautiful Boys Costello, Rob | Lethe Press (376 pp.) $22 paper | April 20, 2025 | 9781590217962

A small-town gay teen struggles with bullying, family trauma, and longings for a glitzier life than is good for him in Cost­ ello’s YA coming-­ of-age novel.

Toby Ryerson is a 17-year-old living in the dreary town of Shelter Valley in the Adirondacks.

There, his habitual snarky attitude, makeup, and a wardrobe heavy on women’s lingerie make him the target of homophobic slurs and beatings, while his assignations with random men at the Marsh Trail cruising ground earn him comparisons with his mother, Bonnie, who overdosed when he was 4 years old.

Toby dreams of fleeing to New York City to see his drag-queen idol Ravisha Mann’s Manntasia show; he has no interest in attending college, as his half brother and guardian, Jimmy, a paper-mill worker whose only solace is restoring his ’69 Camaro, wants him to.

Tensions boil over when Toby outs his ex-boyfriend Dylan, who responds with

violence; Toby is rescued by Gabe Fournier, a handsome 30-something resplendent in “black leather biker boots, a threadbare wife-beater, and crotch-tight Levis” who puts Toby’s tormentors to flight. Gabe tries to mentor Toby—the relationship turns sexual and is further complicated by Gabe’s history with Jimmy, who bullied him in high school. Toby finally runs away to Manhattan to live with Gabe, but his dream becomes nightmarish when he confronts the reality of Gabe’s big-city life. Costello complicates this story of queer pride and small-town bigotry with nuances and subterranean conflicts: Even the Trump-supporting characters possess sensitivity and insight, while Toby’s put-upon self-­ righteousness masks his own callousness and irresponsibility. Costello’s prose is sharp and vivid—he delves into his characters with an evocative lyricism. (“He was bull-necked, blue-collared, and as hulking as a load of cement, bearing down on life with a weary kind of tenacity, all brusqueness and persistence and as earnest as a freight train.”) Readers will root for Toby to figure things out before the world’s ugliness marks him too deeply.

An engrossing tale full of spiky attitude that masks roiling emotions.

Seneca: Evolution Deeb, Rayya | Mediology (196 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 5, 2025 | 9781734201635

In the conclusion to Deeb’s YA SF series, a brilliant young hacker and her friends strive to purge evil forces that have corrupted an amazing technocratic utopia located below the ground.

In a future beset by climate-change strife in the “Aboves” zone, Southern California teenager and math prodigy (and recreational super-hacker) Dorothy “Doro” Campbell had been initiated into a secretive society called Seneca.

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Emotional lessons about family, resolution, and love.

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installations around the world), Seneca ostensibly grooms elite youths to become the saviors of the endangered Earth. In reality, however, the place has been compromised by amoral, power-­ hungry corporate forces with a different agenda. Doro, aided by her biotech­ nologist boyfriend, Dominic, and a few other trusted allies, has uncovered evidence of nanotechnology surveillance, media lies, and mind control.

She has also investigated the mysterious disappearance of her father, Johnny, who had just discovered a solution to heal the atmosphere’s sundered ozone layer. In this installment, Doro emerges from a 54-day coma, a side-effect of a neural attack courtesy of the sinister Flex Corporation. Doro and Dom are mentally wired into an online connection with other humans throughout Seneca. This is a sword that cuts both ways: The duo can virtually travel anywhere and sense conspiracies (such as an ambitious Mars settlement–terraforming scheme meant to extend Seneca’s totalitarian rule to another planet), but at the same time they are vulnerable to nefarious traps and digital fail-safes in the system. With hidden allies emerging from all directions, can the tide be turned? This is very much a gang’s-all-here cast reunion of the various heroes, villains, and in-betweens from throughout Deeb’s series, many proclaiming slogans like “The time has come for us to take back the tools of oppression. Help us reshape the world” in pep-rally proliferation. The “science” aspect of the narrative is fairly indistinguishable from magic, but the author ably depicts the exhilaration of dawning mass-awareness in a shared consciousness and reliably delivers the SF genre’s seemingly mandatory messages of resilience, eco-justice, and girl power as the saga reaches an upbeat conclusion.

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The young come to the rescue of the future as this series reaches its celebratory climax.

Quiet Mind Crazy Heart: A Spiritual Memoir Edwards, Suzi K. | Self (280 pp.) | $19.99 June 14, 2022 | 9798834822776

In this memoir, a jet-setting socialite remembers rock ’n’ roll shenanigans of the 1960s and her eventual discovery of the healing power of yoga.

To say that Edwards was simply a ’60s scenester would be a gross understatement. She not only hung out with the Rolling Stones, but also ran with Andy Warhol’s crowd at Max’s Kansas City in New York. Her remembrance in these pages is forthright and revealing.

For instance, she notes that she did lots of drugs and had lots of sex, but that she didn’t experience an orgasm until LSD “unlocked the magic door.” She studied fashion design at the London College of Fashion and almost immediately found success in the industry as a designer in New York. But in 1972, when the author was 28, Edwards felt worn out and decided to walk away from it all. She was later diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, she says, and she experienced two marriages that ended unhappily. Along the way, though, she stumbled upon the practice of yoga, read Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) by Paramahansa Yogananda and the Bhagavad Gita, and lived in an ashram, emerging from the experience in 1975 with the new spiritual name of Sri Gopika Dasi. This is a whirlwind narrative that careens from one

star-studded encounter to another, but it never feels superficial; instead, Edwards’ memoir brims with compassion for others and for herself: “I learned to see that everyone in the world is suffering in some way,” she candidly writes. “No one, even the wealthiest and most successful, is free from the vicissitudes of the material energy, which changes constantly.” She’s equally generous with her insights about becoming a mother-in-law later in life, telling of how she learned to use her mindfulness practice to “step waaaay back” and learn how to “shut [her] mouth.” She also proves to be exceedingly straightforward about the challenges of aging and persistent loneliness. Edwards writes that she saved herself from hard times through spiritual practice, and her book could help others to do the same.

An intimate, vulnerable remembrance that’s full of heart and soul.

Kirkus Star

Ash & Feather Frances, Sharon | Self (242 pp.) | $16.95 paper April 1, 2025 | 9781734419641

In this illustrated novel, a teenage girl learns to truly live while confronting the reality of death.

