April 15, 2019: Volume LXXXVII, No 8

Featuring 339 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children's and YA Books

KIRKUS VOL. LXXXVII, NO. 8 |

15 APRIL 2019

REVIEWS

Closely observed and elegantly written, Isabella Hammad’s debut novel, The Parisian, sets the life of one man against the tumultuous backdrop of Palestine in the waning years of British occupation. It also closes with a humane message of hope. p. 14

from the editor’s desk:

Excellent March Books B Y C LA I B ORNE

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

SM I T H

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

Photo courtesy Michael Thad Carter

Flowers of Mold by Seong-nan Ha; trans. by Janet Hong (April 23): “In even the most mundane lives, spectacular and shocking things can happen. This is a collection of 10 unsettling short stories by Korean author Ha, one of the new wave of Korean women writers, thoughtfully translated by Hong….Like those of the American auteur David Lynch, Ha’s characters seem to exist in another dimension….Even though this is a book of short stories, it’s definitely a pageturner, as readers encounter one strange, unsettling saga after another, always wondering, ‘What can possibly happen now?’ If you’re looking for a book that will make you gasp out loud, you’ve found it.”

Claiborne Smith

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (April 2): “The noted African-American literary scholar and critic examines the tangled, troubled years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the modern civil rights movement….

From the outset, writes Gates, there was, among whites, a profound difference between being opposed to slavery and advocating equality for emancipated black people. Alexis de Tocqueville, he notes, warned of the latter that since ‘they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.’…Gates suggests that it’s possible to consider the entire history of America after the Civil War as ‘a long Reconstruction locked in combat with an equally long Redemption,’ one that’s playing out even today. A provocative, lucid, and urgent contribution to the study of race in America.”

Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff (April 30): “A meticulously delineated, detailed, graphic history of the events of 9/11 in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Working at the Boston Globe as an investigative journalist, Zuckoff spent months after 9/11 publishing pieces on the tragedy’s victims and their families and friends….The author divides the book into three sections: what happened inside the cabins and cockpits of the four hijacked planes; what happened on the ground at the twin towers, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania countryside; and reports on what happened to some of the survivors after 9/11….Zuckoff did not set out to write a feel-good book, and the subject matter is unquestionably depressing at times. Nonetheless, as contemporary history, Fall and Rise is a clear and moving success.”

Belly Up by Eva Darrows (April 30): “When 17-year-old Serendipity ‘Sara’ Rodriguez had her firstand-only rebound hookup at a classmate’s party, she never anticipated getting pregnant. Soon enough, however, signs (and science) point to ‘yes,’ and, after much consideration, she decides to carry her pregnancy to term and raise the baby herself. Thankfully, she lives with her compassionate mom and tough-but-loving grandma—a dynamic support network enhanced by her white, Jewish lifelong best friend, Devi….Those looking for a ‘problem novel’ should look elsewhere; this is quietly cheerful, surprisingly feel-good, and wholly endearing.” (Fiction. 14-18) 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 CLAIBORNE SMITH csmith@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 MEGAN 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 Creative Lead A R D E N P I AC E N Z A apiacenza@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 Controller MICHELLE GONZALES mgonzales@kirkus.com for customer service or subscription questions, please call 1-800- 316-9361

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contents fiction

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS............................................................ 4 REVIEWS................................................................................................ 4 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................... 6 ON THE COVER: ISABELLA HAMMAD............................................. 14 ANGIE KIM’S MIRACLE DEBUT ......................................................... 24 MYSTERY...............................................................................................35 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY.......................................................... 41 ROMANCE............................................................................................ 43

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

nonfiction

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.......................................................... 45 REVIEWS.............................................................................................. 45 EDITOR’S NOTE...................................................................................46 DOUGLAS BRINKLEY’S SPACE RACE.............................................. 60 VALERIE JARRETT FINDS HER VOICE.............................................66

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INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS..........................................................88 REVIEWS..............................................................................................88 EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................... 90 ADAM RUBIN GIVES A HIGH FIVE! ................................................106 BOARD AND NOVELTY BOOKS....................................................... 125 CONTINUING SERIES ...................................................................... 131

young adult

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.........................................................134 REVIEWS.............................................................................................134 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................136 JENN BENNETT’S FEEL-GOOD ROMANCE....................................142 CONTINUING SERIES ..................................................................... 148

In his latest insightful work, Lewis Hyde demonstrates how transformation, creativity, and philosophical liberation all may involve relinquishing memory. Read the review on p. 65.

indie

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS........................................................ 149 REVIEWS............................................................................................ 149 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................150 INDIE Q&A: JAMES ALTUCHER...................................................... 156 QUEERIES: HAL SCHRIEVE.............................................................. 164 INDIE BOOKS OF THE MONTH.........................................................173

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FIELD NOTES......................................................................................174 APPRECIATIONS: A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC TURNS 70.........175 |

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fiction These titles earned the Kirkus Star: BUNNY by Mona Awad........................................................................ 4 FAKE LIKE ME by Barbara Bourland................................................... 6 RED BIRDS by Mohammed Hanif....................................................... 11 THE GIFTED SCHOOL by Bruce Holsinger.........................................16 LADY IN THE LAKE by Laura Lippman.............................................22 A PHILOSOPHY OF RUIN by Nicholas Mancusi............................... 24 HOW COULD SHE by Lauren Mechling.............................................25 CONVICTION by Denise Mina........................................................... 26 DARK CONSTELLATIONS by Pola Oloixarac; trans. by Roy Kesey................................................................................30 BERG by Ann Quin...............................................................................32 GONE TOO LONG by Lori Roy............................................................ 33 SPRING by Ali Smith...........................................................................34 LADY IN THE LAKE

Lippman, Laura Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-06-239001-1

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BUNNY

Awad, Mona Viking (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-525-55973-3 A viciously funny bloodbath eviscerating the rarefied world of elite creative writing programs, Awad’s latest may be the first (and only?) entry into the canon of MFA horror.

Samantha Heather Mackey is the single outsider among her fiction cohort at Warren University, which is populated by Bunnies. “We call them Bunnies,” she explains, “because that is what they call each other.” The Bunnies are uniform in their Bunniness: rich and hyperfeminine and aggressively childlike, fawning over each other (“Can I just say I loved living in your lines and that’s where I want to live now forever?”), wearing kitten-printed dresses, frequenting a cafe where all the food is miniature, from the mini cupcakes to the mini sweet potato fries. Samantha is, by definition, not a Bunny.

But then a note appears in her student mailbox, sinister and saccharine at once: an invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon, one of their many Bunny customs from which Samantha has always been excluded, like “Touching Tuesdays” or “making little woodland creatures out of marzipan.” And even though she despises the Bunnies and their cooing and their cloying girlishness and incomprehensible stories, she cannot resist the possibility of finally, maybe being invited into their sweet and terrifying club.

Smut Salon, though, is tame compared to what the Bunnies call their “Workshop,” which, they explain, is an “experimental” and “intertextual” project that “subverts the whole concept of genre,” and also “the patriarchy of language,” and also several other combinations of creative writing buzzwords. (“This is about the Body,” a Bunny tells Samantha, upon deeming her ready to participate. “The Body performing in all its nuanced viscerality.”) As Samantha falls deeper into their twee and terrifying world—drifting from her only non-Bunny friend in the process—Awad (13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, 2016) gleefully pumps up the novel’s nightmarish quality until the boundary between perception and reality has all but dissolved completely.

It’s clear that Awad is having fun here—the proof is in the gore— and her delight is contagious.

Wickedly sharp, if not altogether pleasant, it’s a nearperfect realization of a singular vision—and definitely not for everyone.

THE BODY LIES

Baker, Jo Knopf (288 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-525-65611-1

DEAR WIFE

Belle, Kimberly Park Row Books (336 pp.) $15.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-7783-0859-1 A woman is on the run with cash, a burner phone, and plans that have taken most of a year to build. But can she escape?

Beth Murphy, from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, has planned every detail of her departure meticulously; from her new name to her new appearance and car, she is leaving nothing to chance. But the person she is fleeing continues to be an overwhelming presence in her

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Psychologically as well as physically bruised by a random attack on a city street, a young woman moves to the country with her child only to find that she has not put as much distance between herself and danger as she thought.

Haunted by repetitive images of a dying girl in a wood, Baker’s (A Country Road, a Tree, 2016, etc.) new novel is a story of female response to male threat, boosted by questions of literary expression. The unnamed heroine, author of a successful first novel and living in London with her teacher husband, is assaulted by a stranger as the story opens. Later, partially healed, she moves north with her 3-year-old son to a university town to take up a lectureship in creative writing. The move is stressful in multiple ways, as the woman juggles domestic responsibilities, struggles to keep her marriage together, and tries, as a novice teacher, to handle her students. The students’ written work peppers the tale, notably chapters by Nicholas Palmer, a gifted but complicated young man from a wealthy local family, whose autobiographical fiction includes references to the tragic death of a young girl. The woman begins to sense warning signals yet doesn’t take the necessary steps, a factor common to thrillers but also part of Baker’s commentary on the difficulties for women of dealing with encroaching peril. Nevertheless, this conventional setup is at odds with Baker’s previous, often outstanding body of work, which is marked by more original portraits of women’s lives and stances. Here, for all the central character’s identifiable dilemmas and the interesting perspective of the “other” literary voices, the story devolves into singlestrand plot stereotype, with a psychopath battering down the door and a terrorized woman fleeing for her safety.

Baker’s fans will enjoy the crisp descriptive writing and insightful nuances but might find this a limited, relatively predictable showcase for her abilities.

mind, and she expects to see him hiding in every shadow. He has trained her well through years of abuse, and she knows that he will find her—the only question is when. Her jumpiness during the days and terror-soaked nights are hardly going unnoticed, and it becomes obvious to her new co-workers and roominghouse neighbors that she is not who she says she is. From her new life as a cleaner in Atlanta, Beth obsessively tracks the media coverage of a missing woman from Pine Bluff, Sabine Hardison, and the police’s search for her. Sabine is a successful realtor who disappeared one afternoon while her husband was away on business, but as the police dig deeper, it becomes clear that this was not a happy marriage. Suspense author Belle (Three Days Missing, 2018, etc.) switches among three points of view as the story unfolds, giving insights into Beth and her efforts to recreate herself; Sabine’s husband, Jeffrey, who is picking up the pieces left behind by his wife’s disappearance while coming to terms with the aggressive publicity around his marriage’s shortcomings; and the detective, Marcus, who has been assigned to find out where Sabine has gone. Is Beth actually Sabine? Is she not? Are those continuity errors the whisper of red herrings or just the different ways multiple characters perceive the same events? An unexpected ending hinges on information missing from the story.

Everything is not quite as it seems in this quick, satisfying read.

THE GONE DEAD

Benz, Chanelle Ecco/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-06-249069-8 “Who could breathe under the weight of a genius father who was supremely brilliant and made a mysterious tragic exit?” Billie James hopes she can in this debut novel.

Billie comes from literary royalty, but you wouldn’t know it from the humble shack in the Mississippi Delta that she’s just inherited from her grandmother. She spent time there during her early years, and it’s where her father, Clifton, a gifted though underappreciated African-American poet, died under mysterious circumstances when his daughter was 4. Now in her 30s, and feeling the weight of not quite living up to her father’s standard, Billie returns to the Greendale, Mississippi, of her childhood and begins to seek answers to the questions surrounding her father’s death. As she turns stones long undisturbed, she makes a curious discovery: She was present when her father died, and yet she has no memory of the event. The ingrained tribalism of Clifton James’ relatives, friends, and lovers makes them reluctant—or only halfheartedly willing—to reveal the long-buried truth and see justice served.

Their inability to provide straightforward answers propels Billie on a dangerous path. When she discovers an unpublished chapter among her father’s things, her determination shifts into high gear, putting her life in danger. The legacies of slavery, |

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april is quite the month for great women writers

Photo courtesy Heather Weston

For a book person, there’s no pleasure like watching a great writer reach an audience. This month, several women at various stages of their careers are poised to break out and find a wide readership.

Susan Choi is the author of four previous novels; she’s gotten excellent reviews but isn’t a household name. Trust Exercise (April 2) may change that. Our starred review describes it as “the story of obsessive first love between drama students at a competitive performing arts high school in the early 1980s [which] twists into something much darker….Never sentimental; always thrillingly alive.” And this is a busy season for Choi; her first picture book, Camp Tiger, is coming out in May and also earned a starred review.

Canadian novelist Miriam Toews has been flying just below the radar in the U.S. for a while; her last novel, All My Puny Sorrows, was published by McSweeney’s in 2014 to a chorus of praise, and earlier books were published by HarperCollins, Counterpoint, and Arcade. Perhaps Bloomsbury will be the one to break her out with her new book, Women Talking (April 2), which combines her longtime interest in Mennonite com- Susan Choi munities with a timely story about systemic sexual abuse of women and girls. “Stunningly original and altogether arresting” says our starred review.

Sally Rooney’s first novel, Conversations with Friends, was huge in Britain; it was named book of the year by Waterstones, among other honors. Her second, Normal People (April 16), has already won the Costa Book Award, and it’s poised to get just as much attention in the U.S. Our starred review calls it “absolutely enthralling.”

Keep an eye out for this first novel, too. Here’s what our starred review says about Miracle Creek by Angie Kim (April 16): “Intricate plotting and courtroom theatrics, combined with moving insight into parenting special needs children and the psychology of immigrants, make this book both a learning experience and a page-turner.

Should be huge.” —L.M. Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.

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racism, segregation, and classism imbue the novel, along with the relentless insularity of small-town life. And yet the reader’s foothold into this world is tenuous, much like Billie’s as she is welcomed and repelled at the same time. Where the novel shines is in dialogue. The music of the spoken word shows that Benz (The Man Who Shot out My Dead Eye, 2017) has a strong ear and appreciation for Southern culture that rings true. Unfortunately, though, the reader is only occasionally steeped in the world of the novel.

The thirst for justice is difficult to make palpable, but Benz makes a valiant effort.

FAKE LIKE ME

Bourland, Barbara Grand Central Publishing (368 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-5387-5951-6 “The history of art is littered with the bodies of dead women.”

Artist Carey Logan made her name by creating hyper-realistic sculptures of bodies in various states of decay, including one memorable piece where body parts were buried, awaiting discovery. In 2008, Carey filled her rain boots with quick-drying cement and walked into a lake at an upstate New York property owned by her art collective, Pine City. Carey’s suicide “opened up the floodgates” for our unnamed narrator, a talented but struggling artist who had admired Carey since a brief but memorable encounter back when the narrator was an art student. In 2011, the pink-haired artist is 34, successful, and still living in an illegal New York loft that doubles as her studio. The series of largescale paintings she’s spent the last two years working on—titled Humility, Obedience, Chastity, Modesty, Temperance, Purity, and Prudence—are scheduled to be shipped to Paris for a show, but they’re all destroyed when the loft burns down. In desperation, the artist tells her gallerist that Prudence was the only casualty and is given a few months to fix it. She’s able to procure a space at Pine City and is allowed the use of Carey Logan’s old studio. The artist throws herself into her work and a passionate affair with Tyler Savage, who makes art out of black-market human organs and was Carey’s boyfriend. The other Pine City members are largely standoffish, and her burning questions about Carey and her rumored final work are decidedly unwelcome. The artist’s three months at the isolated compound are a menacing, swirling, hypnotic dance of parties, art, sex, and, ultimately, startling revelations. Bourland’s (I’ll Eat When I’m Dead, 2017) painstaking research on the practical and emotional aspects of making art is on vivid display. Readers eager for a glimpse into the New York art scene will be enthralled, but despite the glitz and glamour, it’s frequently a dehumanizing place to be, especially for women.

After all, as the gallerist says: “Female painters are the bargain of the century.”

A haunting, dizzying meditation on identity and the blurred lines between life and art.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Bruns, David & Olson, J.R. St. Martin’s Press (336 pp.) $27.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-250-20031-0

Never mind North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. In the latest thriller from former Navy men Bruns and Olson (Jihadi Apprentice, 2016, etc.), Kim Jongun has the world’s most dangerous cyberterrorist working for him—and the lethal hacker has America in his crosshairs.

The terrorist is Rafiq Roshed, a rogue operative whose past feats include shutting down the power grid serving America’s east coast and nearly detonating a nuclear device in Minneapolis. He is for the moment hiding out on a small island off the coast of North Korea. His master plan is to incite warfare among the U.S., China, and Japan by infecting their military networks. Under increasing threat as the cyber-controlled

skirmishes intensify, America places its best hopes for survival on the skills of three exceptional midshipmen from the Naval Academy, including a tech prodigy who is a genius at “pattern rec.” The action bounces in short chapters among Washington, D.C., and Pyongyang, Japan and Russia, Australia and Argentina. The terrorist, we learn, is an outcast who lost his family to the cyberwars and has a vendetta against the United States.

Kim makes a brief, forgettable appearance (he likes California grapes). The unnamed, infrequently seen American president is also nondescript. But fans of the cyberwarfare genre will enjoy the novel’s snappy pace, broad cast of characters, and timeliness. One reassuring takeaway is that U.S. networks are harder to crack than one might think. Bruns and Olson leave us hoping we don’t have to find out how much harder.

The authors consider the possible consequences of a cyberattack on America’s military, to entertaining but unsettling effect.

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MADAM, MAY I

Bryant, Niobia Dafina/Kensington (304 pp.) $15.95 paper | May 28, 2019 978-1-4967-1654-5 A high-end madam revisits her own difficult past when she decides to follow her dreams and face her ambivalence toward her life choices.

Thirty years after her mother’s death, Desdemona Dean wakes up bored and weary. As a high-end madam, she has every material thing she wants, but nothing makes her happy. She cares about her employees and makes sure they’re safe from violence and legal risk, but the older she gets, the more she wonders why she’s still in the game. Her life is so filled with secrecy she’s never had a friend, and no one knows her real name. “There was no part of her life that felt complete.” When Desi decides to further her education, she connects with Loren, a tutor who’s a

decade younger, and she finds herself charmed by his positivity, gratitude, and sense of possibility. They enter into a sexual relationship—which starts when she offers to tutor him with her own expertise—that is ultimately derailed when she convinces herself that their differences are too complicated even as she begins to ask herself what will make her happy and makes life changes influenced by his worldview. As she does, she looks back at her life, honoring her strengths and re-evaluating her measures of success, making choices which may lead her back to love and self-respect. Bryant opens up her book with a young Desi holding a Tickle Me Elmo in 1988, an impossibility since the product launched in 1996 yet a good prop for the scene.

Much of the book is like this—not quite perfect yet compelling nonetheless, and where Bryant’s writing sometimes lacks polish, Desi’s thought-provoking backstory and transformation keep the reader engaged and sympathetic.

The heroine is the hook, and she rocks it.

CYGNET

Butler, Season Harper/HarperCollins (240 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-06-287091-9 A teenager is left to live in a community of old people on an ocean-ravaged island.

A few months ago, 17-year-old Kid’s parents left her with her grandmother on Swan Island, off the coast of New Hampshire. They promised to return soon, but now her grandmother is dead and she hasn’t heard from her parents at all. To complicate matters, Swan Island is no ordinary place—it’s home to a group of elderly separatists (who call themselves Swans) who have left the real world (which they call “The Bad Place”) behind. They have chosen to age in peace with as little interaction with the outside world, especially young people, as possible.

Kid spends her days re-creating her neighbor’s past: retouching photos, rephrasing diary entries, and editing home videos. She spends her nights alone, listening to the violent waves crashing outside her window, except for the first Friday of every month, when Jason, her off-island nonboyfriend, visits. She describes him as “a period, something that happens to my vagina once a month.” The longer she stays, the less welcome she is among the Swans, but she’s afraid to leave in case her parents return for her. Jumping back and forth between the past and present, the novel sketches out Kid’s nomadic, lonely childhood. Butler’s writing is sensitive and sharp: “My skin tingles hard, like a violin string, like the surface of a drum,” and “All I want is a break from existing, something deeper than sleep.” Climate change beats in the background, as incessant as the ocean waves eating away at Swan Island. There’s a metaphor to be found in Kid’s obsession with the deteriorating island while the Swans remain unfazed. If there’s any fault, it’s that the novel wraps up a little too quickly, though it ends on a much-needed hopeful note.

A unique debut from a promising writer.

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There’s a certain glee inherent in reading about rich people behaving badly. twisted family values

HAUNTING PARIS

Chaudhry, Mamta Talese/Doubleday (288 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-385-54460-3

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While a timid French music teacher grieves the death of her partner, outside, on the streets of Paris, his ghost lingers, lending historical context and soulful musings to a story of unresolved anguish and late love.

Chaudhry’s elegant debut rests on an unusual and risky premise: It is narrated in part by a soul in limbo. Julien Dalsace has died before the story opens, and his old-fashioned voice sets the scene: “The scent of lilacs on the breeze stirs dormant phantoms to life, but music is sorcery more potent.” We are in Paris in the year of the bicentennial, 1989, observing, like Julien, the struggles of his surviving partner, Sylvie, to cope with her loss. Julien, although spectral, is the novel’s lynchpin.

The romance between him—an older, upper-class, married Jewish psychologist—and the quiveringly sensitive piano teacher is the beating heart of the story. But there’s another thread, taking the reader back to 1942, when the Jews of Paris were rounded up and deported, including Julien’s sister, Clara, and her twin daughters. Julien never forgave himself for his absence in London during World War II and his failure to save Clara, but a secret folder that emerges after his death offers Sylvie the opportunity to conclude his quest to discover the fate of Clara’s girls. Julien’s curious perspective—on history, on other ghosts, on the beauty but complexity of France generally and the Île Saint-Louis, his corner of Paris, in particular—is the novel’s most original aspect. Elsewhere, while Chaudhry brings a kind of reverent seriousness to events both past and present, her approach is more familiar. Characters are often simple, like the kindly Jewish baker, the protective (but kindly) concierge, the sympathetic American lodgers, and even Sylvie’s anthropomorphized terrier, Coco. And resolutions, even sad ones, arrive with coincidence and ease.

A curious fusion of the predictable and the unconventional which, given the appetite for Paris, love, and wartime tragedy, might well touch a popular nerve.

their family isn’t as perfect as they pretend it is. Under the surface, there’s a lot of drinking and a lot of infidelity, but the most scandalous secret is that teenage cousins Biz and Charlie, best friends since birth, are perhaps growing a little too close. Charlie is actually adopted, meaning that he and Biz aren’t related—but only Charlie’s mother, Cat, knows that, and she plans to keep the secret so Charlie won’t lose his inheritance from his bloodlineobsessed grandfather. Chickering (Nookietown, 2016) follows Biz and Charlie as they go to college in the 1980s, make other friends, and get into relationships, all the while attempting to deny the strong connection they feel to one another. But when Biz sleeps with Charlie’s roommate, Charlie retaliates by attempting to sexually assault her (a fact that is acknowledged by both Biz and Charlie), forever changing their relationship. As Biz and Charlie continue to age and move on, neither of them can forget about the other—but will they ever learn the truth about their biggest family secret? There’s a certain glee inherent in reading about rich people behaving badly, and the Thorndens certainly behave badly. Chickering’s irreverent tone works quite well when detailing the eccentricities of a large family, but it doesn’t always work

TWISTED FAMILY VALUES

Chickering, V.C. St. Martin’s Griffin (352 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-250-06529-2

A family of New Jersey WASPs tries— and fails—to hide their dysfunction.

No one thinks more highly of the Thornden family than the Thorndens themselves—in the 1970s, they’re known for throwing large, lavish parties and showing off their perfect family. The truth, of course, is that |

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when dealing with more serious issues, most notably the sexual assault. Biz’s trauma is thoughtfully and realistically explored, but it’s hard to view Charlie as a compelling romantic hero.

The title is an accurate warning—this is a truly twisted family.

THE COLOR INSIDE A MELON

Domini, John Dzanc Books (344 pp.) $16.95 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-945814-85-3

The latest from Domini (Movieola!, 2016, etc.) is a dark, brisk-paced, and intriguing— if sometimes slightly ungainly—hybrid.

In a Naples rattled by a major earthquake, the authorities are struggling to maintain a semblance of order, and those at the margins of the culture, especially the under-the-radar African refugees known as clandestini, find themselves even more vulnerable and imperiled than before. When one such immigrant is the victim of a grisly murder, Risto—a Somali-born Neapolitan who owns a prominent art gallery and is married to an Italian woman named Paola—decides to investigate, in part to aid the authorities and in part to pressure them into pursuing the case more energetically. Risto, orphaned in his teens and scarred by the trauma of those war-ravaged years in Mogadishu, soon finds himself plunged into an impassable thicket of mysteries and secrets (nothing and no one in this book is quite what it seems) and plagued by memories of his youth, by doubts about those close to him, and by a kind of hallucination, a nimbus of light. But the novel’s primary interest lies less in the surface mystery of the plot, which is nimbly constructed but familiar, than in Domini’s exploration of race, class, and immigration, of what it feels like to be at the dark, desperate fringes of a cosmopolitan European city, a proud old culture that demands assimilation at the same time that it keeps insisting there is a stigma of foreignness that can’t ever be shed.

A dark, buzzing, sometimes-chaotic literary noir written in lively and often elegant prose with an intriguing meditation on immigration and assimilation at its center.

A NEARLY NORMAL FAMILY

Edvardsson, M.T. Trans. by Willson-Broyles, Rachel Celadon (400 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-250-20443-1

In Swedish author Edvardsson’s U.S debut, a family is shattered by a heinous crime.

Adam is a well-respected pastor, and his wife, Ulrika, is a defense attorney.

Their daughter, Stella, has just turned 18 and is planning a trip to 10

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Asia. From the outside, the Sandells are the perfect family, but that facade crumbles when Stella is arrested for the brutal stabbing of 32-year-old Christopher Olsen at a playground. On the night of the murder, Adam finds Stella’s shirt covered in dark stains; he will do anything to keep his daughter out of prison, including providing a false alibi, but his decision contradicts his faith and shakes him to his core. The story is told in three parts, from the viewpoints of Adam, Stella, and Ulrika. Adam presents Stella as a troubled child and out-of-control teen. Stella reveals that much of her acting out stemmed from her desire to control her own life, her father’s overprotectiveness, and her mother’s perceived coldness. Further, Adam and Ulrika’s failure to report a sexual assault on Stella by a trusted camp director when Stella was 15 created a permanent fissure in the family.

Stella’s whirlwind affair with the wealthy and attentive Chris is complicated by his ex-girlfriend, who tells Stella he’s abusive.

The romance eventually spins out of control, but could Stella be a killer? Much of Ulrika’s narrative is spent in the courtroom during Stella’s murder trial, which may lead some readers to feel like she got short shrift. In between flashes of courtroom drama, Ulrika contemplates her marriage, motherhood, and her alienation in the face of what she felt was an impenetrable relationship between Adam and Stella. The murder mystery falls a bit flat and the resolution is overly neat, but Edvardsson ably weaves themes of parental guilt and sacrifice into a nuanced family drama.

Not terribly suspenseful, but as a dissection of a family in crisis, it works.

THE PORPOISE

Haddon, Mark Doubleday (320 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-385-54431-3 A labyrinthine narrative that wends its way through classical myth, Shakespearean theater, and childlike fairy tale as it twists toward a tentative contemporary conclusion.

British author Haddon has never written anything like the same book twice, but his fourth novel is in some ways even more audacious and ambitious than his breakthrough debut (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night­-Time, 2003). The plot propels itself forward at a furious clip, yet key characters disappear (and occasionally reappear) as the basic premise hopscotches centuries and countries. It begins with a bang, or rather a crash. A very rich man loses his very beautiful and pregnant wife when the small plane on which he never should have let her fly crashes into farmland, the pilot momentarily distracted by her beauty. A doctor who happens to be passing assists in the birth of her daughter, whose life begins as her mother’s ends. The forlorn father can find life’s only consolation in his daughter, named Angelica, and they share an incestuously secret life amid “the vapour of fantasy which always surrounds the rich, powerful and reclusive.” Angelica has

Funny, fresh, and not afraid to draw blood. red birds

some sense that these intimacies are wrong, a violation, but it is only with the arrival of the modern equivalent of a handsome prince that she feels she needs to escape; she needs this hero to rescue her, for, upon their first meeting, “she is already in thrall to an imagined future in which he takes her away from all this, and the knowledge that the fantasy is ridiculous does nothing to sour its addictive sweetness.” The attempted rescue almost results in a murder, but the prince himself escapes. At which point the story shifts to a different father and daughter, a king and a princess, who may well be an earlier incarnation of the same father and daughter. This tale has proven captivating since classical times and was popularly given form in the Shakespearean play Pericles. So Pericles becomes a character in this novel, as does Shakespeare, or perhaps his ghost. Pericles marries the princess and becomes a mourning father whose pregnant wife dies during an ill-advised voyage. Or did she die? The adventures of Pericles consume 14 years of the narrative, in which he grieves his wife and might have to save his own daughter. And Angelica? The novel ends with her yet seems to open into a whole new world.

The nature of narrative itself would seem to be the focus here in a novel that challenges readers to connect the multidimensional dots.

RED BIRDS

Hanif, Mohammed Black Cat/Grove (304 pp.) $16.00 paper | May 14, 2019 978-0-8021-4728-8 A satire of American military power that skirts didacticism while skewering our nation’s misadventures in the Middle East.

Hanif (Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, 2012, etc.) sets us down in an unidentified Middle Eastern country, where a darkly cynical American fighter pilot named Ellie has been sent on a possibly unethical bombing run by a mysterious institution called Central Command. Ellie—whose military training

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combined deadly firepower with cultural sensitivity lessons like “Eat and Drink with the Enemy”—bows to pressure from Col. Slatter to flatten a compound he insists is “a real bad place full of bad bad people. You can smell the evil from the skies.” Ellie crash-lands on his way to the compound, though, and finds himself wandering the desert, desperate to survive. That bad, bad compound turns out to be a refugee camp for victims of the American war. Momo, a wisecracking teenager with delusional schemes of capitalist grandeur and a world-weary suspicion of everything around him, lives there with his grieving mother, feckless father, and brother, Ali. Momo is given to dark proclamations on the world’s moral state. “How’re you gonna keep your integrity in a place where thievery is not only accepted but also expected?” he asks early in the book. He tromps around the camp wearing an “I Heart NY” cap and drives a Jeep through the desert. By the time the novel opens, Ali, who was an informant giving bombing targets to the Americans, has gone to work at a nearby American military facility known simply as the Hangar—and never returns. Ever since he’s disappeared, American bombings have ceased. Momo is determined to figure

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out what’s behind Ali’s disappearance, and when Ellie arrives at the camp at the same time as an American aid worker and academic nicknamed Lady Flowerbody, the boy hatches a plan to retrieve his brother. Amid all this, supernatural occurrences are happening in the desert beyond the compound. Momo’s journey to get his brother back will take him into the heart of the American presence in his country—and that presence is not at all what he expects. Narrated in the first-person from multiple perspectives—Ellie’s, Momo’s, and even that of Momo’s dog, Mutt—Hanif ’s novel maneuvers between compelling, hilarious voices with the fast pace of a slapstick comedy, albeit a comedy with teeth. In a surreal flourish, the book climaxes with a final act that is a little too frantic for its own good. Thankfully, by the time the ending arrives, we’ve gotten to spend quality time with Hanif ’s indelible characters.

Funny, fresh, and not afraid to draw blood, this is an unusual gem of a book.

As always, Hilderbrand’s characters are utterly convincing. summer of ’69

JUST ONE BITE

Heath, Jack Hanover Square Press (352 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-335-95284-4

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A cannibal is recruited to help catch a serial killer.

Much as it hurts him to admit it, and for reasons he does not divulge, Timothy Blake will tell you he’s a cannibal.

In fact, his dietary preference, such as it is, informs his livelihood: He disposes of bodies for Charlie Warner, one of Houston’s toughest gangsters. In the course of celebrating this marriage of food and function, Blake happens upon an unauthorized corpse right where he was to receive his next assignment from Charlie; he puts it in his freezer, and things rapidly spin out of control. First, Charlie sends two of her heaviest heavies to fetch Blake for questioning. Why had he left the drop-off location, leaving a large corpse in the trunk of the wrong car? Well, it’s because of that other corpse, but Blake doesn’t want Charlie to know about that. And then Reese Thistle from the FBI shows up to ask him to help investigate a disappearance, and Blake soon realizes the missing man is the body in his freezer. Thistle, it turns out, was Blake’s “handler” when he worked for the FBI, and in fact their history goes back to their days in foster care. Blake at one time had feelings for Thistle but had pushed her away lest his appetites get the better of him. Her reappearance is unsettling, and the two dance uneasily through an investigation that gets sidetracked in several ways. Charlie is not happy her corpse-disposal officer is swanning with the FBI and threatens to terminate Blake’s employment permanently; Blake realizes that the corpse in his freezer could convict him of murder; and the investigation uncovers evidence of other murders. A messy kidnapping-for-porn subplot occupies Blake and somewhat distracts him from the FBI’s agenda. And, oh yes! He and Thistle reconnect in conventionally fleshly ways. Told with energy and humor, this dark narrative is a bit overstuffed with dire twists, but the characters of Blake and Thistle are sweetly tough and naïve.

A pleasing romp through a fetid swamp, but not for weak stomachs.

As is typical with Hilderbrand’s fiction, several members of a family have their says. Here, that family is the “stitched together” Foley-Levin clan, ruled over by the appropriately named matriarch, Exalta, aka Nonny, mother of Kate Levin.

Exalta’s Nantucket house, All’s Fair, also appropriately named, is the main setting. Kate’s three older children, Blair, 24, Kirby, 20, and Tiger, 19, are products of her first marriage, to Wilder Foley, a war veteran, who shot himself. Second husband David Levin is the father of Jessie, who’s just turned 13. Tiger has been drafted and sends dispatches to Jessie from Vietnam. Kirby has been arrested twice while protesting the war in Boston. (Don’t tell Nonny!) Blair is married and pregnant; her MIT astrophysicist husband, Angus, is depressive, controlling, and deceitful— the unmelodramatic way Angus’ faults sneak up on both Blair and the reader is only one example of Hilderbrand’s firm grasp on real life. Many plot elements are specific to the year. Kirby is further rebelling by forgoing Nantucket for rival island Martha’s Vineyard—and a hotel job close to Chappaquiddick. Angus will be working at Mission Control for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

Kirby has difficult romantic encounters, first with her arresting

SUMMER OF ’69

Hilderbrand, Elin Little, Brown (432 pp.) $28.00 | $30.00 lg. prt. $40.00 audiobook | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-316-42001-3 978-0-316-45416-2 lg. prt.

978-1-5491-1735-0 audiobook Nantucket, not Woodstock, is the main attraction in Hilderbrand’s (Winter in Paradise, 2018, etc.) bittersweet nostalgia piece about the summer of 1969. |

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Isabella Hammad

CLOSELY OBSERVED AND ELEGANTLY WRITTEN, HER DEBUT NOVEL CLOSES WITH A HUMANE MESSAGE OF HOPE

By Gregory McNamee Photo courtesy Kathy Coulter

“Bonjour. Je m’appelle Midhat Kamal.” Midhat, a Palestinian medical student, wants nothing more than to live in France. He has dreamed of that since high school in Constantinople, even in classrooms “whose windows had displayed a hot Turkish sky, and admitted shouts of Arabic from the water.” He is not deterred, and finally he works his way across the Mediterranean from Nablus to Montpellier to study medicine. He dreams in French, knows the parts of the body by their French terms, is steeped in the ideals of liberté, egalité, and fraternité.

He experiences love and loss, but after a time, though aspirationally French to the depths of his soul, he returns to Palestine in the waning years of British occupation.

Palestine is rapidly changing, colonized by European 14

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Jews heeding the call of Theodor Herzl to return to their ancestral lands—lands that, of course, will soon be contested. Midhat winds a careful course among extremes, nursing regrets but still declaring, years later, “When I look at my life…I see a whole series of mistakes. Lovely, beautiful mistakes. I wouldn’t change them.”

Midhat is real. That is to say, he steps out of the past into a particular family history and from there into a poetic, intimately detailed novel, The Parisian, Isabella Hammad’s debut. “He is based on my great-grandfather.

My grandmother told me stories of him,” she says from her current residence in New York. “She had a fantastic memory—she could remember that on a certain day half a century ago she was wearing white socks. Other members of my family told me stories, too. From them I had a skeleton, some idea of a man whom everyone remembered as being old. But in the end it was up to me to weave all those facts and memories into a story and to imagine what he was like when he was young and what Palestine was like before 1948.”

Born into a Palestinian emigrant family, 27-year-old Hammad grew up in London. “Even when I was a teenager, I knew that I would be a novelist,” she says. “My imagination was always going wild.” To prepare, she went to Oxford University and studied literature, reading across the centuries but drawing special inspiration from Virginia Woolf. “When I left university I began to work on The Parisian in earnest,” she recalls. “I hadn’t been to Palestine, and I began to travel, gathering more stories and more details.”

Those details and stories find their ways into The Parisian, a novel of many voices and moods. France, Midhat finds, is a sometimes-bewildering place but one with every promise of fulfilling the dreams of youth. The realities of the world are different from those fond wishes, however, and Midhat has to negotiate an uneasy path as his neighbors urge immediate action: “We must resist all of the Jews,” insists one, “even our own Jews, the ones we

multaneously published with the American edition in early April; there, among other things, she’ll attend the famed Hay Festival of Literature & Arts in Wales and then will move on to Denmark. “It’s not lost on me,” she says quietly, “how lucky I have been. I am able to write and do nothing but write.”

Hard work has something to do with that luck, too, as well as a finely honed skill as a storyteller. But at the same time that she’s digging deep into her new book, Hammad, finding she “quite likes New York,” is trying to sort out her visa status so that she can stay a while longer. Asked whether she’s experienced any particular difficulties in a time that is unfriendly to international visitors, especially from Islamic nations and backgrounds, she answers no, adding, “I like to go between places, between New York and London and other cities. I think we’re all in trouble, no matter where we live.” Taking in the humane message of hope that closes Isabella Hammad’s The Parisian is a good place to begin finding our way out of the mess.

Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor. The Parisian received a starred review in the Feb. 1, 2019, issue.

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have here.” Midhat weathers war—and then illness, madness, loss, and sorrow, and, as if to add insult to all those injuries, he begins to forget his French.

Writing The Parisian, which weighs in at nearly 600 pages, proved a longer process than Hammad imagined, but in 2016, on the strength of a partial manuscript that she began writing in 2013, she soon found a home for the book at Jonathan Cape in the U.K. and Grove Press in this country. “I’d already done a lot of structuring and restructuring, writing and rewriting,” she says. “The book was edited simultaneously by both publishers, and I was pleased that most of what was wanted from both was just fine-tuning and polishing, not much heavy work.”

That heavy work had taken more than five years and, as Hammad puts it, “many dark nights of the soul.” To work out some problems as she looked for the book’s “center of gravity,” she adds, she looked back at some favorite writers for ideas. “I read and reread Gabriel García Márquez to figure out how he handles time and Penelope Fitzgerald, an absolutely brilliant writer, for how she handles the scene. And then of course there was Virginia Woolf, whom I imbibed, especially her To the Light­ house, for a sense of design.” Each of the three parts of The Parisian, she notes, has a different cadence, but all are indisputably part of the whole, just as a person’s life—in this case Midhat’s—is, from the uncertainty and haste of youth to the deliberation and stillness of old age.

There was a fourth inspiration, and perhaps an unlikely one on the face of it: the towering American modernist poet Charles Olson, founder of the short-lived but highly influential Black Mountain College. “When I first came to America,” she says, “I went on a kind of pilgrimage to North Carolina. The college had long been closed, but I asked if there were anything left of it. The man who owned the building rummaged around and found Olson’s high school ring, with his initials carved on it. I have the ring now. Olson was a dreadful sexist—he made women students sit outside the door of his classroom—so I wear the ring as a kind of rebuke to him.”

Hammad can write up a storm, and she’s already at work on another novel that she describes as quite different from The Parisian: It will be set in the present, involving two sisters making their way in the world. “I look forward to writing it,” she says, “but I don’t have it planned all the way through. I’m hoping it will be shorter, but we’ll see. With The Parisian, I told myself that I can write a novel in a year, but that’s not what happened after all.”

The pleasure of writing that new novel will be interrupted soon by a book tour that, so far, is concentrated on the East Coast, with visits to bookstores and other venues in Boston, New York, and Washington. After that, she’ll return to the U.K., where The Parisian is being si-

THE PARISIAN Hammad, Isabella Grove (576 pp.) $27.00 | April 9, 2019 978-0-8021-2943-7 |

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officer, then with a black Harvard student whose mother has another reason, besides Kirby’s whiteness, to distrust her. Pick, grandson of Exalta’s caretaker, is planning to search for his hippie mother at Woodstock. Other complications seem very upto-date: a country club tennis coach is a predator and pedophile.

Anti-Semitism lurks beneath the club’s genteel veneer. Kate’s drinking has accelerated since Tiger’s deployment overseas.

Exalta’s toughness is seemingly untempered by grandmotherly love. As always, Hilderbrand’s characters are utterly convincing and immediately draw us into their problems, from petty to grave. Sometimes, her densely packed tales seem to unravel toward the end. This is not one of those times.

To use the parlance of the period, a highly relevant retrospective.

THE GIFTED SCHOOL

Holsinger, Bruce Riverhead (464 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-525-53496-9

Four close friends, their husbands, their children, their housecleaners—and one application-only magnet school that will drive them all over the brink.

A Boulder-esque town in the Front Range of the Rockies, Crystal, Colorado, is a progressive paradise where four entwined families are raising their children, though death, divorce, and drugs have taken their toll on the group since the moms met at baby swim class years back. The women give each other mugs with friendship quotes each year on the anniversary of that meeting, and they get together every Friday morning for a 4-mile run, “a ritual carved into the flinty stone of their lives…shared since they’d first started trimming up again after the births of their children.”

Beneath the surface, resentments are already simmering—one family is far wealthier than the others; the widowed mom is a neurotic mess; one of the couples didn’t make it through elementary school and he’s remarried to “a hot young au pair who was great with the twins [and] a willing partner in mindblowing carnality.” Then comes the announcement of a public magnet school for exceptional learners, with a standardized test as the first step in separating the wheat from the chaff. The novel’s depiction of the ensuing devolution is grounded in acute social observation—class, race, privilege, woke and libertarian politics—then hits the mark on the details as well. From the bellowing of the dads on the soccer field to the oversharing in the teenager’s vlog, down to the names of the kids themselves— twins Aidan and Charlie Unsworth-Chaudhury; best friends Emma Z and Emma Q; nerdy chessmaster Xander Frye—Holsinger’s (The Invention of Fire, 2015) pitch is close to perfect.

The subject of parents charging past every ethical restraint in pursuit of crème de la crème education could not be more timely, and the Big Little Lies treatment creates a deliciously repulsive and eerily current page-turner.

THE DAUGHTERS OF TEMPERANCE HOBBS

Howe, Katherine Henry Holt (352 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-250-30486-5

Howe (The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen, 2015, etc.) returns with a creepy, witchy sequel to The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (2009).

Though her former professor and adviser remains in a mental hospital, Connie Goodwin has turned her continued fascination with witchcraft in early America into a tenure-track professorship. She’s working hard 16

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A sweeping romantic tale of thwarted love. the stationery shop

can only turn to Mr. Fakhri for help. Although he cannot tell Roya where Bahman has gone, Mr. Fakhri offers to exchange secret letters between the lovers. The plan works, and the two even plan to elope, but Bahman does not show up in Sepah Square. Sixty years later, Bahman’s confession will finally expose the secrets that cast shadows over the lovers so long ago.

A sweeping romantic tale of thwarted love.

I KNOW YOU

Kantaria, Annabel Crooked Lane (304 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-64385-110-5 A lonely woman’s efforts to find friendship reveal the nasty underbelly of social media.

Heavily pregnant Taylor Watson has moved from California to London with

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to finish her book, serving as a mentor to graduate students, and living with Sam Hartley, her steeplejack beau. Her mother, Grace, continues to inspire exasperated affection; when Connie goes to visit her, Grace insists on tying an eagle stone around her wrist as a symbol of maternal protection—the first clue that Connie is pregnant. Grace also tells Connie she should break up with Sam, pointing out that generations of women in their family have lost their husbands young, to sudden deaths. As Connie begins to research this phenomena, she discovers a single exception—Temperance Hobbs, an 18th-century ancestor whose portrait sits above Grace’s fireplace and whose husband lived to be over 100. When Connie discovers a hidden box behind the portrait, it’s clear that there might be a way to save Sam—but the consequences to the natural world may be greater than they can afford to pay. The story cuts back and forth between Connie’s life in 2000 and the women engaged in “weather work” in the early Colonial period, and it takes a long time to build to a climax. Howe clearly has enjoyed doing her research; Connie’s role as academic allows her to educate us about the history of witchcraft in America without too much lecturing. The characters are likable, but the mood and plot are slow to build.

Until the spooky magic begins, too close to the end, the book casts a rather lukewarm spell.

THE STATIONERY SHOP

Kamali, Marjan Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-9821-0748-2 Sixty years after her first love failed to meet her in a market square, Roya Khanom Archer finally has the chance to see him. But will he break her heart again?

Back in 1953, she was a 17-year-old schoolgirl, raised in a progressive home in Tehran, where her father encouraged Roya and her sister, Zari, to take advantage of the recent reforms that allowed women to go to university. While he hoped she might become a chemist, Roya loved escaping into novels, which sent her to Mr. Fakhri’s stationery and book store every Tuesday afternoon. There she first sees Bahman Aslan, a breathless young man already well-known as a political activist. Kamali (Together Tea, 2013) sets Roya and Bahman’s love against the tumultuous days of Mohammad Mossadegh’s rise and fall as prime minister of Iran, infusing their affair with political passion and an increasingly frantic sense of the shortness of time.

