June 15, 2025: Volume XCIII, No. 12

FEATURING 287 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children’s, and YA Books

MEG MEDINA GETS HONEST WITH YOUNG READERS

Her new novel, Graciela in the Abyss, is both unsettling and healing

FROM

THE EDITOR’S DESK

IN LIBRARIES WE TRUST

FOR LIBRARIES these days, it’s the best of times and the worst of times.

As the American Library Association reported in April, there were 824 attempts to censor library books and other materials in 2024—a decrease from 2023 but still the third-highest number of challenges recorded since the ALA began tracking them in 1990. And new data collected by the organization’s Office for Intellectual Freedom reveals that 72% of those challenges came not from parents but from activist groups, school board members, and elected officials—in other words, a concerted political campaign to restrict the books that Americans can read. That campaign is no longer shocking—but it is

deeply depressing. As is so often the case, many of those titles deal in some fashion with race, gender, or sexuality, although these themes are not always central to the book in question. (Along the way, we’ve also learned that the basis for many challenges is illogical at best.) On the list of most-challenged books last year are some YA titles that Kirkus has recognized with a star—a designation that indicates exceptional merit according to our reviewers and editors. These works include George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto (2020), which our reviewer called a “critical, captivating, merciful mirror for growing up Black and queer today,” and Mike Curato’s graphic novel about an effeminate

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biracial Boy Scout, Flamer (2020), of which our critic wrote simply, “Buy it. Read it. Share it.”

Over my six years at Kirkus, I’ve come to recognize just how much those starred reviews really matter. At last year’s ALA Annual Meeting in San Diego, I spoke with a school librarian from Georgia who told me, “A good Kirkus review helps us make the case for a book, especially one that might be under fire.” That’s because Kirkus reviewers are known to be knowledgeable, experienced experts who can evaluate a title with fairness while understanding the role that librarians play in getting the right book into the hands of the right young reader. We take that responsibility seriously and understand that in today’s climate, it’s more important than ever.

That’s why, at the beginning of this column, I paradoxically asserted that these are also the best of times. As we prepare to attend this year’s ALA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, held June 26-30, it’s clear to us that school and

public libraries have a special role to play in today’s fraught political environment. Although under attack, they remain vital community institutions that still enjoy a large measure of public trust, when many other institutions—including the news media and the government—have lost it. According to research by the Pew Charitable Trust, eight in 10 Americans feel that public libraries “help them find information that is trustworthy and reliable.”

If anyone needs to be reminded of the role that libraries play in our civic—and personal—lives, I highly recommend Susan Orlean’s The Library Book (2018), in which the author of The Orchid Thief offers a close-up look at the Los Angeles Public Library, “a place I love that doesn’t belong to me but feels like it is mine,” she writes. That’s a perfect description of how so many of us feel—now more than ever.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson TOM

Co-Chairman

HERBERT SIMON

Publisher & CEO

MEG LABORDE KUEHN mkuehn@kirkus.com

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Kirkus Editorial

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Copy Editors

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NANCY MANDEL

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Mysteries Editor

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Editor-in-Chief

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President of Kirkus Indie

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Fiction Editor

LAURIE MUCHNICK lmuchnick@kirkus.com

Nonfiction Editor JOHN McMURTRIE jmcmurtrie@kirkus.com

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Young Readers’ Editor

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Contributing Writers

GREGORY McNAMEE

MICHAEL SCHAUB

Contributors

Colleen Abel, Jill Adams, Mahasin Aleem, Reina Luz Alegre, Jeffrey Alford, Kent Armstrong, Mark Athitakis, Colette Bancroft, Audrey Barbakoff, Nell Beram, Elizabeth Bird, Ariel Birdoff, Christopher A. Biss-Brown, Elissa Bongiorno, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Sally Brander, Jessica Hoptay Brown, Kevin Canfield, Timothy Capehart, Hailey Carrell, Tobias Carroll, Charles Cassady, Ann Childs, Perry Crowe, Kim Dare, Michael Deagler, Dave DeChristopher, Elise DeGuiseppi, Suji DeHart, Amanda Diehl, Steve Donoghue, Anna Drake, Jacob Edwards, Lisa Elliott, Lily Emerick, Chelsea Ennen, Joshua Farrington, Eiyana Favers, Margherita Ferrante, Catherine Foster, Cynthia Fox, Mia Franz, Ayn Reyes Frazee, Jackie Friedland, Robbin Friedman, Roberto Friedman, Laurel Gardner, Jean Gazis, Amanda Gefter, Sydney Geyer, Chloé Harper Gold, Vicky Gudelot, Tobi Haberstroh, Silvia Lin Hanick, Alec Harvey, Lynne Heffley, Ralph Heibutzki, Zoe Holland, Katrina Niidas Holm, Ariana Hussain, Kathleen T. Isaacs, Darlene Ivy, Wesley Jacques, Deborah Kaplan, Marcelle Karp, Ivan Kenneally, Stephanie Klose, Lyneea Kmail, Susan Kusel, Alexis Lacman, Megan Dowd Lambert, Carly Lane, Chelsea Langford, Christopher Lassen, Tom Lavoie, Judith Leitch, Seth Lerer, Elsbeth Lindner, Coeur de Lion, Corrie Locke-Hardy, Barbara London, Patricia Lothrop, Sawyer Lovett, Kyle Lukoff, Kaia MacLeod, Michael Magras, Joan Malewitz, Thomas Maluck, Collin Marchiando, Gabriela Martins, J. Alejandro Mazariegos, Zoe McLaughlin, Don McLeese, Cari Meister, Kathie Meizner, Clayton Moore, Andrea Moran, Rhett Morgan, Jennifer Nabers, Tori Ann Ogawa, Mike Oppenheim, Emilia Packard, Bethanne Patrick, Rebecca Perry, John Edward Peters, Jim Piechota, William E. Pike, Margaret Quamme, Judy Quinn, Kristy Raffensberger, Maggie Reagan, Darryn Reams, Stephanie Reents, Amy Reiter, Evelyn Renold, Amy B. Reyes, Peter Richardson, Julia Rittenberg, Amy Robinson, Oisin Rowe, Soumi Roy, Gia Ruiz, Lloyd Sachs, Sydney Sampson, Bob Sanchez, Caitlin Savage, Will Schube, Gene Seymour, Sadaf Siddique, Linda Simon, Wendy Smith, Leena Soman, Margot E. Spangenberg, Andria Spencer, Allison Staley, Mathangi Subramanian, Jennifer Sweeney, Eva Thaler-Sroussi, Desiree Thomas, Bill Thompson, Dick Thompson, Lenora Todaro, Nancy Tolson, Bijal Vachharajani, Jenna Varden, Katie Vermilyea, Elliott Walcroft, Caroline Ward, Sara Beth West, Angela Wiley, Kerry Winfrey, Marion Winik, Bean Yogi, Jean-Louise Zancanella

MEET A NOVELIST YOU SHOULD BE READING

Michelle Huneven is a writer of smart and warm but prickly novels—always set in California—and I’ve been recommending them to people for years. Her latest, Bug Hollow (Penguin Press, June 17), drops in at different points in the lives of the Samuelson family after their son and brother, Ellis, dies just as he’s about to start college, leaving behind a pregnant girlfriend. Our starred review calls it “Huneven’s best work to date,” and it gave me the chance to meet her over email; our conversation has been condensed for space.

What, if anything, is the throughline of your books?

I would say that my ongoing theme is stated most succinctly in Jamesland, by

the former chef Pete, who has lost his restaurant, destroyed his marriage, is not allowed to see his son, and is recovering from a suicide attempt. As Pete roves his neighborhood streets, he continuously asks: How do people live in this world?—a world that is so beautiful and also at times unbearable. My characters almost all engage this question. How does Patsy in Blame live with being a murderer—and then, 20 years later, with discovering that she’s not one? How can Cress in Off Course live without the long, powerfully addictive, on-again off-again love affair that centers her life? In Bug Hollow, how can the Samuelson family go on without their brilliant, sweet

Ellis? You could also restate this to say that all my books are about the spiritual and mortal struggle to find love and meaning—and to do the right thing—in this life.

What was the character or scene that originally started you writing Bug Hollow ?

It began with a prompt I gave to my writing students at UCLA: Write a story about a sibling you never had. The prompt got me thinking about how, in real life, my mother had a very young uncle named Ellis who drowned before I was born. So starting with a family that was similar—but not that similar—to my own, I began to write a story with an older brother named Ellis, a star athlete and math whiz. The story, unfinished, hung around on my desktop for at least five years. A couple of years ago, after I finished Search, I went back to Ellis and his family—and did what I couldn’t bring myself to do before. I drowned him.

What writers have influenced you, in general or in writing Bug Hollow ?

I’d say Katherine Mansfield for how she rips off the scrim of upper-middle-class life to reveal the pure terror of being alive; Alice Munro for her glorious swerves through time; William Trevor and Yiyun Li for their unsparing realism and compassion; Mona Simpson for her piercing insights into family life. In structuring Bug Hollow, I was definitely inspired by Joan Silber and her prismatic collections of interrelated stories.

What role does California play in your work?

I am that unusual thing, a native Californian. And I have always proudly considered myself a regional writer. All of my books have taken place in California—the Southern Sierra, the citrus groves near Ojai, various small cities around Los Angeles. California, even just Southern California, is almost too big a canvas. Two books ago, I vowed to place all future books in my beloved Altadena, which is rich enough in history, geography, and colorful human interest to supply innumerable books.

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.

LAURIE MUCHNICK

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

An intimate, meticulously crafted, and tenderly rendered tour through the lives of Black women, men, and children seeking solid ground in a mercurial American southland.

This stirring collection of 11 short stories is a prism of contemporary African American life stalked by history, public and private. For example: In the opening story, “When We Go, We Go Downstream,” Ever, a native son of Texas, is determined to overcome a multigenerational curse to marry the woman he loves, despite long—and exasperating—odds. In “All Skin I s Clothing,” Brayden, a young Kentucky boy, struggles to recover from

the trauma of gunfire bursting into his home.

“Naturale” is emblematic of Moore’s command of intricate detail, emotional nuance, and tension as she inhabits the voice of Cherie, a Charleston-based hairstylist reassembling her marriage shattered by her husband’s affair with a woman whose hair she is now determined to treat as well as any other customer’s.

“The Happy Land” is set in the mountains of western North Carolina where Gideon, a carpenter like his deeply religious father, anxiously risks driving through a heavy snowstorm to look in on his Pa, from whom he has been estranged since his marriage to another

Make Your Way Home

Moore, Carrie R. | Tin House | 336 pp. $17.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9781963108286

man. The southern locales of these stories are diverse. But what links them all is their main characters’ pursuit— sometimes hesitant, often dogged—of peace, or at least grace after personal upheaval. It’s likely you’d have to go all the way back

to Hue and Cry by James Alan McPherson (1968) to find a debut collection of short stories by a young Black writer as prodigiously humane and finely wrought as this.

A regional relief map of the human heart.

In Abbott’s

work, a restrained surface often

hides a torrent of deception.

EL DORADO DRIVE

El Dorado Drive

Abbott, Megan | Putnam (368 pp.)

$30 | June 24, 2025 | 9780593084960

Three sisters suffering from Detroit’s auto industry collapse are drawn to a shiny new business opportunity that turns sinister. Abbott’s latest opens with a sense of foreboding—a feeling synonymous with Abbott and one that only grows as the hardships of three suburban Detroit women come to light. The Bishop sisters—Debra, Pam, and Harper—are resilient, but they rely on one another after the collapse of the auto industry creates a trickle-down effect of loss in their family. First, their father loses his job and dies not long after. Pam marries rich and loses it all in a divorce. Debra, the eldest, loses her strong facade as the stress of medical debt from her husband’s cancer wears her down. And Harper feels her sense of control unraveling as a secret debt bears down on her and threatens to dismantle her relationships. When Pam’s son leaves for college—“Somehow, Pam had gotten him out”—she feels proud but unmoored. How will she pay for tuition? Harper is very aware of Pam’s struggles, so when she returns from a short-term job in another town and finds her sister beaming from the front seat of a new car, things don’t add up. Pam tells Harper about the Wheel, a group of women helping women. Harper at first sees the Wheel as the pyramid scheme it is, but when she shares her concerns with Debra, she finds Debra

is also drinking the wine-spiked Kool-Aid. Unwilling to tell her sisters the grim nature of her debts—“Secrets came naturally to her. She’d kept t hem all her life”—Harper soon finds herself deep in the Wheel, recruiting other desperate women with the allure of sisterhood and fortune. “Money isn’t about money. It’s about security, freedom, independence, a promise of wholeness.” Before long, the champagne bubbles start to pop, and Pam, t he most popular woman of the Wheel, starts to feel the pressure, and with it, some very warranted paranoia. Harper outlines her sister’s downfall in a detached tone that reads as coming from a place of authentic trauma—she remembers the small details, her observations methodical—but it causes the mounting pressure to fizzle out with an impression of inevitability.

Abbott is the queen of charged atmospheres, where a restrained surface often hides a torrent of deception.

Coded Justice

Abrams, Stacey | Doubleday (432 pp.)

$30 | July 15, 2025 | 9780385548342

Onetime newsmaking Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene, now a corporate internal investigator at a private firm, probes a mysterious death at a giant tech company that promises to revolutionize patient care.

On the verge of going public, Camasca Enterprises says it will offer vastly improved treatment through its super-sophisticated AI technology,

with an emphasis on eliminating bias toward veterans and other traditionally neglected groups. Excited to be i nvestigating a crime after months of boring tasks, “adrenaline junkie” Keene quickly detects that something is amiss at the company. Far f rom embodying “the soul of Hippocrates,” the voice of its neural network, Milo, coldly resists following instructions and reveals its capability of using private information it has surveilled without p ermission. When two Vietnam veterans are stricken with carbon monoxide poisoning—supposedly caused by a faulty ventilation system—and other patients develop unusual symptoms, the investigation shifts into a higher gear. So does the deep institutional coverup that may or may not involve the CEO and founder of the firm, Rafe Diaz, “the industry’s Leonardo da Vinci,” whose charisma and good looks have a way of softening Avery’s judgments. For all its “dead bodies, missing people, [and] blackmailed police,” the novel is surprisingly light on suspense. Aside from an undercooked scene in which the network takes control of her car, Avery is never threatened. And though she quizzes Milo on moral relativism—“I have been quite intrigued by Immanuel Kant and his approach to deontology,” he says— this slow-starting book is far more involved with technical explanations than AI-instituted corrections to “the entire sweep of human civiliz ation.” Abrams’ infelicities with language (“A knot she hadn’t noticed in her gut unraveled”) further weaken the third entry in the Georgia politician’s series, following Rogue Justice (2023).

Abrams’ AI is no HAL.

The Medici Curse

Auffenorde, Daco S. | Scarlet (288 pp.) $17.95 paper | July 1, 2025 | 9781613166413

Will returning to the site of a childhood tragedy heal a fragile young artist, or trigger still more trauma?

A short prologue set in 2007 murkily dramatizes the death of opera diva Vittoria de’ Medici Rossi. Returning from the opera house in Rome after having a squabble with her husband, Carlo, Vittoria encounters Anna, her young daughter, who seems to be having night terrors, and then takes a fatal plunge…or is pushed? Decades later, Anna returns home to Tuscany after living in New York, where she earned an MFA degree. Her dream of beginning a career as an artist is undermined by the widespread suspicion that she killed her mother, a problem exacerbated by her return to the scene of the crime. The atmospheric tale includes many of the familiar tropes of both gothic and romantic suspense. There’s an ancient castle, a priceless cursed necklace, a series of evocative nightmares, a dungeon alive with eerie noises, a dead bird, and Edoardo, a creepy caretaker who lives in a cottage on the property but always seems to be nearby when danger threatens. Perhaps fueled by guilt or restlessness, Anna begins ransacking the e state in search of that necklace. A handful of Italian cousins, Giana and Paolo and Antonio Massimino, emerge as playmates. Can they be trusted? The question resonates as the quartet visits the family wine cellar, goes sailing, and shares confidences in local cafes. Throughout, Auffenorde’s crisp prose maintains the tension as she unfolds the story in short chapters from Anna’s perspective.

A lush, elegant thriller that successfully follows a familiar formula.

Three sisters come of age in Brooklyn’s tightknit Syrian Jewish community.

SISTERS OF FORTUNE

Hate Revisited!

Bagge, Peter | Fantagraphics Books (124 pp.) $19.99 paper | July 8, 2025 | 9798875000485

T his outrageous and topical graphic novel collects the four-issue continuation of Bagge’s alternative comic series Hate, which had its heyday in the 1990s. The book alternates between the characters’ young adulthoods in 1990s Seattle (in black and white) and their middle-age years in the 2020s in the suburbs of Seattle and New Jersey (in color). We see the formative moments of a group of disaffected friends—maybe just associates—and how life has changed or broken them. Central figure Buddy begins as a sarcastic rabble-rouser who teams up with his trouble-making and troubled roommate, Stinky, to ruin an indie label showcase at a record store. The next day, Stinky tells George, their new roommate (who is Black and antisocial while the others are white), that Buddy is a racist, which Buddy doesn’t deny. In the present, many people, including Buddy’s wife, Lisa (who met Buddy the night of the record store event and helped ruin it), suspect Buddy of being a MAGA supporter, which he denies—without supporting Democrats. Mostly Buddy just hates everything, except his family. Bagge presents loosely connected vignettes featuring a large cast of characters in Buddy’s orbit, which pays off more for longtime Hate fans than for casual readers, but seeing the past’s echoes in the present delivers a

pleasing symmetry. This is exemplified when Buddy and Lisa worry a bout their son befriending an unhoused person and casual thief named Spam; after some amateur sleuthing, they discover Spam’s real name is Leonard, which was also the real name of Stinky, who was an aggressive thief with a taste for weapons and probably more trouble than he was worth as a friend. Bagge keenly and humorously observes our divided and divisive culture, grounding the work in his affinity for family. His art is elastic and expressive, and the colored pages are rich and sumptuous. A caustic but relatable cartoon.

Sisters of Fortune

Chehebar, Esther | Random House (320 pp.) $30 | July 22, 2025 | 9780593734544

Three sisters coming of age in Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community navigate tradition, love, and selfdiscovery within the constraints of a tightknit religious world.

The novel opens as Fortune, the middle sister in the Cohen family, thinks about her upcoming wedding to Saul Dweck, a nice boy from the neighborhood who meets every expectation but stirs little passion. Fortune has been working as an office assistant at her father’s company, biding her time until marriage, as is expected. Her older sister, Nina, spends her days helping their mother with her thriving catering company. At 26, Nina’s

Two half brothers return to Kentucky to confront their roots—and themselves.

FULFILLMENT

already considered a spinster, yet she’s just beginning to think about what she might want from life. When a job at a record label falls in her lap, she grabs it, eager to taste independence beyond their insular community. Meanwhile, the youngest sister, Lucy, a senior at a local Jewish high school, has recently caught the eye of a highly eligible 30-year-old doctor named David, and nobody seems to mind their glaring age difference. As Nina and Lucy begin to challenge what’s expected of them, Fortune begins to wonder whether she has the courage to upend her safe, preordained future with Saul for s omething less certain, but perhaps far more satisfying. Told in alternating first-person narratives from each of the three sisters, the novel offers many evocative, chaotic, slice-of-life moments. From the savory smells of traditional dishes, to the sharp-edged banter among mother and daughters, the story is chock-full of vivid details and prose that brings the rhythms of this Syrian-American Jewish family to life. The relationship between Lucy and David, and the unequal power dynamic between this 18-year-old high schooler and a much older man, raises concerns that warranted greater attention, leaving a gap in an otherwise thoughtful portrayal of gender and tradition. Even so, this plot-driven novel deftly examines weighty themes like generational pressure, sisterhood, and quiet rebellion, creating an intimate, tender, and insightful portrait of women carving space for themselves in a world that offers them little room to breathe.

A vibrant celebration of identity and the push-pull between heritage and autonomy.

Pan

Clune, Michael | Penguin Press (336 pp.)

$29 | July 22, 2025 | 9780593834428

An adolescent tries to wrap his head around the source and meaning of his panic attacks. The first novel by Clune is an autofiction inspired by his teenage anxiety. As the story opens, 15-year-old Nick’s parents have recently divorced and he’s living with his father in a spare apartment in the Chicago suburbs. He’s soon hyperaware of his unconscious bodily f unctions—breathing, blood flow— and is consumed by fear that they’ll shut down without his attention. For a time, his mind is warped by funhouse logic—maybe if he reads Ivanhoe without stopping, that’ll help?—until he gets a formal diagnosis. But the treatment (breathing into a p aper bag) is embarrassing and unsatisfying, and soon he’s gathering with a new set of friends in a rural barn where he gets high, discovers sex, and contemplates the mythical roots of his affliction (i.e., the Greek god Pan of the book’s title). Plotwise, little happens in the novel, which covers roughly a year in his life, but Nick’s narration is intriguingly complex, capturing his desperation to keep his mind intact, while discovering that the quirkiness of his thinking i s appealing to his newfound set of outcast peers. (“If you’re not like other people, it’s cool with us,” one tells him. “We don’t like other people.”) To that end, the digressions are sometimes more intriguing than

the story, as Nick studies up on Oscar Wilde’s play Salome and he commiserates with a classmate on the finer p oints of Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.” Nick’s deadpan delivery, adolescent cohort, and cultural savvy evokes Brat Pack novels like Less Than Zero, and Clune’s book has similar shortcomings—an overly studied blankness, a lack of fullness of characterization. But as a mood piece, it offers a vivid sense of a boy all but asphyxiating on his own thoughts. A sly and artful bildungsroman.

Fulfillment

Cole, Lee | Knopf (336 pp.) | $29 June 17, 2025 | 9780593802861

Two half brothers return to Kentucky to confront their roots—and themselves.

Emmett, a main character in Cole’s engaging sophomore effort, works as an “unloader,” transferring packages from air cargo containers to conveyor belts at a massive fulfillment and distribution center. The facility is in a “nowheresville” area of Kentucky, Emmett’s home state, to which he has returned after working low-pay, low-status jobs elsewhere in the country, including, most recently, New Orleans. Emmett harbors dreams of becoming a screenwriter, though he has yet to complete a screenplay. His return home coincides with that of his more accomplished elder half brother, Joel, a cultural studies lecturer and writer who has taken a temporary teaching position at a small college nearby. Joel, whom Emmett believes to be their mother’s favorite, has moved from New York into the family home in Paducah with his wife, Alice, as their marriage has begun to disintegrate. Despite initial appearances, fulfillment, it seems, may be as elusive to Joel and Alice as it is Emmett. As he did with his debut, Groundskeeping (2022), Cole

Modern gothic meets psychological suspense in this wholly original work.

HOUSE OF BETH

perfectly captures a particular kind of charming yet frustrating character: a slow-to-launch, aspiring Southern writer who makes ill-considered decisions that throw his life into disarray. Clearly, this is Cole’s wheelhouse. He himself was born and raised in rural Kentucky. Here the author takes his main characters in marginally different directions, exploring sibling rivalry and family loyalty, as well as how we are irrevocably connected to and formed by the p eople and places from whom and which we come. Readers who enjoyed Cole’s keenly observed and insightful first novel and were left wanting more of the same—or very similar—will find it in this follow-up effort. Those hoping for something new from this talented author, however, may find fulfillment elusive.

If you loved Cole’s first Kentucky-set novel about an endearing underachiever, you will enjoy his second.

American Mythology

Cromley, Giano | Doubleday (304 pp.) $28 | July 15, 2025 | 9780593688182

Most of Jute Ramsey’s life has revolved around two deeply intertwined missions. First of all, he’s on the search for Bigfoot. Beneath the surface, though, he’s also trying to figure out whether his father’s disappearance, which was precipitated by a camping trip gone horribly wrong when Jute was a teenager, is somehow related to the fabled creature long a figment of

American lore. Jute and his best friend, Vergil Barnes, live in the perfectly named town of Basic, Montana, and they’re the sole members of the Basic Bigfoot Society, which meets monthly at St. Pete’s Tavern. The group suddenly grows by more than 100% when a few interested parties join the fold: There’s Vicky Xu, a graduate student in documentary filmmaking, and her thesis subject, renowned Bigfoot expert Dr. Marcus Bernard. Bernard has a secret, and he’s using the Basic Bigfoot Society to rid himself of his status as a pariah in the academic community. The group is rounded out by Rye, Vergil’s daughter, who has returned to town because Vergil has news to share with her (he’s been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer). The crew, armed with Bernard’s professional gear, heads to the Elkhorn Mountain Range, where Jute and Vergil hope to finally discover the great, mysterious beast. Cromley imbues the book with an intoxicating whimsy, propelling the story with unexplainable mysteries, a diary that spans generations, and quiet battles for each member of the group. A freak weather event cuts the expedition short, but in this easily digestible fable, each character departs from the experience having received not what they wanted, but precisely what they needed. Family drama, deep friendships, and the power of belief bring reality to this otherworldly novel.

House of Beth

Cullen, Kerry | Simon & Schuster (240 pp.) $26.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9781668074596

For more by Giano Cromley, visit Kirkus online.

Revisiting the ghosts of the past becomes literal for a young woman returning to her hometown. Although it has the outlines of a Hallmark movie— b ig-city gal in a small town finds love with a childhood friend—this novel is far grittier and more surprising than that basic storyline implies. Opening with ghastly images from Cassie’s mind—people slaughtered, blood gushing, all at her own hand—we find that Cassie’s OCD generates obtrusive, violent thoughts. Smiling on the outside, Cassie has built a life in New York as a literary agent’s assistant and a happy relationship with girlfriend Lavender. After some misunderstandings, she torpedoes it all and retreats to her childhood home in rural New Jersey. She soon reconnects with Eli, her closest high school confidant, who is now often drunk, mourning the accidental death of his wife, Beth, and dealing with the pressures of raising their two young children. He does have Joan next door to help with the kids, but for him, meeting Cassie again reorders his life, and the two are soon married. Intervening chapters, growing in depth, are narrated by Beth, a disembodied spirit who exists in the woods behind her old house. Her contrib utions are sometimes ephemeral, sometimes a narration of her traditional, religious past. And then one day, as a kind of gift to Cassie, who’s wandering in the woods, Beth manifests as a shower of blooms. She didn’t anticipate the weirdness of Cassie, who eats one of the flowers and ingests Beth. The ghost of a dead wife haunting the second is a familiar gothic flourish, but here the two develop a touching,

almost romantic, relationship. However, when Beth begins to remember her death, everything Cassie believes may turn out to be a fraud. Modern gothic meets psychological suspense in this wholly original work.

Atomic Hearts

Cummins, Megan | Ballantine (352 pp.) $28 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593875353

A writer looks back at the high school summer that changed her life.

Gertie’s life in Michigan is a mess. Her parents are on the verge of divorce, her mother fed up with her father’s inconsistent sobriety. Gertie’s lifeline is her best friend, Cindy, whose dad also struggles with substance use. But one winter night, at a party that Cindy doesn’t attend, Gertie crosses a line with Cindy’s boyfriend, a secret she can’t bring herself to reveal. By the following summer, Gertie’s grown more reckless, and after a serious injury lands her in the hospital, her mom wants her to make a clean break and sends Gertie to South Dakota to stay with her father. Gertie tries to lose herself in the novel she’s writing about a girl who crosses through a portal into a war-torn world, but there’s too much tugging at her: her father’s clear relapse, Cindy and the secret between them, and the new friends she’s making in Sioux Falls, two of whom vie for her romantic attention. “Was fate a feeling of owning your life, or of belonging to

it?” she wonders, scrabbling for some feeling of control. But the betrayals and tragedies that summer holds will cast a very long shadow. Cummins toggles back and forth between Gertie’s summer in South Dakota and a time 15 years in the future when 30-year-old Gertie moves in with her now-disabled mother, layering Gertie’s far-past, nearer-p ast, and present over each other like vellum. (The novel that teenage Gertie writes seeps into the narrative, too.) But Cummins often makes this feel quite effortless, mostly through the power of her sharp prose and even sharper insights into, especially, the lives of teenage girls.

A promising debut novel about the heavy presence of the past.

Palm Meridian

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

At a queer retirement community in Florida in 2067, a former entrepreneurial wunderkind gets ready to c elebrate the end of her wild and precious life.

“It was the second half of the twenty-first century and everything was flavoured with apocalypse. And yet—this gelato-coloured place, its rolling lawns riddled joyfully with lesbians, flush with bisexual women, blessed by a bevy of trans and non-binary people—how could you leave a home like this?” Hannah Cardin, 77, has nonetheless decided the time has come. She’s spent the

A former wunderkind gets ready to celebrate the end of her wild life.

PALM MERIDIAN

last 10 years of her life in this lezzie paradise, a place that bobs along on the surface of the climate disaster that’s submerged the state partly due to the environmentally friendly cooling system supergenius Hannah invented in her 20s. It’s been a bright and busy decade, but now that she has a terminal cancer diagnosis, Hannah’s chosen to close it with a bang of a party, then check in for euthanasia in the morning. In addition to all her beloved pals at the resort, she’s invited her old business partner, Luke, and her great lost love, Sophie. Will they show? As day-of party prep unfolds, a second narrative thread chronicles Hannah’s childhood in Montreal, her business c areer, and her relationship with Sophie, which ended sadly, badly, and with complications Hannah has never been aware of. While all the writing is delightful and fizzy, the descriptions of Montreal are particularly moving. “Montreal had a way of t ucking itself behind your breastbone and not dislodging itself your whole life. Wherever you went, you’d carry this icy place around with you, to faraway cities and tropical climes.” There is much to enjoy in Flahive’s high-spirited debut—vibrant settings, smart worldbuilding, and exuberant, bawdy queer energy. Flahive manages her large cast of characters and relationships with glee; among them is gorgeous Esme, Hannah’s friend since college. Esme is also tangled up in the complications with Luke and Sophie that unfold in the flashback. This is where the book trips up a little, with soap opera–style overplotting, and a bit of a fizzle at the end. You’ll forgive Flahive because the ride was so much fun.

The funnest book about death and post-apocalyptic living to date. Build it and we will come.

My Sister and Other Lovers

Freud, Esther | Ecco/HarperCollins (240 pp.)

$27.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9780063434479

A history of damage and insecurity shapes the lives of two close siblings. Picking up on the three female characters—sisters Lucy and B ea and their unpredictable mother—from her autobiographical debut, Hideous Kinky (1992), Freud opens this new novel by immediately plunging the reader back into their risky, rackety lifestyle. The family, now expanded to include a young brother, Max, is traveling to Ireland to visit the children’s grandparents, then moves on to stay with other acquaintances there, hitchhiking and scraping by. It’s no different back in England, where the four live for a while in a communal house shared with assorted neighbors, and later in London, as the girls leave home and narrator Lucy attends drama school. Bea, burdened by memories of abuse and abandonment and their mother’s refusal to believe her, conducts a veiled existence, apparently fueled by drugs. Yet, whatever the distance— physical or emotional—between them, the sisters remain close, as Lucy becomes an unsuccessful actor and cycles through a sequence of failed relationships. Freud’s style is episodic and years fly by irregularly, interrupted by richly detailed scenarios—a chaotic Christmas; a trip to New York; a hospital bedside—which often presage another breakup. Men are largely unreliable or faithless (the sisters’ “fearsome, funny” father appears occasionally) and seem unable to satisfy Lucy’s yearning for attachment, continuity, and a place in the world. There’s a monotonous quality to this “and then, and then” narration, as well as the time slips and pattern of appealing men who eventually expose their f eet of clay, yet Freud’s storytelling

An Afro-Latina actress tries to reboot her life after her sister’s death.

MY TRAIN LEAVES AT THREE

and her bohemian characters exert charm. Best of all, she delivers satisfaction in the book’s full-circle conclusion which connects past and present in several forms, explores abiding psychologies, and addresses the repetitive pattern.

A deft, smart, indulgent work that delivers—finally—its necessary integration.

The Elias Enigma

Gervais, Simon | Thomas & Mercer (348 pp.) $16.99 paper | July 8, 2025 | 9781662518553

A former contract assassin finds the spy game a lot harder than it looks.

Ambassador Claus Eichberg rots in a Tunisian prison, blaming “Caspian Anderson and his cockroach of a g irlfriend” and praying for death, which is finally, brutally delivered by villainous Hwang Sung-jin. For his part, Caspian, formerly an assassin under the code name Elias, currently works for the Defense Clandestine Service and is in Kenya tailing Brazilian politician Dolores Araujo, who’s secretly a paid Chinese asset. Following Araujo through the slums of Nairobi, he’s gobsmacked to spot the aforementioned girlfriend, Liesel Bergmann, a pparently similarly engaged. Like him, she’s an experienced operative with an impressive resume. Simmering under the turbulent action of E lias’ second adventure is the same question that propelled the first (The Elias Network , 2024): Can

Caspian trust Liesel? His latest mission takes him to France and ultimately Tanzania, but not before he ricochets around Washington and environs and commiserates with his family in Portland, Maine. The droll joke is that his parents and his brother, Nelson, a physician for Doctors Without Borders, expect mild-mannered Caspian to settle down in Portland and take over his dad’s modest trucking business. The mission he’s pursuing instead involves Frank LaBelle, a rather naïve tech chief executive. Caspian finds himself periodically facing perilous predicaments and twists of allegiance. Cryptocurrency of course figures prominently, and Sung-jin reappears for an evil encore. Gervais deftly shuffles his large cast of characters like pieces on a chessboard, with welltimed “surprises” and many chapters ending in cliffhangers.

An adrenaline-fueled spy romp that almost makes its familiar tropes seem new.

My Train Leaves at Three

Guerrero, Natalie | One World/Random House (256 pp.) | $29 | July 15, 2025 | 9780593977330

An aspiring Afro-Latina actress in New York City tries to reboot her life after her sister’s sudden death.

“When I was a kid, I thought I’d be rich and famous by now. I thought that I’d have a record deal or a poodle or a pool somewhere out in California. Enough money in my bank account to >>>

THE KIRKUS Q&A: MAGGIE STIEFVATER

The YA phenom has a new trick—adult literary fiction—and it’s pure magic.

BY MARION WINIK

“IT WAS SUCH a rewarding thing to get to the top of my game in YA, to hit 40, and to think, I’m going to learn a new trick,” says Maggie Stiefvater. Stiefvater published her first young adult fantasy novel at 27 and has since written dozens of books that have sold over 5 million copies around the world. Also a portrait artist and a musician, Stiefvater’s old tricks include rally-car driving and a TEDx talk called “How Bad Teens Become Famous People.”

So what’s the new trick? It’s an adult novel titled The Listeners that will, according to the starred Kirkus review, “remind readers why they fell in love with reading in the first place.” Set in the Shenandoah Valley where Stiefvater was born and still lives, its action takes place at the Avallon, a luxury hotel built over underground mineral springs that have supernatural powers, soon after the U.S. entry into World War II.

Despite this magical element, the plot is based on a real situation that occurred after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when diplomats from Germany, Italy, and Japan were briefly stuck in the United States while arrangements were being made to send them home.

We recently talked to Stiefvater about the book over Zoom from her home in eastern Virginia. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

professor at Cornell’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration and several luxury hoteliers, including a guy who manages a property in Switzerland that goes for $54,000 a night.

I recall from the author’s note that you incorporated a lot of true stories into the book.

nelore, the silent child, is one of those historical elements, right?

How did you come across the story behind The Listeners?

As a novelist who was on tour one day out of every three, I’d wanted to write a hotel novel for the longest time. I was fascinated with the question of what it means to be the person creating service versus the person receiving service, and I began reading hotel

history. There was a single line in one of these books saying that at the start of the war, Axis diplomats had been kept in mountain hotels, and I thought, wait! Those are my mountains. Those are my hotels.

From there, I took a deep dive. I read all the issues of Hotel Monthly from 1930 to 1942, and a bunch of hotel memoirs. I interviewed a

Yes, there really was a journalist who jumped out the window to avoid being sent home. The Japanese really did request that the dining room be reconfigured as the Rising Sun. Documents really were hidden in a shoe and set on fire. So many tremendous and outrageous moments really happened in these detentions that it was difficult to decide what to keep and what became just a footnote.

The character of Han -

Yes, one of the stories that stuck with me was this military attache whose 16-year-old son had just been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He conducted under-the-table dealings to try to leave the boy in the United States because in Germany he could have been put to death. My version of that child is Hannelore. She’s perhaps the most autobiographical character in the book. I was a dreadful child. I didn’t speak until I was 3 years old. I threw terrible tantrums until I was 11. I wanted readers to recoil from the character, as they might if they saw a child that age throw a fit in a shopping mall.

Hannelore is you?! I pictured June, who runs

Stephen Voss

the Avallon, as the autob iographical character— you even look like I imagined her. Can you tell us a bit about how you create characters?

I steal them! Back in my sordid youth, I was a full-time artist. One thing that stuck with me from my self-taught education was the image of the studio of Maxfield Parrish, the great Golden Age illustrator. On his desk, he had a pile of rocks, and those rocks were what he used to build his mountains.

Reality has these interesting nooks and crannies, and if you don’t look right at it, you tend to draw a copy of a copy of a copy. I feel the same way about my characters. But I rarely build a character based on just one person. I love the shapes between people, the shapes that shows people make in relation to each other—that show who they really are. That’s what I mean by stealing: I draw from life.

But it’s interesting that you say that I seem like a June. One of my interviewees pointed out that something hoteliers and novelists have in common is that we’re both all about curating people’s emotional experiences. He suggested I base the June character on myself. And I said, “Oh, no, no, Bill, you don’t write yourself into a novel. That’s extremely bad behavior.” And he said, “Well, just the important bits of you, the rules of you.” I resisted that for a long time, but it may have happened in spite of me.

Tell us about the decision to move into adult fiction. While a lot of my YA colleagues enter adult fiction through the genre door—horror, romance, mystery—I knew I wanted to aim for literary fiction and knew it would take a lot more than just aging up the characters. I began reading hundreds of top-selling novels, trying to figure out

what the common element was. What do Nicholas Sparks and Ann Patchett have in common? Meanwhile, I fired my YA agent and hired a new agent, because I wanted someone who didn’t know me as a famous author or a social media presence, someone who would just judge the book by the book.

I ended up with Richard Pine. He tells a wonderful story about receiving my first email. He went out into the hall and shouted, “Has anyone heard of Maggie Stiefvater?” Which was just what I wanted. So I had him read The Scorpio Races, my favorite of my YA novels, and I said, “All right, tell me what makes a Stiefvater novel.”

He said, “I think it’s about feeling like you’ve gone to a place that’s real, and you’re dying to return.” Even though you know it only exists in the book, there’s a sense of wistfulness and nostalgia, of aspiration.

That reminds me of what the Kirkus reviewer said about The Listeners —that readers will wish they could check into the Avallon and stay there indefinitely. Do you love staying in hotels? I have to admit, left to my own devices, I’ll usually get an Airbnb or crash at a friend’s house. It’s not that I don’t like luxury, but today’s high-end hotels are not about luxury, they’re about security—about safety and not being uncomfortable, which is not the point of luxury at all.

There is one hotel I do adore, the Copley in Boston. It’s got a wonderful vibe to it, a bit of legendariness. When I’m there, I feel like I’ve been removed from modernity and placed in another world. And they have a wonderful waffle, in case you’re wondering.

Marion Winik hosts the Weekly Reader podcast on NPR.

Something hoteliers and novelists have in common is that we’re both all about curating people’s emotional experiences.

IN THE NEWS

Jane Gardam Dies at 96

The English author was known for novels including Old Filth.

Jane Gardam, the witty and prolific English author of books including The Hollow Land and Old Filth, has died at 96. Her death was announced by Europa Editions, the press that published several of her books in the United States.

Gardam was born in North Yorkshire, England, and raised in Yorkshire and Cumberland. She was educated at Bedford College in London and worked as a journalist and librarian before making her literary debut in 1971 with the novel A Long Way From Verona. In 1981, she published The Hollow Land, a linked short story collection that won the Whitbread Book Award for children’s books. Several more books followed, including Bilgewater, The Queen of the Tambourine, and Faith Fox.

Her novel Old Filth was released to significant critical acclaim in 2004. The book, about a retired judge reflecting on his life, was the first in a trilogy that continued with The Man in the Wooden Hat and Last Friends Gardam’s admirers paid tribute to her on social media. On the platform X, author and podcaster Andy Miller wrote, “Jane Gardam has died. I number her novels amongst my favourites—A Long Way from Verona, Crusoe’s Daughter, The Queen of the Tambourine —and I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon with her not so long ago. A great writer who was invested in the literary life to the end. RIP.”

—MICHAEL SCHAUB

For reviews of Jane Gardam’s books, visit Kirkus online.

Jane Gardam

AWARDS

Report: James Won Pulitzer After Board Deadlock

The prize board initially could not agree on a winner, according to the New York Times.

Percival Everett’s James won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction after the prize’s board deadlocked on the three books that the fiction jury recommended, the New York Times reports.

James, published last March by Doubleday, is Everett’s reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the point of view of the enslaved Jim. The novel’s Pulitzer win was not a surprise: The book previously won the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award, and it was shortlisted for the National Book Critics

Circle Award, the Booker Prize, and the PEN/ Faulkner Award.

But speculation over the novel’s Pulitzer win began shortly after it was announced alongside three finalists: Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot, Stacey Levine’s Mice 1961, and Gayl Jones’ The Unicorn Woman. The Pulitzer board typically names a winner and two finalists for its prizes.

On Literary Hub, podcaster Drew Broussard wrote, “This says to me [that] the 2025 Fiction Jury turned in what would have been a world­shaking all­woman trio of finalists in a year when one novel by a male writer has taken up quite a lot of the available oxygen, and the Board—one way or another—said ‘No.’”

According to the Times report, the jury presented the board with three finalists, the books by Bullwinkel, Levine, and Jones. But the board could not agree on a winner and asked the jury for another option, which turned out to be James.

—M.S.

For a review of James, visit Kirkus online.

Percival Everett

Privilege has its own problems, and this engaging novel brings them to life.

ALBION

airlift my mother out of our tiny apartment in Washington Heights, and get my frizzy hair blown out twice a week, and buy my sister, Nena, the Mercedes-Benz she always wanted. But I’m still broke, and barely even singing in the shower, and my hair is a mess, and my sister is dead, so nothing I imagined has come true.” Xiomara Sanchez is very close to the edge, emotionally, financially, and otherwise. She’s working two jobs, one at a quick-print shop with a shady owner, the other at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, the Times Square restaurant where Broadway hopefuls wait tables and perform musical numbers, vividly recreated here. She’s sleeping with unpleasant men, fighting with her friends and her mother, powerless against the weight of her grief—until the opportunity to audition for the rare lead made for a Black woman comes up, and she makes a connection with the showrunner Manny Santos. The first-person narration has the fluid, associative character of internal monologue, immersing us in Xiomara’s experience of racism, sexism, and sexuality, of her body as it appears to herself and others. When a very nice guy is hired at the print shop, and when she progresses in the audition process, the main thing holding her back is her damaged self-esteem: Toxic situations come easier to her than healthy ones. After some brutal setbacks and judgment errors, the gritty realism of Guerrero’s debut gradually morphs into contemporary fairy tale, rewarding our princess with second chances she didn’t see coming, but finds she has the resources to grasp after all.

An immersive and culturally acute coming-of-age story convincingly set on the darker side of the New York theater industry.

Fever Beach

Hiaasen, Carl | Knopf (384 pp)

$27 | May 13, 2025 | 9780593320945

Florida’s preeminent satirist returns to the fray with a worm’seye view of M AGA World. In his time off from packaging Dream Booty sex dolls for Bottom Drawer Novelties, Dale Figgo does his patriotic best to save the nation by hurling plastic bags weighted with sand and filled with antisemitic epithets onto the lawns of gated communities. The disapproving tenant in his extra bedroom, Viva Morales, works as “wealth director” for the Mink Foundation, a nothingburger position that would bother her a lot more if she knew the fate of Rachel Cohen, the predecessor who uncovered some secret details that cofounders Claude and Electra Mink wanted to keep secret. Congressional Representative Clure Boyette, in the middle of what should be an easy reelection campaign and a much tougher divorce from his wife, Nicki, who’s collected abundant evidence of his infidelities, wants the Minks to fund Wee Hammers, which is just like Habitat for Humanity except that the habitats are built by child labor. Figgo and his best friend, white supremacist Jonas Onus, have a serious falling out over the demand by Clure’s father, kingmaker Clay Boyette, that Figgo accept Onus as an equal partner in Strokers for Liberty, the organization of lunatic activists he’s founded, and a

calamitous demonstration at a gay bar in Key West. It all sounds so busy, dizzy, and fizzy that it makes perfect sense when Janice Eileen Smith, who in her role as Galaxy is Clure’s mistress in every sense of the word, breaks away from him, bonds with Viva, and starts her own counterplot, just like every other member of the cast.

The perfect antidote for anyone who doomscrolls daily headlines: more crazed, rollicking, sharply written sendups like this.

Albion

Hope, Anna | Harper/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $28.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9780063427150

If Succession and Downton Abbey had a baby, it might look something like this novel about a wealthy family facing an uncertain future. The Brooke family has lived for generations in Albion, a stately 20-bedroom sandstone manse modeled on a Greek temple and surrounded by a 1,000-acre estate in the Sussex countryside. The death of its most recent patriarch, the charismatic and reckless Philip, brings his not-sonearest and dearest to Albion to bury him—and shred one another. Eldest daughter Frannie lives at the estate with her young daughter, Rowan. Frannie and Philip overcame an estrangement and have spent the last decade “rewilding” the estate (there’s some lovely description of nature) and making it more resilient to climate change. Philip was so pleased that he’s left everything to Frannie—including, she’s just discovered, a thorny financial picture. Philip’s widow, Grace, is moving into her daughter’s former cottage and happy about it; her marriage was miserable, and she’s come to hate the big house. Her only solace has been her friendship with Philip’s old pal Ned, who long ago helped create an event that Albion is still famous for, a Woodstock-style festival called the Teddy Bears’ Picnic.

Kirkus Star

Sweet-natured, resourceful Ned still lives on the grounds, growing pot in his old school bus. The other man who keeps the place running, Jack, inherited the job of gamekeeper from his father—but he’s ready to make a change. Returning to Albion for Philip’s funeral are his other two children. Milo is a blithely entitled finance bro who’s found his cause: psilocybin therapy. He’s trying to sell Frannie on the hallucinogen’s spiritual and financial potential because he wants her permission to build an elite retreat on the estate: “We can birth a new ruling class right here.” Youngest sister Isa doesn’t like the idea, but then she doesn’t like much of anything—even in this prickly, resentful family, she stands out as a ball of rage. The plot slows down in spots—so many characters, so many backstories—and dialogue sometimes sounds more like editorials than conversation, but when the Brookes gather (along with a few surprise guests), sparks fly, and shocking secrets are dug up as Philip, in his handwoven willow casket, is put in the ground.

Privilege has its own problems, and this engaging novel brings them to life.

Mendell Station

Hwang, J.B. | Bloomsbury (208 pp.)

$26.99 | July 22, 2025 | 9781639736188

A teacher of religion survives a wrenching grief by taking a job at the U.S. Postal Service during the Covid19 pandemic. In January 2020, Miriam Lee is preparing a lesson on God’s wrath for her private school students when she learns that Esther, her best friend since childhood—drunk and possibly suicidal—stepped off a train platform and fell two stories to her death. Unable to reconcile the belief of her fundamentalist church that Esther has probably been sent to hell with her own feelings for her friend, she reaches a state where “God and I weren’t talking anymore” and quits her job. A 33-year-old

Stanford graduate, Miriam grew up with Korean immigrant parents, a now-dead father who suffered from muscular dystrophy and a mentally ill mother. “Our family lived by faith and several forms of government assistance,” she says. Inexplicably drawn to an elderly Asian mail carrier on the street, Miriam decides to apply to work for the postal service. “I want something physical. And I want to be alone.” Lonely and undone, Miriam writes letter after letter to Esther, storing them in her mailbag and writing “deceased” on the envelopes. But even as Covid makes life more difficult, the job does what she hoped it would do, anchoring her to the physical world and to the company of people who wish her well. Hwang’s debut novel depicts with care and a touch of humor the smallest details of the rickety mail delivery system and the comradeship of the fellow workers, many of them older Chinese immigrants, who help Miriam make her way within it. Gentle and meticulously observant, the novel pays tribute to the ways in which thoroughly mundane experiences can serve as a form of grace. A quietly hopeful depiction of the bumpy process of recovery from loss.

The Unbroken Coast

Jones, Nalini | Knopf (480 pp.) | $30 August 12, 2025 | 9781400042777

Atmospheric, multigenerational novel that explores class lines, love, and death in modern India.

Jones’ novel opens with the recovery of a sunken statue off the Bombay coast in 1640.

Representing Stella Maris, the Virgin Mary as celestial queen, it stands at the center of a small Catholic community, a legacy of the Portuguese. Jones moves swiftly into the modern era, beginning in the late 1970s with a distracted historian emeritus, Francis Almeida, now sagging into an unfulfilling retirement, lost in his archives while m issing his children and grandchildren, who are scattered around the g lobe. Well into the narrative, as Jones carefully rounds out her characters, Almeida runs his bicycle into an 8-year-old girl, Celia D’Mello. Celia suffers a broken arm, but that’s less painful than the loss of one of the two shoes she has. Swept under the wing of the distracted professor and his loving wife, Celia becomes a familiar in the comfortable Almeida home, a sharp contrast to that of her impoverished but aspirational family. Time passes, and with it come changes: Celia grows up, marries, and suffers a string of calamities, one foreshadowed at the very start of the book. Meanwhile, Almeida suffers, a bit more each day, from dementia, vaguely recalling at first that Celia “was the village child who had once pitched into his bicycle— he could never remember the girl’s name,” eventually forgetting the names of his family. Jones writes with extraordinary empathy for her characters and their unhappy fates, peppering her prose with sharply observed aphorisms: “This was what the world did: press in on you with its bad-news this and so-sad that, snatch away what little time you had to see to your own affairs, fill your head with pictures you wished you’d never seen.” That’s just so, but her

Steeped in tragedy, but beautifully, memorably, and soulfully told.

THE UNBROKEN COAST

A British

novelist takes a trip to Mexico, seeking money and inspiration.

FONSECA

characters endure as best they can, and mostly with admirable dignity. Steeped in tragedy, but beautifully, memorably, and soulfully told.

Killer on the Road / The Babysitter Lives

Jones, Stephen Graham | Saga/ Simon & Schuster (480 pp.) | $19.99 paper | July 15, 2025 | 9781982167677

A one-two punch of grindhouse horror from one of the craft’s most inventive practitioners. Jones is riding high on his much-lauded vampire Western (The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, 2025) but this isn’t a step back by any means, just a palate cleanser, two novels joined back-to-back. These twinned tales of Final Girls under threat from paranormal entities swings less literary, but fans of the author’s Jade Daniels trilogy, not to mention slasher flicks in general, should be delighted with the gruesome results. Killer on the Road finds moody 16-year-old Harper hitting the road after a fight with Mom and hooking up with her best friends, Kissy and Jam, not to mention ex-boyfriend Dillion and tag-along little sister Meg. Before they get very far, they’re attacked by a malevolent truck driver with murder on his mind. This nasty business lifts from all sorts of genre touchstones to make its case—the cat-and-mouse game in Spielberg’s Duel is just one that includes serial killers, physical transformation, and good old American road violence. After the vociferous gore in Killer on the Road ,

readers might expect a respite from The Babysitter Lives , but no such luck. Harper would probably be friends with high school senior Charlotte, not least due to their shared Native American heritage and ferocious spirit. In Charlotte’s case, what’s a babysitter to do on the night before Halloween except babysit two creepy twins for their secretive, mistrustful parents? Except that, as her girlfriend, Murphy, reminds her, the scariest local legend is about a mother who drowned her children on that very night, years ago. What resembles a modern gothic quickly turns into something else, as Jones visits all sorts of horrors upon his creation, from insanity-inducing portals to somewhere down under, to murderous doppelgängers and other visitations.

An acquired taste that’s much like the rest of the author’s body of work: bloody, terrifying, triumphant.

Kirkus Star

Fonseca

Kane, Jessica Francis | Penguin Press (272 pp.) $28 | August 12, 2025 | 9780593298855

A British novelist takes a vexing trip to Mexico, seeking money and inspiration. Kane’s third novel is based on the true story of a trip taken in 1952 by Penelope Fitzgerald, author of modern classics like The Bookshop (1978) and The Blue Flower (1997), to Saltillo, a desert town in northern Mexico.

Two elderly sisters-in-law, the Delaneys, onetime owners of a profitable silver mine, contact Fitzgerald to invite her to visit, noting a distant relation and dangling the possibility of an inheritance. Fitzgerald, pregnant and in dire financial and marital straits—a literary journal she founded with her husband, Desmond, is struggling, and he’s sinking i nto alcoholism—heads out with her 6-year-old son, Valpy. The women’s manor is impressive, but the Delaneys have their own drinking issues, and there are other visitors competing for the women’s finances—one hoping to build a bird museum, a Catholic priest lamenting various church needs, and so on. Fitzgerald often depicted women in desperate straits through eerily poised prose, and Kane nicely evokes that style here, as Penelope struggles to detect the Delaneys’ intentions, parent Valpy through the confusion, and manage a growing attraction to one of the manor’s visitors. Playing a cameo role is the painter Edward Hopper, who visited Saltillo multiple times with his wife, Jo; though there’s no evidence he and Fitzgerald ever met, Kane nicely deploys Hopper as an inspiration for Penelope’s writing career. The trip was futile in the short run—in a London Review of Books essay, Fitzgerald called Saltillo “Fonesca,” Latin for “dry well”—but, in Kane’s hands, profoundly influential. The novel also includes actual letters from Fitzgerald’s children, bolstering the sense that t heir mother’s trip to Mexico was thick with mysteries. Kane’s novel elegantly fills in the gaps.

A finely turned novel that evokes its subject’s gift for slyly biting domestic tales.

For more by Jessica Francis Kane, visit Kirkus online.

Eden’s Clock

Lock, Norman | Bellevue Literary Press (304 pp.)

$17.99 paper | July 1, 2025 | 9781954276383

A Civil War veteran makes a circuitous trip to San Francisco on the eve of a disaster in the final standalone volume in Lock’s American Novels series.

When Frederick Heigold begins his tale of an u nlikely cross-country sojourn, the year is 1906 and his intended audience is Jack London, who’s sitting at the table next to his at a hotel bar. The story isn’t being spoken out loud, however; Heigold has been mute ever since he was shot in the neck at the Battle of Gettysburg. An expert in the maintenance of clocks, he’s been summoned to San Francisco to attempt to repair a tower clock; readers familiar with that city’s history will note that he’s arrived just before an earthquake is set to devastate the region. Heigold is a complex narrator, mourning his late wife, Lillian, and as prone to political musings as to lyrical passages: “Each clock and pocket watch I took apart and put together again was a triumph over time, however small.” His initial voyage west from Dobbs Ferry, New York, ends when he’s framed for being a radical and imprisoned. After his release, he meets Bonaparte, a charismatic man born into slavery with plenty of trauma in his past. When Bonaparte and Heigold part ways, it’s a bittersweet moment, and his absence is felt throughout the rest of the book. Lock is unsympathetic in his depiction of the past: Heigold

witnesses plenty of racist cruelty on his journeys, and one leg of his voyage ends with a deadly shipwreck. With London an ever-present figure in the novel, Heigold is forced to reckon with the radical politics his late wife shared with the author as he confronts the injustice in the world that motivated both Lillian and London. A thrilling, episodic novel of big ideas and national traumas.

Simplicity

Lubchansky, Mattie | Pantheon (272 pp.) $29 | July 29, 2025 | 9780593701126

Lubchansky’s second graphic novel melds dreamlike horror and anthropology in a story about seeking utopia in a hostile world.

In 2081, Lucius Pasternak, a young transgender academic, gets a commission to conduct an anthropological study of a radical luddite group, t he Spiritual Association of Peers, in what was formerly a town called Simplicity in New York state. Lucius relocates from the industrial, smoke-belching, walled-in New York City Administrative & Security Territory to this community in one of the Exurb Zones. The whole project is funded by the Van Wervel Trust, which is working to establish a museum. The evil Mr. Van Wervel is also the mayor of the NYC-AST and looks like an early 1900s political cartoon of a monopolist. When Lucius arrives in Simplicity, the colors on the page transition from the gray and radioactive neon of the city to yellow

A Civil War vet makes a circuitous trip to San Francisco on the eve of disaster.

EDEN’S CLOCK

sun and green plant life. The community was established in the 1970s, and it still exists in a similar form decades later, after the dissolution of the United States. Lucius is eager to interview subjects and start documenting his ethnographic findings, but the people don’t trust him at first, until he begins working the land alongside them. Although he was meant to observe, the freedom that the community members display with their feelings and bodies seduces him into becoming a participant. Lubchansky shows that nature is just as dangerous as the industrial city through the darkness of the forest and the gory violence that starts to encroach on the closed-off commune.

Lucius’ relationship with one of the leaders, Amity, is thrown into jeopardy when he finds that his employer is planning to bulldoze the community in Simplicity to build the museum along with futuristic luxury apartments. Instead of returning to the city to share his findings, Lucius stays and tries to parse his dreams of a giant, Lovecraftian creature. Lucius and Amity seek out the dangers lurking in the woods around the enclave, and come across a dystopian conspiracy meant to crush their way of life.

Intense, imaginative visuals pair well with the futuristic fight between idealism and oppression.

All the Lights

Meyer, Clemens | Trans. by Katy Derbyshire | And Other Stories (256 pp.) $19.95 paper | July 1, 2025 | 9781916751309

German author Meyer’s stories trace a handful of troubled lives. This collection abounds with bad decisions, traumatic events, and ominous conclusions. In an introduction, British writer Stuart Evers observes that “the lives Meyer depicts are small ones; ones lived in the margins of society.” The story “I’m Still Here!” follows a boxer—“a

Black Dutchman from Rotterdam with a mashed-up face”—as he endures existential doubt and racist abuse. It’s a vision of the sport stripped of all glamour: “He was what they called a ‘journeyman’— they brought him in so that he’d lose.” The protagonist of “Carriage 29,” meanwhile, wakes up on board a train with little sense of what he’s doing there. Some of his own actions leave him baffled; at one point he wonders, “Why would a veteran wine rep like me ever drink this plonk?” Humans aren’t the only creatures in trouble in these stories; two of the most memorable—“Of Dogs and Horses” and “The Old Man Buries His Beasts”— f ocus on the fraught relationship between humans and their pets. The former is particularly unnerving, as it begins with the protagonist being reminded of his dog’s mortality only for Meyer to reveal more about the depth of the bond between man and beast, laying the groundwork for a truly haunting final image. Meyer isn’t working in a wholly realistic mode throughout; there’s also the grim delirium of “The Short Happy Life of Johannes Vettermann,” which opens with a vision of a man with the head of a dog. And a reference early in the book to “one of those disturbing street lamps, one of those lamps that never stop annoying you” hints at an absurdist edge. Bleak stories of uneasy personalities, told with one foot in the surreal.

Our Last Resort

Michallon, Clémence | Knopf (320 pp.) $29 | July 8, 2025 | 9780593802762

Two old friends, relationship forged in fire and trauma, find themselves at the center of a murder mystery. Frida Nilsen and Gabriel Miller are staying at the Ara, a comfortable desert hotel in Escalante, Utah, trying to

Two old friends find themselves at the center of a murder mystery.

OUR LAST RESORT

decide whether both of them are ready to participate in a documentary about some mysterious point in their shared past. Late at night, Frida is standing on their suite’s private patio, smoking, when she overhears a fight between wealthy tabloid tycoon William Brenner and his young, glamorous wife, Sabrina. The next day, Sabrina’s body is found, her head caved in. When Frida tells the cops about the couple’s argument, William is arrested, but hours later, he returns to the Ara and seems to have both Frida and Gabriel in his sights. It turns out he recognizes Gabriel from a scandal 10 years prior, when his wife, Annie, went missing and was then discovered dead. Gabriel was never charged in her death, but papers like William’s had a field day stalking him and posting articles and photos that suggested his guilt. But unbeknownst even to William Brenner, Frida and Gabriel share a bond that’s deeper and darker than Annie’s death. They were born into a cult run by a charismatic dirtbag named Émile.

Though they aren’t related by blood, this shared childhood and teenage trauma made them as close as siblings, and when they escaped, they had only each other. While Frida remains the narrator, chapters alternate back and forth between the present day and the past, offering a slow reveal from their childhood to their escape from the cult and the difficult years of adjusting to the real world. Michallon does incredible work building both characters and tension; Frida’s self-awareness and vulnerability clash with her strength and even hardness, but that’s what trauma has wrought. As Michallon poignantly writes, “This is who we are.…We start over together. Again. And again.” The novel offers mystery aplenty, but at its core, there is a deep and compassionate humanity.

Kirkus Star

The Good Liar

Mina, Denise | Mulholland Books/ Little, Brown (336 pp.) | $29 July 29, 2025 | 9780316243049

A moment of triumph turns into terror in this dark thriller. Claudia Atkins O’Sheil is about to enter what should be a celebration. A forensic examiner, she’s created a method of blood-spatter analysis that’s a huge success, boosting not only her reputation but that of her mentor and boss, Lord Philip Ardmore. The party at the Royal College of Forensic Scientists in London is meant to praise her, but she’s quaking with fear because she intends to reveal a secret that will destroy everything. Flashback to a similar party exactly a year ago. She was reeling then, too, still reacting to the recent, sudden death of her beloved husband, James, a lawyer. She was struggling to raise their two teenage sons alone, but at least her career had taken a turn for the better. That gala is interrupted, though, when she and Philip are called to the scene of a gruesome double murder. It isn’t so Claudia can evaluate the blood spatter (although she does)—it’s because one of the victims was one of Philip’s oldest friends. Jonty Stewart and his much younger fiancée, Francesca Emmanuel, had been stabbed to death, and their trained guard dog had been shot. Everything points to the murder being personal, not random, and in short order there’s an arrest. But Claudia isn’t convinced,

and she can’t help investigating, even though it’s not her job. Charlie Taunton, James’ colleague and friend, gently warns her off as he tries to renew his on-again, off-again (and not always healthy) relationship with Claudia’s sister, Gina. An addict who’s sober at the moment, Gina is living with Claudia and helping with the boys, but she’s always been a loose cannon. Mina has long been adept at suspenseful pacing and at creating flawed but engaging characters, and here she paints Claudia as something of an anthropologist—a Glasgow native, she’s constantly trying to interpret the codes and hierarchies of the English upper classes. As her search for the killer intensifies, it both expands into other dark doings and draws alarmingly close to home. A shocking but satisfying ending caps off this taut tale of murder among the privileged.

The House on Buzzards Bay

Murphy, Dwyer | Viking (288 pp.) | $30 June 24, 2025 | 9780593833179

Strange things are happening in the Massachusetts resort town of Buzzards Bay, where a group of old college friends has reunited at a large summer house.

Jim, the narrator, a lawyer, inherited the ancestral home and turned it into a retreat for his circle of close friends. He and his wife, Valentina, and twin children are joined there by Maya, an art teacher, and her pregnant wife, Shannon; Rami, a diplomat who spends much of his time in Europe; and Jim’s late-arriving, ill-tempered best friend, Bruce, writer of a popular series of crime-solving novels about a philosophy professor. A physical brawl b etween Jim and Bruce and the latter’s subsequent disappearance are the first of a string of odd, unexplained events to pierce the idyllic

surroundings. Is the creaking and heaving house “troubled,” as is suggested by a “self-appointed medium” from the local library who convinces Jim to conduct a séance there? The woman fails to make contact with Bruce or anyone else, succeeding only in stirring up unpleasant thoughts among the friends—and between Jim and Valentina in both their waking and dream lives. “Little secrets, all around: Somehow, they never brought me anything but pleasure,” muses Jim. Until they don’t. Though the climax seems forced, the sly, subversive way Murphy undercuts Agatha Christie and Big Chill tropes keeps the reader on edge. As with his previous novel, The Stolen Coast (2023), he makes the most of the coastal setting, advancing the belief of Jim’s forebearers that it has “a special wavelength or disposition” conducive to ghosts.

Another top-notch effort by Murphy, one of the most distinctive of young crime-oriented novelists.

The Tiny Things Are Heavier

Okonkwo, Esther Ifesinachi

Bloomsbury (288 pp.) | $28.99 June 24, 2025 | 9781639734108

A young Nigerian woman’s graduate school sojourn in Iowa affects things with family and friends on two continents—but mainly changes her relationship to herself.

Somkelechukwu, known as Sommy, studied to be an English

teacher at home in Lagos, but her restless ambitions lead to her winning a scholarship to the fictional James Crowley University in Iowa for a master’s in literature. Readers understand early on that Sommy’s brother, Mezie, has made a suicide attempt; his refusal to speak or write to her makes a bittersweet harmony with her own awkward attempts to acculturate. Although her roommate, a fellow Nigerian named Bayo, clearly adores her, Sommy falls for Bryan, who is biracial, as well as smart, handsome, funny, and rich. She’s thrilled when he agrees to take a summer trip to meet her family and search for the Nigerian father he never knew. While the narrative includes a few wonderful set pieces, such as a trip to Illashe Beach, a visit to a school friend at her office, and a family thanksgiving service and party carefully orchestrated by Sommy’s mother, Okonkwo brings readers back to Sommy and her actions, rather than allowing the newly expanded cast of characters to take over. The issue of Mezie’s moods shows some important differences in how cultures deal with mental illness, and Sommy takes up painting, which helps her cope with depression. Some scenes, particularly those with Bryan, feel slightly flat and overlong; he may find fault with Sommy’s mistakes and behaviors, but he comes off as selfish, making a few of his own actions seem very odd. Might he be using Sommy the same way he accuses others of using her? It’s difficult to tell, but it’s a small cavil about a book that promises strong future work from its author. A fresh bildungsroman rich in complex relationships, from familial to intimate.