With summer vacation winding down, 14-year-old Phoenix is looking forward to starting eighth grade. But one week before school begins, her parent, Eagle, is diagnosed with brain cancer. Reeling from the news, Phoenix attempts to separate her worlds: the one at school, where she tries to be a “normal” student (but still finds that “the cancer ghost walks behind” her), and the one at home, where she and her grandparent, Duck, try to care for Eagle during his illness. All the while, Phoenix finds that wings are beginning to sprout from her shoulder blades— making real her desire to be both “human and bird.” She finds unexpected comfort and acceptance in a new friend from school, the colorful and eternally optimistic Ing. But soon the family trio K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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discovers that a coyote is waiting in the wings, biding its time while it tries to steal the headdress that Eagle wears as part of his cancer treatment. This savage, eternally hungry representation of death stalks the family until Phoenix slowly learns to embrace her new wings and become the kind of person—and bird—who loves without fear. Using magical realism to blend the real and supernatural, Frances writes in nonrhyming verse form, with the formatting of the words sometimes echoing the action itself (the words “bird / spiraled / down,” for example, drops down the page). Each page features unique black-and-white block prints, with some covering the whole page and others adding small narrative details on the text pages.

Frances’ words and illustrations stack upon each other to form a compelling series of images that plays upon the book’s powerful themes of love and death. One full-page print, for example, shows a black silhouette of Phoenix wearing a hoodie, all human except for one arm that is a wing and the opposite foot that is a bird claw. It’s a visual feast based on a story that seemingly draws much of its animal representation from Native American lore. This is perhaps most obvious in the character of the coyote: “Coyote crawls through the window, / eyes gleaming, teeth snarling. / ‘Come to the table, Eagle. / Let me test your blood.’/ Needles and playing cards fall from the sky.” Phoenix’s journey toward acceptance and healing involves many starts and stops, eloquently reflecting the fluid emotions that people (especially teenagers) experience during times of upheaval. Some instances may strike a chord even among those who haven’t experienced a serious medical diagnosis in their family, especially since Frances has a knack for capturing the universal difficulties of existence: “So she did the hard thing– / she let herself feel everything / she let herself burn.” While some younger readers may struggle with accepting the book’s various animals and nature as metaphors for such ephemeral concepts as death and hope, the physical representation of these ideas creates its own kind of power: “After school, / I crawl on my hands and knees / into the river. / My wings are damp. / I cannot K IR KU S R E V IE W S

fly. / But maybe I can swim.” Frances has crafted a modern-day folktale that accomplishes the unique feat of providing both entertainment and catharsis.

Rich language and striking visuals reveal emotional lessons about family, resolution, and love.

Get Gribnitz Gimple, Howard | Mystromedy Press (348 pp.) $9.99 paper | July 24, 2024 | 9798990761575

A short-tempered New York adman finds himself in hot water in Gimple’s novel.

New York City, 1988: Stew Gribnitz, a recently divorced copywriter for a middling Madison Avenue ad agency, has a problem with authority. When his new creative director, James G. Persons, trashes some of his work—literally throws it into the garbage bin—Stew reacts by grabbing Persons’ necktie. “I scrunch it up in my hand, blow my nose in it, rub my armpits with it and stick it down the back of my pants,” narrates Stew. “Then I take the tie and throw it in his face.” By some miracle, Stew doesn’t get fired…but in a horrible coincidence, Persons is murdered shortly thereafter, strangled to death with the same necktie.

The police suspect Stew, obviously, and even though he has an ironclad alibi, the New York papers label him the “Madison Avenue Murderer,” causing him to lose his job anyway. While the sudden infamy makes his father proud (“You finally made a name for yourself,” swoons Moish Gribnitz, with whom Stew is temporarily staying), it also makes him a persona non grata across his industry. Luckily, a new opportunity soon presents itself: working as a consultant for Edward Rivette, a dilettante billionaire launching a vanity campaign to become governor of Connecticut. It would be a fairly straightforward job if Rivette’s opponent weren’t a mob-connected former FBI agent willing to kill in order to win— and potentially frame the Madison Avenue Murderer with the crime.

Gimple’s prose, as narrated by the chatty Stew, is littered with pop-culture references and puns, and the text is often clever and amusing (Stew describes his “pal Levine, who was one of Brooklyn’s bigger quaalude dealers and used his pill-gotten gains to buy himself a deli in Sheepshead Bay”). Some of the jokes feel very 1980s—Stew repeatedly refers to his ex-wife as the “Orthodox Jewish Vampire Bride from Hell”—but the voice and the material combine to form an effective old-school comedic thriller with a heavy dose of Outer Boroughs attitude.

A colorful and entertaining crime story with a memorable protagonist.

We Need To Talk: A Survival Guide for Tough Conversations Graves, Joshua | Rosenfeld Media (296 pp.) $54.99 paper | April 15, 2025 | 9781959029113

Graves offers strategies designed to solve conflicts that could arise on the job.

Have you ever struggled with difficult situations or people at your workplace? The answer is likely yes, and this guide, covering a wide array of work-related challenges and offering possible resolutions, can help. Not a fan of conflict himself, the polite, raised-in-the-South author’s life changed when he replaced the concept of niceness, a “candy-coated emptiness,” with the tougher and more productive principle of kindness that underlies this book. First, Graves gives general strategies for dealing with dissent, like Hanlon’s razor (choosing to not assume others’ bad intentions) and “cranky conclusions” (practicing empathy). Subsequent chapters explore multiple themes, using conflict between real-life individuals as a starting point and working toward mutual understanding between them. Some of the topics covered include lying and gaslighting, conflicts that arise when working remotely, microaggressions, pushy people, safety at the workplace, and pay inequality. Each JULY 1, 2025

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chapter is set up as a problem with a solution and includes things to look out for, various charts and graphs, and final thoughts. Graves’ book, though clear and organized, courts monotony with the repetitive format, but the author strategically avoids this pitfall—each section has unique and tailored information. (In “People Losing Control,” Graves discusses amygdala hijacks and diagrams the grounding practice of “box breathing,” while “Understanding Cultural Dynamics” features tables comparing the individualist and collectivist philosophies of different cultures, stereotypes at work, and assertive versus collaborative mindsets.) The use of humor helps; Graves renamed individuals in his book after horror movie characters, and, in a chapter regarding forgiveness, he suggests using a brulee torch on a burn letter for “extra flair.” Taking a realistic approach, Graves does not neatly resolve all the situations he details: In “Mediating with Multiple People,” engineering lead Vicaria is ultimately blamed for a botched app rollout when the CEO mediator sides with product manager Donald, the CEO’s personal friend. Yet even unsuccessful conclusions are instructive as the author reimagines the conversations and leads readers down alternative paths. A helpful alphabetical index is included at the book’s end.

Relevant, grounded, and often humorous insights for the conflict-­ averse to consider.

An Artist’s Legacy Ha, Khanh | Unleash Press (340 pp.) | $26.99 paper | February 28, 2025 | 9798869224538

In Khanh’s historical novel, a Vietnamese artist falls in love with a singer during the Indochina War, but their commitment to the resistance keeps pulling them apart.