Tuesday after Tuesday, the couple falls more deeply in love, and Bahman soon proposes marriage to Roya. While Roya’s family welcomes Bahman—although Zari warns Roya that his heart cannot be trusted—Bahman’s emotionally volatile mother refuses to accept the engagement, because she has already chosen Shahla, the daughter of a man closely allied with the shah, for her son. Roya determines to weather her future mother-inlaw’s storms, but when Bahman and his family disappear, she |

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her British husband, Jake, in an attempt to heal their marriage after his affair. Taylor finds it hard to forgive Jake, especially since his travels for his job often leave her alone. In an effort to make new friends, she joins a walking group, where she meets Simon, an ethical hacker who works out of his home as he takes care of his aging father. Simon’s a bit odd but seems harmless.

A more appealing potential friend is Anna Jones, who’s also pregnant and who has a husband off working in Qatar. Taylor helps Anna decorate her rather sad apartment, and they begin to spend more time shopping and lunching together. When Taylor’s neighbor Sarah asks her to join a book group, she brings Anna along to meet the other member, Caroline Hughes-Smith, who went to school with Jake. Sarah, setting her cap for Jake, uses the excuse of arranging a birthday party for Taylor for a night out with him, arousing Taylor’s suspicions. Interspersed chapters present the thoughts of an unidentified person stalking the hated and despised Taylor online, where both she and Anna overshare details of their lives. Meantime, Anna insists she’s being watched, perhaps by the person who dropped a baby rattle through her mail slot in the dead of night. She confesses

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that she’s feared the unknown ever since her roommate was raped and murdered while Anna slept. In Jake’s absence, Taylor relies more and more on Anna, who feeds her doubts about Jake and Sarah. When a crisis arises, the agonized Taylor can’t decide whom to trust.

Kantaria (The One that Got Away, 2017, etc.) has produced a psychological thriller that will make your hair stand on end as you join her heroine in guessing which of her new friends is really her deadly enemy.

THE ORPHAN’S SONG

Kate, Lauren Putnam (336 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-7352-1257-2

Kate’s adult fiction debut explores the intriguing world of Venetian orphanages that teach music to children.

Violetta and Mino are foundlings entrusted to the Ospedale degli Incurabili, originally a convent-run hospital for syphilitics. Violetta does not know who her parents are, but when she was 5, she witnessed Mino’s abandonment by his mother. Now teenagers who have met sporadically and secretly on the Ospedale’s roof, each must follow the destiny preordained by their social status in the arcane caste system of 1730s Venice. Violetta is training to join the Ospedale’s coro, the all-female ensemble that performs liturgical music to raise funds for the church. The prospects of less talented orphan girls are limited to arranged marriage, the convent, or menial servitude. As a boy, Mino is not allowed to study music, although he is gifted and has surreptitiously taught himself to play the violin. (He is also a self-taught luthier.) Male orphans like Mino are apprenticed when they age out. Kate (Unforgiven, 2015, etc.) does not stray far from the young adult staples of angst-y teens and conflicted love. Rejected by Violetta, Mino opts for Venetian street hustles in lieu of apprenticeship. Violetta is torn between the coro and the lure of professional singing, between Mino and a dashing older impresario who can make her a star.

The contradictions posed by Venetian culture vis-à-vis the arts and morality are well-depicted: Coro musicians are revered, but their lives are constrained; professional musicians are viewed with contempt, and, with few exceptions, their performances are illegal. Strict moral codes ostensibly govern Venice, but the custom of wearing masks most of the year encourages all manner of anonymous vice and licentiousness, which then feeds the Ospedale system with more STD patients and abandoned, illegitimate progeny. Violetta and Mino, though, seem thinly motivated. Lacking clearly defined goals, each too often seems attracted by the latest shiny object.

A historical novel that connects some dots but not all.

An epically concocted apocalyptic vision of America in all its faded glory. fka usa

FKA USA

King, Reed Flatiron Books (480 pp.) $27.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-250-10889-0 In 2084, a daring young orphan is tapped by the president to deliver a talking goat to a laboratory in San Francisco.

Yes, really.

This book is quite strange but eminently readable and kinetic in a manner that mashes up pop culture, video game tropes, apocalyptic visions, and a meaningful nod to the peculiar humor of Douglas Adams. While there’s a lot of bizarre aspects here and quite a twisty plot, you can break down this novel by King (a pseudonym for an apparently accomplished author and television writer, so let the guessing game begin) into its essential parts. In sum, this is a quest novel, and like all good quest novels, there is an order to things. There is always a fellowship: in this case,

16-year-old orphan Truckee Wallace, who lives in what was Little Rock; the aforementioned talking goat, Barnaby; a quite likable female-identifying android named Sammy; and Tiny Tim, who’s unfortunately got a head full of bad wiring; not to mention a host of other grifters, addicts, robot escorts, and other denizens of the loosely collected, nuclear-ravaged city-states identified in the title (as in, Formerly Known as the United States of America). There’s always a mission in a quest novel, and in this case the president asks Truckee to deliver Barnaby to San Francisco, a perilous journey indeed. There’s a plot here somewhere, something to do with a search for immortality, but Truckee’s epic journey is brimming with so many fantastic characters, so much outlandish imagery, and odd little tics like footnotes and selections from a book called The Grifter’s Guide to the Territories FKA USA that readers who are into semicomical fantasy novels will find plenty to like regardless of how it all turns out. Like all quests, there are also a few villains, a prize, and a sacrifice that turns out to be rather touching in the end. Here we go.

An epically concocted apocalyptic vision of America in all its faded glory.

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ROUGE

Kirshenbaum, Richard St. Martin’s Press (320 pp.) $27.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-250-15095-0 When cosmetics mogul Josephine Herz dies, she leaves behind a multibillion dollar empire. But will her archrival’s lawsuit strip her of her greatest achievement?

Inspired by the real-life rivalry between Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, celebrity adman Kirshenbaum’s (Isn’t that Rich? Life Among the 1%, 2015, etc.) novel beguilingly documents the stunning, parallel rise of these women in the cosmetics industry. “An English girl raised in Canada,” Constance Gardiner follows her half brother, James, to New York City after a detour through a Seven Sisters college. Securing a job with a pharmaceutical company, Constance seizes the opportunity to learn everything about business. In a few short years, she’s launched her own company with the novel concept of an elegant army of door-to-door saleswomen.

Her Gardiner Girls idea not only puts her products directly in women’s hands, but also builds a marketing strategy that offers employment opportunities to women. Constance also hires CeeCee Lopez, a black woman who will make her own mark on the cosmetics world with her novel hair relaxer. Meanwhile, Josephine, a young Jewish woman fleeing anti-Semitism in post– WWI Poland, settles in Melbourne, Australia. While working at her uncle’s drugstore, Josephine swiftly realizes that she can sell more face cream to women if she connects the product to psychological desire. Within months, she has rented her own counter space and founded a successful cosmetics company that will soon expand to Sydney, London, Paris, and New York.

As Constance and Josephine shrewdly negotiate the business world, their every move mirrors the other’s. Against a background of the Holocaust, women’s entrance into the workforce, secret gay culture, and McCarthyism, their marriages rise and fail, product lines and marketing innovations take the world by storm...or falter. And at the center is the fight over the world’s first over-the-counter mascara: Who invented it first?

A vivid portrait of glamorous, feisty women contending for the crown of cosmetics queen.

THE PERFECT FRAUD

LaCorte, Ellen Harper/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-06-290607-6 A fake psychic wakes up to find that her abilities are real in LaCorte’s debut thriller.

Claire is descended from a line of female psychics, but she’s never truly had the gift. In fact, she feels like she’s faking it in many aspects of her life: her 20

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job, her relationship, and her family. Her father suffered a series of strokes when Claire was in high school, and the subsequent distance that sprang up between her and her mother has left her unwilling to open herself up to love. When her father suffers yet another stroke and then dies, however, and she returns to Pennsylvania, she and her mother finally begin to speak honestly with one another, opening up all the parts of Claire she had been keeping locked down. Flying home to Sedona after the funeral, she not only finds new fulfillment with and commitment to her boyfriend, but she also begins to manifest a true psychic gift in her readings for others. When Rena, a blowsy woman she met on the plane, comes for a reading, Claire knows that something is wrong. Rena’s daughter, Stephanie, is terribly sick, but her illness, which has mystified every doctor she’s seen, may have a darker, deeper cause. Claire finds herself in a race against time to save the little girl. LaCorte splits the narration between Claire and Rena, alternating chapters, and she truly does create two very distinct and believable voices, a difficult feat. It’s easy to be sympathetic to Claire, while Rena seems immediately to be an unreliable narrator, but the voices complement each other, building two sides of the story that officially intertwine about halfway through. At the heart of this novel is Claire’s realization that love, “a desperate, life-sustaining, and imperative connection,” can also be “pure and light and joyful.”

Make no mistake: This is a dark, dark thriller, and the villain is absolute. But alternating voices allow for a more nuanced building of tension as LaCorte contrasts this darkness to Claire’s own fragile optimism.

LaCorte delves deeply into horrible things that humans do—and, as in life, not all evil is punished—but still offers hope and healing in the end.

THIS WICKED TONGUE

Levine, Elise Biblioasis (172 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-77196-279-7

Twelve stories that probe the long shadow of trauma, whether historical or familial.

We are all products of our pasts; the wounded children we were shape the adults we become. Toronto-born writer Levine (Blue Field, 2017, etc.) has the most success exploring this idea in her more conventional, character-driven stories such as “The Association” and “As Such,” which both feature Martin. In the first, Martin is just 11, a computer whiz who is navigating his parents’ divorce and his mother’s controlling personality. (She gives him two Bengal cats but makes him keep them in a tiny bathroom.) In the second, grown-up Martin, now a successful scientist married to a composer, still struggles with the “boyshithead” he used to be. His efforts to silence that angry childish voice are affecting, and we understand why he freaks out over his husband’s desire to have a child. Elsewhere, however, some of Levine’s characters are so cold and nasty it’s difficult to

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A stylish, sexy, suspenseful period drama about a newsroom and the city it covers. lady in the lake

care about them (or the stories) even when we learn about their troubled pasts. Em, a hospice counselor, inwardly mocks the dying and their families even while she’s supposedly ministering to them (“The Riddles of Aramaic”), and Eddie, a venomous old Jewish man, reflects without much regret on the harm he caused his wife and daughter (“Death and the Maidens”). Levine has a poet’s command of language. Her taut, musical sentences make some of the stories’ small details exquisite. In “This Wicked Tongue,” which follows a young woman on a religious journey, a donkey “twitches his flied flank,” a “thrush throats,” and “a spider webs her prey.” Sometimes, however, Levine’s restraint is too severe, and her characters feel insubstantial and ultimately unknowable.

A stylish, experimental collection, but readers might yearn for Levine to show more compassion for her damaged characters.

LADY IN THE LAKE

Lippman, Laura Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-06-239001-1 Baltimore in the 1960s is the setting for this historical fiction about a real-life unsolved drowning.

In her most ambitious work to date, Lippman (Sunburn, 2018, etc.) tells the story of Maddie Schwartz, an attractive 37-year-old Jewish housewife who abruptly leaves her husband and son to pursue a long-held ambition to be a journalist, and Cleo Sherwood, an African-American cocktail waitress about whom little is known. Sherwood’s body was found in a lake in a city park months after she disappeared, and while no one else seems to care enough to investigate, Maddie becomes obsessed— partly due to certain similarities she perceives between her life and Cleo’s, partly due to her faith in her own detective skills. The story unfolds from Maddie’s point of view as well as that of Cleo’s ghost, who seems to be watching from behind the scenes, commenting acerbically on Maddie’s nosing around like a bull in a china shop after getting a job at one of the city papers. Added to these are a chorus of Baltimore characters who make vivid onetime appearances: a jewelry store clerk, an about-to-be-murdered schoolgirl, “Mr. Helpline,” a bartender, a political operative, a waitress, a Baltimore Oriole, the first African-American female policewoman (these last two are based on real people), and many more. Maddie’s ambition propels her forward despite the cost to others, including the family of the deceased and her own secret lover, a black policeman. Lippman’s high-def depiction of 1960s Baltimore and the atmosphere of the newsroom at that time— she interviewed associates of her father, Baltimore Sun journalist Theo Lippman Jr., for the details—ground the book in fascinating historical fact.The literary gambit she balances atop that foundation—the collage of voices—works impressively, showcasing the author’s gift for rhythms of speech. The story is bigger than the crime, and the crime is bigger than its solution, making Lippman’s skill as a mystery novelist work as icing on the cake.

The racism, classism, and sexism of 50 years ago wrapped up in a stylish, sexy, suspenseful period drama about a newsroom and the city it covers.

THE LAST COLLECTION

Mackin, Jeanne Berkley (352 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-101-99054-4

A widowed American woman navigates the world of fashion in 1938 Paris, getting caught up in the rivalry between two famous designers.

Lily Sutter is teaching art at a girl’s boarding school in England when her 22

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brother, Charlie, invites her to Paris. Drowning in the memories of her husband, who died two years earlier, and living in a world of gray, Lily has been unable to paint. Once in Paris and caught up in the glamorous circles of her brother and his married lover, Ania, Lily begins to see the world in color once again and picks up her brushes. The novel is divided into three parts, each section labeled with an oft-referenced primary color meant to symbolize the emotions described within it. The first, blue, is a paradox, representing longing, sadness, joy, and fulfillment. The second, red, is for love, death, and passion. And the last, yellow, is for sunshine, gold, and new beginnings but also warning and fear. Creating a world where fictional and real worlds overlap is tricky, particularly when famous events and people (in this case Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel) are a major part of the narrative. The novel includes as a plot point the reported realworld instance when the rivalry between Chanel and Schiaparelli became physical—accidentally or on purpose—and Chanel caused Schiaparelli’s costume to catch fire at a party. Mackin (A Lady of Good Family, 2015, etc.) goes beyond the facts, however.

A substantial portion of the novel is composed of hypothetical

interior monologues, thoughts, and motivations of the two reallife fashion icons. Readers interested in historical accuracy may find this distracting.

Fashion lovers will enjoy descriptions of the design of clothing and accessories and the machinations of running fashion houses before World War II.

AFTER THE END

Mackintosh, Clare Putnam (400 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-451-49056-8 A married couple must make an agonizing decision about their critically ill young son.

Dylan Adams, an almost 3-year-old English boy, is in pediatric intensive care when we meet him, having endured

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angie kim’s debut novel is a taut legal drama

Photo courtesy Tim Coburn

Angie Kim first stumbled upon hyperbaric oxygen therapy not as a novelist, but as a parent. One of her sons, then just a toddler, had been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and also celiac disease, and the standard treatments weren’t helping. An acquaintance mentioned that an HBOT facility just happened to be opening that summer in their Northern Virginia town.

Miracle Creek (April 16) opens with an explanation of how HBOT works. Patients are sealed into a submarinelike chamber, where the atmospheric pressure is adjusted to be sig- Angie Kim nificantly higher than normal, and then—wearing a helmet connected to an O2 tank outside—breathe in 100 percent oxygen. One potential hazard of the treatment: All that pure oxygen means there’s an elevated risk of fire.

So when Kim started a novel more than a decade later, HBOT chamber was the obvious place to start. When the novel opens, the worst has already happened. The fire that killed two people—one parent and one child—is over, and the murder trial has already begun.

The defendant is the child’s mother, who pushed too hard, who obsessed too much, who maybe just couldn’t take the stress of being the single parent of an autistic child.

But of course, it’s more complicated.

If the circumstances of the novel are extreme—a dead kid, a murder trial, a medical pseudo-submarine— the questions at its heart are about as fundamental as it gets. “The book is first and foremost about sacrifice for your family,” Kim says. “How far are you willing to go? How far does that sacrifice extend?”—R.S. Rachel Sugar is a writer living in New York. Miracle Creek received a starred review in the Jan. 1, 2019, issue.

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several rounds of chemotherapy as well as surgery to remove a brain tumor. His devoted parents—Max, an American business analyst, and Pip, a British flight attendant (the family lives near Birmingham, England)—want nothing more than to bring their boy home. Eventually, though, Dylan’s doctor, Leila Khalili, presents them with an excruciating choice. Pip favors one option; Max, another. This is grim material, and in other hands, the story easily could have turned mawkish. But Mackintosh, a British author of mystery-thrillers (Let Me Lie, 2018, etc.), gets a lot of things right. She’s a natural writer, and her powers of observation are keen: “It takes practice, speaking to a sedated child,” she writes, then goes on to explain why. Everything, at least in the first half of the novel, feels true. (In an afterword, the author reveals that she and her husband were once compelled to make a similar decision.) The book is also briskly plotted, an unlikely page-turner. The story is told in the alternating voices of Pip and Max; there’s also a third perspective—that of Leila, the sympathetic doctor, whose narrative provides some relief from the intensity of the other two accounts. The book falters in the overlong second half. The author imagines dual outcomes to her story, which seems gimmicky—things get complicated (and sometimes confusing) as well as repetitive.

Plus, Max’s downward trajectory doesn’t seem entirely credible; neither do some of his personal choices. But the ending, if not exactly happy, is authentically hopeful.

While occasionally overwrought, this is a perceptive, skillfully told story about a profoundly painful subject.

A PHILOSOPHY OF RUIN

Mancusi, Nicholas Hanover Square Press (256 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-335-93066-8 California philosophy professor Oscar Boatwright has his notions of free will severely tested when he’s seduced by a self-possessed student named Dawn who involves him in a dangerous drug-

dealing scheme.

It’s not an auspicious time for Oscar. His mother died during a flight from Hawaii, where she was paying secret visits to a self-help guru who took all of her family savings, and left her husband, Oscar’s father, high and dry. After Oscar drunkenly sleeps with Dawn, not knowing she’s his student until he spots her in class the next Monday, he’s worried the hookup will cost him his job. But after Dawn blackmails him into retrieving a backpack of drugs from Mexico, the professor (who is 29 but seems older) is most worried about staying alive. His fears are justified when he’s captured by Mexican drug smugglers whose leader calmly tells him he has had women and children killed and Oscar is next. What would Schopenhauer say? Oscar, who believes the script for his life has already been written and he is merely acting it out, struggles “to think of some evidence... that the essence of existence was not suffering.” Good luck

A sharp dissection of the fraught dynamics of 30-something female friendship. how could she

with that: With the exception of his unlikely romance with Dawn, life is one wild misadventure after another for Oscar.

That includes his hopeless pursuit of the shady self-help character, whose videos, he discovers, are not entirely without worth.

For all its edgy, downbeat humor, the novel inspires a deep emotional investment in Oscar. The big existential questions that get asked are brilliantly framed by his antics. The payoff is, dare we say it, profound.

Brooklyn writer Mancusi’s revelatory novel is a drug tale with a difference—even the chase scenes are philosophical.

THE VAN APFEL GIRLS ARE GONE

McLean, Felicity Algonquin (304 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-61620-964-3

Mechling’s first novel for adults is a sharp dissection of the fraught dynamics of 30-something female friendship.

In their first years of adulthood, Sunny, Rachel, and Geraldine worked together at a Toronto magazine, where they became, if not a trio—Sunny and Rachel never got along— then at least an intimate triangle. And then they scattered: Sunny, an artist and illustrator whose life has always flowed with an ease befitting her name, moved to New York and married rich; Rachel, a confessional lifestyle writer and an American, returned to her native Brooklyn, where she married a nice man, had a baby, and took up a fledgling second career writing YA novels; and Geraldine, the unlucky one despite her beauty,

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A journalist makes her fiction debut with a tale of missing girls as told by one girl who never stopped missing them.

So many girls disappear. This is true in life. It’s maybe even truer in fiction. Girls who go missing are an endless source of fascination. Or maybe this is just when the girls are white and, at the very least, middle-class. These girls are especially compelling when they’re beautiful. Cordelia Van Apfel was white, middleclass, and beautiful before she and her sisters vanished from an Australian suburb in 1992, and she is the absence at the heart of McLean’s debut novel. Tikka Malloy is heading home from America because her sister, Laura, is battling cancer. Tikka’s return doesn’t revive her search for the beguiling Cordie—she has never stopped searching for Cordie; she sees Cordie everywhere—but Tikka’s presence brings long-buried secrets back to the surface of the insular community in which she and her sister became friends with the Van Apfel girls before they disappeared. Tikka has a sharp sense of self-awareness. She recognizes that her place in the hierarchy of neighborhood girls—not quite included by the older girls, eager to separate herself from the younger—and the trauma of losing her friends have left her stunted as an adult. But all of this makes Tikka a terrific narrator. She examines her memories with the perspective of a grown-up, and she finds that people who were reticent to tell her everything when the Van Apfel girls went missing are eager to unburden themselves now. Tikka’s conversations with her father are especially affecting, and of course the local busybody and Tupperware saleswoman has a great deal of information and insight to share. There are, ultimately, no real surprises. What happened to Cordie is something that happens to any number of girls. It’s the disappearance of her sisters with her that made her story sensational. But Cordie isn’t like other girls for Tikka, which makes her special for the reader, too.

A wry, sad coming-of-age story and a well-crafted first novel.

HOW COULD SHE

Mechling, Lauren Viking (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-525-55938-2

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who stayed in Toronto and who—since getting dumped by her fiance—has been living in Sunny’s old apartment, a demonstration of Sunny’s magnanimity. And then Geraldine moves to New York. This, in itself, does not disrupt their equilibrium, though it does expose the fissures. What disrupts their equilibrium is that, in New York, amid a dying industry, Geraldine is a success. The plot is minimal, in terms of what actually “happens”—Sunny’s glamorous life is not so glamorous; Rachel worries she’s wasted her career on fluff; Geraldine gets into podcasting; media is flailing; men are difficult—because what actually matters is what’s happening in the characters’ heads.

Their relationships to each other are delicate and often painful but also essential to their understanding of their own adult lives: More important than liking each other, they’ve built their identities around each other. Mechling details these dynamics with accountantlike precision so that the action is in the small slights and hurts and oversights that have accumulated over the years between them. While the novel flits lightly on the surface, even occasionally bordering on satire (Mechling, herself a journalist, is well-acquainted with the absurdities of the

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media industry), there is a profound and wistful melancholy at its core.

Not especially groundbreaking but emotionally astute; a pleasure.

CONVICTION

Mina, Denise Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (384 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-316-52850-4 A compelling, complex thriller as modern as tomorrow.

Mina (The Long Drop, 2017, etc.) leaves historical Glasgow and sets this crackling tale in the very moment. Sophie Bukaran is living as Anna McDonald; she’s hidden herself in Glasgow, in marriage to a lawyer, in being mother to two girls. Then one

their coastal rentals and a place to live in their guesthouse. But everything fell apart after Sadie died. When Avery finds Sadie’s phone hidden in the rental cottage where last year’s Plus-One party was held, she turns it in to the police—after doing a bit of snooping. Additionally, someone’s been breaking into the rentals, and Sadie’s brooding older brother, Parker, is acting strangely.

Sadie’s death is looking less and less like a suicide, and Avery is at the top of the suspect list. The Loman family’s lies are rising to the surface, but can Avery keep her head above water? The narrative, which flips between 2017 and 2018, grows increasingly tense as Avery, who is a surprisingly reliable narrator, gets closer to the truth, but while Miranda (The Perfect Stranger, 2017, etc.) builds some creepy atmosphere in the lead-up, the final revelations are more sad than shocking. Most compelling are the class tensions between Littleport’s year-round residents and the seasonal, moneyed tourists as well as the elusive nature of memory and the intricacies of friendship.

An evocative and perfectly readable thriller, but genre fans will find few surprises within.

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November morning, between episodes of a true-crime podcast called Death and the Dana, her life “explode[s].” Her best friend, Estelle, is at the door, and Anna’s husband reveals that he and Estelle are lovers and they’re leaving with the girls. Anna considers suicide, but the podcast distracts her. Leon Parker and his family have died aboard the Dana, and the ship’s cook has been convicted. The podcast asserts that the cook could not be guilty and the deaths were the result of a murder-suicide committed

by Parker. But Anna knew Leon Parker and feels he could not be the culprit, so she decides to try to learn more about his fate.

When Estelle’s anorexic and feckless husband, Fin, a minor rockand-roll celebrity, appears at her door, he is caught up in her decision, and they eventually create a companion podcast that details their explorations. But in the process, Anna and Fin are photographed and the pictures posted online, so Anna’s quest becomes entwined with threats to Sophie Bukaran’s life. Years earlier Sophie was raped by members of a beloved football team, and her accusations threatened the team’s reputation and value. When the only corroborator of her testimony was silenced, Sophie was discredited in the usual manner: Her morals were questionable, she was possibly drunk, she was seeking money. Dismissed and subjected to public vilification, Sophie disappeared. But a new witness has come forward and could confirm Sophie’s accusations, and her reappearance again threatens a financial empire. As Fin’s podcast becomes wildly popular and he and Anna begin to unravel the mystery of Leon Parker’s death, the assassins seeking Sophie close in.

This one has it all: sexual predation, financial skulduggery, reluctant heroism, even the power of social media.

THE LAST HOUSE GUEST

Miranda, Megan Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-5011-6537-5

A year after her best friend’s supposed suicide, a young woman must clear her name when new evidence is uncovered.

The Lomans own much of Littleport, Maine, a fact that hasn’t changed much since their only daughter’s death a year ago. In the summer of 2017, on the night of the annual Plus-One party, aimed at summer people who’ve stayed a week longer than the traditional Labor Day end-of-season, golden girl Sadie Loman apparently threw herself off a cliff into the churning sea, but to those who knew her, especially her closest friend, Avery Greer, she seemed to have everything to live for. Year-round Littleport resident Avery was adrift after her parents’ deaths when she was a teen, but when she met the mesmerizing Sadie, a summer person, her life took on new meaning. Sadie and Avery became so close, it was sometimes hard to tell where one ended and the other began. After Avery’s grandmother died, Avery was alone, and the ridiculously wealthy Lomans seemed to welcome her into the family, even giving her a job as property manager for |

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A MATTER OF WILL

Mitzner, Adam Thomas & Mercer (316 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-5039-0513-9 This seventh novel by a Manhattan attorney is a high-finance thriller spattered with bloody surprises.

Will Matthews is a struggling investment broker at Wall Street’s Maeve Grant. If he fails a second time to make his quarterly numbers, he will automatically be fired. Wolfe, his aptly named boss, can’t wait to show him the door. But then like manna from heaven, Samuel Abbadon and Eve Devereaux strike up a friendship with Matthews at a Rangers-Devils hockey game and soon take him to a restaurant where Abbadon casually foots the $12,000 tab. His profession? “I am a collector of things of great value.” Matthews is both flattered and dazzled.

Then Abbadon says he can see the hunger in the broker’s eyes.

Matthews replies, “I’m not just hungry, Sam. I’m downright starving to death.” So Abbadon saves Matthews’ job by giving him an $18 million account that will make him a star at Maeve Grant. “I reeled in my whale,” Matthews tells a colleague. Nearly overnight he’s filthy rich and moving into an opulent Manhattan apartment Abbadon has bought for him. Alarm bells peal in his head, but at first they can’t match the choruses of hal­ lelujah. By the time he realizes that of course it’s all too good to be true, there’s no going back. The only places “Mr. Wall Street” can escape to may be prison or the morgue. In a subplot, Gwen Lipton is a hotshot lawyer on a high-profile murder case who meets Matthews through a dating app and becomes entangled in his briar patch of troubles. It’s too bad, because they might have a future together if they can only survive the shocks. Readers may wonder why Lipton doesn’t bolt when she still can, and the resolution feels a bit abrupt, but those are nits.

Business, blood, and deception help make this an exciting and fast-moving yarn. Fine fare for thriller fans.

BLOOD RELATIONS

Moore, Jonathan Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (368 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-328-98781-5 A San Francisco PI gets much more than he bargains for when he’s asked to investigate the suspicious death of a wealthy young woman.

Ex-attorney–turned–private investigator Lee Crowe hasn’t lacked for jobs in the six years since he was disbarred for beating the stuffing out of his now ex-wife’s lover, a California Supreme Court associate justice. In fact, most of his jobs in his early days as a PI came from his ex-boss attorney Jim Gardner, who likely has a finger in plenty of the city’s dirtiest deeds. When Crowe happens upon the body of a beautiful young woman on the caved-in roof of a Rolls Royce Wraith parked in front of the decidedly down-market Refugio Apartments, he can’t resist snapping photos for a quick tabloid sale.

Jim spots the photo and offers Crowe another job. The dead woman is 20-year-old Claire Gravesend, and her mother, the wealthy and influential Olivia Gravesend, doesn’t believe Claire committed suicide. Crowe has Olivia’s considerable resources to back up his investigation, and he’ll need them. He flies to Boston to examine Claire’s home, where he has a violent encounter with a knife-wielding intruder. Shaken, he returns to San Francisco, where he discovers that Claire’s secret pied-àterre is hiding something even stranger: a woman in Claire’s bed who looks just like Claire and shares the strange circular scars on her spine that appeared on Claire’s autopsy photos. Shocked but undeterred and not afraid to get his hands dirty, Crowe seeks answers from Olivia’s mother and Claire’s doppelgänger in a case that’s shaping up to be stranger than fiction. Moore’s rough-and-tumble PI operates firmly in varying shades of gray; the author delivers enough action and atmosphere to satisfy 28

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A young girl is exiled from her family after she reveals her brothers’ involvement in a brutal crime. my life as a rat

readers who like their gumshoes old-school while having a lot to say about humankind’s hubris and preoccupation with eternal youth. The mastermind behind Claire’s death is truly vile, and the disturbing finale will linger. Luckily, Moore sets things up for a sequel.

Gritty neo-noir with an all-too-plausible speculative twist.

BEFORE I WAKE

Morrell, David Subterranean Press (376 pp.) $40.00 | Jun. 30, 2019 978-1-59606-912-1

A young girl is exiled from her family after she reveals her brothers’ involvement in a brutal crime.

Oates (Mysteries of Winterthurn, 2018, etc.) has often found her fictional subject matter in the lives of girls and young women struggling with the aftermath of trauma. This time her main character is Violet Rue Kerrigan, youngest of seven siblings in a close-knit, workingclass Irish Catholic family living on Oates’ upstate New York turf in the early 1990s. It’s a family imbued with sexism and racism, led by an angry father and a mother who teaches her three daughters compliance as a way to survive such men; as Violet says: “If you do not antagonize them, if you behave exactly as

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Morrell’s (Ruler of the Night, 2016, etc.) third collection, largely consisting of works from the past decade, ranges from eerie tales to CIA narratives to stories featuring literary legends.

In “The Companions,” one of the stories inspired by events in Morrell’s life, a screenwriter and his wife have a series of strange life-changing encounters with a monk and his elderly friend at the Santa Fe opera house.

In “Blue Murder,” one of three stories featuring Cavanaugh, a top-rated security firm director known as the Protector, a female thriller writer is said to be targeted for the rumored anti-Islamic passages in her forthcoming novel. There are also stories about the torture of a renditioned Iraqi prisoner in Uzbekistan and an infamous battle during World War II pitting two units of the French Foreign Legion—one controlled by the Allies, the other by German-controlled France—against one another. Among the famous authors Morrell imagines are Arthur Conan Doyle, who needs a visit from his creation, Sherlock Holmes, to solve his own painful mysteries, and J.D. Salinger, who, fictionalized as R.J. Wentworth, is pursued by a young editor working for a conglomerate that sees a gold mine—but little else—in the reclusive author’s unpublished works. Morrell, who provides personal introductions to each of the stories, openly acknowledges the influences of such writers as Hemingway and Ray Bradbury. Now in his mid-70s, he is old-school in a good way in terms of his craftsmanship and his emphasis on story and character. But by today’s standards, his ironic twists can be rather mild or unconvincing.

And some of the tales feel dated in other ways.

Readers of a certain age will enjoy these recent stories by the author of First Blood (the novel that inspired the Rambo movies).

MY LIFE AS A RAT

Oates, Joyce Carol Ecco/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $28.99 | $28.99 lg. prt. | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-06-289983-5 978-0-06-291151-3 lg. prt.

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they wish you to behave, they will not be cruel to you.” Violet learns the terrible consequences of noncompliance when she’s 12. Her two oldest brothers have already evaded punishment for a gang rape when, one night, out drinking, they encounter a lone black teenager and beat him savagely. Violet is the only one who knows their secret. After the boy dies, she panics and tells her school principal and nurse what she knows. She’s put in protective custody—one brother has injured her as a threat— but is utterly shocked to learn that her family doesn’t want her back. Oates follows Violet for more than a decade as, marked by the traumas of her exile and her upbringing, she is targeted by a series of male predators. Her mental stability sometimes deteriorates into the fever-dream state Oates can evoke so well; the author shifts point of view among first, second, and third person as if Violet can’t even get a grip on her own identity. Violet’s fraught relationship with her family moves to an explosive climax, but there are signs of redemption as well, for her at least.

Oates explores the long echoes of violence born of sexism and racism in one young woman’s life in this deft psychological thriller.

DARK CONSTELLATIONS

Oloixarac, Pola Trans. by Kesey, Roy Soho (216 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 16, 2019 978-1-61695-923-4

A 19th-century naturalist describes a mysterious substance while, closer to the present day, a hacker comes of age and a government tracks its citizens.

“We have to understand these things as dark constellations,” says Max, a character in Oloixarac’s (Savage Theories, 2017) luminous new novel. The Incas, he goes on, “organized the sky in terms of the dark regions between stars, the interior shapes with bright parameters.” In this dense, dizzying book, the Argentine “Ministry of Genetics” tracks the “life trajectories” of its citizens by curating digital as well as biometric data—fingerprints, face scans. Max heads a project to help sift that data. He recruits Cassio, an old acquaintance from their rogue hacker days. Cassio is the closest thing to a main character we have. Oloixarac’s novel proceeds along three tracks; this one is the last and the most legible. Another traces Cassio’s growth from a nerdy, overweight kid to a brilliant student and phenomenal hacker. Yet another track begins in 1882, with a naturalist named Niklas Bruun, who’s conducting research on a hallucinogenic substance that appears to break down the barriers between one species and another. There isn’t exactly a plot here. Oloixarac is interested in big data, and consciousness, and the internet, and a government’s control over its citizenry. In Bruun’s sections, the prose is lushly sinuous: “The meadows dissolved at the banks of iridescent streams, and trees stood out like castles, lowering their branches only to raise them again, lines of dense liquid vegetal matter uniting the earth and sky.”

When it’s Cassio’s turn, the prose lurches toward something more cerebral, even cynical (“As far as Lara was concerned, sex with Cassio would be a completely benign experience”). Oloixarac is a massive, mysterious talent; her latest novel is an oblique puzzle whose pieces never quite fit into place.

This genre-defying novel blends science fiction with cyberpunk with naturalism to end up with something utterly original.

HER DAUGHTER’S MOTHER

Petrova, Daniela Putnam (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-525-53997-1

A mother-to-be stalks her mentally ill egg donor in this debut novel.

After three miscarriages and eight in vitro fertilization procedures, Lana Stone, a 38-year-old art curator, is very ready to get pregnant—right up until the moment 30

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when her partner, college professor Tyler Jones, leaves her after eight years of cohabitation. Lana suspects an affair but opts to go ahead with the next egg transfer on her own, and it’s finally successful. When she spots her supposedly anonymous egg donor—whose picture she had seen but whom she only knew as CN8635—on the subway, Lana can’t help but follow and befriend the younger woman. Katya Dimitrova is a lonely college student.

She’s been hooking up with Damian, who has a violent temper, and flirting with her mental health counselor, Josh Wozniak. The tone turns from cool to creepy as Katya insinuates herself into Lana’s life and Lana realizes their friendship is very wrong. When Katya goes missing, Lana is determined to discover whether Tyler, among other suspects, was involved. Lana is an engaging and sympathetic protagonist. Katya is a troubled and rather dreary victim burdened with a lot of backstory. Tyler, the third of the three firstperson point-of-view characters, is little-heard but offers some of the most sympathetic moments as he struggles to cope with the fallout from Lana’s fertility obsession.

A credible but underwhelming ending mars this otherwise suspenseful, contemporary, and twisty thriller.

get to know the characters; put another way, there’s a distancing between the narrator and the characters—Agnes in particular—as though they are being held at arm’s length. We see them from the outside, not the inside, even when they are narrating their own stories.

Beautifully written and intricately plotted, Porter’s novel falters only when she seems to step back from her characters, to stand at the edge of the water instead of jumping in.

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THE TRAVELERS

Porter, Regina Hogarth/Crown (320 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-525-57619-8 A sprawling, ambitious debut novel traces the fates of a handful of characters, each one caught up in the lives of the others.

Eddie, a black Navy man, steals a copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead from an officer during the Vietnam War. For the rest of his life, he carries it with him, reciting lines. His youngest daughter, Claudia, grows up to be a Shakespeare scholar. She marries Rufus, the white son of a philanderer, who finds out, as an adult, that he has a half brother named Hank who grew up in Buckner County, Georgia. Agnes is black and came from Buckner County, too, but left after a traumatic incident on a dark road involving two white policemen and her boyfriend. Agnes marries Eddie, the Navy man, and moves to New York. Porter’s fantastic debut novel is a whirl of characters spidering outward through time and space. The novel tracks a half dozen of them, all connected to each other, more or less, in one way or another, from the 1950s through 2010. Agnes and the thing that happened to her one night on Damascus Road form the dark heart of the book. Everything else seems to radiate, at least tangentially, from that. When she was a girl, Agnes’ parents took in an almost-orphan, Eloise, with whom Agnes grows up, sharing a bedroom and, eventually, a bed. Agnes is Eloise’s one true love, but Agnes eventually refuses to see Eloise, and they grow distant. But this is just one of Porter’s storylines. There are several, and while they are each gripping and vivid in their own ways, so much action crowds the book. There isn’t enough space to |

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A must-read masterwork by an author whose star should shine brighter in the contemporary firmament. berg

THE POISON THREAD

Purcell, Laura Penguin (368 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-14-313405-3

A Victorian do-gooder meets a young seamstress, on trial for murder, who confesses to killing her employer with just a needle and thread.

Wealthy heiress Dorothea Truelove devotes her charitable work to visiting the female inmates of Oakgate Prison. When she receives a note from the prison matron informing her that “we [have] another one,” Dorothea is thrilled because this is her chance to prove her ideas about the science of phrenology. Convinced that a person’s character, including “the propensity to kill,” is mapped out on the cranium, she is eager to interview her subject, 16-year-old Ruth Butterham, who stands accused of murdering her mistress, “slowly, by degrees.” With each visit,

Ruth tells Dorothea the sad and brutal story of grinding poverty and devastating loss that led to her involuntary servitude and appalling abuse at the dressmaking shop of Mrs. Metyard and her daughter, Kate. A talented sewer, Ruth is convinced she has a supernatural ability to kill as she stitches her emotions into the garments she makes. Of her victims, some were accidents, she tells Dorothea, but others she hated, like Rosalind Oldacre, her tormentor from school, and the abusive Metyards. The rational Dorothea believes Ruth is lying, but the girl’s phrenological profile reveals a “wonderfully retentive memory” and a tendency toward honesty. Meanwhile, Dorothea, who is secretly being courted by police constable David, must fend off her widowed father’s efforts to betrothe her to Sir Thomas Biggleswade. Purcell (The Silent Companions, 2017) cleverly plays two unreliable narrators off each other here. Ruth is more compellingly drawn, but Dorothea’s obsession with head bumps is downright creepy. Who is the dotty one? Unfortunately, the supporting characters are not as fully fleshed out, primarily serving as plot devices in the novel’s sudden and rather clunky climax.

Inspired by an 18th-century murder case involving a milliner and her daughter, Purcell’s slightly flawed novel expertly threads splashes of Grand Guignol violence with dark gothic atmosphere to make for a chilling and engrossing read.

BERG

Quin, Ann And Other Stories (168 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-911508-54-0 “A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father….”

The opening line of Quin’s (The Unmapped Country: Stories & Fragments, 2018, etc.) debut novel, originally published in 1964, firmly establishes the British midcentury experimentalist’s intentions for the story to follow. Arriving in an unnamed coastal town resembling Brighton in the offseason, Berg takes a room in a boardinghouse with only a shared particle-board wall separating him from his elderly father— estranged from Berg since childhood—and his father’s much younger mistress, Judith. As he lies in bed listening to the couple’s amorous exertions on the other side of the wall, Berg plots his father’s death as a sort of revenge gift to his mother, a fragile and perpetually flustered woman named Edith. The Oedipal strains of the plot continue to thicken as Berg embarks on a faltering seduction of the feral Judith that’s marked by increasingly desperate murder attempts against his feckless, opportunistic father. In the febrile world of postwar England, where the class-driven banalities of poverty meet the geopolitical banalities of a generation for whom heroism is something their parents did, Berg strains against his environment, his desire, his body, and his own psychology in a prose that kinks 32

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ever darker and more internal. Quin masterfully blends Berg’s memories, sense impressions, and hallucinations with snippets of preserved text from his mother’s letters so that every scene takes place in prismatic multitude in a style influenced

by Virginia Woolf and Marguerite Duras. As the plot becomes more and more ludicrous, Quin’s black humor becomes apparent. Berg is reprehensible but also the sort of sweaty bumbler whose physical comedy as he drags what he believes to be his father’s corpse across town is reminiscent of a classic French farce. Judith, a Freudian grotesque in her own right, is also a deadpan put-down artist with a weakness for impractical shoes.

The result is a caustic, destabilizing, and very funny exploration of depravity in a world where nothing seems all that depraved but where the daily exigencies of living overwhelm with their ordinary demands.

A must-read masterwork by an author whose star should shine brighter in the contemporary firmament.

THE PERFECT PLAN

Abused from childhood by his monstrous father, Liam Brennan becomes involved in a complicated abduction scheme devised by his manipulative older brother, Drew, a candidate for Delaware governor.

Drew, who married into a rich political family, has concocted a plan to have Lauren, his campaign manager (and mistress), kidnapped by Liam, who has overcompensated for feelings of weakness by acting as his brother’s muscle. At times, that has involved violence. In this case, Drew hopes to draw sympathy votes by standing by his screwed-up sibling after Lauren is dramatically “rescued” from the cabin where Liam stashed her. Little goes as planned, for the characters or the reader. Liam begins scheming to escape his personal history, which is also darkened by the sordid mistreatment and death of his alcoholic mother, and Reardon begins toying with the underpinnings of the plot.

The author likely would have fared better with one less stab of misdirection and a father with more than one dimension. And though this is not a political thriller, the election shenanigans are badly undercooked. But the novel is never less than gripping in its detailing of the sadistic treatment received by Liam and his dear, beautiful mother and the ruinous imprint it left on them. Drew is hardly in the clear, psychologically. “We’re in this together, brother,” he says, oblivious to the full truth of that statement. The nightmare keeps deepening right up to the end.

Reardon’s follow-up to The Real Michael Swann (2018) is another tense and entertaining thriller that keeps its hold on the reader even while indulging in excessive trickery.

Somber, allusive story of his native country’s troubled past by Guatemalan exile Rey Rosa (Chaos: A Fable, 2019, etc.).

The human matter of the title is not just corporeal, although the events Rey Rosa recounts in this slender novel have yielded mounds of corpses. It also includes the faint traces of those who were “disappeared” at the hands of the National Police, a body theoretically disbanded after peace accords were signed between the government and its guerrilla discontents in 1996. Among the names and facts that fill the narrator’s notebooks are a man arrested in 1941, well before such events began, for “recidivist loitering,” another for “shining boots without a license.” The police were there, always, to remove such miscreants from the streets, to say nothing of errant typists, drill operators, sawyers, and others who crossed the line. As he digs, the narrator asks questions of people who were affected by the repression of the regime and the guerrilla war alike; of one professor who narrowly escaped torture for his “subversive activities,” the narrator asks how it could be that the mostly illiterate Mayan peasants of the countryside could be assumed “to share the Marxist ideology of the revolutionary leaders,” a question that the professor finds “extremely unfriendly.” The archives themselves are unfriendly to researchers, as the narrator finds when volumes are brought to him with pages torn out, as if to hide the worst of the worst happenings from history. Secrecy lies at the heart of the story, manifesting itself in many ways, as when the narrator is asked to write about newly published diaries of the Argentinian writer Bioy Casares that Bioy himself never intended for publication. Rey Rosa is suggestive rather than explicit, his narrator slowly despairing of ever finding the truth: When asked who his story is intended for, he finally replies, “maybe it’s just for me.”

Of a piece with the author’s Dust on Her Tongue (1992) as an exploration of political violence and its troubling reverberations.

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Reardon, Bryan Dutton (352 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-5247-4365-9

HUMAN MATTER

Rey Rosa, Rodrigo Trans. by Aparicio, Eduardo Univ. of Texas (182 pp.) $19.95 paper | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-4773-1646-7

GONE TOO LONG

Roy, Lori Dutton (352 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-5247-4196-9

White supremacy and family secrets fuel the latest Southern gothic thriller by a two-time Edgar Award–winning author.

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Smith’s work is always challenging and always rewarding. spring

family known for its connection to the Ku Klux Klan. Imogene’s great-great-grandfather helped to revive the Klan in 1915. Edison Coulter—the man Imogene calls Daddy—led the Knights of the Southern Georgia Order. Her brother, Eddie, her sister, Jo Lynne, and Jo Lynne’s husband, Garland, are active members. Imogene has tried to distance herself from this legacy, and, for her mother’s sake, she has tried to make peace with the full breadth and depth of her family’s cruelty and corruption.

Then Edison dies and Imogene finds a small child living in a boarded-up house on the family’s farm. As she struggles to find the identity of this child, she uncovers a host of other crimes.

The closer she gets to the truth, the harder she has to fight to protect herself and everyone she loves against competing factions within the Klan. Imogene finally discovers that her terrible heritage is something she must fight against rather than repress. Roy (The Disappearing, 2018, etc.) takes her time weaving in backstory and letting her characters reveal themselves, and thriller fans who read for plot might get a bit impatient.

But those who settle in will be rewarded with a riveting mystery, brilliantly crafted and weighted with real-world resonance. The fact that hate groups are resurgent in the United States emerges as an essential element of this novel. The narrative is interspersed with brief historical notes beginning with the origins of the KKK—and ending with the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

A timely thriller that will stay with the reader long after the last page has been turned.

