September 15, 2019: Volume LXXXVII, No 18

Featuring 326 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children's and YA books

KIRKUS VOL. LXXXVII, NO.

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SEPTEMBER

2019

REVIEWS

Margaret Atwood tells Kirkus why she chose to write her hotly anticipated sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. p. 14

Also in this issue: Attica Locke, Imani Perry, Morgan Parker, Julie Flett

from the editor’s desk:

Novels of Africa, Past and Future B Y T O M

Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N

B EER

# Chief Executive Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N mkuehn@kirkus.com Photo courtesy John Paraskevas

If journalism is “the first rough draft of history,” as the saying goes, and nonfiction the second, is literature the third and final draft—the fullest, most truthful accounting of all? A novel, though a work of imagination, can tell a story from unexpected angles, bringing us voices not always recorded at the time.

I’ve been considering such matters as I read the gloriously vivid new historical novel Out of Darkness, Shining Light (Scribner, Sept. 10) by Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah.

It tells the story of Scottish missionary Dr. David LivingTom Beer stone, whose travels in 19th-century Africa—in search of the source of the Nile River—are the stuff of legend; his encounter with journalist Henry Morton Stanley occasioned the famous remark, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” The story has been told many times before (some say it was a partial inspiration for Joseph Conrad’s classic 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness), usually from the point of view of the white explorers.

Gappah takes a radically different approach. Her narrators are two Africans traveling in Livingstone’s entourage: Halima, an enslaved woman bought by Livingstone and employed by him as a cook, and Jacob Wainwright, a freed slave and Christian convert who attaches himself to Livingtone’s party as the missionary falls ill and dies of malaria. The bulk of the narrative concerns Livingstone’s final days and the decision taken by his African associates to carry the body to the port of Bagamoyo (in modern-day Tanzania) so it can be returned to Great Britain. Needless to say, Halima and Jacob perceive Livingstone and his quest quite differently from the historians— indeed, quite differently from one another. Using their voices (inspired by more than 10 years of research), Gappah fashions a tale that complicates and enriches our understandings of the slave trade, colonialism in Africa, and much more. It’s also a straight-up wonderful read.

Gappah’s novel is just one of a handful of new or recent titles that explore African history from Cont. on p. 4 Print indexes: www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/print-indexes Kirkus Blog: www.kirkusreviews.com/blog Advertising Opportunities: www.kirkusreviews.com/about/advertising opportunities

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from the editor’s desk

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Editor -in- Chief TOM BEER tbeer@kirkus.com Vice President of Marketing SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com Managing/Nonfiction Editor E R I C L I E B E T R AU eliebetrau@kirkus.com Fiction Editor L AU R I E M U C H N I C K lmuchnick@kirkus.com Children’s Editor VICKY SMITH vsmith@kirkus.com Young Adult Editor L AU R A S I M E O N lsimeon@kirkus.com Editor at Large MEGA N LABRISE mlabrise@kirkus.com Vice President of Kirkus Indie KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com Senior Indie Editor D AV I D R A P P drapp@kirkus.com Indie Editor M Y R A F O R S B E RG mforsberg@kirkus.com Associate Manager of Indie K AT E R I N A P A P P A S kpappas@kirkus.com Editorial Assistant CHELSEA ENNEN cennen@kirkus.com Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH Contributing Editor G R E G O RY M c N A M E E Copy Editor BETSY JUDKINS Designer ALEX HEAD Director of Kirkus Editorial L AU R E N B A I L E Y lbailey@kirkus.com Production Editor C AT H E R I N E B R E S N E R cbresner@kirkus.com Website and Software Developer P E RC Y P E R E Z pperez@kirkus.com Advertising Director M O N I Q U E S T E N S RU D mstensrud@kirkus.com Advertising Associate TAT I A N A A R N O L D tarnold@kirkus.com Graphic Designer L I A N A WA L K E R lwallker@kirkus.com Controller MICHELLE GONZALES mgonzales@kirkus.com for customer service or subscription questions, please call 1-800-316-9361

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contents fiction

The Kirkus Star is awarded to books of remarkable merit, as determined by the impartial editors of Kirkus.

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS............................................................ 5 REVIEWS................................................................................................ 5 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................... 6 ON THE COVER: MARGARET ATWOOD........................................... 14 INTERVIEW: ATTICA LOCKE............................................................. 24 MYSTERY...............................................................................................31 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY.......................................................... 39 ROMANCE............................................................................................ 41

nonfiction

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS..........................................................44 REVIEWS..............................................................................................44 EDITOR’S NOTE...................................................................................46 INTERVIEW: IMANI PERRY............................................................... 60 INTERVIEW: ANNE BOYER................................................................66

children’s

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.......................................................... 85 REVIEWS.............................................................................................. 85 EDITOR’S NOTE...................................................................................86 INTERVIEW: MARINA BUDHOS......................................................102 INTERVIEW: JULIE FLETT................................................................106 BOARD & NOVELTY BOOKS.............................................................120 CONTINUING SERIES.......................................................................129

young adult

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.........................................................134 REVIEWS.............................................................................................134 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................136 INTERVIEW: MORGAN PARKER.....................................................140 INTERVIEW: DAVE CONNIS........................................................... 144 CONTINUING SERIES...................................................................... 148

Charlotte Nicole Davis’ powerful Wild West fantasy debut features a group of young women trafficked into sex work seeking their freedom. Read the review on p. 137.

indie

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS........................................................ 149 REVIEWS............................................................................................ 149 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................150 INTERVIEW: MICHAEL NAVA.......................................................... 156 QUEERIES: LAWRENCE WESCHLER.............................................. 164 BOOKS OF THE MONTH....................................................................173

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FIELD NOTES......................................................................................174 APPRECIATIONS: W.G. SEBALD’S ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION..............................................................................175 |

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new perspectives. Also out this month is The Shadow King (W.W. Norton, Sept. 24), the second novel by Maaza Mengiste, a writer who was born in Ethiopia and now lives in Queens, New York. Set during Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopa in 1935, it concerns the women—beginning with Mengiste’s protagonist, Hirut—who join the battle against the Italian fascists after Emperor Haile Selassie has secretly gone into hiding. “The Shadow King” of the title is a man who is presented to the public as the emperor— dressed in his clothing, imitating his mannerisms—and Hirut is one of his guards. Our reviewer calls Mengiste a “master of characterization” and praises the novel as a “memorable portrait of a people at war—a war that has long demanded recounting from an Ethiopian point of view.”

Dr. Livingstone makes an appearance on the first page of Namwali Serpell’s debut novel The Old Drift (Hogarth/Crown), published earlier this year to rousing acclaim. This wildly imaginative epic novel aims to do nothing less than tell the story of the African nation of Zambia—past, present, and future—through the stories of three families, black, brown, and white. It goes well beyond the historical record with its mix of historical fiction, magical realism, and speculative fiction—what contributing editor Megan Labrise called “literary Neapolitan ice cream” when she interviewed Serpell, a Zambian writer who now lives in San Francisco. For all its flights of fancy, the novel depicts something essential about Zambia in much the same way that Midnight’s Children captured India or One Hundred Years of Solitude captured Colombia. “This novel’s generous spirit, sensory richness, and visionary heft make it almost unique among magical realist epics,” wrote our reviewer.

At long last, fiction from Africa and by Africans is being published and finding an audience here in the United States. We need to hear these stories and the truths they bring us—I look forward to reading much, much more.

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fiction A LONG PETAL OF THE SEA

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Allende, Isabel Trans. by Caistor, Nick & Hopkinson, Amanda Ballantine (336 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-1-9848-2015-0

WYOMING by JP Gritton.................................................................... 11 THE MERCIES by Kiran Millwood Hargrave....................................12 THE OLD WOMAN AND THE RIVER by Ismail Fahd Ismail; trans. by Sophia Vasalou....................................................................... 13 WRITERS & LOVERS by Lily King......................................................19 ISOLDE by Irina Odoevtseva; trans. by Bryan Karetnyk & Irina Steinberg..................................................................................... 26 A DREAM COME TRUE by Juan Carlos Onetti; trans. by Katherine Silver.....................................................................27 MARY TOFT; OR, THE RABBIT QUEEN by Dexter Palmer...............27 SILENCE OF THE CHAGOS by Shenaz Patel; trans. by Jeffrey Zuckerman................................................................ 28 THE TRUANTS by Kate Weinberg........................................................30 THE RISE OF MAGICKS by Nora Roberts.......................................... 40 THE ROSEWATER REDEMPTION by Tade Thompson.......................41 THE RISE OF MAGICKS

Roberts, Nora St. Martin’s Press (464 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-250-12303-9

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Two refugees from the Spanish Civil War cross the Atlantic Ocean to Chile and a half-century of political and personal upheavals.

We meet Victor Dalmau and Roser Bruguera in 1938 as it is becoming increasingly clear that the Republican cause they support is doomed. When they reunite in France as penniless refugees, Roser has survived a harrowing flight across the Pyrenees while heavily pregnant and given birth to the son of Victor’s brother Guillem, killed at the Battle of the Ebro. Victor, evacuated with the wounded he was tending in a makeshift hospital, learns of a ship outfitted by poet Pablo Neruda to take exiles to a new life in Chile, but he and Roser must marry in order to gain a berth. Allende (In the Midst of Winter, 2017, etc.) expertly sets up this forced intimacy between two very different people: Resolute, realistic Roser never looks back and doggedly pursues a musical career in Chile while Victor, despite being fast-tracked into medical school by socialist politician Salvador Allende (a relative of the author’s), remains melancholy and nostalgic for his homeland. Their platonic affection deepens into physical love and lasting commitment in an episodic narrative that reaches a catastrophic climax with the 1973 coup overthrowing Chile’s democratically elected government.

For Victor and Roser, this is a painful reminder of their losses in Spain and the start of new suffering. The wealthy, conservative del Solar family provides a counterpoint to the idealistic Dalmaus; snobbish, right-wing patriarch Isidro and his hysterically religious wife, Laura, verge on caricature, but Allende paints more nuanced portraits of eldest son Felipe, who smooths the refugees’ early days in Chile, and daughter Ofelia, whose brief affair with Victor has lasting consequences. Allende tends to describe emotions and events rather than delve into them, and she paints the historical backdrop in very broad strokes, but she is an engaging storyteller. A touching close in 1994 brings one more surprise and unexpected hope for the future to 80-yearold Victor.

A trifle facile, but this decades-spanning drama is readable and engrossing throughout.

ZED by Joanna Kavenna......................................................................16

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if you love margaret atwood, try reading…

THE TESTAMENTS

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments has just been published, but I’m betting that many of you have already read it. Excitement has been running so high since Nan A. Talese/Doubleday announced they’d be publishing the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale that it’s felt like every Atwood fan must have been setting aside a few days to read it as soon as it appeared in bookstores. So now what? Here are some other recent feminist novels for your post-Testaments rage-reading: The Power by Naomi Alderman is the perfect book for our moment. What a premise: “All over the world, teenage girls develop the ability to send an electric charge from the tips of their fingers….

Needless to say, there are those who are alarmed by this development. There are efforts to segregate and protect boys, laws to ensure that women who possess this ability are banned from positions of authority….But, ultimately, there’s no stopping these women and girls once they have the power to kill with a touch,” says our starred review. “Very smart and very entertaining.”

Red Clocks by Leni Zumas resembles Atwood’s books in that the United States has banned abortion and Canada seems like a safe haven, but in Zumas’ world, women trying to cross the “pink wall” of the border are sent back to the U.S. to be prosecuted. Told from the perspectives of five different women in a small Oregon town, the book is “a good story energized by a timely premise but perhaps a bit heavy on the literary effects,” according to our review.

Women Talking by Miriam Toews takes place in the current world, not a dystopian future, but the women of the title feel like they could be living at any time: They’re the residents of a Mennonite colony in South America, and they’ve gathered in a barn to discuss what they should do now that they’ve found out that some of the men in their community have been drugging and raping them while they slept. Our starred review calls the book “stunningly original and altogether arresting.” —L.M.

Atwood, Margaret Talese/Doubleday (432 pp.) $28.95 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-0-385-54378-1 Atwood goes back to Gilead.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there’s Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed.

The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

THE CONFESSION CLUB

Berg, Elizabeth Random House (304 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-984855-17-6

The denizens of Mason, Missouri, are at it again, dispensing just deserts with unearned optimism on the side.

The premise for this book, a sequel to two other novels set in Mason (Night of Miracles, 2018; The Story of Arthur Truluv,

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.

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2017), is the Confession Club, a group of mostly middle-aged women who meet regularly at each other’s homes to exchange secrets over wine and treats. For the most part, though, the Confession Club operates independently and irrelevantly of the novel’s main concern—the ongoing sagas of the late Arthur Truluv’s surviving friends. Iris, baking teacher extraordinaire, is about to turn 50, and 20-something Maddy has just returned from New York City with her 7-year-old daughter, Nola, leaving her new husband behind. A major character is introduced: John, a 66-year-old, handsome, homeless Vietnam vet, has made his way from Chicago to Mason, taking up residence in an abandoned farmhouse. Berg does not delve deeply into either the details of John’s homeless existence or his Vietnam combat experience. However, the competence and resourcefulness John displays as a homeless person are strangely at odds with his PTSD. This contradiction might give readers pause, since PTSD (for which he refused counseling) led to John’s wife’s departure, which resulted in his homelessness. Iris is immediately attracted to John, albeit leery of him—and it’s unclear how leery she should be. The Confession Club seems to exist mostly

to explore themes like infidelity, loneliness, independence, and longing, which are too generic to relate to the principal players’ predicaments. As usual, Mason is a refuge unruffled by the country’s political turmoil, and conflict, if any, is mostly avoided before it can generate any excitement. Some readers may wish to return to Mason again and again, to relax with the literary equivalent of well-worn slippers, a glass of wine, and no wellness diets in sight. But readers seeking insight into modern American life, leavened with humor, might be better challenged by Richard Russo or Anne Tyler.

All the bucolic pacifism of an episode of Prairie Home Companion without the seething undercurrents.

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SECRET SERVICE

around Kate. Is her boss, Ian Granger, head of the Europe and Russia desk, genuinely doubtful, or is he dismissing her suspicions because he’s the mole? Is her husband cheating on her?

Is her 15-year-old daughter really having sex with the pierced and tattooed Jed, who is a few years older? And will the MI6 director, known as C, force her to reveal her secret source in the Russian diplomatic corps? Dauntless, Kate slowly unravels the twisted skeins of deceit and betrayal, and though she loses much in the process, she perseveres. If all this seems reminiscent of some of the trials and tribulations of George Smiley, well, it’s a new generation.

Old wine in a new glass, slightly past its prime.

Bradby, Tom Atlantic Monthly (368 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-0-8021-4803-2 Russians meddling in British politics.

Kate Henderson, a senior officer at MI6, has a borscht bowl of troubles.

When her team bugs an oligarch’s yacht, they learn that the Russians have coopted a British politician and that the prime minister is ailing and will soon leave office. Is this disinformation, intentionally leaked to gum up internal British politics? The detail about the prime minister’s health is key: No one in Britain has been aware of any issue, and when he unexpectedly resigns for health reasons, the report seems to be confirmed. But as Kate drills down on which politician may be the Kremlin’s person, it also becomes clear that there’s a mole on her team, and in fact there are potential betrayals swirling all

THE INCOMPLETES

Chejfec, Sergio Trans. by Cleary, Heather Open Letter (180 pp.) $14.95 paper | Sep. 24, 2019 978-1-948830-03-4 A novel of lonesomeness and recollection that takes the construction of characters as its subject.

The question “Who’s responsible for this?” often takes on a tone of indignation, but in Argentine writer Chejfec’s latest novel it’s not an admonishment so much as a practical consideration. As the book opens, the narrator informs readers that he is going to tell us a story—“something that happened one night, years ago, and the events of the morning and afternoon that followed”—and yet the novel is filled with several stories, large and small, as well as multiple nights and evenings. Just as the missives described by the narrator from his friend Felix grow from postcards to full-blown letters, so too do the accumulated moments grow larger and more significant as the novel moves from Buenos Aires to Barcelona to Moscow, where Felix checks in at the Hotel Salgado. From there Felix’s story intersects with that of Masha, the hotel’s owner. We’re let in on her innermost thoughts and feelings, as we are with Felix’s. She’s as persistent as Felix is transient, going about her day wrapped in shapeless bundles and gliding across the floors in shearling boots as she completes her tasks. As their stories begin to intertwine and pieces of their stories begin to resemble one another (a woman whom Felix met at lodgings prior to the Hotel Salgado complained to a clerk about losing money in her pants; Masha, while cleaning a room she is staying in, finds a stack of money in the closet), readers are uneasily reminded of the fact that, in the end, neither Felix nor Masha is telling the story at all. They barely say a word—it is the narrator adorning simple correspondence from a friend with drama and stemwinding diction. The effect it conjures gets at the heart of narration in general: What is the responsibility of the storyteller to adhere to the facts as told? Is it possible to ever completely know what happened? If the story is vivid and engaging—as this book is—does it matter?

In this innovative novel, Chejfec is gesturing toward the grand European traditions on his own terms.

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Plenty of gore from days of yore. sword of kings

SWORD OF KINGS

nightclub; Zhang is drawn to her, a mysterious blonde foreigner who speaks perfect Chinese. The first time they meet, Zhang notices “a light round her, a kind of shimmer” that was “something he could feel, though, rather than see.” Drawn together by desire and something more mysterious, they begin an affair which starts to envelop them both. Naemi lets him get closer than anyone has gotten before, and Zhang begins to realize she isn’t who—or what—he thought she was. Switching between Naemi’s and Zhang’s points of view, the novel builds tension through their mutual secret-keeping. Whether it’s NVK’s past as a fisherman’s wife in Finnmark or as a young woman drinking in a 1970s London pub, the portions about her former lives and the ways she navigates immortality are the most interesting in the book. After she escapes a mob without a trace, NVK realizes that “no one would ever know what became of her. She would be a story that was told to children. A cautionary tale. A fable.” A perfect encapsulation of her life. One of the novel’s biggest problems is that it’s the first in a series and is written as such. It has a hard time standing on its own: It meanders too much, gets lost in minutiae, and

Cornwell, Bernard HarperCollins (336 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-0-06-256321-7

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Plenty of gore from days of yore fills the 12th entry in Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom series (War of the Wolf, 2018, etc.).

The pagan warlord Uhtred of Bebbanburg narrates his 10th-century adventures, during which he hacks people apart so that kingdoms might be stitched together. He is known to some as the Godless or the Wicked, a reputation he enjoys. Edward, King of Wessex, Mercia, and East Anglia is gravely ill, and Uhtred pledges an oath to likely heir Æthelstan to kill two rivals, Æthelhelm and “his rotten nephew,” Ælfweard, when the king dies. Uhtred’s wife, Eadith, wants him to break that oath, but he cannot live with the dishonor of being an oathbreaker. The tale seems to begin in the middle, as though the reader had just turned the last page in the 11th book—and yet it stands alone quite well. Uhtred travels the coast and the river Temes in the good ship Spearhafoc, powered by 40 rowers struggling against tides and currents. He and his men fight furious battles, and he lustily impales foes with his favorite sword, Serpent-Breath. “I don’t kill the helpless,” though, which is one of his few limits. So, early in the story, when a man calling himself “God’s chosen one” declares “We were sent to kill you,” readers may chuckle and say yeah, right. But Uhtred faces true challenges such as Waormund, “lord Æthelhelm’s beast.” Immense bloodletting aside, Cornwell paints vivid images of the filth in the Temes and in cities like Lundene. This is mainly manly fare, of course. Few women are active characters. The queen needs rescuing, and “when queens call for help, warriors go to war.”

The action is believable if often gruesome and loathsome, and it never lets up for long.

This is historical adventure on a grand scale, right up there with the works of Conn Iggulden and Minette Walters.

NVK

Drake, Temple Other Press (352 pp.) $15.99 paper | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-59051-935-6 In 2012 Shanghai, a steamy affair turns supernatural.

Naemi Vieno Kuusela has seen a lot in her four-plus centuries on Earth.

She hasn’t always had the same name but has always kept her initials—NVK—as a way of grounding her: “There had to be something to hold onto, some faint trace of continuity, or she would fall apart.” Naemi meets Zhang Guo Xing, a married businessman, in a hip Shanghai |

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reveals too little. That said, the ending subverts expectations and provides a perfect springboard for NVK’s next adventure.

A gothic supernatural tale that needs more thrills.

readers. Juliette lives in an almost-alternate reality where passengers on the Métro are actually reading paper books rather than texting friends, swiping Tinder, or even reading e-books.

She is intrigued by the man in the green hat who makes his way through an entomology textbook and the hopeless romantic who sobs at page 247 of every book she reads. One morning, Juliette instinctively exits the Métro a few stops early on her commute to find herself at the quirky Books Unlimited, where she meets Soliman and his young daughter, Zaide. There, she is recruited as a book passeur; her mission is to follow strangers and observe their lives in order to give them the gift of the perfect book for that moment in their lives. Part charming stalker, part literary pharmacist, Juliette is more fulfilled as passeur than real estate agent and dives deeper into this secret realm of bibliophilic cupids. With a cast of characters reminiscent of the French film Amélie, Féret-Fleury creates a world that is delightful and enchanting. As she flits about this new universe, Juliette discovers that the life she may change the most is her own. This is the author’s first book to appear in English, and it’s been deftly translated to maintain the lyrical writing of the original French text.

Light and sweet as a bonbon, this little confection of a book is delicious.

THE GIRL WHO READS ON THE MÉTRO

Féret-Fleury, Christine Trans. by Schwartz, Ros Flatiron Books (192 pp.) $22.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-250-31542-7

Can the gift of a perfect book transform a person’s life?

Juliette, a whimsical Parisian, leads a life far too dull for her magical spirit. She has an ordinary office job in real estate and dates men who are positively yawnworthy.

Her love of literature and her active imagination, however, set her on a path to becoming a matchmaker between books and

UNDER OCCUPATION

Furst, Alan Random House (224 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-0-399-59230-0

A crime writer in occupied France finds himself in a plot more dangerous than any he’s dreamed up.

Having been shot by the Gestapo, a man surreptitiously hands something to Paul Ricard just before dying: It appears to be a drawing specifying the technical details of a military weapon. After making some inquiries as to whom he might pass the papers to, Ricard finds himself volunteering for the Resistance and, under the guise of a journalist, traveling to Germany to make contact with the conscripted Polish workers who can explain the document. As with his other novels, Furst (A Hero of France, 2016, etc.) bases his tale on a lesserknown nugget of World War II history, in this case, the Polish laborers forced to build U-boats who took their revenge by smuggling technical information to the French Resistance, who forwarded it to British intelligence. But the tension has, for the moment, gone out of Furst’s work, and the elliptical and compact writing style he developed has devolved into a kind of drifting, random series of scenes that never accumulate into more. There is still a fine sense of the details of life during wartime, the strange and pregnant heaviness that lies over the most banal activities. What’s missing, though, are the moments when that heaviness bursts forth.

This is a picture of war less as a series of impossible choices than as a vaguely romantic miasma.

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A series of shocking events shakes up a Colorado family struggling to get by during the economic downturn of the late 1980s. wyoming

WYOMING

who has the $50,000 payday stolen by a young prostitute he let into his motel room. In fact, nothing ever goes right for him, including his impromptu marriage to his sister’s friend Syrena. We are in an alternate Sam Shepard universe in which the battling brothers are too worn down by failure to fight.

Moving back and forth in time with extreme subtlety, Gritton erects a penetrating family history of love, loss, loyalty, and betrayal. It takes a great writer to make a character as reprehensible as Shelley not only sympathetic, but almost likable.

In fact, Shelley is not so dumb. He wryly reflects on billboards that read “HE IS RISEN” in the face of disaster and tells us how holding $50,000 in cash “feels like a blind rage, like a wolf howling at the moon.” How did Shelley became the man he is? In this brilliant debut novel, there are many bread crumbs leading us back to possible answers.

An affecting, richly drawn, darkly humorous novel about grifting siblings, one worse than the other.

Gritton, JP Tin House (248 pp.) $15.95 paper | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-947793-44-6 A series of shocking events, some instigated by the hapless protagonist, shakes up a Colorado family struggling to get by during the economic downturn of the late 1980s.

Things start going south for construction worker Shelley Cooper after a sudden mountain fire consumes the house on which he and his best friend, Mike, were toiling. When his boss rightly suspects he had something to do with an air processor that went missing after the blaze, Shelley loses his job. In desperate financial straits, he agrees to drive a shipment of marijuana to Houston for his brother, Clay, an ex-con who grows his own. “Don’t think for a second I was dumb enough to figure it would turn out right,” says Shelley,

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THE MERCIES

Hargrave, Kiran Millwood Little, Brown (336 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-316-52925-9 On an icy, dark island, men hunt witches and women fight back.

British poet and playwright Hargrave plucks a piece of 400-year-old legal history—a European king’s prosecution of 91 people for witchcraft—and gives it a feminist spin. The story opens in 1617 in the Arctic Circle, with a historic, strangely sudden storm off the island of Vardø. Maren, 20, has run to the harbor as her father, brother, and fiance founder in boats at sea. “All about her, other mothers, sisters, daughters are throwing themselves at the weather: dark, rain-slick shapes, clumsy as seals.” Forty men drown in the Christmas Eve storm, leaving their Norwegian womenfolk in a treeless village, sunk in winter darkness. The women winch the men’s corpses off the

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rocks, up the cliffs, and store them in a boathouse; the ground is far too frozen to breach. They butcher reindeer and, after much dissention, split over the radical step of going to sea to fish for themselves. News reaches the authorities, who send first a preacher, then someone more sinister, Scotsman Absalom Cornet, who has already executed a woman for witchery. He brings a bewildered new wife, Ursa, a young city woman, ignorant of her husband’s history. She forms a fast, unlikely bond with Maren. To Absalom, the lethal storm seems suspiciously supernatural and the customs of the local Laplanders—Sámi people—an abomination. The tension ratchets across the novel’s three sections: “Storm,” “Arrival,” and “Hunt.” The women—divided, watchful, unlettered, and bereaved— are prey, but they are not helpless. In clean, gripping sentences the author is wonderfully tuned to the ways and gestures of a seemingly taciturn people. “Even writing at a distance of four hundred years, I found much to recognize,” she states in her historical note. “This story is about people, and how they lived; before why and how they died became what defined them.”

This chilling tale of religious persecution is served up with a feminist bite.

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An understated, simply told story of the hell of war from an unusual perspective. the old woman and the river

UNDER NUSHAGAK BLUFF

finds herself suddenly widowed when her husband dies of heart failure; as Ismail writes, “Everyone dies when their time comes, be it in the midst of war or lying in their own bed.” She and her sons, refugees from the delta region, bury him alongside a highway near Nasiriya, but when Um Qasem, feeling homesick a few years later, decides to head back to her home village of Sabiliyat, about 250 miles away, her husband appears to her in a dream and says he wants to go home, too. After digging up what remains of him, Um Qasem undertakes a dangerous journey in the company of a donkey aptly named Good Omen, who snorts understandingly as Um Qasem voices her worries. Arriving at Sabiliyat, she finds that her old home is in disarray, and the entire village, long since emptied of people, is desiccated, destroyed by the river’s having been dammed up by her country’s own army in an apparent scorched-earth maneuver. Um Qasem’s husband begins to figure ever more prominently in her dreams, taking a neighbor’s ax to the flimsy dam, even as Um Qasem becomes a substitute mother to a soldier stationed on the front: “I have three sons,” she says, happily, “you’re now my fourth.” Tragedy, of course, soon follows, even as Um Qasem

Heavener , Mia Red Hen Press (232 pp.) $17.95 paper | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-59709-809-0

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Each summer during the 1930s and ’40s, men from Japan, the Philippines, Russia, Scandinavia, and Washington state flocked to the Yup’ik hamlet of Nushagak Village in Alaska’s Bristol Bay to work in local canneries.

For well-trained fisherperson Anne Girl and her mother, Marulia, both Native Alaskans, the arrival of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian named John Nelson sets the wheels of profound change into motion. Teenage Anne Girl starts seeing John in secret, but eventually the liaison becomes public. Disapproving Marulia wants to know if John is “good for anything” since he seems ill-suited for both sea and factory life. Even more concerning, Marulia worries that John may be an undercover missionary since he’s staying with Frederik and Nora Killweather, Christian evangelists eager to bring the populace to Christ. But Anne Girl doesn’t care. John is an ace storyteller, and she finds his intricate tales enchanting. Soon, the two marry and have a child. Throughout, Anne Girl continues to fish and teaches her daughter everything she knows about preparing nets, catching salmon, readying a boat to set sail, and reading tides and weather patterns. John, meanwhile, learns to fly and becomes the area’s sole pilot, ferrying food, medicine, mail, and sundries between the remote village and the large trading post in Dillingham. It’s an intriguing and important window into life among an Indigenous people and beautifully illustrates the push and pull of assimilation in pre-state Alaska. At the same time, since the action begins in 1939 and continues into the late 1940s, the narrative’s omission of World War II seems odd. Still, the depiction of the customs and oral traditions of the community make this a fascinating coming-of-age story, touching upon sexuality, gender, death, friendship, alcoholism, and the inevitability of cultural shifts.

A compelling, lyrical, and resonant debut.

THE OLD WOMAN AND THE RIVER

Ismail, Ismail Fahd Trans. by Vasalou, Sophia Interlink (160 pp.) $15.00 paper | Oct. 7, 2019 978-1-62371-982-1 An understated, simply told story of the hell of war from an unusual perspective.

Kuwaiti writer Ismail sets his story across the international border in Iraq, at the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It is 1980, the outbreak of a long, savage war between Iraq and Iran, and a woman named Um Qasem |

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ON THE COVER

Margaret Atwood NEARLY 35 YEARS AFTER THE HANDMAID’S TALE, THE AUTHOR EXPLAINS WHY IT WAS TIME TO REVISIT GILEAD IN HER EAGERLY AWAITED NEW NOVEL, THE TESTAMENTS

By Megan Labrise Photo courtesy Nina Subin

Very little was known about The Testaments ahead of publication because very little could be: “Ferocious” nondisclosure agreements kept in-house personnel, critics, and booksellers from saying anything substantial about the novel’s content. (When Man Booker Prize judges announced its inclusion on their 2019 longlist, they called it “terrifying and exhilarating” and left it at that.) We’d only be free to discuss it after Sept. 10, when Atwood planned to launch the book in rock-star style, live from London, in a midnight conversation with broadcaster and author Samira Ahmed, live-streamed in 1,000 cinemas around the world.

“Well, it’s definitely hubbub,” says Atwood, who speaks and writes with precision. “And if I were 35, it would probably ruin my life.”

Atwood, 79, is the author of more than 40 books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays; winner of numerous prizes, including the Man Booker Prize, Arthur C. Clarke Award, and lifetime achievement awards from the National Book Critics Circle and PEN Center USA. The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985, has sold more than 8 million English-language copies and been made into a movie, an opera, and a wildly popular TV series starring Elisabeth Moss, now in its third season, for which Atwood serves as consulting producer. It is the story of a woman known only as “Offred,” a member of the first generation of women conscripted into reproductive slavery by Gilead, a theocratic totalitarian dictatorship that has overthrown the government of the United States.

“People asked me for years whether I was going to write [a sequel],” she says, “and I thought by that they meant a continuation of that narrator’s story, which I would not have been able to do, because you can’t recreate a voice like that.”

But over the years, a few things happened to change Atwood’s mind—or at least her approach. One was

Rarely am I offered an assignment I’m not permitted to disclose. But there I was, five days before the interview, awaiting the special delivery of an otherwise unremarkable cardboard mailer containing the tape-bound galley of a book called The Casements by Victoria Locket.

It was a decoy: No such book exists.

It was very red cloak and dagger. Terribly exciting.

“I think it’s very funny,” Margaret Atwood says of the fake title American publishers chose to disguise advance copies of The Testaments (Doubleday, Sept. 10), the hotly anticipated, closely held sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. “And Victoria Locket is very funny,” she adds, speaking in low tones by phone from Toronto on a bustling recent morning at O.W. Toad, her anagrammatic office.

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al democracy. “Things have not gone completely pearshaped, although young people say to me, ‘Boo-hoo, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened.’ And I say, ‘No, actually, it isn’t.’ ” She winds up with a favorite quote from the movie Gladiator. In a speech at the beginning of the film, Maximus admonishes his troops to “Hold the line”—i.e., defend their battleground. In our case, it means preserving the human rights we currently enjoy.

“If you can just hold the line, you’ll be doing pretty well. If you can only just hold the notion of free and fair elections, you’re doing pretty well. If you can hold an independent media—mainstream—and why do I say that? Because we know where they live, and, if they really lie, you can sue them, whereas fly-by-night bloggers you can’t. So that’s another line, and another line is an independent judiciary. Those are the hallmarks of a democracy,” she says, lowering her voice for dramatic effect, “none of which they have in Gilead.”

“Enjoy the ride as much as you can, hold the line, and don’t vote for the person who tells you there is no climate crisis,” she summarizes. “They’re lying.”

the “worrying trend” of rolling back hard-won women’s rights in countries around the world, including the United States. Two, the aftereffects of 9/11: increasingly conscripted travel and migration, beefed-up homeland security, burgeoning xenophobia. And then the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which happened while Atwood was busy shooting the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale series.

“I’d already started the book by then because it had occurred to me that [Offred’s was] not the only narrative voice that was possible,” she says. “I wanted to know, what happened to those children of Gilead? What would it be like actually to grow up inside such a regime?

“You can look at generations throughout history,” she says, “children of Bolsheviks, children of first-generation Puritans, et cetera, down on through the line, Hitler Youth, kids who’d never known anything else— what’s it like for them?

“No. 2, how did Gilead fall apart? Because we know from Book 1 that it did, but we’re not told how. We know that there were purges, but we’re not told who. Those regimes always seem to do that: They have a founder generation and then those people kill each other, one way or the other.”

Set 15 years after the events described by Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments features three narrators with highly divergent experiences. The first we meet is a Founder of Gilead, an elder—an Aunt—whom readers will remember vividly, if not fondly, from the first book. A member of the only class of women allowed to read, responsible for training Wives and Handmaids in the fine arts of compliance, she writes her story in secret, as Offred did, though her intentions are not immediately clear.

“Over the years I’ve buried a lot of bones; now I’m inclined to dig them up again—if only for your edification, my unknown reader,” begins the first of many chapters entitled “The Ardua Hall Holograph.” “If you are reading, this manuscript at least will have survived. Though perhaps I’m fantasizing: perhaps I will never have a reader. Perhaps I’ll only be talking to the wall, in more ways than one.”

The other narrators represent a younger generation.

One grew up in Gilead, and one grew up in a sovereign nation to the north. Unlike their predecessor, they are asked to share their stories. Their chapters are transcripts of witness testimony, of what we hope and suspect will be the fall of Gilead.

The type of brutal authoritarian dictatorship we never ever thought we’d be tiptoeing toward in 2019.

Not so fast, Atwood says. “Luckily, you still live in the United States of America,” which remains a liber|

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Megan Labrise is the editor at large and host of the Fully Booked podcast.

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subversively disobeys orders to evacuate, taking her time to bury her husband as she quietly restores a bit of the village’s formerly green orderliness. Ismail’s story has a fairy-tale–like quality at points, reminiscent here of Don Quixote and there of Jean Giono’s The Man Who Planted Trees, and it speaks plainly, without sentimentality or obviousness, about the terrors of war—and in particular a war that few Westerners know about.

A memorable tale by an author who deserves wider circulation in English.

TWO DEAD

Jensen, Van Illus. by Powell, Nate Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $19.99 paper | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-5011-6895-6 Writer Jensen (James Bond: Live and Let Die, 2019, etc.) and illustrator Powell (Come Again, 2018, etc.) deliver a kinetic noir graphic novel about the cost of war and guilt as a straight-arrow soldier with blood on his hands returns from World War II to restore order in his hometown, plunging into a volatile mix of police corruption, racism, and the mob.

Gideon Kemp was a good soldier with plans to be a lawyer, but after a friendly-fire incident in the war he becomes a cop in Little Rock, Arkansas, secretly building a case against Abraham Bailey, the loose-cannon chief of detectives who shoots first in his personal war on crime—and with the mob setting up shop in town, that’s a lot of shooting. The unhinged Bailey shares a macabre compulsion with his foe, mob boss Big Mike, though the sadistic Big Mike comes across as the more reasonable of the two, offering a promotion to Esau, the numbers runner in the mobster’s illegal poker room, after Esau doesn’t give up his boss when assaulted by Bailey during the detective’s extrajudicial search for evidence. Noting the absence of opportunities for African Americans like them in Little Rock, Esau encourages his brother, Jacob, to quit the ad hoc police force of war veterans who patrol the underserved black side of town (only by the grace of the all-white Little Rock Police Department) and instead embrace the money and respect offered by the mob.

The knotty story shows the traumas of the past shaping the present, some panels literally haunted by specters. Fresh from his work on John Lewis’ acclaimed March trilogy, Powell applies a pleasingly realistic look while cartoonish flourishes electrify the page. Jensen weaves a propulsive narrative of intersecting stories and festering wounds that doesn’t quite deliver a knockout punch but is highly engaging.

Good pulp.

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SEVEN SAMURAI SWEPT AWAY IN A RIVER

Jung Young Moon Deep Vellum (164 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 15, 2019 978-1-941920-85-5

Curious roman à clef about an eccentric South Korean author’s sojourn in Texas.

This slender tale, Moon writes, is “a story about Texas, something that I’m writing in the name of a novel but something that is perhaps unnamable.” It’s a novel, yes, but one that builds on word association: A shower of acorns on a November day reminds the narrator of a sculptor who’s working on a statue of a wolf, which turns into a brief history of Wolf brand chili, which touches off a reminiscence of eating chili: “I hoped that the controversy over whether or not to acknowledge chili with beans as chili…would go on being the greatest controversy surrounding chili.” Armed with a bucket of stereotypes about Texas, from ten-gallon hats to “many trivial things among which were things that were good to know, although it wouldn’t have mattered if you didn’t know them regardless of whether you weren’t a Texan or you were,” Moon conjures the seven samurai of Akira Kurosawa film fame, who morph into the seven rōnin from Texas who come to the aid of a bandit-besieged village south of the border. The samurai aren’t especially good at swimming, a fact that figures in Moon’s ponderings on Bonnie and Clyde sipping hot chocolate alongside the flood-prone Trinity River, “which perhaps had the most grandiose name of all rivers.” It’s a jumble of legends, travel notes, and odd disquisitions—one in which Moon explains, after a fashion, how he’d previously placed the samurai in a story about a cat that, on its face, had nothing whatever to do with medieval Japan but everything to do with the talismans of the imagination that Moon holds dear.

The mysterious exercise indeed touches on the unnamable to the extent that it’s hard to classify—but suffice it to say that it has little to do with the likes of Max Brand and Larry McMurtry.

An oddly entertaining stream of consciousness that flows out over the thirsty Lone Star State.

ZED

Kavenna, Joanna Doubleday (336 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-0-385-54548-8 Kavenna returns to the existential debate explored in her last novel (Come to the Edge, 2013, etc.) in order to further probe the question of free will in the age of deep data-mining.

In an alarmingly plausible near future, tech giant Beetle has risen to global prominence in the fields of transportation, communication, health, security, media, and |

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everything else. The society it has engineered is safer, more efficient, and totally devoid of surprise until the insidious presence of Zed begins to derange the algorithm. In London, upper level Beetle Douglas Varley is awakened by his digital Very Intelligent Personal Assistant, or “Veep,” Scrace Dickens, to the news that something has gone terribly wrong. Without any prior warning from any of Beetle’s predicative programs, perfectly ordinary citizen George Mann has returned home from a night of anomalous hard drinking to murder his wife and two sons. In the hours that follow, the supposedly infallible Anti-Terror Droid, or ANT, sent to apprehend Mann makes a miscalculation and executes Lionel Bigman, an innocent bus driver and British Army veteran.

A massive damage control effort follows in which the timorous Varley; Beetle’s narcissistic, youth-obsessed CEO, Guy Matthias; and the hacker-turned–Beetle IT guru Francesca Amerensekera attempt to tighten the already iron grip Beetle holds over the totally voluntary participants in its benign social revolution (which—as Beetle controls all currency and thus all means of social mobility—is everyone) while scrambling to stem the spreading chaos created by Zed, “the category term for instability.” Meanwhile, Eloise Jayne, a hard-nosed investigator for the Beetle backed National Anti-Terrorism and Security Office, and David Strachey, editor-in-chief of the Beetle-owned Times, Daily Star, Sun, and the Daily Record, seek the truth of Zed and its implications for a society used to the placidity of a near-total parent state. In the hands of a lesser writer, the novel’s convoluted plot, burgeoning cast of characters, and barbed use of Beetle brand tech-speak would leave the reader hopelessly tangled in the what of the novel before they ever got to the philosophical why. Kavenna, however, is a diligent scholar of her form, melding a massively complex plot à la Thomas Pynchon and the wicked social satire of Evelyn Waugh with a healthy dose of Gogol’s absurdist dysphoria thrown in for good measure.

Complex, funny, prescient, difficult: Kavenna’s novel tackles nothing less than everything as it blurs the lines between real and virtual.

THE BOOK OF SCIENCE AND ANTIQUITIES

Keneally, Thomas Atria (304 pp.) $28.00 | Dec. 10, 2019 978-1-9821-2103-7

A filmmaker and a prehistoric predecessor muse on humanity and mortality.

Booker Prize–winning novelist Keneally (Crimes of the Father, 2017, etc.) tells the parallel tales of aging filmmaker Shelby Apple and Learned Man, an Australian mystic of 42,000 years ago. Both men confront serious problems. Apple has cancer, and Learned Man must interpret and enforce the sometimes-deadly justice of the gods. Keneally offers a few vivid scenes, such as the Vietnam battle that catapulted Apple to cinematic fame. Such moments are outweighed by the sometimes head-scratching interludes in which Learned Man describes his people’s ways: “My first boy, |

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not my Son Unnameable, was killed by a curse that overtook his mouth when he was still young and swelled his head to a dreadful size. Afterwards, our clan marched forth with spears to face the Parrot clan, and we contested them on the ground of war until a necessary measure of blood had been shed.” Big topics are addressed: manhood, love, war, humanity’s past and future, the meaning of life, the nature of death. (The book was released in Australia as Two Old Men Dying.) But Apple isn’t engaging in his ponderings, and Learned Man’s world befuddles as often as it intrigues. The women in both eras are strong but mostly serve as objects of men’s affection or lust—and those prehistoric sex scenes should maybe have been taken out back and buried. (“After she had healed my plant, demanding now and then that I not succumb yet and give her my sap too early, she eased herself backwards onto the fur and that great passage of hers was mine to go into. How we toiled.”)

Dedicated readers might excavate nuggets of wisdom, but most will wonder if the expedition was worth it.

EMPIRE OF LIES

Khoury, Raymond Forge (448 pp.) $27.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-250-21096-8

The Western world turns upside down in this time-traveling alternate history by the author of The End Game (2016, etc.).

A naked “mystery man” suddenly appears in the Muslim city of Paris. After murdering a man for his clothes, he winds up in the hospital.

The year is 1438, or 2017 if you live in the exclusively Christian and white Christian Republic of America. He is Ayman Rasheed, a strange, tattooed patient who eventually begins to babble apparent nonsense to a Dr. Ramazan about traveling across three centuries from the time of the Ottomans’ siege of Vienna. “None of you would be here if it wasn’t for me,” Rasheed insists. Meanwhile, Kamal and Taymoor are partners in the counterterrorism unit of the sultan’s secret police and are honored to witness the public beheadings of terrorists they have caught. It’s that kind of society—the erstwhile Notre Dame cathedral is now called Faith Mosque, Paris has minarets, its main language is Turkish, and freedom doesn’t exist. This is all because Rasheed isn’t the “delusional joker” Ramazan thinks he is. Rasheed had traveled to 1683 C.E., bushwhacked Christian generals, and paved the way for the Ottoman conquest of Europe. The bad news: Europe is “a murderous, barbaric state,” and America looks no better. The good news: There weren’t two world wars with tens of millions of deaths. Which outcome is better is a subject Kamal must mull. Rasheed used a special Palmyran incantation for his time travel, but still, “it’s not so easy to travel three hundred years across time.” When Kamal and friends find those magic words, they must decide whether to undo Rasheed’s deed and allow history to take its natural course. It’s no matter why the words work—they are a simple 18

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A Boston-area waitress manages debt, grief, medical troubles, and romantic complications as she finishes her novel. writers & lovers

plot device to show the stench, misery, and horror of that great clash of civilizations that “would decide the fate of the world.”

This untypical thriller powerfully mixes history, culture, warfare, and imagination.

WRITERS & LOVERS

King, Lily Grove (320 pp.) $27.00 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-0-8021-4853-7

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A Boston-area waitress manages debt, grief, medical troubles, and romantic complications as she finishes her novel.

“There are so many things I can’t think about in order to write in the morning,” Casey explains at the opening of King’s (Euphoria, 2014, etc.) latest. The top three are her mother’s recent death, her crushing student loans, and the married poet she recently had a steaming-hot affair with at a writer’s colony. But having seen all but one of her writer friends give up on the dream, 31-year-old Casey is determined to stick it out. After those morning hours at her desk in her teensy garage apartment, she rides her banana bike to work at a restaurant in Harvard Square—a setting the author evokes in delicious detail, recalling Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter, though with a lighter touch.

Casey has no sooner resolved to forget the infidel poet than a few more writers show up on her romantic radar. She rejects a guy at a party who reveals he’s only written 11 1/2 pages in three years—“That kind of thing is contagious”—to find herself torn between a widowed novelist with two young sons and a guy with an irresistible broken tooth from the novelist’s workshop.

Casey was one of the top two golfers in the country when she was 14, and the mystery of why she gave up the sport altogether is entangled with the mystery of her estrangement from her father, the latter theme familiar from King’s earlier work. In fact, with its young protagonist, its love triangle, and its focus on literary ambition, this charmingly written coming-of-age story would be an impressive debut novel. But after the originality and impact of Euphoria, it might feel a bit slight.

Read this for insights about writing, about losing one’s mother, about dealing with a cranky sous-chef and a difficult four-top.

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AGENT RUNNING IN THE FIELD

le Carré, John Viking (288 pp.) $29.00 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-1-9848-7887-8

Now that he’s revisited and deepened the tissue of double-crosses that put him on the map with George Smiley, le Carré (A Legacy of Spies, 2017, etc.), evergreen at 87, turns to an equally hapless new hero in the age of Trump and Brexit.

“I’m a field man,” says Nat, a Secret Intelligence Service agent, “not a desk jockey, not a social carer.” Convinced at 47 that his years running spies throughout Europe are over, he accepts one last assignment as the only alternative to being put out to pasture for good: assuming command of Haven, the London substation he describes to his unenthusiastic wife, human rights lawyer Prudence, as “a Mickey Mouse outfit” where his job will be “either to get it on its feet or speed it on its way to the graveyard.” No sooner has Nat sunk into this forgettable ambit than three disquieting developments arise. Florence, a probationer who’s his nominal second-in-command, angrily quits over the unexplained cancellation of a project she’s designed, spearheaded, and pitched to the powers that be. Sergei Kusnetsev, a Russian defector who’s become a sleeper agent for Her Majesty’s Government, is contacted by Anastasia, a Russian agent who presumably either wants to put him to work, if she trusts him, or to expose him, if she doesn’t. And Ed Shannon, the much-younger researcher who joined Nat’s athletic club in order to play badminton with him and vent about the folly of Brexit and the rise of neo-Nazism in the States, suddenly appears in an alarming new role. Seeing the world as he knows it—not the new world order or the special relationship, but his own faded patch of it—threatened from every corner, Nat, determined to assert himself one last time, hatches a rickety plan to keep the pot from boiling over.

A tragicomic salute to both the recuperative powers of its has-been hero and the remarkable career of its nonpareil author.

original called A Trick of Light, created by Lee, Luke Lieberman, and Ryan Silbert and here translated to more conventional fiction by Rosenfield (Inland, 2014, etc.). It’s a fairly universal superhero mythology with a few contemporary twists thrown in for good measure, and it’s surprisingly fast-paced and highly entertaining. Our primary protagonist is Cameron Ackerson, an ambitious teen YouTuber whose dad disappeared during a mysterious storm on Lake Erie. When he’s struck by lightning in a characteristically Lee origin story, Cameron discovers he’s been gifted with the ability to manipulate electronics—he’s “cyberkinetic,” as he puts it. His counterpart is his online buddy Nia, a mysterious hacker kept in check by her father, known only as “the Inventor.” Unfortunately, Cameron’s new abilities attract the attention of a cryptic organization called OPTIC (that’s Omni Psyop Tactical Intelligence Corporation, because, sure, why not?) that one of Cam’s friends quickly dubs a secondrate “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” led by a formidable Nick Fury type named Olivia Park, a wetwork-enhanced bionic woman with a temper and a fierce resolve. More dangerously, Cameron and his new comrades have also been noticed and are the subject of a deadly pursuit by Xal, an otherworldly claw-and-tentacle type who wears people like a Doctor Who skin suit and has a real beef with Nia’s dad and a jones for Cam and Nia. With a characteristically enthusiastic intro by Stan and a thoughtful afterword about the creative process by Lieberman and Silbert, this is a wild but inventive introduction to a new intergalactic struggle that promises more adventures to come.

Not quite marvelous but immersive, propulsive, and engaging in the ways that sometimes only comic books can be.

JUST WATCH ME Lindsay, Jeff Dutton (368 pp.) $26.00 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-1-5247-4394-9

The creator of Dexter Morgan, everyone’s favorite homicidal sociopath (Dexter Is Dead, 2015, etc.), dials down the mayhem just enough to introduce a master thief who’s equally proficient at his trade.

Riley Wolfe is bored. Every single one of his heists, even the theft of a 12.5-ton sculpture from Chicago’s Nesselrode Plaza during its dedication ceremony, goes off so seamlessly that there are no new mountains left to scale—almost literally, since Riley is accomplished in parkour as well as larceny. Looking for a suitably impossible challenge, he decides to steal the Daryayeh-ENoor (Ocean of Light) diamond from among the Iranian crown jewels. The Islamic Republic obligingly makes the job easier by sending the jewels from their impregnable stronghold in Tehran to New York’s Eberhardt Museum, a display site that promises to be exceptionally well armored but not quite as unbreachable.

Riley’s plot, as preposterous as it is absorbing, involves multiple disguises, multiple forged artworks supplied by his friend and

A TRICK OF LIGHT

Lee, Stan & Rosenfield, Kat Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (352 pp.) $28.00 | Sep. 17, 2019 978-0-358-11760-5 A vlogger who is struck by lightning receives remarkable powers in this rousing adventure novel that launches a franchise that’s a parting gift from Stan the Man. The late, great Lee (Amazing, Fantas­ tic, Incredible, 2015, etc.) contributed a lot of ideas to this launching of a new universe dubbed Alliances, starting with an Audible 20

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IMPOSSIBLE CAUSES

one-time lover, Monique, and, for better or worse, multiple murders he carries out in between dispensing matter-of-fact bromides like “it doesn’t pay to have friends, because you have to trust them, and that never works out.” But you can’t make headlines without breaking some necks, and Riley, though he takes no particular pleasure in dispatching the unsuspecting souls who stand between him and the Daryayeh-E-Noor, is fully up to the task. About the only thing that casts doubt on the ultimate success of his plan, which pleasingly unfolds with nary a hint of foreshadowing about ways and means, is his devotion to his long-comatose mother, an attachment Chicago FBI agent Frank Delgado, as fanatic as Riley in his way, picks up on after an inexplicable brain wave tells him that Riley’s targeted the diamond, setting in motion a familiar game of cat and mouse, or cat and other cat.

A brashly retro escapist caper reminiscent of Topkapi and just as likely to be filmed.

Mayhew, Julie Bloomsbury (432 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-63557-325-1

When newcomers move to an isolated island, old secrets threaten longestablished order in this engrossing psychological thriller with hints of magic.

This is the first novel for adults by British YA author Mayhew (The Electri­ cal Venus, 2018, etc.). Many of its characters, though, are teens; one of its dual protagonists is teenager Viola Kendrick. After a personal disaster, Viola’s mother hears a radio show about Lark, an isolated island in the North Sea. The tight-knit, religious community there is cut off from all outside contact each year from August to April. Viola and her mother, who’s suffering from depression, arrive just in time for the school year, as does another outsider, teacher Ben Hailey. The island’s only school hasn’t had a male teacher in living memory. Its only male staffer is the headmaster, Jacob Crane, who is the most powerful man on the island. But the handsome new science teacher soon charms everyone, particularly the book’s other protagonist, teacher Leah Cedars, who narrates her chapters in first person. Leah is a “pure catch,” as Lark natives are called, with distinctive ink-black hair; although she knows it will draw disapproval, she falls hard for Hailey. Viola is interested in their relationship, but she’s more obsessed with the Elder Girls, as the three senior girls in the school are called. Britta Sayers, JadeMarie Ahearn, and Anna Duchamp are behaving strangely, and Mr. Hailey seems to be involved. The rumors are that the girls might be practicing old pagan ways, and Viola’s spying seems to confirm it, although what is driving them to rebel is a mystery.

Then someone dies. Mayhew moves the plot around in time, beginning with the discovery of the dead body and then shifting back months to the outsiders’ arrival. Dates on each chapter help keep the complex structure moving smoothly.

Engaging characters, well-crafted suspense, and a tone of growing, claustrophobic dread add up to an effective thriller.

STORM OF SECRETS

Marion, Loretta Crooked Lane (336 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-64385-175-4

The morning after a storm on Cape Cod, there’s a missing child, a murdered man, and a myth in the background that may connect them.

Instead of spending her wedding weekend getting dolled up and married to Daniel Benjamin, Cassandra Mitchell is playing hostess to the other folks in Whale Rock, all because of Tropical Storm Chantal. As one of the biggest storms the town has seen in years bears down, it cancels Cassie and Daniel’s plans and leaves residents and tourists alike huddled together trying to wait out the weather. Not everyone appears to make it safely to the other side, as Cassie discovers when she finds the body of Lee Chambers stuffed into a dumpster, not a victim of nature but of human nature. Although Cassie’s history of informally aiding in crime-solving (House of Ashes, 2018) makes her keenly interested in nosing around in Lee’s death, she has more important mysteries on her mind. One of the Kleister family’s children disappeared in the storm’s mayhem, and everyone in town is looking for the boy, especially Daniel, who can draw on his skills as a former FBI agent. The missing child reminds Cassie of the anonymous grave of a child on her family property: The so-called Barnacle Boy was found at sea years before and buried without any idea who he was or who lost him. Cassie can’t help wondering whether her ancestors Percy and Celeste are sending her signs about the boy’s connection to the boy who went missing this weekend.

Modern and historic mysteries collide in Marion’s bittersweet storytelling.

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LONG BRIGHT RIVER

Moore, Liz Riverhead (496 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-0-525-54067-0

A young Philadelphia policewoman searches for her addicted sister on the streets.

The title of Moore’s (The Unseen World, 2016, etc.) fourth novel refers to “a long bright river of departed souls,” the souls of people dead from opioid overdoses in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington. The book opens with a long |

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Attica Locke

THE EDGAR AWARD–WINNING CRIME WRITER CONTINUES HER SERIES ABOUT A BLACK TEXAS RANGER BATTLING WHITE SUPREMACISTS IN HEAVEN, MY HOME

By Connie Ogle Photo courtesy Los Angeles Times

She thinks of the series as “post-Obama” books, set just before the tiki torches in Charlottesville, before President Trump told four congresswomen of color to go back to where they came from. In this environment, Darren, a black man with a badge that looms large in the Texan imagination, is a tempting target for emboldened white supremacists.

Exploring the roots of racism proved illuminating for Locke, who was also a writer for the Netflix series When They See Us, about the Central Park Five.

“It’s difficult to write any character if you can’t find something you understand about them,” she explains. “Behind everything is some kind of a wound, something that makes people behave the way they behave. I think a lot of the virulent racism that we’re seeing right now and have been forever, so much of it is hate masking other things like envy and resentment. It’s ‘I don’t like the way you make me feel about myself.’…We would do well as people and as a country to say, yes, there’s hate, and it has to be dealt with and prosecuted, but there’s a psychological thing beneath it.”

Yet writing about racism is not a deliberate choice for Locke. “For people of color, it’s not a thing you’re reaching for. This is literally just my life, the lens through which I see everything….I live in a world where that is a life-ordeath question for me.”

As a Houston native, Attica Locke understood the mystique of law enforcement’s legendary Texas Rangers even if she didn’t know the specifics of the job. “When you saw one on the street, it was like seeing a unicorn,” she says.

“Not that they don’t have a complicated history. But seeing one was overwhelming. They’re like rock stars.”

So when she decided to start a crime series set along Highway 59 in East Texas, Locke realized the agency, which “ranges” around the state to investigate crimes, was the perfect calling for lawman Darren Mathews. Raised by twin uncles—one a lawyer, one a Ranger—Darren is driven by a personal mission: to destroy the Aryan Brotherhood in Texas.

Locke won an Edgar Award for the first book in the series, Bluebird, Bluebird. In the new Heaven, My Home (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown; Sept. 17), Darren is enlisted to find a missing 9-year-old who vanished on massive, forbidding Caddo Lake on the Texas-Louisiana border. His real target, however, is the boy’s white supremacist family.

Locke uses this premise to examine race and class, justice and forgiveness, confronting readers with a compelling question: If you have been on the wrong side of justice forever, can breaking the law become a moral act?

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Connie Ogle is a writer in Florida. Heaven, My Home received a starred review in the July 15, 2019, issue. |

Short stories that explore forlorn lives in Middle America. banjo grease

felt like she had taken a blowtorch to my pecker.” The next morning, Westley and George canvass the parking lot picking up condoms, ladies’ undergarments, and dollar bills. “Popeye’s Dead,” a reference to Jim’s penis, seems to owe something to Joyce’s “Araby.” The young brothers visit a local bazaar, and Jim experiences firsthand the midway sideshow’s tawdry world of women. “Big Whitey” is an incisive tale about a young man who gets a job at a White Castle in New York City. “Nolde’s Sun,” which references the German-Dutch painter, is a grim story about the accidental death of 3-year-old Ben when the Daughertys were visiting family friends. People adrift trying to escape their pasts.

For the most part, disappointing, off-putting works played in a minor key.

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paragraph that’s just a list of names, most of whom don’t have a role in the plot, but the last two entries are key: “Our mother.

Our father.” As the novel opens, narrator Mickey Fitzpatrick— a bright but emotionally damaged single mom—is responding with her partner to a call. A dead girl has turned up in an abandoned train yard frequented by junkies. Mickey is terrified that it will be her estranged sister, Kacey, whom she hasn’t seen in a while. The two were raised by their grandmother, a cold, bitter woman who never recovered from the overdose death of the girls’ mother. Mickey herself is awkward and tense in all social situations; when she talks about her childhood she mentions watching the other kids from the window, trying to memorize their mannerisms so she could “steal them and use them [her] self.” She is close with no one except her 4-year-old son, Thomas, whom she barely sees because she works so much, leaving him with an unenthusiastic babysitter. Opioid abuse per se is not the focus of the action—the book centers on the search for Kacey.

Obsessed with the possibility that her sister will end up dead before she can find her, Mickey breaches protocol and makes a series of impulsive decisions that get her in trouble. The pace is frustratingly slow for most of the book, then picks up with a flurry of revelations and developments toward the end, bringing characters onstage we don’t have enough time to get to know.

The narrator of this atmospheric crime novel has every reason to be difficult and guarded, but the reader may find her no easier to bond with than the other characters do.

With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.

BANJO GREASE

Must, Dennis Red Hen Press (168 pp.) $16.95 paper | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-59709-035-3 Short stories that explore forlorn lives in Middle America.

Originally published in 2000, this is a reissue of Must’s (Brother Carnival, 2018, etc.) first collection of short stories, 16 mostly linked tales primarily set in the small, “suffocating,” eastern Pennsylvania town of Hebron, outside of Erie, during the 1960s. This is mill, refinery, pottery, and railroad country. Most of the stories focus on the Daugherty family: two brothers, Westley and Jim; their parents, Margaret and Joe, who live in a “place of marital barrenness”; and assorted relatives. Sex is a prominent theme, usually presented in rather perverse, juvenile ways. As the character who’s working as a gigolo in “Day Laborer” says, “There are times when depravity beckons each of us down.” Copulation scenes abound, as do references to genitals, usually in colorful language—“Her pussy’s drier than an Okie dust bowl.” It gets rather tiresome. The title story deals with Westley visiting his Aunt Min and Uncle George, who run the Skyline Drive-in near Hebron. His uncle recounts the time his wife accidentally used banjo grease instead of Vaseline as a sexual lubricant—“I |

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CONTINENTAL DIVIDE

men were men, or they got the hell out of town.” Set in the early 1990s, Ron’s journey to self-acceptance simmers with fear of discovery in the rural west. He shimmies in and out of a compression shirt, takes pains to shower when no one else is in the bunkhouse, and—against his better judgment—falls for outspoken Cassie, a horse wrangler and co-owner of the ranch with her brother Gus. When Ron is outed by Cassie’s malicious younger brother, Marc, he’s fired and set adrift once more, this time with a target on his back. Myers (Revolutionary, 2014) has written a compelling coming-of-age novel even as he occasionally veers into more pedantic territory. “I don’t want being transgender to limit what I can do and where I can go,” Ron writes in an application for financial assistance for LGBTQ teens. “I have to stand up and live as who I am, with the expectation that people will treat me decently.” With care, patience, and courage, Ron mends relationships new and old, ultimately coming to find a home in himself and his chosen family.

A moving meditation on fear, masculinity, and the power of coming out.

Myers, Alex UNO Press (280 pp.) $18.95 paper | Nov. 30, 2019 978-1-60801-169-8

On the outs with his family, a young transgender man makes his way west to discover what masculinity means to him.

Ron Bancroft has always felt like a boy—his former life as “Veronica,” a tomboyish basketball star, never felt right. But when he comes out to his parents, they refuse to contribute to his education at Harvard, and he’s forced to withdraw from school in order to establish financial independence. Adrift from his family and ex-girlfriend, Ron travels from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Cody, Wyoming, where he chances into work on a ranch. “I was out West,” Ron thinks early in the novel.

“The land of the rugged individual. The land where you got a chance to prove what you were really made of. The land where

ISOLDE

Odoevtseva, Irina Trans. by Karetnyk, Bryan & Steinberg, Irina Pushkin Press (256 pp.) $18.00 paper | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-78227-477-3 First published in 1929 but only just translated into English, Russian novelist/ poet/playwrite/memoirist Odoevtseva’s arresting tale of teenage Russian expats living in France is as dark as it is dreamy.

The book was not an instant hit when it was first published in Paris, where Odoevtseva, like her characters, had fled to escape the Russian Revolution. Among the critical charges against it: It abused “sexual spice”; it was “dry”; it stereotyped the English; it had lesbian overtones. It was, co-translator Karetnyk writes in his engaging introduction, “all much too modern, much too European, much too explicit, much too close to the bone.”

Indeed, it is all of those things, which is exactly what makes it great; the setting may be dated, but the writing, as translated by Karetnyk and Steinberg, is arrestingly contemporary. When we first meet 14-year-old Liza, the heart and center of the novel, it is on the beach in Biarritz, and we see her through the eyes of a wealthy British boy named Cromwell, who falls in love with her immediately and renames her Isolde, to his Tristan. Men fall in love with Liza—it’s just what they do—though except for declaring their devotion, they rarely engage with who she is. Cromwell, the most earnest of the bunch, is a pleasant distraction for both her and her plotting older brother, Nikolai, both of whom bask in his affections and his cash. When the family returns to Paris in the fall, Liza reunites with her boyfriend, Andrei—Cromwell, after all, was just a sweet diversion— but finds herself increasingly uneasy, on the cusp of adulthood, longing still for the half-imaginary Moscow of her youth. When 26

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Truth is in the eye of the beholder as 18th-century British people try to decide whether a series of freakish births represent a miracle or a fraud. mary toft; or, the rabbit queen

MARY TOFT; OR, THE RABBIT QUEEN

Nikolai and Andrei hatch a plot, using naïve Liza as a pawn, the doom that has been hovering over the novel comes to violent fruition, although the real action all takes place offstage. The novel might have been a moralistic tale about an abandoned generation; instead, because of Liza, it is captivating: Underneath her shallow mania is real complexity, and while Odoevtseva’s portrait of adolescence is disturbing, it is also very funny, a ray of light cutting through the misery of an otherwise dark world.

A chilling pleasure.

Palmer, Dexter Pantheon (336 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-101-87193-5

A DREAM COME TRUE

Onetti, Juan Carlos Trans. by Silver, Katherine Archipelago (560 pp.) $26.00 paper | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-939810-46-5

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Centrifugal stories, many set in an imaginary city, by the Uruguayan master storyteller.

Ranked alongside Borges and García Márquez, though far less well known, Onetti (1909-1994) exercised much influence over the development of magical realism. In this collection of his short works, the first in English, Onetti himself seems influenced by Poe by way of Baudelaire—but then filtered through William Burroughs, or perhaps B. Traven. The inhabitants of his imagined Santa María, a port city much like his native Montevideo, are a strange bunch, many of them German and Italian immigrants who are nowhere at home. One, Baldi, has money in his pocket from a legal settlement and visions of an Academy of Bliss, “a project that would prove magnificent, with a bold glass edifice rising out of a garden city, full of bars, metal colonnades, orchestras playing next to golden beaches, and thousands of pink billboards.” Alas, the streets are grittier than all that, and, seemingly trying to impress a woman with cash and blarney, he spins a tale that involves racist murder and illegal drugs, “spitting his words out like curses.” Many of Onetti’s characters harbor dreams large and small, most of them abandoned along the way, “ground down under the mindless, constant pressure of so many thousands of unavoidable feet.” Some, unable to stand up to that pressure, end their lives, as with one 50-year-old woman who finds herself “a slave of the blackness she agreed to sink breathing in for the last time.” Others are blithe in their ignorance or lose their grip, “shamelessly exhibiting an ancient and concealed madness.” Onetti’s stories are enigmatic and elegant, seldom extending more than a few pages; some seem to be only sketches for longer pieces, such as a one-pager in which a stranger plants a kiss on the forehead of a dead man, “leaving between the horizontality of the three wrinkles a small crimson smudge.” All are strange—and mesmerizing.

A welcome, overdue collection by a writer well deserving of his place in the Latin American canon.

Truth is in the eye of the beholder as 18th-century British people try to decide whether a series of freakish births represent a miracle or a fraud.

The third novel by Palmer (Version Control, 2016, etc.) is as different from its predecessors as those two were from each other. Historical fiction, it is based on a real-life hoax perpetuated by Mary Toft, a farmer’s wife living in the small English town of Godalming whose claims to be giving birth to rabbits fooled the doctors attending her. It isn’t the hoax itself that interests the novelist—the machinations and motivations—but the responses of those she fooled: first her doctors; then the residents of Godalming, where the gossip spreads; and

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finally greater London, where the patient and her physicians are summoned to the court of King George. The primary perspective throughout the novel is that of 14-year-old Zachary Walsh, son of Godalming’s preacher and apprentice to the local doctor. He wrestles with the central duality of the novel, between the faith of his father and the scientific reasoning of what was then modern medicine. There will be other dualities—men and women, city and country—as the novel mediates among different versions of reality, ones that cannot be reconciled, through the eyes of an innocent young man who lacks experience in the ways of the world but quickly finds himself challenged by a rash of experiences. “Come to London,” invites a young woman with whom he falls in love, as love also becomes a question of faith or delusion. “Perhaps there are still other versions of myself I have to show you; versions of yourself you haven’t seen.” At the center of the novel, Mary herself is given little space to express herself, limited to two short chapters (“Mary’s Dream,” “Mary’s Soliloquy”), otherwise functioning as a receptacle from which doctors pull rabbits, or pieces of rabbit. Ultimately, this is a novel that attempts to illuminate “the slippery nature of truth,” when everything from God to reality is up for grabs.

Deft, droll, and provocatively philosophical, a novel about how much we don’t know about what we think we know.

story, translated from French, about displacement. “Memory is a hook that sinks into your skin. The harder you pull, the more it tears your flesh, the deeper it sinks. There is no way to get it out without ripping your skin apart,” one of the characters points out. If at times the story reads like a thinly veiled history lesson and the nonlinear narrative feels gimmicky, it nevertheless serves an important function: to inform readers about the unseen collateral damage of geopolitical games of Risk. The bullies on the playground dictate the terms since they know the weaker players have no currency they can truly leverage.

A fierce and evocative telling of the strangled arc of a peace-loving people.

THE WONDERFUL

Sarginson, Saskia Flatiron Books (400 pp.) $16.99 paper | Dec. 10, 2019 978-1-250-08351-7 A young woman tries to unravel the mystery at the center of her life.

Set between 1957 and 1981, Sarginson’s (The Other Me, 2016, etc.) latest follows the American Delaney family as they relocate to a U.S. airbase in England.

Brought to the U.K. on a highly confidential assignment, war hero Todd brings along his wife, Ruby—a frazzled, beautiful homemaker—and their 12-year-old twins, Hedy and Christopher. Though extremely close, the twins could not be more different. Hedy, a tough tomboy, feels extremely protective of her gentle, sensitive brother, who suffers from extreme scoliosis and likes to write fiction. As the family tries to adapt to their new life, strange events begin to occur: Bright lights appear in the sky; people lurk in the forest; screams rise from underground; and Todd’s behavior becomes increasingly odd. After a traumatic, life-changing incident rips her life and family apart, Hedy is sent to live on her uncle’s farm. She spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out the truth, in part by using her brother’s unfinished story, “The Wonderful.” Rooted in history, the novel touches on themes like Cold War paranoia, segregation, bigotry, homosexuality, and mental illness. Broken into three parts—“The Base,” “The Farm,” and “The Forest”—the novel has slightly odd pacing. The first third is given far more breathing room than the other two, which leads to an uneven reading experience and leaves the reader wanting more at the end. Despite this, Sarginson’s writing propels you forward with its strong characterization and quiet beauty: “...and then the slow and sometimes fumbling discovery of being unexpectedly twinned with another…the knowledge that she would not be alone again.” The reveal at the end forces readers to reconsider the whole novel, which is interesting and bolsters the wartime paranoia themes.

A gripping and devastating tale of a family torn apart by secrets, war, and human brutality.

SILENCE OF THE CHAGOS

Patel, Shenaz Trans. by Zuckerman, Jeffrey Restless Books (178 pp.) $17.99 paper | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-63206-234-5 A young man’s journey of self-discovery illuminates the heart-wrenching history of the Chagos Archipelago, a little-known part of the world.

Coming-of-age in Mauritius, Désiré has always felt like an outsider. After all, he traces his ancestry back to Diego Garcia, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. But why does his birth certificate claim he was born in Seychelles? And why is his pet name also the name of a boat? The answers lie in the history of Diego Garcia, a tranquil island in the Chagos Archipelago that found itself in the crosshairs of the Cold War. The island, which was part of the British Empire for decades, eventually became part of Mauritius after that island nation won independence. But in some convoluted international maneuvering, the United States requested that Diego Garcia be handed over, uninhabited, for use as a strategic military base. The result: a forced evacuation of thousands of citizens in just an hour in 1968; natives were eventually displaced to Seychelles or Mauritius. Désiré and his mother Raymonde’s story is set against this tragic backdrop. A pregnant Raymonde is forced to evacuate but gives birth while at sea. The infant Désiré is hastily given papers at Seychelles before being packed along to Mauritius. Patel, a Mauritian journalist, uses his cast of characters to narrate a keenly observed 28

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THREE WOMEN FROM HAITI

man with their car. What follows is a parade of terrible behavior, sometimes bordering on the sociopathic. Besides the hit-andrun early in the book, there’s also a moment in which something awful happens to a house cat. These are characters who say things like, “I dig MILFs. It’s sluts I got a problem with.”

The narrator manages to be marginally less repellant than his cohorts, and the second half of the book follows along as the strained bonds between these characters fracture, eventually putting several of their lives at risk. Where Totth’s novel and its translation from the Hungarian by Nagy both excel is in conveying the banality and numbness as its narrator proceeds through this parade of horrors. The robbery of a store and its aftermath are described in staccato terms, suggesting an anesthetized reaction to the threat of violence. “The clerk is a chick.

She stares out blankly. She’s totally in shock. The screen of a TV vibrates above her head. Barcelona is kicking Real Madrid’s ass.”

The juxtaposition of transgressive behavior with competitive sports recalls nothing quite so much as Jim Carroll’s The Bas­ ketball Diaries. Like that book, the way in which this narrative is told makes for compelling reading even as the acts it describes can inspire shudders.

Totth’s debut is a harrowing experience but also a frequently gripping one.

Seghers, Anna Trans. by Irving, Douglas Dialogos (107 pp.) $18.95 paper | Nov. 30, 2019 978-1-944884-63-5

Three stories about Haiti that place women at the forefront.

Seghers (Stone Age, 1973, etc.) was a German Jewish writer who fled Hitler’s regime in 1933. In exile, she wrote a few novels about escapees from Nazi prison camps. They’re smart, politically savvy books, with all the drama and pacing of good thrillers. Unfortunately, Seghers’ last book, published in 1980 and now appearing in English for the first time, doesn’t live up to her early work. These stories are about Haitian women; each piece takes place in a different century. An erudite introduction by the scholar Marike Janzen insists that Seghers is giving voice to the voiceless, placing Haiti at the forefront of revolutionary history. That’s all well and good, but the stories themselves tend toward condescension. In the first, Toaliina, a young woman, dives from a ship that is attempting to transport Indigenous Haitian women to Spain in the 15th century. She hides out in a cave, where she is joined by her husband, Tshanangi. Then Tshanangi disappears, and his friend appears in the cave, seeking refuge. Toaliina, writes Seghers, “lived with this friend, not as happy as before, but without hardship. She bore him two children.” Perhaps the larger problem with this collection is that Seghers seems distracted by the political points she wants to make. The tone, throughout, is didactic—and not really conducive to storytelling. The characters devolve into mouthpieces for Seghers, and even the plots become muddled. An essay included in the collection describes the Haitian revolutionary hero Toussaint Louverture, but even here, Seghers disappoints. The essay, which seems short on real, substantive research, rambles on without achieving insight.

Taken as a whole, this volume might be useful to scholars of Seghers, but to a lay audience, it doesn’t do her reputation any favors.

A disappointing collection with two-dimensional characters prioritizes politics over story.

THE TRUANTS

Weinberg, Kate Putnam (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-0-525-54196-7 A group of friends at a British college, all connected to the same charismatic scholar of Agatha Christie’s work, are torn apart by secrets and deceptions.

When Jess Walker begins to contemplate going to college, there is only one clear choice: She has to attend the university where Dr. Lorna Clay teaches. Lorna is the author of The Truants, a brilliant work arguing that great artists must destroy their personal lives to create, which has captured Jess’ imagination ever since she was given the book by her uncle. Once Jess starts college in East Anglia, she strikes up a friendship with Georgie, a wealthy socialite with a proclivity to dipping into her mother’s pill drawer; Alec, a 20-something white South African journalist on fellowship at the university; and Nick, a geology student who quickly falls for Jess. A middle child from a farming village, Jess instantly feels her life become more vibrant in the company of her exotic companions. And at the head of it all is the brilliant Lorna, who permeates the boundaries of their lives as students to attend their parties and become their confidante and, eventually, their friend, especially to Jess, who wants to follow in Lorna’s footsteps professionally and personally. But as the relationships among the five become more and more tangled, a tragedy suddenly shatters their lives, forcing Jess to confront the illusory nature of really knowing another. Aside from some slight plausibility issues (if only teenagers’ lives were changed

DEAD HEAT

Totth, Benedek Trans. by Nagy, Ildikó Noémi Biblioasis (256 pp.) $15.95 paper | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-77196-301-5 Bad decisions and worse behavior abound in this novel of restless youth.