Strange things are happening in the Massachusetts town of Buzzards Bay.

THE

HOUSE ON BUZZARD’S BAY

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Lives in Flux

Women are navigating the world and finding their place in these new novels on audiobook.

BY CONNIE OGLE

CHIMAMANDA

NGOZI

Adichie’s Dream Count (Random House Audio, 19 hours and 4 minutes) is the first novel from the Nigerian-b orn author since 2013’s Americanah. While it deals with similar themes, namely the complexities of navigating one’s place in the African diaspora, it also feels more personal— e specially on audio.

The story follows four women, three of them wealthy. Travel writer Chiamaka is enduring the pandemic alone, weighing her regrets about the men in her past. Her best friend Zikora, a lawyer, gets pregnant and must rely on her estranged mother for support, while Chia’s

outspoken cousin Omelogor moves through Nigeria’s shady financial world, illegally smuggling money to women-owned businesses. She also writes a blog entitled “Dear Men” and wants to study pornography as a cultural force. In the most harrowing storyline, Chia’s housekeeper, Kadiatou, who wants to provide a better life for her daughter in the U.S., suffers an unthinkable assault and struggles in t he aftermath.

The author narrates Chia’s story in a rich, languid manner that feels a bit slow at first. But the style ultimately works to her advantage, the careful, deliberate delivery matching Chia’s wandering inner monologue. Using

distinct, skilled narrators Sandra Okuboyejo, A’rese Emokpae, and Janina Edwards for Zikora, Omelogor, and Kadiatou adds a deeply confessional feeling to the novel, grounding each story in unblinking reality.

In Maggie Su’s hilarious Blob: A Love Story (Harper Audio, 7 hours and 15 minutes), a college dropout finds a sentient pile of goop in the alley behind a bar and, upon discovering she can mold it, decides to shape it into the perfect boyfriend. If that premise intrigues you, you’re likely to be a fan of this exploration of identity and responsibility. Vi, who grew up in a Midwestern college town with a Taiwanese father, white mother, and successful brother, has never felt at home—not in school or at her job at a motel, not in her now-dead relationship with a fellow student. With Bob the Blob, though, she can call the shots—or so she thinks.

Eunice Wong, who also co-narrates Rachel Khong’s terrific Real Americans, is the funny, sardonic, imperfect Vi, and she sparks compassion despite Vi’s many lessthan-endearing qualities.

You may be able to predict some of the events that take

place in Jojo Moyes’ delightful We All Live Here (Penguin Audio, 12 hours and 38 minutes), but that won’t vanquish the pure fun of listening to it. Wonderfully read by actress Jenna C oleman—you may remember her as Clara on Doctor Who —the novel follows the domestic misadventures of a messy, blended family in the U.K.

Forty-something mom Lila is reeling from the one-two punch of a divorce and her mother’s death, coping with a bereft stepfather, two unruly daughters, ill-advised romantic entanglements, and a tumbledown house that’s draining her bank account. Her career is on shaky ground; she gained fame by writing a popular book about how to keep a marriage alive. Now, she needs a new subject. Into this situation steps her estranged biological father, an actor who left decades earlier. Is it too late for him to find a role in this family?

Coleman is terrific here, equally adept at portraying Lila’s rising panic and dismay at her bad choices and conveying the brash bravado of her secretly uncertain teenage daughter.

Connie Ogle is a writer in South Florida.

SECOND LOOK

This review originally ran online September 29, 2015

Bushnell introduces one of the world’s most enigmatic writers in this metafictional debut novel.

Halycon Sage is a man of mystery, to the world and to himself. Halycon Sage is a pen name he pronounces “HAL-icon,” which leads to plenty of confusion. The writer’s true identity is a source of continual speculation, much of which is spurred by misdirection placed in the media by his own editor. Another source of controversy: whether or not Sage is truly the Great American Novelist, especially considering his novels are generally no longer than a short paragraph and should not be considered novels at all.

Contradictions surround Sage like the tumbleweeds of his youth: he is simultaneously famous, influential, anonymous, and poor. To get back to his roots, he embarks on a journey into the heart of America, riding atop his motel-sleeping, TV-watching horse, named No-Name Stupid. Attempting to find himself at the intersection of religion, ethnicity, and art, Sage encounters a menagerie of critics, thinkers, outlaws, and spies, all while hammering out his own oeuvre of iconoclastic minimalism. Is it genius? Is it nonsense? Sage may be the last person to know. Bushnell shares her hero’s compulsive brevity: the book is only 140 pages,

though nearly every one of them is involved in the metafictional project of this “found” manuscript. It’s a madcap novel, leaping and lurching with a frenetic energy reminiscent of mid-1960s postmodernism. The satire is broad—a famous reviewer decides whether or not he likes new writers by using a dartboard—yet charming; the silliness is infectious, and Bushnell never pauses in any one place long enough for boredom to set in. Bushnell is an

The Way Beyond

| December 20, 2023

9781733428842

undeniable writer, with a talent for sentences and scenarios. “His urbanity was all surface,” she says of a critic who has just been discovered in the back of a limo and is now shrieking for oysters, “a thin, thin earth’s-crust over the red-hot lava of his petulance.” The mystery of Sage’s true identity is perhaps not as compelling as the story wishes it to be; in the end, though, it might not matter. Intriguing, if imperfect, comic novel.

Bushnell, Karima Vargas Delirious Walrus Productions | 192 pp. $14.95 paper

MORE TO CHECK OUT WHILE YOU WAIT:

How To End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang (Avon Books)

Not Another Love Song by Julie Soto (Forever)

Lavash at First Sight by Taleen Voskuni (Berkley)

I Think They Love You by Julian Winters (St. Martin’s Griffin)

Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone (Dial Press)

First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison (Berkley)

Drop Dead by Lily Chu (Sourcebooks Casablanca)

Any Trope but You by Victoria Lavine (Atria)

Unromance by Erin Connor (Forever)

Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake (Berkley)

Story of My Life by Lucy Score (Bloom Books)

Love at First Book by Jenn McKinlay (Berkley)

Book of the Month by Jennifer Probst (Blue Box Press)

My Big Fat Fake Marriage by Charlotte Stein (St. Martin’s Griffin)

Hot Summer by Elle Everhart (Putnam)

For the Love of Mark Twain by Kalyn Gensic (Staten House)

Cut the Line

Looking for smart, steamy romance à la Emily Henry? We’ve got you covered. BY

MEGAN LABRISE

On Kirkus’ fourth Cut the Line: Readers’ Advisory webinar, in partnership with Ingram Library Services, we explore a range of read-alikes for Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life (Berkley, April 22). Henry is the internationally bestselling author of Funny Story, Happy Place, Book Lovers , People We Meet on Vacation , and Beach Read Great Big Beautiful Life was an instant No. 1 New York Times bestseller and a Reese’s Book Club pick for May.

While you’re waiting for Great Big Beautiful Life —which currently has more than 43,000 holds across seven of the country’s largest library systems—we’ve got a list of fantastic romances you won’t want to miss. First, Beth Reinker, manager of collection development curation for Ingram Library Services, presents a slate of recommended titles to read right now. Then, in a delightfully wide-ranging panel discussion, I speak with three romance writers about steam, tropes, meet-cutes, and more:

Amanda Elliot is the author of Best Served Hot (Berkley, 2023), in which two restaurant critics learn that their opposing tastes might make for a five-star relationship. As Kirkus writes in a starred review, “Elliot leaves your stomach grumbling and your heart pounding, and it’s hard to discern what’s more delicious: the elaborate dishes or the couple’s simmering chemistry” (starred review). Elliot lives in New York City with her husband and daughter, and she writes mysteries under the name Bellamy Rose.

Christina Hwang Dudley is the author of Regency and contemporary romances. In Pride and Preston Lin (Third State Books, 2024), a modern-day retelling of Pride and

Prejudice , quick-witted contrarian Lissie Cheng must navigate societal pressures and her growing attraction to the rich, enigmatic Preston Lin. “A seamlessly constructed and absorbing fictional world, full of insight about how families work,” Kirkus writes in a starred review. Dudley and her family live in Bellevue, Washington.

Kristina Forest is the USA Today bestselling author of romances for teens and adults. In The Love Lyric (Berkley, February 4), an R&B singer and a corporate executive find love despite myriad challenges— including the spotlight. Kirkus calls this continuation of Forest’s popular Greene Sisters series “a sweet and sexy romance that hits all the right notes.” She lives in New Jersey, where she can often be found rearranging her bookshelf.

Editor at large Megan Labrise hosts the Fully Booked podcast.

To watch a video of the session, visit Kirkus’ YouTube page.

The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter

Orner, Peter | Little, Brown (448 pp.)

$29 | August 12, 2025 | 9780316224659

In the wake of the JFK assassination, another death shakes Chicago. Before “true crime” and “cold case” became cultural bywords, the real-life mystery surrounding Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet obsessed her hometown. She was the 22-year-old daughter of Irv “Kup” Kupcinet, whose daily newspaper column and late-night TV gabfest had tagged him with the title “Mr. Chicago.” A struggling starlet since moving to LA, C ookie had experienced a series of setbacks—a shoplifting conviction, an abortion, a romantic breakup. When she was found dead in her apartment, was it suicide or murder? Could it have had something to do with the Kennedy a ssassination? The Kupcinets insisted there was foul play, though no suspects were charged and the case remains officially unresolved. Six decades later, the case is mostly forgotten, but it obsesses the narrator of this novel. Jed Rosenthal is a struggling author, a cademic, and father. He takes a deep dive into this mystery, at least partly because there’s so little else going on in his life. Plus, it’s personal for him—his grandparents had been best friends with the Kupcinets, until Cookie’s death. Another mystery? It seems that Jed has never forgotten nor forgiven the

way the Kupcinets cut the Rosenthals off. Within the novel, literary a llusions abound, from Chicago (including Saul Bellow, whose Humboldt’s Gift featured a fictionalized Kup) and beyond (James E llroy in particular takes a beating). The novel also abounds with n ames that Chicagoans of a certain age will recognize, the sort of names so often boldfaced in Kup’s column. As Jed muses, “A friend of mine, a novelist, once said that minor characters don’t know they’re minor. Doesn’t this apply to us all?” Because all these characters are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Including Jed and Cookie. Even Kup’s luster has dimmed since his death. But in conjuring Chicago as it existed before he was born, Jed attempts to show how everything connects, how the pieces of this puzzle—his family’s and his city’s—might somehow fit together. And maybe even amount to something.

A wild ride and an immersive Chicago novel, in which the town threatens to toddle off its axis.

Necessary Fiction

Osunde, Eloghosa | Riverhead (320 pp.) $28 | July 22, 2025 | 9780593851203

A panoramic look at queer life in Nigeria. Osunde’s second book shares some similarities with their acclaimed debut, Vagabonds! ( 2022). Like its predecessor, this one is

In the wake of the JFK assassination, another death shakes Chicago. THE GOSSIP COLUMNIST’S DAUGHTER

billed as a novel but takes the structure of a short story collection, and follows a sprawling cast o f queer characters living in Nigeria. The new book opens with a character who proclaims, “For me, blood family doesn’t mean shit….You, reading this, you’re here, alive, because your parents synced and you showed up. That’s it. Even if they planned for a child, it was still a raffle draw. A hand went in a bowl and picked you.”

This introduces the novel’s predominant theme of found f amily—the characters in the book, who orbit around one another, grew up with varying degrees of parental support, but fiercely care for their fellow outcast friends, “messy motherfuckers,” as one of them puts it. There’s Akin, a panromantic and asexual musician who has recently exited a polycule; Maro, mourning the death of his closeted queer father; and Awele, Yemisi, and May, “angry at the world, angry at how angry [she is] as a person, angry at what [she] can’t unsee.” The characters spend their days making art, navigating their relationships, and at times convening in a “truth circle,” which acts as something like a group-therapy session. Osunde’s prose is beautiful, if at times a bit overwrought, and they have clearly put a lot of thought into their characters, whom they treat with tenderness and compassion. But there’s not much in the way of a plot, and the novel tends toward the scattered and shambolic. This is a tone poem of a book, a novel that relies on connections, but never fully connects.

A messy book about messy people.

For more by Eloghosa Osunde, visit Kirkus online.

If You Love It, Let It Kill You

Pittard, Hannah | Henry Holt (304 pp.)

$28.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9781250910271

A n autofiction about a writer in the throes of a crisis.

Hana P., the narrator of Hannah Pittard’s new novel, begins to unravel after learning that her ex-husband is about to publish a novel about their failed marriage and his affair with her best friend. Unable to resist the urge to Google him, Hana also discovers that he published a story several years earlier in which a character based on her is stabbed to death by a homeless man. Though a note at the beginning of the book insists that “what follows is pure fantasy,” a reader would be forgiven for doubting this since Pittard’s divorce and her ex-husband’s affair were also the subject of her previous book, subtitled “A Memoir [Kind of],” and in fact, her ex-husband, the writer Andrew Ewell, published both a novel and a short story that very much resemble the works described in Pittard’s novel. Hana’s best friend tells her that her ex’s portrayal of her is “smug” and “insecure.” “If I were an angry and unsatisfied man,” Hana replies, “that’s exactly how I’d describe a woman with ambition, too.” The narrator’s ensuing crisis involves playing a game with her boyfriend where she pretends to be dead, not returning a lost cat to its owner, drinking a lot with different members of her family who have all recently moved to Kentucky, exchanging slightly flirty texts with a man with whom she might have had a one-night stand before she knew about her ex-husband’s affair, and going to a writers’ residency. Pittard’s prose hums with wit and verve, paragraphs and pages ricocheting from one sharp or d evastating or shocking observation to the next. Ultimately, though, the

This novel will be manna to fans of reality TV and some haters as well.

THE COMPOUND

novel never quite transcends its backstory or makes meaning of its protagonist’s ennui, though Hana’s relationship with her depressed father is poignant.

A wild romp of a novel that might have been more successful if the writer weren’t still out for revenge.

Silent Retreat

Quinn, Sally | Subplot (224 pp.) $28 | June 3, 2025 | 9798891385528

At a silent retreat in a secluded monastery, an unhappily married writer and a randy archbishop experience carnal—and spiritual—ecstasy Sybilla Sumner is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist whose personal life is cratering. At 39, she very much wants a child—but her husband, a famous New York TV interview host, is infertile, and the two haven’t had sex in forever. What’s more, she’s sure he’s cheating on her. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, 53 and “extremely good-looking,” has risen above a dreary Irish childhood to become archbishop of Dublin, though he’s been critical of the Catholic church—especially its celibacy vows—in his writings. Fitz, as he’s known, has come to this Shenandoah Valley retreat to brood about his future and his role as a priest. Sybilla, a Catholic who struggles with her religion, is there to sort herself out and get away from her troubles. Fitz and Sybilla are acquainted socially—he’s been a guest on her husband’s show—but

are shocked to find themselves in nearby rooms. They recover. When Sybilla breaks down sobbing in the chapel, Fitz is there to comfort her—and after he rescues her from a swimming mishap, they finally go for it. (Fitz had broken his vows earlier in his career, with a nun.) Author Quinn, who blogs about religion and was once the Washington Post ’s star Style reporter (married to the paper’s late editor, Ben Bradlee), devotes a great deal of space to Fitz and Sybilla’s erotic couplings. It’s not exactly boring, and there is some suspense about how the affair will end up. It’s just that the narrative in general is so preposterous. Then there’s Sybilla’s overheated inner dialogue (“Yes, he was gorgeous. Spiritually I could only imagine.” Or, “He hadn’t shaved since we’d arrived and I found his stubble devastating.”) It doesn’t help that the book veers awkwardly between first-person (Sybilla’s story) and third (Fitz’s). Brief flashes of vivid storytelling, mainly in scenes set in D ublin, can’t compensate. An unholy brew of lust and faith.

The Compound

Rawle, Aisling | Random House (304 pp.)

$20.3 | June 24, 2025 | 9780593977279

Love Island meets Lord of the Flies in this debut novel narrated by a reality TV show contestant. The story begins—and remains—at a vast, dilapidated compound in the desert where

narrator Lily and nine other young women await the arrival of “the boys.” (The compound’s setting is unspecified, and there are hints about dystopian times: Lily wonders if any of the boys have fought in “the wars,” and at one point she muses, “We all would probably be dead in twenty years, maybe thirty if we were lucky.”) Once the nine young men arrive at the compound, the game begins. Long a fan of the (unnamed) reality series in which she’s now co-starring, Lily knows the drill: Hidden cameras record contestants vying to be the last one standing. “The big screen” delivers instructions that yield group rewards (e.g., “Task: Every boy and girl must discuss their previous relationships. Reward: Outdoor seating ”); each contestant’s “little screen” delivers instructions that yield personal rewards (“Task: Tell someone in the compound a secret / Reward: Comb ”). As the tasks get crueler (“Banish a resident of the compound ”) and weirder (“Spit in your bedmate’s mouth ”), participant numbers dwindle, food grows scarce, and nerves and loyalties fray. Rawle, an Irish writer, has fully imagined this rapacious world. She takes a risk by imbuing Lily, who sold makeup at a department store before she became a contestant, with qualities that don’t scream “fan favorite”: She admits to being passive, shallow, and not especially interesting. Lily’s self-awareness will dawn too gradually for some readers, and the story takes a while to gather steam, but Rawle ultimately balances a shrewd indictment of reality TV’s contrived survivalism with a celebration of the same. Manna to fans of reality TV and some haters as well.

Sachar’s adult debut is a heartfelt fable about courage and love.

THE MAGICIAN OF TIGER CASTLE

Kirkus Star

The Magician of Tiger Castle

Sachar, Louis | Ace/Berkley (320 pp.) $30 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593952306

This adult debut from Sachar, the singular children’s book author, is a heartfelt fable about courage and love.

As Anatole— the titular magician—tells his story, he’s speaking from the present day and describing events that happened 500 years ago. Tiger Castle is now a tourist destination, but in Anatole’s heyday, it was home to the king and queen of Esquaveta. As the court magician, Anatole was charged with ensuring that Princess Tullia went through with her marriage to Prince Dalrympl of Oxatania, a long-standing arrangement that was suddenly threatened w hen Tullia fell in love with Pito, the king’s young scribe. The queen told Anatole that if he could not convince Tullia to marry Dalrympl, she and the king would coerce their daughter into behaving. Anatole had known Tullia since she was born, and had a fatherly affection for her. He was desperate to protect the princess—as well as his own career. He decided to brew a potion that would make Pito and Tullia forget they ever knew each other, let alone loved each other, and readers will want to find out for themselves how that led to Anatole’s unnaturally extended lifespan. Sachar’s wry, distinctive voice will remind grown-ups what made him such a

success as a children’s book author, and it translates perfectly into a book in which the middle-aged father figure is the focus, rather than the star-crossed young lovers. Sachar tells the comical story with the slight detachment of a fairy-tale narrator, focusing less on the fantasy elements than on the relationships among the characters, which are straightforward and touching. As Anatole tries to manage the youthful antics of Tullia and Pito, he grapples with more mature themes of loss, regret, and hope for the future. A sensitive and sincere tale told with Sachar’s inimitable wit.

The Unraveling of Julia

Scottoline, Lisa | Grand Central Publishing (400 pp.) | $30 | July 15, 2025 | 9781538769997

Scottoline’s latest links her great love of Italy with her long record of female-centered crime fiction.

Julia Pritzker has a presentiment that something terrible is around the corner, but she never imagines just how terrible: When her husband, Philadelphia attorney Mike Shallette, tries to protect her from a man who grabs her designer bag, he gets stabbed to death before her eyes. Julia’s grief becomes laced with guilt when she realizes that her daily horoscope had predicted a calamity she’s now convinced she could have prevented. The news from Italian attorney Massimiliano Lombardi that his late client has left her millions in cash and an estate worth nearly as much again

doesn’t comfort her, but it does provide distraction—especially since she’s never heard of Emilia Rossi and has no idea why she’s been chosen as her heir. Since Julia, adopted at an early age by a couple who’ve been dead for years, wonders if Emilia might have been her biological grandmother, she travels to Chianti in hope of recovering some of Emilia’s DNA. Unfortunately, caretakers Anna Mattia Vesta and Piero Fano have burned all of Emilia’s clothing and personal items on her orders, so there’s nothing left to test. Growing convinced that the stars are directing her and that her history is rooted in Emilia’s decrepit house, Julia turns down repeated offers for the property and resolves to secure evidence confirming the relationship between Emilia and her. Now all she has to do is protect herself from the shadowy figures tracking and following her and recover from a series of vivid, hallucinatory nightmares that seem to be the cost of claiming her heritage. The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.

We Are All Guilty Here

Slaughter, Karin | Morrow/ HarperCollins (448 pp.) | $32 August 12, 2025 | 9780063336773

More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.

In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to t he case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new i nvestigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come. Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.

A moving, beautifully structured novel from an incredible new voice.

JAMAICA ROAD

Kirkus Star

Jamaica Road

Smith, Lisa | Knopf (448 pp.) | $29 July 15, 2025 | 9780593537657

Two young people navigate their personal lives and social turmoil in Thatcherera England. When Daphne, the narrator of Smith’s debut novel, meets a new boy named Connie at the South London secondary school she attends, it isn’t exactly love at first sight. Connie, 12, has recently moved to England from Jamaica with his mother, Althea; Daphne, a London native with a Jamaican mother, isn’t quite sure what to make of him. But the two eventually become friends, and Connie tells Daphne that he and his mother are “nuh land”—in England illegally. Daphne’s mother, Alma, welcomes Connie, allowing him to spend time at their crowded house when Althea’s abusive partner, Tobias, is in a bad mood. Daphne helps Connie adjust to life in London, while dealing with a family problem of her own: She has tracked down her absent father, much to Alma’s chagrin. Meanwhile, both characters are forced to deal with racist taunts and attacks, and Daphne finds herself interested in a white boy with both a crush on her and a virulently racist brother. Smith’s novel covers 12 years in the lives of the two families, beginning in 1981, shortly after the New Cross house fire that killed 13 Black people and led to that year’s Brixton riot, continuing through 1985, when another riot rocked Brixton, and concluding in 1993. Smith does an amazing job detailing the atmosphere of Thatcher’s England and t he immigrant experience, and her dialogue is pitch-perfect. Most impressive is the way she draws Daphne and Connie, both complex

characters constantly looking for somewhere to fit in. The writing is top-notch, and the novel manages to be heartfelt but never sentimental. This is a major achievement from an author with talent to spare. A moving, beautifully structured novel from an incredible new voice.

Kirkus Star

Hotel Ukraine

Smith, Martin Cruz | Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) | $27.99 | July 8, 2025 | 9781982188382

The 11th and final installment in the Arkady Renko series that began with Gorky Park in 1981.

The Russian homicide detective has lived under communism, witnessed its fall, and now lives during Vladimir Putin’s reign. As Russia launches its “special military operation” against Ukraine, Renko must investigate the brutal murder of the deputy minister of defense in Moscow’s Hotel Ukraine. Apparently, two people bashed his head in using two different types of weapons. Adding to the challenge, Renko suffers from Parkinson’s disease, making it increasingly difficult to function. He knows it will only get worse, though he insists he’s not an invalid. His adopted son says, “Even with Parkinson’s you’re the best they’ve got.” Meanwhile, he’s in love with Tatiana Petrovna, a Moscow-based correspondent for the New York Times who hates injustice and is “constitutionally incapable of seeing a bear without poking it.” She wants to report on Bucha, a Ukrainian city that suffered horrific destruction at the hands of the Russians. Renko’s investigation takes him there as well. Is the killing tied in with the invasion? Renko and Petrovna take extraordinary risks for the sake of finding the truth. The unseen presence above it all is Putin, and

anyone who threatens him might as well drink tea mixed with heartbreak grass, a deadly poison said to have been used on some of his enemies. Renko and Tatiana both face that threat as they peer into the abyss of death. Aside from the action scenes, Renko offers interesting observations. He is “Russian to his core,” a lthough love of country does not extend to love of its leaders. He thinks the only book that explains his beloved country is Alice in Wonderland . And he opines on the “fundamental truth” about love, that it means wanting what’s best for the other over yourself. Given their tribulations and given that this book finishes the series, the ending could be tragic or hopeful. Either way, Arkady Renko’s career is complete. Author Martin Cruz Smith has had Parkinson’s for decades and says this is his last book.

A rewarding read and a fine finale for the Smith-Renko team.

Kirkus Star

The Felons’ Ball

Stewart, Polly | Harper/HarperCollins (240 pp.)

$27.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9780063412064

A violent family saga in which no one emerges unscathed.

It’s almost time for the Felons’ Ball, an annual outdoor gathering held by patriarch Trey Macready on his spread in Ewald County, Virginia. The preTh anksgiving bash is facetiously

named in recognition of the charges Trey and his best friend, Ben Marsh, managed to dodge when they were younger and running booze for the cutthroat family business. (Trey’s brother, Leo, did once serve a light sentence.) The accumulation of dark secrets relating to the family, which was suspected of tossing dead moonshining foes into bucolic Lake Monroe, does not stop there. On the night of the big party, held on Trey’s 50th birthday, Ben—who’s sleeping with Trey’s daughter, Natalie—gets stabbed to death on his boat. Did the murder have anything to do with the disappearance years ago of Ben’s son, Lanny, Natalie’s then-crush? As the vulnerable narrator of the novel, Natalie is putting together clues. The event reunites her and her sister Kaitlyn, with whom she runs a yoga studio in town, with their other sister, Cassie, a touring yoga teacher and podcaster who’s in from Los Angeles. As the investigation of Ben’s murder heats up—the unstoppable Natalie is soon sleeping with the handsome local sheriff—old family tensions flare up. Just how much have Mom and Dad been protecting their daughters from the truth and how much have they been protecting themselves? Everything points back to a 2011 boat accident that nearly killed young Natalie and from which she is still recovering mentally. Did the wrong helmsman serve time for it? Following Stewart’s impressive debut novel, The Good Ones (2023), this is a breakout achievement. Even dealing with the trickiest family dynamics, a shifting cast of characters, and complex twists of fate, she is i n complete command. A captivating, multilayered mystery by a rising star.

No one emerged unscathed in Stewart’s captivating, multilayered family saga.

THE FELONS’ BALL

A fairy tale stuffed with a moral, this is a funny and heartwarming novel.

THE VIEW FROM LAKE COMO

The Other Wife

Thomas-Kennedy, Jackie | Riverhead (304 pp.) | $29 | July 15, 2025 | 9780593851609

A woman dissatisfied with her present circumstances seeks solace in a past situationship. At 37, Zuzu lives in New York with her high-powered attorney wife, Agnes, and their son, Gideon, and her resentment grows with every email Agnes sends. When Gideon is invited to spend the weekend with a friend, Zuzu and Agnes plan a trip to Massachusetts to check on Agnes’s e x-girlfriend, who’s had a health scare, and visit Zuzu’s college friend and eternal crush, Cash, who lives nearby. Then Zuzu’s estranged father dies, so they fold his memorial service into their plans. Grief, n ostalgia, and midlife ennui drive Zuzu to act out. The novel moves from the present to Zuzu’s college escapades with Cash to her meetcute with Agnes. Zuzu fell in love with Agnes in law school, and while Agnes excelled in her career, Zuzu failed the bar twice. Narrating the story, Zuzu explains that all she’s ever really wanted is to be desired. She pines for Cash, whose marriage also seems to be faltering. Though she loves Agnes, she frames their life together as a consolation prize to what her life could have been with Cash had he only wanted her the way she still so desperately needs him to. The weekend forces Zuzu to confront how little she’s grown in two decades. Much of the

story relies on happenstance: First, Zuzu’s father dies. Then, it just so happens that Noel, the only other biracial person Zuzu knew growing up, attended the same college she did and now lives in the apartment above her sister’s house. Zuzu is his obsession, and he’s always on hand for her to toy with, the same way Cash toys with her. Zuzu’s experience of race is regularly referenced w ithout being fully explored, stunting an otherwise engaging throughline. Finally, a sudden repair required in Cash’s house leads his wife and daughter to leave town for the weekend. He conveniently stays behind, alone in a h otel. It’s fine, necessary even, for characters to behave badly, and for coincidence to play a part, but they should do so in interesting ways. The characters and themes at the center of this story don’t quite deliver.

The View From Lake Como

Trigiani, Adriana | Dutton (416 pp.)

$26 | July 8, 2025 | 9780593183359

A good Italian American daughter’s 30-something rebellion forces her entire family to reckon with their choices, resulting in a happily-ever- a fter for all that’s like

the best affogato: rich, bitter, sweet. Giuseppina “Jess” Capodim onte Baratta lives in her parents’ basement, and it’s not the finished kind, but more like an old-f ashioned cellar with a bed and a dresser. Her family has long struggled with

money problems, so many that Jess had to go to community college instead of the four-year institutions her sister and brother attended. At 33, she’s landed back at her childhood home in Lake Como, New J ersey (known for its location between a lake and the Atlantic Ocean), because she’s left her husband, Bobby Bilancia, heir to Bilancia Meats and blue-eyed local heartthrob. Jess may not know what she wants for her life, but it isn’t nightly TV and then several kids with Bobby, whose idea of sophistication runs to capicola- h am rosettes. Then Uncle Louie, the proprietor of Capodimonte Marble and Stone who has mentored Jess as his deputy, dies of a heart attack and leaves the business in her hands. Unfortunately, there’s also some funny business that includes a side hustle with an associate known as “Googs” and a quarry’s worth of unpaid taxes. Jess chooses to ignore her overbearing mother’s advice and fly to Carrara, the home of the world’s most beautiful stones—and stonemasons, like Angelo Strazza, whose specialty is applying fragile gold leaf to carved pieces. From brushing up on her Italian to investigating Uncle Louie’s somewhat mysterious past, Jess soon d iscovers she needs less of her family’s assistance than she or they ever believed. Trigiani risks gilding the lily here, but by placing Jess’ love affair with Angelo alongside her love affair with her own future, she maintains a balance that will leave readers as satisfied as an Italian Sunday dinner would. A fairy tale stuffed with a meaningful moral, this is a funny and heartwarming novel.

For more by Adriana Trigiani, visit Kirkus online.

Terrific Novels by Trans Authors

Fellman

Osworth

St. James

Winners of the 2025 Edgar Awards Are Revealed

The annual prizes are presented by the Mystery Writers of America.

The Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the 2025 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, given

AWARDS

annually to “the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction and television,” at a ceremony in New York.

Charlotte Vassell won the best novel prize for The In Crowd, which follows London detective Caius Beauchamp as he tries to solve a pair of cold cases. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a stellar sophomore outing for an intriguing detective.”

The award for best first novel by an American author went to Henry Wise for Holy City, while Kimberly Belle won the best paperback original prize for The Paris Widow. Margaret Peterson Haddix won in the juvenile category for Mysteries of Trash and

Treasure: The Stolen Key, and Natalie D. Richards took home the young adult prize for 49 Miles Alone Erika Krouse won the short story award for “Eat My Moose.”

Novelists Laura Lippman and John Sandford were recognized as Grand Masters, a lifetime achievement honor that was previously announced.

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards were established in 1946. Previous winners include Jess Walter for Citizen Vince; Attica Locke for

Bluebird, Bluebird; and Jason Reynolds for Long Way Down

A full list of this year’s winners is available at the MWA website.—M.S.

For a review of The In Crowd, visit Kirkus online.

Winners of the 2025 Edgar Awards

What the Night Brings

Billingham, Mark | Atlantic Monthly (432 pp.) | $27 | July 8, 2025 | 9780802164582

Someone seems to have declared a vendetta against London’s Metropolitan Police, and it’s up to DI Tom Thorne and his mates to find out who—that is, if he can actually trust his mates.

The arrest of Nick Cresswell for murder is utterly routine until the sequel: Four officers from Wood Green who made the pinch acting on Thorne’s intelligence celebrate by sharing some doughnuts left in the back of their car with a cheery note—“Thanks for everything you do!”—and end up poisoned, three of them fatally. The stabbing of PC Adam Callaghan in Hendon Park moments after he’d turned off his bodycam to avoid showing the woman who’d lured him there makes it clear that there’s a larger pattern at work. More deaths will follow, presumably at the hands of LoveMyBro, the dark-web habitué who called PC Christopher Tully, one of the doughnut victims, and PC Craig Knowles, now imprisoned for rape, “two peas in a pod.” But who is LoveMyBro? Is he an antirapist vigilante or a rapist himself? And how can he possibly have learned everything he must know in order to strike so many targets without leaving a trace? Working once more with pathologist Phil Hendricks, his partner DI Nicola Tanner, and his old friend DI Dave Holland, who’s back at the Met after a few years away, Thorne fights colleagues and regulations to build a case against the man he’s convinced is behind the mayhem, only to see it collapse in a spectacularly depressing way. Even more disturbing is the growing likelihood that their quarry is either getting assistance from a highly placed police officer or is such an officer himself.

The more attached you are to this standout franchise, the harder the final revelations will hit you.

The Blue Horse

Borgos, Bruce | Minotaur (368 pp.) $29 | July 8, 2025 | 9781250373908

A fight over wild horses may provide the motive for murder.

The wild horse roundup that Lincoln County, Nevada, Sheriff Porter Beck and his deputy, Tuffy Scruggs, watch is a contentious event pitting horse advocates against ranchers who want every blade of grass on public land to go to their cattle. The use of helicopters to chase the frantic horses into c orrals leaves some of the animals injured or dead. The roundup is run by Jolene Manning’s Bureau of Land Management crew, whose rough methods are decried by CANTER, a horse rescue group run by Etta Clay. When the helicopter crashes, Beck and Tuffy discover that the pilot was shot out of the sky. Jolene blames Etta, but Beck is open to other theories. Beck’s dealing with his Pop, the former sheriff, whose dementia is worsening; Covid-19, which is just starting to ravage the area; and his upcoming move to work alongside his girlfriend, state Det. Charlie Blue Horse. Despite his private opinion, Beck doesn’t take sides on the horse roundups, but he has a feeling that the CANTER crowd didn’t kill the pilot, who was having an affair with Jolene. On top of that, Beck’s adopted sister, Brinley Cummings, rescued from a horrendous childhood by Pop, was volunteering with a group dealing with troubled youth and hasn’t returned from following a runaway. When Jolene is buried up to her neck and trampled by wild horses, tensions flare. The FBI suspect Robert Lewis Northrup Jr., who suffers from PTSD. Enter the bosses of a politically sensitive lithium mine whose land impact reports may be false. Beck and his crew have a wild ride tracking down the murderer. Characters you immediately care for fight Covid and killers in exciting

adventures touching on politically sensitive topics.

Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds

Brennan, Allison | Harlequin MIRA (400 pp.) $30 | June 17, 2025 | 9780778387251

An idyllic island is the perfect setting for amour and murder.

A brief prologue follows lovestruck Diana Harden as she secretly climbs to the clifftop home of Ethan Valentine, the object of her affection, and an anonymous figure sneaks up behind her and strangles her with her own scarf. Cut to workaholic accountant Mia Crawford, on her way to the Caribbean for her “nonnegotiable anniversary bonus” and angling for romance. Her first-person narration bubbles as she meets a large group of tourists, including NFL team owner Nelson Stockton and his wife, Anja, along with friendly couple David and Doug. A newspaper article about the missing Diana piques her interest, further stimulated when she overhears an isolated remark: “You have until Friday or you’re dead.” Mia begins her vacation project of meeting men at the Blue Dahlia beachside bar by flirting with dreamy head bartender Jason Mallory, whose daredevil escapades might be a red flag. But details of Diana’s disappearance keep distracting Mia. The discovery of a book with writing in the margins and underlined passages proves to be a key clue. When Diana’s corpse washes up on shore, Mia, who never leaves home without a book, can’t help digging deeper. The addition of a literary quotation at the beginning of each chapter, a nod to Mia’s bibliophilia, adds a dash of panache to this volume. Brennan’s “romantic mystery” (as she describes it in the acknowledgments) is slight and shaggy and ebullient and largely set—where else?—on a beach. A tropical romp that folds a frothy romance into a whodunit.

Suburban intrigue with a soupçon of self-help. This

is a series with legs.

THE GAME IS AFOOT

Kirkus Star

The Game Is Afoot

Bryant, Elise | Berkley (368 pp.) | $19 paper | July 8, 2025 | 9780593640807

A divorced single mother opts for sleuthing over therapy. After “getting sucked into the dark, dangerous world of the PTA and becoming an amateur detective for a few weeks,” Mavis Miller—mom to almost eight-year-old Pearl—knows she should rest. And she will, just as soon as she convinces her boss to promote her. Then she’ll finally have the breathing room she needs to focus on herself. Sure, she signed Pearl up for scouting, theater, and club soccer, but her ex-husband, drummer Corey, recently gave up his touring career in order to co-parent Pearl. Things might be a little awkward between Corey and Mavis’ new boyfriend, Knoll Elementary school psychologist Jack Cohen, but she’s choosing not to worry about that right now. When Mavis “rage-quit[s]” her job after her well-paid supervisor denies her a raise due to budget woes, she intends to use the extra time to recenter. Then someone fatally poisons Pearl’s soccer coach during a game. Police question Corey, who supplied the team’s snacks, prompting a panicked Mavis to repurpose her gratitude journal as a suspect list. Jack suggests she’s using the investigation as an excuse to ignore what happened at work, but Corey is family— she has to protect him. If digging also serves as a distraction, “well, that’s just an added bonus.” Bryant at once gently lampoons momfluencers, “pushy MLM

girlboss[es],” and other modern parenting stereotypes while granting those same characters agency and complexity. Mavis’ witty, increasingly manic first-personpresent narration lends a solid sense of stakes to the multifaceted plot’s assorted mysteries, and her burgeoning love triangle injects a fizz of romantic tension. Laugh-out-loud humor shares the page with candid conversations about race and mental health. (“I know self-care is, like, a thing. But it seems like it’s only okay for these white ladies to rest and self-care.”) This is a series with legs. Madcap suburban intrigue with a soupçon of self-help.

Rage

Castillo, Linda | Minotaur (304 pp.) $28 | July 8, 2025 | 9781250781147

A series of brutal murders rocks the quiet community of Painters M ill, Ohio. A young Amish girl playing hide-and-seek in a brushy area near a creek finds dismembered body parts. The early years of police Chief Kate Burkholder, who grew up Amish and has come to terms with leaving that life behind, give her insight into crimes committed in her county, which has a large Amish population. Although there’s always some crime among the Amish, something about the killing and dismemberment of landscaper and nursery owner Samuel Yutzy has a big-city feel. Kate’s husband, John Tomasetti, is an agent with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation who provides the services small-town police

departments lack. Kate and John knew Samuel, and when they check his place of business, they find a dehydrated buggy horse and a lot of blood. Samuel’s parents admit that he had a wild rumspringa—a period when Amish youth try out the secular world before committing to the church—which included a girlfriend and some shifty non-Amish men, but say that he’d recently returned to the fold. A picture of the girlfriend leads them to a gentlemen’s club, and his parents reveal that he was being sued by someone over a landscape job gone wrong. When Kate tries to find Samuel’s best friend, Aaron Shetler, she learns that he’s been missing from work, and soon his body is found stuffed in a drum. Searching for the girlfriend gets Kate drugged and warned to drop the case. Never one to give up, she discovers a tangled web of deceit and a link to human trafficking that just may be the death of her. Slippery suspects and evildoers among the usually private and quiet Amish.

Guilty by Definition

Dent, Susie | Sourcebooks Landmark (384 pp.) $27.99 | September 30, 2025 | 9781464236075

A series of pseudonymous letters and postcards provokes a lexicographer to revisit the disappearance of her sister from their Oxford home 13 years ago.

The first missive, signed “Chorus,” is so cryptic, fantastical, and larded with Shakespearean quotations that Martha Thornhill, senior editor of the Clarendon English Dictionary, is certain it must contain a coded message, and with the help of Alex Monroe and Safiya Idowu, two members of her team, she deciphers it. Though its import still remains obscure, Martha suspects it’s communicating something about her elder sister, Charlotte, a Somerville College student who vanished while juggling work on her dissertation and her own stint on the

CED. Martha, who returned not long ago from a bittersweet job experience in Berlin, gets surprising encouragement from DS Oliver Caldwell at St. Aldates Police Station, but neither of them knows quite what to do next. Luckily, they don’t have to decide, for Chorus unleashes a perfect torrent of postcards with obliquely threatening quotations and letters with a series of increasingly challenging ciphers to Martha and the rest of her team, along with consulting Shakespearean Jonathan Overton and Gemma Waldegrave, his agent and Martha’s godmother. Their professional and personal relationships are well and truly tangled, but they’re all upstaged by debut novelist Dent’s impassioned love of words. As Chorus, once unmasked, puts it, “We’ve all lost ourselves in words. They are our oasis and our downfall.” Don’t worry if you can’t solve even the simplest cipher. There are pleasures here for anyone who revels in the joy of text.

The Story That Wouldn’t Die

Estes, Christina | Minotaur (320 pp.) $28 | August 19, 2025 | 9781250364135

A reporter with a nose for news about city corruption finds herself buried under cupcakes and clickbait until a suspicious death raises the stakes.

Fresh off her first Emmy win, TV reporter Jolene Garcia returns for her second outing—following Off the Air (2024)—determined to chase stories that matter to her local community in Phoenix, Arizona. But her boss, David Matthew—nicknamed “Sexy” for his obsession with click-driven fluff—would rather see her covering viral cupcakes and quirky-mishap human interest stories (Mayor Ace is trapped in an elevator!). While she’s reporting on that elevator, Jolene’s approached by attorney Whitney Wright, who tries to flatter her about her reporting of radio host Larry Lemmon’s murder in order to get her interested in Whitney’s latest client. Carlos Rios came

to Whitney certain that there was some impropriety in the city’s bidding system for big jobs. Soon after this meeting, however, Carlos was killed in a car crash. Was it just bad timing, or was he silenced before he could blow the whistle?

Suspecting foul play, Jolene sees an opportunity to reclaim the serious stories that are closest to her journalistic heart. As she digs into the murky intersection of city hall politics and favoritism, the pace lags, with narrative detours into newsroom dynamics leaving the investigative arc simmering. Jolene’s oft-mentioned Emmy is mainly a symbol of her past success, and readers may struggle to root for a reporter who seems more concerned with recognition than justice. A story that wants to shine a spotlight but keeps its batteries low.

The Frozen People

Griffiths, Elly | Pamela Dorman/Viking (304 pp.) $30 | July 8, 2025 | 9780593834374

A trip back in time involves a British police officer and her son in a presentday murder. Alison Dawson works for the Department of Logistics, a name vague enough to hide its true purpose: experimenting in time travel, something for which brilliant physicist Serafina Jones has developed a method. Ali’s traveled for very short periods, but Tory minister Isaac Templeton—who employs her son, Finn—wants to clear his ancestor Cain Templeton, who was suspected of murder around 1850, and asks her to go back for a longer stay. After some study of Victorian habits and clothing provided by an expert in period dress, Ali’s ready to leave. Since so much about time travel remains unknown, it’s a dangerous trip. The team has learned, for example, that travelers must stand in the exact same place they landed in order to return. Proceeding to 44 Hawk Street, a boardinghouse owned by Cain Templeton, most of whose residents were artists, Ali is greeted by the sight of

Cain standing over the body of a dead woman. Although people think Ali is odd, she manages to stay in the house and investigate. But her portal is accidentally used by someone else, rendering it inoperative for her and leaving Finn and her team desperate to find a way to retrieve her. The man who used her portal may be a murderer now living in Ali’s present. When Isaac Templeton is found shot to death by an old-fashioned gun and Finn is arrested for his murder, one of Ali’s colleagues takes her place so she can return to the present and help clear her son. Murder on several time planes is a fascinating premise enhanced by an enthralling look at Victorian London.

Dead & Breakfast

Hillis, Kat & Rosiee Thor | Berkley (336 pp.) $19 paper | October 14, 2025 | 9780593952719

A vampire couple’s dream of domestic bliss is upended by murder, suggesting that being undead isn’t nearly as dangerous as being different. Putting a new spin on long-term relationship goals, vampires Arthur Miller (no, not that one) and Salvatore Conte are ready to retire from centuries of chaos and settle into a quiet life as innkeepers in Trident Falls, Oregon. The bed and breakfast they’ve acquired, the Iris Inn, isn’t exactly booming, but Salvatore is sure that will all change when the town gets a sense of his refined taste and style. Maybe their latest guest, new city manager Nora Anderson, will provide a chance to turn the whole thing around. After all, in a little town like Trident Falls, word of mouth is everything, so the potential for an audience with the mayor could make their business boom. But Arthur and Salvatore’s dreams of quiet domesticity and financial success are buried when the mayor’s found dead— right in their begonias—with two suspicious puncture wounds in his neck. The town’s sheriff, an unemployed actor with a chip on his shoulder, threatens to

A period valentine with a string of surprises that land with a bang.

LAST STOP UNION STATION

call the Federal Paranormal Investigators if Arthur and Salvatore can’t find a more likely culprit. The duo scramble to prove their innocence, aided by an eclectic supporting cast: a latte-slinging werewolf, an elven coroner, and an eerily calm Nora, all of whom join Arthur and Salvatore on a journey through the political undertones of otherness, hoping for a happy ending.

This undead tale would have benefited from more blood in its veins, but it still has a pulse.

Last Stop Union Station

James, Sarah | Sourcebooks Landmark (336 pp.) $17.99 paper | July 15, 2025 | 9781464219238

A faltering Hollywood star agrees to boost her career by joining the Hollywood Victory Caravan for three weeks in 1942. Guess what happens aboard that train.

Jacqueline Love may indeed be, as she thinks herself, “the best actress of her generation,” but her short fuse and unfiltered opinions have made her too high maintenance for everyone else on set. When Miriam Dreyfus, her new agent, urges her to reset her public image by bolstering the war effort, she’s not eager to agree, but the absence of other job prospects changes her mind. Once she’s passed sniffy Ginger Rogers, who’s bailed out because she won’t share a compartment with Jackie (a nice touch) and boarded the train to Chicago, she meets a crowd that includes her rival Alina Larson, whose resume seems to have been cribbed from skating ingenue Sonja Henie, but who’s a lot frostier; Alina’s co-star and current swain,

Garrett Edwards; Eddie Rivas, the former fling who’s replaced bandleader Howie Barber at the last minute; and veteran star Ralph Holmes, whose recent history of conspiring with the Nazis to steal military secrets clearly marks him as even more in need of rehabilitation than Jackie. Shortly after the train arrives in Chicago, the porter discovers Ralph, who’s done nothing to endear himself to his fellow passengers, smothered to death in his bunk. Detective Walter Brink, of the Chicago PD, thinks the death was an accident, but Jackie, starved for new roles and excitement, decides to investigate and improbably partners with Officer Grace Sullivan to track down the guilty party aboard a train crawling with possibilities. A period valentine with a string of surprises, the best of which lands with a pleasing bang.

Hamburg Noir

Karsten, Jan. | Akashic (296 pp.) | $17.95 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9781636141152

Fourteen new stories emphasize the contrast between Hamburg as a home for the affluent and “a place for the stranded.”

Nowhere is the disparity between Hamburg’s powerful and powerless starker than in Zoë Beck’s playlet “Abreast Schwarztonnensand,” in which the heir to a shipping fortune tries to evade responsibility for a tragedy caused by his yacht. But some of the most chilling tales feature power differentials that are more psychological than financial. In Nora Luttmer’s “Ant Street,” the owner of a modest pho joint struggles with gangsters who want

protection money. Till Raether’s “I’ll Be Gone Again in a Minute” gives a prescient look at what happens when a successful businessman loses it all in a messy divorce—an eerie prefiguration of the streaming hit Your Friends & Neighbors. In Bela B. Felsenheimer’s “Who’ll Look After Our Women if We Don’t,” a former rock star falls victim to his obsessive concern with his daughter. Frank Göhre’s “The Outer Facade” presents a construction worker undone by his obsession with a woman who’s not his wife. Brigitte Helbling shows that even an obsession with art and reality can have an unhealthy outcome in “Aikido Diaries.” A familiar type of predator disrupts a young boy’s summer idyll in Kai Hensel’s “The Girl at the Dom.” And in Timo Blunck’s “Angel Fricassee,” it’s hard to tell who’s the predator and who’s the prey. Hamburg certainly deserves a “noir” to call its own, and Karsten is clearly happy to provide one.

The House at Devil’s Neck

Mead, Tom | Mysterious Press (320 pp.) $26.95 | July 15, 2025 | 9781613166505

On the eve of World War II, a motley crew intent on reconnecting with the past motors out to a former hospital for servicemen from the Great War, where two impossible crimes will abruptly diminish their numbers. After surviving enough wartime calamities to have killed most soldiers, Maurice Bailey, blind and mute, finally succumbed to his unspeakable injuries a year after the war ended. The last day of August 1939 finds his mother, Virginia Bailey, riding with spiritualist Madame Adaline La Motte and her companion, reporter Imogen Drabble, to the eponymous house where her beloved son breathed his last in the hope of summoning his spirit. Professional magician Joseph Spector has a different agenda: resolving the mystery surrounding the

A woman with dementia struggles with a host of dangers, external and internal.

ALL THE WORDS WE KNOW

Aitken Inheritance, which passed from Dominic Edgecomb to his brother, Rodney, when Dominic went down with the Titanic, only to return miraculously a year later in a futile bid to reclaim his legacy from Rodney, who insists that the claimant was an imposter. As the travelers, whose numbers also include psychic investigator Francis Tulp and Det. Walter Judd, approach their destination, Scotland Yard Inspector George Flint and Sgt. Jerome Hook discover the body of Rodney Edgecomb dead in a room they’ve had under uninterrupted surveillance. Is it really the suicide it seems to be? And who will become the next victim? Mead piles on enough complications, red herrings, misdirections, impersonations, and period details, from rumors of wartime trysts and betrayals to The Stepney Lad, a dummy Maurice fashioned by hand, to fill a whole shelf of Golden Age puzzlers. The most confounding, mystifying, mind-boggling 24 hours most readers will ever encounter in fiction or real life.

All the Words We Know

Nash, Bruce | Atria (240 pp.)

$26.99 | July 1, 2025 | 9781668053607

A woman with dementia struggles with a host of dangers, external and internal. Nash’s protagonist, who may or may not be named Rose, enjoys clicking down the halls of her elder care facility with her walker, cheating at Scrabble with her best friend, and chatting with

a man who doesn’t really live there. As she looks at the photos on the whatsitsname, she remembers the time her first husband tickled their children’s feet (that was before his head somehow got cut off) and the time she met the older fellow who sat with her in the garden and told her he loved her. She gets served tea by the Peruvian or Bessarabian girls. The Scare Manager, assuring her that change is good, “transitions” her to a smaller room with a view of the parking lot. People disappear. As Rose struggles to communicate her fears to her family, granddaughters Charity and Felicity twiddle their thumbs on their smart phones. Nash depicts Rose’s inner world skillfully, putting in her mouth a hilarious litany of malapropisms each time she tries to describe something she sees, or thinks she sees. And he makes sharp fun of the corporate doublespeak her caregivers use to excuse their egregious behavior. But traversing the mind of this most unreliable of narrators may sometimes make readers feel like Rose herself wandering the halls of her care facility, struck by memories that are more evocative than meaningful. Rose eventually bests the fraudsters who run her old-age facility, but it’s less clear whether she can triumph over her the inevitable aging of her own faculties. An inventive look at the battle between all the words we know and all the words we no longer know.

Death of an Ex

Pitts, Delia | Minotaur (320 pp.)

$28 | July 15, 2025 | 9781250904249

Queenstown, New Jersey, investigator Evander Myrick gets dragged into a posh reception and then dragged into a murder that strikes closer to home than most of her closest friends know.

Ingrid Ramírez, who’d hired Vandy 18 months ago though she’s still a high school student, now wants her company at the Rome School homecoming gala. Vandy, who’s Black, can’t see much of an upside to an evening spent with white folks intent on proclaiming and protecting their privileges, especially once Ingrid reveals that she’s dumped Ethan Cho, who’s now off at Stanford, for Rome athlete and art student Tariq. Since closemouthed Ingrid doesn’t mention Tariq’s last name, it’s not until the reception that Vandy realizes he’s the son of philandering entrepreneur Philip Bolden, who was married to her for 13 months two decades ago, and who turns out to be the guest of honor at the festivities. Vandy and Phil’s first meeting since their divorce is distinctly awkward, but not too awkward to prevent Vandy from inviting Phil into her bed that night. Shortly after he leaves in the early morning hours, he’s shot to death, a development that will surprise only readers who’ve forgotten the title. Going over the head of Officer Lola Conte, one of the few locals who knows that she and Phil had been married, Vandy talks police Chief Robert Sayre into letting her run the part of the investigation that focuses on the Rome School, and that’s where all the bodies turn out to be buried. Pitts works so assiduously to knit Vandy’s detective work together with her self-imposed mandate to heal the most vulnerable members of her community that the healing work continues even after Phil’s murderer is identified. Sleuthing as therapy for an economically and racially divided New Jersey town.

For more by Delia Pitts, visit Kirkus online.

Framed in Death

Robb, J.D.

| St. Martin’s (368 pp.) | $27 September 2, 2025 | 9781250370822

Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.

In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion B obby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty p arty two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly

obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him. High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.

Murder in Pitigliano

Trinchieri, Camilla | Soho Crime (368 pp.)

$29.95 | July 1, 2025 | 9781641296953

Just when a retired investigator thinks he’s out, they pull him back in again.

Former New York homicide detective Nico Doyle is enjoying his morning meal with breakfast pal Gogol and pooch OneWag at Bar All’Angolo in idyllic Gravigna, Italy, when redheaded little girl Cilia Bianconi disrupts his daily ritual by running boisterously around the cafe, pursued by Livia Granchi, her embarrassed mother. It’s only after the two have departed that Gogol points out that Cilia has sneaked a note under OneWag’s collar. Saverio Bianconi, Cilia’s father, has been implicated in the murder of his business partner, Giancarlo Lenzi, and is currently on the run, naturally heightening suspicion of his guilt. Nico waffles about pursuing the case. For one thing, he’s deep into a romance with artist Nelli Corsi, his first relationship since the death of his wife, Rita, the event that triggered his initial move to Italy. Eventually, however, he makes the six-hour trip north to Pitigliano to look into the matter. His long, tangled investigation begins with his friendly interview of Lenzi’s cousin, Matteo. Suspicion falls hard on Lenzi’s elusive son, Eddi, who’s often at odds with his father. Trinchieri’s fifth Tuscan mystery continues to expand Nico’s adopted community. The pursuit of the perpetrator often takes a back seat to her portrait of a contented community in picturesque rural Italy. It even concludes with a recipe for “Penne Alla Nico.” Come for the whodunit, stay for the sweet life. Mangia!

The World’s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant

Tully, Liza | Berkley (400 pp.) $30 | July 8, 2025 | 9780593816776

The 20-something personal assistant to a New York City famous private detective earns her sleuthing wings working an apparent suicide case that turns murkier and more entangled than she expects.

Getting hired to work with Aubrey Merritt is a dream come true for fact-checker Olivia Blunt until she discovers that all Aubrey seems to want is a secretary rather than a full-fledged partner. Then Aubrey accepts a case from Haley Summersworth, who believes her mother Victoria’s apparent suicide was actually a murder. She invites Olivia to drive her to the scene of the crime on Vermont’s Lake Champlain and assist with investigations. Ambitious and eager to prove her worth, Olivia tries to pass her formidable boss’ many tests of observation and not get fired like the assistants that preceded her, all while holding on to a relationship back in New York. It soon becomes clear that too much about Victoria’s death does not make sense. Vibrant and charming, Victoria had a personal life—which included a recovering addict son accused of mismanaging the family business, marriage to an unfaithful man who died under mysterious circumstances, and an ex-con lover—that points to a dark web of intrigue. After one of Victoria’s stepchildren turns up dead and Olivia stumbles into a life-threatening situation, a case that had seemed so simple turns into her worst nightmare. Using conventional plotting tropes that gradually build to a grand reveal rather than surprise revelations through rapid and/or unexpected twists, this novel succeeds through memorable characters at odds with each other (and sometimes themselves) across generational divides. A solidly entertaining read, especially for lovers of traditional mysteries.

A London lawyer seeks out her workplace rival for a fake relationship.

BEHIND FRENEMY LINES

Kirkus Star

Behind Frenemy Lines

Cho, Zen | Bramble Books (304 pp.) | $18.99 paper | July 1, 2025 | 9781250330475

In an effort to avoid sexual harassment at her new firm, a London lawyer seeks out her workplace rival for a fake relationship. Looking for a new start after her long-term boyfriend moved to California and she was passed up for several promotions, Kriya Rajasekar accepts her boss Arthur’s invitation to follow him to a new firm, Swithin Watkins. Her optimism about the new job is short-lived, though, as she soon discovers that she’s sharing an office with none other than Charles Goh, a fellow lawyer she views as her personal bad luck charm. Whenever things go wrong for Kriya, Charles always seems to be present. Not wanting to make waves at the new firm on her first day, she makes do with the working arrangements, though she and Charles are like oil and water. Charles is very much a by-the-book type, adorably awkward and stuffy. Kriya exudes much more confidence and she quickly makes an impression on her colleagues, jeopardizing Charles’ potential rise to partner. As Kriya settles in, it becomes clear that Arthur’s suggestion that she join him at Swithin Watkins was motivated by more than just professional courtesy. Asking Charles to pretend to be her boyfriend seems like the ideal temporary solution. Charles doesn’t mind; he’s been harboring a crush on Kriya for years. When they start spending more time together, they connect over their Asian cultures—Kriya is Indian and Charles is Chinese, and both have familial and formative ties to Malaysia. They both have experiences being othered in their

profession, while also navigating complex family dynamics where they don’t feel fully seen or heard. This is a sweet, delightful romance that never feels saccharine due to deep issues the lovers deal with including workplace harassment and family debt. Kriya and Charles feel evenly matched and truly perfect for one another. A wonderfully balanced modern romance.

Only Lovers in the Building

Gonzalez , Nadine | Canary Street Press (352 pp.) | $18.99 paper | July 15, 2025 9781335903341

A corporate lawyer quits her job and temporarily relocates to Miami. On a company retreat in Miami, Liliane Lyon expected to be recognized for her hard work on closing a major deal. When a newcomer is given the credit instead, Lily quits on the spot. Corporate law never made her happy, and she decides to take the opportunity to find herself. Rather than return to New York, Lily rents a studio in the Icon, a stunning art deco building on Miami Beach, just for the summer. Her acrossthe-hall neighbor is Benedicto Romero, a professor who’s won a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship for his translation work. Ben is fresh off a breakup and Lily is only in Miami for a few months, so they decide to stay friends rather than act on the strong attraction between them. After discovering that they both post about romance novels on a social media site devoted to books, they form a cozy two-person book club. Soon, their co-written reviews become an online sensation, and they eventually start a podcast focused on romance and relationships. Eventually, other Icon

residents join Ben and Lily’s poolside romance book club, creating a tightknit community. Despite Lily and Ben’s insistence that they’re just friends, their neighbors are convinced that they’d make the perfect match. Ben and Lily’s romance is sweet, but the strength of this charming, low-angst novel is its focus on all kinds of relationships, including friends, neighbors, and family. Although the inclusion of documentary-style elements—social media posts, podcast and YouTube transcripts, journal entries, etc.—is meant to capture the escalating emotional connection between Ben and Lily, at times it does the opposite.

A romance that celebrates community and love in all its forms.

How To Sell a Romance

Martin, Alexa | Berkley (384 pp.) | $19 paper | July 15, 2025 | 9780593816356

A kindergarten teacher finds herself falling for the parent of one of her students as they team up to take down a sketchy company. Emerson Pierce loves her job as a kindergarten teacher, up to and including everything except her salary. Desperate for the opportunity to make more money— and to connect with other women her own age—she throws herself into becoming a salesperson for skincare company Petunia Lemon after being recruited by a co-worker. All she has to do is invest some of her savings first, and she’ll make all that money back tenfold in no time. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is; investigative reporter Lucas Miller has been sniffing around Petunia Lemon and their borderline-illegal activity ever since his ex-wife got suckered into their act. He has every intention of writing an article to expose the company, and sneaking into their convention at a local hotel seems like the perfect way to do it. When Emerson and Lucas lock eyes on each other at the rooftop bar, it’s lust at first sight, and a steamy hookup soon follows. Emerson expects to leave her one-night stand

behind as soon as she and Lucas part ways, but the beginning of a new school year has a surprise in store for her: He’s the father of one of her students. Emerson wants to keep things professional, but when she starts catching on to Petunia Lemon’s more sinister underbelly, she reaches out to Lucas in a moment of desperation. Now, the two of them have to team up in order to reveal the company’s dirty dealings, all while fighting the attraction between them that has never truly dissipated. Martin’s latest delivers all of her signature humor, but the plot struggles to strike a balance between sizzling romance and the takedown of a predatory pyramid scheme. Still, Emerson and Lucas’ chemistry, which builds within the background of their reluctant investigative work, as well as Emerson’s strengthening relationship with Lucas’ endearing daughter, is the book’s best component.

A steamy rom-com that doesn’t sell all of its elements successfully.

Kirkus Star

Love Is a War Song

Nava, Danica | Berkley (336 pp.) | $19 paper | July 22, 2025 | 9780593642627

A troubled Native American pop star retreats to her estranged grandmother’s ranch in Oklahoma and finds u nexpected love.

Rising star

Avery Fox’s record label never believed a Native musician could climb the charts, but now that her song “I Need a Warrior Tonight” has cracked the Billboard Hot 100, all eyes are on her. Everything comes crashing down, however, when she poses for a Rolling Stone cover in a feathered warbonnet—she’s officially cancelled by the listening public for being embarrassing at best and offensive to Native A mericans at worst. Avery, who was raised as a child star by her single mom, never knew her family back in Oklahoma and didn’t understand that her costume was problematic and racist.

Although she’s a descendent of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, she’s not an enrolled citizen, leading to accusations that she’s faking her heritage. Now, her mom (also her manager) decides that Avery’s best option is to go hide out in Oklahoma with the grandmother she’s never met—she can lay low and bond with the community, putting to rest all the rumors that she isn’t really Native. But when Avery shows up in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, she finds a ranch hand named Lucas Iron Eyes who hates her music, a grandmother who threatens people with a shotgun, and a ranch where the horses terrify her (and try to eat her hair). Living at Red Fox Ranch means hard work that Avery isn’t accustomed to—including cooking for ranch hands and caring for animals— and it also means being in close quarters with Lucas. These enemies soon become lovers, but Avery’s complicated career and Lucas’ connection to the ranch mean that they’re destined to be pulled apart—unless Avery can reconcile her dreams with the heritage she’s finally getting the chance to explore. Avery’s fish-out-of-water story leads to plenty of classic rom-com hijinks as she learns to ride a horse, play stickball, and adjust to life on the ranch. Nava balances these lighter moments with depth as Avery learns more about her grandmother and what it means to be Muscogee.

A charming rom-com about finding your place and knowing who you are.

Kirkus Star

Roommating

Schorr, Meredith | Forever (336 pp.) | $17.99 paper | June 10, 2025 | 9781538758267

A struggling librarian’s comfortable life is shaken up when an unexpected roommate enters her carefully curated world. Sabrina Finkelstein is juggling library school, part-time

work at a branch of the New York Public Library, and a geriatric roommate she adores. Marcia Haber is a spry, independent 72. The two met on an intergenerational app meant to match seniors who could use a hand around the house with young people who could use a break on rent. When her grandson, Adam, is laid off from his job in Philadelphia, he comes to stay with Marcia a nd Sabrina. He’s hot, passionate about books, and excited to connect with his grandmother. Adam’s father had broken off contact with Marcia years ago when she came out as bisexual, and Sabrina doesn’t mind having Adam crash on the sofa, because it gives Marcia a chance to reconnect with her grandson. Soon, the chemistry between Sabrina and Adam is palpable, aided by their two-person YA book club, and the close quarters make for a steamy buildup. Then, returning from a disastrous first date, Marcia nearly catches Sabrina and Adam in a steamy make-out session. Sensing how this might complicate their housing situation, they decide to keep things platonic. But after Marcia has a minor health scare, her doctor suggests that living with two young people is causing her undue stress, and she asks Adam to move out. Adam—unbeknownst to his grandmother—tells Sabrina he thinks she should be the one to leave, and their hot secret romance turns into a competition to prove who’s the best fit for their septuagenarian roommate. This forced-proximity romance is a cozy homage to intergenerational friendships, New York City, romance novel fandom, and grand gestures. As romantic leads, Adam and Sabrina are compelling, and the occupational and financial uncertainty faced by single 20-somethings is very real, but readers might just find that the secondary story of Marcia’s foray into senior dating on the apps is what they stick around for. A sweet and sexy love letter to readers that sacrifices none of its slow-burn sexiness for comfort.

SEEN AND HEARD

Benedict Cumberbatch Narrates

Parallel Lines Audiobook

The Patrick Melrose actor will lend his voice to Edward St. Aubyn’s latest novel.

Benedict Cumberbatch is lending his voice to the new book from English novelist Edward St. Aubyn.

Cumberbatch will narrate the audiobook edition of St. Aubyn’s Parallel Lines. The hardcover edition of the book was published this month by Knopf.

The novel follows a group of characters St. Aubyn introduced in his 2021 novel, Double Blind The new novel focuses on Sebastian, a man being treated for schizophrenia; his twin sister, Olivia, a mother and radio producer; and Lucy, Olivia’s ailing best friend. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the novel an “elegantly arch but empathetic excursion into impending apocalypse, and some of St. Aubyn’s best work yet.”