In 1953, Tran Khang works as a reporter—his official title is propagandist—for the 351st Heavy Division of the People’s Army in Vietnam. He tracks the 152

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division’s grueling march to Dien Bien Phu, where the French colonial forces gather in an “impregnable fort,” a “Far-East Verdun” that stands as a monumental sign of the French’s military superiority and unabashed confidence during the Indochina War. Khang is a gifted artist—before he joined the resistance, he studied at the Ha Noi Institute of Fine Arts, and his talent is immediately evident to anyone who sees his work. When he meets Hà Mi, a singer and performer who is similarly dedicated to the resistance, he is immediately taken with her, and after they part, she continues to haunt his reveries (every time he remembers her, the image “dissolve[s] like a sugar cube in water”). In this profoundly affecting work, Khang and Hà Mi become lovers, but the war keeps them apart—the Party frowns upon romantic relationships within the ranks.

Additionally, they hail from vastly different worlds: She is from a working-class family, and he comes from a cultured, bourgeois one. Still, Khang falls for her deeply. The author beautifully describes his love for her: “You feel empty when you’re not with her, but that emptiness is beautiful, and you wouldn’t want it in any other way.” The historical authenticity of the narrative is simply extraordinary—Khanh’s command of the facts is magisterial, and he brings them to vivid life with a kind of literary sorcery. This is a mesmerizing novel, one that transports the reader to another time and place—one ravaged by war where love continues to thrive.

A moving love story embedded within an engrossing work of historical fiction.

Borderlands: Stories From an El Paso Shelter Hansen, Deb | Apocryphile Press (396 pp.) $20 paper | August 3, 2024 | 9781958061855

A volunteer at the United States-Mexico border shares her experiences in this debut memoir.

As Hansen’s train neared its destination of the El Paso train station in November 2019, it

unexpectedly stopped for an hour, “with no explanation.” The author later found out that seven travelers aboard the train had been taken into custody, though no other details were provided. “Welcome to a new reality at the borderlands,” she remarks to herself in the book’s opening lines. A white woman and former interfaith chaplain at a trauma hospital in Detroit, Hansen was unsure of the forces that were pulling her to the border, but she was drawn to the Annunciation House. Initially funded by young, socially conscious Catholics in the 1970s, the organization is now an independent network of shelters for asylum seekers. Presented chronologically, from 2019 through 2023, the story opens with the author’s twoweek orientation at a high-volume refugee center designed to handle hundreds of people a day (the strict expectations regarding volunteers included a six-day work week). The author notes that the homes within the Annunciation House network “are places of hospitality and grace, offering sanctuary and practical support for people from outside the United States” while also emphasizing the ways in which U.S. policies are responsible for fueling the migration crisis in the first place. The book’s engrossing narrative details the web of organizations and activists that serve some of the nation’s most vulnerable people; readers meet figures like Ignacio Torres, a Nahual community leader who works to preserve their indigenous culture. The work is grounded in sound research, as reflected by the endnotes and bibliography, but what makes it special is Hansen’s nuanced, empathetic writing style. The author sensitively recommends more thoughtful ways to discuss the topic, arguing that we should avoid labeling people as “migrants” or “aliens” and reserve labels for describing situations rather than people. Her engaging text is supplemented by a wealth of maps, photographs, and other visual aids that contribute to its accessibility.

An empathetic and often poignant reflection on the American border crisis.

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Nostalgia Hoffman, Scott | Illus. by Danijel Žeželj Mad Cave Studios (160 pp.) | $19.99 paper June 17, 2025 | 9781545821060

A reclusive rock star is drawn out when a stranger enters his life in this comic collection from writer Hoffman and artist Žeželj.

In a technologically advanced and dystopian near future, Craig (better known by his stage name, Nostalgia) was once a revolutionary musician, but after not making any new music for years, he’s become completely detached from both his creative life and his former insurrectionist ties: “I can’t get arrested these days,” he says to someone currently fighting against the system. “And I’m not looking to.” When Nathan appears, claiming to be his son, Craig is skeptical but open to forming a bond with the younger man. The story flashes back to Craig’s earlier life—his parents, his rise to fame, and subsequent withdrawal from the world—while, in the present, Nathan’s involvement with a shadowy rebel organization is revealed. Unlike a lot of other dystopian fiction, this story’s setting and its technology is fleshed out just enough to be intriguing without feeling excessive; the futuristic way that music is created is especially engrossing.

There’s a twist just before the end that some readers may see coming, but Hoffman (perhaps better known by his stage name, Babydaddy, of the glam-rock band Scissor Sisters) still manages to make it compelling. Žeželj’s art style is more abstract than one typically encounters in comics—reminiscent of flyers from punk shows, but more richly colored. It’s an appealingly bold stylistic choice, but it causes a few problems at times, as characters’ faces are sometimes too abstract to recognize. The story itself is moody and introspective, ruminating on such ideas as what it means to be famous, how to use that fame, and what a celebrity owes to the world; however, it avoids feeling self-absorbed. Truly, the K IR KU S R E V IE W S

A provocative treatment of one of the most important issues of our time.

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biggest downside is that the story ends just as it seems to be getting started.

A thoughtful tale of fame and its power.

The Museum of Lies Hunt, J. Timothy | Clink Street Publishing (218 pp.) | $14.99 paper February 6, 2025 | 9781915785435

A poet attempts to make sense of his dysfunctional history in Hunt’s comic novel.

Cary Scott never stood a chance. He stumbled upon his beloved grandfather’s dead body on his first day of kindergarten. His merciless mother dressed him up as a woman to humiliate him in front of his Cub Scout troop. His closeted father ran off with his closeted uncle. His grandmother forced enemas on him when she decided he was constipated. In high school, he was so terrified of gym class—where he was caught with an erection in the boys’ shower—that he faked stigmata to be excused. Cary’s one moment in the sun came when he wrote a poem about a streaker that got published in the local paper, then adapted into a top-10 hit by country artist Kitty Belle Crawford. He has never followed up on that success, however, and 10 years later he is an obese, single, self-­loathing poet with no other published work and a severe eating disorder. Leaping back and forth between childhood traumas and the yo-yo dieting and personal humiliations of his adulthood, Hunt’s novel follows Cary’s unlikely journey toward self-­ understanding via recovered memory therapy—though whether the memories he ends up recovering are true (and what

they might mean for his sense of himself) is not so cut and dried. The writing is as psychologically acute as it is funny, as here when Cary attends an eating disorder conference: “If I were a food, I’d be devil’s food cake,” he explains during an exercise. “I’m sweet and people should like me, but liking me is forbidden. I’m dark and black inside and am quite bad for you if you take me in anything other than small doses. That’s because I’m loaded with fat. Fat and sin.” Hunt is a masterful storyteller, escalating his protagonist’s misadventures to the point of farcical truth. Cary feels just responsible enough for his predicaments to make him a compellingly tragic figure, someone whose larger-than-life problems feel both real and searingly relevant to the reader.