SPRING

Smith, Ali Pantheon (352 pp.) $25.95 | May 1, 2019 978-1-101-87078-5 The third installment of Smith’s Seasonal Quartet (Autumn, 2017; Winter, 2018) touches on previous themes of creativity and friendship and delves deeper into current events with a sharp-edged look at the treatment of immigrants.

In the spring of 2018, a TV director named Richard discusses a new film with a woman named Paddy, a brilliant, ailing scriptwriter with whom he started working in the 1970s. The project and their decadeslong relationship will punctuate the book’s time-bending narrative, a large swath of which concerns a few days in the following October. Paddy has died, and Richard takes a train to Kingussie, Scotland, and considers suicide. Around the same time, Brittany, a guard at one of England’s immigrantdetention centers, meets the quasi-magical 12-year-old Florence and agrees to entrain for Scotland as well. Joining the sparse cast in Kingussie (pronounced Kin-you-see, in a devilish pun) is Alda, the driver of a coffee van with no coffee. All is revealed in the spring of 2019. As in the first two books, Smith alludes to contemporary issues, such as #MeToo, Brexit, and fake news, but on immigrants she grabs a megaphone. The book’s opening chapter is a verbal collage of rant and headline. Smith uses Brittany to 34

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spotlight grim details behind the cynicism and cruelty of Britain’s immigrant-detention policy, while Alda and Florence suggest the roots of a solution. Roots, shoots, and buds abound amid myriad references to death and rebirth, from the Hanged Man pub to Orpheus, Norse mythology’s Ragnarok, and Shelley’s “The Cloud.” The three novels have a few common elements—the pain and pleasure of creativity; the pairing of an older adult and an intelligent youth; the showcasing of an English female visual artist, here Tacita Dean—but they are self-contained and increasingly urgent in their hope that art might bring change. As Alda says, “Those stories are deeply serious, all about transformation.”

Smith’s work is always challenging and always rewarding.

MESSAGE FROM THE SHADOWS

Tabucchi, Antonio Trans. by Cooley, Martha & Frenaye, Frances & Harris, Elizabeth & Parks, Tim & Romani, Antonio & Thresher, Janice M. Archipelago (328 pp.) $18.00 paper | May 14, 2019 978-1939810-15-1 A career-spanning story collection from Tabucchi (19432012; For Isabel: A Mandala, 2017, etc.) exploring the liminal spaces between dream and waking, fact and fiction.

All but one of the 22 stories here have appeared in earlier books, and taken together they make for a substantive overview of the obsessions that marked Tabucchi’s work. “The Reversal Game” and “Night, Sea, or Distance,” both set in Portugal, evoke his admiration for Fernando Pessoa, particularly his interest in the slippery melancholy state of “saudade.” “Clouds” and “The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico” are elliptical evocations of the subconscious; in the latter story, a monk’s vision of a trio of insectlike beings can be read as magical realism or a hallucination of a cloistered mind. “Cinema” is a noir satire about two movie actors who attempt to turn their roles as World War II resistance fighters into reality. “The phrase that follows this is false…” and “Little Gatsby” are arch metafictions that weave the author himself into the story. At once modern (fragmentary, interior rhetoric) and postmodern (satirical, suspect of narrative), Tabucchi possessed a lively and inimitable sensibility; “imagination gave him a reality so alive that it seemed more real than the reality he was living,” he writes of one character, a notion that guides many of these stories. Not all of these high-concept stories succeed; some are overly digressive, and Tabucchi has a habit of introducing a stray memory or reverie in a story the way a hack crime writer introduces a thug with a gun. But in magical stories like “Clouds” and “Letter from Casablanca,” he creates somber vignettes that are playful in structure and imagination. The latter is narrated by a man who discovers his capacity to impersonate a woman singer, a fulfillment of Tabucchi’s feeling that we can inhabit any environment, however foreign, if we pay close enough attention.

A fine tribute to a writer defined by his singular command of mood and mystery.

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THE SECRET LIFE OF SAM HOLLOWAY

Thomas, Rhys Park Row Books (384 pp.) $15.99 paper | Jun. 18, 2019 9780-7783-0871-3

In a floundering marriage, a mother tries to balance her daughter’s needs with those of a child she’s met only once.

The past casts a long shadow over Aubrey Finch. Her mother died in a car crash when she was a child, and her father, a longtime victim of PTSD, took his own life when she was a teenager. The crimes she committed to survive after his death are memories she shares with no one, not even her attorney husband, Paul. Bree struggles to be the best mother she can be to 3-year-old Charlotte, although she constantly reminds herself that she’s not chic enough, savvy enough, or just plain good enough for her daughter. When she finally realizes she can never tell Paul about her past, she suggests a separation, leaving Charlotte in the family home and seeing her only on weekends.

During one of these cherished visits, she takes Charlotte to the park, where she plays with a boy while Bree talks to his very young mother. A few days later, in the same park, she sees the boy lured into a SUV. She reports the abduction to the police, but as the days pass and no one reports a missing child, they start to treat her as an attention-seeking crank. An experienced hacker, Bree has the computer skills to search for the child on her own. But every step she takes to investigate the disappearance of a child whose name she doesn’t even know risks the chance that Paul will find out enough about her past to make him withdraw the privilege of seeing her own daughter.

Readers who can make it past the heroine’s unrelenting self-flagellation that Armstrong (Watcher in the Woods, 2019, etc.) tosses into the early chapters will enjoy a tense thriller with a quirky romantic twist.

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A man spends his evenings dressing up as a superhero and his days stuck in the past.

Sam Holloway is, by outward appearances, a normal man. He flies under the radar in his job at a warehouse, he has a couple of friends, and he spends his free time drinking at a local pub. But what no one else knows is that, by night, Sam becomes The Phantasm. He dons a costume and hits the city streets, ready to help people as a renegade crime fighter. It’s the only thing that helps Sam make sense of the crushing grief and loneliness he feels after the years-ago plane crash that killed his entire family. He may not have been able to save them, but at least he can help others.

Sam prefers to be by himself, at home with his comics, sticking to his routines…that is, until he meets Sarah. Right away, Sam knows that Sarah is different—she seems to understand him, and he’d rather be with her than home alone. But actually being in a relationship with her will require Sam to open up in a way that he hasn’t been able to since his family died. He may even have to give up his secret crime-fighting alter ego…but is a new relationship worth it? Or should he just stay in the comfortable, but lonely, cocoon he’s created? When Sam makes a mistake at work that spirals into a catastrophe, he realizes he can’t be anonymous forever. Thomas’ (On the Third Day, 2010, etc.) characters are all well-drawn, especially Sam, whose sympathetic backstory makes him immensely likable. Sam’s life seems almost unbearably sad at points, but that makes it all the more meaningful when he’s finally able to take off his mask—both figuratively and literally—and be brave. By opening himself up to Sarah, his friends, and even his boss, Sam might finally be able to live a life he never thought possible.

A lovely and touching exploration of grief and courage, perfect for self-proclaimed geeks and those who love them.

WHEREVER SHE GOES

Armstrong, Kelley Minotaur (304 pp.) $27.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-250-18136-7

SWEET TEA AND SECRETS

Avon, Joy Crooked Lane (288 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-64385-023-8

A suspicious handyman, a cold case, and a current murder leave a former tour guide confused but determined.

Callie Aspen is back in Heart’s Harbor, Maine, to help her great-aunt Iphy with her literary-themed tea shop and her responsibilities maintaining magnificent Haywood Hall as a venue for activities. Iphy rents her a fixer-upper cottage and puts up a notice for a handyman. It’s answered by Quinn, a |

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complete stranger whom at least Callie’s Boston terrier, Daisy, likes. Conflicted about her decision to move and give up a job she loved, Callie recalls her Christmas visit (In Peppermint Peril, 2018), when she and Deputy Falk hit it off, and wishes he hadn’t cooled off. When Falk shows up looking for a missing border collie, they find him together, but Callie temporarily hands the dog over to Quinn since the owners no longer want it. Callie has offered to organize her great-aunt’s Fourth of July tea party, and Quinn suggests she read back issues of the local paper to find material for the “living history” theme; that’s how she finds a story from 1989 about the mysterious disappearance of actress Monica Walker, whose stay at the Cliff Hotel was troubled by a former lover hounding her. Monica and a fishing boat vanished, never to be found. Did she sail off, or was she murdered?

Journalist Joe Jamison fobs off Callie and Quinn with platitudes but later admits to Callie that he knows things he’s unwilling to share with Quinn. When Jamison turns up murdered, Quinn’s furious with Callie for making him a suspect. For her part, she’s angered by all the lies he’s told her. Intrigued by the long-missing actress, Callie interviews everyone she can find who was around when she vanished and wonders whether the secrets she’s unearthed will lead to a conclusion or another death.

Not much of a mystery, though there are plenty of suspicious characters, romantic overtones, and two delightful canines.

THEIR LITTLE SECRET

Billingham, Mark Atlantic Monthly (400 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-8021-4736-3

DI Tom Thorne (The Killing Habit, 2018, etc.) is convinced that a woman who threw herself under a train at the Highgate station wasn’t a routine suicide.

He’s absolutely right, but not at all for the reasons he thinks.

Mary Fulton knows perfectly well why her sister, university lecturer Philippa Goodwin, killed herself: Because she’d been fleeced, dumped, and ghosted by Patrick Jennings, who’d bilked her out of 75,000 pounds before he took his departure from her life and her cellphone records. While he’s waiting to see if Jennings has any record of having done this before, as he surely must have done, or has left any traces the Met can follow up, Thorne is pulled into another case: the murder of 17-yearold Kevin Deane on Margate Beach. The surveillance cameras that have redefined the turf of contemporary British mysteries indicate that Kevin was bashed to death very shortly after he had sex with a woman who’s vanished as completely as Patrick Jennings. In fact, as Billingham reveals at a moment guaranteed to catch the savviest readers off guard, the two fugitives have found each other and are locked in a larcenous folie à deux bound to claim more victims, including perhaps each other.

The development of their unholy union, which has more layers than an onion, is so compelling that it shunts Thorne and 36

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his mates to supporting roles and virtually guarantees an anticlimactic ending. But Billingham, sweating both logistical and psychological details, creates a deepening sense of nightmarish surrealism along the way until Thorne has to acknowledge that “there was very little about this case that wasn’t weird.”

An object lesson in how to take an established series into shockingly deep waters without losing the thread that keeps the franchise going. The detection that normally drives each entry is the least of this one’s dark appeal.

THE BOOK SUPREMACY

Carlisle, Kate Berkley (336 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-451-49140-4

A honeymoon, a rare book, and a past history of spying create a volatile mix.

On her last day in Paris, bookbinder and restorer Brooklyn Wainwright (Bur­ ied in Books, 2018, etc.), honeymooning in France with her security-expert husband, former spy Derek Stone, buys Derek a copy of The Spy Who Loved Me as a wedding gift. Soon thereafter, she spots Derek talking to someone who seems to be an old friend and notices a man in a hoodie watching them both. Both Derek and his friend, ex-colleague Ned Davies, shrug the watcher off. Back in their San Francisco loft, Brooklyn discovers that her inexpensive purchase is worth over $7,000, and Derek finds his business in turmoil over a troublemaking employee. A visit to SPECTRE, a shop that sells books and surveillance equipment and includes a cafe and escape rooms, gives Derek the idea of using its features to build trust among his squabbling employees. Owen Gibbons, another former colleague, who owns SPECTRE, asks Brooklyn to lend her newfound book for his anniversary celebration and assures her that his top-drawer security will keep it safe.

They also meet Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, and Drummer Girl, a group of young writers who hang out in the cafe. The snake in the office is Lark, a beautiful but evil woman who hates Brooklyn for marrying Derek. Everyone but Lark enjoys the escape room experience. Each room has a different theme and is filled with clues that participants must use in order to escape in the time allowed. The plot turns deadly when someone breaks into SPECTRE, attempting to steal the book, and kills Tailor, who’s working late. The whole episode is caught on tape, but the welldisguised killer can’t be identified. Meanwhile, a note from Ned that accurately predicts his own murder suggests that Derek look for a list of names hidden in Brooklyn’s book, one of them Ned’s killer.

Charming characters, information on book restoration, and plenty of angst and spycraft do not quite make up for the mundane plot.

A Victorian lady’s pleasant life is disrupted by the murder of an acquaintance. a lady ’s guide to gossip and murder

THE CUTTING ROOM

Dyer, Ashley Morrow/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-06-279770-4

CITY OF FEAR

Enmon, Larry Crooked Lane (304 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-64385-031-3 The killing of Dallas drug lord Ricardo Salazar leads to complications both personal and professional for detectives Rob Soliz and Frank Pierce.

The detectives, part of the Dallas Criminal Intelligence Unit, were watching Salazar’s place when they saw a red-haired woman enter the building. Shortly after, they heard shots. Inside, they found a dead Salazar, a voodoo doll—but no redhead. The drug lord’s death sets off a wave of gang killings in Dallas, and Pierce wonders if drug dealer Levern might be involved because Levern reputedly has a voodoo link through his Louisiana grandmother. Since Pierce rescued Levern years earlier from a street attack, part of the detective wants Levern to be innocent. But that’s not Pierce’s biggest

A LADY’S GUIDE TO GOSSIP AND MURDER

Freeman, Dianne Kensington (304 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-4967-1690-3

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In the follow-up to Splinter in the Blood (2018), Liverpool detectives Greg Carver and Ruth Lake are on the trail of a new killer who seeks an audience for his bloody masterpieces.

DCI Greg Carver and DS Ruth Lake are each still experiencing the aftereffects of previous traumas.

Carver sees auras, resulting from a head injury and a gunshot that nearly killed him, and Lake bears invisible scars of her own. Any thoughts of Carver taking it easy fall by the wayside when they’re called to an unusual scene: Sections of human brains have been encased in plexiglass and displayed in a public place for all to see.

Turns out the brain sections belong to men who have recently gone missing, including the host of a popular reality show called Fact or Fable? Lake, who never forgets a face, dives headlong into the case with her usual hyperfocus. She’ll need it, because the killer, dubbed The Ferryman, considers himself an artist, albeit one who paints in shades of blood red. He’s building a massive social media following, and ghoulish groupies bearing his logo roam the streets, complicating the investigation. Lake is thrown into a tailspin when evidence leads directly to her estranged brother, Adam. Can Carver and Lake catch a killer before he completes his final, fatal masterpiece? Dyer (the writing duo of Margaret Murphy and Helen Pepper) keeps the twists coming while sprinkling in a few clever red herrings, and Carver and Lake are an effective and symbiotic detecting duo. Thankfully brief passages by the killer are interspersed throughout.

Fans of intricate procedurals who like things gritty and gruesome will find a lot to love.

problem. He consults Dr. Alma Hawkins, a redheaded professor of religious studies, about the voodoo angle and is convinced she’s the woman he saw at the crime scene. Yet even after another witness identifies her as being at the scene, Pierce goes on to become intimately involved with her. This rambling story is filled with clichés (words “were burned into Frank’s memory”; “cold crept through his blood”) and contradictions—Frank spends lots of time shopping for food yet “hadn’t figured out the whole eating thing cops held so dear.” The addition of a hired assassin does little to enliven the plot, and the characters, although assigned various tics, never become people the reader will care about.

One wishes the author (The Burial Place, 2018) would have used his own background in law enforcement to enhance this run-of-the-mill mystery.

A Victorian lady’s pleasant life is disrupted by the murder of an acquaintance.

Frances Wynn, Countess of Harleigh, lost her husband—and almost her money and her life—in a well-hidden scandal (A Lady’s Guide To Etiquette and Murder, 2018). She doesn’t miss her husband, who died in another woman’s bed; her money has been restored; and she now lives happily in London with her clever Aunt Hetty, her daughter, Rose, her sister, Lily, and Lily’s visiting friend, Lottie. Frances has recently introduced her husband’s cousin Charles Evingdon, one of his few relatives she likes, to widowed Mary Archer. Soon after he announces that they don’t suit each other, Mary is found murdered. Inspector Delaney, questioning Frances about the friendship, shows her a note with information about her battle with her brother-in-law over money, something only a few close friends know about. Once Frances mentions Evingdon’s connection with Mary, he immediately becomes a suspect, especially since he drove past her house on the night of the murder. Frances enjoys a mutual affection with George Hazelton, who helped her escape with her reputation intact when her husband died. Because George has connections in high places, he’s been given files hidden at Mary’s home that show she’d been collecting information ranging from harmless gossip to more dangerous secrets. The possibility that Mary was a blackmailer reveals ranks upon ranks of suspects. So George enlists Frances to go through the shorthand files. Since Hetty is busy with financial matters and Lily on plans for an engagement party, Frances asks Lottie for help. She finds her remarkably proficient in digging up information in search of alibis for people Mary had investigated. The gossip columns written by a Miss Information that Lottie’s saved seem based on Mary’s less scandalous files. Which of her more sensitive secrets fomented murder?

A charming period mystery with enough sexual tension and credible suspects to keep the reader guessing. |

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LEFT FUR DEAD

Griffin, J.M. Kensington (304 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-4967-2057-3 The owner of a rabbit farm and rescue operation needs help from her telepathic bunny friend to find a killer.

Juliette Bridge so loves caring for her bunny friends that she owns the rabbitfocused Fur Bridge Farm. Her particular favorite is Bun, the pet bunny who has the unique ability to share his thoughts with Jules telepathically. Bun just loves being right, and he feels a certain sense of told-you-so when he and Jules are out for a walk and he spots a frosty hand rising from the cold ground. Hard as it may be to believe, the pair has stumbled on a corpse right on the grounds of Fur Bridge Farm. When Jules reports her discovery to Sheriff Carver, he tells her that the body is that of Arthur Freeman, a man whom Jules and Bun think they’ve never heard of until they realize he’s Arty the Mime. Though Arty and Jules weren’t close, Jules knows him as a co-performer at local events where she’s showcased her rabbits, and he seemed a kind man who kept to himself (perhaps as only a mime can). Bun insists that he and Jules figure out what happened to Arty but soon realizes that Jules and the farm may have been the true targets of the killer.

With the help of longtime farmhand Jess and new hire Lizzy, Jules tries to track down whomever has a grudge against her and her bunny family.

Written simply, without nuance or character complexity, Griffin’s debut offers little beyond that telepathic bunny to distinguish itself from the pack.

ROBERT B. PARKER’S BUCKSKIN

Knott, Robert Putnam (336 pp.) $27.00 | May 7, 2019 978-0-7352-1827-7

Marshal Virgil Cole and Deputy Marshall Everett Hitch face what amounts to an underground range war in Appaloosa.

The minute rancher James McCormick found gold on the parcel of land he’d purchased from Henri Baptiste, Baptiste rued the sale and tried everything he could to persuade McCormick and his brother, Daniel, to sell it back. The measures the Baptiste Group took included hiring seven gunslingers headed by fearsome Victor Bartholomew to intimidate the McCormicks and their miners, two of whom have now vanished. Nothing daunted, the McCormicks have engaged Edward Hodge and some gunmen of their own. As each side swaggers and threatens and waits for the other to back down, tensions rise across the town’s 4,000 souls. But dressmaker Allie French, Cole’s sweetie, still keeps 38

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her sights fixed firmly on Appaloosa Days, the celebration of local culture she’s enticed visiting actress/singer Martha Kathryn to join. Since sparks have instantly flown between Martha and Hitch, the lawmen have an even greater stake than usual in keeping the peace. But that promises to be harder than they know. An unnamed kid has broken out of jail, traced his roots to Appaloosa, and set his course for the troubled town, apparently robbing and killing everyone in his path except for a teamster’s wife whose Amazonian figure makes her even more intimidating than him. In short order, she takes him to bed, stokes the fires of his quest for vengeance, and tags along to provide logistical support. Cole and Hitch, who’ve now appeared in more novels written by Knott (Robert B. Parker’s Revelation, 2017, etc.) than by their creator, have little to do but stand around, tote up the rising body count and occasionally augment it, and offer gruffly monosyllabic responses to questions that come their way as the perfect storm gathers to strike their hometown.

Earnest, heavier than usual on old-fashioned detective work, and ritualistic to a fault. If you’re surprised by anything that happens, you need to read more Westerns.

BLOODSHED

Lister, Michael Pulpwood Press (310 pp.) $27.99 | Jun. 10, 2019 978-1-947606-37-1 A stark look at one of the tragedies of our time: school shootings.

Potter County deputy sheriff Chip Jeffers, Potter High School resource officer Kim Miller, and guidance counselor LeAnn Dunne agree: Someone’s planning a school shooting.

Notes found in the boys’ bathroom remind LeAnn of Columbine. In a pre-emptive attempt to stop trouble, they notify the faculty; Chip calls on prison chaplain/sheriff ’s investigator/recovering alcoholic John Jordan (And the Sea Became Blood, 2019, etc.); and Kim and LeAnn compile lists of the students they think most likely to carry out such a horrible crime. The names include Tristan Ward and Denise Royal, arty goth types putting on a pretentious, badly written play, and snarky Mason Nickols and Dakota Emanuel, the only students to make both women’s lists. John reasons that the attempt will take place on the day of the play, the anniversary of the Columbine massacre. After police officers and teachers search the building and find nothing, the play goes off as planned. That night, at a local bar, a couple of nonalcoholic beers give John the yen for something stronger, and he falls off the wagon. The next morning, explosions and gunshots rock Potter High, and John, arriving eight minutes into the attack, rushes to help Kim, who’s wounded and alone. In the smoke and confusion John and Kim are fired upon by a student who’s only trying to help and whom John shoots and critically wounds. Even after an investigation clears John, he can’t forgive himself, and he continues to drink.

Despite warnings by his boss and attacks by the press, he won’t give up his attempt to identify the masked killers.

A relentless obituary writer gets a little too involved in her work. the ugly truth

THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER

Every word rings true in this disturbing demonstration of how hard it is to stop a massacre even when you know it’s coming. The aftermath is heartbreaking and the ending a real shocker.

MURDER IN THE CITY OF LIBERTY

McMillan, Rachel Thomas Nelson (320 pp.) $15.99 paper | May 28, 2019 978-0-7852-1696-4

A century and more after he solved a dozen baffling crimes without ever leaving the A.B.C. tearoom where he held court for an impressionable reporter, the anonymous hero created by the author of The Scarlet Pimpernel is back in print.

The setup never varies: Polly Burton, of the Evening Observer, sits across the table from a nameless old man who asks her opinion about recent unsolved mysteries, summarizes the events of the cases himself, gloats over her feeble efforts at solving them, and then looks up from the string he’s been compulsively knotting just long enough to produce a dazzling solution himself. The first and best-known of them, the endlessly reprinted “The Fenchurch Street Mystery,” sets the pattern for most of the others in its deceptively simple tale of a down-at-heels man found murdered shortly after attempting to put the touch on an old friend he’d saved from a criminal charge years before the friend left England for Russia and prospered beyond the victim’s dreams.

After offering his solution, the tweed-suited sleuth returns to solve a series of robberies, assaults, and murders whose settings, ranging as far from London as Edinburgh and Dublin, never require him to leave his chair. The mysteries, heavily dependent on disguises, family loyalties, interchangeable identities, and 180-degree reversals, are so repetitious that they’re best consumed in the way they’re solved, one per sitting. But there’s no denying the old man’s gift for brisk, sarcastic expositions and mordantly epigrammatic solutions or his powerful influence on a generation of more famous golden-age sleuths and stories that followed.

In his grasp of both logic and theater, in fact, the eponymous sleuth is both the most successful challenger to his great contemporary Sherlock Holmes and an indispensable model for all the armchair detectives who follow.

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A professional and potentially romantic pair dig into connected cases, one on housing development and one on discrimination against a local baseball great.

Chicago, 1940. Luca Valari may be a crook, but he’s enough of a softie to keep his cousin, clean-cut Hamish DeLuca, away from his interest in a housing development in Boston’s Fiske’s Wharf. Back in Beantown, Hamish and his investigative partner, Regina “Reggie” Van Buren, are drawn in to whatever is going on at the wharf, though at first they don’t connect Luca to their own work. In the two years since some sort of showdown with Luca at the Flamingo (Murder at the Flamingo, 2018), the New Haven–-native Van Buren, whose insistence on working and wearing pants fits in with her modern-girl ideals, has formed a detective agency with the anxious Canadian who can’t keep his eyes off her. After the two are as quickly fired as hired on the Fiske’s Wharf project, they decide to look into it on their own time and dime, relying on Hamish’s buddy Nate Reis, an expert in housing development, for more information.

The city is awash in xenophobia linked to the Christian Patriots, who’ve been proselytizing around town. Things get complicated when black baseball player Errol Parker hires Reggie and Hamish to look into some pranks that seem to be escalating to bullying and beyond. Meanwhile, Reggie, who’s getting parental pressure to marry former flame Vaughan Vanderlaan, is still exploring her feelings for Hamish. He loves her, she loves him, but the corresponding will-they, won’t-they plotline is dragged out without raising the stakes, taking up substantial real estate without yielding much payoff.

McMillan’s period romance supplies conscientious ofthe-time detail, well-researched background, a murder halfway through that gets wrapped up miles before the end, and a barely-there baseball subplot. None of it will keep you up past your bedtime.

Orczy, Baroness Pushkin Press (288 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-78227-523-7

THE UGLY TRUTH

Orr, Jill Prospect Park Books (280 pp.) $24.95 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-945551-46-8 A relentless obituary writer gets a little too involved in her work while investigating murders in a small Virginia town filled with big personalities.

Tuttle Corner is rocked when not one, but two people are murdered within a single week. Not that folks were too surprised when town miscreant Justin Balzichek met an unsavory end—for him, the question had always been not whether but when—but it’s quite a surprise that noted lobbyist Dale Mountbatten’s wife, Greer, |

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is dispatched so shortly afterward. When obituarist and generally curious person Riley Ellison goes to the local funeral home to get the facts of the unsolved cases, her efforts are hampered because her friendly funeral director has been replaced by one Ashley Campbell, a mischievous grouch who seems determined to use Riley to express his own problems. Yet Riley persists in investigating, if only because the murders appear to have chased restaurateur Rosalee Belanger out of town, and she can’t live another day without Rosalee’s croissants. Though Riley’s colleague Holman is typically a human computer, more focused on the practical than the potential, Riley notices that he’s fixated on the murders as well, and she realizes that Rosalee has the same place in Holman’s heart that croissants have in hers.

It’s just as well that the current cases are occupying Riley. Her colleague and friend Flick has shown new interest in the sudden death of Riley’s grandfather several years before, and the more recent murders take Riley’s mind at least briefly off fears of what Flick may discover. Another distraction, though perhaps less welcome, is the reinvention of Regina H., who previously self-identified as Riley’s Personal Romance ConciergeTM and is actively rebranding herself as a life coach with #allthehashtags (but #noneoftheanswers, according to Riley).

Orr fails to capture the magic of earlier series entries (The Bad Break, 2018, etc.), and her humor is less inventive in a franchise that remains good but not great.

THE BLACK JERSEY

Patterson, Jorge Zepeda Trans. by Obejas, Achy Random House (336 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-984801-06-7

A brilliant and devious criminal turns the Tour de France into a life-or-death race.

Following a glossary of cycling terms and a cast of characters, the story kicks off in the arch narrative voice of Marc Moreau, a “domestique”—that is, a nonleading member of a cycling team, “from the French for ‘servant.’ ” He’s been aware of both the star quality and cockiness of American cyclist Steve Panata from the moment they both joined the tour in 2006. Ten years on, Steve is at the top of his game and he and Marc have developed a deep synchronicity. As the extended 2016 race proceeds in stages, with regular updates of the leaderboard for the reader, British cyclist Saul Fleming is found dead in his bathtub, his wrists slit. At first his death looks like suicide. But after police comb through the crime scene, they decide it was probably murder, for Fleming drowned with bruises on his body as if he’d been held down. When the police confidentially share their findings with Marc, asking for his help getting inside the cycling circuit because he’s a former military policeman, he seizes the role of amateur sleuth. His close relationship with the other cyclists is complicated by his new love, the mechanic Fiona. Worried that this wonderful development may compromise his synchronicity 40

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with Steve, Marc still manages to identify one of Steve’s chief rivals as the likely killer, but how to prove it? When a suspicious accident lands Steve in the hospital, Marc realizes just how urgent it is to catch the killer.

Patterson (Milena, 2017) offers complex character portraits, a dramatic depiction of the Tour de France, and a nifty whodunit.

A DANGEROUS COLLABORATION

Raybourn, Deanna Berkley (336 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 12, 2019 978-0-451-49071-1

An intrepid lepidopterist and her sometime lover are caught up in yet another extravagant adventure in 1888.

Returning to London from Madeira, Veronica Speedwell gets the cold shoulder from her companion in mystery solving, Stoker TempletonVane (A Treacherous Curse, 2018, etc.), who’s still furious that he was left out of the unexplained trip. He’s not happy, either, that his elder brother, Tiberius, Lord Templeton-Vane, wants Veronica to accompany him to St. Maddern’s Isle off the coast of Cornwall to visit the castle of his old friend Malcolm Romilly, who’s promised to give Veronica some larvae of the Romilly Glasswing butterfly, thought to be extinct. What Tiberius doesn’t tell Veronica—yet—is that she’ll have to pose as his fiancee to gain the approval of their Catholic host, who wouldn’t approve of an unchaperoned single woman. Upon their arrival in Cornwall, they find Stoker, refusing to be left out, waiting to join a group that includes Malcolm; his sister, Mertensia, a tireless gardener; his sister-in-law, Helen; her son, Caspian; and a crew of servants directed by longtime family retainer Mrs. Trengrouse. The island is large enough for farms and a village whose superstitious natives tell tales of piskies and mermaids. Stoker and his brother constantly snipe over Veronica, whom Tiberius works to seduce and Stoker secretly wants to marry. Although she loves Stoker, Veronica fears he’s never gotten over the dreadful marriage that almost killed him and is so independent herself that she’s afraid to commit to more than a physical relationship. Meanwhile, Malcolm’s wife, Rosamund, vanished on their wedding day three years ago, and no one knows whether she’s dead or alive. When Malcolm’s discovery of Rosamund’s traveling bag makes it all but certain that she’s dead, he asks for Veronica and Stoker’s help in finding out what happened to her.

Slowly, secrets from the past are revealed, and the sleuths find themselves threatened by someone desperate to keep those secrets buried forever.

The astute and unconventional Edwardian pair seem to have entered the pages of a gothic novel for an exhilarating new tale full of wild adventures and treacherous relationships.

JANE DARROWFIELD, PROFESSIONAL BUSYBODY

eight guests to his mansion on a snowy night. He embarrasses his daughter, Eiko, by suggesting that one of the male guests might be her new husband. Once everyone has been locked into their rooms, a series of unusual events begins. In her room at the top, guest Kumi Aikura sees a threatening man appear, impossibly, at her window. It’s a snowy night, but no footprints show up anywhere around the house except when the party ventures out to see what they think is a corpse but turns out to be an antique doll Kozaburo purchased in Czechoslovakia. Whoever placed it there also decapitated it. The next morning, when guest Kazuya Ueda, the chauffeur of industrialist Eikichi Kikuoka, fails to appear for breakfast, his locked room is broken into and he’s found dead, bound to his bed frame. Enter a team of police, led

by DCI Saburo Ushikoshi, who begins the methodical questioning of suspects and the (armchair) sleuthing.

The prolific Shimada (The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, 2015) deserves to have more of his work translated into English.

He creates a delightfully intricate murder puzzle with retro charm, bound to tantalize readers.

Ross, Barbara Kensington (272 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-4967-1994-2

science fiction and fantasy THE BOOK OF FLORA

Elison, Meg 47North (332 pp.) $14.95 paper | Apr. 23, 2019 978-1-5420-4209-3

The restless conclusion of The Road to Nowhere trilogy, set generations after a virulent disease killed most men and even more women, making women a precious commodity and childbirth a hazardous enterprise.

Flora, a transwoman raised as a sex slave, tells her story from essentially two points of view: as an old woman writing her autobiography after many years of residence on Bambritch (Bainbridge) Island near Settle (Seattle) as an invasion looms; and as a younger woman continuing the plot from The Book of Etta (2017), sprinkled with memories of her difficult childhood and adolescence. Having killed the Estiel (St. Louis) warlord known as the Lion, the survivors of his harem have taken somewhat uneasy refuge in the underground town of Ommun, a matriarchal Mormon community led by Alma, whose many successful pregnancies and supposedly divine visions have led her followers to believe her a prophet. Flora; her lover Alice, a skilled herbalist and occasional abortionist; the transman Eddy, Flora’s unrequited love and one of Alice’s other lovers; and a small group of followers reject Alma’s theocratic governance

MURDER IN THE CROOKED HOUSE

Shimada, Soji Trans. by Kawai, Louise Heal Pushkin Press (352 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-78227-456-8 A locked-room mystery in a uniquely built mansion is not so much a whodunit as a how-done-it…illustrated!

A list of dramatis personae, a detailed drawing of the Ice Floe Mansion, and a plummy prologue theatrically set the scene. The story is divided into four “Acts,” each of them in turn divided into “Scenes,” with the final act preceded by a challenge to the reader. The puzzle begins when oil executive Kozaburo Hamamoto invites a diverse group of |

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A Massachusetts retiree with a knack for discovering secrets lands a new gig.

Jane Darrowfield, who has a reputation among her friends as a problemsolver, is offered a job at Walden Spring, an adult community in Concord. But director Paul Peavey is evasive about what exactly the job involves. When Jane, at his suggestion, moves into an apartment pretending to be a potential long-term resident, she sees that Walden Spring has rival cliques, just like high school. Because she’s already met Evangeline Murray, a friend of a friend, Jane lunches with the artists. The leather-jacketed bad boys are led

by Mike Witkowski and the popular preppies by Bill Finnerty, whose wife is in the Alzheimer’s unit. At the same time, Jane, who’s vetting men from a dating site for a friend, finds herself drawn to Harry Welch and agreeing to another date after years of wariness ever since her husband took off with another woman and most of their money, leaving her to climb back to financial security on her own. Jane soon discovers disturbing undercurrents at beautiful Walden Spring, especially between Bill and Mike. When Bill’s found beaten to death on the golf course, Jane’s ready to go home. Since Peavey and the police prefer that she stay, she decides to do a little snooping. She’s especially interested in the identity of a man she’s seen walking across the community’s golf course late at night. The case takes an unexpected turn with the discovery that Bill and Mary Finnerty were killed in a car crash 12 years ago. So who are the residents passing as Bill and Mary?

A sprightly new cozy series for Ross (Steamed Open, 2018, etc.) with plenty of entertaining characters, hidden clues, and a touch of romance.

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and return to the world above, where they search for somewhere that will allow them to live without the threat of slavers and rigid expectations of gender and sexuality. The market is currently flooded with dystopias in which women are valued for their breeding and rarity as sexual receptacles, where the divide between women and men has grown and the definition of gender is more rigidly reinforced. This series, and this book in particular, refreshingly argues that despite violent opposition, an imbalance in the number of women and men might offer more freedom for some to make their own definitions of gender, sexuality, and selfhood and that even in a world where fertility is damaged and pregnancy a risk, one doesn’t need to devote oneself to having or facilitating the having of babies to be valuable.

If the story has a flaw, it is the author’s penchant to suddenly introduce a meaty bit of plot just before the book ends and then quickly conclude without fully exploring it.

A thoughtful extrapolation of contemporary gender and sexuality issues in need of wider discussion and understanding.

THE GAMESHOUSE

North, Claire Orbit (448 pp.) $15.99 paper | May 28, 2019 978-0-316-49156-3 A twisty tale of intrigue and games played for the highest possible stakes.

The Gameshouse is always the same, though it is not always in the same city; always home to a strange crowd of gamblers, some of whom don’t seem to belong in this time and place. If you play well, you may be invited to join the higher league. There, your pieces are people, and you must wager part of yourself to join the game: “Your skill with language, perhaps. Your love of colour....Years of your life.”

We begin in Venice, 1610, where a woman named Thene will be invited to play a game of Kings. We will travel many miles and centuries from this beginning but must always remember that anyone we meet might later become a player—or a piece to be played. North (84K, 2018, etc.) creates a dark, atmospheric world in 17th-century Venice, then moves to a high-stakes, suspenseful game of hide-and-seek all over Thailand in 1938, and finally a world-spanning game of chess played for control of the Gameshouse itself. The first two parts are stronger than the third, because the stakes feel more immediate and less theoretical, but the whole adds up to something quite rich.

An unusual, intriguing novel that’s both a paranoid fantasy about a world where anyone can be bought and a broody tale about what really matters when anything can be gambled away.

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ALPHA AND OMEGA

Turtledove, Harry Del Rey (480 pp.) $28.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-399-18149-8

This, the latest from the prolific purveyor of alternate-world science fiction (Armistice, 2017, etc.), offers a startling premise: What if there was unequivocal proof that God exists?

Two key events trigger amazing revelations in the Holy Land. In accordance with an ancient prophesy, Israel begins to raise the Third Temple in Jerusalem. And, losing patience after a horrible act of terrorism, authorities permit archaeological explorations beneath the Temple Mount.

Subsequent events prove beyond all doubt that God is present and purposefully intervening in temporal affairs. The implications for humankind, and for followers of the Abrahamic religions in particular, clearly are profound. Is there a divine plan?

Should Jews expect the Messiah? Christians, the Last Days?

Muslims, the Mahdi? The author explores these and other questions through his trademark series of vignettes involving disparate characters and viewpoints, including secular American archaeologist Eric Katz, U.S. televangelist Lester Stark, Israeli scholar and theologian Shlomo Kupferman, Palestinian leader Haji Ibrahim, and Gabriela Sandoval and Brandon Nesbitt, hosts of a wildly popular American television show, who care nothing for religion but know what makes great viewing—and are prepared to risk death to get it. How readers will react to all this is far from clear. Turtledove is advancing an unambiguous proposition that brooks no argument. Does it therefore follow that non-Abrahamic religions are false or irrelevant? And it’s difficult to reconcile the God that initially manifests—closely resembling the uncompromisingly biblical force of nature that tormented Job—with the astounding act of communion that forms the novel’s zenith. Maybe the author’s just overreached himself in providing answers while denying any possibility for skepticism or doubt. Like similar flaws in another, famous work of theological science fiction, James Blish’s A Case of Conscience, some things might have been better left cryptic.

Heady on one level and perturbing on quite another.

EMPIRE OF GRASS

Williams, Tad Daw Books (688 pp.) $30.00 | May 7, 2019 978-0-7564-1062-9

The shelf-bending second installment in Williams’ Last King of Osten Ard saga (after The Witchwood Crown, 2017) exemplifies the very best—and worst—that epic fantasy has to offer.

The novel begins with Osten Ard— which is inhabited by mortals and a variety of fantastical

A dowager countess is mistaken for a lady of the night by her aristocratic neighbor. the earl next door

races—in flux. Although the kingdoms and factions are seemingly at peace, increasing political tensions and deep-seated animosity have turned the continent into a powder keg about to explode into all-out war. When King Simon’s grandson and heir to the throne, Prince Morgan, is thought to be kidnapped by savage “grasslanders” and his wife, Queen Miriamele, is caught up in a violent uprising while attending a wedding in far-off Nabban, he is left alone to deal with the chaos closing in around him. The nomadic grasslanders have a new leader who is uniting the clans for war, and the near-immortal Norns are inexplicably gathering and following their ageless queen into Hayholt, King Simon’s home. Williams initially braids together the multiple plot threads adeptly—an impressive feat when considering the multitude of characters he’s following. The grand-scale storytelling, however, does become unwieldy in extended sequences, and that narrative bloat negatively impacts the book’s momentum. Additionally, the ending is not a conclusion at all but a respite. Readers who have spent countless hours immersed in this story may be less than pleased with the abrupt stoppage.

But the inconsistent pacing and unsatisfying ending are more than counterbalanced by deep character development, impressive plot intricacy, and rich worldbuilding. The extensive histories and mythologies that Williams has created in this realm (beginning in 1988 with The Dragonbone Chair) are comparable to fantasy’s most meticulously rendered realms, like Tolkien’s Middle-earth and Martin’s Westeros.

Pure, unadulterated epic fantasy—this 600-plus-page doorstopper will leave readers simultaneously satisfied and frustrated knowing how long they’ll have to wait to find out what transpires next in the sprawling realm of Osten Ard.

THE LAST TSAR’S DRAGONS

Yolen, Jane & Stemple, Adam Tachyon (192 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jun. 19, 2019 978-1-61696-287-6

Master fantasist Yolen (How To Fracture a Fairy Tale, 2018, etc.) and her son Stemple collaborate on a novella that merges dragons with the Russian Revolution.

Cycling among the points of view of the last tsar, Nicholas II, his wife, the tsarina Alexandra, the notorious Grigori Rasputin, Leon Trotsky, and an unnamed court official, the story tells of the downfall of tsarist Russia and the rise of the revolution—but if you think you know the story, think again. Because in this Russia, the tsar sends out flights of black-scaled, fire-breathing dragons to harass his enemies, especially the Jews, and Leon Trotsky (known in the book by his birth name, Bronstein) has managed to secretly raise an army of his own dragons—these are red and fighting for the revolution. Despite the high stakes, the story feels quite intimate as it leads us to gaze on each player in turn: the tsarina, a foreigner to her husband’s country,

plagued with worry over her ill son and believing that only Rasputin can save him; Rasputin himself, driven by his madness, lusts, and ambition; Bronstein, who struggles to keep hold of the weapon he has given to the revolution; and our nameless court dignitary, whose hatred of Rasputin drives much of the action. The dragons themselves are never afterthoughts—their effect on the characters, even when they are not present, worms its way into nearly every scene—but they are also not the players of the drama. Like the impending revolution, their presence simply hangs over the characters with the shadow of brutal, impersonal violence.

Where the characters end up is not surprising—we know the history, after all—but getting there is delightful, carried along by crisp, tight prose and the authors’ marvelous imaginations.

r om a n c e THE EARL NEXT DOOR

Grey, Amelia St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $7.99 paper | May 28, 2019 978-1-250-21430-0

While opening a girls’ boarding school, a dowager countess is mistaken for a lady of the night by her aristocratic neighbor, leading to affinity and a scorching affair, but will love be able to overcome divergent goals?

Adeline, the Dowager Countess of Wake, doesn’t exactly mourn her husband, who went down on a ship. Their marriage was complicated, and he’d bullied her when she couldn’t conceive. After befriending two fellow widows of the wreck and learning of the dire straits of the crew’s families, Adeline decides to start a boarding school for the daughters and sisters of those men. The ideal property is next door to Lyon Marksworth, the Earl of Lyonwood, whose aunt convinces him there’s a brothel moving in. When he enters Adeline’s home uninvited to confront her, she has just tried on an intriguing piece of lingerie that furthers his misconceptions. However, despite her problematic attire, rather than cowing to him, she berates him for his unacceptable behavior, and he is intrigued by the fiery countess who dresses him down. Once the girls move in, Adeline and Lyon find themselves more and more attracted to each other as they navigate students and lords behaving badly, meddling family, and a neighbor with a spyglass. Lyon has waited his whole life to find Adeline, and he wants to marry her, but she refuses: “Because I’ve been a wife and found I’m not suited to marriage and have no desire to entangle myself in it again.”

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more. The impasse may keep them apart. Author Grey’s unconventional meet-cute, compelling series backbone, and authentic characters move an interesting plot forward, but the not-completely-surprising surprise ending undercuts the intensity of the central conflict.

An engaging series start with hints of secrets to unfurl in subsequent books.

THE PURSUITS OF LORD KIT CAVANAUGH

Laurens, Stephanie Harlequin MIRA (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Apr. 30, 2019 978-07783-6939-4

When Lord Christopher “Kit” Cavanaugh launches a yacht-building company, he inadvertently displaces a school run by Sylvia Buckleberry, a bridesmaid from his brother’s wedding. As the two fight mysterious enemies to keep both ventures progressing, their negative first impressions give way to tender feelings.

Realizing his passion for sailing could be directed into a business, Kit prepares to take “his first true step into the future he was determined to craft and claim.” Unfortunately, when he rents warehouse space in Bristol’s dock area, he’s unaware that it will effectively kick a school out of the building. When the school’s director confronts him, they recognize each other from his brother’s wedding, where vicar’s daughter Sylvia served as a bridesmaid. Sylvia knows Kit as a feckless aristocrat from her season, and she impressed Kit at the wedding as cold, rigid, and distant. He is stunned by the impassioned advocate who demands his intervention. For Kit, sponsoring a new space for the school is the right thing to do, but it also garners community good will and, thanks to the students’ connections, introduces him to a wealth of skilled but unemployed tradesmen, since the shipbuilding industry has shifted to iron while his yachts will be built from wood. Getting his enterprise off the ground and the school settled keeps Kit and Sylvia close, yet as their feelings toward each other shift into a courtship, a series of dangerous attacks against her school and his workshop escalate. Longtime romance favorite Laurens continues the Cavanaugh series by connecting two figures who demonstrate courage and discernment in presenting their true selves and looking beyond their initial misconceptions in order to find happiness.

Laurens’ subtle nods to forgiveness, community-building, and second chances lend extra character and warmth to a winning love story.

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KINGDOM OF EXILES

Martineau, Maxym M. Sourcebooks Casablanca (400 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-4926-8938-6 A woman exiled from her home realm makes a deal with the assassin who has been hired to kill her.

In this debut fantasy romance, Leena Edenfrell is a Charmer, a person with the ability to bond with Pokemon-like magical beasts that can talk and communicate telepathically. Charmers can then harness the powers of their beasts for everything from healing to fighting. After Leena escapes an assassination attempt, she cuts a deal with Noc, the leader of the assassins’ guild: She will provide him with four beasts in exchange for her life. Not realizing he intends to double-cross her, Leena sets out on a quest with Noc and three of his male assassins to capture the promised beasts. Leena has a hidden agenda of her own—to charm a beast so powerful she will be allowed to return home and prove herself innocent of the crime that forced her into exile. As Noc and Leena travel in search of beasts, Noc is determined to quash the attraction he feels toward Leena. He has been cursed, and anyone he loves platonically or romantically dies a terrible death; he is determined to keep the people around him safe by staying emotionally distant. The worldbuilding and quest plot overwhelm the romance between Noc and Leena, which feels unconvincing.