There’s little respite from the bleaker side of life in Totth’s debut novel. The scene in which we meet the narrator and his friends—a profane and sex-obsessed bunch of teenage boys who are members of a swim team—ends with them hitting a 30

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A faux witch must deal with a putative werewolf. potions are for pushovers

m ys t e r y

by works of literary scholarship!), Weinberg has written one of the best thriller debuts in recent years, with all the cleverness of Ruth Ware (and, yes, even Christie herself) and a dash of Donna Tartt’s edgy darkness.

Though Christie fans may be particularly delighted, this propulsive, pitch-perfect thriller has something for everyone.

UP IN THE MAIN HOUSE & OTHER STORIES

Zaman, Nadeem Unnamed Press (176 pp.) $17.00 paper | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-944700-98-0

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Berry, Tamara Kensington (288 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-4967-1963-8

A faux witch must deal with a putative werewolf.

Since helping the wealthy Hartford family rid their ancient English estate of ghosts and solving a murder (Séances Are for Suckers, 2018), Ellie Wilde has set up shop as an elixir seller and spellcaster in the nearby village. Now that she no longer has to help her sister, who’s passed on but still talks to her, Ellie ekes out a living selling potions whose main ingredient is vodka and refusing the help offered by Nicholas Harford III, whose romantic appeal is one more reason for staying in England.

Although her profession makes her efforts to deal herself into village life something of a tough sell, she’s made several friends, including Nicholas’ niece, Rachel; his rather odd mother, Vivian; and Annis, the vicar whose influence keeps Ellie from being totally shunned. When cordially disliked Sarah Blackthorne keels over and dies at a planning meeting for the village fete, Ellie has every reason to be drawn into Inspector Piper’s investigation, since the choice of wolfsbane as the weapon points to her. The discovery of a pig she’d put a spell on that’s ripped to pieces and the disappearance of her own cat make her deeply disturbed but more determined than ever to get to the bottom of it all. She gets help from Rachel and Lenora, the village doctor’s stepdaughter, who’s shadowing Ellie for a school project. One of Lenora’s activities is researching werewolves, and her discoveries make even the deeply skeptical Ellie wonder whether they may actually exist. The case is further complicated when the inspector’s aunt reports that someone’s stolen some wolfsbane from a locked cage in her garden. Although she has no magic powers, Ellie’s very good at reading people, and her skills put her in danger before she comes to a decidedly mundane solution.

A puzzling mystery laced with guile and humor.

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Savage short stories reveal snapshots of life in contemporary Bangladesh.

It’s been over 50 years since Bangladesh gained independence from the British, but whiffs of old colonial and feudal attitudes remain. In his U.S. debut collection, Zaman dives into the heart of everyday life in Dhaka.

It becomes quickly apparent that the feudal structure born in the villages has moved to the capital. In “The Father & The Judge,” a vulnerable Shamsher Ali travels from his village in Sylhet to plead with the last scion of the powerful Qureshi family for protection. Shamsher’s daughter is being harassed in the village, where the Qureshi name still carries power. “Nobody will come near her if they know she has your protection,” Ali implores. The uneven servant-employer dynamic plays out to nuanced effect in the two stories that bookend the collection: the title story and “The Forced Witness.” By focusing these stories squarely on the “help”—the homeowners who are the employers are away in each instance—Zaman expertly reveals the complicated power plays between the various employees. In “Main House,” Kabir is embarrassed and uneasy when his wife, Anwara, plays house in the owners’ home, trying on the woman’s clothes and sleeping in the master bedroom. In “Forced Witness,” fellow employees rally to help an aging Noor Muhammad, who is subject to police brutality after a theft in the home they are charged with guarding. A vein of dark humor runs through these stories where characters can sniff out vulnerabilities a mile away. “It doesn’t take much to know that you’re burdened with guilt. But I don’t judge you for it,” says a young man to Rosie, the “Happy Widow” who hides a dark secret.

A collection that stands out just as much for what remains lurking in the dark as what lies dissected and exposed in full view.

POTIONS ARE FOR PUSHOVERS

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ZEN AND THE ART OF MURDER

have something to do with the 1926 general strike. Although that was three years ago, the murder may well represent a Bolshevik attempt to foment revolution. He also tells her that powerful northern industrialists and the press must be kept out of the loop. Kate can only hope that DC Yeats, her liaison with the Yard, will be more forthcoming. Yeats does give her a list of important people who shouldn’t be bothered that had been removed from her original briefing and mentions that two potatoes and two gold coins were found in the sack. Giving her assistant, Mr. Sykes, and her housekeeper, Mrs. Sugden (A Snapshot of Murder, 2019, etc.), specific assignments, Kate wangles an invitation to stay with her old friend Gertrude Brockman and her husband, Benjie, a Lord Lieutenant involved in manufacturing and mining. Because some unusual calluses on the corpse’s hands make Kate suspect that he may have been a golfer, she sends Sykes to question people at area courses, all the while wondering what rhubarb, gold, Bolsheviks, golf, and a demolished children’s home can possibly have in common.

A picture-perfect portrayal of England caught in the burgeoning class struggle between the wars.

Bottini, Oliver Trans. by Bulloch, Jamie Dover (304 pp.) $16.95 paper | Nov. 13, 2019 978-0-486-83918-9 An unconventional German police inspector tackles the baffling case of the Japanese monk who’s been wandering the Black Forest beaten and disoriented.

Policeman Johann Hollerer finds the seriously wounded monk collapsed on the steps of the Catholic church in Liebau. The scene is even more puzzling because it’s the middle of winter, and the ground’s covered in snow. Hollerer’s call to Inspector Bermann of the Serious Crime Squad leads to the dispatch of Louise Bonì, a brilliant detective who’s fighting personal demons and a dark past. A brief, awkward conversation between Bonì and the monk confirms that he’s Japanese. The language barrier slows progress on the case to a crawl, and Bottini uses this interregnum to develop the relationship between Louise and Bermann, her bullying boss; Louise’s struggles with alcohol; and her camaraderie with both Hollerer and unworldly junior detective Niksch. They trade theories and search for a monastery in the area, but the case takes a darker turn with the discovery of a corpse in the forest and a second wounded victim. Fueled by an obsession to solve this crime, Louise uncovers a bizarre international crime ring involving children. But the investigation also takes a brutal personal toll, nearly destroying her. By the end, you may think you’ve seen it all, but you haven’t: A bonus short story follows, further illuminating Louise’s past.

The first of Bottini’s six Black Forest procedurals offers a compelling modern heroine and a labyrinthine plot packed with shady characters.

LADY TAKES THE CASE

Casey, Eliza Berkley (304 pp.) $16.00 paper | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-9848-0388-7

An unconventional debutante enlists the help of a lady’s maid and a cat to solve a murder.

Time has taken its toll on Danby Hall and its inhabitants. Emmaline, Lady Avebury, launches a desperate plan to save the family home. She hopes to arrange a marriage between her son, Patrick, and Annabel Clarke, an heiress from San Francisco.

Against all odds, beautiful, vivacious Annabel seems charmed by the reclusive Patrick. After a long series of teas, garden parties, and dinners, Lady Avebury hopes their engagement will be announced at the upcoming masked ball. But disaster strikes.

At a formal dinner preceding the ball, handsome new footman Jesse Fellows offers world traveler Richard Hayes a dish that causes him to become violently ill and fall down dead. Chief Inspector Hennesy is suspicious of Patrick, who keeps a variety of toxins in his botanical laboratory. So Patrick’s sister, Lady Cecilia Bates, who’s just completed her first season out without making an engagement, enters the fray. She forms an unlikely friendship with Annabel’s maid, Jane Hughes, fueled by their shared affection for Jack, Jane’s cat. With Jane as her eyes and ears, Lady Cecilia tracks the complex world downstairs, including the elusive Fellows, housemaid Rose and her suitor, Paul, and stern butler Redvers. But Cecilia, knowing that wealth and class are no barrier to murder, keeps an equally close eye on those upstairs as well.

Agatha Christie meets Jane Austen in a promising series debut.

THE BODY ON THE TRAIN

Brody, Frances Crooked Lane (336 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-64385-160-0

An assignment from Scotland Yard pits a clever private investigator against both ruthless killers and an establishment hoping to sweep murder under the rug.

Cmdr. Woodhead of Scotland Yard asks Kate Shackleton to take on an unusual homicide thought to have been perpetrated on her home turf of Yorkshire. A body has been found at London’s King’s Cross Station after arriving on the so-called Rhubarb Special, which runs during the peak rhubarb-forcing season. Kate receives a colored sketch of the unidentified man, clad in his underwear, found in a potato sack, and shot in the stomach. Woodhead hints that the killing may 32

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A private investigator fights inner demons and evildoers alike. echoes of the fall

THE NIGHT FIRE

Connelly, Michael Little, Brown (416 pp.) $29.00 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-316-48561-6

NO MAN’S LAND

Driscoll, Sara Kensington (304 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-4967-2247-8 When FBI agent Meg Jennings and her K-9, Hawk, explore the ruins of an old hospital, they think they’re just practicing their skills—until the discovery of an elderly woman’s body leads to something more serious and sinister.

Meg and her firefighter friends are enjoying urban exploring, an activity in which people enter and explore old, deserted, and dangerous sites. Meg, as a member of the Human Scent Evidence Team, thinks the outing will hone Hawk’s skills, and Hawk does indeed help find the elderly woman’s body. But when more |

ECHOES OF THE FALL

Early, Hank Crooked Lane (352 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-64385-181-5

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A cold case pulls Harry Bosch back from retirement and into another eventful partnership with Detective Renée Ballard of the LAPD. The widow of Bosch’s retired mentor, Detective John Jack Thompson, has a present for Bosch, and it’s a doozy: the murder book for the unsolved killing of ex-con John Hilton, shot to death in his car one night nearly 20 years ago, which Thompson swiped from the archives without authorization or explanation. Bosch, who wonders why Thompson lifted the murder book if he didn’t intend to work the case, is eager to take a crack at it himself, but he needs the resources that only an active partner can provide.

But Ballard, settled into the routine of the midnight shift after her exile from Robbery-Homicide (Dark Sacred Night, 2018), has just started working her own case, the arson that killed Eddie, a homeless man, inside his tent. As if that’s not enough criminal activity, Bosch’s half brother, Lincoln lawyer Mickey Haller, faces the apparently hopeless defense of Jeffrey Herstadt, who not only left his DNA under the fingernail of Walter Montgomery, the Superior Court judge he’s accused of killing, but also obligingly confessed to the murder. Working sometimes in tandem, more often separately, and sometimes actively against the cops who naturally bridle at the suggestion that any of their own theories or arrests might be flawed, Ballard and Bosch slog through the usual dead ends and fruitless rounds of questioning to link two murders separated by many years to a single hired killer. The most mysterious question of all—why did John Jack Thompson steal that murder book in the first place?—is answered suddenly, casually, and surprisingly.

Middling for this standout series but guaranteed to please anyone who thinks the cops sometimes get it wrong.

elderly people are found in other deserted locations, Meg, with the help of her colleagues as well as a reporter, will continue to put herself at risk to uncover the truth. The novel’s premise and cast of characters could have made this a gripping book. But the author (Storm Rising, 2018, etc.) lacks the talent to bring the characters to life. When sharing background information about sites they’re exploring, for example, Driscoll’s characters speak in dialogue that sounds more like a brochure (“Bethlehem Steel was once an industry giant...”) than the way people really talk.

There are many examples of urban exploration (“urbex”) lingo for those who might be interested.

When the only intriguing parts of a novel are the scenes involving a dog’s abilities, it is perhaps time to track down another book.

A private investigator fights inner demons and evildoers alike in a tortuous case whose roots go back many years.

Earl Marcus has recently lost the sheriff ’s election to Preston Argent, a corrupt and feckless puppet of the even more corrupt white supremacist Jeb Walsh. So when he finds a dead man on his lawn, he’s certain that calling the police will be a bad idea. In the absence of his girlfriend, Atlanta cop Mary Hawkins, who’s off in Nevada helping with family problems, Earl’s boosted his drinking to a degree that alarms even his closest friends, Rufus, who’s blind, and the loyal Ronnie, who’s just gotten out of jail for his role in helping Earl in his last case (In the Valley of the Devil, 2018). The one hint of the dead man’s identity is a cryptic letter he’s carrying addressed to Joe by Dr. Blevins. Earl goes to great pains to hide both the body and the car Joe arrived in, but his conscience forces him to investigate.

Earl gets a librarian friend to research Blevins, a teacher who now works at the Harden School for young men with problems. When Earl and Ronnie visit the school pretending to be relatives of a troubled boy, they’re turned away but sneak off to investigate further. Earl stumbles upon a nearby waterfall that’s inspired legends of a utopia on the other side for anyone who can jump over it. He’s not the only one tempted by an alternative to his real life. Rufus also has a troubled past going back to his days working at the Harden School, where gay boys are subjected to conversion therapy. Past and present collide as Earl crisscrosses a North Georgia mountain area that harbors many a secret.

A flawed, likable protagonist uses violent methods to solve a complex, compulsively readable case.

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MURDER, SHE WROTE A Time for Murder

Heath. But insomniac Sparrow (nee Candice) Martin’s brief glimpse of a man on the Heath wearing a pig mask and attacking another man while she’s separated from the other Ladies sets her latest outing apart. Even though Sparrow takes flight, the bat journal she accidentally leaves behind allows Hugo Blake to track her down with no trouble after he’s finished hanging Dhruv Cheema from his ankles amid the branches of a willow tree and stabbing him to death. Not surprisingly, the ghoulish case is sent to the PCU, where the killing of bank employee Luke Dickinson under very different circumstances but with a suspiciously similar weapon persuades DCI Arthur Bryant, the master of arcane knowledge whose sources of information seem to include every seedy character in London, that the killer, who seems to prefer striking at 4 a.m., has other victims in mind— up to three others, by Bryant’s precise reckoning. Since no one outside the PCU shares Bryant’s unshakeable conviction, it’ll be up to his longtime friend and partner, DCI John May; Operations Director Janice Longbright; DS Meera Mangeshkar; DS Colin Bimsley; and the unit’s lesser lights to establish not only who the killer is, but what his victims have in common and where he’s likely to strike next. Complications ensue along with the wackiest digressions in the business, at least one gobsmacking coincidence, and two deaths that will catch even the most devoted fans of this wacky franchise by surprise.

The crime spree is relatively straightforward, but the devil is in the details, and Fowler’s details are hilariously devilish.

Fletcher, Jessica & Land, Jon Berkley (304 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-9848-0430-3

Jessica Fletcher (Murder She Wrote: Murder in Red, 2019, etc.) must review the very first murder case she solved in order to find a brand-new killer.

When high school senior Kristi Powell, interviewing Jessica for a series on former teachers at Cabot Cove High, asks about her first real-life murder case, Jessica is reluctant to answer. But Kristi keeps pushing about the case, which took place 25 years ago in the halcyon days when Jessica and her husband, Frank, were raising their nephew and she was a substitute teacher in the nearby town of Appleton. A visit to the high school reveals that Jessica’s interviewer was an imposter who’s shortly found shot dead. In death, the phony Kristi Powell is finally identified as Ginny Genaway, a 33-year-old whose divorced father, Walter Reavis, was the high school principal whose murder first turned Jessica from teacher to sleuthing mystery writer.

Ginny had an older sister, Lisa Joy, who’s long gone from the area and a brother killed while serving in the Middle East. An invitation to a retirement party for former fellow teacher Wilma Tisdale brings back a flood of memories from the days when Jessica helped the local law solve Walter’s murder. Now she’s eager to help Sheriff Mort Metzger with this one. So is Ginny’s husband, an incarcerated mob boss who sends a few associates to Cabot Cove just in case Jessica needs help. Slowly Jessica reveals the details of how the earlier case was solved and who was involved, throwing light on the current case, which features some of the same people. Ginny’s mother is found living in an area lighthouse, and Lisa Joy may or may not be dead in what may or may not be an accident. Wondering who’s targeting the Reavis family gives Jessica ample opportunity to reflect on her storied past.

A nostalgic portrait of the past illuminates a tricky case that’s one of the heroine’s best.

DEATH WITH DOSTOEVSKY

Hyde, Katherine Bolger Severn House (288 pp.) $28.99 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-0-7278-8899-0

Back at Oregon’s Reed College, which Hyde has now renamed Bede College to avoid too many possible inconsistencies with the real deal, professor Emily Cavanaugh plans to spend her sabbatical leave finishing her book on Dostoevsky’s spirituality. That’s not exactly

BRYANT & MAY The Lonely Hour

how things work out.

Now that she’s all but retired from Bede, Emily (Cyanide With Christie, 2019, etc.) feels more than ever her marginal status. She’s reluctant to pull rank on Daniel Razumov, one of her students, when she finds him with a raft of books on Dostoevsky she needs for her own work. She backs down from a confrontation with professor Taylor Curzon over whether her colleague should leave her hands off Daniel, whom she clearly has in her sights. And when she threatens to bring the case of Daniel’s girlfriend, Svetlana Goldstein, whom Taylor unfairly gave a D, to smirking divisional chair professosr Richard McClintock, she finds herself eavesdropping with chagrin on Taylor’s highly successful blackmail of McClintock. It might seem nothing but a relief when someone bashes Taylor’s head in with a miniature bronze replica of the famous Bronze Horseman statue in St.

Fowler, Christopher Bantam (448 pp.) $28.00 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-0-525-48582-7

Back from the prequel that followed them to 1969 (Bryant and May: Hall of Mir­ rors, 2018), the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit settle in to another round of doing what they do best in present-day London: creating chaos while bringing an unusually single-minded killer to book.

On normal excursions, the Ladies of the Night meet to map the colonies of the bats they’re trying to preserve on Hampstead 34

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Petersburg’s Senate Square. As Emily instantly recognizes, however, the murder weapon belongs to Daniel, whom the police promptly arrest. Luckily, the police are represented by Detective Colin Richards, the nephew of Emily’s intended, Lt. Sheriff Luke Richards, and the connection gives Emily a birds’-eye view of the investigation and more than a little influence over its direction, both before and after the Russian Mafia gets improbably involved. It’s not that Richards will do whatever Emily says; it’s that knowing what he’s doing allows her to deploy her own allies—professor Marguerite Grenier, her bestie; adjunct professor Oscar Lansing, her newfound half brother; and Saul Goldstein, Esq., Svetlana’s father—more efficiently.

Eventually the heroine reflects: “She could be inside one of Dostoevsky’s novels—where anything might happen.” Um, no.

RIVER RUN

A Latina cop who can’t stay on the right side of the law does her best to work with some good ol’ boys investigating a serial killer who’s targeting hunters in Oregon.

In spite of her recent promotion, everything seems to be going to hell for Deputy Delia Chavez.

She’s still saddled with Deputy Craig Castner, a colleague dumb as a box of rocks who can’t stop acting like he’s her boss. And the stress of his reelection bid has made her real boss, Sheriff Gus Grice, even more of an ass than usual. If that’s not enough, the combination of her short-fuse temper and her ongoing interest in asserting herself with the criminal element has led to several administrative investigations into her own work, although Delia remains convinced that whatever perps she shot at deserved it. Luckily, her friend and mentor Detective Harvey Schenkel is willing to go to bat for her when need be, which is pretty often. But when Harvey is suddenly laid up in the hospital, Delia must fend for herself. After some departmental shuffling makes Delia the lead on incoming cases, she lands a doozy: The bodies of hunters appearing near the Willamette at the beginning of waterfowl hunting season raise fears that there’s a serial killer afoot. Delia does what she can to work the case while continuing to battle her own department, shuttling back and forth between deployment and suspension at Grice’s whims. The proximity of the hunters to the water means that Delia’s stuck using a boat in her search. Although she doesn’t like the water, she thinks she might come to like the boat’s captain, Jerzy Matusik.

James’ generously plotted debut, like his heroine, has a lot going on.

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When animals go missing from a Texas zoo, an officer and her K-9 colleague investigate as the poacher tries to stay under the radar.

Megan Luz lives her love for animals on the job every day as a K-9 officer with the Fort Worth Police. The dog she works with, Brigit, is Megan’s partner, friend, and a voice in interspersed chapters throughout the series (The Long Paw of the Law, 2018, etc.). Further chapters this time are presented from the viewpoint of The Poacher, a man whose identity Megan must uncover. The poaching starts small, with the disappearance of Hyacinth macaws Fabian and Fernando from the zoo.

New hire Danny Landis is dismissed over the crime, and though he asserts his innocence, he’s the reader’s most likely suspect, and Megan’s too. Megan’s love of animals spurs her determination to solve the crime as more, larger, and pricier animals go missing. The Poacher, meanwhile, is drawn in surprising detail and given complex motivations, like a family that inspires his criminal escalation, making him more nuanced than a cut-anddried villain. Though she’s not sure it will help, Megan, along with Brigit, gets an assist from her boyfriend, Seth, whose role as a firefighter and whose own K-9 colleague, Blast, just might give Megan the edge she needs to figure out who’s behind the animal thefts. Crime-fighting aside, sharing insights from the case turns out to be a good way for Megan to connect with Seth, and Brigit with Blast—an ability that’s especially valuable because Seth’s newest paramedic colleague is a cute 20-something with her eye on Seth.

Police officer, K-9 partner, and poacher have complex inner worlds in this tale. Well, police officer and poacher do.

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James, J.S. Crooked Lane (336 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-64385-231-7

PAW OF THE JUNGLE

Kelly, Diane St. Martin’s (368 pp.) $7.99 paper | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-250-19737-5

MURDER OFF THE PAGE

Lehane, Con Minotaur (336 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-250-31792-6

A third case for crime fiction curator Raymond Ambler (Murder in the Manuscript Room, 2017, etc.) offers still more arguments for throwing a dragnet around Manhattan’s 42nd Street Library.

At least this time the cops aren’t stringing crime-scene tape around the library itself, though that’s where the trouble begins. Shannon Darling, a novice researcher who’s interested in the fiction of veteran mystery writer Jayne Galloway, installs herself in Special Collections long enough to draw the attention of Ambler, who’s especially kirkus.com

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alert when he sees his old friend Brian McNulty, the bartender at the nearby Library Tavern, escort her off the tavern’s premises after she has one or two too many. The next time McNulty and Darling are linked is when private security agent Ted Doyle is shot dead in Darling’s hotel room and the bartender and the researcher go AWOL. Detective Mike Cosgrove, the NYPD Homicide cop who’d like to talk to them both, doesn’t buy Ambler’s weak pleas to move on because there’s nothing to see here. The first of the two fugitives to turn up is Darling, killed in another hotel room in Stamford, Connecticut. By the time he gets the news, Ambler has already convinced himself that the fake researcher is Dr. Sandra Dean, the dying Jayne Galloway’s real-life daughter, whose inquiries now take a deeply sinister turn. As Ambler tries to come up with a good excuse to question Sandra’s husband, architect Simon Dean, Cosgrove is pursuing the long list of men Sandra marked for one-night stands in her journal. The two sleuths inevitably clash over Brian McNulty, whom Cosgrove naturally regards as the murderer and Ambler as an old friend who couldn’t possibly have killed anyone, especially since he’s already anchored a series of his own (Death at the Old Hotel, 2017, etc.).

This heartfelt dive into a troubled woman’s past makes the victim more interesting than any of the sleuths or suspects.

the grounds of the former St. Margaret Clitherow Refuge and School, which, until it closed five years ago, was under the iron control of Sister Mary Patrick of the Order of the Blessed Pearl.

As Paula and her ReMIT squad work the case, they confront layer upon layer of unctuous professionals and religious whose sole emotion seems to be abstracted annoyance that their coverup is coming undone. Little does the squad know that there’s even more to cover up than they’ve bargained for.

A vast, absorbing smorgasbord of crime, malfeasance, and corruption that ultimately has no more momentum than most bountiful buffets.

TRACKING GAME

Mizushima, Margaret Crooked Lane (288 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-64385-135-8 The case of a murdered outfitter brings a K-9 cop a little closer to nature.

Although it’s been a long time since Deputy Mattie Cobb has felt close to anyone, she makes a determined effort when she attends Timber Creek’s Celebration of Summer dance with Cole Walker. Mattie likes Cole a lot, and the two share a love for work involving animals, Cole as the town’s vet and Mattie as a police officer with a special bond with Robo, her K-9 partner. In spite of her interest in Cole, or maybe because of it, Mattie’s been keeping him at arm’s length. She isn’t ready for him to know about her childhood experiences of neglect and abuse even though the latest case she worked on (Burning Ridge, 2018) involved the death of her only known sibling. Given all this baggage, Mattie’s almost relieved when the two are distracted from the dance by a car fire. But things change dramatically when they discover Cole’s friend Garrett Hartman hurt by the fire and local outfitter Nate Fletcher dead at the scene. While Mattie uses the opportunity to dig into the investigation into the death of Nate, whose gunshot wound naturally suggests murder, and push Cole away, Cole must confront his own family problems when he gets a call from his young daughters telling him their visit with their mother, Olivia, isn’t going as planned and demanding to come home. As Mattie’s case heats up, the investigation puts her in danger when she and Robo connect Nate’s killer to a mysterious growling in the woods.

Part family drama, part animal-infused mystery, part ongoing exploration of the troubled heroine’s psyche.

HOW THE DEAD SPEAK

McDermid, Val Atlantic Monthly (416 pp.) $28.00 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-0-8021-4761-5

Sidelined in very different ways since their last collaboration ended so disastrously for them both, DCI Carol Jordan and psychological profiler Dr. Tony Hill are reduced to subplots as the Regional Major Incident Team founded by Carol plows on under DI Paula McIntyre.

To bring readers who skipped Insidious Intent (2017) up to speed: Tony’s now in prison for manslaughter, and Carol’s no longer with the Bradfield Metropolitan Police. Tony, who refuses to see Carol because he wants to spare her more anguish, is pressured by Vanessa Hill, his monstrous mother, to get Carol to hunt down Harrison Gardner, the Ponzi artist who made off with her life savings. Vanessa doesn’t want anything as oldfashioned as justice; she just wants her money back. But even though she’s unemployed and barely holding things together, Carol’s time turns out to be unexpectedly valuable. Defense solicitor Bronwen Scott, with whom she’s crossed swords many times before, wants her to work with After Proved Guilty, an innocence project Bronwen’s launched, to exonerate Saul Neilson, who’s three years into a sentence for murdering Lyle Tate, a gay sex worker who vanished after his last appointment with Saul and is presumed dead. Such is McDermid’s generosity in plotting that neither of these cases is the main course here.

That would be the discovery of some 30 unmarked graves on 36

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An aristocratic detective takes on murder and more. tell me no lies

BLIND SEARCH

Munier, Paula Minotaur (352 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-250-15305-0

TELL ME NO LIES

Noble, Shelley Forge (304 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-7653-9874-1

An aristocratic detective takes on murder and more.

Philomena Amesbury, Dowager Countess of Dunbridge, escaped a dull life of mourning her unloved husband by moving from England to New York City in 1907.

Her Plaza Hotel abode is paid for by an unknown organization that wants to call on the detective skills she developed while rescuing an old friend from a charge of murder (Ask Me No Questions, 2018). She lives quietly along with Preswick, her faithful |

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A boy who likes to wander and dogs that live to find the missing add up to an exciting adventure in rural Vermont.

Still mourning the death of her fiance in Afghanistan but comforted by Elvis, his bomb-sniffing dog, Mercy Carr has formed an attachment to Game Warden Troy Warner and his search dog, Susie Bear, who were her partners in solving a murder (A Borrowing of Bones, 2018). When she hears shots, Mercy tracks Elvis, who’s vanished into the woods owned by Daniel Feinberg, her wealthy friend and neighbor. Feinberg’s hunting party has found a large bear in the tree to which groundskeeper Gunnar Moe’s pack of Norwegian elkhounds chased him. But Elvis has turned up something even more disturbing: a young woman with an arrow in her chest. The dead woman is Alice de Clare, an architect and weekend guest of Daniel’s who’s been working with his other guests—Blake and Katharine Montgomery, Caspar and Cara Farrow, Lea Sanders and Ethan Jenkins—on a project to renovate the Bluffing Bear Inn. Mercy’s discoveries continue when she finds a pajama-clad boy in the woods who may be a witness to murder. The boy is Henry Jenkins, an autistic 9-year-old math genius who speaks little but knows much and finds the dogs calming. As Troy well knows, the woods are beautiful but menacing, occupied by the most dangerous beasts, human lawbreakers. Even so, Mercy believes that the killer is most likely one of Feinberg’s guests, most of whom have been friends ever since they attended prep school together. Certain that the headline-seeking State Police detective will get everything wrong, Mercy and Troy use Feinberg’s estate as a base for hunting the killer. Their most difficult task is protecting Henry, whose wandering is a danger to himself and the people and dogs who guard him.

An action-packed story of triumph over adversity.

butler, and Lily, her multilingual, knife-wielding maid, until a note from Mr. X, as she calls her mysterious benefactor, alerts her to a visit from Mr. Luther Pratt, a wealthy man whose wife, Gwen, she’d seen at a ball at their house the night before. Now, in the wake of a fatal mishap, Gwen, knowing Phil’s reputation, has sent her husband to ask for help in averting a scandal. The dead man—Perry Fauks, scion of a wealthy industrial family and suitor for the hand of Agnes Pratt—was stabbed and pushed down a laundry chute. Even worse than the possible scandal is the likelihood that Fauks’ death will roil the financial waters of the already troubled stock market and banking industry. Phil promises to help Gwen, who’s smart, tough, and frail from asthma, but insists on calling the only honest police officer she knows. Even though she was a thorn in the side of DS John Atkins in her first case, he respects her skills and her ability to travel in circles closed to him despite his genteel appearance and manners. Phil and her team uncover plenty of motives for murder, from bad business deals to bad behavior with women.

Was it business or pleasure that killed Fauks?

A complex mystery featuring an unconventional sleuth working in an era of unfettered greed.

DEAD BLOW

Preston, Lisa Arcade (266 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-5107-4911-5 A tough yet vulnerable farrier tracks a killer, makes new friends, and commits to marriage.

Rainy Dale has settled into Cowdry, the small Oregon town she calls home.

She’s living with her boyfriend, Guy, a chef whose interest in food is as intense as her own interest in horses. Rainy’s newest customer, Donna Chevigny, a widow whose husband, Cameron, died under suspicious circumstances, wants Rainy to shoe some horses she plans to sell. The area where the horses are kept, which is especially difficult to reach because Donna’s neighbor refuses to let her cross his property, is the site of Cameron’s death in a tractor rollover and home of a dangerous killer rodeo bull Cameron and a friend had hoped to use to start a stock business. Rainy offers to use her dog, Charley, to help bring in some cattle from the same area and remove the tractor’s flat tire for repair. At the corral and shed where they work, Rainy finds a discarded horseshoe which her practiced eye tells her is not from a ranch horse, and Donna’s dog makes an even more disturbing discovery: a glove containing a human hand. At length the hand is identified as belonging to Arielle Blake, the former girlfriend of Donna’s neighbor, whose remains are soon located in a shallow grave. Arielle’s affair with Cameron, one of several he was carrying on, makes Donna a likely suspect in both deaths. Overcoming her initial suspicions, Rainy comes to admire Donna. As she goes about her business, she ponders the mystery and picks up clues. All the while, Melinda Kellan, an ambitious police clerk with whom Rainy’s kirkus.com

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developed a love/hate relationship (The Clincher, 2018), hopes to use Rainy’s knowledge to help solve the murders and fulfill her dream of becoming a police officer.

A gritty tale with a complex mystery and an unusual heroine.

once the center of a thriving plantation. Because the Civil War left Bennett and his family little but their gracious old house, their “people” as servants, and their social status, Bennett’s older son and heir has become engaged to the daughter of a Yankee businessman. Shortly after they arrive at the island for the wedding, Eleanor confesses to Prudence that she feels eyes watching her from the moss-hung live oaks, pine forests, and swampland. When Eleanor goes missing, Prudence, every inch the modern woman, insists on joining the hunt for her along with Geoffrey Hunter, her partner in Hunter and MacKenzie, Investigative Law. Their professional services become sadly relevant when Teddy’s younger brother discovers Eleanor’s body drowned in the swamp. In laying out Eleanor in preparation for burial in her silk and Valenciennes lace wedding gown, Prudence finds bruises and a dislocated shoulder indicating that someone held Eleanor underwater. Over her body, Prudence and Geoffrey, an ex–Pinkerton agent and a son of the South himself, vow to find her killer. The warnings of Aunt Jessa, a conjure woman who was once Teddy’s mammy, as well as an attempt on Prudence’s own life and the startling appearance of a young servant named Minda lead Prudence into a family history as tangled as the swamp that claimed Eleanor’s life in Simpson’s fourth Gilded Age mystery (Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets, 2018, etc.).

Packed with suspense, romance, voodoo, class and racial issues, and intimations of the war that didn’t end at Appomattox.

COBBLERED TO DEATH

Ross, Rosemarie Kensington (304 pp.) $7.99 paper | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-4967-2275-1

A baking show host solves a murder.

Courtney Archer, the star of Cooking With the Farmer’s Daughter, has a secret: She grew up in Chicago and her dad’s really a pediatrician. It’s probably the worst-kept secret in the industry and definitely the worst-kept on the set of The American Baking Battle, where she’s currently the guest host.

Co-host Skylar Daily, who also hosts Grocery Store Gambit, and judge Shannon Collins, star of Southern Comfort Foods, both of whom actually did grow up in rural America, instantly recognize Courtney’s urban ways. And things get even worse when contestant Mick Henderson overhears Courtney talking about the deception with her producer, Eric Iverson. Mick’s knowledge of her secret alone would make Courtney a prime suspect when a cherry cobbler she sets out to cool in its cast-iron pan is used to beat Mick to death. Her discovery of Mick’s body lying amid the ruins of her confection further sharpens her status as a person of interest in the eyes of Carbon County Sheriff Milton Perry. Handsome security guard Drake Nolan keeps a close eye on Courtney, agitating Eric, who has an eye for her as well. But Courtney decides that the best way to clear her name is to solve the case herself. Her search to discover who clobbered Mick with her cobbler has results that are all too predictable.

Ross’ series debut adds nothing to the cooking-mystery niche—not even recipes.

BROOKLYN LEGACIES

Stein, Triss Poisoned Pen (224 pp.) $15.99 paper | Dec. 3, 2019 978-1-4926-9934-7

A fifth sort-of case for Brooklyn historian Dr. Erica Donato shows her teaming up with an aging local activist against rapacious Jehovah’s Witnesses. Uh-huh.

Louisa McWilliams Gibbs isn’t called the duchess of Brooklyn Heights for nothing. In her time, she’s marched, she’s demonstrated, she’s organized, she’s importuned City Hall, she’s done everything humanly possible to help her beloved borough retain the best of its distinctive character in the face of wishy-washy government bureaucrats, bean-counting civil servants, and slick real estate speculators out to make a quick buck. Now that she’s too old for most of those activities—she has a hard time even getting up and down the stairs without the assistance of Sierra, her hipster aide—trouble has ironically come right to her doorstep in the person of Daniel Towns, a Watchtower bigwig intent on selling a parcel of properties the Witnesses own to mega-developer Mike Prinzig, of Prince Projects. Since Louisa’s home adjoins one of the Witnesses’ buildings, Towns wants to broker the sale of her home to Prince Projects too. When Louisa bridles and stiffens her spine, two activities she’s very good at, someone begins harassing her with a series of anonymous letters she reluctantly describes to Erica and a pair of NYPD officers.

DEATH BRINGS A SHADOW

Simpson, Rosemary Kensington (320 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-4967-2209-6

A 19th-century fairy-tale wedding turns into a funeral on a remote Georgia island.

For Eleanor Dickson and Teddy Bennett, their upcoming nuptials on Bradford Island are all about true love. But Prudence MacKenzie, Eleanor’s best friend, knows that it’s also a coldhearted business deal between the bride’s and groom’s fathers.

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A film crew brings drama to a Maine town when the lothario director is killed on set. thread and buried

The report falls flat once Louisa and Erica realize that Towns has been getting anonymous letters too, and even flatter when Towns is found dead inside one of the well-kept underground tunnels connecting the buildings. In the experienced hands of Erica (Brooklyn Wars, 2017, etc.), however, the promising mystery runs down rather than winding up. And despite restoration expert Nancy Long’s tale of woe, there’s precious little in the way of disclosures about the Witnesses either. It’s hard not to sympathize with the cop who tells Erica, calling to report on the latest anticlimactic developments: “I have real crimes to handle here.”

A modern Battle of Brooklyn Heights for fans of borough history only.

THREAD AND BURIED

Wait, Lea Kensington (272 pp.) $7.99 paper | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-4967-1675-0

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THE LIGHT OF ALL THAT FALLS

Islington, James Orbit (864 pp.) $29.00 | Dec. 10, 2019 978-0-316-27418-0

The final part of Islington’s prodigious, sprawling fantasy trilogy (An Echo of Things To Come, 2017, etc.), in which the religious-philosophical-magical-temporal war reaches its conclusion.

Again Islington supplies a synopsis and glossary; they help, but not much. The Venerate, immortal shape-shifting wizards, wield a higher-order magic called kan, which emanates from the Darklands. However, they now serve an evil god and perhaps always have. Four friends have resolved to defeat them. Caeden, a Venerate who once did terrible wrongs in their service, bears the knowledge that he will, or already has, kill his friend and ally Davian. Davian, whose ability to use kan exceeds even Caeden’s, becomes trapped in the past, where he must learn how to build kan-powered machines in order to escape. Asha channels the enormous power of her Essence, magic deriving from her personal life force, to maintain the Boundary confining the horrors of the Darklands; the heavy price she pays is entombment within a virtual-reality bubble. Wirr, now Prince Torin the Northwarden, must rally his people to hold off armies of religious fanatics and Darklands monsters long enough for the others to succeed. So what do we have here, a thaumaturgical-alchemical extravaganza? A teenage superpower fantasy to rival Marvel comics? What with the unflagging pace, so many moving parts, and so much intricate, lavish, and sometimes intimidating detail, it’s nigh impossible to ascertain whether it all adds up. What matters is the author’s unshakable conviction that it does—a conviction that eventually we come to share, if only by osmosis. One intractable flaw: Though there are so many immortals running around, we don’t feel the weight of all their years and deeds. It’s more like time’s collapsed into a dimensionless present.

Fascinating, and not for the faint of heart.

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A film crew brings drama to a Maine town when the lothario director is killed on set in what’s definitely either an accident or murder.

Picturesque Haven Harbor has drawn a movie crew to film Harbor Heartbreak, and local needlepointer Angie Curtis has been tapped to help with the set design. Though she’s not about to make a big deal about it, Angie’s pretty sure she got the job through her boyfriend, Patrick West, whose mother, Skye, is a movie star slated for a big role in the film. Haven Harbor hasn’t just been picked because it’s pretty; it’s also the original site for the maybe-true events of the story. Longtime resident Ruth Hopkins, who wrote the account the movie’s based on before she learned that all the publishing dollars were in spicy romance novels, is on hand to help make her vision a reality. But the real driving force behind the film is director Marv Mason, who’s put all his energy into ensuring the success of his stars, for example by showering the film’s young lead actress, Cos Curran, with predatory romantic attention. Ick. Angie is on set one day when Marv is literally knocked off by a boom mic that pushes him backward off a rocky cliff. Though it’s obvious that Marv wasn’t well-loved, Angie wonders whether anyone hated him enough to kill him. Drawing on her background as a private eye and her experience solving crimes (Thread on Arrival, 2018, etc.), she questions the film’s crew. She’s certain the drama and death are coming from the outsiders, but which of them?

Reading Wait’s Maine-centric cozy is like watching a movie on TV versus going to the theater: fine but not must-see.

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BLOOD OF EMPIRE

McClellan, Brian Orbit (672 pp.) $29.00 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-0-316-40731-1

Conclusion to McClellan’s Gods of Blood and Powder fantasy trilogy (Wrath of Empire, 2018, etc.), in which politicking assumes as much importance as magic and armies.

Dynize blood sorcerer Ka-Sedial intends to secure the three ancient monoliths known as godstones in order to make himself into a god, and he invades Fatrasta to capture two of them. Giant warrior Ben Styke, accompanied by Ka-Poel, the mute bone-eye sorcerer (and Ka-Sedial’s grandaughter) whose magic can detect the stones, plans to attack Dynize and locate the third godstone. But a storm scatters Styke and Ka-Poel’s ships and strands them with only 20 lancers. Worse, the stone is already under Ka-Sedial’s control, forcing them to forgo brute force and attempt diplomacy. Ka-Poel’s husband, Taniel, despite his near godlike powers, spends most of the book trying to catch up with them. Gen. Vlora Flint, grievously wounded and bereft of her gunpowder magic, burns for revenge yet must engage more Dynize armies and endure political interference. Ex-spy Michel Bravis and KaPoel’s sister Ichtracia, a Privileged sorcerer, try to learn why so many Palo are mysteriously disappearing. McClellan tells an intriguing tale. Still, alert readers will wonder why the book’s villain, having quickly solved his main problem, then does nothing for hundreds of pages and why many of the characters that add salt and spice to the proceedings spend too long offstage or just form wallpaper. True, the author doesn’t do politics nearly as effectively as he does magic and battles, and he wrings out few surprising plot twists. His prior novels, with their hero Field Marshal Tamas, cast an unfortunately deep shadow: Tamas is one of the great fantasy heroes of recent years, and nobody here comes close.

Solid and absorbing but not the tour de force the Powder Mage trilogy was.

the other. Invisible Planets, an outstanding selection of Chinese short science fiction in translation edited by Ken Liu, hit both marks, and although the quality of stories in last year’s A People’s Future of the United States, edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, was deeply uneven, its concept of collecting near-future tales of marginalized people was thought-provoking. However, this collection, edited by Rajaniemi and Weisman (co-editor: The Unicorn Anthology, 2019, etc.), has a bland, vague theme—“new voices,” although many were first published years ago—and exactly one impressive story. Alice Sola Kim, one of the few bright spots in the LaValle and Adams anthology, stands out again here. Like her previous story, “Now Wait for This Week,” “One Hour, Every Seven Years” plays with the idea of time repeating and doubling back on itself, as a time-travel researcher struggles to save her 9-year-old self from her classmates’ torment. The rest of the stories range from forgettable to genuinely terrible. Suzanne Palmer’s “The Secret Life of Bots” takes the what-if-robots-were-sentient idea and does nothing especially new or interesting with it. Jamie Walhs’ virtual-reality story, “Utopia, LOL?” is so full of cringe-y online-speak that one can feel it becoming dated as one reads it—“Charlie looks all skeptical_fry.pic.” Yikes. The absolute nadir of the 20 stories is “Calved” by Sam J. Miller, in which a man struggles to connect with his son; the tale ends with an idiotically regressive twist.

A useless sci-fi collection with a paltry 1-in-20 success rate.

THE RISE OF MAGICKS

Roberts, Nora St. Martin’s Press (464 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-250-12303-9

In the conclusion to Roberts’ Chronicles of The One, Fallon Swift and her army vanquish violent, fearmongering leaders, but in order to reintroduce light to the world, she and her two closest magickal allies must face the darkness and their most dangerous foe back where the Doom began.

Nearly twenty years after the Doom (Of Blood and Bone, 2018, etc.), Fallon Swift has become a powerful witch and raised an army of both magickal and nonmagickal people determined to bring down the corrupt U.S. government as well as Jeremiah White and his anti-magickal Purity Warriors, both of which prey upon magickal people. But as she travels across the country preparing for battle and surveying the land, Fallon finds small pockets of decent, tolerant people who have started or maintained their own mixed communities, much like the successful New Hope. Inspired to protect them and help them build, she works with her family and friends to plan a revolution dedicated to the motto “Light for Life,” so all people can live in peace and security. Creating communities and helping them thrive has the added benefit of providing a place for survivors when Fallon and her allies take over PW strongholds and government research facilities, safe spaces which become breeding

THE NEW VOICES OF SCIENCE FICTION

Ed. by Rajaniemi, Hannu & Weisman, Jacob Tachyon (432 pp.) $16.95 paper | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-61696-291-3 Stories from “a chorus of storytellers who are up to the task of capturing the essence of our world’s present and future,” according to co-editor Rajaniemi (Summerland, 2018, etc.).

Anthologies are a tricky thing. When done well, a great anthology has both gripping short stories and a compelling overarching motif. At the very least, an anthology needs one or 40

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An heiress and a penniless war hero enter into a secret marriage of convenience. this earl of mine

grounds for more soldiers willing to fight for the cause. Fallon and her army take bold and inspired actions to gain ground against the darkness, but there’s no question that in order to truly vanquish the evil that’s grown since the Doom, she’ll have to face it at its source. Meanwhile, Fallon’s relationship with Duncan grows ever stronger, and the dance around their attraction moves toward a powerful commitment, though facing off against evil never guarantees survival. Roberts’ magnificent trilogy concludes with another title that perfectly balances magic, adventure, romance, and steely resolve in the battle of good vs. evil while reminding us that while the battles may save us, it’s the home, hearth, and community which sustain us.

Brilliant and inspiring.

truth while everyone else fails to notice, too intent on their own needs. The ultimate strategy our (anti)heroes choose to employ against the Homians also has its roots in a sci-fi plot device that’s more than a century old, but it’s still carried off with drama and panache.

A fitting end to this trilogy, which, in even its trippiest moments, maintains a plausibility that others in this subgenre often lack.

r om a n c e

THE ROSEWATER REDEMPTION

THIS EARL OF MINE

Bateman, Kate St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $7.99 paper | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-250-30595-4

In an alternate near future, the threat of an alien invasion looms ever closer in the city-state of Rosewater, the surrounding nation of Nigeria, and, ultimately, all of Earth.

As per the agreement set in the previous Wormwood novel (The Rosewater Insurrection, 2019), the alien Homians have begun mentally occupying reanimates, apparently mindless fresh human corpses healed and revived by Homian technology. Unbeknownst to most, this is the beginning of a gradual takeover of Earth by the Homians. But some Homians are trying to speed up the process through a series of mass murders. Worse still, Hannah Jacques, a lawyer and the wife of Rosewater’s mayor (who struck the deal with the Homians), publicly reveals that reanimates are capable of recovering their memories and cognitive facilities. Tensions in Rosewater rise still higher as criminal twins and rivals Taiwo and Kehinde engage in violent turf wars and the mayor legalizes gay marriage in what is still a very homophobic population. Meanwhile, Femi Alaagomeji, once the head of the Nigerian intelligence agency S45, works to counter the Homian threat, enlisting her former operative Kaaro, the cowardly but powerful psychic who is sensitive to her cause even while his girlfriend, Aminat, another ex–S45 agent, feels frustrated in her current position as Rosewater’s head of security. And Oyin Da, the enigmatic time-traveling woman also known as Bicycle Girl, learns some troubling truths about herself as she searches for a way to undermine the aliens and ensure humanity’s survival. Popular American tales of alien invasion typically depict the contentious nations of the world recognizing the threat and uniting despite their differences to defeat the unearthly foe; Thompson is far too canny about how even an alternate version of our planet really works politically to throw such a corny show our way. Of course, it’s still a trope (but a more believable one) that only a few people are clearsighted and ruthless enough to see and act upon the |

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Thompson, Tade Orbit (416 pp.) $16.99 paper | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-316-44909-0

An heiress and a penniless war hero enter into a secret marriage of convenience in the first book in a new Regency romance series.

To protect her shipping fortune from her greedy cousin, Georgiana Caversteed devises a desperate plan to marry a condemned prisoner. She does not realize that the prisoner is Benedict Wylde, second son of the late Earl of Morcott and a Bow Street Runner who was working undercover at Newgate Prison on assignment, until she sees him alive and well at a ball a few weeks later. Georgiana recovers quickly from the shock and convinces Benedict to pretend to court her until they can “marry” in public, saving her reputation, after which they can go their separate ways. Having served in the Rifles for three grueling years during the Peninsular War, Benedict and his two best friends opened the Tricorn Club, a casino in London, to make their fortunes and provide cover for their work on behalf of the crown. Benedict’s main preoccupation is paying down his family’s mountain of debt, but he is intrigued by the “vibrant, multifaceted” Georgie, whose “business-like brain…sharp wit, and…fearsome intellect…challenged him on so many levels.” When thwarting a treasonous plot requires both Benedict’s military skills and Georgie’s knowledge of ships, they become partners with benefits, most memorably in the close quarters of a tiny dry-docked submarine, where he raggedly confesses: “Every minute of the day. You make me crazy with wanting.” Bateman quickly dispenses with her protagonists’ antagonism in favor of genuine romance that shines through the many tired plot points.

Delightful leads and sexy capers tip the balance in favor of giving this one a try despite its predictable elements.

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THE GODDESS GETS HER GUY

restoring Jordan Industries’ financial health and reputation. Erik is proud of what his family’s African American cosmetics company “represents to so many women who have been told they’re not beautiful or that they have to conform to someone else’s idea of beauty.” But he needs a designer to remodel the company’s headquarters as he modernizes with new products. Sylvie Gates of SG Designs knows the JI gig could help her fledgling business take flight, but she’s not prepared to discover her unforgettably hot one-night stand occupying the c-suite. Erik and Sylvie are both workaholics. She’s been burned by love and he has commitment issues, not to mention a very messed-up family situation. But their attraction is too powerful to resist, and before long they develop a friendship with benefits. Family secrets and misunderstandings threaten, but Hodges (The Business of Love, 2019, etc.) lets Erik and Sylvie act their ages in this well-paced story. Secondary characters, especially Erik’s mother and brother, add richness to the tale.

An entertaining and sincere romance with plenty of family drama set in Atlanta’s business district.

Chase, Ashlyn Sourcebooks Casablanca (320 pp.) $7.99 paper | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-4926-4558-0

A recently retired surgeon travels to Puerto Rico and falls in love with Gaia.

Dr. Aaron Samuels was widowed 20 years ago and is expecting his first grandchild soon. One day during surgery, he notices a tremor in his hand and chooses to retire rather than endanger his patients.

Aaron decides that since one of his daughters lives in Puerto Rico, home to the only rainforest in the United States, he should travel there and search for plants that could be turned into medicine.

Meanwhile, Gaia is on a tear. She has decided to put a group of shifters on trial for revealing themselves to humans, therefore breaking the laws she’s made as Mother Nature. Gaia’s behavior is so out of control that her sisters, Fate and Karma, try to set her up on a date. Maybe if Gaia falls in love, she’ll be more forgiving of human foibles. The romance between Aaron and Gaia is a small subplot in a novel overwhelmed by point-of-view characters from 12 previous books over multiple series. The novel moves along frenetically, bouncing from character to character without any kind of main narrative arc. Chase (Immortally Yours, 2019, etc.) incorporates characters and mythologies from other cultures in a way that feels scattershot, such as mixing Greek and Roman gods together. But the book also whitewashes non-European cultures.

Karma, an idea borrowed from Hinduism, is envisioned here as a beautiful redhead. Although large portions of the book take place on Puerto Rico, there are hardly any Puerto Rican characters and no hint of the Spanish language or Puerto Rican culture.

Gaia glibly and cruelly explains that Hurricane Maria happened because she was busy preventing an earthquake in California, but, she says: “As soon as I was free, I grabbed hold of the tail of that hurricane and unwound it. You and the rest of the western Caribbean are welcome.”

Likely to appeal only to staunch fans of previous books.

SEDUCTION ON A SNOWY NIGHT

Hunter, Madeline & Jeffries, Sabrina & Putney, Mary Jo Kensington Books (336 pp.) $15.95 paper | Sep. 24, 2019 978-1-4967-2028-3 Three beloved Regency romance authors join forces in this heartwarming holiday anthology.

In this collection of novellas, the Christmas season brings the gift of love. A Christmas Abduction

by Hunter (Never Deny a Duke, 2019, etc.) finds Adam Prescott, Baron Thornhill, abducted by a mysterious but familiar woman.

Caroline Dunham is out for revenge, and kidnapping Adam seems the easiest way to expedite her plans. Fleeting touches and forced proximity add a wonderful tension to this slowburn romance. Heiress Cassandra Isles becomes taken with the charming Col. Lord Heywood Wolfe in Jeffries’ (Project Duch­ ess, 2019, etc.) A Perfect Match. Too bad he’s a notorious fortune hunter. The most dramatic of the three novellas, A Perfect Match is overwhelmed by too many characters and a thwarted kidnapping. One Wicked Winter Night by Putney (Once a Spy, 2019, etc.) is, by far, the standout of this trio, with a lovely second-chance romance as lovers reunite at a magical costume ball.

Lady Diana Lawrence committed herself to a life of travel and adventure to mask her heartache over a whirlwind love affair that ended poorly. Now, seven years later, she never expected to reunite with the dashing Anthony Raines. The only common thread between the three novellas is the wintry setting; a stronger connection might have made the collection feel less stilted.

However, it’s clear that these historical romance dynamos know their craft and can make any dubious reader believe in a happily-ever-after despite the shorter format.

A solid and varied collection for readers who adore a holiday setting.

TEMPTED AT MIDNIGHT

Hodges, Cheris Dafina/Kensington (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Sep. 24, 2019 978-1-4967-2382-6

Atlanta designer Sylvie Gates has a night of passion with a stranger only to discover he’s the CEO of Jordan Industries, her newest, and biggest, client.

Chemist Erik Jordan was happiest hunkered down in the lab of his family’s multinational cosmetics company, but when he accidentally discovered that his father was embezzling funds, he had to inform the authorities. As Erik’s father is carted off to prison, the board appoints Erik CEO, entrusting him with 42

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To prevent an impoverished governess from marrying the wrong man, a duke lives up to his bad reputation and steals her away. the duke’s stolen bride

THE DUKE’S STOLEN BRIDE

Jordan, Sophie Avon/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $7.99 paper | Aug. 23, 2019 978-0-06-288543-2

To prevent an impoverished governess from marrying the wrong man, a duke lives up to his bad reputation and steals her away.

Marian Langley is crouched under a table, hiding from one of her creditors, when she first bumps into Nate, the socalled “depraved” Duke of Warrington. She’s heard rumors that he hides courtesans in his home, but at least he lets Marian hide under his table until her creditor leaves. Rather than marry an unappealing rich man to settle her debt, Marian asks Nate to train her in the art of seduction so she can become a courtesan and live on her own terms. Her one condition is that he can’t deflower her—she’s saving that honor for the highest bidder once she’s skilled. At first, Nate isn’t interested in ruining a nice girl’s prospects. His own beloved wife is dead, and his loneliness requires professional help. But he’ll do it to win a bet with his man of affairs. Nate and Marian agree to be discreet, but their lessons quickly pick up steam, and it’s not long before someone uncovers their secret. To protect her from ruin, Nate abandons his plans, follows his heart, and insists on marrying her. But before she can claim her happily-ever-after, Marian will have to settle her debt to an unhappy creditor. She isn’t exactly a free woman now, but she is much less inhibited. And despite his reputation for depravity, Nate proves his true skill as a lover by following her lead.

Depravity is no match for true love in this sweet and steamy read.

THE HIGHLANDER’S CHRISTMAS BRIDE

Kelly, Vanessa Zebra/Kensington (432 pp.) $7.99 paper | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-4201-4703-2 A young woman ill-suited for life as a nun is sent home from her convent with only a handsome Highlander as escort.

Donella Haddon is known throughout Scotland as “The Flower of Clan Graham” for her beauty and charm.

Logan Kendrick has recently returned to Scotland from Canada, hoping to expand the market for his trapping and logging business. He is deputized by Donella’s uncle to escort her home, but the short trip turns into a journey after someone attacks their carriage and tries to kidnap her. Donella’s return to society forces her to face the humiliations that sent her fleeing to the Carmelites in the first place: being jilted by her fiance and lingering bad blood over a past incident involving Clan Murray. Logan and Donella become friends and learn to trust each other, but |

their unchaperoned nights together move them down a path to marriage neither one is ready for. Kelly (The Highlander Who Pro­ tected Me, 2018, etc.) constructs the entire plot around secrets and hidden information—not only do Logan and Donella keep secrets from each other, but major plot developments are also kept hidden from the reader. This gives the entire book an aimless, drifting feeling: Something is motivating characters, but it isn’t worth telling readers about. A subplot about Logan’s son’s heritage as part of the Mi’kmaq tribe feels shoehorned in to win diversity points rather than being an organic part of the story.

Convoluted and slow-moving plot with uneven characterization and pacing.

ONCE A SPY

Putney, Mary Jo Zebra (368 pp.) $7.99 paper | Sep. 24, 2019 978-1-4201-4810-7 Our man in Waterloo proposes a marriage of convenience and ends up with much more.

Suzanne Duval may be the Comtesse de Chambron but nevertheless, she’s making ends meet with piecework in a boardinghouse when Col. Simon Duval comes to find her. Simon, her late husband’s second cousin, has returned from his service as a spy in the Napoleonic wars and has sought her out to propose marriage. Suzanne and Simon met years ago and had a “teasing friendship,” so it’s no surprise that they take quick interest in one another. But Suzanne, whom readers of the Rogues Redeemed series (Once a Scoundrel, 2018, etc.) will recognize from previous volumes, is traumatized by the abuse she suffered in a harem for many years. Simon, who understands the “death of desire,” proposes a marriage solely of companionship, and Suzanne accepts. As they begin their adventure-filled marriage together, traveling the Continent in the brief lull of the Napoleonic wars, Simon’s lust begins to reignite, and Suzanne is unsure whether she will be able to reciprocate his passion. But just as she begins to become more comfortable with Simon, Napoleon comes back from his exile, and soon the newlyweds are en route to a little town called Waterloo. As ever, Putney’s characters find themselves in mortal peril more than once as their love slowly blooms. Unfortunately, this developing romance is often undermined by several subplots, copious historical detail, and cameos from earlier entries in the series, and it’s burdened with a lot of unnecessary exposition. Readers who will be uncomfortable reading about a heroine struggling with PTSD–like symptoms related to sexual assault may need to skip this one. Suzanne does find her way toward healing and enjoying sex, and although this happens more quickly than some might expect, Simon’s tenderness with her makes it more believable. Fans of the series will likely enjoy this new entry, but it will be hit or miss for other historical romance readers.

An uneven Napoleonic tale that’s equal parts adventure and romance. kirkus.com

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nonfiction SEVEN SIGNS OF LIFE Stories From an Intensive Care Doctor

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: A PLACE OUTSIDE THE LAW by Peter Jan Honigsberg....................63

Abbey, Aoife Arcade (288 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 1, 2019 978-1-948924-82-5

AMERICA FOR AMERICANS by Erika Lee........................................67 FAMILY PAPERS by Sarah Abrevaya Stein.........................................79

AMERICA FOR AMERICANS A History of Xenophobia in the United States

Compelling encounters between a young Irish doctor and patients in intensive care.

Abbey, a fellow of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine and council member at the Intensive Care Society U.K., writes that her world as a doctor is centered on emotions, and she tells of her experiences through seven emotions that are vital elements of being human: fear, grief, joy, distraction, anger, disgust, and hope. Throughout the book, the author writes with honesty and compassion about her relationships with patients. Each of the seven chapters opens with a relevant quotation from writers such as T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and C.S. Lewis, selections indicating that Abbey is a reader as well as a writer. As an intensive care doctor, she cares for many patients who may be dying or may be in some undetermined state between life and death. Abbey explores the strategies for talking to these patients as well as to their families. “Of course ongoing academic achievement and the acquisition of hard skills are paramount to a doctor’s development, but they are not the whole story,” she writes. “Many of the pivotal moments in any doctor’s story are about learning how to talk to people, to understand them and to make yourself understood.

Competence is not simply about knowing what is possible, but also about understanding what is right. It is about feeling and, more importantly, about knowing what to do with a feeling.” A text filled with a doctor’s bedside experiences with dozens of vulnerable patients may sound like grim reading, but this is not the case. Abbey’s account is warm and accessible, leaving readers with a feeling of relief that such thoughtful doctors exist and the hope that if one is ever in need of critical care, a wise and caring doctor like her will be by the bedside.

Merits a spot on a list of required reading for medical students.

Lee, Erika Basic (432 pp.) $32.00 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-5416-7260-4

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In her latest, esteemed religion writer Armstrong...once again demonstrates her encyclopedic knowledge of the world’s religions. the lost art of scripture

HOME NOW How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town

THE LOST ART OF SCRIPTURE Rescuing the Sacred Texts

Armstrong, Karen Knopf (624 pp.) $35.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-451-49486-3

Anderson, Cynthia PublicAffairs (336 pp.) $28.00 | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-5417-6791-1

How an influx of refugees from Somalia and other African countries challenged an old mill town in Maine to

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redefine itself.

As a New Yorker article noted more than a decade ago, an improbable migration has turned Lewiston into “a large-scale social experiment.” That statement was “a blunt but not inaccurate assessment” of the once-thriving and overwhelmingly white town, writes Anderson (Writing/Boston Univ.; River Talk, 2014), who grew up nearby. The town was facing economic ruin after its industries vanished and its population declined. Then more than 6,000 refugees from Somalia and other African countries began to stream into town. Despite resistance from the mayor and private citizens, the newcomers reenergized the community by opening shops, forming cultural groups, and leading the high school to its first-ever state soccer championship. In this sympathetic account of their efforts, Anderson follows a group of Somali, Congolese, and other refugees from 2016 to early 2019, offering intimate glimpses of their homes and workplaces and their birthday, wedding, and other celebrations. In an especially memorable scene, the founder of a Somali women’s rights group testifies, at a legislative hearing, against a bill that would have criminalized female genital mutilation in Maine—and might have discouraged women harmed by the practice from seeking medical help—even as she describes herself as “a survivor of this horrendous procedure.” Elsewhere, a refugee who works at L.L. Bean praises his employer for giving Muslim workers a dedicated space for five-times-a-day prayer.

Worthy as such stories are, Anderson’s self-conscious recounting of them often reveals more about her than her subjects. The author also skimps on or belatedly introduces vital context. Not until Chapter 7, for example, does she adequately supply the background on the civil war in Somalia that explains why so many people fled the country. A more helpful overview of Lewiston’s turnaround appears in Amy Bass’ One Goal. Anderson provides a more up-to-date yet imperfect portrait of the enduring challenges faced by Lewiston.

Close-ups of refugees who transformed a town but it’s short on geopolitical context.

The forgotten value and purpose of sacred scripture.

In her latest, esteemed religion writer Armstrong (Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, 2014, etc.), an ambassador for the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, once again demonstrates her encyclopedic knowledge of the world’s religions.

Here, she argues that modernity—and its tendency toward rationalism, literalism, and left-brain thinking—has robbed religions worldwide of the mystical and elastic power of scripture. The author champions “the forward-thrusting dynamic of scripture, which has no qualms about abandoning the ‘original’ vision but ransacks the past to find meaning in the present.”

Throughout most of history, Armstrong shows, scripture did just that. It changed over time and in so doing helped adherents cope with changing times. In recent centuries, this quality has been altered, and “scripture, an art form originally to be interpreted imaginatively, had now to be as rational as science if it was to be taken seriously.” Armstrong argues that the trend of many movements to return to the source of the faith traditions behind their scriptures led believers to look backward when they most needed to look ahead. This mistaken view of scripture was further compounded by modernity’s elevation of science and reason, forcing people of faith to read scriptures literally as opposed to allegorically. Literalism, argues the author, leads either to fundamentalism or skepticism, either of which have negative consequences for any religion. Though the author adroitly switches among Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, and many other faith traditions, Western religions and Western thought are her primary reference points. Armstrong’s grasp of global religious history and thought is beyond impressive, but the depth of her analysis will overwhelm many general readers—though the 25-page glossary is helpful. For those willing to travel this road with the author, the journey is expansive and worthwhile and will make them reconsider what scripture means to those who admire it.

Excellent reading for religious scholars and students. (first printing of 75,000)

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impact reading Photo courtesy Leah Overstreet

It’s a sad fact that the majority of books published each year will disappear from the radar soon after they are released—not exactly the kind of information that an aspiring writer wants to hear but a fact nonetheless. However, each month, there are a handful of books that have staying power, often because they deal with a timely topic in a way that is not only memorable, but also galvanizing and even timeless.

On Sept. 3, there were two such books released.

The first is The Ungrateful Refugee (Catapult) by Dina Nayeri, an Iranian American novelist who has won the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, among other awards. In her first work of nonfiction, she delivers one of the most incisive explorations of the refugee experience that I have read. In a starred review, our critic notes, “with inventive, powerful prose, Nayeri demonstrates what should be obvious: that refugees give up everything in their native lands only when absolutely necessary— if they remain, they may face poverty, physical torture, or even death.”

The author was born during the Iranian Revolution, and after her family was threatened by extremists due to her mother’s Christian beliefs, they escaped and ended up in Italy. Following 16 months in a refugee compound, they eventually found their way to the United States and a better life. Throughout her “unique, deeply thought-out refugee saga,” which mixes her personal experiences with consistently illuminating philosophical discussions about displacement, Nayeri dispels countless myths about refugees and immigrants, bringing necessary light to an issue that shows no signs of leaving the headlines anytime soon.

Also in the headlines is one of America’s most insidious scourges: the opioid epidemic. While many books 46

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have explored the topic from a variety of angles— most notably, Sam Quinones’ Dreamland—few have handled all of the complex factors involved as well as Ben Westhoff ’s latest, Fentanyl, Inc. (Atlantic Monthly). Focusing mostly on fentanyl but also other synthetic drugs such as K2 and Spice, the author doesn’t just offer a litany of overdose stories (though there are plenty of those, all of them heartbreaking). He also digs into the history of these substances and how their distribution has become so widespread in recent decades.

Our starred review notes, “in order to uncover the origin of the epidemic and the epic race to develop effective deterrent systems, the author seamlessly blends past and present in his profiles of Belgian chemist Paul Janssen, who was responsible for Fentanyl’s initial development in 1959; police officers; politicians; LSD drug kingpins, and St. Louis street dealers.”

Impressively, Westhoff reveals an element of the epidemic that has not received enough attention: the role of the Chinese drug operations that manufacture fentanyl and other lethal substances. While some of these companies operate covertly, others make their products in full view of the Chinese government and exploit vulnerable areas of international trade law to export their goods around the world. Using the dark web, users can easily purchase the drugs as well as the necessary precursors to synthesize them in the U.S. Westhoff ’s book is an excellent diagnosis of a catastrophic problem, and it has the potential to bring about real change if policymakers and others in positions of power pay attention and choose to act. “Drawing material from official reports, drug databases, scores of interviews, and years of personal research,” writes our reviewer, “Westhoff presents an unflinching, illuminating portrait of a festering crisis involving a drug industry that thrives as effectively as it kills.” —E.L. Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction and managing editor.

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THE BEATLES FROM A TO ZED An Alphabetical Mystery Tour

THREE DAYS AT THE BRINK FDR’s Daring Gamble To Win World War II

Asher, Peter Henry Holt (272 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-250-20959-7

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The third in a presidential trilogy by the Fox News host spotlights another telling moment of executive leadership— in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s case, the decision, made in November 1943, to embark on an invasion of Normandy.

Admitting he is not a historian, Baier (Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, 2018, etc.) takes on one of the most written-about personas in history, offering his “personal journalist’s spin on the great events of Roosevelt’s day.” Essentially, he delivers a highly admiring biography that breaks no new ground, using the three days at Tehran, “that vital

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A lively firsthand recollection of the Fab Four.

British singer, musician, record producer, and host of SiriusXM’s radio program From Me to You, Asher makes his book debut with a bright, rambling memoir about his long association with the Beatles, which began in 1963 when Paul McCartney, who was dating Asher’s sister, moved into his house. At the time, Asher was half of the duo Peter & Gordon, performing in pubs, clubs, and coffeehouses, and soon under contract with the prestigious EMI Records. Asher eventually quit performing to become head of A&R for Apple Records, where he managed such artists as James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Cher, and Diana Ross. The author’s self-described “personal and at times idiosyncratic” take on Beatles music, which follows their playlist alphabetically, is bursting with anecdotes about each song’s composition and the circumstances of recording it. He opines on the songs’ structure, content, effect, and quality, and he digresses about anyone and everyone associated with the Beatles—collectively and individually—as well as performers connected to his career as a record producer. Reading this memoir is like listening to an entertaining, though nonstop, monologue from someone reprising a golden time, blithely jumping from one memory to another as new thoughts and stories pop into his mind. Halfway through his “alphabetically inspired yet meandering pace,” Asher arrives at the letter L, which gives him a chance to comment on “Love Me Do,” the Beatles’ first single, and also on Sean Lennon and Julian Lennon, whose musicianship Asher much admires. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” writes the author, was inspired by Julian’s childhood drawing of his friend Lucy, “against a sparkly sky”—and not, as some have speculated, about LSD. The letter Q gives Asher pause: He writes about “Queenie Eye,” a solo McCartney song, and expounds on the Quarrymen, string quartets, and what he deems is the quietest Beatles song (“Blackbird”).

A gift for Beatles fan.

Baier, Bret with Whitney, Catherine Morrow/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $28.99 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-06-290568-0

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A rare, welcome look at the art and craft of biography. parisian lives

conference,” as the apotheosis of his leadership—when he took a chance on Joseph Stalin, whose country’s might was deemed necessary to turn the tide of war against the Nazis. Baier builds the narrative with a spirited account of FDR’s life, the details of which are well known. Though his mother coddled him, she was also dedicated to his intellectual and emotional growth. As the author writes, awkwardly, “as was the case with so many presidents, Franklin Roosevelt’s mother was the wind beneath his expansive wings.” FDR’s rise in politics was temporarily slowed by polio, but even that could not defeat his spirit. “It strengthened him,” writes Baier, “as if he had been waiting all his life for a challenge large enough for his ambitions.” Within this “crucible,” FDR became a vital leader just in time to help lead the faltering nation out of the Depression. By the time FDR forged his partnership with Churchill, Roosevelt was at the top of his game, a war president who had supreme confidence in his persuasive abilities. Meeting Stalin for the first time face to face had been a hard-won charm offensive, and agreeing to stay in the Soviet Embassy compound (knowing it was bugged) confounded the British even as it disarmed the Soviets. The campaign to hammer out the cross-channel invasion had begun.

A condensation of the historical record that will appeal most to Baier’s fans.

PARISIAN LIVES Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me: A Memoir

Bair, Deirdre Talese/Doubleday (368 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-0-385-54245-6

A biographer recalls the challenges of writing her first books.

Bair (Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend, 2016, etc.), who won a National Book Award for her first biography, of Samuel Beckett, and critical acclaim for her biography of Simone de Beauvoir, has been asked, time and again, “what were they really like?” In a candid and engrossing memoir, Bair creates unvarnished portraits of those two headstrong, demanding, and brilliant individuals as well as of her growth as a researcher, writer, and feminist. The author had just completed her doctoral dissertation on Beckett when she asked for his cooperation in writing his biography.

He replied immediately, agreeing to meet her in Paris. “I will neither help nor hinder you,” he told her. “My friends and family will assist you and my enemies will find you soon enough.”

During many years of research, she discovered the truth of his remark, as she interviewed scores of his friends, relatives, hangers-on, and vociferous enemies, all of whom she renders in lively detail. Although Beckett did not overtly interfere, he kept tabs on her research, often making her feel “like a marionette whose strings he was pulling.” After her book was published, she found that she had made her own enemies among critics and scholars she calls Becketteers, who reviewed her book with “unrelenting hostility.” Suffering “a minor breakdown,” Bair thought the 48

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biography would be her last. When an admiring editor encouraged her to think of a new subject, however, de Beauvoir quickly came to mind. She was, Bair thought, “the only modern woman who had made a success of everything,” an achievement that astonished Bair, who was juggling the responsibilities of a wife, mother, writer, and professor. She often considered the aging de Beauvoir to be “lumpy, dumpy, frumpy, and grumpy”; although agreeing to cooperate, she was reluctant to discuss sensitive issues, notably regarding sexuality. Besides offering privileged views of her celebrated subjects, Bair reveals herself struggling with structure and style and negotiating a world of publishing and academia not welcoming to women.

A rare, welcome look at the art and craft of biography.

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Banerjee, Abhijit V. & Duflo, Esther PublicAffairs (432 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-61039-950-0 “Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

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WORLD PEACE (And How We Can Achieve It)

Bellamy, Alex J. Oxford Univ. (288 pp.) $25.95 | Nov. 1, 2019 978-0-19-883352-9

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The world is primed for an outbreak of peace. Can we pull it off this time? So wonders a social scientist and U.N. consultant on genocide prevention.

“Neither war nor peace,” writes Bellamy (Peace and Conflict Studies/Univ. of Queensland; Massacres and Morality: Mass Atrocities in an Age of Civilian Immunity, 2012, etc.), “is embedded in our nature.” We fight when we must, and there are times when fighting is appropriate and war is even just.

Still, argues the author, pursuing the goals of war is better done by instruments other than war itself, instruments that have proven their efficacy, especially free trade. Bellamy does not argue, as some have, that democracy is a precondition for such a peaceful track, but he does observe that democracies don’t tend

to go to war with each other. The time is right for pressing for peaceful resolutions, he argues. Even as the world seems full of saber-rattling, blustering nationalists, the fact is that the number of fatalities caused by war is declining around the world, and the frequency of armed conflicts has similarly been falling. And why not fight? Because, in part, as Bellamy shows, war “tends to produce far more losers than winners,” ravaging economies and populations even among the putative victors. Part of the problem is the nature of the state itself, he observes: States were often formed by violence, even if they now provide the institutional basis for peace, so that “the state is nothing if not a paradox when it comes to war and peace.” Optimistic without being starry-eyed, Bellamy believes that peace is a possibility but not “imminent or likely,” particularly as international tensions have risen and reasons for war, including resource scarcity, have become more pronounced. Against this, he counsels that each of us can do a little something to promote peace, “building the minor utopias in our own times and places.”

A sensible, occasionally overly utopian case for pursuing politics by means other than war.

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THE LESS PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT US A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity

EXPOSURE Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against Dupont

Betz-Hamilton, Axton Grand Central Publishing (320 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-5387-3028-7

Memoir of a life under the shadow of identity theft.

Betz-Hamilton (Consumer Sciences/ South Dakota State Univ.) grew up in the age before the internet, a time when it took considerable effort to assume another person’s identity and exercise financial fraud under those auspices.

For a time, her mother was given to buying cheap, “pointless” jewelry from TV shopping channels, hiding the fact from her father, but she was seemingly normal compared to others in the family. Since the identity thief seemed to follow them wherever they traveled, moving often to stay a step ahead of creditors, taking pains to hide their whereabouts, it became evident that someone within the family was the author of the plot. Was it the grandmother who “had long ago stopped taking her insulin”? Grandma’s boyfriend, who made a career of sitting on the porch? Some other relative? The payoff, a financial version of the movie Halloween, is surprising indeed, and it opens onto a world of mental illness on the part of adults and a life of bewildered, anxious isolation on the part of a child who bore no blame in the matter. As the author writes, “recalling the phoneless house of my teenage years, I began to realize how especially damning it had been to lose that connection to the outside world.” Betz-Hamilton has since become a specialist on identity theft, and her notes on such matters as how debt is traded back and forth between credit card companies and collection agencies are revealing. Still, though the book is fairly short, it seems padded, and the writing is too often clunky: “There have been a few moments in my life when reality has skipped in front of me like a broken television”; “Grief waited like horses locked in a starting gate.” Given that identity theft and fraud are both commonplace and comparatively easy to fix these days, readers might find the memoir dated as well.