A funny, dark, and deeply human novel about what shapes us as human beings.

Education Empowered: A Holistic Blueprint for Building Better Schools and a Better World Jallepalli, Srinivas | Amplify Publishing (440 pp.) $33.82 | June 3, 2025 | 9781637556795

Jallepalli diagnoses what ails contemporary education and prescribes a holistic approach that considers the full range of human nature.

According to the author, K-12 education today is widely regarded as inadequate, and there is a connection between its failings and the “steady decline in our children’s well-­being” in general. Unfortunately, per Jallepalli, our pedagogical philosophies have become stagnant and JULY 1, 2025

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intractably resistant to revision, “almost like religions.” The central problem, as he understands it, is that there hasn’t been significant reflection on the aims of education in light of the essential nature of human beings. In order to rectify this, the author considers the evolutionary history of man and posits six foundational competencies: curiosity, cognition, empathy, ambition, creativity, and communication. A “holistic curriculum” built around these qualities, Jallepalli posits, will nurture a student’s physical, emotional, and spiritual health, as well as creativity and a sense of purpose. Such a curriculum should be customized to suit each individual’s idiosyncratic needs and “prioritize transferable skills and fundamental competencies over mundane information and fixed abilities.” In this impressively thoughtful study, the author offers a wide-ranging consideration of many competing educational philosophies, including a panoramic survey of the groundbreaking work of Dewey, Steiner, and Piaget. He convincingly makes the case that educational reform is an “urgent civilizational imperative” and that discussions that might seem philosophically abstract about the constituent elements of human nature are in fact highly practical and entirely indispensable. Jallepalli’s writing is unfailingly lucid and unburdened by academic jargon or fashionable cant. The weakest and least persuasive section of the book is devoted to outlining the principal characteristics of human nature; however, in fairness to the author, this is far too complex a subject to be handled so briefly without succumbing to the allure of theoretical reductionism. Still, this is an erudite and valuable contribution to a singularly important conversation.

A provocative treatment of one of the most important issues of our time.

Adopting Grace Jinja, Anna | Midwestern Books (332 pp.) $14.95 paper | November 12, 2024 9798991789714

Jinja’s novel tells the story of a Midwestern mom whose life is anything but simple.

Dressmaker Grace Solberg was adopted from South Korea as a child by a Norwegian American family and, whether she likes it or not, she’s still challenged by the spaces she inhabits as she nears 40. Her husband, Marc, is leaving her for his long-lost high school love, her teenage daughter is going through a rebellious stage, and a man moves in next door whose home decor unnerves her. Meanwhile, Grace is trying to work miracles as a seamstress and keep her home a healthy and happy place for her two daughters to grow up.

There are also Grace’s extended family members, who are witty, messy, loud, and can’t stand one another—or live without one another’s company. As Grace stops resisting life’s changes, she finally finds herself able to work through past trauma—and she may have more people on her side, and more to offer the world, than she thinks. Jinja’s novel is a funny, dramatic read that blends love, loss, and larger-than-life family drama.

Readers will root for Grace as she’s continuously dealt bad cards by life—and particularly by her ex-husband. The story reads like an intimate conversation between Grace and the reader: “I shouldn’t feel guilty or obligated to explain to a fifteen-year-old why spending thirty-five dollars on a vintage designer dress on sale at a

A thoroughly enjoyable and inviting story with well-drawn characters.

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consignment store gives me the confidence to spend time with her father.” This lends itself to emotional connections with each of the characters, who are written with just the right amount of detail to bring them to life.

The novel approaches hard topics with care and sensitivity, and the Midwest feels realistic; these aren’t the usual characters looking to flee to a big city, but who are learning to live as who they are, where they are.

A delightful, thoughtful, and meaningful story of domestic life.

The Gourmet Club Kahn, Michael A. | Atmosphere Press (270 pp.) $27.46 | $16.99 paper | April 22, 2025 9798891326750 | 9798891326088 paper

Kahn’s heartfelt saga follows a group of young lawyers through 25 years of their lives together.

It’s 1981 and Gabe Pollack, Susan Baker, Eric Cameron, and Norman Greenberg meet at orientation for the Chicago white-shoe law firm where they’ve all recently been hired.

They are, of course, the best of the best.

Norman’s wife, Esther, insists that the foursome have a potluck (“That way we can meet each other’s spouses, get to know one another, maybe even become—you know, maybe—friends,” Norman says), and this regular event, over the years, becomes the loose framework of the novel. Readers glide through the story of their career changes, their kids, and the inevitable challenges that life brings. If there is one lodestar, it’s the unbreakable friendship that the four attorneys and their spouses share. Significantly, at book’s end, none of the main players work for that white-shoe law firm anymore. Readers learn in an afterword that Kahn’s real-life experience as a young lawyer formed the template for this fictional story. The author, who’s still a practicing attorney, has written multiple mystery novels—so when, halfway through the K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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book, none of the characters have met with foul play, the reader begins to stop expecting mayhem and slides into the comforting narrative, as into a hot bath.

The book is immensely readable, and sometimes Kahn even gives the game away by intruding as the storyteller—a nice touch that reaffirms the book’s charm. Does the author push too hard to provide a happy ending? To think that is to wish, churlishly, for just a few more deaths, diseases, or divorces.

Sometimes, one needs a book like this one—a pleasant love letter to a profession, and to professional friends.

A thoroughly enjoyable and inviting story with well-drawn characters.

Revolution 9 London, Mark | Illus. by Carlos Reno Mad Cave Studios (88 pp.) | $17.99 paper May 6, 2025 | 9781545816158

In author London and illustrator Reno’s comics collection, a young assassin in the San Francisco Bay Area confronts the unresolved contradictions of her past, which requires her to make some unsettling choices.

Zealotry exerts a powerful pull on the mind, but it only takes one contradiction to weaken it. Velveteen learns this lesson the hard way as she carries out her grim assignments for the Order of Nine, a shadowy cabal with roots in ancient Rome. At first, she thinks nothing of her latest task—to kill Jasper Dean, a young hacker whose incredible coding abilities pose a serious threat to the organization.

Just how much of a threat quickly becomes apparent when Jasper’s hackery reveals that the story of her own origins, as told to her by the Order, is a lie: “There’s no revolution. No great plan,” she concludes. The realization that she’s essentially been programmed to do someone else’s bidding hits hard, but it’s one that Velveteen has precious little time to ponder, as the Order is soon targeting her. She must find a way to keep herself—and Jasper, with all his K IR KU S R E V IE W S

secrets—alive. Readers will find themselves engaged by the pair’s navigation of the situation, in which the impulse to do right and the instinct to do what’s necessary to stay alive are often mutually exclusive. The resolution of this first installment, which covers the story’s first four issues, is delivered amid some graphic, eye-popping action sequences, and it serves as an effective repudiation of the brutal mindset of Volta, the Order’s extremist leader. As the author suggests, the end doesn’t always justify the means, nor does empathy equate to weakness, despite Volta’s declaration that “Emotions are what make you untrustworthy.” It’s a timely and compelling reminder that readers will surely appreciate, especially in today’s hyperpolarized social climate.