The book is full of problematic elements. The continuous use of dark and light metaphors seems both dated and lazy. Although Leena is a strong woman, there are no other well-developed female characters. Most damning, Martineau fully commits to a world in which the charming of humans is both torturous and a heinous crime, leaving readers to wonder why it’s acceptable for a permanent subclass of magical creatures to be captured, enslaved, and used by Charmers.

An unsatisfying romance in a flawed fantasy world.

nonfiction BLEEDING OUT The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence—and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: ELDERHOOD by Louise Aronson.........................................................47 ASSAD, OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY by Sam Dagher................... 55

Abt, Thomas Basic (304 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-5416-4572-1

THE SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY by Gabriel García Márquez; ed. by Cristóbal Pera; trans. by Anne McLean.....................................58 BALLPARK by Paul Goldberger...........................................................59 A PRIMER FOR FORGETTING by Lewis Hyde..................................65 THIS AMERICA by Jill Lepore............................................................ 69 THE QUEEN by Josh Levin................................................................. 69 THE FATE OF FOOD by Amanda Little...............................................70 MAMASKATCH by Darrel J. McLeod................................................. 71 THE DOOMSDAY CALCULATION by William Poundstone............... 75 THE CROWDED HOUR by Clay Risen................................................ 77 PICNIC COMMA LIGHTNING by Laurence Scott...............................79 THE WHITE DEVIL’S DAUGHTERS by Julia Flynn Siler.................. 80 THE IMPEACHERS by Brenda Wineapple.......................................... 84 ASSAD, OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY How One Family’s Lust for Power Desstroyed Syria

Dagher, Sam Little, Brown (560 pp.) $29.00 | May 28, 2019 978-0-316-55672-9

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A study of how to reduce gun violence in low-income urban neighborhoods, a step the author sees as a necessary precursor to bringing neighborhood residents up from poverty.

Abt is well-positioned to make his arguments: He is currently a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he was a policymaker in Barack Obama’s Justice Department and studied urban violence in the administration of New York governor Andrew Cuomo. In addition, Abt has viewed gun violence as a Washington, D.C., high school teacher and as a New York City prosecutor. The author opens with an emergency room triage analogy: Doctors must halt a patient’s bleeding before even considering long-term recovery options; likewise, various parties must pull together to stop gun violence before moving on to broader solutions regarding employment, better wages, and other factors taken for granted in safer enclaves. In this “work of forward-looking pragmatism,” Abt skillfully mixes academic research, information about previously instituted pilot programs, and interviews with families devastated by gun-related homicides to propose a multistep solution that he believes will reduce gun deaths in cities across the country. The author argues that identifying individuals who carry out the violence as well as specific neighborhood corners where much of the shooting occurs constitute straightforward tasks. A mixture of prevention and punishment is vital, and Abt is confident that academic theory and street knowledge can coexist. “Perhaps surprisingly to some,” he writes, “social scientists and the street are largely in agreement on urban violence, one reinforcing the other as they see the same phenomenon through different lenses, with each perspective being necessary but not sufficient for a full understanding of the issue.” The author also addresses relevant issues of race and class, noting that “violence is not simply a manifestation of poverty; it is a force that perpetuates poverty as well.”

A useful addition to the necessarily growing literature on urban violence. (4 b/w charts)

MY PARENTS by Aleksandar Hemon..................................................65

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unique treats in april DIGNITY Seeking Respect in Back Row America

Photo courtesy Leah Overstreet

While I freely admit that I’m a sucker for any kind of food or chef-related book, many of them are similar: a roughly chronological, straightforward memoir format in which an acclaimed chef takes a bittersweet look back at the grueling years of work in a variety of kitchens, interwoven with childhood memories of mom’s or grandma’s cooking and some recipes.

This month, however, features two unique food books. The first is from one of our most well-respected food critics, Ruth Reichl. In Save Me the Plums (April 2), she recounts her rise through the ranks from New West to the Los Angeles Times to the New York Times and, finally, Gourmet. What makes this memoir stand out is her focus on the process of “magazine making” at Gourmet. As our reviewer writes in a starred review, “she describes the exhilaration of working with talented, quirky staffers, and she provides vivid snapshots of Condé Nast honchos, including publishers [Si] Newhouse (supportive) and Gina Sanders (who “relished” fights) as well as the “large, loud,” yet appealing CEO Steve Florio, who regaled her with tales of Newhouse (“You know that Roy Cohn was his closest friend?”). Throughout, the author’s interesting memories, smooth prose, and sharp eye for what makes a good dish make for an “absolutely delightful reading experience.”

In Hotbox (April 9), another refreshing take on the food and restaurant business, Matt and Ted Lee, the well-known Southern cookbook authors, examine the catering industry.

The brothers spent four years interviewing professionals and working with a catering firm, and they offer intriguing and consistently revealing glimpses behind the scenes of one of the most overlooked corners of the food-service industry. Our reviewer writes that “this book will give readers a newfound appreciation of caterers’ artistry and their constant perch on the precipice of failure.” —E.L.

Arnade, Chris Photos by the author Sentinel (304 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-525-53473-0

A journey across America reveals stories from communities forgotten and

destroyed.

In 2011, Wall Street bond trader Arnade, who often took long walks around New York, decided to explore the Hunts Point neighborhood of the South Bronx, an area he had been warned was dangerous and forbidding. What he found surprised him: a “welcoming, warm, and beautiful” community, unfairly stigmatized, he thought, because of drugs and sex work. For the next year, he frequented dive bars, McDonald’s, and evangelical churches, where residents told him about the complexities and challenges of their lives, a reality that contrasted starkly with his “cloistered and privileged” world. Questioning his own values, the author quit his job to immerse himself fully in Hunts Point: talking, listening, and trying to help—driving people to detox, prison, or a hospital or doling out small amounts of cash to help them get by. Unfortunately, he got pulled into their lives more fully than he had planned and, for a short time, ended up abusing drugs and alcohol. However, his experience led him to embark on a larger project: a journey to other poor, neglected neighborhoods—“black, white, Hispanic, rural, urban”—to document, in photographs and narrative, life in the nation’s “back row.” In every community, Arnade listened to residents’ life stories: about drug addiction, alcoholism, homelessness, abuse, unemployment, and eviction. He listened, also, as people told him about the importance of faith to help them make peace with their lack of control over their lives and connect them with “something beyond the material.” Arnade strives to afford each individual respect for choices made and understanding for opportunities denied. Although he concludes that everyone—in the front row and the back—must listen, keep from being judgmental, and understand others’ values, he offers no other suggestions for changing an exclusionary, exploitative, racist system that has created vast economic and social inequality, drug addiction, and humiliation. Some analysis would have given this moving volume more heft.

Candid, empathetic portraits of silenced men, women, and children. (4-color photos throughout)

Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction and managing editor.

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Empathetic, probing, and often emotionally moving narratives on appreciating the power and the pain of aging. elderhood

ELDERHOOD Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life

RAINBOW WARRIOR My Life in Color

Baker, Gilbert Chicago Review Press (240 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-64160-150-4

Aronson, Louise Bloomsbury (464 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-62040-546-8

The audacious life and work of the designer of the symbolic rainbow flag.

Gay rights advocate Baker (1951-2017) passionately charts his rise to prominence from a stifling Methodist childhood in 1950s Kansas, where he secretly danced in his aunt’s old prom dress and became conflicted about his burgeoning homosexuality and obsession with art. Drafted into the Army at 19, he endured a harrowing two-year stint but landed securely in San Francisco at the dawn of the gay rights movement, a sure sign of things to come. Baker writes briskly and amiably about making fast friends and becoming an activist promoting “lavender tolerance and social acceptance.” Though sewing projects

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A noted geriatrician illuminates the facets of old age through a compassionate, philosophical, and humanistic lens.

For Aronson (Medicine/Univ. of California, San Francisco; A History of the Present Illness: Stories, 2013), what began as a relatively rudimentary “old age book” soon morphed into an examination of aging and the human condition encompassing poignant stories and the viewpoints of medical experts, writers, historians, and scientists. Most of the author’s patients are 60 and above, and she approaches their care not just from a wellness angle, but from humanitarian, social, and personal ones as well. She shares harrowing case studies of elderly people who have been misdiagnosed or mistreated by medical professionals. She also examines the ways an ageist modern society and the medical community and its depersonalized treatment protocols continue to fail elderly patients. Aronson rightly believes that these failures must be brought forward as learning tools for the global medical community. The author modestly inserts herself into the narrative, frequently sharing stories about her youth and her medical rotations as well as her father’s struggles with dementia and her mother’s battle with cancer. She also addresses worrisome (and potentially disabling) physical changes and medical issues that appeared much earlier in her life than she’d expected. The narrative is comprehensive, sprawling, and often depressing and somber, featuring sad histories of elder maltreatment and neglect as well as clear examples of ageist ignorance. Nonetheless, the book is beautifully written and offers countless moments of keen insight. Some observances are even startling, as when Aronson pauses to reflect on the societal obsession with anti-aging and accidentally observes the disturbing hairline of a woman with a facelift, her “surgical residua pulling one way and gravity another.” By collectively observing age from diverse perspectives, the author hopes readers (and caregivers) will discover a new appreciation for growing old that is positive, fruitful, and rewarding.

Empathetic, probing, and often emotionally moving narratives on appreciating the power and the pain of aging.

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kept him busy, he envisioned creating something to replace the pink triangle as the symbol of gay visibility and diversity. Thus, the rainbow flag was born, “a visual metaphor and an active proclamation of power, created and dedicated to gay and lesbian liberation,” and was displayed during Gay Freedom Day on June 25, 1978. Through the darkness of the Jonestown massacre, Harvey Milk’s assassination, and Ronald Reagan’s problematic presidency, Baker and his friends persevered, proudly continuing their dedication to promoting tolerance. His urban activism continued with the charitable Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a politically charged organization focused on exposing religious homophobia and sexual oppression. The AIDS epidemic further darkened the atmosphere, and the author vividly illustrates the deadly struggle to survive both the wrath of a mysterious killer and the political unrest that continued to plague gay America. Baker’s legacy as a creative designer and a staunch advocate intertwined when he worked on the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt with fellow activist Cleve Jones as well as the creation of the epic mile-long rainbow flag that stretched across the streets of Manhattan for the Stonewall 25 commemoration in 1994. Baker’s rainbow flag legacy lives on not only as a key emblematic component during pride celebrations worldwide, but in everyday discourse about the compassionate and unconditional nature of the community it represents and defends.

A moving, educative memoir from one of the innovators of the gay liberation movement. (25 color photos)

Israeli soldier behind the gun. “That single shot had changed my whole life,” he writes, “and I wondered if it had changed his.” In the end, the story comes full circle, as Bashir travels the world to convey the message of peace in the Middle East, the bullet in his back, as he puts it, moving him forward and not restraining him. There is some bitterness nonetheless, especially when he recounts that Israeli soldiers commandeered all the cooking vessels in his family home and then left them behind, each full of feces. Even with that insult, in this eloquent and affecting memoir he adopts another remark of his father’s as his own: “What happened to me makes me believe even more in peace.”

An inspiration to peace activists in all theaters of war and struggle and a book that deserves a wide audience.

EMBERS OF CHILDHOOD Growing Up a Whitney

Biddle, Flora Miller Arcade (328 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-948924-00-9

A memoir from the granddaughter of the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Biddle (The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made: A Family Memoir, 2017), who served as the president of the Whitney from 1977 to 1995, writes about how her grandmother Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942) founded the Whitney and how her descendants, including the author, continue to serve on its board. As Biddle shows, in families of wealth, it was accepted that children were turned over to nannies, governesses, and servants while parents were often absent in body and mind. The formality her parents exhibited toward her and her siblings left her seeking more meaningful human contact, which she found in a kind nursery attendant, a teacher, and her riding instructor, among others. She never smiled in childhood photos, was frightened to disobey, and was under constant supervision. Though she had security and comfort, the author was taught to mask feelings of sadness, boredom, and the constant loneliness she mentions throughout the book. “School” was just a few children on the grounds of Joye Cottage in Aiken, South Carolina, where most of her childhood was spent. “It was my first nest,” she writes, “and the one that means the most to me in a long life; a touchstone, origin and symbol of that part of me that is deep inside.”

Biddle writes fondly of days spent fishing and hunting, activities that she was occasionally able to enjoy with her parents. When summering in France, the family spoke only French, receiving a fine if they spoke English. Dotted throughout the narrative are intriguing tidbits about life among the ultrawealthy—e.g., the artist who painted her portrait in 1938 “would later be painting President Roosevelt at the time he died.”

Refreshingly, the author rarely complains or brags, creating an honest portrait of a privileged upbringing.

THE WORDS OF MY FATHER Love and Pain in Palestine

Bashir, Yousef Harper/HarperCollins (240 pp.) $25.99 | May 7, 2019 978-0-06-291732-4

Bashir delivers an urgent, impassioned call for peace between Palestine and Israel.

The words of the Palestinian peace activist’s father are, on the surface, incontestable: Strive for peace, he insisted, for “violence only leads to more violence.” Yet, during the second intifada and in the face of the intransigence of Israel’s government in dividing the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and barring movement between the two Palestinian areas, striving for peace became a difficult proposition to hold up—and one that was particularly difficult to defend in a time of growing militance. By Bashir’s account, the plot of land that his educator father had so carefully improved, building the soil, planting trees by the hundreds and crops by the row, became a dust bowl under a de facto Israeli siege.

Moreover, an Israeli soldier shot him for reasons that he finds inexplicable today, paralyzing him for a long period and requiring multiple surgeries. Years later, writes the author, even as he mourns the passing of his father and the loss of the land that his father took pains to tell him was his forever, he found himself thinking obsessively of that transformational event and the 48

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Sincere and uplifting stories of being a mother, a wife, and a career woman while juggling the responsibilities of being the vice president’s wife. where the light enters

WHERE THE LIGHT ENTERS Building a Family, Discovering Myself

as a child and adult. She shares how the Bidens stand together as a united front in the face of adversity, something that has helped them through extremely difficult times, most significantly the death of Beau Biden from brain cancer in 2015. She explores her insecurities and introverted nature, two issues that made it difficult to be in the spotlight as the wife of a public figure. However, she was able to overcome these concerns in order to present speeches and provide support for her husband during his run for president and later when he became vice president during the Obama administration. The author also shows us her deep involvement with her students and the importance of having her own career and rewarding work with military families and the education of girls and women. Biden’s tone is conversational and partially confessional, an endearing quality. Through this personal disclosure, readers gain insight into the fortitude and courage it takes to be a woman with a career and a close-knit family, with the obligations that come with a life as the second lady.

Sincere and uplifting stories of being a mother, a wife, and a career woman while juggling the responsibilities of being the vice president’s wife.

Biden, Jill Flatiron Books (224 pp.) $27.00 | May 7, 2019 978-1-250-18232-6

A former second lady talks about her family, relationships, and career as an educator.

In this often poignant retelling, Biden shares some of the more meaningful moments of her life. She tells how she married when she was 18 and then divorced, an act that made her hesitant to enter into marriage again. But she was wooed by then Sen. Joe Biden and fell in love despite her previous failed marriage and fears of being a mother to two young boys.

Throughout, the author discusses the importance of family and traditions, such as lighting candles for an evening meal or traveling to Nantucket for Thanksgiving, and of her prankster nature

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THE WEATHER MACHINE A Journey Inside the Forecast

THE ACCIDENT OF COLOR A Story of Race in Reconstruction

Blum, Andrew Ecco/HarperCollins (224 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-06-236861-4

Brook, Daniel Norton (336 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-393-24744-2

Journalist Blum (Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, 2012) takes a bright look at weather forecasting.

The world’s “weather machine” comprises a “global infrastructure of observation and prediction” peopled by hidden atmospheric scientists, data theorists, and others. Thanks to computer models, today’s “weather men” deliver a six-day forecast that is “as good as a two-day forecast in the 1970s.” Based on many interviews, this revealing, nicely crafted book guides us gently into a daunting subject through stories of unexpected people and events. The telegraph, introduced by Samuel Morse in 1844, first allowed us to know the weather in many places at one time. Ten years later, the Smithsonian began posting weather observations on a giant U.S. map in the lobby of its new Washington, D.C., headquarters.

Norwegian meteorologist Vilhelm Bjerknes (1862-1951) used math and physics to analyze the atmospheric variables (density, humidity, temperature, etc.) of a single moment and extrapolate a weather forecast. Many more observations were needed for the method to work with accuracy, and much of Blum’s book recounts how laboratories, lighthouses, farmers, and others, including today’s weather satellites, formed a worldwide system of collecting data that is now fed into weather models to become sophisticated forecasts. Today, thousands of weather stations are networked through the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization. Blum’s travels offer glimpses of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Mesa Lab in Colorado and the “Euro” forecast factory in Reading, England; meteorology conventions where small instrument makers exhibit next to Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and other manufacturers of drones and satellites; the ongoing $11 billion makeover of the U.S. satellite program; and the Weather Company, which provides forecasts for TV and websites worldwide. A “last bastion of international cooperation,” the current system of data exchange may one day be supplanted by global corporations, writes the author.

A solid popular account with plenty of quirky detail about this “new way of seeing into the future.”

Illuminating investigation of the historical binaries of race in America.

Before American independence, writes freelance journalist Brook, places such as Charleston and New Orleans turned on the assumption that “in the New World there was precious little racial purity” and that naturally and inevitably, people who came from far-flung ethnic groups would meet and intermingle. After independence, however, that changed: The official appointed to govern New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase, for instance, quietly instituted procedures to limit the rights of supposedly nonwhite citizens even if, as a later activist who pressed for the rights of all citizens no matter what their ethnic composition noted, “if you were not informed you would be sure to pick out the white for colored & the colored for white.” Free, mixed-race communities in those cosmopolitan cities had long flourished, even if they were anomalous elsewhere. It outraged nativists, notes the author, that immigrants from Europe who arrived in the 19th century treated everyone they encountered as equals. Yet this equality was fleeting. South Carolina Reconstruction-era congressman Joseph Hayne Rainey observed in a speech before the House that in Charleston he could enjoy public amenities while in Washington, he was denied “the same benefits that are accorded to our white colleagues on this floor.” Things would only get worse for Rainey and others now classified as black in the postwar binary of race through the mechanism of Jim Crow laws throughout the country. The very idea of “black” and “white,” Brook ably demonstrates, is the product of segregation: “It is only because mixed-race activists failed, despite their valiant efforts, to stop a regime of race-based rights that contemporary Americans view society through the racial blinders that we do.” In his fluent narrative, the author shows how much we have lost by denying the reality that “we are mestizos, Creoles, misfits all.”

A provocative, welcome contribution to ethnic studies and the literature of civil rights. (10 illustrations)

MONEYLAND The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World Bullough, Oliver St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $28.99 | May 7, 2019 978-1-250-20870-5

An eye-opening investigation of the places where dark money goes to hide.

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As Guardian writer Bullough (The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation, 2013, etc.) notes, there was a time when a kleptocrat who stole money from their nation had a fairly limited set of options for what to do with the loot: buy a nice yacht or a fleet of cars, which can be easily accounted (and prosecuted) for. The dark magic of offshore finance, with its shell companies and hidden bank accounts, changes all that, providing a “magic teleportation box” whereby the money disappears only to pop up on the other side of the globe, difficult to trace and useful in bribing local officials. “It’s no wonder officials become such gluttons,” Bullough writes, “since there is now no limit on how much money they can steal, and therefore no limit on how much they can spend.” The author’s first case study is Paul Manafort, the now-disgraced chair of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, master manipulator of “financial plumbing” that allowed him “to suck money out of Ukraine and pour it into luxury goods in New York and Virginia.” That money flowed into laundering companies in the Caribbean, Cyprus, and several U.S. states, all secret stations on the way to “Moneyland.” Governments around the world foresaw that such

a place might exist, which led to the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, meant in part to “stop uncontrolled money flows” and to buttress otherwise corruptible democracies; those laws have pretty well been scrapped. Bullough ably explores the shadow world of finance, writing of the gold standard of old as well as the modern moneyed class, who “don’t tend to be part of a specific geography,” as one investigator put it, “but tend to be very global, hanging out in plutonomy destinations with fellow plutonomists”—the very people, by the author’s account, who truly run the show.

Students of the modern economy, to say nothing of politicians and nations for sale, will find Bullough’s work fascinating.

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The author offers fascinating context about law enforcement investigative techniques and revelations about how a murderer can strike again and again without being detected for more than a decade. american predator

AMERICAN PREDATOR The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Even if searching for a common narrative risks neglecting some current or future group,” writes the editor, “we…still recognize the value of exploring whether a unifying story can be achieved and, if so, what that story might be.” The responses are all over the map, provocatively so, with some contributors stressing how this lack of a shared story and thus a shared identity has been integral to the story of America from the start.

Each state had its own story, and the country prized the sovereignty of those states over any sort of federal unity. “When Thomas Jefferson talked about ‘my country,’ he meant Virginia,” writes history professor Gordon S. Wood, who proceeds to elaborate, “people were citizens of a particular state, which is what made them citizens of the United States.” That these citizens had formerly been subjects under British rule is essential to the origin story, but some citizens have long been more equal than others, and many who lived here weren’t citizens at all. So the story must encompass the plights of slaves and their descendants, the fight for equality that remains in flux. There are many mentions of “American exceptionalism,” a term that the concluding essay by Paris-based historian Cody Delistraty notes was first used by Joseph Stalin in 1929 and has since provided something of a battlefield for sparring ideologues. Yet America remains exceptional as a country founded upon an ideal, one that could well provide a unifying spirit despite the country’s deep divisions. As Cherie Harder, who served as an assistant to both George W. and Laura Bush, writes, we must “teach and learn our story.” But what story do we teach? What story do we learn? And what story do we tell? Other notable contributors include Cass Sunstein, Alan Taylor, and David Blight.

A mixed-bag collection that finds the United States at a crossroads.

Callahan, Maureen Viking (304 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-525-42864-0

A deep dive into the twisted life of Israel Keyes, “a new kind of monster likely responsible for the greatest string of unsolved disappearances and murders in modern American history.”

New York Post critic at large Callahan cannot state with certainty how many murders Keyes committed, but the count seems to be at least 11 and is likely many more. He committed his final murder in Anchorage, Alaska, where he resided at the time with his daughter and an off-and-on girlfriend. Serial killers often commit their crimes close to home, inside a comfort zone, but as the author documents throughout this compelling narrative, little about Keyes fit the conventional serial-killer mold, including the fact that his crimes were scattered all over the country. She shares the sleuthing of law enforcement agents from the FBI, the Anchorage Police Department, and other state-level forces. Throughout the book, the law personnel obsessed by Keyes’ methods and grisly results come across as dedicated and largely talented, with the exception of the federal prosecutor, who had ultimate jurisdiction. Callahan portrays him as vain and tone-deaf, and his unwanted presence in the interrogation room undid much of the progress made in the case. The author builds the narrative around the kidnapping and murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, who worked at an isolated coffee booth in Anchorage. Police had no clues for days, but the case eventually led to Keyes’ arrest due to outstanding detective work and uncharacteristic sloppiness by Keyes. In the latter chapters, Callahan explores Keyes’ unusual childhood, military service, and skills as a top-notch carpenter.

Although the details of the book are by definition lurid, the author admirably avoids a descent into journalistic sensationalism. Instead, she offers fascinating context about law enforcement investigative techniques and revelations about how a murderer can strike again and again without being detected for more than a decade.

THE LAST PIRATE OF NEW YORK A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation Cohen, Rich Spiegel & Grau (256 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-399-58992-8

A tale of mid-1800s New York City and “the first gangster, a model for Lan-

OUR AMERICAN STORY The Search for a Shared National Narrative

sky and Gambino.”

Though Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone contributor Cohen (The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse, 2017, etc.) claims his latest is about the birth of a gangster nation, the narrative focuses on one horrific multiple murder, the capture of the culprit by a star detective, and the trial. At the center of this book is Albert Hicks (circa 1820-1860), the supposed founding father of the New York underworld. The author delivers an entertaining story, beginning with a picture of New York City just before the Civil War, especially the seedy underbelly surrounding the port. Hicks’ childhood was marked by a wild, restless disposition, aversion to labor, and the perpetual need to fight. As

Ed. by Claybourn, Joshua Potomac Books (224 pp.) $29.95 | Jun. 1, 2019 978-1-64012-170-6

Edited by attorney Claybourn, this collection addresses the possibility of a shared narrative within a country divided by political polarization.

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UP JUMPED THE DEVIL The Real Life of Robert Johnson

a teenager, he served his first prison term, escaped, and was caught and put in solitary confinement for a year. Feeling hopeless and abandoned, he set off for revenge and to make his fortune. Signing on to an oyster sloop, he proved to be a good worker—until boredom set in or something angered him and he lost his temper. Aboard another ship a few voyages later, he was involved in his first mutiny, an event that, sadly, proved to be his best learning experience. He was a good speaker and persuader and was easily able to draw crews to mutiny, after which they would take the profits from the voyage and blow it all on wine, women, and gambling. It became the template for his life of crime before he was executed by hanging in front of a massive crowd of nearly 20,000.

Though not a traditional gangster book—Hicks was certainly a pirate and a murderer, but he lacked a loyal gang or specific territory—this is a rollicking, page-turning tale that is “too great and grisly to be anything but true.” (b/w photos)

Conforth, Bruce & Wardlow, Gayle Dean Chicago Review Press (320 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-64160-094-1

Fifty years in the making, a comprehensive biography of the legendary Delta blues singer.

Conforth (African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story, 2013, etc.), the founding curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and blues historian Wardlow (Chasin’ that Devil Music: Search­ ing for the Blues, 1998) waste little time taking on the myths and rumors previous books have promulgated about Robert Johnson (1911-1938). The authors seek to “return him to his human particulars” and reveal the “real story.” In order to do so, they have unearthed a massive amount of primary source materials, much

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Although the prose is occasionally dry, this in-depth portrait of Johnson’s life and times will be mighty hard to improve upon. (100 photos)

of it reproduced here, and numerous “first-person accounts of who he really was.” They do a fine job of thoughtfully weaving the biographical essentials with portraits of the harsh and impoverished sharecropper’s world of the South in the 1920s and ’30s. Johnson was born in a tiny, ramshackle house near Hazlehurst, Mississippi, “the illegitimate son of two unmarried parents.” He hated farming, preferring to play harmonica and guitar. He grew up hearing cotton-field blues and embraced the music “like a boll weevil did a growing cotton ball.” He lived an itinerant existence, playing in jukes, roadhouses, family homes, and on the streets. He could read and write and drink—a lot— and womanize along the way, all the while perfecting his musical skills and learning from other musicians, like Willie Moore and Son House. Guitar fans will enjoy the detail the authors provide about Johnson’s unique style of playing and their in-depth discussions of his songs as well as their fascinating account of his historic 1936 recording sessions in Texas. The authors also refute the famous myths—e.g., that Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads and that he was poisoned. He had an ulcer and suffered from “esophageal varices,” which hemorrhaged.

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SACRED DUTY A Soldier’s Tour at Arlington National Cemetery Cotton, Tom Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $28.99 | May 14, 2019 978-0-06-286315-7

An Arkansas senator and Bronze Star recipient delivers a first book full of information, history, and remarkable facts about true heroes.

The 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, aka the Old Guard, is the oldest active-duty regiment in the Army. “Since 1948,” writes Cotton, who served in the 3rd between combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, “the Old Guard has served at Arlington as the Army’s official ceremonial unit and escort to the president.”

Any soldier seeking to join the Old Guard must meet the highest mental, physical, and moral standards in the military, and they cannot have civil or military convictions or drug, alcohol, or financial issues. Public missions include funerals at Arlington, state funerals, presidential inaugurations, and serving as sentinels at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The recruitment of sentinels is only within the Old Guard, and the training cycle is extremely difficult. It includes learning at least 20 distinct marching movements as well as a test of stamina in which one must stand ramrod still, without bending knees or wiggling toes, maintaining ceremonial composure for 75 minutes. Though some readers may think the author provides too much detail on uniforms, procedure, and training, he explains that in the Old Guard, perfection is not just a goal, it’s an absolute. Pleats and shirt tucks are measured to the inch, stray threads are burned off, and wrinkles are unheard of. Attending multiple funerals in a day, the guard is transported by van, but they’re not allowed to sit down lest they wrinkle their uniforms. As Cotton demonstrates, the uniform prep, cleaning, insignia, and badge placement are stressed continually. Among other reasons, they meet these strict guidelines because a family only gets one funeral; it must be perfect every time. “What the Old Guard does inside the gates of Arlington,” writes the author, “is a testament to the noble truths and fierce courage that have built and sustained America.”

A must-read for military members and their families that is sure to appeal to patriotic Americans of all stripes.

(25 photos. First printing of 150,000)

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A riveting chronicle from a courageous journalist who was there to witness and report the truth. A book that should deservedly garner significant award attention. assad, or we burn the country

ASSAD, OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY How One Family’s Lust for Power Destroyed Syria

THE LIE A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out Dameron, William Little A (286 pp.) $24.95 | Jul. 1, 2019 978-1-5420-4474-5

Dagher, Sam Little, Brown (560 pp.) $29.00 | May 28, 2019 978-0-316-55672-9

A blogger and essayist’s account of how he came out after discovering that hackers had used a personal photo on dating websites to lure unsuspecting women into relationships.

Dameron was in his mid-40s when he learned that cyberthieves had used a stolen selfie for a catfishing scheme that succeeded in duping women all over the world looking for love. The incident left him feeling angry and violated but also profoundly disturbed: Now the online poster child of “deceptive online dating,” it seemed the universe was also calling him into account for the lie that had become his adult life. A

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A harrowing, deeply researched look inside a country riven by a brutal, longrunning dictatorship that would rather destroy the country and its people than relinquish power.

To understand Bashar al-Assad’s use of lies and terror to subjugate his people, journalist Dagher, who spent 15 years covering the Syrian civil war for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times (he was expelled from the country in 2014), looks first at the regime of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who established the violent playbook. Hafez and his right-hand man, Mustafa Tlass, seized power in 1963 and created a dreaded secret police force, brutally eliminating all opponents and inklings of opposition. Assad’s second son, Bashar, who was enlisted as successor only when his “golden knight” older brother was killed in a car wreck, assumed power in 2000 upon his father’s death. He was packaged as a “reform” leader, and he was courted by world leaders especially after 9/11 as the lynchpin in fighting Islamic terrorism in the Middle East. Meticulously and systematically, Dagher shows how the glamorous front concealed the truth: Assad was behind the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005; he was enjoying the full support of Hezbollah and Iran; and, when the Arab Spring erupted in 2011, he employed the murderous tactics of his father across the country. His support by Iran and ultimately Russia allowed him to remain in power by presenting the Syrian civil war as necessary in defeating the Islamic State. Dagher scored a highly valuable source for this work, Manaf Tlass, son of Mustafa, who was, as the familial roles played out, Bashar’s own right arm in the early years of his rule (he defected to France in 2012). Besides insiders, the author interviewed numerous opposition leaders who endured terror and torture to challenge Assad’s dictatorship yet “must surrender to the fact that there’s nothing we can do if the entire world wants Bashar to stay.”

A riveting chronicle from a courageous journalist who was there to witness and report the truth. A book that should deservedly garner significant award attention.

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father of two who had married his college sweetheart, Dameron had been raised Catholic by a homophobic mother. His adolescence had been an ongoing struggle to keep his gay identity private and live like a “normal” man. No longer willing to remain in the closet but unsure of how to escape it, he sought out the company of males at the local gym and secretly experimented with steroids to build up his body. He also developed a close friendship with Enzo, a straight man at his company, that quickly developed into one-sided attraction. Jealous of her husband’s “bromance,” Dameron’s wife accidentally found his cache of steroids. After couples counseling failed to shore up their marriage, they separated, and the author began working with a therapist to help him come to terms with “the other [gay] Bill.” Seeking a foothold in the gay community, he moved in with two lesbians and began searching for a partner. In the meantime, his wife and daughters struggled to cope with the personal and social fallout that Dameron’s revelation brought into their lives. Eventually, the author crossed paths with another gay “breeder and…Daddy” who not only helped Dameron face his demons, but also became his husband. Candid

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and compassionate, the book celebrates truth and honors the redemptive power of forgiveness and love.

An ultimately uplifting memoir in which the author learns “to love my authentic self, not the image I had created.”

ILL WINDS Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency Diamond, Larry Penguin Press (368 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-525-56062-3

A leading scholar of democracy combines his academic research with his direct experience to piece together a wide-ranging study of the creation—and possible destruction—of that specific form of governance.

Although aware that the United States has termed itself a democracy since the 18th century, Diamond (In Search of Democ­ racy, 2015, etc.), the founding editor of the Journal of Democracy and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, writes that the nation never achieved that goal until 1965, with the Voting Rights Act, when meaningful voting rights became a reality for all adults, at least in theory. “Only in 1968,” he writes, “could an American presidential election plausibly be, for the first time, called free and fair.” Despite disagreement within the academy and within councils of government, the author maintains that democracy is necessary before a nation lays claim to freedom for its citizens. A durable democratic government must be broadly recognized as legitimate. Diamond has been disseminating such a message for decades, but he decided to write his latest book after Donald Trump became president—after suffering the “anguished knowledge of what his presidency would mean for democracy around the world.” As the author clearly shows, Trump is not just a threat to American democracy; he also plays an influential role in the retreat from freedom besetting numerous nations. Diamond is worried that the authoritarian governments of China and Russia are actively seeking to halt nascent democratic movements by encouraging other autocrats in nations such as Hungary, Turkey, and the Philippines. What to do with such complicated forces at work? The author suggests numerous potential promising paths, including a switch to a parliamentary form of government, specific measures to diminish the corruption pervasive in kleptocracies, and transparent elections that feature ranked-choice voting. Diamond is most comfortable with suggestions that would revive U.S. democracy before mounting sustained initiatives elsewhere.

A potent mix of theory and practice that runs from didactic to inspiring. A good addition to the growing library on fighting authoritarianism.

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A fresh, enthusiastic history of the moon mission. one giant leap

FORMATION A Woman’s Memoir of Stepping Out of Line

Rather than focus on the astronauts, journalist Fishman (The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, 2011, etc.) offers lively profiles of many tireless, imaginative, and innovative scientists, engineers, and technicians who contributed to the Apollo mission from May 1961, when President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would send a man to the moon by the end of the decade, until July 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped onto lunar dust. Kennedy’s proposal stemmed not from an adventuresome spirit but from Cold War urgency: He wanted to beat the Russians in the space race and demonstrate the triumph of freedom over communism. However, that triumph was hardly certain; NASA, surprised by Kennedy’s announcement, gave the U.S. only a 50-50 chance of success. As Fishman amply shows, the nation was woefully unprepared for space flight. Astronauts had “exactly 15 minutes of manned spaceflight experience,” and rockets, landing ships, navigation equipment, spacesuits, and a new generation of computers and software all had to be invented from scratch. In the 1960s, computers took up whole rooms, required huge amounts of electricity, and could not run for more than a few hours

Dostie, Ryan Leigh Grand Central Publishing (368 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5387-3153-6

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Dostie’s debut memoir describes the journey of a woman soldier struggling to survive and compete in a system that demanded she fall in line.

Though she hoped to travel and attend college after high school, a meeting with a recruiting officer led to Dostie’s enrollment in the Army, where she became a Persian-Farsi/Dari linguist in military intelligence. There are two main stories here: The first one traces the aftermath of rape. The author was raped by a fellow soldier, and she details what seems like deliberate incompetence in the handling of the case through official channels. In addition to the emotional fallout of rape, she also faced the cruelty of seeing her attacker and his friends nearly every day. Discussing how her account of the events and her credibility were undermined, Dostie exposes how pervasive bias functions in this guarded system. Despite many challenges, the author managed to do what she was trained to do: follow orders. When she found herself on the front lines in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, determination and growing rage fueled her survival. The second story follows the development of a bruised but not defeated soldier struggling with PTSD, coping with the challenges of adjusting to civilian life, and contemplating the political and philosophical issues involved in the war. Dostie successfully navigated life at home, and she ably demonstrates the contrast between developing agency and a strong sense of self after sexual assault and the demands of the Army power structure, which expected more obedience than independence. Each of these narratives deserves to be heard, and though they may have been stronger as two pieces, Dostie does a service by frankly confronting the hypermasculinized culture of the armed forces.

An occasionally uneven but unquestionably inspiring story traversing the personal and public battlefields of sexual assault in the armed forces.

ONE GIANT LEAP The Impossible Mission that Flew Us to the Moon Fishman, Charles Simon & Schuster (464 pp.) $29.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-5011-0629-3

Marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a close look at the scientific and technological challenges that needed to be overcome to make it possible—achievements that regrettably have been “mostly invisible.” |

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THE SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY And Other Writings

without failing. The MIT Instrumentation Lab, headed by the irrepressible Charles Draper and his brilliant colleague Bill Tindall, was charged with inventing and building flight computers, writing and wiring their software, and training astronauts in their use, and 20,00 companies contributed to the construction and assembly of the spacecraft. For eight years, 410,000 people put in 2.8 billion work hours to make the flight possible. As the author sees it, those efforts—long before the innovations emanating from Silicon Valley—ushered in the digital age, making technology “a tool of everyday life.”

A fresh, enthusiastic history of the moon mission to be read alongside Douglas Brinkley’s American Moonshot and other recent books commemorating the 50th anniversary.

(16 pages of b/w photos)

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García Márquez, Gabriel Trans. by McLean, Anne Ed. by Pera, Cristóbal Knopf (336 pp.) $27.95 | May 14, 2019 978-0-525-65642-5

An eye-opening collection of articles that reveal Gabo the journalist.

New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson sets up this eclectic and transportive selection of 50 journalistic pieces from 1950 to 1984 by the Colombian Nobel laureate, noting in his introduction that journalism was García Márquez’s “first true love.” In fact, the beloved novelist (1927-2014) called it the “best profession in the world.” Editor Pera confesses that he purposefully chose pieces that “contain a latent narrative tension between journalism and literature” to showcase the author’s “unstoppable narrative impulse.” The titular article, the longest in the collection, written for El Spectador, which published García Márquez’s first short stories, is an account of the mysterious death of a young Italian woman in Rome in 1953.

The atmospheric, serialized piece is told in chapter form and might owe something to García Márquez’s love of two “perfect” short stories he references in “Like Souls in Purgatory”: W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw” and Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” Many of the articles confront political and social issues, including the U.S. blockade of Cuba, the Sandinista raid in Managua, Nicaragua, the international trafficking of women, the death of his beloved Magdalena River from pollution and deforestation, and the Soviet intervention in Hungary. In “Misadventures of a Writer of Books,” García Márquez admits that a writer “has no other revolutionary obligation than to write well.”

He rages about bad teachers of literature who “spout nonsense,” calls the Nobel Prize a “senile laurel,” is convinced “Japanese novels have something in common with mine,” praises “selfsacrificing” translators as “brilliant accomplice[s],” and mourns the death of John Lennon. In the lovely “My Personal Hemingway,” García Márquez recalls seeing him across a Paris street in 1957 and shouting out, “Maaeeestro!”

The text is elegantly translated by McLean, and García Márquez fans will welcome these fresh and lively examples of his beautiful, lyrical writing.

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A tour de force that will appeal to devoted baseball fans, architecture devotees, and even casual readers. ballpark

BALLPARK Baseball in the American City

Goldberger, Paul Knopf (384 pp.) $35.00 | May 17, 2019 978-0-307-70154-1

Vanity Fair contributing editor and renowned architecture critic Goldberger (Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, 2015, etc.) sets his gaze on the design of Major League Baseball stadiums.

The detail of the research, both its breadth and depth, is remarkable, and the author doesn’t limit himself to current stadiums; he also looks at some dating back to the 19th century. The volume also includes more than 150 illuminating photos scattered throughout the text. Though the narrative is not always cohesive— Goldberger jumps from one ballpark and city to another—each chapter carries a theme and subthemes as the author demonstrates trends in stadium design. He discusses the evolving designs

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in terms of the quality of the viewing experience for fans, and he evaluates how each stadium shapes the city around it—and is simultaneously shaped by the characteristics of that particular city.

Goldberger’s touchstone is Camden Yards, the home of the Baltimore Orioles that opened in 1992. It’s clear that the author considers Camden Yards the most exciting stadium ever constructed, and in his opinion, since it was built, it has not been surpassed. In addition to discussing inanimate qualities such as the wood, steel, stone, and concrete of the edifices, Goldberger provides miniportraits of hundreds of men (and a few women) who have owned the baseball teams, influenced the politics of the cities where the stadiums sit, and designed the stadiums in both derivative and original ways.

Goldberger is aware that he could have also included ballparks from the minor leagues across the United States, from the now defunct Negro League, and from baseball cultures outside North America. He explains that such inclusivity would have yielded an encyclopedia rather than a smooth narrative, so he set limits on the scope of the book, which is quite impressive in its current form.

A tour de force that will appeal to devoted baseball fans, architecture devotees, and even casual readers. (152 illustra­ tions in color and b/w)

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Douglas Brinkley

HIS ENGAGING HISTORY OF THE SPACE RACE RECALLS A BIPARTISAN ERA IN AMERICA’S HISTORY

By Gregory McNamee Photo courtesy Danny Turner

were involved in the effort to make sure that America, and not Russia, was the first to take that giant step.

Still, it was largely JFK’s vision that “leapfrogged” the nation to the moon, a task done when he said it would be done.

Douglas Brinkley, professional historian and prolific writer, chronicles the presidential politics behind the lunar landing in his new book American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race (April 2). Its publication may coincide with the countdown to the 50th anniversary of the landing, but the book has been on his mind for many years. “When you grow up in Ohio in the ’60s, as I did,” he tells Kirkus, “then it was an especially big deal. I was 9 years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. He was from an Ohio town not far from where I lived, and he became one of my all-seasons heroes. John Glenn had a big impact.

He was also from Ohio, and he later became one of our senators. My formative years were heavily influenced

by NASA.” Those formative years were also spent in the shadow of the Cold War, when the United States and the USSR were competing in every theater. One thing that occupied Brinkley’s attention was the big question of how Kennedy was able to make space a central concern of his administration at a time when the Cold War was becoming hot in places like Vietnam and Cuba. Even at the height of the Bay of Pigs debacle and the Diem assassination, Brinkley documents that JFK was keeping his eyes fixed on what NASA was doing.

There was good reason for that. As Brinkley notes, Franklin Roosevelt had revitalized the country with New Deal projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Works Progress Administration. Dwight Eisenhower had the Saint Lawrence Seaway and the interstate highway system as legacies. Kennedy wanted something big to put his name on, but he was also a politically astute man who had a big problem: He needed to keep the South from slipping over to the Republican side during the height of the civil rights era. That didn’t work out quite as planned, either, but the South

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed a rocket module on the surface of the moon and, taking what Armstrong famously called “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” became the first humans to walk on Earth’s satellite.

It was a moment that John F. Kennedy had promised at the beginning of the decade, when, having used Republican reluctance to spend money on space exploration as a talking point in his 1960 presidential campaign, he promised that American astronauts would reach the moon by the end of the 1960s, when, he hoped, he would just be wrapping up his second term in the White House. Things didn’t work that way, and three presidents—Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon— 60

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got the bulk of NASA money all the same: a space center in Texas, a flight center in Florida, test and research facilities in Alabama, and so on. Granted, the rest of the country benefited from the space race, too.

As Brinkley points out, “We got GPS, MRIs, all kinds of technology from it. We spent about $185 billion in today’s dollars, and we got back our investment many times over.”

Brinkley is a busy man these days. When we caught up with him during a brief stopover to his Texas home, he was just returning from New York after preparing historical notes for CNN on the political background of the Mueller report, breaking news at the moment.

He is traveling extensively to support the new book, with speeches planned at the NASA facility in Huntsville, Alabama, at the Kennedy Library in Boston, and at the Library of Congress, where he’ll talk to members of Congress about the historical accomplishments of a bygone cooperative era even as each of them gets a copy of his book.

Moonshot is a term that comes from sportswriting, Brinkley notes; NASA borrowed it. “Joe Biden calls his campaign to cure cancer the next moonshot,” he says. “The left wants a Green New Deal as its moonshot. Astronauts are pushing for a trip to Mars as the next moonshot for NASA. Whatever we decide on, people in these hyperpartisan times are hungering for a project that’s bipartisan in nature that will prove that we can accomplish anything we set our minds to as a nation if we’re willing to put all our muscle into one large endeavor.” As American Moonshot ably demonstrates, we’ve done it before.

A THOUSAND SMALL SANITIES The Moral Adventure of Liberalism Gopnik, Adam Basic (272 pp.) $26.00 | May 14, 2019 978-1-5416-9936-6

American Moonshot received a starred review in the April 1, 2019, issue.

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The longtime New Yorker staff writer and prolific cultural critic once again shows his astute awareness of the public’s political consciousness in this new work championing “liberalism.”

In this “distillation and…reduction” of previous essays from the New Yorker over the past 20 years and “a long lifetime’s reading of philosophy, history, and biography,” Gopnik (At the Strangers’ Gate: Arrivals in New York, 2017, etc.) gathers together biographies of and theories from a wide variety of subjects, including Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Disraeli, and James Boswell, in order to define liberalism and clarify its purpose through the ages. Over the course of four discursive chapters, the author demonstrates how these struggles contribute to humanity’s incremental improvement: “those thousand small sanities…moving us bit by bit a little bit closer toward the modern Arcadia.” Gopnik frames the narrative around a conversation he had on the night of the 2016 U.S. presidential election with his 17-year-old daughter (“A Long Walk with a Smart Daughter”), whom he consoled by explaining why the liberal values her parents brought her up with were “not just some family legacy of attitudes…but ideals that were made reliable by experience and proven true by history.” In the “The Rhinoceros Manifesto: What Is Liberalism?” the author shows how the passionate and egalitarian 1850s love affair between John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor helped forge one of the first documents on liberalism (Mill’s On Liberty). In subsequent chapters, Gopnik examines why the political right hates liberalism—e.g., prizing reason over cultural values, nonbelief in reform—and why the left hates liberalism (the need to be revolutionary). Essentially, the author’s “adventure” is not a defense of liberalism as much as a clarification and pieces of fatherly advice for a new generation on liberal reforms and institutions.