Though with an unexpected payoff, this is a tale in need of streamlining.

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Bilott, Robert with Shroder, Tom Atria (400 pp.) $28.00 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-5011-7281-6

An environmental lawyer recounts the two-decade-long saga of U.S. residents being poisoned by drinking water contaminated with toxic chemicals used in the production of Teflon.

A young corporate attorney in Cincinnati as the narrative opens in 1996, Bilott explains his progression from defending corporate polluters to advocating for plaintiffs being denied justice by the multinational chemical manufacturer DuPont.

Although the narrative eventually becomes dominated by arcane legal procedures and complicated chemistry, it opens powerfully as Bilott receives an unusual telephone call from Earl Tennant, a farmer on a modest acreage near Parkersburg, West Virginia. Tennant understood implicitly that some toxic substance was killing his cows and causing illness in his family, but nobody in West Virginia would listen, including the state environmental protection agency. Tennant was acquainted with Bilott’s grandmother, who provided him with the author’s phone number in Cincinnati. Though Bilott felt he could not accept Tennant as a client, for a multitude of reasons, he met with him at the farm, immediately sensed an injustice, and risked his career at his law firm to represent the Tennant family. Eventually, that one case mushroomed into a class-action lawsuit on behalf of tens of thousands of plaintiffs harmed by the toxic discharges emanating from DuPont’s factory. Bilott is obviously an advocate, so his treatment of DuPont’s scientists, lawyers, and top executives should be read with caution. Still, his level of detail leaves little doubt that year after year, the corporation misled government agencies, courts, and consumers into a false sense of security about the poisonous nature of their manufacturing processes. Bilott shares candid details about his own insecurities within his law firm as well as his failures as a husband and a father stemming from his workaholic nature.

Bilott’s admirable crusade is widely known thanks to coverage by journalists; this book adds plenty of detail and further context.

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SOMEONE IS OUT TO GET US A Not So Brief History of Cold War Paranoia and Madness Brown, Brian T. Twelve (512 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-5387-2803-1

A pop-history chronicle of fear and distrust during the Cold War years.

In this sprawling, anecdote-laden account, journalist and Emmy Award– winning TV producer Brown (Ring Force, 2012, etc.) recalls the most outlandish moments of the years 1946 to 1989, when geopolitical tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union dominated world events. The period pitted “capitalism versus communism, the God-fearing versus the atheists, the force of light battling the forces of darkness,” writes the author, producing a paranoia reflected in the final warning of Hollywood’s The Thing From Another World (1951): “Keep

watching the skies!” The resulting four-decade drama, spurred by the “overhyped menace of communism,” included the Truman loyalty program, the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, and the arms and space races, with an incendiary cast including Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Richard Nixon, and many others. All of this will be familiar to most readers. Writing with plenty of attitude (“The men in the Kremlin were running a bullshit factory”), Brown lumps together colorful, disparate moments of the period— e.g., UFO sightings, the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, FBI claims of a communist plot behind the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, and the Cuban missile crisis—in ways that seem more exploitive than illuminating. Quotes from serious historians offer some perspective, but Brown’s eye is on the sheer spectacle of noisy conflicts and controversies. He sometimes swerves off course to discuss violence (from Dirty Harry to Charles Manson), supernatural terror (The Exorcist), and magical thinking (the Bermuda Triangle) as well as air disasters, gas shortages, and other calamities of the period. These matters apparently popped up during his extensive online research,

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Brownstein’s warmth and candor will keep readers immersed in this tale of survival in a time of chronic illness. the open heart club

THE OPEN HEART CLUB A Story About Birth and Death and Cardiac Surgery

conducted while “wearing sweats, picking my nose [and] noshing on pretzels.”

Diverting but ultimately tiresome—not be confused with a true history of the Cold War.

DESK 88 Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

Brown, Sherrod Farrar, Straus and Giroux (368 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-374-13821-9

A senior senator from Ohio highlights the careers, accomplishments, and proposals of mentors and former colleagues.

Brown (Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed, 2004, etc.) arranges his text chronologically, from Sen. Hugo Black, who served from 1927 to 1937, to Sen. George McGovern, 1963-1981. Some of the names will be familiar to readers (Al Gore Sr.; Robert F. Kennedy), but a few—Theodore Francis Green, 1937-1961; Glen Taylor, 1945-1951—are less well known. Desk 88 is the number of Brown’s desk in the Senate chamber, and he reveals that senators traditionally sign the inside before they leave office. Desk 88 bears the signatures of four of the senators he writes about: Black, Gore, Herbert H. Lehman, and McGovern (and now his own). “What drew me to the names at Desk 88 was the idea that connected them: progressivism,” he writes. For each of his eight men, the author provides a brisk biography and a description of his Senate career; following each chapter is a section called “Thoughts from Desk 88,” ruminations about his own experiences, thoughts about issues dear to him, and comments about Republicans and Donald Trump (who, he writes, “promote a racist, phony populism”).

In his “Thoughts” sections, Brown writes about his own family and background, the birth of Social Security, minimum wage laws, Wall Street corruption, race, health care issues, world hunger, and policy (with some nasty stories about GOP opposition to the Affordable Care Act—“death panels” and the like). The author argues that Democratic candidates should pound away at the GOP’s opposition to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, minimum wage protections, and so on. At times, in fact, his text reads almost like a campaign biography, but in March 2019, Brown withdrew from 2020 presidential consideration.

Earnest, committed, and even contentious, a text that will cause liberals to smile and conservatives to gnash their teeth.

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Brownstein, Gabriel PublicAffairs (368 pp.) $28.00 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-1-61039-949-4

PEN/Hemingway Award winner Brownstein (English/St. John’s Univ.; The Man From Beyond, 2005, etc.) turns to nonfiction to tell “the history of heart surgery through the story of my heart.”

When the author was born, in 1966, with a heart condition known as tetralogy of Fallot, making him an oxygen-starved “blue baby,” heart surgery was something new, and heart defects were a leading cause of death. Today, more than 2 million Americans, most in middle and old age, survive with congenitally defective hearts. Like Brownstein, they have benefited from great medical advances but have had to cope with difficult arrhythmias, open-heart surgeries, and other procedures.

In this engaging account of his uncertain life “in a strange border country ruled by medicine,” he describes his birth to welleducated yet “frightened” parents who never talked about his health; his own inability to face his disease (“we deny weakness, defy it, and try to imagine it away”), and his “stunted, shuttered emotional life” as a traumatized young man. He relates this affecting personal story against the rise of our understanding of the human heart, from William Harvey’s 17th-century study of circulation to pioneering work in pediatric cardiology in the 1920s by woman doctors like the eccentric Maude Abbott to such modern surgeons as James Malm, who saved the author’s life. These historical pages, covering a dizzying array of surgeons and surgeries, are often overlong and will appeal mainly to readers who share Brownstein’s deep interest in his subject.

Even so, with his keen eye and storytelling abilities, the author offers absorbing glimpses of an African American doctor who saved the life of a man stabbed in the heart at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and pioneer surgeon Walt Lillehei (1918-1999), who could drink seven martinis and then operate successfully the next morning on a small child with a hole in his heart.

Brownstein’s warmth and candor will keep readers immersed in this tale of survival in a time of chronic illness.

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE BRIDGE A Memoir Caldwell, Joseph Delphinium (200 pp.) $24.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-883285-83-8

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The acclaimed novelist and playwright traces one of his significant relationships, from its inauspicious origins on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1959 to its heart-wrenching conclusion during the height of the 1980s AIDS epidemic.

Caldwell (The Pig Goes to Dog Heaven, 2010, etc.), the winner of the Rome Prize for Literature, packs a lot into this brief yet rich, meditative memoir about a talented Midwestern transplant trying to make his mark on New York City. Aspiring playwright, defiant Catholic, struggling novelist, courageous civic activist, conflicted soap-opera scribe: Caldwell approaches the many roles in his life with an offhanded aplomb that belies his depth as an artist. In reconciling his homosexuality with his steadfast Catholicism, the author writes, “whenever I’m asked about my sexuality, I say, ‘I am, by God’s good grace, as gay as a goose.’ Glib, I know, but true.” Later, he wonders if “the greatest satanic success since the eating of the Edenic apple was the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity.” The author’s sexuality, no wonder, plays a central role in this story, and much of it predates the Stonewall uprising, in an era when being gay could get you fired from a job on a trailblazing soap opera like Dark Shadows. As Caldwell explains, not only did he have to keep mum about his homosexuality while writing for the enduring cult TV favorite, he also had to mute any intrinsically gay themes. Ultimately, though, this memoir is about the author’s 30-year, on-again, off-again (mostly off) relationship with the young photographer named Gale that he met at dawn on the Brooklyn Bridge. Throughout his triumphs and travails, Caldwell never abandoned hope that the two would one day be reunited, and when the reunion ultimately occurs, it hits as hard as any love story could.

A simultaneously tragic and uplifting story of enduring love.

In today’s acrid political climate, where even the fundamental humanity of immigrants is often denied, many readers may be surprised to learn that the U.S. effectively maintained open borders until the Immigration Act of 1924. Beginning there, Caplan (Economics/George Mason Univ.; The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, 2018, etc.) and Weinersmith (Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543: A Collection of Science-Themed Comics, 2014, etc.) offer a cogent and accessible analysis of U.S. immigration policy and how it should change. The author and illustrator build a framework for their position based on moral, economic, philosophical, and pragmatic considerations, all while anticipating naysayers in a fun, open, and respectful manner. One example is the “Skittles argument” against open borders, which asks, “if there were three poison pills in a bowl of Skittles, would you take a handful?” Caplan and Weinersmith gently invoke the spirit of probability theory pioneer Carl Friedrich Gauss to illustrate that this argument against immigration is actually the “height of innumeracy” because the bowl with three poison pills actually contains millions of delicious candies—and refusing to eat is as childish as refusing to leave your house because you might get

OPEN BORDERS The Science and Ethics of Immigration Caplan, Bryan Illus. by Weinersmith, Zach First Second (256 pp.) $19.99 paper | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-250-31696-7

An acclaimed economics professor and a celebrated comic creator team up to argue that a major component of global peace and prosperity is actually open borders. |

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A must-have in the libraries of those who love this period and/or admire these two iconic historical figures. revolutionary brothers

struck by lightning. “Numeracy won’t mend your heart if an immigrant kills someone you love,” writes the author, “but numeracy will prevent you from using one injustice to rationalize another.”

For the sake of argument, Caplan and Weinersmith even accept the validity of the top complaints about immigration, but they propose “keyhole solutions” that address those concerns “without blanket restrictions on immigration.” If that’s not enough to spark serious discussions about open borders, they also enlist the wisdom of J.S. Mill, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Richard Posner, Lee Kuan Yew, Immanual Kant, and even Jesus.

A highly effective way to talk about an issue that remains a nonstarter for so many nationwide.

97,196 WORDS Essays

Carrère, Emmanuel Trans. by Lambert, John Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-374-17820-8 A collection of essays by one of France’s most acclaimed nonfiction authors.

Originally published in France in 2016, these pieces, published between 1990 and 2017, encapsulate novelist and filmmaker Carrère’s (The Kingdom, 2018, etc.) career as a journalist who places himself in his writing and subject matter. In the first piece, the author, then a fledgling crime reporter, recounts the trials of three murderers. Then he explores the life of Dr. Jean-Claude Romand, another murderer who “wasn’t even a doctor” and whose “duplicity” lasted for 18 years. In another essay on Romand, the impostor, Carrère writes that he hopes to “emulate” Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in a book that would recount Romand’s “life from the outside,” noting that the “presence of the observer invariably modifies the observed phenomenon.” He fulfilled that hope in The Adversary (2000). Many of these essays are shorter versions of books Carrère eventually wrote, from a profile of the young, anti-Putin dissident Eduard Limonov to one on a catastrophic tsunami in Sri Lanka. Carrère is always a questioner, probing as he ponders and tries to honestly assess what he sees, hears, and experiences about other people’s lives. He is especially candid in “How I Completely Botched My Interview with Catherine Deneuve,” and he offers an insightful profile of Emmanuel Macron, with whom he was impressed: “When it’s not Hegel he’s quoting, it’s Spinoza.” There is also a piece on the stories of Phillip K. Dick and a brief assessment of an H.P. Lovecraft story full of “Lovecraft’s trademark—fear.” In “Four Days in Davos,” Carrère writes that he “wants to laugh aloud at the endless stream of infatuated, overbilled [economic] statements.” The best piece is the emotional “Letter to a Woman of Calais,” about the plight of migrants, mostly Syrian, in the city by the Chunnel. Their camp, the “Jungle,” is “a nightmare of misery and filth.”

The best among these essays should bring Carrère new readers. (7 b/w illustrations) 54

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REVOLUTIONARY BROTHERS Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship That Helped Forge Two Nations Chaffin, Tom St. Martin’s (528 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-250-11372-6

An examination of the strong bonds and rewarding exchanges between the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson.

Their friendship was primarily based on correspondence, beginning in 1781. Chaffin (Giant’s Causeway: Frederick Douglass’s Irish Odyssey and the Making of an American Visionary, 2014, etc.) capably traces their parallel stories, presenting a wealth of information, personal and historical, not often included in biographies. Stories of Jefferson’s governorship of Virginia, which represented the extent of his Revolutionary War activity after the Declaration of Independence, shows a man wholeheartedly devoted to Virginia. As the author clearly shows, Jefferson had little interest in military matters and generally stayed aloof from the war. Because he was unsure of what a 19-year-old Lafayette could bring to the table, George Washington accepted his offer to serve with great reservations. What Lafayette did have was enormous wealth, royal connections, and, in 1777, a ship loaded with men and materiel. He was determined to emulate his father, who died in the Seven Years’ War, and become a great general. Furthermore, the American fight was a chance for Lafayette—and France—to get revenge for their horrible loss to England in that war. It was not until 1779 that France actually entered the war, bringing the fleet and support that turned the tide of the Revolution. Lafayette welcomed Jefferson’s term in France as minister and (unofficial) consultant to Lafayette and his supporters. At the same time, he opened doors for Jefferson and helped him learn the ways of diplomacy. Lafayette’s strength was in taking a middle road, protecting the king while aiming for something between the U.S. Constitution and Britain’s arrangement by which the monarch and subject united into a single polity. Sifting through mountains of research material in both the U.S. and France, Chaffin has emerged with a text packed with facts and insights into both men as well as the tumultuous times in which they lived.

A must-have in the libraries of those who love this period and/or admire these two iconic historical figures.

(8-page b/w photo insert)

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BIG SISTER, LITTLE SISTER, RED SISTER Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China Chang, Jung Knopf (384 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-451-49350-7

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Clark, Robert Univ. of Iowa (184 pp.) $20.00 paper | Nov. 1, 2019 978-1-60938-667-2

A writer’s literary obsession leads him to discover that Victorian England might be a fine place to visit, but he couldn’t live there.

Clark (Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Master­ pieces, 2008, etc.) turns inward with a hit-and-miss memoir of his “Victoromania.” The author has read more than 100 Victorian novels, many of which are now forgotten. He immersed himself in the art, architecture, philosophy, culture, and religious issues of the era. He traveled to England frequently, staying there once for as long as five months. Earlier, Clark experienced a painful divorce, though he reveals little about it or the

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Chang (Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, 2013, etc.) follows three renowned sisters across more than a century.

The story of the Soong sisters, writes the author, is a kind of modern fairy tale. The Christian Shanghainese family into which they were born was prosperous but not especially influential, and the girls themselves “were not great beauties by traditional standards.” Yet, self-confident and determined, each made her mark. Ei-ling, the oldest, born in 1889, became one of the richest women in the country; Ching-ling, born in 1893, married Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the republican movement in China, whose renown endures throughout the Chinese-speaking world; and May-ling, born in 1898, married Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist government of China. According to the fairy tale, one sister loved money, another power, and the third her country—though, depending on one’s politics, the third attribute could belong to any of them. Chang recounts the lives of the sisters and their deeds, as when May-ling, in the face of an impending Communist invasion, flew from the mainland to Taiwan, “a huge boost for the Nationalists’ morale”; after Chiang died in 1975, she lived in seclusion in New York, her life spanning across three centuries. Ching-ling embraced the Communist cause, though it was only on her deathbed that she joined the party, acclaimed as “Honorary President of the People’s Republic of China.” Of the three, Ei-ling’s life is the least compelling, though she had her accomplishments, as well.

Chang’s story is worth attention on the strength of the three sisters’ notable doings, though her writing is often flat—“Above all, she had found fulfillment as a mother”; “The Generalissimo came to appreciate what his wife did”; “A whole new world opened up to Little Sister.”

Of middling quality, but a story full of twists that follow the course of modern Chinese history. (24 pages of color and b/w photos; map. First printing of 60,000)

MY VICTORIANS Lost in the Nineteenth Century

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marriage preceding it. He believed he could have better luck with online dating in England, and while he met a number of women who shared his interest in the Victorians, nothing came of those meetings. He apparently had the means to travel at will at least in part due to the death of his father after a divorce from his mother, who later divorced his stepfather as well. “I have been a beneficiary; on a small scale when I was younger and on a larger scale as I’ve gotten older, as my elders died off and their wills were read,” he writes. He continues, “I can write what I want without much interruption beyond the teaching I like to do….I worry about what I say, how I say it, and whether it will attract some readers, but not much about getting paid.” There is some purity in this confessional endeavor, and, as Clark freely acknowledges, narcissism. His immersion in the Victorians informs his diffuse reflections on his own writing, his religious conversion, his losses, and, ultimately, his emergence from the fog of that obsession. “That my interest in the Victorians is now no larger than any other interest of mine is, in retrospect, not surprising,” he writes, “though at the time it seemed a very sudden alteration….The Victorians and I were friends, but no more than that.”

A hodgepodge memoir in which the author experiences the full range of obsession.

COWBOY IS A VERB Notes From a Modern-Day Rancher

Collins, Richard Univ. of Nevada (312 pp.) $21.95 paper | Nov. 6, 2019 978-1-948908-23-8

A working cattleman offers a view from the saddle, which too often gives onto suburban subdivisions.

Southern Arizona rancher Collins is a man of parts: a scholar and practitioner of range conservation, a livestock producer, and an organizer of environmental good works. He is also keenly aware of what he likens as tribal divisions between nature lovers and those who work the land, as when he writes of two rural denizens “carrying their guns and a brace of Montezuma quail for supper, while the birders, draped with high dollar Swarovski binoculars, gasped in horror.”

In this sometimes-pensive memoir, the author writes of other clashes, some of them obvious: Given the choice of a mine, a feature of an extractive economy that destroys the land, or a housing development, which covers the land with asphalt, or a ranch, which puts a herd of cattle out on the land, it’s clear where he falls even as representatives of the other industries clamor to gain access to the mix of public and private lands on which Western ranches rely. Although environmentally minded, Collins places himself in opposition to numerous environmental groups that consider any ranching to be destructive, some of which have a great deal of money behind them and whose “main tool is the lawsuit.” Like many Western ranchers, too, Collins has had his run-ins with federal agencies and wildlife biologists 56

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who, on one hand, give pride of place to topminnows and errant jaguars and who, on the other hand, like nothing better than damming up watercourses in remote canyons. Against them, the author holds up the examples of private conservation organizations comprised of people whose livelihoods depend on the land. When not engaged in polemic—thankfully, not often— Collins delivers a few amiable yarns about cowboying: “Cowboy sagas,” he writes, “arise and gain stature from the dubious excitement of chasing range cattle through thickets and over boulder slides.”

A valuable if debatable contribution to the literature of Western land conservation.

IMAGINATION Understanding Our Mind’s Greatest Power

Davies, Jim Pegasus (400 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-64313-203-7

When asked to imagine a brown cow, what takes place inside your head? This pleasantly winding survey offers some clues.

Per John Lennon, can we really imagine that there’s no heaven? Perhaps, writes Davies (Cognitive Science/Carleton Univ.; Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One With the Universe, 2014), but given that imagination seems to be strongly tied to memory, it may be that we can’t really know what we haven’t experienced—or perhaps we can. Either way, it shouldn’t keep us from trying: Imagination is, after all, a component of creativity and of problem-solving. As the author reveals, imagination is strongly linked as well to the related word “imagery,” which opens onto a universe of symbols with its own grammar, declarative and otherwise. Memory recall is a work of imagination “because memories are reconstructed every time they are retrieved”—and therein lies the possibility of negative consequences, since reconstructed memories can be unhappy ones.

Good or bad, Davies examines how thinking works, always in a complicated way, since, as he notes, “there’s a saying in neuroscience: if the brain can do things five different ways, it does all ten.” His discussion covers such matters as hallucinations, which defy description, and imaginary friends: Some readers may take comfort in knowing that there’s no requirement that one abandon them at an early age. “When the child perceives that the parent starts to disapprove,” writes Davies, “the imaginary companions go dark: the children stop sharing information about companions, and only play with them when parents aren’t around.” At the close of his ever engaging book, Davies notes that the visual and spatial components of the brain and the contents it holds are often “bewildering.”

A worthy companion to books by Oliver Sacks, Daniel Dennett, and other students of the always puzzling human mind. (b/w illustrations)

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“EYE-OPENING.” —LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED REVIEW

A M E M O I R OF R A C E , G E N D E R , AND P A R E N T I N G IN A M E R I C A “A M O V I N G

AVAILABLE

Now!

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corrective to the primarily white narrative on adoption.”

—Booklist

Join us T U E S D A Y ,

SEPTEMBER 24, WHEN N E F E R T I T I AUSTIN, author of Motherhood So White, talks with us on the Fully Booked podcast!

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THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPH The True Story of a Native American Child, Lost And Found in America Dorgan, Byron L. Dunne/St. Martin’s (208 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-250-17364-5

A sober and sobering testimonial about the devastating consequences of the United States government’s broken promises to the Native American community.

Former North Dakota Sen. Dorgan (Reckless!: How Debt, Deregulation, and Dark Money Nearly Bankrupted America (And How We Can Fix It!), 2009, etc.) continues his post-office advocacy work with this grim exposé. The central figure is Tamara, a young woman from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Her biography distills hundreds of years of institutional dishonesty, incompetence, and malevolence, which have left the Native American community’s well-being far behind that of other American demographics. Dorgan first encountered Tamara through a newspaper story in 1990. Her parents were abusive alcoholics, and at age 2, she was placed in a foster home where she was beaten nearly to death. The author launched an investigation into the reservation’s child welfare system, which yielded alarming facts but left much work still to be done. This book, he explicitly hopes, will inspire readers to action. Dorgan gradually reveals Tamara’s story, which exemplifies many of the most pressing concerns confronting Native Americans. Each phase of her life becomes an intimate entrance point by which to analyze a particular systemic failing. The author looks into the history and current state of issues, including child welfare, health care, education, and justice. He details problems like generational trauma, environmental degradation, and land theft while highlighting leadership within the community and offering recommendations for a brighter future. The text is well organized, balancing personal anecdotes with history and hard data. Many of the statistics, though, lack citations that would further bolster the author’s credibility among skeptics. Dorgan confronts difficult realities with unblinking sensitivity and an infusion of hope. Policy change is his undisguised intention, so the authorial voice is that of a politician persuading his constituency.

Simultaneously appalling and optimistic, this book will enlist many sympathetic readers to the cause of Native rights.

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A MARVELOUS LIFE The Amazing Story of Stan Lee Fingeroth, Danny St. Martin’s (400 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-250-13390-8

Pow! Zam! If it’s connected to comic superheroes in the last half-century, Stan Lee almost certainly had something to do with it.

Stanley Martin Lieber (1922-2018) was no superhero. He was litigious, scrappy, and inclined to take sole credit for the work of many hands. However, writes former Marvel Comics editor and writer Fingeroth (The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels, 2008, etc.), Lee had an uncanny handle on pop culture and a sense of what comic-book fans wanted. “Was Stan Lee at the right place at the right time—or did he make his time and place the rights ones?” The answer one derives from the author’s longish, detail-packed account is, both. Another conclusion is that the comics business is no laughing matter. As Fingeroth writes, one editor in a comics mill when Lee’s career was just taking off routinely rejected freelance pieces but then had them redone by his favored circle, and some artists and writers who should be better known, such as the long-suffering Jack Kirby, were eclipsed by people like—well, Stan Lee. One result, Fingeroth suggests, was the comix revolution of the 1960s, when creators took more financial risks but kept more of the proceeds as well as the rights to their own creations: “No one owned Mr. Natural but his creator, Robert Crumb. Mister Miracle—who no one ever denied was created by Jack Kirby—was owned by DC Comics.” Lee read the zeitgeist correctly when he sensed that the superheroes who populated Marvel Comics were right for Hollywood, making the transition from televised cartoon series to A-list films. Fingeroth also credits Lee, in between lawsuits, for helping popularize the various comics conventions that have become staples of nerd culture. “From what you know of Stan Lee,” he remarked when asked if Lee still enjoyed attending the conferences in his later years, “do you think he’d rather die at home, alone, in his sleep, or being adored by five thousand people in a convention auditorium?”

Fans of comics culture will enjoy Fingeroth’s tribute to his legendary boss. (8-page color photo insert)

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An enriching, sympathetic consideration of an extraordinary character in the fraught time of Tudor England. walter ralegh

THE COLOR OF LOVE A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl Gad, Marra B. Bolden/Agate (256 pp.) $17.00 paper | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-57284-275-5

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How one woman handled racial prejudice in her family.

Born to a white, Jewish mother and black father, TV and film producer Gad was adopted by a white Jewish family when she was 3. In the eyes of many in her adopted, extended family, she wasn’t white, black, or Jewish, and this was never more evident than with her Great-Aunt Nette, who refused to accept Gad as part of the family. In this somewhat rambling memoir, the author examines her childhood and the awkwardness she felt when people pointed out that she did not look like her mother or father—or that she couldn’t be Jewish because she was mixed-race. Nette was the worst of them all, displaying “a clear hatred” for Gad. Despite sharing some minor similarities with the author, such as craving chocolate cake in times of stress, Nette was constantly aloof or disparaging. The list of slights Gad experienced is long: Nette was happy to give the author’s younger sister her beloved jewelry but gave nothing to Gad; she also flew her sister from Chicago to California for a visit but never sent for Gad. When Nette began to suffer from Alzheimer’s, it was an ironic twist of fate that the only person who could help her was Gad. While the author could have turned her back on her great-aunt, she chose to endure further disdain to help Nette. Though the prose is often lackluster, Gad’s message about resisting hate is solid. “I know far too many people that let the anger…about what it is to live with the constant burn of racism and hate consume them….I choose love…because I will not be an instrument that puts more hate into the world.”

A flawed but honest memoir about looking beyond hate to find some semblance of peace on the other side.

Desmond Rebellions, the Irish attempts to halt Elizabeth’s colonization of the Munster province in Ireland in advance of the certain Spanish invasion, Ralegh showed himself to his queen as the ultimate courtier. His service to Elizabeth was absolute, and in 1584, she “granted [him] a patent to found and possess a colony in America.” Famous for planting a colony on Roanoke Island, Virginia—and then abandoning it when war with Spain called him back—Ralegh, as the author ably delineates, was determined to promote a colony far different from the brutally disastrous Spanish model. Ralegh did not believe in enslaving the Native peoples; rather, he worked toward a benevolent, mutually beneficial partnership between the two. Naturally, there was much propaganda involved in this colonizing effort; so too in Ireland, where great circumstantial evidence suggests Ralegh had a significant role in the introduction of the potato crop, brought from America, as well as tobacco. There was also plenty of self-promotion during his search for El Dorado in South America, which was part of his effort to vindicate himself under the new king, James I. Though Gallay is unfortunately not interested in Ralegh’s personal life, he manages to convey

WALTER RALEGH Architect of Empire Gallay, Alan Basic (576 pp.) $40.00 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-5416-4579-0

A new biography of the Englishman who was both celebrated and excoriated in his Tudor era as a model colonizer.

Beloved by Queen Elizabeth, Walter Ralegh (c. 1552-1618) was handsome, dashing, imaginative, and intelligent. In addition, he could write beautiful poetry. “Imagination was a powerful, creative force in his life,” writes Bancroft Prize winner Gallay (Chair, History/Texas Christian Univ.; Colonial and Revolutionary Amer­ ica: Text and Documents, 2017, etc.). Cutting his teeth during the |

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Imani Perry

THE SCHOLAR AND AUTHOR WRITES HER MOST PERSONAL BOOK YET—A LETTER TO HER SONS AND A TRIBUTE TO BLACK MOTHERHOOD IN THE UNITED STATES

By Hope Wabuke Photo courtesy Sameer Khan

“So many mothers, many thousands more, never saw their children return,” writes Imani Perry in the opening pages of her new book, Breathe: A Letter to My Black Sons (Beacon, Sept. 17). “They witnessed only departures. Theft.”

Perry is writing about the historical facts of black motherhood—how, from 1619 until 1865, black women in the United States were not allowed to mother their own children. Enslaved by white plantation owners, black mothers witnessed their children beaten, raped, and sold away from them. “As a black mother,” says Perry, “I am constantly thinking of slavery because the theft of your children was one of the fundamental wounds.”

A scholar and writer, Perry holds degrees from Yale and Harvard and now teaches at Princeton University.

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She is the author of six other books, most recently Looking for Lorraine and Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation.

While those books are somewhat academic, Breathe is anything but. The prose is riveting: accessible, lyrical, and lush; precise in its construction and in its explication of ideas and personal experience. “I begin each project with the question I am trying to explore,” says Perry, speaking of her versatility with different prose forms, “and then see which form best animates that.”

For Perry’s sons, Issa and Freeman Diallo, two events had special resonance: the execution of Troy Davis for a crime Davis and eyewitnesses said he did not commit, and the murder of teenage Trayvon Martin, shot while walking home by a man who was later acquitted. The boys were shocked into realizing how little value society placed on black lives—that this violence, too, could happen to them some day. “These were the moments in their lives that made them understand justice and injustice and made them want to understand race and racism,” Perry says.

One of the most haunting moments in Breathe occurs late at night when Perry’s alarm has been tripped; the police are en route to her home. But rather than welcoming the police as saviors, Perry feels overwhelmed by fear of the violence police officers have enacted upon unarmed black children. She calls her son on his cellphone and tells him to stay in his room so that the police, seeing a brown-skinned, dreadlocked body, do not react with unconscious bias, assume her son is the invader, and shoot him.

This moment, terrifying in its description, perfectly encapsulates the anxiety of black motherhood.

One cannot always trust in social structures to protect one’s children the way white mothers can; too often, those social structures fail and end the lives of black children instead.

In Breathe, Perry is open, honest, and vulnerable. She shares her struggles with how much racism and injustice to lay bare before her children. “My responsibility is to give them the emotional resources to not be fro-

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zen by this reality but to also become people who care,” says Perry. “We talk continuously—about race, about inequality, about capitalism. This political moment is pretty horrible for all of us, but it’s really hard for our kids because they are witnessing our complete failure to stop all of these impending crises—whether it’s the destruction of the planet or children being held in cages and separated from their families.”

The regular business of motherhood is difficult enough. But when you add to it the terror of your sons being hurt just because of their skin color, it becomes too much. “When you see the next black person shot in the back with impunity and the shooter gets away with it,” Perry says, “you realize there is no parenting that can protect against that violence—that this is a social problem.”

This, in essence, is the main theme of Breathe: How do you keep a black child safe in this racist world?

What is Perry’s advice to black mothers? “I want to tell black mothers that they are more than enough, that they are doing a wonderful job,” says Perry. “We need each other; we have to talk to each other. We have to hold each other up in this particular task. This is not stuff to tackle alone.”

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THE CITY GAME Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team Goodman, Matthew Ballantine (448 pp.) $29.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-101-88283-2

A college basketball Cinderella story that turned into a scandalous tale.

The 1949-1950 City College team achieved a feat no other has or almost certainly ever will: The Beavers won the NCAA and the National Invitational Tournament in the same season. This double national championship run was improbable in part because the parochial, academic-focused college in Manhattan consisted of African American and Jewish players in an otherwise mostly segregated, WASPy sports world. However, even years after the Beavers’ legendary season, the team would come to be viewed as more infamous than famous, as prominent City College players admitted to accepting bribes from gamblers to shave points during games in that and the subsequently tumultuous 1951-1952 season. Goodman (Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World, 2013, etc.) takes on the story more as a historian than sportswriter, and readers will be grateful for that. The author describes much of the on-court play-by-play with hackneyed language common for the genre. The notable exception is a memorable chapter on the Beavers’ defeat of the University of Kentucky, coached by segregationist Adolph Rupp, who once said, “the Lord never meant for a white boy to play with a colored boy… else he wouldn’t have painted them different colors.” Most of the riveting action unfolds outside the arena, in the halls of government and through the hands of bookies; here, Goodman is at his scene-setting best. While he occasionally provides more detail than is necessary, he smoothly shapes readable narratives of a deep roster of characters, including coaches (Goodman paints Hall of Fame head coach Nat Holman as a hands-off figurehead and assistant Bobby Sand as a sympathetic workhorse), politicians, police, detectives, organized criminals, and, of course, players (with focus on the lives and achievements of Eddie Roman, Ed Warner, and Floyd Lane).

Basketball fans are not the only readers who will be edified by this significant slice of New York City history.

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Hope Wabuke is a writer and assistant professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Breathe received a starred review in the July 1, 2019, issue.

the enormous sense of how the gallant courtier, alchemist, humanist, and author helped create the cult of the goddess queen—who summarily ejected him out of her orbit.

An enriching, sympathetic consideration of an extraordinary character in the fraught time of Tudor England. (25 b/w illustrations)

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A smooth read that will give readers of either gender much to ponder—and to argue about. are men animals?

BLACK RADICAL The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter

ARE MEN ANIMALS? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short

Greenidge, Kerri K. Liveright/Norton (400 pp.) $35.00 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-63149-534-2

Gutmann, Matthew Basic (320 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-5416-9958-8

A prominent newsman helped shape decades of civil rights activism.

Greenidge (Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora/Tufts Univ.) makes her literary debut with an impressively researched biography of African American newspaperman and activist William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934), whose uncompromising views made him an influential—and controversial—figure. Born in Boston, raised among educated blacks dubbed “negrowumps,” the precocious Trotter “was reading and writing entire Bible passages by four” and later participated, at his parents’ dinner parties, in “passionate, often raucous debate over racial representation, political radicalism, and the continued deterioration of black civil rights.” He enjoyed a comfortable middle-class childhood, taking piano lessons, playing tennis, and attending desegregated schools. After graduating at the top of his high school class, he went on to Harvard, where he was both popular and respected, a leader among his classmates. “Confident in the principles under which he’d been raised,” Greenidge writes, “Monroe had no reason to believe that he and his colored fellows could not ‘plan a new world’ in which all could contend for racial equality.” That vision was undermined, as he saw it, by Booker T. Washington’s insistence on “conservative racial uplift.” Black citizens, Trotter believed, were being “duped into their own enslavement” by Washington’s refusal to support black dissent and radical efforts to claim civil rights. In 1901, to counter those ideas, Trotter started his own newspaper, the Boston Guardian, aimed at working-class blacks. Within a short time, it became “the greatest race paper” in America, opening its readers’ eyes to radical black politics in Boston and, as the years went on, throughout the country. Greenidge presents Trotter’s growing prominence as a spokesman and gadfly in the context of economic, political, and often violent social upheaval in the first decades of the 20th century. A “prickly” and “inflammatory” personality, Trotter nevertheless attracted loyal followers, buoyed by his “populist demand for racial pride and political respect.” He was, writes the author, “an icon of New Negro idealism, an unapologetic ‘race man’ ready and willing to present his blackness before the world.”

An absorbing biography that offers a fresh perspective on African American history. (20 b/w illustrations)

The evergreen argument of naturevs.-nurture persists, this time regarding masculinity.

“We need to be clearer about gender confusion,” writes Gutmann (Anthropology/Brown Univ.; Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico, 2007, etc.) at the beginning, “better at distinguishing anxieties and limitations from expectations and choices, more determined than ever to untangle the fairy tales about men from the bodies and souls of real live men.” To demonstrate the complexity of gender and the wide variability of human maleness across cultures, he cites the Muxe’, a sort of “third gender” in Mexico; the ritualized homosexuality among the Sambia of New Guinea, where young boys must swallow the semen of older men in order to become adult males; and hijras in India, who “are people born anatomically male” but “achieve spiritual purity by sacrificing their sex organs to a Hindu goddess.” As the author convincingly argues, assessing maleness means looking beyond biology, since biology alone cannot explain these variabilities. “Biological extremism about men and boys is nonsense,” he writes. Throughout, Gutmann stresses that the expression “boys will be boys” gives males a free pass to engage in bad behavior. The real-world consequences of such thinking, writes the author, include the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the 2018 confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Such examples, appealing to some and anathema to others, do give the book a certain air of timeliness but may ultimately serve to date it. Gutmann’s scope is impressive, as he also sheds light on contemporary Chinese gender negotiations in the section about “Blind Date Corner” in Shanghai; reveals some regional differences in male attitudes toward vasectomies; and tackles prevailing myths about the role of testosterone and its relation to violence.

A smooth read that will give readers of either gender much to ponder—and to argue about.

MEDALLION STATUS True Stories From Secret Rooms

Hodgman, John Viking (304 pp.) $25.00 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-525-56110-1

The actor, humorist, and podcast host reflects on his Hollywood status and beyond.

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THE QUEENS OF ANIMATION The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History Holt, Nathalia Little, Brown (352 pp.) $29.00 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-316-43915-2

Inspiring tale of the women who contributed their creative prowess to Walt

Disney’s creations.

Holt (Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, From Missiles to the Moon to Mars, 2016, etc.), who writes with a researcher’s mind and a storyteller’s heart, engagingly chronicles the lives of the women animators at Disney from their humble (and much ill-treated) beginnings breaking into the Ink and Paint Department during the company’s rough commencement, through its founder’s death in 1966, to the studio’s modern age. In the majority of the narrative, the author focuses on five fascinating women who broke into the studio and made significant contributions. The first was Bianca Majolie, who went |

to high school with Walt Disney. The second, Grace Huntington, is worthy of her own biography. When she wasn’t laboring over Snow White or Bambi or dealing with the ingrained chauvinism at the studio, she was breaking aviation records as the highest-flying woman on Earth. There’s also Sylvia Holland and Ethel Kulsar, whose vision for Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid would find its way onto cinema screens nearly 50 years after they wrote its treatment; and Mary Blair, the visionary who became invaluable to Walt, creating the concept art for Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and the Disneyland attraction It’s a Small World. Though these women have long since passed—Holt based her portrayals on correspondence, notes, photographs, journals, and interviews with family and friends—the author’s resurrection of this lost age is eminently readable and inspiring and will appeal to the many fans of Hid­ den Figures. Disney-philes will appreciate many of the rarely revealed stories, some of which are painful—e.g., the stars of the racist-leaning Song of the South, among them Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel, barred from their own premiere.

A compelling story of women with talent, artistic vision, and spines of steel.

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through recent career and personal life experiences. The title references his frequent flier program attached to his favorite airline. His obsession with the accumulating airline perks serves as a continuing metaphor within this loosely constructed narrative. “These stories are about my life and jobs in Hollywood ‘Workland,’ while I was briefly welcome in that country,” writes the author. “But there’s no hiding that these really are stories about fame, and especially its dwindling. They are stories about the many different kinds of gifting lounges, private parties, and secret societies I was given entrance to just because I was on television sometimes, and to which I am no longer invited….” Throughout, Hodgman shares anecdotes about his varied, often amusing experiences working in show business. Early on, the author’s humor fails to make an impact, often feeling forced, but the narrative improves as it moves along. In describing his desperate quest to receive a party invite while staying at the trendy Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, he offers wry insights into Hollywood’s ranking system. Much of Hodgman’s best writing involves his non-Hollywood experiences. In the humorous and surprisingly poignant chapter “This Was All Optional,” he recounts his 18-year relationship with his curmudgeonly cat, who had to be put down. In “Two Buildings in Florida,” the author chronicles his tour through Florida with the Boston Pops, taking detours to one of the headquarters of Scientology and Mar-a-Lago. “A Stranger Comes to Town” recounts his experiences as a part-time resident in rural Maine along with the quirky perks of becoming a well-grounded community member. A dry-witted and meandering writing style seems to have become Hodgman’s trademark, and his latest will appeal most to his devoted readers.

Up-and-down humor and intermittently engaging storytelling that falls short of the author’s capabilities.

A PLACE OUTSIDE THE LAW Forgotten Voices From Guantánamo

Honigsberg, Peter Jan Beacon (288 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-0-8070-2698-4

The founder and director of Witness to Guantánamo shares his research on nearly 20 years of lawlessness there.

Since the military prison was founded in 2002, this “detention center for alleged terrorists” has housed inmates who have been held indefinitely without being charged and without legal representation or recourse for enduring extralegal torture.

(Most have since been released from custody.) Honigsberg (Univ. of San Francisco School of Law; Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror, 2009, etc.) and a crew of researchers have conducted 158 videotaped interviews (more than 300 hours of film across 20 countries) with detainees; their distraught family members; Guantánamo guards and interrogators from the U.S. military; civilian and military lawyers; and interpreters hired by the federal government to deal with the mixture of languages spoken by those incarcerated. The author presents factual accounts based on the videotaped interviews and wide-ranging supplemental research. Honigsberg combines his impressive research with his persistent advocacy for detainees who clearly played no role in the 9/11 attacks and who almost certainly never posed any threat to American citizens. In easily understood lay terms, the author explains how the George W. Bush administration ignored federal court rulings regarding humane treatment, how Congress furthered the lawlessness, how federal lawyers invented the status of “enemy combatant,”

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A solid military history focused on an elite division that made its mark in the final stages of World War II. the winter army

and how the Obama administration never observed promises to shut down Guantánamo. Some of the most unforgettable profiles in the narrative focus on detainee Mourad Benchellali, interpreter Rushan Abbas, military defense attorney Matt Diaz, civilian defense lawyer Gita Gutierrez (on the staff of the Center for Constitutional Rights), military guard Brandon Neely, journalist Carol Rosenberg, and Damien Corsetti, the so-called “King of Torture.” As presented convincingly by the author, the misconduct by the U.S. government is so egregious that readers with a moral compass could fairly conclude that many individuals have been wrongly incarcerated.

A well-documented, hard-hitting, necessary exposé.

THE WINTER ARMY The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America’s Elite Alpine Warriors Isserman, Maurice Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (336 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-328-87143-5

A pioneering military unit’s history, culminating in its breaking the German hold on Italy’s mountains during World War II. Isserman (American History/Hamilton Coll.; Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering, 2017, etc.) traces the story of the 10th Mountain Division from its inception at a meeting of four skiers in 1940, when Finnish ski troops were resisting the invading Germans. One of them, Charles Minot Dole, decided to take the idea of training and equipping an American ski regiment. At first met with indifference, he managed to convince the War Department to take the idea seriously.

The Army set up a training facility in mountain country and began to recruit trained skiers to man the new unit. Eventually, the training camp was located at Camp Hale in the Colorado Rockies, and the soldiers also took lessons in mountain climbing. At first, there was no obvious mission for the 10th Mountain. A mission to the Aleutian Island of Kiska turned out to be a fiasco when the Japanese occupiers evacuated before the U.S. troops arrived. Men were transferring to other units in order to find combat somewhere. It wasn’t until late in the war—December 1944—that the stalled front in the Italian mountains presented a perfect spot for their skills. While the Germans were already in retreat elsewhere in Europe, Hitler ordered them to hold the line in Italy. The 10th Mountain took the critical peaks and ridges to which they were sent; they also endured heavy casualties in the process. Isserman draws on the division’s extensive archives, including personal accounts by many of the surviving soldiers. He focuses on several individuals from their induction to the end of the war, giving the book the feel of an old war movie with a cast drawn from all parts of the country.

The division’s long time in training makes the narrative a slow build, but once the 10th Mountain gets to Italy, there’s plenty of payoff.

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A solid military history focused on an elite division that made its mark in the final stages of World War II. (b/w maps and photos throughout)

JET GIRL My Life in War, Peace, and the Cockpit of the Navy’s Most Lethal Aircraft, the F/A-18 Super Hornet Johnson, Caroline with Williams, Hof St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-250-13929-0

A former Navy jet pilot looks back on her training and career with a mixture of

affection and dismay.

Johnson’s first book alternates between chapters on her training in the Naval Academy and in flight school and those on her deployment on the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the Middle East in 2014. Her story begins in 2005, when she entered the academy as a freshman, transforming from “a somewhat privileged Colorado debutante with doting parents” into “property of the United States Navy.” Perhaps surprisingly, she looks back on her years of strenuous training with more gratitude and enthusiasm than those of her deployments. Although she clearly relished the thrill of flying jets and even of killing “terrorists,” an experience she likens to “playing the most important video game of my life,” she found flying extremely hard on her body and resented the constant low-level—and intermittent higher-level—sexism of life on a ship with very few women.

The most intriguing segments of the book deal with the nittygritty details of Navy life, from the complications of female urination during a jet flight to the mental and physical challenges of SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, escape) school to the supportive relationships among the few women aboard the carrier. (The author’s female solidarity does not extend to the “chickenhawks” and “homecoming queens” married to other officers and allegedly jealous of the time Johnson spent with them.) Less fascinating are the passages that deal with Johnson’s romantic relationship with the emotionally distant Marine she nicknames “the Minotaur” due to his “chiseled upper body and skinny legs.” It’s not clear why the book moves around in time so frequently, since the jumps can cause confusion for readers and the segments don’t shape themselves into a narrative arc.

A realistic look at a difficult, dangerous profession.

(8-page color photo insert)

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IT’S UP TO US Ten Little Ways We Can Bring About Big Change Kasich, John Hanover Square Press (240 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-335-01220-3

ALL HELL BREAKING LOOSE The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change Klare, Michael T. Metropolitan/Henry Holt (304 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-62779-248-6

Though the White House may not believe that the climate is changing for the worse, the U.S. military does.

As Klare (Emeritus, Peace and World Security Studies/Hampshire Coll.; The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, 2012, etc.) writes, one of Donald Trump’s early acts in office was to countermand |

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The former Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate urges readers to get their own houses in order.

It’s nice to be nice, and even if the man to whom Kasich lost the 2016 primary isn’t very nice, he counsels “that we shouldn’t be investing all of our emotions in that one office in the White House.” Quoting the likes of the Who and the Kings of Leon, he reckons that it’s up to us to change the world in smaller ways, telling uplifting stories “that remind us that everything we do accrues to the good—and, inversely, that everything we don’t do lines up against us.” That is, assuming that what we do is do good in the first place, such as the young woman who, in the absence of the person employed to do the job, donned a Chuck E. Cheese costume to save the day for a young man on the spectrum who would otherwise have been shattered by a missed hug.

Kasich proffers a list of 10 principles, and, within the chapters devoted to them, he sometimes offers surprises, as when he defends Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee “as a way to call attention to racial justice and oppression.” Many of Kasich’s homilies are rather pointedly Christian, but by way of Mr. Rogers and not Franklin Graham: “We need to care for each other, love each other…acknowledge each other.” We also must “get out of our silo” and start listening to each other’s points of view, quizzing our sources of news in the same way that we would test the claims of a used-car salesman, said occupation being perhaps the only one held in less esteem than that of a politician. There’s nothing objectionable about the author’s 10-point program, though some farther to the right than he might not be happy with all of his examples.

A be-nicer-to-each-other program that’s worth considering though unlikely to take shape in a time of growing division.

an executive order issued by Barack Obama instructing the military to identify threats to future operations and “enhance climate preparedness and resilience.” Given that so much of America’s arsenal is located and operates in climate-sensitive areas—along the coasts and in increasingly turbulent skies and seas—that order made good sense, but Trump gave pride of place to “the unbridled exploitation of America’s oil, coal, and natural gas reserves” instead. The military, writes the author, has been assessing climate change all the same, recognizing both that the U.S., like all nations, is susceptible to climaterelated catastrophes such as hurricanes and drought and, moreover, that such disasters “will generate cascading effects within affected communities, triggering all sorts of disruptive and unpredictable outcomes.” Among the geopolitical hot spots that Klare identifies are an increasingly iceless Arctic Ocean, effectively a “whole new ocean” that the Navy must guard against Russian encroachment; and the nations of South Asia, where climate change is worsening already fraught relations between India and Pakistan. Senior officials in all branches of the service, “proceeding in their efforts to prepare for combat on a climate-altered planet,” have thus been examining future possibilities as well as observing the already evident effects of climate change, such as the flooding earlier this year that inundated a wing of the nuclear-capable Strategic Command and other military bases along the nation’s interior rivers. Klare closes by expressing hope that “under a new administration, these voices will be heard more widely, and we will all benefit from these officers’ valuable insights.”

A valuable look at strategic thought and planning, one full of bad scenarios—and not much room for hope.

THE BAD SIDE OF BOOKS Selected Essays of D.H. Lawrence

Lawrence, D.H. Ed. by Dyer, Geoff New York Review Books (512 pp.) $19.95 paper | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-68137-363-8 An assortment of nonfiction works

by Lawrence (1885-1930) encompassing memoir, literary criticism, and riffs on travel and religion.

Lawrence is best known for novels like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Rainbow—or perhaps more precisely, the controversies that erupted upon their publication. In “Pornography and Obscenity,” he addresses the matter directly, drawing a line between pornography (“the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it”) and his own mission to loosen sexuality from Victorian constraints. Lawrence wasn’t entirely successful, and he was a man out of time for much of his short life, impatient with British prudery but skeptical of modernism too; rolling his eyes at Joyce and Proust, he wrote that “some convulsion or cataclysm will have to get this serious novel out of its self-consciousness.”

Editor Dyer’s selections reveal Lawrence at his most pointed

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Anne Boyer

A POET WRITES—AND READS—HER WAY THROUGH BREAST CANCER TREATMENT TO CREATE AN UNORTHODOX NEW MEMOIR, THE UNDYING

By Bridgette Bates Photo courtesy Cassandra Gillig

“The book really began the day I found the lump,” says award-winning poet and essayist Anne Boyer of her new lyrical memoir, The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care (FSG, Sept. 17). “Although I didn’t know what was quite happening to me, I was writing through the whole process.”

The harrowing experience that became the driving force behind Boyer’s impassioned meditation was her diagnosis with a highly aggressive breast cancer one week after she turned 41. As a single mother living 66

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on a modest teaching salary, she was forced to reckon not only with the uncertainty of her own illness, which would lead her down the path of chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, but also with navigating the isolating culture of cancer, especially for those with limited resources.

Boyer, whose other titles include A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, found solace in literature and writing.

She immediately began to read everything she could on the history of illness literature, and friends sent her numerous cancer-related books, including too-manyto-count copies of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals.

“The worst thing that could happen to me was to become so terrified or exhausted that I didn’t maintain [the writing] part of my life, especially because once I found out about the cognitive loss through chemotherapy, to write became a way to keep a history of my cognition,” explains Boyer. “I worked really diligently, also with the hope that by continuing to write, if I did get brain damage, that it wasn’t going to attack that part of me….I had attached so much personal value to my capacity to read and write.”

Each electrifying page of The Undying reads like a mantra to survive—physically and intellectually: “Here we are, here I am, alone and myself, half of me fallen off, half of us gone, and all of us as ghosts or the undying ones, half of us dead and half of myself nowhere to be remembered or to be found.”

Distilling her treatments and recovery through varied lenses, including critiques of the health care industry and responses to cancer writing—writing that often skews too hard into rage or too far into positive thinking—Boyer balances sweeping reflections of life and death with the raw reality of her experience.

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and well reasoned (as in the superb “Morality and the Novel,” in which he argues for the importance of candor and integrity in fiction) as well as his most absurdly woolly. For example, an extended selection from an essay on Thomas Hardy gasses about distinctions between men and women, replete with botany and transportation metaphors. But if Lawrence’s ideas about fiction and gender are debatable, his writing is often pure pleasure.

He writes exquisitely about the flora of Tuscany, the sunlight in New Mexico (“arching with a royalty almost cruel over the hollow, uptilted world”), and the resurrection of Christ. Lawrence was at heart a sensualist, but he also had a dishier, snarkier side: “Memoir of Maurice Magnus” is a brutal extended dismissal of a spendthrift aspiring author, and he stomps hard on life in London: “I am being dulled! My spirit is being dulled! My life is dulling down to London dullness.”

A quirky, wide-ranging compendium, revealing Lawrence’s character and debates over life, art, and faith between the world wars.

AMERICA FOR AMERICANS A History of Xenophobia in the United States

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“It still feels like the weight of these events remains too heavy for their telling,” she writes, but she perseveres and pulls off the incredible feat of writing a startlingly profound book through her recovery. Boyer says she accumulated hundreds of thousands of words of rough material, which she originally intended to craft into a straightforward nonfiction narrative, but she kept failing to contort her inherent poetic instincts into a traditional form. “The only way the book ultimately was able to be written was by abandoning all the efforts to bully it into normalcy,” she says. “Instead, if it bent in places toward the lyric, I finally just let it bend.”

Harnessing the intimacy of poetic language to connect more viscerally with the reader, Boyer opens up the microgenre of cancer literature to a wider audience. In one of the final sections confronting her illness, she writes: “I know it has all been confusing, or at least it was to me, but it’s the same confusion as when I am confident that every person who has ever lived knows exactly what I mean when I describe feeling like a snake on the path in the dappled sunshine that turns out, on close inspection, only to be a snake’s discarded skin.”

Lee, Erika Basic (432 pp.) $32.00 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-5416-7260-4

Bridgette Bates’ poetry collection What Is Not Missing Is Light is the recipient of the Black Box Poetry Prize. The Undying received a starred review in the July 1, 2019, issue.

Thoroughgoing survey of an old strain in American history: racial and cultural animus toward newly arrived non-Americans.

“The target of our xenophobia may have changed from decade to decade, but our fear and hatred of foreigners has not.” So writes Lee (Chair, Immigration History/Univ. of Minnesota; The Making of Asian America: A History, 2015, etc.), opening her discussion with examples from the last electoral cycle and the current occupant of the White House—who, though his statements are “either patently false or grossly misleading,” nevertheless cannily taps into that ancient fear. Xenophobia is a powerful motivating factor in American politics, writes Lee, even if it goes against the equally powerful notion that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants. “Even as it has welcomed millions from around the world,” she observes, “it has also deported more immigrants than any other nation—over fifty-five million since 1882.” Even as the current administration is widening its field of targets to include legal as well as illegal immigrants and to curtail both, it draws on former movements: the Know-Nothings of the 19th century, for instance, who “argued that Catholicism and Catholics were dangerous to American values and institutions”—and it’s no accident that the Hispanic migrants are mostly Catholic, even as Islam is also singled out for exclusion today. Lee charts various movements in the nation’s history, from Benjamin Franklin’s lament even before the Revolution that German immigrants would not be able to assimilate to anti-Irish measures in the years around the Civil War, and then |

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Thoughtfully crafted musings about life and death. the depositions

the fervor those very Irish exercised in opposing immigration

by Italians, Asians, and Jews. Throughout, the author notes that xenophobia is good business for its purveyors—politicians, TV commentators, radio hosts, and the like—and it is likely to remain a point for those people to flog in the coming election, as the president proclaims, “Our country is full.”

A carefully constructed history of wide interest to students of American politics.

WHAT WE WILL BECOME A Mother, a Son, and a Journey of Transformation

Lemay, Mimi Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (352 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-0-544-96583-6

A transgender rights advocate’s account of how breaking with Orthodox Judaism helped her come to terms with her gender dysphoric daughter’s wish to transition.

When Lemay learned she was pregnant for the second time, she took an IntelliGender test that revealed she was carrying a boy. However, the child was born a girl, and the author and her husband named her Em. Stubborn and strong-willed, by age 2, her tantrums became as “epic” as her demands; she was, the author writes, a “force of nature.” Em later developed an obsession with a dog sweater, which became the only thing she wanted to wear to preschool. For a time, Lemay believed that Em, who insisted she was male, had entered into a tomboy rebel phase. Yet her odd behavior, which included barking like a dog when people tried to talk to her, also persisted. It was only after consulting with a social worker friend that Lemay began to consider the possibility that her child was actually showing signs of gender dysphoria. In the author’s parallel story about growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household, she recalls how her patriarchal faith sometimes left her longing to be free from the constraints of tradition. Her years at a female Orthodox seminary only confirmed that she could not willingly settle into a life where she would always be subservient to men and their ambitions. Empathizing with Em’s identity crisis, Lemay allowed her daughter to choose a boy’s name she could use around the house and present herself as a brother to two sisters on a family trip.

Not long afterward, she and her husband allowed Em—who now went by the name Jacob—to transition into a happy, welladjusted little boy. Compassionate, wise, and sensitively told, Lemay’s narrative offers moving portraits of a mother and family willing to embrace radical change in order to unconditionally support their child. It will be helpful to any parent experiencing a similar situation.

An intimate and clearly heartfelt memoir.

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THE DEPOSITIONS New and Selected Essays On Being and Ceasing To Be

Lynch, Thomas Norton (352 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-324-00397-7

A funeral director and writer reflects on his life and profession.

“So I’m over at the Hortons’ with my stretcher and minivan and my able apprentice…because they found old George, the cemetery sexton, dead in his bed.” This is vintage Lynch (Whence and Whither: On Lives and Living, 2019, etc.). A published poet of “internationally unheard of poems,” the author is witty and wise, wry and humorous. If he gets a tad mawkish at times, so be it. He’s been the only mortician in a small Michigan town for more than four decades, and he respects his profession and the people he buries and their kin. It’s an honorable trade, and he’s been writing engagingly about it for years. This collection contains 18 pieces from a few of his books as well as a handful of new essays. Lynch writes about embalming, cremating, and burying the old, young children, babies, a beloved cousin in Ireland, his father, two dogs, and the remains of a friend, which he scattered in a Scottish river. The author saw his first dead body with his undertaker father when he was a young boy. In his foreword, Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball writes that reading Lynch is “to suddenly be able to see what it’s like to be comfortable with mortality. To respect it but not fear it. To see both the absurdity and beauty of death, sometimes simultaneously.” In addition to chronicling his tasks as an undertaker, Lynch writes about his fluctuating faith, family, two wives, and friends in Ireland, where he often goes to live in an inherited cottage in West Clare.

He shares his kooky business plan for a Golfatorium and his general disdain for Jessica Mitford’s “muckraking” The Ameri­ can Way of Death. In one of his poems, he writes, “Like politics, all funerals are local.”

Thoughtfully crafted musings about life and death.

AN ELEPHANT IN MY KITCHEN What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage, and Survival

Malby-Anthony, Françoise with Willemsen, Katja Dunne/St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-250-22014-1

The sequel to The Elephant Whisperer (2009), which was written by MalbyAnthony’s late husband, conservationist Lawrence Anthony.

In 1998, the author and her husband founded Thula Thula, a game reserve in South Africa where they rescued a herd of elephants. But when Lawrence died unexpectedly, Malby-Anthony

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A MONTH IN SIENA

Matar, Hisham Random House (144 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-593-12913-5

A quiet meditation on art and life.

Matar’s Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir, The Return (2016), was about his Libyan father who was kidnapped in Cairo and taken back, imprisoned, and “gradually, like salt dissolving in water, was made to vanish.” His father’s presence reverberates throughout this thoughtful, sensitive extended essay about the author’s visit to Siena, where he ruminates and reflects on paintings, faith, love, and his wife, Diana. Matar focuses on the 13th- to 15th-century Sienese School of paintings which “stood alone, neither Byzantine nor of the Renaissance, an anomaly between chapters, like the orchestra tuning its strings in the interval,” but he discusses others as well. First, he explores the town, “as intimate as a locket you could wear around your neck and yet as complex as a maze.” Day or night, the “city seemed to be the one determining the pace and direction of my walks.” In the Palazzo Pubblico, Matar scrutinized a series of frescos the “size of a tennis court” painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338. As the author writes, his Allegory of Good Government is a “hymn to justice.” Matar astutely describes it in great detail, as he does with all the paintings he viewed. When one is in a despondent mood, paintings, Matar |

writes, seem to “articulate a feeling of hope.” He also visited a vast cemetery, a “glimpse [of] death’s endless appetite.” Over the month, he talked with a variety of Sienese people, including a Jordanian man whom he befriended. One by one, paintings flow by: Caravaggio’s “curiously tragic” David With the Head of Goliath, Duccio di Buoninsegna’s “epic altarpiece,” Maestà. Mounted onto a cart in 1311, it was paraded through Siena. Along the way, Matar also ponders the metaphysics of rooms and offers a luminous, historical assessment of the Black Death.

A beautifully written, pensive, and restorative memoir. (full-color illustrations throughout; full-color endpapers)

HIGHWAY OF TEARS A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

McDiarmid, Jessica Atria (320 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-5011-6028-8

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was faced with the formidable task of continuing their work alone, with a limited ability to speak the native language in a land where few women hold positions of authority. In this endearing and inspirational follow-up to The Elephant Whisperer—written with the assistance of Willemsen (Shepherd’s Prayer, 2012), who grew up in South Africa—Malby-Anthony shares how she not only managed to preserve their elephant herd, but went on to Phase 2 of their dream: opening a nursery for orphaned baby elephants, a hippo who didn’t like water, and rhinos whose mothers had been killed for their horns. The author shares multiple stories about her daunting mission to bring these orphaned animals back from the brink of death due to starvation, dehydration, and simple fear. She discusses the disgusting nature of poaching for horns (“they turned her beautiful face into a gruesome mess of blood and flesh, and she was alive when they did it….They butchered her while she was a breathing, living, feeling rhino”), which command incredible prices on the black market, and the extreme measures she takes in order to protect the animals in her care.

Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, the game reserve was still brutally attacked. The common threads that run throughout her story are love and respect for these wild animals and the heartwarming nature of the animal families that embrace each other as well as Malby-Anthony and her dogs. The writing is full of vivid descriptions that place readers in the middle of the action, making the book difficult to put down.

An engrossing eye-opener on the fragility of South Africa’s fauna. (two 8-page color photo inserts)

A powerful account of an area of British Columbia in which women and girls are being murdered or disappearing without a trace.

Highway 16, which runs for 735 kilometers west from Prince Rupert in the northwest corner of B.C., is called the Highway of Tears because more than 30 girls and women, by far most of them members of Indigenous families, have been murdered or disappeared along that route. Canadian journalist and first-time author McDiarmid, who grew up near the highway, traces in agonizing detail the lives and fates of several of those women, but the narrative is much more than just a list of tragedies. The author, whose writing has appeared in the Associated Press and the Toronto Star, among other publications, uses the highway as a microcosm to shine a light on the racism against Indigenous people that stretches across Canada. The numbers are startling: murders or disappearances of between 1,000 and 4,000 (depending on who’s counting) women and girls, most of them Indigenous, over the past few decades. McDiarmid delves into the history of how racism has forced many Indigenous people into poverty, which in turn has led to drug addiction, crime, violence, and broken families. She also exposes the uncaring attitudes of many law enforcement agencies when the victims are Indigenous; and of the press, which devotes noticeably less space—if any at all—to murders and disappearances of Indigenous people compared with whites. The author, writing with deeply felt emotion, makes it abundantly clear that this racism persists today. If there is a weakness in her book, it is the sometimes-rough transitions among the several narrative elements— the personal stories, the indictments of law enforcement and the press, and the tumultuous history of the Indigenous people.

Nonetheless, McDiarmid brings to light a little-known story that deserves more attention.

A difficult but essential read.

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A shimmering account both as a travelogue of the deep north and vivid portrayal of a grizzly bear attack. the twenty- ninth day

THE TWENTY-NINTH DAY Surviving a Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra

SECONDHAND Travels in the New Global Garage Sale

Messenger, Alex Blackstone (272 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-9825-8333-0

The tale of six young men on a canoeing expedition in northern Canada—and the bear attack that almost killed one of them.

Messenger was 17 when he embarked on a journey with his comrades on a remote stretch of rivers and lakes in Nunavut, Canada. From the beginning, this chronicle of their days afield is populated by original observations—e.g., the Arctic terns’ “black-and-white feathers appearing and vanishing so suddenly they looked silver”—and salutes to a landscape rich with possibilities. The group spent the first few days getting used to the rhythm of outdoor life on the water, discovering a shortage in their food supplies, contending with heavy weather and swarms of insects, and making all the fundamental errors that mark the beginning of a trip. Messenger is equally comfortable describing flat water and rapids, great recycling whorls and standing waves of water studded with jagged rocks. It’s clear that the author and his buddies were immersed in the sheer effort of the undertaking. “We lost ourselves in the labor and exertion,” he writes. “We plodded on.” One day, while out walking the high ridges of the tundra alone, Messenger was attacked by a grizzly bear, a harrowing encounter that the author recounts in a highly compelling fashion. His wounds were significant, and much of the second half of the book concerns the many difficulties of traveling while attending to his injuries. Despite all his exertions, the nominal leader of the trip couldn’t stop the creeping infection that enveloped the largest of the wounds. “I tried to contain the pain. I failed,” he writes about the agonizing process of irrigating the wound. Rescue was on the way but not before days of rain and gale-force winds, further mishaps, and bad dreams of the PTSD variety.

A shimmering account both as a travelogue of the deep north and vivid portrayal of a grizzly bear attack. (photos throughout)

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Minter, Adam Bloomsbury (304 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-63557-010-6

In a follow-up to Junkyard Planet (2013), Malaysia-based Bloomberg Opinion columnist Minter looks at what happens to our discarded stuff, the used household goods and clothing donated to thrift stores or sold at garage sales.

While conducting his research, the author traveled widely in North America, Asia, and Africa to interview people involved in every aspect of the secondhand business. Because statistics on the business are scanty, Minter tells much of his story through the people he met at the many stops in his global journey. These include home cleanout businesses in Minnesota and in Japan, a swap meet in Mexico, a used clothing exporter in Canada, a sorting warehouse in Nigeria, and a Goodwill store in Arizona (in 2016, Goodwill International “generated $4.16 billion in retail sales, making it the king of an American thrift trade that generated at least $17.5 billion in revenue”). Chronicling the work of the employees at these various businesses, Minter shows readers their expertise, what special knowledge they need to have to operate successfully, what problems they face, and how the secondhand business is changing. China, for instance, used to be an importer of used clothing, but it is now an exporter. The author’s respect for the people working in the business is clear, but the characterdriven approach tends to lengthen the report and blur its clarity. Still, readers will come away with an understanding that the supply of secondhand goods is vast, the amount of stuff in the world is still growing, and that the secondhand business is supplying billions of people around the world with goods they want and need. The author also offers some recommendations, especially about the quality of goods, noting how the manufacture of more durable and repairable goods would have a positive effect on the secondhand business, something he notes that is beginning to happen already. The handful of black-and-white photographs, unfortunately, are generally small, murky, and unhelpful.

A character-driven, detailed, eye-opening report far richer in description than analysis. (illustrations)

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THE ZOOKEEPERS’ WAR An Incredible True Story From the Cold War

THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women

Mohnhaupt, J.W. Trans. by Frisch, Shelley Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-5011-8849-7

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A group portrait of a celebrated crime writer and her Oxford friends.

When Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) arrived at Somerville College in 1912, women were second-class citizens, able to take classes but not earn degrees. Undaunted, the future novelist and other female students read their works in progress aloud—with “no false modesty or feminine shame”—at meetings of a group that Sayers dubbed the Mutual Admiration Society. In this wellresearched group biography, Moulton (History/Univ. of Birmingham; Ireland and the Irish in Interwar England, 2014) follows four pillars of the “society” as they challenged stereotypes of women throughout their lives: Muriel St. Clare Byrne, a distinguished historian and playwright; Charis Barnett Frankenburg, a birth control pioneer who wrote popular child-rearing manuals; Dorothea Hanbury Rowe, the co-founder of an influential amateur theater company; and Sayers, the author of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective stories. Dividing its focus among the women, the book shows how they helped one another as friends, intellectual sounding boards, and, in the case of Sayers and Byrne, collaborators on the play Busman’s Honeymoon. The drawback to this approach is that Sayers was the star from the start, and a surfeit of prosaic details about her friends and their outliers makes for a slow-paced story, further encumbered with redundancies (most Wimsey novels are “enduring classics”), retrofitted jargon (the women risked “marginality within the gender politics of their era”), and unedifying exposition (Frankenburg found it “enormously stressful” to have three sons in uniform in World War II). Still, Moulton offers telling glimpses of Sayers, whether she’s making a daring plan to hide her son born out of wedlock or exulting when her agent sells Whose Body? to Boni & Liveright: “I am rich! I am famous!” Moulton also has a firm answer to the question of who inspired Lord Peter: “The early Wimsey is, above all, an idealized version of DLS herself, with bits and pieces of her experiences and her fantasies woven in to make a genuinely fictional character.”

Lord Peter Wimsey’s creator upstages her companions as they blaze trails for women. (20 illustrations)

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The Cold War was fought by proxies, to be sure—but pandas and pangolins?

An offbeat tale from the Cold War and a bestseller in Germany after its original publication in 2017.

As journalist Mohnhaupt writes in his first book translated into English, Berlin’s zoo animals, like its people, suffered terribly during World War II. After the war, in an occupied city isolated from the surrounding countryside, animals were valued even more, and two rival zoos, one in the Russian-governed eastern sector and the other in the Allied-governed west, sprang up.

Over the years, each drew a steady stream of visitors—millions, in fact, and this in a (divided) city that, during the Cold War years, didn’t draw many tourists. A rivalry developed, punctuated in the opening pages by an unseemly moment between the respective zoo directors: “One word led to another, and eventually a shoving match ensued between the two aging men— neither much taller than five foot five—right there among the elephants.” The Berlin Zoo on one hand and the Tierpark on the other became the beneficiaries of an unlikely race for animalkeeping supremacy, and with plenty of near-comical turns—e.g., when the East German institution had to use capitalist shipping to send “four hyenas and six lions from its world-famous breeding center” to China in exchange for Siberian tigers. More fraught were efforts to keep elephants, the ostensible subject of the directors’ brawl, and other exotic creatures. As Mohnhaupt notes, the East German zookeeper was fierce enough to keep the Stasi away, the secret police agency reasoning, by way of face-saving, that animal lovers were harmless. Meanwhile, his West German counterpart was shrewd at corralling huge sums of money that eventually made the Berlin Zoo “the world’s most biodiverse.” Reunification did little to stem the rivalry at first, writes the author, though the turf war has since simmered down.

It’s not quite a Bridge of Spies–level thriller, but there are plenty of unexpected, entertaining twists behind bars. (8 pages of b/w photos)

Moulton, Mo Basic (384 pp.) $32.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-5416-4447-2

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A pointed analysis of a country that, though much in the news, remains a mystery to most outsiders. the hidden history of burma

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF BURMA Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century

THINK, WRITE, SPEAK Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor

Nabokov, Vladimir Ed. by Boyd, Brian & Tolstoy, Anastasia Knopf (576 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-101-87491-2

Myint-U, Thant Norton (272 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-324-00329-8

Recent developments in a South Asian country that, the author suggests, is unduly shackled by the past.

At the beginning of the 2010s, writes Myint-U (Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, 2012, etc.), everything seemed to be looking up for his nation: An entrenched military government was giving up power to a civilian one, and “everybody, at least in the West, began to believe that the country was in the midst of an astonishing transformation.” Alas, Burma, endowed with some of the planet’s greatest biodiversity, is also riven by ethnic tensions and politics colored by money, much of it from the trade in opium-based drugs. In Burmese thought, writes the author, “kala” has an important role—that is, a notion of overarching ethnicity that sharply separates people into clans, tribes, groups of others. Colonizing powers reinforced this division. As the author notes, during World II, Japan backed the Arakanese Buddhists while the British armed the Muslims who are now in the headlines as the Rohingya. These groups continue to clash, with recent ethnic violence forcing untold hundreds of thousands of Burmese Muslims to take refuge in neighboring Bangladesh. The world found much hope in the freeing of former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, who became a member of parliament and then president. However, writes the author, she has since practiced politics pretty much as usual, seeking a reconciliation between her party and the all-powerful military and emphasizing “at every opportunity that she loved the army…and that she wanted more than anything to see it stronger and more respected than ever.” The conflict rages on, not just internally, but also with an encroaching China. So does economic anxiety, as the government “advocated liberalization and a welcoming of foreign investment” but refused to abandon cronyism and bureaucratic micromanagement. The author calls Burma an “unfinished nation,” and the description seems apt.

A pointed analysis of a country that, though much in the news, remains a mystery to most outsiders.

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Scores of interviews reveal Nabokov’s sly wit and powerful opinions.

Award-winning biographer, editor, and literary critic Boyd (English/Univ. of Auckland; Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition and Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 2012, etc.) and scholar and translator Tolstoy (Junior Research Fellow/University of Oxford; co-translator: Nabokov’s The Tragedy of Mister Morn, 2013) have gathered more than 150 uncollected writings by the prolific Nabokov (Letters to Véra, 2014, etc.): essays, reviews, questionnaire responses, letters to editors, and—accounting for the majority of the pieces—interviews, most dating from the “post-Lolita years of world fame.” An informative introduction places the selections in the context of Nabokov’s life and writing career.

After Lolita appeared in 1958, interviewers pressed Nabokov about not only the book, but also opinions of other writers, his decision to live in America (the “country where I’ve breathed most deeply,” he said), his interest in butterflies, and his assessment of his own work. Boyd has condensed some of the more repetitive interviews. Nabokov claimed that his favorite book was the just-published Lolita, “the story of a poor, charming girl” who was “caught up by a disgusting and cruel man.” To the suggestion that any of his books could be elucidated by Freudian interpretation, he was indignant: Freud, he proclaimed, “has been one of the most pernicious influences on literature…a medieval mind dealing in medieval symbols.” Psychoanalysis, he added, “has something Bolshevik: internal police.” Nabokov had similarly vehement opinions about a host of writers: Dostoevsky was “a journalist, like Balzac,” and “Camus is a thirdrate novelist.” He admired Hemingway’s short stories, but he thought his novels were “abominable.” Of Nobel Prize winner Boris Pasternak, Nabokov derided Dr. Zhivago as “a sorry thing, full of clichés, clumsy, trivial and melodramatic.” J.D. Salinger, though, was “a great, wonderful writer—the best American novelist.” When asked what other career he might have chosen “if the muse failed,” Nabokov suggested a lepidopterist, chess grandmaster, or a “tennis ace with an unreturnable service.”

A rich treat for Nabokov’s admirers. (8 illustrations)

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ALTA CALIFORNIA From San Diego to San Francisco, a Journey on Foot To Rediscover the Golden State

BOWIE’S BOOKSHELF The Hundred Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life O’Connell, John Illus. by Paadín, Luis Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $18.00 paper | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-982112-54-7

Neely, Nick Counterpoint (432 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-64009-165-8

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A peek into the psyche of one of rock’s most inscrutable figures through the books that had the strongest impact on him.

In 2013, London’s Victoria & Albert Museum hosted an exhibition, “David Bowie Is,” for which the star drafted a list of the 100 books that had influenced him. O’Connell, a veteran music journalist, gamely delivers brief essays on each title, with context on what influence Bowie might have drawn from them.