A fast-moving but thoughtful tale of betrayal and enlightenment.

Littoral Magic Mason, Aaron & Leslie Ann Moore Norton Place Publishing (524 pp.) | $21.99 paper | March 1, 2025 | 9781735833019 Series: All Oceans Aglow, 1

A teenager grieving the loss of her father discovers a mysterious connection with two young otters from rival tribes in Mason and Moore’s YA fantasy novel, the first in a series.

Thirteen-year-old Ayana Outerbridge is headed north with her mother for another summer at her grandparents’ isolated homestead on the Pacific Northwest coast. Once these trips were times of joy—now, the experience feels hollow (“One minute, Ayana had a father.

The next ― POOF! ― she didn’t”).

At the same time, in the waters just offshore, a young river otter named Sleek violates tribal law by entering a sacred cave to retrieve a magical gift for Gloss, the headstrong daughter of the sea otter king. The cave—once part of a luminous, mind-awakening realm known as Liminal—has been overrun by a monstrous predator, and Sleek’s trespass

could reignite the war between the river and sea otters. Gloss chafes under the strict rules that forbid females from hunting or wielding weapons. Her clandestine efforts to prove herself collide with Sleek’s mission. Unbeknownst to both of them, Ayana’s fate may be linked to theirs. The story effectively blends naturalism with high fantasy. The authors construct a dense but coherent mythos that frames the ocean as both a literal and symbolic frontier, rendering underwater societies with distinct hierarchies, dialects, and beliefs. Gloss, in particular, emerges as a standout character—a female warrior determined to break caste and gender restrictions (“I will defend my Raft just as you do.

Better than you do.”) Ayana’s arc is more introspective, centering around her grief and alienation. Her skin condition (vitiligo) and conversations with her late father’s memory add emotional depth, though her connection to the fantasy plotline remains mostly suggestive in this first volume in Mason and Moore’s series. While the novel’s early chapters can be dense with exposition, especially in the undersea scenes, the pacing soon quickens, and readers are rewarded with richly imagined action, interpersonal tension, and a final act that sets the stage for an expansive saga.

An ambitious and imaginative series opener that mixes ecological allegory with character-driven fantasy.

Whatever Happened to Uncle Ed? Miller, Eric | Big Time Books (288 pp.) | $17.99 paper | January 17, 2025 | 9798992397109

A man must confront his deepest fears inside the haunted mansion left to him by his missing uncle in Miller’s horror novel.

Max Brown has a strange routine every day after work: collecting weapons and ammo for the monthly life-or-death battles that take place in his basement (“The helmet, boxes of JULY 1, 2025

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ammo, and other supplies make a growing, sloppy pile”). Max is a former high school basketball star whose life has long since peaked; after the disappearance of his mysterious Uncle Edward, Max inherited not only an eerie old mansion and a mountain of cash but also a chilling family curse.

Beneath the house lies a supernatural arena in which Max must battle demons to free people trapped there.

Working alongside two men named Walter and Tommy to rescue these poor souls, Max worries that their efforts are futile, especially since his allies are only the latest in a long line of people who have arrived at the house to fight, only to give up after months of struggle. Max is also still mired in grief over his mother’s death and dealing with the unexpected turmoil of falling in love while fighting for his life. Can Max come out on top, or is he doomed to the same unknown fate as his uncle? Despite the dark premise, the novel’s tone is campy and self-aware, balancing the horror of the characters’ situations with moments of absurdity and humor. Even the high-stakes climax strikes notes of levity (it takes place during a basketball game). The narrative is full of developments that blend affecting emotional truths with feats of writerly imagination and deeply enjoyable plot twists— Miller manages to make the prospect of facing one’s own worst nightmare simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. (This is a great read for fans of horror who enjoy seeing common tropes and references being playfully subverted.) Sometimes the emotional stakes are undercut by the humor, but, overall, this is an effective blend of comedy, heart, and scares that defies expectations in a way that will intrigue readers without losing the plot.

An imaginative horror novel that provides more laughs than gasps.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

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Kirkus Star

The Unofficial Batman: The Animated Interviews, Vol. 2 Miller, W.R. | BearManor Media (820 pp.) $108.86 | $63.99 paper | November 15, 2024 9798887710938 | 9798887710921 paper

This second volume about a beloved animated TV show offers interviews, storyboards, insights, and more.

In this book, Miller continues his thorough and exhaustive oral and pictorial history of Batman: The Animated Series, which ran from 1992 to 1995 on the Fox Kids Network and immediately became both a critical success and a popular favorite. The author breaks down every episode of the Emmy Award–winning show, interviewing the writers, producers, directors, actors, and artists who brought the series to life. Virtually all of these creators echo one another in considering their time on the show as one of the high points of their professional lives. Almost all of them agree with series writer Mitch Brian in their enthusiastic estimation of the show itself. “The legacy of Batman: The Animated Series is it is one of the most ground-breaking, impressive, magnificent television shows in the history of television,” Brian asserts. “Notice I didn’t say animated television. It is one of the great TV shows of all time, in my opinion.” In addition to these interviews, Miller includes hundreds of stills, screenshots, and storyboards from the show, along with a wide variety of standout quotes (from the Joker, for instance: “What? Compare me to Batman?! I’ve got more style, more brains.

I’m certainly a better dresser!”). In assembling all this colorful material, the author once again strikes the perfect balance between information and testimony, carefully drawing out of his interview subjects both background tidbits and personal insights. As with the first volume, this book doubles as an intriguing insiders’ look at the workings of the entertainment industry; the people Miller interviews aren’t giving him sanitized press releases. When one of these creators

describes Batman: The Animated Series as “a show that just made its own vision and stuck to it,” fans will nod in agreement.

Those aficionados will certainly want this definitive second volume.

A spirited, vibrant, and visually striking oral history of Batman: The Animated Series.

Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day Murray, Emma E. | SmallPub (336 pp.) | $16.99 paper | August 26, 2025 | 9781954899216

An abused woman is pushed to the point of fracture in Murray’s literary horror novel.