Gopnik’s learned, lofty, occasionally dense study ultimately reasserts the belief in the “infinity of small effects.”

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WAKING THE WITCH Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power

say what this book is or for whom it was written. The chapter called “Body Monsters” includes some intriguing observations about women and motherhood. However, in trying to establish a connection between historic and modern ideas about female sexuality and reproductive rights, Grossman includes much more detail about contemporary politics than is necessary to make her point. The extended exploration of witch-inspired fashion also feels like a bad fit for this section. The author’s treatment of witches in recent pop culture is especially frustrating. It reads as if Grossman is unaware of the incredible wealth of material—from the scholarly essays to fan sites—devoted to subjects like Sabrina Spellman and Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Willow Rosenberg. An author writing for a general audience can be forgiven for not taking a deep dive into the academic literature, but Grossman doesn’t offer any insight into these characters that wouldn’t be obvious to a casual viewer. Overall, the text feels more like notes toward a full-length study than a finished product, and the long passages of autobiographical material reinforce this sense. Most readers will come away from the book with an understanding of why it is so appealing to Grossman but little else.

An odd, uneven mix of history, cultural criticism, and memoir.

Grossman, Pam Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-982100-70-4 Assorted musings from a modern witch.

Witches are having a moment, and Grossman has played no small role in making this happen. A practicing witch herself, she is the founder of the Occult Humanities Conference at NYU, and she has been published in a variety of publications. Her personal Instagram account has 8,000 followers, and the account for her podcast, The Witch Wave, has nearly 14,000. One might expect her book to be an accessible guide to witchcraft and its most recent renaissance. It is not that, and, indeed, it’s difficult to

THE VAGABONDS The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s Ten-Year Road Trip Guinn, Jeff Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-5011-5930-5

Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, road-tripping buddies.

Beginning in 1914, the two American icons took yearly automobile trips through the countryside. Even though they didn’t accomplish much of note during these trips, journalist Guinn (The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, 2017) tells an entertaining story that mixes sharp portraits of their vivid personalities with details of their travels and a portrait of American society during those years.

Although past his prime, Edison was universally worshipped as the world’s greatest inventor, while Ford was at his peak, having developed an automobile cheap enough for the middle-class families who bought it in droves. Idolizing the older man, Ford had requested an autographed photograph in 1911. A visit to Edison’s New Jersey lab soon followed, and the two hit it off.

Ford accepted an invitation to Edison’s retreat in Florida, where they drove to the Everglades, which was then a trackless wilderness. Although this initial trip was an unpleasant experience, it began a yearly series of auto journeys. Edison and Ford were usually accompanied by Harvey Firestone (of Firestone Tires), a wealthy entrepreneur happy to serve as Ford’s factotum, organizing the itinerary. No ascetic, Ford paid for several vehicles filled with camping and cooking equipment, servants, and a 62

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A poignantly told memoir about a life fiercely lived. we have always been here

WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE A Queer Muslim Memoir

chef that accompanied them. While Ford often stayed in hotels, Edison roughed it. According to Guinn, few Americans in 1914 ventured into the hinterland, a nearly roadless, exotic, often impoverished setting. Ten years later, thanks partly to enthusiastic newspaper coverage, “autocamping” became the rage, the recognizable America of campgrounds, motels, diners, and gas stations took shape, and the vagabonds themselves faded from headlines in favor of the latest 1920s idols. “A contributing factor to the end of the trips wasn’t the Vagabonds’ expectation of too much attention being paid to them, but too little,” writes the author.

An amusing account of celebrity travelers through the primitive and yet vaguely familiar America of 100 years ago. (16 pages of b/w photos)

Habib, Samra Viking (272 pp.) $18.95 paper | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-7352-3500-7

A queer Muslim woman recounts her emotional, sexual, and spiritual unfurling.

In her debut, writer, photographer, and activist Habib begins with her childhood in Pakistan, where she learned the protective value of hiding, which insulated her from public stigma (and her mother’s private devastation) after Habib survived child sexual abuse at age 4. Hiding also provided tenuous safety for her Ahmadi Muslim family amid growing state and extremist violence against the religious minority. Masking her feelings also proved useful when her family sought asylum in Canada and “traded one set of anxieties for another.” There, the author endured racist bullying, growing alienation from her family, and the despair of her

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KATHLEEN HALE IS A CRAZY STALKER

arranged marriage at 16: “Getting to know men was not something the women in my family were encouraged to do. They were to be avoided at all times, like attack dogs without muzzles.” After desperation drove Habib to attempt suicide, her survival pushed her to emerge from under the patriarchal, homophobic expectations of both her culture of origin and the broader Western culture within which she matured. She started by bravely defying her forced union, which propelled her on a challenging, revelatory journey to return to her queerness, faith, and family (biological and chosen). Religious and secular readers alike will be touched by the way Habib’s faith has been strengthened, rather than undermined,

by Islamophobia as well as by the compassion and candor with which she examines her complex filial relationships. Triumphantly, the narrative culminates in scenes of a life full of purpose, power, and belonging. Habib found a LGBTQ–centered mosque, created a queer Muslim portrait project, and accepted invitations to speak all over the world. Though the author’s prose is occasionally overworked, the book is a moving example of resilience and healing in the face of racial, sexual, and familial trauma.

A poignantly told memoir about a life fiercely lived.

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Hale, Kathleen Grove (176 pp.) $23.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-8021-2909-3

Journalist and erstwhile YA author Hale offers six previously published essays gathered in an apparent attempt to prove the collection’s title.

The title springs from events described in a 2014 Guardian piece called “Am I Being Catfished?” that made news in literary circles, when the author became so obsessed with a negative Goodreads review of her first YA book, No One Else Can Have You (2013), that she burrowed into the reviewer’s online identity and physically tracked her down to confront her. Slightly reworked as “Catfish,” that essay leads off this collection. In the others, Hale recounts a hunting trip to Okeechobee in which she “stabbed the shit out of ” a female feral hog and a separate series of futile efforts to track down and kill a mountain lion in Hollywood’s Griffith Park; one reporting trip to the Miss America pageant and another to Snowflake, Arizona, to profile a community of people suffering from “environmental illness”; and, most poignantly, the rape she endured at a sketchy massage parlor on the same day she moved into her freshman dorm at Harvard, an event that warped her college years and, by implication, perhaps her adult life. Hale weaves references to her own mental illness throughout the collection, describing how, after the publication of “Am I Being Catfished?” “I went bananas. I lost my mind,” took a knife to her wrists, and spent some time in a psychiatric hospital.

For all her seeming forthcomingness, however, the author rarely gives readers anything other than what feels like an intentionally curated sense of Kathleen Hale, crazy stalker.

The essays don’t work as well together thematically as she perhaps hopes they do, an effect intensified by her caginess as to the timeline of both events recounted and the essays’ original publication dates.

Readers may feel themselves responding as her college acquaintances did: “my problems and I were a burden.

‘You’re too much,’ they said. And they were right; I was impossible.”

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An eclectic and insightful miscellany of playful, spirited, provocative reflections. a primer for forgetting

MY PARENTS An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You

Coll.; Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership, 2010, etc.) inquires into the power of forgetting. Declaring himself “weary of argument, tired of striving for mastery, of marshaling the evidence, of drilling down to bedrock to anchor every claim, of inventing transitions to mask the jumpiness of my mind,” he instead gives free rein to that inspired jumpiness by juxtaposing anecdotes, stories, meditations, and aphorisms about the meaning of forgetfulness. Illustrated with artwork from an imaginary Museum of Forgetting, the author’s collage of entries comes from a rich trove of philosophy, mythology, ancient and modern literature, religion, psychology, art, and history as well as his own life, including witnessing his mother’s dementia. Forgetting, he discovers, does not necessarily imply loss. For Emerson, “self-forgetting” was essential for personal self-renewal and cultural reinvention. Philologist Ernest Renan believed that collective amnesia contributed to “the essence of a nation.” Robert E. Lee advised his contemporaries “to obliterate the marks of civil strife and commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered” in order to move into the future. Amnesties—judicial forgetting—appear in nations recovering from the trauma of war or

Hemon, Aleksandar MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-374-21743-3

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Two very different memoirs within the same cover address memory, identity, history, and mortality from different perspectives.

Having established himself as a brilliant novelist (The Mak­ ing of Zombie Wars, 2015, etc.) and memoirist (The Book of My Lives, 2013), MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow Hemon offers a structural challenge in these back-to-back memoirs, where the end of the book finds a fresh beginning, with no direction on which order they should be read. In My Parents: An Introduc­ tion, the author takes a deep dive into the lives and marriage of his Ukrainian father and Bosnian mother, and their lives before and after the devastating war that tore apart their Yugoslavian homeland and drove them to Canada. His father is a storytelling natural who rarely reads and disdains fiction: “I am not going to read made-up stuff only because it’s nicely written,” he insists.

His mother reads voraciously. As chapters illuminate the cultural significance of food, music, literature, and so much else within their extended families, Hemon rebels against both parents, but what he resists most strongly is their aging and the inevitability of their dying. Ultimately, it is a memoir of mortality, of memory, of what endures. This Does Not Belong to You is more of a series of coming-of-age fragments, some rapturously poetic, covering much of the same ground of the family’s years before the war but with the focus on the author as a young boy and man rather than on his parents. He struggles to understand what he understands better now, and he feels a sense of loss now over what he experienced then. It provides the seeds for his sense of identity and for his germination as a writer. Eventually, he finds his narrative and shows that there could have been many others.

An incisive combination of literature that addresses the function of literature and memories that explore the meaning of memory.

A PRIMER FOR FORGETTING Getting Past the Past

Hyde, Lewis Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-374-23721-9 Transformation, creativity, and philosophical liberation all may involve relinquishing memory.

While many people try brain games, exercise, and food supplements in hopes of preventing memory loss, MacArthur fellow Hyde (Creative Writing/Kenyon |

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valerie jarrett finds her voice To understand Valerie Jarrett—the very private, soft-spoken and high-powered senior adviser to former President Barack Obama—it helps to know who her people are, as Ella Baker would put it.

Her grandfather Robert Rochon Taylor was the first black chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority. Her father, Dr. Jim Bowman, became a renowned geneticist and medical professor in Chicago after working in segregated hospitals in America before seeking opportunity to thrive in Iran, where Jarrett was born and spent the early years of her life.

In her new memoir, Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward (April 2), Jarrett writes that despite the example of confident authority going back gen- Valerie Jarrett erations in her family, it was advocacy for others in public service that helped her find her voice. “I found it easier to advocate for others than for myself. I was very, very shy from a young age,” she says.

“I didn’t know what my passion was. My father loved medicine; my grandfather loved real estate. My greatgrandfather loved architecture. I didn’t know what direction my passion would take me in. I made up a plan and it was rather arbitrary, but I kind of clung to it instead of having a plan.”

Jarrett worked as a lawyer, then in Chicago’s city hall, where, notably, she hired Michelle Obama after working for the first black mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington. In time, she would become the longest serving senior adviser to former President Barack Obama.

“It was kind of a circuitous route, but I knew I stood on the shoulders of people who had broken all kinds of barriers,” she says. “I just wasn’t sure I could do that. I think a lot of people have this fear of failure, this fear of not measuring up.” —J.S.

Photo courtesy Andrew Eccles

human rights abuses. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission requires a detailed recollection of crimes as part of an amnesty petition that, if granted, serves the state as “a cold forgetting, expedient and instrumental.” Public monuments, Hyde asserts, “often become invisible,” so that people “can turn away from the past.” Considering the connection of memory to creativity, the author finds that many artists, composers, and writers seek “the delight or anxiety of fresh perception” rather than “the comfort or dullness of the habitual.” “Remembering betrays Nature,” wrote the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. “Because yesterday’s Nature is not Nature. / What’s past is nothing and remembering is not seeing.” Amnesia, nostalgia, forgiveness, retribution, and the mining of memory in psychoanalysis—Hyde considers all these and more.

An eclectic and insightful miscellany of playful, spirited, provocative reflections. (24 b/w illustrations)

SURPRISE, KILL, VANISH The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins Jacobsen, Annie Little, Brown (560 pp.) $30.00 | May 14, 2019 978-0-316-44143-8

A behind-the-scenes look at the most shadowy corners of the American intelligence community.

It’s no secret that intelligence agents operate covertly around the world. As Jacobsen (The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncen­ sored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency, 2015, etc.) notes, this so-called “third option” is used “when the first option, diplomacy, is inadequate and the second, war, is a terrible idea.” The underlying idea is that getting up close and killing a single opponent or small batch of them is preferable to bombing an entire city or region to achieve the same goal. So it was that, as Jacobsen writes, a weathered and fearless contractor named Billy Waugh entered Khartoum to track a well-protected Osama bin Laden, who was enraged after having been rebuffed by the Saudi royals to lead a war against Saddam Hussein. When the Saudis decided to allow infidels in the form of a vast American army to do the job, bin Laden “began plotting jihad against the United States.” Waugh saw what he needed to see and developed a plan to eliminate his target that might have kept 9/11 from happening—but it never happened, nixed somewhere between his handlers and the president’s desk. Waugh and other operatives hatched other plots, and they were just right for the job. As Jacobsen writes, one CIA officer “was an expert in parachute insertion, scuba exfiltration, evasive driving, knife fighting, and a host of other close-quarters combat skills,” and his credentials seem light compared to some of the other agents she profiles. Some of the operations failed, but some were successful, as when Waugh scouted a Hezbollah higher-up in Riyadh and passed the ball to Mossad, which planted a car bomb that caught up

Joshunda Sanders is a writer and educator living in New York City. Finding My Voice was reviewed in the Feb. 15, 2019, issue.

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A welcome contribution to sports history, drawing attention to two extraordinary athletes for whom recognition is long overdue. the world’s fastest man

THE FIRST WAVE The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II

with its target in Damascus, incinerating him in one of the book’s critical moments.

Assassination may be frowned on but it’s used more often than you might think. Well-sourced and well-paced, this book is full of surprises.

Kershaw, Alex Dutton Caliber (384 pp.) $30.00 | May 14, 2019 978-0-451-49005-6

THE UNSPEAKABLE MIND Stories of Trauma and Healing from the Frontlines of PTSD Science

Jain, Shaili Harper/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $29.99 | May 7, 2019 978-0-06-246906-9

Comprehensive survey of the state of knowledge concerning PTSD, woven into the author’s experiences as a therapist and the child of survivors.

Family memories of the partition of India and Pakistan fueled psychiatrist and PTSD researcher Jain’s initial explorations of a condition marked by what she deems “five quintessential intrusive features”—namely, distress caused by memories of trauma, flashbacks, nightmares, unshakable waking thoughts, and physiological responses such as the feeling that one can’t breathe or that death is imminent. The trauma that produces PTSD is life-transforming. The author writes that recent therapies have improved the outlook for some of those who suffer from PTSD, and she suggests, in a footnote to the ongoing nature vs. nurture controversy, that someone raised in a supportive family may well weather trauma better than someone in a conflict-ridden environment. Moreover, she adds, “the resilience of the wider community to which you belong has a knock-on effect of your own capacity, as an individual, to be resilient.” When someone is not resilient, however, then trouble can lie ahead: PTSD sufferers tend to self-medicate, for instance, and their conditions are often misdiagnosed, so that when they are medicated pharmaceutically, it may well be with the wrong thing (benzodiazepines, in particular). Domestic violence, trouble with the law, suicide, and other negative consequences of PTSD are also commonplace. Jain carefully lays out what can be said with confidence about the syndrome—the fact, for instance, that “children with PTSD have altered neurobiology”—and what is more speculative, all with an eye to potential cures or at least effective therapies for managing the condition, such as recent British experiments with intensive residential treatments and the application of methods “with an emphasis on the fear and horror associated with the traumatic event.”

Given epidemic anxiety and stress disorders, this is a timely book that will greatly interest those who suffer from them as well as family members and medical practitioners.

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An account of the soldiers who were the first to land at D-Day, paying a terrible price for their valor.

Kershaw (Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family’s Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Paris, 2015, etc.) returns to the scene of his book The Bedford Boys: the Normandy beaches that saw the Allied invasion on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It was an operation fraught with peril. As the author writes, Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied forces, soberly observed that “we are putting the whole works on one number,” and failure was a very real possibility. The first wave of invaders took extraordinarily heavy casualties at many points; one British major, wounded in action, was fortunate to be taken away on a stretcher, for “out of 125 men in his company, he had lost eighty-three.” Kershaw’s pages are as densely populated as Cornelius Ryan’s but with some characters who haven’t played much of a role in the historical record—e.g., a cigar-chomping leader of American airborne pathfinders who fought his way desperately across the French countryside and survived the terrible odds only to wind up falling into a weird trap laid by a Nazi double agent at the end of the war. Kershaw sometimes falls into breezy human interest–ese, long on description and adjective— “a sprightly, dark-haired Londoner with a wisp of a mustache, armed with a pistol and a Sten gun”; “Dressed in a dark leather coat, Rommel was soon racing back to Normandy in a black Horch”—and his work lacks the attention to strategy and tactics, but also the heaviness, of an Antony Beevor narrative. Still, Kershaw is good at giving a you-are-there account, and it’s an eventful story indeed, told from both sides of the fight and featuring characters not often heard from: a member of the French Resistance here, a Polish conscript into the Wehrmacht there.

World War II buffs will find this an engaging, unchallenging read.

THE WORLD’S FASTEST MAN The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America’s First Black Sports Hero Kranish, Michael Scribner (384 pp.) $30.00 | May 14, 2019 978-1-5011-9259-3

A vigorous biography of an African-American pioneer of professional cycling—a man all but forgotten today. |

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Washington Post investigative political reporter Kranish (Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War, 2010, etc.) switches gears here to go into the realm of sports history, albeit a history that is laden with political and racial burdens. His story centers on young racer Marshall “Major” Taylor (18781932), whose father had served in the Union Army during the Civil War but whose bicycle-racing debut, at Madison Square Garden, was marked by the house band scrambling to find the sheet music for “Dixie” “even though Taylor was not a Southerner.” The “black meteor,” as one paper called Taylor, earned every one of his medals and prizes through the ordinary hard work of athletics coupled with the racism of late-19th-century America, a time when Plessy v. Ferguson was reinforcing separation, “all but normalizing racism and undoing much of what had been achieved since slavery ended with the Civil War.” Particularly intriguing in the narrative is not just Taylor, but also an entrepreneur and fellow racer who took him under his wing, a pioneer named Louis de Franklin Munger, who built and raced high-wheel bicycles, moved on to “safety bicycles” with equally sized wheels, and ended up building cars in New York City, selling to the likes of John Jacob Astor. Also of interest is the datum that Munger, himself a champion, predated the boxer Jack Johnson by a dozen years—and that Johnson himself, inspired

by Taylor, “dreamed of being a bicycling world champion” until an accident put him in the hospital and, as he put it, made him decide to “look for a less dangerous profession.” The dangers would mount for Taylor in the age of Jim Crow, and his misfortunes in later life make for sobering reading.

A welcome contribution to sports history, drawing attention to two extraordinary athletes for whom recognition is long overdue.

first wave attacking Sicily in July 1943. Medical units worked at the front, enduring as many casualties as infantry, and the narrative features plenty of action and suffering, including several of Lambert’s own nasty, if minor, injuries. After Sicily, everyone returned to Britain to train for the invasion of France. For the third time, his unit landed with the first wave, this time on Omaha Beach, an experience far worse than the others. Within hours, Lambert received life-threatening injuries—ironically, from the ramp of an American landing craft that crushed him as he was helping a soldier in the water. Thanks to outstanding American medical care, he survived and, despite not finishing high school, went on to a prosperous career and extremely long life. Veteran ghost writer DeFelice admits to a great deal of research filling in details of the training and fighting, and Lambert’s narrative flows smoothly throughout, clearly showing the author’s heroism.

One of the better recent World War II memoirs.

THE SHANGHAI FREE TAXI Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China Langfitt, Frank PublicAffairs (320 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-61039-814-5

A longtime NPR reporter who has lived and worked in China for more than a decade offers an engaging account of how ordinary Chinese are navigating the complex changes and challenges in their evolving nation.

In an ingenious experiment to interview people in a relaxed, private manner, Langfitt, a former taxi driver in Philadelphia who is now the London correspondent for NPR, offered free cab rides in Shanghai in exchange for conversation. Since roof lights were not permitted, the author festooned his car with magnetic signs (“Make Shanghai friends, Chat about Shanghai life”). Most people seemed delighted at the free ride and opened up to the Mandarin-speaking foreigner. His passengers included Rocky, “a farm boy turned Shanghai lawyer,” and Charles, a salesman who went on to work for a European newspaper. During road trips, the talk often turned political, and his passengers revealed their thoughts about the state of the roads, Chairman Mao, and the corruption built into the communist system. The tales of Rocky and Charles resurface throughout the work, and in each chapter, Langfitt offers examples of those searching for what Xi Jinping calls the “Chinese Dream.” There’s Joanna, a human rights lawyer who was once imprisoned in a public park; Crystal, a Chinese immigrant in America whose sister had disappeared in the mountains of Southwest China and who urged Langfitt to help in the search; and Ashley, a young professional who grew up in a family of party officials but moved to America “in search of political freedom months before the election of Donald Trump.” All are in search of individual wealth and freedom, now championed by China in a new era in which the country is asserting itself in the world yet still leaving people behind.

EVERY MAN A HERO A Memoir of D-Day, the First Wave at Omaha Beach, and a World at War Lambert, Ray & DeFelice, Jim Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $26.99 | May 28, 2019 978-0-06-293748-3

The vast majority of World War II veterans have died in recent decades, but at 98, Lambert, who earned a Silver Star and multiple Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, is still around to tell his story. Readers will be grateful.

Born in rural Alabama in 1920, Lambert joined the Army in 1939 because it offered a steady income. Learning that he had once assisted a veterinarian, the recruiter assigned him to the medical corps. Nearly three years passed before he saw action, and Lambert and co-author DeFelice (West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express, 2018, etc.) deliver a lively account of his training and maneuvers in America and then in wartime Britain. By this time, Lambert was a noncommissioned officer in charge of a unit. He landed with the first wave on North Africa in November 1942 and then again with the 68

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A top-notch study of an exceedingly odd moment in history. the queen

THE QUEEN The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth

Lively, humorous, and touching, the book exposes the struggles of regular people in conflict with an authoritarian state.

Without judgment, the author/driver allows his subjects to narrate their own adventures, leading to honest, raw, human stories.

Levin, Josh Little, Brown (432 pp.) $29.00 | May 21, 2019 978-0-316-51330-2

THIS AMERICA The Case for the Nation

Slate editorial director Levin examines the Ronald Reagan–era political trope about welfare queens in its most

Lepore, Jill Liveright/Norton (160 pp.) $16.95 | May 28, 2019 978-1-63149-641-7

Following her impressive one-volume history of the United States, These Truths (2018), the acclaimed historian delivers a sharp, short history of nationalism, which she describes as “a contrivance, an artifice, a fiction.”

As New Yorker staff writer Lepore (American History/ Harvard Univ.) notes, the term wasn’t even used until the 19th century. In 1830s America, it was called sectionalism, and its adherents included those who favored slavery and native tribes who didn’t recognize the government. By the 1880s, nationalism was fed by Jim Crow laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Dawes Act, and the Supreme Court ruling that Native Americans had no birthright to citizenship. The author clearly shows that, while patriotism is characterized by love of your home and people, nationalism features hatred of other countries and immigrants as well as those who are different at home. “Immigration policy is a topic for political debate; reasonable people disagree,” writes Lepore. “But hating immigrants, as if they were lesser humans, is a form of nationalism that has nothing to do with patriotism and much to do with racism.” Furthermore, she writes, “confusing nationalism and patriotism is not always innocent.” The author also takes her fellow historians to task for missing the resurgence of nationalism following World War II. Though there was a comparatively brief lull in the 1930s, with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the nation fell apart. Churches were bombed, civil rights leaders were harassed and even killed, and the Ku Klux Klan reappeared.

Hopes rose with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Immigration Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and in the 1980s, nationalism in the U.S. was all but dead. However, it continued to thrive in Bosnia and Rwanda and has carried over to Russia, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and the Philippines. Lepore writes that while global trade, immigration reform, and the internet were supposed to end divisions, nationalism has surged; now we have politics of identity rather than nationality.

A frank, well-written look at the dangers we face. We ignore them at our peril.

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extreme case.

Linda Taylor made a big mistake when, in 1974, she called Chicago police to report a burglary with a “weird list” of items taken: a refrigerator, a stove, elephant figurines, stereo speakers, and “thousands of dollars’ worth of household furnishings.” The investigating detective thought the list weird, too; in his ensuing investigation, he discovered that Taylor, who went by many names and, as a person who could pass as black, white, Jewish, Native American, and Hispanic and who seemed to be ageless, had proven to be a master of impersonation. Her skillful gaming of the welfare system had netted her a handsome income, complete with fur coats and buckets of jewelry—and then there was insurance fraud, bigamy, and a host of other crimes, including, perhaps, more than one murder. Taylor went to prison and was essentially forgotten, dying of a heart attack in 2002. She lived on as a caricature, however. On the presidential campaign trail, Reagan referred to “welfare queens” who bilked the government categorically. Levin nimbly explores Taylor’s life in a story that becomes more complex the more it’s revealed. The tale encompasses an astonishingly prolific criminal career as well as issues of race (“a light complexion could, in certain circumstances, allow a biracial person in the Deep South to travel between two very different worlds”), mental illness, and selfinvention, to say nothing of politics and the essentialism that Reagan commonly practiced, distilling people into categories and making an instance of malfeasance into a pattern of behavior. As the author shows in this excellent piece of true-crime writing, Taylor’s case is entirely rare, but the potent political symbolism it inspired certainly did no favors to those who truly needed welfare assistance in the years since.

In the end, a politician’s reductive sloganeering finds some support here but is ultimately found wanting. A topnotch study of an exceedingly odd moment in history.

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SERIOUS EATER A Food Lover’s Perilous Quest for Pizza and Redemption

THE FATE OF FOOD What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World

Levine, Ed Portfolio (288 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-525-53354-2

Little, Amanda Harmony (352 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-8041-8903-3

A food blogger chronicles his rocky road to success.

From childhood, Levine (Pizza: A Slice of Heaven, 2005, etc.) reports in an effusive, often self-deprecating memoir, he gravitated “toward the most delicious food I could find.” He loved to eat, to discover out-of-the-way restaurants, and to recommend hidden gems to friends. After working unhappily in advertising, he finally was able to turn that passion into a career. In the 1990s, his books New York Eats and New York Eats (More) won praise (restaurant critic Ruth Reichl called him the “missionary of the delicious”) and led to a local cable TV show, a short-lived show on public radio, and gigs as a freelancer. But with a wife and son to support, he needed a more secure way of making a living. His first idea was to launch EATv to give him a forum for his many food stories; when he failed to find backing, he came up with the idea of a food blog, Ed Levine Eats, where he could be both editor and star. “I loved everything about blogging,” he writes. “I love the soapbox that it gave me, allowing me to proselytize about the food and the purveyors I felt so passionately about.” He leaped into the blogosphere with high hopes: “Belief, passion, and willful naiveté are the first-time entrepreneur’s best friends.” However, the reality proved to be grueling. Levine recounts in detail the frustrations he faced as he tried to raise money, solicit advertising, and assemble a team of talented, energetic employees for a site he called Serious Eats. Forced into “constant money-raising mode,” he found some support from family and friends but also faced repeated rejections from potential advertisers and, after nearly a decade, when he decided to sell the blog, from would-be buyers. “The day-to-day was exhausting,” he writes, “a never-ending financial crisis.” Finally, he found a buyer, and Serious Eats, he reports delightedly, is thriving.

Recipes for bagels, spiced onion clusters, white clam pizza—and more—add further flavor to an entertaining memoir.

A wide-ranging examination of approaches to food production that point the way to feeding the more crowded, hotter, and drier world of the future.

Environmental journalist Little (Journalism and Writer-inResidence/Vanderbilt Univ.; Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—Our Ride to the Renewable Future, 2009) recounts her travels around the globe seeking out stories that illustrate problems and solutions related to food production and climate change.

Among others, she had insightful discussions with farmers in Wisconsin, Mexico, China, and Kenya. In Norway, a salmon farmer introduced her to aquaculture, and in New Jersey, she learned the hows and whys of aeroponics, or vertical farming.

An Israeli engineer demonstrated to the author that country’s solutions to the water shortage, and she visited a California lab where cultured meat is being grown via cellular agriculture.

Besides giving readers entertaining profiles of her interviewees, she shares her experiences in a lively, personable manner with just a few statistics and lots of pertinent quotes. She chronicles how she ate cultured meat and 3-D–printed food and drank specially treated water. Little, an open-minded author who has a knack for picking the brains of the right people, also looks at food waste, ancient crops with traits of climate resistance, cloud-seeding, and 3-D printing of military meals. The illustrations are rather sparse, small, and black-and-white, but one worth the price of admission reveals an “unsuccessful attempt to 3D-print hummus flatbread with an avocado star.” As the author shows, true innovation takes patience and time. Little’s take-home message is that innovation combined with good judgment can provide the solutions to the coming food crisis.

She calls for a synthesis of the wisdom of the past with the ingenuity of the present to help us survive the future.

An important, well-documented report that is highly readable, fact-filled, and eye-opening. (50 b/w photos)

MARRIAGEOLOGY The Art and Science of Staying Together Luscombe, Belinda Spiegel & Grau (288 pp.) $26.00 | May 21, 2019 978-0-399-59236-2

Six areas that need special attention if a marriage is to last a lifetime.

In her debut book, Time editor at large Luscombe has identified six 70

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different subjects she feels couples must master: “familiarity, fighting, finances, family, fooling around, and finding help.”

Taking each topic in turn, the author interweaves stories of her own relationship with her husband with research and tales from other couples. This provides readers with an in-depth analysis of what works and doesn’t work in each scenario. Luscombe also sprinkles in some droll humor, which helps break up the seriousness inherent in the topic. As the author demonstrates, familiarity and fighting appear to go hand in hand. Often, we get so used to our partner that we forget what made us attracted to them in the first place. Eventually, we create a negative image and stick with it. Money is an issue regardless of whether both partners work or one works and the other stays home with the children. Luscombe notes that it’s important to address wage discrepancies and the fact that more women feel less dependent on a spouse when they earn their own income. To prevent infidelity, couples need to talk about sex, make time for it, and understand that men and women usually have different levels of desire. For those couples who need it, Luscombe recommends couples therapy; having an unbiased outsider look at a relationship’s pressure points can help move partners back onto a better path together. “People who are happily paired with another live longer and are healthier, richer, and more satisfied with their life, in the main, than people who are singles or whose relationships don’t last,” writes the author. “Their kids are more likely to thrive. They have more sex.” Using her suggestions, many couples will be able to weather the ebb and flow of their relationship and stick with it.

Though Luscombe doesn’t break much new ground in the genre, she provides informative, helpful advice on how to maintain a marriage for the long haul.

the present day.” Lynskey does a superb job analyzing the young Orwell’s political beliefs, his hatred for fascism, and his “vision of common-sense radicalism.” He had a special admiration for Charles Dickens, whom he described as “generously angry.”

Lynskey traces Orwell’s early influences, from H.G. Wells, who “loomed over Orwell’s childhood like a planet,” to Jack London and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “anti-utopian novel We.” Arthur Koestler’s “masterpiece,” Darkness at Noon, provided Orwell with Nineteen Eighty-Four’s “mental landscape.” Though never a wealthy man, Orwell found success with Ani­mal Farm, which provided him with the funds to finish Nineteen Eighty-Four, which he edited continuously for three years while he was quite ill. It published in June 1949; Orwell died 227 days later. Lynskey next traces the novel’s impact, from the Cold War era to today, on politics and other writers; film and play versions; contemporary music and TV shows; and the “most celebrated television commercial” of the 1980s, Apple’s Macintosh computer launch.

As Lynskey somberly concludes in this fascinating literary history, Nineteen Eighty-Four’s 70th anniversary “falls at a dark time for liberal democracy.”

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MAMASKATCH A Cree Coming of Age McLeod, Darrel J. Milkweed (240 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-57131-387-4

In his debut, the winner of the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction, McLeod recounts his childhood and coming-of-age in Treaty Eight Cree territory in Northern Alberta.

Told predominantly in English, with a smattering of French and infused with important moments of untranslated Cree language, the fragmented and seemingly dissonant episodic chapters contain elements that are present in many Native/First Nations memoirs: alcohol, drugs, domestic violence, abuse, racism, religious intolerance, and poverty. However, these details don’t exist to pleasure the white gaze or to satisfy any savior complex. These aspects, delineated in the segmented narratives, reflect candid truths and the brokenness that occurs in a life surrounded by settler colonialism and fueled by historical trauma. They also serve as an acknowledgment, which is the first step to healing. Whether retelling his mother’s stories, such as her escape from residential school, or recounting the grooming and abuse he experienced from his brother-in-law, his search for intimacy, or his desire for reconnection to Cree tradition, the author ably conveys all of the devastating guilt, shame, remorse, and emptiness that he has experienced. Still, it’s clear that McLeod isn’t “looking for pity.” As the title of the opening chapter, “Spirals,” suggests—and just as his mother did in her own “magical way”—the author shares his stories in a spiral, revisiting “each theme several times over, providing a bit more information with each pass,” until it “wash[es] away the heaviness.” Readers able to “just sit back and listen without

THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 Lynskey, Dorian Doubleday (368 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-385-54405-4

The life and afterlife of the celebrated—and seemingly evergreen —novel.

Music, film, and politics writer Lynskey (33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day, 2011) reminds us that George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has been the book “we turn to when truth is mutilated, language is distorted, power is abused, and we want to know how bad things can get.” The “fact that the novel speaks to us so loudly and clearly in 2019,” he writes, is a “terrible indictment of politicians and citizens alike.” The author tells his vibrant, spirited story of a man and his book in two parts. He first recounts how Orwell came to write the novel and describes in detail the world he inhabited. In the second section, he follows the “political and cultural life” of Nineteen Eighty-Four, originally titled The Last Man in Europe, from “Orwell’s death to |

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THE MOSCOW RULES The Secret CIA Tactics that Helped America Win the Cold War

interrupting” (a lesson young Darrel learned from hearing his mother’s stories) will share in the secret knowledge that coming-of-age has little to do with losing one’s innocence and everything to do with maintaining one’s hope.

Lyrically written and linked by family, compassion, forgiveness, and hope, Mamaskatch sings out as a modernday celebration of healing.

Mendez, Antonio J. & Mendez, Jonna H. with Baglio, Matt PublicAffairs (272 pp.) $28.00 | May 21, 2019 978-1-5417-6219-0

SEA STORIES My Life in Special Operations

Two former CIA agents stationed in Moscow reveal the ins and outs of spycraft.

The golden days of the espionage aspect of the Cold War may have been the early 1960s, but the contest was still going strong in the late-’70s, when the Mendezes (Spy Dust, 2002, etc.) were CIA operatives in Moscow. It was a heady and dangerous time, they write, whose closing months, dating into the mid’80s, were marred by revelations of double agents and the quick dismantling of the CIA’s spy network. “The majority of Soviet citizens working for us,” they write, “had been arrested and executed, most of them betrayed by Americans inside the intelligence community.” But before that, there was a world of spycraft to explore, with elaborate disguises, consultations from magicians who helped construct secret compartments, and all kinds of nifty gadgetry, such as “a contraption that would allow an individual to rapidly rappel down an apartment building and return up the rope using an ascension device, which had fondly been nicknamed the Spiderman.” Cool tools aside, the authors make it clear that espionage is a deadly business, and dealing with nations that are good at it requires a special kind of agent and a flexible protocol (the “Moscow rules” of the title). One evolutionary stage of those rules occurred in the 1960s, when the U.S. and U.K. collaborated to “run” a Soviet agent whose intelligence helped prevent the Cold War from turning hot during the Cuban missile crisis. Another was to bring in technical officers “who would never have feet on the ground in an actual CIA overseas operation,” including scientists, graphic artists, and the like. Much of what the authors describe is the quotidian back and forth of spycraft, boredom punctuated by episodes of real excitement; the narrative has the same choppy feel at times, but reading about prosthetics, cameras hidden in fountain pens, and other such things makes for eye-opening entertainment.

Fans of le Carré and other spinners of secret-agent tales will find this of considerable interest.

McRaven, William H. Grand Central Publishing (352 pp.) $30.00 | May 21, 2019 978-1-5387-2974-8

A retired four-star admiral serves up a readable memoir that’s long on blood and guts—including those of Osama bin Laden.

McRaven (Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World, 2017) grew up a military brat—and a Texan when his father was sent to San Antonio after suffering a mild stroke (“something to do with cigarettes and Jim Beam whiskey, the doctor would say”).

He also grew up in the 1960s under the influence of James Bond movies and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., all of which would come into play when the young Navy ensign applied to become a SEAL, “reportedly the toughest physical training in the entire military.” Certainly the drill instructors worked McRaven hard; of an entering class of 155, he writes, only 33 completed training and became SEALs. He himself would serve longer than any other SEAL, rising to become the commander of the entire U.S. Special Operations Forces. His book is anecdotal but without many surprises for anyone with military experience, but his account of finding and killing bin Laden is one of the best in the literature, told from the eagle’s-eye viewpoint of one who oversaw the entire operation. There his story shines, full of twists and turns ranging from the politics of the military’s engagement with the intelligence community (“those CIA officers who disliked SOF the most seemed to be our staunchest supporters”) to confirming that it was indeed bin Laden the SEALs and other special ops troops had killed. (McRaven recounts ordering a 6-foot-2 SEAL to lie next to the corpse of the 6-foot-4 bin Laden to be sure that they’d gotten the right guy.) It’s a story with many heroes but of cold professionalism as well; as the author tells it, “I had no sense of relief, no internal exhilaration, no feeling of victory,” not until his men were safely home.

Readers interested in the essential work of military special forces will be inspired by McRaven’s adventures.

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Just the kind of sharp, relevant scholarship needed to continue to inspire the next generation of feminist thought. wordslut

WORDSLUT A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

THE LEVELLING What’s Next After Globalization

Montell, Amanda Harper Wave/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-06-286887-9

O’Sullivan, Michael PublicAffairs (352 pp.) $28.00 | May 28, 2019 978-1-5417-2406-8

A gloomy report on the end of globalization featuring a unique thesis that harkens back to 17th-century England.

O’Sullivan, the chief investment officer in the international wealth management division at Credit Suisse, first imparts a wealth of historical information to explain how the current sense of a “world turned upside down” is actually a transition phase not unlike the tail end of the previous period of global growth that occurred just before World War I. Globalization, in short, is defunct, and following a huge expansion in world markets, trade, and financial institutions, it is all coming apart—as in the early decades of the previous century— due to protectionism, tariffs, rise in poverty, debt, ill-health, unemployment, inequality, protest voting, and right-wing policies. The author begins his study with the depressing state of current affairs and then addresses the challenge of “darker scenarios that threaten the world we live in.” He delineates a fascinating grassroots movement that erupted during the throes of the English civil war, one that might lend practical solutions for today. The Levellers emerged as a democratic faction of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army, a “mongrel” group of regular people, soldiers, and tradespeople, both men and women, as opposed to the “Grandees” who held the power in Parliament.

Over the course of several so-called Putney Debates in St. Mary’s Church in London in the 1640s, they laid out a case for “repairing the broken contract of trust between elected representatives and their electorates,” pleading for equality, accountability, responsibility, and transparency in government, along with unfettered trade and debt relief. The ramifications of the Levellers’ demands later appeared in the revolutionary constitutions of America and France, and O’Sullivan also examines what Alexander Hamilton might have suggested as a solution for our current mess. With a generous nod to the work of previous authors and experts, the author offers a solid synthesis of prognosis and practical solutions.

While the book is somewhat of a structural patchwork, the concept of O’Sullivan’s Levelling presentation is fresh and thought-provoking.

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A fresh look at how gender impacts language, loaded with strategies to alter the way people think about communication.

In her debut, editor and linguist Montell sets a high bar, proving that linguistics plus feminism equals big fun. The infectious love of wordplay embedded in her work translates into a laugh-out-loud analysis and critique. Readers are invited to enter the realm of ever evolving speech habits and encouraged to consider their own thinking about language and power.

With attention to global variations, the author substantively addresses the inherent ways communication patterns have misrepresented and sometimes failed women speakers of English throughout history. In addition to considering how feminism’s language makeover may improve accuracy, Montell offers hilarious insights on such topics as how to confuse catcallers (“and other ways to verbally smash the patriarchy”), techniques for shutting down obsessive grammar correctors, and how to craft insults, talk dirty, and swear (while feminist). The author addresses the game-changing inroads made by academic feminists and writers from the 1970s to the 1990s while also candidly documenting their shortcomings, and she sets the path and pace for reshaping language use with equity in mind. She explores how young women’s speech patterns often influence future directions and examines how some frequently criticized adaptations, like hedging and uptalk, serve distinct social purposes. Montell also analyzes how everything from women’s word choices to voices are policed and coached. She unpacks these biases while debunking related advice that describes itself as ‘empowering’ while encouraging girls and women to change.

Grounded in decades of innovative feminist scholarship, full of witty personal stories, and written with the pragmatic aim of disrupting and changing the status quo, this is a humorous and important book for anyone interested in gender equality, wordplay, or fostering precise communication.

Just the kind of sharp, relevant scholarship needed to continue to inspire the next generation of feminist thought.

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THE TROUBLE WITH GRAVITY Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet

NOTES TO SELF Essays

Pine, Emilie Dial (192 pp.) $17.00 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-984855-45-9

Panek, Richard Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (256 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-544-52674-7

A debut collection of personal essays on the meaning of being a woman living in a patriarchal society.

Pine (Modern Drama/Univ. Coll.

Dublin; The Politics of Irish Memory: Per­ forming Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture, 2010, etc.) breaks years of learned silence to take feminist aim at taboo subjects. The opening essay, “Notes on Intemperance,” concerns her relationship with her father, a depressed alcoholic writer who “seemed happiest when he was as far away from his family as possible.” As she chronicles his struggle to pull back from the brink of liver failure, she examines the difficult emotions she experienced as a loving daughter who raged inwardly at her father’s profound selfishness. Her experiences starting a family of her own were no less painful, but for different reasons.

In “From the Baby Years,” Pine discusses the pain of agonizing over whether or not she wanted a baby and then undergoing several unsuccessful fertility treatments. In another essay, she considers the female body, discussing menstruation in a powerfully unfettered way. Daring to offer details about such topics as menstruation during sex, Pine calls attention to the way female bleeding—and, by extension, the female body—is still seen as unclean. She suggests that her own discomfort with even saying she is menstruating is evidence of the pernicious way “women are policed. And of how we police ourselves.” In the most personally revealing essay, “Something About Me,” the author chronicles her “wild child” teenage years when she was part of the London club scene. A lonely child from a broken and dysfunctional home, Pine skipped school, drank, drugged, and had sex with strangers. Eventually, university life saved her, and she became a professor. But as she writes in her essay about being a woman in an institution built on patriarchal values, that home had its own breakdown-inducing stressors. Bold and timely, Pine’s book tells truths about being female and human that are as necessary to speak as they are to hear.

A sharp, refreshingly frank collection from a fresh voice.

According to this fine popular primer, nobody knows what gravity is, but few readers will feel that their time was wasted.

No one thought about gravity before Aristotle, writes science writer Panek (The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, 2011), but all ancient cultures knew that some things were “up” (the heavens, the gods), and earthly matter was “down.” Everything on Earth fell down, but the heavens stayed up, and few thinkers wondered why. “Reasoning,” writes the author, “…was what Aristotle would introduce into the conversation: methodology, not mythology.” However, he came to the wrong conclusion, maintaining that objects fell because they are drawn toward the center of the universe, which sat at the center of the Earth.

Heavenly objects, being perfect, were exempt. Newton’s concept of universal attractive force and the inverse square law were not original, but his outstanding mathematics, which predicted movements of bodies anywhere in the universe, made him a superstar in Britain. Natural philosophers of other nations pointed out that a force that acted magically across empty space was clearly nonsense. Because Newton’s math worked so well, they came around, but plenty of thoughtful scientists remained unhappy. Panek paraphrases physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach: “the theory of gravitation had disguised its philosophical shortcomings by proving its reliability and usefulness. But the philosophical shortcomings remained. They’d just become respectable.” Einstein solved the problem in 1915 by more dazzling mathematics demonstrating that matter warps nearby space-time. Bodies moving through this distorted space seem to change direction, giving the appearance of a force acting on them. Many bizarre consequences—black holes, gravitational lenses, the slowing of time—follow naturally. Philosophically inclined readers may complain that scientists still don’t know what gravity is, but the remainder will enjoy Panek’s expert description of the spectacular things that gravity does.

A useful primer on a force that still inspires mystery.

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An amusing, entertaining effort to answer the unanswerable. the doomsday calculation

INDECENT ADVANCES A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall

THE DOOMSDAY CALCULATION How an Equation that Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe

Polchin, James Counterpoint (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-64009-189-4

Poundstone, William Little, Brown Spark (320 pp.) $29.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-316-44070-7

A cultural historian examines truecrime stories from the early- and mid-20thcentury press to recover a little-discussed history of violence against gay men.

“Queer history,” writes Polchin (Liberal Studies/New York Univ.), “has often focused on narratives of progress in which sexual minorities prosper despite the social injuries done to them.”

In his first book the author takes a different tack, analyzing true-crime newspaper narratives to understand how the American press “shaped ideas of morality and immorality” about gay men. He begins around 1920, when the Justice Department grouped homosexuals with political subversives and a medical establishment steeped in Freudian theory promoted ideas about “homosexual panic (panic due to the pressure of uncontrollable perverse sexual cravings),” which later evolved into an in-court defense used by (straight) men charged with murder or assault.