This is sometimes a tall order. Many of Bowie’s selections speak to his obvious passion for music, especially early rock ’n’ roll and R&B (Greil Marcus, Gerri Hershey), his famous Japanophilia (Yukio Mishima, Tadanori Yokoo), and his stint in Germany (Alfred Döblin, Otto Friedrich). There are a few surprising anecdotes—e.g., Alberto Denti di Pirajno’s obscure 1956 memoir, A Grave for a Dolphin directly inspired Bowie’s classic song “Heroes.” But many of Bowie’s selections don’t lend themselves to such cause-and-effect treatment. The best O’Connell can make of Bowie’s affection for Frank Norris’ McTeague and William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is that teeth feature prominently and Bowie had dental implants; he can only speculate that Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard appealed for its story of a giant in decline. That straining for meaning suggests that this project might better have been approached thematically rather than book by book. Exploring Bowie’s interest in transgressive literature by Hubert Selby, Mikhail Bulgakov, Jack Kerouac, and John Rechy needn’t require extensive plot summaries of each novel; numerous books on divided selves speak collectively to Bowie’s career-long shape-shifting (and his late schizophrenic half brother). Still, O’Connell’s approach does underscore the range and playfulness in Bowie’s reading, from hefty tomes on the Russian Revolution to laddish comic books like The Beano.

An enlightening if imperfectly conceived look at Bowie’s eclectic bookshelf.

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A chronicle of the author’s 12-week, 650-mile journey, on foot, from San Diego to San Francisco, tracing a Spanish expedition of 64 men and 50 mules led by Capt. Gaspar de Portolá from July 14 to Nov. 6, 1769.

As journalist and essayist Neely (Coast Range: A Collection From the Pacific Edge, 2016) writes, the party was tasked with mapping Monterey Bay, which Spain saw as a strategic outpost, and determining sites for future Catholic missions to convert some 300,000 natives and help the nation hold coveted territory. Several members of Portolá’s expedition kept journals to which the author refers frequently as he compares his own journey with that of his predecessors. Neely’s task has no international consequences: He just wanted to get acquainted with the land, and he shares his experiences in meticulous, sometimes overwhelming detail. Throughout the narrative, the author offers precise and often lyrical descriptions of landscapes and vistas, sky and sea, flora and fauna. He recounts his conversations, the food he ate, fences and No Trespassing warnings that impeded him, menacing traffic, signs of urban blight (graffiti, dumpsters, dumped trash), and surprising insect life: a tarantula as big as his palm, for example, with bristles “tinged with red, especially on its bulbous abdomen.” He was also bitten, between his toes, by big ants as he nestled in his sleeping bag.

Along the way, Neely inevitably encountered tourist sites. At Mission San Juan Capistrano, for example, he notes the “commercialization and fetishization of California’s missions, trafficking in mystique and fantasy.” He visited the La Brea Tar Pits Museum, where he engaged with an interactive display inviting him to “Discover what it’s like to be trapped in tar.” He also saw evidence of opulent wealth at the Getty Museum, which conveys “a sepulchral feel, as if Getty’s bones were hidden behind some unidentified stone block,” and the grand 165-room Hearst Castle, which overlooks “the gilded, retina-burning Pacific.”

A sprawling record of a unique adventure. (9 maps)

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A promising first book. some of us are very hungry now

IAN MCKELLEN A Biography

O’Connor, Garry St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-250-22388-3

The life and career of the beloved actor.

O’Connor (The Vagabond Lover: A Father-Son Memoir, 2017, etc.) has known McKellen (b. 1939) since their student days at Cambridge in the 1950s, but when he asked his celebrated friend to help write this book, McKellen declined, saying “I’ve only got a few years left,” and “I’d be wasting your time, my time, correcting and disputing things.” The resulting book demonstrates how much McKellen has done with his years and plans to do with his remaining allotment. Born in Burnley, England, to a civil engineer father and “traditional Lancashire housewife,” McKellen was devastated at age 12 when his mother died from breast cancer, a tragedy that “became a driver towards endless achievement and ambition.” O’Connor chronicles the highs and lows of that ambition, from McKellen’s work in Cambridge plays to his long career in the theater to his late-in-life success in films, most remuneratively his roles as Magneto in the X-Men series and as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings series.

The author also charts the trajectory of McKellen’s personal life, including his early realization that he was gay, his many years of keeping it hidden from everyone but close theater friends, and his decades as a vocal champion of gay rights. O’Connor inserts himself into the narrative more than he should: the conversations he has had with other theater people, the plays he has directed, and so on. He often digresses with tangential stories, such as the three pages of anecdotes about Laurence Olivier, whom McKellen idolizes. However, there’s enough backstage insight to entertain McKellen fans. The book is packed with anecdotes, as when McKellen, after his Lord of the Rings success, takes guests to a restaurant, “rises to his feet, looks around benignly grinning at everyone, and addresses the company with the words, ‘Gandalf pays!’ ” A chatty biography of one of the era’s greatest actors.

(16-page b/w photo insert)

SELF-CONFIDENCE A Philosophy Pépin, Charles Trans. by Wood, Willard Other Press (224 pp.) $25.99 | Dec. 31, 2019 978-1-59051-093-3

Confidence in one’s self requires embracing life’s essential mystery.

French philosopher and novelist Pépin, who has extolled beauty, joy, and failure in previous books of popular philosophy, now offers a 74

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slim volume on self-confidence, broadly conceived as “confidence in others, confidence in one’s own capabilities, and confidence in life.” Although providing no evidence, the author is certain that we are all experiencing a crisis of self-confidence, caused by our loss of “direct contact with things” and even with “pinpointing our profession.” In one of many sweeping generalizations, he asserts, “being as super-connected as we are puts us all at a remove from basic doing and leaves us few concrete opportunities for developing confidence.” Pépin cites several individuals who seem to exude confidence—Madonna and Serena Williams, for example—to support his contention that having someone who trusts and encourages us builds confidence; so does honing a skill. “Among great artists,” he writes, echoing Malcolm Gladwell, “confidence comes first and above all from constant, devoted, almost obsessional practice.” Pépin, though, is interested in more than confidence in one’s ability. Through perfecting her skill as a tennis player, Williams discovered “what kind of woman she was. She understood she was the kind of person who becomes her truest self in moments of adversity.”

As the author expands on his theme, confidence transcends its connection to mastery to mean “surrender” to “cosmos, God, or life.” This spiritual awakening allows us to respond authentically to nature and to beauty, trusting our feelings, with no need for experts’ validation. “Each time we recognize that something is beautiful without reference to external criteria, we are gaining confidence in ourselves,” Pépin writes. “But beauty gives us more than that: it fills us with life force and helps us find our courage.” Although drawing on many canonical writers and philosophers—Emerson, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Kant, and others— Pépin’s message is common to most self-help books: We must celebrate ourselves, “not relative to the value of others.” We are each “solitaire diamonds.”

A well-meaning paean to self-affirmation.

SOME OF US ARE VERY HUNGRY NOW

Perry, Andre Two Dollar Radio (172 pp.) $15.99 paper | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-937512-83-5

A debut collection of interrelated essays finds a young writer trying to navigate his way through identity and challenges of race, privilege, sexuality, and culture.

Reflective and creative, Perry has been on a pilgrimage of self-discovery that has led him from prep school and Princeton out East to the freer-spirited bohemia of San Francisco, describing himself in 2003 as “25, black, and frequently straight.” As the collection nears its end, he is “31, almost 32, and my future seemed empty.” After moving to Iowa City for a graduate program in writing, he struggled with his identity and what he wanted amid “the engulfing whiteness of Iowa, a shroud that would surely overwhelm me.” His educational pedigree conferred on him a sense of privilege, of “passage to live among various stratifications of the white world,” which seemed to some to

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render his racial authenticity suspect. “You’re not a real nigger,” insisted one of his white classmates, though Perry recognizes that race is the categorical qualifier through which others perceive him and through which he perceives himself. He also recognizes that words can hurt and that he has used them to hurt.

Chronologically arranged to mark the author’s geographical, psychological, and cultural progression, the essays show that he writes engagingly, feels strongly, thinks obsessively about who he is and what he wants, and doesn’t accomplish anything of lasting significance. He writes about a lot that goes nowhere: sex, relationships, bands, writing, and his graduate degree. Yet throughout his journey of self-discovery, he has been gathering material, experiences that he can mine in writing. The final section features three brief letters addressed to “Emma,” a woman not previously mentioned in the collection. The first suggests that she “might be some sort of light I could follow on my way out of the cave.” At this point, it seems Perry has begun to find his way.

A promising first book.

Priyadarshi, Tenzin & Houshmand, Zara Spiegel & Grau (256 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-984819-85-7

The director of the Ethics Initiative at the MIT Media Lab tells the compelling story of how he evolved away from his Hindu Brahmin background to become a Buddhist monk.

Priyadarshi was 10 years old when he first received the call to abandon “the comfort zone of the familiar, with its false sense of certainty and complacent promises.” After awakening from a recurring dream of a Japanese Buddhist monk, he left his school dormitory in Kolkata and traveled to a Buddhist temple several hours away in Rajgir. There, he found a photograph of the man he had seen in his dreams and met a monk named Nabatame who told Priyadarshi that he had been “expect[ed].”

By the time his uncle found him, Priyadarshi knew that his mission was to follow the teachings of the Buddha. Forced to return home, he fought to carry on with a plan that went against what was expected of him as the member of a Brahmin family. He reached an uneasy truce with his parents only after he promised to continue his schooling by day and attend prayer sessions at the local Buddhist temple before dawn and at night. In the years that followed, he traveled to other Buddhist temples in India and Nepal. Later, he failed his university entrance exams so that he could become a fully ordained monk. His family then sent him to live with an uncle in New York, where he attended college and studied world religions. A scholarship to study abroad for a year returned him to India, where he continued the monastic education that would culminate in ordination. Later, the author attended Harvard Divinity School and became a |

THE AMBASSADORS America’s Diplomats on the Front Lines Richter, Paul Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-5011-7241-0

An intriguing look at U.S. diplomats in the greater Middle East.

On Sept. 11, 2012, Islamist militants killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in raids on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. Those horrific attacks were only two of more than 400 “significant” attacks on “U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel” since 2001. In his first book, Richter, a former Los Angeles Times reporter in the Washington, D.C., bureau, profiles four diplomats—Stevens, Ryan C. Crocker (ambassador to Afghanistan, 2011-2012), Robert S. Ford (ambassador to Syria, 2010-2014), and Anne W. Patterson (ambassador to Egypt, 2011-2013)—who chose to serve in some of the most dangerous locales of the immediate post–9/11 years. The author, whose reporting has taken him to more than 60 countries, effectively relates the admirable, often inspiring efforts of the four diplomats who did their best in the most trying circumstances; they were indeed “the best people for the worst places.” Richter shows Crocker using a sleeping bag in his Kabul office, Ford traversing the deadly streets of Najaf, Iraq, without a bodyguard, and an Egyptian magazine calling Patterson “The Ambassador from Hell.” Stevens paid the ultimate price for his service, and Richter’s depiction of his demise is both captivating and heartbreaking. The author slips on occasion. Crocker returned to Washington from a Middle East trip in December 2001, not December 2002, and Iron Maiden’s “2 Minutes to Midnight” is a song, not an album. Elsewhere, the author undermines his argument for a U.S. role in “steady[ing] these countries” when he admits that the nations in question are “weak and failing societies” riddled with corruption, incompetent governance, and ethnic and religious infighting. Still, Richter does a service by showing the diplomats’ accomplishments to readers. He also includes a helpful timeline and a 12-page cast of characters.

“There are no ticker tape parades for diplomats,” a State Department official once said. This book gives them the recognition they deserve. (4 pages of photos)

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RUNNING TOWARD MYSTERY The Adventure of an Unconventional Life

visiting scholar at MIT, where he began an interdisciplinary dialogue about ethics that evolved into the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values. In this wise and searching journey Priyadarshi fearlessly engages with the mystery of life and explores the visible and invisible connections that comprise our “vast web” of being.

A spiritual memoir with plenty of food for thought.

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Solid sociology in pursuit of an issue that continues to confound. newcomers

THE MOVES THAT MATTER A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life Rowson, Jonathan Bloomsbury (352 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-63557-332-9

A former British Chess Champion (2004-2006) considers the connections between chess and life—and finds many.

Rowson (Chess for Zebras, 2005, etc.), who now plays only occasionally, frequently reminds readers that he has a doctorate from Harvard, the flow of the narrative sometimes thickened with quotations and allusions, both from literary and intellectual figures (Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Emerson, Dylan Thomas) and from popular culture (The Velveteen Rabbit, The Wire, Groundhog Day). His text is a somewhat motley mix of memoir and self-help. We learn about his boyhood beginnings with chess and various games (good, bad, and ugly), his marriage and son, and his decision to return to school to get his doctorate. Rowson divides his chapters (more than 60) into subheadings that bear such titles as “Ceasing Hostilities,” “How to Give Praise,” “The Politics of Puppets and Muppets,” and “Race Is Not Black and White.” His advice ranges from trenchant to amusing—e.g., a wonderful section about applying chess strategy to changing an infant’s diapers.

The author also offers bons mots (“chess players are like sniffer dogs”), some of which could appear in just about any self-help text (“We are more like glass tables than we typically imagine.

Mostly we are solid, but we can and do crack up”). Along the way, Rowson deals with politics, religion, mistakes, artificial intelligence, and the traits that champions possess, among many other weighty matters. Perhaps the most affecting—and modest—moments are when he writes about accepting your status and about decline and death. “I am probably Scotland’s strongest-ever player, but with all due respect to fellow Scots, in chess terms that is a bit like being the highest mountain in Kansas,” he writes of his career. “I never threatened to be the very best British player, and I was never world class.”

Accounts of significant chess experiences lightly salted with self-regard and sometimes peppered with platitude.

NEWCOMERS Gentrification and Its Discontents

Schuerman, Matthew L. Univ. of Chicago (320 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 8, 2019 978-0-226-47626-1

A study of gentrification through the stories of a few specific neighborhoods in three major American cities.

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allowing readers to understand it as a complex phenomenon in urban neighborhoods—never entirely negative or entirely positive and usually a mixture that improves the lots of some residents while hurting others. Drawing on case studies from neighborhoods in New York City (northwest Brooklyn), San Francisco (the Mission District), and Chicago (the former site of the notorious Cabrini-Green housing project), the author humanizes the community transformations so that readers who have never set foot in those locales—and even those who know them personally—fully comprehend the dynamics involved when wealthy newcomers move in and less financially well-off residents are displaced. Despite the many negative elements associated with gentrification, Schuerman maintains an optimistic tone, pointing out plenty of evidence in his research that the nonwealthy need not automatically suffer via displacement. Often, the author shows, the incoming residents and the departing residents do not entirely affect the outcome. Rather, public policymakers enhance or harm changing neighborhoods by the rules they adopt and enforce. Schuerman makes the case in all three of the cities he studied that the professional planners lacked vision, and as a result, they lost control of the gentrification early and could never adequately smooth over the glitches. In addition to teaching through illuminating case studies, the author occasionally departs from that narrative to address issues that cut across income levels. For example, can rent control instituted and enforced by city governments solve the conundrum of affordable housing shortages? Or does it actually reduce affordable housing stock in the long run? These and many other pertinent issues run throughout the author’s informed text. Schuerman seems taken with the character of specific neighborhoods before they gentrified, but he never allows nostalgia to compromise his educated opinions.

Solid sociology in pursuit of an issue that continues to confound.

THE WHITE MAN’S GUIDE TO WHITE MALE WRITERS OF THE WESTERN CANON

Schwartz, Dana Illus. by Katzenstein, Jason Adam Perennial/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $16.99 paper | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-06-286787-2

A subversive lampoon of the Western literary canon.

Culture writer and creator of the parody Twitter account @guyinyourmfa, Schwartz (Choose Your Own Disaster, 2018, etc.) distills 500 years of literary history through the eyes of a fictional know-it-all. This entertaining guide starts with Shakespeare and winds through Goethe, Tolstoy, Faulkner, and fiction’s heavy hitters, culminating with the Jonathans (Franzen, Safran Foer, and Lethem). Each profile summarizes a particular author’s biographical highlights and major works.

Amid factual details, the MFA student inserts revealing asides and footnotes. Off-track forays, from how to roll cigarettes

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THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT OLIVETTI IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World’s First Desktop Computer

IBM enjoyed on such machines. (Later, Olivetti developed a portable calculator so closely emulated by HP that the Italian company launched and won a copyright suit.) Word came that Olivetti wasn’t reluctant to sell the technology to Russia and China, among other potential customers, and not long after, Olivetti was dead, the victim of a heart attack when presumed in the prime of health. A year and a half later, his chief technologist and designer died in a suspicious car crash. Did American intelligence do these dirty deeds? It’s not outside the realm of possibility; after all, Secrest writes, the Russians likely assassinated two American scientists involved in missile guidance systems. That much of the author’s argument proceeds by inference and suggestion doesn’t diminish its plausibility.

A competently written story that limns the complex spy-vs.-spy calculus of a time still fresh in memory. (82 illustrations)

MARY BALL WASHINGTON The Untold Story of George Washington’s Mother Shirley, Craig Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $28.99 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-0-06-245651-9

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to how to pen dirtier love notes à la Joyce, build a road map for emulating the ultimate writer. Pointed descriptions home in on the features that have stained some of the authors’ reputations. Failed marriages, self-absorption, Updike’s infamous Rabbit character, and uglier histories—such as Mailer’s violence—portray a flawed bunch. Comedy writer and cartoonist Katzenstein creates expressive, grayscale headshots with sartorial flair. Ranging from brow-heavy seriousness to closed-mouth smiles, the authors’ faces are humorously annotated. (Of Kafka: “Auteur hair.” Henry James: “Eye bags—genius never sleeps.”

Kerouac: “Perfect swoop.”) Each is given a yearbook hall-offame title, such as Milton, a “Goody Two-Shoes,” Fitzgerald, who’s crowned “Prom King,” and Vonnegut, “Most Dependable.” Such offhand remarks are clever rather than blistering.

Fittingly, the MFA student is blind to his fawning taste. The role demands a misogynist who pretends to be “woke” and who considers New York as the only literary hub worth mentioning.

Schwartz’s knowingness and thorough commitment are consistently humorous. She writes the MFA guy with sincere, cringing acuity, and the act stays fresh. An affectionate naiveté offsets his ambition, and the literary overview is useful. A reading list rounds out the compendium, a fun read for the aspiring literati.

For all the skewering, this is a well-researched, passionate tribute to books and authors that have left their marks.

Media commentator Shirley (Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative, 2017, etc.) confronts the problem faced by all of Mary Ball Washington’s biographers:

Secrest, Meryle Knopf (320 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-451-49365-1

Prolific biographer Secrest (Elsa Schiaparelli, 2014, etc.) delves into a remote corner of Cold War history.

Adriano Olivetti (1901-1960) was a man of parts: an intellectual, a devotee of careful planning, a socialist at a time in Italy during which the capitalist economy was controlled by “a tiny elite group of allies who held key minority positions in each others’ companies.” His evolution was not without its checkered elements; he went along with Mussolini’s fascist government for a time, as an expedient, while other family members took an active role in the resistance and helped smuggle Jews out of the country. Yet a socialist he was, with a vision of a postwar nation that did not quite square with that of the American government—in particular, CIA director Allen Dulles, who favored “a double agent ready for action, not an ambitious, left-leaning industrialist who wanted to impose upon American policy his plan for a new Italy, ad nauseam.” Olivetti soon went on to take his firm, renowned for its typewriters, into the realm of electronics, developing a mainframe computer, “the first fully transistorized one in the world,” that threatened the near monopoly |

lack of material.

“Much of her life was a mystery,” writes the author, leaving him to speculate about her personality, appearance, beliefs, and especially her relationship with her eldest son, George. “Was she part helicopter mother, part ‘Mommie Dearest,’ ” he asks, using popular, if anachronistic, allusions, “or was she a saint and a joy for George? Historians down through the years have portrayed her as both.” Shirley looks to several earlier historians for their conclusions, making his biography “just as much a historiography of Mary Washington as it is a history.” Those historians, though, also worked with scant evidence, and their portraits were shaped by their own assumptions about how Colonial women must have, or should have, behaved as wives, mothers, and citizens. Hagiographical portraits depicted Mary as “the grandmother and redeemer of America” while one of Washington’s early biographers portrayed Mary as an ardent Loyalist, fiercely opposed to the Revolution. Shirley finds a sympathetic reading in Nancy Byrd Turner’s The Mother of Washington (1930), to which he frequently refers. He dismisses Marion Harland’s Story of Mary Washington, published in 1893, as being so hagiographical that it “glossed over” the death of Mary’s infant daughter “as if it was a distraction to the grand character of Mary and her relationship to her children.” Shirley thinks that Mary “must have been beside herself ” because of the “inseparable and deeply unique connection between mother and daughter.” However, neither historian knows for sure. Throughout, Shirley guesses what Mary probably, might

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RETREAT FROM MOSCOW A New History of Germany’s Winter Campaign, 1941-1942

have, or perhaps felt. Although he draws on archival material from the papers of George Washington, the resources of the Mary Ball Washington House, and many biographies of Washington, at best, he offers more about Mary’s times—likely familiar to readers of Colonial history—than details of her life.

A well-meaning but frustrated attempt to pierce the veil of history.

IN DEFENSE OF OPEN SOCIETY

Soros, George PublicAffairs (224 pp.) $26.00 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-1-5417-3670-2

The noted philanthropist diagnoses threats to liberal democracy.

Wealthy financier Soros (The Trag­ edy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival?, 2014, etc.), founder of the Open Society Foundations, gathers a selection of recent articles, speeches, and book excerpts offering an impassioned analysis of what he considers the most pressing political, social, and economic problems. The author has devoted vigorous efforts and considerable funds to support what he calls political philanthropy: the influx of money and expertise aimed at making the world “a better place.” At first focused on developing nations, he now assigns more than half of his foundations’ budget to the U.S. and Europe, where he believes the “democratic achievements of the past” are being undermined. Among the threats he cited in a 2018 speech at the World Economic Forum are North Korea, climate change, the lack of a functioning two-party system in the U.S., artificial intelligence and social media as tools for social control, extremist ideologies, and repressive regimes in Europe and China. He is concerned, as well, about attacks on the European Union, conceding that the EU, governed by outdated treaties, “needs to be radically reinvented” through “a collaborative effort that combines the top-down approach of the European institutions with the bottom-up initiatives that are necessary to engage the electorate.” Three issues loom as especially problematic for the EU: the refugee crisis, “territorial disintegration as exemplified

by Brexit,” and the need to address economic growth. Soros recounts the difficulties he faced in establishing Central European University to promote academic freedom. A final chapter explicates his economic theory, “radically different from orthodox economics”; although revised from an earlier article, it is still somewhat confusing. Characterizing himself as “admittedly selfish and self-centered,” an egocentric philanthropist in love with his own ideas, Soros admits to finding pleasure in altruism.

“I no longer see any reason to feel ashamed of having such a large ego,” he writes, “because it turned out to be beneficial both to me and to many others.”

A timely appeal for radical change.

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Stahel, David Farrar, Straus and Giroux (560 pp.) $35.00 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-0-374-24952-6

The hair-raising follow-up to the author’s The Battle for Moscow (2015).

Stahel (European History/Univ. of New South Wales) has written an intensely researched account of three months of brutal fighting under awful conditions on the Eastern Front whose deaths and cruelty dwarfed whatever Britain and American endured in the west throughout the war. Never short of strong opinions, the author maintains that Germany had lost within months of its June 22, 1941, invasion when it became obvious that the Soviet Union would not collapse. Once the fighting “passed from being a blitzkrieg to a slogging war of matériel, which was already the case by the end of the summer, large-scale economic deficiencies spelled eventual doom for the Nazi state.” Germany’s advance stalled in early December, the result of increasing resistance, exhausted, freezing troops, and the impossibility of supply over immense distances and primitive roads. At the same time, a long-planned Soviet offensive began, regaining about 15% of its lost territory before running out of gas in February.

Most of the new Red Army divisions were hastily assembled, poorly trained, and lacked heavy fire support. They suffered casualties that shocked even the Soviet high command. Both Hitler and Stalin made matters worse. No Russian general dared refuse Stalin’s orders to attack, and many were shot until Georgy Zhukov convinced the Soviet leader to back off.

Ignorant of conditions at the front and convinced that Aryan fighting spirit trumped any deficiency, Hitler repeatedly forbade retreating. Historians still debate how much damage this caused because senior commanders did not always obey. Stahel’s blow-by-blow, unit-level analysis will appeal to military scholars, and his vivid anecdotes will draw in some general readers. He concludes that the Soviet offensive failed in its strategic goals and endured catastrophic losses, but it contributed to the steady erosion of the Wermacht.

A page-turner for World War II buffs but likely more than most readers want to know about an awful campaign.

(8 pages of b/w illustrations; 7 maps)

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A masterful multigenerational reconstruction of a family’s life. family papers

PALM BEACH, MAR-A-LAGO, AND THE RISE OF AMERICA’S XANADU

FAMILY PAPERS A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century

Standiford, Les Atlantic Monthly (288 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-8021-2849-2

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The experiences of a Sephardic family reveal tumultuous Jewish history.

Drawing on rich archives that yielded thousands of letters, telegrams, photographs, and legal and medical documents, two-time National Jewish Book Award winner Stein (History and Jewish Studies/UCLA; Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century, 2016, etc.) offers a fascinating history of the Levy family, Sephardic Jews descended from Sa’adi Besalel Ashkenazi a-Levi, an influential publisher in 19th-century Salonica. The author’s incomparable sources, which include Sa’adi’s memoir (edited

by Stein for publication in 2012), afforded her an intimate look at the challenges, quarrels, loves, and rivalries that beset Sa’adi and his wives, children, grandchildren, and their descendants as they experienced cataclysmic world events. Organized chronologically, each chapter focuses on a family member to explore their choices and opportunities in a changing world. Of Sa’adi’s 14 children, one daughter became a teacher; one son followed in his father’s footsteps as a newspaperman; another became a high-ranking official for the Jewish Community of Salonica. Yet another son, a gifted linguist and mathematician who rejected a teaching career in favor of law, rose to considerable stature as the Jewish Community’s “director of communal real estate,” a position that carried significant “legal, social, and economic authority.” Four emigrated to Sephardic communities abroad.

Generations of the Levy family were caught in the maelstrom of wars. The First Balkan War, which obstructed daily life, led to the Ottomans’ loss of Salonica to Greece, an upheaval that the Levys saw as calamitous because it gave Greek Orthodox Christians preference to Jews. After World War I, a massive influx of Greeks reduced the once-prominent Jewish population to “a mere fifth” of the city’s residents. In 1943, Nazi persecution intensified in Salonica, and Stein uncovers harrowing evidence of one great-grandson of Sa’adi who became a Nazi henchman, for which he was executed. By the end of World War II, of 37 family members deported from France and Greece, only one survived. Still, the Levys endure, scattered throughout the world.

A masterful multigenerational reconstruction of a family’s life. (59 b/w illustrations; map; family tree)

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A history of the famed resort town and a residence that has “assumed a stature in the collective consciousness far larger than its physical bounds.”

Standiford (Center of Dreams: Building a World-Class Perform­ ing Arts Complex in Miami, 2018, etc.) returns to the Floridian territory of the rich and famous that he chronicled in his biography of Henry Flagler (Last Train to Paradise, 2002), but this time the author will likely attract even more readers with the newly relevant Mar-a-Lago. Donald Trump and his purchase of the mansion in 1985 does not take center stage until more than 200 pages have elapsed, but after that, he and his over-the-top resort occupy the majority of the rest of the book. Before focusing on Trump, though, Standiford recounts the epic struggle of the ultrawealthy to transform what are now known as Palm Beach, Boca Raton, and Key West into a previously unimaginable enclave for conspicuous consumption. Flagler dominates the narrative for a stretch of pages, as does architect Addison Mizner, who was famous for his Mediterranean revival and Spanish colonial revival styles. The other main character is heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who was most responsible for the design, construction, and legend of Mar-a-Lago. Post collected lovers and husbands, but arguably the most significant was her husband E.F. Hutton, the wealthy financier. Mara-Lago served as a Post-Hutton showplace, boasting 62,500 square feet and 128 rooms. For the most part, it gained renown because of its style and setting rather than its size; after all, it wasn’t nearly the largest mansion in the area. Standiford likes to compare and contrast the sizes and styles of the mansions as he offers background about their owners. For readers who never tire of reading about extreme wealth, the book will hold endless fascination. Others, however, may lose interest partway through. Unsurprisingly, Standiford offers a negative portrayal of Trump, chronicling his controversial purchase and the many ugly battles that ensued.

During this era of extreme income inequality, much of the narrative is antiquated and irrelevant except for the Trump connection.

Stein, Sarah Abrevaya Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-0-374-18542-8

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BEREZINA From Moscow to Paris Following Napoleon’s Epic Fail

Tesson, Sylvain Trans. by Gregor, Katherine Europa Compass (224 pp.) $15.00 paper | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-60945-554-5

French travel writer Tesson chronicles his journey following the route of Napoleon’s 1812 retreat from Moscow to Paris—200 years later, on motorcycle, in winter.

The two weeks documented here represent an adventure, pilgrimage, and challenge against the elements and the weight of history. In 2012, the author and a small group of friends decided to brave the elements of ice and snow on two motorcycles with sidecars, duplicating the route that, two centuries earlier, had been littered with corpses from the well-documented retreat of Napoleon, a “paradox, unique in Human History: an army marched, from victory to victory, toward its total annihilation!” Over the course of the text, Tesson evokes War and Peace, various historical accounts, and Napoleon’s own grandiose confessions, alternating with the contemporary account of following Napoleon’s tragic route. But why? “For the sheer glory of it.”

There was much camaraderie on the trip but little glory, as the journey culminated less in triumph than in relief; ultimately, the dangers encountered and the historical horrors conjured hardly seemed worth the risk. As the author notes at one point, “doubt was worming its way into me: what the hell was I doing on a Ural [motorcycle] in the middle of December, with two fools in tow, when these damn machines are made to transport small, 90-pound Ukrainian women from Yalta beach to Simferopol on a summer afternoon?” Yet the meditative aspects of braving the elements on motorcycle offered time to reflect on the enduring legacy of the Franco-Russian conflict on both nations and the rest of the world, the visions that drove Napoleon to his death, and the differences in character between the Russians—in the era after Communism and the Soviet Union—and the French.

Both the writer and the reader feel like they’ve really been through something when the journey is done and Tesson concludes, “I suddenly felt like going home, taking a shower, and washing off all those horrors.”

A brief travelogue that bridges and comingles past and present.

WHAT IT IS Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues Thompson, Clifford Other Press (160 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-59051-905-9

A black writer tussles with race in the Trump era, taking his questions directly to the president’s supporters.

At the opening of this graceful and searching clutch of essays, Thompson (Twin of Blackness, 2015, etc.) explains that, at age 54, he’s at a crossroads. He’s long tried to think of race through the lens of idols like James Baldwin and Albert Murray, alert to racism but slow to anger over it, comfortable with white people while feeling that, often, “being American means being white.” But Trump’s election, and the racism it has exposed and often supported, has left Thompson unsettled. Taking his cue from another idol, Joan Didion, the author levelheadedly assesses the state of his racial temperament through memoir and reportage. He recalls his experience with race as a student and writer; his interactions with the children he’s raised and mentored; and the comfort he’s taken in jazz as a proxy for working through those struggles (these sections contain the author’s most lyrical writing). The heart of the book is Thompson’s reporting on interviews he conducted with three Trump supporters after the election to understand “what was going on in this country about which I had developed such uncertain feelings.” They’re not fire-breathing racists, but their masks as freedom-loving Americans often slip, revealing casually bigoted attitudes about blacks and Hispanics. Triangulating those conversations with chats with a Bronx-based nonprofit leader and the head of the National African American Gun Association, Thompson concludes that the most pernicious problem America faces regarding race, “the cold heart of the trouble,” isn’t ignorance or outright bigotry but indifference.

The author isn’t despairing, but the book concludes with a sense that there’s plenty more work to do.

A coolly delivered yet impassioned study of how much Trump’s election has shifted and revealed Americans’ thinking about race.

INVISIBLE PEOPLE Stories of Lives at the Margins

Tizon, Alex Ed. by Verhovek, Sam Howe Temple Univ. Press (248 pp.) $25.00 | Nov. 22, 2019 978-1-4399-1830-2

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Tizon (Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self, 2014) honors undersung lives in a posthumously published collection.

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LETTERS FROM AN ASTROPHYSICIST

Tyson, Neil deGrasse Norton (272 pp.) $19.95 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-324-00331-1

Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, 2017, etc.) receives a great deal of mail, and this slim volume collects his responses and other scraps of writing.

The prolific science commentator and bestselling author, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, delivers few surprises and much admirable commentary. Readers may suspect that most of these letters date from the author’s earlier years when, a newly minted celebrity, he still thrilled that many of his audience were pouring out their hearts. Consequently, unlike more hardened colleagues, he sought to address their concerns.

As years passed, suspecting that many had no interest in tapping his expertise or entering into an intelligent give and take, he undoubtedly made greater use of the waste basket. Tyson eschews pure fan letters, but many of these selections are full of compliments as a prelude to asking advice, pointing out |

mistakes, proclaiming opposing beliefs, or denouncing him.

Readers will also encounter some earnest op-ed pieces and his eyewitness account of 9/11. “I consider myself emotionally strong,” he writes. “What I bore witness to, however, was especially upsetting, with indelible images of horror that will not soon leave my mind.” To crackpots, he gently repeats facts that almost everyone except crackpots accept. Those who have seen ghosts, dead relatives, and Bigfoot learn that eyewitness accounts are often unreliable. Tyson points out that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so confirmation that a light in the sky represents an alien spacecraft requires more than a photograph. Again and again he defends “science,” and his criteria—observation, repeatable experiments, honest discourse, peer review—are not controversial but will remain easy for zealots to dismiss. Among the instances of “hate mail” and “science deniers,” the author also discusses philosophy, parenting, and schooling.

A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.

UNASHAMED Musings of a Fat, Black Muslim

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As a reporter, Tizon (1959-2017) gravitated toward misfits, eccentrics, and outsiders, all of whom he treats with acute sensitivity in this roundup of articles originally published between 1994 and 2017. Two autobiographical pieces form the book’s moral center: an excerpt from his memoir of being Filipino American and the bittersweet June 2017 Atlantic cover story, “My Family’s Slave,” a loving portrait of a woman who worked for his family as a de facto indentured servant. The other entries consist of newspaper articles demonstrating the wide range of Tizon’s sympathies, rooted in his belief that everyone has an “epic story” to tell. This thread ran through all his stories, whether he was writing about the only Muslim family in a Wyoming town after 9/11 or the descendants of a chief of the Nisqually tribe who fought to exonerate an ancestor they saw as unjustly hanged by the authorities. Most of the author’s subjects exemplify broader cultural issues, none more heartbreakingly than the story of a Cambodian widow who saw her parents killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers, which reveals both her implacable grief and American psychiatrists’ lack of preparation for dealing with trauma of that magnitude. More upbeat pieces include “Onward Christian Surfers,” about missionaries on Waikiki Beach, and a profile of “a full-time UFO investigator and possessor of one of the world’s most comprehensive, though unofficial UFO databases.” Skillfully chosen by Verhovek, all of the pieces have brief introductions by fellow journalists or others. The collection lacks the articles for which Tizon shared a Pulitzer with two Seattle Times co-workers, but they remain available on the paper’s website, and many people will want to seek them out after reading this book.

A memorable collection that shows how much journalism lost with the early death of one of its finest.

Vernon, Leah Beacon (240 pp.) $25.95 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-8070-1262-8

Detroit-based model, blogger, and activist Vernon describes life caught between the societal boxes of white and Islamic cultures.

Narrating the story of her life, the author takes aim at the societal vitriol directed at those living in fat, black, and Muslim bodies. “Deciding, really deciding, to unapologetically wear my hijab for me has been the most freeing and rebellious and feminist thing I could possibly do,” she writes. In a brash, slangheavy text, Vernon—whose work has appeared in Elle, Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and the New York Times, among other publications— speaks to experiences often concealed within her communities, including mental illness, divorce, abortion, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and body-shaming. “Self-worth was a roller coaster,” she writes, “and mine was usually attached to what I could and couldn’t fit into.” Though these traumas have deeply impacted the trajectory of Vernon’s life, she takes care to enthusiastically portray her triumphs: her escape from a dysfunctional marriage, her personal flourishing as she embarked on a plus-size modeling career, and the creation of her semiviral video, “Muslim Girl Dance.” Vernon’s narration reads like an intimate heart-to-heart chat with a friend; while her off-thecuff riffing is infectious, the storytelling occasionally rambles.

Readers may balk at the author’s apparent disdain for incarcerated people and women who have casual sex, and not everyone will understand the hard-won wisdom behind “Angry Black Bitch,” Vernon’s inner persona that turned racist, sexist, and fatphobic aggression into the courage “[t]o step out of my comfort zone and fuckin’ live a little.” However, those looking for an

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A compelling addition to the ongoing conversation on journalism and how it is practiced and consumed. the view from somewhere

THE VIEW FROM SOMEWHERE Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity

imperfect hero of her own story, “with [her] own opinions and skewed outlooks and quirks,” will find this a quick, cheeky read, and her message is solid. “We are all humans with complexities,” she writes. “We are equal. We are fucked up. But we are beautiful and interesting and knowledgeable.”

Irreverent, vulnerable, and unapologetic in every sense.

WHAT REMAINS Bringing America’s Missing Home From the Vietnam War

Wagner, Sarah E. Harvard Univ. (272 pp.) $29.95 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-674-98834-7

The often painful stories behind the recovery of American dead left behind during wars, with an emphasis on the nearly 1,600 still missing in Vietnam.

Wagner (Anthropology/George Washington Univ.; To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing, 2008, etc.) reminds readers that America’s compulsion to bring home battlefield dead—unique among nations—began with the Civil War, during which a small army of embalmers followed the troops. After World War I, bereaved families had the option of burial in France or repatriation; 70 percent chose the latter. Beginning in the Korean War, all recovered bodies were returned. Peace accords signed by North Vietnam in 1973 contained a clause requiring cooperation in recovering those still unaccounted for, and POW/MIA activist groups continue to pressure the U.S. government over Americans still missing.

“That demand…has given rise to a forensic enterprise, which, in its attempts to order facts and bodies, has spanned decades, cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and returned thousands of absent American war dead to their surviving families and to the nation,” writes the author. Traveling widely, Wagner chronicles her encounters with individuals and communities dealing with tragic losses. She also visited labs to describe the tedious but often imaginative work that can tease out an identity from a fragment of bone. DNA analysis has been a major advance, but, informed by TV crime shows where DNA solves all problems, journalists and legislatures regularly denounce the labs— unfairly, according to Wagner—as a haven for stick-in-the-mud scientists and time-serving bureaucrats. The response has been shakeups and a congressionally mandated, vastly increased yearly quota of identifications. Ironically, this obsession with “body count” has reduced Vietnam recoveries to less than 10 percent. Few sites, mostly plane crashes, remain in Southeast Asia but earlier wars have left cemeteries, battlefields, and tiny Pacific islands with innumerable unidentified remains available to fill the quota.

An expert account of a little-known but massive forensic program.

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Wallace, Lewis Raven Univ. of Chicago (240 pp.) $25.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-0-226-58917-6

An examination of a significant, contentious issue in the field of journalism.

Soon after Wallace decided on a career in journalism after college, he began to question the wisdom of traditional journalistic “objectivity.” When he lost a job in public radio due to his open questioning of the objectivity paradigm, he conducted a deep inquiry into the history and validity of objectivity in the field.

Wallace acknowledges that some of his questioning stems from his personal identity as a transgender individual. Even though the author’s public radio employer desired newsroom diversity, he still got fired. It’s important to note that by questioning objectivity, Wallace is not abandoning the goal of factual accuracy and context. Rather, the author maintains that objectivity is often the ideology of the status quo and that journalists should sometimes feel free to openly question the status quo.

As examples, Wallace mentions reporting beyond the official police versions of fatal shootings, government versions of wars waged against enemies abroad, and common depictions of gay and transgender lives. The author’s historical research led him to boundary-busting nonobjective journalists, including Ida B. Wells, Heywood Broun, Randy Shilts, Linda Greenhouse, David Brock, Masha Gessen, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, and Gary Younge. Because he focuses primarily on journalists who might be labeled renegades, Wallace also addresses the possibility of confirmation bias regarding his arguments. The author delves into the thicket of angry, often misleading rhetoric spread by Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, Fox TV personalities, and other similar outlets. Wallace is rarely preachy in his arguments; his case comes across as nuanced and subtle. How, for example, would traditional objectivity play out in a journalistic account of climate change? Is there really another “side” to tell responsibly? The author hopes for an eventual journalism of collaboration with the voiceless rather than a process of simply extracting information from them as exploited sources.

A compelling addition to the ongoing conversation on journalism and how it is practiced and consumed.

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CARRIE FISHER A Life on the Edge

MUD AND STARS Travels in Russia With Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age

Weller, Sheila Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (416 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-0-374-28223-3 An intimate and effusive tribute to Carrie Fisher (1956-2016).

Between traditional biography and commemorative journalism lies a place where facts meet fandom, where both casual observers and devotees alike can bear witness to an extraordinary life. Weller (The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour— and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News, 2014, etc.) could find those coordinates in her sleep. That’s not to say she didn’t work incredibly hard to pull together this endearing collection of stories about the late actor. The author is a seasoned veteran of panoramic storytelling; as a result, her narrative is occasionally almost as difficult to keep up with as Fisher herself. The book begins and ends with the fateful trans-Atlantic flight that signaled her impending death, but in between, readers have more than 300 pages to fall in love with the quirky, brilliant, outrageously witty woman who graced the silver screen as Princess Leia, among other roles. Weller interviewed scores of Fisher’s friends, former lovers, colleagues, and family members to shape a mostly chronological, highly detailed rendering of her life. The author dives deep into her subject’s childhood, films, books, marriages, friendships, and highly publicized battles with addiction and mental illness. The latter two elements provide some of the most poignant moments of the book, as readers get a revealing look at Fisher’s eventual acceptance of—and fierce honesty about—living with drug addiction and bipolar disorder. Occasionally, the dizzying array of quotes and voluminous backstories of Fisher’s friends and family get a bit taxing, and the book is brimming with gossipy tidbits. Regardless, Weller connects the dots in ways that create a vividly hued portrait.

There is no monochrome here but rather an expansive look at a woman who lived large, loved deeply, and did a lot to destigmatize mental illness.

Whether you were well-acquainted with Fisher or not, this book will make you miss her. (8 pages of b/w illustrations)

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Wheeler, Sara Pantheon (304 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-5247-4801-2

The veteran British travel writer roams around Russia, inspired by some of its most storied writers.

In the introduction to this adventurous but not always cohesive book, Wheeler (Access All Areas: Selected Writings 19902010, 2011, etc.) notes that she aspires to show how Russian literary titans like Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, and Tolstoy spoke both to their time and to present-day Russia. However, in most of the pages that follow, she’s not engaging in socio-literary criticism so much as using those authors to lend gravitas to her efforts to grasp the country’s current melancholic mood. Near Pushkin’s ancestral home, she met a man boozily complaining about Putin; a chapter ostensibly about Dostoyevsky detours into her struggles learning Russian, nearly getting mugged at a St. Petersburg train station, and meeting some couch-surfing youths. Wheeler notes that her Russian teacher adores Turgenev but never explains why; a trip to the Caucasus to walk in Lermontov’s footsteps leads to some digressive grousing about the country’s poor preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and sour conclusion that “being Russian has always been miserable.” This rhetorical disconnect is especially unfortunate because the text sings when Wheeler thoughtfully weaves her chosen writers with her travels. In Ivan Goncharov’s 1859 novel, Oblomov, she finds a Bartleby-esque symbol of the national character, particularly in his hometown in Russia’s far eastern region, where there are now “dozens of sets of traffic lights, many of which work.” Wheeler’s admiring visit to Tolstoy’s estate thoughtfully captures the author’s mordant mood and his hypocrisies—e.g., his churchy pronouncements about austerity belied more than a dozen illegitimate children). More often, though, the book is best appreciated as light travelogue bolstered with some literary history.

Wheeler is impressively well read in Russia’s literary golden age, but her pocket biographies could better blend with her excursions. (photos)

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AROUND THE WORLD IN 60 SECONDS The Nas Daily Journey—1,000 Days. 64 Countries. 1 Beautiful Planet.

Yassin, Nuseir HarperOne (272 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-06-293267-9

The founder of Nas Daily, a media channel that produces one-minute travel videos, chronicles his travels with entertaining gusto.

A blend of memoir and portraits of humans across cultures, this energetic debut details how Yassin, a Palestinian Israeli citizen raised in Israel, quit a job as a coder for Venmo to pursue his travels. Displeased with a conventional career, he decided to embark on a 1,000-day global journey. For each day abroad, Yassin tasked himself with uploading a video to Facebook. The narrative’s loose arrangement features colorful sketches of places as far-flung as a favela in Brazil and the streets of Malta. Amid accounts of a community recovering from a hurricane in Puerto Rico or a Syrian man who was stranded in a Malaysian airport and rescued by Canadians, the author weaves in some history lessons. Yassin’s past in Israel and his return visits home highlight his family’s support. Such reflective moments intersperse with profiles of creative individuals who stand out in their communities. The author’s candor is striking, and his delight in risk-taking is infectious. Even when he conducted doubtful experiments—such as feigning to have lost his wallet to test people’s kindness—there’s little voyeurism here. The author acknowledges when his project caused discomfort and when it brought strangers together. These travels culminated in many overly familiar impressions: the divide between rich and poor; how similar people are even as we celebrate differences; and how stereotypes are dispelled if people learn about each other.

However, the author’s genuine passion for digging beyond the usual tourist stops is compelling. Features on environmentalism and innovations in developing countries paint a positive portrait while certain inspiring moments are encapsulated with sentiments that sometimes come across as unintentional sound bites. This coffee-table companion to a popular website doesn’t always surpass its original format, but it’s a passionate introduction to Yassin’s worldview. The contemporary, catchy voice reflects its social media roots.

For Nas Daily fans and others seeking a pleasant journey to read in installments.

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FRANZ BOAS The Emergence of the Anthropologist Zumwalt, Rosemary Lévy Univ. of Nebraska (448 pp.) $34.95 | Nov. 1, 2019 978-1-4962-1554-3

The first of a two-volume scholarly biography of Franz Boas (1858-1942), the father of American anthropology.

Zumwalt (American Folklore Scholar­ ship: A Dialogue of Dissent, 1995, etc.), dean emerita at Agnes Scott College, ends this work in 1906, when Boas resigned from New York’s American Museum of Natural History to concentrate on teaching at Columbia. Born in Germany, Boas was fiercely ambitious and fascinated by science from childhood. Despite a doctorate in physics, he took up geography and spent a year studying the Inuit in northern Canada. This began a lifelong interest in non-Western cultures, which included trips to study First Nations peoples in the Pacific Northwest. Dissatisfied with limited opportunities in Germany, he settled permanently in America in 1887. Although quickly recognized, he spent years searching for a steady job, serving as an editor of the journal Science, organizer of the massive ethnology exhibit at Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exhibition, and, during an abortive period, head of anthropology at the newly founded Clark College. Financial security came with his appointment as a curator in the American Museum of Natural History in 1896. In 1899, he was named a professor at Columbia, after which his writing and the generation he taught converted anthropology from its clunky, racist origins into a modern scientific discipline. This is a work of academic research, not a popular biography. Readers who doubt that Zumwalt has read every letter, diary, and field note of Boas and his circle will quickly discover their error because her narrative technique is to make a point and then illustrate it with an excerpt from a document. Readers who begin each paragraph and then—upon encountering the first quotation mark—skip to the next will miss little. Nonspecialists will find Charles King’s Gods of the Upper Air far more accessible.

An expert but dense research study of a giant of modern science.

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children’s PANTHERA TIGRIS

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Alzial, Sylvain Illus. by Rajcak, Hélène Trans. by Lal, Vineet & Ardizzone, Sarah Eerdmans (32 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 29, 2019 978-0-8028-5529-9

INFINITE HOPE by Ashley Bryan....................................................... 94 JUST FEEL by Mallika Chopra; illus. by Brenna Vaughan................ 96 CUB by Cynthia L. Copeland; illus. by Cynthia L. Copeland with Ronda Pattison..................................................................................... 96 PARKER LOOKS UP by Parker Curry & Jessica Curry; illus. by Brittany Jackson......................................................................97

REACH FOR THE SKAI by Skai Jackson...........................................101 FINDING NARNIA by Caroline McAlister; illus. by Jessica Lanan.........................................................................108 THE THIEF KNOT by Kate Milford...................................................110 DRIFTWOOD DAYS by William Miniver; illus. by Charles Vess.....110 SUFFRAGETTE by David Roberts..................................................... 113 M IS FOR MELANIN by Tiffany Rose.................................................114 MARIO AND THE HOLE IN THE SKY by Elizabeth Rusch; illus. by Teresa Martinez.....................................................................114 PACKS by Hannah Salyer.................................................................. 115 ROLL WITH IT by Jamie Sumner.......................................................119 CASPIAN FINDS A FRIEND by Jacqueline Véissid; illus. by Merrilees Brown....................................................................119 KINDNESS MAKES US STRONG by Sophie Beer.............................122 SILLY LULLABY by Sandra Boynton.................................................. 123 INFINITE HOPE A Black Artist’s Journey From World War II to Peace

of study.

An old white man who has devoted his life to learning is frustrated when he realizes that there is a gap in his knowledge.

After months of intensive study, he sets out to get a glimpse of his subject—the Bengal tiger—in its native habitat. Guided by an Indian local, “a rather simple young man,” the scholar pontificates as the two travel through the jungle together, overwhelming the young man (and possibly readers as well). The guide attempts several times to interject but is steamrollered by the scholar’s verbosity. Face to face with the animal at last, the old man is distraught to discover that none of his knowledge has prepared him for the reality of a hostile predator. Alzial’s text, translated from the French, is long and dense, peppered with complex scientific vocabulary. Rajcak’s fine-lined, blackand-white drawings, splashed with oranges, browns, and greens, are similarly sophisticated. Intentionally old-fashioned in appearance, they include complicated diagrams and anatomical details alternating with scenes depicting the action. Both words and pictures have a slyly ironic tone, clearly poking fun at the scholar’s vanity. Unfortunately, the knowing contrast between the learned man’s ignorance and the local hunter’s knowledge is undercut somewhat when the latter acts “instinctively” to avoid the tiger.

This one-joke morality tale includes some engaging details but may nonetheless struggle to find an appreciative audience. (Picture book. 5-9)

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ACTIVIST by Lauren Elizabeth Hogg & Anthony E. Zuiker; illus. by Don Hudson...........................................................................100

A learned scholar travels to the jungle to seek out his most recent subject

FROM A SMALL SEED The Story of Eliza Hamilton

Bryan, Ashley Illus. by the author Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum (112 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-5344-0490-8

Andros, Camille Illus. by Blackham, Tessa Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (40 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-1-250-29742-6 Eliza Hamilton’s life is summarized, along with some fictionalized episodes intended to illuminate her character and accomplishments. |

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banned books week 2019 Photo courtesy Leah Overstreet

It’s time to celebrate that most secular of holidays, Banned Books Week.

Observed annually in the final week of September by a coalition that includes the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, among other organizations, Banned Books Week celebrates every reader’s freedom to read whatever they want, without barrier or censure.

When I was a children’s librarian, I took great delight in assembling my annual display, festooning it with yellow police-line tape. Adults exclaim in disbelief to see their childhood favorites—and their children’s favorites—pilloried. The Lorax? It’s anti-logging. Where the Wild Things Are? It’s scary. The Giving Tree? It’s sexist. The conversations the display started could go deep.

As the oft-challenged author Laurie Halse Anderson has said, a challenge to a book for young people “most often comes from a place of love and concern. My first response is compassion,” she told a group of students in 2010.

And compassion is indeed in order: Adults who seek to keep certain books out of the hands of children are doing it because they want to protect children from harm.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that all 11 of the ALA’s most frequently challenged books in 2018 are books for children and teenagers, and of those 11, seven are for children.

Five of those were challenged due at least in part to their embrace of LGBTQ characters and themes.

There’s George, Alex Gino’s tender debut about a trans girl named Melissa who claims her true self, and Raina Telgemeier’s charming graphic novel Drama, which chronicles the misadventures of a troupe 86

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of middle school thespians, two of whom are gay. Dav Pilkey’s characteristically subversive Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot drew special ire for its depiction of a same-sex couple. In Jill Twiss and E.G. Keller’s media stunt, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a fictional male rabbit based on Vice President Mike Pence’s real one marries another boy bunny. And Gayle Pitman and Kristyna Litten’s This Day in June distills the joy of a Pride parade for young readers.

Those who object to these books do so to protect children from content they deem harmful. I, and those who support these and other LGBTQ books, believe that they counter the harm done to LGBTQ kids by simply living in a hostile world. It’s easy for me to defend kids’ rights to read them.

My feelings when I look at Judy Schachner’s Skippyjon Jones series are not so simple. “Challenged [in 2018] for depicting stereotypes of Mexican culture,” this series debuted in 2003 to general acclaim; its eponymous first book even won the inaugural E.B. White Read Aloud Award in 2004. One reason it’s so easy for many to read aloud is its caricatured Spanish, made familiar by such mocking icons as the Frito Bandito. That’s harm of another sort. Among its many one-star reviews on Amazon is this one from a Chicana mom: “When my five-year-old daughter asked [why] Skippyjon is speaking the way he does…I had to say, ‘because they think it sounds funny when people speak Spanish.’ ” We support the right to read Skippyjon Jones because we support the right to read George, Drama, and the others. But if I were back in my library and a parent asked me why Skippyjon Jones was in book jail for the week, I’d probably share that mom’s words. It’s these conversations that make Banned Books Week such a valuable observance: The more we talk about the books we read with our kids, the more thoughtfully we can share them. —V.S. Vicky Smith is the children’s editor.

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Bagley’s artwork creates an emotionally resonant experience. henry and bea

CARAVAN TO THE NORTH Misael’s Long Walk

Argueta, Jorge Illus. by Monroy, Manuel Trans. by Bell, Elizabeth Groundwood (112 pp.) $16.95 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-77306-329-4

In October 2018, hundreds of people gathered in the capital city of El Salvador to form a caravan heading to the United States. Through the voice of one of these asylum seekers Argueta chronicles the unimaginable walk to the Tijuana border.

Misael Martínez, his brother, and their parents have joined the caravan “because you can’t really live / in my village anymore. / There’s no work. / There’s no way to get by. / What there is, / is violence, gangs.” As the caravan undertakes the staggering walk of over 2,500 miles—most individuals with no more than a backpack “full of hopes”—crossing through El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, they are met mostly with kindness along the way. Finally, after much hardship, they reach the U.S. border only to be met with tear gas, “police with shields / and soldiers everywhere. / I’m really, really, really scared.” That night he dreams “the sweetest dream of all. / Instead of going to the North, / I went back to El Salvador.” Deceptively simple blackand-white line drawings accompany this wrenching account of the humanitarian crisis taking place in Central America and at the U.S. border. Read this along with Argueta’s Somos como las nubes/We Are Like the Clouds, illustrated by Alfonso Ruano and |

translated by Elisa Amado (2016). Argueta’s original Spanish text, Caravana al norte, publishes simultaneously.

This moving work should help children understand the current national discussion. (afterword, map) (Verse fiction.

9-adult) (Caravana al norte: 978-1-77306-332-4)

HENRY AND BEA

Bagley, Jessixa Illus. by the author Neal Porter/Holiday House (40 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-0-8234-4284-3 Henry stops speaking to his best friend, Bea, but Bea is still there for him when he needs a friend.

Henry and Bea understand each other, and that’s why they are best friends. They always have fun together and are pictured reading inside a tent, playing hide-and-seek, sharing a cookie, and watching the clouds. Then one day, Henry seems “quiet and sad.” He wants to be alone, and even an announcement about a field trip to a farm doesn’t make him excited. At the farm, though, Bea gently offers her company to Henry. Finally, when they are alone, Henry reveals that his beloved cat died.

Bea sits with him as he cries and helps him say goodbye to his friend. When they rejoin the group in order to take shelter from a storm, Bea implicitly understands that she shouldn’t tell anyone about what he shared. On the final picture, a rainbow peeks through the storm clouds as the friends share cookies once more. Bagley’s artwork creates an emotionally resonant experience, with the use of white space, perspective, and the expanse of the double-page spread to communicate emotional closeness, distance, and isolation. Readers will be invested in this simple, elegantly told tale and will not be disappointed at its conclusion.

Henry is white, Bea is brown, and their classmates are fairly diverse.

An excellent choice for themes of friendship and trust.

(Picture book. 4-8)

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Andros uses an extended metaphor of seeds and trees to frame Eliza’s long and eventful life. This view of human resilience as stemming from strong roots, along with sophisticated vocabulary and the breadth of Eliza’s experiences, may require some explication for young listeners. Repetition of words and ideas and a lyrical flow to the text, however, ensure that listening will be a pleasure even if understanding takes some extra effort.

Blackham’s matte, naïve-style illustrations vary in size and placement, including double-page spreads, single-page pictures, and spot illustrations. The subdued palette appears appropriate to the era; details of costume and setting also serve to anchor the story in time. Eliza is first shown as an energetic, smiling, dark-haired, pale-skinned girl with loving parents. Her empathy for those less fortunate is shown in a drably colored (imagined) interaction with an unnamed white orphan boy. Growth from child to young woman follows quickly, summarized on a twopage spread that shows her eight times against the same simple background, a checkerboard floor. Her marriage to Alexander Hamilton, the birth and raising of their children, the loss of her husband, and her subsequent child welfare work are briefly outlined and illustrated in the remaining pages; the last activity introduces the only characters of color depicted.

An accessible and engaging portrait of a remarkable historical figure. (author’s note, artist’s note, bibliography) (Biography. 6-8)

POWER OF A PRINCESS

Baker, E.D. Bloomsbury (240 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-68119-769-2 Series: More Than a Princess, 2

In the series’ second installment, Princess Aislin draws on her pedrasi powers to confront a powerful enemy.

Exploring Mount Gora’s tunnels at the behest of her royal pedrasi grandfather, Aislin discovers vicious trolls collecting dragons’ eggs for a mysterious being they refer to as “her.” Using pedrasi powers to dispatch the trolls—with help from cavern-dwelling spriggans— Aislin, her guards, and her doll friend, Twinket, return to the pedrasi palace. On the way they meet angry fairies, upset that

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A provocative take on a world without borders. a sky without lines

Aislin’s royal fairy grandparents are moving to the human world and opening the borders for humans to enter the magic realms.

Asked to help with the transition, Aislin travels to the fairy palace, where, ignoring relentless lobbying from fairy wannabes, she selects her own multispecies ladies-in-waiting, provoking more fairy ire. Her royal relatives, too, realize mischief ’s afoot.

When, after the move, human nobles visit—including odious Rory and Aislin’s friend Tomas—events prove harm is intended, but by whom? After a strong opening, the story quickly loses steam, remaining flat and nearly action-free until the final 30 pages. Exciting events are summarized, not shown. The author’s tendency to repeat what readers already know in dialogue that’s long on introductory greetings and action summaries and short on plot advancement and character development doesn’t help.

Aislin’s gifts—exceptional magical powers, wide popularity, and prodigious beauty—deprive her of challenges, leaching her story of suspense. Human characters default to white; nonhuman but human-seeming Aislin has brown skin and long, dark hair.

Strictly for princess-culture devotees with a high boredom threshold. (Fantasy. 8-11)

JOURNEY THROUGH THE UNIFIED FIELD

Barlow, Cassie B. & Norrod, Sue Hill Illus. by Gantt, Amy Pelican (128 pp.) $9.95 paper | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-4556-2478-2

Summer science camp proves both educational and exciting for a rising fifth grader with a deployed dad.

Plot rides the back seat, if not the boot, as this STEM-agenda–steered tale opens with a guest introduction, closes with a career guide, and in between sends young Emma to her inventor grandpa’s Dayton, Ohio, camp (think Wright Brothers…and sister too). There, she and readers are treated to lectures about the electromagnetic spectrum and cybersecurity, demonstrations of Newtonian laws of motion using toy weapons, and a career profile of Grace Hopper presented by her VR avatar. This all occurs before, two-thirds of the way through, the authors get to the abduction of Emma’s drone-pilot father by a Somali militia. Learning that her grandpa is secretly experimenting with converting matter into electronic data, Emma (with lots of help from the avatar) has herself transmitted to her dad’s laptop, evades its anti-malware program, and finds a clue to his location that she forwards to a local SEAL team. The adventure is properly adventuresome… but it hardly seems more than a pretext for the boosterish STEAM (as the authors position it, though the “Arts” get barely a nod here) content. Aside from one classroom scene, Gantt’s small chapter-head drawings depict an all-white cast.

Too much freight, even with a full head of STEAM. (Science fantasy. 9-11)

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THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS DO

Barnhart, Cathleen Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-0-06-288893-8

A careful introduction to consent and sexual harassment for a middlegrade audience.

Sammie Goldstein and David Fischer have been best friends since forever, but lately David has realized that he has a crush on Sammie, and he’s nervous about telling her. When Luke Sullivan, an extremely cool new kid, moves to New Roque, the New York City suburb where they live, David sees him as immediate competition. But all Sammie wants is to continue being friends with David, to keep her spot on the baseball team (she thinks that softball is for girls and that anything for girls must be inferior), and to avoid a romantic entanglement with the obnoxiously aggressive Luke. When David accidentally touches Sammie’s chest, their friendship begins to unravel fast, but Sammie discovers a newfound camaraderie with the girls she had always dismissed as being too, well, girly. Told in the rapidly alternating perspectives of the two white Jewish young people, the plot drags a bit in the middle as the two stumble painfully through constant failures to communicate; the antagonist, who embodies the worst of coercive male attitudes toward girls and women, is not given similar interiority or growth. These flaws aside, the middle grades need more books that address both the ways that misogyny and rape culture surface at that age and how it’s hard but necessary to get the help you need.

A worthy, timely, ambitious debut. (Fiction. 8-12)

A SKY WITHOUT LINES

Basil, Krystia Illus. by Borràs, Laura Minedition (32 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-988-8341-89-4

Two brothers live separated by a line on a map.

Arturo fantasizes about overcoming the obstacles the line represents. Perhaps he can dig under it, swim through it, or build a bridge over it—anything to be with his older brother, Antonio, again, just like the cranes freely crossing the skies. He dreams of meeting his brother on the moon, where they can play fútbol with their faces gleaming from “the sticky sweetness of warm churros.” Basil’s story of borders implies a happy ending for a truncated family stuck in two different countries. But Barcelona-based artist Borràs’ (Marwan’s Journey, 2018) earth-toned watercolor landscapes feature the political reality of the United States–Mexico fence— the “line” running through the lives of Arturo and his family. The stylized images resemble marionettes with pupil-less, masklike faces; expressions are limited or nonexistent. Many of

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the double-page spreads are populated with fox-ish, ring-tailed creatures. Since neither foxes nor coyotes have ringed tails, it’s difficult to decipher what they are. If coyotes, they may serve to call attention to the ubiquitous human traffickers known by the same name. The cranes’ unfettered flight from one country to the next evokes Arturo’s wish that where two lands meet there be no lines; after all, “he’d looked hard, and he’d seen no lines in the sky, none at all.”

A provocative take on a world without borders. (Picture book. 5-9)

LOST AND FOUND

Beck, JiWon Illus. by the author Peter Pauper Press (40 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 15, 2019 978-1-4413-3186-1

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Behar, Susie Illus. by Lord, Bethany Ivy Kids (32 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-78240-921-2 Series: Look Down and See

A new way of looking at parts of the world with remarkable natural scenery.

From the Lofoten archipelago in Norway to Redwood National Park in California, a graphic designer and travel enthusiast offers young readers bird’s-eye views of a dozen remarkable destinations around the world in this series opener.

The overhead perspective works well for Lord’s flat, digitally produced images, each filling a double-page spread. Informational text in colored boxes set directly on the pages introduces the area and points out some interesting details. Describing Lapland, the author introduces both the reindeer-herding Sami

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An Arctic Native child and a polar bear forge a friendship in this wordless fable.

At the end of a day of fishing, the child unexpectedly encounters a polar bear in the igloo. Rather than taking fright, the child reaches out to touch the polar bear’s nose, and the creature accepts the gesture. Following a shared fish dinner, a relationship of mutual care and joy develops. But then the two must part after a heartfelt embrace, the bear to its own kind and the child to the family that awaits in the frame house that is their permanent residence. True to Indigenous wisdom, the picture book teaches reciprocity between the animal world and humankind. Perhaps less appealing for adult readers is the nature of the reciprocal portrait, as it does not depict either traditional gratitude between hunter and prey or the realistic fear that a big carnivore creates. Perhaps the lack of realism is the point: A hungry polar bear being fed by a human does not help the species in the real world, but in this world a child can make a difference, and the absence of text gives adult-child pairs ample room to imagine. Beck’s illustrations emphasize meticulous detail against expanses of Arctic white, the hairs on the child’s fur-trimmed parka and the bear’s coat rendered with equally loving precision The imagination soars in this magical story of an unusual friendship. (Picture book. 4-8)

NATURAL WONDERS OF THE WORLD

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and the northern lights. The Grand Canyon yawns below tourists on the hanging skywalk bridge: “Scary!” On each spread, a small world map labeled by continents shows the general location with an arrow and dot. Readers are encouraged to look for small details with questions such as “How many zebras can you spot among the wildebeest?” shown crossing the Mara River in Tanzania. Answers are on the last page. Once in a while her perspective slips—most noticeably at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, where both the dugong and humphead wrasse are shown sideways. Other wonders celebrated include Victoria Falls in southern Africa, Arctic Alaska, Mount Everest, Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, the Tengger Caldera in Indonesia, and Lake Nakuru in Kenya.

Interesting, unusual choices for an invitation to a lifetime of travel for young explorers. (Informational picture book.

7-10)

THE GREAT BRAIN ROBBERY

Bell, P.G. Illus. by Sharack, Matt Feiwel & Friends (384 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-250-19005-5 Series: The Train to Impossible Places, 2 The most famous train in Troll Territory is ready to roll once more in this sequel to The Train to Impossible Places (2018).

It’s been two months since the crash that put the Impossible Postal Express out of commission, and Suzy, now Deputy Postal Operative Suzy Smith, can’t wait to return to the Union of Impossible Places to see her friends and hop aboard the Express to take up her position as “postie.” An earthquake—Trollville’s first—cuts the celebrations of the train’s relaunch short and throws the town into chaos. When Suzy discovers that the earthquake was no act of nature, she reluctantly turns to an old nemesis for help defeating a new threat. Suzy is joined by her friends: Postmaster Wilmot, a troll; human Frederick, the Chief Librarian of the Ivory Tower, free from his snow globe prison; and the rest of the Express’ quirky crew. The fast-paced dual narrative switches back and forth in the third person between Suzy and Wilmot, each of whom has a role to play in saving not just Trollville, but the entire Union. The ending is satisfyingly tidy, with the setup for the third in this projected trilogy firmly in place. Suzy and one secondary human character have brown skin while trolls are a variety of colors, including purple and cherry red. Frederick is white; assume whiteness for other humans.

Full-steam ahead for more fun. (Fantasy. 8-12)

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GREAT STREETS OF THE WORLD From London to San Francisco

Berchtig, Frauke Illus. by Sousa, Agusti Trans. by Kelly, Paul Prestel (36 pp.) $14.95 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-3-7913-7403-1

Readers are invited to wander Regent Street in London, La Rambla in Barcelona, Rynok Square in Lviv, Ukraine, and Hàng Bac in Hanoi, among others.

A well-traveled adult or even an armchair traveler may appreciate the lively sketches, emphasizing the architecture, transportation, and crowds in these busy urban sites. Will children? Perhaps not, despite the inclusion of some unusual global locales, such as the Rue de Bougounni, a large marketplace in Bamako, Mali, and Hatogaya, in Shirakawa, Japan, a historic street with “sloping, thatched roofs [that] prevent snow from piling up on top of the houses.” A few children are pictured having fun: Two kids play soccer in the Calleja de las Flores in Córdoba, Spain, and two other children make a snowman in the Japanese spread. Other kids are depicted walking alongside adults. The facts accompanying the illustrations are sometimes inadequate. The Anne Frank House receives prominent mention in the paragraph about Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht, but it’s impossible to tell whether it’s in the picture. The text about Calle 3 in Medellín, Colombia, mentions that “ten years ago, its residents barely dared to go outside” due to “the constant clashes between the army and drug gangs.” Without a specific year, the reference will be meaningless in the future. There is no map showing the various cities, nor any resources for readers motivated to learn more.

Visually attractive but cursory. (Informational picture book.

8-11)

CHICKEN BREAK! A Counting Book

Berry, Cate Illus. by Alder, Charlotte Feiwel & Friends (32 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-250-30679-1

A counting primer follows the daring escape of 10 chickens from the coop.

One chicken holding a twig like a rifle starts the count by “standing guard.” Then two vigilant chickens break out binoculars and “scan the yard.” “Three chickens hatch the plan. / Four chickens on the lamb.” (Quite literally: They are on top of a lamb.) As the text counts up, more and more chickens join, each with an important job to do. When the total finally reaches 10, they squawk and flap their way to an adventure beyond the barnyard. Ten chickens devour soft pretzels, go shopping and

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This book may be most helpful for those who experience mild forms of anxiety and depression. happy right now

ice-skating, and see a show (Bantam of the Opera, of course). After all that excitement, they are exhausted. Counting back down, they head for home. Unfortunately, they can’t all fit into a cab, so they must come up with other creative modes of transportation. Berry’s snappy rhymes (some brilliantly unexpected: “Five chickens tippy TIPtoe. / Six chickens incognito”) match the frenetic energy of the cunning poultry. But it is Alder’s boldly outlined cartoon chickens that steal the show. Decked out in caps, roller-skates, and super spy sleuth gear, they each have distinct personalities, which readers can trace through the pages. One uses a skateboard; another rides in a tagalong behind an older chicken’s bike.

Simple but clever: a good egg. (Picture book. 3-6)

HAPPY RIGHT NOW

Berry, Julie Illus. by Hatam, Holly Sounds True (32 pp.) $17.95 | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-68364-352-4

A young child learns to reach for happiness.

The young narrator, a black child with cornrows and afro puffs, thinks of many acquisitions and happenings that would bring happiness. The glum kid will be happy after getting “a puppy, / a unicorn, / an ice-cream sundae.” Or when “everyone adores me.” But each time, the narrator adds, “Or, I can be happy right now.” As the difficulties standing in the way of happiness grow harder to bear—sickness, sadness, and sorrows—the narrator more actively counteracts them. The kid can “snuggle down for a sleepy snooze” or “breathe right now / … / Feel my body relax… // …Know that happy will find me again soon.” The final

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Jon J Muth [sponsored]

THE AWARD-WINNING ARTIST FINALLY HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK ON HIS DREAM PROJECT: A GRAPHIC ADAPTATION OF A CLASSIC SCIENCE-FICTION STORY BY STANISLAW LEM

By James Feder Photo courtesy Joseph Fanvu Photography

Artist Jon J Muth has a long and impressive resume to his name. The winner of, among many other prizes, the Eisner Award, he’s illustrated a volume of Neil Gaiman’s seminal Sandman series, produced comics for powerhouses Marvel and DC Comics, and created critically acclaimed paintings. For the past two decades, his prolific output has primarily consisted of children’s book illustrations, a side effect, he says, of fatherhood. And while this shift led him to the place where he feels “truly at home,” it also meant moving away from a story he’d long been trying to tell—or so he thought.

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In junior high school, Muth discovered a passion for reading science fiction, but there was one book that stood out from the rest: Solaris by Polish author Stanislaw Lem. “Where the story went, and why, and the implications were so new to me,” Muth remembers. “I’ve always been drawn to artists whose work goes out beyond the edge of the page, and Solaris sort of upset my apple cart.”

Lem was writing fabulous sagas of space exploration long before man’s first foray beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

But despite the stories’ being set so far outside the bounds of reality, they remain grounded—not only in technological terms, incorporating scientific advances upon which Lem kept assiduously up to date, but also in humanity. It was that latter aspect that first got Muth thinking about the possibility of a collaboration.

“In the 1990s, comics were taking a cynical, postmodern, ironic stance,” Muth says, “and I felt somewhat lost.”

He wanted to break free of what he felt to be an increasingly stifling atmosphere, and the nuanced and often humorous ways in which Lem explored sophisticated ideas seemed the perfect vehicle. So he wrote the author a letter, with markedly low expectations. But then, quite quickly, he got a reply.

“Once I caught my breath,” he says, “we corresponded about which of his books might make a good graphic novel.” After some back and forth, they arrived at “The Seventh Voyage,” a 1957 story from Lem’s The Star Diaries. It was the book that introduced readers to Ijon Tichy, a lovable, befuddled character who would reappear in Lem’s writing periodically throughout the decades. But then, parenthood arrived, and Muth’s career took a turn toward children’s books. It wasn’t until many years had passed, and Lem himself had died (in 2006), that Muth was finally given the chance to see the project through after being asked to create something for Scholastic’s Graphix imprint. “It was a perfect fit at the right time,” he says, simply.

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James Feder is a New York–born, Scottish-educated writer based in Tel Aviv. The Seventh Voyage was reviewed in the Aug. 1, 2019, issue.

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spread shows the child balancing on a branch, reaching toward a cat, knowing that “I’ll be happy when / I’m hopeful, / cheerful, / helpful, / thankful. / Reaching for happy / until I can grab it.”

While most children (and adults) can relate to negative thought patterns, this book may be most helpful for those who experience mild forms of anxiety and depression, the text incorporating cognitive, physiological, and action-based tools to improve mood and combat negativity. The illustrations convey only two emotions—sad and happy—and an embodied “worry monkey” (whose fur is unfortunately reminiscent of the narrator’s afro puffs) scampers about on two spreads.

Despite its visual flaws, this book will help a small, deserving readership. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE TACO MAGICIAN AND OTHER POEMS FOR CHILDREN / EL MAGO DE LOS TACOS Y OTROS POEMAS PARA NINOS

Bertrand, Diane Gonzales Illus. by Flores, Carolyn Dee Trans. by Lima-Padilla, Rossy Piñata Books/Arté Público (64 pp.) $9.95 paper | Oct. 31, 2019 978-1-55885-891-6

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Tichy’s adventures in The Seventh Voyage are extremely varied. “But most of them are funny or absurd,” Muth explains, “and they all poke fun at humanity’s foibles.”

Muth notes that The Seventh Voyage lends itself well to the graphic format. “The rhythm and pacing and verbosity were deliberate and frustrating. Lem didn’t just describe it; as a reader you really go through it.” (The English translation is by Michael Kandel.)

The journey Muth and Lem take the reader on is a harrowing one, and it’s entirely Tichy’s fault. As he travels alone through space in a broken spacecraft, a series of gravitational vortices bend time, causing future and past versions of himself to appear and disappear. While the extra hands—his own—should make repairing the ship easier, he just keeps getting in his own way. Time and technology are in a constant state of flux in this beautifully illustrated and absurd story—it is, after all, a 2019 adaptation of a 1957 story set in the year 2319—and the focus on an individual with traits so immediately recognizable is what has allowed Tichy to remain relevant for so long. In fact, that was one of the biggest takeaways for Muth as he worked through the process of bringing the story to life.

“As I was doing the book, I would read the news or see some current information on the internet, and it occurred to me, this is just like the gravitational vortices Ijon Tichy is going through,” Muth reflects. “A ridiculous universe throwing unfathomable circumstances at us— and we watch in horror as history repeats itself over and over and over.”

Bertrand’s collection of bilingual poems offers a (mostly) child’s view of the surrounding world.