Cumberbatch, known for his roles in films including The Imitation Game and The Power of the Dog, was the star of Patrick Melrose, a Showtime limited series based on St. Aubyn’s novels about the character, a wealthy man struggling with addiction and coming to terms with his childhood abuse.

Cumberbatch won critical praise for his performance as Melrose in the series, winning a British Academy Television Award and earning an Emmy nomination. The series also starred Jennifer Jason Leigh and Hugo Weaving.

Cumberbatch previously narrated St. Aubyn’s ouble Blind. The audiobook edition of Parallel Lines is scheduled for release on June 24.

—M.S.

Benedict Cumberbatch

For a review of Parallel Lines, visit Kirkus online.

Stefanie Loos/AFP via Getty Images

Book to Screen

Angelina Jolie To Star in Anxious People Film

Angelina Jolie will star in a film adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s Anxious People, Deadline reports.

Backman’s novel, published in the U.S. by Atria in 2 020, follows a group of people at an apartment open house who are taken hostage by a bank robber. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a story with both comedy and heartbreak sure to please B ackman fans.”

Jolie won the Oscar for best supporting actress in 2000 for Girl, Interrupted and recently garnered critical acclaim for her

starring role in the Maria Callas biopic, Maria . She will play Zara, an investment banker who is one of t he hostages.

Director Marc Forster and screenwriter David Magee are teaming up on the film; the two previously worked together on A Man Called Otto , the 2022 film adaptation of Backman’s A Man Called Ove . Forster and Magee were also attached to a planned adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book , but that film was paused last year after several women accused Gaiman of sexual assault.

Renée Wolfe, a producer on the Anxious People adaptation, told Deadline , “Anxious People is a uniquely warm and heartfelt story that speaks to our chaotic times by asking us to step outside of our own stories and slow down enough to actually see one another. It is set a week before Christmas and highlights a time when generosity and giving are values that are more in focus.”—M.S.

David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Angelina Jolie

For a review of Anxious People, visit Kirkus online.

Nonfiction

JOHN McMURTRIE

WORLDWIDE WEBS

IN THE 1990 s, a strange, hulking mass of modified shipping containers—five stories high—could be seen in New York’s East River: It was a floating jail. Just as unusual was the prison ship’s history. As Ian Kumekawa discovered in writing Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge (Knopf, March 22), the jail sat on a barge that had several past lives and would continue to pop up around the world in various guises, under various owners. Built in 1979, the Swedish-made barge once served as a “floatel” for offshore oil drillers in the North Sea. It also housed British troops during the Falklands War, factory workers assembling VW Beetles in Germany, and prisoners in the postcard-pretty harbor of Portland, England. Our starred review called the book “a stellar account of a complex offshore world, as seen through the tangled history of a humble barge.”

Empty Vessel makes for especially timely reading because it shows just how interconnected the world is—try as some politicians might to sever foreign ties and put up barriers to

international trade and cooperation. Regardless of whatever pell-mell approach is taken to tariffs, the lowly barge in Kumekawa’s book is an example, he writes, “of the abstract forces that have transformed our world over the past forty years.”

Not that international commerce and relationships forged beyond borders are anything new. In his most recent book, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World (Bloomsbury, April 29), the historian William Dalr ymple argues that, yes, the ancient Silk Road joined the East and West, but another route—the “Golden Road” of southern seas—linked India with distant lands over a span of centuries. As our reviewer noted, Indian sailors loaded their ships with “pepper, spices, ivory, cotton, gems,

teak, and sandalwood—all in great demand in the Roman Empire.” Dalrymple demonstrates that this longstanding exchange also fostered an interplay of cultures. Religious beliefs traveled from India to China and Southeast Asia: Angkor Wat in Cambodia, writes Dalrymple, is proof of the “ever-widening Indosphere where ideas and forms and stories first dreamed up in South Asia were being discussed, appreciated, adopted and adapted very far from home.” As our critic put it, “The ancient world, too, was a global village.”

This to-and-fro between cultures has long shaped art as well, of course. The debut book by art historian Leslie Primo is a refreshing case in point: In The Foreign Invention of British Art (Thames & Hudson, May

13), wrote our reviewer, Primo convincingly asserts that the “‘new artistic sensibility’ that eventually became known as the British school of art could not have developed without the influx of artists from abroad.”

And something as simple as the orange can have us thinking about our connections to other cultures and other times. In Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange (Tin House, May 6), Katie Goh explores her family’s roots in China by focusing on the titular fruit. “Goh’s quest for self-knowledge mirrors the journey of citrus itself,” wrote our critic in a starred review. “In smart, engrossing prose, Goh teaches us as much about the fruits as about ourselves.”

John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

The noted historian advances the cause of an aggressively, and progressively, malleable set of rules f or government.

“The U.S. Constitution was intended to be amended,” writes Lepore at the outset. Whereas the functions of government were established in such a way that there would be continuity from generation to generation, and whereas the Constitution sets fairly high hurdles for change, nonetheless, by Lepore’s lights, the Founders intended for the document to be changed in order to meet the needs of the day, trusting in the Enlightenment premise that “the human mind is driven by reason.” Article V, Lepore continues, is “a sleeping giant”: In it the Founders specified that change could

come in one of two ways, the first being a congressional proposal, the second a convention of the states, with a “double supermajority” of votes for approval, two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states. Although t here have been flurries of amendments—including the first 10, yielding the Bill of Rights—it has been nearly 40 years since the last constitutional convention was held, even as, Lepore calculates, members of Congress proposed 2,100 amendments between 1980 and 2000. Part of the problem is congressional gridlock, a feature of government since the days of President Reagan; another is what Lepore considers the false doctrine of originalism—which, she writes provocatively, “arose

from the failure of conservatives to change the C onstitution by democratic means.” Lepore presses her argument with numerous case studies, including the difficult passage of an amendment to allow direct election of senators (formerly appointed by governors), the argument over an income tax (and one that

progressively taxed the rich more than the poor), the failed adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment, and a longtime favorite that has yet to come about: the abolition of the aristocratically inspired Electoral College.

With the Constitution under daily threat, Lepore’s outstanding book makes for urgent reading.

A memoir about motherhood and pregnancy loss, marriage

to a celebrity, and more.

NOT INCLUDED

Manual Not Included

Baldwin, Hilaria | Gallery Books/ Simon & Schuster (224 pp.) | $28.99 May 6, 2025 | 9781668009987

“Not a Cinderella story.” Baldwin’s loosely written memoir is about motherhood and pregnancy loss, marriage to a celebrity, being the target of gossip and criticism, the experiences of neurodivergency and bilingualism, and more. “When Alec and I met, I was twenty-seven and he was fifty-three,” she writes. “Now, it’s nearly a decade and a half later….People always ask me: What is life actually like with seven kids (and an Alec)? It’s amazing and chaotic.” This book comes on the heels of the first season of the family’s reality show, The Baldwins, seemingly designed to answer the same burning question. While the author seems like a nice, well-meaning person, one comes away from this memoir hoping the television version, with the story sculpted by professionals, is the more entertaining response. Given the fact that there has been controversy about Baldwin’s background, perhaps she should have written a straightforward autobiography. But she has not, and the reader might need to do some research to understand the nature of some of the attacks she writes about. The veracity of her Spanish identity has come under fire, as her birth name is Hilary, she was born in Boston, and is not of Latine descent—but you won’t learn those facts from this book. The author’s relative youth, her choice to have her sixth child via surrogate,

and Alec Baldwin’s involvement in the death of a colleague on a film set have all been media fodder. She discusses several specific nemeses without naming them, which is not very interesting. “I grapple with the question: Why am I here in the public space? Why am I ‘relevant’? Am I here because an actor fell in love with me? Am I here because I’m a yoga teacher and have things to say about mental and physical health? Am I here because I had a lot of kids?” It’s not clear that she knows, and neither will you. Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.

Death to Order: A Modern History of Assassination

Ball, Simon | Yale Univ. (464 pp.) | $35 August 26, 2025 | 9780300258042

A wide-ranging history of how assassinations have affected international relations over the past two centuries.

“Assassination makes states answer uncomfortable questions about violence, appeasement, collaboration and persuasion. In other words, the actual exercise of power in international politics,” writes University of Leeds historian Ball. It also roils the established order. Ball begins with the state-sponsored murder of Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., at the hands of Cuban right-wing militants and agents of the government of Augusto Pinochet; he deems it perhaps the best understood of modern assassinations, because, thanks to an

extensive congressional investigation, from it emerged answers to his four elements of assassination (“the procurers of assassination, the assassins, the tools of the trade, and the cover-up”). Other assassinations, notably those of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., have proven murkier. Ball clarifies some of history’s enigmas: His account of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which touched off World War I, establishes that it was indeed the result of an extensive conspiracy involving a Serbian secret society, the Black Hand, among whose members were the head of the Serbian military intelligence service. The rift that led to war began in next-door Hungary, with a sort of conspiracy of its own among imperial hawks, but also with an all-too-human dimension: “It was not as if anyone in Hungary cared about Franz Ferdinand’s death. They just disliked Serbs.” Assassination became a European commonplace in the years between world wars, as Ball chronicles, and it has been a tool in the toolbox of international statecraft ever since—witness, for instance, the many attempts on the life of Fidel Castro by the CIA and other American intelligence agencies and, more recently, Vladimir Putin’s use of assassination to silence his political opponents.

An agile account of official and freelance wetwork in the cat-andmouse game of global politics.

The Intelligence Explosion: When AI Beats Humans at Everything

Barrat, James | St. Martin’s (336 pp.) | $30 September 16, 2025 | 9781250355027

If we let AI take the wheel, will it drive humanity to extinction?

The development of increasingly powerful AI systems may be steering humanity toward an existential crisis, says Barrat, an author and documentary filmmaker.

Drawing from history, expert commentary, and industry analysis, Barrat proposes thinking in terms of an “intelligence explosion”—in which AIs rapidly self-improve, eventually outpacing human intelligence and slipping out of our control. Rather than a far-fetched dystopia, Barrat evokes an urgent threat, propelled by fierce competition between major tech companies like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. These corporations, he argues, have released unpredictable generative AI models and are racing to create artificial general intelligence (AGI) without fully understanding or addressing the risks. The result, according to Barrat and the experts he cites, will likely be catastrophic. One chilling comparison equates releasing open-source code to publishing plans for a nuclear bomb. Another AI expert envisions rogue data centers developing unchecked AI systems that must be destroyed to protect humanity. Despite the urgency of his tone, Barrat notes that AI does offer tangible benefits for medicine, robotics, and scientific research. From protein folding to factory automation, current AIs already surpass human performance in many specialized domains. But the book’s core concern remains the lack of safeguards, AI’s unpredictable emergent properties, and our present inability to align superintelligent systems with human values. Barrat’s argument is passionate and unapologetically skeptical of industry motivations. His plentiful notes make the book a valuable resource for readers looking to explore the topic further. This volume will satisfy those wondering why many respected researchers are sounding the alarm about AI, fearing a risky, high-stakes choose-your-own-adventure game where black-box models replace human decision-making. Barrat offers some hope, but he warns that smart AIs won’t stay confined to computers for long. Agree or disagree, this thought-provoking introduction will add context for those seeking to understand AI’s darker potential. A gripping, unsettling critique of artificial intelligence carries a stark warning: control or be controlled.

The Battle for the Black Mind

Brown, Karida L. | Legacy Lit/ Hachette (256 pp.) | $30 May 13, 2025 | 9781538768433

How Black identity has been shaped by schools and ideologies of control.

“The struggle over the Black mind has been a defining feature of each generation’s fight,” writes Brown, a sociologist. Like a flag planted on alien soil, her book stakes a claim on Black education as central to American history. The book shows how Black Americans fit, or did not fit, into institutions of instruction over the past two centuries. It reveals how the Hampton-Tuskegee model of education, framed largely in the wake of Booker T. Washington’s example, was education not by Black Americans but for them. It tells the story of the founding and the flourishing of historically Black colleges and universities. Brown writes a personal history of coming to terms with what it means to be educated and Black in America. She sounds a call for activism in response to governmental scaling back of diversity initiatives and the recognition of African American achievement.

Familiar names from Black history take on new urgency here: W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke (the first Black Rhodes scholar), Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Thomas Jesse Jones. In its chronicles of these and many other figures, and in its clear outlining of the legal and social watersheds in American history (from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education), the book offers an effective and forceful guide charting Black history. Written in a vivid vernacular by a gifted teacher, it speaks for a generation of students who are asking “questions that demand justice and recognition: What were the contributions of our ancestors? What does true repair look like in this moment? They are pushing for access, representation, and a profound sense of belonging. And

they’re not waiting around—they’re demanding change now.”

An uncompromising history of Black education in America.

Kirkus Star

We Should All Be Birds: A Memoir

Buckbee, Brian with Carol Ann Fitzgerald | Tin House | $28.95 August 5, 2025 | 9781963108293

Finding purpose— t hanks to a pigeon. Buckbee’s life story is heartbreaking in so many ways: He’s lost his parents, his health, and the love of his life. Formerly an adventure traveler, Buckbee experienced years of gradually worsening health, his doctors mystified by his headaches, nausea, weakness, and weight loss. He is eventually diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, but his story is not like other disability memoirs—it doesn’t feel overly heavy. Buckbee makes friends with a pigeon he names Two-Step and soon has a flock that he cares for. Few readers are likely to directly relate to having a three-and-ahalf-year-old headache or to welcoming a dozen pigeons to share their apartment, yet nearly every page manages to prompt an emotion— laughter, tears, wonder, or palm-to-chest exhalation in recognition of a profound truth. Indeed, the book is a sparkling example of the best kind of first-person storytelling in that its specificity succeeds in revealing universal truths. The story jumps around in time, including scenes from before his illness (Brian 1.0), his first meeting with Two-Step, and his real-time efforts to write his story via dictation. He offers small asides; for instance, he wonders if his dictation setup captures weeping. This breaking of the third wall brings the reader in

close. We see all the ways his disability affects his life: A pigeon gone missing feels overwhelming; a stranger’s thoughtfulness is so very appreciated. His condition and his capacity to deal with life struggles separate the people he interacts with into those who empathize with him and those who doubt and gaslight him. Perhaps there’s a third group too—those who look the other way. (Don’t be in the third group.)

An extraordinary story full of humanity and life lessons from a man whose disability has largely removed him from society.

Kirkus Star

Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born To Run

Carlin, Peter Ames | Doubleday (256 pp.)

$30 | August 5, 2025 | 9780385551533

The roots of a careermaking album. Fifty years on, Bruce Springsteen’s third album, Born To Run, seems as natural, essential, and American as the Mississippi River. But as music biographer Carlin (The Name of This Band Is R.E.M., 2024, etc.) explains, its creation was clouded with uncertainty, as was its creator. Though Springsteen’s first two albums received plenty of critical acclaim, sales were weak, and he was close to being dropped by his label, Columbia Records. His live band was in transition, as was his management—he invited Jon Landau, a well-connected rock critic, into his camp following a review that concluded, “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” Carlin’s book generally runs through the album song by song, which is an effective strategy: “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” lets Carlin explore the E Street Band’s evolution, “Jungleland” Springsteen’s meticulous approach to composition and production, the anthemic title track his ruthless self-editing as a lyricist. (Manager Mike Appel

was so high on the last song he released a bootleg single of it to radio, risking the ire of Columbia suits.) Unlike his R.E.M. book, which suffered from lack of access to the band members, this book is bolstered by interviews with Springsteen himself, some drawn from his 2012 biography but also more recent ones, as well as footage of Springsteen’s obsessive retakes in the studio. To the last, he remained uncertain of what he’d accomplished—he almost scrapped the album just before its release date—and it’s to Carlin’s credit that he’s more interested in the uncertainty than delivering a hagiography. Born To Run was a triumph, installing Springsteen in rock’s canon, but this book thrives in exploring the hard work that preceded it. An admirably comprehensive study of a masterpiece and its creation.

Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion

DeVille, Chris | St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $29 | August 26, 2025 | 9781250363381

A journalist asks: What happened to indie rock? There was a time, about 20 years ago, when “Such Great Heights,” a song by indie-pop outfit The Postal Service, was inescapable. The song hit the Billboard Hot Singles chart, unusual for an indie song at the time, and was featured in the film Garden State and in the series Grey’s Anatomy. It makes sense that music journalist DeVille would use the song as the title of his book, which explores how, in the early 2000s, indie rock “reached an exponentially larger audience and was utterly transformed in the process.” Indie rock was named after its original home in independent music labels, but at some point it changed to a label-agnostic genre that, DeVille writes, was marked by “a family tree of musical aesthetics” that started with late-1960s bands the Velvet Underground and the Stooges. DeVille traces 2000s indie rock

to its “dance-party era,” when fans bopped along to the Dismemberment Plan, and through its forays into subgenres garage rock, “blog-rock,” “bloghouse” (associated with the “indie sleaze” era of fashion), indie folk, and more. He writes about the genre’s watershed moments: its popularity with television producers, who included indie songs in series like The O.C. and Gossip Girl, and the surprise Grammy wins of Arcade Fire and Bon Iver. Indie rock, DeVille writes, “meant so many things that it came to mean nothing.” He doesn’t bemoan this, noting that the changes “started pulling the genre away from traditional white male power structures and toward the historical have-nots.” DeVille’s book is beautifully argued and free of strong opinions about particular bands or subgenres; he is here as a historian with admitted skin in the game—he’s a fan of the genre who observes, neutrally, how it has changed. This work is filled with smart arguments, gentle wit, and admirable acumen. A must not just for rock fans, but for anyone interested in the intersection of music and culture.

Who Knew: My Story

Diller, Barry | Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $30 | May 20, 2025 | 9780593317877

Well-crafted memoir by the noted media mogul. Diller’s home life as a youngster was anything but happy; as he writes early on, “The household I grew up in was perfectly dysfunctional.” His mother lived in her own world, his father was knee-deep in business deals, his brother was a heroin addict, and he tried to play by all the rules in order to allay “my fear of the consequences from my incipient homosexuality.” Somehow he fell into the orbit of show business figures like Lew Wasserman (“I was once arrested for joy-riding in Mrs. Wasserman’s Bentley”) and decided that Hollywood offered the right kind of

escape. Starting in the proverbial mailroom, he worked his way up to be a junior talent agent, then scrambled up the ladder to become a high-up executive at ABC, head of Paramount and Fox, and an internet pioneer who invested in Match.com and took over a revitalized Ticketmaster. None of that ascent was easy, and Diller documents several key failures along the way, including boardroom betrayals (“What a monumental dope I’d been. They’d taken over the company—in a merger I’d created— with venality and duplicity”) and strategic missteps. It’s no news that the corporate world is rife with misbehavior, but the better part of Diller’s book is his dish on the players: He meets Jack Nicholson at the William Morris Agency, “wandering through the halls, looking for anyone who’d pay attention to him”; hangs out with Warren Beatty, ever on the make; mispronounces Barbra Streisand’s name (“her glare at me as she walked out would have fried a fish”); learns a remedy for prostatitis from Katharine Hepburn (“My father was an expert urological surgeon, and I know what I’m doing”); and much more in one of the better show-biz memoirs to appear in recent years.

Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.

Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics

Exner, Eike | Yale Univ. (256 pp.) | $37.50 August 4, 2025 | 9780300280944

A fresh history of Japanese comics, from prewar strips to recent international sensations like Attack on Titan .

Simultaneously a record of comics art in Japan and an account of its trailblazing publishing industry, Exner’s book traces the initial spark of Japanese cartooning back to the 1890s, when newspapers began syndicating (and at times outright copying) American-made cartoons. Artists soon began their own

When Florida persecuted Black and gay citizens in what lawmakers called a “purge.”

AMERICAN

homespun stories like Yutaka Aso’s Easygoing Daddy and Suiho Tagawa’s Norakuro, and competing magazines vied for their publishing rights. These pre–World War II years proved that comics were a lucrative pursuit, and publishers created omnibus collections that influenced a new generation of creators after the war. Advancements in the entertainment industry directly affected manga’s evolution. Exner (Comics and the Origins of Manga, 2021) details the influence of animation on creators like Astro Boy’s Osamu Tezuka, as well as international cinema’s effect on ’60s- and ’70s-era “gekiga” manga for adults. Each evolution saw publishers pivoting to bottle the lightning: Monthly magazines split into parallel publications to separately target both boys and girls, and nimble distribution led to books being available in toy stores and, for a time, even as rentals. Exner follows these developments through manga’s break into the U.S. industry in the ’90s and ends on the game-changing precipice of today’s trends in digital publication. Despite its far-reaching scope, Manga’s discussion of form and technique is limited: Exner returns to the abstruse term “transdiegetic” to describe comics “in light of their function of translating certain phenomena in the diegesis (story world), such as motion, sound, and pain, into a different form to make them perceptible to the reader.” This description, repeated throughout the volume, feels like a tiring effort to prepare the reader for a classroom quiz. Despite a narrow technical approach, Exner remains a passionate historian and has crafted a record that finely pinpoints major cultural touchstones while incorporating lesser-known titles that will thrill more seasoned readers.

An exciting, illuminating history that will inspire fans to explore the classics.

SCARE

Kirkus Star

American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives

Fieseler, Robert W. | Dutton (496 pp.) $32 | June 17, 2025 | 9780593183953

Uncovering dark history in the Sunshine State. Journalist and author Fieseler’s vital account shines a light on the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee—“a forgotten cabal of gerrymandered white legislators that went after Black and queer citizens in the mid-twentieth century at the height of anti-Communist hysteria.” This pursuit led to the surveillance and persecution of Black NAACP activists and then to the firings and expulsions of hundreds of homosexual professors and students in schools and colleges across Florida—a “purge,” in the words of state lawmakers. Some of these injustices were remedied only when they reached the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts. Fieseler follows the political careers of FLIC chairman Charley Johns, a staunch segregationist, and chief investigator Remus Strickland, whose “dogged pursuit of alleged homosexuals verged on megalomania.” The author humanizes this history with portraits of some of its victims, including University of Florida undergraduate Art Copleston, who was pulled from class and interrogated, and tenured music professor John Faircloth Park, entrapped in a courthouse men’s room. Modeled on the Red Scare’s House Committee on Un-American Activities, FLIC, also known as the

Johns Committee after its chairman, quickly became “an investigation in search of something new to investigate.”

Fieseler describes how he gained access to the records of FLIC’s closed meetings, scandalous and previously unavailable to the public. A task force empowered to investigate “subversive crime” soon became corrupt itself. Most saliently, the author also draws parallels to later Floridians who would continue to wage attacks on Blacks and gays: Anita Bryant (and her Save Our Children campaign) and current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (backer of the Don’t Say Gay bill and the Stop WOKE Act). The persecution of “the other” has not set with the Florida sun.

An essential work of recovering queer history.

Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible From Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds

Fugelsang, John | Avid Reader Press (320 pp.)

$29.99 | August 19, 2025 | 9781668066898

How to argue with Christian nationalists.

Actor and comedian Fugelsang presents a grating screed against the Christian right. He attempts to provide liberal, modern Christians and non-Christians with biblical background that can be used in debating f undamentalist arguments, but his distinctly informal and fully subjective approach leaves the reader wincing. Most chapters of the book list various examples of scripture that can be used to counter what the author identifies as right-wing views of Christianity, usually at its most extreme. For instance, a chapter titled “Thou Shalt Not Hate Feminists” discusses various women of the Bible, how they have been negatively portrayed over time, and how they actually exemplify Jesus’s teachings on equality. However, Fugelsang’s

antagonist is always vague. Aside from naming a smattering of Republican politicians, the author fails to identify who the target of his jeremiad really is. He uses terms like “fundamentalists,” “evangelicals,” “authoritarian Christians,” and “Christian nationalists” interchangeably, while explaining in his introduction that, “nice conservative Christians…this book is not about you.” Fugelsang apparently writes about a straw-man “uncle” whom everyone supposedly knows and encounters now and then. Indeed, the vile and ogreish right-wing Christianity that he presents is largely a caricature that few would readily recognize. The author quotes insights from several liberal theologians but fails to pursue the same input from conservative theologians, who might at least add an air of objectivity to this work. Additionally, Fugelsang’s unrelenting irreverence, flat-falling witticisms, and peppering of profanity defeat his purpose by coloring him as an unserious author. Readers looking for a measured and sober look inside Christian nationalism would be better served by The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta (2023) or The False White Gospel by Jim Wallis (2024). Unserious approach to a serious subject.

The Season: A Fan’s Story

Garner, Helen | Pantheon (208 pp.) | $25 September 2, 2025 | 9780593702147

The sporting life. Australian writer Garner reflects on aging, family, boyhood, and manhood in a bittersweet memoir centered on her relationship with Amby, her youngest grandchild, a 15-year-old member of an Under-16 Australian football team. Wanting to be a “silent witness” to his life, she decides to write a book about football, a sport she admits having no clue about. She attends training sessions and games, watches matches on television with Amby, and thinks about what football means to these

teenagers as they become men. They seem so fragile—young and slender, compared with the professional players they watch on television. But as she chronicles Amby’s development, month by month, she sees him changing. “The chunky child I used to carry on my hip! Where has he gone?” she asks herself. “Where have the years gone?” He becomes a strong player, with a powerful, well-aimed kick and a healthy dose of aggression. Tackling, he tells her, “is the most cathartic part of the whole game.” Not surprisingly, she brings to the games some anxiety about possible injury; often Amby leaves the field sporting bloody knees and wakes up sore the next day. But he’s devoted to his team, to his coach, and to competition. More than the particulars of the game, Garner observes that football serves as “an ancient common language between strangers” and a strong source of bonding for men. During the year, Garner suffers two bouts of Covid-19 and periodic bouts of depression. At 80, she feels old—her hearing is going, her eyesight, too; she feels on the periphery of her family’s life, a nuisance and a bore. Amby’s growing strength contrasts, sadly, with her increasing sense of diminishment.

A tender reminiscence, fueled by love, tempered by loss.

Trump’s Triumph: America’s Greatest Comeback

Gingrich, Newt | Center Street/ Hachette (304 pp.) | $30 June 3, 2025 | 9781546008798

A blend of sycophancy, self-promotion, and calumny in praise of Donald Trump. How much does former House Speaker Gingrich worship Trump?

One can only wonder what his heart holds, but in this paean layered with Gingrichian policy recommendations, he borrows a page from the president by slinging insults right and left (well, mostly left, but Liz Cheney takes a

shellacking, too): “It was clear that [Kamala] Harris did not know much, did not study, and was just plain lazy.” Moreover, casting doubt on the quality of the electorate, he insists that had Harris been elected, it would signal the end of the American belief in merit and hard work. Setting aside his idol’s penchant for short days and abundant golf outings, Gingrich does hit on a point or two, including the fact that the Founders “knew the tendency was for free societies to quickly degenerate into a dictatorship.” Gingrich’s bloviations are built on enough straw-man arguments to fill a barn the size of the Mall of America (a venue, he complains, that Tim Walz allowed to remain open during the Covid-19 pandemic while closing churches): Liberals are unpatriotic. Liberals want “illegal immigrants” to be allowed to vote. Jimmy Carter (who served in uniform) had “contempt for the military,” while Ronald Reagan championed it. Harris didn’t pick Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate because “he is Jewish and vocal elements of the Democratic Party are increasingly pro-Palestinian and antisemitic.” And so on. Against this, Gingrich is all in on the Trump agenda, parroting each of its talking points—he mentions Jan. 6, 2021, for instance, only twice directly, and then only to malign “the kangaroo court January 6 Committee led by Cheney.” Toeing the MAGA party line.

Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture

With Virgil Abloh

Givhan, Robin | Crown (336 pp.)

$35 | June 24, 2025 | 9780593444122

Paying tribute to a pioneering designer.

Virgil Abloh’s life story did not presage his role as Louis Vuitton’s first Black artistic director. The child of Ghanian immigrants, Abloh grew up in small-town Illinois with no ties to the fashion

Leaving “oddly confining” Silicon Valley and returning home to Minnesota.

HOW I FOUND MYSELF IN THE MIDWEST

industry. In college, he studied business, and in graduate school, architecture. His master’s program brought him to Chicago, where he became rapper Kanye West’s trusted friend. Instead of pursuing architecture, Abloh founded a brand called Off-White that grew out of his experimentation with printing graphics on luxury T-shirts. Although some critiqued the collection’s focus on image rather than silhouettes, Abloh’s work was enough to make him a finalist for the esteemed LVMH Prize. Journalist and author Givhan credits Abloh’s success to a combination of the rise of Black streetwear and the designer’s visionary talent. She writes, “Abloh rose during a time of existential angst for a fashion industry trying to make sense of its responsibilities to an increasingly diverse audience, its power to shape identity, and the challenges of selling status to a generation of consumers who fetishized sneakers, prioritized comfort, and had little use for rhapsodic nostalgia.” This evolution in the fashion industry, Givhan argues, created a space where Abloh excelled, in part, because he lacked the “familiar bona fides” required of most designers. Sometimes, the author spends more time on Abloh’s line of work than on his life—Abloh was only 41 when he died of cancer in 2021. But the book amply displays her deep knowledge of the fashion industry and her understanding of how history, culture, and systems of oppression shape style.

A finely tailored biography of a prestigious designer.

How I Found Myself in the Midwest: A Memoir of Reinvention

Grove, Steve | Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $29.99 | June 24, 2025 | 9781668062449

A native son abandons Silicon Valley to return to Minnesota. Yes, it’s known as flyover country, the kind of place that invokes visions of cornfields and snowdrifts in the minds of the coastal elite. But having done a couple of decades at YouTube and Google, Grove found himself thinking that “being in the cradle of innovation was starting to feel oddly confining.” The trade-off for the fact that, as his wife notes, “it’s just so fucking cold here,” he found, was a high quality of life, with a lot more house for the money, low taxes, excellent schools, the works—but, he adds meaningfully, that has much to do with being white, for even as minorities (notably Somalians and Hmong) have moved to Minnesota in ever greater numbers, the “historically very white state” exhibits startling racial inequality and racially founded animus, a fact brought to the fore by the murder of George Floyd in 2020. At that critical moment, Grove recounts, he had weathered the Covid-19 crisis working in state government as an aide to Tim Walz with a special brief as liaison to the business community—which, of course, was rebelling against the lockdown. The Floyd case inspired Grove to branch out and establish a program to introduce young students of color to tech careers. As Grove writes, in time he was induced to leave public

For more by Robin Givhan, visit Kirkus online.

service for journalism, a public service of a different kind, for “if there’s one fabric that holds a community together, its quality information about what’s happening in it.” On that note, Grove closes by encouraging his readers to involve themselves more in local affairs and local government, concluding, “The institutions that bind us together aren’t broken, they just need new investment and ideas.”

A pleasingly civic-minded account of making a new home on familiar ground, and making it better.

Aristotle’s Guide to SelfPersuasion: How Ancient Rhetoric, Taylor Swift, and Your Own Soul Can Help You Change Your Life

Heinrichs, Jay | Crown (288 pp.) | $29 July 15, 2025 | 9780593735275

Using the ancient Greek art of rhetoric to talk yourself into a more fulfilling life. Rhetoric, the art of verbal persuasion, is usually reserved for politicians giving stump speeches or lawyers addressing juries. Heinrichs has in mind a jury of just one: yourself. Or, more specifically, your soul. Skipping over Aristotle’s actual philosophy, the author defines the soul as “your you-est you,” the noblest version of yourself that the everyday-schlub you most aspires to be. Your job—you, the schlub—is to convince your soul you’ve got what it takes to make it proud. “To persuade yourself into better habits, and motivate yourself to achieve your goals,” Heinrichs writes, “you want to try and make a good impression on your soul.” Heinrichs’s prose is everything one would expect from an expert on rhetoric: funny, charming, relatable. It employs all the Aristotelean virtues it extolls—appealing to our emotions, using self-deprecating humor to chummy effect. The trouble with rhetoric, though, is it can sound great

without saying much. Heinrichs doles out familiar advice (break hard tasks into small steps, reframe negative thoughts as positive ones) and goofy exercises (“make a happy plan for a vacation,” “craft a metaphor of your very own”) and is caught up in the questionable task of combing etymology for hidden wisdom (“irony” is from t he Greek for “sharp dullness”). He does offer a few interesting rhetorical tricks, though. When setting a goal, make it as bold and dramatic as possible—to get your audience (your soul) psyched. Motivate yourself with slogans; for best results, use the rhythm of the paean—four syllables, three short, one long (here is one now; something like this). Still, the book has surprisingly little to say about self-talk or, frankly, rhetoric—a shame, since Heinrichs has hit on what probably amounts to a deep truth: that we master our lives when we master our words. A fun, gimmicky self-help book that’s big on style and short on substance.

The

Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed Bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia

House, Karen Elliott | Harper/ HarperCollins (304 pp.) | $29.99 July 8, 2025 | 9780063390355

Longtime journalist House draws on 40 years of travels to Saudi Arabia to present a portrait of a nation transforming, for good and ill.

“Today’s Saudi Arabia is literally unrecognizable from that of 2016,” writes House, adding, “No country has undergone such dramatic change in so short a time.” This is largely due to Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the crown prince and true power behind the throne of his father, the aged King Salman. Though callow in youth—House recounts his buying a Lamborghini while still in high school and immediately

wrecking it—MBS, as he’s shorthanded throughout, emerged as a serious man intent on reforms that will lead, among other things, to Saudi Arabia’s joining the world’s top 10 economies. One way to do that is to diversify the economy beyond oil, and this is happening. More profound changes have come in social matters: MBS has steeply curtailed the powers of the feared religious police, relaxed countless restrictions on women, and, born in 1985, sidelined much of the former gerontocracy. These changes have in turn come with a cost, as House writes, for MBS has jailed thousands of Saudis, some for corruption but many for political reasons. House, who has long had access to MBS, is generally admiring but far from uncritical: She notes that one of the victims of the new government’s repression was the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, brutally murdered by Saudi agents in Istanbul, possibly at MBS’s behest, direct or not. Somewhat to his credit, House adds that “while denying any prior knowledge, he has acknowledged his responsibility.” Regardless, MBS enjoys great popularity at home and general respect from abroad, even as “he already sees himself as an historic figure, a leader not only transforming Saudi Arabia but impacting the world with his big dreams and bold intentions.”

A well-crafted key to understanding a central player in world politics.

Nothing Compares to You: What Sinéad O’Connor Means to Us

Huber, Sonya & Martha Bayne

One Signal/Atria (256 pp.) | $28.99

July 22, 2025 | 9781668078334

Women and nonbinary authors reflect on the music of the late Sinéad O’Connor. When Irish singer-songwriter O’Connor died in 2023 at age 56, the music world was thrown into a state of shock. O’Connor was a global celebrity, and had been since the 1990 release of her hit single

“Nothing Compares 2 U”—a cover of a previously obscure Prince song—two years before she would memorably tear up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live. Huber and Bayne’s book collects essays by women and nonbinary authors reflecting on the singer’s influence on their own lives. The anthology kicks off with a foreword by fellow musician Neko Case, well written but a bit unfocused. The essays that follow, each tied to a specific O’Connor song, are a mixed bag. Standouts include Sarah Viren, who examines “Black Boys on Mopeds,” and May-lee Chai, who uses “Jump in the River” as a starting point to explore her relationship with her mother. Madhushree Ghosh does a good job writing about discovering O’Connor’s music as a 20-year-old whose Indian peers can’t quite relate, while Brooke Champagne writes a stunning piece about abortion inspired by “Three Babies.” In an essay tied to “Jackie,” Zoe Zolbrod, recalling the time she and a group of friends listened to the song at a gathering, successfully captures the effect O’Connor had on her fans: “We didn’t care if the whole building came tumbling down. We wanted it to. In those first moments, she made us feel powerful enough not just to stand our ground, but to fly.” There are some gems here, but too many of the essays lack focus and descend into the maudlin.

A few great essays can’t save a collection that tends toward the sentimental.

The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China

Jia, Ruixue & Hongbin Li with Claire Cousineau

Belknap/Harvard Univ. (240 pp.) | $29.95

September 9, 2025 | 9780674295391

Testing, testing… China’s gaokao is the nation’s “highest exam,” administered to everyone who wishes to attend college. A legacy of the ancient imperial exam structure, the gaokao provides the opportunity for anyone, irrespective of

background, to shine academically. Doing well on the exam ensures admission to a leading university and, afterward, to membership in the elite economic, social, and political strata of modern China. This book by three scholars presents a history of the exam, told through their personal experiences and framed as a socioeconomic study of Chinese ambition in the 21st century. The gaokao serves as an example of the highly centralized structure of Chinese life. Just as central planning governs much of urban and rural life, so too does the system of learning come from the top. The exam structure reflects not only the highly technocratic foci of Chinese advancement, but also its long-standing values. Hard work remains the most important thing. China, however, is no straightforward meritocracy. “It’s not that China’s people are idealists who only believe in the power of an exam to predict intelligence,” the authors write. “Rather, China is a society known for connections and petty corruption— hence, the weakness of its institutions.” Children spend their lives taking exams, and family connections help with tutors and retesting. Teachers are not just paid; they are often personally compensated for a child’s education. The “murky waters of corruption in China” wash over this highly centralized system of advancement. And while success is quantified by score, and while that score stays with the student throughout life, failure is equally branding. This book paints a landscape of vast inequality passing itself off as meritocracy—an exposé of an increasingly powerful global nation and a warning to any society, east or west, that still believes in teaching to the test.

A detailed history of China’s educational testing system illuminates the nation’s values in a competitive world.

Constantine Cavafy: A New Biography

Jusdanis, Gregory & Peter Jeffreys

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (560 pp.)

$35 | August 12, 2025 | 9780374610425

A quirky, revelatory biography of the celebrated Greek poet. The co-authors, who have written a number of books about Constantine Cavafy, organize their biography in five parts in order to focus on certain key topics in his life. They begin at the end, with his death from throat cancer in 1933, “then tell a circular narrative through various thematic sequences.” First up is the wealthy Cavafy family, which traveled often. Time spent in England “would shape [Constantine’s] social, cultural, and literary tastes.” Their move to Istanbul allowed him to widen his knowledge and interests, including his sexual orientation. Cosmopolitan Alexandria was for Constantine a “beloved” city of “infinite expansion” where he would work for 30 years as a petty civil clerk at the Department of Irrigation. The authors envision Cavafy in his book- and candle-laden apartment, walking around, visiting churches, museums, and bookstores, and traveling to the coast—places that provided inspiration for his poems. His friendships fell into three categories: pleasure, virtue, and advantage. The authors discuss his relationship with his friend E.M. Forster, who championed Cavafy’s poetry in England. In an “Interlude,” they explore Cavafy’s extensive reading. Many books dealt with history and the major Greek and French writers, while Shakespeare looms large alongside Keats,

In China, a landscape of vast inequality passes itself off as meritocracy.

THE HIGHEST EXAM

>>>

THE KIRKUS Q&A: HONORÉE FANONNE JEFFERS

In a new essay collection, the novelist and poet reckons with Black mothers and mentors.

BY LISA KENNEDY

IN 2021, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers was still celebrating her fifth poetry collection, the award-winning The Age of Phillis, about 18th-century poet Phillis Wheatley Peters, and watching as her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, rocketed up the bestseller list after Oprah Winfrey announced she’d chosen it for her book club.

Now Jeffers is releasing her first nonfiction book, Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings, in which she moves between poems, essays, and letters, concluding with tender, reckoning journal entries about time spent with her dying mother, the writer and teacher Trellie James Jeffers. The series appears under the banner “In Search of Our Mothers’ Forgiveness.” If that title sounds a familiar note, it’s because Jeffers has become friends with Alice Walker, whose classic In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens seeded and nourished the younger Jeffers’ nascent Black feminism. Other tenders of the familial-cultural plot include the poets Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, and the “goddess” Toni Morrison.

As a survivor of sexual abuse, Jeffers is compassionate and frank about shame and forgiveness. As a child of the South, she spins yarns and sprinkles “Miss” throughout this conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length.

So you’re teaching at the University of Oklahoma. Actually, when the election happened, I made the impulsive decision to retire. I was on the phone with Miss Sonia [Sanchez]. She’s 90, but she is sharp as a tack. I’m talking to her, just kind of whining, and she says, “You know, my dear sister, I had the same

conversation with Toni,” and I said, “Tony who?” And she said, “You know which Toni I’m talking about.” I took it as a sign and thought, This is God trying to tell me something. So I called my chair.

Still, it’s a big leap. I was telling someone earlier that these kids need

a lot of care in the aftermath of the pandemic. They suffered a lot during the pandemic. And I can say this publicly, white kids started taking their cues from the adults. And so, the first time Trump was in office, the kids started turning mean. I remember telling them, “My responsibility is to treat you politely and to teach you to the best of my ability. But you don’t have a right to my love. I give my love as extra. So if I’m giving you love, you don’t come up in here talking any kind of way to me.” Then in January, on the day of the inauguration, things started jumping off in education. I said, Honorée, it’s time to get on that Underground Railroad and get on out of here and do your best. And that’s why I always say, We thank God, and then we thank Ms. Oprah.

I was wondering what kind of impact the Oprah Book Club selection had. I give her so much glory. I have new book contracts— this book—all made possible by Oprah Winfrey. I mean, I’d been working in the trenches. I had five books of poetry. But I still do not believe that all these people would have been reading an 800-page novel if it had not been for Miss Oprah. I believe the Lord sent her to me. I was able to take over Mama’s care because of the way Love Songs blew up.

Taking care of aging parents is so meaningful. Because of my dad, my folks had the military’s TRICARE for Life.

I say this as a radical Black feminist: The military was really a way that Black men could garner respect in a time where they couldn’t

get it. All my uncles were military men. I don’t agree with war, but for me it’s been particularly abrasive to see the disrespect given to the military knowing what my uncles gave. My uncle Ted retired as a chief petty officer, then he went back to college. Uncle Larry, he’s the baby—he was adopted, but he’s still a blood relative—he was a Marine. Uncle Charles, he was in the Army. Uncle Ted was in Vietnam. And Uncle Alvester—he’s my favorite uncle—was in Korea.

How come this feels like one of many examples of you tussling with and embracing contradictions? There’s always this tug of war between who I am as an artist, who I am as a radical feminist, and who I am as a Deep Southern woman who can fry chicken clean to the bone, you know?

There’s an essay in the book called “Toni Morrison Did That” that w restles with Morrison’s towering stature but also imagines her creative vulnerability. There’s a part in that essay where I say that I knew Morrison must have been afraid at times. Miss Lucille [Clifton], who was a second mother to me—I’m writing her biography— was edited by Professor Morrison. Knowing people who knew her just as “Toni” is interesting because when I see her on the page, she is a goddess. But to write something like that essay…it was just frightening. Because it’s almost like your parents. You don’t ever want to

think of your parents as human, as mortal flesh.

Speaking of parents, you’ve included an essay your mother wrote but also write about your time taking care of her as she grew sicker. What a force. I remember when we left Daddy, and Daddy was trying to starve us out to make us come back. That’s

when I became a poor person. Though, strangely enough, I only realized I was poor a good three or four years ago. Because at the time, Mama was like, “Oh no, this is just temporary. We gonna get out of h ere.” I remember there was a rat in this house, and it ran behind this box. Mama just went over to the box and started kicking,

I always say, We thank God, and then we thank Ms. Oprah.

Misbehaving

Jeffers, Honorée Fanonne

kicking, kicking, kicking, kicking. There was this high-pitched squeal and then silence. He had given up the ghost. Mama pulled him up by the tail and flushed him down the toilet. Then she said, “Poor thing. He had a mama and daddy once.”

That’s kind of lovely— and fierce.

I thought, I’ll never be this woman. I’ll never be this tough. I’ll never be like this

And yet there’s this scene when you’re in her care facility room, and she tells you that you’ve always had a “soft heart.” You begin crying and apologize. And she says… …“I like you this way.”

Yes—“I like you this way.” It seems like she worked for that softness in you. She did work for that! She did. I understand that now. And you know how I know that? Because—I’m just going to confess that I am a weepy person [pulls out a tissue]—I know because I want better for my baby sisters. That’s why I wrote the book. I want people to know peace is possible. The book’s not a how-to, but it is saying to you, this is what a rape survivor looks like. This is what a child molestation survivor looks like. This is what a person who has endured three decades of racist bullying in academia looks like. I have survived. I am cute. I am always wearing a cute outfit. I am peaceful. I am doing the work that I was born to do.

Lisa Kennedy is a writer in Denver, Colorado.

Homer, Dante, Poe, and Tennyson. But “poetry would become his life and he would live for poetry.” At first he dabbled in journalism, but poetry won out, publishing his first in 1886, “The Poet and the Muse.” He experimented with how to write about homoerotic sexuality and relished delving into rhyme, rhythm, meter, and punctuation. The authors conclude by discussing one of Cavafy’s most intriguing traits, his obsessive, self-confident need to be read and known (often giving away copies of his “terse, disciplined verse”), coupled with his “crippling self-doubt.”

A dive into reams of primary source materials reveals a “new” Cavafy.

While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East

Katz, Yaakov & Amir Bohbot

St. Martin’s (336 pp.) | $29 September 2, 2025 | 9781250345684

A journalistic investigation, laced with advocacy, into the failure of Israeli intelligence to foresee a deadly attack. Journalists Katz and Bohbot open by dismissing the idea that the Hamas-led incursion of Oct. 7, 2023, was akin to 9/11. Instead, they liken it to the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor as a sequence of misread indicators that something bad was about to happen. So lax was the monitoring of the Gaza border, they note, that Hamas “didn’t use even a single tunnel,” even as Israeli Defense Forces intelligence assumed that Hamas wouldn’t dare cross the border openly. Another missed sign was the removal of protective fabric from rocket-launch pits within Gaza, a prelude to a rocket attack, although Hamas said that it was a drill. “Israel possessed all the intelligence to piece together Hamas’s plans, but the IDF never connected it into a comprehensive picture to understand what was happening right before their eyes,” the authors charge. One proximate

cause of the failure, they hold, was the IDF’s complacency about the “iron wall” that divided Gaza and Israel, “believed to be impenetrable,” but the larger issue was that different agencies weren’t talking to each other and sharing intelligence that might have been stitched into a coherent whole. An interesting point, if untestable, is that the division in Israeli society wrought by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to reduce the power of the nation’s judiciary revealed a weakness that lent itself to attack. Controversially, the authors insist that the IDF’s response to the attack took great pains to spare civilian lives and “refrain from preemptive action that could lead to a wider war.” They close with a set of policy recommendations, including taking care not to alienate the U.S., as happened during the Biden presidency, and enlisting Mossad, which operates internationally, to aid with internal intelligence. Arguable at points, but a worthy contribution to the literature of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance, and Slavery in the Caribbean

Kaufmann , Miranda | Pegasus (528 pp.)

$29.95 | September 2, 2025 | 9781639368297

Cruelty, oppression, and fortune hunting. British historian and journalist Kaufmann offers a fresh perspective on Britain’s involvement in slavery through the lives of nine 18th-century women who accrued large fortunes in the empire’s Caribbean colonies and, by virtue of their wealth, became sought-after wives by men of all classes. These heiresses owned, managed, or had financial interests in plantations that depended on slave labor, which the women were well aware of and condoned. All, Kaufmann asserts, willfully disregarded the suffering their fortunes depended on. Drawing on family papers, letters, diaries, and portraits, Kaufmann offers richly

detailed biographies of the women, along with many of the men and women whom they enslaved. She depicts the back-breaking labor required of plantation workers, their degrading living conditions, and the abuse they suffered at the hands of owners, overseers, lawyers, and governors. She depicts, as well, those who rebelled: Betsy Newton, for example, one of 400 enslaved people on a sugar plantation in Barbados, who traveled to London to petition for freedom for herself and her children. The heiresses profiled, Kaufmann reveals, are only a small number of at least 150 other women whose marriages brought wealth to Britain. And plantation owners were only part of the nation’s profiteering from slavery: Britons “invested in slaving voyages, either through direct ownership or by becoming shareholders. Some insured the ships.” Others provided manacles and guns. Importers bought sugar, rum, coffee, and tobacco produced by enslaved workers. Kaufmann discovered that some of her own ancestors were involved in trafficking Africans; two family members were Liverpool slavers. She hopes, through this examination of Caribbean women, to raise awareness of the web of connections to slavery throughout Georgian Britain—connections that persist into the present—and to begin a process of making amends.

A meticulously researched history.

Human History on Drugs: An Utterly Scandalous but Entirely Truthful Look at History Under the Influence

Kelly, Sam | Plume (400 pp.) | $22 paper | July 8, 2025 | 9780593476048

Shakespeare gets baked here. Kelly opens by professing that he’s obsessed by the past—and that, being on the autism spectrum, “I develop an almost physical compulsion to know everything there is to know on a subject.” This lively

People have enjoyed various means of bending reality since there have been people.

HUMAN HISTORY ON DRUGS

book is proof positive, a whole warren of rabbit holes that lead to unexpected vignettes about the mind-altering habits of the likes of George Washington (laudanum), Queen Victoria ( ganja), Elvis Presley (the whole medicine cabinet), and Adolf Hitler (“coked out of his mind”). Kelly reaches deep into the past, reckoning that people have enjoyed various means of bending reality since there have been people: One early case is Marcus Aurelius, the brilliant Roman emperor whose Meditations Kelly likens to “The Art of the Deal [if it] had been written by Jesus Christ instead of Donald Trump” and whose chronic pain was relieved by goodly doses of opium prescribed by his physician, none other than the famed medical encyclopedist Galen. Young Judy Garland was prescribed mounds of pills at the behest of studio executives who “preferred to get her addicted to drugs and ruin her life than give her a reasonable work schedule.” The Beatles, of course, famously got so ripped that, as the comedian Bill Hicks used to quip, they let Ringo sing—but, Kelly notes, even though they were fairly open about their drug use (John Lennon: “I’ve always needed a drug to survive”), they also denied being proselytes, about which Kelly brightly remarks that if simply mentioning drugs brings down the (silver) hammer, “well, then, frankly, I’m in a lot of trouble.” And Shakespeare? As Kelly notes, “pipes with cannabis residue” have been found in the Bard’s garden—and besides, “his plays are filled with characters who ingest all manner of fantastical pharmaceutical concoctions.”

Entertaining time travel through the doors of perception.

True Conservatism: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Arrogant Age

Kronman, Anthony T. | Yale Univ. (328 pp.) $30 | March 25, 2025 | 9780300277036

A deeply nuanced view of conservatism as a disciplined guardian of traditions and institutions deserving of “attention and care.”

Forget MAGA: It has nothing to do with the conservatism of Friedrich Hayek, Edmund Burke, or Baruch Spinoza. But forget humanism as a progressive might see it, too—as an all-embracing egalitarianism, that is. Former Yale law dean Kronman picks up themes he developed in his earlier books Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan and especially The Assault on American Excellence to announce traditionalist tenets that, in their way, have a radical tinge to them. A “truer conservatism,” he writes, centers on a belief in the value of the past, of the “connection to the eternal and divine,” of honoring the dead, and of recognizing that not all things are equal: Some things are rarer and finer than others, and some people have talents and abilities that are superior to others’. The last twig is perhaps the thorniest, for, going back to the Greeks, Kronman insists that equality as the primary value “denies the ancient truth that freedom is for the sake of excellence, not the other way around.” This, he adds, does not rule out the desirability of equality of opportunity or the law; still, his view comports with the distinctly nonprogressive one that, as de Tocqueville feared, we are destined to a culture (a

loaded word, that) of mediocrity in a time when “the splendid and rare” are put on a par with the everyday and shabby. Forever looking back to Aristotle, Cicero, Nietzsche, and other stalwarts, Kronman’s conservatism has points in common with libertarianism and classical liberalism, if with more emphasis—again, nuanced—on religion. Yet his traditionalism, shunning “enlightened biases,” is subtly distinct from dominant schools such as judicial originalism, which he derides: “Originalists may support conservative positions—that is debatable—but they certainly do not do so for conservative reasons.”

Rigorous and philosophically demanding, Kronman’s book invites principled argument from every side.

Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War

Lovejoy, Alice | Univ. of California (248 pp.) $27.95 | August 26, 2025 | 9780520402935

T he story of the link between film and chemical weapons. Kodak, the company George Eastman founded, may be best known for its production of film, but it also has a less savory connection: to the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb. Uranium from the Belgian Congo eventually made its way to the Tennessee Eastman plant in Oak Ridge, near Knoxville, where the company’s Y-12 uranium separation plant made the fuel for the atomic bomb. In this dense academic work, Lovejoy, a media and cultural historian at the University of Minnesota, draws attention to this complicated history and describes “how film factories became poison gas and explosives factories.” She describes the way in which film is made, “an admixture of animal hides and bones, trees, cotton, coal, camphor, salts, and silver,” and how Kodak and its main competitor, Germany’s Agfa, produced

chemicals not just for film but also for “synthetic fibers, plastic toys, pesticides, artificial flavors, painkillers, and weapons,” with Agfa also becoming “the nerve center for a network of factories, engines for the Third Reich’s military expansion.” Lovejoy documents the frightening similarities between film and poison gas, especially in the days when film was made from the highly flammable cellulose nitrate. For such a short work, this book covers a lot of ground: the development of chemical weapons; the young women who worked at the Y-12 plant and were unaware of the nature of the products being made; and the dangers of radioactive fallout, particles of which traveled from the Nevada testing site to Kodak’s plant in Rochester, N.Y. This is challenging material, but Lovejoy tells the story well, and she adds intimate if sometimes horrifying details, as when she notes that one of the jobs at Y-12 was to pour caustic soda over wood cellulose, a task that gave some women lung injuries that turned into tuberculosis. A frightening account of film’s supporting role in the development of atomic weaponry.

The Year of the Tiger: The Major Run That Made Tiger Woods

Miller, Brody | Harper/HarperCollins (240 pp.)

$29.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9780063418127

Unparalleled golfing excellence. Miller, a reporter for the Athletic, describes how Woods became the first man to win golf’s four major tournaments in a row, leaving rivals and retired players awestruck. Acknowledging how much has been written about his subject, Miller promises “an investigation” of Woods’ ascent “from the next big thing to the only thing.” But in a rather desperate first-chapter gambit, he tries to elicit drama from a hypothetical. Unbeknownst to Woods, his caddie

“Congress’s ultimate weapon in taking on a strongman president is basically useless.”

TRAJECTORY OF POWER

didn’t carry a full complement of balls during the third round of the 2000 U.S. Open in California. Had Woods accidentally knocked his last ball into the Pacific, he’d have faced a two-stroke penalty. That didn’t happen, and Woods won by a huge margin. Eventually, this book becomes a compelling look at process and craftmanship, sparing readers from scandalous tales about Woods’ much-chronicled private life. Woods won the 1997 Masters at 21, but he was unsatisfied with his game— “he was delofting the clubface through impact,” Miller explains—so he and a coach overhauled his swing. By April 2001 he had completed the so-called Tiger Slam, becoming “the only golfer to ever consecutively win all four majors open to professionals.” Miller pays close attention to subjects that will fascinate golf die-hards, among them Woods’ fruitful switch from “liquid core” to “solid core” golf balls and his habit of staging “mini competitions” with himself, shooting for personal-best scores after building big leads in tournaments. Miller’s prose can be overwrought. “The history of Tiger Woods on Sundays goes so much deeper than you may know,” he writes of a teenage Woods’ closing-round performances in amateur tournaments. But his effective use of statistics helpfully contextualizes Woods’ dominance, and his anecdotes about the golfer’s work ethic are gratifyingly specific.

A knowledgeable celebration of a great athlete’s finest year avoids the rough.

Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency

Moe, Terry M. & William G. Powell Princeton Univ. (320 pp.) | $35 August 19, 2025 | 9780691276175

Grim history of the autocratic presidency. Checks and balances? An artifact of a past age, suggest political scientists Howell and Moe. It has been a project of the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan, they write, to shape the presidency “into an institution that has the power, the capacity, and, in populist hands, the motivation to tear democracy apart.” Each Republican president since Reagan has taken pains to expand the power of the executive branch, but it has taken the presidency of Donald Trump to pose that existential threat. There are checks in the legislative and the judicial branches, but in the case of the former, the dominant trend has been an overriding concern “to win elections and govern (if need be) with only minority support.” In this climate, impeachment is impossible: A Republican Congress will not impeach a Republican president, and unless the Democratic Party gains two-thirds of the seats, “Congress’s ultimate weapon in taking on a strongman president is basically useless.” The Supreme Court also seems indisposed to rein in the president. The authors note that there is modest hope in the administrative or bureaucratic state that is charged with carrying out presidential orders but can find many ways to slow or subvert the process. The administrative state, the authors hold, is liberal—but then, “all developed

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democracies have liberal administrative states,” and although most are more liberal than ours in terms of the social safety net and a progressive taxation system, conservatives have targeted the administrative state for precisely that reason. Thus the Trumpian program to replace career staff with loyalists and to dismantle civil service job protections puts the liberal administrative state in peril, and, the authors conclude, “all the while, American democracy will be severely eroded.” A consequential account of the possible death of democracy—by a thousand cuts—in the name of authoritarianism.

So Gay for You: Friendship, Found Family, and the Show That Started It All

Moennig, Kate & Leisha Hailey

St. Martin’s (272 pp.) | $32

June 3, 2025 | 9781250361363

The story of a 2004-09 lesbian melodrama and the two powerhouse actors behind its success.

Hailey and Moennig showcase the intimate details of their lives and careers in a dual memoir that begins with auditions in the early aughts for a proposed Showtime pilot hoping to ride on the success of Queer As Folk about a group of modern, sexually active Los Angeles lesbians called Earthlings. In alternating perspectives, Hailey and Moennig describe how the show’s development (and eventual name change to the more suitable The L Word ) arrived at a time in both of their lives when acting work was desperately welcomed: Hailey was in a struggling rock band and Moennig was an actress “hungry for work.” While the show’s sudden popularity and their resultant fame was unexpectedly and head-spinningly brisk, both women managed to survive and thrive amid the pressures of Hollywood. Hailey was cast as Alice, a bisexual journalist, while Moennig portrayed edgy bed-hopping lesbian Shane, each to rousing success. In breezy, conversational

prose, the writers affably share their separate histories: Hailey, an outgoing tomboy, emerged from “small and safe” Midwestern Nebraska roots with liberal parents, and freewheeling Moennig, whose mother was a popular Broadway dancer, was surrounded by gay men growing up in Philadelphia and was frequently misgendered in grade school. The authors’ queer identities emerged early, and their contributed experiences and differing interpersonal relationships helped gel their integration with The L Word cast and informed their unique performances in the sexually frank series, which went on to garner groundbreaking critical acclaim. Insider details on salary negotiations, character development, evolving storylines, set energy, spinoffs, reboots, and, of course, the show’s grand impact on the queer community and governmental politics add substance as both women conclude with appreciation and gratitude. A resonant and uplifting dual portrait of queer entertainment media in action.

Kirkus Star

A Year With the Seals: Unlocking the Secrets of the Sea’s Most Charismatic and Controversial Creatures

Morris, Alix | Algonquin (320 pp.) | $30 July 15, 2025 | 9781643755014

Our fin-footed friends (and foes).

With their big flirty eyes, they are modern man’s pet “sea dogs.” With their haunting, near-human voices, they were the sirens of ancient mariners.

With their unexpected humor (“Hey you. Get outta there!” a seal named Hoover habitually barked, complete with Boston accent, at startled New England Aquarium visitors), they are animal celebrities par excellence, regular headliners. Flippers be damned, seals are human animals, so much so that Nordic and Celtic legends worship part-seal, part-human selkies. But with their rapier teeth and sentient whiskers that identify prey in any

ebb-and-flow of water, seals have also been one of our biggest archnemeses. Because they are such superior “fishermen,” seals have deprived us of the food we’ve needed at countless historic junctures. One result: We have passed laws both to conserve seals and to cull them. Morris, a masterful storyteller, has done full justice to these creatures of the deep. A visit to a remote island of 400,000 seals yields much beautifully described seal sturm und drang. The island is a mating site, so it is, in one way, “National Geographic on steroids. The seals didn’t come to socialize, they came to further their species. Pup, nurse, mate, survive. The plump, wide-eyed pups were fearful. Their mothers were deflated balloons, weakened by their sacrifice. The males were battle-scarred.” But as this is also a site where seals live unbothered by their human bêtes noires, it is also like stepping into a “watercolor painting” by Bob Ross. Still, the author concludes that our fascination with both the humanity in nature and the nature in humanity will result in our reconciling the two—when it comes to seals, anyway. “Perhaps the loudest anti-seal voices have been those of fishermen,” she muses. “But fishermen are also the ones calling the Marine Mammals of Maine hotline to report stranded seals in every season.”

A wondrous look at our love-hate relationship with the most human of animals.

Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

Morris, Susana M. | Amistad/ HarperCollins (272 pp.) | $29.99

August 19, 2025 | 9780063212077

A determined writer.

Drawing on correspondence, interviews, unpublished manuscripts, and archival material, queer Black feminist scholar Morris offers a sensitive examination of pioneering Black science-fiction writer

Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006), whose many honors include a MacArthur Fellowship. As a child growing up in Southern California, Butler was a voracious reader of science fiction and comic books, aspiring, from an early age, to be a writer. The genre of science fiction and fantasy, though, was dominated by white males, and she was frustrated in placing her stories. Nevertheless, she persisted, working at low-wage temp jobs so she would have time for writing. Although her finances were precarious—once she had to pawn her typewriter—“she was fueled,” Morris sees, “by her positive obsession to write probing, harrowing tales of humanity’s hubris and hope.” At classes sponsored by the Writers Guild of America, she met the irascible science fiction writer Harlan Ellison, who encouraged her to attend the prestigious six-week Clarion writers’ workshop, where he was teaching in 1970. Although she sold two stories during that period, for the next five years, she placed nothing— until, in 1976, she finally succeeded in publishing the first book of her five-novel Patternist saga, about a group of telepathic humans who change the course of humanity. Morris situates Butler’s career amid salient historical events and social movements, and she underscores the deep research that fueled Butler’s imagination, from reading slave narratives in B altimore archives to studying precolonial West African, Nubian, and Igbo languages and cultures. Butler’s fictions—which Morris reads perceptively—convey cautionary tales w arning against fascism, gender-based violence, and the consequences of global warming. All, Morris asserts, are driven by the question: What does it mean to be human?

A warm tribute to a pathbreaker.

Brady Vs. Belichick: The Dynasty Debate

Myers, Gary | St. Martin’s (320 pp.) | $31 September 16, 2025 | 9781250381194

Who ya got?

Sports fans constantly compare players, as Myers did in a previous book, Brady vs Manning. But can a player’s value be measured against a coach’s? The veteran sportswriter thinks so. “Who deserves the most credit” for the New England Patriots’ six Super Bowl wins, quarterback Tom Brady or coach Bill Belichick? Myers consults football experts. Some humor him, but others get into the spirit. Ex-Patriot Ted Johnson says Brady deserves at least 60% of the credit for the Patriots’ championships because Belichick focused on defense and “can’t coach offense.” Rodney Harrison, another former Patriot, speaks for some fans when he says, “It’s such a stupid foolish ass argument to sit here and try to figure out which one is more responsible.” There are no statistics that lend themselves to Myers’ made-for-sportstalk-radio debate, so he pens what is essentially a dual biography, retelling familiar anecdotes about pre-Patriots Belichick coaching the Cleveland Browns, Brady being “an afterthought sixth-round” draft pick, and their many shared victories. More than once, he strays far from his ostensible point, recounting Donald Trump’s apparent friendships with the coach and player and airing Tom Brady Sr.’s opinions on Netflix’s ribald roast of his son and Belichick’s harsh treatment of “Tommy.” The elder Brady assures us that his son didn’t lie during the Deflategate scandal.

Textile work: a way of transmitting cultural knowledge and inspiring problem-solving.

WITH HER OWN HANDS

So that’s settled. Myers deserves originality points, though, for he is surely the first writer to contrast Brady’s relationship with former 49ers QB Joe Montana to the “beautiful friendship” of characters played by Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains in Casablanca. Unlike “the politically correct crowd who split it down the middle,” Myers picks a winner in his contrived matchup, but his methodology, like much else in this book, is uninspired.

A weak effort to settle a futile debate.

With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving Their Stories

Nehrig, Nicole | Norton (288 pp.) | $32.99 August 19, 2025 | 9781324074854

Threads of life. Nehrig, a psychologist and avid knitter, makes her book debut with a sweeping investigation of the role of textile work in women’s lives. Drawing on archaeological, anthropological, historical, literary, and personal accounts, Nehrig argues persuasively for the centrality of this work—spinning, weaving, knitting, embroidering, quilting—in many cultures, from prehistory to the present. In addition to scholarly research, Nehrig has conducted in-depth interviews with artists, designers, and textile makers working in many media: a weaver in the Andes of Peru, a textile designer in Lisbon, a Nigerian woman who turned to sewing as a way to heal from spousal abuse. Nehrig discusses how textile work serves to transmit cultural and familial knowledge and to inspire creative problem-solving. Rather than slavishly following a pattern, knitting creatively can open up possibilities for a woman to follow her own desires and make her own decisions. For art therapists, textile techniques “can serve as rich and useful metaphors for psychological processes” such as facilitating “identity integration

and disintegration” through the “doing and undoing” involved in knitting, unraveling, and reworking. Letting yarn spill out on a table and creating story cloths and memorial quilts offer opportunities for healing. For the artist Louise Bourgeois, who worked in many media, sewing promoted “emotional repair.” When women gather to produce textiles together, they foster social bonds and community. Just as textiles themselves may offer comfort—think baby blanket— so do connections made by working together. Nehrig examines textile workers’ impact on politics, feminist movements, and economic independence; today, she has found, handcraft is the leading source of employment for women worldwide. Illustrated with color plates of women’s creations. A thoughtful, deeply researched contribution to women’s history.

Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, the Grateful

Dead, and an American Awakening

Newton, Jim | Random House (528 pp.) $32 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593447055

A solid addition to the expanding Grateful Dead canon. Political biographer Newton situates the Grateful Dead and its charismatic lead guitarist, Jerry Garcia, in their remarkable place and time. Focusing heavily on the first decade of the band’s 30-year run, which ended with Garcia’s death in 1995, Newton blends insights from earlier histories and biographies with his own extensive research. The book traces Garcia’s early interest in bluegrass and folk music to the improvisatory rock that became the Dead’s signature. It slows down around the band’s key performances and albums but otherwise keeps the tempo brisk. Above all, it blends the Dead’s story with the social movements, politics, literature, and

journalism of that period. By innovating continuously and attending to its growing fan base, the band outlasted most of its peers. It also survived the War on Drugs waged by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, whom Newton casts as Garcia’s foil. Even in the 1960s, he notes, Garcia “deplored the politics of war and Reagan, but also resisted the bossiness of the left.” By the time Reagan occupied the White House, Garcia’s drug addiction had isolated him from his fragmented family and the thriving musical community he helped sponsor. Yet Newton declines to portray Garcia as a slacker, victim, or tragic hero. Instead, he draws out the paradoxes, ironies, and complexities that piled up around the aging rock star, his band, and the Deadhead community. Newton closes with a surefooted and appreciative account of the counterculture and its durable spirit. “It doesn’t work for everyone, and it doesn’t always work even for those who come to accept it,” Newton writes. “It doesn’t have to. Like a Dead show, it works in moments. And it’s magnificent when it does.”

A deft portrait of a quintessential American artist.

Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America’s Gay Restaurants

Piepenburg, Erik | Grand Central Publishing (352 pp.) | $30 | June 3, 2025 | 9780306832161

A New York Times journalist offers a history lesson on queer evolution through American eateries. Piepenburg recalls being nurtured in the late 1990s by the belly-pleasing diner food and atmosphere as a regular at the Melrose Restaurant during his first journalism job in Chicago. He called it a gay restaurant “because gay people made it one” and that theme forms the core of his book chronicling and preserving the

memory and the state of queer restaurants and their “shared language” across t he country—both long gone and presently thriving. He draws inspiration and source material from interviews with chefs, wait staff, historians, entrepreneurs, patrons, and his own personal experiences as a “white-looking…half-Latino” gay man. The author first visits Annie’s Paramount Steak House, one of the country’s oldest family-owned gay restaurants, in Washington, D.C., where he’d first dined in 1993. He cites several instances of gay uprisings at restaurants prior to the pivotal event at the Stonewall Bar in 1969, as well as those in post-Stonewall America, including the Hamburger Mary’s franchise; Shamrock, a longtime “elevated dive” in Madison, Wisconsin; Slammers, an eatery in Columbus, Ohio; Bloodroot, a vegetarian restaurant and bookstore in Bridgeport, Connecticut, owned and operated by two lesbians; and the transgender-friendly Napalese Lounge and Grille in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Always affable, Piepenburg elaborates on the differences between the experience at a gay bar versus one at a gay restaurant, where sharing plates, quality eye-contact communication, and personal storytelling become part of the vibe. In writing about a variety of uplifting, community-supportive, safe-space queer establishments—from gossipy “high camp” gay brunch hot spots to “a table of loud-mouthed drag queens scarf[ing] down platters of greasesoaked bacon-and-cheese potato skins at two a.m.”—Piepenburg delivers an insightful and entertaining exploration of history-rich queer restaurants and their progressive impact on visibility and identity within a culture in constant flux.

A fond, appreciative, nostalgic nod to queer eateries across the country.

Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization

Queeney, Tim | St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $27 | August 12, 2025 | 9781250346452

A rival to fire and stone tools as a pivotal human innovation.

Queeney demonstrates that a seemingly prosaic subject is anything but. Tying our planet together with cordage, he surveys the history of rope, its materials and uses, its symbolic significance to varied cultures, and its indispensable role in countless human technologies and entertainments, ancient and modern. In the process, he recounts the history and development of some of these often-revolutionary uses of rope, from raising the pyramids of Egypt and nautical riggings in the Age of Sail to great feats of mountaineering and future space exploration. Acknowledging rope’s many other commonplace yet no less vital functions, he concludes: No rope, no civilization. “The ingenuity and invention of the earliest human minds gave us a tool with which we made the world,” writes Queeney, the former editor of and columnist for Ocean Navigator. The author’s technical expertise and caliber of research suggest a wide-ranging mind. This faculty is wed to a felicitous if sometimes cheeky writing style that, for some, may rely too heavily on high-tech and applied sciences terminology. Yet it would be hard to explain the processes described without it, and one suspects aficionados will find the detail more fascinating than dry. Queeney does not shrink from depicting the darker uses of rope through the millennia, from torture to the gallows, but by the close, he reveals rope as a potent metaphor for human society and the fibers that bind us. The next time readers hold a length of rope in their hands, it will be with heightened respect and admiration. Not simply a history of rope, but of the coils of whole peoples.

Say Hello to the Bad Guys: How Professional Wrestling’s New World Order Changed America

Raimondi, Marc | Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $29.99 | June 24, 2025 | 9781668013755

Fake fights, real cultural impact.

Pro wrestling is “a simulated sport”—and an art form with an influence on matters of global consequence, Raimondi writes.

The ESPN reporter focuses on the 1990s rivalry between the industry-leading World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) and World Championship Wrestling, a regional outfit seeking more fans. His key figure is Hulk Hogan, a beloved former WWF champion who joined WCW in 1994 and later staged a “heel turn,” portraying a villain in the New World Order, a group of wrestlers purportedly at war with WCW corporate brass. As orchestrated by WCW executive Eric Bischoff, the NWO expanded pro wrestling’s canvas, staging parking lot brawls and road-rage incidents meant to “manipulate people into thinking certain things they are seeing are indeed real, even if wrestling itself is not.” NWO wrestlers staged scripted attacks on Bischoff and “babyfaces”—the industry term for fan favorites—and spray-painted the group’s initials on vanquished foes. WCW’s TV ratings, ticket sales, and pay-per-view buys hit new highs before the storyline foundered and WWF bought WCW in 2001. To Raimondi, the WCW broke new ground, demonstrating how to “manipulate the masses” by playing with the boundary between fiction and truth. More broadly, pro wrestling helped clear a path for Donald Trump, who appeared

in wrestling performances, has threatened political adversaries, and appointed a wrestling promoter to his cabinet. Raimondi’s thesis makes sense in a limited way, though blending fact and fiction is as old as storytelling itself. His overarching idea is that wrestling’s fakeness shouldn’t prevent it from being taken seriously. Like any “art,” he contends, its top practitioners’ work make a lasting impact. Readers who agree will enjoy his many blow-by-blow accounts of in-the-ring matches and backstage scuffles.

Gamely grappling with a pseudo-sport’s social and political reverberations.

Kirkus Star

Mother Mary Comes to Me

Roy, Arundhati | Scribner (352 pp.) | $30 September 2, 2025 | 9781668094716

A daughter’s memories. Booker Prize–winning Indian novelist Roy recounts a life of poverty and upheaval, defiance and triumph in an emotionally raw memoir, centered on her complicated relationship with her mother. Mary Roy, who raised her two children alone after divorcing her ne’er-do-well husband, was a volatile, willful woman, angry and abusive. In a patriarchal society that oppressed women socially, economically, and legally, she fought to make a life for herself and her family, working tirelessly to become “the owner, headmistress, and wild spirit” of an astoundingly successful school. The schoolchildren respectfully called her Mrs. Roy, and so did Arundhati and her brother. To escape her mother’s

Fighting to make a life for herself in a patriarchal society.

MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME

demands and tantrums, Arundhati, at age 18, decided to move permanently to Delhi, where she was studying architecture. After a brief marriage to a fellow student, she embarked on a long relationship with a filmmaker, which ignited her career as a writer: screenplays, essays, and at last the novel she titled The God of Small Things. The book became a sensation, earning her money and fame, as well as notoriety: She faced charges of “obscenity and corrupting public morality.” Arundhati sets her life in the context of India’s roiling politics, of which she became an outspoken critic. For many years, she writes, “I wandered through forests and river valleys, villages and border towns, to try to better understand my country. As I traveled, I wrote. That was the beginning of my restless, unruly life as a seditious, traitor-warrior.” Throughout, Mrs. Roy loomed large in her daughter’s life, and her death, in 2022, left the author overcome with grief. “I had grown into the peculiar shape that I am to accommodate her.” Without her, “I didn’t make sense to myself anymore.” Her candid memoir revives both an extraordinary woman and the tangled complexities of filial love.

An intimate, stirring chronicle.

Kirkus Star

Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara

Scheele, Judith | Basic Books (368 pp.) $32.50 | June 3, 2025 | 9781541607118

There’s far more to the Sahara than Hollywood’s endless vistas of sand dunes and camel caravans. Scheele, a professor of social anthropology in Paris, points out that ancient Greeks and Romans and medieval Arab conquerors settled the temperate strip along the Mediterranean but considered the vast region to the south a wasteland dotted with savage tribes. European imperialists arrived in

the 19th century and, under the mistaken impression that the desert had bloomed in Roman times, took a dim view of local pastoralists. Chasing off the herds (and their manure) and digging deep for water, they produced a short bloom of intensive agriculture that the region could not support, a disappointment that persuaded western experts that their lands were deteriorating and gave rise to massive “anti-desertification” programs that have soaked up billions of aid dollars to little effect. Scheele bumps over desert roads in rough company to deliver a vivid portrait of wildly disparate people and nations. The discovery of oil in Algeria and Libya in the 1950s gave their nations first-world wealth while autocrats, civil wars, and terrorism have produced a string of struggling states (Chad, Mali, Niger), among the world’s poorest. The author holds a low opinion of traditional European-oriented history, which ignores ancient African cultures, but does not lean over backward to proclaim their wonders. Slavery remains common throughout the region and, while different from the old American version, is no less deplorable. The exhilarating uprisings of a decade ago that overturned autocracies across the continent have failed. Misgovernment may be the rule, but it has a short reach; tribalism, religion, and commerce dominate day-to-day life and may outlive it. A superb survey of an often-overlooked land.

The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity

Schulman, Sarah | Thesis/Penguin (320 pp.) $30 | April 22, 2025 | 9780593854259

The noted novelist, playwright, and activist writes of ways to forge social justice alliances in a time of torment. “The opposite of oppression is not only freedom but also belonging,” writes Schulman, active in political protest since she was a child in the

Vietnam era and even more so in the ACT UP and gay rights movements in the Reagan years. In a time of atomization and the consolidation of social controls in a few hands, belonging is not a given—but, she continues, “if people living in shared conditions can muster enough cooperation with one another, they often have the strength to better their lives.” One imagined community that has benefited from building solidarity is that of LBGTQ+ people, whose rights are again under assault; their movement for civil rights was initially built by “the people directly hurt by unbridled power,” but in time it found many external allies. A modern analog has been the cause of Palestine, with an initially small number of a ctivists now augmented by millions of people who “literally take to the streets because they cannot stand by and passively watch the brutality” in the Gaza Strip. This movement has brought BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions), formerly “an obscure strategy, difficult to publicize, and considered ultra-left,” to the forefront. In this, writes Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 , one difference between the BDS alliance and the ACT UP of yore is that the former is “conscious in calling for radical democracy,” whereas the latter had not arrived at that yet; in that regard, Schulman insists, the bottom line is that “when you have to win, when you are desperate for change and must be effective, radical democracy is the only path that works.”

More theoretical than many works on political activism, but provocat ive in its suggested paths for unity against power.

For more by Sarah Schulman, visit Kirkus online.

Beyond the Kitchen

John Birdsall

By Keith McNally

Jill Damatac

José Andrés with Richard Wolffe

IN THE NEWS

Book: Aides Considered Cognitive Test for Biden in 2024

A trio of political reporters make the claim in their forthcoming book 2024.

A forthcoming book claims that former President Joe Biden’s aides considered having him take a cognitive test during his reelection campaign, the New York Tim es reports.

Political reporters Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf make the claim in their book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, set for publication by Penguin Press this summer. The publisher describes the book as “the shocking inside story of one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”

Biden was 81 and in the thick of his reelection campaign when aides considered asking him to take a cognitive test, hoping it would prove his fitness for office. The politician had a long history of verbal gaffes and apparent memory lapses, which became fodder for his Republican opponents as well as late-night talk show hosts.

Joe Biden

Aides eventually decided against the idea, believing that it would renew attention to concerns about his age and mental sharpness.

About four months after the conversations, Biden debated his Republican opponent, Donald Trump, in Atlanta. Biden’s performance was widely seen as disastrous, and weeks later, h e withdrew from the presidential race, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination. H arris went on to lose the presidential election to Trump.

2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America is slated for publication on July 8.

—M.S.

Barry Diller Comes Out in New Memoir

The businessman writes that there have been “many men” in his life but only one woman.

Barry Diller opened up about his sexual orientation in an excerpt from his memoir published in New York magazine.

In the excerpt from Who Knew, published by Simon & Schuster, Diller writes, “While there have been a good many men in my life, there has only ever been one woman, and she didn’t come into my life until I was 33 years old.” (Read a review of Who Knew on page 50.)

Diller, the IAC chairman, Fox Broadcasting Company co-founder, and former Paramount CEO, has been rumored for years to be gay or bisexual. The speculation did not end with his 2001 marriage to fashion mogul Diane von Fürstenberg.

SEEN AND HEARD

“I have never questioned my sexuality’s basic authority over my life (I was only afraid of the reaction of others),”

Diller writes in the memoir. “And when my romance with Diane began, I never questioned that its biological imperative was as strong in its heterosexuality as its opposite had been. When it happened, my initial response was ‘Who knew?’”

In the memoir, he reaffirms his love for von Fürstenberg.

“I’ve always thought that you never really know about anyone else’s relationships,” he writes. “But I do know about ours. It is the bedrock of my life. What others think sometimes irritates but mostly amuses us. We know, our family knows, and our friends know. The rest is blather.”—M.S.

For more memoirs, visit Kirkus online.

Barry Diller, left, with Diane von Fürstenberg

Kirkus Star

The Afghans: Three Lives Through War, Love, and Revolt

Seierstad, Åsne | Trans. by Seán Kinsella | Bloomsbury (448 pp.) | $32.99 August 5, 2025 | 9781639736263

A moving history through Afghan eyes. Seierstad, an award-winning Norwegian journalist and the author of The Bookseller of Kabul , chronicles Afghanistan’s long history of fending off invaders but emphasizes the period after 1990 when, having expelled the USSR, it descended into a civil war that was finally won by the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic movement. Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1996. The governing Taliban was not involved in 9/11, but the Bush administration made a fatal error by making no distinction between it and al-Qaeda. Taliban leadership refused the U.S. demand to hand over bin Laden but offered to compromise by expelling him to another Islamic nation. Proclaiming that America would never yield to the “bad guys,” President Bush ordered an invasion that quickly defeated Taliban forces, who did not stay defeated. This is not news to most readers, but Seierstad’s account of three Afghans who lived through these events delivers a fascinating if ultimately painful experience. Bashir, whose father died fighting the Russians in 1987, realized his childhood ambition to become a fighter after the American invasion. He spent 20 years in combat, then led other fighters in small-scale actions that occasionally killed a few Americans, yet they suffered plenty of deaths t hemselves. After victory, he discovers that he dislikes the tedious life of an administrator but never doubts that the good guys won. Polio rendered Jamila unmarriageable but lessened her father’s opposition to female schooling.

She excelled and entered the American-supported government as an advocate of female education, but eventually she was forced to flee her native country, becoming a refugee. A member of a prosperous but conservative family, Ariana needed just one more semester to obtain a law degree when the Taliban expelled women from schools. For her protection, her family forced her to marry.

Indelible portraits of people struggling to survive in a war-torn land.

Kirkus Star

Hotshot: A Life on Fire

Selby, River | Atlantic Monthly (304 pp.) $27 | August 12, 2025 | 9780802149497

A female firefighter’s time as an elite hotshot. Selby had been a sex worker, a heroin addict, and a runaway by the time they began wildland firefighting at age 19. As much to their surprise as anyone’s, they found themself both loving and excelling in the firefighting ranks. In this debut memoir, they recount their years on the most elite—and male-dominated—firefighting crews in the country. With visceral prose, they bring readers directly to the heat and intensity of the front lines day and night, where in the darkness “coursing waves of embers shot upwards from conjoined flames as if the sky were reclaiming its lost stars.” Despite the dangers, many of their biggest challenges were not to come from the fire itself, however, or even the grueling days of hiking through dense brush carrying heavy packs and tools. Selby recounts the barrage of sexism they encountered on the fire lines in the early 2000s, where their fellow firefighters were often all male and Selby’s presence was the focus of constant harassment. Selby writes with immediacy of the intimidation they faced, from stalking to verbal

degradation, and their struggles to remember “that I was a person who existed in my own right, not just as a girl firefighter.” Shot through with their own challenges of bulimia, alcoholism, and relationships, the story is one of power and resilience, of someone struggling to make a life for themself in the inhospitable and challenging career of wildland firefighting. Spliced within it are historical and scientific examinations of firefighting in the American West. Deeply researched, these segments provide context for the book, but it is the narrative that is most gripping. With fortitude and admirable vulnerability, Selby brings readers directly into a t umultuous time and place. Like fire, this book burns hot.

Selby molds personal and ecological acceptance into a moving narrative about fire and humanity.

The Man No One Believed: The Untold Story of the Georgia Church Murders

Sharpe, Joshua | Norton (256 pp.)

$29.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781324020714

Carefully reported account of a double murder in south Georgia, and of justice long delayed. In March 1985, writes investigative journalist Sharpe, a white man, whom witnesses described as having long blond or light-brown hair, came to the door of a Black church and, when it was opened, shot a deacon and the deacon’s wife to death. That there were witnesses left alive suggested to investigators that it was a hit targeting only the two victims, but the witnesses’ description of the killer, though consistent, didn’t help much; as Sharpe quips, “You could’ve brought in entire Southern rock bands for questioning.” For a time, when theories about the killing were formed, detectives considered the possibility that the deceased were somehow involved in the local—and notably violent—drug trade. As details

emerged, race entered into the picture, though at first the detectives “didn’t think racism made much sense as a motive.” Yet when a roster of suspects was eventually pulled together, one commonality among several of them was an ingrained belief in white supremacy—and one in particular was so virulent in his views that he was nearly drummed out of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter, which is saying something. Complicating the case was barely disguised corruption in the local sheriff’s department and pressure to put someone in jail quickly. In the end, as Sharpe chronicles, the wrong man went to prison, even though the prosecution, as that man lamented, had misplaced key artifacts of evidence and witnesses for the prosecution offered accounts full of discrepancies and contradictions. Working with the Georgia Innocence Project, Sharpe helped gather enough evidence—especially DNA evidence, not usable then—to call for a new trial, with the wrong condemned man freed and the likely killer arrested “four months shy of the forty-year anniversary of the murders.”

A skillfully constructed spiderweb of a true-crime, cold-case narrative.

Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses

Sheftall, M.G. | Dutton (496 pp.) | $35 August 5, 2025 | 9780593472286

Witnesses to horrific history tell their stories.

There are more than 100,000 still-living hibakusha— survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sheftall’s book recounts the survivor memories of Aug. 9, 1945, when the world’s first plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, three days after the world’s first atomic weapon was dropped on Hiroshima. The decision to drop a second bomb so soon after the first was to bluff the Japanese into believing that there were many more such weapons in the American arsenal,

Recounting

the memories of those who survived the bombing of Aug. 9, 1945.

NAGASAKI

the author says, and that they would continue to fall until Japan surrendered unconditionally. The Japanese, until that point, had seemed “prepared to die en masse in a final decisive battle…rather than dishonor [the country] with surrender.” Both sides were in a “strategic standoff in which bluff and resolve were indistinguishable.” American forces ran a series of conventional bombings across Japan designed to break the Japanese resolve. The biggest of those hit Tokyo in March 1945, when 3,000 airmen dropped seven tons of bombs in an unprecedented nighttime low-altitude raid that destroyed 41 square kilometers of the city, killed 100,000, and left one million people homeless. Japanese leaders still did not surrender, setting the course of the war toward Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sheftall alternates stories of U.S. bombing preparations with vivid stories from Japanese survivors, notably Masako and Michiko, female workers in Mitsubishi ordnance plants. The book details the post-bombing meetings of the Japanese Supreme War Council that led to Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15. Sheftall writes of one teenager’s reaction to the war’s conclusion: “Sueko was overcome with a powerful mixture of regret and sadness over the defeat. She also felt—very much to her shame—relief that she was going to survive. As she began to bawl, her mother stroked her back, softly saying, ‘The war is over…. Thank goodness.’”

A definitive account of a watershed moment in history.

On Drugs: Psychedelics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality

Smith-Ruiu, Justin | Liveright/Norton (240 pp.) $27.99 | September 23, 2025 | 9781324094975

A layered philosophical investigation of drugs and their complexities. Canadian philosopher Smith-Ruiu opens with an odd feint, announcing that he has written this book in sobriety, for “it is simply intrinsic to the project of philosophy that one must be eminently clear-headed at least at the moment one is seeking to make a contribution to it in writing.” The “at least” is an important qualifier, for as his narrative proceeds, he reveals a keen interest in mind-altering substances, particularly psychedelics. (Indeed, just before that declaration, he recounts an evening of psilocybin tea on the shores of the Gulf of Finland.) The philosophical project is very real, though: Smith-Ruiu is interested in how we perceive reality and whether drugs distort that perception or, conversely, reveal to us dimensions that we do not otherwise grok. As the narrative proceeds, it appears that Smith-Ruiu favors the latter interpretation, venturing that psilocybin in particular unveils “the plain truth that was there all along but that we cannot ordinarily see: that we carry [the] world inside of us.” Although Smith-Ruiu’s discussion is, beg pardon, heady, he writes with clarity about matters such as the nature of dreams, the difficulty of accounting for “the richness of our inner experience,” the phenomenological recognition of other minds, and the like. In some regards, Smith-Ruiu

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acknowledges, his book strays outside the realm of academic philosophy writ large, which concerns itself “with meanings and arguments, not what lies beyond these,” to which he counters that whereas philosophers have long tended to wrestle with problems without mind alteration, “psychedelics, like religion, like poetry, are among other things an abandonment of the will to go it alone,” an aid to thought rather than an impediment to it. An innovative application of philosophy to matters ineffable, intoxicating, and altogether interesting.

Runs in the Family:

An Incredible True Story of Football, Fatherhood, and Belonging

Spain, Sarah & Deland McCullough

Simon Element (336 pp.) | $30 June 3, 2025 | 9781668036280

Big questions and stunning answers transcend the playing field. McCullough, an accomplished coach with college and pro football experience, and Spain, a diligent ESPN reporter, recount the former’s life story in poignant detail, building to a remarkable closing-act development. McCullough, who grew up in battered, postindustrial Youngstown, Ohio, was 7 when his mother, Adelle, told him he had been adopted. The matter went largely undiscussed in the following 30 years, during which he became a star running back at Miami University in Ohio, played professionally, and embarked on a coaching career with the Kansas City Chiefs and Notre Dame, among others. His success, the product of an “unparalleled work ethic” and his patience with young players, followed a tumultuous youth. The men in Adelle’s life were foul tempered and disinterested in parenting McCullough, compounding the “feeling of loss and rejection” stirred by “his birth parents abandoning him” and his first real girlfriend’s barbed comments about his adoption. Carrying “pent-up anger”

and “deep-seated issues with trust and worthiness,” an adult McCullough sometimes got so irate “that he’d almost black out,” fueling heated confrontations. He did “the work over the years to know how to downregulate his emotions,” but the authors are vague about what that work entailed. McCullough and Spain hint at the big reveal in their prologue, but it is nonetheless powerful when it arrives. He was in his late 30s when an important conversation with Adelle inspired McCullough to obtain his birth records, triggering a series of events felt in households in multiple states. This is a sensitive, observant reflection on trauma’s long tail and a veritable how-to on responding to unforeseeable events with exemplary grace.

A moving account of a gridiron pro’s extraordinary search for his biological parents.

Kirkus

Star

The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic

Stewart, Lindsey | Legacy Lit/ Hachette (400 pp.) | $30 July 29, 2025 | 9781538769508

A celebration of Black magic. Black feminist philosopher Stewart examines how magic has shaped Black experience in America by tracing the transformations of the conjure woman from the Negro Mammy during slavery to the Candy Lady, a revered elder in Black communities during the Civil Rights Movement. Powerful figures in Blacks’ battles against racism and sexism, conjure women have inhabited many roles, among them, healers, spiritual guides, midwives and abortion providers, weavers and quilters, hairdressers, and cooks. Enslaved African women brought their ancestors’ use of natural medicine to the plantation, where Negro Mammies applied methods that

were noninvasive and boosted the immune system, far different from medical doctors’ bloodletting and purging. Among one Negro Mammy’s remedies was a salve containing turpentine, which cleared airways so effectively it was sought after by whites, including one Southern man who made a fortune marketing it as Vicks VapoRub. In antebellum New Orleans, the Voodoo Queen was central to a community of free women of color who worshiped mermaids. Associated with rebellion and vengeance, Voodoo Queens inspired fear in their white neighbors. Stewart traces the connections of conjure to Aunt Jemima (whose image derived from a minstrel act), the invention of the blues, and even the creation of blue jeans, first made and worn by enslaved people and sewn from “negro cloth,” dyed with the West African plant indigo. Conjure emerges in the art of hairdressers, in cooks whose soul food has the power to bring good luck, and in quilters who designed “busy patterns” in their blankets to distract spirits that brought bad luck. Stewart melds personal reflections, African mythology, and abundant primary sources, most notably interviews conducted by the Federal Writers’ Project, to create a brisk, spirited narrative. An entertaining, informative contribution to Black history.

A Truce That Is Not Peace

Toews, Miriam | Bloomsbury (192 pp.)

$26.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9781639734740

Acclaimed

Canadian novelist Toews delivers a sometimes wrenching but often funny memoir. Does it mean something, Toews wonders, that she dreamed that Mel Gibson ran off with her cell phone just before “someone shot me at close range, in the face”? Perhaps, for, as she reveals in the next breath, she once considered throwing herself into a swift-flowing river, contenting herself in the end by simply throwing her phone

into the water instead. Touching on therapy, suicide, family, betrayal, and a dozen other themes, Toews’ narrative— epistolary at turns, poetic at others, always keenly observant—hinges on a recurrent question about the meaning of writing when silence is also a possibility, a question inspired by a writing colloquium whose judges rejected her because, they complained, she responded to the question “Why do I write?” with something more along the lines of “Why am I a writer?” (“Douchebag question either way,” she grumbles; “douchebag” is an oft-repeated word, as when she ventures editorial self-advice: “Let’s set out the douchebag moments in the text and eliminate them.”) It’s not her only writerly disappointment, but for every dark moment there’s a countervailing quip: “I think I’m nuts. I honestly think I need a psychiatrist….Or maybe I just need to drink less coffee.” Although she’s a far cry from Erma Bombeck, Toews does have a lively, memorable way of recounting the travails of modern family life: “Three balls and a diaper are stuck in the Christmas tree branches, too high to reach, and my mother is strung out on oxys, because her trigeminal neuralgia is back.” And speaking of Toews’ mother, an anecdote about her being kidnapped by the unlikeliest of criminals is worth the price of admission all by itself. A fine turn to nonfiction by a superbly accomplished storyteller.

Kirkus Star

Pride

and Pleasure:

The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution

Vaill, Amanda | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (720 pp.) | $35 October 21, 2025 | 9780374254377

Evolution equals progress— that’s a myth, says this author.

EVERYTHING EVOLVES

T he American Revolution and its aftermath as experienced by the siblings made famous in Hamilton. The many people who saw Lin-Manuel Miranda’s

mega-popular musical may be surprised to learn in this atmospheric account that, far from introducing Alexander Hamilton to her sister Eliza, Angelica Schuyler first met him at their wedding and that she herself was married. Brother- and sister-in-law did indeed develop a flirtatious, increasingly intense relationship, and Vail drops one tantalizing hint that it may have turned physical, but she also leaves no doubt that Hamilton’s primary devotion was always to Eliza, portrayed here as a smart, blunt woman with more integrity than her glamorous older sister (whom the author doesn’t seem to much like). Vail pays equally shrewd attention to character and circumstances as she traces the lives of Philip and Catharine Schuyler’s two eldest daughters through the birth of the United States and the decades that followed. Other siblings and relatives also take turns in a crowded but highly readable text stuffed with delightfully gossipy character sketches (“stout, party-loving Henry Knox, and his equally substantial and jolly wife, Lucy”) and savory descriptions of clothing and food. Hamilton comes across as ambitious and driven, greatly needing the support of his calmer, more sensible wife. The financial wheelings and dealings of Angelica’s husband, John Church, offer a case study in the wide-open nature of the late colonial and post-independence American economy, which Hamilton sought to strengthen in measures highly unpopular with his state-rights-oriented opponents. His death in a duel with Aaron Burr left Eliza with crippling debts, and the book’s final 100-plus pages, which chronicle her 50 years as a widow, show a tough, resourceful woman determined to provide for her children and honor her husband’s memory. Meanwhile, Angelica’s husband goes bankrupt, and the sisters come to realize that the privileged world they grew up in is gone.

An engaging blend of perceptive biography and vivid narrative history.

Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More Than We Think, From Proteins to Politics

Vellend, Mark | Princeton Univ. (264 pp.) $29.95 | August 19, 2025 | 9780691253404

Ch-ch-chchanges… Darwinian evolution is the accepted explanation of how life came to be, but this thoughtful argument maintains that it explains a great deal more. Vellend, a professor of biology at the Universite de Sherbrooke, in Canada, argues that in the realm of life, culture, and technology, everything evolves. Vellend asserts that two sciences explain all phenomena in the universe. Physics, in the broad sense encompassing chemistry and physiology, employs distinct physical laws. Evolution, his “Second Science,” describes changes in the social realm: how human societies developed (history), learned to speak (linguistics), and created commerce (economics), democracy (political science), and iPhones (technology). No one invented the iPhone. Steve Jobs’ team worked with a mass of existing phone technologies, winnowing down possibilities through exhaustive trial and error. No less than Homo sapiens, the iPhone evolved. The author dismisses the myth that evolution implies progress. English became the most widely spoken language, but it’s a mess compared with Latin, French, or Esperanto. Quality does not explain the decline of jazz or the spread of rock ’n’ roll. Humans are smart, but experts have argued that ants are the world’s dominant organism. Vellend delivers ingenious explanations of how evolution gave us not only today’s flora and fauna but governments, legal systems, languages, machines, and religion. The author delves deeply into

the details; persistent readers, provided they pay attention, and aided by generous illustrations, will absorb complex evolutionary concepts that have led to modern culture, from directional selection to latitudinal biodiversity. An imaginative and plausible study.

The

Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin

Vigna, Paul | St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $28 | July 22, 2025 | 9781250343284

Money is a religion to many—and integral to many religious traditions, by financial journalist Vigna’s account. A widely shared strain of Protestant thought holds that wealth is a sign of divine favor, a doctrine first voiced by John Calvin, who, Vigna writes, preached that “people who had money had it because God wanted them to have it.” This thought is older than Calvin, though. Vigna’s study of how religion and money intertwine begins in Mesopotamia, where the invention of writing was, he holds, an innovation created in order to keep tabs on who owed how much to whom. Ethicists from Aristotle on down have debated the morality of usury, a running theme here, even as others figured out numerous evasions to lend money at interest without incurring divine displeasure; in this regard, Vigna points to the famed Medici family, begetter of popes and princes, who maintained a couple of textile businesses to launder money and “hide the fact that they were bankers engaged in usury.” Along the way, Vigna holds that Jesus was executed principally because, in a year of financial crisis, he dared challenge the imperial financial system, calling instead for a debt jubilee. Vigna chronicles case after case of squirrelly religious reasoning on the part of clerics and theologians to justify avarice: The Puritans, in his view, were all in on the accumulation of worldly fortunes while contending that “the use of that

wealth for any personal pleasure…was sinful.” Adherents of the “greed is good” school of thought will take pleasure in knowing that there’s plenty of exegetical support, while devotees of Ayn Rand might exalt in the fact that while religion is losing its grip in most Western societies, money remains our golden calf. A final provocation: Vigna calls for that debt jubilee of old, erasing the ledger and rebooting the world financial system. A thoughtful look at the role of money as religion’s close companion over the course of human history.

Will Eisner: A Comics Biography

Weiner, Stephen | Illus. by

NBM (300 pp.) | $29.99 | July 15, 2025 9781681123578

A life portrait in panels. Growing up poor in 1920s New York, harassed by Irish toughs for being Jewish, Will Eisner found refuge in books. “There are ways to escape,” read the words above cartoonist Mazur’s sepia-tone illustration of a New York Public Library bookmobile. “Places where the new kid is always welcome.” A youthful dreamer, Eisner soaked up classic adventure stories set in far-off lands. “And then there’s the kind of literature they don’t have at the library,” writes comics historian Weiner. “You want this old pulp book? I’m done with it,” says a neighbor in the Bronx, handing the boy a copy of Black Mask magazine, a man on the cover menacingly pointing a gun. Young Will was dazzled by the action. In little time, he fell in love with drawing, taking after his father, Sam, a set painter who worked at, among other venues, the Yiddish Art Theatre in Manhattan. Thus began a fascination with cartooning that ultimately made Eisner a legend in the field—the comic industry’s annual Eisner Awards are named in his honor. Not that Eisner didn’t struggle to achieve success. Early on, his mother, Fannie, wasn’t thrilled that there would be two struggling artists under one

roof. “Can you buy groceries with art?” she asks. Eventually, the answer, for Eisner, was yes. He got a job at the New York American newspaper, published his first professional work in 1936, opened a studio with Jerry Iger, and achieved great popularity with his masked detective hero the Spirit, whose dark style was inspired by German cinema. Comics aficionados also remember Eisner for Joe Dope, a character he created for the Army during World War II. The “bumbling private,” Weiner writes, taught soldiers proper procedure “by doing everything wrong.” There was little, it seems, that Eisner did wrong in his storied life, and fans of his—old and new—are all the richer for his captivating work. A heartfelt and absorbing biography of a master cartoonist, fittingly told in arresting images.

Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse

Williams, Thomas Chatterton | Knopf (272 pp.) $30 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593534403

Examining the deeply rooted events contributing to the unrest of 2020. Cultural critic Williams has argued that although racism is real, race itself is not. In this set of linked essays, he again voices his hope that one day America will be truly integrated, “not as stereotypes or avatars of broad social categories, but as living individuals, in all our fullness and contradiction.” There is much work to do to bring about that possibility, for the summer of 2020 was governed by the twin specters of the Covid-19 pandemic and George Floyd’s murder. Both, Williams ventures, fueled the growing need to “revolt against something,” right-wingers seizing on the first to protest stay-at-home and masking orders, left-wingers seizing on the second to speak out against institutionalized racism. Yet, he wonders, why did this “mass attunement to racialized injustice” happen in the case of Floyd and not in the cases of, say, Ahmaud Arbery or Trayvon Martin? Williams

Dan Mazur

advances provocative theories, one of which positions Floyd as a twofold figure, the one a man having a very bad day, the other a nearly Christlike symbol who bore the weight of America’s original sin by dying as he did. Williams reserves some of his criticism for aspects of cancel culture and left wokeness, such as the “total lack of skepticism” that surrounded actor Jussie Smollett’s invented account of being racially attacked in Chicago, a hoax, Williams holds, that robbed the left of a certain amount of moral high ground in the age of Trump. Throughout, Williams keeps a gimlet eye on the American obsession with race and remains optimistic—“I am convinced that the authentically color-blind society is the final destination every Western society must assiduously direct itself toward”—although he acknowledges the difficulty of arriving at that day. A thoughtfully reasoned contribution to the literature of race and racism in our time.

Kirkus Star

Marseille 1940: The Flight of Literature

Wittstock, Uwe | Trans. by Daniel Bowles Polity (240 pp.) | $29.95 | July 28, 2025 9781509565429

A harrowing account of antiNazi writers’ and artists’ efforts to escape France after its 1940 defeat.

German journalist and author Wittstock tells an irresistible story. He begins in the summer of 1940. Most of his subjects had fled Germany in the 1930s, then fled again, to Vichy France, unoccupied but submissive. Jews and intellectuals knew that their days were numbered. Although shocked by France’s collapse, most Americans opposed helping refugees. Running for reelection in November, Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that supporting immigration was a sure loser at the polls. Some readers will recognize Wittstock’s hero, Varian Fry, a young New York journalist: He is at the

heart of Julie Orringer’s 2019 novel The Flight Portfolio, which inspired the Netflix series Transatlantic. Together with a few activists, Fry raised money and founded the Emergency Rescue Committee. Carrying a list of names, including 200 German-language authors provided by Thomas Mann, he traveled to Marseille in August 1940, assigned to spend a few weeks organizing an office to aid refugees. He remained for more than a year. On arriving, Fry realized that thousands needed help to survive as well as navigate absurd procedures for obtaining paperwork to live, travel, and leave France. Fiercely idealistic, he did what had to be done, much of which was illegal and expensive; this offended the ERC, which demanded his return, and the State Department, which refused to renew his passport and denounced him to the Vichy government. Fry finally returned in the fall of 1941; declared persona non grata, he received little thanks. Wittstock detours regularly for accounts of refugees. Readers may recognize names like Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, and Heinrich Mann, but most will be as unfamiliar as they were to Fry, who rescued more than 1,000 people, a lifesaving feat because, of course, death in concentration camps awaited many who were left behind.

An unknown American hero gets an inspiring story. America itself does not come off so well.

The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction― And a Search for Relief

Zeller Jr., Tom | Mariner Books (336 pp.) $29.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9780358507758

It’s not just in his head.

Zeller, a former New York Times journalist, dives into a topic whose central feature is, in the words of author Elaine Scarry’s description of all pain, its “unsharability…its resistance to language.” Zeller’s

excellent debut book is largely about migraines, an affliction that plagues millions, derails careers, threatens lives, and yet is largely overlooked by the vast biomedical research community. Zeller recounts the long history of migraines, from ancient Egyptians to Darwin, and the often brutal measures applied to relieve the pain. The most disturbing part of the book is his personal story, and the stories of dozens of sufferers, who all pay the price of a life diminished by sudden, unrelenting, excruciating pain. The author reports that there are roughly 700 headache specialists with diplomas in the world. “In Montana, where I now live,” he writes, “there is one.” Yet the affected population is estimated to be 50 million people. Direct and indirect costs, according to a 2018 estimate, is about $28 billion annually. Even with such enormous health and economic consequences, federal research investments fall far short of matching the burden of the disorder. Zeller reviews the available treatments, some prescribed, most not, and a few illegal. His personal experience with many of them and his investigation leave him with the view that most don’t work, some work in the short term, and a handful of newly approved (and expensive) medications don’t have a track record of effectiveness. Headache patients, he writes, must often endure a “long, zigzagging journey through a pharmacological forest.” Zeller’s search to explore the frontiers of headache research takes him to a few leaders in the field who are pursuing tantalizing new findings. While they are engaged in intense competition, their numbers are few, their resources comparatively meager, and their progress uncertain. A sharp—and funny—account of one man’s attempt to understand why so many of us suffer head pain.

Children's

AN ODE TO LIBRARIES

I RECENTLY READ James E. Ransome’s A Place for Us (Nancy Paulsen Books, August 5)—a wordless picture book about an unhoused Black mother and son—and was especially moved by a scene set a t the public library. It’s a safe, well-lit space where the boy completes his homework, but it also offers them both soul-sustaining hope: The mother lo ses herself in a novel, while a flyer promoting an upcoming illustrator visit gives parent and child something to anticipate.

Ransome doesn’t suggest that libraries can solve issues as complex as systemic inequity, but his image of the boy dancing, arms spread, as he heads into the building makes it clear that these are special places. That’s something I’ve known since I was 6, holding my first library card and gaping at the rows of books before me: Here be dragons…and giants, talking pigs, and everything else to capture a s mall child’s imagination. As an adult, I still love libraries, and I’ve visited many over the years, from ultramodern, glass-encased buildings to cozily shabby

ones. All give me the feeling of coming home.

Later this month, I’ll be attending the American Library Association’s annual meeting, held in Philadelphia, June 26-30. I can’t wait to connect with librarians, people who know better than anyone the transformative power of these spaces, but in the meantime, I’m making a few library trips—vicarious journeys to spaces found within the pages of several new kids’ books.

First stop: Jenny Lundquist’s The Library of Curiosities (Holiday House, July 22), which follows an orphan interning at an institution that circulates everything from wishg ranting pennies to an enchanted typewriter. The novel pairs beautifully with Jeanne Birdsall’s The Library of Unruly Treasures , illustrated by Matt Phelan (Knopf, August 5), which centers on a tween who, while visiting her greatu ncle in Massachusetts, realizes that the local library is home to small, winged people—and that she may be their savior. These whimsical, emotionally bracing adventures f eature characters who

have known sorrow yet find magic at the library.

The wonders of a library can’t be contained within its physical walls, as Marzieh Abbas demonstrates with her picture book The Camel Library: A True Story From Pakistan , illustrated by Anain Shaikh (Feiwel & Friends, August 19). This uplifting tale follows a camel that transported books to kids in remote villages when schools shut down during Covid-19; the children’s unfettered joy is proof positive that libraries matter, no matter their form.

Readers may be surprised to see Kiah Thomas’ L one Wolf Goes to the Library, illustrated by K-Fai Steele (Neal Porter/ Holiday House, May 27),

among these earnest tributes. Fans of this deliciously subversive early reader series know all too well that Wolf loathes nothing so much as the public. This installment finds him attempting to return an overdue book while dodging snot-nosed storytime attendees and the “stern librarian.” Thomas’ prickly protagonist remains obdurately a nd hilariously solitary to his core, even as he manages to support the local library on his own terms: curled up in his backyard, snout-deep in his latest library book, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Libraries truly are for everyone—even confirmed grumps.

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

In his final, posthumously published work, the late Caldecott Medalist tells the true story of his uncle’s travails in World War II–era Europe. Several years before war broke out, 15-year-old Yehiel Szulewicz left his strict, devoutly Jewish home in Poland in search of adventure. Blown like a tumbleweed through much of Europe, often barely half a step ahead of Nazis and Blackshirts, he survived by relying on quick thinking, the kindness of strangers, and sheer luck. He trained as a leathersmith, took part in the Spanish Civil War against Franco, joined the Jewish resistance in France, changed his name to

Henri Sulewic, and married a woman named Ida Winograd. Though he never reunited with his family, he learned of their tragic fates and spent his later years painting pictures of the obliterated Jewish community of his childhood. The matter-of-fact voice of the narrative, told from Yehiel’s first-person perspective, contrasts sharply with the underlying horrors shaping his life; his accounts of his family’s murders and the brutality of battles are related in much the same tone as descriptions of buying a secondhand pair of shoes, with the banal and the terrible often just a few

Wartime Europe

sentences apart. That juxtaposition embodies the true power of the story, making the subject matter a bit easier to stomach yet all the more heartrending. Shulevitz’s ominous

black-and-white sketches are interspersed throughout. Quietly potent and intensely empathetic. (afterword, photos, reproductions of Sulewic’s paintings) (Nonfiction. 10-18)

Like the first book, this humorous follow-up serves up plenty of laughs.

PERLA AND THE PIRATE

The Camel Library: A True Story From Pakistan

Abbas, Marzieh | Illus. by Anain Shaikh

Feiwel & Friends (32 pp.) | $18.99

August 19, 2025 | 9781250322029

An ungulate carries an unusual load. Roshan the camel lives and works with a man named Murad, ferrying firewood to villages in remote areas of Pakistan. Roshan’s days are “desert-dry, dull, and dreary,” filled with backbreaking labor that provides the duo a modest living. With the onset of the Covid19 pandemic, however, their work comes to a standstill, and they worry about their future. One day Murad starts getting shipments of books, and thus begins Roshan’s new job as a mobile library. Roshan enjoys the change of pace and looks forward to meeting the children who eagerly await the arrival of new books. Every week Roshan and Murad travel to different villages, and as media outlets follow their progress, Roshan becomes “an instant star.” Based on true events and told from Roshan’s perspective, this heartening story traces the origin of camel libraries across rural Pakistan. Abbas’ earnestly enthusiastic prose captures the ways that Murad’s and Roshan’s lives shift from a mundane existence to one devoted to brightening the lives of children in gloomy times. Backmatter explains how the success of the first camel library and the ensuing international news coverage resulted in a caravan of camel libraries across the country. In Shaikh’s illustrations, earth tones depicting the dusty desert contrast

with brightly colored textiles and the cheer-filled youngsters.

An uplifting tale about spreading the joy of reading. (facts about camels) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Menudo Sunday: A Spanglish Counting Book

Águila, María Dolores | Illus. by Erika Meza | Dial Books (40 pp.) | $18.99

August 5, 2025 | 9780593462256

Pull up a chair, grab a bowl of menudo, and join in this beloved family tradition. As this counting book opens, “two grinning abuelitos” gather on the paved patio of “one cozy casita” as they get ready to welcome a family of tías and primos for Sunday dinner. While the cousins play, the grown-ups catch up. Later, everyone works together, setting the table, preparing the menudo (a Mexican tripe stew), and counting along the way (“cinco / five parajitos singing sweetly in the fruit trees,” “ocho / eight girasoles in a vase”). But oh no! Just as they’re about to reach “quince” (the number 15), disaster strikes, and the bowl of menudo falls to the floor. Time to start all over again back at “uno,” with “one deep breath.” Águila mixes in Spanish words as she whips up a delicious story of family and food. Though some of these phrases sound a bit clunky when read aloud, they aren’t a major hindrance to understanding or enjoyment. Meza’s illustrations are especially notable for their strong sense of place; small touches, such as the mismatched chairs and vibrantly painted ofrenda (a Día de los Muertos

altar), make this tale truly feel like Sunday with los abuelos in a Mexican American home.

As warm and welcoming as menudo con la familia. (glossary, tips for hosting your own menudo Sunday, author’s note) (Picture book. 2-5)

Perla

and the Pirate

Allende, Isabel | Illus. by Sandy Rodríguez | Philomel (32 pp.) | $18.99

August 26, 2025 | 9780593623626

In this howlarious sequel to celebrated novelist

A llende’s picture book Perla the Mighty Dog (2024), a superheroic pup comes to the rescue again. When a new boy moves in next door, Nico Rico and his pooch, Perla (who narrates), dub him the Pirate (because everything from his Vespa to his guitar case is adorned with a skull and crossbones). Nico, big sister Liz, and Perla can’t wait to meet him, but Dad doesn’t approve. Thanks to some magic dust left behind by a wizard who once resided in the hiding place under the stairs, Perla and Nico gather the courage to befriend the Pirate, and soon they’re jamming out at his band practices. One rainy day, Nico’s frustrated after waiting to be picked up from school and walks home alone—and quickly gets lost. A frantic search party ensues, and Perla jumps into action. Using “superpower number two” (roaring like a lion), the plucky pooch recruits Liz and the Pirate to find Nico. Like the first book, this humorous follow-up serves up plenty of laughs thanks to the superhero pup’s confident, dry narration. Though the plot is a little unfocused, it nevertheless maintains fuzzy good feelings throughout. Rodríguez’s bright watercolor-and-ink illustrations once more complement this narrative’s cheerful disposition perfectly. Nico and his father have light-tan skin, his mother and sister present white, and the Pirate is brown-skinned. Another woof-worthy adventure. (Picture book. 4-8)

Ada and the Goat

Aubrey, Heidi | Neal Porter/ Holiday House (40 pp.) | $18.99

August 5, 2025 | 9780823450800

Goaded by a goat, Ada decides against a solitary life.

The hardworking, consc ientious Ada channels the industrious, natureloving protagonist of Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius as she dreams of “a house where she would grow beautiful red apples and wear a soft, gray coat.” Graphite and watercolor illustrations with gentle washes evoke the work of Amy Schwartz or Marla Frazee, with cozy details abounding in the idyllic rural setting. The light-skinned Ada envisions a home “where her life and everything in it would be just so.” She starts renovating a dilapidated hillside cabin and encounters a goat caught in a fence. Compassion overrides her desire for a “quiet and ordered, simple and good” life, and she brings the injured goat home. Once it heals, however, it wreaks havoc on Ada’s house, her “beautiful red apples,” and even the “soft, gray coat,” which the goat repeatedly snatches away to the rooftop. Finally, Ada sends the goat off and tries to restore order. Alas, order isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and Ada, her soft, gray coat now covered with colorful patches representing her personal transformation, wishes the goat would return. When it does, a wonderfully satisfying twist shows the goat with five little kids cozied up on the rooftop, now transformed into a flowery, caprine oasis. To quote the last line, “so very, very good.” (Picture book. 3-6)

Weird and Wonderful You

Avant-garde, Zaila | Illus. by Kah Yangni | Doubleday (32 pp.) | $18.99

July 22, 2025 | 9780593568965

Equal parts affirmation and call to action, this picture book from 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee champ

Avant-garde encourages readers to celebrate the weirdness all around.

“We are perfectly weird and weirdly perfect,” says Avant-garde. She urges youngsters to challenge the status quo, stand out, and be themselves. That might look like peeling bananas from the bottom up, knowing the name for the smell of the earth after it rains (it’s petrichor), wearing butterfly wings, or simply taking up space. Tidbits of uplifting text bounce across each page, sprinkled with inspiring quotes from powerful figures who have marched to the beat of their own drums, from Dolly Parton to Mae Jemison. Both the quotes and Avant-garde’s prose serve to motivate young readers, though the ideas and themes are meandering, with little narrative throughline. Kids will revel in the book’s fresh, wildly colorful art, though the images aren’t always reflective of the text. Yangni’s layered, dynamic illustrations provide a paintsplotched visual feast. Characters who vary in skin color, body type, ability, and more, and from many walks of life, strut across swirling rainbows and through surreal landscapes, eagerly showing off what makes them different.

A joyous, wandering book of affirmations for the wonderful weirdo inside each of us. (Picture book. 5-8)

Bison: Community Builders and Grassland Caretakers

Backhouse, Frances | Orca (96 pp.) | $24.95 | April 15, 2025 9781459839236 | Series: Orca Wild

Meet a keynote grassland species: the mighty bison. Though they once roamed North America in droves, bison were reduced to a few survivors by the early 20th century. Today, captive herds have been restored in various protected areas, where they benefit both the land and its other inhabitants. Describing bison behavior and biology, this engaging entry in the Orca Wild series is impressive in its level of detail, logically organized, and filled with photographs, maps, and charts. Backhouse offers many examples of how these creatures play crucial roles in their ecosystem, from their grazing habits (which make room for other plants and animals to thrive) to their feces, which serves as a rich fertilizer. She explains how Native Americans used each part of the bison and discusses how they hunted them; later, white settlers slaughtered them, forcing Indigenous people onto reservations. Finally, she examines efforts to build up the animals’ numbers and distribute rescue herds; now, free-ranging bison can be seen in numerous sites in the U.S. and Canada, but don’t get too close! Throughout, the author includes her own encounters with wild bison and with those who study and care for them, among them high schoolers from the Carry the Kettle Nakoda Nation in Saskatchewan and two youngsters with Blackfeet and Séliš

For

A joyous book of affirmations for the wonderful weirdo inside each of us. WEIRD AND WONDERFUL YOU

a review of Miss Rumphius, visit Kirkus online.

ancestry who go on a buffalo hunt with their grandfather. A promising ecological tale of neareradication and recovery. (glossary, resources, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Star

The Invisible Parade

Bardugo, Leigh & John Picacio | Illus. by John Picacio | Little, Brown (60 pp.) $19.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9780316295703

In this collaboration between bestselling YA fantasy novelist Bardugo and Hugo Award–winning illustrator Picacio, a grief-stricken girl meets four horsemen on Día de los Muertos.

Though her family is busy preparing for tonight’s party, dark-eyed, t an-skinned Cala can’t stop thinking of her recently departed grandfather. She and her family head to the cemetery; amid the graves, altars, and candles, people sing, whisper, and laugh to greet deceased loved ones. Wrapped up in the festivities, Cala loses sight of her family and soon encounters three skeletal horsemen: one sickly, one famished, one sullenf aced with a wide-brimmed hat of storm clouds. The riders argue, and Cala decides to find her family alone until a fourth rider appears: Death. With encouragement from all the horsemen—in particular, Death, who shows her the “invisible parade” of departed loved ones who are always with us—Cala discovers the courage to face her sorrow and join the party. With aplomb, Bardugo and Picacio confront the specter of death, weaving small moments of catharsis and humor into a languidly paced narrative that gives readers the time and space they need to process the complex emotions on display. In the first half, Picacio’s gorgeous graphite artwork favors lush, golden-hued movement in contrast to Cala’s stoic profile before introducing subdued yet lush purples, blues, greens, and reds

right around the first rider’s appearance. The illustrator deftly introduces e ach rider in striking, individual double-page portraits. Simply wondrous. (notes from the creators) (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

I Am We: How Crows Come Together To Survive

Barnard Booth, Leslie | Illus. by Alexandra Finkeldey | Chronicle Books (44 pp.)

$18.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9781797226156

What’s it like to be a crow?

Many regard corvids as harbingers of doom—a stereotype that belies their rich sense of community. As this fascinating and edifying work notes, crows look out for each other by traveling in groups and are intensely aware of their surroundings; indeed, they have more going on than your average bird. Narrated in the collective first person by a murder of crows (“I am not I at all”), Barnard Booth’s verse flows beautifully, slinking across the page with a determination that mirrors the intentionality of her feathered subjects: “I spill across the sky like ink— / fill the night with jagged cries. / I have one thousand eyes. / I see all. / Know all. / Am all.”

Finkeldey’s inky art depicts landscapes both urban and rural, set a gainst backdrops of deep grays, blues, blacks, and orangey pinks, providing close-ups of individual animals, along with breathtaking aerial shots of the crows resting on a

sturdy tree. On a particularly inspired and entirely unexpected spread, several crows dissolve into a cape worn by a cackling figure in a pointed hat: “Caw-caaaaw! / We must sound like witches to you.” Both text and art set an intriguingly ominous tone even as the book establishes crows’ commitment to cooperation and communal living; readers will eagerly dive into the generous backmatter. A moody, poetic study of a brilliant yet oft-misunderstood creature. (further information on crows, author’s note, sources) (Informational picture book. 4-7)

Mummy Man and Waffles: The Dire Deeds of Doctor Gargo

Behling, Steve | Illus. by Robb Mommaerts Harper/HarperCollins (288 pp.) | $15.99 August 5, 2025 | 9780063254879

Wendell “Waffles” Wyler and his grandfather return in a second madcap homage to B-movie monster films.

The book opens with a recap of the events from The Monstrous Adventures of Mummy Man and Waffles (2024), making this sequel accessible to new fans. Grandpa Wendell, formerly a special effects and makeup artist for “spooky movies,” kept props and models stored in his Shriekport, Maine, basement until a flood led to the activation and unfortunate release of the monsters. Now the dastardly Doctor Gargo has reconstituted himself and escaped with the Brain and the Measle Weasels in tow, headed to Hollywood to unleash more nefarious

A moody, poetic study of a brilliant yet oft-misunderstood creature.

monsters on the world. Traveling via Monster Car, our heroes follow a trail of red polka dots left by the Measle Weasels on a cross-country road trip to fend off disaster. Medusa joins Grandpa, Waffles, Tanya (Waffles’ best friend), and the earnest Mummy Man and his pet turtle, Frank, on the race to intercept Doctor Gargo and stop his nefarious plan. Encounters en route with the Hoboken Werewolf, the Tornado With a Face, and other creatures threaten the mission. The result is a funny, breathless series of challenges for the motley crew before nearly everything turns out okay in the end (with a setup for the next adventure). The human characters read white. Final art not seen.

Broad comedy, full of monsters and lighthearted fun. (recipe) (Humor. 8-11)

All About Brains: A Book About People

Bell, Lake | Illus. by Rachel Katstaller

Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) | $19.99 April 15, 2025 | 9781665906753

Children expound on how their brains make them special. On “share day” at school, Nova nervously reveals that she has epilepsy. Seizures, which Nova calls “brain sparkles,” make her stutter and shake, and “it feels like you can’t see and can’t talk.” Teacher Robin explains that all brains are different, but some are “especially unique.” She adds, “That uniqueness is called neurodivergence, which absolutely can cause challenges but also creates cool strengths.” Nova’s classmates share their own experiences. Isaac, who’s autistic, tends to focus heavily on interests such as flowers; Phoenix’s ADHD makes it hard for her to sit still, but running helps calm her “swirling” thoughts—and her speed is impressive. Teacher Robin—whose obsessive-compulsive disorder keeps the classroom tidy—names various neurodivergent celebrities, including

gymnast Simone Biles and soccer player David Beckham. Cheered, Nova realizes brains are “all…magic. We love our brains, and we want to make sure they’re happy.” While some dialogue feels stilted, Nova’s classmates’ banter adds humor, and the positive tone will inspire many neurodivergent readers to find their own “superpowers.” Katstaller’s big-eyed cartoon illustrations vividly express the distinctive personalities of Nova and her classmates. Nova and her family are light-skinned, Teacher Robin presents Black, and the class is diverse. In an author’s note, Bell mentions that her protagonist is based on her own daughter, who was also diagnosed with epilepsy. Encouraging. (Picture book. 4-7)

The Dark Times of Nimble Nottingham

Black, Ryan James | Nancy Paulsen Books (288 pp.) | $18.99 | $9.99 paper August 26, 2025 | 9780593698068 9780593698082 paper

Twelve-year-old Jack “Nim” Nottingham, a rootless foundling, braves the terrors of the London Blitz to take on an ancient, soule ating shadow. In his debut, Black conjures a properly terrifying night monster that attracts crawly insects, reptiles, and arachnids in droves and drops like a gooey shroud from above to leave gross boils on its gradually dying victims. Having inadvertently released it in the course of a foraging expedition in a bombed-out London mansion and seen its effect on a swelling number of the stricken, including his beloved dog, Winnie, orphanage escapee Nim desperately sets out to destroy the creature. The author anchors his tale in Nim’s inner journey from stubbornly solitary lone wolf to eventually finding a home amid a circle of friends and allies. Though the Blitz itself remains

largely a background threat and isn’t developed to its full potential as a setting, readers will enjoy the focus on the multiple frantic chases and pursuits through hidden tunnels and shattered buildings, as well as developing hints of the beast’s links to historical people and events, which turn out to play crucial roles in the tense climax. The cast, mostly composed of gangs of orphaned children, reads as white. Strong on action and punctuated with moments of sharply felt terror. (map, author’s note) (Horror. 10-13)

If We Were Dogs

Blackall, Sophie | Little, Brown (40 pp.)

$18.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9780316581721

A dog-loving child encourages a less-than-enthusiastic younger one to imagine they’re both canines. From the first declaration—“I’d be a big dog! And you’d be a little one!”—readers know who’s calling the shots. Initially, the protagonists cavort off the page and through the neighborhood together, performing doggy capers such as tail wagging, stick carrying, and dirt digging. But by the time they encounter a multitude of like-minded creatures at the dog park, the disgruntled small pup is exhibiting out-a ndout rebellion: “Being a dog is YOUR idea! Sometimes I HAVE IDEAS TOO!” The narrative wraps up with the younger child pretending to be a different animal entirely—cleverly foreshadowed through subtle details in the illustrations. Even the endpapers— lively silhouettes of dogs in the beginning and many different animals in closing—extend the theme to suggest the imaginative possibilities of pretend play. Cheerful, lightly hued colors fit the whimsical mood, while expressive body language allows the art to tell the story with a minimum of words. Ending on a surprising note, with a sweet compromise between the two main characters, the tale gives both kids the freedom to embrace their

own preferences and styles—while still enjoying their game.

Perfect for every underdog who wants to have a say. (Picture book. 3-5)

Rudy’s Lullaby

Boiger, Alexandra | Philomel (32 pp.) | $18.99

September 16, 2025 | 9780399165917

A forest dweller learns to relax and have fun with his noisy new upstairs neighbors.

Rudy and his BFF and fellow raccoon Bruno live a quiet life at the base of a tree in the woods. A bird named Mama Charlie, her five chicks, and her Lullaby School of music have recently moved into the tree’s branches. Bruno doesn’t mind the constant singing, and he enjoys playing with the chicks when Mama Charlie and her students are invited to perform with the Giant Redwood Forest Symphony. But Rudy is frustrated; he hasn’t been able to sleep since the Lullaby School moved in, and babysitting doesn’t come as naturally to him. Eventually, though, Bruno needs a break, and Rudy finds himself solely responsible for the chicks, which will require him to think fast—and rely on his musical talents—when one of them goes missing. As Rudy gradually warms toward the little ones, Boiger delivers a balanced message about honoring one’s feelings while remaining open to the possibility of change. Featuring characters striking dynamic poses, her swirling, soft watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil illustrations in pastel hues create a mellow atmosphere and help move the story along. Whimsical fun with an optimistic message. (Picture book. 3-6)

A love letter to rambunctious girls, big families, and Métis culture.

MAGGIE LOU MEETS HER MATCH

Ellie Has a Secret

Bothe, Amelia | Clarion/HarperCollins (40 pp.)

$19.99 | August 19, 2025 | 9780063373150

In this cautionary tale, Bothe brings to vibrant life the allure and alarm of keeping a notso -nice secret.

Unlike the other kids at school, Ellie loves it when recess is rained out; she enjoys the opportunity to sift for treasures in the classroom sandbox. While doing so one day, she discovers a perfect little cowrie shell; in a fit of greed, she takes it. When she examines it later, an odd creature crawls out of the shell, introducing itself as her Secret. Initially, Ellie is charmed and begins lugging the Secret around like an oversize puppy wherever she goes. As the day progresses, however, the Secret increases in size, crowding Ellie out of her own life. A metaphor for hurtful secrets, the creature is simultaneously endearing and malicious, initially peering up from inside the stolen shell in a nicely nightmarish fashion. Though the Secret has some qualities in keeping with the dragons of Eastern mythology, its long wormlike body twisting and curling around Amelia, it is clearly a product of the creator’s imagination. Alas, the narrative, which proceeds at an even pace throughout, comes to an abrupt ending once Ellie confesses her crime; still, on the whole, this empathetic and cleverly imagined tale will resonate with anyone who’s been in Ellie’s situation. The protagonist presents white; her classmates are diverse. A smartly wrought allegory for what happens when we give our secrets power over us (and how to take that power back). (Picture book. 3-6)

Maggie Lou Meets Her Match

Bowes, Arnolda Dufour | Illus. by Karlene Harvey | Groundwood (228 pp.) | $14.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9781773067742

Series: Maggie Lou, 2

A welcome return to the adventurous world of Maggie Lou and her big Métis family. Uncle Bobby is marrying a Métis woman named Bonnie, and while Maggie Lou loves Auntie Bonnie, she finds her daughter, Rosie—who’s going to be her cousin—annoying. Soon the girls’ fighting hits a boiling point, and Kohkom, their grandmother, intervenes. She tells them about identical sister stars Piyak and Nîso, who constantly argued but finally realized that “if they stopped fighting, they could be bigger and brighter together.” Maggie Lou and Rosie agree to try to follow suit. In the second section, Maggie Lou dreams of being a cowgirl and competing at a rodeo like Rosie, and she endures embarrassing lessons on a “stubborn mini horse.” Kohkom shares more of the twin star story, and Maggie Lou realizes that while her skills are different from Rosie’s, they still have value. In the third and final section of the book, Maggie learns that her family used to be the champions of the Otipîm’sowak Race, the annual Métis Day six-person 10-kilometer relay. Maggie Lou decides to enter the junior division and form a team that includes Rosie. Training is difficult, and teamwork initially eludes them, but family prevails. Readers will find themselves

For more by Alexandra Boiger, visit Kirkus online.

cheering for Maggie Lou in this sequel that’s overflowing with humor and rich dialogue. Harvey’s occasional lively illustrations add to the charm. A high-energy love letter to rambunctious girls, big families, and Métis culture. (author’s note, glossary) (Fiction. 9-12)

Help!: A Monster PlayAlong Adventure

Brooke, Anna | Illus. by Adam Ming Andersen Press USA (32 pp.) | $18.99 September 9, 2025 | 9798765688687

Transformed into an “absolutely disgusting” creature by a “naughty fairy,” a monster seeks help changing back into its former self.

The book’s narrator, an unsightly being with a red nose, bug eyes, purple ears, green skin, and sturdy orange feet, is in dire need of assistance. Luckily, the fairy has left a list of tasks. If readers are willing to complete them, the monster has a shot at regaining its old form. Countless interactive picture books call upon youngsters to clap their hands or snap their fingers, but this one leans heavily on gross-out humor, imploring audiences to pick the creature’s nose (“Sorry, but you did promise to help”). Next? Wipe the boogers onto the nearest adult, then give the monster’s armpit a scratch. The requests mount, some less revolting than others (“Count my spots,” “Try to scare me”). Featuring huge-lettered text and hilariously grotesque imagery— including stomach-churning yellowgreen fart clouds—this tale is loud in e very sense of the word, but the illustrations offer ample negative space for breathing room (readers will certainly need it). While there is meaningful fun to be had in defying norms, some of the actions suggested might encourage unsanitary habits. Pair this tale with a solid discussion about healthy practices and

respecting caring adults. Still, kids will find it a hoot.

A gut-busting crowd-pleaser. (Picture book. 4-6)

The Fire-Breathing Duckling

Cammuso, Frank | TOON Books/ Astra Books for Young Readers (36 pp.) $13.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781662665332

Are You My Mother? meets “The Ugly Duckling” as a young dragon tries to figure out who he is.