In the meantime, queer crime stories offered readers glimpses into a salacious demimonde. In the 1930s, increasingly sensationalized queer crime stories embodied what Polchin posits were emergent fears about sexual psychopaths. This led to gay men being arrested on minor charges and enduring “forced psychological treatments meant to control and cure abnormal sexual desires.” By the 1940s, the trope of segregation began to emerge in queer crime accounts. Accounts of black men injured by male companions “rarely made headlines beyond the African-American press.” By the 1950s, homosexual panic was officially listed as a psychological disorder in the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which was largely influenced by a guidebook assembled by the military. Yet on the edges of this oppressively homophobic world, LGBT artists like photographer Carl Van Vechten observed the suffering of queer men and filled scrapbooks with gay crime news stories meant to serve as an “unofficial history of queer life in mid-century America.” Thoughtful, accessible and well-researched, Polchin’s book offers useful insight into some of the lesser-known cultural currents that gave rise to the gay rights movement.

An enlighteningly provocative cultural history. (b/w photo insert)

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An amusing, entertaining effort to answer the unanswerable.

In his latest thought-provoking journey, journalist Poundstone (Head in the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are so Easy to Look up, 2016, etc.) writes about how modern scientists have applied the mathematical theorem of obscure 18th-century British clergyman Thomas Bayes to a host of important questions and come up with unsettling answers.

“By applying Thomas Bayes’ rules to the technique of self-sampling,” writes the author, “we can address cosmic mysteries.

Was life on Earth probable or a rare accident? Why don’t we see any evidence of extraterrestrials? Is the world we see real or a simulation? Is the universe we observe all there is?” There is perhaps less than meets the eye because the results are always in probabilities, but many defy common sense, and the enthusiastic Poundstone delivers a steady stream of delicious jolts.

Bayes’ theorem finds the probability of something if one knows other probabilities. Sound boring? Here’s an example: A woman learns that her mammogram is positive. What are the odds that she has breast cancer? The known probabilities are that 1 percent of women have breast cancer and that mammograms are 90 percent accurate. The startling answer: The odds are only about 1 in 9. Since the test is only 90 percent accurate, 10 percent of the 99 healthy women will also be positive. Poundstone turns up brilliant scientists who have applied Bayes’ theorem to unanswerable questions and then delivered answers. One determined that, with a 95 percent confidence level, the human race will survive at least 5,100 but not more than 7.8 million years.

Another charming example of the Malcolm Gladwell school of writing: making an implausible statement and then producing evidence that it’s true—maybe. Poundstone’s examples mix statistics and serious philosophical arguments, and readers who pay close attention will be rewarded. (20 b/w illustrations)

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Along with many contemporary political analysts, such as William Davies and Timothy Snyder, Reid-Henry (Geography/ Queen Mary, Univ. of London; The Political Origins of Inequality: Why a More Equal World is Better for Us All, 2015, etc.), a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, is alarmed about the erosion of civic engagement and “loss of moral legitimacy” in Western democracies. Democracy, he asserts, is struggling to live up to its core value: “commitment to reconciling pluralism with political justice.” In a capacious, hugely ambitious study of the last 40 years, the author chronicles when and how this crisis began. In the 1980s, tension between freedom and equality, individual demands and common needs, intensified under the “laissez-faire market economics” of the U.S. and U.K. Tax cuts undermined publicly funded mandates, regulation and oversight were rolled back, and public entities such as schools and prisons were handed over to for-profit businesses.

Social welfare programs were “defunded, outsourced, meanstested,” and the family, rather than the community, was touted as “the central unit” of society. By the end of the 20th century, Reid-Henry asserts, “the reigning liberal blueprint was that of societies governed at a distance”; “collective thinking” was subsumed by individual interests. Moreover, wealth gained outsized influence, with public policies increasingly enacted not “to safeguard democracy” but, with great vigor, “to save capitalism.” In the current climate, politicians focus on how to win support from “powerful business lobbies, corporate managers, and international finance” rather than on promoting and publicizing a democratic political vision. Instead of debating issues, politicians now rely on “charisma” to win over voters. The author’s cogent analysis is undermined at times by convoluted prose, and although his evidence is abundant and compelling, the book might well have been judiciously honed. Nevertheless, he conveys an important message: Individual political action must become accountable to society’s interests.

A persuasive argument that democratic values can be revived.

Rae, Casey Univ. of Texas (312 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-4773-1650-4

A critical analysis that celebrates the transgressive author as rock avatar, cultural visionary, and literary adventurer.

The terms of the title could have been flipped, for this book focuses on what might be called “the cult of William S. Burroughs” and the ways that his influence and legacy have permeated the culture of rock as a whole. Longtime music critic Rae, the director of music licensing for SiriusXM, not only makes the case that the triumvirate of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan were equally and deeply under the influence of the novelist, but also that his influence can be seen across the spectrum of rock, at the opposite poles of progressive and punk. Indeed, he argues that the creative forces of Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, and the Clash all worshipped at Burroughs’ altar. Moreover, Burroughs anticipated the internet, where we are “bombarded with fragmentary words, sounds, and images shot through the digital ether,” his cut-up strategy with words and tape anticipated hip-hop sampling. “Once you start looking,” writes Rae, “Burroughs is everywhere. It’s like a game of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ with a killer soundtrack. But instead of a chipper youth with a striped sweater, we’re spying a wan junkie in an old fedora.”

Occasionally, the author overreachs in his analysis, suggesting that Burroughs must have influenced where he may have and that his influence was crucial at pivotal moments when it was perhaps coincidental at best. Would Dylan have become Dylan in a world without Burroughs? Most likely. Yet David Bowie clearly learned much about dissociative artistry and shifting personae from Burroughs (as well as from Dylan), and Kurt Cobain plainly considered himself an acolyte. Maybe more rock stars romanticized his life and addiction than actually read his books, and some tried “to boost their own hipness through association,” but Rae builds a convincing case that Burroughs has been underacknowledged in rock history.

A book that nudges a legendary legacy from the cultural margins toward the mainstream.

IN PAIN A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids Rieder, Travis Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $27.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-06-285464-3

EMPIRE OF DEMOCRACY The Remaking of the West Since the Cold War

A debilitating accident prompts a man’s descent into opioid dependence.

Rieder (Toward a Small Family Ethic, 2016, etc.), the assistant director for Education Initiatives at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, retraces the aftermath of a traumatic 2015 accident that shattered his foot and forced him to endure six grueling surgeries. Eventually, the author was sent home with a stockpile of opioid painkillers for his excruciating pain. Rieder doesn’t skimp on the grisly postsurgical details, including “the boiling pain of carved tissue” or how “coming out of anesthesia was basically the process of

Reid-Henry, Simon Simon & Schuster (880 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-4516-8496-4

A sweeping exploration of how voter apathy, distrust of government, ideological extremism, and economic inequality point to a crisis of democracy.

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A revelatory history of America’s grasp for power. the crowded hour

discovering how awful it was to be conscious.” Sprinkled among the chronological chapters of his recovery are fascinating sections in which the author discusses the historical narrative of opioids, racial differences in pain assessment, and the intricate mechanics of physical pain, that “fiery, boiling, acidic” suffering that Rieder knows well. As he recovered, his physician advised him to wean himself off the high doses of oxycodone he was taking. The author describes weeks of agonizing withdrawal symptoms, including insomnia, nausea, cold sweats, and terrifying emotional darkness, which, as a new father to a young daughter, left him unable to care for her at home. Though he fortunately overcame his opioid dependence, Rieder believes he is one of the lucky ones and that improved withdrawal management and behavioral intervention programs must be mandated in hospitals to “help patients escape the grip of this medication.” Later in the book, the author takes a critical detour to skillfully address the primary challenge facing opioidprescribing physicians: initiating dependency while dutifully attempting to alleviate severe patient discomfort. Rieder recognizes in himself—and others, including his mother, who had knee replacement surgery—the dilemma facing the medical community: treating patients in pain with dangerously addictive medications responsible for killing thousands yearly. With this smart, riveting, real-life account, the author proves himself a convincing and effective advocate for opioid use reform.

A harrowing cautionary narrative that speaks to patients and physicians alike on the ugly reality of the enduring opioid epidemic.

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and Frank Norris—Risen (Single Malt: A Guide to the Whiskies of Scotl­ and, 2018, etc.), deputy op-ed editor at the New York Times, offers a penetrating history of the “half-baked, poorly executed, unnecessary conflict” from which the U.S., nevertheless, emerged victorious. Due to the nation’s limited army and ill-prepared state militias, the war relied on volunteers; many eagerly joined Roosevelt’s “cowboys,” which took its nickname from one of Buffalo Bill Cody’s touring troupes. The Rough Riders were shocked by the reality of Army life: Malodorous cattle ships, refitted to transport troops, teemed with insects; on the island, they lacked food, water, cooking utensils, supplies, medicine—and decisive leadership; malaria, typhoid, and yellow fever raged. Moreover, Cubans were resentful, seeking guns, money, and ammunition— not America’s “rescue.” Although the intervention lasted less than six months, America battled on for another four years, in the end controlling Puerto Rico and part of the Philippines. The war, Risen argues convincingly, shaped the nation’s sense of unity, purpose, and role as an exporter of American values, establishing “the wheels of myth-making, idealism, and national self-interest that would guide the country during the twentieth century.”

A revelatory history of America’s grasp for power.

STONE MEN The Palestinians Who Built Israel

Ross, Andrew Verso (272 pp.) $29.95 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-78873-026-6

THE CROWDED HOUR Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century

Cultural differences, labor relations, religious certainty, a knotted history of violence, political dominance, and cruel economic policies—all figure prominently in this account of the stone and building industries in Israel.

Ross (Social and Cultural Analysis/New York Univ.; Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City, 2011, etc.), a contributor to the Nation, the New York Times, and Artforum, delivers a deeply researched, passionate, pro-proletariat view of his topic. Based on interviews with businessmen, laborers, Palestinians, Israelis, and others, the text rehearses the long history of stonework in the region. The author exposes what he sees as the exploitation of Palestinian stoneworkers and points out the difficulties of those workers (getting through checkpoints each day takes hours) and how many of them are torn by the necessity to make money by building the homes of those whom they view as occupiers. He notes, as well, the lack of civil rights for the workers—and of any other benefits besides a salary, which is, as he describes, often barely adequate to sustain life. From the beginning, Ross pulls no punches, decrying the Israeli employers’ “discrimination, degradation, and exploitation.” Repeatedly, he shines light on the dark side of economic power: the deals, the political connections, the anti-union efforts. The author visited many building sites and talked with hundreds of workers, often standing in line with them at clogged checkpoints. He reports that many told him “they no longer had any dreams or

Risen, Clay Scribner (368 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5011-4399-1

A lively exploration of how “intervene first, ask questions later” became America’s foreign policy beginning with the Spanish-American War. In 1898, Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain captured the American imagination, inflamed by sensational newspaper reports and dispatches by well-regarded journalists. Many believed that Cuban rebels were starving, perishing on America’s doorstep, and it was the responsibility of the U.S. to intervene “in the name of humanity.” Although President William McKinley and his administration were reluctant to interfere, others pressed for war, the noisiest among them Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s views prevailed, and his name and fortune became forever linked to a volunteer regiment known as the Rough Riders, whose exploits fed into America’s self-image of courage and invincibility. Drawing on letters, archival sources, and abundant newspaper articles—many from onsite journalists including Richard Harding Davis, Stephen Crane, |

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THE ST. LOUIS ANTHOLOGY

hopes.” Ross also offers details about the stone deposits in the area (and a map—Bethlehem is one important site), talks about the recent “Separation Wall” (with a nod to the issues regarding a border wall in the United States), and does not see much hope.

A sturdy and depressing study in which the author’s pro-worker sympathies and empathies are clear—as are his condemnations of Israel’s (and employers’) policies.

Ed. by Schuessler, Ryan Belt Publishing (256 pp.) $20.00 paper | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-948742-44-3

One of America’s most infamous river cities comes roaring to life in this haunting, enigmatic, and musical literary anthology.

A small town with big-city ambitions, a Catholic stronghold, home to one of the biggest breweries in the world, and a flyover town that was once one of the largest cities in the United States, St. Louis is a study in contrasts and contains an essence that is difficult to capture. In the latest in the publisher’s city anthologies series (previous volumes have covered Detroit, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, among others), St. Louis–raised, Chicago-based journalist Schuessler presents a mix of prose and poetry. The book assumes the herculean task of bringing to life a city that is integral to American history while also proving unfindable on a map by most Americans.

“St. Louis is undoubtedly fragmented, physically so in that the city is dissected by rivers, highways, walls, and fences; but also in a more insidious way,” writes the editor in the introduction.

“It’s a city (like many) where race, class, religion, and zip code might as well be cards in a rigged poker game, where the winners’ prize is the ability to ignore that the losers have drastically shorter life expectancies. But it’s also a city of warmth, love, and beauty—especially in its contrasts.” Divided into three sections—Histories, Memories, and Realities—the anthology gives readers a dazzling portrait of a Midwestern city whose relationships among socio-economics, religion, civil rights, and class are consistently complex. In Nick Sacco’s short essay, the writer discusses the complicated history of the city’s Italian immigrants, capturing that neighborhood’s inexorable charm and racial and religious xenophobia. Jason Vasser-Elong’s biting poetry brings to life the Delmar Loop, a vibrant area with a complicated racial history that inspired artists like Chuck Berry, while Alice Azure’s poetry in “Downtown St. Louis” highlights that area’s commercial vitality while also addressing the homeless population that is largely ignored.

A satisfying love letter to a charming city that has many faces and identities.

THE WIDOW WASHINGTON The Life of Mary Washington Saxton, Martha Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-8090-9701-2

A sympathetic look at George Washington’s mother.

Saxton (Emerita, History and Women’s Studies/Amherst Coll.; Being Good: Women’s Moral Values in Early America, 2002, etc.) believes that Washington’s biographers have treated Mary Ball Washington (1708-1789) unfairly. “The caricature of an incompetent, crude, imperious, selfish, and unloving woman flowered fully in the 1940s and ’50s,” Saxton writes, a portrait based on scant evidence and shaped by sentimental maternal stereotypes. Steeped in Colonial history, the author takes on a formidable project: to uncover the shards of Mary’s life, place her in the context of her times, and tease apart “the biographical fates of mother and son” in order to give Mary “the dignity of her independent existence.” Saxton offers a sensitive, sharply drawn portrait of a resourceful woman whose early losses made her anxious and fearful for life. By the time she was an adolescent, her father, stepfather, half brother, and mother all had died. After 11 years of marriage, she became a widowed mother of five, facing financial instability. “Trauma,” Saxton observes, “was Mary’s normality.” As an old woman, one evening, during a thunderstorm, her daughter found her praying alone: “my trust is in God,” Mary confessed, “but sometimes my fears are stronger than my faith.” Her fears led her to be overprotective of her children, not least her eldest son, George. When he was 14, Mary strongly opposed his desire to join the British navy as a midshipman—“a singularly dangerous institution,” Saxton notes. Mary prevailed but later found herself repeatedly at odds with her son’s “aggressive, restless, and risk-taking spirit” as well as his vanity and stinginess. Besides closely examining Mary’s relationships with various members of her extended family, Saxton mostly succeeds in the challenge of treating fairly Mary’s role as a demanding, often cruel, slaveholder who tried to project strength and authority through “force, name-calling, and abuse.” Her religious beliefs validated that treatment: “violence,” Mary thought, “could justifiably produce obedience,” and obedience led to moral behavior. Like others of her time and class, slavery shaped her identity.

A fresh perspective on Colonial America. (8 pages of b/w illustrations)

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LEAVING THE WITNESS Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life

Scorah, Amber Viking (288 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-7352-2254-0

Scorah, an editor at Scholastic, debuts with the story of her life in, and after, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. |

Centrifugal excursions into the nature of reality, a sad and confusing place for most of us. picnic comma lightning

Having been born into the church, the author went on to become one of its missionaries to China; the most fascinating portions of her memoir describe her years in Shanghai. Scorah paints the picture of an innocent and unquestioning young girl who grew up to be a more independent, yet socially impaired, adult. Following a protracted teenage tryst that caused her to be ostracized from the church for a time, she married a man she did not love and found escape and meaning as a missionary, reaching out to whomever she could find to teach Jehovah’s Witness doctrine. The author is adept in her portrayals of the conflict in cultures she discovered in China and in relaying the challenges she faced as a Westerner trying to convert people in a foreign country. A lengthy online affair with a man who became driven to prove her religion wrong led Scorah to have doubts and eventually begin the process of leaving her husband and then the church—and thus most everything she had ever known. The author eventually found new work and friendships in Shanghai, and she later relocated to New York. Her work is well-written, and only occasionally does the author delve too heavy-handedly into salacious tell-all territory. Mostly, she provides an eye-opening account of how Jehovah’s Witnesses live and operate. Sadly, the tale lacks a happy ending, as the author would lose her 4-month-old son. “When I arrived at lunch [at day care] to nurse him, he was dead,” she writes in the heartbreaking final section. “No one could tell me why, or what had happened.” The narrative ends on a note of near-despair, with only a glimmer of hope. “I have called a truce with the unknown,” writes Scorah, “and I am learning to live with the disquiet.”

An intriguing read about a mysterious religion.

to cry that it’s fake news. Alternative facts, alternative realities, alternative truths; all add up to what Scott nimbly calls “tears in the fabric of normalcy, reason and accountability.” The author moves from one subject to another with sometimes-neck-snapping speed, populating his pages with names and events that in many instances will be ephemeral in a few years (Britney Spears, Cosmo Kramer) but with others that are eternal (W.H. Auden, Aeschylus, Doris Lessing). Scott ably deconstructs how shared realities are forged, all of which involve the skillful, meaningful storytelling of which he himself is an ascended master. As he moves from the nature of story, love, memory, and other such things that enfold us while embracing and being embraced by “the weird scale of the private life of the mind,” the author makes it clear that reality is not always a pleasant place to be, for framing this eminently literary story and running through it are memories of his mother as she dies, too young, of cancer.

A lucid, if refractory and quite brilliant, critique of a fragmented culture in a peculiar time.

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GIANTS OF THE MONSOON FOREST Living and Working with Elephants

Shell, Jacob Norton (288 pp.) $26.95 | June 11, 2019 978-0-393-24776-3

The fate of Asian elephants raises important questions for conservationists.

In this illuminating book, geographer Shell (Geography and Urban Studies/Temple Univ.; Trans­ portation and Revolt: Pigeons, Mules, Canals, and the Vanishing Geographies of Subversive Mobility, 2015) reports on his visits to the “remote forestlands between India and Burma,” where he followed the trails of working elephants and their riders, called “mahouts.” Strong and amazingly sure-footed, the trained elephants are able to traverse monsoon-soaked landscapes, ford torrential waters, climb up and down mountains, and lift and carry huge weights, making them essential to the logging industry. Of 40,000-50,000 elephants in South and Southeast Asia— compared with some half a million African elephants—about a third are involved in labor. While most African elephants exist in the wild, the working Asian elephants have been domesticated in a process that the author realizes will disturb many readers: “a captured elephant is usually tied up for months on end in the forest, each leg fastened to a tree,” denied food at first, then rewarded with treats for learning commands—or struck on the back or ear with a metal-tipped instrument. Once trained, elephants work days and are released into the forest at night to forage for food and mate, though their front legs are fettered with a chain to keep them from ranging too far. Most are not eager to escape since cooperating with humans protects them from hunters and poachers. Shell describes in detail elephants’ power, ingenuity, intelligence, and “profound feelings of loyalty and protectiveness” that make them so valued. This

PICNIC COMMA LIGHTNING The Experience of Reality in the Twenty-First Century Scott, Laurence Norton (256 pp.) $25.95 | May 28, 2019 978-0-393-60997-4

Centrifugal excursions into the nature of reality, a sad and confusing place for

most of us.

George Orwell once noted, presciently, that the lasting harm caused by totalitarian regimes lay not in the atrocities they committed but in their assaults on “the objective concept of truth.” Truth is reality, and, writes Scott (Writing/New York Univ. in London; The Four Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World, 2016), reality is being mediated away from us.

“What does it feel like to be responsible for generating a sense of reality in a culture that accuses itself of being fictional?” he wonders. Then he looks at the many evasions our culture permits us, from the philosophical concept that reality is simply a shared set of hallucinations to the widely shared tenet that there is no such thing as objective truth to begin with, which allows politicians to lie savagely and then, when confronted with their lies, |

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THE WHITE DEVIL’S DAUGHTERS The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown

relationship between human and elephant, the author suggests, is a result of displacement when encroaching farmland pushed animal and human communities out of their original habitat in the plains. Both migrated to forests, where humans, turning to lumbering as a new livelihood, found elephants indispensable.

To animal rights proponents who argue that elephants should live in the wild, Shell points out that with little effective protection, their habitat is vulnerable to deforestation. To those who see only a “picture of domination,” Shell makes a persuasive case that the reality is complicated.

An insightful look at a rare cross-species relationship.

Siler, Julia Flynn Knopf (448 pp.) $27.95 | May 14, 2019 978-1-101-87526-1

An eye-opening account of the valiant work of a handful of Christian women against the enslavement of Asian girls in San Francisco’s Chinatown from the mid-1870s well into the next century.

In her latest impressive work of research and storytelling, San Francisco–based journalist and author Siler (Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America’s First Imperial Adventure, 2012, etc.) delves vigorously into a shocking story of racism and oppression. Well past California’s ratification of the 13th Amendment, the white male authorities largely looked the other way when boatloads of Chinese girls and vulnerable other women arrived as cargo from overseas and were quickly corralled into work as prostitutes and indentured servants. Most were tricked by unscrupulous relatives and agents into voyaging to America. They were valuable fodder to feed the “pent-up demand for sex” by the solitary male Chinese workers who had been lured in great numbers by the gold rush of 1848 as well as those who fled the turmoil in South China’s Pearl River delta region in the 1860s. The notorious brothels of Chinatown also attracted a considerable white clientele. Rising first to meet the need of girls and women who managed to escape their horrific fates were the wives of Presbyterian missionaries, part of the surge of Christian evangelism at the time known as the Great Awakening. From their modest Presbyterian Mission House on Sacramento Street, on the edge of Chinatown, these brave women, especially the house’s superintendent, Margaret Culbertson, sheltered the refugees, defying their gangster handlers; taught them skills such as reading and sewing; served as their advocates and translators in court; and often arranged for them respectable marriages to Chinese men, one of their few options in America. Siler vividly portrays both the vibrant, violent milieu of Chinatown of the era—amid the fear and hatred of the Chinese by whites and the effects of laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—and the lives and dedication of the extraordinary women of the Mission House.

An accessible, well-written, riveting tale of a dismal, little-known corner of American history. (62 pages of illustrations)

THE BELLS OF OLD TOKYO Meditations on Time and a City

Sherman, Anna Picador (256 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-250-20640-4

A poetic historical exploration of Japan’s immense capital city by an American-born author who moved to Japan to learn the language and was inspired by composer Yoshimura Hiroshi’s book Edo’s Bells of Time.

Living and working in Tokyo for some years as an editor for Hong Kong University Press inspired Sherman, who was born in Arkansas, to create this spiritual memoir, which weaves between personal storytelling of her time there and oral and mythical histories of the old neighborhoods of Tokyo. In the era of the shogunate, before the 16th-century missionaries brought the first clocks, Tokyo was Edo, and time was told by the tolling of bells across the city. The author presents Tokyo as a “timepiece,” with each different neighborhood representing the site of an ancient temple hosting its own singular sacred bell, delineated in Hiroshi’s work. Moving structurally from neighborhood to neighborhood, Sherman whimsically maps the city for readers, chronicling her encounters with the locals, including the owner of a small coffee shop with whom the author built a significant friendship. Sherman also explores the myths of the shogunate and illuminates the personal histories of the monks, bell-ringers, and other interesting characters she met along the way. Throughout her lyrical journey, she follows in the footsteps of Hiroshi, eschewing railroad travel in favor of tracing on foot “areas which bells could be heard, the pattern on a map looked like raindrops striking water.” The author’s own layered process mirrors the city’s complexity, nonlinearity, and frozen beauty.

The bells were not always easy to find, but Sherman was determined, and she successfully brings into focus their elusive stories, which point to an appealing past in a city that has moved rapidly into the future.

Sharp attention to detail and a deliberate pace give this singular narrative history the sense of a shimmery, vanished past.

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A thoughtful and often entertaining eco-agro-pescatorial manifesto sure to inspire like-minded readers. eat like a fish

EAT LIKE A FISH My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer

Smith, Bren Knopf (320 pp.) $26.95 | May 14, 2019 978-0-451-49454-2

In which a hard-living old salt sees the light and works to undo some of the damage wrought by extractive fishing, becoming a “restorative ocean farmer.”

“I’ve paid my debt to the sea,” writes Smith. “I dropped out of high school to fish and spent too many nights in jail. My body is beat to hell: I crawl out of bed like a lobster most mornings.” In what he deems a “long, blustery journey,” he describes how he came to realize that overfishing, climate change, ocean acidification, and other forces are making it impossible to extract a living from the sea—at least the sea as it is now. Instead, he has been busily working a stretch of Long Island Sound, raising shellfish and kelp, both of which are restorative; they filter out bad stuff, attract fish, and can provide a good living for people who practice “underwater gardening.” That’s one term; Smith confesses that he doesn’t quite know what to call what he does, with phrases like “regenerative ocean farming” preferred over the hated “aquaculture.” Whatever the case, the work is inarguably restorative, and Smith harbors a big vision of lots of little oceanic farms producing tons of seaweed and hundreds of thousands of crustaceans per acre—an economic revolution, he ventures, that could create 50 million direct jobs and a whole host of related ones. The author is no purist—he allows that he has a weakness for McDonald’s fish sandwiches and once lived a life of “stealing, dealing, fighting”—but it’s clear that he’s found a place among the back-to-the-landers, foodies, and greenies whom he might have made fun of back in the day but whom he now sees as allies in the work of “transforming fishermen into farmers.” And despite his fast food jones, he closes with an inviting set of recipes, including one for fake scampi that uses kelp instead of shrimp and olive oil instead of butter, making it a vegan delight.

A thoughtful and often entertaining eco-agro-pescatorial manifesto sure to inspire like-minded readers.

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As defined by Stern (History, Women’s Studies, Obstetrics/ Univ. of Michigan; Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America, 2012, etc.), the key element of the alt-right is white nationalism. Most of the individuals and organizations portrayed here branch out after that common denominator. Some emphasize peaceful but total separation of whites from people of color while others seek to bring violence against those seen as a threat to their hegemony. Almost every alt-right influencer is male, and they all exhibit varying degrees of misogyny. Other targets of their enmity include gay and transgender individuals and Jews. While alt-right devotees clearly do not dominate government or civic life in the United States, they are widespread and determined. Stern argues that her research—mostly stemming from copious online evidence posted publicly—has not led her to “trivialize nor sensationalize the alt-right” even when their platform “inhabits the gutters of political discourse.”

At intervals, the author, who leads the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab at Michigan, delves into the lengthy history of altright and similar movements, within both the U.S and Europe, and she also investigates the adulation of Donald Trump as an enabler of the movement. The alt-right standards for determining who qualifies as white—and who does not—can become complicated; Stern illuminates that element with impressive insights. An anomaly that not even the author can explain involves why alt-right subscribers fear annihilation so deeply when the U.S. remains controlled by a powerful white patriarchy. Stern’s prose is frequently lively, though it sometimes lapses into academic jargon.

An important study that extends the knowledge from other recent books that have demonstrated a stubbornly pervasive network of white nationalists.

REMEMBERING EMMETT TILL

Tell, Dave Univ. of Chicago (312 pp.) $25.00 | May 6, 2019 978-0-226-55953-7

History is written by the victors— but also by committees and grant agencies, the subject of this excursus into the “ecology of memory.”

Emmett Till, 14 years old, was murdered in August 1955, his body weighted down and sunk in the Tallahatchie River of Mississippi. His crime: allegedly whistling at a white woman. The killing has been presented as ground zero of the civil rights movement ever since, though, as Tell (Communications/Univ. of Kansas) points out, the real work in Mississippi was done through “door-todoor canvassing and the development of local leadership.” Till’s death, with no punishment of the killers, remains a matter contested in memory: How should he be commemorated? Should the store where his transgression occurred be preserved? Tell, the principal investigator of the Emmett Till Memory Project, takes readers through thickets of politics and commemoration, of fact and fiction, and of local communities trying to leverage

PROUD BOYS AND THE WHITE ETHNOSTATE How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination

Stern, Alexandra Minna Beacon (192 pp.) $24.95 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-8070-6336-1

A deep dive into the so-called “altright” in which the author “seeks to expose the underlying logic and implications of white nationalism and its master plan of a racially exclusive patriarchal world.” |

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civil rights histories to which they may not have strong connections. This is an academic book, and the author commits some labored prose to the page, as when he strains to link the Tallahatchie to the Greek river Lethe in “an intimate series of connection among rivers, oblivion, and forgetfulness.” Still, this is also a book likely to displease local chambers of commerce, memorial designers, and others who would weave together stories that were once considered separate and even today are not fully answered. As he writes, for instance, “while the inclusion of Bryant’s Grocery in Till’s story is no longer controversial, questions about what precisely happened in the store remain as all-consuming as they were in 1955.” Controversially, Tell suggests that the paternalism that led to Till’s death is also fully in command of his commemoration nearly 65 years later.

A book with broad application to the study of the civil rights movement but particularly useful for students and practitioners of local history and civic tourism. (26 halftones)

somewhat scattered, with reproduced speeches dotting the narrative, the author’s career was unquestionably impressive, and his memoir makes for hopeful reading.

Of interest to 20th-century American history buffs and aspiring diplomats.

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR A Muslim Doctor’s Struggle for Home in Rural America

Virji, Ayaz with Eisenstock, Alan Convergent/Crown (208 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-525-57720-1

A Muslim physician details his unexpected transformation from a rural family doctor into an ambassador for cultural tolerance.

In 2013, Virji left a well-paying position at a Pennsylvania hospital to practice a “dignified medicine” that treated patients as whole people rather than walking ailments. Seeking a better life and a way to redress the doctor shortage in rural America, he relocated to Dawson, Minnesota, a town of less than 1,500 residents. He and his family were the only Muslims, yet they acclimated quickly. Better still, Virji’s career as the wellrespected chief of staff, bariatric clinic director, and CEO of his own weight loss business blossomed: “life in every sense [was] good.” The first sign of trouble appeared in 2016 when then–presidential candidate Donald Trump began to “[spew] hatred toward Muslims” in his campaign speeches. Though life in Dawson seemed unaffected by national events, everything changed after Trump won the election. Now seen as a terrorist threat, the author contemplated moving to Dubai only to realize that he did not want to be driven from the home that he and his family had come to love. Then a local pastor approached him to work on an interfaith project that aimed to dispel misconceptions about Islam among the mostly Christian members of the Dawson community. Although he believed that faith was a private matter, Virji made the task a personal jihad, or struggle.

His message of tolerance struck a deep chord in Dawson as well as the other Minnesota communities where he was invited to speak. Yet his impact was constantly thwarted by rival lecturers espousing racist, anti-Muslim doctrines that tested the author’s commitment to both the life he had chosen and the spirit of brotherly love he defended. Both candid and compelling, Virji’s book is strong medicine for an age plagued by the ills of xenophobia, misinformation, and distrust.

A courageous and necessary memoir in troubling times.

HOPE AND HISTORY A Memoir of Tumultuous Times vanden Heuvel, William J. Cornell Univ. (296 pp.) $28.95 | Jun. 15, 2019 978-1-5017-3817-3

A well-respected American diplomat looks back on his life and career.

Born in 1930 to a working-class family in Rochester, New York, vanden Heuvel (On His Own: Robert F. Kennedy, 1964-1968, 1970, etc.) grew up in Franklin Roosevelt’s America, and he is one of the greatest champions of FDR’s tidal wave of justice, which he sees as continued during the tenure of Lyndon Johnson. The author attended Deep Springs College, a Western ranch serving as a school to enrich self-governance and develop leadership and public conscience. He continued his education at Cornell University, where he earned a law degree and served as editorin-chief of the college’s law review. He writes glowingly of his mentors, Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and the International League for Human Rights; and William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services, who gave vanden Heuvel his first position in his law firm. More importantly, Donovan took him as a personal aide when he was appointed ambassador to Thailand, and they were in Saigon to witness the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

The author’s insight into the politics of those fraught times is clear and straightforward, and he provides an interesting look at the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and the “revolution of rising expectations.” Working as a special assistant to Attorney Genereal Robert F. Kennedy, he was tasked with leading school desegregation efforts in Virginia. His days as chair of the New York City Board of Corrections brought the prison crisis of Attica to public view, and as ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva and New York, he delivered a memorable letter decrying the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Though the organization of the book is 82

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A thoughtful search for parallels between biological and human innovation. life finds a way

LIFE FINDS A WAY What Evolution Teaches Us About Creativity

When the tragedy at Sandy Hook occurred in 2012, Watts was a stay-at-home mother of five older kids. Initially using her Facebook page, she rallied other mothers to form the organization for which she has been volunteering full-time ever since. In her first book, which she labels as “part manifesto, part memoir, and part manual,” the former public relations executive compiles a list of suggestions for would-be activists, including, “be dedicated to the ends, but flexible about the means” and “be devoted to your self-care.” The author focuses on the importance of using social media effectively and “branding” a movement, which Moms Demand Action does with its signature red T-shirts. The text veers between generic recommendations for (nonworking) moms who wish to devote their time to volunteering and more specific insights into the conflict between Moms Demand Action and the National Rifle Association, the group’s primary opponent, whose “bluster and posturing” Watts finds repugnant. While the author provides a few glimpses into her personal life—particularly the challenges her frequent travel and commitment to the cause presented to her marriage and family—for the most part, she stays peppy and avoids revealing any details her enemies might seize upon. Some may find Watts’ use of terms such as “naptivism” (activism achieved while children are napping) cloying and statements such as, “activism equals organizing, and if there’s one thing moms know how to do, it’s organize,” reductive. Others will find her chatty tone and positive attitude inspiring.

While the book isn’t likely to change many minds, those who share the author’s point of view will likely feel encouraged to put their political views into action.

Wagner, Andreas Basic (320 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-5416-4533-2

A thoughtful search for parallels between biological and human innovation.

No slouch at addressing big ideas, Wagner (Evolutionary Biology/Univ. of Zurich) took the first step in Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution’s Great­ est Puzzle (2014), which explained life’s spectacular transformation over 4 billion years since its origin. Summarizing that earlier book, he emphasizes that “every one of the millions of species alive today is the most recent link in a nearly endless chain of creative achievement that goes back all the way to life’s origin. Every organism is the product of countless innovations, from the molecular machines inside its cells to the physical architecture of its body.” Most readers associate evolution with Darwinian natural selection, but Wagner points out its limited creative capacity. In natural selection, a better adapted organism produces more offspring. This preserves good traits and discards bad ones until it reaches a peak of fitness. This process works perfectly in an “adaptive landscape” with a single peak, but it fails when there are many—and higher—peaks. Conquering the highest—true creativity—requires descending into a valley and trying again. Natural selection never chooses the worse over the better, so it can’t descend. Wagner devotes most of his book to the 20thcentury discovery of the sources of true biological creativity: genetic drift, recombination, and other processes that inject diversity into the evolutionary process. His final section on human creativity contains less hard science but plenty of imagination. The human parallel with natural selection is laissez faire competition, which is efficient but equally intolerant of trial and error. Far more productive are systems that don’t penalize failure but encourage play, experimentation, dreaming, and diverse points of view. In this vein, American schools fare poorly, but Asian schools are worse.

Combining evolutionary biology with psychology to explain creativity is a stretch, but Wagner makes an ingenious case. (13 b/w illustrations)

THE CONSERVATIVE SENSIBILITY

Will, George F. Hachette (640 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-316-48093-2

The veteran Washington Post columnist and TV commentator offers a richly documented history of and argument for a wider embrace of conservative political values.

“Richly documented” is an understatement. Will (A Nice Lit­ tle Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred, 2014, etc.) is nothing if not a thorough, dedicated researcher and thinker, but he’s often prolix. Many of the historical figures the author references will come as no surprise—e.g., Burke, Moynihan, Madison, Locke—and there are also plenty from the literary world; these include allusions to Twain and Fitzgerald, whose closing sentences from The Great Gatsby provide Will with a metaphor for his principal points. Not much the Pulitzer winner offers here will surprise those who have paid attention to his rhetoric over the decades. His three American heroes remain: Washington, Lincoln, John Marshall. He thinks the U.S. government has grown too big, that it is too interested in providing entitlements (Will is a believer in much more self-reliance than

FIGHT LIKE A MOTHER How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World

Watts, Shannon HarperOne (320 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 1, 2019 978-0-06-289256-0

cause—or any other.

The founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America offers advice for women looking to take up that

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he sees evident today), that schools and universities should do a much more rigorous job of transmitting the Western historical heritage, and that progressives just don’t understand how America is supposed to work. However, in one chapter, he may surprise some readers: He declares he is an atheist (though “amiable, low-voltage”), and he spends a few pages reminding us that the founders were not particularly religious and that we must observe the separation of church and state. He praises the civil rights movement but asserts that much of it has gone wrong.

Oddly missing are direct references to the current occupant of the White House, though Will does zing many of his predecessors (from both parties but principally Democrats), mostly for their failure to comprehend fully the concept of liberty that fueled the founders.

The author’s literate, committed voice sometimes disappears in his tangled wood of allusion and quotation.

hauled before a court of impeachment but was acquitted after a series of legal arguments that the author renders with verve and skill, no easy feat given the technical nature of some of them— though, as she notes, the central question is one fit for the present moment: “What constituted an impeachable offense?”

A superb contribution to presidential history. (photos and original documents)

OUTRAGES Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love

Wolf, Naomi Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (304 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-544-27402-0 An account of how Victorian laws stimulated the homophobia and censorship issues that continue to exist today.

In this expansive work of historical and literary investigation, Wolf (Vagina: A New Biography, 2012, etc.) explores a series of civil divorce and anti-obscenity laws passed in 1857 England and how they led to the criminalization of love between men. By focusing on the act of sodomy, previously recognized as only a minor offense in England, and then subsequently assigning any act or suggestion related to homosexual relations a crime, the laws deflected from the more pertinent issue of women demanding the right to divorce their husbands, particularly in relation to abusive or adulterous acts. “For four decades following 1857,” writes the author, “public attention was successfully directed away from a surprisingly widespread feminist confrontation with heterosexual male sexual privilege and toward these sexual ‘outsiders,’ newly deemed horrifying by society’s gatekeepers. They rebranded sodomy as ‘the worst possible thing’ and thus reoriented British society: this slowed the initially successful effort by angry women to start policing the sexuality of heterosexual men. The task of policing the sexuality of homosexual men was presented, and in many quarters accepted, as the real emergency.” Wolf weaves this narrative through parallel explorations of the careers and personal lives of Walt Whitman and English poet John Addington Symonds. Wolf recounts the long publishing history of the varying and often censored editions of Leaves of Grass, showing how these poems inspired such writers as Oscar Wilde—and especially Symonds, who argued that homosexuality should be regarded as a natural rather than indecent or abnormal attraction. Wolf provides engrossing accounts of Whitman and Symonds, yet her story is even more compelling in its wider portrait of the societies and institutions in America as well as England that served to shape the fears and prejudices that have lingered into our modern age.

An absorbing and thoughtfully researched must-read for anyone interested in the history of censorship and issues relating to gay male sexuality. (8-page b/w photo insert)

THE IMPEACHERS The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation Wineapple, Brenda Random House (576 pp.) $30.00 | May 21, 2019 978-0-8129-9836-8

The impeachment of a president is a court of last resort—even one who willfully breaks laws while in office. Thus this lucid, timely study of the sole impeachment trial convened until 1998.

Andrew Johnson was an accidental president, brought into office with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He immediately began to alienate allies: He was not keen on the prospect of African-American equality, pretty much ignored Congress, and quietly undid some of the work of Reconstruction. Writes Wineapple (Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877, 2013, etc.), ultimately, “he sought to restore the South as the province of white men and to return to power a planter class that perpetuated racial distrust and violence.” Moreover, he considered Lincoln-variety and more radical Republicans to be his enemies, not the former traitors who had seceded from the Union. For all that, as the author lays out in her carefully constructed narrative, Johnson made powerful enemies indeed.

These included Lincoln’s secretary of war, the indispensable politician Edwin Stanton, whom Ulysses S. Grant called “one of the great men of the Republic”; and the expansionist senator Charles Sumner, famed for having been caned on the floor of the Senate after denouncing slavery, who definitively turned on Johnson—whom he called “ignorant, pig-headed, and perverse”—when Johnson allowed the Southern states to bypass the question of whether blacks would be allowed to vote. The last straw was when Johnson refused to sign a civil rights bill with characteristic scorn. As Wineapple writes, “if the winning combination had been demagoguery and orneriness, with a touch of malice, that…no longer worked so well.” Johnson was 84

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The director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory asserts that human empathy and kindness can be developed skills. the war for kindness

THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONATA The Musical Odyssey of Lea Luboshutz

THE WAR FOR KINDNESS Building Empathy in a Fractured World

Wolf, Thomas Pegasus (336 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-64313-067-5

Zaki, Jamil Crown (272 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-451-49924-0

Biography of a Jewish girl who transcended poverty and prejudice to become an illustrious violin virtuoso.

Flautist Wolf (Musical Gifts or How a Maine Fishing Village Became a Center for Great Music, 2011, etc.), co-founder of Bay Chamber Concerts and former executive director of the New England Foundation for the Arts, grew up hearing tales about his famous grandmother, Lea Luboshutz (1885-1965). Those tales—some incomplete, some contradicted by other family members’ versions of events—piqued the author’s curiosity. Urged by his mother to “tell the story,” he mined boxes of letters and clippings, archival documents, diaries, memoirs, and histories to convey, in a sensitive, perceptive biography, the improbable truth about Luboshutz and her emergence from a tumultuous world. She grew up in Odessa, where Jews were forced to live. Her father, certain that she was a musical prodigy, began violin lessons when she was 4; at the age of 5, she was performing for neighbors and at school. At 8, she won a scholarship for private lessons with a prominent teacher; at 14, she entered the Moscow Conservatory, invited by an influential musician who heard her play in Odessa. Luboshutz’s career, Wolf discovered, was punctuated by “amazing good fortune” in the form of generous patrons who provided money and support, not only to her, but also family members. Among them, none was as significant as Onissim Goldovsky, a brilliant pianist, lawyer, and writer, “a true Renaissance man” who, at the time he met 18-year-old Luboshutz, was 38 and married. She admitted being mesmerized by Goldovsky, and by 1906, she was pregnant with his child. Thereafter, the couple lived together for extended periods and had two more children, while Goldovsky continued to maintain “another domestic reality” with his unsuspecting wife. A scandalous personal life, Russia’s roiling political upheavals, and virulent anti-Semitism did not hinder Luboshutz’s career: Celebrated wherever she performed, she came to the attention of impresario Sol Hurok and immigrated to the U.S. in 1927, where her reputation soared.

A captivating story of passion and music. (32 pages of photos)

The director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory asserts that human empathy and kindness can be developed skills.

With alarming evidence of our society’s rapidly diminishing empathy, Zaki (Psychology/Stanford Univ.) draws on decades of clinical research, along with experiments conducted at his lab, to consider the forces that impact our modern condition. “The news is not good,” he writes. “Empathy has dwindled steadily especially in the twenty-first century. The average person in 2009 was less empathic than 75 percent of the people in 1979.”

The author goes on to recount examples of how individuals and groups have worked toward reversing this trend. These include a former white supremacist who, after becoming a father, found new meaning in his life, enabling him to reverse his negative and often violent instincts. Along with a group of like-minded colleagues, he formed a nonprofit support group called Life After Hate, which “works to extract people from the dark place he once inhabited.” Similarly, the alternative sentencing program Changing Lives Through Literature helps convicts become more empathetic by expanding their self-awareness through reading about fictional characters who have struggled through their own challenging issues. Zaki further considers degrees of empathy, especially regarding health care workers and other caretakers, offering examples of how to work effectively without burning out from the pressure of needing to fix all problems. He also reviews our quickly evolving technological advances, highlighting the many opportunities where technology can serve to enhance empathy. While Zaki’s many examples offer encouragement that change is possible, the book could have further benefited by a more substantive action plan and a resource list. “In five years, or one, the world could be a meaner place or a kinder one. Our social fabric could further tear or start to mend,” writes the author, so “…the direction we take— and our collective fate—depends, in a real way, on what each of us decides to feel.”

An earnest and well-researched call to action and an urgent message that will hopefully expand in Zaki’s future work. (6-7 charts and photos)

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Thomas Lennon [Sponsored]

THE ACTOR’S DEBUT MIDDLE-GRADE BOOK IS AS FLAVORFUL AS THE STRONGEST IRISH STOUT

By James Feder Photo courtesy Jason LaVeris/Film Magic

a menagerie of magical folk, from foulmouthed leprechauns to leprechaun-eating unicorns, the titular and somewhat autobiographical character stands out for his earnestness, unending goodwill, and social awkwardness.

In Ronan Boyle, readers meet a scrawny 15-yearold who, solely because of that very scrawniness, finds himself thrust into the fast-paced world of magical law enforcement. As a cadet in the Irish Garda’s Special Unit, his job is to help ensure that the various faerie folk of Ireland stay in line.

Whether the wide-eyed Ronan is ever truly up to the superhuman task is something the reader is never quite sure of. And yet, from whacking angry leprechauns clean off their feet to successfully answering a far darrig’s riddle, the unlikely hero proves himself capable of far more than even he expects of himself.