Odes to cherished objects like Easter cascarones (confettifilled eggs), favorite foods like cinnamon buñuelos, and fond moments like napping together in Pepo’s favorite chair root the poems in Mexican familial culture while also touching on universal topics. Lima-Padilla’s Spanish translation of the entire book follows the English version. The collection targets intermediate readers, but some poems reflect a much younger voice that likely won’t resonate with middle-grade readers: “We climb aboard, chugging upon the seats / as we ‘choo-choo’ along.”

Others require more emotional depth from readers, as in the downright sad “My Piñata Cowboy,” in which a heartbroken child empathetically looks on at a piñata’s demise: “He’s beaten, broken and empty. / Why does no one care?” A tribute poem to the children of Houston compares Hurricane Harvey to a bully using a third-person adult perspective. The overall result is a lack of cohesive voice in both age and tone. In an author’s note, Bertrand cites previous appearances of some work, which helps to explain the disjointed perspective. Nevertheless, the odes to family members stand out for their genuine appreciation for slice-of-life moments, such as in relishing Abuelita’s delicious raisin tamales, Tía María’s hugs, or learning to dance to cumbia from Daddy.

Positive reflections of children’s experiences within Mexican families balance this collection’s unevenness.

(Poetry. 6-9)

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So many unique yet universal aspects of the human experience are touched upon in this lovingly shared memoir. infinite hope

MAX AND MARLA ARE FLYING TOGETHER

Boiger, Alexandra Illus. by the author Philomel (32 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-0-525-51566-1

Max encourages Marla to fly by building a kite.

One day Max, an upbeat young child, announces to pal Marla, a little barn owl, they will build a kite to “fly high up in the sky.” Max labors enthusiastically on the kite, but Marla barely participates. “Flying is not her favorite thing.” After adding a sketched self-portrait to the kite, Max takes Marla outside and instructs her to fly high with their kite beside her, as if they were flying together. When Marla ignores Max’s flight instructions, the child realizes she’s afraid and assures her owls were born to fly. Marla’s having none of it. The next day Max coaxes Marla to help rake fallen leaves and find their now-missing kite.

Marla, however, stands behind a tree—and on the kite—until a sudden wind sweeps both her and the kite skyward, where she notices Max’s picture, hears her friend encouraging her, and reacts as she was born to. Simple, gently humorous watercolorand-ink illustrations rendered with expressive black outlines and fluid, pale color washes track Max’s supportive efforts to help Marla overcome her fear of flying in close-up vignettes as well as expansive aerial spreads. Max and Marla’s facial expressions and body language deftly reveal their status as “best friends.” Max is white and appears to live alone with Marla but no parents.

An uplifting tale about overcoming fear. (Picture book. 3- 7)

INFINITE HOPE A Black Artist’s Journey From World War II to Peace

Bryan, Ashley Illus. by the author Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum (112 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-5344-0490-8

Renowned artist and children’s-book creator Bryan shares his journey through World War II. Best known for his brightly colored paintings of flowers and joyful scenes, here Bryan shares a part of his life that was less bright. Bryan was in his third year of art school when he was recruited to join the U.S. Army in 1943. Training for service in an all-black battalion, being deployed to Europe to fight with the Allied Forces on D-Day, and spending months trying to get his men back home—these experiences did not stop Bryan from pursuing his development as an artist. He was always drawing and sketching, and his fellow soldiers and even some of his superiors encouraged him to do so. His years in the Army are effectively detailed in a multimedia format that has the intimate feel 94

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of a scrapbook being shared by the author. The main text is a retrospective narration surrounded by extensive primary documents: old photographs and documents, handwritten letters (whose contents are also set in a small blue type for easier reading), paintings, and sketches, both standing alone and overlaid on top of photographs. So many unique yet universal aspects of the human experience are touched upon in this lovingly shared memoir: the passion that kept an artist going through the most difficult times, the contradictions of war against Nazism with segregation at home and within the U.S. Army.

Watching Bryan generously transform the bittersweet into beauty is watching the meaning of art. (note, sources, index) (Memoir. 10-adult)

BLUE PLANET Life in Our Oceans and Rivers

Butterfield, Moira Illus. by Woodward, Jonathan 360 Degrees (32 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-944530-96-9 Series: Colors of the World

Broad overviews of both the water cycle and the varieties of life in waters fresh and salty.

In simple language broken up into one- or two-sentence blocks, Butterfield leads a tour of our planet’s five oceans and select biomes at their edges and various depths, then moves on to the four largest rivers and a half-dozen named representative lakes. A spread of boats and another of aquatic homes on various continents acknowledge human use, capped by glances at a community well and a water-treatment plant that lead to a final appeal not to waste or spoil our “sparkling treasure!” Woodward crowds most of the natural locales with characteristic wildlife, much of it seen close up, all reasonably accurately rendered in what looks like layered, painted paper collage. Human figures are rare and distant but seem to be matched to their diverse locales. In the co-published Green Planet: Life in Our Woods and Forests, the scene shifts to woodsy settings for basic pictures of tree types and metabolism plus glimpses of rainforest insects and spider monkeys, grizzly bears in snowy boreal forests, owls and other residents of deciduous woods, and arboreal human dwellings (albeit with no humans in sight).

A serviceable early introduction to watery environments and some of their residents, wild and otherwise. (index) (Informational picture book. 6-9) (Green Planet: 978-1-944530-97-6)

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THE LAST LEOPARD

Cao Wenxuan Illus. by Li Rong Starfish Bay (44 pp.) $16.95 | Dec. 1, 2019 978-1-76036-088-7

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In the “vast and boundless” wilderness, a leopard roams in hopes he’s not alone.

Searching for another of its kind, the leopard encounters the harshness of nature. Thirsty, he can drink “only on rainy days,” as the rest of the time, “the sun beat[s] down…like a burning fireball in the sky.” Days into his journey, still “not a single leopard” is to be found. Soon he does, however, meet several creatures, including a pigeon, a groundhog, and an oak tree— each one wondering if it too is the only one of its kind left in the world. In each exchange, the leopard comforts his new acquaintance and is comforted in return. Despite his discouragement, he continues to rally and to persist. A final encounter with a pond after a rainstorm brings bittersweet solace. Cao’s patient, undeterred leopard is compelling, though the storytelling can be unsubtle if heartbreaking (particularly the conclusion). The uncredited translation feels stilted at times, and line breaks in wordy passages as well as the text placement sometimes disrupt the flow. Li’s textured full-color art depicts the wilderness primarily in blues, yellows, and browns. Rainy spreads set in black highlight the leopard’s relief in quenching his thirst and work in contrast to the leopard’s climactic water encounter, done in the dominant palette.

A contemplative, sobering extinction story. (Picture book.

6-9)

items that will be unfamiliar: vinyl record and cassette player and tape; typewriter and film reel; floppy disk and a laughably passé cellphone. Some experiences are out of young children’s ken, so a few questions will be difficult to answer, and, on several pages, details get lost in gutters. Picture quizzes at the back require readers to find objects not belonging to the professions of depicted persons. Commendably, the illustrated workers are racially, ethnically, and nontraditionally gender diverse. Besides expanding vocabulary, the book develops the math skill of classifying.

Kids should have some fun, but they won’t make a job of returning. (Informational picture book. 4- 7)

THE BIG BOOK OF EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO GET THE JOB DONE

Cassany, Mia Illus. by Inclan, Maria Suarez Trans. by Kaasikas, Daniel Prestel (32 pp.) $14.95 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-3-7913-7404-8

To do the job, you need the right stuff.

That’s the premise of this themed picture dictionary that displays tools, equipment, and apparel associated with different jobs. Illustrated in muted colors, the objects corresponding to the jobs are arranged and labeled on two-page spreads.

Each spread includes an informative sidebar; additionally, kids are challenged to answer a question about each career. For instance, readers must select which tools a chef uses for measuring. (Answers to all questions are given at the end.) Some other occupations include artist, doctor, and mechanic. It is simple enough, but there are concerns with this title, originally published in Spanish, with numerous examples of off-the-mark labeling, such as “ceramic” and “antiquity” used to label pottery pieces on the “Artist” spread. A few spreads feature outdated |

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JUST FEEL How To Be Stronger, Happier, Healthier, and More Chopra, Mallika Illus. by Vaughan, Brenna Running Press Kids (128 pp.) $12.99 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-7624-9474-3

Adolescence may not come with a user’s manual, but this resource offers information and practices that can help readers feel in control of their emotions, behaviors, and decisions.

In a friendly, encouraging tone, Chopra guides readers on a journey of self-discovery. The text is divided into three sections: “Know,” “Choose,” and “Take Action.” Within, readers will learn about their emotions and their impact on thoughts and behaviors, and they’ll find dozens of practices with which they can experiment to deepen their self-knowledge. The presentation of this material is notable in its approachability and its respect for its intended audience. The informational sections are brief, practices require no special materials, and consistent guidance is offered on when and how to reach out to trusted adults for help. Breaking up the text are line drawings that clearly express diversity through hair styles and facial features. Undoubtedly, some lessons will resonate with readers more than others. Some may balk, for example, at the emphasis placed on personal responsibility or at a practice that guides readers through the colors of unseen energetic centers in the body. However, with such a wealth of material from which to pick and choose, this resource stands out in offering something for everybody.

An empowering guide to finding more satisfaction and calm in life. (Nonfiction. 10-14)

HOLLOW DOLLS

Connolly, MarcyKate Sourcebooks (288 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 1, 2020 978-1-4926-8819-8 A young girl with the power to read minds searches for her lost family.

This novel picks up immediately after the events of Connolly’s Shadow Weaver (2018) and Comet Rising (2019) and is set in the same world. A brief prologue summarizes the previous books’ events as mind reader Simone introduces herself. She and her best friend, Sebastian, a memory thief, were among “the talented” held captive by Lady Aisling. They are now free, and together they hope to find Simone’s family. Simone, Sebastian, and Jemma—Sebastian’s sister and now their guardian—set out for the Archives, hoping information found there will lead them to Simone’s village, visiting Lady Aisling in prison first. When a body walker takes Jemma over, Simone and Sebastian must continue their journey alone.

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They meet Maeve, who is also headed to the Archives; the foreshadowing is blatant as the pair debates Maeve’s trustworthiness before ultimately deciding to join her. While this is written as a stand-alone companion, readers unfamiliar with the previous books will be at a disadvantage in understanding the magical world and the terror surrounding Lady Aisling, which affects character development. The main characters aren’t well developed enough for readers without that background to empathize with their plight; Sebastian stands out as especially fretful throughout the book. Characters are presumed white.

This fantasy quest will be best appreciated by those familiar with the earlier books. (Fantasy. 8-12)

CUB

Copeland, Cynthia L. Illus. by the author with Pattison, Ronda Algonquin (240 pp.) $24.95 | $12.95 paper | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-61620-993-3 978-1-61620-848-6 paper In the fall of 1972, Cindy Copeland sees nature’s game of predator versus prey playing out in the halls of Litchfield

Junior High School.

Donning long, Amish-like dresses and fitted with braces, she’s certain of her destiny as prey, subject to the mean girls that sit at the predators’ table. Instead, her favorite English teacher arranges for her to work with a local newspaper journalist as a “cub reporter.” Her new mentor is a young, hip reporter who drives a VW Beetle and wears bellbottoms. Meanwhile, Cindy’s best friend starts hanging out at the predators, table, leaving the protagonist for the first time without her childhood BFF. As Cindy becomes a more adept reporter, her confidence grows and she develops new friendships; she even acquires her first boyfriend. News assignments are followed by examples of rough drafts with corrections and notes showing the editorial process. As a cub reporter, Cindy is exposed to contemporaneous issues: the 1972 presidential election campaign, Earth Day, and Connecticut’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Copeland’s first graphic novel for kids successfully integrates the right balance of coming-of-age issues into those arising from her early-’70s setting; many of the latter are eerily similar to those that the country is still experiencing. Cindy is white; one of her new friends is one of their school’s few students of color.

This tale of middle-grade angst and self-consciousness is laced with humor and nostalgia. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)

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Invites young readers to imagine a world of possibilities for themselves. parker looks up

SNEAKY BEAK

Corderoy, Tracey Illus. by Neal, Tony Tiger Tales (32 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-68010-175-1

PARKER LOOKS UP An Extraordinary Moment

Curry, Parker & Curry, Jessica Illus. by Jackson, Brittany Aladdin (40 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-5344-5186-5 This book is based on the viral photograph of African American toddler Parker Curry, who, during a visit to the National Portrait Gallery, became mesmerized by Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama, who she thought was a queen.

One rainy afternoon, Parker’s mother (co-author Jessica Curry) makes the suggestion that they visit the museum, little sister Ava in tow. At the museum, they see Parker’s friend Gia and her mother. The three girls dance through the halls of the museum noticing horses, flowers, and feathers in the famous works of art. Just before they leave, Parker notices the portrait of Michelle Obama, stops in her tracks, and that viral photographic moment is born. Parker’s thoughts about what she sees when she looks at Michelle Obama are assumed by her expressive gaze, well captured by illustrator Jackson. The reimagined images of the paintings are brilliant. In one, Einstein seems to |

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL

Ephron, Amy Philomel (192 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-9848-1327-5 Series: Castle in the Mist, 3

In this sequel to Carnival Magic (2018), a Christmas trip to London tumbles siblings Tess and Max into a mystery frozen in time.

The snowstorms might be keeping Tess and Max’s parents from flying to join them and Aunt Evie at the posh Sanborn Hotel, but they do promise a magical ramble through Hyde Park. A mysterious coachman, his equally mysterious horse, and a well-dressed, soft-spoken boy called Colin are the first of a series of fantastical figures linking the modern world to a Christmas nearly a century past. At first the magic seems benign enough—Colin invites Tess and Max to what seems to be a fancy-dress party on the hotel’s hithertononexistent eighth floor, where he and his family live. When things take a dramatic turn for the worse, however, Tess is left alone, and she must use Max’s logic and her own imaginative wit to save both Max’s and Colin’s lives as well as to discover just what was so important about the events of “December, 1926: Three Days before Christmas.” Ephron’s simply told tale of Christmas magic draws a loving and occasionally turbulent sibling relationship through Tess’ eyes. The plot is gently paced, with several twists working to maintain readers’ interest right up to the end—which, to the book’s discredit, feels somewhat rushed. Characterization is minimal, which might throw readers unfamiliar with the preceding books for a loop, but the characters themselves are likable and suitably quirky. The cast is default white.

A mild-mannered Christmas caper. (Fantasy. 8-12)

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A susceptible bear falls under the spell of a slick salesbird.

A glib TV ad questioning whether his bed is bouncy enough has Bear signing up for a “bounce test,” which leads to the installation of a “Snores-Galore Mega Bed” so huge that it crowds Bear’s silent co-habitant Hamster right out of the bedroom.

In a classic round of upselling, the eponymous avian huckster then cozens Bear into springing for a “Super-Whirl Turbo Tub” that floods the house, a “Crunch-O-Matic Granola Maker” that likewise explodes, and even a rocket to an outer-space vacation.

Realizing at last that glamorous goods are no substitute for his tiny, treasured friend, Bear returns to Earth determined to chuck the lot—and responds to Sneaky Beak’s offer of a “Trashtastic Trash Can” with: “No, thanks! Hamster and I will recycle!”

Though Corderoy and Neal rather flub the ending by equating “recycle” with just pitching all the appliances out on the sidewalk with a “Free Stuff ” sign, their hearts and values are more or less in the right place. Bear’s new stuff comes positively festooned with retro-futuristic gauges, dials, and robot arms that play amusingly with the pastel refrigerator, lava lamp, and other domestic period details in the cartoon illustrations.

A cautionary tale for budding consumers. (Picture book.

6-8)

be looking down on Parker and Gia, who laugh at his “bushy mustache,” and ballerinas in “frilly white tutus” step out of the frame to join the girls as they dance down a hall. (The actual titles of the paintings are included in the backmatter.) One illustration shows a diverse group of children engaging in various activities, which invites young readers to imagine a world of possibilities for themselves, the way Parker does.

A delightful story that speaks powerfully to the importance of representation. (Picture book. 3- 7)

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Smashing: a romantic, ripping yarn set in the mobile-phone era. a talent for trouble

A TALENT FOR TROUBLE

Farrant, Natasha Clarion (272 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-328-58078-8

At a ramshackle Scottish boarding school, three children begin a hair-raising adventure.

Why must Alice’s home, Cherry Grange, be sold? Ever since her mum died four years ago, Alice—a dark-haired, white 11-year-old—has been a shadow of her former self. Her beloved father is unreliable, and her aunt decides nothing will help Alice but a fresh start. So it’s off to Stormy Loch Academy for Alice. It’s an odd sort of place: full of Challenges, where students discover Talents, and actions have Consequences. (Both characters and narrator have a tendency to speak with capitalized significance.) More importantly, the building is a storybook castle, with forbidden towers and pigs to feed. Despite an extremely rough start, Alice comes to depend on two of her classmates. Jesse Okuyo is a tall, multiracial rule-follower, and Fergus Mackenzie is a rule-breaking white redhead and the bane of Jesse’s existence. On the Great Orienteering Challenge, the three discover that Alice’s mercurial father has entangled them in a dangerous adventure, complete with foreign criminals, shootings, and an island chase. The adventure is selfconsciously—and delightfully—in the spirit of classic British school stories: Alice’s favorite book is Eva Ibbotson’s Amazon adventure, Journey to the River Sea (2001), and the foreshadowing narrative voice is markedly old school. Prose peppered with ellipses and dashes at times drags this otherwise-buoyant coming-of-age tale into languid meanders.

Smashing: a romantic, ripping yarn set in the mobilephone era. (Adventure. 10-12)

SURF’S UP!

Flowers, Luke Illus. by the author Scholastic (64 pp.) $4.99 paper | $23.99 PLB | Dec. 26, 2019 978-1-338-54752-8 978-1-338-54753-5 PLB Series: Moby Shinobi and Toby, Too!, 1 Sand, sun, and surf provide a jovial backdrop to ninja Moby Shinobi’s latest adventures, presented here in this graphic format after five more-conventional earlyreader outings.

Moby’s sidekick dog “Toby wants to play in the sun. / A beach visit would be fun!” Ninja Moby indulges Toby’s request, packing both beach and ninja items before setting out for the “Beach Bash!” Simple rhyming couplets and plenty of action follow as each brief chapter showcases a new problem for Moby. In “Sun and Sand,” his friends ask for assistance to place the final flag atop their impressive competitive sand castle only to be 98

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sabotaged by a snappy crab. In “Catch of the Day,” a fisherman on a pier recruits Moby to pull in a catch only to be entangled in lines and confusion. Moby later goes “To the Rescue” of a mariner whose sailboat is sinking. Following suit from previous books, Moby often creates a comical catastrophe before ushering in a creative solution. Bold illustrations layered with bright colors and textures are combined with oversized cartoon facial features. The combo heightens the lively plot, especially during the monosyllabic action sequences in each vignette: “TWIRL! / TOSS! / BOINK! / PLOP!” Light-skinned Moby may be equipped with and dressed in ninjutsu attire, but diversity is shown with a single brown-skinned friend and other background characters.

A high-interest venture for the early-reader audience.

(Graphic early reader. 5- 7)

VINCENT VENTURA AND THE MYSTERY OF THE WITCH OWL / VINCENT VENTURA Y EL MISTERIO DE LA BRUJA LECHUZA

Garza, Xavier Illus. by the author Trans. by Baeza Ventura, Gabriela Piñata Books/Arté Público (144 pp.) $9.95 paper | Oct. 31, 2019 978-1-55885-890-9 Series: Monster Fighter Mysteries, 2

Young monster hunter Vincent Ventura faces his next greatest foe…the dreaded witch owl!

A strange new girl moves into the house across the street: 666 Duende. Her arrival intrigues Vincent, who immediately notices her father’s eccentric behavior and the three enormous owls that keep a watch on the house. Then the owls transform into three women dressed in black, and it seems that a new monster mystery is afoot. With a little help from his cousins, Vincent gets to know his new neighbors, Zulema Ortiz, who’s obsessed with drawing owls, and Mr. Ortiz, a curandero from Mexico. When Vincent discovers that the Ortiz family’s hometown, Catemaco, is known as the “witchcraft capital of the world,” he begins to suspect that Zulema might be a wicked witch owl. As the brave monster fighter learns more about his mysterious crush and her family’s tragic past, the true villain of this adventure swoops in to stir a little monstrous chaos. Taking place shortly after the events of Vincent Ventura and the Mystery of the Chupacabras (2018), Garza’s cool series sequel offers a little mystery, a little action, and a lot of fun. A breezy read, Vincent’s latest adventure packs folkloric elements in a fast-paced tale that’s sure to entice reluctant readers. Similar to its predecessor, this bilingual novel contains both English and Baeza Ventura’s Spanish versions, with the latter being superior in readability.

A real hoot. (Fantasy. 8-12)

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IGNORE THE TROLLS

Gershowitz, Jordan Illus. by Prabhat, Sandhya POW! (32 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-1-57687-933-7

THE GIFT INSIDE THE BOX

Grant, Adam & Grant, Allison Sweet Illus. by Schoenbrun, Diana Dial (40 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-9848-1546-0

A mysterious box seeks a giver.

After parachuting from the sky, an unaddressed cardboard box wonders, “Who’s going to open me?” Sporting spindly arms and legs, the cheerful box slips into homes and crashes a science camp, surprising—then ditching—assorted children, most of whom seem to be expecting deliveries. Its corny parting puns, such as “Piece out!” to a child anticipating a new puzzle or “That’s not my beat” to a drummer eager to replace broken drumsticks, will likely fly over young readers’ heads. After escaping bickering twins, a dog, and a clamor of kids claiming their tutu, tennis racket, etc., the box leaps into the arms of its dream recipient: a child who’s sure it contains “something wonderful” and who’d “love to give [it] to”…someone, despite its unknown contents.

“Who would YOU give this box to?” asks the last line. Despite good intentions, mixed messages and a cleverly boxlike but awkwardly reverse-opening cover make this lesson in generosity difficult to unpack. Their dangerously naïve acceptance of a suddenly |

HARD WORK, BUT IT’S WORTH IT The Life of Jimmy Carter

Hegedus, Bethany Illus. by Han, Kyung Eun Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-0-06-264378-0

An outline of President Jimmy Carter’s life—peanut farmer, president, and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

As a child growing up during the Depression on a farm in Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter “knew more people of color than most white boys his age.” In fact, an African American boy named Alonzo “A.D.” Davis was Jimmy’s best friend until they got older and the ways of segregation altered their relationship. Hegedus focuses on segregation as a key element in Carter’s life, and Han’s muted, fine-lined illustrations complement and extend the text, effectively evoking segregated lunch counters, movie theaters, school buses, and schools.

As a young man, Carter’s response to the injustice he witnessed was to create a set of “Good Mental Habits” to live by; even though they are included in an illustration, these aren’t adequately explained. As he became politically active and progressed from local school board to the Georgia state Senate, from governor to president, Carter began to act against injustice. Though it is not made clear what he did to work for change in U.S. race relations, he is shown working on the Camp David Accords, trying to bring home hostages from Iran, and building houses for Habitat for Humanity.

An affectionate, admiring tribute to our 39th president. (author’s note, timeline, bibliography, online resources) (Picture book/biography. 4-8)

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Modern advice in a medieval setting plays on parallels between trolls, real and online.

Tim the Timid (as he’s known) has a good heart, but he yearns to be more than a boy afraid to dance with fairies. At school the bravest kids are the Knights, so that’s where he’s set his sights. Unfortunately, when tryouts are announced, Tim starts practicing only to find his embarrassing mistakes are captured by a troll’s “magic picture taker” and sent to all the kids in school. The more Tim tries to prove himself to the trolls, the worse they treat him, until he finally heeds advice from the knight Bethany the Brave that the only way to defeat them is to ignore them. Tim draws courage from her counsel, though it is unclear how this solves his initial problems of timidity, which were entirely unrelated to trolls. Regardless, his newfound strength leads him to victory. While many might benefit from the advice to ignore online bullying, it’s unfortunate that the book lacks any backmatter that might provide kids advice from an era a little more recent than the Middle Ages. Busy pages teem with images that meld the past and the present, often serving the story but sometimes overwhelming the eye.

Tim presents white; Bethany has dark skin.

Gets to the titular point but lacks contemporary advice.

(Picture book. 4- 7)

appearing, unmarked box aside, it’s fair for kids expecting packages to assume that the box is theirs, and the box’s teasing exits risk contradicting the kindness it hopes to impart. Sadly, Schoenbrun’s spot cartoon illustrations don’t disguise the purposive plot or flat speech-balloon dialogue. Most kids present as kids of color.

Three present white; one uses a wheelchair.

Return to sender. (Picture book. 4-8)

WHO WANTS TO BE A PIRATE? What It Was Really Like in the Golden Age of Piracy

Heos, Bridget Illus. by Duncan, Daniel Henry Holt (32 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-0-8050-9770-2

Avast! There’s more to a real pirate’s life than plunder and parties.

As in Who Wants To Be A Princess? (2017, illustrated by Migy), Heos contrasts romance with reality—but not in any particularly

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perceptive, or even accurate, way. Addressing readers whose idea of “pirate” starts and ends with the likes of Capt. Hook or Jack Sparrow, the equally fictional Capt. Parrot (a white human with a diverse crew) does present pirate food as wormy in good times and boiled boots in bad, and gives redolent new meaning to the term “poop deck” thanks to the livestock on board.

But aside from drinking punch and having food fights, he barely alludes to actual piratical behavior or history. Duncan is no better, as he shows a cartoon crew firing anachronistic breechloading cannons and then contradicting the narrative claim that victims are thrown overboard by providing them a boat and supplies. He also depicts a carpenter “surgeon” flourishing but not using a faintly discolored saw, leaves the captured captain being bundled aboard a paddy wagon rather than hanged, and offers a final view of an apparently uninhabited pirate ship sailing along. An afterword on the Golden Age of Piracy, capped by a bibliography, at least points to piracy’s less savory side.

Anemic fare for would-be buccaneers. (Picture book. 6-8)

ACTIVIST A Story of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Shooting

Hogg, Lauren Elizabeth with Zuiker, Anthony E. Illus. by Hudson, Don Zuiker Press (96 pp.) $12.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-947378-21-6 Hogg relates her experience of surviving the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and her journey to becoming a gun control advocate.

This is a strong—and unfortunately relevant—addition to the publisher’s series of graphic treatments of contemporary social issues. Hogg tells her tale in a compelling voice, and the book begins with a page of arresting graphics, showing slender, then– high school freshman Hogg. She introduces herself and relates that she was on campus when 17 people died of bullet wounds on Valentine’s Day 2018. After revealing that two of her close friends died in the massacre, Hogg notes, “I lost my friends, but I found my calling.” A full page shows her and other students—fists in the air—beneath the slogan #NEVERAGAIN. Anecdotes about Hogg’s relationships with her mother, father, brother, and closest friends cleverly both inform readers about Hogg’s personality and foreshadow later incidents. In the midsection, Hogg relates her memories of the fateful day of the shooting. The images are appropriately gripping but never sensationalized. The final section covers grief, survivor guilt, and increasing empowerment— including students challenging the National Rifle Association.

The use of “congressmen” for both male and female members of Congress is a startling regression, especially since Hogg is so politically aware. Hogg is white, and the diversity of her school community is represented in the illustrations.

Inspiring and heartbreakingly timely. (about the author, photographs, note for parents) (Graphic memoir. 10-14) 100

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LET’S BUILD

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Illus. by Waring, Zoe HMH Books (56 pp.) $14.99 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-1-328-60607-5 This construction book knocks down the fourth wall faster than a wrecking ball.

What’s better than an interactive picture book filled with critters? The answer is so obvious it may seem inevitable: an interactive picture book filled with construction critters! At the start, a beaver foreman urges young readers to knock on the hard hat across the gutter twice before helping with the work. From there, children are urged to clap, point, swing, blow, and generally engage with the book physically. The animals are building something, and they need all the help they can get. There’s even a bit of narrative tension, as when the cement mixer’s drum stops spinning and needs a bit of a shake to get going or when the excavator requires help piercing the hard dirt. As each piece of equipment is a different color, those words are highlighted within the declarative statements and instructions to readers.

There’s even a nod to environmental enthusiasts with the planting of new trees along the paved road. In the end, a new park has been created, and the last instruction is to “Pat yourself on the back for a job well done.” Sturdy, reinforced pages are filled with brightly colored animals and machines that can stand up to a little physical pounding.

Young construction enthusiasts will be in heaven.

(Picture book. 2-5)

BEEHIVE

Hurley, Jorey Illus. by the author Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-4814-7003-2 Hurley applies her trademark minimalist approach to a spring-through-fall sojourn with a colony of honeybees.

The text has but 15 words, one per double-page spread: “buzz / swarm / explore / find / build / lay / feed / grown / fly / collect / pollinate / guard / sting / keep / honey.” Muted, matte illustrations depict the action: The swarm flies above early-summer flowers till the bees happen upon a hollow tree, where they establish their hive. The queen lays eggs; workers feed the larvae. The metamorphosed adult bees collect pollen and nectar from tangerine-colored fall blooms and defend the hive from a marauding skunk in order to have honey enough to last the winter. For all the graphic simplicity of Hurley’s images (gardeners will be scratching their heads as to the specific types of some of these flowers), her depiction of bee behavior is accurate. She takes considerable artistic license with the depiction of the hive in unrealistically exposing it within the enormous hole in the

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Skai reveals the more challenging aspects of celebrity. reach for the skai

tree’s trunk, but the device allows readers to see a curtainlike pane of wax comb within and takes a visual stand against the alltoo-common erroneous depiction of a beehive as a wasps’ nest.

An author’s note fills in the narrative conveyed by the illustrations, the words of the text helpfully printed in uppercase so that caregivers can expand on each spread for curious listeners.

Simple, beautiful, surprisingly accurate. (Informational picture book. 3-6)

THE DOUBLE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS

Iggulden, Conn; Iggulden, Arthur & Iggulden, Cameron Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $22.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-0-06-285797-2

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An intergenerational Australian comedy.

Alana Oakley starts Year Eight with a crush on the new boy, Flynn—and so do her friends, setting up comedic tension. In a parallel storyline, readers meet Alana’s freelancejournalist mother, Emma, a Filipina immigrant and grieving widow who self-medicates with painkillers with the help of her irresponsible friends. After Emma is caught in a nonsensical, televised high-speed police chase—much to Alana’s embarrassment—she is sentenced to community service at the Police Boys’ Club, rehabilitating at-risk youth called “Second-Chancers.” A chapter titled “Lost in Translation” pretty much sums up the rest of this confusing read as the author weaves in and out of POV between Alana and her mother, following Alana’s misadventures and her mother’s erratic behavior, fueled by an obvious addiction to painkillers. Meanwhile, Alana’s crush on Flynn loses its allure as she becomes convinced he’s a phony and begins to stalk him (absurdly wearing a sombrero as a disguise at one point). Unfortunately, instances of body-shaming and the use of cultural stereotypes for comic relief further mar this title.

Inkwell’s cast is a diverse one; in addition to biracial Alana (her father was white) and her mother, one of Alana’s friends is Bruneian, and her “Auntie” Ling Ling is Singaporean Chinese.

Confusing and not nearly as funny as it wants to be.

(Fiction. 10-14)

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A new compendium of helpful skills, projects, puzzles, quotes, historical anecdotes, and other miscellany that add quality to life…if not necessarily length.

“The accumulation of knowledge is one of life’s subtle pleasures,” writes the co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys (2007), collaborating now with his sons instead of his brother Hal. In that tongue-in-cheek spirit they offer up a fresh array of rewarding reading—beginning with detailed, practical instructions for picking a lock followed by an account of the experiences of Ernest Shackleton that highlights his extraordinary leadership skills. Tucking in well-placed photos or diagrams, they go on to recommend poems to memorize, describe select famous world empires and how to make lasagna, and, just to prove that the title is not mere hyperbole, suggest numerous ways of provoking “Interesting Chemical Reactions” with easily available materials. For what it’s worth, the authors seem to have tested all of these activities themselves, and they add cautionary notes based on their experiences. Many of this import’s U.K.–specific entries have been Americanized, but some, such as how to get a shotgun or wire an electric plug have not and may be of less use (not to say even more “danger”) on this side of the pond. With very rare exceptions the historical incidents, figures, and cultural defaults are white and Eurocentric, but at least girls willing to disdain the title and brave the pervasive male gaze are not specifically discouraged from harvesting what they might.

Salutary fare for readers who, like the authors, believe that “we should all know a few basics.” (Nonfiction. 12-15)

TORMENT AND TRICKERY

Inkwell, Poppy West 44 Books (312 pp.) $12.90 paper | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-5383-8483-1 Series: Alana Oakley, 2

REACH FOR THE SKAI How To Inspire, Empower, and Clapback

Jackson, Skai Crown (232 pp.) $19.99 | $22.99 PLB | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-9848-5154-3 978-1-9848-5155-0 PLB What’s it like to grow up as a Disney child star?

Skai Jackson, whose first big role was the character Zuri on the Disney Channel show Jessie, shares her experience of being in front of the camera, starting as a baby and continuing through her emergence as a young star who becomes a superconfident teen. The daughter of a single parent, Skai began her modeling career in New York when she was still in diapers.

Her ambitious mother, struggling to make ends meet, decided she wanted more for Skai, which led to first commercials, then bigger auditions that resulted in her roles on Jessie and Bunk’d.

Skai takes readers through how she adapted to life as a child actress and an unexpected role model for black girls. She also

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Marina Budhos

IN HER FIRST MIDDLE-GRADE NOVEL, THE AUTHOR DRAWS ON THE EXPERIENCE OF A 1970S QUEENS CHILDHOOD AND EFFORTS TO DESEGREGATE SCHOOLS THROUGH BUSING

By Ana Grilo Photo courtesy Peter Konerko

The Long Ride, Marina Budhos’ middle-grade novel, interweaves the personal and the political in the story of three mixed-race Queens girls about to start seventh grade in 1971. Jamila Clarke and her two best friends, Josie Rivera and Francesca George, are to be part of an integration experiment, bused an hour away from their predominantly white neighborhood to integrate a new school in South Jamaica.

The author herself grew up in Queens during the period when The Long Ride is set, the daughter of a diasporic Indian from Guyana and a Jewish-American mother. “I was aware of the promise of the early civil 102

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rights movement, but now came the time when ordinary people—not the heroes on the frontlines—had to make those subtle changes in their day-to-day lives.”

Change, identity and belonging are at the heart of The Long Ride. Budhos wanted to write about families of color and mixed-race families “who are constantly navigating for their children. Does a middle-class family move to an apartment building where the father might get stopped in the elevator? What happens when their daughter or son don’t grow up with others who look like them? Where do they belong?” she asks.

“I think these internal choices and trade-offs are very visible to families of color; less so to white families.”

Unsurprisingly, the experiment has a profound effect not only on the three girls, but also their entire circle of family and friends. While Jamila and Josie learn to negotiate the complex setting in which they both belong and don’t belong, Francesca’s parents end up sending her to a private school, separating the three friends for the first time. Budhos relates how she “wanted to capture my own experience—being mixed race, having friends who were mixed race, and going to a somewhat tough junior high school where black and white students were not integrated. Many of the experiences in the book,” Budhos says, “were familiar.”

The Long Ride is also a new experience for the author, her first middle-grade novel after writing awardwinning adult and YA novels including Watched, Ask Me No Questions, and Tells Us We’re Home. Mastering a new kind of voice was only one of the challenges— the other was the question of agency when it came to young characters with a limited range of independence. “Once I realized that Jamila had a bit of fire and intuitively saw the inequities and racial-class divisions

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Ana Grilo is co-editor of The Book Smugglers blog and co-host of the Fangirl Happy Hour podcast. The Long Ride received a starred review in the June 15, 2019, issue.

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reveals the more challenging aspects of celebrity, such as having to stand up for herself, or maturely “clapback,” when attacked on social media. She unapologetically states the reality of having to navigate life as a dark-skinned girl in a business that prefers lighter hues. Sporting her natural hair for years, Skai has had the fortitude to fully embrace and forge her identity as a talented actress, social-change advocate, and fashion icon (as well as a sneakerhead!). Periodic boxed lists of tips and copious photographs, both abetted by lively design, add to the book’s sense of fun.

Truly delivers what the subtitle promises. (Memoir. 8-12)

MACHINES IN MOTION The Amazing History of Transportation Jackson, Tom Illus. by Mould, Chris Bloomsbury (64 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-5476-0337-4

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at school,” Budhos says, “I felt I had something that could drive her agency, and thus the storyline.”

Jamila’s narrative is situated at the confluence of big-picture issues and personal experience—making new friends, falling in love, finding her own voice but never losing track of her love for her two best friends.

“I wanted to set Jamila into the trio of friends and capture all those emotions—from wearing the same boots to wanting to both play with dollhouses and be a bit cooler like the older kids to those uneven spurts of sexuality to figuring out how to convert her spunk into something constructive. I also love the fierceness of friendship between girls,” Budhos says.

The Long Ride is a very topical book, and Budhos talks about how, in writing the story and talking to others, she found out how many people were affected by desegregation plans of the era. “We have a whole generation shaped by these efforts, and for all kinds of reasons, we are living in resegregated schools today,” she says. “Why not have a conversation about that period—what we learned? What’s the same? Indeed, I would argue that we are still, in some ways, adjudicating the legacy of that period.”

A sprawling history of a dozen modes of transport.

We are surrounded by and typically make daily use of some form of transport. Jackson and Mould train their spotlight on 12 types: trains, ships, cars, balloons, bikes, airplanes, tanks, helicopters, rockets, spacecraft, working vehicles, and submarines.

Each mode is introduced with a two-page timeline spread illustrated by a spread-spanning rambling path through an appropriate setting for each vehicle. “Cars” from an ancient pottery wheel to the Ford Model T putter along a winding path; “Bikes” from the 1817 “dandy horse” to the “superbike” that won the 1992 Olympics navigate a hedge maze. Mould’s black-and-white cartoon artwork is dazzling as it works its way from ancient systems of transport to modern types. The timelines pick out stellar moments in the development of each transport, and the pages that follow each timeline go into greater detail of the highlights.

And the histories are routinely amazing, with 600-year-old trains, high-speed dreadnoughts, 458-meter-long supertankers, sound-barrier–punching automobiles, Titanic-sized zeppelins, the flying monk of 1,010 C.E. (he crash-landed and broke both legs), Leonardo da Vinci’s tank, a 4-billion-horsepower coal digger, and 2,300-year-old diving bells. Jackson’s text has considerable bounce and enthusiasm while managing to convey lots of tantalizing information and historical movement. There is no index, but the table of contents provides easy entry.

A vibrant, well-paced exploration. (Nonfiction. 5-11)

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A charming, gorgeously illustrated ode to sisterhood, adventure, and mindfulness. the star in the forest

THE STAR IN THE FOREST

Kellock, Helen Illus. by the author Thames & Hudson (32 pp.) $17.95 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-500-65190-2

An energetic young girl’s thirst for adventure leads to an unexpected (but not unwelcome) outcome.

Maisie and her older sister, Pip, are visiting their grandparents in a wooded region depicted in muted watercolor swaths of blue-grays, green-browns, and golden yellow-browns that mingle amid sketchy pencil lines. Both girls love stargazing, but Maisie would prefer a “SPECTACULAR adventure”—and she gets one after seeing a “bright flash” of pink and yellow in the sky. Vignettes capture Maisie’s eagerness to head outside as she pulls a sweater over her head and runs full tilt off the page, flashlight in hand. The book’s large trim size accommodates both further vignettes of the sisters bravely making their way through the dark woods and rich double-page spreads surveying the girls from a distance through the eyes of foxes, owls, and other woodland creatures as they approach the site of the mysterious flash. When they reach it, Maisie’s quick to feel disappointed, but Pip’s careful examination yields an exciting discovery that helps Maisie appreciate the full events of their evening. Both the illustrations and plot are favorably reminiscent of Beatrice Alemagna’s modern yet whimsical forays into nature and the transformations that occur from unhurried, focused observation. All humans depicted are short and round with fluffy hair, pointy noses, and skin the color of the uncoated white pages.

A charming, gorgeously illustrated ode to sisterhood, adventure, and mindfulness. (Picture book. 3-8)

DRAWING GOD

Kiefer, Karen Illus. by De Wit, Kathy Paraclete Press (32 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-64060-187-1 A young child is inspired by art and faith to draw pictures of God. After visiting an art museum and viewing the works of Picasso, Emma is moved to draw and create like the great artist. She meditates on what to draw and hears whispers from her mind and heart to draw God. Unfortunately, when Emma shares her first drawing—a vibrant yellow ball of light—with Peter the next day at school, he tells her that her drawing is simply the sun. Emma is disheartened but tries again. However, her next attempts (of a warm and toasty brown loaf like her mother bakes and a throbbing red heart symbolizing love) are also dismissed as bread and a Valentine—not God. Emma learns that she doesn’t need the approval of her friends and realizes that her drawings are truly representations of God to her. By the end of the book, all of the other children are drawing their own 104

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pictures of God, and all of them are different. De Wit’s illustrations well match the text and story: simple line drawings that have an abstract quality that mirrors the art theme. God is not defined or attributed to any particular religion in this book, so it will have appeal to readers of many faiths. It closes with suggestions for faith-based activities for children that connect with Emma’s story.

A simple, easily understood, and welcome book about children’s relationships with God. (Picture book. 4-8)

THREE KOREAN FAIRY TALES Beloved Stories and Legends

Kim So-Un Illus. by Jeong Kyoung-Sim Tuttle (96 pp.) $15.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-0-8048-5227-2

Three traditional Korean folktales are combined into one anthology, fully illustrated, with an introduction on the

cultural background.

During his lifetime, storyteller and journalist Kim (19071981) published multiple books on Korean folklore. The three stories chosen for this anthology (“The Magic Gem,” “The Tigers of the Kumgang Mountains,” and “The Deer and the Woodcutter”) have been previously published as stand-alone books. Exploring the curiosities of nature, each of the three legends tells an entertaining tale while imparting cherished Korean beliefs and values. As with the Grimms’ tales, there are hard truths and feelings of hatred, jealousy, and desire. Two of the stories clearly value being kind to wild animals, with celestial rewards. They also involve filial devotion, with a return to family leading to mixed results. Some of the morals are ambiguous and complicated. For example, the woodcutter kidnaps a fairy and makes her his wife, a turn of events she accepts with calm. And, unfortunately, the story of the tigers, a revered symbol in Korean culture, also does not migrate well. In the tale, tigers assume human forms, such as a priest, an old woman, and a young married couple. In each case, a hunter, avenging the death of his father, shoots these people, whose bodies then transform back into dead tigers. There may be a story of persistence here, but the revenge story and gun violence seem louder.

These tales may miss the connection to a current Western audience. (Fairy tales. 6-10)

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WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

Lennon, John & McCartney, Paul Illus. by Cole, Henry Little Simon/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 10, 2019 978-1-5344-2983-3

WHO DID IT FIRST? 50 Scientists, Artists, and Mathematicians Who Revolutionized the World

Leung, Julie Illus. by Kuhwald, Caitlin Henry Holt (128 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-250-21171-2 Series: Who Did It First?

A crew of achievers, mostly of recent vintage, STEAMs up to provide inspiration and role modeling.

Leung includes outliers Isaac Newton and 18th-century professor Maria Gaetana Agnesi in her gallery, but she favors figures of the past two centuries—all of whom made at least some contribution in science, technology, engineering, the arts, or mathematics that can be classified a “first.” Seventeen of the profiles are just thumbnails, gathered into two inserted chapters; the others each receive a full-page tribute that focuses less on biographical detail than on the highlighted achievement.

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BECOMING RBG Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Journey to Justice Levy, Debbie Illus. by Gardner, Whitney Simon & Schuster (208 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-5344-2456-2

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The lyrics of the classic Beatles song accompany an illustrated story in Cole’s (Spot & Dot, 2019) latest creation.

Two children sit near the front of their school bus, on opposite sides of the aisle, looking wistfully out their respective windows, while the crowd of kids in the back of the bus chat and laugh together. As the children exit the school bus, the two hang back from the crowd. At lunch, they notice each other; at recess, the blond, white child plays a guitar while the puffy-haired, darker-hued child watches, smiling. By the next spread, they are singing together in a bedroom and have developed a warm friendship. But soon, the blond child must move away, and each is alone again. They manage their loneliness with letters and phone calls, and, finally, they prepare for what becomes a spectacular visit. Most of the world is drawn in black and white, with touches of color to highlight the main characters and their connection; blue skies dominate the final spreads. Cole’s detailed style effectively creates a busy world in which individuals seek the comfort of friendship. The lyrics only loosely connect to the pictures, and parts of the text may seem obscure to children unfamiliar with the song. Adult readers will likely be happy to share the classic with children, though, and the visual story is strong enough to carry at least a full reading.

The authors’ names will sell it, but it’s the pictures that sing. (Picture book. 4-8)

“The first woman to solely direct an animated feature from a major Hollywood studio, 2011”). Most, however, merit huzzahs (Mary Golda Ross: “The first female engineer for Lockheed, 1942,” and a member of the Cherokee Nation to boot), and many are likely to be new to young readers. Each entry features a motivational quote or two, some of which occupy entire pages of their own, and, from Kuhwald, a stylized but easily recognizable portrait placed in an evocative setting. The roster earns high marks for diversity, as it includes 36 women and 20 people of color or who identify as Latinx.

This broad take on “firsts” is unusually rich in lesserknown figures and feats. (timeline, illustrator’s note, resource list) (Collective biography. 10-12)

Levy expands upon I Dissent (2016), her picture-book biography of the Supreme Court justice and cultural icon, in this graphic biography.

Octogenarian Ruth Bader Ginsburg is widely renowned for her intelligence, clarity, perseverance, and determination to move the needle of the American judicial system toward tangible justice and equity. With clear, effortless text conveyed in narrative boxes and speech bubbles, author Levy shows readers that these traits have been core tenets of Justice Ginsburg’s life since childhood. The evenly paced narrative provides an overview of Ginsburg’s life from her birth through her appointment on the Supreme Court, showing how her relationships with family members and her (delightfully unconventional) husband and the discrimination she faced as a woman and a Jew affected the arc of her life and career. Levy seamlessly provides historical context for this discrimination and the discrimination of other marginalized people Ginsburg worked with, and she neatly breaks down some of Ginsburg’s key legal cases to make them accessible. A detailed prose epilogue charts Ginsburg’s time on the Supreme Court, the personal and professional challenges she has faced since her appointment, and the cultural impact she continues to have. Gardner’s two-tone illustrations (a patriotic deep blue with red-pink highlights and ample use of white space) are friendly, easy to follow, expressive, and engaging, though at times text-box placement is awkward, and the use of type is unexceptional. Backmatter includes a timeline, a select bibliography, and endnotes with quotation sources.

Enlightening, inspiring, and empowering. (Graphic biog­ raphy. 10-adult)

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Julie Flett

THE NATIVE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR CREATED HER NEW PICTURE BOOK, BIRDSONG, AS A PAEAN TO ART-MAKING AND INTERGENERATIONAL FRIENDSHIP

By Kathie Meizner Was there music you had in mind as you worked on Birdsong?

I imagined Agnes and Katherena looking up from separate projects to hear the sound of a wood thrush or chickadee and thinking of one another. My son once called me from Gabriola Island [in British Columbia] where he was visiting a friend one summer—he wanted me to hear the sounds of the frogs on the island. That’s the sort of connection I saw between Agnes and Katherena.

Birdsong started out as a wordless picture book. I’d been working on it for about four to five months, and one day the words just started to come together. I sat down and wrote it all out, almost like song lyrics. I’d been holding the story for so long, in pictures, that I knew it well and it was very fluid, had a rhythm to it.

Julie Flett is an award-winning Cree-Métis artist, illustrator, and author. Her book Wild Berries was a First Nation Communities Read selection in Canada and a Kirkus Best Book of 2013. Her new book, Birdsong (Greystone Kids, Sept. 24), tells the story of a young girl in a new home who discovers that her elderly neighbor is a fellow artist.

What are your artistic influences?

I was raised surrounded by artists and makers of all ages.

My mom was a textile artist who had a weaving shop and later a shop with a focus on vintage clothing. I developed a love for patterns, dyes, and materials.

I often think about the artist Ruth Asawa and what she said about art-making: “Art is doing; art deals directly with life.”

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What is your illustration process?

I usually start on paper. For the last few books I’ve worked with pastel on paper, then the work is scanned and composited digitally. I’ve just started to get to know how to work with brushes in Photoshop; that’s been a lifesaver— and it’s playful. I studied film early on at art school and have always wanted to go back to film. I think that this is how I see book making, as short films/animation. I would love to do more!

Are the Cree words in Birdsong ones you knew you wanted to share?

The Cree words that I used in the book came organically to the story, where it was natural to the conversations between Katherena and Agnes. Starting with the images as opposed to starting with text helped me to focus on the fluidity of their friendship.

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Kathie Meizner manages a public library in Maryland and reviews children’s books for Kirkus Reviews and the Washington Post. Birdsong received a starred review in the July 1, 2019, issue.

HERRING HOTEL

Lévy, Didier Illus. by Bloch, Serge Thames & Hudson (40 pp.) $14.95 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-500-65212-1 When a tumbledown old hotel… tumbles down, what’s to become of the residents?

In this French import, young Gabriel enjoys helping his parents work to keep the hotel (once known as the “Sherrington” until some letters fell off the sign) a going concern for its long-term guests, who range from Mr. Folds, a serial origamist, to genteel Mrs. Kettle, who dispenses chocolate “medals” for good deeds and insists that she is “Tina the 23rd, exiled Queen of Kettlippia.” Unfortunately, coping with roof leaks are one thing, but when entire walls start falling down—well, it’s time to pack up. Bloch mixes spiky, outlined figures, mostly white as the paper beneath except in one late crowd scene, with superimposed cutouts and patterns to give the seedy guests and setting a look of faded elegance—sometimes with a satiric edge, as two of the tanks supposedly invading from “the big country next door” in Mrs. Kettle’s account of her supposed exile bear red stars and one, a familiar stars and stripes flag. Just as the tearful guests are gathering to say goodbye, a long cavalcade of limos drives up. More guests? No, it turns out that the hotel really was housing a royal, whose long wait has at last come to an end. All of the guests come along by invitation, and the hotel itself too…rebuilt right next to the palace.

Sketchy—less a story than a treatment—but lit clear through with the warmth of found family. (Picture book. 6-8)

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The intergenerational friendship between artists is particularly sweet.

Katherena is an homage to the author Katherena Vermette, who I’d just worked with on our book The Girl and the Wolf. Agnes is an homage to filmmaker Agnès Varda, whose work I admire and return to often. A quote of hers particularly speaks to me: “If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes.”

I used to take long walks and stop at one house with an ungroomed but beautiful yard and big trees. In the spring, the yard was covered in snowdrops. On one occasion, a woman came out to the front balcony. I looked up and said, “I love the snowdrops,” and she said, “I know.” She’d seen me over the last few weeks. We slowly got to know each other, and I learned that she was a ceramics artist.

About a year before we moved away from that neighborhood, she dropped a little baggie of snowdrops on my doorstep—no note, just the snowdrops. I kept them for a while in my studio before planting them.

I wanted to do a story about the connections we have with the people in our communities. I found myself thinking of the snowdrops after I lost someone close to me. Everything came together, along with some of my own childhood experiences.

THE APARTMENT A Century of Russian History

Litvina, Alexandra Illus. by Desnitskaya, Anna Trans. by Bouis, Antonina W. Abrams (64 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-4197-3403-8

Seven generations of a family in a communal apartment lead readers through 100 years of Russian history.

First published in Russia as Istoriia Staroi Kvartiry (2016), this story tracks the fictional Muromstev family from its move into the apartment in 1902 to a birthday celebration in 2002, covering major political and personal events within that time period. Double-page, diary-style spreads generally alternate between an intimate look into the apartment, with one of the current generation’s children narrating events both personal and political, and a more objective examination of the history experienced. These pages tend to be crowded with labeled illustrations of household objects, conversations among characters, |

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Rather than exclusively focusing on interesting or chronological details, McAlister looks at how Narnia was born. finding narnia

and collaged-in archival images. Endpapers are plastered, scrapbook-style, with photographs and document clippings, and family trees are helpfully included prior to and following the story proper. Extensive backmatter provides further cultural elucidation. While readers might at first be skeptical of what appears to be a glorified house tour, the triumphs and tribulations of the family quickly become engrossing thanks to Litvina’s conversational, emotive text. Desnitskaya’s simple cartoon illustrations easily distinguish the many characters, although time skips of up to 12 years can make it difficult to discern who’s still alive.

Readers unfamiliar with Russian might also have trouble pronouncing character names; conversely, readers who can read the language will enjoy perusing the newspaper articles and song lyrics scattered throughout. Characters are all white presenting, but the Muromstev clan includes Jewish and Georgian family members.

A visual delight for the culturally savvy. (author’s note, glossary, timeline, bibliography, index) (Historical fiction.

8-12)

HUMANIMAL Incredible Ways Animals Are Just Like Us!

Lloyd, Christopher Illus. by Ruffle, Mark What on Earth Books (48 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-912920-01-3

Eye-opening discoveries for readers who think only humans grieve, play, or admire themselves in mirrors.

Claiming the titular word (wrongly) as his own coinage, Lloyd develops the theme that many animals display behavior or characteristics once thought exclusively human, from living in cities (termites) to feeling emotions like love and grief (elephants, bonobos). The author extends commonly seen examples: Yes, as Jane Goodall has proven, chimps do use tools, but so do Australian black kites, which have been seen carrying burning sticks from fires to nearby grasslands to stir up prey.

He also points to observations of bees communally deciding on where to establish a new hive; ravens repeatedly rolling down hills for, evidently, fun; and even slime molds showing a knack for constructing networks between food sources that rival for efficiency anything that civil engineers can concoct. In many reports he names animal researchers (though all but two of the 15 in his closing biographical gallery are white and European or American) and describes specific incidents or experiments.

Ruffle adds big, boldly hued views of stylized but expressively posed, easily recognizable creatures against monochromatic or simplified natural backgrounds. The rare human figures are nearly all actual portraits.

Convincing evidence that the boundaries between us and them aren’t all that sharp. (index, selected scientific publications) (Informational picture book. 7-10)

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KAREN’S WITCH

Martin, Ann M. Illus. by Farina, Katy with Lamb, Braden Graphix/Scholastic (144 pp.) $18.99 | $10.99 paper | Dec. 26, 2019 978-1-338-35611-3 978-1-338-31519-6 paper Series: Baby-Sitters Little Sister, 1 Could a witch really live next door?

In this graphic-novel adaptation of the series spinoff, 6-year-old Karen Brewer (stepsister to Baby-Sitters Club founder Kristy Thomas), has only three house rules when staying at her dad’s: don’t leave the TV on, keep closet doors shut, and (most importantly) no spying on the neighbors. Fanciful Karen cannot help but break the last one, convinced that her gray-haired, black cat–owning neighbor is only masquerading as being the kindly old Mrs. Porter and is actually a broom-riding witch named Morbidda Destiny. Soon, witches are all Karen can think about. After she convinces BFF Hannie Papadakis of Mrs. Porter’s witchery, the two concoct a spell to cast Morbidda out of the neighborhood and protect their families. Karen’s plan goes predictably awry, but her imagination, determination, and, ultimately, remorse should resonate with young readers. Adapted from the novels aimed at early-reader graduates, this charming graphic reworking should appeal to a similar audience with its adorably styled characters with rounded features and a palette of lively, bright colors. For those unfamiliar with either the 1980s novels or their new counterparts, this is a great jumping-in point for younger readers or catnip for those wishing to soak up more time in Stoneybrook. Karen and her family present white; Hannie has olive skin and dark hair.

Sure to bewitch fans new and old. (Graphic fiction. 6-10)

FINDING NARNIA The Story of C.S. Lewis and His Brother Warnie McAlister, Caroline Illus. by Lanan, Jessica Roaring Brook (48 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-62672-658-1

A vivid portrait of inspiration and imagination focuses on teamwork and historical fact.

C.S. “Jack” and Warren “Warnie” Lewis were brothers and best friends, curious dreamers and inspired playmates, but they probably never guessed that their games would help fire the imaginations of generations of children. Following the two from early childhood to later life, straightforward, energetic text paired with appealing, specific, and skillful illustrations provides background for the genesis of Lewis’ ideas (Norse legend, Raj-era India, Irish shipyards, and English boarding schools all played a role). However, rather than exclusively focusing on interesting or chronological details (though both are included),

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McAlister looks at how Narnia was born. She finds its roots in the brothers’ invented worlds, their on-again, off-again partnership, the different directions their lives took, the behavior of wartime refugee children who stayed in their home, and, of course, the presence of a magical wardrobe in their childhood.

Lanan’s paintings combine homey views of the family’s Belfast house, pictures, maps, and diagrams of their imagined world, and luminous, magical paintings of Narnia. In a nice touch, the focus extends to the endnotes, where McAlister, as biographer, and Lanan, as illustrator, mention their own research discoveries and related artistic choices.

Masterfully explains how a classic series came to be while maintaining a sense of mystery and wonder. (Picture book/biography. 4-8)

MATCHY MATCHY

Maria’s clothes always match the occasion as well as her accessories, but she’s about to “lose [her] matchy-matchy mind.”

The book’s beautiful, flowery cover foreshadows the world Maria lives in. In the living room Maria’s outfit blends in with the print of the comfy chair she’s sitting in. At school her laces, lunchbox, backpack, and even the barrettes holding back her black hair match. One comical two-page spread shows Maria’s flowery yellow underwear matching her dress. Maria’s problem here, though, is not the outfits: It’s her mom. “My mom picks out all of my clothes. She makes everyone…and everything match.” Maria longs to mix it up, and in her fight for the right to self-expression, she rebels, conceals, debates, and marches.

Finally, Mom concedes, even wearing her own unmatchy outfit: “Polka dots and petunias!” By the end of the book, Maria exults that “this is me. Marvelous, unmatching, mix-it-up me!”

McGill’s humorous illustrations mix patterns, textiles, and collage to great effect. Readers might want to pair this book with Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match/Marisol McDonald no combina,

by Monica Brown and illustrated by Sara Palacios (2011), for a look at another child who rejoices in her individuality. Maria and her mother have black hair and olive skin; her school friends have a variety of skin and hair colors.

As Maria shows, some things are worth fighting for.

(Picture book. 5- 7)

Megdal, Howard Illus. by Lossing, Abbey Wide Eyed Editions (112 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-78603-967-5

A diverse gallery of record breakers, envelope pushers, and activists, promi-

nent or otherwise.

Journalist Megdal offers figures from, mostly, the present or recent past, each born in or at least loosely associated with a particular state. His selections show a distinct slant toward leftist reformers or people involved in social or environmental causes. Some, notably Muhammad Ali (Kentucky), Rachel Carson (Pennsylvania), and Jackie Robinson (Georgia), are necessary fixtures on any such roster, but many—for example, Joe Biden (Delaware), Social Democrat Michael Harrington (Missouri), and the All-American Red Heads (Arkansas), an early women’s basketball team—seem more personal choices.

No small number are just odd, such as William Allen White, a Kansas newspaper publisher billed as “the figure small town America needs today,” and Marjorie van Vliet (Rhode Island), who tried to fly to all the lower 48 state capitols for peace in 1990 but died in a crash before reaching the final one. The trailblazers are presented on hard-to-parse spreads composed of kaleidoscopically contrasting color blocks, each containing a few lines of narrative, a quote, or a stylized illustration done in a flat, serigraphic style. Along with occasional snort-inducing errors (though none so hilarious as a map with LBJ’s home state, Texas, labeled “Michigan”), a quirky company of achievers that includes 22 figures of Latinx, Native, or African American descent, and, counting the Red Heads, more women than men, will greet readers willing to stay the course. Shorter profiles of 16 more luminaries at the end expand the roster.

Refreshingly unpredictable, if remarkably sloppy, opinionated, and a chancy choice for role models. (index) (Collective biography. 9-11)

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McGill, Erin Illus. by the author Cameron + Company (32 pp.) $16.95 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-944903-72-5

50 TRAILBLAZERS OF THE 50 STATES

THE SUPERLATIVE A. LINCOLN Poems About Our 16th President

Meyer, Eileen R. Illus. by Szalay, Dave Charlesbridge (48 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-58089-937-6

Telling Abraham Lincoln’s story in poetry is a tall order, but Meyer pulls it off.

“Come read about a legend— / the greatest of the greats; / from a poor boy in the backwoods / to a president, first-rate.” The title of each celebratory poem offers a yearbook-style superlative about our 16th president: “Best Wrestler,” “Best Lumberjack,” “Who’s Tallest?” Each poem is accompanied |

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by a brief paragraph providing context for the poem. The rhyming poems are mostly in third person, though one is in the voice of Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, and there’s another from Grace Bedell, who wrote to the president encouraging him to grow a beard. The upbeat poems and string of superlatives, however, leave little room for more nuanced explanations, as in “Strongest Conviction: Signing the Emancipation,” from which readers learn that Lincoln freed the slaves but not that they weren’t really free yet nor that his commitment to abolition was limited. The portrait orientation of the volume is the right choice for our tall president, and Szalay’s attractive, folksy art manages to capture the homespun spirit of the poems. Brown faces appear in the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial, and President Barack Obama and Frederick Douglass make appearances. The collection will make excellent reading aloud in the classroom, a few a day.

A tip of the stovepipe hat for making a poetry biography so much fun. (author’s note, superlative words, timeline, resources, quotation sources, bibliography) (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)

BIG WORDS FOR FEARLESS GIRLS 1,000 Big Words for Girls With Big Dreams

Miles, Stephanie Illus. by Miles, David Bushel & Peck Books (32 pp.) $15.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-7336335-4-3

A concept book for budding feminists.

For youngsters who love to pore over images in early concept books, this oversized book with board pages offers an extra layer by introducing groundbreaking women and their contributions to the arts, history, science, and other areas of society.

Concepts are presented in double-page spreads that feature labeled images in bold colors and a geometric graphic design, a rhyming overview that invokes “you” to become engaged, and short descriptions of women and their accomplishments.

While the opening “Change” and “Pioneers” sections are so abstract as to be potentially confusing, they set the activist tone for the rest of the book. Successive concepts, from food, colors, and animals to music, gardening, and space, make more sense and follow a predictable pattern. A concluding “Family” section depicts a family tree with one interracial branch but no evidence of same-sex branches. The diverse women covered span from historical Frida Kahlo and Amelia Earhart to the more modern Serena Williams and Jane Goodall. Such figures as Lek Chailert, who’s fighting to protect Asian elephants in Thailand, may be new to adults, too. This volume also deviates from traditional concept books by promoting multiple ability levels.

For instance, “Building Things” includes basic shapes as well as types of columns and blueprint elements. This range of content allows readers at many stages to visit and revisit the book.

A fun, visual way to relate women, activism, and big ideas to children. (Informational picture book. 3- 7) 110

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THE THIEF KNOT A Greenglass House Story Milford, Kate Clarion (464 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-328-46689-1 Series: Greenglass House

Another of Milford’s Nagspeake tales, brimful of intrigue, plucky wannabe adventurers, and some suspiciously

artful iron.

Marzana Hakelbarend and Nialla Giddis are bored.

Supremely bored. In the Liberty of Gammerbund, “the place where nothing happens,” they stake out even the most innocuous of interactions in hopes of uncovering some dastardly plot— alas, to no avail. A mysterious dinner guest from the city proper, however, upends the Hakelbarends’ tranquil domesticity with news that a mayoral candidate’s 11-year-old daughter has been kidnapped. Marzana’s parents don’t seem to consider the girl’s being held in Gammerbund a possibility, so Marzana, sick of being denied access to her parents’ pasts and (mis)adventures, decides to spearhead her own investigation with the help of an assembled six-kid band dubbed the Thief Knot. The offbeat, impassioned narration twists through uncertainties, anxieties, failures, and triumphs at a jaunty clip. Observant readers will delight in piecing together the clues to puzzle out the knots alongside the Knot as these well-drawn individuals grow from awkward semiacquaintances into a close, cohesive team. Colorful supporting characters further populate this complex world.

A particular strength is Milford’s depiction of parent-child relationships; rather than taking the easy way out and making the parents dead, abusive, or absent, she makes them affectionate, invested enough in their children’s well-being to grow livid upon discovering they’ve been conspiring behind their backs to get involved in a dangerous crime. Marzana is biracial, with a pale mother and dark-skinned father; Nialla presents white; other characters are diverse.

A fascinating, intricate tale of friendship and rescue.

(Mystery/fantasy. 10-12)

DRIFTWOOD DAYS

Miniver, William Illus. by Vess, Charles Eerdmans (48 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-8028-5370-7

Readers follow a branch as it bobs down a river and out to sea, where it transforms into driftwood.

The story begins “under autumn leaves”: A brown-skinned boy watches a beaver constructing its lodge in the river. A branch breaks loose from the structure and is carried down river until it snags on a boulder, where it stays all winter as the river freezes. When spring returns and the river thaws,

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The tale incorporates an exploration of a tantalizing many-worlds theory. the starspun web

the branch moves on, making a stop at the river’s edge, where turtles climb on it. When the branch floats out to sea, weary birds use it as a resting place. When the waves finally carry it to shore, “the summer sun bleaches its dark hues” until the same boy, vacationing with his family on the shore and “looking for beach-things,” finds it and picks it up. For the boy, it is everything: a pen, a sword, a souvenir. At summer’s end, the boy and his family return home to the mountains, where, once again, he watches a beaver constructing its lodge. Vess’ drawings, done in colored pencil and ink, are soft and detailed, with elements of line and motion that draw the eye all over the page. The background holds interesting changes throughout: families of different species and signs of new seasons, various habitats. The text educates stealthily, never sacrificing the soothing, poetic, and cyclical story, which has the makings of a classic. An author’s note discusses the importance of driftwood to the ecosystem.

Content and style, structure and illustrations combine to make this a beautiful and satisfying story. (Picture book.

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Monson, Christy Illus. by the author Bushel & Peck Books (112 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-7336335-0-5

Profiles of achievers, mostly of the present or recent past, focusing on character traits that make them worthy role models.

Aside from tricking biased readers into picking this up, there is no reason to brand it as “for boys”—not only because 15 of the chosen figures are or were women, but also because all were chosen as exemplars of one or more of 20 “Special Powers” unrelated to sex, such as “compassion,” “creativity,” “intelligence,” and “perseverance.” Along with such usual suspects as Jackie Robinson, Abraham Lincoln, and Malala Yousafzai, the arbitrarily ordered roster mines less-picked-over ground, from William Tyndale, who translated the New Testament into English and was burned at the stake for it, to, more recently, Yasuteru Yamada, organizer of a corps of senior citizens volunteering to help clean up the Fukushima nuclear facility. The lineup is less notable for its diversity, though it does include 15 people of color. Each receives a two-page profile that extols their virtues (not always uncritically: Lincoln “sacrificed his life, along with 620,000 others, for the future of the United States”) and urges readers to find ways of practicing said virtues in their own lives.

Each also comes with a heavily stylized likeness. There are no source notes.

Wears its agenda on both rolled-up sleeves, but it’s set apart by the admixture of unfamiliar names. (Collective biography. 9-12)

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O’Hart, Sinéad Knopf (368 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-101-93507-1 978-1-101-93508-8 PLB A 12-year-old orphan girl with extraordinary abilities is swept away by a strange mustachioed man claiming to be a distant relative. Does he also hold the secrets to her otherworldly past?

Ackerbee’s Home for Lost and Foundlings is the only home that Teresita “Tess” Mariana de Sousa has ever known. And a loving and safe home it’s been, especially for a girl who was left on its doorstep as an infant along with a secret object from another world. At age 4, Tess gained a pet tarantula named Violet, who keeps her tethered to the current reality. The tale incorporates an exploration of a tantalizing many-worlds theory, which considers that all possible versions of the universe might exist simultaneously, not to mention that multiple universes may fit together like a spider’s web. Ultimately, however, the story leads into experiences based on real-life events in Ireland during World War II. Fantasy readers will appreciate the foray into interdimensionality and multiple and alternate realities as well as the flecks of other fantasy and science-fiction influences that will feel familiar. The spunky protagonist appears to have light brown skin while other characters appear to be white.

A good old-fashioned engaging and inventive pageturner. (author’s note) (Fantasy. 8-12)

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50 REAL HEROES FOR BOYS True Stories of Courage, Integrity, Kindness, Empathy, Compassion, and More!

THE STARSPUN WEB

THE MIDWINTER WITCH

Ostertag, Molly Knox Illus. by the author Graphix/Scholastic (208 pp.) $12.99 paper | $24.99 PLB | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-338-54055-0 978-1-338-54056-7 PLB Will Aster, accepted as a witch by his immediate family, find that approval with his extended family? And does Ariel, welcomed into the Vanissen fold, even

want a family?

As the ward of the Vanissen family, Ariel’s now being trained in witchcraft, and in a world in which magic is passed down and learned within families, this should be a wonderful thing.

But orphaned Ariel chafes against magical traditions and the emphasis on family, a response that appears to be the result of her understandable fear of abandonment and intimacy. Added to this are nightly dream visitations from a woman named Isabel Torres. Claiming to be her aunt, Isabel plants doubts about the Vanissens’ acceptance and feeds Ariel’s anti-traditionalist leanings. Meanwhile, the Midwinter Festival—an annual magical extended family reunion—is coming, and Aster wants to compete in the Jolrun for the title of Midwinter Witch. As the

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The author realistically portrays Carlos’ adjustment to disability and loss. bouncing back

first boy to openly study witchcraft, he’ll be the first boy to compete. The Vanissens, Ariel, and nonmagical friend Charlie attend, but a surprise at the Jolrun causes conflict. Ostertag’s signature bold, clear, thick-lined illustrations are at work here, as are her fascinating magical world-within-a-world worldbuilding and thoughtfully inclusive approach to LGBTQ and racial representation. Aster is biracial, with a white mom and brownskinned dad, Ariel has olive skin and dark hair, and Charlie is black, with two black dads.

This solid addition to the series should please fans and newcomers alike. (Graphic fantasy. 8-14)

BOUNCING BACK

Ostler, Scott Little, Brown (304 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-0-316-52474-2

A boy and his wheelchair-basketball team try to salvage their season in sportswriter Ostler’s debut novel.

A year after losing his parents and the use of his legs in a car accident, 12-year-old Carlos Cooper reluctantly joins a wheelchair-basketball team at the encouragement of his guardians, his Mexican American maternal aunt and uncle.

Formerly dubbed “Cooper the Hooper,” Carlos struggles with wheelchair basketball’s difficult new techniques…and with no longer being the star shooter. But soon, Carlos catches the Rollin’ Rats’ cooperative, competitive spirit—just as the mayor closes their run-down gym, jeopardizing their chances of reaching California’s state championship. Basketball fans will particularly enjoy Carlos’ play-by-play narration of challenging practices and intense games, but readers won’t need sports knowledge to root for Carlos as he and fellow teammate Mia— and unexpected allies—scheme to outwit the villainous Mayor Burns. The author realistically portrays Carlos’ adjustment to disability and loss, and Carlos’ increasing empathy is believable and thought-provoking. Bantering text messages highlight the team’s camaraderie, and Carlos’ bond with his tenacious aunt and uncle adds tenderness, humor, and some (italicized) Spanish words. His teammates’ disabilities range from paraplegia to limb difference; one member has autism as well as spinal bifida.

Latinx Carlos is bicultural and probably biracial (his mom was Mexican and his dad was British) and has brown skin, and one teammate is black. Mia, who is white, has two moms.

A sports story that’s as heartwarming as it is actionpacked. (Fiction. 8-12)

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SPACE TRAIN

Powell-Tuck, Maudie Illus. by Mountford, Karl James Tiger Tales (32 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-68010-158-4 A child and his grandma join forces to restore a very special train.

Lonely Jakob is excited to find a battered old rocket in his space station’s hangar, but his grandma is over the moon. “It’s the SPACE TRAIN!” she crows—recalling how in her youth it “crisscrossed the universe on tracks of stardust,” so fast “it made the stars look like streaks in the sky.” Putting their heads together, and with help from Jakob’s robo-chicken, Derek, and the crotchety, work-shy ToolBot, the two labor to restore the hulk…blasting off at last in search of new worlds and, Jakob hopes, new friends. Worthy though this intergenerational plot may be, it wastes a set of spectacular illustrations. Mountford depicts his space-dwelling duo, both brown-skinned and with wild mops of almost luminescent blue (Jakob) or lavender (Grandma) hair, transforming a dim and dusty relic into a breathtaking, bright-orange behemoth with dramatically rakish lines. Views of the angular vessel arrowing through dramatic starscapes or, in one fondly remembered glimpse inside, abrim with a wildly diverse array of nonhuman passengers offer heady promise of interstellar encounters and exotic ports of call. Alas, despite traces of lyrical language in the narrative, that larger promise remains disappointingly unfulfilled.

A decent storyline and better-than-decent art show good intentions—but different ones, which find few if any points of connection. (Picture book. 6-8)

BLOOD MOUNTAIN

Preller, James Feiwel & Friends (240 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-250-17485-7 Siblings face a multiday fight for survival after getting lost on a hike.

Thirteen-year-old Grace and her 11-year-old brother, Carter, look forward to an “internet-free day” hiking up Blood Mountain with their dog, Sitka, and their father. What starts as a routine trip turns frightening when kids and dog become separated from their father and stray off the trail. Disoriented, they make more wrong decisions, which lead them deeper into the woods. Severe injuries, threat from a mountain lion, and an encounter with an unstable mountain man erode their hope of being found and challenge their ability to remain alive. What initially feels set up to be an inclusion of diverse elements—a “wheelchair-bound” mother with multiple sclerosis, a war vet mountain man dealing with what seems to be PTSD, and brown-skinned park ranger Makayla Devaroix (the only explicitly nonwhite character)—turns out to

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be mostly peripheral. In addition, while the use of alternating, third-person points of view for each chapter lends a filmic quality to particular scenes, allowing readers to experience the story from multiple perspectives, some may find that jumping among characters hobbles important opportunities for emotional connection in critical moments. Nevertheless, sectioning the story into six distinct days combines with the tight prose to make a fast-paced read for those not eager for more diversity in their outdoor adventures.

For diehard fans of wilderness survival. (Adventure. 9-12)

SUNNY DAY A Celebration of the Sesame Street Theme Song Raposo, Joe & Hart, Bruce & Stone, Jon R. Random House (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Oct. 22, 2019 978-1-9848-4818-5 978-1-9848-5253-3 PLB

WHEN THE SNOW IS DEEPER THAN MY BOOTS ARE TALL

Reidy, Jean Illus. by Chou, Joey Godwin Books/Henry Holt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-250-12712-9

Oh! The thrills—and chills—of the season’s first snowstorm!

A child slips on snow pants, “loopty-loops” a scarf, zips up a jacket, and gets ready to “Step! Stamp! Stomp!” in the snow until it is finally “deeper than my boots are tall.” Oh dear! Luckily, playful parents “swoop” the child out of the deep snow and stay |

SUFFRAGETTE The Battle for Equality

Roberts, David Illus. by the author Walker US/Candlewick (128 pp.) $25.00 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-5362-0841-2

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A heartwarming tribute to a familiar, friendly tune.

For many, it is the theme song of childhood. The opening melody of Sesame Street has been delighting children for 50 years. Eighteen acclaimed artists have come together to celebrate this incredibly special song. From the jacket to the case cover to every line of “Sunny Day,” each artist takes a spread and reimagines what the beloved lyrics mean to them. The varied lineup parallels the mission of diversity and inclusion that the show has always pursued. Two veteran Sesame Street artists are included: Roger Bradfield and Joe Mathieu. Others also try their hand at rendering the street’s lovable, iconic characters in their own individual styles. Tiny details such as a yellow feather floating by (or other pops of the bright Big Bird color found in a balloon or butterfly), along with cookies and rubber duckies galore, give special nods to the adored show. Each spread has a forward motion, propelling groups of children of various races and abilities toward that oh-so-familiar street. Illustrators include Christian Robinson, Pat Cummings, Rafael López, Selina Alko, Dan Santat, and more.