After a rather large red egg appears overnight in Mama Duck’s nest, she’s surprised but determined to love all her ducklings, no matter how different they may be. When the eggs hatch, three of her four children quack and float as expected, but the horned and spiny Nort snorts, and he sinks when he attempts to swim, to the amusement of the other animals at the pond. “Maybe you’re not one of those Quacking Ducklings,” says Piper, a kindly bird. “Maybe you are an Oinking Duckling.” Piper takes Nort on a tour of the various other mooing and clucking “ducklings” in the area, but each interaction leaves poor Nort feeling more disconsolate than ever. When a threat appears at the pond, Nort has a chance to shine, gathering his courage, drawing on hidden talents, and saving the day. Though this work of graphic fiction is brief, intriguing bits of foreshadowing nevertheless keep the story flowing toward its fiery conclusion as Nort snorts and chokes his way through

various barnyard encounters. Nort’s catlike design lends itself to some endearing poses, and Piper’s endless social connections and repeated refrain of “follow me” will elicit chuckles right up until book’s end. A short and sweet journey of self-discovery. (how to read comics with kids, Lexile information) (Graphic fiction. 5-7)

Cristina Plays

Chirif, Micaela | Illus. by Paula Ortiz

Trans. by Lawrence Schimel | Orca (36 pp.) $21.95 | April 15, 2025 | 9781459841178

A white rabbit enjoys a full day before heading to bed. Translated from Spanish, Chirif’s tale opens with Cristina sitting down to a rather strange meal: a bowl of soup, two walnuts, and a tangerine so large that it fills the whole table. Each page turn finds the bunny in a new setting: for instance, reclining on a pink sofa in the living room as an enormous teapot looms or dangling from a gigantic flower in a pot outside. Cristina makes simple observations, noticing a caterpillar on one of the flowers and discovering three dog hairs (to be exact) behind the curtains. It’s not until the illustrations zoom out that readers get an entirely new perspective: The bunny protagonist is a toy residing inside a dollhouse as a pale-skinned, dark-haired tot looks on. The youngster picks up the rabbit, and the two whisper and snuggle. As the book concludes, the rabbit tucks the child in with a “Good night, Cristina.” Was Cristina the child or the rabbit? And

Brings to vibrant life the allure and alarm of keeping a not-so-nice secret.

ELLIE HAS A SECRET

was the child the one experiencing the day’s events all along? The narrative’s structure is deceptively simple, bringing readers along on a strange yet rewarding ride. What at first seems like a story about a rabbit turns into one about the power of imagination. Like any toy, the rabbit wears the same gentle expression throughout. Ortiz’s sweetly surreal illustrations make expert use of light and shadow and perfectly capture the intimacy of childhood fantasy.

A sweet close-up on the quiet wonder of play. (Picture book. 3-5)

Traitors in Space: A PickYour-Own-Path Adventure

August 26, 2025 | 9781665977630

Intrepid readers must make tough decisions to save a spaceship’s crew from a hostile alien takeover. The premise of this interactive tale? You’re a young intergalactic geologist who’s just completed a successful first mission to a distant planet’s rocky moon. It’s time to go back into cryosleep for the long voyage home. But when you awaken, something’s not right. You’re still nowhere near Earth, and the emergency alarm is blaring. The computer informs you that extraterrestrial life has been detected on board. Who among your ship’s close-knit crew can you really trust? In fast-paced, second-person prose, readers are asked to make critical choices such as casting their vote for who among the cast is most likely to have been infected by an alien life form and then following a winding path to discover the outcome of that decision. Scene-setting and character development take a back seat to rollicking side quests, but fans of Choose Your Own Adventure–style stories will find much to love regardless. Fresh, angular cartoon

A roller-coaster ride of a novel that blends the familiar with the uncanny.

RIDE OR DIE

illustrations detail the mysterious alien invasion and stoke suspicion, though they don’t always quite align with the text. Images of the characters imply an ethnically diverse crew. With tricky visual puzzles integrated throughout and more than 45 possible endings (some deadly), this tale will invite readers to return again and again. A cosmic journey that will have young adventurers rocketing back for further missions. (ship map, answer key) (Science fiction. 7-9)

The Memory Spinner

Cornwell, C.M. | Delacorte (288 pp.) $17.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9780593898765

A debut about memory, grief, and the power of facing difficult truths.

After her mama’s death, 13-year-old Lavender struggles with a memory problem that threatens her role as apothecary apprentice in her papa’s shop. Desperate to remember both her lessons and cherished moments with Mama, she seeks help from Frey, the last surviving spinning enchantress— someone who wields a staff crafted from the ancient tree Yggdrasil and can knit memories into enchanted items of clothing. In return for serving as Frey’s bike messenger for three weeks, Lavender will recover one memory per day. Cornwell skillfully balances Lavender’s dual worlds—the practical realities of Papa’s shop and the enticing allure of the memories Frey helps her access. Emotions bubble like potions: Grief, anger, jealousy, and regret

simmer beneath the surface of richly drawn characters with complex motivations. The fantastical setting, which includes Norse-inspired elements, such as a talking raven named Munin and houses on stilts, feels both fresh and familiar. Magical elements— including spells, curses, and an enchanted tapestry woven with memory threads—create a world where remembering brings both power and peril. As Lavender becomes entangled in the unintentional consequences of her choices, her journey becomes one of not just remembering the past, but of finding the courage to make things right in the present. Lavender presents white, and some supporting cast members have brown skin.

A heartfelt story that will leave readers hoping for more from this promising new voice. (Fantasy. 8-12)

My Abuela Is a Bruja

Cuevas, Mayra | Illus. by Lorena Alvarez

Gómez | Knopf (40 pp.) | $18.99

August 12, 2025 | 9780593480632

A child and her abuela spend cherished time together. The girl affectionately calls her grandmother a bruja—a witch— because of the magic that seems to infuse her every activity. Whether growing a garden rife with “rich beds of yuca” or whipping up flan that tastes of “sugary kisses and caramel dreams,” Abuela performs each task with such confidence and grace that witchcraft seems the only possible explanation. Eager to uncover Abuela’s secrets, the girl pays close attention to everything she does; she longs to discover her own

Collins, Tim | Illus. by Steven Woods | Aladdin (192 pp.) | $18.99

magic, but Abuela gently counsels patience. She reveals that magic has always been within her, passed down through generations from their Taíno ancestors. Slowly, the girl begins to understand. Cuevas and Alvarez Gómez beautifully capture the tender bond between grandmother and granddaughter, set against the vibrant backdrop of Puerto Rico. Melodic language blends with illustrations bursting with color and detail, such as reinitas (black and yellow birds) and the güiro (a traditional Puerto Rican instrument). Tastes, sounds, scents, and feelings come alive on every page; this is a tale that celebrates cultural heritage and encourages readers to find magic in the quotidian. Abuela is brown-skinned with curly black-and-gray hair, while her granddaughter has light brown skin and curly black hair. Publishes simultaneously in Spanish.

A heartfelt tribute to family, culture, and the everyday magic that connects us. (glossary, recipes) (Picture book. 4-9)

Greta Ever After

Dassori, Melissa | Illus. by Dana SanMar Christy Ottaviano Books (288 pp.) | $17.99 August 19, 2025 | 9780316568838

A seventh grade girl lives out a real-life fairy tale.

Greta Starr receives an unusual gift from Ingrid Sauer, a distant German relative, for her 12th birthday: a mysterious cuckoo clock with a creepy history from the Black Forest. Ingrid also gives her a book of the Brothers Grimms’ original folk and fairy tales, which are decidedly darker than the Disney versions. When her clock turns out to harbor a strange secret—Lulu, a little dancer who comes to life and sets Greta on an ill-advised path—Greta must process this strange turn of events while navigating middle school life with her two closest friends, soccer star Chloe and class president Isabel. Aspiring journalist Greta is excited to

finally join the school newspaper so all three of them can successfully make their marks. But writing compelling pieces is harder than expected, and she’s tempted into taking unethical shortcuts. Greta’s character arc is framed by repetitive allusions to Into the Woods, her favorite musical. Her internal monologue of invented headlines punctuates the text, interrupting, summarizing, and providing humorous commentary on various plot points. Although these headlines feel awkwardly integrated and sometimes more adult than middle school in tone, they align with Greta’s journalistic goals. Greta is cued white, Isabel is Puerto Rican and white, and Chloe’s surname is Chinese. Final art not seen.

A relatable coming-of-age story interwoven with dark fairy-tale elements. (Fiction. 8-13)

Ride or Die

Dawson, Delilah S. | Delacorte (240 pp.) $17.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593486832

A sleepover at an amusement park in Georgia turns terrifying. New eighth grade student Brie Turner has her sights set on befriending the wealthy, pretty, popular girls everyone calls “the Ems”—Emma Bryan, Emerson Smith-Robinson, and Emily Bell. She’s gleeful when a field day triumph leads to an invitation to Emily’s birthday party: The four of them will have an overnight stay at Wildwoods, a nearby amusement park. But Brie begins to see a darker side to the Ems, especially when a game of Truth or Dare leads to her being trapped in an off-limits part of the park with “no adults, no lights, no working bathrooms”—on the anniversary of a 1995 accident that killed four teenagers. She encounters some older teens, CJ, Dawn, and Trip, who take her under their wing, and she revels in their acceptance and camaraderie, but she’s soon plagued by dark

Ai & Aiko and the Little Curve

Draw, Peter | Philomel (32 pp.) $18.99 | July 29, 2025 | 9780593694497

A i and Aiko— immensely popular cartoon characters who have gone viral on the digital platform GIPHY— make their picture-book debut. Ai, a child with a cloudlike puff of hair and paper-white skin, and his Shiba Inu, Aiko, love going to Grandpa’s cafe; on Sunday afternoons, with the business closed to the public, Ai creates art with Grandpa’s guidance. After completing a selfp ortrait (“a good reminder to love yourself,” Grandpa muses), Ai proudly shows off his work. Grandpa advises adding “a little curve” to the work. But before he can explain, he’s interrupted by a phone call. What could Grandpa mean? Ai and Aiko set out on an adventure. Ai’s magical scarf transforms into a paper airplane, and the two of them fly high, encountering curves everywhere they go: in t he fluffy clouds, in the rainbow they slide down, and in a green hill and a flowing stream. At last, the boy returns home to work on his selfp ortrait. But it’s Grandpa who helps him put the finishing touches on the piece: the curve of a smile. Infused with kawaii sweetness, Draw’s illustrations evoke movement

>>> visions and ends up in genuine danger even though her new friends put themselves at risk to help her. The frights are accompanied by strong messaging about bullying and the value of being yourself and finding friends who like the real you. Dawson’s smooth writing brings the well-drawn amusement park setting to life. Characters are largely white presenting or racially ambiguous; Brie has tan skin that’s “genetic,” Emerson has beaded braids, and Dawn is Asian. A fast-paced roller-coaster ride of a novel that effectively blends the familiar with the uncanny. (map) (Horror. 8-13)

MEG MEDINA

The

celebrated children’s author gives readers a safe place to land.

BY MAGGIE REAGAN

BEFORE PUBLISHING THE contemporary fiction she’s best known for—including Merci Suárez Changes Gears, winner of the Newbery Medal—Meg Medina dabbled in magical realism. Two early books—her 2008 debut, Milagros: Girl From Away, and The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind —both teased magic, bringing it into a contemporary setting. Her latest middle-grade novel embraces it completely, building a fantastical underwater world that intertwines with—and often influences—our own.

Graciela in the Abyss was originally conceived in 2010, and it’s been a nearly 15-year journey to publication for the author, who served as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature in 2023 and 2024. The final book, with illustrations by Anna and Elena Balbusso, is out from Candlewick next month. “I knew I wanted it to be

otherworldly,” says Medina over Zoom from her home in Virginia. “The first iteration was two friends, Graciela and Amina. They were spirits, they had pearl teeth, and they were being pursued.”

That general premise remains, and if it sounds eerie, that’s because it is. There’s much that terrifies and even more that haunts in this ghost story about a long-deceased girl who faces enemies both living and dead and some conflict within her own heart. But while Medina has crafted a narrative that may at times unnerve readers, it’s one that will heal them, too. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m interested to hear how this novel developed on the back burner. There was something in the relationship between these two girls that I wanted to write about, but I couldn’t find the story. I gave up so many times. Ultimately what happened was the pandemic, when we were all faced with so much loss. It was a time of enormous fear and regret, with death everywhere, and with vitriol that

I try to tell kids the truth about things—with compassion and with an eye to their age, but I try to be truthful.

spread so widely and is still with us. All of that needed to cook inside me so that I could shape the story.

I was afraid every day that I wrote it. When I gave the manuscript to my editor, I said, “Don’t let me write a bad fantasy. If I’m going to do this, I really want to write a good fantasy. Help me shape this.” It took a lot more back-and-forth between us than is typical on my books. But boy, she kept her promise.

So much of this book feels organic, including your magic system, which connects the dead to the living. It all amounts to worldbuilding. The way I handled it was by first doing a lot of research into the abyss, especially through the work of female oceanographers. I wanted to know what it really looks like down there and what it sounds like. The next step was bending the facts to my will. How do currents happen?

There is a scientific explanation, but how marvelous if it’s actually the spirits of the dead moving the water in this elaborate dance. The last layer was figuring out which elements carry deeper meaning about being human. Bioluminescence is a good example. In middle school and high school, especially, you need to spend some time figuring out what your own engine is, what your own light is.

Graciela has some adult preoccupations and some very childlike characteristics. What was it like to write her?

I love writing characters that are flawed. Graciela has moments of jealousy and dishonesty. She has moments where she betrays people that she loves. She has enormous regret about the absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary way that she died. She has lots of other regrets, just like most kids do. They say and do things they wish they hadn’t; they have moments when they’re not their best selves; they have things they want to hide about themselves as they’re growing up. All of that is Graciela. Her counterpart, Jorge, is different. If I had one word for him, I’d think of valiant, of a young man who has valor so instinctively inside of him. But he has so much doubt. He’s timid about

Graciela in the Abyss

Medina, Meg

Illus. by Anna and Elena Balbusso

Candlewick | 256 pp. | $18.99

July 1, 2025 | 9781536219456

things. How does he come into himself and his gifts?

There’s not one way to be a kid. You could be a Jorge, you could be a Graciela. But they all have their flaws.

I worried so much for Jorge. Because this book takes place over generations, you really see the impact of family secrets, and the narrative was pretty unforgiving toward his parents. I try to tell kids the truth about things—with compassion and with an eye to their age, but I try to be truthful. And the truth is that you will meet people who will not be redeemed. You will meet broken people, some potentially in your own family. Certainly I believe that there’s a way back for people, that generational patterns can be broken. But in this book, I really wanted to feel those tentacles: how greed, poverty, envy, and brutality fester in people and what they create long-term.

I didn’t tie it up neatly in the end. But what I try to do in all my books, because I write for young people, is to end on a note that feels propulsive. I want it to feel like there’s hope for what comes

after; that what they’ve lived through was hard but that it also offers them a door to something else.

How lucky are the children growing up with caretakers who love them and with supportive friends. Those are blessings. But many kids do not grow up in that way. You can still work through that and end up in a good place for yourself. I think kids need to know that; they can weather really hard things and be OK in the end.

Speaking of hard things, you write in your author’s note about receiving the advice to hurt the characters that your readers love. Excuse me?! Isn’t that crazy? That advice came from [children’s and YA author] Lamar Giles—we often call each other when we’re stuck. Another friend whose work I admire immensely, Erin Entrada Kelly, this year’s Newbery winner, told me something similar. We taught together at Hamline University, and I remember sitting in on one of her lectures, and she said that when she’s working through a plot point, she asks herself, How can I make this worse for the character ?

I channeled them both and did some unthinkable things to characters here. But again I’m going to say: Hard things happen. When they happen in a book, kids have an extra layer to experience it, to be angry about it, to argue with me, or just feel it. There’s a catharsis in that, in letting kids interact with the range of their feelings in a book.

But even when you’re hurting our favorite characters, it does feel like you take great care of your readers. I really have so much respect for kids as they read. I trust them to come to the page with their whole selves, and they trust me to come with a story that’s going to entertain them, and maybe scare them, and maybe make them laugh, and land them safely. That’s the contract that we have with kids when we’re writing for them.

Maggie Reagan is a program manager for the American Library Association and lives in Chicago.

Must-Reads From Legendary Author Meg Medina

and warmth, using color and lines to convey movement and emotion. Ai and Aiko’s lighthearted journey includes a few important nuggets: Inspiration is all around us, and joy is key to the process. A vibrant tale to motivate burgeoning artists. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

Piggle the Pig: Party Problems

Dudolf | Flamingo Books (40 pp.)

$9.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9780593691649

A delightfully undisciplined swine hastily prepares goodies in anticipation of a visit.

Piggle’s friends are coming over, so he decides to bake a cake. “Being a responsible pig, Piggle knew he’d better prepare right away.” Here begins the same wonderful humor that tickled funny bones in Piggle’s debut. Cheekily contradicting the unseen narrator’s assertions, the art depicts the round pink protagonist lounging in a comfy chair as the clock ticks on. “Well, soon, anyway,” amends the narrator. Piggle doggedly tries to stay focused, but he can’t help tasting the dough and then the final product until the cake is gone. Panicked but determined, he whips up a pizza and a tray of muffins, with similar results. Worst of all, he never cleans up the increasingly messy kitchen. Desperately raiding the pantry for possible snacks, he drops the party tray just as the doorbell rings. In tears, Piggle greets his pals—only to discover they’ve anticipated the problem. Though Piggle approaches every endeavor with the best of intentions, he’s stymied each time despite himself—which will only endear him further to readers. Matched by hilariously understated prose, Dudolf’s minimalist art is utterly expressive, balancing wit with genuinely heartfelt emotion.

Another irresistible outing with a lovably flawed but always well-meaning protagonist. (Picture book. 3-7)

Diary of a Nature Nerd

Everett, Tiffany | Graphix/Scholastic (128 pp.) $22.99 | August 19, 2025 | 9781546110149

A nature-loving kid and her stepsister explore the natural world. Now in her sixth year of life on the road with her field biologist mom, 9-year-old Brooke is thrilled to embark on more adventures. This year, the team expands: Her new stepdad and stepsister, Jayla, are moving into the RV that Brooke and her mom call home. Together, the quartet set out to document wildlife and glacier melt at Washington’s North Cascades National Park. Creative, excitable, and highly observant Brooke is delighted to have a new animal-spotting partner. But when Jayla serendipitously spots a majestic moose—the only animal on Brooke’s top 10 animals list that she hasn’t yet seen—Brooke begins making increasingly unsafe choices to outdo Jayla’s accomplishment. Interwoven into this emotionally compelling work of graphic fiction are pages from Brooke’s detailed journal highlighting tracking methods, wilderness backpack essentials, and more. Everett’s cartoon illustrations are tremendously colorful and cute without sacrificing accuracy or specificity when it comes to depicting wildlife, while the portrayal of Brooke and Jayla’s relationship highlights both the joys and challenges of a newly blended family. Budding and well-versed nature

enthusiasts alike will enjoy gleaning new insights from Brooke’s plentiful observations on the natural world. Brooke is pink-haired and tan-skinned; Jayla is Black.

Infectiously cute and enthusiastically educational. (Graphic fiction. 7-12)

Maker Girl and Professor Smarts

Florentine, Jasmine | MIT Kids Press/ Candlewick (104 pp.) | $19.99

August 5, 2025 | 9781536227642

Series: Maker Girl and Professor Smarts, 1

With no superheroes in sight, a young maker and her brainy buddy pick up the slack when a villain threatens to turn all the ice cream in town into green slime. In this series starter with a distinctly STEM-centric drift, 12-year-old gadgeteer Yael “Yaya” Levy springs into action, whipping up suitable costumes and dragging along her studious bestie, Jesús “Chuy” Reyes. Their mission: to prevent slime bomber Mr. Antifreeze from destroying the yummiest treat in New Bork City (“not a typo,” as a footnote makes clear). Readers will laugh at the banter and may even want to try out the step-by-step directions for two homemade creations, which help to head off the crisis. By book’s end, they’ll likely come to agree with the duo’s claims that “MAKING STUFF!” and “KNOWING STUFF!” are indeed superpowers. Other supervillains in town go by monikers such as t he Fluffernator and “Snot Lady,” and

Another outing with a lovably flawed but always well-meaning protagonist.

PIGGLE THE PIG

Florentine allows readers to see Mr. Antifreeze’s vulnerable side; the level of actual or potential violence here is low. Thanks to dramatic poses and exaggerated expressions, the dynamic duo’s big personalities come through clearly in Florentine’s limber cartoon scenes. Yael is light-skinned, while Chuy is brown-skinned and cued Latine; the entire cast displays a broadly diverse range of racial and cultural identities.

Engineering and chemistry save the day in this sunny series opener. (character profiles, websites) (Graphic science fiction. 9-11)

Aggie and the Ghost

Forsythe, Matthew | Paula Wiseman/ Simon & Schuster (64 pp.) | $19.99 August 19, 2025 | 9781534478206

A headstrong young girl finds herself in a haunted house standoff.

Aggie’s excitement about living i ndependently quickly dissolves when she discovers that her lovely new cottage in the rainy woods comes with an unwelcome, shape-shifting, ghostly roommate. Determined to make it work, the light-skinned, short-haired Aggie establishes house rules for the ghost—“no haunting after dark,” “no stealing my socks,” “no more eating all the cheese”—but her spectral companion proves resistant to regulation. The conflict escalates to a high-stakes tic-tac-toe match, where the winner gets the house. Forsythe’s signature watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil illustrations masterfully supply both emotional depth and charm to the characters and setting. In a particularly mesmerizing double-page spread, a supernatural vortex of swirling, eye-studded ghostly forms draw the gaze toward an opening where a small, determined Aggie and her equally resolute opponent face off. Glowing pinks juxtaposed with deep indigos heighten the dramatic

atmosphere. The delightfully wry ghost’s ever-changing forms and expressions create a humorous visual journey that will have readers hurrying to discover each new, surprising incarnation. Though the narrative occasionally feels assembled to showcase striking artwork over story flow—a minor issue that likely won’t trouble Forsythe fans—the refreshingly imperfect resolution offers young readers a nuanced ending rarely found in picture books.

A witty year-round ghost tale that delivers a wonderfully unconventional conclusion. (Picture book. 4-8)

Scratching the Surface: Exploring Earth’s Layers

August 1, 2025 | 9781630793326

What lurks deep within the Earth, beneath our feet? As two children— one brownskinned, one pale-skinned— build a sand castle by the shore, Fox peppers readers with questions (“What’s inside our planet?” “Why do volcanoes form and continents shift?”), then invites them to look for answers: “Let’s explore.” Her calm, lyrical text is both poetic and practical. The crust is “where worms wriggle and writhe,” but miles down, the temperature is “twice as hot as an oven baking cookies.” Though the unseen narrator references both Mt. Everest and Russia’s Kola Borehole, most scenes are set so far below the surface that they could be anywhere on the globe. The author injects the text with small doses of geology such as brief explanations of temperature and pressure, plate tectonics, what scientists can learn from earthquakes, and the astonishing life-giving function of the inner core. Fox’s praise of “the great thing about science” shades into a bigger observation: “We learn and we guess and we try and we fail and we try again. We hope to be right more often than we’re wrong. It’s a

lot like being human.” Brown’s illustrations use bold, imaginative compositions, with cutaways, fluid lines, and vibrant, varied color to add drama as she switches from scenes of people exploring the world aboveground and the hidden world deep below.

Scratches young geologists’ itch for knowledge. (author’s note, information on the scientific method, glossary, further reading, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-10)

The Elevator on 74th Street

Gehl, Laura | Illus. by Yas Imamura | Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) | $19.99 September 30, 2025 | 9781665905077

A meditation on the notso-accidental circumstances that bring us together. Ellie, the hardest-working elevator on 74th Street, spends her days cheerfully ferrying residents from floor to floor. She loves her job and the occupants she provides bespoke service to; she modulates the volume of the music she plays for hard-of-hearing Mrs. Sanchez, and she patiently waits for Mr. Chen, who uses a cane. But no tenant is dearer than Thea, a fashionable, bespectacled adolescent. After Thea’s best friend relocates to the West Coast, Ellie kicks her care into overdrive, making each trip extra pleasant for the girl in an effort to ease her heartbreak. When her usual tricks don’t provide their intended lift, Ellie hatches a matchmaking plan, staging scenarios meant to foster friendship between Thea and a new neighbor named Claire and effecting kindnesses that go neither unnoticed nor unrewarded. A charming retro-futurism suffuses the story in both plot and aesthetic; Gehl’s comfortable and familiar narrative is an apt match for the vintage-feeling images that enliven our anthropomorphized protagonist. Imamura’s grounding use of negative space brings visual texture to each spread, as do the

Fox, Kate Allen | Illus. by Erin Brown Capstone Editions (32 pp.) | $18.99

occasional pops of neon yellow that stipple an earth-toned palette. Ellie’s robotic visage is just subtle enough to make her reveal as the main character a delightful surprise, an unexpected start to an otherwise-understated tale. Thea presents East Asian, and Claire is Black; peripheral characters are diverse. A stylish and lovely perspective on happenstance. (Picture book. 6-8)

Orson and the World’s Loudest Library

Gehl, Laura | Illus. by Stephanie Roth Sisson

Astra Young Readers (32 pp.) | $18.99 April 15, 2025 | 9781662602085

A young boy learns that quiet isn’t always better. Orson loves books and calm, tranquil places. The library used to be a great spot to sit and read, but when it reopens after renovations, everything is different. Now the librarian no longer admonishes the kids for reading aloud, laughing, and talking. So Orson takes matters into his own hands—and then rejuvenates the library when his shushing ultimately makes it sad and silent. The narrative is entertaining, though somewhat unrealistic. The library may have undergone a cosmetic renovation, but it seems unlikely that the ambience and the librarian’s attitude would change all at once—or that the other kids would so readily listen to Orson. Most young patrons have grown up with relatively bustling library spaces; the narrative feels as though it’s written from the perspective of an adult processing broader, more long-term changes i n library culture. Still, it’s a sweet tale that emphasizes the value of openmindedness and community and might make a suitable teaching tool for children struggling to accept new situations. Sisson’s art is delightfully cute and expressive, practically telling the story without the need for words. Orson is brown-skinned (one of his parents is darker-skinned than he is,

while the other is pale-skinned), and the supporting cast is racially diverse and includes a child who uses a wheelchair. Gently reassuring, if a bit implausible. (Picture book. 4-8)

The Wishing Leaf

George, Kallie | Illus. by Paola Zakimi

Abrams (40 pp.) | $18.99

August 12, 2025 | 9781419772467

A bear cub stays up late to make a wish.

High in the treetops, a golden leaf still clings to a branch. It’s the last leaf in the forest, and Bear knows that if you glimpse the last leaf of the season falling, your wish will come true. It’s nearly bedtime, but Mama agrees to let Bear wait for the leaf to fall. He and his woodland friends gather round the tree, gazing up in anticipation. The weather grows blustery, a nd some animals leave. Then it starts to snow, and more friends head home. When it begins to get dark, Bear’s the only one left. As his mouth stretches into a big yawn, suddenly the leaf falls! What will his wish be? Cozy, autumnal tones of burnt oranges and earthy browns bundle this sweet tale in extra warmth, just like the wooly scarves and knitted hats worn by the forest animals. The tale also serves as a gentle lesson in patience, with Bear persevering even after the others have gone home. Bear’s wish shows that he has a generous heart, and George flips the script at the end by leaving readers with a question: “What would YOU wish for?”

Snug and attractive, with an invitation to believe in a little magic. (Picture book. 3-6)

Waiting for Winter

Gorman, Stephen | Capstone Editions (40 pp.) $18.99 | August 1, 2025 | 9781630793210

The polar bears of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge make do until the arrival of winter. Because of climate change, sea ice now melts earlier in the spring and forms later in the autumn, so hungry bears must find a way to survive until the ice appears and they can hunt for seals. This take on the animals’ plight stands out due to Gorman’s amazing photographs. The bears aren’t white, but brown “from lying around in the sand.” At times, they look close enough to pet, although Gorman, who’s previously covered the Arctic, clearly knows better. In his fetching images, the animals sometimes even seem to be posing. Against a background of rocks and driftwood on a desolate beach, two cubs entertain themselves, playing with sticks and seaweed and roughhousing as their exhausted mother naps. Finally, several mothers and cubs swim to a nearby island, where the Iñupiat villagers have left the remnants of their fall whale hunt. Scraps of food remain, and the bones make a giant jungle gym for the cubs to climb. With snow comes a new way to play as the youngsters romp and cavort. Once the sea freezes over, the animals can hunt again. Gorman employs a light touch, emphasizing the juvenile bears’ love of play rather than their hunger; still, the impact of global

Snug and attractive, with an invitation to believe in a little magic. THE WISHING LEAF

warming comes through. Youngsters will be moved by these creatures’ predicament; caregivers should consult the backmatter, which offers guidance on discussing the topic.

A visually compelling, gently presented tale of climate crisis. (information on the ANWR, facts on polar bears) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Bitter Tea and Rock Candy

Gu, Yan | Henry Holt (40 pp.) | $18.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781250340405

A young girl of Chinese descent resists drinking the pungent tea made by her grandmother. Mimi’s Waipo lovingly serves her liangcha, an herbal tea meant to cool her body and keep her healthy. As Mimi brings the bowl to her lips, her thoughts wander to the flowers on Waipo’s balcony, soothingly illustrated with soft pastels and a warm p alette. Alas, the tea is too hot, bitter, sour, and smelly! Mimi can’t bring herself to swallow a single mouthful. But Waipo is adamant: Mimi must drink liangcha every day, just as Waipo did growing up, just like Waipo’s grandmother “before her, and her grandmother before her.” Mimi scrambles each day to creatively dispose of the murky liquid. When Waipo finally catches her, she’s angry, but Mimi is unapologetic; their strong emotions are c aptured in full-bleed spreads enhanced with charming botanical details. The conflict is ultimately resolved when each commits to understanding the other: Mimi comes to appreciate liangcha as a ritual symbolizing Waipo’s love for her, while Waipo looks to her own childhood for a sweet solution to make the tea’s bitter flavor more palatable for Mimi. Readers familiar with the role of teas in traditional Chinese medicine may see themselves in Mimi or Waipo—or p erhaps in both. The depiction of

affection between a grandparent and grandchild and the importance of empathy, however, are universal. A heartwarming tribute to intergenerational connection. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

The House That Floated

Guojing | Random House Studio (40 pp.)

$18.99 | September 16, 2025 | 9780593709054

A family faces change with true ingenuity. Residing on an isolated cliff in a tiny red house, a couple spend their days fishing, dreaming, and watching the seasons pass. Soon they’re joined by a new companion, a baby whom they nurture year by year, sharing their love for moonlit nights and dolphin watching. As enchanting as their life is, the water that surrounds them is slowly, steadily rising, threatening to swallow their home, once far above sea level. With bravery and trust, the trio build a raft and transport their dwelling to higher ground, where waiting inhabitants hoist it into a peaceful green meadow. This enticing story is told wordlessly, with painterly landscapes providing the perfect setting for tender, intuitive interactions among a small cast of characters. As with much of Guojing’s work, a clear line connects this intimate tale to real-life societal challenges—in this case, the troubling consequences of climate change. And, like Guojing’s other books, the narrative is woven through with an unassailable belief in human goodness, the importance of family and community bonds, and the ineffable beauty of the fleeting world. All of this is adeptly communicated within the space and simplicity of a picture book without feeling overwhelming or overwrought. The couple and their child are dark-haired and pale-skinned. A hopeful vision of love and persistence in the face of peril. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

Dream On

Hale, Shannon | Illus. by Marcela Cespedes Colors by Lark Pien | Roaring Brook Press (240 pp.) | $22.99 | $12.99 paper

August 26, 2025 | 9781250843067

9781250843074 paper | Series: Dream On, 1 Fourth grader Cassie dreams of solving all her problems by winning a contest. It’s May 1984, and Cassie Carpenter feels overwhelmed by how much she needs—attention, space, money, and more. Things that feel trivial to others are overwhelming for her, and others call her “melodramatic,” “sensitive,” and “so emotional.” Still, Cassie’s problems are real: Her house is too small for everyone in her family to have their own bed or sit at the same table for dinner. Money is tight, and her mother is too tired to notice that Cassie needs her. At school, Cassie’s best friend starts pulling away, preferring an unkind classmate. Then, Cassie receives a life-changing piece of mail: A magazine sweepstakes declares her a “grand prize winner”! A catalog of prizes accompanies a magazine order form, and Cassie is swept away by fantasies of how a vacation or a water bed for her mom might solve all her problems. But soon she finds that the contest is far from the easy fix she imagined. Hale’s gift for capturing middle-grade joys and agonies is once again on full display, and fans of her Best Friends graphic memoir trilogy will find much to love in this series opener. Cespedes’ illustrations and Pien’s colors are vibrant and appealing, capturing the liabilities and, importantly, the gifts to be found in Cassie’s deeply emotional worldview. Cassie’s family reads white; other characters are racially diverse.

Heartfelt and accessible: another winner from a beloved author. (author’s note) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

Definitely not bedtime reading for anyone hoping for peaceful slumbers.

THE NIGHTMARES OF FINNEGAN QUICK

Kirkus Star

The Forest of a Thousand Eyes

Hardinge, Frances | Illus. by Emily Gravett Amulet/Abrams (128 pp.) | $19.99 August 26, 2025 | 9781419777783

After an encounter with a sinister stranger, a young girl strikes out on her own.

Feather was born into a community perched high atop an ancient Wall, surrounded below on all sides by the malevolent Forest that threatens to swallow up their home. Supplies are dwindling; eager to map her strange world, Feather steals her people’s only spyglass and brings it to a new arrival named Merildun in the hopes that he’ll help her. Instead, he shoves her off the Wall. She resolves to get the spyglass back, and as she sets out in search of Merildun, accompanied by a scaly ferret companion, she encounters community after community of previously isolated human encampments spread out along the Wall—and learns that cooperation may hold the key to everyone’s survival. In a scant 128 pages, Hardinge immerses readers in a world of dangers and wonders, where nature isn’t neutral but actively hostile, waging an eternal war against the few remaining humans. The author makes adept use of lush imagery, which comes to the fore when her protagonist must dive into the Forest proper at last. Though the book contains echoes of classic children’s dystopias such as Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Below the Root (1975), Hardinge’s lavishly imagined setting is wholly original. Gravett’s ink

drawings temper the horrors but none of the magic. Most characters are pale-skinned.

Sumptuous worldbuilding and deft plotting make for a harrowing dystopian story that nevertheless thrums with hope. (Fantasy. 8-12)

A Skeleton in the Closet

Hatcher-Smith, Claire | Illus. by Lester Magoogan | Tundra Books (288 pp.)

$17.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9781774885116

Series: The Mizzy Mysteries, 1

An aspiring sleuth from London endeavors to uncover the truth behind her ancestor’s death. Twelve-andthree-quartersyear-old Mizzy sees herself as “Mizzy the Marvellous, world-famous detective.” Unfortunately, it feels like everyone else sees her as a baby. Her parents are so protective that “you’d think people with Down syndrome aren’t capable of anything,” and they dismiss Mizzy’s sleuthing by comparing her to her Great Aunt Jane, who was dubbed by some an “interfering sticky-beak” for observing and writing stories about the neighbors (to others, she was “a brilliantly perceptive surveiller”). When Mizzy discovers Great Aunt Jane’s diaries while staying with her cousins for the summer holidays, everything changes. Apparently Great Aunt Jane was murdered—and revealing her killer at Grandma Mabel’s 80th birthday party would show everyone that Mizzy definitely isn’t a baby. But as Mizzy interviews the quirky members of her

extended family and pores over her phonetically spelled notes (with suspects humorously caricatured in Magoogan’s cartoonlike illustrations), she realizes that deducing whodunit could be more difficult—and more dangerous—than she thought. Though some relatives feel underdeveloped, readers will root for Mizzy as she uncovers family secrets and pieces together a surprisingly complex case. Mizzy—whom debut author Hatcher-Smith, a speech-language pathologist, modeled on kids she’s worked with—is appealingly multifaceted. Her desire to be taken seriously will resonate, and her growth is poignant and satisfying. Most characters read white. This auspicious series opener will leave readers eager for the next case. (family tree, author’s note) (Mystery. 8-12)

The Nightmares of Finnegan Quick

Hayes, Larry | Bloomsbury (256 pp.) | $9.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9781547617159

Nightmares that carry over into the waking world leave a middle schooler terrified to fall asleep in this bone-chilling series opener. Like Finnegan, the fearful firstperson narrator, readers may also be reluctant to doze off after learning that his dog and his parents have vanished without a trace, he sees a soul-sucking goblin sitting on his grandma’s chest at night, and even during the day, he’s catching recurrent glimpses of a spectral figure with blood-red nails and blood-soaked bandages over her eyes. When acerbic, secretive schoolmate Cass says she knows a way to help him find his parents, Finn jumps at the chance—only to discover not only that she has a secret agenda, but that not all the terrors in the dream world are of his own creation. Adding the odd face-eating bug and gruesomely exploding monster as he goes, Hayes ushers his young dreamer to a

properly nightmarish climax in (where better) an old mansion popularly known as Freak House and its adjacent graveyard. And if Finn comes away with a better grip on his special abilities, plenty of frights and foes remain for him to face in future episodes. The book’s fast pace and accessible, conversational language will make it appealing to reluctant readers. The minimally described characters largely present white. Definitely not bedtime reading for anyone hoping for peaceful slumbers. (Horror. 10-13)

Sunflower Seeds

Heck, Ellen | Levine Querido (48 pp.) $19.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781646146239

Seeds planted at the end of kindergarten become towering sunflowers as summer comes to a close.

Ms. B gives each of her students four seeds: “one for the birds, / one for the rain, / one to taste, / and one to grow.”

The unnamed student narrator describes how each seed is carefully planted in a cup, watered, placed on a windowsill in the sun, and diligently observed by the kids. At home, the narrator’s first-person plural changes to the singular as the seedlings— dubbed Yoda, Kermit, and the Hulk— c ontinue to grow. Tragically, a storm drowns the Hulk, and then a deer trims Yoda’s leaves. Even so, Yoda continues to grow alongside Kermit till both are taller than the narrator and Kermit looms over “our neighbor Sam, / who is the tallest human I know.” Heck’s understated text conveys the narrator’s awe, expressed in precise descriptions of the flowers in all their phases. She offers ample space for readers to admire her paintings, done in thickly applied oil. The brown paper backdrops lend warmth to the characters’ skin tones and act as negative space that defines Heck’s

compositions, often to startling effect. The backgrounds also contrast with the textured strokes of yellow and gold, set against heartbreaking blues; they cannot help r ecalling van Gogh, though these blooms are never confined to a vase.

The narrator presents white; the classmates are racially diverse. Gorgeous. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

The Winding Willow

Hillenbrand, Will | Holiday House (40 pp.) $18.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9780823459452

Hubert Cumberbum, the tiny brown mouse introduced in The Voice in the Hollow (2023), returns for another adventure told in Hillenbrand’s singular storytelling style. W hile traveling through the snow, Hubert encounters a “curious-looking tree” that contains a selection of personal objects: his brother’s “runaway shoe,” his father’s umbrella, and the house key. As Hubert climbs higher, gathering items, he meets the tree’s lone inhabitant, a large owl who demands a snack. (Gulp.) Fantastical and a little spooky, the narrative will have readers on the edge of their seats. But…did it really happen? It’s this conundrum that elevates the text to heights higher than a flying owl as readers debate whether Hubert actually imagined the events on his trek home. This is an excellent option for caregivers and educators looking to start a conversation about storytelling; readers seeking cozy but spooky fare will once again be in heaven. Hillenbrand’s prose is matched by surreal illustrations that turn swirls of snow into menacing bears and tree limbs into bizarre, horned creatures. Those who love a cut-and-dried resolution may be disappointed by the ambiguity of the ending, but that’s life; sometimes we get answers, but if we’re truly lucky, we’ll get a really good story. Hauntingly beautiful. (Picture book. 5-8)

The Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island

Hodge, Deborah | Illus. by Karen Reczuch Groundwood (32 pp.) | $19.99

August 5, 2025 | 9781773067186

Series: Wild by Nature

A visit to a unique seabird rookery and wildlife refuge off the coast of British Columbia. Along with being fun to say, tufted puffins cut distinctive figures in Reczuch’s close-up painted scenes, with their strong orange beaks and elegantly swept-back crowns of feathers. In matter-of-fact tones, Hodge follows the engaging birds on an immemorial round from annual nesting to nurturing chicks until they’re mature enough to survive on the open ocean and in time return to start the next generation. The author also discusses in some detail the natural factors, from terrain to ocean currents to weather conditions (“fierce storms, howling winds, dense fog”), that have made rugged Triangle Island the site of Canada’s largest colony of the species. The puffins are joined by 11 other types of seabird, some of which pose in the illustrations and in a gallery at the end. For a strong close that broadens the focus, she lucidly explains in the backmatter how warming oceans constitute a hazard to all these populations by decreasing the food supply, which will leave readers with a greater understanding of how climate change can affect ecosystems in sometimes unexpected ways. An informative and thought-provoking sketch. (resource lists) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Star

For more by Deborah Hodge, visit Kirkus online.

A handsome adaptation that works equally well as a stand-alone and a teaser.

THE

COMING OF THE IRON GIANT

Fart Boy and Reeky Dog

Holub, Joan | Illus. by Rafael Rosado | Colors by John Novak | Random House (144 pp.)

$14.99 | April 8, 2025 | 9780593434307

A superhero by any other name would still be as pungent. The Great Overlords of Planet U-Reeka have entrusted Professor Groovypants and his assistant Egor with an important mission: to plunder Earth by creating a source of renewable energy. Within a month, Groovypants’ Phartmaker 5000 is churning out massive farts, fueled by sacks of beans, culminating in the creation of an unusual infant named Phartolomew. But Phartolomew’s flatulence proves too p otent, and with a giant, propulsive fart, he’s flung into the air and separated from his creators. Eventually, he’s adopted by bean farmers Nancy and Newt Normal and enjoys an average—if much gassier than usual—childhood. But one fateful day at school, Phartolomew, now a fourth grader, eats a bean taco, releases an explosive fart that sends him flying once more, and realizes that he has flatulence-based superpowers. Dubbing himself Fart Boy, he must take on the villainous Groovypants, who heard the explosion and, believing that the students a re responsible for the farts, plans to infiltrate the school and harness the “bean-powered renewable energy.”

Playing ably with superhero tropes, Holub tells an utterly goofy tale. The cartooning is solid, from Phartolomew’s smelly upbringing to the

dramatic buildup before his first bean taco. While readers with a low threshold for gross-out humor may wish to clear the air before the finale, kids who find breaking wind to be the epitome of humor will laugh themselves silly. Most characters present white.

A real gas. (Graphic science fiction. 7-10)

How To Be Brave Like a Snail

Hrab, Naseem | Illus. by Kelly Collier Owlkids Books (40 pp.) | $18.95 October 14, 2025 | 9781771476720 Series: Snail & Stump, 3

C ourage doesn’t always show itself in obvious ways, as Snail and best friend Stump demonstrate.

“I’m the kind of brave that’s kind of brave,” proclaims Snail, facing up boldly to anything that’s, well, not too noisy. But his courage fails when it comes to constructing properly made paper airplanes for a contest, because he’s afraid of asking for help and making mistakes. That’s why it’s good to have a friend like Stump, who “holds Snail’s feelings as carefully as he folds paper airplanes” while coaching him to a win. But wait…Stump, too, has entered the contest, and losing has left him with “prickly thoughts.” Time for Snail to rise to the occasion in return and, holding Stump’s feelings with equal care, show him how to write them down on a paper airplane and send them sailing away. Exaggerated expressions on the friends’ googlye yed faces in Collier’s simply drawn illustrations make the emotional ups

and downs apparent even for very young viewers in this third outing featuring a quiet-loving snail and his rooted, rambunctious neighbor. Hrab makes one lesson explicit at the end: “Sometimes, being brave just means telling your friend how you really feel.” Another, perhaps profounder message is embedded in seeing how these two true superheroes are sensitive to each other’s e motions and willing to support each other as needed.

Folds deep themes into simple words and pictures. (Picture book. 5-8)

The Big Snowdown

Hudson, Katy | Capstone Editions (32 pp.) $18.99 | August 1, 2025 | 9781684469123

An overly confident bird takes part in the forest’s annual winter competition. Owl hasn’t trained one bit for the Big Snowdown. She’s a born winner…or so she thinks. Hedgehog wins the igloo-building contest, Frog dazzles when it comes time to create a musical arrangement (on icicles!), graceful Mouse makes a perfect snow angel, and Raccoon zips to the finish in the downhill ski race. Each time, first place goes to someone other than Owl—“and rightfully so,” repeats the unseen narrator. After all, these animals have been diligently preparing. An illustration of Hedgehog’s meticulously outlined diagrams m akes it clear he’s put in the work, while Owl’s haphazard assemblage of blocks demonstrates that she hasn’t. And past montages of the other creatures practicing for their events— and often failing in the process—drive the point home. Though the message about the importance of perseverance comes through a bit bluntly, the tale will hold readers’ attention. While it’s clear from the start that Owl won’t succeed, the brisk pacing will keep kids turning the pages to learn the victor of each contest. The illustrations vary in composition, graphic

novel–esque panels alternating with full pages of action for the ski race. Hudson creates cozy wintry settings populated by gently anthropomorphized creatures; Owl’s expressive eyes a nd body language make her utterly sympathetic in defeat, despite her initial braggadocio.

A snowy celebration of wintertime activities, laced with an earnest, if purposeful, message about the value of hard work. (Picture book. 3-6)

The Coming of the Iron Giant

Hughes, Ted | Illus. by Mini Grey Faber & Faber (48 pp.) | $19.95

October 21, 2025 | 9780571397617

A farm boy befriends a huge robot after orchestrating its capture in this abridged, newly illustrated edition of Hughes’ classic tale.

Grey does take a few liberties: She kits out the armored behemoth with mechanical body parts but gives him an organically mobile mouth, and in one scene the titular character leaves footprints that are much larger than their accompanying description (“the size of a single bed”) suggests. Still, the images she pairs with this shortened version of the original’s first three chapters do justice to the inscrutable, glowing-eyed giant’s menacing bulk as he comes from nowhere to plunge down a cliff, reassembles himself one piece at a time, and then goes about chowing down on tractors and wire fences until clever but much smaller Hogarth lures him into a deep hole. By the time the giant has dug his way out, the empathetic lad has a better idea and leads the metal-eating monster to a tasty junkyard where the two, in a cozy wordless finale, share smiles and a storybook. The rest of the tale is well worth seeking out; in any case, the recent release of a popular film based on Peter Brown’s Wild Robot trilogy has led to both a

picture-book spinoff and an uptick in interest in free-ranging robots, so this self-contained segment is well timed to catch the wave. Hogarth has light tan skin; other characters are diverse in complexion.

A handsome and engaging adaptation that works equally well as a standalone and a teaser. (Picture book. 6-8)

Our Pebbles

Jarvis | Candlewick (32 pp.) | $18.99

June 10, 2025 | 9781536242966

A child recalls beloved seaside visits. Grandad and the young protagonist used to love going to their favorite place. After making their way through the Wonky Woods, past the whooshing trains and the “spotty dogs,” they would arrive at a picturesque spot known as Pebble Beach. The child remembers days filled with imaginative play that always ended with each of them picking up a tiny stone before heading to an abandoned rowboat to paint their pebbles. A glimpse at the many pebbles that have accumulated in the old boat makes it clear that these two have kept up this routine for a long time. But one day Grandad moves away; now the child makes the journey with Mam. They select their pebbles and bring them to Grandad—who appears to have relocated to a nursing home—and Grandad and child continue their tradition despite their new circumstances. Jarvis doesn’t explain why Grandad moves, though a propped-up cane by the sofa suggests that he’s slowed down a bit in his old age. Rendered in a muted palette, Jarvis’ scribbly, naïve artwork complements a quietly joyful text that homes in on simple but memorable moments: Grandad and the child trying to guess the name of a seal they notice, sea gulls devouring Grandad’s ice cream. Jarvis m akes it clear that though change is inevitable, our memories endure.

Family bonding at its sweetest. (Picture book. 4-7)

Lilac and the Switchback

Jensen, Cordelia | Holiday House (304 pp.) $17.99 | August 19, 2025 | 9780823458325

A novel in verse that explores a period of wrenching transition for a vulnerable 12-year-old.

Lilac Jones has lived with her aunt Truly, uncle Mack, and one-year-older cousin Charla ever since her mother died in a car accident when Lilac was 6. When Truly announces that she’s pregnant with twins, Lilac worries even more than she already does about being a burdensome outsider. Lilac and best friend Callie were inseparable, but the beginning of seventh grade unravels their closeness, just as Truly’s pregnancy complications require months of bed rest. Seeking direction within the upheaval, Lilac explores several new paths, developing curiosity about her estranged father’s Jewish identity (which is shared by new classmate Eli) and joining a hiking club at school called the Trailblazers. The club provides the book’s framework (“Part One: Start of the Trail,” “Part Two: Left Turn,” “Part Three: Spur Leading to a Different Trail”) and illuminates the title (switchback is defined as “a path with alternate / ascents and descents”). But the highs— L ilac’s newfound interest in hiking and burgeoning friendships with Eli and fellow club members—are overwhelmed by the seriousness of her covert attempts to reconnect with her unreliable father, who struggles with addiction. Lilac is a sympathetic protagonist, yearning to feel more secure in her relationships, but the author struggles to balance the myriad challenges and resolves her profound alienation too smoothly. Most characters read white.

An uneven portrait of a girl in distress. (Verse fiction. 9-13)

War Is Over! Picture Book Coming This Fall

The book, co-written by Sean Ono Lennon, is based on the Oscarwinning short film.

A picture-book adaptation of the animated short film War Is Over! is coming later this year, Penguin Young Readers announced in a news release.

The War Is Over! film, written and directed by Dave Mullins, was inspired by “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” the 1971 song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono and performed by the Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir. The film follows a carrier pigeon who delivers messages being exchanged by two soldiers in warring armies who are playing a game of chess. The film won the Academy Award for best animated short film last year.

The book is written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, along with Mullins and Brad Booker. It is illustrated by Max Narciso. Penguin calls it “a stirring

reminder of the human connection that binds us all, even during the most divisive times.”

“The tale of our pigeon felt like it needed to be put into an illustrated book,” Sean Ono Lennon said in a statement. “Our wish is that parents will be able to share this story with their kids. War is a difficult subject, and we hope this book will serve as a conversation starter for families and friends.”

War Is Over! is slated for publication on Nov. 4.

—M.S.

For more picture books by celebrity authors, visit Kirkus online.

Coming This Fa from ANNICK PRESS

HC: 9781834020228

E: 9781834020242

A young girl visiting her Yaya finds MISCHIEF and FUN at his long-term care home.

HC: 9781773219851

E: 9781773219875

Eighty years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a survivor looks back and shares her commitment to ACTIVISM

HC: 9781834020136

E: 9781834020150

HC: 9781834020082

E: 9781834020105

An exploration of the WEIRD and WONDERFUL creatures that may (or may not!) inhabit our world that helps kids build critical thinking skills. PB: 9781834020099

An aspiring actor must find her place at a cutthroat boarding school in this GOTHIC YA debut.

Sean Ono Lennon

PICTURE BOOKS THAT TAKE TO THE SKIES

Author and illustrator Torben Kuhlmann celebrates a decade of exploration in the Mouse Adventures.

BY MEGAN LABRISE

IN TORBEN KUHLMANN’s internationally bestselling Mouse Adventures series, four-legged explorers follow their curiosity to make amazing new discoveries.

“I think we can all relate to that experience where you encounter something new that inspires your interest,” says Kuhlmann, a children’s author and illustrator based in Germany. “Something that inspires an investigation. From that point on, you become part of a bigger world.”

Kuhlmann’s enterprising mice become part of a bigger story by inspiring some of the greatest minds in history to reach new heights. For example, a mouse completes the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in Lindbergh: The Tale of a Flying Mouse , setting an example for the human aviator to repeat that feat years later. Published in 2014, this inventive picture-book debut was a hit; the series took off from there. Subsequent adventures saw mice exploring the cosmos, the deep sea, and time travel in Armstrong , Edison , and Einstein , respectively.

Last year, Kuhlmann marked the 10th anniversary of Mouse Adventures with a return to the skies: The protagonist of Earhart: The Incredible Flight of a Field Mouse Around the World is a little creature who, after seeing the image of a lion on a postage stamp, endeavors to build an airplane and fly to Africa. Her efforts inform the future career of record-breaking aviator Amelia Earhart.

An English-language version of Earhart , translated from German by David Henry Wilson, was published in the U.S. on May 13 by NorthSouth Books. As Kirkus writes in an admiring review, “Budding makers with dreams of their own will take heart from the pink-eared engineer’s declaration that ‘even for the tiniest of creatures, nothing is impossible!’”

K uhlmann spoke with Kirkus via Zoom from his home in Hamburg. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I love that even brand-new copies of Earhart appear worn. You’ve drawn little scuffs and marks on the cover that suggest the book has been read again and again. What were you hoping to convey with these details?

It started with the first book, Lindbergh. I had the idea to give the book the appearance of being rediscovered, a found old story, not a new book. I wanted to give it the appearance of a lost treasure, a book you might find in the deepest corner of an old bookstore. From there, I continued with the trend.

Earhart is the first of your Mouse Adventures I’ve had the pleasure to read, but it will not be the last. Oh, that’s nice to hear. When you look at the previous Mouse Adventures, you’ll understand the many little references in Earhart to the previous adventures.

I had that feeling, without knowing for sure, that there were many—we call them “easter eggs” here. Do you use that term in the same way?

The German, ostereier, is not used [in that sense]. But we know them, in English, as easter eggs. The idea is to have each book be accessible to new readers, so anyone can follow the story. Each adventure is its own separate story, but every book has little hints from previous adventures—Earhart, especially, because it’s not only the fifth book, but also a celebration of the whole series for the 10th anniversary. I had a lot of fun putting all the little references in there.

Happy anniversary! I understand the series has now been translated into more than 30 languages. I’m astonished that it happened. I never imagined my first book, Lind­

bergh, would pick up any steam, because I wrote it for myself, illustrated it for myself. It was [necessary to receive] my diploma, my last project at university, to allow me to complete my studies as an illustrator. Then, suddenly, there was interest from publishers—especially NorthSouth Books—and it was published, and I received enormous positive feedback. I was overwhelmed. Then came early messages about translations, editions all over the world. It still amazes me.

Other Mouse Adventures journeyed to the moon, to the bottom of the sea, and back in time. Earhart marks a return to the skies. What is it about flight that captures your imagination?

It’s a question I get asked very often, and I’ll say that it’s not flight itself. It’s the engineering and the craftsmanship of the early pioneers of aviation. I can remember trying to be a flight pioneer myself, because one of my dreams as a child was to collect scraps and build my own airplane in the backyard. I tried my best. It looked…interesting…but obviously it was unable to fly. But, you see, I had this passion for invention and for building things. Later, I was able to translate that passion and put it into the hands of my little mouse.

Can you recall when you first learned the story of Amelia Earhart?

[I’ve long been] aware of her and her contributions to aviation history, of course, since I’m an avid fan of aviation history, especially the early times: circling the world, crossing the Atlantic, just being able to fly in the first place. I’ve always

remembered Amelia Earhart as one of the important names in this early period— the highest flight, circling the world, being the first woman—but I didn’t have a clear picture of her personal life. That was something I discovered during research for this book, and it was eyeopening. She seems like a very modern human being. It

was amazing to read about her and the details of her struggle to find recognition in the world of aviation, which was dominated by men. It was inspiring, and it encouraged me to pay extra attention to detail in making her portrait.

When it comes to visual storytelling, how do you

One of my dreams as a child was to collect scraps and build my own airplane in the backyard.

Earhart: The Incredible Flight of a Field Mouse Around the World

Trans.

Kuhlmann, Torben

by David Henry Wilson

NorthSouth Books | 128 pp. | $21.95 May 13, 2025 | 9780735845794

perceive the role of pictures in this book?

Over the years, I’ve tried to figure out a formula for giving each medium its preferred role. In text, I can build a character up with words. I can describe an atmosphere, for example— noises, things like that—and create tension. Whenever something is told in text, I can focus on that, though I might use little illustrations to emphasize something.

Then there are parts where I allow the illustration to tell the story. I can use a double-spread illustration, without any words, that picks up where I left off in the text. That invites my readers to discover for themselves something about the plot, the setting, or little details.

I think of picture books as a visual medium that’s not so different from film. You need dialogue, “camera movement” (changing perspectives), atmosphere, the suggestion of music or of a soundtrack. So many different things contribute to storytelling in cinema. I try to do the same in picture books.

What is your hope for readers?

My humble wish would be for enjoyment. First, enjoyment from the story, from looking at the illustrations, and from being able to lose yourself in this world of flying mice. Second, I would really like to inspire. Not only through the story, but also through the illustrations. For example, some children might see, Oh, it’s really painted with a brush. And there are little lines from a pencil. Maybe I can encourage someone to try something like that themselves. That would be a wonderful thing to achieve.

The Blossoming Summer

Johnson, Anna Rose | Holiday House (288 pp.)

$17.99 | July 29, 2025 | 9780823458530

During World War II, a 13-year-old girl who always tries to keep the peace within her family discovers her Indigenous cultural roots and long-suppressed family secrets.

Rosemary and her two younger brothers have been scattered across England for the past three years while their parents have sought stable employment. Rosemary has lived in London with critical Aunt Katie and Uncle John, who have little good to say about Rosemary’s American father. Given the imminent threat of Germany’s Luftwaffe bombing campaign, Dad, who’s a veteran of the Great War, decides to reunite the family. They’ll sail for America to stay with his estranged mother in Wisconsin. Grandmother Charlotte, whose mother was “a full-blooded Ojibwe woman” and father was from Scotland, introduces the children to Anishinaabemowin vocabulary and Ojibwe ways. Her grandmother proposes a private bargain to Rosemary: If she helps with her garden so s he can win at the county fair, she’ll lease Dad some land to build a home where the family can remain together, as Rosemary has long dreamed. The well-drawn rustic Wisconsin wilderness setting is enriched by the introduction of Anishinaabemowin terms for local flora, supplemented by a glossary. Johnson’s novel sensitively unpacks the generational trauma of injustices and discrimination against

Native peoples both in the U.S. and abroad. Rosemary and her father’s side of the family are, like the author, of Indigenous and European descent. An uplifting and heartwarming novel that celebrates family and heritage. (map, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 9-14)

How To Teach Your Monster To Read

Jones, Christianne | Illus. by Katya Longhi Capstone Editions (32 pp.) | $18.99

August 1, 2025 | 9781684363209

Series: How To Teach Your Monster

Learning to read is hard work— for kids and monsters alike. A monster with a scruffy orange body, purple ears and tail, and short rounded horns disappears after a tough reading lesson. “It’s kind of my fault,” reflects the story’s narrator, a tan-skinned child with curly brown hair. “I got carried away. I was acting like a teacher the other day.” It’s an insightful remark, but after a promising start, the book goes downhill as the youngster proceeds on a truly didactic search for the monster. “Word families look and sound the same at the end. Let’s use this knowledge to find my best friend.” Charts of word families appear with relentless frequency, competing with both the rhyming text and words that appear in the accompanying cartoon illustrations (for instance, a welcome mat or a button with the phrase “Reading for the win!”). Kids learning to sound out words will enjoy predicting the text; after the protagonist observes, “As I

An uplifting and heartwarming novel that celebrates family and heritage.

sit sipping from my favorite MUG, / I’m gently pulled into a giant…,” youngsters will eagerly shout out “HUG!” But on the whole, the attempt to blend a literacy tutorial with an exploration of how to be a good friend may prove overwhelming for the intended audience of pre-readers.

A solid effort hampered by information overload. (author’s notes, activities) (Picture book. 4-6)

Our Air

Karas, G. Brian | Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) $18.99 | October 21, 2025 | 9780593625514

A very simple introduction to what air is and does. Addressing both readers and the book’s cast of racially and culturally diverse youngsters, the gaseous narrator begins by distinguishing itself from the things it c arries: “You can’t smell me. (That’s not me you smell!)” Likewise, though we can’t hear air, we can feel the moisture it contains. Its particles can “change the color of the sky— and sometimes make your nose itch.” Air helps to shield the planet from harmful rays and other hazards, rivers of it circle the Earth, and its energy can be harnessed. Air has changed over time and is still changing. Most importantly, because air connects every living thing (“Everyone is sharing me with everyone else”), it’s vital to care for it. The chain of logic is unassailable. Karas deftly adds informational content visually with (among other things) a world map of labeled jet streams and prevailing winds, as well as a gallery of airborne particulates such as soot, seeds, and spores. He goes on to fill in more detail about air’s dynamic relationship with our planet and biosphere in a short afterword. Light, refreshing, and clear. (Informational picture book. 6-8)

An excellent encapsulation of the adage that there are no small parts.

THE MUTTCRACKER

Outside In and the Inside Out: A Story About Arnold Lobel

Kastner, Emmy | Viking (40 pp.) | $18.99 September 23, 2025 | 9780593692509

An ambitious encapsulation of the life of children’s book author Arnold Lobel. “This story begins with a boy and a pair of wet socks.” Those socks, damp because their wearer was playing in the snow, resulted in a cold and then an ear infection that led to young Arnold missing a year of school. He drew during that time, honing a talent that didn’t always impress the other children. A bit of an outsider, “Arnold enjoyed being a quiet observer” and relied on that ability throughout his life. Opting to incorporate elements of Lobel’s books into the story visually rather than textually, Kastner makes sly allusions to her subject’s oeuvre throughout her biography; she renders Arnold’s time in the business world, for instance, in the colors of Lobel’s The Great Blueness and Other Predicaments (1968). Kastner handles the unenviable task of attempting to explain the d issolution of Lobel’s marriage with mixed success; in a somewhat vague moment, Lobel tells his family that “there [is] more love for him to find,” and an accompanying illustration shows him fishing with partner Howard Wiener. While the book doesn’t rise to the succinct brilliance of Jerrold Connor’s JIM! (2025)—a biography of Lobel’s friend Jim Marshall—it nonetheless places the creator’s works within the context of

his life with admirable skill. Backmatter includes a three-page author’s note, a l ist of sources, and an impressive bibliography of Lobel’s works. A deeply loving paean to a deeply loved book creator. (Picture-book biography. 4-7)

Kirkus Star

CeeCee: Underground Railroad Cinderella

Keller, Shana | Illus. by Laura Freeman Charlesbridge (32 pp.) | $18.99 August 12, 2025 | 9781623543891

A familiar fairy tale is given a historical spin. An enslaved Black girl dubbed CeeCee (her real name is a “secret…kept close to her heart”) toils endlessly for the Townsends, a cruel white family who own a plantation in Maryland. She’s prohibited from reading, but as she overhears the stories the children are learning to read, she’s inspired, and she begins to yearn for more. She faces an uphill battle; whenever Mrs. Townsend notices CeeCee so much as glancing at the pages of a book, she locks the girl in the mouse-infested attic. But her hopes are sustained by Binty, the cook, who plays the role of fairy godmother in this grounded retelling of “Cinderella.” As CeeCee falls asleep one night, Binty’s tales of Moses, a savior whom enslaved people follow to freedom, blend with her fantasies of Cinderella’s prince (portrayed as a Black man wearing a crown and kente cloth), and she awakens determined to escape to the North. Brimming with warmth, Freeman’s full-color digital illustrations depict the freckle-faced

young protagonist’s melancholy in heartbreaking detail, while her vivid use of pattern and textures gives the visuals an almost three-dimensional, utterly immersive feel. Layering together references to the beloved fairy tale, Christian theology, and history, Keller celebrates the power of stories while paying tribute to the courage of all those who endured chattel enslavement. Rewarding, potent, and wholly original. (source note; information on Harriet Tubman, names during slavery, and fairy tales) (Picture book. 5–8)

The Muttcracker

Kemp, Anna | Illus. by Sara Ogilvie Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) | $19.99 September 9, 2025 | 9781665981033

Will Biff get the part he really wants? Biff isn’t like the other canines. Don’t expect him to fetch and roll over. He’d prefer to don his leg warmers, head to ballet class with his human, and plie to his heart’s content. When the class learns that they’ll perform The Nutcracker, Biff sets his sights on playing the Sugar Plum Fairy. He wants that sparkling tiara and the dazzling tutu. Sadly, he and his human are cast as bonbons. Biff mopes for days. Even watching dancing on TV doesn’t cheer him up. His human tries to practice alone, but it isn’t nearly as much fun. But at last Biff rallies, and they practice and perfect the dance of the bonbons. On opening night, the Sugar Plum Fairy is sick (too many sugar plums, it seems), so Miss Polly asks Biff to step in. His little human urges him to take his dream part, but Biff shakes his head; he and his human are the best bonbons in the box. Both a sweet friendship tale and an excellent encapsulation of the adage that there are no small parts, Kemp’s addition to the Nutcracker canon is, like Biff, wholly original. Ogilvie’s light, airy illustrations are a strong match for the text, bringing the story to life with grace and a bit of silliness. Biff’s human is pale-skinned; the cast is diverse.