Bernadette “Birdie” Black lives in fear of setting off her boyfriend Russ Swinbank’s explosive temper. He flies into a rage if she doesn’t make a dinner he likes, for instance, and she’s afraid to tell him about her plans to go to nursing school. “He loves me,” she insists to her best friend, who regularly encourages Birdie to leave him. “He does! He just has a hard time showing it.” On some level, Birdie feels that she deserves Russ’ cruelty: She blames herself for the accidental death of her son, Noah, and for an affair that she had that destroyed her first marriage. As Birdie works around Russ’ moods—and his frequent nights away from the house—she frets over her future, experiments with a grief group, and even reconnects with her ex-husband, Noah’s father. As her story unfolds, the novel intersperses chapters from the viewpoints of other women—all victims of a local serial killer, including one who’s already dead and moldering in the woods. Can Birdie overcome her self-hatred enough to save herself from Russ, or is she, like the victims of the killer stalking her community, caught in a trap that will inevitably destroy her? Murray writes with a horror novelist’s sense of tension and dread. Her skills are particularly on display in the chapters about the killer’s victims, as in this passage about a woman named Maeve: “she’d left a window cracked and a man she’d seen four days before at a gas station, a stranger K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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who’d eyed her up and down and given her the creeps, had checked every door and window each day since he followed her home.” The book also persuasively dramatizes the mindset of an abused person, and although it takes her situation to its darkest extremes, it never abandons a sense of emotional verisimilitude.

A finely wrought and deeply disturbing work of psychological terror.

Kirkus Star

Ezarah and Elyse: Starlit Ballet Neely, Essence | Illus. by Hameo Pham Eden Storyhouse (38 pp.) | $15.99 paper February 5, 2025 | 9798992597301

At bedtime, twin toddlers find themselves dreaming of dancing among the stars together in Neely’s picture book.

Ezarah and Elyse are twin sisters with brown skin and dark curly hair. The sisters have distinct personalities—Ezarah is fearless and Elyse is a bit less bold—but their bond is fierce, which is evident when they’re put into different cribs to sleep. The separated twins are upset and find sleep hard to come by until Elyse suggests that Ezarah climb into her crib to sleep. (“Ezarah agrees with a warm, sleepy smile, / Together they’ll dream in the sweetest twin style.”) A spectacular, dreamy sequence features the twins dancing together; it almost feels interactive, making readers feel as if they, too, are floating among the stars. The next morning, the twins’ mother finds them contently sleeping side by side, and she vows to buy them a bed to sleep in together. Neely’s text is short and sweet, lyrical and gentle, but the star of this picture book is, fittingly, the pictures; Pham’s illustrations elevate the narrative, making it seem dreamlike with a soft palette of gentle pastels and dusky blues.

Pham has a gift for evoking emotions through details, especially the girls’ wide, expressive eyes. This is more than a bedtime story—it’s a visual poem K IR KU S R E V IE W S

celebrating love, imagination, and the unbreakable bond of sisterhood. It’s also an instant classic fit for any picture-book shelf.

A beautifully written book that finds its real emotion in its lovely illustrations.

A Broken Window Parrish, Anne Leigh | Unsolicited Press (270 pp.) $22.95 paper | June 20, 2025 | 9781963115970

A poet breaks free from her past experiences in Parrish’s novel.

Sam is a 30-something poet finally pursuing the college degree she promised herself she would earn, but the experience lacks luster. Her new boyfriend, Steven, a professor from her program, has a research grant to go to Boston; moving there seems like a promising new start and a way to gain clarity about what she wants to do with her life, but Sam keeps getting dragged back into her past. Her alcoholic ex-boyfriend Timothy is still a fixture, as are the memories of a difficult childhood spent living under the eye of her abusive grandmother that keep threatening to surface. In Boston, Sam finds her creative need to write poetry comes second to Steven’s work; she finds solace in new friend Martin Alistair, son of legendary feminist publisher Edith Alistair. Sam reads Edith’s diaries about her publishing house—part of Steven’s research that he seems surprised she is fascinated by—while simultaneously writing poetry. From the novel’s opening line (“Happiness was a shock. So was knowing she belonged”), Parrish writes lyrically, conveying the creativity of her heroine while also displaying her own skill as a published poet. This is particularly evident as Sam

works through a recurring motif of her childhood trauma, turning a terrible memory into an affecting poem. Though both Timothy and Steven feature heavily in the story (occasionally, it feels a little unclear as to whether they are meant to present a love triangle for Sam), the most compelling aspect of the narrative is the central character’s journey as she finds her footing and truly addresses her own needs.

Readers will find themselves rooting for Sam, a woman in her 30s, as if this is her coming-of-age tale.

A contemporary poetic novel for audiences who love strong female characters.

Your Journey to Successful Parenting: Ages 2-11: A Stress-Free Guide to Effective Behavior Change Rogers, Alexandra J. | Self (258 pp.) $24.99 | $19.99 paper | March 5, 2025 9798991615600 | 9798991615617 paper

Rogers draws on her 32-year career as a clinical psychologist to offer a comprehensive approach to parenting young children.

In this guide, the author expounds on a series of treatment recommendations that aim to bring new insights to parent-child relationships and the earliest years of institutional education. Her book is broken up into four parts, first looking at the basics of problematic issues and behaviors and ways to address them; she then offers a long discussion of the challenges faced by parents and teachers when dealing with children with behavioral issues. Finally, the book looks at rarer and more concerning

A sweeping and pleasingly empathetic guide to the problems of childrearing.

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situations that may arise and how to deal with them. Rogers tackles instances of random disobedience, but this is just one of dozens of specific scenarios in these pages.

About battles over bedtime, for example, she identifies multiple potential motivations; the child may view the situation as a power struggle, or they may simply be anxious. She’s sympathetic to the kids involved, often asking readers to see things from their perspective. Why do children misbehave in stores, for instance? From their perspective, she asserts, shopping is boring, adults ignore you, you’re not allowed to touch anything, and “you get shut down when you try to pick something you want.” She puts forward strategies for dealing with getting children to clean their rooms or stopping a child from repeatedly interrupting others. She also addresses the “learned helplessness” of kids who always expect help and therefore never learn new and complex things on their own.

The comprehensiveness of Rogers’ advice is impressive and deeply involving, and the book as a whole makes for engrossing reading—even for those who’ve never spent a single hour around a moody, temperamental child. (Indeed, many of situation-calming techniques outlined here would work equally well with immature adults.) The author’s tactic for dramatizing virtually every scenario she puts forward— complete with simulated dialogue between caretaker and child—works with direct, unobtrusive efficiency, but the broader discussions are equally enlightening. At every turn, her breakdowns of the best approaches to tense or sticky situations is compassionate, even when she’s recommending strict responses, as in cases of children trying to manipulate adults: “By eighteen months,” Rogers writes, “every self-respecting baby can tell who in the family is the easy touch”; sometimes, she says, the way to counteract this behavior in older children is to establish that if manipulation is attempted, choices revert instantly to the worst options. Even here, Rogers offers a nuanced perspective, noting that occasionally kids are grateful for the strictest option, as it sometimes gives them an excuse for getting out of something they didn’t really want to do. This element of sympathy is at its strongest in the book’s latter sections, some of which deal with helping children to navigate their parents’ 158

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divorce, while others deal with the extremes of early teen mood swings. In every chapter, the book resonates with the author’s long experience, and readers will appreciate her calm wisdom.