It’s impossible not to hum along and be transported.

(Picture book. 2-5)

to enjoy family play in the snow. Chou’s blocky, bright illustrations show a peach-complected, brown-haired father, mother, and child against changing snow-blue backgrounds. The child’s pink-and-purple hat, orange scarf, lime-green parka, and pink mittens make for vivid spots of color on the icy pages. A friendly dog and somewhat dubious cat provide additional visual interest. One playmate is a child of color. Although the rhyme and meter aren’t technically perfect, this snow ballad (with repeated and expanding chorus and onomatopoeic exclamations) sings: “And my nose drip, drips, / and my wet cheeks freeze, / and the drifts, oh they drift / to the tops of my knees, / and my feet get soaked, / toes one and all, / because the snow is deeper— / it’s really so much deeper— / the snow is deeper than my boots are tall.” It’s just waiting for a performer and a young audience eager to participate.

This celebration of the first day of snowy play hits the right notes. (Picture book. 3-8)

The struggle to achieve voting rights for women in both the United States and the United Kingdom is told in this illustrated book first published in the U.K. Readers who may be skeptical that a man—as author/ illustrator Roberts is—can do justice to the story of women’s suffrage will be happily proved wrong. Not only does Roberts bring his well-researched story to life, but his Edward Gorey– like watercolor portraits (some based on period photographs) both enlighten and entertain. Though primarily focused on the struggle in the U.K., the narrative in this large, sumptuously illustrated book nonetheless inserts U.S. suffrage activities in a natural way. Young readers will be amazed to learn that women’s suffrage in both countries took decades of organizing, demonstrating, marching, and educating—and that it was not a completely unified endeavor. The schism in the U.K. between factions who believed in peaceful demonstration and those who subscribed to more violent (although not against human lives) measures is presented factually, as is the discrimination in United States suffrage organizations that discouraged or denied participation by women of color. This cleareyed, evenhanded presentation gives the overall story a veracity that lets shine the bravery of all the women (and men) who were ridiculed, imprisoned, force-fed, and beaten for their determination to win the franchise.

This compelling story of determination and persistence can’t help but inspire today’s readers. (foreword, introduction, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 8-14)

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TOOTH FAIRY IN TRAINING

Robinson, Michelle Illus. by Smith, Briony May Candlewick (40 pp.) $16.99 | Dec. 10, 2019 978-1-5362-0939-6

Becoming a tooth fairy involves visits to many toothy creatures.

Tate, the titular tooth fairy–in-training, narrates the rhyming text as her big sister, May, teaches her how to retrieve kids’ teeth and leave them coins. The twist, telegraphed by the undersea imagery in the cover art, comes when May brings Tate to a lake because a “baby hippo needs a visit. / Not every child’s a human, is it?”

Brave Tate perseveres through visits to a crocodile, a fiercelooking seal, and “a MASSIVE anaconda,” her expressive, lightbrown face betraying the jitters underlying her bravery. The last visit is to a human child. “A little girl. I can’t go wrong,” narrates Tate, so of course, this is where drama ensues. It’s light drama, however, befitting the gentle, cartoon style of the illustrations, which give characters’ facial features a look similar to Crockett Johnson’s Harold (of purple-crayon fame). “I had to get caught

by Melissa… / a doll-collecting fairy kisser,” Tate laments as she squirms in wakeful, white-appearing Melissa’s hands, the backdrop a bedroom filled with fairy dolls, a dollhouse, and other whimsical toys and décor. Tate’s magic wand does the trick of getting Melissa back to sleep, and then she and May return home, triumphant, to rest up for their next trip.

A fresh take on tooth-fairy lore. (Picture book. 5-8)

M IS FOR MELANIN A Celebration of the Black Child Rose, Tiffany Illus. by the author Little Bee (40 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-4998-0916-9

“Melanated” children get an ABC book to make them proud in Rose’s colorful debut.

A is for “Afro.…Pick it, fluff it, love it.” B is for “very Black.

Be it unapologetically.” C is for “Creative. Paint the canvas of your life with the colors of the rainbow. Sprinkle your Black Girl Magic and Black Boy Joy on the world.” Each large letter is itself a work of art, filled with patterns, colors, and themes that frequently directly relate to the word represented. Children of various hues populate each page, pictured at about one-third the size of the letters, enacting the word in some way. They sing, they dance, they march, they wear crowns, they pretend, they dream, they smile at their reflections in the mirror. A few famous names are featured—Obama for O, and Malcolm X for X. The white space is splattered with what looks like watercolor paints, in different colors on each spread. Each child pictured is unique, with all sorts of hairstyles and hair colors and skin tones 114

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that range from the deepest black to albino and everything in between, including several with vitiligo. Contagiously upbeat, joyful, and positive, this artistic alphabet book is also a series of affirmations for young black children, who will beg to read it again and again.

From “Empowerment” to “Worthy,” “Genuine” to “You,” there are more than 26 reasons to cherish this book.

(Picture book. 3-8)

MARIO AND THE HOLE IN THE SKY How a Chemist Saved Our Planet

Rusch, Elizabeth Illus. by Martinez, Teresa Charlesbridge (40 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-58089-581-1

“The sky is falling, the sky is falling”—but unlike the supporting cast of “Chicken Little,” no one pays attention to Mexican-born chemist Dr. Mario Molina’s call to action.

Rusch’s compelling narrative captures the dread and frustration felt by Molina and fellow University of California-Irvine chemist Sherwood Rowland as they race to head off the depletion of the ozone layer. Excessive amounts of chlorofluorocarbons are being released into the atmosphere from air conditioners, refrigerators, spray cans, etc. at an alarming rate. Their initial, unsuccessful efforts to convince the media and Congress about the serious chemical threat to everyone on this planet parallels Nobel Prize winner Molina’s current struggle to address our current crisis of global warming. Martinez’s Disney-esque illustrations, set against dark or murky-colored backgrounds, detract only slightly from the strong storyline. A succinct epilogue summarizes Molina’s many accomplishments, and a chart comparing the similarities between ozone depletion and global warming is appended. Additionally, a suggested reading list and corresponding links are provided. Unfortunately, the timeline is printed across the endpapers—limiting access to the information once the protective jackets are affixed to school or library copies. A Spanish-language edition will be simultaneously released, with a translation by Carlos E. Calvo.

A timely and fascinating look at what courage and focused, informed action can accomplish. (Picture book/ biography. 6-11) (Mario y el agujero en el cielo: 978-1-58089-582-8)

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Part natural science, part deep ecology, wholly captivating. packs

PACKS Strength in Numbers

Salyer, Hannah Illus. by the author HMH Books (48 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-328-57788-7

THE POWER BOOK What Is It, Who Has It and Why?

Saunders, Claire; Songhurst, Hazel; AmsonBradshaw, Georgia; Salami, Minna & Scarlet, Mik Illus. by Avelino, Joelle & Broadbent, David Ivy Kids (64 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-78240-927-4 A consciousness raiser about who makes and enforces life’s written and unwritten rules.

Noting at the outset that “power is neither good nor bad; it totally depends on how it is used,” five British writers begin by very briefly laying out a general picture of how adults, bullies, and political leaders wield influence over others. Subsequent sections explore types of said influence—from race, “Rainbow Rights,” and “Different Bodies” to war and money—and offer suggestions for self-empowering activities. Though these last are at least relatively low-risk (i.e., self-esteem–building exercises, making signs and petitions), embedded profiles of |

STRETCHY MCHANDSOME

Schachner, Judy Illus. by the author Dial (40 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-0-8037-4121-8

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The community of species is celebrated in this picture book.

With a vigorous nod to the philosophy of deep ecology, author/illustrator Salyer presents an uplifting, lively picture book that details the various ways a community structure helps a species thrive and survive. The deep-ecology message begins with cleverly designed endpapers. Illustrated in an identical gestural style and palette, the front endpapers depict a small herd of elephants that spills onto the page turn, while the back endpapers show a diverse group of human bicyclists. The body of the book begins with four double-page spreads depicting, in a glorious overall design on each, a group of individuals within a single species. While stunning in their own right, the illustrations also work to underscore the message of beauty within community, and the text sums this up: “Together, / we are better.” Amplifying this broad statement, the balance of the book details a single species per two-page spread, relating what a group of that species is called and giving an aspect of that species’ behavior. “We lions live in a pride….we use purrs, licks, and nuzzles…. / Together, we nurture!” The final double-page spread shows a diverse group of humans interacting together, with the words, “All together… / …we are better!” Final pages note the extinction danger of many species, offer ways to help, and identify the species illustrated in the book.

Part natural science, part deep ecology, wholly captivating. (Informational picture book. 4-9)

activists such as Emmeline Pankhurst, Mohandas Gandhi, Che Guevara, and Alan Turing make it clear that bucking the powers that be can carry a high price tag. The authors pose wonderfully perceptive what-ifs, such as invitations to identify things that might be acceptable today but not OK in the future and to think about Snow White falling in love with Cinderella. These add needed depth and scope to a discussion that occasionally takes a simplistic turn (“the US civil rights movement…eventually ended segregation across America”) and glosses over a number of relevant topics, from terrorism and religion to confirmation bias. The illustrations add a carefully inclusive mix of celebrated figures and generic, mostly young activists pointing and posing around the blocks of text.

It’s got a few gaps, but it’s stimulating reading nonetheless for upcoming activists and rebels. (glossary, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 7-11)

This appealing orange kitty needs a break from his family.

Stretchy McHandsome lives in a big cardboard box with his eight brothers and sisters. “Now Stretchy was different / in more ways than one. / He was streeeeetchy / and handsome, / a soft bundle of fun. // …One eye was blue, / the other was green, and around his dear neck / was a stinky sardine.” It’s hard being the baby in such a huge litter, so Stretchy decides he needs a vacation. After a quick bath, he sets out for town, ending up in a bookstore window. There, he’s spotted by Beanie McBright, a very special girl: “She had unusual looks, / wore the ears of a kitten, / and round her neck / hung a wild woolly mitten.” The two hit it off and have a great day, but the McHandsome clan misses their little brother and follows the clues he left all over town to find him. Beanie adopts the whole lot…and thankfully has eight siblings to help with the care. Schachner’s new puss protagonist is every bit as bouncy as Skippyjon Jones, as is her verse, which here does not resort to stereotyped dialect for effect. In the bright, busy cartoon illustrations, Beanie’s a white girl whose orange mop matches Stretchy’s coat; her siblings are racially diverse, and one uses a wheelchair.

Sure to elicit purrs from kitty-loving readers. (Picture book. 2-8)

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This riveting tale has received scant attention, and this telling does it justice. nazi saboteurs

NAZI SABOTEURS Hitler’s Secret Attack on America Seiple, Samantha Scholastic Focus (224 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-1-338-25914-8

In 1942, Nazis sent eight inept white German-Americans to the United States with a mission to sabotage industrial sites.

All of the eight men who had been transported to the East Coast via submarine had previously lived for years in America but had returned to Germany early in the war. Some seem to have been motivated by a desire to serve their native country; others were more pragmatic in their plans, perhaps wanting to escape Germany. The training period was short, and there was no attempt to weed out less-effective agents. Immediately after landing on a New York beach, the leader of one group, George Dasch, encountered a Coast Guardsman whom—violating his orders—he released, giving away their secret mission. Only a week later, Dasch turned himself in to the FBI, erroneously believing he would be hailed as a hero. Although the information he revealed was critical in capturing the rest of the saboteurs, he was tried alongside the others before a military tribunal. Six (although not Dasch) were condemned to death and immediately executed. In a concluding chapter, Seiple draws connections between these saboteurs and the legal odyssey of 9/11 terrorists, whose fate remains uncertain. This riveting tale has received scant attention, and this telling, heavily informed by court transcripts, does it justice. Excellent backmatter and a smattering of period photographs round out the presentation.

A story that will appeal to both espionage and World War II enthusiasts. (Nonfiction. 10-14)

THE ATLAS OF AMAZING BIRDS

Sewell, Matt Illus. by the author Princeton Architectual Press (144 pp.) $19.95 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-61689-857-1 An album of bird portraits from around the world, created and curated by a British ornithologist.

In his introduction, bird-watcher Sewell describes this as “my personal selection of the most amazing birds in the world— the most beautiful, strange, scary, speedy, and enchanting.”

He’s organized his collection loosely by continent, preceding each chapter with a map outlining and labeling the countries.

There’s no index, but the birds described in each section are listed by page number on the map spread. As with Narisa Togo’s Magnificent Birds (2017), a compilation with a similar premise but far fewer entries, this includes stylized images accompanied 116

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by a challenging text. Even adult readers will appreciate the author’s nimble word choice, his humor, and his admirable descriptive abilities. A Himalayan monal (Asia) is a “thoroughly pleasant pheasant.” Of the Andean cock-of-the rock (South America): “The males are dressed in an effervescent, glowing orange-red with what look like metallic silver solar panels on their backs.” Flat, full-color images of each bird are set on a white background. These are labeled with the bird’s common and scientific names. They’re reasonably accurate and certainly identifiable, though not to scale. Each of the 140 or so entries includes one or two paragraphs of descriptive text as well as the bird’s length in English units and where in the world it might be found. Unscientific, perhaps, but appreciative and informative.

Enchanting, indeed. An invitation to a world of ornithological wonders. (Nonfiction. 8-12)

THE OBSIDIAN COMPASS

Shurtliff, Liesl Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-06-256818-2 Series: Time Castaways, 2

Relocated to the family vineyard in upstate New York following the events of The Mona Lisa Key (2018), the timetraveling Hudson kids (and parents, this time) prepare for a chronologically challenging confrontation with Capt. Vincent.

Vincent’s escaped in the shape-shifting, time-traveling vessel Vermillion with the Obsidian Compass, the letter from its inventor, and, worst, Matt’s friend Jia. Frantic to rescue her, Matt builds a new compass. If it works, he and twins Corey and Ruby must then evade their watchful mom, Belamie, once Vermil­ lion’s dashing, time-traveling French pirate captain. Orphaned in 1762, she lived on the streets until acquiring the compass at 15.

With Vincent, she plundered and looted across centuries until she abandoned that life for marriage and a family. With Vincent at large, both parents keep the kids in the dark until Colombian adoptee Matt’s 13th birthday, when a chance discovery renders his new compass functional. He’s whisked back to the Vermillion when Belamie captained it, with near-catastrophic results. Despite failures, Matt keeps trying. The Hudsons are presumed white. Chinese orphan Jia; 14th-century Mali Empire princess Tui; and 20th-century African American Wiley add diversity. Each century-hurdling trip (to ancient Siberia, 1893 Chicago, and 1990s Los Angeles) adds new complications—and some add new time travelers. Tucked into head-spinning plot twists, surprises, and abrupt changes of century and location are thoughts on the nature of time itself that readers may stop to ponder before hurtling on to the next adventure; unanswered questions signal more to come.

Exhilarating. (Fantasy. 8-12)

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HOLE IN THE MIDDLE

Simon, Coco Illus. by Stone, Joanie Simon Spotlight (160 pp.) $17.99 | $6.99 paper | Dec. 10, 2019 978-1-5344-6026-3 978-1-5344-6025-6 paper Series: Donut Dreams, 1 It is the summer before middle school when Lindsay Cooper begins her first job working for the family business,

VETERINARIANS AND WHAT THEY DO

Slegers, Liesbet Illus. by the author Clavis (32 pp.) $16.95 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-60537-495-6 Series: Profession Series

A straightforward guide to what a veterinarian does.

After getting a new pet, a child brings the puppy to the vet.

First, the book shares that a vet is very knowledgeable about what animals need to stay healthy, and she also helps when a pet is sick. The introduction of the tools and surgical clothes a vet might use sets a scene of a sick puppy who won’t eat. The puppy undergoes an examination and X-ray, which reveals that he swallowed a small ball. The vet explains that the puppy will have an operation to remove the ball. The concept of anesthesia is presented in a child-friendly way, with the puppy dreaming |

ICED OUT

Smouha, C.K. Illus. by Bunnell, Isabella Cicada Books (32 pp.) $16.95 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-908714-62-6

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Donut Dreams.

Though many of her friends spend summer days at the lake, Lindsay has dreams of going away to college; her steadfast commitment to work motivates her to not lounge the summer away. This summer is different, though, as middle school looms. Since her mother died two years ago, Lindsay’s paternal grandparents spend a lot of time helping Lindsay, her dad, and her younger brother, Skylar, adjust to their new reality. Once Lindsay’s best friend, Casey, returns from summer camp texting a long-distance “boyfriend,” the two BFF’s speculate about middle school, both feeling an undercurrent of the possibility that their bond may potentially shift in a new environment.

When Lindsay’s maternal grandmother, Mimi, comes to visit, the family organizes a party to help Lindsay pick a dress for the upcoming fall dance. Grief finally overtakes Lindsay when she learns that the party has been organized to compensate for her mother’s absence during this rite-of-passage time for Lindsay.

Narrated by Lindsay, this series opener is a comforting read, set in a small town where everyone knows everyone, the donuts are sweet, and familiarity and closeness ease childhood grief. The cast is default white. The book ends with sample chapters for the upcoming Donut Dreams title.

As sweet and straightforward as…well, a donut. (Fiction.

8-12)

of a romp in the park. After a few days, the puppy is allowed to go home, and everyone is happy. But suddenly, the vet attends a house call to bandage a horse with hurt legs, giving readers a glimpse of large-animal practice. Translated from Dutch, the sentences are simple and to the point. Beginning pages hold an illustrated glossary, but the purpose of most of the equipment isn’t explained. Although the interaction between the vet and child is intended to be calming, the lack of information about what surgery entails will leave readers with more questions. In Slegers’ characteristic illustrative style, the white characters are drawn with bold lines over solid-colored backgrounds.

Cute—but may leave readers with more questions than answers. (Informational picture book. 3-6)

Outsiders bond at Miss Blubber’s School for Arctic Mammals.

Not being seals like their teacher and the rest of their classmates, and bad at sports to boot, Neville the narwhal and Wilfred the walrus lead socially isolated lives (they don’t even like each other much)—until the arrival of new student Betty Beluga…who excels at everything but keeps to herself. Being, as Smouha puts it, “smitten,” Neville tries to impress Betty with a soccer-ball trick, but Wilfred torpedoes the effort. All three proceed to play hide-and-seek, and then, after Betty rejects a demand to pick one over the other (“I don’t need any rescuing and I don’t want a boyfriend thank you very much”), become “firm” friends who never again fret about fitting in. Ta-da! Bunnell illustrates this sketchy tale with chalky views of rotund sea creatures in chairs, on a soccer field, and like minimally detailed settings. The seals are all a uniform gray; Neville and Wilfred are, respectively, mustard and blue; Betty is a dazzling white…which gives the closing observation that “Wilfred and Neville and Betty were not like the other kids in Miss Blubber’s class” potentially uncomfortable overtones.

Considering that the seals all look pretty much alike aside from the odd hat or scarf, it’s also more exclusionary than otherwise, which begs the final “And that was just fine.”

Simplistic wish fulfillment unlikely to move or comfort similarly marginalized kids. (Picture book. 6-8)

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OLD MACDONALD HAD A BABY

Snape, Emily Illus. by Steele, K-Fai Feiwel & Friends (40 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-250-30281-6 Snape and Steele give readers a modern twist.

Old MacDonald is a going-gray-around-the-temples beigeskinned man with a black husband and a beige-skinned baby.

When his husband drives off in the morning, MacDonald is left in charge of the child with help from his pets—and eventually the entire barnyard, as with each stanza a new animal joins the action. Steele’s bright, cartoon-style illustrations sell the zaniness of a new dad’s day. They elevate the story as bipedal animals assist the harried dad with the increasing chaos, but they can’t save it. Snape’s word choice often fights the tempo of the song, and the few moments of alliteration may create tonguetwisters during read-alouds: “And for that baby he sang a song, / E-I-E-I-O. / With a boom-boom here, / And a crash-bang there, // Here’s a clap, there’s a whack, / Everywhere’s a raucous ruckus!” The constantly changing language—so different from the song’s patterning—makes it impossible for a child or a group of children to sing along. The joy of “Old MacDonald” is the call-and-response opportunity offered with each additional animal. What does a goat say again? In this version, adults may chuckle at the memory of the frantic early years, but children will feel frustrated that they have limited moments to join in the fun. It sinks some really good illustrations.

This Old MacDonald’s not much fun. E-I-E-I-O. (Picture book. 4-6)

COWIE

Stanton, Elizabeth Rose Illus. by the author Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-5344-2174-5 A donkey longs to be a cow in this picture book.

Cowie, a donkey, thinks cows are the best thing ever. “He admire[s] their soft ears and their kind eyes” and their “calm and steady” demeanor. In fact, he loves cows so much that he wants to become one. So he stands with the cows and chews cud with the cows, but when he tries to moo like a cow, it comes out backwards, as “oooooom.” Donkey is dreadfully discouraged.

His friends Mousie and Duckie (whose names, unlike Cowie’s, represent them accurately) try to cheer him up by squeaking and quacking backwards (“kaeuqs” and “kcauq”) but to no avail.

Next, they examine Cowie (“WHOA” betide them when they get to his breath) to try to find a solution to his backwards mooing. This lighthearted story is decorated with delicate penciland-watercolor illustrations that leave plenty of white space on 118

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the page to emphasize the buoyant feel. Even the typeface has a certain sense of play to it, adding to the book’s well-thought-out overall design. The theme, if readers need one, may be something along the lines of the value of friendship, but when the characters are as cute as Mousie and Duckie (and the unnamed chick who toodles about throughout the pages), readers will be forgiven for just enjoying the silly antics of everyone.

A comforting, carefree romp in the land of the silly.

(Picture book. 3- 6)

ROLL WITH IT

Sumner, Jamie Atheneum (256 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-5344-4255-9 A middle schooler with cerebral palsy faces a new school and family upheaval in Sumner’s debut.

Twelve-year-old Ellie Cowan dreams of becoming a great baker; when she’s not penning letters to celebrity chefs, she’s practicing recipes. But sometimes—especially when her single mom’s protectiveness goes overboard—her CP feels like “the Go to Jail card in Monopoly: No matter where you are, it always shoots you back to zero.” When Ellie and her mom temporarily move from Nashville, Tennessee, to Eufaula, Oklahoma, to help care for Grandpa, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, Ellie struggles with being not only “the new kid in the wheelchair” at school, but one of the ostracized “trailer park kids.”

But after Ellie befriends outspoken aspiring singer Coralee and fact-reciting “mega geek” Bert (who is, Ellie observes, “probably on the spectrum” but undiagnosed in this small town with little support), the quirky trio find themselves cooking up ways for Ellie to stay—“maybe forever.” Her voice equal parts vulnerable, reflective, and deliciously wry, Ellie is refreshingly complex.

Kids navigating disabilities may find her frank frustration with inaccessibility, illness, and patronization particularly cathartic, but readers with and without disabilities will recognize her desire to belong. The mother of a son with CP, the author portrays Ellie and her mom’s loving but fraught relationship with achingly vivid accuracy, bringing the tension between Ellie’s craving for independence and her mother’s fears to a satisfying resolution. Characters, including Ellie, appear white.

An honest, emotionally rich take on disability, family, and growing up. (Fiction. 10-14)

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The striking, stylized art and text work perfectly together. caspian finds a friend

THE PRESIDENTS Portraits of History

Tinari, Leah Illus. by the author Aladdin (96 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-5344-1857-8

In order from Washington to Trump, a gallery of big, full-face presidential portraits done in exuberant strokes and

WILLOW MOSS & THE LOST DAY

Valente, Dominique Harper/HarperCollins (224 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-0-06-287940-0 Series: Starfell, 1 A girl with the ability to find lost things is tasked with finding a lost day.

Not everyone in Starfell “is lucky enough to have a bit of magic up their sleeves,” but Willow Moss deems her power to find lost things lackluster compared with the flashier powers her mother and sisters brandish. Willow’s therefore stunned when Moreg Vaine, the “most feared witch” in Starfell, seeks her help to find the missing last Tuesday and prevent the world from unraveling.

The least likely candidate for saving the day, Willow’s afraid to refuse Moreg and secretly longs for adventure. Stuffing her only friend, Oswin (a savvy monster living under her bed), into her carpetbag, Willow departs with Moreg to search for the lost |

CASPIAN FINDS A FRIEND

Véissid, Jacqueline Illus. by Brown, Merrilees Chronicle (36 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-4521-3780-3

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spatters.

Less venturesome in subject matter than her womanfocused Limitless (2018) and characterized by the same legibility issues, this is a step sideways rather than forward for Tinari.

More style than substance, it’s unlikely to achieve her stated intent (except in the most literal sense) to “add some splashes of bold, bright color to our US story.” That color comes largely in isolated highlights of purple, red, or another single color added to the broadly brushed grayscale portraits. The sparse snippets of fact that are lettered or lightly stenciled around each portrait or printed on facing pages are too scattershot to reveal much about each president’s public or private character. Along with leaving Jefferson off Mount Rushmore while identifying the other three carved there, for instance, the author lets out that he “popularized French fries and ice cream” and “owned over 600 slaves.” While she mentions (but neglects to unpack) the confusing claim that Andrew Johnson “WAS impeached but WASN’T removed from OFFICE,” for Bill Clinton she notes only that he presided over “1 of the longest periods of peace and economic expansion in American history.” The closing table of additional facts has a similarly arbitrary air.

For all that it’s up to date (for now), of more artistic than historical merit. (Informational picture book. 7-10)

Tuesday. Arriving in witch-phobic Beady Hill, Moreg’s arrested and imprisoned, dispatching clueless Willow with cryptic instructions. Willow’s subsequent convoluted quest leads her to a floating village, suspended Cloud Mountains, a magical blue tree, and into Troll Country. Aided by eccentric helpers (a dragon, a seer of the past, and a female troll), as well as by Cockney-accented Oswin’s comic relief, Willow discovers she may just have the right moxie to save the day without flashy magic. Valente’s cozy worldbuilding and familiar characterizations make for a sweet, comfortable read. The human cast is a mostly white one.

What a difference a day makes in this intriguing fantasy. (Fantasy. 8-12)

How will a lonely boy in a lighthouse find a friend?

Caspian is a self-sufficient young boy who probably ages from 6 to 7 during the story. The opening double-page spread immediately draws readers into Caspian’s world of both natural beauty and isolation. Against a stark white background, a lighthouse sits above a sheer cliff of sand and rock. Far below and to the right, the tiny figure of Caspian is visible on a small sliver of land, gazing toward the sea. The opening words inform readers that Caspian lives in the lighthouse. Poetic lines about Caspian’s life follow: “Every day, he watches the waves, / wondering, waiting, wishing for a friend.” When he gets no results from beaming his lighthouse light, a delightful double-page sequence shows Caspian printing a message on a paper, emptying a translucent green jug of its flowers, and carefully pushing his rolledup message into it. More lyrical text and dreamlike art follow, as Caspian sends his message out to sea, waits for months, and eventually gets a one-word response. He rows his little boat out under the night sky’s constellations, and eventually he meets up with the friend who will bear him back home. The striking, stylized art and text work perfectly together to create a whimsical, nonthreatening story that still has plenty of action and adventure—with the bonus of not one interfering grown-up. Caspian is depicted with pale skin, straight, dark hair, and dark eyes.

Bedtime or naptime perfection. (Picture book. 3-6)

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An enchanting plunge into the underbelly of a failing library and a city brimful of secrets. a girl, a raccoon, and the midnight moon

THE 1000 YEAR OLD BOY

Welford, Ross Schwartz & Wade/Random (400 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Oct. 8, 2019 978-0-525-70745-5 978-0-525-70746-2 PLB When one’s permanently stuck at age 11, living forever can lose its appeal.

Being one of the legendary “Neverdead” thanks to a magic potion, Alve (aka “Alfie”) has spent the past millennium or so with his equally immortal mom and cat, just getting by and keeping out of sight. What has become increasingly difficult in today’s Britain turns impossible when, tragically, his mother is killed (they are not invulnerable) in a house fire— leaving him injured, traumatized, and all too exposed to local police and social services. Fortunately, there’s an antidote to the potion. Unfortunately, he’s outwardly 11 (albeit polylingual, classically educated, and well versed in 17th-century fighting techniques) and owns nothing except a rescued trunk of autographed Dickens first editions. Welford gives his world-weary protagonist several resourceful allies led by Roxy Minto, a young neighbor of West Indian descent with a big personality, and her naïve but game sidekick, Aidan (who, like Alve, presents as white and who shares narration duties with him). Alve not only has to cope with modern life and elude civil authorities, but also to evade a brutal adversary who’s been after the antidote for centuries. If readers find themselves wishing for more than tantalizing glimpses of Alve’s experiences in earlier centuries, his immediate plight is absorbing, as sharply felt as both the weight of all those years and the shining promise of being able to grow up at last.

The sweet and sour of immortality infuses a heady, heartbreaking, occasionally humorous tale. (Fantasy. 11-13)

A GIRL, A RACCOON, AND THE MIDNIGHT MOON

Young, Karen Romano Illus. by Bagley, Jessixa Chronicle (392 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-4521-6952-1

This is the way Pearl’s world ends: not with a bang but with a scream.

Pearl Moran was born in the Lancaster Avenue branch library and considers it more her home than the apartment she shares with her mother, the circulation librarian. When the head of the library’s beloved statue of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay is found to be missing, Pearl’s scream brings the entire neighborhood running. Thus ensues an enchanting plunge into the underbelly of a failing library and a city brimful of secrets. With the help of friends old, uncertainly developing, and new, Pearl must spin story after compelling story in hopes of saving what she loves 120

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most. Indeed, that love—of libraries, of books, and most of all of stories—suffuses the entire narrative. Literary references are peppered throughout (clarified with somewhat superfluous footnotes) in addition to a variety of tangential sidebars (the identity of whose writer becomes delightfully clear later on).

Pearl is an odd but genuine narrator, possessed of a complex and emotional inner voice warring with a stridently stubborn outer one. An array of endearing supporting characters, coupled with a plot both grounded in stressful reality and uplifted by urban fantasy, lend the story its charm. Both the neighborhood and the library staff are robustly diverse. Pearl herself is biracial; her “long-gone father” was black and her mother is white. Bagley’s spot illustrations both reinforce this and add gentle humor.

The magic of reading is given a refreshingly real twist. (reading list) (Fantasy. 10-12)

b o a r d & n o v e lt y b o o k s FUTURE PRESIDENT

Alexander, Lori Illus. by Black, Allison Cartwheel/Scholastic (24 pp.) $8.99 | Dec. 26, 2019 978-1-338-31224-9 Series: Future Baby Babies have all the qualities necessary to be leaders of the free world.

Does Baby have what it takes to be the president of the United States of America? Baby knows how to take charge, command attention, and negotiate complex trades. Besides these professional qualifications, Baby is used to working in a play space shaped surprisingly like the oval office. With all of these credentials, Baby seems like the perfect fit for the highest office in the land. The illustrations in this board book feature racially and ethnically diverse examples of both babies and presidents, notably including women of color and at least one woman wearing hijab, and a brown, female-presenting child beams from the cover. (It is, however, disappointing that the very first potential president within the book is a white, malepresenting child rather than one of the more diverse babies featured in later pages). The cartoon illustrations are bright and cheerful, featuring bold blocks of color that are especially appealing to very young children. The clever parallels drawn between a baby’s relationship to the world and the president’s job are sure to delight adults reading the book aloud, although many are too sophisticated for children to understand. The final pages feature facts about the U.S. presidency that are interesting but more appropriate for readers who are slightly older than the typical board-book age.

A book for very young readers who are already ready to lead. (Board book. 6 mos.-2)

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A FOREST’S SEASONS

Illus. by Arrhenius, Ingela P. Chronicle (10 pp.) $8.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-4521-7494-5 Series: Bookscape Board Books

A MARVELOUS MUSEUM

Illus. by Arrhenius, Ingela P. Chronicle (10 pp.) $8.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-4521-7492-1 Series: Bookscape Board Books

Learn about the treasures museums hold in this intricately shaped board book.

Each page in this tiny handful of a board book is a dynamic silhouette that mimics the shape of an exhibit inside, ranging from a narrow, rounded sarcophagus page to the square of a glass-windowed diorama. Pages are thick and solid, and all together they look swell, multilayered and three-dimensional, though those unusually shaped edges also lead to quick fraying.

Unfortunately, the pages’ thickness limits the length, and with only five double-page spreads, it’s short even by board-book standards. Related in alliterative descriptors, lines such as “discover details in dioramas and dinosaurs” are tongue-twistingly fun to read aloud, but heavy reliance on fairly complex vocabulary (“artifacts,” “architecture”) seems oddly mismatched to a toddler audience. Approachable, vividly colored art features |

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BOO! SCARED YOU!

Babin, Stéphanie Illus. by Mathy, Vincent Twirl/Chronicle (22 pp.) $14.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-2-40801-281-6

This board book introduces an odd mix of caution and mayhem.

The cover proclaims “10 BIG and SCARY FLAPS,” but there are actually 11, counting the half-page cover, which hides a witch chasing a wolf, who is scaring a ghost. On the final spread the wolf returns to be scared by a “Boo!” from young readers. In large font, the text invites children to tickle an ogre, knock a witch off her broom, startle an ostrich, etc. Predicting each cartoon creature’s response is part of the fun. Will they be happy when the flap is opened? Usually they are scared, not scary.

Some adults may balk at suggestions like “Stick your tongue out at the dragon” or “the lion is sleeping. Now’s a good time to poke him.” In both cases the behavior elicits an angry reception, so youngsters may understand that this was not particularly good advice to follow. The interaction with a seemingly friendly crab is less clear. When that flap is lifted, the crab threatens to pinch. Is the lesson to not trust strangers? Or just to avoid crabs? The reactions are clear in the bright, uncluttered illustrations behind large, easily manipulated flaps. However, the black type is difficult to read when set on the occasional dark, lowcontrast background.

A raucous if slightly opaque addition to storytime.

(Board book. 1-3)

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Sophisticated vocabulary marks this French import as a board book for quiet sharing with older toddlers and preschoolers.

Cleverly layered, extra-thick die-cut pages depict an ever changing temperate forest landscape. Each page is shaped like a different (stylized) tree. Seen closed, the extra-thick pages form a complex forest environment. The varied shapes invite little children to explore this idealized woodland. Each page turn creates a new scene with animals native to the forest on each spread. Unnamed but mostly recognizable creatures—a fox, several birds, a hedgehog, a brown bear, a black bear, a wild boar, a deer, an owl, pink and blue bunnies, a squirrel, a snail, and a bee—gaze directly at readers with large, dark eyes. The story begins with a simple declaration: “In the forest, seasons change.” Following this, five to eight words per spread describe spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The poetic descriptions in the uncredited text may puzzle literal-minded toddlers. “Spring brings babies and blooms” and “Autumn is both bright and brown” will evoke more questions than answers. Words such as “summons” and “countless” are not standard toddler vocabulary.

Still, the small trim, graspable and sturdy shapes, and colorful pictures may be enough to draw youngsters in for multiple readings.

A pleasure to hold and lovely to look at again and again.

(Board book. 2-4)

stylized, nonthreatening versions of T. rex, animal dioramas, statuary, masks, and paintings rendered in a bold, graphic style with minimal detail and no shading. Child art patrons have a wide variety of skin hues, and their interactive poses, including one making eye contact with a taxidermied bear (all the art appears to peer back) or another imitating a mummy, make the experience of visiting a fine art museum feel accessible to younger audiences.

This sophisticated title will be a boon to adults planning a museum trip with young children. (Board book. 1-3)

ZOOM!

Babin, Stéphanie Illus. by Newman, Ben Twirl/Chronicle (12 pp.) $14.99 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-2-40801-283-0 Series: Matching Game A large-format board book with sliding, matching-game–style panels featuring things that move on land, sea, and by air.

This one is fodder for young readers who love everything on wheels. As in Babin’s Animals, illustrated by Julie Mercier (2018), b o a r d & n o v e lt y b o o ks

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this book includes a series of panels that allow for a matching game, wherein four sets of matching pairs are hidden behind sliding windows. The left-hand side of each double-page spread shows brightly-colored cartoon animals riding in or on the vehicles while the game is presented on the right-hand side. Each transportation set includes directives for ways to engage with the book (“Can you name and find all the vehicles that are yellow, red, or green?”), but they vary little from page to page and mostly follow the same predictable format. The “In the Sky” page features some unusual modes of transportation such as a hydroplane and paraglider, likely unfamiliar to younger readers (and not included in the matching game). The book provides opportunities to point to and name items, similar to a picture dictionary. It’s really less book and more game, which, while entertaining, does become repetitive for adults. It’s a good choice for travel and even for keeping little hands busy at a restaurant, because it is really something to play with rather than something to read.

More game than substance. (Board book. 2-4)

WALK THIS UNDERGROUND WORLD

Baker, Kate Illus. by Brewster, Sam Big Picture/Candlewick (24 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-5362-0856-6 Series: Walk This World

Cross-section views of underground settlements and sites, from ancient tombs to the cities of humans and prairie dogs.

The creators of Walk This Wild World (2017) here literally take the low road, with stops on each continent except Antarctica.

The tour begins with a panoramic look at the busy shopping level beneath the streets of Montreal and the subway beneath that, then goes on to similar views of London and Tokyo. Brewster also digs down to reveal underground warrens populated by leafcutter ants and other creatures, subterranean Berber homes in the Tunisian town of Matmata, elaborately decorated tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, a salt mine in Poland, an opal mine in Australia, and prehistoric fossils buried beneath Mongolia’s Flaming Cliffs. Each graphically tidy setting is rich in details, with human figures (fairly diverse of dress and skin color) and animals engaged in exploration, housekeeping, or other tasks. Baker’s identifying rhyme is the only text visible on each spread at first glance, which invites viewers to take in the overall scene at their leisure before lifting the multiple flaps to reveal illuminating descriptive and explanatory comments, along with fleshed-out versions of dino skeletons and like additional images. Despite a few liberties with scale, these subterranean sojourns will add a new level…or two…to readers’ worlds.

A searching look beneath the surface for young perambulators. (Informational novelty. 8-10)

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KINDNESS MAKES US STRONG

Beer, Sophie Illus. by the author Dial (24 pp.) $11.99 | Dec. 24, 2019 978-1-984816-39-9

Kindness is a skill, and this book is the perfect way to practice it.

Each double-page spread begins with the sentence stem “Kindness is...,” which is then followed by illustrated examples of children caring for the peers, adults, and animals around them. In this follow-up to Love Makes a Family (2018), Beer populates the pages with children who practice a range of skills, from simply saying hello to being patient. She masterfully pairs fairly abstract ideas, such as offering comfort and reaching out, with pictures that elucidate the term in child-friendly situations, such as a preschool musical performance or playing dressup. The rhythmic, repetitive text makes this book an excellent read-aloud as well as a fun and rewarding choice for children who are beginning to read independently. The vibrant illustrations blaze with movement and light and, perhaps most importantly, are peopled with diverse characters with varied skin colors, hair textures, ethnicities, and abilities (one child has a prosthetic leg, another uses a wheelchair, two wear glasses).

The curated examples are empowering: Each example of kindness is an action that a child can take independently, without adult supervision, and regardless of ability status. Furthermore, because they all take place in child-friendly settings such as playgrounds or classrooms, they can be easily related—not to mention applied—to real life.

A gorgeously illustrated, cleanly written introduction to the art of kindness. (Board book. 1-4)

WINTER

Berner, Rotraut Susanne Illus. by the author Prestel (14 pp.) $12.95 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-3-7913-7415-4 Series: All Around Bustletown It’s winter in Bustletown, and there’s so much to see.

Each two-page spread of this oversized, wordless board book features a different area of Bustletown, including the train station, a local farm, and downtown.

The scenes depict characters of all ages, such as baby Francis, who is tucked into a stroller; elementary-age Lena and Lisa; and gray-haired Anne, who has missed the bus. The scenes often present cutaways of buildings, such that readers can see the activity inside, not to mention the various birds and animals climbing across roofs and trees. The illustrations are detailed without overwhelming preschoolers, and the clever repetition of key characters (identified on the back) on each set of pages

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Boynton is at her absurdist best. silly lullaby

allows readers to weave together multiple, simultaneous narratives as the book progresses. Although some of these characters are pictured with dark skin and dark hair, most of them appear to be white. One of the few exceptions, a South American named Pedro who finds Bustletown “pretty cold,” wears stereotypical dress and does little more than tote a guitar around town. Furthermore, the book exclusively features Western, Christian iconography, including a prominently placed town church, a Christmas tree displayed at the cultural center, and what appears to be a Christmas market downtown. The lack of diverse main characters and religious traditions flattens an otherwise interesting book.

Beautifully illustrated but disappointingly homogeneous. (Board book. 2-5)

SILLY LULLABY

This lullaby will send children to sleep in fits of giggles.

After their child puts a pair of red pajamas on their body and a stuffed duck on their head, an adult caregiver declares that it is finally time to go to sleep. The sleepy child climbs into the grown-up’s lap, settling in for what readers are led to believe will be a cozy, traditional lullaby. Instead, the caregiver sings a song rife with non-sequiturs and nonsense words such as “fibblety-fisty foo” and “zoodle.” As the song continues, the lyrics become increasingly ridiculous, referencing chickens in the bathtub, sheep in the closet, and sneakers in the freezer.

Despite the nonsensical words, the lullaby lulls the child to sleep, and the adult—who now wears the stuffed duck on their head—lovingly tucks their dear “zoodle” in for a restful night.

With this effort Boynton (I Love You, Little Pookie, 2018, etc.) is at her absurdist best. The illustrations, which feature her characteristic ink lines and bold blocks of color, are filled with hilarious details ranging from the demeanor of a somberly mooing owl to the wide-eyed puzzlement written across the child’s face upon hearing the lullaby’s opening lines. The rhyming text is delightful to read aloud, and the musical score incorporated into the illustrations allows parents who can read music to sing the lullaby to an actual tune.

Sure to please both young children and the adults who read to them. (Board book. 6 mos.-3)

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Burton, Jeffrey Illus. by Waring, Zoe Little Simon/Simon & Schuster (16 pp.) $5.99 | May 28, 2019 978-1-5344-3975-7 Series: Twinkle, Twinkle In a text that can be sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” a young dinosaur plays with other prehistoric friends and gets ready for bed.

In this companion piece to Twinkle, Twinkle Unicorn (2019), each double-page spread features a friendly, green theropod with rosy cheeks watching pink pterosaurs fly, using a sauropod’s tail as a sliding board, and watching volcanoes explode in the night sky. As the sun sets, the dinosaur yawns and heads back home to two larger dinosaurs, one pink with eyelashes and one blue without, who appear to be mama and papa dinosaur respectively (did color stereotyping based on gender exist 65 million years ago? And why isn’t the protagonist dinosaur mauve?). Waring has arguably created the most benign and affable dinosaurs possible, with their perpetual smiles, rounded horns and teeth, oversized eyes, and brightly colored hides.

Weighing in at only a slight 16 pages, the book runs through two modified verses of the classic, and the first scans quite fluidly.

The second stanza feels a little forced to make it fit into the bedtime theme: “Twinkle, twinkle dinosaur, / the day is done. / It’s time to snore.”

Amiable if slight. (Board book. 2-4)

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Boynton, Sandra Illus. by the author Little Simon/Simon & Schuster (16 pp.) $5.99 | Aug. 27, 2019 978-1-5344-5282-4

TWINKLE, TWINKLE, DINOSAUR

THE EDGE OF THE WORD

Callander, Drew & Harrison, Alana Illus. by Andrews, Ryan Penguin Workshop (336 pp.) $13.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-5247-8510-9 Series: Mightier Than the Sword, 2 Reading this fantasy novel is like being locked in a room with a puzzle fiend.

This book is filled with puzzles: a crossword and a maze and Mad Libs–style fill-in-the-blank sections. Like many lovers of puzzles, the authors love wordplay.

The characters include Baron Terrain and Prince S., who carries a sword called the S. Word. Both nobles appear white in the illustrations. Most other characters are animals or fanciful creatures, but one is a dark-skinned winged centaur in Western garb. And because this is an interactive novel, written in the second person, the main character is “you.” The jokes make the book feel endlessly clever at first but then endlessly exhausting. It’s mildly amusing when the authors use the word “flabbergastation,” (“the state of being flabbergasted (astonished, dumbfounded)”), but they spend several long sentences in the footnote that defines it ruminating about a “flabby ghast b o a r d & n o v e lt y b o o ks

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The full-color photographs are beautiful and bold. wings

station” and what sort of ghost a ghast might be. The plot is just as busy. When it seems to have reached a climax, a new set of antagonists suddenly appears. The story is surprisingly accessible for the second book in a series, but it ends with more dangling plot threads than necessary. Andrews’ drawings, however, are enchanting, combining broadly cartoonish figures with delicate shading. Several blank pages invite readers to contribute their own.

The invention never stops—but that’s not necessarily a good thing. (Fantasy/novelty. 8-12)

WINGS

Crow, Katrine Flowerpot Press (20 pp.) $7.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-4867-1659-3 Series: Whose Is It? Guess the animal based on its wings.

This board book truly is as simple as it sounds: It’s a book about animals and their wings. The featured animals range from the eye-catching (monarch) “butterfly” to the brightly colored “parrot” (a scarlet macaw). A detailed, close-up photograph of part of an animal’s wings is accompanied by a question asking who they belong to. A full-bleed, double-page spread follows, showing a different picture of the whole animal, which adds a bit of suspense. Younger readers might be expecting the colorful underside of the parrot’s wing based on the close-up, but a turn of the page reveals the bird sitting wings closed at its side.

Crow includes rich vocabulary words for young readers, like “wrinkled” and “patterned,” as descriptors. The full-color photographs are beautiful and bold, and the close-ups are laid against a white background, helping details stand out. The other books in this series, Coats, Horns, and Scales, follow the same format.

Horns impresses with animals uncommon to board books, such as the alpine ibex, markhor, and highland cow. The simplicity of the text and format suggests a younger reader, but the matching skills suggest a slightly older one. Overall, this one will appeal to both age groups thanks to its beautiful photography and the guessing element.

Stunning photography with high appeal for little animal enthusiasts. (Board book. 1-3) (Coats: 978-1-4867-1661-6; Horns: 978-1-4867-1660-9; Scales: 978-1-4867-1662-3 )

NOSE KNOWS Wild Ways Animals Smell the World

Figueras, Emmanuelle Illus. by De Gastold, Claire Trans. by Murray, Alison What on Earth Books (38 pp.) $21.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-912920-07-5

A survey of the many ways we and other animals use and detect odors.

In this large-format French import, lightweight flaps hide inside views, diagrams, and close-ups added to De Gastold’s whimsical scenes of expressively posed animals and (racially diverse) people sniffing air or water to track down prey or other food, identify mates or offspring, detect danger, and offer clues to migratory routes. The flap on which two seals swim beneath a thick layer of sea ice that separates them from a sniffing polar bear lifts to reveal a seal coming up for breath—right into the jaws of the bear; a pigeon-shaped flap lifts to reveal an aerial view of that pigeon sniffing its way home. Figueras explains in simple but specific language how the “high tech instruments” of creatures including dogs, sharks, elephants (“superheroes of smell”), and ants process pheromones and other odorant molecules. Readers also learn, memorably, how male giraffes smell and taste the urine of females to check out their hormone levels and male ring-tailed lemurs produce a “stomach-churning perfume” to engage in “smell battles” with rivals. These whiffs of humor lighten the informational load…though serious-minded young biologists will still prefer Mary Holland’s Animal Noses (2019), with its more naturalistic photographs. Suggested titles for further reading are limited to three British books and two in French.

A fresh, factual blast with hints of drollery. (index) (Informational novelty. 7-9)

A IS FOR APRICAT Learn Your ABCs With These Deliciously Adorable Food & Critter Mash-ups!

Illus. by Gatti, Mauro Walter Foster Jr. (28 pp.) $9.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-63322-722-4

Mix an animal or an insect with food and what do you get?

A critter mashup.

In this book, 26 such critters are presented—one for each letter of the alphabet. Take an apricot and mix it with a cat, and the result is the titular apricat. Or a coconut and a cow combine for a cowconut. Each letter/creature occupies one page, a photo of the edible digitally incorporated into a simple, bright illustration that rests against white space. Some of these mixes are more successful than others. Mix a flamingo with a mango and the result is a flamango, but mix an ape with a grape and 124

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the result is still a grape? Or a dragon with a dragon fruit and the result is still a dragon fruit? Or, mix a deer with an eggplant and the result is an elkplant? Just in case readers don’t get it, accompanying each new creature is a statement. For example: “LEMONSAUR / Just a spoonful of sugar will help sweeten this sourpuss”; “PEANGUIN / Frozen legumes know how to play it cool.” Though it might inspire some readers to come up with their own creations, it is hard to know who the intended audience for the book is. The statements will probably go right over the heads of most young children and fall flat with adults. A final page offers some facts on each featured food.

Take a pass on this one. (Board book. 3-6)

I BELIEVE IN ME

Even at a very young age, there are so many things that kids can do!

This rhyming text is a joyous celebration of all the things that very young children can do as they grow from babies into toddlers. The examples span a range of developmental stages, beginning with simple actions such as standing and eating independently to spinning and jumping. The text bounces gleefully with internal rhymes, creating a celebratory tone sure to make children giggle. Laudably, the accompanying illustrations feature characters with a variety of skin tones, hair types, and ages. Additionally, the book is not limited to positive emotions: While most of the drawings burst with joy, there is also a page celebrating a child’s ability to cry. Unfortunately, while the pages include racially diverse children, they are not so diverse in terms of ability: There is one child with glasses, one who appears to have a hearing aid, and one with leg braces, but there is no child who uses a wheelchair or is otherwise obviously disabled. Particularly in a book that celebrates ability, this feels like a glaring omission.

Overall, though, the book is child-centric, featuring only two adults in all of the pages, reinforcing its premise that children (and their amazing bodies) are the stars of their own worlds.

Joy abounds. (Board book. 1-3)

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Hall, Algy Craig Illus. by the author Boxer Books (18 pp.) $6.95 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-910716-67-0 Series: Little Holiday Books Little ones learn about Halloween traditions—costumes, tricks, and treats—in this un-scary board book.

This entry in Hall’s Little Holiday Books follows the same cast of racially diverse children wearing costumes fashioned from footie pajamas on a not-too-scary Halloween hunt for treats. Their costumes are not elaborate: hoods for Little Pumpkin and Little Franken, a cape for Little Bat, a hood and sheet for the child dressed as a ghost. Little Pumpkin starts out alone but quickly finds Little Franken behind the curtains. As each trickor-treater is discovered, Little Pumpkin declares “Good trick.”

These toddlers act like actual toddlers, climbing the stairs on all fours and cheerfully tumbling over one another. The black kitten on each spread and treat bags decorated to match each child’s costume are details that will help young readers focus on the slight story. As in Little Darling’s Book of Love (2019), the text is sometimes cloyingly cutesy. Curtains are described as “swishy, swooshy”; a door is “spooky-wooky.” These minor missteps will be forgotten when the final page turn reveals “Halloween treats galore.” (Curiously, candy canes feature prominently amid the Halloween candy.)

A cheerful addition to the holiday bookshelf that might even last longer than the Halloween candy. (Board book. 1-4)

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Grover, Lorie Ann Illus. by Búzio, Carolina Cartwheel/Scholastic (24 pp.) $9.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-338-28624-3 Series: Wonderful Me

LITTLE PUMPKIN’S HALLOWEEN

BARNYARD BUBBE’S HANUKKAH

Klein-Higger, Joni & Sharf, Barbara Illus. by Gutierrez, Mónica Kar-Ben (12 pp.) $5.99 | Sep. 1, 2019 978-1-5415-2215-2 Barnyard Bubbe makes latkes and applesauce out of the ingredients delivered by her farm-animal friends.

This board book invites readers to play two simultaneous guessing games: Which animal has left each food item, and why are they leaving them at Barnyard Bubbe’s door? On each night of Hanukkah, Barnyard Bubbe discovers different gifted food, and each night she asks, “Oh, my. Who has left this for me?” It’s a mystery to the readers, too, save the swish of a chicken’s tail, for example, which is accompanied by the word “Bwak.” The final double-page spread reveals the culmination of the animals’ gifts and Barnyard Bubbe’s hard work: those latkes with applesauce, of course. Klein-Higger and Sharf ’s text follows a repeated, rhyming pattern that is largely successful until it falls apart on the last two pages. There is no inclusion of the religious aspects of Hanukkah, and the only related symbol is the menorah at the end. Gutierrez’s Bubbe looks the part of a b o a r d & n o v e lt y b o o ks

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stereotypical white grandmother, down to the apron and granny glasses. The illustrations vary little except for the changing animal part, limiting engagement in Barnyard Bubbe’s world. The anthropomorphized animals at the end are cute enough but lackluster. Overall, a sweet, secular book for Hanukkah.

Formulaic but fun. (Board book. 2-4)

WHO SAYS UH OH?

Illus. by Kragulj, Vanja Highlights Press (14 pp.) $7.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-68437-647-6 Series: Baby Mirror Board Books

Unpublished Journals of John Muir (edited by Linnie Marsh Wolfe, 1979) and focusing on humanity’s spiritual connection to nature, appears on either or both sides of each tableau: “The sun shines not on us but in us. // The rives flow not past, but through us.”

Youngsters may not grasp the big ideas, poetic musings, and how it all relates to Muir (or even who he was), but the reverence for the Earth comes through with each page turn. With round, friendly lines reminiscent of Wanda Gág’s work, the jewel-toned landscapes evoke the vistas of Yosemite National Park, which Muir helped preserve.

This offering isn’t much of an introduction to Muir, but it is a lovely poetic meditation on the natural world. (Board book. 2-4)

WILD ANIMAL SOUNDS

Animal and human babies alike are unsteady on their feet in this rhyming

board book.

Photographs of baby animals against an all-white background show them playing, reaching, hopping, and ultimately falling down, saying “uh oh” at each landing. Then it’s Baby’s turn to go and stumble, and finally, a mirrored page asks readers to practice saying the titular phrase. Even when collaged with the occasional prop (a tennis ball, a butterfly), the photographs and page layouts are all very bare bones, leaving little for readers to explore. On the one hand, this makes the words and images easy to focus on; on the other, there’s little reason to linger and look. The black baby on the front cover is also the only baby featured, notable in a field crowded with books about and including only white babies. The text isn’t anything splashy, but its simplicity allows for the rhyming words to stand out, good vocabulary building blocks for young ears to hear aloud. All of the rhyming phrases appear in capital letters, subtly adding emphasis. The use of the phrase “uh oh” is clever given that it is often among a baby’s first spoken words. The mirror at the end encourages smiling, pointing, and, at last, lingering.

Young readers will enjoy the repetition and rhyme of this one even though its format is all too familiar. (Board book. 6 mos.-3)

LITTLE MUIR’S SONG

Muir, John Illus. by Ghahremani, Susie Yosemite Conservancy (14 pp.) $8.99 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-1-930238-89-3

National Geographic National Geographic (26 pp.) $7.99 | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-4263-3466-5 Series: Little Kids First Board Books National Geographic brings its gorgeous, accurate wildlife photography to toddlers.

One double-page spread is devoted to each of 10 animals (some may feel that calling chipmunks, frogs, and ducks “wild” is stretching it a bit). The animals hail from all over the map— from an elephant and a zebra to a black bear and a wolf. The sound each creature makes begins the text, followed by a sentence speculating what the animal might be communicating. Six of the spreads highlight an additional animal fact in a bright yellow circle. White thought bubbles on seven spreads that attempt to inject humor are less successful. For example, in response to the wolf ’s howl, the wolf pups think, “Should we answer?” Similarly, on a different spread, the primary text reads, “Roar! Time for dinner, the mother tiger calls.” The tiger cub wonders in response, “What’s the catch of the day?” The typical board-book audience of babies and toddlers will not get the jokes, and preschoolers are ready for more-substantial books.

The needless anthropomorphization detracts from what could be simple, useful nonfiction. The final spread reprises six of the animals in a guessing game to “Match the animals with the sounds they make.” Ocean, published simultaneously, is similarly formatted (and flawed), but all the creatures featured share the ocean habitat.

Attractive but disappointing. (Board book. 2-4) (Ocean: 978-1-4263-3468-9)

A gentle introduction to the natural world and the words of John Muir.

A useful version of Muir himself, sporting a brown beard with no mustache, white skin, blue vest, white shirt, and brown trousers, appears on each double-page spread. Dubbed “Little Muir” on the cover but not on the inner pages, this sole human character hikes mountains, rock-hops across a river, snoozes under and climbs up trees, and listens to bird song. One line of Muir’s own words, taken from John of the Mountains: The 126

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Details bring this family to life. baby ’s blessings

BABY’S BLESSINGS

Newman, Lesléa Illus. by Nakata, Hiroe Kar-Ben (12 pp.) $5.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-5415-2214-5

HUMPTY DUMPTY

Illus. by Quintanilla, Hazel Flowerpot Press (14 pp.) $7.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-4867-1669-2 Series: Hazel Q Nursery Rhymes In this retold nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty is a hapless, egg-shaped crab.

The orange-red protagonist sits on a wall that looks to be the sunken ruin of a sand castle and then suffers the inevitable fall. The king’s horses and king’s men are sea horse stretcher bearers and an operating trio of a shrimp, a shark, and a dolphin, respectively. True to the rhyme, they are unsuccessful in healing Humpty Dumpty, so the crab, who likely needs better health insurance, is sent on his way still cracked and bandaged. Animals similarly star in companion titles. A bear plays the role of “baker’s man” in Pat-a-Cake, marking a cake “for baby and me” with a large blue B and inexplicably frosting it before baking it. The stars of Jack and Jill are two goats, one white and one black, respectively, who climb a peak only for Jack to fall and break a horn, which is somehow miraculously fixed on the final page. In Mary Had a Little Lamb, Mary is a |

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MAKE ME A MONSTER

Rogalski, Mark Illus. by the author Chronicle (16 pp.) $14.99 | Aug. 20, 2019 978-1-4521-6715-2

Make a monster by lifting the flaps.

In the voice of the monster on the cover, rhyming, instructive text on each page asks readers to determine whether or not the creature in the illustrations is a monster. Children are prompted to unfold monster-appropriate appendages, including horns, wings, and scaly blue feet.

A new element appears in each spread, in the manner of a reverse-order Go Away, Big Green Monster—but it’s not nearly as successful as Ed Emberley’s classic. The flaps, though carefully illustrated, are confusing: How they operate to complete the monster (as promised on the back) is inconsistent, and readers must perform a fair amount of acrobatics to make the monster visible. The rhyming text is fun to read aloud, but it meanders, shifting between grandiloquent praise of the creature’s various body parts, such as “splendid gold horns,” and entreaties to readers to tell the truth about whether or not the creature is, in fact, a monster in the negative sense. The book’s design—which includes a circular hole in the middle of the book sporting teeth and a tongue—will certainly appeal to young readers who are still exploring the world with their hands. Overall, though, both the book’s message and artwork are too confusing for most children to decipher, and the flimsiness of the flaps guarantees a short shelf life.

Interesting premise; unsuccessful result. (Board book.

2-4)

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A Jewish family celebrates a baby with traditional symbols and rituals.

The whole family—even the cat—dotes on baby in this board book. Newman’s rhyming text includes Yiddish and Hebrew vocabulary and Jewish traditions: There’s kugel and challah, a mezuzah and a tzedakah box, and, of course, many blessings and much joy. Newman doesn’t spend time defining the various terms for non-Jewish readers, allowing Nakata’s softly textured illustrations to provide some context clues.

While the text is certainly very sweet and scans well, the beautiful images are the stars. There are wonderful details: wallpaper adorned with chicks, Zayde’s tortoiseshell glasses, and, delightfully, the cat behaving typically by stuffing itself inside a paper bag. These details bring this family to life. The only point of confusion in the book is that at first, it seems as though the family (all white presenting) is readying the house for a brandnew baby—Bubbe is knitting booties and baking on the first page, for example—but this is no newborn. The baby is shown forward-facing in a baby carrier, sitting up on a lap at the table, and climbing playfully on Zayde. Overall, this book would make a wonderful gift for a Jewish family welcoming a new addition, as it certainly conveys the excitement and joy of having a little one in the house.

A sweet celebration of a baby, full of Jewish tradition.

(Board book. 1-3)

purple lamb who has a beloved stuffed lamb toy with whitishgray fleece. This is the only classic text that is condensed; the repetition of the song is absent, which makes singing in time to the page turns difficult. In the other titles, the lines of rhyme flow quite nicely; particularly effective is the page-turn pause before Jill comes “tumbling after.” Quintanilla’s imagery has an endearing cuteness, featuring animals with voluminous eyes on oversize heads.

With its companions, a baby-friendly classic. (Board book.

1-3) (Jack and Jill: 978-1-4867-1668-5; Mary Had a Little Lamb: 9781-4867-1667-8; Pat-a-Cake: 978-1-4867-1670-8)

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Dense, multilayered art creates atmospheric backgrounds. i love you, world

TUMMY RIDE Calming Breaths for Little Ones

Stewart, Whitney Illus. by Alejandro, Rocio Barefoot (14 pp.) $7.99 | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-78285-748-8 Series: Mindful Tots

This how-to board book coaches toddlers on the methodology of deep breathing.

Using a meditative, repetitive style, an omniscient narrator obliquely explains the process of feeling and controlling one’s breath, a process readers learn “helps you rest.” Initially the instructions, such as placing hands on one’s tummy to feel it moving up and down, are quite clear. However, the directions become harder to follow as the metaphor grows more protracted and abstract, comparing breathing to an “ocean wave” that becomes a “smooth wave” with deep breaths, though patient adult caregivers will probably be able to help young charges bridge this gap. Good-natured, colorful art features diverse adults and children who adequately model the instructions, though the roughly drawn faces with triangular noses and loud, red-circle cheeks on oversized heads look a little peculiar.

Companion text Loving Kindness, a meditation dedicated to building empathy and other “happy feelings for little ones,” is filled with sweet scenes between family members and affirmations such as “use gentle hands when you play. You can share happiness.” An earnest reading of these purposeful instructions will feel natural to some but corny to others.

Not to everyone’s taste, but those searching for ways to explain and explore mindfulness with little people will be pleased. (Board book. 2-5) (Loving Kindness: 978-1-78285-745-5)

I LOVE YOU, WORLD

Illus. by Szmidt, Aleksandra Flowerpot Press (22 pp.) $7.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-4867-1672-2 Series: Global Greetings

Take a tour around the world and learn to say “I love you” with 15 different parent-child animal pairs.

Representative animals from different countries profess their affection in different languages, while small, somewhat obscured placards identify their countries of origin. Phonetic pronunciations underneath each statement (including “I love you”) assist with possibly unfamiliar words. This is especially helpful in a companion volume, Merry Christmas, World, as some phrases are rather long. Animals and countries are nicely spread about the globe, opening on a Canada goose speaking English to its gosling, who responds in French; later on, a Japanese Shiba Inu whispers to its pup. Non-Roman characters are absent; all languages that employ them are rendered only in Romanized 128

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form. Cheerful backmatter showing small vignettes of each duo identifies the animal species and languages spoken, although their out-of-order display may confuse readers. Dense, multilayered art creates atmospheric backgrounds, with a plethora of colors bleeding into each other, and Szmidt renders the mostly realistic animals with visible lines, like a neatly filled-in coloring book. With steadfast eye contact between parent and child, snuggly poses (a fox kit is wrapped in a fluffy tail), and even tigers and king cobras looking warm and fuzzy, it’s a little precious, but it suits the subject matter. The Christmas book suffers without the parent-child relationship, as the added presents or Santa hats are cute but not as compelling.

Mushy but endearing. (Board book. 2-4) (Merry Christmas, World: 978-1-4867-1671-5)

LET’S GO! A Flip-and-Find-out Book

Ward, Lindsay Illus. by the author HarperFestival (30 pp.) $8.99 paper | Jul. 1, 2019 978-0-06-286863-3

A guessing-game introduction to wheels and the vehicles that use them.

Sandwiched between opening and closing spreads, twospread pairs provide some clues as to a vehicle and then the answer, the latter separated from the former by a wheel-shaped die-cut page. Each verso provides a one- or two-sentence clue written in rhymed verse, ending with the same question: “CAN YOU GUESS WHAT I AM?” For a clue, a full image of the wheel in question appears on the same page below the text, the recto is a 90-degree slice of that tire, and a little bit of the scene on the following page is visible below the tire edge. The page turn reveals the answer and features a scene with diverse people using or boarding the conveyance. For the spreads about a train, a bit of the train platform, tracks, and waiting passengers are visible from behind the train wheel. When the page is turned, the almost-double-page spread reveals the train and passengers waiting in the station. This format works for some of the vehicles, such as the bicycle, police car, and stroller, but most of the larger modes of transport, such as the school bus and the garbage truck, are truncated in odd ways due to the wheel-shaped page. Ward’s art is cheery, with muted swaths of color and easily identifiable imagery.

An entertaining vehicle that has a few dings. (Board book.

1-3)

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5 VERY LITTLE PUMPKINS

Weane, Holly Illus. by Forgo, Ivana Flowerpot Press (20 pp.) $7.99 | Aug. 4, 2019 978-1-4867-1673-9

THE CHANGELING KING

Aldridge, Ethan M. Illus. by the author Harper/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $21.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-0-06-265390-1 Series: Estranged, 2 (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

Five animals dressed in jolly jack-o’lantern costumes experience Halloween traditions.

In this not-too-spooky board book, an odd combo composed of a cat, a dog, a goat, an elephant, and what appears to be a dinosaur go trick-or-treating. Told in boisterous rhyme that starts out comparatively strong, the first half of the book describes the process of going house to house, knocking, and filling a treat bag with candy, making it an adequate vehicle for preparing the smallest of trick-or-treaters for the festivities. But when the story veers to a late-night trip to the pumpkin patch to gorge on candy, it models behavior that most caregivers will find less appealing or useful. At the same time, the rhyme becomes strained and uninspired: Children with “tummies that all ache” usually don’t “GIGGLE, and then JIGGLE, / and then DANCE around and SHAKE.” Interspersed capitalized words might help adults read aloud with emphasis, but it’s overwhelming in its forced enthusiasm. The folksy art is competent, but the simple lines, busy fall-leaf–themed foreground, and blobby, uninspired cartoon animals aren’t especially compelling, and there are some elements, such as menacingly leering mushrooms or evilly grinning jack-o’-lanterns, that feel too dark for such a light book. A padded, lightly embossed cover is solid enough to hold up to rough handling by small, candy-coated fingers.

Not quite a trick—but not really a treat, either. (Board book. 2-4)

ROBO-DOD RUMBLE

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Angleberger, Tom Illus. by Chapman, Jared Amulet/Abrams (112 pp.) $12.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-4197-3688-9 Series: Didi Dodo, Future Spy, 2 (Fiction. 6-9)

MONSTER TRUCKS

Arnold, Tedd Illus. by the author Scholastic (32 pp.) $3.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-338-35389-1 Series: Fly Guy Presents (Nonfiction early reader. 6-8)

GAME ON IN ANCIENT GREECE

Bailey, Linda Illus. by Slaven, Bill Kids Can (56 pp.) $15.99 | $11.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-5253-0273-2 978-1-77138-988-4 paper Series: The Time Travel Guides (Informational fiction. 8-12)

500 SWEET FACTS TO SATISFY YOUR CURIOSITY Beer, Julie & Lin, Chelsea National Geographic Kids (208 pp.) $8.99 paper | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-4263-3437-5 Series: Brain Candy (Nonfiction. 8-12)

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BILLY STUART AND THE SEA OF A THOUSAND DANGERS

THE PEPPER PARTY IS COMPLETELY CURSED

Cooper, Jay Scholastic (128 pp.) $5.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-338-29706-5 Series: The Pepper Party, 3 (Fiction. 7-10)

Bergeron, Alain M. Illus. by Sampar Trans. by Watson, Sophie B. Orca (144 pp.) $9.95 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-4598-2343-3 Series: Billy Stuart, 3 (Fantasy. 6-8)

DRAW A COMIC!

Coovert, J.P. Illus. by the author First Second (128 pp.) $19.99 | $12.99 paper | Oct. 22, 2019 978-1-250-15211-4 978-1-250-15212-1 paper Series: Maker Comics (Graphic nonfiction. 9-13)

THE LAST KIDS ON EARTH AND THE MIDNIGHT BLADE

Brallier, Max Illus. by Holgate, Douglas Viking (304 pp.) $13.99 | Sep. 17, 2019 978-0-425-29211-2 Series: The Last Kids on Earth, 5 (Adventure. 8-12)

CODE CRACKING FOR KIDS Secret Communications Throughout History, With 21 Codes and Ciphers

LILY’S STORY

Daigneau, Jean Chicago Review (144 pp.) $16.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-64160-138-2 Series: ...For Kids (Nonfiction. 9-12)

Cameron, W. Bruce Illus. by Cowdrey, Richard Starscape/Tom Doherty (224 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-250-21351-8 Series: A Dog’s Purpose Puppy Tales (Fiction. 8-12)

PETE THE KITTY GOES TO THE DOCTOR

Dean, James & Dean, Kimberly Illus. by Dean, James Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | Sep. 24, 2019 978-0-06-286833-6 978-0-06-286832-9 paper Series: Pete the Cat (Early reader. 4-8)

BISCUIT’S SNOW DAY RACE

Capucilli, Alyssa Satin Illus. by Schories, Pat Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-0-06-243621-4 978-0-06-243620-7 paper Series: Biscuit (Early reader. 4-8)

SUPER WEIRD!

Do, Anh Scholastic (160 pp.) $5.99 paper | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-338-30565-4 Series: WeirDo, 4 (Fiction. 7-10)

RISING STAR

Chiang, Sylv Illus. by Choi, Connie Annick Press (200 pp.) $18.95 | $9.95 paper | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-77321-312-5 978-1-77321-311-8 paper Series: Cross Ups, 3 (Fiction. 9-13)

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ULTIMATE WEATHERPEDIA The Most Complete Weather Reference Ever Drimmer, Stephanie Warren National Geographic Kids (272 pp.) $24.99 | $34.90 PLB | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-4263-3543-3 978-1-4263-3544-0 PLB Series: National Geographic Kids Ultimate (Nonfiction. 8-12)

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THE GREAT SHELBY HOLMES AND THE HAUNTED HOUND

ATTACK OF THE FURBALL

Ignatow, Amy & Krosoczka, Jarrett J. Illus. by Krosoczka, Jarrett J. Scholastic (176 pp.) $12.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-338-29537-5 Series: Star Wars: Jedi Academy, 8 (Science fiction. 8-12)

Eulberg, Elizabeth Bloomsbury (256 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-5476-0147-9 Series: The Great Shelby Holmes, 2 (Fiction. 8-12)

FIELD TRIP DISASTER

FUTURE HUMANS

Fridolfs, Derek Illus. by Bardin, Dave Scholastic (176 pp.) $12.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-338-27329-8 Series: DC Comics: Secret Hero Society, 5 (Fiction. 7-10)

Jackson, Tom Illus. by Guitian, Cristina QEB (96 pp.) $14.95 paper | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-7112-4455-9 Series: What’s the Issue?

(Nonfiction. 11-13)

WHAT PET IS BEST?

HACKERS

Jackson, Tom Illus. by Guitian, Cristina QEB (96 pp.) $14.95 paper | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-7112-4458-0 Series: What’s the Issue?

(Nonfiction. 11-13)

THE NOCTURNALS The Tasty Treat

Jawando, Danielle Illus. by Snir, Noa Laurence King (64 pp.) $11.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-78627-506-6 Series: Little Guides to Great Lives (Biography. 6-8)

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Garton, Sam Illus. by the author Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-06-284513-9 978-0-06-284512-2 paper Series: I Am Otter (Early reader. 4-8)

MAYA ANGELOU

Hecht, Tracey Illus. by Yee, Josie Fabled Films (40 pp.) $12.99 | $5.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-944020-29-3 978-1-944020-30-9 paper Series: The Nocturnals (Fiction. 4-6)

THE WORLD’S GREATEST CLUBS

Jökulsson, Illugi Abbeville (64 pp.) $14.95 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-7892-1353-2 Series: World Soccer Legends (Nonfiction. 8-12)

TROY AIKMAN

Hill Jr., Clarence Random House (192 pp.) $13.99 | $16.99 PLB | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-63565-252-9 978-1-9848-5219-9 PLB Series: Game for Life (Biography. 8-12)

DRAGON TO THE RESCUE

Kann, Victoria Illus. by the author Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | Sep. 3, 2019 978-0-06-284042-4 978-0-06-284041-7 paper Series: Pinkalicious (Fiction. 4-8)

SQUIRRELFLIGHT’S HOPE

Hunter, Erin Harper/HarperCollins (464 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-0-06-269880-3 Series: Warriors Super Edition, 12 (Fantasy. 8-12) |

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THE SECRET OF SHADOW LAKE

AMELIA BEDELIA & FRIENDS BEAT THE CLOCK

McGee, Joe Illus. by Tormo, Bea Andrews McMeel (96 pp.) $12.99 | $6.99 paper | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-5248-5546-8 978-1-5248-5518-5 paper Series: Creature Campers, 1 (Fantasy. 6-9)

Parish, Herman Illus. by Avril, Lynne Greenwillow (160 pp.) $15.99 | $5.99 paper | Sep. 3, 2019 978-0-06-293518-2 978-0-06-293517-5 paper Series: Amelia Bedelia & Friends, 1 (Fiction. 6-10)

DRAGON CURSE

THE CAT’S MEOW

McMann, Lisa Aladdin (432 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-5344-1601-7 Series: The Unwanteds Quests (Fantasy. 8-12)

Parish, Herman Illus. by Avril, Lynne Greenwillow (160 pp.) $15.99 | $5.99 paper | Sep. 3, 2019 978-0-06-293522-9 978-0-06-293521-2 paper Series: Amelia Bedelia & Friends, 2 (Fiction. 6-10)

THE BIG SHRINK

Mlynowski, Sarah; Myracle, Lauren & Jenkins, Emily Scholastic (192 pp.) $14.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-338-22151-0 Series: Upside-Down Magic, 6 (Fantasy. 8-12)

THE ARCTIC FOX’S JOURNEY

Pfeffer, Wendy Illus. by Huff, Morgan Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | $6.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-0-06-249083-4 978-0-06-249082-7 paper Series: Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science (Nonfiction. 4-8)

ISADORA MOON SAVES THE CARNIVAL

Muncaster, Harriet Illus. by the author Random House (128 pp.) $7.99 paper | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-9848-5174-1 Series: Isadora Moon, 6 (Fantasy. 6-9)

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH JAYDEN JACKSON?