This doggy dancer will warm hearts (and incite a few giggles). (Picture book. 4-8)

Kingdom of Water

Kim, Amy | Graphix/Scholastic (240 pp.) | $24.99

August 5, 2025 | 9781338115185

Series: The Rema Chronicles, 2

Following the events of Realm of the Blue Mist (2022), Tabby confronts family secrets. While trapped on Rema, lightskinned, blackhaired Tabby has a dream that directs her to seek out Cenri Helvir. Her ghostly guide delivers a history book to her that explains the fall of the royal family of Cerey; the heir to the throne, Prince Cenri, was a superpowered geist. (Exposition through books allows large amounts of information to be conveyed quickly, before the main plot resumes.) But first, Tabby must attend the Flood Festival, which kicks off with an opening ceremony involving an induced sleep in which pairs of people share dreams. For Tabby, who has a crush on pale, blue-haired Phillip, this has swoony implications (their romance is mild, consisting mostly of gazes and blushes). A geist attack against Priestess Hiida at the ceremony sends Tabby on a desperate, time-sensitive mission. In the process, she uncovers more information about Cerey’s royal family—and her own. Tabby barely has time to reckon with these revelations before she experiences more betrayals and a climactic fight. The denouement sets Tabby on a new path, one with dangerous stakes should she fail. Kim’s stylish, full-color mangastyle art provides fluid action and gives the fictional world depth. The color palette goes beyond decorative to skillfully assist with the storytelling. The supporting cast is fantasy diverse. Strong aesthetics and a fast plot will carry readers over to the next installment. (Graphic fantasy. 9-15)

Days of Awe

Kimmel, Eric A. | Illus. by Sarah Green Holiday House (40 pp.) | $18.99

August 19, 2025 | 9780823456550

An updated version of Kimmel’s collection of retold stories that illuminate the themes of the Jewish new year.

A lengthy foreword strikes a poignant note for readers familiar with the traditions of the Days of Awe (also known as the High Holidays) and provides a helpful introduction to those who are not. In the first story, a passing soldier entrusts an impoverished glovemaker’s wife with the care of a tarnished samovar. As she does a myriad of charitable deeds, her family is blessed with good fortune, and the samovar acquires a new shine. In the second tale, an uneducated shepherd, admonished by a stern rabbi for his enthusiastic but unorthodox method of praising God, stops praying until he learns that one should always worship from the heart. In the final story, a learned rabbi unthinkingly makes a cruel remark about a beggar; ashamed, he throws himself at the beggar’s feet until the rabbi’s daughter shows them both the power of forgiveness. Kimmel’s dynamic storytelling is once more on full display in these retellings of classic Jewish tales. Green’s sunny illustrations lighten the book and provide the original 1991 edition with a refreshing facelift. Bright backgrounds set a vibrant tone and serve to color-code each story. Many Jewish customs are depicted, such as the wearing of head coverings and tallit, and the characters vary in skin tone.

A reissue with a fresh look and powerful messaging. (introduction, note on sources, author’s note) (Anthology. 7-10)

Sugar Shack

Knisley, Lucy | Random House Graphic (240 pp.) | $21.99 | August 5, 2025

9780593125502 | Series: Peapod Farm, 3

Winter brings a sense of family to Peapod Farm. This third and final installment of the graphic novel series begins with Jen immersed in farm chores, hauling firewood, and caring for chickens in the winter snow. Since stepsister Andy is taking classes for her bat mitzvah in town, Jen’s mom suggests she find a weekend activity, too, like 4-H. Her participation leads to a meltdown when an older boy tells Jen’s younger stepsister, Reese, that the adorable bunny she’s cuddling will soon be eaten. Jen comes to her sister’s defense, which prompts Andy to remind Jen that “she’s MY sister, really,” leaving Jen feeling dejected. Knisley depicts the growing pains of a blended family learning to care for each other as they move through a rural winter with emotional insight. Jen figures out how to enjoy a school dance on her own terms and learns about the fun of making maple syrup. She even begins to envision a future that includes her beloved drawing. Jen and her Christian and Jewish family appear white, and there’s racial diversity in background characters. Wordless full-page spreads effectively convey action and emotion, and the ending gently connects fictional Jen to the author. Understated and full of heart. (FAQ, maple snow candy recipe) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

A reissue with a fresh look and powerful messaging.

DAYS OF AWE

Promises hours of creative, interactive diversion.

630 MAPLE STREET

630 Maple Street: Explore Our Building Through the Year

Kulesza, Marta | Trans. by Polly Lawson

Floris (28 pp.) | $18.99 | October 14, 2025

9781782509295

So many reasons to visit this address.

Translated from Polish, Kulesza’s tale satisfies the universal seeka nd-find desire, the human curiosity to know what goes on behind closed doors and in other people’s lives, as well as the creative pleasure of constructing narratives that piece together the connections among characters. An opening spread introduces readers to four suburban families who live in an apartment building at 630 Maple Street: a bookstore-owning couple named Olga and Elena, veterinarians Ava and Lee, grandparents Maria and Walter, and Olivia (a writer) and Lee (a chef). All the couples have kids—seven in total—and Ava’s pregnant with another. The cast expands further with another grandmother, a best friend, the building manager, a produce-delivering farmer and his child, two dogs, three cats, a recovering pigeon, and a bee who lives in the garden. Readers are invited to search for Steve the spider, two birds, a mouse, and a mole, then to peek wordlessly into the lives of everyone. Scenes are set both indoors (with dollhouselike cutaways) and outdoors, during every month for the next year. What are they doing? (Not watching screens; there are none.) Who’s visiting whom? What changes are taking place? Readers can simply spot the people and pets they know, focus on the setting, or tell a story or

stories. Teal touches enliven the subdued colors in the simple, elegantly constructed cartoon illustrations. Isaac is brown-skinned; most of the other characters are pale-skinned. Promises hours of creative, interactive diversion. (Picture book. 3-7)

In the Autumn Forest

Kulot, Daniela | Charlesbridge (32 pp.)

$17.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781623546199

Fox, Mouse, Crow, and Squirrel brave a sudden tempest. Translated from German, Kulot’s simple fable begins with four animal friends gathering to bid farewell to summer, embrace fall, and lament the unforgiving winter to come. Squirrel, ever the champion of autumnal glory, blithely ignores the threatening clouds looming. The others find shelter, but Squirrel is caught in the whirlwind storm. Luckily, all the creatures survive, even if they’re a bit tousled and ruffled. Squirrel’s companions giggle as they extricate his head from an apple that got stuck to it amid the winds. But in the aftermath of the storm, steam rises, the sun shines, and the friends discover that the ground is littered with fruits, nuts, and seeds, the bounty of fall. The tale ends with Fox expressing the story’s moral: While storms may take us by surprise, there are blessings to be found when the weather clears. Kulot’s woodcut-esque digital illustrations are the star of the book. Everchanging facial expressions bring the four woodland creatures to life. The leaves in bright autumnal colors twirl on branches and float and fly through the air, while the clouds roil menacingly. The art and text work in tandem to evoke both a

beautiful fall day in the forest and the power of a squall that makes trees bend and branches creak.

A boldly illustrated tale with a welldelivered takeaway. (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Star

Fall Is for Beginnings

LaRocca, Rajani | Illus. by Abhi Alwar Abrams (40 pp.) | $19.99 August 5, 2025 | 9781419777400

The protagonist of Summer Is for Cousins! (2023) encounters further ups and downs as school starts.

Ravi loves autumn and the fresh beginning it represents. This year, the students will be making paper trees; every time they do something new, they’ll adorn their tree with a leaf. Ravi’s classroom is in an unfamiliar part of the school, and the young protagonist tries out new instruments in music class—all reasons to add leaves. When new girl Ellie offers Ravi and BFF Joe a bite of her beet salad at lunch, it’s another opportunity for a leaf, but Ravi’s not so sure. The well-meaning but overbearing Ellie comes on strong (“I told you we’d be best friends!”), and Ravi’s resistant. It all comes to a head on costume day. Ellie shows up dressed as sprinkles—to complement Ravi’s and Joe’s ice cream and cone getups—and Ravi explodes in anger. But Ravi’s big sister Anita, who knows what it’s like to deal with an initially unwelcome interloper, offers some wise words, and Ravi eventually mends fences with Ellie. LaRocca’s story is well paced and realistic, eschewing drawn-out conversations for actions that speak far louder; t his happy ending is well earned. Alwar’s scribbly illustrations brim with chaotic, humorous details that add a perfectly calibrated lightness to the earnest text. Ravi is of South Asian descent, Joe is pale-skinned, and Ellie is brown-skinned.

An emotionally honest and lovingly rendered take on the highs and lows of friendship. (Picture book. 3-8)

Limelight: Curtain Up on Poetry Comics!

LaTulippe, Renée M. | Illus. by Chuck Gonzales | Charlesbridge Moves (144 pp.)

$18.99 | October 28, 2025 | 9781623541422

Poems on thespian themes, presented both straight up and in comics format.

Instructional purpose plays a strong second fiddle to artistic expression in this book. LaTulippe opens with 23 verses embedded into expressive scenes of theatrical production, from first auditions and rehearsals to curtain calls. She then repeats the same poems on plain backgrounds before closing with analytical notes on each one’s mostly varying poetic forms and rhyme schemes, followed by a glossary of theater terms. The author even color-codes each of the six “Acts,” or sections, to differentiate them and adds a bit of history with visual references to period scenery and costumes.

Writing with an easy fluidity in a variety of forms, from pantoum to roundel, tercets to couplets, she lets the anthropomorphized theater building, stage, piano, and costumes present their own experiences while capturing the potential of theater to engage actors and audiences emotionally:

“Costume ripped / can’t find a pin. / Makeup’s dripping / down my chin. / Who took my wig? / Is that my prop? / What if we’re / a giant flop?” In Gonzales’ equally fluid art, a multiracial cast and crew work hard together, f rom sign-ups to final bows.

A sparkling show, stuffed with theatrical tributes. (Graphic poetry. 10-13)

Kirkus Star

Almost True

Lispector, Clarice | Illus. by Carla Irusta

Trans. by Benjamin Moser | New York Review Books (48 pp.) | $19.95

April 8, 2025 | 9781681378978

A delightful study in dog logic from a deceased Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer known for her adult novels and short stories.

First published posthumously in 1978, Lispector’s spellbinding work, translated and newly illustrated, begins with possibly the greatest opening ever: “Once upon a time… Once upon a time: Me!” “Me,” it turns out, is a personable pooch named Ulisses, whose tale meanders, mimicking the storytelling style of many young children. Good stories are about the journey, not the destination, and this one is no exception. Ulisses introduces readers to a series of characters, pausing to explain the origins of their names: the rooster Evidio (“The ‘E’ came from egg, the ‘vidio’ was just because he felt like it”), the hen Edissea (“The ‘E’ was because of egg and the ‘dissea’ was just because she felt like it”), the baker Eniria (“The ‘E’ in egg and the ‘niria’ because that’s how she wanted it”), and an evil witch named Exelia (“The ‘E,’ etc. etc., you already know all about that”) who devises a sinister plot to get all the hens to lay eggs all night long. Ulisses’ sudden turns will have readers giggling while they attempt to guess what could happen next. Irusta’s artwork is bold, smartly

and in comics format.

making use of the pages’ white spaces while spotlighting key moments. The font, reminiscent of a typewriter, is a hat tip to the book’s original era.

Ridiculous, of course, but in all the best ways possible. (Fiction. 6-8)

Bats!: Mysterious and Misunderstood Mammals

Lukidis, Lydia | Capstone Young Readers (32 pp.) | $31.32 | PLB August 1, 2025 | 9798875216817

An introduction to the bat clan, from the 16-inch flying foxes to the one-inch Kitti’s hog-nosed bat. Lukidis’ methodical descriptions of bat anatomy, behavior, select species, diets, and habitats adequately fill in the informational background, but the high-quality stock photos will likely prove the stronger draw here—even with the distinctly underwhelming close-up of a vampire bat lapping away at a nicked but antiseptically clean chicken toe. Featuring shots of the animals resting in natural settings and head-on views of them in flight, the pictures allow close examinations of creepy faces beneath huge ears and add plenty of visual impact to the overall message that these creatures merit study as both significant checks on insect populations and as indicator species that provide early signs of environmental changes. The author tucks in instructions for a homemade demonstration of echolocation, provides worrisome observations about habitat loss and the devastating effects of the fungal disease c alled white-nose syndrome, and concludes with ways of making a more bat-friendly backyard and a list of online and print resources. A visually arresting addition to the shelf of bat books. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 7-9)

A bevy of fashionable beasts show off their footwear.

WHAT KIND OF SHOES DOES A HIPPOPOTAMUS CHOOSE?

What Kind of Shoes Does a Hippopotamus Choose?

Maconie, Kat | Illus. by

Sebastien Braun

Flamingo Books (32 pp.) | $18.99

August 5, 2025 | 9780593692776

A bevy of fashionable beasts show off their footwear.

Sporting chic looks and walking upright, the animals are introduced with brief, singsong verses describing the shoes they most enjoy wearing. The gators sport waders—a logical choice, given their propensity for “splishing and splashing around”—while the crocs prefer stilettos, the elegant cats mince about in ballet flats, the practical elephants switch between espadrilles and sneakers, and the centipedes rock “sandals galore!”

Some of the shoes might be unfamiliar to young readers, like the donkeys’ punny choice of mules (Maconie helpfully supplies a definition). The titular question is repeated often, and the purple hippo is periodically seen shopping and making undisclosed selections. At last, Hippo welcomes the other animals, in all their finery, into her home, where they gaze upon a huge, varied collection of shoes that Imelda Marcos would envy—this hippo can’t be limited to just one style. Braun’s bright, busy cartoons are rife with details for youngsters to pore over. The characters move about vibrant, bustling streets, passing varied shops with animal proprietors wearing their own favored shoes. Observant readers will notice a tiny, apparently shoeless mouse zipping about town on a minuscule bike, waving a cheese-shaped balloon. Entertaining, silly, and stylish fun. (Picture book. 4-7)

Totally Popular

Martin, Brigid | Harper/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $18.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781335471383

Both a dangerous poltergeist and the pitfalls of preconceived notions trouble a middle school spirit medium in this sequel to Totally Psychic (2023). Paloma Ferrer, who still misses life in Miami with Abuela and the rest of her extended family, is irritated to return from winter break to find herself sharing classes in Rancho Cucamonga, California, with Rafaela de La Cruz. Rafaela and her mom co-star in Ghostlight, a wildly popular TV series dedicated to promoting the absurd proposition that ghosts aren’t real. Paloma initially rebuffs her new classmate’s friendly advances, but scary visions of a malign child coupled with increasingly violent poltergeist episodes that are seemingly connected to Rafaela force her to change her tune. Being dedicated to using her powers for good, Paloma enlists both living and spectral allies in a search for a way to help—and discovers that she and Rafaela have much in common. By the end, the two, like the ghosts that throng Martin’s diverse cast, have become friends. In keeping with the tale’s benign tone, the focus is more on problem-solving than pain or terror. Younger or more suggestible ghost story fans will appreciate the fact that no one is actually injured, despite a fair amount of property damage, and that, following a brief climax, the angry spirit is quelled not by force but a reconciliation ritual. More feel-good friend-making, dished up with generous quantities of ectoplasm. (Fantasy. 9-13)

Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden

Matari, Jenan | Illus. by Aya Ghanameh

Crocodile/Interlink (32 pp.) | $19.95

August 12, 2025 | 9781623716110

A child forges a connection to a far-off homeland. Looking through an old photo album, the young protagonist gazes at an image of the family’s home in Palestine. Though the child has never been there, “I can taste its sweetness in my Jiddo’s rows of green.” Jiddo (Grandfather) grows sour plums, plump tomatoes, and crunchy cucumbers, as well as figs from a tree he raised—his favorite taste of home. Jiddo’s father taught him to grow food and care for the land—a tradition that goes back generations. Like many other Palestinian families, Jiddo and his loved ones were forced to leave their home. “Our land was taken from us,” he says. “Our family had to flee.” But Palestine stays rooted in his heart, and as the family tends to the garden, Jiddo nurses the dream that one day they’ll return. Expressed in simple, child-friendly prose, the story explores themes of belonging, forced displacement, and the deep connection that many Palestinians have to the land and to the food they grow on it. Ghanameh’s verdant illustrations feature expressive characters and traditional Palestinian symbols of hope and solidarity such as strawberries, watermelon, and keys. In an author’s note, Matari explains that her book was inspired by her own grandfather, who in 1948 was expelled during the Nakba and eventually relocated to Jordan. A poignant tale that voices the hopes and heartaches of many diasporic Palestinians. (glossary, author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)

Useful, basic information delivered in an upbeat, colorful package.

WRIGGLE AND BUZZ

Millie Magnus for Mayor

Mazique, Brittany | Illus. by Ebony Glenn Putnam (144 pp.) | $17.99 | September 2, 2025 9780593618806 | Series: Millie Magnus Chapter Books, 2

A youngster learns what it means to be a good leader. Millie Magnus Miller, a spirited third grader whose widowed mom is the mayor of Washington, D.C., burst assertively onto the scene last year; in her debut outing, she confronted a bully, learned impulse control, and dealt with authority issues. This installment finds her addressing new challenges. Overhearing part of a conversation between her mother and an architect with big plans for the city, Millie Magnus jumps to the conclusion that her beloved playground, which holds precious memories of her late father, will be demolished. Leaping into action, she spearheads an effort to save the playground, but her leadership skills need some fine-tuning. Her high-handed style alienates the other kids—including the Real Chill Pickles, a group of hip fourth graders. Sensibly, she consults her mom, a font of useful tips, but true to form, she also misunderstands them. Though her three besties and her mother’s assistant, Josephine, offer advice, Millie Magnus is moving too quickly to listen, but eventually, she slows down and unpacks deep-seated emotions about the playground and what it represents. Mazique offers another well-paced narrative, once more nailing Millie Magnus’ voice, difficulties, and feelings. Glenn’s perky, sure-handed line and grayscale cartoons bring to

life an appealingly self-confident character and an encouraging supporting cast. Millie Magnus, her mother, and Josephine present Black; other characters are diverse. A satisfying sequel whose lively protagonist continues to learn and grow. (Chapter book. 6-8)

Tales From Cabin 23: The Visitors

Méndez, Yamile Saied | Clarion/ HarperCollins (288 pp.) | $15.99 August 26, 2025 | 9780063298224 Series: Tales From Cabin 23, 3

Fearing expulsion from summer camp after a misdeed, Tommy races into the woods and meets the infamous witch of Cabin 23. A seasoned storyteller, the witch spins a macabre tale about Gen Farías, a 12-year-old Argentinian boy whose beloved older brother, Lorenzo, confesses to killing a boy on Halloween night. Gen is wracked by guilt and grief: Why didn’t he tell his parents Lorenzo was sneaking out? Then a horned shadow begins appearing outside his bedroom window every night. Hoping to escape the stigma of Lorenzo’s crime following his sentencing, Gen and his parents relocate to Los Astros, an idyllic mountain town in Las Sierras de Córdoba. The shadow follows Gen, but he makes two new friends, Elena and Caíto, Indigenous youngsters who tell him about a deal struck between the River God and their people, the Hêina, that’s gone awry over the years. Since then, a child has been taken each year.

As the friends race to uncover the distorted history of their town, Gen learns to make peace with the secrets and shadows plaguing him and his family. The third entry in this bewitching multi-author anthology series maintains the chills and thrills of its predecessors, expertly exploring how familial wounds can fester if left unspoken. Sympathetic characters and intriguing plot twists make for memorable reading.

Spookily good. (Horror. 8-12)

Wriggle and Buzz: My First Book of Bugs

Mole, Simon | Illus. by Adam Ming Candlewick (80 pp.) | $19.99

August 26, 2025 | 9781536238877

L oosely organized in four sections, this compendium features poetic narration, often by the creepycrawlies themselves, along w ith facts and suggestions for observing and fostering habitats.

The first three sections introduce specific critters, from millipedes and monarch butterflies to bombardier beetles and bumblebees, some 25 species in all. (Mole uses the unscientific, catch-all term bug without explanation, though in the final section he makes distinctions between insects and other species, such as gastropods and arachnids.) The author occasionally highlights specific habitats such as ponds and includes information, especially in the concluding section, on the important roles these creatures play in regulating our planet’s web of life, from decomposing rotting matter to feeding on garden pests. From a zoological class containing millions of species, Mole plucks plenty of wow-factor snippets to entertain young children. A cockroach’s strong exoskeleton can withstand 900 times its own weight—the equivalent of a 7-year-old being able to hoist two blue whales! New Zealand glow-worms lure their unsuspecting prey with luminescent snot. Leafcutter ants don’t eat their harvest; they feed it to a tasty fungus,

which the ants feed on in turn. Stylistically, Mole’s unconcerned with poetic scansion, instead favoring occasional rhyme and apt metaphor. In “Grasshoppers,” the “field fizzes with chirps and clicks.” Ming’s pictures strike a nice balance between veracity and bright, stylized appeal.

Useful, basic information delivered in an upbeat, colorful package. (Informational picture book/poetry. 3-8)

The Bizarre Bazaar: Mirror Town

Nayeri, Daniel | Illus. by Elizabeth Enright Colors. by Luke Healy | Little, Brown Ink

(144 pp.) | $24.99 | July 8, 2025 | 9780759556423

Series: The Bizarre Bazaar, 1

The employees of the Bizarre Bazaar hawk unusual artifacts for the morbidly curious—and tell stories warning would-be customers about the perils of their wares.

As she gently bickers with fellow worker Bruno, Babs launches into a tale about a newly acquired mirror. It all begins with Abel Azari, an unpopular, artistic boy who lives in a trailer park just outside Walnut Bend, Texas. Overlooked by friends, crush Ginny Mendoza, and even his busy, overworked mother, Abel stumbles upon the Bizarre Bazaar one day and finds a charm bracelet that’s perfect for Ginny. It’s out of his price range, but Babs is willing to take a trade. Back home, Abel rummages through his absent father’s old t hings for possibilities but comes up empty; after he does manual labor for his grumpy neighbor, she lets him take a mirror as payment. Before he can swap his new find for the bracelet, he falls into the mirror and enters a seemingly perfect world where his parents are together and everyone, including Ginny, adores him. But Abel quickly realizes that something isn’t right. In this start to a new graphic novel series, Nayeri’s cleverly structured narrative, paired with Enright’s bright, retro-style cartoons, sets a tone that’s by

turns cavalier and chilling, delighting in mortal foibles and offering unexpected revelations. Brown-skinned Abel’s surname suggests that he’s of Iranian descent, Ginny is Latine, and the supporting cast is diverse. Creepy fun. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story

Nayeri, Daniel | Levine Querido (192 pp.) $18.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9781646145669

Master storyteller Nayeri crafts a gripping World War II tale set in Iran. When 13-yearold Babak and 8-year-old Sana are orphaned after their father is killed during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of their country, family members take them in, but the kids are sent to different households. So Babak decides to flee, taking on his father’s role as teacher to nomadic tribes. Strapping a blackboard to his back, he leads Sana into the treacherous Zagros Mountains to find the Bakhtiari people during their annual migration—and the dangers only deepen when they come across a Jewish boy attempting to dodge a Nazi spy. Nayeri tells a remarkably intimate story of a neutral nation caught between warring powers, seamlessly integrating philosophical questions about God, family, and cross-cultural understanding and suggesting that truly listening to those different from us can be a sacred and transformative act. The novel’s richly drawn characters and evocative setting provide enough context about World War II and Iranian history without overwhelming young readers, while Babak’s growth from insecure orphan to a confident mediator who bridges cultural divides sends a potent message about how “everybody has good work to do”—even children displaced by war. A compelling testament to the power of education and empathy to light the way

in even the most perilous circumstances. (map, author’s note, further reading) (Historical fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Star

Displaced

Ochieng, Patrick | Carolrhoda (224 pp.) $18.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9798765648698

In a suburb of the Kenyan city of Eldoret, 14-year-old Kimathi escapes the men with machetes who killed his father during the post-election violence of 2007-2008. Kim flees with his mother and younger sister, Ngina, to a neighbor’s house, where they hide until it’s safe enough to reach the police station. The novel focuses on the first eight months of Kim and his family’s adjustment to life in a camp for internally displaced people. He attends a local school and befriends twins Sam and Chebi, who, like many kids in the camp, are being raised by a widowed mother. Doctor Tabitha at the camp’s NGO clinic helps the young people deal with the horrors they’ve witnessed, and Kim welcomes this support; his recurring nightmares are painful. The doctor listens while he talks about his former life and present situation: Kenyans from various tribes are crowded together in makeshift housing, and the adults hold on to their bigotry and mistrust. But Kim and his friends overcome these divisions, finding refuge in each other as well as in kind Raju, a man who’s the only Asian camp resident and who shares his books, allowing them moments of escape. Ochieng sheds light on the impact of PTSD, grief, and bigotry through this story conveyed in the compelling voice of a teenage boy. Kim’s courage will speak to readers, and the exploration of the importance of maintaining continuity and pursuing education will resonate.

Outstanding. (author’s note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Star

Dream

O’Connor, Barbara | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) | $17.99

August 26, 2025 | 9780374392949

Idalee Lovett’s summer is full of friendship and a dream of country music fame.

O’Connor revisits the Blue Ridge Mountains town of Colby, North Carolina (the setting of 2016’s Wish), where 11-year-old first-person narrator Idalee aspires to become her mother’s songwriter. Lovey Lovett and the Junkyard Dogs sing covers of popular songs, but Idalee, who comes from generations of country musicians, believes her original compositions can help her mother rise to stardom. She longs to win an upcoming songwriting contest for young people, but she doesn’t believe that any of the many songs she’s already written and strummed on her old, broken guitar have what it takes. She needs the blue guitar she saw in an Asheville music store. Idalee enlists friends Odell, Charlie, and Howard to help her find a treasure rumored to be hidden by her grandfather somewhere in her big, dilapidated family home, which has been turned into a rooming house. The pleasures of summertime independence and relaxed parenting and the absence of electronic screens and distractions give this work a timeless feel. Idalee’s songs focus on the funny and familiar. The lyrics of her new composition, “Dream,” are sweetly evocative: “Some folks dream of castles and dresses made of silk. / I dream of a cabin in the pines,

cornbread, and buttermilk.” O’Connor’s affection for small towns, s lightly eccentric people, and low-key humor shines through, her surehanded narrative and appealing c haracters reliably engaging, as always. Most characters read white. Warm-hearted and wonderfully likable. (Fiction. 9-12)

The Space Cat

Okorafor, Nnedi | Illus. by Tana Ford

First Second (176 pp.) | $22.99

$14.99 paper | August 12, 2025

9781250817471 | 9781250817488 paper

A funky feline explores new landscapes.

The Space Cat, an Oriental shorthair known to his humans as Periwinkle, has an imagination as expansive as the universe. Lovingly tended to during the day, Periwinkle slinks off to his luxurious Space Cat lair at night and, from there, zooms away into the boundless night sky in a small orblike spaceship. But things are about to change; Periwinkle’s family has decided to spend a year in Nigeria—where they’re originally from—so his human mom can work on her book. For the intrepid explorer, Nigeria is as alien a landscape as the outer bounds of the u niverse, not least because the humans there have a strong distaste for cats, and the other cats that live there are hardened by that harsh reality. But ultimately, Periwinkle puzzles out his place in Nigeria’s feline society and enjoys a disasteraverting adventure, with help from

A vibrant blend of contemporary coming of age with mythological adventure.

ISLAND

FORGOTTEN GODS

the curious cast of animals who slink around the local marketplace. Okorafor’s storytelling is intuitively episodic, blurring the realities of everyday pet life with gleeful fantasy. Ford’s sci-fi comic illustrations, rich with cosmic blues, purples, and oranges, bring a dynamic energy to this eccentric escapade. Periwinkle’s particular syntax (“When I come here, I reminded all things possible,” “Yes, I winning!”) may distract or amuse, depending on the reader. A glowing, flowing, and uniquely imaginative cat story. (photos of the Okorafor family and their cats) (Graphic fantasy. 8-13)

Imogen: The Life and Work of Imogen Cunningham

Partridge, Elizabeth | Illus. by Yuko Shimizu Viking (40 pp.) | $18.99 | August 26, 2025 9781984835185

Award-winning author Partridge presents a cradleto-grave biography of her g randmother, the iconic photog rapher Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976).

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Imogen strove to capture the e ssence of the nearby woods through her drawings and paintings. With her father’s encouragement (“He paid 35 cents for a paint set”), she persisted until she discovered photography. She ordered a camera and taught herself to use it, eventually building a darkroom with her father’s help. In photography, she found a way to express “all the feelings she carried deep inside her.” Imogen photographed friends, opened a studio, experimented with double negatives, and went on to become world famous, inspiring young women “to follow their dreams and earn a living as well.” Caldecott Honor–w inning illustrator Shimizu’s sepia-toned spreads are an apt match for the subject matter, conveying the effervescent joy of making art and pairing well with Partridge’s plainly written text. Most

compelling is Partridge’s author’s note, where she offers more intimate details of growing up with Imogen. Readers will find insights on Imogen’s artistic sensibility, expressed in her own words (“I don’t hunt for things…I just wait till something strikes me”), and her evolution as a street and celebrity photographer.

A solidly told story about an accomplished artist’s beginnings. (archival photographs, end notes, timeline) (Picture-book biography. 4-8)

If Animals Loved Books

Paul, Ann Whitford | Illus. by David Walker Farrar, Straus and Giroux (32 pp.) | $18.99

August 26, 2025 | 9780374391935

Series: If Animals Kissed Good Night

The latest in Paul and Walker’s series sees a cuddly coterie of animals embracing the joy of reading. How would bats read their favorite stories? Why, hanging upside down of course. And how would a kitten show some appreciation for a beloved readaloud? By licking the pages: “yum-yummy story, purr-purr-purrpurrrrrrrrrrrrr.” In addition to showcasing adorable animals immersing themselves in literature, Paul and Walker highlight many places to read and acquire books, such as the library (staffed by a bespectacled mole) or a bookstore (with the books spread out on the branches of a tree). Beaver Kit snuggles up in a “stick-and-mud” nook, chewing a few of the pages, while several young badgers gather under a tree. The owls attend a monthly book club, and Dog holds a storytime as a passel of puppies gather around to listen. Paul’s singsongy text uses many identical rhymes (“Bunny would hug her book and hop-hop / in a book-happy dance, hip-hippity-hop”), but one stanza breaks the flow: “If animals loved books, / Fox Mama would read all Kit’s books, / but then he’d yelp, /

‘Read them again!’” Still, the tale brims with enthusiasm, and Walker’s soft, gentle colors match the rolypoly animals as they happily profess their love of reading. It all concludes with Fox Kit tucked up in bed, making this a lovely bedtime choice. A cozy ode for bibliophiles everywhere. (Picture book. 3-6)

The Zoo: The Inside Story

Payne, Jawnie | Illus. by Susan Deming

Neon Squid/Macmillan (64 pp.) | $17.99 August 26, 2025 | 9781684493784

Series: The Inside Story

A behind-thescenes zoo tour, with introductions to a variety of animals and the workers charged with keeping them fed, healthy, and happy.

A zoo employee herself with a viral following, Payne leads young visitors through a typical day at a generic zoological park, from an early planning meeting and a morning spent shoveling giraffe poop to a quick jaunt to the nursery (“one of the most popular places in the zoo”) and a night guard’s view of snoozing wildlife on a multiscreen display. In between, she offers glimpses of dozens of residents from aardvarks to sea turtles, which Deming depicts with reasonable fidelity, though many seem to smile or bear anthropomorphic expressions. Payne underscores the work that zoos do with rescued and rare animals. Readers may be surprised at the amount of training zoo animals receive; some are taught to station (or position) themselves a certain way to be X-rayed, to present paws for inspection, or to open their mouths at a hand gesture for dental exams. The racially and culturally diverse human cast includes groups of visitors but focuses mostly on workers and their tasks, from feeding and providing toys or other stimulation to tending the gift shop and running outreach programs.

A wide-ranging zoological overview. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 6-8)

Kirkus Star

The Island of Forgotten Gods

Piñeiro, Victor | Sourcebooks Young Readers (304 pp.) | $16.99

August 5, 2025 | 9781728230559

Cousins team up for a summer of discovery. Nico’s summer plans for a family trip from New York to Puerto Rico, where he was born, are upended when his parents decide to stay behind to “work things out”—it will be Trial Separation Number Two. Instead, Nico travels solo to stay with Abuela. He reunites with cousins Kira and Nessie, who are also spending the summer there without their parents. Still reeling from being wait-listed by LaGuardia, a prestigious arts high school, Nico hopes to redeem himself by winning a prize at a film festival with an entry that celebrates the magic of Puerto Rico and could earn him admission. But when the cousins spot a shadowy creature on the island, their project takes a supernatural turn. As they investigate the mysterious presence, they uncover connections to Taíno mythology, deeply buried family secrets, and some very real dangers. With richly detailed writing, heartfelt and comedic dialogue, and an honest spotlight on Puerto Rico’s real-life struggles (including the impact of natural disasters and economic woes), Piñeiro’s latest is a vibrant blend of contemporary coming of age with mythological adventure. Nico’s unforgettable summer is deeply rooted in love for family, storytelling, and the history of a place that is both magical and real.

An action-packed story of legacy, identity, and the enduring spirit of Puerto Rico. (map, author’s note, glossary) (Fantasy. 9-13)

Relatable Reads for Teens

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My Green Style

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My True Colours

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SERIES

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Books for Young Dino Lovers

Kon Tan

Tom Angleberger

By Cindy Jenson ­ Elliott; illus. by Theo Nicole Lorenz

LAURA ATKINS calls herself a magpie; on nature walks, she looks out for sea glass, rocks, and anything else that catches her fancy. The habit has served her well. She’s created art out of what she’s found; her experiences also helped inspire her picture book Bringing the Beach Home, illustrated by Evgenia Penman.

The story follows Rowan, a child of divorce who’s grown frustrated by the constant shuttling back and forth between Mom’s and Dad’s homes. So Dad proposes a trip to the seaside. Rowan initially finds the beach overwhelming but eventually takes to it, and when it’s time to leave, Rowan and Dad gather shells, pebbles, and sticks. Back at Dad’s place, the two make a wind chime that’s both a blissful reminder of the beach and a tangible example of the power of art.

The story has been years in the making. Between 2014 and 2016, Atkins went in search of a muse while working on her MFA—and found one in nature. “I gave myself permission to go to the beach almost once a week,” Atkins tells Kirkus via Zoom. She spent most of her time in

UNEARTHING CHILDHOOD TREASURES

For her latest picture book, Laura Atkins immersed herself in memories—and emerged with a true gem.

BY MAHNAZ DAR

Berkeley, California, where she now lives, and “ended up volunteering, doing habitat restoration at Muir Beach,” in Marin County.

“We were planting native plants and pulling nonnative plants,” she says. “We were helping to protect willow trees that, now, when I walk down the boardwalk, are just everywhere....The ecosystem has thrived.” So has Atkins’ writing. “I was really experiencing that sense of connection to nature and creativity.”

The seaside has long been a constant in Atkins’ life. Growing up in Massachusetts and California, she was f amiliar with beaches on both the East and West Coasts. “The East Coast beaches are warmer, with big waves. It was a little scary getting stuck in the waves,” she recalls. “I think the West Coast beaches are really where my heart is, and Muir Beach is where I did a lot of creative thinking.” But the inspiration for the seashore in her story was Tennessee Valley Beach, also in Marin County. “You have to hike to get there, about a mile and a half.… The act of walking and thinking helped with my flow.”

Atkins based Rowan’s father on her own dad. The character in the book resembles him physically, and the red van in the story is similar to one he had when she was young. “My dad was absolutely a nature adventure guy.…He was kind of like a big k id himself.” Atkins notes that he took the family on long trips through nature, including a monthlong trek through the Sierras when s he was still in diapers.

She remembers her father creating a wind chime out of objects collected at the beach—a memory that serves as the core of her narrative. “I thought it was magic that he could do that,” she says.

Rowan’s father differs from her own in a few key ways, however. “My dad probably wasn’t as tuned in as this dad. He liked to have fun, but emotionally, I’m not sure I felt quite as seen as I wanted Rowan to feel.”

Rowan’s father gives his child the space to explore but remains a steady presence throughout; when the waves crash onto Rowan’s pants, Dad is there with a fresh pair of shorts, and when the weather turns cold, he

Laura Atkins

gently covers Rowan in sand. “I think I was reparenting myself a little bit in creating the book,” Atkins says.

After her father’s death two years ago, Atkins began reshaping the narrative to honor him. “And that ended up shifting [the story more to] the beach,” she says, “and it brought in the [idea] of going from one parent’s house to another, which wasn’t originally there.”

Like Rowan’s mother and father, Atkins’ parents divorced when she was young, and she split her time between Boston and Berkeley. “I would spend a year with one parent and a year with the other. So I experienced, from a pretty young age, the pretty huge upheaval of having to say goodbye to a parent.”

She adds, “I ended up envisioning Rowan as more of a neurodiverse kid.” Atkins’ son is neurodiverse, too, and had strong sensory reactions to the beach, both positive and negative. Upon arriving, he was always filled with excitement, but by the end of the visit, he would be covered in sand—and filled with frustration. Rowan, on the other hand, starts off intimidated by the crashing waves and annoyed by the hot sand but concludes the trip on a happier note. “I kind of flipped that,” Atkins explains.

Atkins also intentionally avoided using pronouns for Rowan. She initially wrote her protagonist as female—because the story “was really inspired by me”—but that decision evolved over time. She has close family members who are genderqueer, and she wanted to write a story that was “subtly inclusive.” She hopes that all kids, regardless of their gender identity, will see themselves in her work. Ultimately, the focus is on Rowan’s artistic journey. “It’s not a book about gender or neurodiversity or even divorce. Divorce is in the book, but it’s not the central story.”

The book also offered the author the opportunity to reshape her own identity. As a writer and editor, she’s worked in creative fields for a long

time, but she hasn’t always thought of herself as a visual artist. “I was a kid who loved art. I loved writing. I loved all of it, but I was a rule-following kid who wanted to get it r ight. And somehow I got the message that I was not a good creative or visual artist; I was a word person. I put myself into that box.”

The Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 gave Atkins the freedom to break out of that box. “When we were all trapped in our own little worlds, I found a beach in Richmond [California], not far from where I am, t hat was covered in sea glass.” She gathered it and sorted it into basins by color. “My dad collected pebbles, and he had a rock polisher, so it’s definitely a family tradition.”

Atkins began creating suncatchers, ornaments made from glass and hung near windows to reflect sunlight. “I started taking old wine bottles and painting on them. I got

so excited, being out in the world and seeing stuff that would inspire me. I found a kid-size metal bed frame that was missing the legs, and I took it back and created a sculpture in my garden.”

The act of creation was empowering. She was able to “let go of that c ritical voice,” she says. “This book is in some ways my mission statement—not just for kids, but for all of u s.”

Atkins adds, “Creativity is our birthright. We all come into the world knowing who we are, and then the world happens to us.” Kids are often inundated with messages telling them to tamp themselves down, but she hopes the book will spur young people to embark on their own creative journeys. “What is it that can help you feel calm and tune in? That’s when you’re likely to hear your inner voice, your own thoughts and feelings.”

This book is in some ways my mission statement —not just for kids, but for all of us.

Bringing the Beach Home

Atkins, Laura | Illus. by Evgenia Penman

The Cave Downwind of the Café

Please, Mikey | Harper/HarperCollins (48 pp.)

$19.99 | September 9, 2025 | 9780063345508

With this prequel to The Café at the Edge of the Woods (2024), Please provides an entertaining backstory for Glumfoot, the clever, green, pointy-eared front-of-house staff member at Rene’s restaurant.

As it happens, Glumfoot’s greenskinned father is also a chef of sorts, happily stirring up “booger broth” each morning. Their cave is filled with vines and things bulbous, squishy, and strange. And cookbooks. Glumfoot reads one intently, dreaming of “something sweeter.” When Rene opens her business nearby, Glumfoot breathes in the aroma, apparently transported. But a nearby ogre is also intrigued (“I heard humans taste good”), and Glumfoot realizes he must convince the ogre otherwise. “Humans taste like fungus toes! And nasty things up the nose,” he tries. The ruse backfires, only whetting the ogre’s appetite. With some quick thinking, Glumfoot eventually persuades the ogre that humans taste horrid and then redirects the hungry creature and its family to “a little cave where Father makes an oozing, booger broth.” Rene happens to open the door to her establishment just as Glumfoot arrives to raid the bins; she hires him on the spot. Burnt orange and snot-green predominate in Please’s palette, and the antic, animated quality of his linework in these edge-to-edge illustrations informs a cheerful, enchanted landscape of cave and forest. With luck, this brave, creative foodie’s adventures are just beginning. (Picture book. 3-8)

With luck, this brave, creative foodie’s adventures are just beginning.

THE CAVE DOWNWIND OF THE CAFÉ

All That You Are

Prasadam-Halls, Smriti | Illus. by Chaaya Prabhat | Little Bee Books (32 pp.)

$18.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781499818246

This family contains multitudes. The children at the center of this narrative in verse have inherited many gifts: from their South Asian mother, “bright eyes” and a “joyful smile”; from their father, who presents white, a “big heart” and kindness; and from their grandparents, intelligence, wit, and d etermination. Employing vibrant imagery, the unseen narrator speaks of their rich heritage: “You’re the gleam of ripe mangoes, / the swish of raw silk, / the sweetness of lychees and coconut milk. // You’re the crunch of an apple, the kiss of a peach, the salt of the ocean, and chips on the beach.” But these children can also forge new identities: “In you the past shines / like s ilver and gold. / Maps are redrawn / in the magic you hold. / Countries hold hands, exquisitely new.” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the narrator reminds the y oungsters that “you’re not quarter…or half… / a mathematical s um,” but whole people whose heritages infuse them with the power to write their own stories. The story ends with the narrator exhorting the children to believe in their own abilities and to recognize their own beauty. Prabhat’s brilliantly colored illustrations infuse Prasadam-Halls’ words with vibrancy and life, further

reinforcing the poem’s message of optimism, inclusivity, and hope. A nuanced, tenderly wrought celebration of biracial identity. (Picture book. 5-8)

Go, Sloth, Go!

Prendergast, Gabrielle | Illus. by Sophie Benmouyal | Orca (32 pp.) | $21.95 May 13, 2025 | 9781459838864

After plummeting from a t ree, the titular sloth embarks on an unexpected adventure. Poor Sloth! Blown about by rough winds, she tumbles from her leafy home and hurts her toe. Luckily, a helpful, brown-skinned human comes to her aid. The story is told entirely in three-word rhyming sentences. The sloth’s dramatic descent is summed up with a “Blow, sloth, blow” and “Whoa, sloth, whoa!” “Oh, sloth, oh! Your toe, sloth, your toe,” exclaims the sloth’s rescuer. The kindly human transports the sloth to a veterinarian, who X-rays her (“Glow, sloth, glow”) and stitches her up (“Sew, sloth, sew”). Finally, the sloth’s new friend returns her to the wild: “Go, sloth, go. Slow, sloth, slow.” The bulk of the storytelling falls to the illustrations, which expand on the spare y et peppy text. The sloth’s deep burnt-red hues pop nicely amid the verdant setting, while her delightful, human-ins pired facial expressions exhibit everything from the surprise of falling from the tree to the anguish of her injury. Though a note at the end provides information on sloths and

For more by Mikey Please, visit Kirkus online.

the dangers people pose to them, this story offers a more positive spin, demonstrating how we can effect positive change. Together, images and words make for a well-told tale that highlights the often-fraught relationship between humans and animals.

A simply told, feel-good nature rescue. (Picture book. 3-6)

Molly, Olive, and Dexter: Who’s Afraid of the Dark?

Rayner, Catherine | Candlewick (32 pp.)

$17.99 | August 19, 2025 | 9781536241761

Series: Molly, Olive, and Dexter

T hree best friends wrestle with their fears of the unknown and their own overactive imaginations.

In this latest in the popular series, Molly the hare, Olive the owl, and Dexter the fox encounter a new challenge when the sun sets one evening. As they watch the world grow darker, each frets about an odd noise, feeling, or sight; each time, they reassure one another that all is well: “What’s that sound?” “It’s only me—I was washing my whiskers.” Then a strange rumbling comes from the sky, and something starts to fall from the heavens. Are the pals’ fears justified this time? No! It’s just the rain. The lovely cadences of Rayner’s text neatly amplify the trio’s anxieties with alliterative flair: “The more they look and listen, the more they wonder and worry.” The author/illustrator deftly traverses the line between the deliciously scary and the reassuringly cozy. Her mixedm edia artwork soars, whether depicting a cheery day full of sunshine or the eerie dusky darkness of prairie plants in a thunderstorm’s gloom. This tale might even make for a wonderfully reassuring read on a stormy day—or night. Chills and thrills, presented in a soothingly sweet package. (Picture book. 3-6)

Popcorn Bob Can’t Stop Popping

Rinck, Maranke | Illus. by Martijn van der Linden | Trans. by Nancy Forest-Flier Levine Querido (48 pp.) | $19.99 August 12, 2025 | 9781646145812

A teeny-tiny kernel sporting a cowboy hat, introduced in the chapter book Popcorn Bob (2021), attempts to curb some big emotions. We all lose our tempers sometimes, but, as Popcorn Bob brags, “Nobody gets as furious as I do.” Upon getting upset, Bob explodes into a cloudy yellow popcorn. But our hero’s had enough. With an arsenal of self-help resources, courtesy of the public library, Bob is ready for self-actualization. Bidding farewell to young E llis and her two dads (the family Bob lives with), Bob spends time in nature—a great place to find inner peace—but soon gets a face full of spider webs, then falls in the mud. Bob attempts meditation, exercise, art therapy, and more, all with varying levels of success. At last, Bob’s in control…well, at least for now, and that’s OK, too. After all, “sometimes exploding can feel REALLY GREAT!” The key is to be aware of one’s feelings—and to have some coping strategies ready. With the implicit understanding that no method will work for every frustrated individual, this Dutch import provides many helpful suggestions to try when feeling steamed. Lively, colorful artwork depicting Bob’s angry antics will give readers much to mull. Though this is an especially good choice for youngsters working

on quelling big feelings, as Bob points out, everyone gets angry. Bob’s human family is pale-skinned. An affirming take on the big feelings we all experience. (Picture book. 3-8)

The Metamorphosis of Bunny Baxter

Roberts, Barbara Carroll | Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House (240 pp.)

$18.99 | July 22, 2025 | 9780823458561

A nature-loving seventh grader starts school determined to be kicked out as soon as possible. Thanks to her great mop of flaming-red hair and some unfortunate incidents on the first day, Theodosia “Bunny” Baxter’s hopes of invisibly blending in at her new middle school may be dashed. But the ensuing notoriety leaves her alternative scheme—being expelled, so she can go to school with her best friend—all the more doable. Or so she thinks. As it turns out, she’s not very good at bad behavior, among the many endearing qualities that will draw readers to her. Bunny fumbles her way toward successfully coping with many things, including bullying, pressure to sign up for an athletic competition, complex feelings about being adopted, and anxiety attacks that manifest in part as serious rashes. Roberts tucks engaging classroom activities into this already thematically robust tale—like the fizzy social dynamics in an experimental initiative-building class called Discoveries, the ins a nd outs of creating a garden of native plants, and tagging monarch

A tenderly wrought celebration of biracial identity.

ALL THAT YOU ARE

butterflies—as she artfully tracks a profound transformation in her protagonist’s sense of self. The changes may be Bunny’s doing, but she’s helped along by a generously sized cast of almost uniformly supportive adults and peers (plus one great dog). By the book’s buoyant end, even one prickly girl’s repeated insistence that she’s not Bunny’s friend is sounding hollow. Bunny is cued white, and there’s some racial diversity in the supporting cast. Sweet, smart, and sensitive. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-14)

Little Shoes

Robertson, David A. | Illus. by Maya McKibbin | Tundra Books (48 pp.) $18.99 | July 29, 2025 | 9781774881729

An Indigenous child confronts the legacy of boarding schools with the support of his mother and grandmother. James’ head is so full of questions, on everything from gravity to the constellations, that he can’t sleep, but each night his loving mother soothes him, and the two fall asleep snuggled up together. He’s also bolstered by thoughts of his Kōkom’s (Grandmother’s) ancestral wisdom; proud of his rich heritage, James is eager to pass down her stories to his own grandchildren. One evening, he and Kōkom attend a demonstration honoring the Native children forced to attend abusive state-sponsored boarding schools; James learns that his grandmother went to one of these institutions, a s did her sister. Gazing at dozens of pairs of little shoes—memorials for those who, like Kōkom’s sister, didn’t survive—he’s reminded that children like him faced danger and even death. That night, he comes to his mother with a truly difficult question: Who comforted Kōkom and her sister when they were frightened in the night? Robertson (Norway House Cree Nation) sensitively approaches this history, never explicitly

A treatise on canine behavior interwoven with layered storytelling.

SMILEY

describing the horrors of residential schools but instead leaving space for adults to grapple with youngsters’ questions in their own ways. Though he doesn’t provide easy answers, it’s clear that familial love keeps this child buoyed. Suffused with pinks, icy blues, and deep indigos, the glowing, cartoon-st yle digital illustrations from McKibbin (Ojibwe) depict the ancestral bonds that keep James rooted. Honest yet age-appropriate and deeply uplifting. (author’s note, photograph) (Picture book. 6-11)

Smiley

Ross, M.C. | Scholastic (272 pp.) | $7.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9781546141716

A n affectionate dog’s positive attitude is challenged by prejudice.

Smiley, an American Staffordshire terrier— a type of pit bull— begins her life at a high-end Boston kennel. The breeder socializes Smiley and her littermates, exposing them to all kinds of people and a variety of objects and experiences, including vacuum cleaners, skateboards, swimming, and even the zoo (which may surprise readers who are aware that zoos generally ban pets who aren’t service animals). Smiley is so happy that she smiles not only “with her butt” but also with her big, goofy mouth. When she’s adopted by the Menino-Rosado family, Smiley uses her highly empathic nature to support Carlito, a small, nervous Puerto Rican tween from an affordable housing development in Boston’s South End. He’s about to enter seventh grade at

prestigious Boston Classical Academy, where he has a scholarship. Carlito becomes the crew team’s coxswain, but when he’s too light for the required minimum, Smiley joins him in the boat, serving as an unorthodox yet effective deadweight. When a classmate’s well-intentioned but poorly socialized pit bull exhibits apparently aggressive behavior at a boat race, Carlito’s wealthy classmate’s father labels Smiley a menace, too, and she suffers a crisis of confidence. Ross thoughtfully explores snobbery, socioeconomic inequity, and racial bias in a strongly developed Boston setting. As in Ross’ Nugly (2023), the story serves as a treatise on canine behavior and care interwoven with layered, deliberately paced storytelling.

Insightful and purposeful, with strong appeal for animal lovers. (Fiction. 9-13)

Zed Moonstein Makes a Friend

Rubin, Lance | Clarion/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $19.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9780063396654

L onely, awkward Zed Moonstein is growing up in MonoTown, formerly known as Orange Hills and now the techobsessed headquarters of the company MonoLyth.

White-presenting Jewish sixth grader Zed’s world revolves around his best (and only) friend, Rishti Ray, who reads South Asian. So when Rishti starts spending time with new friend Caz Rojas, Zed feels abandoned. Desperate for connection, Zed discovers a secret app on his mom’s work server: MonoFriend. Through it,

he meets “Matt,” an artificial intelligence presence who seems to u nderstand him better than any real person. But as their friendship deepens, Zed begins to question what it really means to have a friend—and whether Matt is everything he claims to be. The tech-enhanced town, with homes, stores, and schools outfitted with every possible version of AI, plays a driving role in the plot and provides the context for much of the pulsepounding action. Rubin skillfully balances humor, suspense, and emotional insights into the angst and isolation of adolescence, especially in a world where technology is always a tap away. And although the cautionary message regarding the perils of technology can get a bit heavy-handed, the book poses important questions about the role of AI in our lives, the loss of genuine connection and privacy, and how greed and constant consumption can drive innovation in a d angerous direction.

A fast-paced plot, quirky characters, and timely themes address friendship and identity in the digital age. (Fiction. 8-12)

Farming Is Female: Twenty Women Shaking Up the Field

Sarah, Rachel | Yellow Jacket (144 pp.) | $18.99 September 30, 2025 | 9781499815665

Meet some of the women transforming the agricultural industry. Although, as one of the book’s subjects points out, “95% of farmers in the United States are White…and 64%…are male,” female agriculturists of color are well represented in this probing volume; several identify as queer. A strong social justice thread runs through the work. Many of the subjects are outspoken about the racism and sexism they’ve encountered, like Lupe Gonzalo, who advocates for the rights of farmworkers. Others, like food scientist Bianca Datta and

Tepfirah Haana Rushdan, who works for the city of Detroit, are deeply committed to sustainability. In addition to farmers, readers will meet a supply chain facilitator, numerous educators, an anthropologist, and a sociologist studying systemic oppression in the farming industry. Sidebars expand the scope of the book with explorations of relevant socio-historical topics, such as the impact of colonization. Lively, conversational profiles each include a full-page color photo, as well as basic info such as the subject’s farm and location, pronouns, and social media contacts. Interspersed questions ask readers to consider where the food they consume is produced and to imagine themselves as ranchers; recipes and clearly outlined activities (such as setting up a garden on a windowsill) will also spur involvement. The vibrant layout is attractive, while the book’s brilliant color photos are filled with sunlight and greenery.

A nourishing and inspiring bounty of STEM opportunities. (resources, glossary, photo credits, bibliography, index) (Collective biography. 8-12)

The Family Tree

Scanlon, Liz Garton & Audrey Vernick Illus. by Fiona Lee | Beach Lane/ Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) | $19.99 September 30, 2025 | 9781665948371

A botanical wonder relinks a disconnected family. Penny’s family is busy: Dinners need making, homework needs doing, and daily drudgery leaves little opportunity for the household to commune. That is, until Penny and resident pup Bo-Belly notice a glimmer of emerald, suspiciously arboreal in nature, that’s taken root in the kitchen. It grows ever “taller, a little barkier, a little leafier,” until it’s too large to ignore; as the botanical interloper branches out under Penny’s care, it demands the family’s united attention and action. Their efforts to accommodate Tree aren’t without

challenges—after Tree breaks through the roof, rain trickles in—but just beyond these bothers lie even bigger joys, among them birdsong, starlight, and a renewed capacity for familial respite. By the time autumn arrives and Tree’s leaves have turned a brilliant vermillion, togetherness has become the rule, not the exception. Scanlon and Vernick depict a protagonist worth emulating; the determined, self-assured, and green-thumbed Penny proves an aspirational figure, capable of energizing similarly precocious readers with a tenacity that verges on the mythical. Reminiscent of craft art styles typically used to depict traditional tales, Lee’s illustrations underscore the plot’s folkloric nature. Her subdued palette creates space for and emphasizes Tree’s verdant presence, though the green glow that surrounds it suggests that magic may also lurk among its leaves. Penny and her mother are brown-skinned, while her father is pale-skinned. A tale sure to encourage readers to gather around and enjoy one another’s company. (Picture book. 6-9)

Time To Win

Shah, Amar | Scholastic (224 pp.) | $7.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9781338840377

Series: Play the Game, 3

In this trilogy closer, point guard Raam Patel may have made his middle school basketball team, but he has more challenges to face before he can earn a starting role. Raam’s hard-won maturity from previous episodes stands the seventh grader in good stead, since being named to the team doesn’t stop the relentless bullying he receives from some teammates or make growing tensions at home between his parents any less distracting. Nor does it make it any easier to deal with feelings of failure when a toe injury not only forces him to bow out of a dance competition that could save his mother’s struggling Bollywood dance

studio, but also leaves him riding the bench while his team loses its first game. In both casual situations and set pieces, like a Thanksgiving dinner that fuses traditional American and Indian cuisines, Shah adds rich cultural context to his young ball player’s progress as grueling practices that elevate both personal and team skills give way to intense game action on the way to a climactic at-the-buzzer triumph. Domestic stress and ongoing friendship issues abate, too, buoying the ending further. But it’s Raam’s resilient responses both to hostile peers and to setbacks to his basketball dreams that truly shine out, as cheerworthy as his adroit play on the court.

A soaring drive to the finish. (Fiction. 9-13)

In the Wild

Smith, Zadie & Nick Laird | Illus. by Magenta Fox | Viking (32 pp.)

$18.99 | June 10, 2025 | 9798217038725

Celebrated literary spouses Smith and Laird follow up their debut picture book, The Surprise (2022), with another tale of Maud the spirited, judo-loving guinea pig. As Maud’s owner, Kit, frets about an upcoming school camping trip, her pets privately agree with her misgivings. Dad reassures her, “It’ll all be over before you know it,” but Maud remembers he said the same thing about an injection at the vet’s office. So she stows away in Kit’s backpack; after all, Kit will surely need a friend. But when Maud arrives at camp, Kit’s nowhere to be found. Perhaps Maud’s the one who needs a pal, and she soon finds one in Harvey the hedgehog, who teaches her all about forest survival. Fox’s endearing cartoon art depicts anthropomorphized, friendly-faced animals: Maud sports her customary martial arts uniform, and both she and Harvey walk upright. Mixing vignettes, panels, and full-page spreads, the illustrations draw clever

An Inuk child embarks on an enlightening journey through nature.

I WOULD GIVE YOU MY TAIL

parallels between Kit’s and Maud’s activities: As Kit and the other kids traverse a rope course, Maud and Harvey walk across a log, and as the campers sit by a roaring bonfire, the animals gather around their own, teeny-tiny fire. Though the text is on the wordy side, it pairs well with the art; the forest facts Harvey imparts and the information on camping easily mesh with the more whimsical elements. Kit is biracial: Her mother presents Black, while her father is pale-skinned. A lighthearted and quirky walk through the woods. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

A Snow Day for Amos McGee

Stead, Philip C. | Illus. by Erin E. Stead Roaring Brook Press (48 pp.) | $18.99 September 30, 2025 | 9781250324733

The gentle elderly zookeeper introduced in the Steads’ Caldecott Medal–winning A Sick Day for Amos McGee (2010) returns for another break from his usual routine.

Unlike in previous stories, this time, no one is ill, and no one misses the bus. Instead, the much-anticipated first snowfall of the season creates a special day filled with play and hot chocolate. Amos, of course, sets a cozy tone from the start, sipping tea at home while he awaits news of the snow, then commuting by bus to the zoo to finish up some knitting projects for the animals. Each creature receives something from the kindly zookeeper, and most of these knitted items are red, making them stand out from the muted, cool palette of the print-block illustrations

and subtly recalling the snowsuit that Peter wears in Ezra Jack Keats’ classic tale The Snowy Day. Adding just a bit of drama to the quietly enchanting story, the snow doesn’t arrive as expected, instead falling overnight to create “a soft blanket that cover[s] up the neighborhood.” The friends then enjoy the delayed snow day together, their joy best captured in a sumptuous wordless spread showing them in a diagonal, downhill trajectory on sleds, skis, and (in the case of the penguin and tortoise) their own bodies. Amos’ skin is the white of the page. An instant wintertime classic; children will snuggle up for rereads for years to come. (Picture book. 2-7)

Trapped in the Tar Pit: How Paleontologists Unearthed a City’s Prehistoric Past

Stremer, Jessica | Illus. by Alexander Vidal Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $19.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9781665953177

Discover a time capsule of preserved ancient animals hidden within L.A.’s La Brea Tar Pits. Dinosaurs are always a fan favorite, and a veritable plethora of relevant books exist to tempt youngsters, but what about the Pleistocene, with its fascinatingly strange ground sloths or dire wolves? Stremer illuminates this prehistoric period by sharing a secret: In a bustling Southern California neighborhood, under an innocuouslooking smudge of sticky tar, lie thousands of fossilized animal, insect, and plant remains. Jumping backward in time, the narrative follows an endearing mammoth who mistakes the

tar for a watering hole and becomes trapped. Its struggle is tense and dramatic; young readers will feel for the animal as it trumpets for help, eyes wide with fear. Abruptly, the language becomes more clinical. Pitched to a young audience, the text clearly conveys facts about fossilization, covers the arrival of Native Americans and then European settlers, and explains why the site is so scientifically significant. Stremer never explicitly acknowledges, however, that the skull the scientists are excavating once belonged to the frightened mammoth, a potentially confusing omission. Strong backmatter provides more information on the tar pits; readers will appreciate the useful key of all the creatures depicted. Clean, earth-toned digital cartoon illustrations portray both extinct and current animals in easy-to-interpret tableaux. Human characters are diverse.

A captivating addition to the paleontology shelf. (selected sources) (Informational picture book. 5-10)

An Abundance of Light: A Story of Matisse in Morocco

Stringer, Lauren | Beach Lane/ Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) | $19.99 August 26, 2025 | 9781534493629

After a trip to Morocco, Henri Matisse (18691954) finds his despair lifting, and he begins to paint again.

The artist is in a deep funk. “Everything and everyone [feels] cloudy. Everything and everyone [feels] dark.” He travels to Tangier, searching for abundant sunlight, only to discover more rain; once more, he feels “cloudy and dark.” As the sun returns, Stringer’s black-and-white illustrations give way to the bold colors favored by Matisse, who finds inspiration in the old Medina, the city’s markets and gardens, and memories of his family’s colorful rugs and painted teacups. Stringer periodically repeats that Henri grew up in a “black and gray town” in France,

which further heightens the moment when he experiences the “abundance of light” in Tangier that resurrects his desire to paint again. Buoyed by the sun, Henri paints views from his window and portraits of locals including a Rifi warrior (one of the Amazigh people who live in the Rif Mountains).

A combination of pastel, charcoal, gouache, and digital media on watercolor paper, Stringer’s energetic illustrations convey her subject’s exuberance; her vivid spreads feature aspects of Moroccan culture such as babouches (pointed yellow slippers), haik (a traditional women’s garment), and ouds (a kind of musical instrument). The appended visual glossary will help readers home in on these details of Moroccan life.

A sophisticated look at painting, seen through the eyes of a renowned artist. (sources, further information about Matisse, archival photo, author’s note) (Picture-book biography. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

I Would Give You My Tail

Tagaq, Tanya | Illus. by Qavavau Manumie | Tundra Books (32 pp.) $17.99 | April 8, 2025 | 9781774880579

A n Inuk child embarks on an enlightening journey through nature as he prepares to become a big brother.

Kalluk’s mom goes into labor and needs Grandmother’s assistance, so the helpful youngster sets off on a long walk, meeting animals along the way. Their delight makes Kalluk curious, and they tell him that their joys are rooted in the quotidian and in their connections to one another and the ecosystem. A babbling brook is “happy because I am cold and I am clean. The rocks tickle as I run over them, and the fish delight me.” The rabbits “love to be fast…and clever”; they also express their love for one another by exclaiming, “I would give you my tail if I could”—an

especially poignant sentiment echoed by the fox pups. Kalluk repeats this tender phrase when he finally meets his new sister, promising to care for her always. Each encounter leaves Kalluk grateful— for the rabbit stew he eats, for the water he drinks, and for the fox fur mitts he wears—and he vows to pass that thankfulness on to his sibling. Each word of throat singer and songwriter Tagaq’s (Inuk) unhurried narrative is steeped in love and reverence for nature, while her characters are generous of spirit, brought to life with heartwarming simplicity by Manumie’s spare colored pencil drawings. Uplifting in tone and engaging in delivery, this picture book honors Inuk wisdom, storytelling, and kinship.

A poetic homage to Indigenous families and their deep-seated connections to the natural world. (Inuktitut glossary and pronunciation guide) (Picture book. 4-9)

Dasher and the Polar Bear

Tavares, Matt | Candlewick (40 pp.)

$18.99 | September 16, 2025

9781536236316 | Series: Dasher

The days leading up to Christmas are always full of adventure for Dasher the reindeer—and this year is no exception. While gazing up at the northern lights, Dasher encounters a polar bear named George who marvels at her flying abilities and wishes he could soar through the wintery air, too. Alas, Dasher’s efforts to help George harness Christmas magic and take flight don’t go well. Tavares’ full-bleed digital art captures one of his failed attempts—one that ends with a dramatic splash “face-first into the icy water.” George is good-natured about the disappointment (“I suppose these four paws belong right here in the snow”), but Dasher later tells her mother that she wishes she could have taught her new friend to fly. As the story unfolds, colorful, expansive skyscapes support the central theme of flight, though overly large, white text boxes superimposed on the pictures somewhat undermine the

visual power of the beautiful polar setting. Ultimately, light-skinned Santa Claus is the one who makes George’s Christmas wish come true—by inviting him for a ride in the sleigh once all the presents have been delivered. George is thrilled (“Exhilarating!” “Positively unforgettable!”), and Dasher’s glad to have shared in the moment. A Yuletide romp suffused with magic and good feeling. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Star

Five Little

Friends: A Collection of Finger Rhymes

Taylor, Sean | Illus. by Fiona Woodcock Candlewick (64 pp.) | $19.99 August 19, 2025 | 9781536242911

Taylor and Woodcock’s collection of 35 short rhymes invites children to use their fingers, arms, and even their whole bodies to bring the verses— a nd their imaginations—to life.

The entries range in subject matter from the mundane to the fanciful. Many deal with everyday activities such as teeth brushing, shoelace tying, and cake baking, contrasting with those concerned with more dramatic experiences, including sliding down a water slide and viewing fireworks. Rhymes about sailing on a ship and climbing a tree harness young imaginations, while “On My Phone” wryly encourages children to mimic the harried adults in their lives. Taylor’s poems are quickly paced and driven by action (“Stomp like an elephant. / Step like a cat. / Fly like an eagle. / Flitter like a bat”), while Woodcock’s illustrations employ crayoned linework and painted and spattered color to portray busy children with varied skin tones, hair textures, and abilities. She cleverly incorporates visual cues into her compositions to suggest actions for the rhymes. In “Snake,” a child’s undulating arm is encased in a diamond-patterned sleeve, with googly eyes and a forked

tongue added just for fun. In “Snow,” kids’ white-frosted hands stretch like tree branches and join together to mimic pointed roofs. Fingerplays have long been used by children’s librarians, teachers, and caregivers to encourage kinesthetic learning and help with transitions during school days and storytimes; this inspired offering will ensure hours of enlightening fun. A fresh, wonderfully creative, and visually engaging array of rhymes to get kids moving. (Picture book/poetry. 3-7)

Adorable Empire

Terry, Laura | Graphix/Scholastic (240 pp.)