“I didn’t want to have a main character that was cool,” Lennon says when asked about the gen-

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For his debut novel, Thomas Lennon—best

esis of Ronan. He’s a skinny boy, yes, and that’s

known for his iconic work in Reno 911!—writes

crucial to his character. But “almost everything

what he knows best: being extremely Irish and

else about him is just my autobiography: the se-

absurdly, nonsensically funny. “If my options were

vere food allergies, the tendency to blurt out the

ever to go heavy or go silly,” he says, “I almost al-

dumbest thing you could possibly say in a situa-

ways went very, very silly with the book.” That’s

tion, the obsession with Dame Judi Dench.” But

not to say, however, that Ronan Boyle and the Bridge

Ronan, in his own way, is cool. “I love his interac-

of Riddles (March 5) lacks heart. Surrounded by

tions with the world and his courage.”

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Courage is certainly something that Ronan

Lennon’s son has attention deficit disorder.

needs as he makes his way through this first in a

Ronan Boyle is an effort “to get brand-new recruits

series of adventures. The leprechauns Lennon

into the world of reading, maybe kids who aren’t

creates aren’t the sweet little green men who

ready to pick up The Sound and the Fury quite yet,”

smile on cereal boxes; they hail from a time be-

Lennon says. “I wanted it to be a lark, without a lot

fore mass marketing and commercialization. “In

of heavy lifting. I guess,” he adds, clearing his throat,

the stories I was told as a kid,” Lennon explains,

“you could call this very recreational reading.”

“leprechauns don’t put candy in your shoes. They’ll do something like switch out a baby that’s being

James Feder is a writer based in Tel Aviv. Ronan Boyle

adored too much with an ugly baby. They’re swin-

and the Bridge of Riddles was reviewed in the Jan.

dlers who would replace your nose with a turnip if

1, 2019, issue.

they could make a euro off of it.”

The world that the reader enters in Ronan Boyle is undoubtedly magical, but “the magic isn’t wonderful,” Lennon is quick to clarify. “It’s small and sinister and dubious.” In drawing upon authentic folklore, Lennon hearkens back to a long and established Irish tradition of storytelling that links the ancient Celts to Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats. While he added a few of his own takes here and there, Lennon was careful to ensure that all of his faerie folk have a grounding in history or mythology, thereby ensuring that if young readers are inspired to seek out more information on clurichauns or pucas, it’s out there for them to find.

When he began writing, Lennon says he wasn’t really conscious of the fact that he was writing for a specific audience of young readers. “I think what I accidentally did was I wrote to my son, who is 9, and also for myself, right when I started to love books.” The book is dedicated to his son, and Lennon even inadvertently brought him into the workshopping process. (“A great way to edit your book,” he says, “is to read it to a child every night, especially in a very light Irish accent.”) And with such a specific audience in mind, Lennon also very intentionally set out to write a book that wasn’t a chore to read. |

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children’s FOREVER NEVERLAND

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Adrian, Susan Random House (272 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-525-57926-7 978-0-525-57927-4 PLB

HOW TO READ A BOOK by Kwame Alexander; illus. by Melissa Sweet......................................................................... 89 THIS WAS OUR PACT by Ryan Andrews............................................91

Two Americans go adventuring in Neverland in this continuation of the famous Barrie classic.

Clover and Fergus, two white children from San Diego, are spending three weeks in London with grandparents whom they have never met. As they struggle to settle into a strange place, Fergus is intrigued by sightings of a mysterious boy outside of their sixth-floor nursery window. A talk with their grandmother reveals that they are the descendants of Wendy—she is Margaret from the famous novel’s conclusion—and that Peter’s appearance means that he wants to take them on an adventure. Neverland is everything that the siblings could want, until mermaids start mysteriously disappearing. Adrian does an exemplary job of creating complex and compelling characters out of the sibling protagonists—who alternate narration duties—so that readers are thoroughly invested in their journeys before Peter whisks them away. Fergus’ autism is deftly woven into the narrative and the siblings’ relationship. Clover, used to mothering her younger brother, struggles to stop worrying in Neverland, while Fergus, loving the freedom he finds there, fears that he will be judged. Two welcome and notable changes to the original Neverland mythos are the inclusion of female Lost Boys—the group as a whole alternates the monikers “Lost Boys and “Lost Girls”—as well as a racially diverse cast of supporting characters; Barrie’s Indians do not figure in the plot and indeed are not mentioned at all. A list of books and websites on autism is appended.

A magical ode to childhood that updates the classic while keeping its flavor. (Fantasy. 8-12)

CARNIVAL CATASTROPHE by Natalie Lloyd..................................108 WHERE ARE YOU FROM? by Yamile Saied Méndez; illus. by Jaime Kim..............................................................................110 DUGOUT by Scott Morse.................................................................... 111 YOUR TURN, ADRIAN by Helena Öberg; illus. by Kristin Lidström; trans. by Eva Apelqvist....................................................................... 113 THE HERO NEXT DOOR by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich....... 117 BIRDS OF A FEATHER by Susan L. Roth......................................... 118 THE CLOCKWORK GHOST by Laura Ruby..................................... 118 MY FATE ACCORDING TO THE BUTTERFLY

by Gail D. Villanueva......................................................................... 121

MY FATE ACCORDING TO THE BUTTERFLY

Villanueva, Gail D. Scholastic (240 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 30, 2019 978-1-338-31050-4

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HOW TO READ A BOOK

attend her parents’ annual Barbaric Ball, a boring event for grown-ups, and she’s been saddled with showing around new student Prince Tangine, who’s been sequestered in the palace since his mother went missing, presumed eaten by a fairy. He’s “horrible”—“and not in the nice way.” Tangine even has the nerve to claim Amelia’s beloved pet pumpkin, Squashy, for his own! But these ghouls have hearts of gold. Anderson plays her premise expertly, creating giggleworthy, topsy-turvy scenarios that are just over-the-top enough. The cliffhanger ending sets up Volume 2, Amelia Fang and the Unicorns of Glitteropolis, which publishes simultaneously.

Young goths will be gleeful the creepy fun will continue. (Fantasy. 7-10) (Amelia Fang and the Unicorns of Glitteropolis: 978-1-9848-4842-0)

Alexander, Kwame Illus. by Sweet, Melissa Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-06-230781-1

y o u n g a d u lt

A linguistic and visual feast awaits in Alexander and Sweet’s debut collaboration.

If the mechanics of deciphering words on a page is a well-covered topic, the orchestration of finding magic between pages is an art emphasized but unexplained…until now. First things are first: “find a tree—a black tupelo or dawn redwood will do—and plant yourself.” Once settled, take the book in hand and “dig your thumb at the bottom of each juicy section and pop the words out…[then] // Squeeze every morsel of each plump line until the last drop of magic / drips from the infinite sky.” Reading, captured here in both content and form, is hailed as the unassailably individual, creative act it is. The prosody and rhythm and multimodal sensuousness of Alexander’s poetic text is made playfully material in Sweet’s mixed-media collage-and-watercolor illustrations.

Not only does the book explain how to read, but it also demonstrates the elegant and emotive chaos awaiting readers in an intricate partnership of text and image. Despite the engaging physicality of gatefolds and almost three-dimensional spreads, readers with lower contrast sensitivity or readers less experienced at differentiating shapes and letters may initially find some of the more complex collage spreads difficult to parse.

Children depicted are typically kraft-paper brown.

New readers will be eager to follow such unconventional instructions, and experienced readers will recognize every single step. (Picture book. 4- 7)

AMELIA FANG AND THE BARBARIC BALL Anderson, Laura Ellen Illus. by the author Delacorte (240 pp.) $12.99 | Jul. 30, 2019 978-1-9848-4839-0 Series: Amelia Fang, 1

Children recently weaned off Vampirina Ballerina books will sink their teeth into the adventures of Amelia Fang.

A British import, this series opener introduces readers to the city of Nocturnia, starting with a spiky, black-and-white map and a gallery of ghouls: Amelia, her family, and friends. In this turn-around world, readers find that the devilish charm is in the details. The only things to be feared in Nocturnia are Creatures of Light such as sparkly fairies, angel-kittens, and glittery unicorns. Amelia learns all about them at Catacomb Academy, which she naturally attends at night, along with friends Florence (not a beast but a yeti) and Grimaldi (middle name Death, last name Reaperton). Amelia’s got two problems: She has to |

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barrels full of monkeys but no fun If you asked my daughter some 18 years ago what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would invariably answer: “A monkey.” A colleague recently told me about a friend’s son who was taunted at school with the epithet “monkey.” How could the same word be met with such different feelings by two young children? Well, my daughter is white, and my colleague’s acquaintance is black.

My daughter grew up playing on climbing structures and proudly owning the descriptor “monkey,” but she has the luxury of belonging to a racial group for whom “monkey” is not an ages-old term of denigration still in widespread use. Far too many children do not share that luxury. (And adults: remember white Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis’ 2018 exhortation to voters not to “monkey it up” by voting for his African-American opponent, Andrew Gillum?) Librarian and critic Edi Campbell has brought to prominence how monkey imagery in children’s books can reinforce and perpetuate those harmful, negative connotations with African-American children.

Recall Curious George, the eternal naif, brought from Africa by a white man who cares for George and strives always to keep George under control.

When you recall the history of brown-skinned human beings brought from Africa by white people who “cared for” and controlled them, suddenly Curious George doesn’t seem quite so charming. He’s just one of many. Campbell has identified book after book in which monkey characters are depicted as buffoons and treated with paternalism by white people.

Suddenly it’s hard to see a monkey as innocent at all.

And that is how we came to view Leyla, by Galia Bernstein (reviewed in this issue), as something other than the positive lesson in mindfulness it was no doubt intended to be. A young baboon, Leyla is overwhelmed Photo courtesy Leah Overstreet

by her large family and runs away for some peace and quiet. A yogic lizard gives her a lesson in mindfulness (there is a delightful, wordless double-page spread of the two characters meditating), and she is then able to rejoin her family and find peace within herself.

Even though there are no white characters anywhere in this book, it shares in many racist tropes.

Her family is enormous, with 23 cousins. “That’s too many!”

And “They are always busy, always fussy, always noisy.” “Too many” and “too noisy” are accusations frequently flung at black families, and the depiction of Leyla surrounded by relatives searching her for fleas reinforces the racist misapprehension that black people are “dirty.” When Leyla returns to her family after her visit with the lizard, she enacts the role of the buffoon, exaggerating her adventure with rolling eyes that recall minstrel shows and lying about the size of the lizard. It’s important to remember that the source of the wisdom she receives is not of her people. Her hair even sticks up instead of lying down flat.

Will many readers see a delightful story about a baboon who learns self-care? Absolutely. Children in large families will no doubt recognize Leyla’s feelings, and when not viewed through the monkeys-as–blackpeople lens, her antics fall within the scope of familiar, funny preschooler behavior. And the mindfulness instruction is on-point.

But, as our reviewer confessed to me, now that I have seen the connections, I can’t un-see them. I can’t help thinking that even as benign-looking a book as this might give license to some other white child to call some other black child a “monkey” and think “it’s just a joke.”

Maybe we just need to call it quits on monkeys for a while, let the generations purge. Goodness knows, there are lots of other animals we can populate our books with. —V.S.

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Vicky Smith is the children’s editor.

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A marvelously melancholic, earnest graphic novel. this was our pact

THIS WAS OUR PACT

go unanswered: How do you learn to love a problem like 785 x 5?

And what to do with your frustration when you can’t arrive at the “one right answer?” The ET suggests shaking the numbers off the page when they get too overwhelming—an entertaining but ultimately evasive strategy.

Number lovers will enjoy this comic celebration.

Although doubters may not be convinced that math is fun or approachable, they will be impressed with its ubiquity, and that’s a start. (Informational picture book. 5-9)

Andrews, Ryan Illus. by the author First Second (336 pp.) $21.99 | $17.99 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-250-19695-8 978-1-62672-053-4 paper Two reluctant friends—and a talking bear—journey deep into the night in search of answers. ­ The night of the annual Autumn Equinox Festival unfolds as the villagers cast hundreds of lanterns down the river in honor of a local folk legend. For Ben, this year will be different from the rest. He and his friends make a pact to follow the lanterns until the unknown end of their voyage. One by one Ben’s friends give up and return home, all except for Nathaniel, whose love for the cosmos and nerdy ways ostracize him from the group.

In spite of his misgivings, Ben decides to uphold the pact with Nathaniel. A third, unexpected member joins the adventure when the boys come across a talking fisherbear who’s on a quest to fish as his ancestors did. The trio eventually loses track of the path, and an unplanned encounter with the feisty Madam Majestic leads to even greater escapades. To shed more light on the story risks spoiling Andrews’ marvelously melancholic, earnest graphic novel, at its core an exercise in whimsical selfreflection. This story’s a quiet one in which danger flickers and hope flares at odd but fruitful moments. The core relationship between Ben (a dark-haired, light-skinned, bespectacled boy) and Nathaniel (a dark-skinned boy with puffs of hair) never veers into pure mawkishness. Likewise, the primarily blue and red mixed-media pictures underscore how nighttime sometimes promises transformation.

Brilliantly enchanting. (Graphic fabulism. 10-14)

RIVERBOUND

Beatty, Melinda Putnam (288 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5247-4003-0

I’M TRYING TO LOVE MATH Barton, Bethany Illus. by the author Viking (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-451-48090-3

Having tackled such hard-to-love topics as bees and spiders, Barton (Give Bees a Chance, 2017, etc.) here lobbies for the love of math.

An unnamed, unseen math-phobic narrator opens by announcing that they’re not alone, as “4 in 10 Americans hate math. That’s like 40%,” only to be hilariously interrupted by a three-eyed purple ET. “Did you just use math to explain how much you don’t like it?” The ET proceeds to explain how math is everywhere and in everything we already love, including cookies (demonstrating that a recipe is in effect a word problem), music (explaining the time signature and notes on a staff), and pizza (measuring the pie using pi). Loose and lively illustrations and big, bold lettering take readers on a colorful tour of cool math history and concepts. But the narrator’s critical questions

y o u n g a d u lt

A girl with a rare magical gift and her allies must save the kingdom from treachery in this absorbing fantasy conclusion to the adventure begun in Heartseeker (2018).

It’s been three months since 11-yearold Only Fallow was brought, unwillingly, to Bellskeep. Only’s been taken to be the king’s Mayquin: She sees lies and is unable to tell any herself. Even as a prisoner, Only, who presents white like her captors, knows she’s vastly better off than her Ordish friends. The Ordish, a romanticized group of boat-dwellers, suffer immense racism, and many of their children have been taken as indentures—that is, slaves. Only and her Ordish friend Lark are secretly helping along a plot to put the princess on the throne; unlike her father, the princess isn’t biased against the Ordish. But can the girls trust the noblewoman running the scheme? When Lark and Only are framed for a terrible crime, they have only one chance to save the kingdom from a terrible end—and if they fail, the Ordish will meet an appalling fate.

With the help of two wacky criminal scoundrels, Only and Lark undertake an exciting quest to reveal the dark truth. As Only navigates these treacherous waters, she engages in thoughtful meditations on relative privilege and conspicuous consumption in the presence of poverty. Why, though, isn’t this quest to save the Ordish Lark’s story, instead of Only’s?

A mostly satisfying conclusion to a cozy yet surprisingly thought-provoking magical ordeal. (Fantasy. 9-12)

LEYLA

Bernstein, Galia Illus. by the author Abrams (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 21, 2019 978-1-4197-3543-1 Leyla, an anthropomorphized hamadryas baboon, lives in a giant, loving, and boisterous family. Sometimes she just wants to find a bit of quiet! |

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It takes a lot of sass to make “piranhas” and “bananas” rhyme. piranhas don’t eat bananas

A FEEL BETTER BOOK FOR LITTLE TEARS

When her noisy relations become too much to bear, Leyla runs away to find her own space. In doing so, she makes the acquaintance of a very still and quiet lizard, who teaches Leyla the art of doing nothing. Together, they sit, feeling the sun, listening to the wind, and letting their minds be free of thought.

When Leyla returns to her family, she is better able to appreciate their vociferous affection. At the surface level, this is a lovely story of cross-species friendship, of finding peace by connecting mindfully to the present moment, and of distance making the heart grow fonder. How unfortunate, then, that the author chose to deliver this story through the use of anthropomorphic baboons when historically in the United States, images of this type have been used to denigrate African-American families, and stereotypes that still cause harm, such as black families being “too” large or “too” loud, show up in the text. Regardless of the author’s intention, the pain this title could cause black families must be noted. To her credit, Bernstein’s imagery is playful, sweet, and well-researched, and her inspiration for the use of the baboons after seeing them in the Prospect Park Zoo is explained in a brief author’s note.

A wonderful concept mired in an execution that comes with far too much baggage for comfort. (Picture book. 4- 7)

Brochmann, Holly & Bowen, Leah Illus. by Ng-Benitez, Shirley Magination/American Psychological Association (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-4338-3031-0 A useful picture book for encouraging social-emotional health.

The rhyming text uses direct address to speak to diverse child characters who are experiencing sadness in a range of settings—and by extension, to child readers of the book. A backmatter “Note to Parents and Caregivers” deconstructs the intentions behind different parts of the text to: respond to sadness; normalize sadness; cope with sad feelings; and offer hope.

Throughout, Ng-Benitez’s sensitive, engaging illustrations do an excellent job of providing narrative specificity to the general scenarios the text suggests, elevating the book’s aesthetic success as a whole. The text itself is a bit grating with its singsong, faltering cadence, which is at odds with the seriousness of its contents. “We can start just by talking / about why you feel sad. / It may not be all better / but it might not be as bad,” reads one representative stanza on a spread depicting a whiteappearing child with downcast eyes in a classroom filled with smiling, diverse peers and sitting before a happy teacher (also white). The picture book’s overt bibliotherapeutic intent will doubtlessly position it as a title suited to counseling sessions and responses to children’s experiences with grief and loss. But readers may also find value in its potential to foster empathy or to pre-emptively address sadness as one of many emotions we all experience.

Validating and soothing. (Picture book. 3-6)

PIRANHAS DON’T EAT BANANAS Blabey, Aaron Illus. by the author Scholastic (32 pp.) $14.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-338-29713-3

It takes a lot of sass to make “piranhas” and “bananas” rhyme, and Blabey’s book is full of that sass.

Who would guess that a piranha loves fruit? But Brian does.

When he tries to tempt other piranhas to try a banana, they turn him down cold. “Well, how about some silverbeet?” Brian asks.

“Are you serious, Brian? We eat feet,” they reply. “Or would you rather a bowl of peas?” “Stop it, Brian. We eat knees.” Children will readily guess what the other piranhas reply when Brian asks if they’d like some nice, ripe plums. But Brian keeps trying, ultimately offering the other fish “an awesome fruit platter.” They gobble it up in a typical piranha frenzy, and a hopeful Brian asks, “Is it yucky or yum?” While they admit “It’s very nice,” they enthusiastically proclaim, “But we still prefer bum!” The loose, rhyming back and forth between Brian and the other piranhas make this a fun read-aloud guaranteed to generate giggles and requests to “read it again.” Illustrations, just as sassy as the text, spotlight bright, lantern-jawed avocado-green fish and colorful fruit that pop against a stark white background. And the piranhas’ facial expressions? Priceless. Don’t miss the endpapers for serious and not-so-serious information about piranhas and bananas.

A wonderfully silly story about being true to yourself.

(Picture book. 4-6)

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I DO IT LIKE THIS!

Brooks, Susie Illus. by Johnson-Isaacs, Cally Kane/Miller (32 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 1, 2019 978-1-61067-826-1 Eating, moving, talking: “Some animals do things just like you…while others

are very different!”

This British import offers informational text about animal behaviors illustrated in cheery cartoon-style pictures and juxtaposed with diverse children engaging in similar activities. The opening double-page spread asks readers, “How do you eat? A chameleon SHOOTS out its tongue to catch food.” Illustrating this are a child biting into an apple while a chameleon stands on their head, catching a fly with its long tongue. On the facing page another child talks on a push-button phone, “us[ing] words,” and “a lion lets out a loud ROAR!” Poor pacing undermines the success of the book, with each spread offering (too) many human/animal juxtapositions. Although subsequent spreads |

MONSTER CLUB Hunters for Hire

are arranged topically, there’s no sense of cohesion offered by a particular structure—the spreads could be rearranged into a different sequence without any impact on the book as a whole.

The result is a title that offers lots of interesting information illustrated with pleasing, playful pictures, but it’s weakened by a lack of organization that would enable engagement and interest in accessing the information.

Not a great example of how to do expository nonfiction for young readers. (Picture book. 4-6)

Brown, Gavin Scholastic (256 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 30, 2019 978-1-338-31851-7

UP VERSES DOWN Poems, Paintings, and Serious Nonsense

Brown, Calef Illus. by hte author Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (80 pp.) $19.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-8050-9929-4 Fifty-odd (with and without the hyphen) new poems from a nabob of nonsense, with appropriate artplay to go with the wordplay.

“NASA has a bakery. / A spaceship in disguise. / Everybody talks about its meteoric ryes.” In between an “Intro” and an “Outro” promoting the notion that nonsense is serious business and offering pointers for readers eager to get started creating their own, Brown arranges examples cast in a variety of meters and rhyme schemes. The tone varies too, as along with clever own-sake exercises in language and lexicography (from “Borscht”: “This poem is the worscht. / The rhymes are forscht”) are verses on family ties and friendships, a “New Technique” for getting to sleep when sheep-counting palls, fretting over “Stingy” behavior, and ruminations on dust “Motes” passing in and out of sunbeams. The last is delivered by a woman in hijab, and throughout the naively stylized illustrations, human figures are likewise cast with an evident eye to diversity—even if bodies are sometimes those of insects and skin comes in gray or green as well as more likely hues. Birds surrounding the title poem carry banners welcoming all poetry readers and writers in inclusive terms: “Not ‘of a feather’ / But we flock together / Forever united / All are invited!”

Readers who take silliness seriously are well-advised to “sit back and sample this humble compendium. / Begin in the middle or go back from the endium.” (Picture book/poetry.

5-10)

y o u n g a d u lt

Busy monster-chasing adventures in an alternate-universe Hollywood, California.

Brown introduces 11-year-old buddies Tommy Wainwright, Collen “Spike” Hernandez, and Karim Khalil, who’s the son of legendary fantastic-beast hunter and former TV star Yousef “The Fang” Khalil. What starts as the threesome trapping—and Tommy taking a selfie with—a basilisk at their school moves to their successfully catching a mischievous gremlin before failing to nab a two-toed snipe. Along the way, they ensnare the attention of AppVenture, an online monster-elimination service with some questionable branding and job practices, including hiring the underage trio. Characterization is uneven. The author develops Tommy from a white male “beefcake” to a loving big brother who uses his AppVenture earnings to send his 8-yearold sister to Adventure Camp and Karim (who presents black) from a son scared of his own—and his father’s—shadow to a young person claiming his legacy. Unfortunately, Spike comes across as a person with anti-social personality disorder in the guise of a plucky Latina heroine who deeply resents her father, Luis, who divorced her mother, moved across the country, and resurfaces as an employee at AppVenture. This mixes with some unnecessary punching-down jokes about suing for fat discrimination and a tiresome running gag about Tommy’s love for the protein product Brotein.

Still, how the friends proceed makes for an amiable tale and a subtly scathing critique on today’s exploitative media culture and gig economy. (Science fantasy. 8-12)

MYSTERY CLUB Wild Werewolves; Mummy Mischief Cali, Davide Illus. By Robert, Yannick HMH Books (112 pp.) $21.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-1-328-52848-3

Set in London, England, two monster mysteries in graphic-novel format.

Kyle, who blogs his passion for ghosts and monsters, is actively on the lookout for a mystery to solve. In “Wild Werewolves,” the first of the two stories, a stranger named Lon Chaney approaches Kyle and his friend Zoey at the library. He believes that a few nights ago he turned into a werewolf, and he asks them to find a solution. Kyle and Zoe team up with Ashley and Tyler, two more friends, to work out why werewolves have suddenly appeared in the city. In “Mummy Mischief,” the four friends read an online news article about a mummy on the |

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SHLOKAS Hindu Chants for Children

subway (the text has been Americanized) and go to the British Museum’s mummy exhibit to get more clues. Both stories are reminiscent of Scooby-Doo, and Robert’s bright illustrations offer a lot of potential. However, the stories lack conviction, and although the book tries (very hard!) to be funny, the wordplay is clunky and the jokes often fall flat. (For instance, the answer to the question “Why would a mummy travel on the subway?” is “Because taxis don’t give rides to mummies!”) Most importantly, perhaps, the allegedly teenage characters read like 8-year-olds. Zoey is the only character of color, but her identity does not come into play at all during the course of the stories.

Ultimately, this European import is clumsy and uninteresting. (Graphic mystery. 7-10)

Campfire Editors Campfire (28 pp.) $6.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-93-81182-82-6 Series: Campfire Awakening

A small collection of short verses used in Hindu worship presented in both English and Sanskrit.

Each spread in this slim volume presents one Sanskrit shloka, or verse, with a phonetic transcription and an English translation. Each verse is dedicated to a particular deity and paired with a digital illustration, attributed to “Team Campfire.” The illustrations draw inspiration from Indian calendar art, a genre that has historically had impact on worship in public and private spaces, and will feel rather ordinary to those familiar with this mass-produced art form. Although the introductory text reads, “We hope this book proves invaluable in helping create an awareness among children of the spiritual legacy of Sanskrit texts,” it offers limited scaffolding for readers unfamiliar with Hinduism. The one-page survey of Indian scriptural traditions is thin, and the deities described are not contextualized.

In addition, these verses are sacred and are believed to have psychological and spiritual powers only if pronounced perfectly. To mitigate this, there is an inadequate pronunciation guide and a QR code on the back cover that can be scanned to access an audio version of the book. For readers familiar with Hinduism and/or growing up in Hindu homes, this likely replicates many texts readily available in temple retail spaces or via community connections.

While a decent addition to any basic, multicultural, multifaith library, it is not outstanding in any way. (Picture book/religion. 4-8)

A SMALL ZOMBIE PROBLEM Campbell, K.G. Illus. by the author Knopf (240 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-553-53955-4 978-0-553-53956-1 PLB Series: Zombie Problems, 1

Hot sauce, butterflies, and zombies—oh my!

When you’re a lonely little boy who would like nothing more than to make friends, it is decidedly unhelpful that you are white as a sheet and often confused with a ghost due to having lived your entire life inside a dilapidated manor, or that you have a strange condition that unfailingly attracts butterflies that hover about your head, or that eccentric Aunt Hydrangea, whom you live with, won’t stop talking about your family’s failed hot-sauce empire. But even with all these setbacks, August DuPont manages to capture the attention of another aunt he didn’t know he had, who invites August to meet her and his two cousins. Aunt Orchid proposes that she and August can help each other: He can look in his house for a rare stone and family heirloom that Orchid wants for her jewel collection, and in exchange she can send him to school. But his hopes of normalcy are seemingly dashed when a long-dead relative inexplicably pops out of her grave and refuses to leave August’s side. In his middle-grade authorial debut, Campbell has crafted an endearing protagonist and intriguing cast (even a sweet zombie) and set them adrift in a haze of family mystery with such elements as giant white alligators and undead magic shows for added flair. His frequent black-and-white pictures add humor and depict August’s family (both living and dead) as white.

A tantalizing start to a delightfully macabre new series.

(Supernatural mystery. 8-12)

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THE PRINCE AND THE WITCH AND THE THIEF AND THE BEARS Chisholm, Alistair Illus. by Tuya, Jez Kane/Miller (32 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-61067-849-0

A bedtime storytelling bonanza.

Jamie requests “A made-up one” when his dad asks him what kind of bedtime story he’d like. Then he immediately provides the titular cast of characters for this story within the story, and his dad dutifully begins to spin a yarn. His rambling storytelling is punctuated by Jamie’s questions and interjections, which he integrates into the tale. It’s notable that neither Jamie nor his dad are on the book’s cover, and while Jamie and his dad present black, with brown skin and curly, black hair, the Prince protagonist has lighter skin and straighter brown hair in the digital illustrations depicting his imagined escapades with fierce bears and such. The Princess, who appears later in the story, shares |

May be of some use in homes with persistent monster problems. no more monsters under your bed!

NO MORE MONSTERS UNDER YOUR BED!

the Prince’s skin tone (in most pages, though this is an inconsistent feature of her visual characterization) but has hair texture more like Jamie’s. Her role runs counter to typical damsel-indistress narratives since, as Jamie notes, “Mom says Princesses in stories are rubbish.” A Witch with an Evil Eye (and a tiny frog in her pocket) is the antagonist until she and the Prince and Princess make amends, but this occurs only after many (perhaps too many?) silly escapades. The happily-ever-after ending is reinforced by Dad’s affectionate goodnight kiss to Jamie, with a promise of more stories to come.

Silly bedtime fun. (Picture book. 4-6)

Chouteau, Jordan Illus. by Even Or, Anat Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-316-45388-2

Can a magic monster patch make the monsters go away?

“There once was a boy with a monster problem.” Monsters lurk, waiting for him to bed down—hiding under the bed, in the closet, in the laundry, under the rug, and even in the fishbowl.

He is so scared he can’t fall asleep. “He was afraid of monsters with zillions of eyes watching him, monsters with zillions of hands grabbing him, / and monsters with cavity-filled teeth gobbling him up.” This little boy is so afraid of so many monsters (exhaustively enumerated) that his parents give him “a magic monster patch to put on his pajamas” that makes him invisible to monsters. It works, of course, and the monsters grow bored and leave to find a more susceptible kid. The protagonist shares

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Elaborate linework and a vibrant pearlescent palette bring the underwater kingdom to life. sea sirens

FIREFLY HOME

the badge with a friend, who shares it with another friend, and now—the protagonist points straight out of the book, like Uncle Sam—it’s the reader’s, included with the book. (A downloadable patch will also be available on the publisher’s website.)

Chouteau’s picture book teaches its lesson with clunky, mundane prose, and, even though the monsters look more funny than scary in Even Or’s unsubtle cartoon illustrations, the catalog of hiding places and monster types may serve to scare youngsters with real fears. The narrator and his family present white; his friends are children of color.

A slick, well-intentioned package that offers nothing new to the dispelling-monsters genre, though it may be of some use in homes with persistent monster problems.

(Picture book. 3-5)

Clarke, Jane Illus. by Teckentrup, Britta Nosy Crow/Candlewick (24 pp.) $14.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-5362-0587-9 Florence the firefly is lost. Can “you” help her find her way home?

Young readers help guide Florence across the water and into the city, hopping from light source to light source. The text and the art work together to give clues as to what creates each one.

Readers can guess along with Florence, then turn the page to find the answer in the sweeping full-page spreads. Is that distant flashing light the other fireflies? No, it’s a lighthouse. What about that line of lights that seems to be moving? No, it’s a train. The interactive components beg to be read aloud—“Say ‘Fly faster, Florence!’ and flap your hands to show her how to fly really fast”—making it a good choice for group storytimes.

Clarke identifies “home” as a “special place,” recognizable in Teckentrup’s digital illustrations by way of the unique, geometric plant life they flit among. Some resemble grass, some ferns, and others wildflowers that double as little bursts of pale light.

The artist’s style is collagelike, with textures à la Eric Carle and spots of gradient lights. The solid yellow lights pop dramatically against the predominantly dark blue backgrounds. Earth tones and bright shades for the city round out the color scheme, which, along with the ever present star-speckled sky, makes this story equally apt for bedtime reading.

A charming, interactive tale that can help young readers engage with reading—probably one that will earn that simple command, “Again!” (Picture book. 3-6)

SEA SIRENS

Chu, Amy Illus. by Lee, Janet K. Viking (144 pp.) $20.99 | $12.99 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-451-48016-3 978-0-451-48017-0 paper A girl and her grouchy cat are thrust into the middle of an undersea war.

Vietnamese-American Trot loves to surf with her one-eyed rescue cat, Cap’n Bill, as her immigrant grandfather fishes from the pier. Unfortunately, Grandpa has dementia. After he wanders off from his fishing spot and gets lost one day, Trot and Grandpa aren’t allowed to go to the beach anymore. Naturally, Trot breaks the rules and goes surfing anyway. Wiping out on a huge wave, Trot and Cap’n Bill descend right into the middle of a fight between the Sea Sirens and the Serpents. With a little help from Siren magic, Trot and her cat—whose querulous meows become understood as English (“JUST a cat?”)—and, later, Grandpa stay longer than they expect, getting ever more entwined in the underwater world and war. Inspired by L. Frank Baum’s The Sea Fairies (1911), Chu and Lee create an impressive graphic fantasy with adventure, danger, and magic. Elaborate linework (reminiscent of John R. Neill’s) and a vibrant pearlescent palette bring the underwater kingdom and all its fantastical creatures to life.

Trot’s relationship with her grandfather forthrightly addresses the seriousness of dementia and the effects it has on a family.

From a plotting standpoint, the Siren and Serpent war wraps up rather quickly, but a “to be continued” panel promises further underwater escapades for Trot and her curmudgeonly cat.

A fast-paced beginning to a stunning new under-thesea graphic series. (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

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THIS BEACH IS LOUD! Cotterill, Samantha Illus. by the author Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-525-55345-8 Series: Little Senses

A young child gets excited about an upcoming beach trip with Dad, but when they arrive, the beach proves to be louder and more overwhelming than anticipated.

It’s beach day! This energetic tyke cannot wait to wake Dad up and hit the road. The drive is full of excitement, anticipation, and questions, but as soon as they park, it all “looks… busy….” All kinds of people are everywhere! They are digging and stomping and splashing and just being loud. And the sand gets everywhere. The once-eager protagonist isn’t sure if a beach day is so great after all. It’s “ouchy and sticky and bumpy and scratchy,” but Dad knows how to give his youngster the tools to refocus so they can enjoy their day out. The text bubbles with onomatopoeia even as it teaches readers ways to cope when in a new space that feels overwhelming. The illustrations—drawn in ink and charcoal and colored with block print—are bright |

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and cheerful, depicting dad and protagonist with light brown skin and straight, black hair. Text is incorporated inventively, at times occupying huge swaths of space to convey the child’s excitement and then agitation. Especially designed for kids with sensory-processing issues, the book has broad applicability beyond that audience.

Everyone can feel affected by a new scenario, and this book will reassure children that they can overcome their anxieties and have a beautiful day at the beach. (Picture book. 4-6)

with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule.

In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.

A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)

MAISY GOES TO A SHOW Cousins, Lucy Illus. by the author Candlewick (32 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-5362-0463-6 Series: Maisy First Experiences

Maisy and her friends attend a live theater performance and have a wonderful time.

Part of the Maisy First Experiences series, this outing finds the group with tickets, presumably purchased by their grownups, to see Flora Fantastica starring in Funny Feathers.The iconic, wildly popular mouse and her animal friends show their tickets, get programs, and find their front-row seats. Along with the rest of the audience, they get very quiet for the raising of the curtain. The show is a musical tale of jungle animals heading for the big city. Stagehands, here called special helpers, take away the jungle set and bring on the city. The curtain comes down for intermission, a bathroom break for Maisy and Cyril, and snack time for Charley and Tallulah. The bell rings, and it’s time for the second act. At the end there are cheers and a standing ovation.

The friends sing as they head home from a wonderful adventure. Cousins includes all the essential elements and appropriate new vocabulary and never allows the enthusiasm to wane. As in previous books in this series, a new experience is treated in a nonthreatening, encouraging tone for very young readers who might be excited but a bit apprehensive about a special event.

The signature gouache illustrations in the brightest of hues are familiar and appealing.

Maisy and friends are always a delight. (Picture book. 2-6)

MANGO MOON

de Anda, Diane Illus. by Cornelison, Sue Whitman (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 1, 2019 978-0-8075-4957-5 A realistic portrayal of a family torn apart.

Ten-year-old Maricela’s mama picks her up from school on the day everything changes. She tells Maricela and her younger brother that their “papi won’t be coming home for a while.” Readers learn through simple prose that Maricela’s undocumented father is being held in a detention center while he awaits deportation to an unnamed but “dangerous” country. Every aspect of Maricela’s young life is affected, from her now-coachless soccer practice to her after-school routine. She narrates the story with a sense of grief and honesty true to a child’s understanding of a complicated and devastating situation. Cornelison’s soft, impressionistic illustrations depict the all-Latinx family with light brown skin and straight, black hair and convey the overwhelming loss and sadness felt by a child longing for an absent parent. The unsmiling characters in the story feel authentic to the heaviness of this experience.

Despite their separation, Maricela focuses on ways she can stay connected to her papi, through handwritten notes and especially looking up at their same mango moon. Author de Anda honors the real challenge that many children face when a parent is deported and reminds them that it’s “all right…to cry.”

Available in both Spanish and English, this story validates a heartbreaking experience. (Picture book. 7-10) (La luna mango: 978-0-8075-4959-9)

HUMMINGBIRD

Davies, Nicola Illus. by Ray, Jane Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2019 978-1-5362-0538-1 A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.

In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds 98

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With illustrations extending across double-page spreads, the tundra feels as if it is expanding beyond the book. the fox wife

THE FOX WIFE

the case. This page-turning true-crime narrative takes readers behind the scenes of the detailed work, decision-making, and sometimes luck that go into solving difficult cases. The writing is lively, and the principal players are fully dimensional. The author’s note gives insight into his own intriguing process.

This is the first in a series that will look at the important cases of the FBI, and it’s a highly auspicious opener. (timeline, additional facts, sources) (Nonfiction. 8-12)

Deer, Beatrice Illus. by Herron, D.J. Inhabit Media (30 pp.) $16.95 | May 7, 2019 978-1-77227-212-3 In this modern interpretation of a traditional Inuit story, a fox marries a human.

One day a beautiful red fox falls from the sky. Catching sight of an Inuit family, she is fascinated. When the older son, Irniq, spots her, she flees but follows them, out of sight. Years pass, and Irniq grows into a man. He decides to set out on his own. His mother worries, but his father reassures her that their son is capable of surviving the rugged terrain. Now Irniq has his own sealskin tent, and after a long day hunting, he must do the chores alone. But there is a surprise when he arrives back at his camp. Who has lit the oil lamp and prepared his fish? This tale of a supernatural fox who hangs up her skin to become an Inuit man’s wife will sadden readers who hope to find unconditional love at the heart of the story. Instead, the book teaches an important lesson about judging our loved ones. With illustrations extending across double-page spreads, the tundra feels as if it is expanding beyond the corners of the book. The northern lights bounce off the horizon to enhance the mystery of this world, inviting readers to imagine a distant place and time when animals could become human.

The story of a divide that cannot be bridged will leave readers with much to ponder. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE POUT-POUT FISH CLEANS UP THE OCEAN Diesen, Deborah Illus. by Hanna, Dan Farrar, Straus and Giroux (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-374-30934-3 Series: Pout-Pout Fish

THE UNABOMBER Agent Kathy Puckett and the Hunt for a Serial Bomber Denson, Bryan Roaring Brook (176 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 24, 2019 978-1-250-19913-3 Series: FBI Files, 1

A female FBI agent is at the center of the search for the bomber who evaded capture for almost two decades.

Beginning in 1978, a series of serious bombings around the United States thwarted the FBI’s ability to apprehend the persons responsible. By the time special agent Kathleen M. Puckett was recruited, the FBI had been working for years to achieve that goal. Puckett had a positive reputation, and her background in the Air Force and her work in counterintelligence made her a sought-after prospect—but that didn’t save her from sexist microaggressions. “Puckett didn’t want to be respected as a female agent. She wanted respect as an agent. Her day would come.” In fast-paced prose, Denson recounts how Puckett, a white woman, was determined to learn all she could about the case, diligently studying the old files and visiting the scenes of the attacks before the publication of the Unabomber’s manifesto in the New York Times and the Washington Post helped break |

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The pout-pout fish finds more to pout about.

In the eighth book in this popular series (not counting holiday miniadventures, board books, and novelty tie-ins), Mr. Fish and his friends discover “a big…BIG…MESS” in the ocean. In rhyming stanzas, with an occasional refrain, Diesen tells of the dismal discovery, research, discussion, and consensus: “The problem is… / Us!!!” The friends agree to work together to solve it, inviting readers’ help. Hanna illustrates with his familiar cartoonish characters, letting his imagination fly with examples of what surrounds these ocean-dwellers as they journey to the trash mountain: straws, cups, and plastic bags; bits of plastic toys; bottles and cans; candy wrappers and pizza boxes; old electronics; broken sandals; tires; an abandoned ukelele; an Earth Day balloon (oh, the irony); six-pack rings; and more. Mr. Seahorse’s vehicle belches smelly exhaust; a fish behind him wears a gas mask. Two final spreads show the cooperative cleanup. Mr. Seahorse now rides a bicycle. Humorous details will keep readers coming back to the pictures again and again, but it’s not all laughs: There is an entangled turtle, a fish strangling in a sixpack ring, and more than one skeleton. An older audience will certainly get the point; young listeners may need a reminder from the adult reader to understand who really consumes fast food and leaves litter behind—the real “us” that threaten actual marine life. A final page offers suggestions for learning more, taking action, and sharing.

Well-meant but distressing. (Picture book. 3-6)

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The illustrations make clear that Grandad is a part of a vibrant community. a visit to grandad

A VISIT TO GRANDAD An African ABC

dog trainer, Eric eventually learns his lessons—and so does Ugly.

Ugly’s misadventures are believable, as is Eric’s avoidance of responsibility. Maggie provides interesting dog-training hints, and the happy ending may inspire readers to pick up Ugly’s next misadventure, My Dog Gets a Job, which publishes simultaneously. Eric, his family, and Maggie present white in Lancett’s engaging illustrations; he has at least one friend of color.

This amusing but never especially compelling dog tale is most likely to appeal to animal lovers. (Fiction. 8-11) (My Dog Gets a Job: 978-1-4926-8089-5)

Fadipe, Sade Illus. by Ayalomeh, Shedrach Cassava Republic Press (32 pp.) $16.95 | Jun. 5, 2019 978-1-911115-81-6 Unlike ABC books that are primarily informational, this rhyming, poetic one has a continuous narrative that is more prominent than the walk through the alphabet.

During a school break, Adanah, a little (probably Nigerian, like the author and the illustrator) girl with cornrows, leaves her mother and little sister at home and rides with her father to Grandad’s house. Grandad has goats and a guitar in his gated yard, which sets the stage for encouraging readers to pay attention to the details that appear in the illustrations that the text never mentions. For instance, on the page that says, “E is for eagles / flying above the trees,” a woman carrying four cartons of eggs on her head, an elephant on a billboard, and an artist using an easel on the hill also appear. While the narrator talks only about her grandfather, the illustrations make clear that he—and his granddaughter, by extension—is a part of a vibrant community who look out for and appreciate one another. On the C page, before she leaves home, the protagonist says she will take her camera on her trip, and at the end of this circular journey, she shares all of her photos with her little sister—Zainab.

From Nigeria, a wonderful story of community that will encourage readers to see both mirrors of their own lives and windows into another fascinating place. (Picture book. 3- 7)

I WILL RACE YOU THROUGH THIS BOOK! Fenske, Jonathan E. Illus. by the author Penguin Workshop (32 pp.) $9.99 | May 7, 2019 978-1-5247-9195-7

A highly competitive rabbit challenges readers to a race through the book it stars in.

In rhyming couplets, Book-it Bunny makes introductions and then declares, “No one reads as fast as ME! / So turn the page and take a look. // I will RACE you through this book!”

Begging a false start, the bunny then tries to trick readers into closing their eyes, which leads to a very funny wordless doublepage spread in which BiB is caught tiptoeing off the recto. The shenanigans continue as BiB takes off running before the count of three and tries to distract readers with reports of a cow in flight before losing stride upon sighting the supposedly imaginary winged cow. When (of course) readers do beat the bunny, BiB pretends not to care and then chooses another book—and another opponent: a snail. Fenske’s humorous metafictive competition pares down visual distractions so that readers can concentrate on decoding and on the book’s sense of play. The only setting is a blue floor and white background, both given solidity

by BiB’s digitally thrown shadow. The bunny is a standard-issue cartoon, with sticking-up ears, buck teeth, and cotton-ball tail, all white save for touches of pink in ears and on nose. The occasional panel in yellow provides some variety.

Since finishing this book means winning a race, it delivers an extra sense of satisfaction for beginning readers.

(Early reader. 4-8)

MY DOG MADE ME WRITE THIS BOOK

Fensham, Elizabeth Illus. by Lancett, James Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (160 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jul. 1, 2019 978-1-4926-8086-4 Series: My Dog Ugly Nine-year-old Eric was thrilled to get a puppy from the animal shelter. But Ugly has now grown into an out-of-control dog.

The primary reason for that is Eric, of course. It’s been far too easy for him to leave Ugly’s care to his busy mom, so the young dog has never received any training, and now Eric’s parents and his rather unpleasant, much older sister have lost patience with both boy and dog. Worse is that Ugly prefers the person who feeds him, leaving Eric feeling rejected and unmotivated. If Ugly isn’t to be sent away, Eric has to step up and take over, a lesson he’s quite reluctant to embrace in spite of gentle—if rather pedantic—guidance from his grandfather.

Eric’s first-person narrative is represented as a book he’s writing, apparently as self-motivated bibliotherapy. With amusing advice from his friends and help from Maggie, an experienced 100

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SERAPHIN

enhance the story, reflecting Tameika’s changing emotions and her interactions with her parents, whose positive affirmations help give Tameika the courage and self-love to remember how much joy she gets from performing. For kids who like to imagine themselves being anything they want to be, it is reassuring to be reminded that it’s not exterior looks that matter but the princess within.

A feel-good picture book and a great reminder that classic princess roles can be reimagined to embrace inclusion, diversity, and body positivity. (Picture book. 4-8)

Fix, Philippe Illus. by the author Trans. by Nicholson-Smith, Donald Elsewhere Editions (28 pp.) $18.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-939810-25-0 Dreamer Seraphin finds difficulty working and living in modern-day Paris.