Pickle, Charley West 44 (64 pp.) $17.95 | $10.55 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-5383-8206-6 978-1-5383-8205-9 paper Series: We the Weirdos, 3 (Fiction. 8-12)

IF YOU LOVE FASHION, YOU COULD BE…

Nakamura, May Illus. by Kwee, Natalie Simon Spotlight (32 pp.) $17.99 | $4.99 paper | Sep. 24, 2019 978-1-5344-4877-3 978-1-5344-487676 paper Series: If You Love (Informational early reader. 5-7)

CARNEVIL

Reynolds, J.H. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (192 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-0-06-286941-8 Series: Monsterstreet, 3 (Fiction. 8-12)

AMELIA BEDELIA GETS THE PICTURE

Parish, Herman Illus. by Avril, Lynne Greenwillow (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | Oct. 8, 2019 978-0-06-293525-0 978-0-06-293524-3 paper Series: Amelia Bedelia (Early reader. 4-8)

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BETTER TOGETHER

Scott, Drew & Scott, Jonathan Illus. by Smith, Kim Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-0-06-284665-5 Series: Builder Brothers (Picture book. 4-8) children ’s

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UNICORN WHISPERER

STEPHEN HAWKING

Simpson, Dana Illus. by the author Andrews McMeel (176 pp.) $9.99 paper | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-5248-5196-5 Series: Phoebe and Her Unicorn, 10 (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

Thomas, Isabel Illus. by Madriz, Marianna Laurence King (64 pp.) $11.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-78627-514-1 Series: Little Guides to Great Lives (Biography. 6-8)

MR. PENGUIN AND THE FORTRESS OF SECRETS

HOUDINI’S CURSE

Smith, Alex T. Illus. by the author Peachtree (288 pp.) $16.95 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-68263-130-0 Series: Mr. Penguin, 2 (Fiction. 8-12)

Wolfe, William B. Dreaming Robot (232 pp.) $12.95 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-940924-46-5 Series: Phantom Files, 2 (Fantasy. 8-12)

HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK The Classic Illustrated Storybook

Wunsch, Emma Illus. by von Innerebner, Jessika Amulet/Abrams (144 pp.) $12.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-4197-3737-4 Series: Miranda and Maude, 3 (Fiction. 7-10)

THE MISSING MOVIE

Yolen, Jane Illus. by Moran, Mike Simon Spotlight (32 pp.) $17.99 | $4.99 paper | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-5344-3893-4 978-1-5344-3891-0 paper Series: School of Fish (Early reader. 4-6)

RECESS REBELS

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Illus. by Smith, Kim Quirk Books (40 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-68369-136-5 Series: Pop Classics, 7 (Fiction. 4-8)

FRIENDSHIP ON THE HIGH SEAS

Stilton, Geronimo Scholastic Paperbacks (128 pp.) $7.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-338-54696-5 Series: Geronimo Stilton, 73 (Fiction. 7-10)

REVENGE OF THE INVISIBLE BOY

Stine, R.L. Scholastic Paperbacks (160 pp.) $6.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-338-35571-0 Series: Goosebumps SlappyWorld, 9 (Horror. 8-12)

GHOST CABIN

Tamaki, Mariko Illus. by Allen, Brooklyn Amulet/Abrams (256 pp.) $14.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-4197-3361-1 Series: Lumberjanes, 4 (Fiction. 8-12)

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young adult POINT OF VIEW

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Bard, Patrick Trans. By Bui, Françoise Delacorte (192 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 10, 2019 978-1-9848-5176-5

THE QUEEN OF NOTHING by Holly Black...................................... 135 THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS by Charlotte Nicole Davis....................... 137 CATFISHING ON CATNET by Naomi Kritzer..................................141 BODY 2.0 by Sara Latta....................................................................142 YOU DO YOU by Sarah Mirk.............................................................145 CALL DOWN THE HAWK by Maggie Stiefvater............................. 146 BORN TO RUN by Jason Walz............................................................147

Translated from French, Bard’s English-language debut depicts a 16-year-old boy who has an addiction to pornography.

Lucas Delveau spends hours each day holed up in his room watching porn. He forgoes basic hygiene, gains weight, starts doing poorly in school, and avoids friends. He’s also sworn off all interactions with girls ever since he fantasized about a schoolmate named Samira, then sent her an unsolicited naked photo and she reacted negatively.

(Later, a therapist brushes off this unwanted sexual advance as merely “clumsy”). His parents find out about his porn habit and take away his devices. In a suicide attempt, Lucas jumps out of a fast-moving car and gets sent to inpatient rehab. The narrative jarringly switches between the perspectives of Lucas and his father (and occasionally his mother), all presumed white.

Lucas’ parents’ points of view highlight their obliviousness and disgust with their son’s porn use. Lucas’ father says, “He makes me want to puke. He’s a pig.” While the author tries to distinguish between human rights abuses in exploitative porn versus feminist productions, problems unique to the digital age versus the experiences of earlier generations, and healthy expressions of sexuality versus addiction by an underage viewer, the distinctions could have been made clearer. Some of the language also presents a derogatory attitude toward fat people.

A provocative work that could have been more nuanced. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14-18)

THE BLACK MAGE

Barnes, Daniel Illus. by Kirkland, D.J. Oni Press (144 pp.) $19.99 paper | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-62010-652-5 St. Ivory Academy of Spellcraft and Sorcery has launched a Magical Minority Initiative, but newly enrolled Tom Token discovers it’s harboring some long, dark secrets.

Artistically influenced by anime and manga, this volume puts a contemporary racial twist on the misadventures of teenagers in

CALL DOWN THE HAWK

Stiefvater, Maggie Scholastic (480 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-338-18832-5 Series: Dreamer Trilogy, 1 134

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a wizarding school à la Hogwarts. Readers are introduced to St. Ivory—think ivory tower—which presents itself to the brilliant yet underserved black teenager Tom as interested in increasing diversity and stepping away from its separate-but-equal past, or so says headmaster Atticus Lynch III. Readers can expect racially coded puns throughout. Some might call it campy, others corny for its humor, which in no meaningful way disguises the metapurpose of the text as a racial allegory on today’s struggle amid much neo-Confederate discourse on increasing minority representation versus achieving substantive racial justice goals. Readers find the ghostly Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and the (possibly mythical) figure of John Henry thrown in to offset the obvious villains with a cohort of black resistance historical actors. After experiencing numerous stereotypical racial microaggressions, Tom and his familiar, a crow named Jim, are clued into a web of a conspiracy that goes back to the Civil War. With the help of his student liaison and newly-minted White Ally(™) Lindsay, they must act before fatal consequences ensue.

Succeeds at increasing black representation in graphic fantasy but not much else. (Graphic novel. 12-18)

Black, Holly Little, Brown (320 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-0-316-31042-0 Series: Folk of the Air, 3 Broken people, complicated families, magic, and Faerie politics: Black’s back.

After the tumultuous ending to the last volume (marriage, exile, and the seeming collapse of all her plots), Jude finds herself in the human world, which lacks appeal despite a childhood spent longing to go back. The price of her upbringing becomes clear: A human raised in the multihued, multiformed, always capricious Faerie High Court by the man who killed her parents, trained for intrigue and combat, recruited to a spy organization, and ultimately the power behind the coup and the latest High King, Jude no longer understands how to exist happily in a world that isn’t full of magic and danger. A plea from her estranged twin sends her secretly back to Faerie, where things immediately come to a boil with Cardan (king, nemesis, love interest) and all the many political strands Jude has tugged on for the past two volumes. New readers will need to go back to The Cruel Prince (2018) to follow the complexities—political and personal side plots abound—but the legions of established fans will love every minute of this lushly described, tightly plotted trilogy closer. Jude might be traumatized and emotionally unhealthy, but she’s an antihero worth cheering on. There are few physical descriptions of humans and some queer representation.

Whether you came for the lore or the love, perfection.

(Fantasy. 14-adult)

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Calonita, Jen Disney-Hyperion (320 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-368-05223-8 Series: Twisted Tale “What if Anna and Elsa never knew each other?”

Anna and Elsa from Frozen feature in this entry to Disney’s series featuring their popular animated films reimagined with alternate premises. Accidents when they were young caused both Anna and Elsa to forget Elsa’s powers and their relationship. Elsa grows up in the palace, and Anna is raised in a bakery on a mountainside, unaware of her royal status. Key moments from the film are still featured but with reworked pivotal status, as is some narration with strong nods to a certain viral song: “the cold never bothered her, anyway.” The novel adds some depth to the worldbuilding, such as by naming and describing members of the palace staff, although no one returning or new adds great substance to the story. This outlandish, convoluted timeline leaves the sisters even more lonely than in the animated film’s plot but still with a bond of sisterhood that apparently transcends physical separation with innate yet inexplicable yearnings and feelings. In the end, it’s (authorized) fan fiction—exactly what some fans crave. Characters’ ethnicities follow the portrayals in the movie original.

Let this one go. (Fiction. 12-18)

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THE QUEEN OF NOTHING

FROZEN Conceal, Don’t Feel

DANGEROUS ALLIANCE

Cohen, Jennieke HarperTeen (448 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-0-06-285730-9

A Regency-era teen needs to find a husband to save the family estate—provided someone doesn’t murder her first.

When 17-year-old Lady Victoria Aston’s older sister, Althea, flees her abusive husband, Viscount Dain, Victoria’s parents tell her she must marry soon: Without Vicky’s erstwhile husband as a possible heir, should her father die before Althea’s separation can be legally recognized, his estate and title would default to Dain. But someone seems intent on harming Vicky: She’s attacked by a stranger and later survives a mysterious carriage accident. Tom Sherborne, her old friend and neighbor returned from years in exile after succeeding to his father’s title, saves her both times. But Vicky’s still angry that Tom dropped their friendship when he left five years earlier. As various suitors vie for her hand, Vicky has one question: What would Jane Austen’s heroines do? Cohen’s debut is lighthearted and well researched, but a lack of focus—is it mystery? Romance?—keeps it from being a page-turner. The

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who gets to be “normal”?

A 2018 upper-middle-grade title I recently read contained a throwaway comment by a character who commented that his family seemed “almost normal” in comparison to someone else’s. This was a 12-year-old boy from a family of white, cisgender, straight, middle-class people. What made this character’s family seem not normal were that his parents were divorced and he had a stepdad and half sister.

The fact that only about half the children in the U.S. are growing up with two married parents speaks to the fact that “normal,” in reality, includes diverse family structures.

I mentioned my discomfort to an adult who had also read the book, and her response was, “All kids think their families aren’t normal!” While this may be true, this was fiction, not memoir. These were words chosen by an author in a world she created, a world that has the power to question norms—or reinforce them. Some kids grow up continually bombarded with implicit and explicit messages that their families are not normal, and I strongly suspect they will not feel seen when they read this passage.

Of course it is terribly hard to adjust to divorce, remarriage, new siblings. But feelings of marginalization, while real, may not reflect reality. The adult parallel is the way that some majority groups embrace a narrative about “feeling” marginalized, which leads some members to take out their anger and resentment on disenfranchised people through verbal and physical violence. The scene in the book—one for readers old enough to think critically about these concepts—could have been written in a way that supported those wrestling with difficult feelings about family without excluding anyone. It was a missed opportunity to do what literature does at its best: expand perspectives.

I’d argue that what some readers need is not more validation (which they get in spades from the dominant culture) but perspective. Not in an “aren’t you so fortunate compared to those poor people” way but by offering the reality check that comes from learning that how you live is not how everyone lives. What you value is not what everyone values. Some readers have too many mirrors and too few windows. Books can help remedy that but only if authors are conscious of the messages they are sending with the words they choose.

Of course, there are many subtle ways to marginalize readers without ever mentioning the word “normal.” Here are a few titles that do a superlative job of creating inclusive worlds where some readers will experience the joy of finally being validated in print and others will get a gentle nudge to help broaden their horizons.

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Color Me In by Natasha Díaz (Delacorte, Aug. 20) is about identity—the protagonist is biracial; her mother’s family is black and Baptist, and her father’s family is white and Jewish. Books about biracial characters too frequently present angstridden stories that make it seem as if being multiracial is a sorry state of affairs. Our reviewer praised this title for breaking the mold, saying that, “in Díaz’ skillful hands, the many aspects of Nevaeh’s intersectional identity are woven together so that they are, as in real life, inextricable from each other,” adding that it was “free of the melodrama often associated with half-this, half-that issue books.”

How often do we get to see a fat, queer, black girl as the star of a lighthearted interracial romance? The protagonist of the delightful graphic novel Pumpkinheads, by Rainbow Rowell, illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks and Sarah Stern (First Second, Aug. 27), is working at a pumpkin patch with her longtime friend, a buff, blond, white boy. The story of falling in love with someone who has been right under your nose all along is not new (although it is arguably a highly satisfying story arc), but what is new is the way this title presents the characters’ identities as completely natural. It is an important corrective in a genre dominated by cookie-cutter portrayals.

The graphic novel Stage Dreams, written and illustrated Melanie Gillman (Graphic Universe, Sept.

3), is on one level another Civil War/ Western adventure story. However, its protagonists are a white trans woman and a brown-skinned woman, two types of characters who rarely get to feature in historical fiction. The story of their “engrossing escapade with a heart-stealing queer romance,” as our reviewer described it, is set against the backdrop of a world where racial and gender restrictions of course have an impact on their lives, but their dreams and love for one another—and their daring heist—are the focus. —L.S. Laura Simeon is the young adult editor.

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central conceit—that Vicky draws inspiration from Fanny Price, Elizabeth Bennet, Marianne Dashwood, etc.—only muddles the story, as it’s likely going to be lost on many YA readers who may not know who these characters are. There are mentions of India, the West Indies, and abolition, but all characters seem to be white.

Not scary, not sexy, not quite enough. (historical note) (Historical fiction. 14-18)

THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS

Davis, Charlotte Nicole Tor Teen (352 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-250-29970-3

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Davis, Ronni Little, Brown (400 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-0-316-49070-2

Summer romance interrupts a teen girl’s focused path to a Ph.D. Devon has wanted to become an astrophysicist since she was a kid; one night of watching the stars on a camping trip to Yellowstone and she fell in love. With her sights set on a competitive, top-notch college program, Devon prioritizes school above everything else. The summer she is 16, while visiting the beach with her cousin, Devon meets Ashton, and suddenly she has two loves—astronomy and him. However, on what should be their final day together, Ashton never shows. A year passes with no word, and then, on the first day of senior year, Ashton reappears. He reveals that he suffers from depression and that his wealthy white family’s pressure to be someone he is not and to leave Devon because she is middle-class and biracial (her mom is black and her dad is white) overwhelmed him. The pair reunite, but Ashton’s depression and mental health struggles increase, and Devon is left trying to choose where to focus her energy—school or boyfriend. Astronomy facts are interspersed throughout the text, demonstrating Devon’s obsession, but never interrupt the narrative. Debut author Davis provides a new take on the archetypal first love novel by tackling the impact of mental health, race, and class wars.

A moving love story, timely given the pervasiveness of mental health crises. (Fiction. 14-18)

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In an alternate Wild West, five girls are on the run.

On the night of her sister’s debut into the world of prostitution, Aster tells Clementine to think of a song to distract herself. They are Good Luck Girls, indentured sex workers from poor, sharecropping families of a social underclass known as dustbloods. There is no outward difference between a dustblood and a fairblood, but generations ago, dustbloods had their shadows torn away, and since then their children have been born without them. When Clementine accidentally murders her first “brag,” or customer, Aster knows they must run for it. In seeking help, she unwittingly recruits three other girls itching to escape, and the five head north, where fairblood Violet insists a woman named Lady Ghost can help by removing their favors, mystical tattoos applied to the throats of Good Luck Girls that cannot be disguised. And thus begins their adventure, which also involves robbing men who deserve it and having to avoid vicious ghosts called vengeants and soulless, evil club bouncers/bounty hunters called raveners. Inventive language and outlaw girls are nothing new in Westerns, but debut author Davis’ richly imagined setting goes deeper than that, questioning the difference between ethics and law, exploring the complexity of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage, and exposing the lengths men will go to control and constrain women. Characters have varying shades of skin, from light to dark, and hair of different colors and textures.

This one is a winner. (Speculative adventure. 14-adult)

WHEN THE STARS LEAD TO YOU

MY STORY STARTS HERE Voices Of Young Offenders

Ellis, Deborah Groundwood (224 pp.) $18.95 paper | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-77306-121-4

Ellis’ (Sit, 2017, etc.) compilation shares stories from Canadian youth and adult offenders, many of whom have experienced homelessness and been in and out of juvenile detention centers, foster homes, and group homes.

Nearly all the people profiled had troubled childhoods, with parents or caregivers who were abusive, neglectful, substance abusers, or a combination of the above. The stories connect the history of physical and emotional violence in their families with the young people’s own experiences of mental health challenges, anger, theft, drugs, and gangs, mirroring the negative models and environments they had growing up. The stories are compelling and dark, with some sharing how they have taken responsibility for the role they played in perpetuating the cycle of inflicting pain on others with their actions as well as how they have begun to turn their lives around, especially with

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Invites conversations about dominance, oppression, and rebellion in our own world. crown of oblivion

the help of restorative justice practices and diversion programs.

Each story is told in a short chapter of four to six pages. Text boxes offer discussion questions, action steps, and contextual information that could be used as prompts with teens. While the stories are quite moving, readers may wonder how Ellis gained access to these individuals; transparency regarding the sourcing and adaptation of the stories, as well as around agency, privilege, and civil rights of this vulnerable population, would have provided valuable ethical context. The people profiled represent diversity across multiple dimensions.

A powerful collection. (references and resources) (Non­ fiction. 13-18)

CROWN OF OBLIVION

Eshbaugh, Julie HarperTeen (480 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-0-06-239931-1

Familiar tropes have surprising outcomes in this densely plotted fantasy revolving around a cruel blond prince, a mind-altering drug, and a continentspanning race.

Astrid Jael and Princess Renya look like sisters with their wavy hair, brown eyes, and olive skin, but only Astrid has tracking devices embedded in her neck. The embeds are a constant reminder of the division between magicless indentured Outsiders like Astrid’s family and the powerful Enchanted like Renya’s; when the princess misbehaves, Astrid, her surrogate, endures corporal punishment. Such violence is not unusual in Lanoria, where Enchanted supremacy is selfperpetuated by inoculating Outsiders against magic at birth, ensuring they have fewer resources and opportunities as they grow up (sound familiar?). Each year, Outsiders hoping to win citizenship for their families enter the deadly, drug-fueled Race of Oblivion: a tidy mechanism of social control presented as an honest way for Outsiders to improve their fortunes. When Astrid finds herself in the race, it takes all her strength and focus just to stay alive, but, as she confronts riddles and rough terrain, her own inexplicable magical abilities, and her feelings for Darius, a light-brown–skinned, hazel-eyed fellow racer, she ultimately comes to question the only social order she’s ever known.

Perfect for fans of Deltora Quest and The Hunger Games, this suspenseful, action-packed adventure—while at times overstuffed—invites conversations about dominance, oppression, and rebellion in our own world.

Ambitious and provocative. (Dystopian fantasy. 13-18)

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THE STONE BOYS

Gurian, Michael Latah Books (210 pp.) $16.75 paper | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-999-7075-7-9 Pedophiles outnumber protagonists in this sad, scary title.

The tale opens with longtime tormenter Allen’s explicit, if aborted, attempt to rape 16-year-old Dave with a fishing rod and then goes on to a round of get-back as Dave enlists Ben in a scheme to humiliate the bully.

Ben, newly arrived in Durango to help his divorced playwright dad rehearse a Native American theater troupe on the reservation nearby (no nation specified), proves particularly susceptible, as he is hiding a history of being molested (cue flashbacks, with more explicit details) by a child psychiatrist back in New York.

A situation in which he barely restrains Dave from raping Allen with a stolen gun, coupled with his discovery about sexual abuse perpetrated by local priests, finally breaks down Ben’s reserve and pitches him into a round of confessions—first to Eagleclaw, an old playwright on the reservation (whose own son turns out to have been another victim of childhood sexual abuse). Except for Eagleclaw, whose formal speech patterns do not contain contractions and who serves in the role of wise Indian elder, the speaking cast is white. Native people are repeatedly portrayed as heavy drinkers. Gurian (Lessons of Lifelong Intimacy, 2015, etc.) incorporates autobiographical elements into a story built not around easy answers but anguished inner arguments and long heart-to-heart and bro-to-bro conversations. Ugly, disturbing, agenda driven…and nightmarishly informative.

May be triggering to some but of use for discussing the cycle of abuse. (introduction, afterword, Q-and-A with author, discussion questions) (Fiction. 14-18)

EIGHT WILL FALL

Harian, Sarah Henry Holt (368 pp.) $18.99 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-250-19664-4

Eight teens with magical powers must slay an ancient god.

Seventeen-year-old Larkin and her brother, Gallan, break their backs mining for luminite, the mineral that gilds Demura Isle’s capital and suppresses the magic of marginalized Empaths like Larkin and her family, who are able to harness the emotions of those around them to make powerful, forbidden magic. But Larkin is resistant to luminite, and she’s arrested after using her magic to steal from a prejudiced shop owner. Queen Melay blames the ancient god Otheil Kyran for recent disappearances outside the city, and she sends Larkin and seven others to kill him. The dying starts soon after descending into the Reach, a vast cave infested with murderous

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creatures and the walking dead. Readers who like gobs of gore with their quests will be thrilled. De facto leader Larkin forms a bond with the enigmatic Amias, and they soon discover the real reason they were chosen for this mission. Debut author Harian has a gift for atmosphere, but this blood-soaked, overstuffed tale mostly consists of a series of episodic set pieces, giving the feel of a video game rather than a fully cohesive story. A rushed romance and underdeveloped characters don’t help. Larkin has olive skin, and a variety of other skin tones can be found among the Empaths and the supporting cast.

A chaotic subterranean adventure that doesn’t quite come together. (Horror. 14-18)

DARK STAR CALLING

Keller, Julia Tor Teen (272 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-0-7653-8769-1 Series: Dark Intercept, 3

SAFE HARBOUR

Kilbourne, Christina Dundurn (264 pp.) $12.99 paper | Nov. 16, 2019 978-1-4597-4518-6 Fourteen-year-old Harbour Mandrayke, a home-schooled teen from Florida, spends the summer waiting in Toronto for her father to arrive on his sailboat.

Harbour, whose Canadian mother is deceased, and her trusty furry companion, Tuff Stuff, live by their wits, camping in a ravine. She’s armed with her dad’s quirky summer reading list and the resources of the local library. However, Harbour’s father is weeks late from his scheduled arrival date, and her credit card has been declined. Deeply in denial, Harbour meets Lise Roberts, a street-wise 16-year-old with locs, eyebrow rings, and a beautiful smile, who knows how to navigate the Toronto streets and shelters. Lise’s expertise comes in handy as winter

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New Earth faces non-Intercept threats in this trilogy closer.

In the year that has passed since Dark Mind Rising (2018), 19-year-old Violet Crowley has become president of the New Earth Senate, 18-year-old Steven “Rez” Reznik is the New Earth Science Authority director and chief technologist, doctor/artist Shura Lu leads government research efforts, and Kendall Mayhew serves as police chief, with deputy Tin Man. (Lest readers question such high ranks achieved at such tender ages, the text points out that New Earth President Ahmad Shabir is 24.) Rez’s calculations show deteriorations in New Earth’s orbit; while scanning the galaxy for a good star and exoplanet for eventual relocation, he detects a faraway signal originating from his dead sister’s Intercept chip. Another threat that the plucky band of heroes must contain is a nasty jumping virus, Graygrunge, which is just as deadly to people as it’s destructive to computers. While the primary storyline is about the signal, the driving narrative tension instead comes from the interpersonal dynamics of the core cast and the push-pull of emotion and reason—external threats are sparse, episodic, and quickly dealt with. At times, the thematic elements come out as long, preachy character monologues. Most characters are white; Shura is queer, and Rez is coded as neurodivergent. The ending only satisfies if one doesn’t think too long on logistics.

Though heavy-handed, the thematic arc succeeds where the world still feels flimsy. (Science fiction. 12-adut)

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Morgan Parker

THE ACCLAIMED POET MINES HER TEENAGE YEARS—AND HER OWN DIARIES—FOR A DEEPLY PERSONAL YA NOVEL, WHO PUT THIS SONG ON?

By Jennifer Baker Photo courtesy Renell Medrano

Morgan Parker’s poetry books (Magical Negro and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé) have been lauded for their unique perspectives and thought-provoking material. So it makes sense that her new young adult novel is already getting serious praise. Take the Kirkus starred review that proclaims Who Put This Song On? (Delacorte Press, Sept. 24) “a heart-filled, laugh-outloud hilarious YA fiction debut.”

While the novel has autobiographical elements, right down to the protagonist and author sharing a name—“I didn’t really do that as a move,” Parker insists—and lifts material from Parker’s teenage journal, it’s not a pageby-page reenactment of her high school years. Parker’s goal wasn’t to mine every aspect of who she was (and is) for a teen audience, but she was compelled by an awareness of the limited range of marginalized characters in 140

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fiction. “I really needed to see a Morgan Parker character when I was that age,” the author says.

The Morgan Parker we meet in Who Put This Song On? is a black teen who lives in a heavily white suburb in Southern California. She thoroughly enjoys emo music, actively acquires information about black history—due to the dearth of it taught at her Christian high school—and has started seeing a therapist named Susan.

“It seems like everyone I meet, everyone telling me how to be, is a Susan,” teen Morgan laments. After she’s diagnosed with depression, Morgan starts meeting with Susan over the course of her junior year. This is a year rife with aggressions (both micro and macro) during the 2008 U.S. presidential election as Barack Obama is solidified as the first black presidential candidate; personal disappointments and revelations; and many uncomfortable, yet eye-opening, moments with her family, friends, and crushes.

Through it all, Morgan’s voice is critical, blunt, and hysterical, never glossing over the issues yet refusing to tie them up prettily. Morgan’s humorous observations about the people in her community—“White people love Bon Jovi”—along with honest accounts of the complexity of depression and emotions in general— “Whatever, sometimes you just need to cry for no reason”—allow readers access to a relatable reality. “Even though it’s a really personal story, I wanted it to be really open,” Parker notes. “I find we’re either so dramatic, like so sad, or so perfect. I wanted something that’s just… here’s what it is.”

Parker wasn’t being coy when she said there were struggles moving from poetry to narrative. “I mean, novels take forever,” she admits about writing Who Put This Song On? over the years and trying on different voic-

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Jennifer Baker is the editor of Everyday People: The Color of Life—A Short Story Anthology and the creator/ host of the Minorities in Publishing podcast. Who Put This Song On? received a starred review in the July 15, 2019, issue.

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approaches and Harbour’s damp, cold tent makes daily life nearly impossible. Harbour’s study of philosophical greats like Paramahansa Yogananda helps her learn to read people and build the patience and resolve to endure the harshest winter she’s ever experienced while dependent on the whims of strangers. Trust issues and dark family secrets threaten to shake Harbour and Lise’s budding friendship in this gritty, highly engaging, realistic mystery that captures the harsh realities of homeless teens in crisis. This plot-driven novel with well-drawn characters will pull readers into a devastating tale of intrigue and redemption. Fans of Homecoming by Cynthia Voight (1981) and Roam by C.H. Armstrong (2019) will appreciate this book.

Characters are assumed white.

An intriguing story with broad appeal. (Mystery. 12-16)

CATFISHING ON CATNET

Kritzer, Naomi Tor Teen (304 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-250-16508-4

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es before discovering one that was truly hers. But the author found that not overthinking the process was also, in her words, “freeing.” At points Parker asked herself, “Am I just breaking all the rules? Is this a novel?

I don’t even know. Can I even…oh well!”

Ultimately, what teen Morgan goes through showcases community, people, and experiences that aren’t monochrome. Many coming-of-age stories, the author found, are hopeful but not always helpful. “I’m trying to prepare my reader for what is next, not what could be next. Not what [happens] ‘if you have a good attitude and good support system,’ not that,” she says. Morgan and her ragtag group of friends lose and regain faith, get hurt, experience pain, rejoice in their successes, and learn how to express and embrace who they are in the process. Journeys like theirs don’t often have a clear path or a satisfactory conclusion.

Parker says, “For a teenager, how do you feel regret at the same time you feel optimism and hope? Those are really complicated emotions to navigate all at once.”

Who Put This Song On? seeks to decipher those emotions as teen Morgan does, and she brings readers along for the ride with a very emo soundtrack.

Dual narrators—a cat picture–loving AI and a teen with a dangerous past— develop a friendship.

Steph’s spent her whole life constantly on the move, never in one town or school long enough to make friends, as her mother keeps them carefully hidden from Steph’s abusive father. Her realest connections are her online friends from an internet community called CatNet. CatNet is secretly run by one of those friends—username CheshireCat—a powerful AI that uses the community for cat pictures and to counter loneliness. When Steph and her friends hack her new school’s sex ed–instructing robot (to give actual, correct answers to questions instead of “You’ll have to discuss that with your parents!”), the resulting hilarity and scandal attract unintended media attention, leading to worries that Steph’s father will be able to use the story to find them. Preemptive digging into her father reveals worrying inconsistencies in what Steph thinks she knows, kicking off a tense, fast-paced thriller storyline. The believably applied near-future technology grounds the wilder plot elements. The personhood elements of the AI narrator’s story complement identity themes among the cast at large—though the new town is nearly all white (with one biracial black/white character), the characters offer positive, realistic LGBTQIA+ representation— especially nonbinary identities and characters still exploring their identities. Refreshingly, the characters also feel like generally-woke-but-still-imperfect humans.

Wickedly funny and thrilling in turns; perfect for readers coming-of-age online. (Thriller. 13-adult)

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Spotlights the fascinating convergence of medicine, engineering, and scientific discovery. body 2.0

BONJOUR SHANGHAI

Laflèche, Isabelle Dundurn (280 pp.) $14.99 paper | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-4597-4231-4 Series: Bonjour Girl, 2

Clementine Liu is back: This time she’s finishing her second year at the Parsons School of Design and heading to Shanghai for a summer term at the Condé Nast Center of Fashion & Design.

Clementine, who is biracial (French/ Chinese), aspires to be a fashion journalist and takes her blog, Bonjour Girl, very seriously. As her departure date approaches, both her best friend, Jake, and her boyfriend, Jonathan, are behaving erratically, and once again Clementine overthinks every transactional detail and monitors everyone’s “vibes.”

Meanwhile, Henry Lee, an attractive young Chinese student at Condé Nast in Shanghai, has been messaging her, and with Jonathan emotionally and physically distant, she is drawn to his flattering attention—with predictable consequences. There’s also an older woman on her flight who instantly becomes a mother figure to Clementine and who figures into a dramatic fourth storyline. Despite the year since the last book left off, Clementine seems not to have matured at all, carrying the same load of insecurities, overreactions, and gullibility as before.

Nor has Laflèche’s (Bonjour Girl, 2018, etc.) prose developed; it continues to be charmless and wooden, a blunt instrument describing outfits and telling the reader what characters think.

Characters and dialogue alike are composed of tired clichés, and not a single relationship feels authentic or believable.

A trip into Shanghai’s fashion world sounds magical, but sadly, this novel is not. (Fiction. 13-18)

SISTERS OF SHADOW AND LIGHT

Larson, Sara B. Tor Teen (368 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-250-20840-8

Isolated from the world by a magical barrier, two sisters navigate dangerous changes when a stranger crosses over.

Eighteen-year-old Zuhra lives with her mother and younger sister, Inara, trapped by a sentient hedge in the long-abandoned Citadel of the Paladins. Once, the gryphon-riding warriors chased and defeated the rakasa monsters from their dimension and protected the humans of Vamala, but now they have all but disappeared. Zuhra and Inara share Paladin blood, but Inara’s blue eyes glow with power, repelling their mother, who forbade all things Paladin when the girls’ father disappeared after Inara’s birth. Inara is often lost in her own mind, with only brief moments of lucidity, leaving Zuhra feeling alone, longing 142

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for connection. When Halvor, a scholar of the Paladin and the first boy they have ever met, breaches the hedge, Zuhra is intrigued by his revelations of the world and motivated to escape, but the mysteries of the citadel prove more dangerous than any of them know, threatening both realms. Larson’s (Bright Burns the Night, 2018, etc.) narrative of might, magic, and a deep sisterly bond is uneven, with beautiful prose that is repetitive and dual voices that sound very similar. The female characters suffer abuse and isolation, making their longing for romantic connection understandable but leaving them dependent on their male counterparts. Naming conventions pull from different world cultural traditions, but physical descriptions point to whiteness as the standard.

An enjoyable, if flawed, tale. (Fantasy. 13-18)

BODY 2.0 The Engineering Revolution in Medicine

Latta, Sara Twenty-First Century/Lerner (96 pp.) $37.32 PLB | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-5415-2813-0

A primer on biomedical engineering.

Veteran science author Latta (Zoom in on Mining Robots, 2018, etc.) here spotlights the fascinating convergence of medicine, engineering, and scientific discovery, offering provocative glimpses into the burgeoning fields of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, neuroscience, microbiology, genetic engineering, and synthetic biology. Inspiring problemsolving–minded teens to explore these STEM disciplines by describing projects so cutting edge they seem like science fiction, Latta also includes brief profiles and photos of diverse researchers that enable readers to imagine themselves pursuing similar careers. Says Dr. Gilda Barabino, “I think there’s a little bit of an engineer in everybody. It’s curiosity! Everybody wants to know how things work.” Areas of potential breakthrough covered include brain-computer interfaces that may one day allow people with paralysis or limited mobility to move their limbs or control a robot helper; editing the human genome to treat chronic diseases like sickle cell disease by removing and replacing damaged DNA; optogenetics, which hopes to combine gene therapy with light to reduce pain and cure blindness; and growing bespoke body parts like bone, skin, arteries, and more in the lab, seeded by one’s own cells and partially crafted by 3-D bioprinters. Full-color diagrams and photos combined with informative text boxes and a lively, conversational style make this an appealing choice.

Hot and heady: an enticing calling card for researchers of tomorrow. (glossary, source notes, bibliography, further information, index, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 13-18)

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FERAL

Luiken, Nicole Yellow Dog (224 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 15, 2019 978-1-77337-031-6

COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES Stories About Love

Ed. by Mandanna, Sangu Soho Teen (312 pp.) $18.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-64129-046-3

Multigenre short stories filled with romance and diverse characters who cross boundaries.

Representing interracial and crosscultural relationships, this anthology takes readers to new worlds. The need for queer, ethnically diverse fantasy protagonists is answered by Tara Sim’s (Fire­ starter, 2019, etc.) “Death and the Maiden,” in which the Indian heroine weds Hades. In L.L. McKinney’s (A Dream So Dark, 2019, etc.) “Your Life Matters,” an interracial lesbian couple struggles with family dynamics while watching the latest reports of a protest of the police shooting of an unarmed black man. From dealing with a racist bully to facing the impact of colonialism and handling Asian fever, the authors delve into a number of cultures, races, religions, and ethnicities: Moroccan, |

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH How Students Can Join the Fight for Gun Safety

McCann, Michelle Roehm Illus. by Hill, Katie Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $22.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-58270-700-6

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In the small town of Pine Hollow, stubborn 17-year-old Chloe Graham navigates werewolf pack politics and a budding connection with a mysterious wolf.

Chloe faces taunts from the other pack teens because she hasn’t yet been able to transform into a wolf. She’s worried the ability will never come and she’ll be kicked out of her pack. Compounding her stress is a strange wolf that’s started following her. He’s suspected to be a dangerous feral—trapped in animal form so long that he’s lost his humanity—but eventually reveals himself to be Marcus Jennings, her best friend’s brother, who was presumed dead in a plane crash that claimed the whole family. Chloe protects stoic Marcus while he emerges from his shell, and she must step up when the pack faces threats both internal and external, from infighting and a supernatural being. Mainly told in close third person following Chloe, the narrative occasionally alternates to the wolf ’s intriguing point of view. Marcus’ position as Chloe’s adoring beta is refreshing, and Chloe shows impressive growth from timid high schooler to assertive alpha. Reminiscent of Maggie Stiefvater’s The Wolves of Mercy Falls series, the plot is slightly derivative but still immensely entertaining as Luiken (In Truth and Ashes, 2017, etc.) combines sweet romance and riveting action to great effect. The book situates whiteness as the norm, using othering language to describe a biracial Chinese/white character.

A howling good time. (Paranormal romance. 12-18)

Indian, black, Hmong, Chinese, Jewish, Latinx, Palestinian, and Irish, among others. A pirate ghost mentor, a poisoner, and a superhero add fantastical elements. Some stories with abrupt revelations and rapidly resolved arguments would have benefited from additional plot and character development, but for the most part the discussions of identity and messages of cultural acceptance and recognition of inequality are well executed.

The LGBTQIA+ stories, about one-third of the collection, particularly shine. Readers who enjoy romance and exploring questions of community and belonging will find much to savor in this collection, which contains works by some of the leading voices in YA today, including Anna-Marie McLemore, Samira Ahmed, Adam Silvera, and more.

Entertaining and inclusive. (editor’s note, author bios) (Anthology. 12-18)

A handbook explaining why and how readers can do their parts to end gun violence.

This is a substantive look at the causes of the serious epidemic of gun violence in America and a how-to manual for making positive changes to create safer schools and communities.

Using well-researched facts, this book dispels the myth that nothing can be done. Topics covered include the impact of gun violence on marginalized communities (systemic racism and structural violence, Black Lives Matter, hate crimes), the history of the National Rifle Association, strategies and policies in states that are successfully combating gun violence, and information about gun control in other developed countries. Standout graphics and images as well as informative graphs and maps and a mixture of eye-catching fonts keep readers’ attention and make the data easier to absorb and remember. Profiles of activists, many of them teens who have been directly affected by gun violence—and even a few gun owners who advocate for responsible gun ownership—at the end of each chapter place a human face on the epidemic. Most usefully, the book contains detailed strategies for taking action, beginning with the foreword by Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action. While the harrowing stories and facts will make an impact, this book ultimately seeks to empower young people.

Will give readers tools for combating a problem that leaves many feeling helpless. (resources, gun glossary, notes) (Nonfiction. 13-18)

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Dave Connis

A TEEN GIRL RUNS A LIBRARY OF BANNED BOOKS OUT OF HER SCHOOL LOCKER IN THE AUTHOR’S NEW YA NOVEL, SUGGESTED READING

By Michael Schaub Photo courtesy Heather Harper

For Clara Evans, the narrator of Dave Connis’ young adult novel Suggested Reading (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins, Sept. 17), there’s nothing more important than books. Reading is the No. 1 priority for the high school senior, and nothing else even comes close. When she discovers that the administration of her private school maintains a list of banned books, she decides to take matters into her own hands, establishing a de facto samizdat library in her locker, distributing censored books to other curious readers. Connis talked to Kirkus Reviews about his second novel—just in time for Banned Books Week, Sept.22-28—via telephone from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and two children.

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How did the idea for Suggested Reading come to you?

A while back, there was a question going around on Yahoo!

Answers from a girl who was at a private school, asking, is it OK to run a banned books library from my locker? I thought it was an amazing question, and I wanted to explore it. I tucked it away in the back of my mind and chewed on it for a while, and that became the plot of Suggested Reading.

Why do you think Clara takes the banning of books at her school so personally?

Clara made it for a long time without ever getting push back for the things she believed about books. For the most part, the people around her treated her love of books with a “Go, you” sort of attitude: The more books, the better. In Suggested Reading, the push back she experiences with the banned-book list is the first time that she ever had to deal with somebody dissenting against this idea. Her world is rocked, because now some people think that some books might not be up to par or can be harmful. She has no idea what to do with that. So she does what humans are best at, and she takes offense. There’s another layer, too: She’s not just mad that books are banned, but something happens in her when everything she’s defined herself with and by is challenged.

Where did your own interest in challenged or banned books come from?

The first time I can remember was in college, when a friend told me that she read somewhere that Fahrenheit 451 had been banned. I thought it was the most ironic thing, and I actually laughed at the time. I thought she was joking. Then, once I graduated, I started working in a library, and I heard stories from librarians about censorship. What was interesting to me about these stories is that most perpetrators of censorship would have called their acts the right thing to do.

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Have you considered the possibility that maybe somebody might challenge Suggested Reading and how you might react if that were to happen?

It definitely could happen. I think I’d tell them, “I get it, I understand why you’d want to challenge my book. But make sure you’re not reacting out of fear.” And I’d tell them that teens and preteens are constantly underestimated, and they’re able to think through and discuss incredibly complex things. It’s the parent’s responsibility to listen and ask questions about those complex things and have conversations, and books help those conversations.

Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas–based journalist and a regular contributor to NPR. Suggested Reading received a starred review in the Aug. 1, 2019, issue.

A DREAM SO DARK

McKinney, L.L. Imprint (416 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 24, 2019 978-1-250-15392-0 Series: Nightmare-Verse, 2

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McKinney’s sequel to A Blade So Black (2018) delves into the corruption of Wonderland’s peaceful existence.

After an epic battle against the Black Knight and his Fiends, Dreamwalker Alice Kingston works to reckon with the death of her best friend, Chess, who was stabbed during the melee. When Chess is reanimated by Slithe, literally the stuff (blood) of Nightmares, and kidnaps the Poet Maddi, Alice must deal with her mother’s declining trust in her as well as attacks from a mysterious bloody lady in order to find her friends. She journeys from our world to Wonderland and literally somewhere In-Between, which is “not here nor there, nor anywhere… it’s pretty much everywhere,” eventually being forced to face the deepest fears held in her heart. Wonderland takes shape through its ethnically diverse peoples, such as Xhosa-speaking healer Naette, and fantastical, Carrollian creatures, like Duma the Bandersnatch, a doglike animal with hooved feet, multicolored fur, and a purple tongue, and is much more interesting than the underdeveloped settings in our world. Readers meet characters whose personal relationships contribute to a complex intrigue that nicely complements the interspersed fight scenes, creating great balance and pacing. The addition of queer-coded Dreamwalker Haruka, a young Japanese woman, and a broader portrait of the Black Knight’s history effectively complicate the plot without making it clunky.

Rousing, nonstop twists help make this sophomore entry a success. (Fantasy. 14-18)

YOU DO YOU Figuring Out Your Body, Dating, and Sexuality

Mirk, Sarah Twenty-First Century/Lerner (120 pp.) $37.32 PLB | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-5415-4022-4

An affirming, up-to-date book for teens that encourages smart, informed decision-making about their own bodies.

Navigating an ever shifting world of bodies, identities, emotions, and expectations can be overwhelming. This volume is educational and engaging; slang terms are employed alongside their scientific counterparts, and pop-culture references appear throughout. The text approaches a range of topics in accessible language: issues relating to gender and sexual orientation, including coming out, allyship, emotional labor, bodies and body image, and sexism; puberty, including menstruation; sex, including consent, assault, |

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contraceptives, and abortion; STI symptoms, transmission, and treatment; and healthy communication strategies, abusive relationships, and breakups. Notably, the text addresses readers without making assumptions about their gender, sex, or sexual orientation and emphasizes the difference between gender and sex, using language like “people with ovaries” rather than “women.” Similarly, while there is a distinct section that explores gender identity and sexual orientation, content relating to LGBTQ+ people and experiences is seamlessly woven throughout the book, and various combinations of genders appear in sample scenarios. The book’s funky black, purple, and lime green cover and interior seem deliberately designed to appeal to a broad audience, resisting the very gender constraints exposed within. Some yellow sidebars are confusingly placed in the middle of longer bullet-pointed segments, but overall the book is well designed and easy to read.

Highly recommended for teens and the adults who care for them. (glossary, bibliography, resources, index, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 13-18)

TRUCKUS MAXIMUS

Peterson, Scott Illus. by García, José First Second (288 pp.) $16.99 paper | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-59643-814-9 In a near-futuristic Roman Empire, scores of subjugated drivers compete and survive in a cruel, destructive game known as Truckus Maximus.

Overseen by the Dominus, an omnipresent gamemaster that bends and twists the rules in an instant, the game dangles the promise of freedom to whichever driver can win 100 races and achieve the coveted rank of Centurion. Enter Axl, lead driver of Team Apollo, who’s racking up win after win in an impressive feat of ambition. When Axl recruits a headstrong young driver named Piston, it seems as if he’s courting disaster. The girl’s impressive string of damaging losses hurtles her toward the bottom of the rankings despite Axl’s training efforts.

Piston’s unorthodox driving style, however, soon proves advantageous. Axl, meanwhile, scores his 99th win. As his final race approaches, the honor-bound hero must contend with the attention of the whole Roman Empire, including the malevolent Caesar. Thanks to the incisive probing of the crushing power of spectacle via a focus on the game and its toll on the drivers, the story evokes oppressive regimes. The gritty artwork overflows with frenetic action, using colors that evoke a dystopian world. Ample use of close-ups, irregular panel layouts, and other techniques sharpen the story’s emotional resonance and stakes. Diversity in the multiethnic cast presents mainly via skin color; Axl has brown skin and hair, and Piston is lightskinned and blonde.

A truly marvelous tribute to underdogs. (Graphic fantasy.

12-18)

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CRYING LAUGHING

Rubin, Lance Knopf (336 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-0-525-64467-5

Winnie Friedman is navigating her sophomore year of high school, evolving friendships, and family worries.

After a stand-up comedy fail at her bat mitzvah, 15-year-old Winnie swore off public performances. However, when she is asked by Evan Miller, a popular junior, to join the school’s Improv Troupe, she decides to take the risk. Her best friends, Muslim, hijabi identical twins Leili and Asmaa, are very supportive. However, just when Winnie believes she really will do comedy again, she finds out her father may have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. A girlfriend for Asmaa and friendship troubles with Leili add to the changes and turmoil. Winnie just wants to make people laugh and find humor in the world around her— but can she, with her father’s health problems, complications with Evan, and the falling out with Leili? Rubin’s (Denton Little’s Still Not Dead, 2017, etc.) writing realistically brings to life teens struggling to find their paths and be happy, lending the story a feeling of authenticity. Small, telling details of the girls’ interactions in their interfaith friendship and pop-culture references add to this reality. This is a touching look into one girl’s high school experience as she seeks the funny moments even in the midst of tragedy and challenging relationships. Winnie is white and Jewish, Leili and Asmaa are Iranian American, and there is diversity in secondary characters.

Charming and affecting. (Fiction. 13-18)

CALL DOWN THE HAWK

Stiefvater, Maggie Scholastic (480 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-338-18832-5 Series: Dreamer Trilogy, 1 Dreams are reality and the apocalypse is nigh in this spinoff from the Raven Cycle series.

Ronan Lynch can pull objects from his dreams; but as blowback from his powers complicates his life (including his relationship with Adam), Ronan follows cryptic clues from a voice in his dreams to learn the scope of his abilities. Simultaneously, art forger and dreamer Hennessy seeks a solution to a life-threatening hitch in her powers. Ronan’s older brother, Declan, works to keep his siblings safe at the expense of pursuing any passions of his own. Plus, government recruit Carmen Farooq-Lane aims to prevent the apocalypse by hunting down dreamers. This cast of characters, each with their own palpable desires, orbit one another until their paths come crashing together. Mysterious magic and secrets abound.

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Thrilling, inclusive, and unforgettable. born to run

The exquisitely painted characters and artful prose propel the plot, which is filled with satisfying twists and turns. Despite the scope, the narrative stays focused, drawing to a dramatic conclusion. While most rewarding to readers of the original series (though they should prepare for brief-but-necessary pockets of summary throughout), the novel is accessible to new readers, too. Ronan and Declan are white and of Irish descent; Hennessy is dark-skinned and English.

Exceptional. (Fantasy. 13-adult)

BORN TO RUN

Walz, Jason Illus. by the author & Proctor, Jon First Second (240 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-62672-893-6 Series: Last Pick, 2

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An outsider encounters a secret magical war in this sequel to The Wren Hunt (2018).

Zara’s family is unraveling following the unexplained (perhaps inexplicable) death of her older sister, Laila, in their new home, the Irish village of Kilshamble. Zara has few friends and soon earns enemies as she haphazardly attempts to solve her sister’s mysterious last days and death. Brown-skinned Zara’s isolated, not set apart from the mostly white residents because of her parents’ South African background but because of her mundanity and humanity. Wading through grief and guilt, Zara stumbles on the secret war between the manipulative magic-wielding augurs and militant judges—feuding descendants of the semi-Druidic draoithe—and repeatedly crosses paths with neighbor David. Spurred on by his father and a “black-and-white vision of the world,” white 18-yearold David simultaneously competes to succeed his disgraced brother, Oisín, as the judges’ War Scythe and searches for a missing, potentially apocalypse-triggering, item. Swerving between Zara’s grieving process and the erratically escalating draoithe guerilla war, the unevenly paced plot gets bogged down by extraneous details and side plots. Watson exhaustively explores the protagonists’ current angst and agony but offers minimal backstories for the characters and vague and contradictory mythology for the draoithe. Zara’s family is cued as being of Indian Muslim heritage.

A bleak and brooding contemporary fantasy that sells magic short. (glossary) (Fantasy. 14-18)

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With his sister apprehended by aliens, neurodiverse Wyatt must lead a team to save Earth.

In the follow-up to Last Pick (2018), evil extraterrestrials have taken or killed all those between 16 and 65, leaving only the young, the elderly, and anyone they consider “useless,” like those who have a disability. Wyatt (who appears to be on the spectrum) is trying to figure out how to lead his sister Sam’s resistance effort after her capture. Off in outer space, Sam is struggling in the alien compound, ordered to exterminate an opposing alien race. Despite all this, Wyatt and Sam have commonplace teenage issues: Wyatt has a blossoming relationship with mauve-haired Harper, who is deaf, and Sam shares a confusing kiss with her best friend, Mia. Their storylines converge into one pulse-pounding cliffhanger, leaving readers positively frenzied for the promised conclusion. Walz’s art is cinematic in scope, shifting from adrenaline-inducing action scenes to evocative facial close-ups. His economic prose creates many sequences that are largely wordless. Colorist Proctor adds dazzling splashes of embellishment amid a purposefully drab landscape for a striking effect. Walz’s cast of characters is richly diverse, portraying characters of myriad skin tones, ages, neurodiversity, and abilities, like a white adult who has one leg and uses a wheelchair; Latinx Mia, whose mother was an immigrant; and a brown-skinned resistance fighter with cerebral palsy.

Wyatt and Sam are white.

An extraordinary sequel that is thrilling, inclusive, and unforgettable. (Graphic science fiction. 12-15)

THE WICKERLIGHT

Watson, Mary Bloomsbury (432 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 26, 2019 978-1-5476-0194-3 Series: Wren Hunt, 2

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continuing series MAKING A PLAY

Glines, Abbi Simon Pulse (320 pp.) $18.99 | Aug. 20, 2019 978-1-5344-0392-5 Series: Field Party, 5 (Fiction. 14-18)

THESE DIVIDED SHORES

Raasch, Sara Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (560 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 27, 2019 978-0-06-247153-6 Series: These Rebel Waves, 2 (Fantasy. 13-18)

EASY STREET

Ross, Jeff Orca (128 pp.) $9.95 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-4598-2401-0 Series: Orca Soundings (Fiction. 12-18)

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indie A CALIFORNIA STORY

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Arora, Namit Adelaide Books (222 pp.) $19.60 paper | Oct. 20, 2019 978-1-950437-83-2

ATHENA’S CHOICE by Adam Boostrom...........................................150 WHERE THE WINGS GROW by Irv Broughton.............................. 151

THE EXPERIMENT by Robin Lamont...............................................161 THE BURDEN OF HATE by Helen Starbuck...................................... 170 FIND ME THEIR BONES by Sara Wolf.............................................. 172

FIND ME THEIR BONES

Wolf, Sara Entangled: Teen (400 pp.) $17.99 | $7.99 e-book Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-64063-375-9 |

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A young man contemplates West Coast life and his technology career in Silicon Valley while family and interpersonal tensions simmer.

This novel by an author, essayist, travel photographer, and former computer engineer follows India-born Ved, a disillusioned, softskilled marketing manager. Ved works at the multinational computer networking behemoth Omnicon. At 36, considered “late middle age in Silicon Valley terms,” he has become restless and anxious to venture elsewhere. His three-year tenure with the tech firm is already stale. Mostly unattached throughout his 15 years in America, he begins dating Liz, whom he met on an online matchmaking site. She’s a spiritually conscious woman who is the polar opposite of Sasha, a 28-year-old Russian escort who satisfies Ved’s carnal needs until real romance can break through the monotony of singledom. More dates with Liz open up their personalities further and explore their differing opinions on contentious issues alongside an amusingly silly intimate moment involving a scene-stealing moth. Still, Ved’s own internal concerns over death, aging, and whether or not he will grow old alone make the narrative relatable. Meanwhile, he contemplates his future while reuniting with his graduation buddies from India who perceive his life to be more exciting and provocative than it really is, callously calling him “too much of a California liberal, with too many un-Indian tastes and manners.”

After several chapters of interoffice melodrama that threaten to dampen the novel’s pace, Arora (The Lottery of Birth, 2017) ratchets up the intensity with a plot twist involving a visit from Ved’s parents. Obsessed with their son’s health and happiness, they share updates on the state of modern India and impart their wisdom and opinions on American culture, which contort and challenge Ved’s ever eroding resolve about remaining in the United States. A vicious hate crime assault happens while Ved and his parents venture out together. This strikes terror in their hearts, and his parents draw their own conclusions as Ved’s overall impression of his safety in California is called into question. Light on plot but engrossing nevertheless, the book keeps the momentum flowing as Ved tries to enjoy working for a sinking company he doesn’t particularly support or like while processing the abundant emotions linked to suffering an attack for being an

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globe trekkers The allure of such majestic sites as the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and the Grand Canal in Venice remains irresistible to both novice and seasoned explorers. Kirkus Indie recently reviewed three travel books that will transport readers to countries ranging from Spain to India.

Graham Hughes’ Man of the World traces the escapades of the British author, who intends to visit every territory and nation in the world. This first volume of a trilogy delivers vivid anecdotes. On a yacht in the Gulf of Mexico, a captain used “a fishing hook to put stitches” in Hughes’ head with no anesthetic “other than a bottle of scotch.” In Congo, he landed in a prison cell that “was like somewhere you might wake up if you were a victim of the Jigsaw Killer” in the film Saw. “A riveting journey recounted by an irrepressible, highly likable narrator,” our reviewer writes.

In The Buddha Sat Right Here, Dena Moes recounts her odyssey with her family to India and Nepal.

In India, they visited Bodh Gaya, a key Buddhist pilgrimage site, and Ladakh, where they watched the Dalai Lama oversee the Kalachakra Initiation ceremony. According to our critic, this “chatty, animated” book “effectively conveys the author’s inward search for spiritual meaning.”

From Machu Picchu in Peru to the vibrant streets of Turkey, Jubilant Journeys by Connie Spenuzza recounts enthralling tales of the author’s adventures with her husband. At the boisterous Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, she searched for the type of towels favored by the Ottoman sultan’s concubines. In Spain’s Basque region, she toured the family home of Ojer de Velástegui, supposedly an ancestor: “He was among Christopher Columbus’s crew on the historic Pinta sailing of 1492.” Our reviewer calls the account “unique, occasionally mesmerizing; loaded with esoteric historical tidbits.” —M.F.

Indian immigrant in America. Arora’s narrative is structurally sound and capably written, with a protagonist who is endearing. Ved will give pop fiction readers someone to cheer for as he navigates the precarious world of online dating, job dissatisfaction, and, perhaps most socially significant and politically relevant, the rampant discrimination and violent racism coursing through the streets of America. Indian culture is knowledgeably and effectively personified through Ved’s character as the story explores the nature of the immigrant journey in the United States: how it shapes lives and can make or break both personal and professional experiences.

A cleverly written tale with a social conscience featuring themes of family, inclusiveness, racial divides, and the theatrics of love.

ATHENA’S CHOICE

Boostrom, Adam Self (276 pp.) $7.99 paper | $5.99 e-book | Jan. 18, 2019 978-1-79420-555-0 In this sci-fi debut, men have gone extinct, and one woman must decide how society should continue.

It’s 2099, and 19-year-old Athena Vosh lives in the Algonquin Forest Zone of the North American Union. Her main source of income is her Citizen’s Benefit stipend, but she wants to become a landscape painter. She lives with her partner, Nomi James, who designs computer programs for “massage implants.”

Both women routinely print clothing and food and interact with their Advanced Artificially-Intelligent Scheduler and Home Assistant. But the strangest thing about their world is that there are no men in it. The last one died in 2051 from Y-Fever, a disease created to kill terrorists that mutated and killed every man on Earth, including transgender men, as well as some women. A company called Helix has been trying to find a cure so that men might someday return. When someone steals an incomplete map of a fever-immune “Lazarus Genome” from Helix’s mainframe, Capt. Valerie Bell of Public Safety investigates. Oddly, the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence, the Third Core, enigmatically suggests to Bell’s supervisor that Athena is vital to solving the case. Meanwhile, Athena has been painting pictures of a ruined, vine-covered building that’s stuck in her head.

She soon travels to Chicago, the North American Union’s capital, for an interview with Capt. Bell. As Athena dreams of the mysterious building and of the phrase “Original Sin is Real,” she grapples with being a “Lonely Heart”—a woman who yearns for men to return.

Boostrom’s tale is fueled by sharp dialogue and challenging ideas, and it’s an invigorating read in an age of political and cultural division. His fictional world, with its population loss, nuclear terrorism, and risen oceans, is futuristic but familiar; rather than swiping right on a dating app, women swipe right in midair while using a contact lens–based web interface to schedule fertility consultations. This future is also apparently

Myra Forsberg is an Indie editor.

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much safer without men: “Crime rates in the NAU were below 1%.” Boostrom frequently references famous paintings to emphasize Athena’s chosen field; his most poignant nod is to René Magritte’s Clairvoyance, which shows a man staring at an egg but painting a bird. According to Athena, this man does what she lacks the talent to do—“he’s viewing all of the egg’s future-promise and potential, fully brought to life.” The first two-thirds of the novel are a taut sci-fi mystery, but the last portion fearlessly interrogates the roots of maleness. The book presents 2099 as a near utopia, aside from a rising suicide rate, which could imply that most women are saints but for the evil to which men drive them; however, the author also has the Third Core say that “some women will be more dangerous than the average man.”

A daring book that will stay in readers’ minds long after the final page.

Bird”) to pleasantly amusing (“Tiger and Goat”). BrisibeDorgu concludes most of the works with brief but helpful glossaries defining African dialects with which readers may not be familiar. These entail greetings, exclamations like “aboo,” and full lines of dialogue.

Indelible tales of hope, humor, and humanity.

WHERE THE WINGS GROW Conversations With Pioneering Women Pilots

Broughton, Irv Open Look Books (586 pp.) $29.95 paper | $9.95 e-book May 6, 2016 978-0-912350-54-7

ESEGI’S MIND AND OTHER STORIES

A collection of interviews with female fliers from the early years of avia-

A collection of 21 short stories, set in Africa, revolves around the happiness and tragedies that families experience.

Brisibe-Dorgu’s (Love So Pure, 2019, etc.) tales share a strong theme of family.

In “The Golden Bird,” for example, Ebiere’s parents beat her after she inadvertently let their prized bird fly away. Believing they’ve killed her, they abandon their daughter, whom a high priestess subsequently takes in, nurses back to health, and raises as her own. Similarly, Tupele’s family in “The Dog” believes he’s “too attached” to his canine companion, Kposa.

But Kposa proves that fierce loyalty can sustain a bond for, it seems, eternity. Some of the stories are grim, such as “Rope Around Oyinbra,” in which the titular girl seems to suffer endlessly, most notably from a stranger’s brutal assault. But there are buoyant tales as well and even occasional signs of drollness. “Gold Everywhere” follows Amunyai, a man with four pregnant wives. Upon giving birth, they are surprisingly discontent that “he did not transfer his good looks to their children.” In the darkly comic title story, Esegi frequently seeks advice, especially regarding his wife, Alabata, from his friend Ewiri. But as it happens, Ewiri’s guidance may be a bit misdirected. Brisibe-Dorgu writes in a plain, no-frills style that perfectly suits her fablelike tales, complete with morals that, while apparent, are not heavy-handed. In the standout story “Three Muturus,” Muturu is the “beauty queen” of her village. When she can’t decide among three suitors, her mother suggests that marrying all three would benefit the family. But the ultimate plan to do just that has a shocking, unfortunate turn. The author excels at narratives with such unexpected endings, from outright startling (“Human Faced |

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tion history.

This big, satisfying book from Broughton (The Levees That Break in the Heart, 2016, etc.) consists of 29 interviews that he conducted over the past four decades with women who were, in their youth, rough-and-ready trailblazers in the realm of domestic aviation. These women broke barriers by being barnstormers, aerial acrobats, bush pilots, flight instructors, and participants in cross-country aerial races.

One is the legendary stunt pilot Dorothy Hester Stenzel, “a record holder in aerobatic flying, holding early world records in loops and several other categories,” who was born in 1910; another is Kimberley Olson, who entered the U.S. Air Force in 1979 and went on to become one of its eight female flying squadron commanders. Olson recalls that, as a little girl, she looked at contrails crossing the Iowa sky and told her mother that she’d like to be a pilot someday. In all of these interviews, Broughton offers minimal exposition, setting up each segment with basic biographical information—most begin with a photo of the subject and occasional references to books they’ve written—and then launching straight into a series of questions that reveal his in-depth knowledge of each woman’s life and career. Throughout the collection of Q-and-A’s, he wisely steps back and lets his subjects do most of the talking, showcasing their enormous personalities and often caustic wit.

The result is absolutely delightful. At one point, for example, Broughton asks pioneering flight academy owner Claire Walters when she first got into flying; she laughs and answers, “I think it started when I fell out of my crib, the first time I fell on my head. No, I was born this way, wanting to fly. I never planned to do anything else.” National aerobatic champion Patty Wagstaff recalls reading the flight-history novels of Ernest K. Gann and noting ironically, “It’s funny because [he] was pretty sexist...the women in his books are flight attendants or babes.” Veteran flight instructor Louise Prugh, born in 1916, responds to the interviewer’s calling her a pioneer with a simple humility of a kind that runs through most of the interviews

Brisibe-Dorgu, Gesiere AuthorHouse (160 pp.) $23.99 | $13.99 paper | Feb. 12, 2019 978-1-5462-3599-6 978-1-5462-3600-9 paper

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here: “I just wanted to do it because I liked the world from the sky.” Broughton often showcases his subjects’ skills; when he mentions to flight instructor Amelia Reid that she must have come close to power lines during some of her woollier flights, for instance, she notes that she sometimes flew under them.

Over the course of these interviews, Broughton uses playful tact and careful diligence to effectively bring the worlds of the various women to vivid life. A bit more interstitial narrative might have made for a smoother, more informative reading experience, along the lines of Keith O’Brien’s excellent 2018 book Fly Girls. However, the subjects here make such lively, funny, and wise company that readers will scarcely miss additional context.

An often gripping account of some fascinating women of the air.

how to go about capturing and analyzing data within an organization, as Castro seems intent on pointing people toward using his own proprietary “ReM Score” process.

A book that makes a strong case that better data, analyzed properly, is key to business success.

CONFESSIONS OF A CRYPTO MILLIONAIRE My Unlikely Escape From Corporate America

Conway, Dan Zealot Publishing (201 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Sep. 9, 2019

In this debut memoir, Conway recounts his struggle to climb a corporate ladder and how investment in cryptocurrency gave him a way out.

Around 2010, the author scored what he calls a “golden ticket”—a blue-chip job at a major multimedia corporation with his own team, a budget, and a six-figure salary. He finally “felt dignified and gangster,” he says. However, he also notes that he was profoundly unhappy, frustrated with a “fake company culture [that] made me and most of my co-workers miserable” and unable to advance as quickly as he’d hoped. He says that his sense of self-worth was fragile and that he was perpetually unable to silence his “Flip Side, the bed-wetting, escapist gimp with bad judgment who lives in the basement of my personality.” He eventually turned to drugs as a balm for his anxiety, and he soon became addicted to Vicodin. After confessing this to his wife, he sought recovery at a rehabilitation center and became a devotee of 12-step optimism. However, he later lost his job, so he decided to bet money he really couldn’t afford to lose on “ether,” the currency of the Ethereum blockchain—one of the popular cryptocurrencies of the time. The author then thrillingly relates the consequences of this dramatic gamble, in which the stakes weren’t merely financial; he knew he would ultimately emerge as either a visionary or a reckless fool. But, he writes, he not only won, he won big—finally cashing out for millions of dollars in a lifetransforming financial triumph.

In this memoir, Conway skillfully combines three intersecting narratives involving his ego-driven, often selfdestructive ambition; his cryptocurrency gamble; and the history of cryptocurrency in general. Along the way, the author stirringly describes how, to him, cryptocurrency investment wasn’t just a new technological innovation, but rather a way to escape the corporate world that he once set out to conquer. Indeed, his critique of corporate bureaucracy in this book is both astute and conveyed with verve. More than anything else, he asserts, the blockchain movement is about freeing oneself from the financial gatekeepers that stymie progress—and about profiting fabulously in the process: “I’m bringing this up simply as a reminder that decentralization used to be a reasonable priority for the common man and woman,” he writes. Over the course of the book,

MEASURE, EXECUTE, WIN! Avoiding Strategic Initiative Debacles Castro, Alex Lioncrest Publishing (168 pp.) $14.06 paper | $6.99 e-book Jul. 12, 2019 978-1-5445-1335-5

In his debut business book, Castro, the CEO of business-technology company M Corp, aims to help corporate leaders make better choices about which initiatives to pursue.

In the corporate world, decision-making at the executive level is “practically medieval,” asserts the author. Too often, he says, C-suite leaders make major business decisions based on past experiences or gut feelings rather than looking at whether their company has the capability to carry them out. As a result, even when CEOs have great ideas, there’s a 50% chance that they’ll fail, according to the author, because they simply don’t consider whether their ideas are feasible. When problems arise, leaders tend to blame the process—or lower-level employees— instead of questioning whether they made the right choices in the first place. In this book, Castro persuasively argues that corporate leaders need to look to data to make better decisions.

Specifically, they need an “execution capability score,” which he dubs the “ReM Score,” based on a 14-point metric that includes specifics such as “Technical Capabilities,” “Business Process and Rules Maturity,” “Subject Matter Understanding,” and more abstract concepts, such as “Vision.” By using this analysis, he says, companies “no longer have to rely on a strategy of hope, of crossed fingers and hunches.” Overall, the author displays an unshakeable belief in the power of information. Readers who share his conviction that all things are measurable will embrace his ideas, but skeptics may still wonder about the more abstract, gut-level element of the decision-making process. Castro has done his homework, though, and his book cites research that backs up his claims about the importance of looking at hard data and avoiding biases as well as a few real-world case studies.

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The author does an admirable job of providing a balanced view of how the winds of today’s political climate may be blowing. the next realignment

the author recounts his personal experience with admirable candor; specifically, he unflinchingly documents his foibles and reflects deeply on how his life experiences prepared him for his risk-embracing cryptocurrency adventure. The tone of the book is somewhat inconsistent, however, as it ranges from buoyantly irreverent to smugly knowing. The author also savagely caricatures his former colleagues, referring to them by nicknames, such as “Fuckface” and “Kermit,” presumably in order to protect their identities, but this also serves to deepen his condemnation of them. Overall, though, this book offers an edifying look into a mysterious world that promises momentous transformation.

A highly dramatic but lucid introduction to the murky world of cryptocurrency.

realignment is quick and easy or long and drawn-out depends on whether voters and politicians recognize the need for party reform, DiStefano asserts.

A necessary addition to the bookshelves of history buffs and political science enthusiasts.

KICKING FINANCIAL ASS Punch Debt in the Face, Invest in the Future, and Retire Early!

Dumont, Paul Christopher Self (290 pp.) $14.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-9991326-0-6

THE NEXT REALIGNMENT Why America’s Parties Are Crumbling and What Happens Next DiStefano, Frank J. Prometheus Books (480 pp.) $26.00 | May 7, 2019 978-1-63388-508-0

An eye-opening exploration of America’s two-party system.

In this debut book, attorney DiStefano, a former adviser to Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign, concludes that a drastic change to American politics is coming soon. He focuses on the concept of party realignment, in which political parties are formed, reformed, and even extinguished over the course of history. Realignments occur, DiStefano explains, when political realities shift and new issues and attitudes force change. The bulk of this work recounts the five different party systems that the United States has known since its inception. It begins with the birth of the two-party system under Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and continues through the realignments of the Jacksonian era, the run-up to the Civil War, the populism of Democratic politician William Jennings Bryan, and the disruption of the Great Depression. Although the U.S. Constitution doesn’t mention political parties, the author argues that its system of governance promotes the continuing existence of two such parties—with each within striking distance of a majority. But America’s current system, DiStefano notes, has basically debated the New Deal for eight decades while America has moved on to other issues: “All our parties know how to do—all they were designed to do—is to fight about the world of Franklin Roosevelt.” Readers who are well versed in political science will already be familiar with the concept of party realignment at the center of this book.

Still, many will find that DiStefano’s conclusions are full of common sense, even if the blur of today’s contentious political discussion seems to hide such seemingly simple realities. Overall, the author does an admirable job of putting history into perspective and providing a balanced view of how the winds of today’s political climate may be blowing. Whether the next |

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A self-described millennial advises his peers on fiscal responsibility.

In this debut personal finance book, Dumont, who is “on track to retire in 10 years even though I had $50,000 of debt only four years ago,” walks readers through the basics of living within one’s means, saving for retirement, and investing. The volume addresses familiar topics—like budgets, the role of debt, how to invest for long-term growth, and the relationship between finances and personal values—that are broadly applicable, though the text makes it clear that the primary audience is millennials: “We tend to focus on experiences instead of financial security, mostly because we believe having both is not feasible.” The author’s approach to financially responsible behavior is strong, with plenty of examples, calculations, and charts, and will be familiar to readers who have already spent time in the genre—limit expenses, establish an emergency fund, maximize income, institute saving as an automatic process, and make a fulfilling retirement the object of all this frugality and planning.

One thing that sets this work apart from its competitors is that Dumont is Canadian, and he provides detailed information specific to Canadian readers, like retirement and investment options, that is not often found in American books. (Readers used to U.S. college tuition may feel more than a twinge of jealousy when the author notes that he paid one semester’s costs by selling 20 iPhones on eBay.) The text is deftly written and informative, though as with many personal finance books, it covers a recognizable set of instructions for monetary success. Readers who find that advice like “Take advantage of happy hour if you are going out with friends. The cost savings will add up” and “If a girl is only dating me because I have a car, that is not a good sign” fits well with their lifestyles and goals will likely appreciate Dumont’s particular take on the topic.

A solid book of financial insights clearly aimed at millennials.

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THE UNITED STATES IN THE WORLD ECONOMY Making Sense of Globalization

PINTO! Based Upon the True Story of the Longest Horseback Ride in History

Elson, Anthony Palgrave Macmillan (227 pp.) $119.99 | $109.00 e-book | Jun. 19, 2019 978-3-03-020687-1

Evans, M.J. Dancing Horse Press (274 pp.) $4.99 e-book | Oct. 15, 2019

A horse tells the story of the Overland Westerners’ ride around the United States in this YA historical novel.

Pinto, the equine narrator of this book, has handsome black-and-white coloring and a noble heritage as a Morab (half Arabian, half Morgan). He calls himself “a little horse with big dreams,” and that makes him perfect for accompanying his new owner, George Beck, on his fame-and-fortune scheme. The idea is that Beck and three other men—calling themselves the Overland Westerners—will leave Bainbridge Island in Washington in 1912 for a 20,000-mile trip, the longest horseback ride in history. They plan to visit every state capitol in the continental U.S., taking photographs of themselves with each governor. Along the way, they’ll sell calendars, postcards, and magazine subscriptions to help fund the journey and wind up in California for the 1915 World’s Fair, the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Like many other ambitious stunts, this one runs into severe difficulties: bad weather, arduous trails, and a constant money shortage, especially as the Westerners get farther east. Their promotional items and magazines don’t sell, and many governors refuse photo opportunities. The Westerners finish the odyssey, but there’s no gold at the end of their rainbow, and it’s hard on the animals; it can be upsetting to see them suffer. Happily, though, Pinto ends his days on Bainbridge, “a good life for a horse.” Historical information and photographs are included. In her book, Evans (The Stone of Wisdom, 2018, etc.) deftly brings out the pluck of the Westerners and the variety and verve of America in the early 20th century. At one stop, for example, the Westerners have no success because a stunt stilt-walker has already been through “and pinched every penny out of the people.” Pinto’s lively, appealingly egotistical voice is appropriate to this young, ambitious America: “I am quite aware of how spectacular I am.”

But while they are brave, the Westerners’ vainglorious enterprise is hard to applaud because it mainly resulted in poverty for the men and exhaustion, injury, or worse for the horses.

A forgotten piece of Americana brought to vivid life.

An economist offers a scholarly appraisal of the ways in which the United States has benefited from—and been challenged by—the rise of globalization.

An angry resistance to globalization has gathered much steam: Opposition to it has come from both sides of the political aisle, as evidenced by the dueling versions of populism in the 2016 presidential election. But while there have surely been costs incurred by the forces of globalization, argues Elson (The Global Financial Crisis in Retrospect, 2017, etc.), the gains have generally outweighed them and been unjustly neglected.

The author scrupulously assesses the “trio of globalization forces”—the increase in the flow of goods and services, labor, and capital across international borders. He demonstrates the ways in which the United States has been a beneficiary of these trends, unsurprisingly because it has “played a pre-eminent role in establishing the institutional arrangements that have guided the process of globalization.” In fact, the world financial crisis of 2008 is largely not the consequence of unrestrained globalization but rather the result of breakneck technological change, pervasive fraud, reckless financial speculation, and inadequacies across the regulatory spectrum. Elson briefly but astutely charts the history of globalization up until this age of discontent and describes the ways in which it has and has not contributed to real problems like socio-economic inequality. Ultimately, the author contends that the old “social compact” that prepared the advent of globalization has been destroyed and needs to be replaced with one that addresses inequality through new and more active labor policies and the promotion of investment to those regions that have been the most adversely affected by the world economy. Elson is an international economist with an impressive resume—he’s a “career official” at the International Monetary Fund—and that wealth of experience is evident in both his expertise and rigor. He covers a remarkable swath of intellectual terrain concisely, impressively combining analytical meticulousness with striking breadth. The author also manages to comment with great clarity on a number of topical issues, including the debate in America regarding immigration and pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

An analytically thorough and thoughtful discussion of globalization that provides a helpful history and sensible policy recommendations.

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Compressed into deftly crafted stanzas, Flaherty’s exhortations jump right off the page. gimme liberty i can smell!

GIMME LIBERTY I CAN SMELL! (Autonomy for Ordinary Personage)

INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE FOR ALZHEIMER’S The Breakthrough Natural Treatment Plan That Prevents Alzheimer’s Using Nutritional Lithium

Flaherty, J. Illus. by Dale, Neil Self (106 pp.) $14.95 paper | Dec. 8, 2018 978-0-692-08771-8

Greenblatt, James FriesenPress (148 pp.) $4.99 e-book | Dec. 6, 2018

A collection of poems battles against groupthink and fake freedom.

In the famous “Grand Inquisitor” chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky imagines a conversation between a medieval Spanish priest and Jesus. The Inquisitor’s point in this exchange is that liberty is terrifying— and that real freedom is both a rarer and more daring thing than most people acknowledge. Flaherty (Ebbing and Fibbing, 2012) sings a similar tune in his delightfully idiosyncratic new verse volume. In “Myopic Freedom,” he writes: “We think we’re free / because we’re not shackled / and we get to choose which shoes to wear today. / We think we’re free / because we’re not kept in a cage / and can move from the sofa to the supermarket / when our favorite snacks need replenishing.” For the author, obviously, such “freedom” is nominal at best, and readers are actually all in irons, whether they care to admit it or not. Flaherty, on the other hand, is looking for a truer liberty: “There must be more to liberty than / being free from foreign rule, as our own rulers’ / star is diminishing, with them on their way / to becoming clones of their foes, / leaving me baying at my Betsy Ross flag: / gimme liberty I can smell!” The search for this autonomy is the throughline of this piquant collection. In it, the author returns to a few crucial messages: Think for yourself; question authority; and don’t tire in your quest for real independence. These are powerful lessons and valuable antidotes to complacency and apathy. And they are skillfully delivered in rousing poetry.