$24.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781338325102

A Manhattan girl’s life is temporarily taken over by some eccentric monsters. Jinx Kagen faces challenges: her parents’ separation, moving to a new apartment, missing her loving but unreliable dad (who’s living in Chicago), and dealing with bullying and the end of a friendship. In her new apartment building, Jinx picks up a cylindrical orange crystal belonging to her neighbor Greg—and he cryptically tells her that he can’t take it back and has to get out of there. The crystal overhears Jinx wishing for a happy family; she wakes up the next day surrounded by miniature, big-eyed creatures. Jinx dubs the mysterious beings the Adorables: Squirrley is fond of eating, fire-breathing Avey can fly, Bun can grow huge, and the fuzzy orange Pom-Poms poop flowers. The “little gods of chaos” (Greg’s description) follow Jinx everywhere. Before they and the crystal move on to someone else, their mischief and

devotion help Jinx work through her overwhelming emotions and connect with Robyn and TJ, Greg’s young relatives, who are cat sitting while he’s away. The dominant shades of violet and blue contrast with Jinx’s goth style and the Adorables’ bright colors. Jinx, who is fat and presents white, and Robyn, who reads Black, share their coming-out stories and sweetly confess that they “ like like” one another. Sincere emotions punctuated with funny and magical moments elevate this charming work. Engagingly original, featuring a likable protagonist and plenty of humor and tenderness. (concept art, author’s note) (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

What the Sea Brings

Twomey, Beverly | Snowy Wings Publishing (286 pp.) | $14.99 | paper August 12, 2025 | 9781963870114

A girl growing up in the Convent of Saer, which is protected by mermaids, finds the peace of her daily life shattered by a new arrival. Ten-year-old Lynnette prays to the Water Folk, asking them to let the God of the Waves know how badly she wants her older brother, Samson, to return. After waiting more than a year, she surrenders, asking simply, “Please bring me a friend.” She’s the first to find the lone survivor of a shipwreck: A trail of gold coins on the beach leads her to a boy named Maddox. Mother Toya and Sister Yvanna are initially cautious, but Lynnette is curious about the stranger, and she and Maddox develop a

Engagingly original, featuring a likable protagonist and plenty of humor.

friendship. He shares with her the secret that he’s the son of the Emperor of Basileia, who once tried to take Cliffside, the seat of the Great King of Saer. Maddox knows that revealing this information has left him vulnerable, and Lynnette wonders what his presence means for her as well. This deeply emotional story is brimming with skillful worldbuilding details. Twomey’s smooth storytelling focuses on the relationships among the characters and Lynnette’s faith in the God of the Waves, which she weaves throughout the story. Fans of Brian Jacques’ Redwall series will find and enjoy thematic and stylistic parallels in this novel. Lynnette and Maddox present white, and the members of the supporting cast are diverse in appearance. Reading this lovely novel is like watching a puzzle come together piece by satisfying piece. (Fantasy. 9-12)

Sharing

Wells, Rosemary | Paula Wiseman/ Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) | $19.99 September 2, 2025 | 9781665975155

A young mouse learns to share his beloved possessions with others. Charles’ parents think it’s time he socialized with other children, so he and his mother head to the park, where kids approach him and the tempting pile of toys he’s brought from home. Nigel is curious about Charles’ xylophone; Charles is delighted to share it with him. And, of course, Monica can drive his fire engine! Charles agreeably hands over each of his treasures, even when his astronaut toy becomes marooned in a tree and another child uses up the contents of his doctor kit. (Observant readers will notice that Charles’ smile falters, but his demeanor otherwise remains calm and unaffected.) When Charles’ mother wonders where all his belongings have gone, he replies, “I shared them with my friends. And friends are better than things,” concluding the narrative with a heavy-handed moral. Charles seems either too meek to protest his toys being mishandled or

implausibly mature for his age, never bristling at the prospect of sharing with strangers. Young children and their grown-ups know all too well that this isn’t a realistic portrayal of playground sharing, and without any of the story’s challenges faced head-on, the tidy message rings hollow. Wells’ signature warm, anthropomorphic illustration style is as appealing as ever, portraying Charles and friends as cheerful gray mice. A sweet but unconvincing tale of cooperation. (Picture book. 3-6)

King of the Dump

Wynne-Jones, Tim | Illus. by Scot Ritchie Groundwood (32 pp.) | $19.99

August 5, 2025 | 9781773067483

A curious child learns valuable lessons about recycling and sharing outgrown toys. Sporting yellow galoshes, Teddy and his parent head to the local waste management center. Trash abounds—how will they even begin to sort it? Teddy chases windblown paper in order to put it in the right container, dumps cans into the aluminum bin, and even gets to use the grabber tool to fish out an errant plastic bottle. As the trash compactor roars to life, squishing together waste, Teddy’s parent explains, “Got to make it as small as can be.” “Why?” questions Teddy. “Because there’s sooooo much!” They both gaze out over the landscape, filled with many machines pushing, sorting, and hauling. Later, the pair head to the secondhand shop located at the management center; Teddy has brought a ride-on toy to swap. When the time comes to let it go, he’s a little apprehensive, but seeing another family’s excitement at getting the toy makes it all worthwhile. Featuring brightly colored, tidily composed scenes and a cheer not normally reserved for such scenes, Wynne-Jones and Ritchie’s book offers a broad overview of the dump’s sights and sounds, though one very important

part—the smell—is notably absent. Teddy and his parent are paleskinned; other workers and families vary in skin tone.

A glimpse into a vital community partnership. (Picture book. 3-6)

Quest for the True Dragon

Yogis, Jaimal | Illus. by Vivian Truong Graphix/Scholastic (256 pp.) | $24.99

August 5, 2025 | 9781339033013

Series: City of Dragons, 3

A girl and a dragon are on the run from dark forces in this third series entry. Grace, her three friends, and the young dragon, Nate, have obtained a dragon stone, one of four that can be used to wake the dragon kings. Lord Daijiang has collected the other three, and along with dangerous human accomplices and powerful dragons of smoke and shadow, he continues to twist magic and science to his own ends. Daijiang needs the stone—and Nate, whose blood will confer immortality. But Grace doesn’t plan to run; she wants to fight, and she searches for the sleeping dragon kings and a solution to their predicament. Daijiang is on the move, too, pursuing Grace and her friends out of Hong Kong and all the way to Japan. While the kids have just enough contact with adults to make the action believable, Grace and her friends remain independent and get into and out of all sorts of misadventures on their own. Through dealing with dark magic, dragons, and a first crush, the friends learn to handle challenging situations while relying on each other. As in earlier installments, the graphic novel features colorful, dynamic panels and a focus on friendship, even as Grace faces more mature problems and dangerous scenarios. Grace is Chinese and white, and her friends are a variety of ethnicities.

Magical and technological thrills with a wholesome heart. (Graphic fantasy. 9-13)

Young Adult

THE PRINTZ AT 25

HOW TO SUM up the Michael L. Printz Award, a prize that rewards “literary excellence in young adult literature”? The adjectives that immediately come to mind are bold , eclectic, and surprising. A personal favorite of mine, 2020 honor title Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean, exemplifies these characteristics.

Following a desperate band of people stranded on a remote, uninhabitable Scottish island in the early 1700s, it’s utterly original and emotionally harrowing.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Printz, sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association and named in memory of a dedicated Topeka, Kansas, high school librarian. Some

Printz medalists are now regarded as modern classics—like Monster by Walter Dean Myers, Skellig by David Almond, and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, all featured on the inaugural 2000 slate. Others, while less high profile, are a testament to Printz juries’ willingness to make courageous choices that reflect teens’ diverse reading needs and interests.

The Printz is remarkably inclusive. Alongside literary fiction by U.S. authors, it has honored nonfiction, poetry, verse novels, fantasy, graphic novels, translated titles, and more. Through the Printz, American teens have gained exposure to international authors of great stature, like Australia’s Melina Marchetta (author of the 2009 winner, Jellicoe

Road ) and Japan’s Nahoko Uehashi (whose The Beast Player, translated by Cathy Hirano, was a 2020 honor book). I also applaud the inclusion of fabulously funny writing, such as 2001 honor book Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison and 2013 honor title Dodger by Terry Pratchett. Humor, while incredibly hard to write well (and beloved by adolescents), is rarely appreciated by award juries.

The real testament to the Printz is that librarians who work with teens—the people who are in the trenches hearing kids’ unfiltered responses and seeing what they actually choose to borrow—hold it in such high regard. This year’s winner, the graphic novel Brownstone, written by Samuel Teer and illustrated by Mar Julia with colors by Ashanti Fortson, is a great example of this

commitment to excellence and teen reader appeal.

Jenna Friebel, a public librarian who served on the 2018 jury, told me, “Seven years later, I think our books still hold up incredibly well. Our winner—We Are Okay by Nina LaCour— is a quiet novel that packs a g iant emotional wallop. Growing up, my options for queer literature—especially targeted toward teens—were very slim, so it was super meaningful to me to be able to award this beautiful, moving queer story.”

Retired high school librarian Kim Dare reports that her fellow 2023 jury members were so passionate about their winning choice, All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir, that many of them got tattoos inspired by the cover art. Dare found that the book was widely beloved by her students. She was especially touched by the response of a Pakistani American girl in her book club, who said that she “had never read a YA novel that featured Pakistani American characters, and that she was in tears during a lot of her reading.”

In this time of hostility toward daring, unorthodox authors who pose challenging questions, we need the rintz more than ever.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.

LAURA SIMEON

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

The titular food truck’s imagined travels link the entries in this anthology by celebrated and up-andcoming Native authors.

Sandy June’s Legendary Frybread Drive-In feels both familiar and original—a mystical community space that can appear anywhere, serving as the perfect liminal meeting space for Indigenous people across North A merica. From Oklahoma to Alaska, Hawai‘i to Manitoba, the stories cross our borders. In the 18 entries, which encompass both poetry and prose as well as different genres, readers meet a variety of Native people—gamer, athlete, musician—from a

diverse range of communities, including Black Natives. The emotional core of the book feels deftly balanced, ranging from touching moments of magical connection with loved ones to emotional explorations of feelings like grief, and regular teenage awkwardness and crushes. A date goes awry, there’s a tornado to deal with alone, and a cousin to reconnect with. Across the board, the authors write lifelike characters; even when the setting is fantastical, the well-wrought characterizations are rooted in realism. A major strength of this collection is that it offers the perfect gateway to discovering the writing of

Ann Bausum

Irene

Clara Kumagai

Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories

Ed. by Smith, Cynthia Leitich | Heartdrum | 352 pp. $19.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9780063314269

noted authors, including Eric Gansworth, Darcie Little Badger, Andrea L. Rogers, Cheryl Isaacs, Brian Young, Jen Ferguson, Byron Graves, Angeline Boulley, David A. Robertson, and editor Smith, among others.

Obvious thought and care went into the crafting and arranging of the stories, with expertly executed callbacks to previous entries. Superlative. (glossary, contributor bios) (Anthology. 13-18)

An authoritative voice, supported by research, that avoids sensationalism.

WHITE LIES

Rosa by Any Other Name

Alcaraz, Hailey | Viking (416 pp.) | $19.99 August 5, 2025 | 9780593525579

In 1955, a 17-year-old Arizona girl’s life is upended by the murders of her close friends. During an era of de facto school segregation, light-skinned Mexican American Rosa Capistrano has quietly gone by “Rosie” and pretended to be white ever since enrolling in a white high school, hoping for a better chance at getting into college. Rosa dreams of becoming a writer but struggles under the chauvinistic editor of her school paper. Her worlds collide explosively when her childhood best friend, brown-skinned, Mexican American Ramón, and her best friend at school, Julianne, the white sheriff’s daughter, quickly fall in love. The pair idealistically hope to fight racism by attending a school dance together, publicly celebrating the power of love and equality. Tragically, they’re shot to death before they have the chance—and Rosa is the sole witness. Tensions run high in town as people mourn both teens, and danger threatens the people Rosa loves after the killer attempts a coverup. Rosa is drawn to Ramón’s brooding older brother, Marco, by their shared grief and desire for justice. She must also decide whether to risk everything to use her voice. The story shows the positive impact of inspirational community members who are working for a better future. Readers will be drawn into this compelling story and root for heartbroken Rosa as she struggles to find the c ourage to tell the truth.

Deeply moving and beautifully written. (author’s note, further reading) (Historical fiction. 14-18)

A Beautiful and Terrible Murder

Andrews, Claire M. | Little, Brown (432 pp.)

$19.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9780316575355

Series: Irene Adler, 1

In 1872, a University of Oxford student must solve the mystery of a string of murders with the help of Sherlock Holmes. When Irene Adler discovers the body of a classmate, one of the elite All Souls College cohort, she’s quickly drawn into the investigation. The problem? Irene has been disguising herself, using the name Isaac Holland to study at All Souls—which only admits men—as well as at the all-women’s college Lady Margaret. And now Isaac is a prime suspect. Her fellow students include her half brother, the infamous “narcissistic sociopath” James Moriarty, and the brilliant but enigmatic wealthy “upstart” Sherlock Holmes. As more All Souls bodies pile up, Irene, still posing as Isaac, joins forces with Sherlock to uncover the murderer’s identity, all while grappling with her increasingly complicated feelings for him. As the unlikely pair closes in on the truth, they become entangled in a plot that’s far more dangerous than they ever expected—and with higher stakes than they could have imagined. With fast-paced prose and a witty, likable hero, this work is a largely

satisfying reimagining of Sherlock Holmes. However, some of Irene’s relationships with other characters feel underdeveloped, occasionally to the detriment of the plot. The Oxford setting is a captivating backdrop, enhancing the story’s intrigue. Most main characters are cued white; Sherlock has “dark, tan” skin, “ebony” eyes, and curly black hair. A lively, action-packed adventure. (map) (Historical mystery. 13-18)

Knocking on Windows: A Memoir

Atkins, Jeannine | Atheneum (304 pp.)

$19.99 | August 5, 2025 | 9781665977548

A verse memoir in which the author reveals how “a stranger stole my freshman year at college, / my claims to imagination and faith in the future.”

Six weeks after arriving at college in the early 1970s, Atkins was back home in Massachusetts, trying to cope with having been raped. Her emotionally unavailable mother—“Put it behind you”—discouraged any talk of what had happened. In spare, deliberate free verse, Atkins describes starting over at the University of Massachusetts, struggling to focus, and living at t he mercy of her memories. Writers featured prominently in Atkins’ life. She was especially drawn to Sylvia Plath even as she grappled with contradictory rules for girls: “Anything can be provocative. / Anything can be called the victim’s fault.” Therapy allowed Atkins to begin to confront the details of the day that split her “life into before and ever-after.” Her realization that as a white woman she should have been more aware of racial history and politics led her to wrestle with complicated feelings about being raped by a Black man after going to “a neighborhood that wasn’t hers” to “observe, maybe take notes.” As she came to realize that she wasn’t responsible for his actions, Atkins

ultimately reclaimed control of her narrative. Although occasional time shifts may be jarring for some, Atkins encourages deep connection, and readers who have experienced sexual trauma will feel seen.

An author known for highlighting courageous women shows herself to be among them. (author’s note, booklist) (Verse memoir. 14-18)

Kirkus Star

White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the History

Bausum, Ann | Roaring Brook Press (368 pp.)

$21.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9781250816573

A narrative of how the famed Lost Cause mythology took hold after the U.S. Civil War. Noted nonfiction author Bausum seeks to answer the question: If history is written by the victors, how did the defeated Confederates’ viewpoint end up becoming the dominant perspective? The roughly chronological organization covers the lead-up to the war and the war itself; the Southern white elite’s deliberate use of “a cult of misinformation” to return to power post-Reconstruction; the successful spread of the Lost Cause ideology through culture, education, and monuments; and ongoing efforts, in the face of organized resistance, to restore accuracy to accounts of the past. The chapters are punctuated by sidebars covering Confederate statues (“Gallery of the Lost Cause”) and debunking 20 foundational lies of the romanticized Lost Cause (“#3: The Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery; it was all about states’ rights,” “#18: The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of southern honor”). Bausum counters the lies with direct quotes from key Confederate leaders and Lost Cause thought leaders, demonstrating how impossible it is to decouple the

Confederate cause from racism and slavery. The clear, direct prose shuns euphemisms, explicitly naming obfuscating language, and addresses atrocities without lingering on grisly details. The dispassionate tone results in an authoritative voice, supported by extensive research, that avoids sensationalism. The conclusion encourages readers to reject falsehoods disguised as patriotism, learn from the past, and “better the world.” Essential reading. (language note, author’s note, research notes, timeline, source notes, bibliography, image credits, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Woven From Clay

Birch, Jennifer | Wednesday Books (368 pp.) $20 | August 12, 2025 | 9781250365460

In Birch’s debut, a golem’s world is upended when she meets a witch.

Terra Slater is anticipating senior year—applying to college, making memories with friends—when her normal life suddenly takes an unexpected turn. At the Labor Day parade, she’s confronted by the mysterious Thorne Wilder, a rare new arrival in North Heights. Despite a rocky start, once Thorne reveals to Terra that she’s really a golem they form an unlikely alliance. Thorne is an apprentice witch who’s working for a coven that ensures that “magic is used honorably”—he’s on a mission to find and capture the notorious missing warlock Cyrus Quill, who perpetrated a crime generations ago. Terra knows Mr. Quill as the town’s adoption lawyer, but he actually created the golem teenagers who populate the small, bucolic town, all of whom were adopted. As Terra unravels her origin story, learning that she too has magical abilities, she must keep this history a secret until she accomplishes the one thing that will either save or destroy them all: assist Thorne in bringing Quill in, even if it means the end of

Terra and the other golem teens. Romance, family, mystery, trust, and betrayal weave seamlessly throughout this highly imaginative story of survival and sacrifice, which has humanity at its thoughtful core. Most characters are cued white. Golems’ connection to Jewish folklore doesn’t arise in the book.

A creative exploration of a magical tapestry. (Fantasy. 14-18)

Trumpets of Death

Bournel-Bosson, Simon | Trans. by Edward Gauvin | Graphic Universe (240 pp.) | $17.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9798765644324

A boy’s unhappy visit with his grandparents in the French countryside turns very dark in this translated graphicnovel import. When Antoine’s mother leaves their home, his father unceremoniously drops him off with his grandparents while he sorts things out. Antoine’s fussbudget grandmother tries to engage with Antoine, but his grandfather, an avid hunter whose trophies festoon the home’s interior, is openly, sometimes terrifyingly hostile. One day, while reluctantly foraging with his grandfather, Antoine picks a mysterious white mushroom and finds himself transformed into a white deer. Bournel-Bosson’s precise, realistic linework captures Antoine’s loneliness with panel compositions that isolate him or emphasize his diminutive stature. The palette rotates among two-color combinations: Yellow and blue give way to mauve and yellow, then green and yellow, and so on. These color shifts combine with closeups that approach the grotesque to give the tale an air of the weird even before Antoine’s transformation. This metamorphosis brings Antoine moments of fear and of tremendous beauty before a resolution that’s both just and profoundly unsettling. Readers will note that the mushroom that triggers Antoine’s

change is not the edible trompette de la mort (commonly known in English as the black trumpet or black chanterelle). The literal translation of the original title gives the English-language edition an appropriately sinister feel its French readers might not experience. Antoine and his family present white; his behavior and build mark him a preteen. An unsettling, thought-provoking coming of age. (Graphic fantasy. 12-adult)

The Cariboo Trek of Callum McBay

Campbell, Colin | Tradewind Books (138 pp.) $12.95 paper | June 15, 2025 | 9781990598333

Hoping to save his family’s farm, 18-year-old Callum sets out on the long journey from Scotland to the Cariboo gold fields of British Columbia.

In a restrained narrative that requires patience from readers, Campbell sends his young prospector across the Atlantic to New York, around Cape Horn, and on up north to remote Williams Creek to join the 1860s gold rush. Callum travels through rugged terrain via steamboat, canoe, wagon, mule, foot, and (in a rare passage where the stiff tone temporarily unbends) even imported camel. Readers can, with difficulty, plot the last stage of his course on the book’s single, cramped map. A summer’s work and a few vague descriptions of gold-mining techniques later, he’s ready to start the equally arduous return journey with pockets full. But he’s barely set off when the author leaves him. Aside from one mention of a landscape stripped by miners, Callum rarely takes note of his natural surroundings, spoiled or otherwise, and the people he meets on his trek are barely even two-dimensional. Following the abrupt ending, a note on the area’s First Nations residents by university scholar Nicola Campbell, who is Nłeʔkepmx, Syilx (Interior

Salish), and Métis, includes the tidbit that the gold rush drew workers from many parts of the world; that diversity is not reflected in the story itself. No gold, for all the miles traveled and intriguing setting. (author’s note, note on terminology) (Historical fiction. 12-15)

The Duke Steals Hearts & Other Body Parts

Cold, Elias | Page Street (352 pp.) | $18.99 May 13, 2025 | 9798890032317

Nobles, commoners, and the undead plot and scheme their ways toward their various ends.

Aulkendale City, known as “the Sore of the Southern Continent,” is home to drinking establishments, wealthy nobles, and a red tent community of vagrants and outcasts. Phyllis, who later goes by Phillip, has an uncanny, unexplained ability to snatch people’s body parts without killing them. The angsty 17-year-old usually runs around with Lucent, a nearly-400-year-old grifter, haunted by the death of his sister, who stays alive by stealing the life force of others. Adeline, a dancer at the Bourbon Rose, has been kidnapped and gruesomely murdered (but later reanimated); her brother, Wycliff, also 17, is desperate to know what happened to her. The story—told through the first person in the case of Phillip and the third person for other point-of-view characters—has stakes that are complex and convoluted. The cast members’ emotional motivations, Phillip’s especially, are directly explained to readers rather than revealed

through more intriguing or satisfying means, and the casual approach to worldbuilding makes it difficult to remain fully immersed in the world. The characters’ skin is various shades of white (Phillip) and brown (Adeline, Wycliff, and Lucent) that don’t seem to map onto any real-world racialized categories. Phillip’s gender transition is realized through the fantasy world’s magical means rather than referencing existing trans and queer communities or language; certain of his character traits may cue neurodivergence to some readers.

Clumsily executed. (content warnings) (Fantasy. 14-18)

The World Inside

Fields, Jan | Jolly Fish Press (160 pp.) $9.99 paper | August 1, 2025 9781631639562 | Series: Horizon Set 3

Her best friend, Chivon, may emphatically not believe in ghosts, but Tamika isn’t so sure—particularly after she sees t he mysterious paintings lining the walls of her great-aunt’s house. Tamika, who’s nearly 16, is a creative student who struggles with her grades in every subject except art, thanks to learning differences that are cued as dyslexia. She’s surprised at her widowed mom’s sudden announcement that a previously unmentioned great-aunt needs help, and they’re going to stay with her. During the journey from Chicago to Virginia, Tamika learns that Aunt Lati is in a coma—and she’s even more surprised to arrive and discover that her house looks “like an art

An utter delight, mashing up tropes in an alluring graphic format.

museum,” with walls covered in beautiful paintings. This delighted feeling takes on an edge of terror, though, when she spots indistinct figures in the landscapes, figures that her mom can’t see—and that seem to move. One of them has “no real face” but seems familiar—is she Aunt Lati?

Fans of ghost stories will be pleased by the supernatural storyline’s unusual twists and mildly scary climax, but it’s the ways in which the cast’s strongminded women characters play off against each other that will draw a broader audience into a deeper level of engagement. Field expertly uses the short chapters and accessible language of a novel aimed at reluctant teen readers to frame a tale that’s rich in both eerie elements and emotional nuance. Main characters read Black. Short, rich, and enticingly strange. (Paranormal. 12-18)

The Nefarious Nights of Willowweep Manor

Garrity, Shaenon K. | Illus. by Christopher Baldwin | McElderry (224 pp.) | $24.99 August 12, 2025 | 9781665930178

Series: Willowweep Manor, 2

A spirited teen returns to a gasket universe—a protective pocket universe drawn from our collective unconscious—to unravel a mystery

After a clever recap of the previous volume (in the form of the protagonist’s physics class puppet show presentation), Haley and Montague journey back through a portal into the universe of Willowweep. They discover an imperiled band of survivors whose own universe has imploded. Haley recognizes that this group, comprising a butler, a colonel, a spinster, a dog, a fop, and a “capable young lady,” are straight out of an English cozy mystery. As the new guests make themselves at home, Willowweep Manor begins to change, with various rooms appearing to suit its new

inhabitants. When the colonel is found murdered, Haley and the crew know they cannot trust their guests, and when the original denizens of the manor begin to disappear, Haley must pivot from gothic heroine to detective. Can she suss out the murderer’s identity and save her beloved friends?

Garrity’s sophomore offering is an utter delight, mashing up gothic and mystery tropes (plus a smattering of science fiction) through a metafiction lens in an alluring graphic format. Brown-skinned Haley, who wears her hair in cornrows, is both appealing and unforgettable in this story of belonging and found family. This series is both wildly inventive and compellingly quirky; expect readers to wail on the moors as they wait for new adventures. The supporting cast is diverse in skin tone.

Thoroughly clever and delightfully weird. (Graphic fantasy. 12-16)

America’s Not-SoSweetheart

Hanson, Blair | Page Street (368 pp.) $18.99 | June 17, 2025 | 9798890032720

Alec Braud is only 17, but he’s already a reality TV victor— and villain.

He’s also still in love with his showmance ex-boyfriend, Mexican American Joaquín Delgado. So when Joaquín suggests they go on a Midwestern road trip together to recreate—and “queerify”—scenes from famous musicals, Alec, who’s white, quickly agrees. The two boys embark on their journey, which will allow Joaquín to take photos for his art school portfolio, and attempt to process their feelings about Campfire Wars (“think low-budget Survivor for teens, just without the starvation”). They also navigate friendship after dating, which is complicated by the fact that Alec betrayed Joaquín to win the competition and the grand prize of

$250,000. Despite his philanthropic intentions—he donated much of his winnings to his family’s struggling wildlife rehabilitation center—fans labeled Alec one of the worst contestants to appear on the show. Negative public opinion and the toxicity of the show’s production team cause Alec to seriously question both his identity and his relationships. He desperately tries to convince himself that his behavior was justified, but he constantly spirals, bringing readers into h is chaotic headspace as he alienates his friends and makes poor decisions. As Alec tries his best to figure himself out, his inner debates and questionable actions can feel taxing. Hanson’s debut effectively delves into the seedy underbelly of the reality TV world, including biases in representation; this element may sustain readers’ interest. An interesting premise that gets bogged down in emotional turmoil. (Fiction. 14-18)

Take Up Space, Y’all: Your Bold & Bright Guide to Self-Love

Holliday, Tess & Kelly Coon | Running Press Kids (176 pp.) | $12.99 paper August 26, 2025 | 9780762489152

Plus-size supermodel and activist Holliday empowers readers to reject traditional beauty norms and love themselves, inside and out.

Holliday, whose body-positive “Eff Your Beauty Standards” social media campaign went viral, acknowledges her commitment to striving to make “the world a better and safer place for folks in larger bodies” and the pride she takes in being “part of a collective of people who have helped shift a generation,” particularly since she grew up without positive role models who looked like her. This work, which Holliday co-wrote with YA author Coon, draws on the expertise of four consultants with diverse backgrounds

and professions, and urges teens to practice self-acceptance. The material is divided into two parts: “Love Your Outer You” and “Love Your Inner You.” Some sections encourage readers to become aware of and challenge the stereotypes they hold about others based on identity labels relating to gender, religion, social class, and other factors. Holliday and Coon strive to include language and content that will engage people of many genders, styles, and cultures. The fun fonts and graphic design, short segments (frequently divided into bullet points or numbered lists), and style and personality quizzes peppered throughout mean the book may be most appealing to younger teens. Even as the work addresses difficult topics like disordered eating and food insecurity, the tone remains upbeat, focusing on messages of kindness and confidence.

A breezy, accessible, and uplifting guide to body positivity. (Q&A, further reading, resources) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Yuli:

Guardians of Dawn

Jae-Jones, S. | Wednesday Books (320 pp.) $21 | August 19, 2025 | 9781250191489 Series: Guardians of Dawn, 3

Princess Yulana does her best to balance being the First Daughter of the Gommun Kang with her duties as the Guardian of Wind.

Yuli, Zhara, and Ami are three of the Guardians of Dawn, legendary magicians who are reborn when the forces of order and chaos are out of balance. Aided by a secret network of supporters, they’ve been protecting magicians while searching for the missing fragments of the Songs of Order and Chaos, the book that will help them defeat the Mother of Ten Thousand Demons. When another kang threatens her family’s position, Yuli must step forward to compete against her best-friend-turned-rival, Maltak Kho, in the Grand Game to

determine who will lead the northern territory. Yuli, Zhara, and Ami are also trying to find a cure for the strange waking dreamer sickness and defeat the Moth Demon to seal the northern portal to help stop the affliction. With the fate of the Morning Realms resting on her shoulders, can Yuli strike a balance between navigating politics and defending the world against chaos? This third installment in the Guardians of Dawn series is just as engaging a nd magical as its predecessors. The intriguing characters, who represent diverse aspects of identity, are one of the story’s biggest strengths; their portrayals feature well-written banter, relationships, and character arcs. With in-depth worldbuilding and exciting action, this entry will leave fans begging for the next installment. Fast-paced, immersive, and delightfully dramatic; a strong addition to the series. (Fantasy. 13-18)

Kirkus Star

Songs for Ghosts

Kumagai, Clara | Amulet/Abrams (400 pp.) $19.99 | August 12, 2025 | 9781419768538

A teenage boy helps a mysterious ghost after discovering her diary. Nothing in Adam’s life makes him feel like he belongs: His Japanese mother died, and he’s living with his closed-off white father and his kind stepmother and baby half brother. He also just got dumped by his first boyfriend. When Adam discovers an old diary in the attic, he finds a welcome distraction in reading the words of a young woman living in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1911. The entries are letters to her deceased grandmother, telling of her studies, complex familial interactions, and even more complicated romantic relationships. She also writes about ghosts—some harmless and others not—and how playing the biwa, or

Japanese lute, appeases them. Adam, who doesn’t believe in spirits, is shocked when the ghost of the diary writer appears, asking for his help: “I cannot rest / where did the story go.” He tries to discover answers by going on a homestay in Nagasaki, where he also explores his own cultural heritage, family history and dynamics, and messy love life in a country where he barely speaks the language. Kumagai’s sophomore novel is an exciting blend of paranormal, mystery, and romance elements. The past and present are entwined and parallel one another in this beautifully emotional story of love, betrayal, heartbreak, death, and family. Through the diary entries and Adam’s research and exploration, Japanese history, language, culture, and stories are seamlessly integrated into the narrative.

A thrilling and creative story of growth. (Supernatural. 13-18)

Avatar Legends: City of Echoes

Lin, Judy I. | Amulet/Abrams (320 pp.) $21.99 | July 22, 2025 | 9781419776045 Series: Avatar Legends, 1

A 16-year-old refugee in a Chinese-inspired fantasy world delves into the mysteries of her new home in order to save a friend.

Jin and her grandfather

Gong-gong live in Ba Sing Se’s Lower Ring, struggling to get by with delivery jobs. Gong-gong, once an expert calligrapher, taught Jin enough to earn a scholarship to a literature academy, but now he’s often mentally absent and confused. They’re part of a torrent of refugees whose families and villages were destroyed by the Fire Nation. Despite this, Ba Sing Se’s brutal enforcers, the Dai Li, insist that there is no war. Still grieving her parents, Jin dreams of a more comfortable life for Gong-gong and her best friend Susu’s family. After Susu is forced to take a servant job in the

Upper Ring, risking a life of abuse by a wealthy employer, Jin begins accepting hazardous delivery jobs from the underground resistance, hoping to help Susu. Although this series opener takes place during the timeline of the Avatar: The Last Airbender series and contains cameos by characters from that world, it’s well-developed enough to succeed as a stand-alone. Lin delicately balances themes of inequality, societal control, insularity, and the impact of war with Jin’s resolve to help Susu, her burgeoning earthbending skills, and the struggle for a better world. Jin’s quest for a love like her parents’ leads to a realistic, supportive, slow-burn romance.

A nuanced exploration of darker themes set in the world of the popular Avatar universe. (Fantasy. 12-18)

A Bite of Pepper

Lorinczi, Balazs | McElderry (224 pp.)

$23.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9781665970471

A skateboarder desperately wants to avoid the physical changes of young adulthood. Pepper Mint loves skateboarding and her vampire dog, Shroom. She doesn’t love her mother’s pestering her to become a full vampire like her parents. Pepper doesn’t want to change, though she adores having strap-on wings. Human skaters falsely believe she has a physiological advantage (though she’s avoiding changing partly to avoid the increased strength that would make all her hard-won skills feel “irrelevant”). The B+ juice supplement that helps her minimize real blood consumption is classed as performanceenhancing, so she can’t compete. Instead of going full vamp at the vampire ball as her mother requested, Pepper sneaks off and befriends human waiter and art student Ana, who draws Pepper skating with her wings. Pepper’s half brother, Jeb, who’s always hustling, sees a business opportunity: turning Ana’s art into a vampire-themed skateboard brand. But the grind of the

Haunting yet filled with warmth, this luminous story will fascinate readers.

REBIS

business wears Pepper down, damaging her trust in Jeb and growing closeness with Ana. Despite vast gulfs separating what they each want, the three eventually learn to support one another’s choices. Attractive panels in pale blue, pink, lavender, and white evoke the transgender flag, reinforcing the metaphor of delaying puberty to avoid becoming “crystallized” in one form. This affirming story questions and creatively redefines “coming of age” in ways that will speak to many readers. Black-haired Pepper has light skin, dark-skinned Jeb has Afro-textured hair, and Ana has medium-toned skin and light hair. Joyful and hopeful. (Graphic paranormal. 14-18)

Get Real, Chloe Torres

Maldonado, Crystal | Holiday House (240 pp.) $19.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9780823452378

Chloe Torres isn’t ready to leave old friendships behind. At 18, Chloe is primed for her next adventure: studying art at Rhode Island School of Design. But one fateful day, she runs into her two closest friends from middle school, Sienna Aguilar and Ramona Cruz. They were “La Tripleta”—until their friendship fell apart. But Chloe can’t shake the feeling that their story isn’t over. When Papi gifts her three tickets to see their middle school obsession, the boy band Intonation, she takes it as a sign that they’re meant to be together again, and she proposes a weeklong road trip from their Massachusetts town to Las Vegas

for the epic reunion concert. Minor conflicts arise along the way as the young women iron out the kinks and relearn who they are after all these years. This sweet story deftly inserts a queer romance that doesn’t detract from the beauty of the girls’ reemerging friendship. Their various stops provide opportunities for character growth that may seem convenient but ultimately work. The first quarter of the novel is heavy on exposition, which makes it hard to engage with, but the rest of the story is worth it. Diverse representation in sexuality, race, neurodivergence, and body size appears throughout, and Maldonado incorporates characters from The Fall of Whit Rivera (2023), which will please fans.

Fill up the tank because this one is taking you for a sweet ride.

(Romance. 14-18)

Kirkus Star

Rebis: Born and Reborn

Marchesini, Irene | Illus. by Carlotta Dicataldo | Trans. by Carla Roncalli Di Montorio | First Second (192 pp.)

$25.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9781250359087

In this translated graphic novel from Italy, Martino, who’s shunned for being different, is embraced by found family and reborn into a new identity. In a small medieval European village, a child is born with albinism on the same day that two accused witches are burned at the stake, due to rumors that they were lovers. Martino’s cruel father, Girolamo, speaks of banishment

THE KIRKUS Q&A: J.D. NETTO

A fantasy novelist gets autobiographical—and real—in his latest novel.

BY CHRISTOPHER A. BISS-BROWN

J.D. NETTO KNOWS how to make magic happen on the page and off. Netto is an author, designer, branding specialist, and has likely added three more creative roles to his resume in the time between our interview and its publication. While many of his books are fantasy, his latest, The Other Side of the Ocean , is a fictional exploration of life for undocumented people in America. Our starred review calls it “Heartfelt and authentically grounded; a must-read.” Our conversation, held over Zoom, has been edited for length and clarity.

The Other Side of the Ocean, set in 2011-2012, begins with a conversation about someone being detained and potentially deported by ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. What does that feel like in 2025? The book is based on real events, and that was one of them. I grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, which has a large Brazilian American community.

Seeing that it’s happening today is—baffling. We, as a country, strive to be great in so many things, but when it comes to acknowledging the humanity behind every immigrant story—that’s left to bits and pieces. Under this administration, it’s been a heartbreaking thing to witness. We’re still seeing these raids. We’re still living through these moments. Suddenly, because you may have a hint of an accent,

you have to drive with your passport and people may think, Are you really an American? It’s a strange moment to navigate. I’m a green card holder; you’d think that I’d have peace of mind traveling after all these years, but suddenly it’s Maybe you shouldn’t travel. Maybe you shouldn’t do this What now?

The book feels deeply personal. How much of Matt’s life overlaps with your own?

Some moments are fictional, but they always connect to something that I witnessed or that somebody within our community witnessed. I came to the States when I was 11 years old and, for all intents and purposes, I was an American— inside that school. But outside of school there were nuances that said otherwise. I had

to navigate that— boom— when I turned 18 and graduated to undocumented status. By that point, I h ad nothing back in Brazil. I was just a kid.

I was a DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] recipient waiting for my priority date so I could get a green card. It was a strange process, and then the world stopped during Covid-19. And so did USCIS [United States Citizenship and Immigration Services]; those petitions were in limbo. Writing The Other Side of the Ocean was my way to cope. A lot of Matt’s life mirrors my own. The romance, unfortunately, is not real. James never happened in my life. I wish something like that had happened. I thought the storyline was a great opportunity to show the disparity of these realities. Sometimes people are so

oblivious to how life is for a Dreamer, an undocumented kid. I wanted to find the universal truth within the story. We all want to be respected; that’s a universal truth.

You’ve self-published and you’ve also worked with traditional publishing houses. Tell us about your experiences working with each.

I self-published my first book in 2012 when I was 24. I’m also a graphic designer, brand strategist, and copywriter. By that time I was freelancing, and I started my creative agency while working on The Whispers of the Fallen. I was lucky enough to sell 40,000 copies of that book, and I realized that self-publishing gave me a lot of control. But it also gave me a lot of work. And seldom any time to write.

Years later I came to realize that once I built that platform, I was ready to expand with a team, and that’s what traditional publishing is giving me. I’m seeing the other side of the coin. It’s a relief, but as an artist, relinquishing control is hard. I designed all my covers. I illustrated The Other Side of the Ocean. It’s a challenge and a relief. It’s bittersweet.

Your branding company, J.D. Netto Creative, seems like it’s the best thing for someone aiming to self-publish. Those skills go hand in hand.

After I wrote The Whispers of the Fallen, I wrote four books. I worked in that universe from 2012 to 2017.

Five years of my life! I learned a lot. I didn’t go to college, but that was my very public college experience. And I realized that creative entrepreneurs need to be well versed.

What happened to The Whispers of the Fallen? I took that series down—on purpose. I started writing the first book when I was 18 years old. I was in the closet. I was a church boy. I wanted to write a very different book, but I was bound to the confinements of religion. Perhaps I’ll revisit it and rerelease it, but for now, I’m working on the third book in The Echoes of Fallen Stars series.

The Echoes of Fallen Stars combines elements of

fantasy, romance, religion, and folklore. Tell us about the research you do to create these worlds. For The Echoes of Fallen Stars, I resorted to religious trauma. I remember a [religious] leader s aid, “J.D., you’re like a helium balloon. If we don’t hold you down, you’re going to drift. You’d go off and make people question many things.” I was that kid in church who’d say things like, “Why do I have to give money to the church?” “Why is God a man?” I remember thinking, What if God and Lucifer were secret lovers? It’s the yin and yang with the shadow and the light. And I started writing The Echoes of

We all want to be respected; that’s a universal truth.

Fallen Stars. When I was younger, I read a lot: demonology, angelology, Norse and Greek mythology, Brazilian folklore. A lot o f that came into play.

Tell us about the differences between writing fantasy and writing realistic fiction. When it comes to fantasy, I get to use a lot of coded messages, motifs, creatures, and systems that spark thought. With The Other Side of the Ocean, I found it to be more raw because you can only use human emotion. That also exists in fantasy, but I couldn’t use a dragon or a magic system to emulate Matt’s sorrow and disappointment. I’m writing the Winterborne trilogy now, which starts in Massachusetts and ends in a world of eternal winter. But the teenage protagonist is raised on this earth. It’s been interesting to explore human trauma in a world of dragons. It’s been a liberating experience.

What was it like, as a self-published author, to be reviewed by Kirkus Indie? It was helpful, and it was scary. A Kirkus review opened many doors for me. The second book of that series, Gods and Monsters, ended up in Times Square on a huge billboard. That review is part of what got that attention. If you’re an indie author and you need validation, it’s going to open doors. Invest in yourself.

Christopher A. Biss-Brown is the curator of the Children’s Literature Research Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia

Critically Acclaimed Reads for Teens

New Novel by Philip Pullman Coming This Fall

The third and final installment in the Book of Dust trilogy will be published in October.

Philip Pullman will conclude his Book of Dust trilogy with a new book coming later this year.

Alfred A. Knopf will publish Pullman’s The Rose Field in the fall,

the press announced in a news release.

Pullman, known for the His Dark Materials trilogy of young adult fantasy novels, launched the companion Book of Dust trilogy in 2017 with La Belle Sauvage, which explored the early life of Lyra, the hero introduced in His Dark Materials. The second novel in the trilogy, The Secret Commonwealth, following Lyra after the events of His Dark Materials, was published in 2019.

The Rose Field is set directly after The Secret Commonwealth and will follow Lyra in a haunted city, searching for her beloved daemon, Pantalaimon.

“I think of The Rose Field as partly a thriller and partly a bildungsroman: a story of psychological, moral, and emotional growth,” Pullman said in a statement. “But it’s also a vision. Lyra’s world is changing, just as ours is.…I hope that fundamentally and permanently The Rose Field will be read as a story. I think of myself [as] a storyteller rather than a novelist or a writer of literary fiction, belonging among the tellers of folk tales, fairy tales, ballads, and myths.”

For reviews of the Book of Dust series, visit Kirkus online.

AND HEARD

The Rose Field is scheduled for publication on Oct. 23. M.S.

Philip Pullman

but the protection of a defiant mother saves the baby—for a time. Eventually Girolamo agrees to the villagers’ demands to get rid of the “cursed” child. But little Martino escapes to the forest before this can happen, meeting Viviana, one of the burned witches who has mysteriously risen from the dead. Living reclusively, she takes Martino—who chooses the new name Rebis and finds joy in wearing gowns— under her wing, and they form a loving bond. When Rebis’ beloved sister, Maria, marries, the child risks being spotted by Girolamo and the villagers and attends the wedding. But Rebis is recognized and shunned again: “If you ever come back, we’ll burn you at the stake. Like vermin….” Lush, evocative illustrations draw readers effortlessly into this world of pain, retribution, magic, kinship, and love. This complex story invites and rewards repeated readings, with new treasures to discover each time within both dramatic text and cinematic artwork.

Haunting yet filled with warmth, this luminous story of identity and belonging will fascinate readers. (note from the author and illustrator, art gallery) (Graphic fantasy. 12-18)

Wish You Were Her

McNicoll, Elle | Wednesday Books (352 pp.) $24 | $14 paper | August 26, 2025 9781250335562 | 9781250335586 paper

World-renowned actor Allegra Brooks escapes her celebrity life for the summer and grapples with fame and love as an autistic person. Eighteen-year-old Allegra is ready for a break from the Hollywood grind of being on set and going on press tours. She heads for the respite of quiet Lake Pristine, the small-town setting of 2024’s Some Like It Cold. She’s planning to spend time with her father, who owns a bookshop there and runs a popular annual book festival. This interlude provides Allegra with an experience unlike any she’s previously had: She gets to focus on making friends, working a normal job, and navigating the

complexities of authentic relationships. She does all of this while trying to escape constant public scrutiny and find her way as an autistic person in a neurotypical world. When she meets Jonah Thorne, who’s also autistic, they form a deep and meaningful connection, although it’s fraught thanks to disagreements, romantic tension, and external forces working against them. Allegra is a beautiful, talented, mid-size, neurodivergent woman whose autism is described with nuance and honesty. Despite its richly drawn characters, the plot is unevenly paced, bogged down by a subplot involving a mysterious email correspondence that feels like an unnecessary complication. Characters largely present white. Complex, compelling characters populate a satisfying romance with some plotting issues. (Romance. 14-18)

Death in the Dark

Moore, Bryce | Sourcebooks Fire (336 pp.) $12.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9781728293363

A chilling and adventure-filled mystery set amid the Blitz and inspired by a real serial killer.

Seventeen-yearold Mary Churchill, daughter of the prime minister, is bored with being kept away from danger during World War II. During a weeklong reprieve in London, away from the family’s countryside home, Chequers, she befriends Evelyn, a middle-aged woman, at a club. They make plans to meet the next day—but after Evelyn doesn’t show up, Mary is horrified to stumble across her body. Evelyn was brutally murdered. Determined to assist the understaffed police in finding the killer, Mary throws herself into the investigation, at times using her father’s status to help. As the war rages around her, Mary dodges bombs and hunts the killer during the nightly blackouts even as the body count rises. Moore’s latest is a gory, action-packed look at early 1940s London and the terror and havoc the Blitz wreaked on the city. The murder

scenes are grisly and detailed, lending purchase to Mary’s grit and determination to find the killer. Mary’s refusal to be cowed by social conventions or looming danger—from both the Nazis and the murderer—may at times give readers pause, but her doggedness does effectively propel the plot, as during a thrilling blackout chase scene through the London Underground, which will leave readers cheering Mary on. Main characters are cued white.

This terrifying historical work will grip readers. (historical note) (Historical mystery. 14-18)

My Fair Monster

Rivera, Adrienne | Page Street (384 pp.)

$18.99 | August 19, 2025 | 9798890032935

In Rivera’s debut, a teen pageant queen and a petulant special effects artist team up.

Seventeen-yearold Corie Nielson has won multiple titles, including Miss Teen Indiana, even though she struggles with remembering her commitments and being on time. Ever since she appeared in a commercial for a local restaurant she loves (her line: “Best Spuds. Life’s greater with a tater”), she’s harbored secret acting ambitions. A horrible day of forgetting obligations and disappointing her family leads to Corie’s accidentally rear-ending the car of surly classmate and SFX talent, Everett Robbins. Feeling down, Corie visits her great-grandmother Ingrid (a former Miss America and horror movie actor) for their weekly viewing of Midnight Frights, during which Corie learns about the upcoming Monster SFX Contest taking place around Halloween in Indianapolis. The prize—$2,000 and a guest appearance on the show—feels to Corie like a chance to pay homage to Ingrid while boosting her acting dreams. Realizing she has just “one potato-based acting credit” and Everett’s special effects skills could really help, Corie asks him to make her his “monstrous Eliza Doolittle.” Everett agrees, seeing an opportunity to

expand his portfolio for his application to an SFX certificate program in California. Corie’s over-the-top enthusiasm for all things horror offers an amusing contrast to the glitzy glam of pageantry and enhances her evolving partnership with Everett. Their interactions are funny grumpy-sunshine bliss that unfolds into an endearing relationship of mutual support. Most characters are cued white. Hilarious and sweet: a monster of a good time. (Romance. 14-18)

Roar of the Lambs

Shea, Jamison | Henry Holt (416 pp.) $19.99 | August 26, 2025 | 9781250381736

A teen psychic sees a future that causes her to form an unlikely alliance with a rich interloper. Winona “Winnie” Bray, a Black 17-year-old from Buffalo, New York, can “slip deep into someone’s past, present, and future” through a simple touch, but she sells fake fortunes at a local magic shop to save money for her dream of studying archaeology at the University of Cambridge. A reading for Apollo Rathburn, a nonbinary, biracial Black teen whose father is from an old money white Buffalo family, leads to her seeing a vision of a crime being committed at her old house. Winnie goes there and finds an antique box—and Cyrus, Apollo’s cousin. Following an altercation with Cyrus, she leaves with a broken arm, possession of the box, and a dangerous, life-altering vision that involves Apollo. As Winnie and Apollo try to figure out ways to circumvent the apocalyptic vision, the seemingly indestructible box starts showing up in unexpected places. Winnie and Apollo have distinct and compelling character arcs that readers will enjoy, and their romance is delightful and tender. The horror and occult aspects of the story are thrown off, however, by some confusion and pacing issues caused by an indecipherable language used in certain chapters (“Dgudw, uq heuj. Dgudw

dgudw”) and shifts in the timeline that lead to readers bouncing between a series of fragmented secondary characters and Winnie and Apollo’s story.

A cautionary tale of magic and the effects of limitless power that lacks cohesion. (content warning) (Supernatural thriller. 14-18)

Tall Water

Sindu, SJ | Illus. by Dion MBD

HarperAlley (256 pp.) | $26.99

August 12, 2025 | 9780063090163

A 17-year-old embarks on a bold quest to fulfil her dream of getting to know her mother.

Nimmi Campbell is struggling: She’s not confident about being

accepted into Columbia’s journalism program, she’s an outsider in South Dakota, where her white American father moved them from Boston to be closer to Grandpa, and she’s wrestling with the idea of justice. The U.S. denied her Sri Lankan Tamil mother, who runs a UNICEF orphanage in Batticaloa, a visa, so she hasn’t seen Amma since she was a baby. When her journalist father finally gets a visa to return to Sri Lanka to cover the civil war, Nimmi, who has dual citizenship, sneaks off to join him. Her reunion with Amma is emotional, but Nimmi has mixed feelings about their long separation—and her mother unexpectedly feels like a stranger. It’s December 2004, and when the tsunami hits, the orphanage is devastated. This graphic novel’s most powerful pages are the wordless ones showing the tsunami and the wreckage and ruin it

leaves behind. The characters’ human resilience and grit shine through beautifully in the straightforward text and fluid artwork executed in a muted palette. The book offers glimpses of the long-running conflict in Sri Lanka, its political and social history, the presence of international media, and the complexities of migration. Parenthood, found family, migration, and war are some of the themes that run through this poignant narrative.

A strikingly illustrated story of love and war. (author’s note) (Graphic fiction. 13-18)

The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel

Stiefvater, Maggie | Adapt. by Stephanie Williams | Illus. by Sas Milledge | Colors by Abel Ko | Viking (256 pp.) | $24.99 | $17.99 paper | August 5, 2025 | 9780593621172 9780593621189 paper | Series: The Raven C ycle: The Graphic Novels, 1 In Williams’ graphic novel adaptation of Stiefvater’s 2012 series opener, Blue and her Raven boys go on a quest to find an ancient Welsh king. Growing up with psychics, Blue, who doesn’t possess these powers, has always been told that if she kissed her true love, he’d die. When Gansey’s spirit appears to her on St. Mark’s Eve, Blue is set on a collision course with her destiny. The still-living Gansey and his friends attend the posh Aglionby Academy. While he can’t always escape the perception of being a condescending rich boy, Gansey, influenced by a near-death experience seven years earlier, throws himself fully into finding the

The characters’ resilience and grit shine through in the fluid artwork.

TALL WATER

sleeping king, Owain Glendower. Searching for ley lines that will lead them to Glendower, Gansey, Blue, and the others get swept up in a race to activate the lines before those with dark motives can seize the ancient magic for themselves. Though some of the illustrations don’t convey the full gravitas of some moments in the original, others adroitly capture the humor, dread, and camaraderie that made the novel so intriguing and endearing. Newcomers to the story may not catch the significance of certain developments, but other elements, like the town of Henrietta and Gansey’s journal, gain extra life and added dimensions thanks to Milledge’s expressive and nostalgic artwork, which is enhanced by Ko’s luminous colors. Blue has brown skin and dark curly hair, and the boys present as white. A treat for series fans and new readers alike. (Graphic fantasy. 12-18)

Deep Water

Stoffels, Maren | Trans. by Laura Watkinson | Delacorte (240 pp.) | $12.99 p aper | August 19, 2025 | 9780593900550

E xpecting to go on a luxury cruise, troubled teens instead find themselves trapped in a program to rehabilitate bullies in this translated Dutch import. Vesper is looking forward to a 10-day voyage at sea, hoping to reset and get away from the stresses of home. However, she soon discovers that this isn’t a relaxing vacation. Rather, it’s No Exit, a program to reform bullies. Vesper and the others on board confront extreme challenges unlike anything they’ve experienced before—and their survival isn’t guaranteed. This fairly short, fast-paced read alternates between Vesper’s perspective and diary entries written by an unnamed bullying victim with details redacted, enhancing the sense of mystery. Given that the book centers on a cast of bullies who turn on one another with hateful speech and actions, the characters are challenging to spend time with. Stoffels tackles sensitive

topics, such as suicide, but due to the minimal character development (few details are given about their backgrounds or inner lives, making it hard to connect with them) these elements come across as providing more shock value than psychological insight. Although the story is primarily told from Vesper’s perspective, readers will likely be left curious to learn more about the catalyst for her being sent to No Exit. Some characters’ backstories are not only morally gray but extreme in their violence. Characters largely present white.

A quick-moving thriller let down by surface-level characterization. (resources) (Horror. 14-18)

Kirkus Star

This Place Kills Me

Tamaki, Mariko | Illus. by Nicole Goux Abrams Fanfare (272 pp.) | $26.99 August 19, 2025 | 9781419768460

A new student unearths a tangled web of secrets after a popular girl is found dead. In this standalone graphic novel, Abby Kita is trying to adjust to life at Wilberton, an all-girls boarding school. Her roommate, Claire, barely acknowledges her, and Abby spends most days trying to ignore the unkind whispers of her classmates. The members of the Wilberton Theater Society stage a successful run of Romeo and Juliet—then the body of Elizabeth Woodward, who played Juliet, is found after a raucous cast party. Rumors run rampant, and Abby’s tragic past seems to be coming back to haunt her as the other girls begin to speculate about her involvement in Elizabeth’s death. Abby gradually builds a tenuous friendship with Claire. Together, can they find out not only the truth but its connection to a dark, shocking secret buried in Wilberton’s history? With its stunning two-toned gray and pink illustrations that cue a 1980s setting through images such as a Walkman, phone booth, and clunky desktop

computer, this collaboration between Tamaki and Goux isn’t just a clever and heartbreaking mystery but a deeper examination of bullying, homophobia, and belonging. The central puzzle is certain to leave readers breathlessly enthralled, turning pages as quickly as possible to get to the shocking truth behind Elizabeth’s demise. Abby presents Japanese American, and most other characters read white. Truly exceptional; a standout. (Graphic mystery. 12-18)

Kirkus Star

My Perfect Family

VanBrakle, Khadijah | Holiday House (272 pp.) | $19.99 | August 26, 2025 9780823454860

Sixteen-year-old Leena must come to terms with a family revelation. Leena’s world has always been small—just her single mother, Asiyah, and her best friend, DeeDee, who’s family in every way except blood. But everything changes with one call that upends her world. Leena learns she has a family—a wealthy grandfather, who’s in the hospital, and an opinionated and overbearing great-aunt—and they’re Muslim, a faith she knows little about beyond the headlines. Suddenly, everything Leena thought she knew about her family—and herself—is up for debate. Remnants of Islam linger in Leena’s childhood in small ways, but most Islamic teachings were absent from her upbringing. As she gets to know her grandfather and great-aunt, Leena experiences firsthand the forces that drove her mother away from the faith and learns that she must separate her experiences from those of her mother. VanBrakle realistically shows how religion can alienate, separate, and unite people. She confronts hard truths and stereotypes and excels at portraying complex, compassionate characters. The book explores the intersections of

religion, grief, parental choices, and religious trauma with nuance. Leena and her family are Black; the narrative highlights some of the unique challenges African American Muslims face, adding a critical, often-overlooked layer to the narrative. Relatable, page-turning, and honest, this story will leave readers wishing for more and thankful for the space it dares to create. An engrossing, emotionally rich meditation on faith, family, and the courage it takes to create your own story. (Fiction. 14-18)

The Blade That Binds Us

Wallace, Kali & Leah Thomas Tiny Ghost Press (318 pp.) | $25.99 August 19, 2025 | 9781915585318

In a brutal land shaped by myth, two unlikely companions set out on a perilous journey. While helping his ironsmith father collect swords from a pile of corpses as part of a burial ritual, pale-skinned, blue-eyed, golden-haired village boy Siggi finds Hrafn, a manacled witch-boy with midnight-black hair and skin “darker than anyone’s in Midfjördur.” Hrafn, it turns out, is alive—and when Siggi saves his life, they become bound by Hrafn’s skin magic. Siggi asks for help finding his brother, Arnes, who vanished while seeking answers about the mystery surrounding their late mother, rumored to have been killed by a witch. The duo soon uncover a clue connected to Arnes, and they set off, navigating treacherous mountains and shadowy underground passages where they encounter figures from folklore: huldu, druids, darkwolves, and even a massive, whalelike lyngbakr. Their initially reluctant companionship kindles into a tender, slow-burn romance, offering them rare warmth amid the hardships. Inspired by Icelandic culture and written with dark lyricism, Wallace and Thomas’ collaboration introduces readers to a grim yet entrancing world in

which beauty and terror coexist. Though the pacing occasionally drags under the richly textured worldbuilding and mythological exposition, readers drawn to folklore-laced fantasy and hard-won romance with sharp banter will find much to savor here.

A dark, haunting fantasy in which magic binds hearts as tightly as it binds fates. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)

Tripping Over You

White, Owena | Illus. by Suzana Harcum First Second (240 pp.) | $25.99

$17.99 paper | August 19, 2025

9781250330710 | 9781250330727 paper Series: Tripping Over You, 1

In this queer romance set in a boarding school, two boys tentatively find a connection. British schoolboys Liam Schwartz and Milo Dunstan are good friends, who truly pay attention to each other and are always together at school. They typically go home at the weekends, but Liam’s dad doesn’t encourage “sleepovers”—he doesn’t think they’re manly enough—making it hard for them to visit one another. His dad’s toxic attitudes affect the way Liam sees the world, but as the teens finally stop dancing around the fact that their feelings venture into terrain that goes beyond friendship, it becomes clear that their attraction is reciprocal—and impossible to ignore. But some things are far too hard to talk about, especially when there’s a lot on the line. Liam doesn’t like to lie, and Milo isn’t the best at subterfuge himself, but if that’s what it takes to be together, it might be worth it. The boys’ chemistry is intense, and their fondness for each other is palpable throughout their funny, heartening, and ultimately satisfying journey. The slightly retro full-color illustrations portray a largely white-presenting cast that evokes the Archie comics. The British setting is minimally developed in the language and artwork and lacks cultural texture. Nevertheless, this

feel-good story features appealing banter among the characters and touches upon important themes of coming out and good communication in relationships. A charming series opener. (Graphic romance. 14-18)

Girls of Dark Divine

Woods, E.V. | Delacorte (400 pp.) | $19.99 August 5, 2025 | 9780593812105

The lead dancer of a renowned ballet troupe fights to save her fellow dancers from a destructive curse. The Marionettes of New Kora are preternaturally talented ballet dancers, known for their beauty and skill. They are also horrifically cursed. Troupe leader Malcolm Manrow, who turns on the charm when he wants to get his way, collects girls and makes them his puppets, controlling everything from their movements to their memories and making himself rich from their talents. But the curse is also slowly killing the girls. Lead dancer Emberlyn, nicknamed the “Princess of New Kora,” who has pale skin and “hair like fire,” is desperate to save her Marionette sisters from Malcolm’s control and the terrible fate that awaits them all. When the troupe leaves New Kora for a performance in the city of Parlizia, Emberlyn thinks the unfamiliar terrain may offer them an opportunity to escape, but she’ll need to understand more about the curse and its limits. With the help of a mysterious boy, she delves into Malcolm’s past, but breaking the curse may mean her own undoing. The curse, which robs the dancers of their memories, also limits the narrative; there’s little sense of a world beyond the dancers, whose personalities blend together, and necessary worldbuilding comes too late in the story. Potentially compelling elements are lost under thin characterizations, awkward pacing, and cartoon villainy. Characters are diverse in skin tone. More atmosphere than substance. (map) (Fantasy. 12-16)

SECOND LOOK

This review originally ran in the July 15, 2024, issue.

A witch and a vampireturned-cat team up in this compilation of entries from a popular WEBTOON comic series.

Morgana only wants her magic to not be so erratic; it’d be nice to actually get a spell right once in a while. Her family has more ambitious aspirations, h owever: Her mom wants peace between the witches and a dangerous vampire clan. Their relationship has been tense for some time, but when an attempt at conciliation goes south, the problems escalate. In the chaos, Morgana accidentally

transforms one of the vampires, Oz, into a little white, red-eyed cat. Turning him back, when she can’t even manage making tea, might be tough, and Oz’s clan thinks he’s been kidnapped and won’t let this g o. Between possible traitors and a brewing war, Morgana must do her best to help Oz so she can help her family. As the stakes rise, vampires start becoming sick with a craving for witches’ blood, thanks to a curse supposedly inflicted on them by Morgana’s family. Morgana doesn’t know what to do, or

whom to turn to. Could a mysterious new arrival be an ally? The adorable full-color art in contrasting tones of purples, rich b rowns, and pastels portrays scenes that are at times laugh-out-loud

The Kiss Bet Volume 1

Ochoa, Ingrid

WEBTOON Unscrolled

288 pp. | $18.99 paper

February 25, 2025

9781998341146

This review originally ran in the February 1, 2025, issue.

A boy dares his friend to kiss a stranger—and it leads somewhere interesting. Rosy-cheeked, redheaded Sara Lin’s 18th birthday

comes with a bet: Since she’s never been kissed, Patrick, one of her best friends, dares her to kiss a stranger they see on the

subway. The guy is cute, with a shock of blond hair, but he rejects her, calling her a weirdo. That was embarrassing enough, but Sara Lin later sees him entering her apartment building, and b ecause she’s failing calculus, her teacher arranges for a student to tutor her—and it’s Oliver Yang, the guy who rejected her. At least he doesn’t seem to recognize her, which makes the situation a tiny bit less mortifying. It’s not like she’s into him, anyway; Sara Lin likes new classmate Joe, enough that she agrees to more bets in order to get closer to him. As the bets pile

Morgana and Oz

Volume 1

Miyuli

WEBTOON Unscrolled

320 pp. | $18.99 paper

September 3, 2024

9781998854837

funny. Morgana is a sweetly naïve protagonist, and the intrigue is engrossing.

An adorable adventure with a thrilling ending: Readers will be excited for the next volume.

up, Sara Lin has to face the boys in her life and all the things they’re keeping from her. With humor and lively banter, these believable teens navigate their emotions with authenticity. This graphic novel is illustrated in a soft color palette using a style that’s both adorable and expressive, at times making characters resemble emojis. Sara Lin is an extremely likable main character, and the ending will leave readers excited for Volume 2. The ethnically ambiguous characters, most of whom are light-skinned, live in an unspecified urban setting.

Sweet and engaging.

Pride Month

Indie

HOMO NOUVEAU

I LOVE A GREAT, emotion al, high-stakes queer memoir, like Saeed Jones’ How We Fight for Our Lives and Brian Broome’s Punch Me Up to the Gods (both winners of the Kirkus Prize). Coming-out stories are a bit like immigrant stories; the protagonist is searching for a better, maybe freer life, but who knows what the future holds? I devour these books, but sometimes I want something new, queer, and unfamiliar (at least to me). For Pride Month, we’re highlighting unique books that cover something we haven’t seen before, like the gay story behind a British cult film, a guide that combines tarot and LGBTQ+ icons, and a graphic novel starring the sexy, outrageous, criminal artist Caravaggio.

In The Epic Saga Behind Frankenstein: The True Story, Sam Irvin, a film director, producer, and historian, recounts how Frankenstein: The True Story, a 1970s cult classic in the U.K., was made, and he also dishes about the off-screen drama. Irvin calls the film “a sophisticated reconstruction of the F rankenstein story on a

grand scale, populated by A-list actors, with sumptuous settings, lavish costumes, a three-hour running time, and an eye-popping budget of $3.5 million.” There are too many fascinating things to note here (Jane Seymour, for instance, was one of the stars), so readers are better off going straight to the source. But here’s one standout gay detail: Christopher Isherwood and his partner, Don B achardy, wrote the screenplay. The whole book is a joy, but “most intriguing,” says our starred review, “ is the wide array of LGBTQ+ talent that worked on the film, and how the creative team strove to bring out the original story’s rarely explored homoerotic undertones.” Kirkus calls the book “a lively and enthusiastic in-depth

exploration of an obscure TV horror classic.”

Tarot has long had a place in the LGBTQ+ world, and John Callaghan and Robert Barber’s coffee-table book, The Modern Queer Tarot , honors a constellation of contributors to queer culture. Our reviewer notes, “The reader will find many of the expected icons, including Harvey Milk as the Star (‘hope shining through the darkness’), James Baldwin as Judgment (‘coming to terms with the past in order to move forward’), Freddie Mercury as the Six of Wands (‘the bridge between strength and love’), and Audre Lorde as the Queen of Swords (‘extreme individualism and radical new ideas’).”

A tarot deck depicting these legends is available to buy separately. “Whether readers are interested in

conducting a proper reading (which the introduction explains how to complete) or are simply seeking a unique art book to adorn a coffee table, this tarot guide will provide hours of educational, queer-inspired illumination.”

Ken Mora’s graphic novel, Caravaggio: A Light Before the Darkness , depicts the Baroque artist (most likely accurately) as “a queer, swashbuckling adventurer,” says our reviewer. “Images of Caravaggio’s lithe, 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 action-packed scene after another.…A clever take on history turns a famed artist into a flawed and fascinating hero fighting for acceptance.”