A sweeping and pleasingly empathetic guide to the problems of childrearing.

Beyond the Darkness: Transformative Journeys Through Dark Tourism Scott, Chad | Whitefox (240 pp.) | $14.99 paper | May 1, 2025 | 9781917523004

Psychotherapist Scott provides readers with a look at the strange world of “dark tourism.”

This book centers on the kinds of sightseeing travel that seldom makes it into brochures, such as tours of old mental hospitals, scenes of natural disasters, or other sites where many people have died. “Historical sites can feel like open wounds,” he writes, “places where suffering lingers in the air,” which describes his own reaction while visiting Auschwitz’s crematorium and descending steps where “thousands of men, women, and children had walked, most unaware they were moving toward their deaths.” Throughout history, he observes, people have been drawn to such grim places. Scott uses the common term “dark tourism” in his book’s subtitle, but he resists using the term in the text itself, as he feels that it has trivializing implications: “To me,” he writes, “a tourist is someone who’s just checking off boxes on a list, while a traveler looks for something deeper—a real connection with the places they visit.” In these pages, Scott chronicles his own memories of visiting such destinations as Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, with its massive tombs, and such spots as the Golden Gate Bridge, the site of nearly 2,000 documented suicides. He relates his visits to medical museums, such as Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, which houses fragments of Albert Einstein’s brain and displays the bodies of conjoined twins, giant tumors, and other biological phenomena; prisons; battlefields; and even

museums of death in Hollywood and New Orleans, which he characterizes as “a sensory overload that sensationalizes death with virtually no discussion of the victims.”

Scott’s prose style occasionally veers toward melodrama over the course of this book, as in a description of Alcatraz: “the infamous prison, perched atop a rocky hill, loomed larger and more imposing against the backdrop of the bay.” However, his earnest tone is the book’s consistent bit of magic. When he visited the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance, he notes how his thoughts were tempered by his nearly 30 years as a therapist: “Knowing I’ve helped people find enough hope to choose life,” he writes, “brings me immense fulfillment.”

His visits to various medical museums reminded him of the liver transplant that saved his life and gave him a greater appreciation of the medical advances that many people take for granted: “It’s a sobering, enlightening journey through the curious corners of medical history,” he writes, “that left me with a deep respect for the design and diversity of the human body.” In this way, Scott transforms his visits to troubling destinations into opportunities for personal growth. This revelatory element regularly elevates his descriptions of sometimes-depressing places, as he frequently manages to find a thread of hope or optimism. His reflections on how recent some terrible events were—such as that, even just 100 years ago, his liver disease would have been fatal—adds a sobering tone to many of his recollections here.

A powerful and often gripping guided tour through some of humanity’s dark places.

Queer Pride Puzzles: Volume One Shatzer, Kerry | BookBaby (156 pp.) | $14.99 paper | April 23, 2025 | 9798350992786

Looking for a dollop of LGBTQ+ lore with your brainteasers?

This beguiling puzzle book has you covered.

Puzzle-maker Shatzer presents hundreds of word puzzles, logic K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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puzzles, mazes, and trivia quizzes, all of them featuring queer themes. The roster includes word searches on a variety of queer-friendly subjects from The Wizard of Oz (look for “Poppy/Field” and “Judy/Garland”) to Joe Biden’s lesbian press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre; “Queerdoku[s],” which are like Sudokus but with letters; decoding puzzles constructed around witticisms from the likes of RuPaul; and word jumbles that yield lubricious puns, like, “When cruising at the mostly-straight gym, make sure you don’t get this” (“spotted ”). For those who prefer visual-spatial tests, there are intricate mazes, including an elegant one with branching walls shaped like the Greek letter lambda, and a spot-the-difference puzzle featuring 16 minutely altered versions of the National Coming Out Day cartoon logo. Brainiacs will find knotty logic puzzles that ask them, for example, to deduce the rankings of contestants in a Miss Red drag queen pageant from a set of gonzo clues (“Candi Apple was not asked about climate change”).

Shatzer offers an extraordinary variety of puzzle types at many skill levels, from simplistic crosswords to difficult, abstract take-offs on classics, including “invisible mazes” that don’t even show where the maze walls are. (There’s a complete answer section at the back for those who get stuck.) The author explains the puzzles in brief how-tos that combine lucid instructions with feisty queer attitude. (“Those homophobic bigots on the right may say “Don’t Say Gay”, but here we say Gay all the time as loud as possible and as many times as possible!”) Solving the puzzles also provides a blithe immersion in queer trivia and humor. (One “namedropping” puzzle unveils an Ellen DeGeneres oneliner: “Twice I have shown up at a party wearing the same thing as someone else. Both times it was William Shatner.”) Hardcore puzzle afficionados and casual gamers alike will find plenty of amusement here.

An inventive and entertaining collection of japes.

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Kirkus Star

In My Father’s Tire Tracks Sheedy, Jack | Self (307 pp.) | $25 paper March 5, 2024 | 9798882954276

A man hits the road in homage to his father’s epic road trip 60 years before in this memoir.

In 1959, Sheedy’s dad, John, was contracted to drive a new 1960 Ford Thunderbird convertible from a dealership in Hartford, Connecticut, to one in Los Angeles. In 2021, the author rented a Hyundai Elantra and largely retraced his father’s route. The resulting book is not just an account of a double odyssey, but also an exploration of relationships, of life’s changes, of growing up Catholic and middle class and wondering if you really know who your father is—and who you are. And it’s not just road travel, but time travel as well, as 2021 chases 1959 and the son, now a septuagenarian, pursues the 40-something father. It can be a dizzying reading experience, but also a fascinating one. Sheedy’s father made it to his destination, of course, delivering the car and visiting relatives on the road and in California; the author made it to the Bay Area, having made his own visits to people of the next generation and gaining invaluable insights and wisdom. Sheedy is a skilled writer and this tribute to his father is thoughtful and moving. He admits early on that “my 2021 road trip was an attempt to merge my identity with my father’s, if not to trade mine for his.”

This is expressed as a forlorn hope, but tales of fathers and sons and cars and road trips are often potent American stories.

Sheedy does his story proud; somewhere in the Southwest, for instance, he fantasized of catching up with Dad as the dawn broke, the T-Bird parked in an empty lot—because the motel where Dad stayed in 1959 was long gone in 2021.

Dad, of course, does not recognize the pleasant older gentleman in the little red sedan in this scenario, but they share thoughts and disappointments and hopes—and then the T-Bird is off again,

heading west. Overall, it’s a powerful and affecting trip.

A fitting tribute to a father-son relationship.