Compressed into deftly crafted stanzas, Flaherty’s exhortations jump right off the page. And he mixes them with several pencildrawn images by debut illustrator Dale that add variety and a rough charm to the whole enterprise. The book’s only flaw is the author’s diction, which sometimes feels fancy or forced.

For instance, in a poem about a group of antelopes, he writes: “When a predator was sensed approaching / the herd’s chronic druthers was fleeing.” The passive voice in the first line robs it of its drama, and the phrase “chronic druthers” in the second is both nonstandard and just plain awkward. Flaherty should feel free to keep streamlining his otherwise effective poetry.

A bracing, poetic call for readers to break loose from their chains.

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A psychiatrist specializing in integrative medicine makes a case for lithium as a preventive treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.

Statistics cited by Greenblatt (Finally Focused, 2017, etc.) about Alzheimer’s are sobering: In the United States, for example, “10% of people 65 and older” have the disease, and it is “the sixth leading cause of death.” The first several chapters of this intriguing book offer a straightforward, easily comprehensible overview of Alzheimer’s and the manner in which the disease leads to death. The author reports that “currently, no medication is effective in preventing the progression of Alzheimer’s”; hence, the motivation for this work. The majority of the book is centered on Greenblatt’s belief that micro doses of lithium, a simple mineral, could be effective in preventing and treating early Alzheimer’s. The author supports his claim by referencing a number of recent research studies, all of them scrupulously footnoted. He observes, however, that lithium’s lengthy history as a medical treatment has sometimes worked against it because of concerns over high doses, which can be toxic. In addition, writes Greenblatt with chagrin, “there is little financial incentive for research on lithium. Companies are not interested in developing a new pitch for an old drug.” In spite of these factors, the volume provides a convincing argument for the supplemental use of lithium, delivering scientific details (some a bit dry and technical) about how lithium functions to protect brain cells. The author goes even further, suggesting that the use of a lithium supplement “contributes to brain health in broad ways.” The “action plan” he puts forth at the end of the book includes suggestions for using lithium paired with other nutritional supplements, including various vitamins as well as natural substances such as curcumin. Readers are cautioned to consult a physician, but even so, the emphasis on dietary supplements is strikingly narrow. Short chapters, summaries, and “key points” facilitate reading. This work is part of Greenblatt’s Psychiatry Redefined book series.

Academic and challenging at times but generally engaging and informative about Alzheimer’s.

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Michael Nava

A WRITER RETURNS TO HIS CELEBRATED LGBT CHARACTER AND BEGINS A NEW CHAPTER WITH SELF-PUBLISHING

By Rhett Morgan child of a poor family who wanted to make good. So, really it was these childhood heroes, one fictional, one historical, who first inspired my interest in becoming a lawyer.

Why did you pursue writing while also working as a lawyer?

I was destined to become a writer. I fell in love with language when I was a child. By the time I was 12, I was selfconsciously thinking of myself as a writer. Also, around puberty, I realized I was gay. This revelation filled me with words I couldn’t speak, so I wrote them down instead, in poems. In fact, then, I entered law school. At that point, the poetry dried up but not the drive, the need, to write.

Why have you chosen to write about characters who are a little older in your later releases?

Writing Saving Ben enabled me to come to terms with my grief, but I felt out of place in the young adult or new adult genres. A year later, I began working on Her Sister’s Shoes.

During that time, I turned 50, celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary, and sent my baby off to college. I wanted to share these experiences with women who were encountering the same milestones.

In 1986, Michael Nava introduced readers to Henry Rios, the protagonist of seven crime novels, who stood out for being—like Nava himself—a gay Mexican American lawyer living in California. Over the last 30 years, Nava found success as an attorney and writer, earning acclaim and a Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award in LGBT literature for the LGBTQ and Latinx themes woven into his mysteries and nonfiction work. Today, however, Nava has taken on a new challenge: publishing. He founded Persigo Press last year to self-publish new editions of his work, release the first new Rios title in 20 years with this October’s Carved in Bone, and create a platform for other writers like him, emerging queer voices and writers of color.

Why was it important to have diverse characters like Henry Rios in your mysteries?

Well, actually, in many ways, Henry Rios is very much in the mold of the classic noir private-eye protagonist, the Philip Marlowes and Lew Archers. Like them, he has a ringside seat to respectable society’s hypocrisy and cruelty but, while outwardly cynical, remains fundamentally idealistic and decent. The difference is that while Marlowe and Archer chose to live on the margins out of temperament, Rios has been forced there because of his homosexuality and his ethnicity. Rios identifies with the disenfranchised because he’s one of them.

How did you first become interested in the law?

The first lawyer I ever encountered was Perry Mason.

Around the same time, when I was 9 or 10, I became obsessed with Abraham Lincoln because, like me, he was the 156

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What led you back to Rios for this latest book?

We are living in a time when, from my perspective as a gay, Mexican American, every form of bigotry is being empowered from the top, and much of that bigotry is being directed at the LGBTQ and Latinx communities. I felt that a character like Rios was more relevant and more necessary than ever, so I revived him.

THE REBOUND EFFECT

Griffin, Linda The Wild Rose Press, Inc. (220 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jul. 15, 2019 978-1-5092-2659-7

Why did you decide to self-publish?

Once I had the rights back, I felt liberated. I was free to do whatever I wanted and to exercise a kind of control over the books I’d never possessed while I was under contract to big publishing. I began to think about the possibility of publishing other LGBTQ writers and writers of color. I got my first break with Sasha Alyson at Alyson Publications, the legendary small gay press. I got very excited about giving to other emerging writers the same opportunity Sasha gave me.

What are your hopes for Persigo Press?

Originally, I envisioned Persigo Press as a place to publish LGBTQ writers and writers of color who write in genres like crime fiction, science and speculative fiction, and historical fiction. Why genre fiction? Because what I learned from writing mysteries is that, if you tell a compelling story that readers enjoy and create characters with whom they identify, you can slip in some consciousness raising. In other words, a writer working in genre fiction can subvert traditional narratives while still coloring within the lines.

Rhett Morgan is a writer and translator based in Paris. Carved in Bone was reviewed in the Aug. 15, 2019, issue.

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A mysterious cop sweeps a single mother off her feet, but is this Romeo too good to be true?

Unlucky-in-love Teresa Lansing isn’t looking for romance when she meets Frank McAllister, a “disturbingly goodlooking” cop who’s just taken a new job in the small town of Cougar. But sparks fly immediately between the two, and before long the persistent Frank has won over Teresa. Yet the dream guy is not quite what he seems in this cautionary romance from Griffin (Seventeen Days, 2018). Sure, he’s charming and attentive and more than willing to open his wallet to pay for nice dinners. But his intensity is off-putting. After only two dates, he convinces Teresa to join him for a romantic weekend on the coast, where he starts talking about marriage and his plans to pay for her deaf son Aiden’s cochlear implant. The skittish Teresa, still reeling from her ex-boyfriend’s recent infidelity, is rightfully troubled, thinking that her new beau “had skipped several steps in their relationship without her permission.”

But Frank doesn’t take no for an answer and Teresa, eager for security, is gradually persuaded that he can be trusted even as the red flags are waving. Frank’s gaslighting is disturbing—the author clearly has a handle on the warning signs of emotional abuse—and Teresa is sympathetically drawn.

Even as it’s obvious to readers that Frank’s intentions are suspect, she never comes across as a fool for succumbing to his manipulations or ignoring her best friend’s warning that “rushing things is one of the signs of an abuser.” But as the story progresses, the plot begins to strain credulity. Frank, it turns out, is no garden-variety abuser. Griffin tosses in a lurid backstory involving his ex-wife, who died via autoerotic asphyxiation, and throws in a serial killer who’s been murdering young women in the Cougar area. Still, the final confrontation between Teresa and Frank is legitimately frightening as she discovers to what lengths he’ll go to make her his.

A love story that skillfully shows that abusers don’t need to use physical violence to control their victims.

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INDIA In Search of the Fourth Veda

TEST OF FAITH Surviving My Daughter’s Life Sentence

Gunderson, Phyllis Onesimus Publishing (237 pp.) $12.99 paper | Apr. 1, 2019 978-0-578-48110-4

Hirst, Bonnie S. She Writes Press (192 pp.) $16.95 paper | Sep. 24, 2019 978-1-63152-594-0

An American sojourner seeks to unlock the riddles of India by investigating its mystical sciences in this scintillating memoir.

In 1994, 50 years old and newly divorced, Gunderson traveled to the Indian city of Coimbatore to teach English and do anthropological research. There, she experienced both delight at the country’s vibrant culture and challenges to her Western sensibilities. Hygienic standards—garbage piled in the streets for animals to eat, cockroaches in hospitals— unsettled her. Pervasive sexism rankled: She was refused service at hotels and restaurants because a woman alone was considered a prostitute, and when she went horseback riding, irate men tried to unseat her. As a window into the Indian mindset, Gunderson began studying the fourth Veda, an ancient primer on traditional practices—astrology, palm reading, numerology, herbal medicine—that influence much of Indian life. (Vedic astrology, she notes, can specify that a man “will suffer appendicitis in the 36th year of his life” and “be accused of killing a cow”; many arranged marriages are aborted when the couple’s horoscopes prove incompatible.)

Gunderson’s consultations mix the uncanny with the comic.

For example, two astrologers divine that she is divorced and blame bad karma from her past lives but can’t agree on whether she will die at age 67 or 75. Written in rich, sensual prose—“fissures in the sidewalks lead to open sewers, odor balanced by mounds of jasmine flowers in the street strung like corn to wear in the hair”—Gunderson’s memoir portrays the author as both ravished and appalled by the splendor and squalor of India. But she doesn’t exoticize the place; she grounds her openness with a wry skepticism and an analytic eye that susses out social nuances and draws rounded, complex character studies of people she encounters. The result is a fine, evocative rendering of the clash of India’s grungiest material realities and its most rarefied spiritual aspirations.

A vivid, thoughtful, entertaining take on Indian society and religion.

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A mother recounts her struggle to maintain her belief in God in the face of her daughter’s life sentence in this inspirational memoir.

Debut author Hirst thought she was doing everything right. A devout Christian from a young age, she married her high school sweetheart, moved to a small Washington town to raise a family, and eventually opened two restaurants with her husband, Ron. God appeared to smile on her and her family. Then her 35-year-old daughter, Lacey, was sentenced to life without parole for hiring someone to kill her husband’s pregnant girlfriend. “Courtroom activity fades into the background as I query myself: Did I not pray correctly?” remembers the author. “Did I not believe enough in His power? Why has God forsaken my family and me?” Leading up to the trial, Hirst had been certain of her daughter’s innocence and eventual acquittal despite the widespread assumption that Lacey was guilty.

Afterward, the author wasn’t sure of anything. This book is an account of how Hirst learned to be a mother to a woman permanently imprisoned, stepping in to raise Lacey’s children and supporting her daughter from the outside. It is also the story of a woman forced to restart her relationship with God from scratch. Hirst’s prose is quietly emotional and often powerful, as here when she describes her anxiety during Lacey’s long trial: “The unknown hung over me like a tornado funnel in the distance. I didn’t know where or how violently it might touch down. I cleaned closets, junk drawers, and file cabinets.

By organizing unseen chaos, I attempted to regain order in my life.” The case itself—and the author’s relationship to it—is deeply engrossing while the book’s religious element is actually quite light. Hirst’s nightmare situation will be sympathetic to any reader. It is truly her quagmire—not Lacey’s—in which the audience will become ensnared. By the end, the author manages to get to a place that feels somehow redemptive, leaving readers to wonder whether they would be able to make it there as well.

A sobering and revelatory account of a family tragedy unfolding over many years.

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Huskins’ epic fantasy offers a meaty stew Dickens would have relished, complete with a gang of juvenile pickpockets. bards of bedlam

THE BEGINNING OF THE END Book One of The End of Children Series

BARDS OF BEDLAM

Huskins, Chad Nine Dusks Entertainment (370 pp.)

Hudgin, Fredrick CreateSpace (359 pp.) $14.95 paper | $7.50 e-book Sep. 21, 2016 978-1-5390-1092-0

After meddling from competing alien groups, humanity creates an astounding invention—prompting a galactic verdict that the dangerous species must be eradicated.

Fantasy/sci-fi author Hudgin (Green Grass, 2017, etc.) launches The End of Children series with the premise that eons ago, an alien expedition—captained by intelligent octopuses of the interstellar Grock Corporation—claimed prehistoric Earth for trading and natural-resource exploitation. The explorers genetically elevated primates, boosting their brain power to the degree that they would ultimately be able to make future commerce deals. But a rival ET mission from the aquatic planet Quyshargo (these aliens resemble mermaids and Black Lagoon monsters) covets Earth as well and subverts Grock’s plan with secret genetic and “dream planters” tinkering. Result: Millennia later, California graduate student Lily suddenly conceives a practical technique for instantaneous travel/teleportation she implements with her boyfriend, Kevin, and classmate Doug.

Dubbed the Rosy Transmitter (for the color of its beam), the process is soon sold by a greedy professor to competing world governments, and even the White House envisions it principally as a weapon. The invention alarms the Grock aliens monitoring the planet. Homo sapiens, they believe, are too vicious for tech that could send them rampaging destructively across the universe. After briefly abducting the three students, the aliens begin using a sanctioned, nonviolent genocide technique, spreading a virus that halts human reproduction. Lily is the last woman to get traditionally pregnant (via Kevin) while both are held virtual prisoners by a panicked U.S. government. Hudgin details the next tumultuous nine months with succinct but wellthought-out strokes (whereas other authors might overpopulate the narrative with a high page count) of how Earth society reacts to the paradigm shift of the Rosy Transmitter and imminent extinction through sterility. Readers will find echoes of Kurt Vonnegut, Harry Harrison, and Philip José Farmer (especially the last’s “Seventy Years of Decpop”) in Hudgin’s smart, edgy blend of the sardonic and the apocalyptic. Some may sense a determinedly schizoid tone, as serious extinction concerns (and involved discussions on cloning) contrast with the campy Grock and Quyshargo minions behaving like maritime pirates despite their dire pursuit of enlightened capitalism of a space alien sort. The loose ends and cliffhanger ending point immediately toward the sequel, and, unlike Earth’s people, the material seems very fertile indeed.

A clever blastoff of a seriocomic sci-fi saga that plays fecund what-if games with technology and social change.

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This novel pits a motley group of musicians against a beast-worshiping cult.

Bedloom trees are “thick, twisted, pointy things,” good for hanging criminals. Bedloomtown, or Bedlam, is split into a prosperous North End and a downtrodden South End. When a nicely dressed woman dies in Midtown of what looks like the sweating sickness, Chief Inspector Donal Wyne investigates. Luckily, his work is aided by testimony from Cael “the Enchanter” Namold, the beloved bard of the Open Casket tavern. The clever bard, a former inspector, deduces that the woman was a violinist, possibly pregnant, and killed by poison. Most disturbing was her insistence before her death that “the eye…they’re everywhere.”

Cael recruits his friend and disgraced coroner, Gregor “Sid” Maven, to perform an autopsy. The bard then taps the thief Senjelica Tend and her young ward, Lucy Whipper, to help break into the morgue. While the autopsy does reveal the victim harboring a life, it’s not a human child—it’s something furry and monstrous. Worse, the creature escapes. The Temple of the Eye, responsible for returning its deity Fen’dir, Keeper of Shadows, to physical form, doesn’t take Cael’s interference lightly. The bard, though a champion of the new system of thinking called science, must work with mystics like Orman Hys if he’s to save Bedlam. Huskins’ (Atlas, 2019, etc.) epic fantasy offers a meaty stew Dickens would have relished, complete with a gang of juvenile pickpockets called the Bunch and a progressive plot thread condemning predatory banks. Cael sits comfortably in the Sherlock Holmes mold, eschewing superstition in favor of logic (and sarcasm, frequently saying things like “No, no, no. Never. Not I, no. A bit, yeah”). Superb worldbuilding graces every page, from the author’s philosophers (Yoro Ricini) to cultural oddities (Trevor’s Traveling Troupe). Lines such as “It was long and lean, like a slim man, but black rags hung from it like a snake shedding its skin” add creature-feature ambiance to the well-crafted fantasy. There is a middle episode involving a time machine that some may find intrusive. But ultimately, Cael believes that storytelling is about spreading hope itself.

A horror fantasy packed with creative swagger.

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DISCOVERING SENIOR SPACE A Memoir

OF HUMAN NATURE AND GOOD HABITS Baby Steps To Follow Mother Nature

Juhasz, Suzanne CreateSpace (258 pp.) $16.95 paper | $8.75 e-book Mar. 19, 2019 978-1-979008-62-4

Karan, Prabhash XlibrisUS (508 pp.) $34.99 | $23.59 paper | $3.99 e-book Mar. 8, 2019 978-1-984566-92-8 978-1-984566-91-1 paper

In this memoir about identity and the aging process, a retired professor contemplates different facets of her life.

At the age of 64, Juhasz (A Desire for Women, 2003, etc.) retired as a professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and she suddenly had time to revive old passions, like acting. But when acute arthritis and other physical problems put an end to her stage performances, she realized she was utterly unprepared for the realities of aging.

The author found it hard to adjust to a time of life when she was no longer middle-aged but not yet old (she calls it “senior space”). Without the stimulation of daily schedules and interactions with colleagues, she was anxious and depressed. Fortunately, she was able to find new interests, such as learning to sing.

Six years after retirement, the insecure feelings remained, but dissecting her past and present helped Juhasz to better understand various aspects of herself. In this cleareyed analysis, she intertwines stories from her life—her youthful aspirations, her family, her search for true love, and her work as an academic— with reflections on being a woman and aging. Though her prose is impeccable, a few of her childhood anecdotes can be tediously familiar. For example, when she was an awkward teenager, she had a fight with her mother and wrote about it in her journal. She uses the journal entry to examine her relationship with her mom. In another eye-glazing account she talks about the angst of not feeling pretty in high school. Her more compelling stories occur later, such as her discovery of feminism in 1971.

Likewise, the pain she felt while searching for love and coming to terms with her lesbian identity is memorably candid. And her assessment of what it means to be a grandmother is both tender and strong: “I am a caregiver: to my grandchild, my daughter, and her family. What I did felt right, and far from questioning it, I was exalted by it.”

An earnest and engaging exploration of aging.

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Retired engineer Karan (Health and Medical Care, 2019, etc.) breaks down human behavior and personality in this nonfiction work that’s part of a series on human wellness.

It’s easy to attribute certain tendencies to “human nature,” but what does that phrase actually mean? “By nature, all humans are alike, but practice sets them apart,” Karan explains early in this book. “A loving person loves to live in a loving world, a hostile person in a hostile world, and a monk among the monks.”

The author takes the many aspects of human nature—personality, ambition, memory, and even laughter and song—and offers a lengthy discussion on each. He includes references to scientific research as well as historical perspectives, cultural associations, psychological schemas, and some of his own personal impressions. He begins with the age-old battle of “nature versus nurture,” and Karan’s argument addresses the complexity of humanity itself: the immense power of the natural world, the limits of logic and rationality, and the myriad influences that go into shaping each one of us. Over the course of this book, Karan’s prose is lively and generally authoritative. However, he sometimes lapses into Walt Whitman–esque paeans to Mother Nature that feel a bit out of place: “The treasures hidden in nature are so rich! She makes us rich….We learn from her.

Nature is our teacher!” At nearly 500 pages in length, the book is truly wide-ranging, covering everything from the effects of social media on happiness to different therapy strategies to the various types of lying (including “fabrication,” “bluffing,” and “manipulation”). There are plenty of books on the topic of human nature that might appeal more to a general readership, but readers who are looking for a bit more energy and a dash of spiritualism may find Karan’s work to be a good option.

An idiosyncratic but informative volume on why we do the things we do.

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The protagonist’s travels and ebbing naiveté recall the novels of Kerouac—though with far greater consequence. the snuff bottle boy

THE SNUFF BOTTLE BOY

THE EXPERIMENT

Kim, Ijen Crux Publishing (314 pp.) $14.99 paper | $8.99 e-book Oct. 23, 2018 978-1-909979-76-5

Lamont, Robin Grayling Press (288 pp.) $12.95 paper | $2.99 e-book May 16, 2019 978-0-9858485-8-3 This novel poses two tantalizing questions: What happened to a young investigator, and why are people in Half Moon, Vermont, having mysterious health problems?

Jude Brannock, a senior investigator at the animal rights group The Kinship, has given Tim Mains an undercover assignment: Infiltrate the facility at Amaethon Industries and, if the company is flouting the Animal Welfare Act, document it. Tim is not only a rookie, but also Jude’s sometime lover. When reports from him suddenly stop, a worried Jude is off to Half Moon. Right off the bat, she is told that Tim has seduced young Heather Buck and introduced her to heroin (Jude is incredulous, rightly so). But drugs are definitely a big thing in little Half Moon, and soon Jude is nosing around that dangerous scene.

Meanwhile, residents are showing up with heavy bruising, nosebleeds that won’t stop, and similar afflictions indicative of blood thinners. Oh, and Jude is having attacks of vision loss. Animals are suffering at Amaethon, but that may not be the worst of it.

There may be a biotech disaster connected to the company’s experiments with “plant made pharmaceuticals.” The trials may have somehow gotten out of control. Could the PMPs be causing the rampant hemorrhaging? Jude eventually figures out who is to blame for the medical crisis and tries to bring the bad guys to justice in the hair-raising final chapters. What most impresses in Lamont’s (The Trap, 2015, etc.) third volume of her Kinship series is that things and people are not what they seem.

Could Tim be a double agent? And then there’s Heather: The Bucks think that their daughter is innocence personified. A drug dealer named Bobby Gravaux is no saint, but is he a killer?

Jude even suspects kindly Dr. John Harbolt of wrongdoing. So the author does a remarkable job of keeping readers off balance.

Lamont also clearly explains PMPs, a plot point that involves real-world science, not fiction, and teases readers with the side issue of Jude’s periodic blindness. In addition, the author can deftly summon up a clipped style that reveals character as much as subject. Here Lamont describes a black mutt: “Very thin.

Very fearful. And in this state, very dangerous.”

A riveting thriller and a welcome third installment of a series; the author is definitely a writer to watch.

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A coming-of-age story set in North Korea’s fringe Chinese community uncovers a shocking world of art and tradition suppressed underneath the country’s disciplined veneer.

To the outside world, North Korea is a gray, choreographed nation, but even under such an oppressive regime, a surprising Chinese community exists within its borders. Mickey and his family are a part of this community, and while not an identity of privilege, it does afford advantages. Though frowned upon, sometimes even punished, there is tolerance for many to work as smugglers, bringing in outside luxuries while selling off pieces of the country’s history or, at the very least, convincing fakes. Mickey toils under a harsh mentor who trains him as an artist and a forger, but his passions lean harder toward the latter. Further igniting his imagination is a painted, antique copper snuff bottle, a family heirloom that has become a talisman to him. Its counterpart was spirited away by his grandmother Lily, who left North Korea for Moscow. The alluring mystery of Lily and the other bottle moves him to seek out greater freedoms as he studies art abroad. He also helps his brother Piggy in smuggling and faces the dangers of fools, assassins, and idealists. Kim’s debut reads as much like poetry as it does prose, Mickey’s travels and ebbing naiveté recalling the novels of Kerouac—though with far less whimsy and far greater consequence. Colorful digressions into his family’s history permeate but never distract from Mickey’s travels. Characters and their experiences, even outside of the protagonist’s plotline, matter. A foolish Western woman extolling the “hardiness” of North Korean socialism isn’t presented as just caricature, and a cruel rival from Mickey’s youth grows, unseen but believably, into a co-conspirator if not a friend. Most notably Mickey’s first love, Minsu, appears sporadically but offers a luckless story that could (and should!) be a novel unto itself, her hardships reminding readers that even Mickey’s journey is not as difficult as others’.

A rich, artistic novel reveals a culture obscured and unknown.

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RAINWATER HARVESTING FOR DRYLANDS AND BEYOND Volume 2, 2nd Edition: Water-Harvesting Earthworks

A TOUCH OF TORAH Divrei Torah, Midrashim, Poems and Essays

Lowe, Anne Illus. by the author iUniverse (196 pp.) $23.99 | $13.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Feb. 11, 2019 978-1-5320-5846-2 978-1-5320-5844-8 paper

Lancaster, Brad Rainsource Press (448 pp.) $49.95 paper | Aug. 23, 2019 978-0-9772464-4-1

This second installment of a series offers a rainwater collection guide.

Several years ago, Lancaster (Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond: Volume 1, 2013, etc.) met an African water farmer named Zephaniah Phiri Maseko who had created a lush paradise on his arid property by “planting the rain” with the help of earthworks, or simple strategies and landforms that capture water and runoff. Eager to adapt Phiri’s concepts to his dry climate in Tucson, Arizona, the author created rainwater and graywater runoff collection systems in his own backyard.

Currently, he harvests about 100,000 gallons of rain and runoff annually in his small, Southwestern oasis. This comprehensive second edition includes Lancaster’s revised tactics for rainwater harvesting, new anecdotes, a host of visually pleasing images by debut illustrator Marshall, and many colorful photographs by the author and others. Much of the book extols the virtues of various earthworks—like berms that capture runoff and spread water over a broad area. Using earthworks can also flush out bad salts from the soil over time, reducing the loss of precious farmland. Lancaster’s smooth prose is easy to read, and it’s not necessary to have a scientific mind in order to understand his eight common-sense principles for rainwater harvesting. For example, he suggests that potential water farmers begin by studying the land to learn its patterns of rain and sediment flow and determine the best type of earthworks needed. Practical tools are included, such as illustrated, boxed instructions for measuring the slope of the land. Presenting many choices of earthworks—such as mulching, digging basins and trenches, planting vegetation, and building terraces—this expansive volume provides inspiration for harvesting rain and runoff in many types of yards and farmland. The author also delivers inspiration and advice for ways to harvest and reuse wastewater from appliances like washing machines. Readers who enjoy real-life success stories will find plenty of memorable ones here.

For example, Chris Meuli of Albuquerque, New Mexico, fills trenches with junk mail, creating a “sponge” for watering trees.

A valuable wellspring of hands-on advice for effective watershed stewardship.

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Lowe explores her own Jewishness by consulting the Torah in this collection of

poems and prose.

For a decade, the author has written divrei Torah (commentaries about the Torah) for her conservative Jewish congregation in Tucson, Arizona. She collects them here for the first time to share them with a wider audience: “My main objective is to make Torah alive today, to find something that resonates in our modern world,” she writes in the preface. Alongside the commentaries, Lowe includes poems, midrashim (biblical exegesis), and personal essays that explore some of the same ideas as the divrei Torah in different formats. She divides the book into five sections, based on the book of the Torah under discussion, and another (“A Bissel of This and a Bissel of That”) for odds and ends. Each includes a mix of poetry and prose that’s interpretive and personal. For example, the section on the book of Genesis begins with two divrei—one about the color blue and one about the possibility of boredom in paradise.

These are followed by the poem “Eve’s Bite,” concerning Eve’s famous tasting of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, which begins: “As she took that first tentative bite of the beckoning fruit, Eve tasted / regret; / remorse; / guilt; and, / surprisingly, a touch of exhilaration.” Another poem, “Simchat Torah JelliedApple Memories,” tells of candied-apple treats that the author would eat as a shul student. Lowe is a thoughtful, warm writer in both her prose and poems. Her verse ranges from the serious to the light, the latter of which is on effective display in her apple poem: “Translucent red coats of tooth-chipping ability, / Who cared at all for enamel’s fragility?” Her accessible discussions of the Torah will sound familiar to anyone who’s been to JudeoChristian services, as she finds ways to relate the ancient words to modern experience. The final section—which includes more personal poems and essays as well as a recipe for kosher pickled green tomatoes—is particularly charming, if idiosyncratic.

Those looking for lighter Torah-related fare may find comforting wisdom here.

A pleasant collection of essays and verse about the Torah.

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Mann smartly traces his sexual desires for stereotypically masculine men back to the rigid gender roles of fundamentalist Christianity. endangered species

RECRUITING SUCKS...BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO Breaking Through the Myths That Got Us Here

ENDANGERED SPECIES A Surly Bear in the Bible Belt Mann, Jeff Lethe Press (334 pp.) $15.00 paper | Sep. 1, 2019 978-1-59021-701-6

Lowisz, Steve Lioncrest Publishing (118 pp.) $21.99 | $14.99 paper | $6.99 e-book Jun. 28, 2019 978-1-5445-0173-4 978-1-5445-0172-7 paper

A recruiter advises readers to change the hiring process for corporate success.

In this debut business book, Lowisz, an experienced recruiter, lists common myths about hiring. He proposes that recruiters adopt a more targeted and personalized method in order to successfully build strong workforces and satisfy both employers and employees. The author argues that despite the development of LinkedIn and online job sites, recruiting has fundamentally changed little since it was developed in the 1940s and often does a poor job of filling employers’ needs. The book’s recommendations include instituting a more holistic approach to evaluating candidates—in Lowisz’s terms, assessing “head, heart, and skills” rather than the traditional appraisal of skills alone—and rethinking how hiring managers determine what they need in a new employee. Other suggestions include forging genuine connections in relevant fields, improving internal data management, and understanding the role of marketing in the recruiting process. Lowisz is clearly knowledgeable about the strengths and weaknesses of corporate recruiting, and the volume is an informative one although the text is fairly short.

The work is at its strongest when giving concrete tips, such as examples of questions to ask in interviews and techniques for establishing credibility with communities of potential recruits (“Emphasize that you want to know more about them as a person and the next steps they foresee in their career”). The inclusion of the trademark symbol in the many references to “Results-Based Interviewing™” is excessive, but aside from that annoyance the writing is generally strong. Lowisz does not hesitate to indict his fellow recruiters as needed: “Recruiters are making decisions for people without talking to people, and they’re basing those decisions on the assumption that what matters to the candidate is money and title (extrinsic motivators), not intrinsic motivation”; “Looking at a resume or a LinkedIn profile for a few seconds is not enough.” In addition to this forthright examination of the mechanics of recruiting, the book leaves readers with a fair amount of actionable advice.

A solid, if brief, addition to business bookshelves that makes a compelling case for a new approach to employee recruiting.

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In a series of personal essays, Lambda Literary Award–winning writer and academic Mann (English/Virginia Tech; coeditor: LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry From Appalachia, 2019, etc.) explores the experience of being a gay man who appreciates conservative Appalachia.

“I own no Cher or Streisand CDs,” Mann proclaims early on, making it clear to readers who may be unfamiliar with his work that he doesn’t fit gay stereotypes. He doesn’t live in a large city, and he’s content with living with his “husbear” in the mountains of the Virginias, listening to Joni Mitchell, and reflecting on writers such as Wordsworth and Keats. Across 22 essays, Mann discusses religion, politics, and sex while addressing the seeming disconnect between his sexuality and the down-home world that he loves. Religion remains the thorniest aspect of Appalachian life for Mann, but in the essay “Surly Bear in the Bible Belt,” he smartly traces his sexual desires for stereotypically masculine men and bondage back to the rigid gender roles of fundamentalist Christianity. Politics, including the election of Donald Trump, are woven throughout these pieces, but they come to the forefront in “Confederate” and “Watch Out! That Queer’s Got a Gun,” in which Mann offers nuanced and surprising stances on hot-button issues. However, the author always wisely brings his arguments back to the personal, concentrating on emotions that Civil War pictures stir within him or how a gun can assuage his anxiety over potential homophobic attacks. His carnal desire for “burly men” comes up often, and it may be the one point that feels repetitive in this collection; however, he sharply analyzes it in the travelogues “Whoremonger” and “A Leather Bear in the Big Easy,” which call to mind the frank, revealing essays of Edmund White. Mann offers some of his best insights in shorter, more poetic pieces, such as “David” or “Country Boy,” in which he concisely relates that two aspects of his identity are intrinsically linked: “I’m country because of the men I’ve yearned for and the men I’ve loved.”

Intelligent, intimate analyses of a gay life in rural America.

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Lawrence Weschler, author of And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?

By Karen Schechner Photo courtesy Don Usner

What’s with the title of your book?

Well, during the four years I spent most intensively with Oliver, during the early ’80s when I was preparing to write one of those multipart profiles of him for the New Yorker, he used to describe himself as a clinical ontologist, by which he meant a doctor for whom the diagnostic question, faced with each fresh patient, was “How are you?” Thirty-five years later, when Oliver, as he was dying, ordered me to return to the project, I effectively decided to turn the question back on him.

Why didn’t you write the piece back then, 35 years ago?

Because after all that reporting, Oliver asked me not to. Deeply closeted and all knotted up with self-loathing over the fact that he was gay—even though the virtual entirety of his experience of that life had been 15 years earlier, when for a few years he threw himself deeply into a leather-, motorcycling-, bodybuilding-, tremendously drug-infused scene, and he had been resolutely celibate ever since, as he would continue to be for the next 20 years—he asked if there was any way I could fashion my profile of him without referring to what he considered the very blight of his existence. And I said really not. I’d come to feel that his gay years, his tortured attitude regarding those years, and especially the sheer extent of the accompanying drug experiences, were central to how he was, helping to account for the preternaturally layered empathy and openness he, and often he alone, subsequently seemed capable of lavishing on the sorts of utterly ignored and overlooked in extremis patients he came to focus upon, starting with the cohort of Awakenings patients whom he’d featured in his masterpiece of 10 years earlier. At any rate, of course I acceded to Oliver’s wishes and abandoned the project (we remained dear friends; he even became a doting godfather to my eventual daughter) and only returned to it during the last months of his life, when he virtually ordered me to.

Author Lawrence Weschler, right, with Oliver Sacks.

In the early 1980s, Lawrence Weschler, then a staff writer for the New Yorker, visited the not-yet-famous neurologist Oliver Sacks—future author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and many other titles—at his home on City Island in the Bronx, angling for his next magazine profile. Weschler spent four years with the endearing, complicated Sacks preparing for the piece—going on rounds with him at a rehabilitation center in the Bronx, touring museums, dining at restaurants and at Sacks’ home, philosophizing at length, and taking a few rowboat tours of Long Island Sound. Ultimately, Sacks, beset by internalized homophobia, couldn’t bear such a public coming out in a New Yorker profile, and he asked Weschler to shelve it. Decades later, when he was terminally ill, Sacks asked/ implored Weschler to write the piece, resulting in the recently published And How Are You, Dr. Sacks? A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks.

The memoir—witty, intimate, erudite—earned a Kirkus Star; our reviewer calls it “a dazzling portrait of a ‘graphomaniac,’ a ‘grand soliloquizer,’ an ‘unparalleled clinician,’ a ‘studiously detached naturalist,’ prodigious swimmer, weight lifter, and reckless motorcycle speed demon.” Here we talk with Weschler, author of many books and the director emeritus of the New York Institute of the Humanities, about the pioneering thinker who became a lifelong friend.

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But wait a second, wasn’t he living in New York and virtually within a few blocks of the Stonewall Inn when the uprising occurred?

Indeed, but as it happens, that summer of 1969 was the very season when the Awakenings drama was coming to a head up at Beth Abraham [Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing] in |

the Bronx; he was spending almost all of his time there and probably didn’t even notice events back there in the Village.

Beyond that, his homophobic self-loathing was very deepseated in him. Keep in mind, he had come of age in the very England and at the very time when no less a genius than Alan Turing, for example, was being chemically castrated for being gay. And in Oliver’s own case, his mother, one of England’s first female surgeons, with whom he had been exceptionally close throughout his upbringing, fell back on her own Orthodox Jewish formation when she found out about Oliver’s yet-to-be-acted-upon proclivities when he was 21. She came storming down the stairs and tore into him, casting “Deuteronomical curses” as he used to characterize them—filth of the bowel, monstrous perversity, “I wish you had never been born!”—and that was the voice Oliver initially fled from, to California, but never really escaped.

NEITHER LIGHT NOR DARK

McCain, Lynn CreateSpace (233 pp.) $10.00 paper | $2.99 e-book Jun. 23, 2017 978-1-5470-6011-5

Never?

Well, actually, seven years before he died, he finally relented, allowing himself to fall in love with a wonderfully sweetnatured, sensitive, and supportive younger man—the writer Billy Hayes—and Oliver’s final decade was in fact doubtlessly his most blessed. He even ended up writing an autobiography in which he outed himself!

And how does that book compare with yours?

Well, in this regard, he deals with those issues from a position of serenity—thank goodness—whereas my account focuses on a time when he was in the midst of a huge decadelong writer’s block and massively, often hilariously, neurotic and bollixed up. A friend describes my account as “a picaresque romp,” and through much of it, I am very much a beanpole Sancho to his capacious Quixote. But I hope it also captures the pathos and some of the depths of his struggles as a person and as the eminent doctor—a neurologist of the soul, of the individual who had the condition rather than the other way around—that he was fast becoming.

Karen Schechner is the vice president of Kirkus Indie.

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A YA novel sees a teenage girl find love and conflict in a fantasy realm.

In 1936, 13-year-old Lily Channon spends the summer at her grandparents’ stately home. Lily delights in her funloving grandfather and his fantastic stories of dragons and adventure. The only constraint is that she’s not allowed to leave the estate grounds; in particular, she must not go into the woods beyond the gate. But the woods call to her. She sneaks out and finds a boy there; he knows about her hidden birthmark and calls her “the one.” Four years pass after that joyous summer. Lily’s grandfather is dead, and she and her mother move onto the estate along with the new manager and his son, Henry. Henry is 10 years older than Lily but very attractive. The two fall in love and are to be married. But Lily goes to the woods once more and is drawn into Arcadia, a magical world once ruled by her grandfather. Arcadia is in thrall to the tyrant Reficul, and although it has been prophesied that Lily—now that she has turned 18—will save the land, there are dangers and betrayals to overcome. She finds her heart split between Henry and Calev, the boy she met four years earlier.

Whom will she choose? How much will she sacrifice to uphold her grandfather’s legacy? McCain (Smoke Signal, 2019, etc.) combines a modern YA quest fantasy with the more chaste romantic yearnings of yesteryear, the setting and contemporaneous time period evoking parts of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. At 18, Lily is older than the children who first enter Narnia; consequently, Arcadia feels less wondrous a place and the quest a little less epic. But the characters are memorable— tiny Shim, for example, and smoldering Levona, who live in Arcadia—and while the action is at times helter-skelter, this mirrors quite cleverly Lily’s breathless disorientation. Instead of lining up with narrative expectations, the story’s dramatic moments gain prominence (or fade perfunctorily) to match the mercurial imbalances of Lily’s ever shifting love triangle. The author’s prose, plot, and dialogue carry the familiar stylization of epic fantasy, yet it is romantics who will most approve.

An edgy mix of escapism and tortured longing with strong characters.

THE WATCHERS’ WAR

BEAT THE BOTS How Your Humanity Can Future-Proof Your Tech Sales Career

Montgomery, John iUniverse (292 pp.) $34.99 | $20.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Mar. 21, 2019 978-1-5320-6616-0 978-1-5320-6614-6 paper

Nielsen, Anita LDK Advisory Services (212 pp.) $21.99 | $14.99 paper | $6.99 e-book Jun. 14, 2019 978-1-5445-0345-5 978-1-5445-0344-8 paper

This novel pits a deity’s chosen warrior against a sorcerer and his evil forces.

On Erathe, 17-year-old Evliit of Arentis has arrived in the gloomy town of Harot. In an alley by the Marker tavern, he sees a serving girl suffering the cold and muck. He befriends the young woman, Jenna, and decides to rescue her from further on-the-job abuse.

He promises to venture into the Black Mountains and return with Soru, a medicinal plant of the utmost value. Selling Soru will get them shelter and food. But in the mountains, Evliit falls and shatters his limbs. He meets the angelic Aleris, leader of the Bhre-Nora, followed by the Creator. The Creator “calls upon” him “to watch over the people of Erathe as we have watched over you.” Evliit wakes up in the mountains healed of his injuries as well as gifted with the Sword of the Watch and a horse he names Angwen. But he returns to find Harot ransacked and numerous denizens murdered, Jenna included. This is the work of Broeden, a sorcerer who covets the Sword of the Watch and is willing to use his inhuman army to gain its power. Montgomery’s (The Fall of Daoradh, 2007, etc.) refreshingly svelte epic fantasy keeps a taut emotional thread running through events, never juggling too many races, places, or magical items. The unexpected friendships that occur among Evliit, the monk Ebert, and the evil sorceress Rendaya hinge on human moments and make the ghoulish action more savory (“Tentacles burst forth from the corpses and began stringing together a horrific mass of rotting flesh”). In this first installment of a series, the author doesn’t rush his hero’s time spent at the Monastery of Ardidhus because “you shouldn’t underestimate what the quiet mind can conjure.” The challenge of keeping faith during wretched times is embodied by the line “If the Creator was…omnipotent, why then did Broeden continue to prevail at the expense of all these innocents?” Moody, uncredited black-and-white illustrations appear throughout.

A tight series opener that should whet the palate of any fantasy fan.

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This debut guide encourages businessto-business tech salespeople to practice human-to-human selling.

Sales performance consultant Nielsen sees her clients struggle on a daily basis with the commoditization of IT products and services. Acknowledging the rise of robots, artificial intelligence, and sophisticated online purchasing, she issues a warning of sorts in this book: “Long-term success in a B2B tech sales career depends on your ability to focus on the exact opposite of technology’s value; you have to master human value.” It’s a point well taken, expressed with verve and passion by an author with relevant experience on the B2B battlefield. Nielsen’s premise— human-to-human, or “H2H,” selling creates value that can’t be duplicated by “bots”—is timely, relevant, and, for some sales professionals, sobering. She finely hones her argument by demonstrating, through examples of right and wrong techniques, the importance of truly understanding each customer’s needs and customizing the sales approach to meet them. Mastery of H2H involves making a commitment to delivering “personalized value,” which, Nielsen writes, is “the main reason why high performers consistently outperform everyone else.” Not surprisingly, this is no easy task, so the author offers authoritative counsel on the psychology behind H2H selling. Perhaps the most striking metaphor in the manual, borrowed from a social psychologist, is “the rider, elephant, and path,” in which the rider signifies the rational mind, the elephant represents emotion, and the path denotes the customer’s road to value (or, for the salesperson, a signed contract). Nielsen does a superb job relating this recurring metaphor, which anchors her own training approach to the complex nature of B2B selling. But the inspirational book goes beyond the metaphor, exploring how to ask effective, “high impact,” open-ended questions; discussing ways to engender the customer’s trust; reinforcing the concept of authenticity; and suggesting strategies for becoming indispensable. While some of the material in the guide is unduly repetitive, the core message of becoming “a purveyor of value” probably can’t be stated often enough. If getting B2B salespeople to think differently is her goal, Nielsen brilliantly succeeds.

Candid, compassionate, and brimming with pertinent, practical sales advice.

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Pattison takes a complicated scientific theory and makes it not just fairly understandable, but entertaining as well. eclipse

ECLIPSE How the 1919 Solar Eclipse Proved Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

JACOB’S LADDER Prepare To Be Born Anew Pike, Charlie The O’Brien Press (320 pp.) $9.10 paper | Apr. 1, 2019 978-1-78849-040-5

Pattison, Darcy Illus. by Willis, Peter Mims House (34 pp.) $23.99 | $10.99 paper | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-62944-125-2 978-1-62944-126-9 paper

This illustrated children’s book explains how a famous experiment used a solar eclipse to prove that light bends around the sun.

In 1919, British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington, head of the Cambridge Observatory, joined Frank Dyson, director of the Greenwich Observatory, for an expedition to Principe Island, off the coast of Africa, to take scientific photographs of the solar eclipse on May 29. Four years previously, Albert Einstein introduced his new theory of general relativity, saying “that the sun’s huge gravity pulled and bent light.” To prove it, astronomers needed to measure the light bending. Usually the sun is too bright, but a solar eclipse would block the sphere enough for scientists to photograph stars around it, measure their positions, and compare them. Eddington and his team took 16 photographic plates, carefully timed using a metronome. A similar team went to Brazil, and although clouds obscured some photos, this body of evidence was valuable in proving Einstein’s claim that light bends with the sun’s gravity. Pattison (The Falconer, 2019, etc.) takes a complicated scientific theory and makes it not just fairly understandable, but entertaining as well. Concepts are explained in simple and, often, more detailed terms.

“Eclipse,” for example, is introduced with a pared-down, onesentence definition (“A solar eclipse is when the moon moves between the earth and the sun”) followed by a more detailed, paragraphlong explanation on the next page. Willis’ (Pollen, 2019) illustrations are a delight, using a collage technique that combines original art with scraps from newspapers and books.

People (nearly all white men) are depicted with blocky, rectangular bodies that are clothed in recognizable styles of the time.

These characters have doll-like, simplified expressions, but they deftly show personality, such as the surprise on scientists’ faces.

Backgrounds are stylized but nicely detailed, often with animals like dogs, cats, and birds. In an appealing additional feature, the upper-right corner of the book can be quickly flipped to show the progress of an eclipse.

An approachable and well-illustrated introduction to an important moment in science.

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Leon, a warrior-savage in the year 2203, ritually hones his survival skills on a dying Earth, waiting for rescue by space aliens—before he learns that the truth about his society is vastly different from what he’d been taught.

Irish author Pike makes an impressive debut with a horrortinged sci-fi tale that’s set generations after multiple disasters ravaged the Earth. Deadly solar flares were followed by acidic rain (nicknamed “Old Sally”), social chaos, and wars that involved both conventional and biological weapons. People from the collapsing civilization sent an SOS into space that begged for help from any listening extraterrestrials. And, amazingly, an answer came. Much later, in a harsh “True Path” survival compound, faithful warrior Leon practices violent rituals in obedience to the “five Messages”—the supposed responses by the aliens. They dictate that only the toughest and least sentimental humans can be saved. Leon begins his ultimate test—the ceremonial hunt for a captured human— and he finds that his prey is an exceptionally resourceful woman. She manages to elude Leon and his team, at least temporarily. Then it turns out that strangers, armed with guns, are also after her. Leon’s long-sought ritual destiny falls into shambles when he hears about different versions and interpretation of the Messages. In a landscape filled with danger, he finds himself rudderless. In the company of a single companion, he heads for a supposedly extinct city where salvation may (or may not) await them.

Pike’s work initially falls in line with other novels’ depictions of future feudalism, barbarism, and hapless wandering, such as Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in which the many details of a past apocalypse abide only in shadow and suggestion. The author flavors his dialogue with colorful, multilingual loanwords (such as “Doghru Yol”), often from the Russian and Turkish languages, which is apt for the vaguely European landscape; however, such linguistic flourishes add little clarity to the proceedings.

Still, Pike keeps up a compelling, even relentless pace thanks in part to the midnarrative introduction of creatures called “worms”—loathsome invertebrate parasites that have the ability to turn humans into deformed, zombielike things that could have shambled right out of the horror novels of Clive Barker, James Herbert, or Shaun Hutson: “It gathers itself, lurches at me again, puckering a lipless mouth between vast, mounded cheeks. Its tongue writhes around the colourless rim where its lips ought to be.” Leon turns out to have a few tricks up his sleeve, literally, and what starts out as a straightforward quest narrative eventually encompasses creature-feature splatterpunk. However, the book’s explanations and exposition are more often implied than stated—by narrator Leon or anyone else. Leon, for his part, proves to be an intriguing mix 167

of trained killer and deluded disciple. Readers who liked the amorphous enigmas of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy may find this novel to be a similarly tantalizing tale.

A familiar story of dystopic, post-apocalyptic anarchy that’s enlivened by superior storytelling and horrendous monsters.

outdoors and enjoy the beauty of nature, encountering a deer.

When Jazzy starts to climb a tree, Kettle stays below, afraid.

But after a branch breaks and leaves her stranded, Kettle climbs up to help. Safe on the ground, Jazzy calls her journey a mistake, but Kettle, now over his fear, insists it wasn’t: “You tried it, and You got to see tomorrow.” The budding friendship, examined through Quinn’s authentic-sounding dialogue between two elementary school–age children, has appeal, especially with the colorful details provided in Lightstone’s images. But the format may confuse some readers; the lack of dialogue tags may leave them guessing who said what. And the absence of consequences for the kids’ independent trek may concern parents who’d like to know where their children are.

A diverse cast and eye-catching illustrations overcome the dialogue format’s limitations in this creative tale of friendship.

JAZZY AND KETTLE

Quinn, Rick Illus. by Lightstone, Sefira Archway Publishing (38 pp.) $25.95 | $16.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Dec. 13, 2018 978-1-4808-6936-3 978-1-4808-6937-0 paper

Two new acquaintances explore the natural world—and learn to support each other—in this debut picture book.

Introducing the two titular characters, digital cartoons by debut illustrator Lightstone depict Jazzy, a tutu-wearing African American girl with freckles and pigtails, and Kettle, a jeans-wearing child with short brown hair and light brown skin. The early risers are up before their families, and through their conversation, readers realize the two are both new to the neighborhood, meeting for the first time. Though they understand they might get in trouble, they decide to venture

WHIZ TANNER AND THE OLYMPIC SNOW CAPER A Tanner-Dent Mystery

Rexroad, Fred Awesome Quest Mysteries (155 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 paper | Aug. 15, 2019 978-1-946650-05-4 978-1-946650-12-2 paper On a family ski trip, two middle school gumshoes try to solve the mystery of stolen Olympic medals in this fourth installment of a series.

For best friends Whiz Tanner and Joey Dent, both 12, visiting a ski lodge with their families is the first vacation they’ve had since starting their detective agency earlier in the school year. But as readers of this series might expect, detective work finds them. Former Olympic skiers Harrison Revel and his brother, Benjamin, helped build the Marsh River Mountain Ski Resort; on display in the lobby are their three medals of bronze, silver, and gold. A small crowd gathers as Harrison opens the case and shows the medals to the kids. That night, the lodge gets snowed in by a blizzard—and in the morning, the medals are missing. The case that held them is discovered in the garbage, but that’s the only clue, because the lobby’s security cameras are down. The Tanner-Dent Detective Agency swings into action with some help from Madilynn and her younger brother, Wyatt, other kids at the resort. They develop and whittle down a list of suspects, lift fingerprints, and set a trap for the most likely culprit. Can they prevent him from fleeing with the loot? Rexroad (Whiz Tanner and the Mysterious Countdown, 2019, etc.) varies his winning formula with a new setting outside the Jasper Springs Museum, a good way to keep things fresh, with the snowed-in lodge providing a reason that adult authorities can’t get involved.

The briskly moving story shows solid sleuthing in the details of acquiring fingerprints, checking alibis, and eliminating suspects. It’s not groundbreaking—the super-glue method of

This Issue’s Contributors # ADULT Colleen Abel • Maude Adjarian • Stephanie Anderson • Poornima Apte • Mark Athitakis • Eleanor Bader • Colette Bancroft • Joseph Barbato • Sarah Blackman • Amy Boaz • Ed Bradley • Tobias Carroll Lee E. Cart • Jennifer Coburn • Devon Crowe • Perry Crowe • Dave DeChristopher • Kathleen Devereaux • Amanda Diehl • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Kristen Evans • Amy Goldschlager • Janice Harayda • Peter Heck • Natalia Holtzman • Laura Jenkins • Skip Johnson • Paul Lamey • Tom Lavoie • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Peter Lewis • Karen Long • Michael Magras Joe Maniscalco • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Michael Merschel • Clayton Moore • Jennifer Nabers • Christopher Navratil • Mike Oppenheim • William E. Pike • Margaret Quamme • Carolyn Quimby • Kristen Bonardi Rapp • Karen Rigby • Justin Rosier • Michele Ross • Lloyd Sachs • Leslie Safford • Bob Sanchez • Lindsay Semel • Linda Simon • Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg Rachel Sugar • Tom Swift • Charles Taylor • Claire Trazenfeld • Jessica Miller • George Weaver Steve Weinberg • Marion Winik • Bean Yogi CHILDREN’S & TEEN Lucia Acosta • Autumn Allen • Kazia Berkley-Cramer • Elizabeth Bird • Christopher A. Brown Jessica Brown • Timothy Capehart • Patty Carleton • Amanda Chuong • Tamar Cimenian • Lisa Dennis • Eiyana Favers • Laurel Gardner • Judith Gire • Carol Goldman • Melinda Greenblatt • Vicky Gudelot • Gerry Himmelreich • Julie Hubble • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Darlene Sigda Ivy • Elizabeth Leanne Johnson • Deborah Kaplan • Megan Dowd Lambert • Angela Leeper • Peter Lewis • Kyle Lukoff • Meredith Madyda • J. Alejandro Mazariegos • Kirby McCurtis • Mary Margaret Mercado Daniel Meyer • Cristina Mitra • Sabrina Montenigro • Lisa Moore • Katrina Nye • Tori Ann Ogawa Deb Paulson • Rachel G. Payne • John Edward Peters • Asata Radcliffe • Kristy Raffensberger • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Amy Robinson • Ronnie Rom • Leslie L. Rounds • Katie Scherrer • Dean Schneider Stephanie Seales • Mathangi Subramanian • Jennifer Sweeney • Deborah Taffa INDIE Alana Abbott • Kent Armstrong • Julie Buffaloe-Yoder • Charles Cassady • Jeannie Coutant • Michael Deagler • Stephanie Dobler Cerra • Steve Donoghue • Jacob Edwards • Megan Elliott • Justin Hickey Ivan Kenneally • Maureen Liebenson • Alana Mohamed • Rhett Morgan • Randall Nichols • Joshua T. Pederson • Jim Piechota • William E. Pike • Sarah Rettger • Jerome Shea • Barry Silverstein

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Readers meet a well-rounded, smart, sexy protagonist, one with a penchant for fresh-brewed coffee and Pat Conroy. below the radar

BELOW THE RADAR What We Pretend To Be, We Become

raising prints has been around for decades, for example—but it’s realistic. These well-described scenes help make up for an absent feature of the adventure series, the fancy TannerDent crime lab. The two friends make a good team; Joey’s regular-kid narrative voice contrasts well with Whiz’s precise diction and large vocabulary. Joey also brings courage and ability to action scenes.

Enjoyable writing and effective detective work stand out in this series entry.

Ridenour, Dana Wise Ink (400 pp.) $14.99 paper | Aug. 13, 2019 978-1-63489-224-7

THE KING AND HIS POOPOPO CROWN

Rey, Mari Pili Illus. by the author The Red Sunflower Books Magical rewards become a stinky surprise in this fable about gold and happiness.

King Jasper the Magnificent, who wears a wig and mustache that would impress a Baroque monarch, is immensely proud of his rococo crown, crafted by jeweler Thomas Joy. When the crown is destroyed, the king blames Thomas (who was also, strangely, tasked with guarding it). Banished from both the castle and employment, along with his wife and their two children, Thomas lives on the streets, begging for food. A fairy grants the family a rabbit who, when content, poops gold—but, she warns, “make him sad and the magic will go.” The gold poop brings Thomas riches and fame.

He once again becomes a jeweler of renown, fashioning “poopopo” jewelry. But when the family fails to keep the rabbit happy, a smelly comeuppance ensues for the Joys and all the wealthy, jewelry-wearing bigwigs. In this picture book, Rey’s (Angelo’s Christmas Present, 2018) potty humor is sure to appeal, and while the Joys and the king are white, bright cartoon illustrations feature the kingdom’s diverse population. Some children may feel concerned when the Joys are on the street given the way the author drains the color from those images. But the accessible, plain moral—take good care of pets, especially if they poop gold—is clear.

An amusing, original fairy tale that counters greed with gross-out giggles.

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An undercover FBI agent enters dangerous territory physically and emotionally when her assignment to infiltrate an extremist cell results in her sympathizing with some of the group’s members.

In Ridenour’s (Beyond the Cabin, 2019, etc.) third thriller featuring FBI agent Alexis “Lexie” Montgomery, the protagonist, now age 33 and barely recovered from her last harrowing mission, ignores the advice of her therapist. Lexie agrees to infiltrate an eco-terrorist group linked to an international animal rights workshop called The Gathering. The workshop, held in the Netherlands, aims to teach the use of illegal action, such as bomb-making and countersurveillance, purportedly to save animals from suffering and exploitation. A Dutch police constable, working undercover investigating the eco-extremists for two years, has vanished, and Lexie, familiar with animal rights activists, seems perfect to learn what happened to him. Her new partner—fit, long-haired, bearded Special Agent Blake Bennett—feels attracted to her. Although initially a romance seems a slam-dunk, one of the leaders of the animal rights movement gives him some competition. Flirty, golden-skinned Holden Graham looks like a surfer and tugs at Lexie’s heartstrings, in part because he reminds her of a lost love. Others in the group appeal to the agent because of their desire to keep animals free from harm. But The Gathering is no peaceable kingdom; episodes of kidnapping, cruelty, and murder occur midbook.

Teetering between tension and anticipated passion, the novel zips along. Dialogue never feels forced, and humor weaves through, as when Blake confuses a European foot wash in the men’s room with a urinal, and uses it accordingly. Descriptions of Amsterdam’s museums, bars, Magere Brug, and surrounding countryside read like a travel blog, and the author’s past life as an FBI agent brings veracity to the investigation aspects of the story. In Lexie, readers meet a well-rounded, smart, sexy character, one with a penchant for fresh-brewed coffee and Pat Conroy. Although the book works as a stand-alone, reading the three volumes in order obviously helps in the understanding of Lexie’s history and appreciation of her development as an agent and a woman.

A taut thriller well told and deftly paced; highly recommended.

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In the middle section, “Mah Jongg: An Homage,” the poet reflects on a game that’s popular with older Jewish women, examining mahjong’s images, rules, history, and lingo as well as the nature of luck. She links these elements to a problem that Jewish people have often been forced to confront throughout history: how to handle the cards that are dealt to you. These thoughtful, smart poems unveil layers of imagery and significance: “Every mahjj tile, symbolic. / Sometime you wish they, along with everything else, could mean less.” But the tiles don’t mean less, requiring constant vigilance: “The goal is to improve your hand. // The goal is self-improvement.” The final section’s poems again conjure the speaker’s mother as well as painful memories, psychic scars, and the need to speak out: “I do not forget, this is one / of my great gifts,” says one poem; in another, even “the angel of silence…wants to live aloud.” The urgency of this need comes out in several poems, as in the final piece, in which the speaker’s mom, Shirley, is given the closing lines: “no sound is dissonant…which tells of Life.” Fittingly, “Life” is the closing word of this collection—an affirmation that the poet earns by honestly engaging with the specifics of memory, both collective and personal.

Well-crafted, sensitive poems that movingly convey liminal experiences.

Seyburn, Patty Finishing Line Press (86 pp.) $19.99 paper | May 15, 2019 978-1-63534-929-0

This collection examines tradition, family, mahjong, and more in lyric poems.

Seyburn (English/California State Univ., Long Beach; Perfecta, 2014, etc.) has previously published many of this collection’s pieces in literary journals.

The title refers to delivery services—generally for large, heavy objects—that stop at one’s front door. This concept connects to “Davenport,” one of several prose poems in this book, which begins: “When I asked the men to bring my couch inside, they shook their heads: threshold delivery, ma’am and I pictured them lovingly carrying my movable the way a bride once was hoisted.” The image of a couch being lifted recalls a Jewish bride being elevated in a chair amid celebration. From here, the poem, as if to take over from the deliverymen, lifts each image forward and links it with new ones. Finally, says the speaker, “I cannot run as fast now but have much better endurance,” suggesting what eventually lies over the threshold.

This poem is in the first of the book’s three sections, which is often haunted by themes of night, memory, and loss, and the speaker’s mother is a recurring figure. Despite these serious associations, the poems also show sly wit, as when the speaker imagines her mom impatiently waiting in the afterlife’s anteroom: “Lend a mirror so she can put on / her face and bring a little artifice / with her.” The poem closes by considering the temporary nature of liminality and of crossing from life to death: “If you never had a foyer, // you’d imagine it / more grand than it was: really, it was / just a threshold, a place / to arrive, pause, abandon.”

THE BURDEN OF HATE Starbuck, Helen Routt Street Press (216 pp.)

In her latest mystery-series entry, Starbuck (No Pity in Death, 2018, etc.) presents a slow-building tale of an escaped killer and a murdered priest.

Operating room nurse Annie Collins and assistant district attorney Angel Cisneros are about to be married when news comes that Ian Patterson, whom they’d been instrumental in putting away, has escaped from prison and is likely bent on revenge. Indeed, at the wedding reception, Ian shoots Angel, just missing his heart, and escapes. Thus begins almost 200 pages of taut suspense. The elusive Ian is always one step ahead of the cops as he taunts Annie with letters and surprise appearances, and Angel and Annie are soon at their wits’ end. Meanwhile, the Rev. Andrew Bingham, the young priest who was supposed to marry the couple but was called away at the last minute, is later found murdered. Annie gets involved in that case, of course, as she has the soul of a detective. Although everyone seemed to like Father Andrew, her digging unearths some revelatory details about his past. Detail and pacing are Starbuck’s strong suits, and she effectively shows how Ian’s threats of violence affect Annie and Angel’s relationship; their tempers flare as their fatigue and despair grow, and at one point, Annie wants to simply give herself up to Ian to have it over and done with. Indeed, Annie initially involves herself in the investigation into Father Andrew’s murder as an attempt to relieve her unrelenting fear. A final twist in the latter case shows a subtle appreciation of human nature and how relationships can

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Ribbing the familial updates some people tuck into Christmas cards, the author’s mock letters become increasingly more absurd and hilarious. peculiar fabrications

PECULIAR FABRICATIONS Short Fictions and FakeNews Christmas Letters

become toxic. Overall, Annie is a wonderful fictional creation, and one hopes that she and Angel become a classic husbandand-wife crime-solving team.

A thriller that offers a master class in suspense.

Viles, Jeffery Dancing Horse Press (161 pp.)

THE FOUR HATS OF LEADERSHIP Be Who Your People Need You To Be

A collection delivers poems and stories about family, both heartfelt and humorous.

In “Day of the Butterflies,” Fidel Lenin “Lenny” Medina is living in a seaside Caribbean village with his infant daughter, Laureano. He’s still coming to terms with wife Nedra’s fatal drowning less than a year ago. But Lenny also struggles with the rumor that Nedra, soon after giving birth to Laureano, was so depressed she committed suicide. Many of the collection’s offerings involve family, like “Getting Even,” in which Dilly helps his big brother, Wayne, get revenge against the movie producer responsible for his recent incarceration. The stories are profound and, even when trekking somber terrain, generally optimistic. For example, in the concluding “Dark Matters,” Buck Walters’ tape-recorded history of his life is occasionally grim, such as a very young Buck witnessing a burned corpse. But interspersed throughout his personal tale are recollections of his wife, Mary, including their meet-cute. Viles’ (The Sasquatch Murder, 2017) poems are also familial, with titles such as “When Father Hit Mother” and “To My Children, Six and Four.” The poems are furthermore displays of the author’s indelible imagery, as in “Ice Storm (Apology to Robert Frost)”: “Trees morphed into upside-down chandeliers / along a slippery, shiny Christmas landscape.” But Viles has a knack for comedy as well. In “Joe and Gorgeous George,” Joe’s lack of urgency makes his 911 call rather amusing while the narrator of the poem “Bird and Window (Mating Season)” laments his inability to give an injured bluebird “mouth-to-beak” resuscitation. The book’s comedic pièce-de-résistance is a series of four “fake-news Christmas letters” that appear sporadically.

Ribbing the news-laden familial updates some people tuck into Christmas cards, the mock letters become increasingly more absurd and hilarious. They begin as boastful accounts of Jeff and his family (for example, daughter Savannah, who’s multilingual at age 3). But they hit quite a few snags by the final letter, with predictably outlandish results.

Assorted short fiction deftly united by an insightful theme of kinship.

Taylor, Drake E. New Insights Press (116 pp.) $9.95 paper | $4.95 e-book Mar. 27, 2019 978-0-9995801-9-6

A debut manual focuses on the different aspects of leadership.

Taylor, a captain in the U.S. Air Force, aims his short but comprehensive book at readers of business leadership guides. He organizes his observations around, of all things, a haberdashery metaphor: the four “hats” at the heart of leadership. (He mentions to readers that they need not actually buy hats.) According to the author, all effective leaders must at some time or other wear four hats: the farmer’s hat, the drill instructor’s hat, the psychologist’s hat, and what he calls the self-care hat. Each of the hats he describes symbolizes its own priorities. The farmer’s hat stresses careful cultivation of people and resources as well as detailed forethought: “In seed selection and sowing, your goal is to choose the specific person or people you want to assign to each project or team.” The drill instructor must be prepared to utilize the surprise, shock, and awe of basic training and to deliver vital leadership in raw terms: “Feared by most, hated by some, and respected by all, drill instructors use a variety of tools to perform their leadership function.” The psychologist’s hat emphasizes good judgment, an even temperament, and exceptional listening skills and frankly acknowledges that “many leaders fail because of a failure of trust.” And the selfcare hat reminds leaders that they, too, make mistakes and need help. Taylor elaborates on all of this in the clear, self-assured prose of an author who’s seen a great deal of inept leadership.

As he deftly points out, these four categories apply far beyond the realm of the military but share all the important essentials with that world: “Whether one is talking about military security, selling insurance, or making widgets, there is a mission that must be completed, threats detected and deterred, and teams of people to lead forward.” Leaders of all types will find these tips both practically applicable and invaluably insightful, getting to the heart of the basic duties of team-building.

A succinct, readable, and powerful anatomy of leadership’s many roles.

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FIND ME THEIR BONES

to play with. Excited, Meggie sniffs at decorative figurines and watches real ducks enjoy the water. She also meets a neighbor girl named Daisy, who shows her around and introduces her to other neighbors. By the end of Meggie’s first day on the houseboat, she’s acclimated to her new life, even sharing kibble with a sea gull. York’s prose has a subtly cheerful tone. Larson’s (A Purrfect Home for Kittens, 2019) color illustrations depict Meggie adorably and often fill in detail about the dog’s surroundings.

Text and images work in tandem to create moments of levity; for example, when Meggie arrives, she “tickled a turtle at the Dragon House,” but the illustration shows her playing with a ceramic turtle. Such details will please close readers and visual learners. A final, short poem will help readers understand a houseboat’s intricacies.

A charming tale with some silly surprises.

Wolf, Sara Entangled: Teen (400 pp.) $17.99 | $7.99 e-book | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-64063-375-9 In this second book of Wolf ’s (Bring Me Their Hearts, 2018, etc.) fantasy/ romance series, a spirited, undead teen suffers the consequences of earlier perfidy.

Nineteen-year-old Zera has revealed her true form. She’s “Heartless”—an unkillable human puppet in thrall to a witch. Her task was to take Prince Lucien of Cavanos’ heart, but instead, she fell in love with him; saving him, yes, but only after deceiving and betraying him. Now that she’s failed in her mission, Zera is expecting death when her witch severs the connection between them. Instead, she finds herself beholden to a new mistress— Lucien’s sister, Princess Varia, who’s returned from the dead and is determined to enforce a peace between humans and witches.

Varia seeks the Bone Tree, a peripatetic talisman through which she will command an army of valkerax (gargantuan wyrms). To find the Bone Tree, Zera—on Varia’s behalf—must find out its location from a half-crazed valkerax. Yet if she does, what further pain may befall Lucien? Zera resolves to keep the prince safe, so no matter the cost to herself, she holds him at a distance. Despite her duplicity, Lucien still has feelings for her. If she does Varia’s bidding, Zera will be made whole again—and is any love worth more than that? After the cliffhanger at the end of the last installment, Wolf resumes her story with aplomb in a continuation that’s both faithful to the first novel yet also a clear progression. The plot is twisty but not contrived, and the subject matter, though emotionally heavy, never feels as such, as it’s lightened by Zera’s confident humor and breezy, presenttense narration. She’s a strong protagonist who’s at once willful and selfless and buoyed by an irrepressible bent for badinage.

Wolf introduces some new characters in this book, and they take delight in Zera’s sassy nature, just as readers will.

A seriously fun concoction of tragedy and melodrama.

A BIG DAY FOR A LITTLE DOG Meggie, the Houseboat Dog

York, Susan Illus. by Larson, Valery Self (42 pp.) $23.95 | Apr. 21, 2018 978-0-9995336-7-3

A playful puppy explores a seaside town in this first picture book in a series.

Meggie is a newborn canine who longs to see the world beyond the farm where she plays. One day, she meets a visiting girl named Jan, and they immediately bond. Jan takes Meggie home with her, past the farmland, through the city, and down to “a little harbor town.” Jan lives on a houseboat decorated with sea horse sculptures, and she gives Meggie a rubber duck 172

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Books of the Month FROM DREAM TO DELIVERY

THE WORLD PUSHES BACK

A comprehensive, easy-to-read manual for people launching new ventures.

Funny, touching, and addictively readable poems.

BOWING TO ELEPHANTS

MY TODDLER’S FIRST WORDS

A luminous, engrossing meditation on family love and loss.

An exceptional parenting book with clear-cut applications.

WHY I NEVER FINISHED MY DISSERTATION

SECOND-CHANCE SAM

Understated, courageous, and deeply insightful poems.

A moving tribute to shelter dogs, the humans who love them, and the wisdom of looking beyond outward appearances.

Garret Keizer

Don L. Daglow

JoAnn Sky Illus. by John Tatulli

Laura Foley

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Kimberly O. Scanlon

Mag Dimond

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Fi e l d No t e s Photo courtesy Sarah Elizabeth Younger

Photo courtesy Gabriella Demczuk

By Megan Labrise

—Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks with Jesmyn Ward in Vanity Fair about writing his debut novel, The Water Dancer Photo courtesy Diana Walker

“Back in 2008 when I queried my first novel, I had responses from agents that went verbatim: ‘We already have a Latino story for the season.’

No one would dare say that now. The impacts of [We Need Diverse Books] have been to solidify the truth that all stories are universal and that inclusivity means having so many voices representing a culture that we shatter the myth of the monolith.”

“I sent the first chapter off to Michael Chabon—we’d struck up this friendship— and he just blasted it. ‘This is not fiction, bro,’ he said....He wrote this long-ass note. It was great. It was really great. I was totally depressed. But it helped. I said, ‘OK, this is where I have to go; this is what it has to be.’ Everything proceeded from there….[But] it was deflating. I was nowhere close, and he let me know, which is exactly what a good friend and good reader is supposed to do. I think so much of writing happens in those moments. Talent is important, but perseverance and high threshold for humiliation is maybe even more important?”

“I think the lightbulb moment for me was when I discovered that remittances—the sums that migrants send home—were three times the world’s foreign aid budgets combined. Conservatives like to say poor people need to do more to help themselves. Migrants do.”

—Jason DeParle, author of A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century, on NPR

—Zoraida Córdova, author of the Brooklyn Brujas series, celebrates the fifth anniversary of the grassroots advocacy organization We Need Diverse Books along with 14 other publishing professionals, at Bustle

Submissions for Field Notes?

Email fieldnotes@kirkus.com.

“My invention for the book jacket means that someone can have the complete works of Jane Austen but in a certain Pantone chip color that matches the rest of the room or with a custom image. People have invested in how their home looks: They chose the cabinets, the carpets, the paint, and the window coverings. Why settle for books that a publisher designed? Books can have as much style as anything else in the room.”

—“Celebrity bibliophile” Thatcher Wine, author of For the Love of Books: Designing and Curating a Home Library (with Elizabeth Lane) and curator of Gwyneth Paltrow’s library, in Town & Country 174

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Appreciations: W.G. Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction

B Y G RE G O RY MC NA MEE

Photo courtesy Gina Ferazzi The Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Eighty years ago, on Sept. 1, 1939, a million and a half German soldiers crossed the Polish border, an invasion that touched off the Second World War in Europe. That war would rage for six years, and it would consume tens of millions of lives—40 million by the most conservative estimate, perhaps twice as many more than that by consensus.

Millions of those deaths occurred in Germany, as many as a million of them, by some estimates, the result of an Allied campaign of bombardment that lasted for more than three years— British bombers by night, American bombers by day, dropping millions of tons of explosives on Germany’s cities. Untold numbers of those bombs lie unexploded to this day, so many that it’s common for city blocks and small villages to be evacuated while disposal units disarm them, a constant reminder of a war that few people alive now recall firsthand.

Allied writers commemorated the work of the bombers: Randall Jarrell in the poems of Eighth Air Force, Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five, Joseph Heller in Catch-22. Later historians, among them Max Hastings and Richard Overy, have documented it as well, part of a vast library dedicated to the conflict. But what of the Germans, whose aactions set the war in motion? Enter W.G. Sebald, a German writer who lived in self-imposed exile in the fen country of eastern England, from which many of those Allied bombing runs took off. Published 20 years ago, his book On the Natural History of Destruction called his homeland out not principally for its guilt in the war, but instead for the silence that followed the bombs. “In spite of strenuous efforts to come to terms with the past, as people like to put it, it seems to me that we Germans today are a nation strikingly blind to history and lacking in tradition,” he wrote.

The Romanian-born German-language poet Paul Celan raised a powerful question: In the face of atrocity, is language sufficient even to begin to account for the depths of depravity the soul can plumb? Yes, Sebald answered. There was plenty to write about: the stench of corpses, the skeletons of fallen cities, his certainty that, since the bombing did little to slow the German war machine, it was carried out for punitive reasons. Instead, he charged, the bombing “has largely been obliterated from the retrospective understanding of those affected, and it never played any appreciable part in the discussion of the internal constitution of our country.”

Of course, it is a universal of human behavior that we tend to forget or sweep aside what shames and pains us; it is because of that tendency that writers are able to rediscover things like Wounded Knee and My Lai year after year, generation after generation. Sebald died in 2001 in an automobile crash, and he did not live to see the rising generation of German writers who have, all these years later, begun to wrestle with the war, reclaiming it from silence. That work has only begun, and there is so much left to say.

y o u n g a d u lt

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THE LBYR RAVE REVIEW AND INTERVIEW Who Wet My Pants? is a big-hearted, laugh-out-loud story that teaches us it’s ok to make mistakes.

“Kindness is revealed to be the best answer to embarrassment and anger in this funny take on peeing in your pants.” —Kirkus

LBYR: Why is it important to use humor to help foster empathy, especially with young children?

BOB SHEA: Humor is a great way to indirectly illustrate an issue. A more direct, “I am using empathy and so should you” story comes across as a dictate from adult overlords who need but the thinnest excuse to gleefully mete out harsh punishment should you foolishly choose to veer from these societal norms. In other words, it’s just another rule.

Humor makes the message sticky and palatable. It’s easier to recall and digest a story that makes you laugh. In addition, using a funny, imperfect character like Reuben makes the story more relatable to the funny, imperfect world young children and adult authors live in every day.

ZACH OHORA: Sometimes the best way to acknowledge our own fears and shortcomings is being able to laugh at them. Laughter is contagious and it makes empathy contagious too.

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Humor can be a gentle way of showing someone else mistakes if it’s a “laughing with” situation and this story does exactly that.

What’s funny is Reuben the Bear’s

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irrational compensation for wetting his pants. Nobody is laughing at Reuben for wetting his pants. All his friends and the reader know it, but it’s because they love Reuben that they don’t try to embarrass him. Instead they share their own examples of when they have had accidents. Reuben may or may not face reality but he does realize that he has some great friends.

And what are good friends other than people who can relate and empathize with each other?

There are zero human beings who have NEVER wet their pants. This realization reminds us, and certainly young children who are learning to potty train or have just finished, that we are all the same.

And that’s funny.

lbschool LittleBrownLibrary.com

LittleBrownSchool

Perfect for story time!

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