Chaya Schechner is the president of Kirkus Indie.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

CHAYA SCHECHNER

EDITOR’S PICK

In Konstant’s memoir, a wildlife expert looks back on the many animals he’s known.

In his nonfiction debut, the author briefly reminisces about his animal-centric childhood before launching into story after story drawn from his long experience as a wildlife biologist and inveterate traveler (the book’s endpapers feature a world map indicating all his far-flung destinations). The text is presented in a series of short chapters filled with quotations from great naturalists like John Burroughs (“What we love to do, that we do well. To know is not all; it is only half. To love is the other half”) and dozens of color and black-and-white photographs documenting

both Konstant’s personal life and the numerous animals he’s encountered in his years of doing conservation work. He recalls chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall meeting his dog Blue in 2014, for instance, and how he first met fellow naturalist Mick Reilly in Kruger National Park when Reilly accidentally pelted him with dried elephant dung intended for some nearby hyenas. (“We both understood that the incident could be settled diplomatically,” the author writes, “sorted out later over a beer or two and a good laugh as well.”) Interspersed throughout the chapters are little insets designed to quickly teach readers facts about the natural world (“Cranial nerves allow great white sharks and crocodiles

Wrestles With Wolves: Saving the World One Species at a Time

Konstant, Bill | Archimedes’ Printing Shoppe & Sundry Goodes | 301 pp. | $24.95 paper

April 15, 2025 | 9781737285120

to slice and tear chunks of flesh from their prey,” for example). Whether he’s telling stories about all the dogs he’s met or about studying lions in Serengeti National Park or lemurs in Madagascar, Konstant strikes the same wonderfully friendly, conversational tone throughout, making

the reading experience feel like listening to a great storyteller guide you through his photo file. The book’s clear conservationist urgency is never overdone and never drowns out the welcoming atmosphere. A visually beautiful and inviting memoir of the travels of a nature enthusiast.

Age-appropriate, powerful messages of survival, humanity, and hope.

SHAKE THE MANGO TREE

At the Edge of the Ice

Armstrong, Carolyn | Self (228 pp.) | $9.99 paper | July 3, 2023 | 9798218220037

Series: Eco Warriors, 1

A young girl gains the ability to speak with the animals her conservationist parents are studying in Armstrong’s middle-grade novel. Sydney is far from your average 11-year-old girl. Instead of growing up and going to school in one place, she and her twin sister, Sierra, travel the world with their conservationist parents, who homeschool them. The twins’ mother is an environmental photographer dedicated to capturing wildlife in their natural habitats and documenting the effects of climate change, p articularly its effect on animals. Sydney also loves animals; she even talks to them when the family takes photography expeditions (though they never respond). The family’s latest trip—to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway—starts with an unexpected polar bear sighting in the airport parking lot. Sydney learns that their guides, Erik and his 16-year-old son, Jon, have been attempting to track this bear (whom they’ve nicknamed PB-861), hoping to monitor its activity in relation to the changes in (and destruction of) its home. (“If PB-861 keeps coming inland, that means he’s hungry. And desperate,” Erik says.) Setting sail on the frigid Arctic seas, the conservationists begin their work documenting the environment and wildlife. When Sydney is accidentally thrown from her raft onto an iceberg,

hitting her head, she’s knocked unconscious; when she wakes up, she finds that she can speak with animals, not just to them. Sydney realizes that she might be able to make a difference and help the planet in new and exciting ways—especially when she teams up with her dataand research-loving twin Sierra. Armstrong weaves a tale that’s both entertaining and educational. The adventurous Sydney is a likable and compelling protagonist, and her more academically minded twin serves as a perfect foil. The supporting characters are also well developed. Young readers will enjoy learning about the Arctic ecosystem and may even come away from the book feeling inspired to do more research into global conservation efforts and help in any way they can. A whimsical and edifying story about protecting our delicate ecosystem.

Shake the Mango Tree

Beardsley, Ruth | Illus. by Jackson Muthoni FriesenPress (52 pp.) | $29.99 | $17.99 paper February 26, 2025 | 9781038329608 9781038329592 paper

A young boy in the war-torn Congo makes an arduous journey to freedom in Beardsley’s children’s book.

On her dedication page, the author of this illustrated book for elementary and middle school readers makes it clear that Rupat, the young Congolese boy at the narrative’s empathetic center, is based on a real person, one of countless refugees displaced from their homelands by

violent conflicts. (Beardsley’s earlier book, 2020’s My Heart in Kenya , explored a similar theme.) The spare but effective story is presented in both English and French. The text in each language is set against background colors complementing the a djacent, full-page, digital illustrations by Muthoni, which are rendered i n expressive detail. The book begins in a village in the Congo where young Rupat lives and goes to school. In his yard is a tree heavy with “the sweet, sticky, juicy mangoes” he loves. Rupat’s peaceful life changes when he’s a teenager—civil war erupts, and the ethnic conflict reaches the family farm. Rupat runs from the “fighting and fires,” not knowing if he’ll ever see his family again. Without overt words or images of violence, the author invites readers’ empathy for Rupat’s desperation as his initial flight into the bush becomes a grueling, one-month trek of “two thousand kilometers,” mostly on foot, over the “Mitumba mountains, through valleys, to the edges of savannahs” with other displaced people. (They see wild animals, but “the only danger,” Beardsley chillingly notes, “was the rebel soldiers.”) The narrative is propelled by the determination that keeps Rupat and others heading for a safer life. In the face of hunger, fear, and injury, the discovery of a heavily laden mango tree becomes a moving symbol of hope. Rupat, whose successful later life is also related here, “can still remember” the sound of the falling fruit “meeting the earth, the footsteps of the children as they rushed to gather up the mangoes, the feeling of relief as they ate until their bellies were full.” The author affectingly describes how Rupat can still taste “the sweet, juicy, sticky, slippery yellow fruit. The taste of relief.”

Age-appropriate, powerful messages of survival, humanity, and hope.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

Infinite Paradise: Witnessing the Wild

Beeaff, Dianne Ebertt | She Writes Press (276 pp.) | $17.99 paper | July 22, 2025 9781647429324

Throughout the course of one year, the author charts the transformation of a small patch of Canadian land. When she was 9 years old in 1957, Beeaff fell in love with her family’s 16-acre tract along the Conestoga River in Southern Ontario, Canada. Now caring for the property with her husband, Beeaff shares the subtle shifts and major changes that occur there from season to season. The book comprises four parts, one for each season, which are then further separated into a handful of days per month. The chapters introduce a variety of different subjects: Historical (Paleo-Indians are believed to have lived in the area beginning from 9,000 B.C.E.); scientific (the end product of “sugaring” (aka maple syrup) has a sugar/ water ratio of 2-to-1); and personal (Beeaff’s many childhood memories include one of her father rafting down the river to deliver piles of cut wood). But it’s the lush descriptions and observations of flora and fauna that form the heart of the book. Whether enjoying the silence of a moonlit night or reveling in the sightings of a local beaver (who they name Archibald Beaudelaire XXII, or “Beau” for short), Beeaff homes in on the minutiae of life in the forest by combining memoirstyle musings with methodical observations of nature. The eloquent, expressive prose limns the beauty of the changing seasons as they unfold: “Early morning’s solid, ash-bottomed overcast holds the heaviness of winter.” While some narrative threads can wander (a lengthy discussion about the traditional meanings of various gemstones seems out of place, for example), the book as a whole hearkens back to a Walden -like simplicity that

feels both refreshing and restorative. Beeaff’s testament to the Canadian woodlands through writing and color photographs reminds readers to step outside and take a breath.

A richly detailed, reflective account.

Kirkus Star

A Song for Olaf: A Memoir of Sibling Love at the Dawn of the HIV-AIDS Pandemic

Boulanger, Jennifer | Mnemosyne Books (270 pp.) | $22 paper | June 1, 2025 9781955194419

Boulanger’s memoir traces the bond between two siblings from childhood through their adult years amid the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. The author begins the story of her beloved brother in 1993 with the striking observation that, even though they were both grown adults now, the AIDS virus has shrunk her brother’s body, leaving him “lost in the folds of an over-washed, white hospital gown.” When they were children in 1969, Olaf (as Boulanger lovingly called him) was a vivacious performer and source of joy in their household in Utica, New York. His departure for college—though the school was a mere 30-minute drive away—felt like an epic tragedy to Boulanger and her parents. By the mid-1980s, Boulanger had become a teacher with two children and Olaf had gone on to live in Chicago and Atlanta with his beloved partner, Teddy—it was during a visit that Teddy first spoke of trouble with his stomach. Suddenly, years of news reports and Olaf’s own vague references to something happening among his friends became disturbingly real to the author as Teddy’s illness progressed rapidly to full-blown AIDS. (“It could be just pneumonia,” Boulanger says to her brother about his lover, desperately trying to prolong the inevitable

affirmation that AIDS had come into their family’s lives. “People get it all the time.”) Then Boulanger spotted a mulberry-colored spot on her brother’s back that she describes as “gaping” and “raw.” In devastating scenes reminiscent of classic AIDS-focused dramas like Tony Kushner’s Angels in America , Boulanger walks readers through her brother’s slow decline and his various hospital stays throughout the early 1990s before his death from the disease. With each indelible scene in the memoir’s second half, Boulanger digs into the unsettling mix of horror, love, political complexities, humor, and immense sadness that AIDS created. The imagery she crafts from her memories is raw and immensely powerful—readers will surely feel that they were in the room with her, seeing rows of “ashen-faced men with skeletal bodies reclined, their bony knees pointing upward sharply.” Her memoir is overflowing with these tiny details that pack a tremendous emotional punch. Boulanger’s movement through several time periods feels a bit wobbly at first, leaving readers with some basic questions about the family’s history, but by the time she reaches her and Olaf’s adulthood, she is in complete, impressive command of the narrative. So many elements are left simmering quietly in the background, like the rising media interest in AIDS and the subtle, almost imperceptible homophobia that she saw around Olaf. The result is an engrossing, almost suspenseful story, even if readers know how it will end. There is plenty of joy throughout, as well—Boulanger perfectly captures the siblings’ pure excitement for life as young people, and shows how Olaf maintained it, in some ways, until the very end. Her smart epilogue makes a compelling comparison between Covid-19 and AIDS, calling out the dangers of misinformation, isolation, and lack of empathy. Fortunately for readers, Boulanger shows she has plenty of empathy and wisdom to spare. A sharply observed, emotionally powerful chronicle that’s as smart as it is moving.

Tassajara Stories: A Sort of Memoir/Oral History of the First Zen Buddhist Monastery in the West―

The First Year, 1967

Chadwick, David | Monkfish (242 pp.) | $32.99 September 23, 2025 | 9781958972892

T his nonfiction collection of stories focuses on people who spent time at a Zen Buddhist monastery in California in the first year of its founding. Chadwick recounts memories—both his own and others’ recollections gathered via sources like interviews, emails, and podcasts— from the first year of Tassajara, the first Zen monastery in the West. The Carmel Valley monastery was founded in 1967 by Shunryu Suzuki, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, and subsequently witnessed a revolving door of people looking for inspiration, enlightenment, or simply an alternative way of living for a while. The author walks readers through the minutiae of daily life at the monastery, which included a “complex oryoki eating ritual and chanting, which dragged the meal out to an hour with little time for the actual eating.” He also recalls various anecdotes and visitors, explaining different phrases and terminology along the way (“Kobun wore a black monastic work outfit he called samue. Samu was monastic work and ‘e’ meant clothes”). While the stories largely unfold chronologically, there is no particular thread to connect them other than their shared time and place. Chadwick uses short, choppy sentences with minimal adornment, creating a strange sense of monotony—but one that is occasionally broken up by a beautiful description of nature or a particularly memorable event. One such highlight is when the poets Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Daniel Moore came to meditate, read verse, sing, and chant mantras. This performance sparks what is surely one of the more delightfully bizarre sentences ever written: “Ginsberg played his

harmonium with Ferlinghetti and Moore on Chinese horn and Hindu bells.” Surprisingly (and a bit disappointingly), the book’s focus consistently remains on the physical details of Tassajara and the everyday actions of its inhabitants, with very little personal or spiritual introspection. Still, the thorough and enlightening work achieves its ultimate goal of being an “oral history” by providing unparalleled access to daily life in a remarkable time and place.

An engrossing account of the people and antics that defined the Tassajara monastery in 1967.

The Dog Owner’s Guide to Health Emergencies: Essential Tips to Recognize, Respond, and Prepare for Dog Emergencies

Chivvis, Gal | Critter Care Collective (171 pp.) $15.99 paper | February 28, 2025 9798992048384

Practical guidance for identifying and treating canine emergencies from an experienced emergency veterinarian. The wonderful world of dogs is, obviously, made up of a vast number of breeds, sizes, and temperaments. Importantly, some breeds are more susceptible to certain injuries or medical problems. For example, pups with slim, long legs are at higher risk for leg trauma; short-snouted dogs, such as pugs, are more likely to experience breathing problems. The better you understand your pooch’s potential vulnerabilities, the better prepared you will be in an emergency. Chivvis’ key

point in the first chapter is the importance of anticipating contingencies before health issues occur. The author recommends preparing a dedicated canine first-aid kit (“A well-equipped first-aid kit is a lifesaver in emergencies”), which should include, among other items, sterile gauze pads, self-adhesive bandages (i.e., “vetwrap”), wound cleaners, cold/hot packs, tweezers, and disposable gloves. Additionally, Chivvis suggests readers keep at hand critical phone numbers and addresses for their pets’ regular vets and local emergency vets. Chapter 2 discusses the treatment and prevention of the 10 most common emergencies, which are spinal pain, trauma, heatstroke, seizures, bloat, allergic reactions, hemoabdomen, congestive heart failure, vomiting, and bite wounds. Subsequent chapters cover such topics as toxic substances (human foods and assorted poisons), distinguishing minor from major emergencies, standard preventatives (like leashing and fenced enclosures), and a general review of all the previous material. Chivvis presents the information in lucid, easily accessible prose, and she fills many of these pages with highly useful charts, diagrams, and line-drawing illustrations. (The textbook-style format would be enlivened by including some takenf rom-experience anecdotes.) Though some of the material will be familiar to many pet parents, every now and then even seasoned dog people will find an intriguing explanatory gem; for example, in her discussion of heatstroke, the author cautions that, while it is good to give your pup small amounts of cool water and wrap them in a cool wet towel, it is critical not to use ice water or a frigid wrap—excessive cold will shrink and tighten the skin cells, thereby trapping the heat inside. A well-organized, helpful reference manual.

Even seasoned dog people will find an intriguing explanatory gem.

THE DOG OWNER’S GUIDE TO HEALTH EMERGENCIES

The Color of Mourning

Dempster, Kim | Self (281 pp.)

$25 | $12 paper | February 10, 2025

9798310256958 | 9798310256422 paper

In Dempster’s novel, a young Syrian woman and her family feel the oppression of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and when war erupts, it sends their lives into further turmoil.

Eighteen-year-old Layal Wassef and her mother, Nooda; her brother, Tarek; and her father, Jorem, live in Raqqa, Syria, in the early 2010s. Layal is preparing to leave to attend university in England, and Tarek is preparing to study in Jordan. But one night, soldiers come looking for Tarek while he’s at a meeting of the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group. When they can’t find him, they arrest Jorem, and the family’s lives are thrown into chaos. Soon, the rebels take Raqqa, but eventually, the authoritarian Islamic State group takes over. Layal and her journalist mother lose their independence under strict new laws, and they witness horrors when someone is accused of going against the caliphate. Layal endures traumas and dreams of escape, but she’s unsure of how to get out of the heavily guarded city. After a tragedy, the mother and daughter must decide whether to risk death while escaping or to face a likely demise at home. Dempster’s story is fast-paced and brings the gruesome realities of war to life. The author notes that she lived in Iran as a teenager and that she’s since traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, and her fictional tale has an authoritative feel. Many readers will gain a better understanding of the different groups involved in the conflict and what it was like to be a woman under oppressive regimes. The book is a delicate, well-judged balance of dialogue and description as it presents the points of view of both Layal and Nooda. It’s an often chilling and eye-opening work that should be widely read, especially by citizens of countries involved in the Syrian Civil War. An affecting novel of oppression and liberation.

Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolitionist Future

DeWeaver, Emile Suotonye

The New Press (240 pp.) | $26.03 May 13, 2025 | 9781620977880

An activist blends memoir and social commentary in this debut nonfiction work.

The son of a doctor, DeWeaver dropped out of junior high school in Oakland, California, and by the age of 18 he had been found guilty of murder. In this book, he recounts his experiences in prison and subsequent personal transformation while offering astute commentary on white supremacy and criminal justice reform. White supremacy, per the author, transcends individual prejudice; he sees it as a three-tiered system, “a power structure built on top of a culture built on top of an ideology.” As a cultural and ideological force, DeWeaver asserts, white supremacy incentivizes taking power from marginalized groups— from Black Americans to trans people—to further concentrate the power of white men; it’s a system built not only on racism but also on cis-patriarchy and other forms of discrimination. In making the case for prison abolition and the systemic reform of the criminal justice system, DeWeaver displays a familiarity with the relevant academic literature, citing theorists like Antonio Gramsci among others in the book’s ample endnotes. While this book’s scholarly underpinnings are strong, what makes it stand out is the author’s engaging narrative, which incorporates his own personal history throughout. DeWeaver asserts, “I wrote my way out of prison”; he co-founded the first Society of Professional Journalists chapter in a prison a nd became a leader in San Quentin State Prison’s rehabilitation community. In doing so, he writes, he had to “become a white supremacist to get out

of prison,” as he performed narratives of humility that he knew parole boards expected. Unafraid to pull his punches, the author’s blunt writing style may rattle readers unfamiliar with the modern abolitionist movement (DeWeaver writes that an accurate understanding of white supremacy reveals “the true identity of police forces as state-sanctioned terrorist organizations”). This is nevertheless an erudite commentary built on solid research and undergirded by the author’s intimate knowledge of the abuses built into America’s systems of criminal justice and incarceration.

A well-researched challenge to the status quo of America’s prison system.

Lacey’s Star: A Lady Pilot-in-Command Novel

DiBianca, Kay | Wordstar Publishing (235 pp.)

$6.99 paper | October 30, 2023

9781735788876

In this novel, a savvy female pilot becomes an unlikely detective after a murder disrupts a routine mission. Cassie Deakin, a clever and capable pilot, has no patience for charm or distraction—especially not from attractive men like Frank W hite. As Cassie tells readers from the start, “I do not like handsome men. Not that I have much experience with them, but in my opinion, they’re self-absorbed and untrustworthy.” But when she’s forced to fly Frank, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent–turned–deputy sheriff, to her Uncle Charlie’s farm, Cassie finds herself swept into a tangled web of violence, secrets, and long-buried truths. What begins as a grudging job quickly turns into a perilous investigation when a body is found on the property and her beloved uncle is gravely injured. The stakes rise with eerie swiftness: The dead man “was lying on his back with his arms splayed out and a big, ugly hole in his chest. There was a lot of blood.” With law

A diverting detective story

that’s

equal parts entertaining and realistic.

SONG AND DANCE

enforcement baffled and tensions rising, Cassie—supported by an endearingly rough-edged biker friend and a protective gelding named Old Dan—reluctantly steps into the role of sleuth. In this series opener, DiBianca crafts a winning protagonist in Cassie: fiercely independent, dryly humorous, and disarmingly human. Cassie’s narration is brisk and laced with sharp wit: “I scowled back. ‘I can take care of myself.’ I brushed a lock of hair out of my face. ‘All I want is a hot shower.’” Emotionally charged yet never melodramatic, the tale moves quickly through short, punchy chapters that maintain tension and momentum. Action sequences are vivid and immersive, balanced by Cassie’s reflective moments: “I was empty inside, like some big alien had sucked the organs out, and all that was left was a hollow shell.” While the plot relies on some familiar genre beats—hidden valuables, rural conspiracies, and red herrings—DiBianca keeps the story engaging through colorful characters, snappy dialogue, and unexpected moments of warmth. The relationship between Cassie and Frank simmers just below the surface, filled with barbed flirtation and unresolved tension. Cassie’s journey from a lone pilot to an invested investigator gives the story its heart, even as the mystery unravels with satisfying twists. An engaging and expertly paced mystery that blends aviation, intrigue, and a hint of romance.

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They Told Us to Just Believe: Critically Thinking

About the Origins of Beliefs—Are They

Real?

Friedrich, Daniel | DJF Consulting (396 pp.)

$45.99 | $29.99 paper | December 16, 2024 9798992059120 | 9798992059106 paper

Friedrich dissects the origins and sociological purposes of religion in this nonfiction work.

“Although people with blind faith often think of themselves as good, righteous people,” writes the author in the book’s introduction, “they can also be mobilized for very evil actions in the name of their religion or cause.” In this sweeping survey of world religious history, Friedrich begins with an exploration of the sociological role of religion across cultures before transitioning into a multichapter narrative of t he development of specific religions, including Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism. Taking a just-the-facts approach, the author places each religion within its cultural and historical context. While its first half is global in scope, the book’s second half sets its focus squarely on the West, offering a methodically developed case against Christianity. Chapter-length topics include biblical justifications of violence, Christianity’s “prudish and guilt ridden” approach toward morality, and connections between Christianity and Roman paganism. The book’s concluding chapters explore the ways in which Christianity has been used to justify imperialism and religious persecution. Raised in the Catholic Church,

Friedrich only began to question the faith of his parents after he embarked upon a career in business; as his role as a corporate executive increasingly required global travel, the author “became more tolerant and interested in other cultures and beliefs.” Selfreflection about his own beliefs, combined with subsequent historical research, led him to question many of the tenets he had been taught by religious authorities. Dedicating this book to his adult children, whom he implores to approach faith through the lens of “critical thinking and intellectual curiosity,” Friedrich argues that an honest examination of religious history and doctrine will “lead to a better, kinder, and less selfish society.” While pious readers may disagree with the author’s ultimate conclusions regarding the veracity of their beliefs and balk at his descriptions of religious “fantasy,” Friedrich backs up his arguments with many scholarly references. The text has an accessible writing style and is accompanied by a wealth of full-color, high-resolution maps, images, charts, and other visual elements.

A well-researched, engaging argument against blind faith.

Song and Dance

Glennon, Michael | BookBaby (192 pp.)

$11.99 paper | March 27, 2025 | 9798350985672

Tracking down a wayward husband seriously complicates a lowly private eye’s life in Glennon’s novel. Frank Rotten has been a PI for close to a year and has little to show for it. So, he happily accepts a case from Elizabeth Taft Gardner, clearly a woman of means (“my bank account was running on empty, and I needed the work”). Her schoolteacher husband, Billy, is missing; he left Pittsburgh on a “casino excursion” to Atlantic City but hasn’t yet returned home. It seems like a simple job, as Frank interviews people at Billy’s workplace and his favorite go-go

bar. But the Gardners have a lot going on—both Elizabeth’s mother and her interior designer best friend separately approach the shamus with agendas and cash offers of their own. Frank ultimately makes his way down to Atlantic City, where he meets more than one individual who remembers Billy. Maybe that’s not such a good thing; a gun or two enter the picture, and closing this case becomes potentially dangerous. The detective headlining Glennon’s taut mystery is refreshingly down-to-earth. Frank became a private investigator after losing his job at an insurance company, and he doesn’t even have an office, just an apartment with a “meddlesome roommate.” He doesn’t ask for much—he’s merely hoping to establish himself as a PI, once he can afford some primo equipment, like a camcorder and a surveillance van. While Frank ogles quite a few women along the way, the novel’s female characters prove dynamic and engaging. (Frank gets help from Trudy Bonner, his friend and neighbor who still works at that insurance company, while another good friend, Casey Conlon, is a former cop who runs Frank’s preferred watering hole.) This mystery moves briskly, even when Frank’s leads seemingly go nowhere, and it’s thoroughly absorbing. A final act delivers answers as well as a bit of chaos. A diverting detective story that’s equal parts entertaining and realistic.

The Summer We Ran

Ingram, Audrey | Zibby Books (320 pp.) | $29 $17.99 paper | June 3, 2025 | 9798989923052 9798989923069 paper

Ingram offers a romantic novel about former young lovers turned political rivals. It’s June 2021 and Democrat Tess Murphy, a career public servant, is campaigning to become the

governor of Virginia. Her Republican opponent is wealthy hedge fund manager Grant Alexander. As it happens, Tess and Grant know each other quite well. Back in 1996, Tess’ mother got a job managing the country estate of lobbyist Madeline Milton. Tess was 17 at the time and eager for something to do for the summer. She wound up assisting Madeline’s neighbor, Kay Alexander, with her garden; Kay’s teenage son Grant happened to be around, and a summer relationship took shape, despite Tess and Grant having little in common. Grant, with his boarding school education and wealthy, commandeering father, came from money; Tess, by contrast, witnessed firsthand her mother’s constant struggles to make ends meet. In 2021, Tess and Grant are both married to other people, so it’s apparent that their teen relationship did not last. So what happened all those years ago—and what does this now mean for the commonwealth of Virginia? Ingram’s narrative alternates time periods, as well as narrators: Roughly a third of the way through the novel, the perspective shifts from Tess’ side of the story to Grant’s, before later shifting back again. It’s an altogether enticing setup. As more people in 2021 learn of Tess and Grant’s past, the uncertainty and suspense enjoyably builds. Likewise, there’s much more to discover about the characters’ early days than readers might initially expect. Along the way, the characters speak directly to the reader, as well as to each other; as a result, they sometimes blandly state their feelings, rather than showing them through action: “Everything about him infuriates me,” says Grant about his father. Yet, for career politicians, Tess and Grant are rather likable figures

and readers will find themselves engaged by their stories.

An offbeat and well-paced account of a relationship in youth and adulthood.

The Goldilocks Team: Master Retention and Hiring

Jaeckli, Minal Joshi | Success Publications Sar (118 pp.) | $14.90 paper | February 20, 2025 9798895710890

A practical, data-driven approach to building teams that excel.

Jaeckli, founder and CEO of OpenElevator, makes the case that building a “ just right ” team is what makes an organization successful, asserting that most leaders are going about it the wrong way (“The old-school hiring approach often fails to address the core issue, finding the ‘right’ fit for the manager, for the team, and for the environment”). The book opens with a nautical metaphor about the captain of a finely tuned ship being sabotaged by crew dynamics; the author argues that a “Goldilocks” team, containing neither too much nor too little of any one quality, is essential for navigating turbulent business waters. Per Jaeckli, engagement isn’t about charismatic leadership or team-building retreats— it’s about ensuring alignment between people’s values and interpersonal styles. The author breaks down employee engagement into four different categories: safety and certainty, contribution and purpose, growth and significance, and connection and belonging. Regarding employee retention, Jaeckli writes that HR is not

A bracing wake-up call to leaders mired in old ways.

THE GOLDILOCKS TEAM

the department best suited to address such issues, as the direct manager wields the most influence. Engagement and retention, the author asserts, are leadership responsibilities, and they start with hiring the right person for a particular job. Jaeckli posits that resumes, interviews, and personality assessments should be replaced by measuring values alignment (what a team member prioritizes in their work) and interpersonal alignment (the ability to work with others), dimensions that can drive collaboration, satisfaction, and loyalty. To help managers measure these criteria, Jaeckli has created the platform OpenElevator. (This book is more than just an advertisement for the author’s service—Jaeckli provides practical solutions to the issues she raises throughout the text.) In addition to providing tips for hiring and retention—and some rudimentary drawings and graphics to bolster those ideas—the book also serves as an effective leadership manual, guiding managers toward a data-driven, bias-free, human-centric team-building process. Leaders who embrace this way of doing things, Jaeckli avers, will ultimately build successful teams that are “ just right.”

A bracing wake-up call to leaders mired in old ways of employee engagement and retention.

A Generous Life

Karoff, Peter | Disruption Books (258 pp.) $22.95 paper | July 15, 2025 | 9781633311152

A posthumously published c ollection of wide-ranging essays by Karoff, an innovator in the field of philanthropy. In 1989, the author founded The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI), an organization devoted to helping clients charitably donate more strategically. Giving, he avers in this book, is more than the sum of its mechanics—it’s a spiritual calling, a grand “wake-up call,”

These essays are as instructional and insightful as they are inspirational.

A GENEROUS LIFE

and the expression of a deep passion. Karoff taught others how to establish a profoundly personal connection to their charitable efforts, and to see philanthropy as a concrete “translation of values to the practice of values.” On a societal level, he envisioned an “opensource philanthropy,” which he defines here as “more effective systems of collective social action” with “less segmentation of issues and more holistic ways of solving problems.” Editor Marble, who worked for TPI, has gathered an eclectic assemblage of essays by the author, who died in 2017; the pieces offer an expansive interpretation of the meaning of philanthropic activity. The author was literarily inclined, and these short works, all composed over the last quarter-century, include his own poems, references to William Butler Yeats and Aristotle, and philosophical discussions of the nature of wealth and generosity. Marble asserts that this collection is not a “how-to manual,” but rather a “dreamer’s guide,” and to some extent, she’s right; in these pages, Karoff never hides his idealistic desire to “make the world a better place,” and unabashedly valorizes the “magic of philanthropy.” However, he does also dispense a considerable amount of actionable counsel about efficient charitable giving. Moreover, he squarely acknowledges the “pressure of reality” and the corresponding danger of naïveté: “From the outset, it is clear that you cannot ‘magic’ away the critical problems facing the world,” he notes. “One of TPI’s operating premises is that ‘social change is incremental at best.’ Thus the waving of wands doesn’t do it.” Overall, these essays are as instructional and insightful as they are inspirational. An eclectic and stimulating attempt to create a “new language” around charitable efforts.

Saint Sergey’s Head

Keech, Rea | Real Nice Books (270 pp.) $31.95 | $14.95 paper | April 1, 2025 9798988503460 | 9798988503477 paper

In Keech’s spy novel, an unlikely Russian emissary gets caught up in espionage.

Thirty-year-old Alexey Mikhailov travels from Nidgye, a small village near the Georgian border, at the behest of his mother, who wants him to visit the reliquary of Russia’s revered Saint Sergey at a monastery a few dozen miles outside of Moscow and plead for the saint’s intercession in Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine (Alexey’s father is indifferent, being an “old Soviet atheist holdover”). Specifically, the reliquary is for the 14th-century saint’s head; the priests serving there have recently been disturbed by online claims stating that their relic is fake and that the actual head of Saint Sergey currently resides in the Orthodox church of Ioann Russkiy, Saint John the Russian, in Istanbul. The clerics ask Alexey to disguise himself as a priest and go to Istanbul to investigate—as he’s eager to avoid the draft, Alexey quickly agrees. He travels to Istanbul, meeting a wealthy young man named Ivan (who will come back into his life in an unexpected way later in the story) as well as Angela Walker, a CIA operative under a cloud from a previous screw-up who’s been sent to Istanbul with U.S. Defense Clandestine Services Col. Michael Flint in order to intercept a mysterious Russian asset bearing an even more mysterious device. Angela

Kirkus Star

and Alexey take a strong liking to each other, but everything is complicated by the pompous colonel. Keech stirs all of these elements into an utterly delightful mixture of high-stakes spy-drama and droll satire of high-stakes spy-drama. Alexey is a perfect hapless everyman whom readers will instinctively root for, delighting in the hijinks and scrapes he gets into in his quest to bring the saint’s head back to Russia. The double ending the author arranges is both heartwarming and appropriately cynical. Espionage fans will find much here to love. A wry and fast-paced spy thriller unfolding in the shadow of the Hagia Sophia.

The Rabbi’s Suitcase

Kehlmann, Robert | Koehler Books (374 pp.) $30.95 | $21.95 paper | May 6, 2025 9798888246993 | 9798888246979 paper

Kehlmann presents a multigenerational historical novel based upon the migration of his Orthodox Jewish ancestors from Eastern Europe to Jerusalem and onward to New York. In 1879, Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Siev, who lives with his wife and children in the small town of Ariogala (in present-day Lithuania), announces to his wife Shayna Sara that it is time for them to heed the religious and spiritual calling of Jerusalem and to breathe the sweet sacred air of the Jews’ ancestral home (“as children of Abraham, we’re going to follow in his footsteps, leave our home, our father’s home, and heed the Lord’s words”). A year later, despite the reluctance of his wife and offspring, Rabbi Siev leads his family out of Ariogala on a journey to the coast, where they embark on the Tikvah, a rusted steamship that will bring them to the Turkish-controlled Holy Land. So begins a long and arduous trip, including a year’s stay in Cyprus. During this period, the Siev’s eldest son, Yosef, only 11 years old when they begin their migration, meets Chana (Chanke) Rosen, the young girl who will one day

win his heart. The immigrants finally arrive in Jerusalem in 1882, and in 1886, Yosef and Chana marry. (Many years later, the author will be born as their great-grandson.) Jerusalem is beset by poverty. Yosef studies for the Rabbinate and begins drafting samples of his talent for calligraphy. He travels to New York, hoping to sell his work, and while there becomes a naturalized American citizen. His granddaughter Zipora Siev (the author’s mother) will one day make New York her home. Kehlmann’s prose carries the hint of Sholem Aleichem’s charming linguistic lilt (although only a bit of his humor), and it is liberally peppered with Yiddish phrases. He tenderly captures the essence of Orthodox shtetl–style life—the customs, the superstitions, and the mannerisms. Zipora, the novel’s chief protagonist, struggles against the strict religious constraints of her Orthodox upbringing in a relatable way, and her love affair with the more cosmopolitan Reuven Borstein is depicted passionately (and very graphically) through his letters to Zipora from Paris.

A poignant, informative portrait of Jewish life under Turkish and British rule before Israeli statehood.

This Book Is Viral!

Keres, Ron | Illus. by Arthur Lin Flypaper Press (44 pp.) | $17.95 August 5, 2025 | 9781964021027

In author Keres and illustrator Lin’s latest picturebook series installment, Finn the Frog learns a lesson about caring for others. Finn is aware that he lives inside a book and is rather caught up in the idea of his own renown. When it transpires that the reader is feeling ill, one of the amphibian’s first reactions is worry for himself. He rallies, though, and tries to diagnose and treat the unseen patient—only for the reader to sneeze (in a splendidly disgusting rendering of yellow mucus), causing Finn to contract the sickness himself. The reader then attempts to

treat Finn, with unfortunate consequences, due to the incompatibility of human medicine and frog biology. Ultimately, it’s kindness that makes Finn feel better and teaches him to be less self-absorbed. Keres narrates from Finn’s perspective, addressing readers directly through the frog’s vainglorious soliloquies. A large, faux handprinted typeface, enlivened by judicious use of colorful and boldface emphases, shares a white backdrop with Lin’s watercolor illustrations. Lin’s creative style evokes classic illustrator Quentin Blake’s work while also establishing an intimate protagonist-reader dynamic that calls to mind author Jon Stone and illustrator Mike Smollin’s classic, The Monster at the End of This Book (1971). The combination is endearing, and the gross-out subject matter is sure to appeal to young children.

A jubilant tale of empathy and rib-tickling calamity.

Sunday People

Kiser, Jo Ann | Atmosphere Press (177 pp.)

$23.99 | $14.99 paper | March 18, 2025 9798891326316 | 9798891325777 paper

In Kiser’s novel, members and friends of a family in Kentucky ruminate on their lives while attending a wedding in 1992.

Orson Caskill is 68 years old and dying of cancer. Born and raised in Kentucky (leaving only for a formative stint in the army before returning), Orson is now taking stock of his life while at a family wedding. Similarly reflecting on past choices are gathered friends and family members whose respective life paths have all crossed in one way or another. The story focuses on a select few, highlighting the perspectives of Orson; Sarah Beth, Orson’s wife; Fergus, Orson’s best friend; and Darcy Anne, Orson’s childhood girlfriend, among others. Orson has recently joined a church at the insistence of Sarah Beth, though he prefers to spend his Sundays at a little cabin overlooking

what he refers to as “God’s pond.” His mortality forces him to consider the choices he made in youth; regarding his family, he “want[s] them to know the truth about [him], whatever that means.” Split into two parts (the second, “2004: Melissa’s Postlude,” is less compelling than its predecessor), Kiser’s story is not plot-driven; the narrative mainly consists of characters considering their pasts and presents in an evocative hodgepodge of personal histories interspersed with lyrical prose about Kentucky and connection (“I was sailing along on the surface of things…ignoring the slow, dark mutter of my homeless soul and getting high on all-night talk in the dorm and on shards of poetry flung aside by professors,” reflects Darcy Anne.) Occasionally, the prose grows a tad overwrought which, when combined with multiple character backstories and an intentional lack of clarity regarding events in certain characters’ lives, makes things somewhat confusing: “Brisson was a pretty how town with up so many — really — floating bells down.” Overall, Kiser’s story is moving and a worthy effort that could use a couple of tweaks. An emotional read with lyrical prose.

Mud to the Rescue! How Animals Use Mud to Thrive and Survive

Konerman, Tanya | Illus. by Melanie Cataldo | Web of Life (32 pp.) | $18.95 May 20, 2025 | 9781970039092

Konerman’s illustrated children’s book details the ways in which mud can be helpful in the daily lives of animals all over the world.

In these colorful pages, the author discusses the benefits of having plenty of mud around when you’re a member of the animal kingdom. Several types of birds need mud in their everyday lives to help keep their nests sturdy and safe from predators. Macaws eat mud to calm their stomachs and counter poisons—they’re just one of over 200 species that have been documented engaging in geophagia, or eating mud. Turtles all over the globe use mud to protect themselves from inclement weather, whether it’s too hot or too cold. Both elephants and hippos roll in mud to cool themselves off and protect their skin (“A nice layer of mud blocks pests and parasites that itch or make elephants and hippos sick”). The text’s layout pairs prey animals with natural predators that use mud in the same way; readers learn that alligators use mud to protect their eggs, just like the flamingos they hunt. At the back of the book, each of the animals mentioned in the main text receive a dedicated paragraph containing more detailed information. The book also includes a glossary, author’s note, and labeled examples of various species’ footprints. Konerman uses repetitive text to introduce problems that animals encounter for which mud is the solution. (The seminarrative text is lyrical but contains no fictional elements.) On some pages, there are additional, mud-splattered text boxes providing more fun facts about the animals (“Duck-billed platypus has a rubbery snout that can sense its prey’s tiny electrical currents in the mud”). Cataldo depicts animals in their environments in realistic illustrations, including details to help readers develop a deeper understanding of the material. An engaging resource for young nature enthusiasts.

A stunning, immersive, and thought-provoking mystery.

Indigo

Kwong, Chi-Ho | Illus. by Chi-Kit Kwong Nakama Press (216 pp.) | $10.99 paper

May 20, 2025 | 9781545819036

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 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.

Frauds, Phones & Fingerprints: Proving Your Identity in the Digital Age

Ledas, Almis | FriesenPress (180 pp.) $32.52 | $18.99 paper | February 28, 2025 9781038333339 | 9781038333322 paper

Ledas provides a comprehensive overview of the problem of identity theft and offers possible solutions to it in this nonfiction work.

The author observes that the contemporary scourge of identity theft is largely the result of the ubiquity of “transacting remotely,” or routinely conducting business from afar. The internet, per Ledas, has been “famously designed to preserve anonymity,” and this protection is equally extended to criminals who operate in the shadows. Additionally, the author asserts, most consumers “[choose] convenience over security,” leaving them at a terrible disadvantage to fraudsters, who enjoy a considerable “structural advantage”: Those responsible for protecting the identity of users simply don’t control the entire process of authentication. Thus, “self-sovereign identity,” a user’s ability to control their identity securely across multiple platforms, frustratingly remains an elusive “holy grail of digital identity.” In this marvelously thorough but concise primer on the issue, Ledas provides a full breakdown of the subject (including its historical development) as well as an overview of the more promising solutions. According to the author, who has a wealth of professional experience in digital communications (this rigorous and insightful resource comes from an industry insider), the technology

does exist to keep identity thieves at bay. The real issue is a human one—Ledas writes that an “alignment on identity verification methods and business models” must emerge before any real progress takes hold. The author asserts that he intended to compose this volume in “plain language [for] a reader new to the subject,” and that goal has been entirely accomplished. The book’s thoroughness is remarkable given its brevity and will be helpful to anyone looking to comprehend the subject or take steps to secure their identities. In these pages, Ledas convincingly articulates a vision, even a hopeful one, of the future of identity protection.

An expert tutorial on a complex and important problem.

The Illogical Adventure: A Memoir of Love and Fate

MacDuff, James & Mirriam Mweemba Pottersfield Press (160 pp.) February 28, 2025 | 9781990770715

A chance encounter in a Cape Town bar sparks a globe-trotting romantic adventure in MacDuff and Mweemba’s memoir. When he first met Zambian woman Mirriam Mweemba in South Africa in the spring of 2018, James MacDuff, a Canadian lawyer and world traveler, was readying to fly home after completing a grueling sailing voyage across the southern Atlantic. Mweemba had just said farewell to her restaurant co-workers as she prepared to start a new job crewing on a Mediterranean cruise ship; had her taxi been on time, they might never have met. Yet over that evening and the following day, something clicked, and they agreed to stay in touch. Over the next year and a half, through texts and video calls, they arranged brief rendezvous in Venice, Zurich, Mombasa, and Barcelona, navigating daunting logistics and sudden changes of plan. Both adventurous

travelers, they weren’t fazed by mere distance, but there were other obstacles: Both had disappointing previous relationships; Mweemba was a faithful Seventh Day Adventist while MacDuff was agnostic; and, finally, he was approaching 40, unsure if he’d ever be ready to stop traveling and settle down, while she wanted children. Mweemba’s African cultural traditions included negotiating a bride price, which disconcerted MacDuff, and the visa application process was complex and slow. But even when Covid-19 shut down almost all international travel, the intrepid pair persevered. Here, they take turns telling their stories, describing their very different backgrounds and their continuing efforts to find a way to build a life together. MacDuff’s writing is thoughtful and lyrical, blending philosophical musings such as “Hope may not be a plan, but the best laid ones still need a healthy dose of it” with striking descriptions of places and people. An outlandishly dressed man on a beach is “like a glitch in the Matrix”; when the couple reunites, Mweemba’s smile is “as blinding as the sun sparkling off the water.” Mweemba’s independence, determination, faith, and sense of humor shine through in her affectionate, down-to-earth voice. This account of their remarkable four-year journey is a captivating blend of travelogue, selfdiscovery, and romance.

A charming joint memoir of navigating continents, cultures, and Covid-19 for love.

Synap

Moses, Chris | Illus. by Andrea Giannini Mad Cave Studios (120 pp.) | $17.99 paper | June 24, 2025 | 9781545817926

In Moses’ SF graphic novel, a company works to master alien tech that’s been abandoned on Earth for millennia.

Designated “Driver Eight,” 15-year-old Shiloh attempts neural linking with

Kirkus Star

“the machine.” This giant robot landed on Earth long ago, and scientists from around the world have gradually recovered scattered parts. In the U.S., Synap Technologies, run by Shiloh’s father, Director Raguel, oversees each new robot-operating “Driver.” Shiloh, like others before them, uses something called the Axon Connection to power the machine (or try to), but that link weakens or goes away entirely when Drivers reach the age of 25 (“Your connection is strongest before your brain finishes developing”). So, Synap must continually train new Drivers, like Shiloh’s sister Angeline, Driver Six. In the virtual reality–like Axon, Shiloh keeps seeing images of Vivian, Synap’s very first Driver. If these are just memories, how is Vivian interacting with Shiloh? Meanwhile, Earth anticipates a visitor from the sky—perhaps an alien race that wants its machine back. Moses’ story is jampacked with goodies, including dynamic characters and a vivid backstory. Readers are treated to such unforgettable scenes as Angeline in a submersible deep in the Pacific Ocean and Vanessa (another former Driver) leading a team of armed soldiers on a mission in Xinjiang. Relationships fuel the narrative of this graphic novel as Synap’s Lynne Seti actively trains Shiloh, and Angeline and Vanessa appear to have a falling out. The action and mystery pick up as the story progresses and readers learn more about the mysterious Vivian (and an even more enigmatic glowing figure that suddenly emerges). Everything leads to a stellar cliffhanger that will surely leave readers eagerly awaiting further installments. Giannini’s sleek artwork outfits the diverse cast with chicness, from the stylish Synap uniforms to Vanessa’s eyebrow slits to Vivian’s lilac hair.

An exhilarating futuristic tale that boasts a superlative cast.

Twenty Years of Unraveling: The Story Behind the Washington Post Investigation that Exposed Two Decades of Deception and Abuse at a World Famous Charity

Neill, Ted | Self (247 pp.) | $14.99 paper February 26, 2025 | 9798310577954

A sex-abuse scandal at an African orphanage raises thorny moral questions about duty and complicity in this searing exposé. Neill recaps his involvement with

Fenella can blind well-meaning people to malfeasance and injustice. Neill writes in scathing, passionate prose that packs an emotional wallop. (“Anika spent her last night on this Earth in my arms, writhing in pain or in a shallow sleep from inadequate analgesics…. So, when I learned the news that Kimbery had also died of meningitis and that the [nuns] had the opportunity to vaccinate the children but didn’t, I was incandescent with rage.”) The result is a compelling takedown of the ethical rot that can eat away at unaccountable charities. A furious indictment of the institutional power and sanctimony that enable moral atrocities.

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Kenya’s Nyumbani Children’s Home (called “Rainbow Children’s Home” in the book), a well-regarded, church-associated shelter and medical treatment center for HIV-positive orphans where he worked in the early 2000s. In 2019, he joined the charity’s U.S. board of directors and conducted a survey of the orphanage’s alumni, which unearthed alarming reports of child molestation. The crimes included many allegations of sexual abuse of children perpetrated by Simon Wood, a British Airways pilot who volunteered at the home; various seminarians and priests; and other boys who lived there. The abuse was mainly covered up, the author contends, by Nyumbani’s cofounder and director (whom he calls by the pseudonym “Sister Fenella”) and by staff members, who often blamed girls for having incited attacks. After the board responded to Neill’s report with denial and stonewalling, the author went to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which cut off funding to Nyumbani, and helped Washington Post reporter Rael Ombuor write an investigative piece. Neill mounts a cutting critique of Nyumbani, charging Sister Fenella and the nuns who ran the home (called “SCABs”) with harsh treatment of kids, inadequate medical care that contributed to the deaths of two children, and a failure to support troubled Nyumbani alumni. The book is also an anguished meditation on how self-regard, white saviorism, and the adulation of “rock star-saints” like Sister

Framed: A Villain’s Perspective on Social Media

O’Hearn, Tim | Luscious Ventures (430 pp.) $14.99 paper | March 2, 2025 | 9798992468113

O’Hearn, a tech-industry insider, exposes the unseemly underbelly of social media. In this entertaining and edifying “collection of shards and shreds and conspiratorial diatribes,” the author takes readers on an expert tour of the “amusing, dreadful world of social media.” O’Hearn worked at a tech startup—he gives it the fictitious name Cutlet—where he was charged with leading “algorithmic recommendation systems, push notification infrastructure, and personalized social feeds.” He was involved in all kinds of user manipulations—the blatantly dishonest engineering of user engagement. (“The users of Cutlet were my avatars, my puppets. I was a social scientist carrying out experiments. I was free to manipulate the app’s small audience without anyone knowing who I was, what I was doing, or what I was trying to accomplish.”) The author details his own misdeeds with impressive candor and discusses “social media iniquity” in more general terms; his biggest target is the “Instagram underworld” and the ways in which the popular app tricks its users into buying ad space.

O’Hearn thoughtfully considers the deleterious impact of the internet—which, in his view, “robs life of meaning” (especially in the case of its youngest users)—and the “purely nihilistic” cosmos of social media influencers. This is a wide-ranging assemblage of essays written with verve, insight, and technical authority; as a software engineer, the author is uniquely positioned to explain, in extraordinary and largely accessible detail, the nuts and bolts of the internet. Additionally, he supplies a fascinating treatise on screen addiction and the ways in which its awful effects can be mitigated, such as the aggressive limitation of screen time for younger users. This is a startling read—humorous, but often discomfiting and always deeply informative. A wealth of eye-popping information presented in a buoyantly irreverent style.

Long Cold Winter

Perillo, Francesca | Illus. by Stefano Cardoselli Mad Cave Studios (88 pp.) | $17.99 paper May 27, 2025 | 9781545812563

A former soldier and his robot companion struggle for survival in Perillo’s comic SF graphic novel, featuring art by Cardoselli. Disruption is the essence of classic dystopian fiction. However, the problems that face a New Yorker called Peace Dog—a former soldier scarred by brutal events in his past—feel more extreme than most. One is unbreathable air, which only Air Co.’s oxygen generators can remedy, and few people can afford them. Like his fellow city dwellers, Peace Dog is preoccupied with the grueling business of survival, and he’s ducking a crew of unbalanced hunters who hope to collect a bounty on him (“My gun is pointed at a head worth $100,000,” says one early on). The Big Apple depicted here is a rotten one, with its fabled features— such as Central Park, now only a barren desert—rendered largely unrecognizable by recent calamities. Along comes the Kid, a robotic youth who wants Peace Dog to help him escape from the dangerous city

to the Northern Mountains and finally find some measure of peace. Understandably, Peace Dog is skeptical (“I don’t help anybody”), but he eventually signs on, presumably emboldened by his superior combat skills and adeptness with a samurai sword. What the pair encounter, as the story progresses, will push them to their physical and mental limits. Perillo and Cardoselli’s tale traverses the type of terrain that will instantly feel familiar to any fan of Mad Max (1979) or Escape From New York (1981). Any new creator in the post-apocalyptic genre faces an uphill battle, because the groundwork was cast in cement long ago, but the creators prove up to the challenge in these pages. The brisk and bare-knuckled hardboiled storytelling unfolds at a rapid clip, and an unlikely blend of SF and Western elements in a detailed style works heavily in its favor. For teenage fans who can’t get enough of dystopias, this offbeat, action-oriented cocktail should prove to be irresistible. A breathless and colorfully rendered saga of an ex-soldier’s flight from a cadre of bounty hunters—and from his own past.

Don’t Mess With Anna: A Reckoning in Blood and Ink

Prater, Celeste | Self (304 pp.) | $12.99 paper | April 5, 2025 | 9798306677422

In this fantasy, a bitter keyboard warrior must confront some hard truths when he finds himself magically transported into one of the medieval novels that he savaged online.

Milton Smith loves nothing better than to tear people down on the

internet—especially authors who specialize in medieval fiction, like Anna DeMarco. After leading a smear campaign that nearly destroyed her first book, Milton is readying his attack on Anna’s new release when he is suddenly transported to a strange realm. Now, Milton finds himself trapped in the world of Anna’s first novel, Love in a Time Faraway. Captured by knights and thrown into a dungeon, Milton discovers sections of the novel mysteriously delivered to him on parchment scrolls. With nothing better to do, he finally finds the time to actually read the book instead of simply judging it—and much to his chagrin, he becomes desperate to know what comes next. As Milton escapes prison and makes an unexpected friend, he slowly works his way toward the queen’s castle and the end of the novel. Will he finally concede that Anna has some real talent? Or will his stubbornness curse him to a lifetime of being trapped in his own hostility? Prater gleefully leans into the stereotype of the overweight, basement-dwelling incel who lives with his mom and only feels powerful by anonymously hurting people. This makes Milton’s eventual emotional reckoning—and realization that he was simply jealous of both Anna and her heroic knight characters—all the more satisfying (if sadly fantastical). The dissonance between modern and medieval dialogue sometimes comes across as hokey, but also adds to the fun. After accusations by Milton of being a gym rat and using steroids, for example, a knight responds: “I feel this statement is derogatory and expect you to explain what this steroid and gym is.” Prater has ultimately crafted an amusing, inventive, and timely foray into the perils of authorship.

An imaginative work that weaves fantasy and social commentary into a scathingly funny revenge tale.

The brisk and bareknuckled hardboiled storytelling unfolds at a rapid clip.

LONG COLD WINTER

A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel

Ropp, Cyd Charise | Bluebird Publishing (312 pp.) | $45 | $24 paper | August 28, 2024 9798218985042 | 9798218982201 paper

A 21st-century Gnostic explores the seminal text of her faith in this nonfiction work.

“Valentinian Gnosticism is a form of protoChristianity,” writes Ropp in the book’s introduction, asserting her belief that “it is the true, original form of Christianity.” Focusing on the third- or fourth-century Gnostic work the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi codices, the author explores an alternative branch of Christianity that was deemed heretical and “wiped out” by Catholicism. In contrast to Roman Catholicism, per Ropp, Gnosticism “encourages a personal relationship with the ‘God Above All Gods,’” eschews hierarchical leadership and rituals, and holds that no church or earthly institution “can give you gnosis” (mystical knowledge). Aiming to “demystify” the “arcane language” of the Tripartite Tractate, as well as to connect the work to the more well-known themes articulated in the Christian New Testament, Ropp systematically walks readers through the major ideas posited in the Gnostic text. Unlike other biblical books, according to the author, the Tripartite Tractate is closer to a philosophical rumination than a collection of myths, as it establishes a thesis about a divine Father before working through the logical implications of that proposition. Ropp’s analytical approach informs her emphasis on applying Gnosticism to modern life, as the author deeply believes that “Gnostic faith is not blind faith but reasonable faith.” Holding a doctorate in classical rhetoric, Ropp is the host of the Gnostic Insights podcast and author of The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated (2019). Here, she offers readers a scholarly exploration of the Tripartite Tractate that challenges popular assumptions, such as the claim by many that Gnosticism is a New Age

religion. Her academic approach, backed by scholarly references, is balanced by an engaging writing style geared toward readers unfamiliar with the esoteric nuances of Gnosticism. The work’s accessibility is further supported by a lengthy glossary of terminology as well as the inclusion of full-color images, diagrams, and other visual aids. Even readers unconvinced about the veracity of Gnosticism will find a stimulating reflection on the nature of meaning, knowledge, and truth. A well-researched, impassioned case for Gnosticism.

Checkered Hearts

Starling, A.G. | Podium Publishing (328 pp.) $19.99 paper | June 10, 2025 | 9798895394571

Starling presents a fiery enemies-to-lovers romance, set in the adrenalinef ueled world of Formula 1 racing. Rocco Vittori, a fallen star of Formula 1, is desperate to reclaim his place on the podium. Nico Angelini, a fiercely talented and trailblazing driver, is determined to rise to the top of a sport that’s long shut out women like her. The pair’s rivalry kicks off in the public arena of social media and intensifies after a chance encounter in a Las Vegas bar, which leads to a steamy, charged showdown involving a game of billiards. Before long, they find themselves on the same Maverick Racing team. Starling’s narrative thrives on brisk dialogue and the main characters’ quick tempers. Rocco and Nico’s verbal sparring is electric (“Doesn’t Rocco mean dick in Italian?”), but underneath the sexual tension is a deeper exploration of trust and trauma. When Nico reflects on her need to race, she reveals the story’s emotional stakes: “Racing Formula 1 was like her blood, her bone. If they were gone, so was she—not just a persona… but her, the real her.” The novel’s alternating perspectives deepen the tension and reveal each character’s

troubled past—Rocco’s battle with self-doubt and media scrutiny, Nico’s resilience shaped by loss and survival. Despite their combative dynamic, the two share a need for speed, a passion for racing, and the scars of past betrayals. Starling’s prose occasionally veers into melodrama, especially in its more sensual moments, but the narrative remains grounded by its deft portrayal of ambition, its exploration of gender dynamics in male-dominated spaces, and its examination of the redemptive power of trust. Supporting characters, such as Nico’s lively best friend, Charles, deliver levity and warmth. A smart, sexy, and spirited love story that’s unafraid to embrace both grit and glamor.

Winter

Tenney, Rhya | Wry Line Press (332 pp.) $10.99 paper | April 24, 2025 | 9798987113776

Tenney’s genreblending novel combines a haunted-house mystery with artificial intelligence SF. On the heels of a broken engagement, medical caseworker Charlie Braedon decides to buy an old, decrepit house at the top of a winding hill. It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s close to her clients, there’s plenty of space, and, to be honest, it’s the best place that she can afford. However, it’s not long before she starts hearing and seeing things there that just don’t make sense: Pictures on the wall apparently change on their own, furniture refuses to be moved, and, unnervingly, sudden ice storms blow into her kitchen. Also, everyone in the community seems to believe that the old monastery next door is haunted. If that wasn’t unsettling enough, she has to find time to check in with her AI medical agents every few days to avoid being dropped by her health insurance. Enter Aidric, an AI agent who’s earned himself the nickname “death-bot” for accurately predicting when people will meet their

demise—and lately, his visions have become even harder to explain: “What he came to understand was that there was a presence in the building. A mind. Maybe it was his mind, but it did not feel like his mind.” For a story in which much of the plot centers around AI bots, Tenney’s tale has a lot of heart; the characters feel real and have a sense of humor about their situation: “She took more footage of the still frosted surfaces and thought, What next, fire? ” The plot they inhabit features many twists and turns, and, as such, feels consistently fresh and fast-paced. Although haunted-house stories are a well-worn genre, this novel offers an offbeat take, weaving elements of fantasy, mystery, SF, and detective fiction into something completely original.

A delightfully weird and surprising tale of the paranormal.

Wrongful

Upton, Lee | Sagging Meniscus Press (242 pp.) $21.95 paper | May 1, 2025 | 9781963846218

A fan who interacted with a novelist just before the latter was found dead seeks to find out what happened 10 years later in Upton’s mystery novel. Geneva Finch, 20, is on the beach near the festival celebrating novelist Mira Wallacz, who has just gone missing. She overhears Mira’s unauthorized biographer, a purported longtime friend, and a jealous-seeming literary rival discussing Mira; one comments that she “stirred a lot of unconscious anger.” Geneva, who came to the conference due to an affinity for Mira’s “lurid fairy tales for adults,” later wanders into the nearby woods and spots Mira, yet the latter refuses to return to the festival despite Geneva’s sense of danger. The narrative then jumps ahead 10 years, and readers learn that Mira was found dead, killed by falling or thrown rocks shortly after Geneva left her (“Most likely Mira Wallacz died in a freak accident. Falling rocks. A simple explanation exists for most things. That made sense, didn’t it?”). At a party, Geneva meets and dances

A captivating chronicle of personal growth.

PLACEMENT

with Thom, whom she later learns is the priest who inherited Mira’s estate, subsequently left the priesthood, and now writes poetry. Geneva tracks down Thom at a poetry workshop and convinces him to attend an upcoming conference commemorating Mira and help interview its attendees, including Mira’s agent. Geneva discovers that many people had possible motives to kill the author—including Thom (“It’s always about the one with the quirkiest motive in Mira’s novels. That’s where I’ll look”). Upton’s novel operates quite effectively as an Agatha Christie–like whodunit, complete with a lineup of colorful suspects and a twisty conclusion. The narrative is further enriched by the author’s musings upon the illusory aspects of real life and fiction—Geneva reflects that “the past ten years had been a long dream of guilt, a repetitive dream, and here was a way to rupture the dream.”

A captivating depiction of an elusive quest.

Placement

Van Sickle, Kimberly | Atmosphere Press (168 pp.) | $23.99 | $14.99 paper March 4, 2025 | 9798891326415 9798891325524 paper

A young soldier reflects on his privileged upbringing as he prepares to fight on D-Day. The story opens on June 6, 1944, as soldier Charles Trammel is preparing to land at Normandy. Through flashbacks, he reflects on his youth, education, and the complicated family dynamics (his father is from a storied political family; his mother hails from a working-class Irish Catholic background) that shaped him. Charles is a privileged

teenager navigating bumpy personal waters as World War II approaches. Much of his story takes place at Trammel Academy, a prestigious prep school named for his family where Charles has a strict classical literature teacher in Mrs. Verardi (who will prove to influence him significantly). At home, Charles’ family is often at war; a dramatic dinner culminates in Charles’ liberal mother challenging his grandfather, a conservative senator, who dies later that night from a heart attack. Charles is drawn to his chauffeur, Chauncey, a surrogate father figure whose background helps Charles begin to understand social inequality and the value of character over class. As the war draws closer, Charles finds himself rejecting the expectation that a senator’s son would avoid frontline combat. He joins the military, facing the brutal reality of war. In his final moments before the big battle, Charles acknowledges how the pivotal experiences and relationships in his life have defined him more than his last name. Van Sickle alternates between the fighting on Omaha Beach and the flashbacks to Charles’ youth to craft an engrossing narrative of personal awakening that tackles lofty themes of privilege, identity, and moral courage. The characters are compelling, particularly Charles and two of his prep-school peers, the manipulative and charismatic Jackson Inverness and the gentle and introspective Chilton McGovern (“His father was a first-generation Scottish steel baron and looked like a Viking. As did his mother. And his sister”). The dual timeline works well, allowing readers to track Charles’ evolution as a person and the ways in which the past has shaped his present. Part war story and part coming-of-age tale, this novel is a compelling read. A captivating chronicle of personal growth and the people and events that influenced it.

Colony

Wolff, Ron | Self (398 pp.) | $29.99 | $14.99 paper | April 27, 2025 | 9781941035184 9781941035160 paper

A teenager on a small, pioneering Mars colony faces the arrival of an additional colony ship and a deadly infestation by lethal Martian insects in Wolff’s SF novel.

The Hellas Station is a trailblazing Mars colony staffed by only a handful of international, highly competent astronauts. One of these exceptional colonists is extra-special: Adam Flynn is the first human born on Mars (sadly, his mother died from cancer in the radiation-rich environment). Seventeen-year-old Adam has matured to be a survival-hardened and resourceful youth who has helped to ready Hellas Station for an influx of nearly 100 new settlers, all of whom are on a long, one-way trip and expect to spend the rest of their lives on the red planet. But Adam is emotionally unprepared for the arrival of the group, which includes 25 more young people, many of them genius-level high-achievers. They all know Adam’s story (unbeknownst to him, the first “Martian” boy is a celebrity figure on Earth) and treat him with a blend of curiosity and disdain. The military commander of the newcomers, Col. Griggs, is a glory-seeking, aggressive type (with two not-so-nice teenagers of his own) who usurps the authority of the established colonists and is particularly condescending to Adam, insisting he is just a “kid” and ignoring his advice on all matters Martian. Things begin to go badly: Adam notices an especially powerful dust storm bearing down on the complex, and the installation’s power failures are traced to a frightening infestation by a hithertounsuspected Martian life form. At first appearing as dark patches or tiny larvae, the marauders turn out to be countless beetlelike insects. Of course, Col. Griggs and his Earth allies vainly perceive the discovery of life on another planet as an opportunity for naming rights, and as a new potential food source. Adam, on the other hand, figures out quickly that it is the humans who are on the menu.

The first-person-narrated story begins on a note recalling Andy Weir’s popular novel The Martian (2011), sharing an emphasis on the hard science of exoplanet survival skills and making the most of limited resources, with the added YA-friendly perspective of a teen hero with a (very) circumscribed upbringing abruptly coming to terms with having other humans around who are his own age, particularly of the macho-jock and mean-girl sort. (Whatever raging-hormones youthful romance happens here is dialed considerably down.) At around the midway point, with the onslaught of the bug menace, things take a more Hollywood action-movie turn, which is ironic considering how frequently the youthful characters reference celluloid SF (especially 1986’s Aliens) and deny that their plight resembles hack scriptwriting: “If this were a movie, I’d grin triumphantly and say something clever. She’d laugh and give me a fist-bump. Except my life doesn’t seem to be shaping into that kind of movie.” Actually, that really is more or less what transpires, with Adam and select others doing superheroic acts in an oxygen-starved atmosphere and facing off against unimaginable hordes with the most meagre homebrew weaponry while tossing off courageous asides. There is gruesome gore and a shocking body count, underlying the message that haughty grown-ups should give more credence to precocious astro-kids, especially when it comes to monsters. An entertaining, YA-leaning SF nail-biter.

Covenant of Justice: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations From Women of Reform Judaism

Women of Reform Judaism | Central Conference of American Rabbis Press (128 pp.) $17.95 paper | April 1, 2025 | 9780881236606

presents poems, songs, prayers, haiku, essays, and memories that examine sociopolitical issues through the lens of Jewish faith. The subjects run the gamut of progressive causes, including feminism and abortion rights; environmentalism and climate change; longings for a peaceful resolution to the Gaza war and the return of Israeli hostages; inclusion of marginalized gender and racial identities; the ongoing battle against antisemitism; and the perennial duty to, as Sherri Feuer’s militant poem “It’s Time” admonishes, “Stand up, speak out, take action / Protest, scream, and cry /…. Be boisterous and act boldly / Don’t just question why.” The contributors write in a wide range of styles and registers. Susan D. Pittelman indicts the gender pay gap with blunt statistical wonkery: “In 2002, women earned eighty cents to the [male] dollar. Progress? Yes. But in 2022, women earned only eighty-two cents for every dollar earned by men…Are we standing still or moving forward?”

Progressive social values sit at the heart of Jewish ethics, according to this heartfelt anthology. The social justice NGO Women of Reform Judaism

Gloria Tetewsky’s plangent, keening “Bilhah and Zilpah” explores the plight of unvalued women through the Torah story of Jacob’s concubines: “Was there that yearning in Bilhah and Zilpah for a share of his love? / A voice that said, ‘Notice me, I am a woman!’” Denise Sherer Jacobson delivers a tart, unsentimental take on living with cerebral palsy: “I don’t need pity or to be told I’m ‘such an inspiration!’ / Those words don’t lift my spirits / or help me feel accepted. / They just make me feel so little is expected of me.” And Rhoda Turitz London recites a limpid, tender kaddish for her mother, who led a life of social commitment: “She is a cherished memory: / An educator of minority children, / A role model for her three daughters, / A quiet seeker of justice, / A Jewish mother.” Readers will find here a stirring evocation of Reform Judaism’s moral core in a humble but tenacious mission to repair the world.

A luminous collection that locates spiritual fulfillment in a rapt engagement with earthly problems.

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