There’s Nothing Left For You Here Solomon, Allegra | Four Way (180 pp.) $19.95 paper | May 17, 2025 | 9781961897441

A debut volume of short stories focuses on characters yearning for connections.

Loneliness is a thread that runs through Solomon’s tales. Adrift from friends and living solo, the narrator of “There’s Nothing Left for You Here” becomes obsessed with her unknown neighbors’ tumultuous relationship. She listens through the wall and even slips a note with advice under the man’s door. In “Appetence,” a man repeatedly pays for an expensive service that recreates his ex-girlfriend Ruth. The imitators learn Ruth’s mannerisms and wear specific types of clothing and a dark wig. The author’s protagonists are young and Black, which contribute to their sense of apartness.

Youth is often a time of flux before life coalesces into a defined shape while underrepresented races can feel like outsiders in the larger society. In “True Blue,” Alexandria and Nikita bond immediately as the only Black girls in their high school freshman class, but Alexandria’s protection of her friend reveals a disturbing intensity. Even for those achieving love, its maintenance requires a delicate balancing act. A young couple’s relationship in “Seeing It Through” nearly derails after they watch a Nicole Kidman film that brings up issues of insecurity on both sides. Solomon’s writing lyrically shimmers, even in mundane-seeming circumstances. Nikita and Alexandria “rolled around in the grass; their bodies sharp with happiness.” A woman strokes a boy’s hair while “his body folded inward, slow, like a Venus flytrap.” The places Solomon’s characters inhabit aren’t always specifically defined. Instead, the author skillfully grounds her youthful players by JULY 1, 2025

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naming the things they care about: the music of Angel Olsen that plays at a party and nostalgia-inducing movies like Roll Bounce and video games like “Street Fighter” that help bored teenagers bond. In a difficult feat to achieve, a character’s text exchanges are funny, natural, and relevant.

In “Something About Us,” Connor’s incessant texting to Eden (“have u ever played firewatch,” “did ur erl piercing hurt btw I kinda want one,” “damn u sleep late”), although annoying, sparks their strange friendship. While portraying difficulties, the compelling stories often lean tentatively toward hope.

A fresh, poetically crafted, and self-assured collection.

Chatterbox: Stories From a Noisy Life Worton, Barbara | Susan Schadt Press (120 pp.) $22.5 paper | March 18, 2025 | 9798989403462

Worton presents a collection of short essays featuring random, amusing, and often tender memories and observations of family and everyday life.

The author was born in 1949 and raised in Massapequa Park, New York, a village on Long Island with a predominantly Jewish and Italian American population. Many essays here offer reflections on a childhood and adolescence defined by the postwar culture of the late 1950s. One vignette describes Sundays at her grandparents’ house in Brooklyn, where Grandma’s legendary spaghetti and meatballs ruled the day at a gathering of aunts, uncles, and cousins; another piece focuses on preparations for an aunt’s wedding. “We were big singers, guitarists, and accordion players in my Italian American family,” she writes of weekly get-togethers, with popular music playing in the background of her recollections. With amusement, she reveals that she fell madly in love with John Lennon as a teenager. At another point, Worton also shares how, at age 7, she inadvertently cut off a sizable lock of her best friend’s hair while they played beauty parlor in 1956.

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Entertaining and evocative slice-of-life stories.

C H AT T E R B OX

There are also vignettes about her emerging political activism in the ’60s as she moved into adulthood. Taken all together, the essays create a vivid pastiche of mid-to-­ late-20th century Americana. Worton effectively tells her stories in a breezy style, laced with both humor and poignancy.

There’s a steady confidence in her prose as she meticulously observes and comments on her own actions, the world around her, and occasional esoteric thoughts that have made a home in her brain, as when she whimsically muses about the uniqueness of her penmanship—a hybrid of cursive and block letters that, she says, allow her to put her thoughts down as quickly as possible: “My straight-up-and-down letters that spill out of my pen when I’m pressed up against the wall for an idea, fighting to get something out of my head onto paper, are a chubby, staccato printing and script mash-up. It’s not pretty or classy.” Overall, the essays, which pivot back and forth between six decades, are generally engaging, although a few wrap up without satisfying resolution.

Entertaining and evocative slice-of-life stories.

The Moon Goddess’s Smile Wu, Catherine C. | Crane Bridge Publishers (388 pp.) | $25.99 | $15.99 paper | April 19, 2025 9798992791211 | 9798992791204 paper

In Wu’s novel, memories and revelations mark a woman’s trip to her native China.

Chinese-born Mei is a driven scientist who works for a pharmaceutical startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts; she’s unhappily married to an Italian American man, with whom she raises snarky, 12-year-old twins. Mei can’t say no when one of her aunts asks her to help facilitate the marriage of the

family’s only male heir, Mei’s cousin Binbin, “whom we protected like an endangered panda”: “We all understood his destiny: before exhaling his last breath, [Binbin] must produce a male progeny against all odds.” To seal the deal with his betrothed, Binbin must take ownership of his late grandparents’ apartment; the hitch is that Grandpa’s death certificate is nowhere to be found, so all other potential beneficiaries must relinquish their claims to the apartment by signing waivers before a local notary.

This setup takes Mei back to her hometown of Nanjing, where, through adult eyes, she reevaluates family anecdotes, her own childhood and coming of age, her beloved Grandpa and Grandma, and her “take-charge mother.” She also comes to understand how the lives of her parents, grandparents, and extended family members were shaped by Japan’s invasion of China and the Nanjing Massacre of 1937; the purges, property seizures, and reeducation camps of the Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong; and Nixon’s 1972 visit to China. Mei’s struggle to belatedly reconcile her past life in China with her assimilation in the United States also spurs her desire to archive her grandfather’s wealth of lore, including the story that gives this novel its name. Wu’s debut novel effectively presents one woman’s compelling personal story and how it’s been shaped by history. Its characters are memorable, and Mei’s introspective narration gives the work a distinctive voice. The presentation of a revelation affecting Mei’s marriage borders on the melodramatic. However, this is offset by the striking sensory quality of Wu’s narrative throughout, as when an “odor of over-ripe fruit” sparks Mei’s “olfactory memory—a strange, illogical library,” and she describes the dialect in her father’s hometown of Suzhou as “so soft—as if every harsh sound had been muffled by cotton candy.”

An observant and emotionally authentic novel of homecoming.

K IR KU S R E V IE W S

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“ADA TWIST MEETS DEXTER’S LABORATORY” —Booklist “A WONDERFUL STEM-THEMED ADDITION FOR ALL TWEEN SHELVES.” —School Library Journal

ISBN: 9798887771335

“ENERGETIC . . . BRIGHT AND KINETIC.” —Publishers Weekly

THE DYNAMIC DEBUT GRAPHIC NOVEL BY

CHANTE TIMOTHY