After he’s fired from his job at the Metro, he lingers in the “sun-filled streets” and “parks resonant with birdsong.” Back home, Seraphin finds a letter: He’s inherited a crumbling mansion! A jovial narrator guides readers through this meandering story, Nicholson-Smith’s conversational translation retaining Gallic eloquence. English-speaking readers will marvel at lithe turns of phrase: The “strange, harsh words” of the men who evict him to make way for new development “wounded him like so many poison arrows.” Readers will also fall under the spell of Fix’s inexhaustible imagination, transferred onto the page as immense, richly detailed, golden-hued watercolor-and-ink illustrations. Only older readers could consume the entire narrative start to finish in one sitting, however, and many might find Seraphin, a middle-aged, pale-skinned innocent whose only friends are a round boy named Plume and a pet hamster called Hercules, a bit bizarre. Christian culture casts seraphim as angels associated with purity and light, and while Seraphin is similarly guileless and radiant, he also seems somewhat strange, making rounds with a peddler’s cart of toys—inventions to attract and entice a group of exclusively white children.

A gorgeous but elusive import. (Picture book. 8-12)

GO FOR THE MOON A Rocket, a Boy, and the First Moon Landing Gall, Chris Illus. by the author Roaring Brook (48 pp.) $19.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-250-15579-5

NOT QUITE SNOW WHITE Franklin, Ashley Illus. by Glenn, Ebony Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-06-279860-2

A little black girl holds true to her dream that on the theater stage you can be whatever you want— even if it’s Snow White.

Tameika is a bubbly, outgoing singer and dancer who loves the stage. She has played various roles, such as a cucumber, a space cowgirl, and a dinosaur, but never a princess. This charming tale tackles the complex subject of biases around race and body image when Tameika overhears her classmates’ whispers: “She can’t be Snow White”; “She’s much too chubby”; “And she’s too brown.” Tameika goes on a journey of self-acceptance as she grapples with her feelings about wanting to be a princess.

Glenn’s playful, animation-inspired digital art will enchant readers as it immerses them in Tameika’s vivid imagination. New fans may seek out her previous work in Jamilah ThompkinsBigelow’s Mommy’s Khimar (2018) and Michelle Meadows’ Brave Ballerina (2019). The vibrant colors and active compositions |

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The Apollo 11 mission ignites a young boy’s lifelong passion for rockets and astronomy.

A stately Saturn V rocket stands ready, illuminated by beams of light against a night sky. Turn the page, and a stunning white moon with a hazy halo shares that night sky, the words “The moon is out tonight” superimposed invitingly on its surface.

Next, a young white boy (assumed to be a young version of the author) stares at the moon through his open bedroom window, thinking, “I’m so excited that I can’t sleep!” Effectively set up by these first images, the narrative proceeds to weave the three threads—the rocket, the moon, and the boy—into a volume that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. The boy’s first-person narrative and supporting illustrations are set within the larger moon-mission illustrations like family photographs. The science behind the Saturn V rocket is related simply, large-format illustrations emphasizing the grandeur of the Apollo endeavor. The moon itself, ever present and awaiting, gets short shrift once the astronauts set foot on the surface; they spend two and a half hours and off they go, blasting off and heading home. The final double-page spread is a stunning, vertiginous view of the boy’s next generation of homemade rockets lifting off.

A solid addition to the growing collection of fine volumes about Apollo 11. (author’s note, fun facts, glossary, sources, places to visit) (Informational picture book. 6-10)

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I NEED TO WEE!

from character to character that readers may be left fatigued or confused. Although Quentin’s voice is distinct, Nevaeh’s and Vic’s are similar enough that readers have to pay particularly close attention.

Heartfelt but exhausting. (Fiction. 8-12)

Hendra, Sue & Linnet, Paul Illus. by the authors Aladdin (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-4814-9039-9

MY PUPPY PATCH

Poor Alan really needs to go!

In a text rife with potty-humor punning, Alan (a blue teddy bear), is in line to go “whizzing down the very tall slide with his friends” at a fair when he starts dancing furiously. Giraffe and others ask why he’s doing this, and he explains “I need to wee!”

But he doesn’t want to interrupt his fun to take care of business. Unfortunately, delays, long lines, and other impediments on the way to the potty make the situation “desperate.” Alan searches for quasi-potties but is stymied at every turn: He can’t use a doll’s toilet because it’s the “teeny tiny” one in her dollhouse; Robot objects to his attempted use of a teapot: “It’s…not a wee-pot!”; Magic Rabbit exclaims, “Don’t even think about it!” when Alan nearly pees in its hat. When Alan inadvertently ends up dancing away on stage, he wins first prize in a contest and is awarded a large, gold trophy, which he promptly uses to relieve himself. What happens to the resulting urine is left to readers to ponder, though perhaps many would rather leave the book aside without solving that mystery, since the story’s seemingly interminable chain of events grows tiresome well before its resolution. The busy digital illustrations with a palette verging on the garish don’t offer much relief.

A miss. (Picture book. 2-4)

Heras, Theo Illus. by Carter, Alice Pajama Press (24 pp.) $16.95 | Jun. 13, 2019 978-1-77278-080-2

A young child is confident a new puppy will adhere to newly learned rules on a first outing beyond the backyard fence.

The unnamed, pigtailed, bespectacled narrator is patient yet strict with their new dog, Patch, named for the black splotch over one eye. They practice the commands of “sit,” “down,” and “stay” (a hard one) to prepare. Once they open the gate and venture out, the leashed Patch is quite excited to encounter butterflies, bugs, and muddy puddles. The highlight of the walk is when they meet Benny, a little boy with his new puppy, a much larger, shaggy canine called Smallfry. “The two puppies leap… and roll…and tussle.” After untangling their leashes, Patch and her owner walk home for a cleanup, some water, and a nap.

Fundamentals of puppy training and pet ownership are the underlying themes that give structure to this rather bland storyline—both Benny and the narrator are careful to disclose that their pups have had their shots before allowing them to play, for instance. Carter supplies attractive illustrations done with colored pencil, watercolor, and digital media against a stark white background. The narrator presents white and Benny black; the narrator’s jewel-toned, print dress is especially attractive.

The genuine love expressed between owner and pet fortifies the responsibilities Patch’s owner undertakes. (Picture book. 5- 7)

THE ECHO PARK CASTAWAYS Hennessey, M.G. Harper/HarperCollins (208 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-06-242769-4

Three foster siblings band together to help their newest brother.

Nevaeh (who’s black), Vic (who’s Salvadoran), and Mara (who’s Latinx) know the ropes of the foster-care system, and they’re in a pretty great situation with their current foster mom, Mrs. K. But their newest arrival, Quentin (who’s white), doesn’t know that, and with his Asperger’s, he finds the new family overwhelming. All he wants is to track down his mother, who is sick with cancer. Vic, who identifies as a kid secret agent, decides that the way to help Quentin is to take him on a quest to find his mom in the hospital (a few towns away), and he’s the person for the job. What he doesn’t count on is little Mara tagging along and Nevaeh taking it upon herself as the oldest to bring them all home. The narration alternates among three of the four kids (Mara, who speaks Spanish, never gets to tell her side of the story), each with a particular role in the family. The portrayals of Quentin’s Asperger’s and Vic’s ADHD are respectful, but the overall construction of the book is chaotic, with so many quick switches 102

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THE BUDDY BENCH

Hooks, Gwendolyn Illus. by Ng-Benitez, Shirley Lee & Low (32 pp.) $14.95 | $5.95 paper | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-62014-571-5 978-1-62014-572-2 paper Series: The Confetti Kids When Padma and her friends notice a lonely new boy at school, they make a plan to help him feel included.

Padma loves school, and she loves her friends. When she finds out that she has been assigned to a different classroom than her friends, she isn’t bothered, seeing it instead it as an opportunity to make new friends. But Padma notices a new boy who stands by himself at the side of the playground, looking |

Levi’s dad’s sensitivity makes him a refreshing representation of a father character. big boys cry

THE GOLDEN ACORN

lonely. To help him feel included, Padma and her friends get the principal’s permission to create a “buddy bench,” a place where kids can sit together and make new friends. After some initial hesitation, the lonely boy sits on the bench, and Padma and her friends learn that Zander’s mom is a military pilot and that the family has been through a number of moves. Padma strikes up a friendship with him, and by the end of the book, he has been absorbed into Padma’s happy and diverse peer group. Padma’s name hints at Indian heritage, and Zander appears black. The book’s vibrant illustrations include a diverse cast of characters who are compassionate, convincing, and empowered to solve their own problems. Although the language is appropriately simple and clear, it can sometimes feel forced and stilted, particularly in dialogue. Likewise, the plot, though well-intentioned, lacks cohesion.

An appealingly illustrated early reader that’s strong on social message but rather weak on plot. (Early reader. 6-9)

Hudson, Katy Illus. by the author Capstone Editions (32 pp.) $17.95 | Jul. 1, 2019 978-1-68446-036-6

BIG BOYS CRY

Howley, Jonty Illus. by the author Random House (48 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-5247-7320-5 978-1-5247-7321-2 PLB On his first day of school, a young boy learns it’s OK to show his feelings no matter his age.

When Levi sets out for his first day at an unfamiliar school, Papa tells him, “Big boys don’t cry,” because he doesn’t know what else to say to calm Levi’s nerves. Along the way, Levi encounters men of all different ages and many walks of life stirred to tears by sadness, art, happiness, and love. At the end of the day, Levi learns his father felt scared about sending Levi to school too, and they both agree that it’s just fine for big boys to cry after all. Debut author and illustrator Howley sets the tone for this quiet, vulnerable story with softly colored illustrations and a quaint, seaside village setting. Both Levi and his dad are white, while the background characters are diverse (though there is not much variation to the spectrum of brown depicted).

Details around the home, such as the pictures on the wall, suggest that Levi’s father is a single parent. His sensitivity makes him a refreshing representation of a father character, as does his willingness to accept and grow from his mistake. The overall lesson about men showing tears is made all the more effective with its representation of a range of feelings beyond sadness.

A compassionate story that encourages openness and honesty about emotions. (Picture book. 3- 7)

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The cadre of compassionate forest critters from A Loud Winter’s Nap (2017) returns to prove that teamwork beats going it alone.

Squirrel’s no slouch. For the last eight years she has won the Great Acorn Hunt, but this time around someone’s thrown a wrench in the works. After a rule change, the race is now a team competition, and Squirrel quickly discovers her friends Beaver, Tortoise, Rabbit, and Bird aren’t quite as adept as she at navigating treetops. Come race day, Squirrel must constantly cede her lead to help her teammates when they get stuck. It’s not entirely clear why her friends want to participate in the race at all or, for that matter, why the cutthroat competitor, after swallowing her annoyance with them throughout, has a 180-degree change of heart mere pages from the tale’s end. She’s left her friends behind and snagged the Golden Acorn by herself— but “Tired, sweaty and...lonely,” Squirrel abandons it and goes back to her friends. “From now on, Squirrel’s friends would ALWAYS come first.” This epiphany feels tacked on at best, if not outright unbelievable. Hudson’s artistic flair helps to compensate for her storytelling. Set against a rich autumnal backdrop, pumpkin pie, candied apples, and warm woolen scarves pop. Plus, it’s hard to imagine any funnier representation of a beaver squeezing through oaken knotholes than this.

Forget the message. Come for the cacophony of color and the slapstick instead. (Picture book. 4- 7)

SECRET SOLDIERS

Hutton, Keely Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-374-30903-9 Thirteen-year-old Irish-born Thomas Sullivan runs away from home to join the English army during World War I. He wants to escape a life of grinding poverty in the coal mines of Dover and is intent on finding his dearly loved older brother, who signed up to fight but has been reported missing in action. Thomas fails to enlist due to his youth but is illegally recruited through the machinations of George, a Cockney street urchin. On the troop train bound for Ypres and the Western Front, they join abused runaway Charlie and stuck-up Eton scholar Frederick. The boys discover that their actual role is not to fight the Germans but to be sappers, whose job is to dig tunnels under the trenches, where they plant explosives to blow up the German lines and ultimately turn the course of the war.

The narrative seamlessly blends historical fact with the intense personal experiences of the four boys—all white—as they learn |

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Nelson is a master at capturing nuance in facial expression and body language. hey, dog

to cope with the horrors of trench warfare. Each brings a special skill to the mix; Thomas’ mining experience, Charlie’s artistic skills, Frederick’s writing ability, and George’s all-round confidence and determination. The design includes a few black pages with white text, describing Thomas’ brother James’ traumatic experiences.

A captivating tale of down-to-earth heroism and a personal exposé of life in the trenches from the perspective of likable, engaging characters. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

thoughtful child asks Mom why anyone would harm a dog, and she “fiercely” replies, “Some people are not as good as dogs.”

After more patient conversations with the dog and more Frisbees with food, the protagonist’s efforts are finally rewarded.

Referring to the stray as “Dog,” the child tells the story with a tone of urgency yet in a direct, easy-to-follow manner. Compassion for Dog shines through the text, strongly reinforced in the simple illustrations, drawn manually and colored in Photoshop.

Nelson is a master at capturing nuance in facial expression and body language, both human and canine. As the unnamed narrator patiently, lovingly cares for Dog, the emotions of both are clear, and readers will cheer Dog’s transition from fear to trust as he gradually emerges from the bush. The protagonist and Mom—no other family members are depicted—both present white.

This gentle, moving lesson in perseverance will touch young readers, especially the dog lovers. (Picture book. 4-8)

MOON BABIES

Jameson, Karen Illus. by Hevron, Amy Putnam (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-0-525-51481-7 A new moon is born every 28 days, but what does a baby moon do all day? Make a wish and join Jameson’s moon babies to discover a day that is out of this world.

Sample a breakfast bottle with milk that flows from the Milky Way. Stand by as the baby moons take a moonwalk— but “wobble-bobble, step and stumble. / Babies try but take a tumble.” Join them as they go into orbit on their favorite playground ride, the carousel, and stack moonstones to build castles in the sky. Ever wondered what is in the Little Dipper? “Steamy porridge” for moon babies’ dinner, of course. As the day winds down, it’s time for bath “play and bubble fun. / Stardust powder when they’re done,” and, finally, the “softest jammies” and bedtime snuggles with “doting grammies” reading nursery rhymes.

Soothing rhythms, a consistent rhyme pattern, lively rhymes, and gently playful references make this book a good bedtime read for both children and caregivers. Illustrations of pastelhued moon babies against nighttime blue backgrounds are restful, too, but they also include details to discuss: ever watchful grammy moons, real and imagined constellation patterns, and a tiny astronaut doll tucked in every spread.

A playful and soothing book for the close of day. (Picture book. 3-5)

MY BIG BAD MONSTER Kang, A.N. Illus. by the author Disney-Hyperion (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-4847-2882-6

A little girl deals with an annoying manifestation of overwhelming negative thoughts.

When the monster is not cackling or blathering nonsense, it declares she has “a huge head” as she looks in the mirror and berates her comments as “dumb.” The girl puts on a hat and doesn’t participate, but the monster grows, lurking just behind her, until she confronts it across the gutter. She drowns it out by making her own instruments from household oddments— cutlery, tin cans, jars—and it begins to shrink. Eventually, she squashes the buzzing, fly-sized monster between two pot-lid cymbals—“SPLAT!”—and she never hears from it again. (If only it were so easy.) The text is very sparse, with far more sound effects than narrative text, so the story depends on the pictures to fill in the gaps, especially in the opening few pages. It would perhaps be best read silently or experienced as part of a discussion. Among her multiracial classmates, the white-appearing girl has a burst of curly, bright-red hair. The monster is an amorphous blob of shadowy scribbles with rounded teeth and flipperlike appendages. Kang’s art has the look and texture of colored pencils on ribbed paper, with thick, fluid lines and effective layering. Color sets the mood; neutrals take over when the monster is influential—the girl’s bright hair is literally squashed under the bluish-gray hat—and transition to a brighter palette when the girl is in control.

It’s a successful visual metaphor but lacking in some practical application of text. (Picture book. 4- 7)

HEY, DOG

Johnston, Tony Illus. by Nelson, Jonathan Charlesbridge (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-58089-877-5 A round-headed, bespectacled kid finds a stray dog and does everything to earn the dog’s trust.

Arriving home from school, the narrator discovers a dog crouching in a bush in the backyard. When the dog flees, the narrator puts out water in a Frisbee for it and later provides a quilt and leftover meatballs, hoping the dog will return. Next day, the meatballs are gone, but the dog still hides. Noticing that the skinny, cringing dog has scars and no tags, the 104

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C-3PO DOES NOT LIKE SAND!

can Charlie keep her from downing the gummy skunks? (And if they give her such terrible breath, why did Charlie bring them along?) The digital illustrations are bright, playful, and attractive, well suited to the story. The dragon’s shenanigans go on far too long, with some abrupt, arbitrary changes in direction, and the humor won’t appeal to everyone. Still there are some young dragon lovers and fans of mischief who will revel in this silly romp.

Fun enough for a single read-aloud, but mostly fluff.

(Picture book. 3-6)

Kennedy, Caitlin Illus. by Kesinger, Brian Disney Lucasfilm (64 pp.) $10.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-368-04346-5 Series: Droid Tales

In a galaxy far, far away, three robots take a sandy trek.

In the heat of desert planet Tatooine, persnickety C-3PO leads playful R2-D2 and BB-8 across the dunes on an important mission. Along their journey, the trio encounters familiar figures from the Star Wars franchise, including speedy podracers, hooded Jawas, and an enormous, shaggy bantha, and also name-drops other notables such as Gen. Leia and Rey. As in the films, R2 and BB-8 communicate only through beeps and boops; C-3PO carries most of the narrative with his endless fussing about keeping his cohorts on track with their mission and grumbling about the sand, which delights and preoccupies the smaller bots. When the threesome reports back to their ship for duty, uptight C-3PO takes a welldeserved bath while R2 and BB-8 provide gentle comic relief.

This graphic offering features large, bright illustrations that stretch over its pages, employing a cheery, eye-catching blueand-gold palette. Standing out prominently against the sky-blue backgrounds, the generously sized text bubbles are stark white, just perfect for emerging comics readers. The exact purpose of the mission is never explicitly stated, although its importance is often repeated—think Waiting for Godot through a Star Wars lens. Young readers should relate to the experience of receiving vague orders with simultaneous injunctions not to get dirty.

Fun for droid devotees. (Graphic early reader. 5-9)

PARTY A Mystery

Kincaid, Jamaica Illus. by Cortés, Ricardo Black Sheep Press (32 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-61775-716-7

ROSIE THE DRAGON AND CHARLIE MAKE WAVES Kerstein, Lauren H. Illus. by Wragg, Nate Two Lions (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 1, 2019 978-1-5420-4292-5

Charlie has chosen an unusual pet, and managing her at the community pool

takes a lot of effort.

Charlie, a black child with a high top fade, didn’t have a dragon in mind when adopting a pet, but Rosie, a round-bellied, dark pink dragon, liked Charlie. “And now we’re best friends.

We do everything together.” Today, they are going to the pool.

Last time “didn’t go that well,” so this time Charlie is prepared.

First, Charlie reviews the rules with Rosie. Then Charlie chases after her, keeping her from terrorizing the families with her play. After many pages of damage control, Charlie finally gets Rosie to calm down, give both Charlie and some friends a ride, and eventually swim on her own. Charlie’s pep talk to Rosie before her solo swim can be taken as sound advice for life. But

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Pam, Bess, and Bess’ younger sister, Sue, visit a museum after hours for a celebration of the “publication of the first of the Nancy Drew mystery books” in this picture book based on a story originally published in 1980 in the New Yorker.

Although The Mystery of the Old Clock was originally published in 1930, Cortés does not set the story during the Depression: The girls—all three are black—wear modern casual clothing, and one appears to be holding a smartphone. When Pam climbs the stairs for a better vantage point from which to peer at the guests, she points out something shocking. Pam and Bess are aghast at whatever it is, but little sister Sue (and readers) remains clueless. Frustratingly, the pictures depict only their changing expressions over pages and pages and not what they actually see—though the last page might offer a visual hint.

The stilted vocabulary seems to date back to Carolyn Keene’s characters of that era: “querulous,” “milling about,” “bilious,” and “hypers” (an exclamation), all incongruous with the characters’ ages. Worse, one textual descriptor of Bess clashes with her depiction as a girl with dark brown skin: “her face turning first a ghostly white, then a vivid red.” For white Bess Marvin, friend of Nancy Drew, this is possible, but blushing would not result in such a color change in a character with skin this dark.

The color palette of the illustrations seems as dated as the museum—another reason this book will likely fail to appeal to young readers.

Nostalgic Nancy Drew fans will likely deem this experimental picture book a failed homage, and it will certainly disappoint young sleuths in search of a real mystery. (Picture book. 5-8)

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Adam Rubin

THE BESTSELLER’S NEW PICTURE BOOK IS AN IMPETUS TO CLAP HANDS—OR BETTER YET, SOMEONE ELSE’S

By Megan Labrise When the impetus to write a rhyming book arose, the inventive 35-year-old author of Dragons Love Tacos and Robo-Sauce circled back to the hip-hop he heard growing up in New York.

“There’s a lot more air, there’s a lot more room for interpretation,” in those songs, he says, “and, that was really inspiring to me. I wanted to make something where somebody could find their own flow with the text and find the rhythm that feels right to them.”

If High Five is about one thing, it’s encouraging individuality. A yetilike narrator named Sensei, who sports an amazing multicolor martial arts belt and a cane, entreats young readers to develop their own signature palm-planting style ahead of the High Five Championship of the World. (It’s not yet a real competition, though High Five’s U.S. publication is two days before the actual National High Five Day on April 18.)

“I don’t want to see something bland,” Rubin writes. “I want to see something brand-new, / a high five only you would do. / A fresh technique / that’s so unique, / it leaves me unable to speak....”

Accompanying the twisty bliss of Rubin’s rhymes are Salmieri’s exuberant illustrations. A fair share feature high-held hands, paws, and tentacles with bold neon caps that demand they be slapped: “HIGH FIVE!” Once readers arrive at the championship, Kirkus writes, “Salmieri’s scribbly ink-and–coloredpencil drawings of the all-animal cast, audience, and panel of judges reflect the infectiously rising suspense and wild excitement as the unseen ‘Kid’ the narrator

If you have love for the Sugarhill Gang’s fine flow, you’ll find High Five (April 16) twice as nice. The latest collaboration from No. 1 New York Times bestselling picture-book duo Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri slaps hard with supernal internal rhymes and a customizable cadence.

“I confess I’m impressed / with your zesty finesse, / but there is one last test / to assess nonetheless,” Rubin writes in one of many lines begging to be read aloud. (Try it.)

“It’s funny, because a lot of rhyming books seem hermetically sealed,” Rubin says via Skype from his home in Barcelona. “You can [only] read them in this very controlled meter.”

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addresses sends each foe in succession reeling away in stunned defeat.”

To wit, it is triumphant reading destined for a beating by many enthusiastic small hands.

“I’m really excited to see how kids make it their own,” Rubin says, “because there’s a lot to this book that happens off the page. I have no idea [of the limits of] how they’ll interact with it and show off their own creativity.”

Nevertheless, in jest we request Rubin’s worstand best-case scenarios. The author kindly obliges: “My nightmare for this book is that some very sweet grandma-type person is reading it to a child that’s perhaps a bit overenthusiastic,” Rubin says.

“And for some misguided reason, she holds the book in front of her face, the kid winds up a little too hard, and just knocks grandma onto the floor.

“The dream scenario is that kids become inspired to organize air-guitar–style tournaments,” he says, “where they pair up and compete for style points, enthusiasm, and technical difficulty against their costumed peers. They have sort of a ranked regional system until they get to the national high-five championship that’s hosted by comedian Godfrey on the FX network.”

DOGS AND THEIR PEOPLE Lambelet, Anne Illus. by the author Page Street (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-62414-689-3

Megan Labrise is an editor at large and co-host of the Fully Booked podcast. High Five was reviewed in the Feb. 1, 2019, issue.

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A child in a dress walking home from school narrates observations of neighborhood friends and their dogs before returning home, where a pet awaits.

The unnamed child, who appears to be about 10, walks home alone through a park and past town houses and shops.

Comments on each owner-canine pair note that the pairs are usually similar in some way but sometimes are diametrical opposites. The narrator knows most of the people and their dogs by name, though there is no direct interaction with them.

The setting appears to be a city in the 1920s, suggested in art deco elements and Jazz Age clothing styles. The watercolor, pencil, and digital illustrations use white backgrounds, placing on them stylized characters with a cubist influence in some of the faces. The narrator and some of the dog owners present white; other characters have brown skin, and two have faces in light blue. The story unfolds at a sedate pace without much excitement or movement, uplifted by a surprising touch of humor in the conclusion. The narrator’s own pet is not a dog as expected, but a “fat, lazy, grumpy old… / CAT!” Though the premise is clever and the illustrations intriguing, the story keeps the narrator at a distance from both the other characters and readers, making it an emotionally disengaging one. (Picture book. 3- 7)

BLASTAWAY

Landers, Melissa Disney-Hyperion (304 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-4847-5023-0 It’s easy to steal a spaceship by mistake. It’s a little harder to steal a sun.

Thirteen-year-old Kyler Centaurus doesn’t exactly mean to steal his family’s cruiser spaceship. But he’s steamed enough at his rambunctious, bullying brothers and his parents’ one-sided adjudication of sibling fights that he does program the ship as getaway transport. Although he changes his mind, he accidentally hits the “execute” button while sleeping alone onboard. Elsewhere in the universe, mutant Figerella Jammeslot, also 13, hires herself out to space pirates. She’s never blown up a sun before, but she’s gifted at demolition, poor, and an orphan—she needs the money. Ky’s and Fig’s paths converge in a rollicking space adventure centered on the theft and use for terrorism of a portable, artificial sun (readers should pack their disbeliefsuspenders) and colored by Harry Potter references, slapstick, and copious jokes in the fart/armpit genres. Although the text |

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Lloyd hits her stride as she weaves plot twists, humor, and suspense. carnival catastrophe

offers overt political commentary on despotic rule, corporate power, and media control, its exploration of (real-world–analogous) ethnic, racial, religious, and refugee oppression is diluted by being only metaphorical—and it’s bleached out by the fact that somehow everyone appears to be white except one morally corrupt brown person.

Fans of gross-out humor and hand-wavy science will have a blast if they can stomach a mostly white 26th century; others should look to Kevin Emerson’s Last Day on Mars (2017) instead. (Science fiction. 8-11)

“This is the golden honey, / made by the thousands of busy bees, / that work inside the dark shelter / that stands in the yard. // And this is Jack, the daddy, / who keeps bees as a hobby, / gathering honey from the bee box / that stands in the yard.” The bees pollinate, gather nectar, and make honey; Jack harvests the honey and makes beeswax candles; his family eats the honey.

While bees are a hot topic, this book falls short in several ways.

With rhythm that never takes off and a narrative that meanders between hive and house, there is no real sense of continuity from blossom to table. The cheery cartoon art, heavy on honey yellow, is likewise unsuccessful. The bees themselves, with exaggerated proboscises and elongated, dully colored abdomens, look uncomfortably like mosquitoes, and they are depicted carrying pollen on all their legs instead of only their back two.

The hive, described in the text as a modern set of boxes, has the profile of an old-fashioned straw one and is, as depicted, highly unlikely to be found in any actual bee yard. Companion title The Cow that Jack Milked is rather more coherent in narrative but equally halting in its rhythms. The family members in both books (they appear to be different) all have beige skin.

Barely marginal. (Picture book. 3-6) (The Cow that Jack Milked: 978-1-60905-612-4)

HOW TO LIGHT YOUR DRAGON Lévy, Didier Illus. by Benaglia, Fred Thames & Hudson (32 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-500-65197-1

Is your dragon flagging? Use this charming French import to put the spark back in your relationship.

A young child wearing a pink homburg is faced with a bit of a pickle: Their dragon, a morose fellow with a bright red head and teal body with black polka dots, isn’t breathing fire these days. “Not even the tiniest flicker of flame.” Acting as a kind of guidebook, the second-person narration instructs the child on a multitude of possible cures. Have you given him “a good shake”? Bounced on his belly? Made him angry or jealous?

When (much) silly trial and error yields bupkis, child informs the blaze-impeded reptile that no matter what, they’ll “always love him.” Elation finally fuels conflagration, and the dragon spurts a sheer rainbow of happy fire (his pleased owner merrily ducking for cover). Happily, the dragon does not suffer in the least from the protagonist’s various forms of experimentation, looking, at worst, mildly perturbed. Though the text evokes instructional booklets, the art is a wild and wonderful amalgamation of bold colors and striking design. The typography almost steals the show with its marvelous variety. Yet it is the message to sit down and tell someone that they are loved that gives the book its true firepower.

Inferno or no, this book’s gentle call to show appreciation to others adroitly conveys its message. (Picture book. 4- 7)

CARNIVAL CATASTROPHE

Lloyd, Natalie Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-06-242824-0 Series: The Problim Children, 2 In the second of the series, the seven zany, quasi-magical Problim children have two prime mysteries to untangle.

To solve both, family go-getter Mona spearheads a dual campaign to find a “treasure beyond measure” and to find missing Mama Problim. The book easily stands alone, deftly filling in readers on the first book’s adventures. Desdemona O’Pinion is still lurking about, trying to separate the close-knit siblings, but she is not the focus. Mona, whose pretty face belies her predilection for practical jokes and all things dangerous or creepy, drives the fast-paced plot. Each sibling’s individual quirk is complemented by a talent or skill that enables the child to participate in one of the contests at the annual Lost Cove Corn Dog Carnival. They must win the contests to earn a trip to the usually off-limit Pirates’ Caverns, which may harbor both Grandpa’s treasure and their mother. Lloyd hits her stride as she weaves—as intricately as Mona’s beloved circus spiders— plot twists, humor, suspense, rivalry, hints of romance for the older Problims, and realistic development of Mona’s character.

Mona’s special game with her father is a lovely, original touch: They slip each other notes expressing affection in terms of animal groupings (“I like you more than a leap of leopards”). The Problims are white; several characters display different kinds of disabilities.

THE BEE BOX THAT JACK BUILT Linn, Margo Illus. by Fitzgerald, Brian Blue Apple (28 pp.) $14.99 | May 15, 2019 978-1-60905-611-7 Series: Jack’s Farm

Despite the obvious inspiration of “The House that Jack Built,” this text does not accumulate but rather rhythmically recounts bee-related activities.

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Readers will be undaunted by loose ends; that means more adventures to come! (Fantasy. 8-12)

concludes, “Trust your heart: it will sing when you find your true home.” The four-stanza song is rather long and representative of the text-heavy book, originally written in Czech by Kavecký after a story idea by Macho. The pacing drags as Gerda interacts with one marine animal after another on her journey, with the final page belatedly arriving on the back pastedown endpaper.

Before reaching this inelegantly designed conclusion, a plot point undermines the central message of following one’s heart to find happiness when a wise narwhal gives Gerda the same advice he’d given to another young whale and tells her to go to “warmer waters, then east.” Gerda takes this external direction and finds Lars in a “beautiful bay” with many other whales. The digital illustrations, while pleasing to the eye, with rounded forms and rich color, are redundant of the belabored text.

Won’t make a splash. (Picture book. 4-6)

SOME PEOPLE DO

Lowe, Frank Illus. by Hara, Josh BQB Publishing (30 pp.) $18.95 | Jun. 1, 2019 978-1-945448-30-0 Series: Some People Children’s A book showcasing a variety of human differences, told in singsong rhyme.

In his diversity-focused debut, social media personality Lowe uses repetitious verse to convey a range of differences, including personal qualities, social identities, physical traits, and individual preferences. Each set of attributes culminates in the same lines: “You may not know them / they may not be you, // but some people are, / and some people do.” Lowe and Hara cover an impressive array of experiences, uplifting adopted and single-parented kids, children with a variety of learning styles (and speeds), spiritual and secular youth, and a spectrum of disabled youth. However, not all of these identities are skillfully portrayed. Cartoony images by Instagram-famous illustrator Hara offer colorful but sometimes-hackneyed representations.

For example, in a picture depicting wealthy and working-class kids, the “poor” child, hair uncombed, lies belly-down on grass, inexplicably grinning at a mouse. In another spread, a white transgender child with short hair and wearing tighty whities frowns into a full-length mirror. On the next page, the same kid beams at their new reflection, which features the child with longer hair; the accompanying text reads, “Some people don’t feel / quite right in their skin // some people want out / of the body they’re in.” The perpetuation of the common narrative that defines trans people by their dysphoria is disappointing.

Thoughtfully conceived but not quite successful in the delivery. (Picture book. 3-9)

THE BIG FIVE

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Makatini, Bella Illus. by Abbot, Judi Clavis (32 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 15, 2019 978-1-60537-457-4 A little boy connects with his African-immigrant grandfather over a shared love of the “big five” animals of Grandpa’s homeland.

On a five-day visit to his grandfather’s house, Danny enjoys the paintings and colorful masks on prominent display. Grandpa commits to teaching Danny about the big five animals, with each one designated to a day throughout Danny’s visit. From Monday through Friday, Danny’s grandfather tells him about elephants, lions, rhinoceroses, leopards, and buffalo, introducing them by their attributes via a guessing game. “The third animal has thick skin and two horns on his nose,” prompts Grandpa, to which Danny responds: “That’s the rhino!” Grandpa then adds, “Do you know what a rhino is good at? Grazing!” Abbot’s colorful illustrations are jovial and heartwarming, adding amusing details, such as a depiction of a smiling rhino with grass drooping from its mouth next to Grandpa and Danny, similarly munching on cucumbers. While talking about these animals, Danny and his grandfather play and learn and make a host of diverse friends along the way. The African country that is Grandpa’s homeland is never specified, but perhaps it is South Africa, where the Dutch author traces part of her heritage.

Grandpa has deep brown skin and graying black hair while his grandson has tan skin and fluffy brown hair.

A sweet celebration of family and introduction to some perennially popular animals. (Picture book. 3-6)

THE WHALE, THE SEA AND THE STARS Macho, Adrián & Kavecký, Peter Illus. by Macho, Adrián Floris (32 pp.) $17.95 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-1-78250-559-4

Home and away with Gerda the whale.

While many children’s books follow a home-away-home structure, this story begins with Gerda and her brother, Lars, home in the ocean with their parents, and it concludes with the siblings in a new home, away from where they began. Lars, as the elder sibling, leaves first, and Gerda departs after memorizing “an old whale song” her mother sings.

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SAMUEL MORSE, THAT’S WHO! The Story of the Telegraph and Morse Code

cybernetically enhanced parrot, Graham. While they quest for Spinner and his research into geo-engineering the Flood, the children avoid the wicked forces of the Admiralty and survive all manner of adventures: a storm at sea, stranding on a deserted island, capture by pirates, arrest by immigration officers, and having to eat some pretty gross bugs. The eponymous castle in the sea plays a startlingly small role but leaves unanswered questions, hopefully to be addressed in the conclusion. The perils are all excitingly perilous, but they are also relatively nonterrifying; in a dark and malicious world, the levels of danger feel more exciting than dreadful. The characters are racially ambiguous, with names and origin stories that imply some diversity of background.

A post-apocalyptic disaster story with the cozy feel of Swallows and Amazons. (Science fiction. 10-12)

Maurer, Tracy Nelson Illus. by el primo Ramón Henry Holt (40 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-62779-130-4

“Who created instant messages and changed the world forever?”

Lively, fact-based text and energetic, kid-friendly illustrations capture the feeling of a past era to present the story of frustrated artist and creative inventor Samuel Morse. Setting the scene quickly so youngsters can jump right in, Maurer goodnaturedly portrays Morse’s artistic snobbery and vision, his not-so-successful experiments with invention, his interest in innovation, his willingness to take risks, his inquiring mind, and his resilience, presenting her subject as a real person to identify with rather than a flawless hero to be coolly admired. This is not a tale of diversity; the cast of characters is primarily male and white, though there are some women and people of color in the background. Periodic questions about Morse’s ideas appear within the story, clarifying Morse’s historical role and allowing for the repeated, titular refrain: “Samuel Morse, that’s who!” By breaking down the invention of the telegraph into steps that readers will easily understand, the text effectively explains how the invention works as well as how it came to be, and young readers and listeners just may be inspired to try some inventing of their own. Backmatter includes a timeline, bibliography, additional facts, and an author’s note. For readers who are able to remove the jacket, there is a Morse code chart on its reverse.

An excellent, entertaining choice to highlight socialemotional skills, history, and STEM. (Picture book/biography.

5-8)

WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

After being repeatedly asked variations on “Where are you from?” the narrator finds out that “I’m from here, from today, same as everyone else,” is not an answer that will satisfy those asking. They want to know “where are you really from.”

The child, who has light-brown skin and hair worn in two afro-puffs, turns to Abuelo for help. He in turn “looks inside his heart for an answer.” Lyrical language and luminous illustrations convey his thoughtful response. “You’re from the gaucho, brave and strong.…But you’re also from the warm, blue oceans the copper warriors tried to tame…where our ancestors built a home for all, even when they were in chains because of the color of their skin.” By pointing out the child’s Argentinean and Puerto Rican cultural heritage as well as mixed racial makeup, Abuelo’s answer addresses the multilayered and varied possibilities of a Latinx identity. Ultimately, Abuelo points out, the questioning child comes from his love and that of all those who came before. The question of where someone is “really” from, in the United States, is too often understood as meaning: You look different; you must be from somewhere else. In this case, the illustrations portray a very diverse group of children and adults posing that very question, demonstrating the particular frustrations often experienced by people of mixed race.

An ideal vehicle for readers to ponder and discuss their own identities. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE CASTLE IN THE SEA McConnochie, Mardi Pajama Press (304 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 14, 2019 978-1-77278-083-3 Series: Flooded Earth, 2

Will and Annalie continue the search for their dad in the middle installment of an Australian eco-thriller trilogy (The Flooded Earth, 2018).

Ever since their father, Spinner, disappeared, the 12-yearold twins have been seeking him out on the ocean. Society is rebuilding since the Flood that broke the planet (not quite our world but one that’s overwhelmingly familiar), but it still seems torn between the despotic Admiralty on the one side and criminal pirates and gangs on the other. Out on the Sunfish, Will and Annalie have nobody but each other and their dearest friends: rich girl Essie, undocumented former slave Pod, and Spinner’s 110

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Méndez, Yamile Saied Illus. by Kim, Jaime Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-06-283993-0

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A delightful confection of monsters and baseball. dugout

NIXIE NESS, COOKING STAR

for dinner so they can teach her good table manners (never mind that of all her breaches of etiquette, Goldilocks’ behavior during mealtime is hardly her greatest sin). The cartoony illustrations are rendered in ink with digital colors, and the incorporation of Sunday-funnies–style Ben Day dots into them is certainly striking. Caregivers misled by the subtitle may expect more manners tutelage than the book delivers. As a story of baddies thwarted, but not for the reasons you’d expect, it’s passable. As a manners book, don’t expect the Emily Post seal of approval. All humans in the story are pictured as white.

Mannered, yes. Containing advice on manners? Not so much. (Picture book. 3-6)

Mills, Claudia Illus. by Zong, Grace Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House (128 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-8234-4093-1 Series: After-School Superstars, 1

Nixie is facing a crisis: “How could you be best friends with more than one person?”

Now that the third-grader’s stay-at-home mother has gotten a job, Nixie has to attend after-school cooking camp. That means her very best friend, Grace, who’s been staying with Nixie in the afternoons because the after-school program costs too much, will now be staying with Elyse. Naturally, Grace enjoys spending time with Elyse—and Elyse’s new kitten—cementing a new friendship. It’s not that cooking camp isn’t fun. Nixie’s team, consisting of smart, fact-spewing Nolan, very precise Vera, and humorously energetic Boogie Bass, makes sure of that. But it’s not the same any more, having to reluctantly share Grace with Elyse, and Nixie’s determined to find a way to fix things.

Unfortunately, her misguided efforts only backfire, and finally Nixie, feeling betrayed, does the unthinkable and screams a horrible thing at Grace. It won’t be easy to win back her friend.

Nixie and her classmates are drawn with enough individuality to distinguish them as they deal with the universal problems of their age group supported by friendly peers and (mostly) helpful adults. Nixie and Boogie present white, and Nolan is IndianAmerican; illustrations suggest that Vera, Grace, and Elyse are all children of color.

Likable Nixie creates a terrific recipe for winning back old friends and making lots of new ones. (Fiction. 7-9)

DUGOUT The Zombie Steals Home

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Morse, Scott Illus. by the author Graphix/Scholastic (256 pp.) $24.99 | $12.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-338-18810-3 978-1-338-18809-7 paper Sports, spells, and sibling rivalry abound.

Sisters Stacy and Gina Cavallaro have a tempestuous relationship both on the baseball field (playing for opposing Little League teams) and at home with their grandmother, who happens to be a kindly witch. Stacy’s team, the Rooks, is an utterly hopeless laughingstock, perpetually coming in last. After a squabble with her sister, Gina purloins a bit of her grandmother’s magic and casts a spell on Stacy’s glove. Although she’s not entirely sure of the results, Gina’s spell unexpectedly works, and soon the Rooks have a new member among their ranks: a lumbering zombie with a penchant for chewing baseballs over brains. Furious, Stacy conjures her own retaliatory spell, leaving Gina plagued by a pernicious poltergeist. Whether the sisters like it or not, they soon find they must work together to save the league, their friends, and each other. This graphic crowd-pleaser is a delightful confection of monsters and baseball, evoking feelings of a mashup of The Sandlot and Goosebumps with a generous dose of humor and an emphasis on teamwork. Author and illustrator Morse (who has coached 10 Little League teams) has a keen eye and ear for both aesthetics and the camaraderie of the Rooks, making readers feel like one of the gang. Additional baseball facts presented by the Rooks in comics form immediately follow. Gina, Stacy, and their grandmother present white, and their teammates are diverse.

A grand slam. (Graphic fantasy. 7-11)

GOLDILOCKS FOR DINNER A Funny Book About Manners Montanari, Susan McElroy Illus. by Parker, Jake Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Jul. 30, 2019 978-0-399-55235-9 978-0-399-55236-6 PLB

Mind your manners? Don’t mind if they do!

Having lost the ickiness contest in Who’s the Grossest of Them All? (2016), buddies Troll and Goblin have now abandoned entirely any desire to be disgusting themselves. Instead, they’ve turned their attention toward children, those “wretched” little beasts that they consider uniformly rude. Concocting a plan, the two decide to find the rudest child and have it for dinner.

Turns out, this is more difficult than planned. Mistress Mary is just contrary, and Simple Simon merely gross. However, when the two hear about Goldilocks, they know they’ve found the kid they want for dinner. The twist at the end is that old chestnut in which the two seeming baddies want to have Goldilocks over |

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Sand and sea are beautifully rendered in subtle tones of gold and deep blue. hum and swish

BALTO AND THE RACE AGAINST TIME

these animals clothed and living as humans would—enjoying a ski lodge, watching TV on a couch, sitting by the fire in a den, messing up a shared bedroom, or reading in a treehouse. But then the message gets muddled: “One could say dolphins live in pods, herds, or even teams.” These are collective nouns, not names of dwelling places; worse, the noun chosen for whimsical treatment is “team,” as they are depicted playing underwater baseball. Dolphin groups are called pods in both customary and scientific nomenclature. The idea of dwelling places returns with lofts for pigeons and neighborhoods and towns for prairie dogs. The prairie dog town morphs into “a town on Earth, a place / all creatures call home / and live with love,” but by now, readers and listeners may have turned away.

Engaging images paired to a less-than-successful text. (additional facts) (Informational picture book. 3-6)

Moss, Helen Illus. by Saburi, Misa Godwin Books/Henry Holt (144 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-250-18633-1 Series: Time Dogs, 1 Time-traveling dogs get the chance to help world-famous Balto in this chapter-book series opener that blends gentle adventure with history.

Yellow Labrador Baxter and his dog pals (border collie Newton, Jack Russell Trevor, papillon Maia, and three-legged mutt Titch) accidentally tumble to the year 1925 in Alaska via a magical van. As they travel backward in time, the creaky old canines become young dogs again. In this strange new location, they meet Balto and a crew of Siberian huskies who are on a rescue mission to deliver medicine to sick children. Emerging readers can use context clues to build vocabulary, and frequent illustrations both break up text and assist readers in visualizing the variety of dog characters. Even with this assist, some may lose track of minor characters in the wide ensemble. A refrain about what constitutes bravery offers opportunity for socialemotional development alongside comprehension. In Seaman and the Great Northern Adventure, the dogs travel to 1805 and become entangled in Lewis and Clark’s famous expedition, encountering enslaved African-American York and Shoshone guide Sacagawea. Unfortunately, Sacagawea fulfills the trope of mystic, seeming to be the only human who can intuit the dogs’ language. Author’s notes provide additional historical information and context for the stories.

Dominant-narrative historical adventure with appeal to dog lovers. (Fantasy. 7-10) (Seaman and the Great Northern Adventure: 978-1-250-18635-5)

HUM AND SWISH

Myers, Matt Illus. by the author Neal Porter/Holiday House (40 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-8234-4286-7 A summer day at the beach inspires Jamie to create something with bits and pieces in the sand.

Jamie is intensely involved, humming softly as the waves swish nearby. Several people, including Jamie’s mom and dad, make inane comments or ask what Jamie’s project is. Jamie answers abruptly and vaguely—or doesn’t answer at all. Jamie is totally comfortable there at the edge of the sea, working and observing and listening, and the sea never asks questions.

When someone arrives with art supplies and no questions, it is Jamie who asks, “What are you making?” When the woman says she doesn’t know yet, Jamie has found a kindred spirit, and they work side by side without conversation. When their projects are complete, there is a lovely surprise at the reveal. Myers’ spare, almost terse, text is accompanied by acrylic-and-oil illustrations in full- and double-page spreads mixed with vignettes suspended against very bright white spaces. Sand and sea are beautifully rendered in subtle tones of gold and deep blue, and glimpses of Jamie’s project are intriguing. Jamie presents white, and the diverse people encountered are depicted in a manner that is at once realistic and painterly. Jamie’s body language and facial expressions allow readers to feel the child’s fierce dedication and exasperation at being interrupted.

A lovely homage to a child’s passionate creativity. (Pic­ ture book. 4-8)

WELCOME HOME Where Nature’s Most Creative Creatures Dwell Mundorff, Lisa Illus. by the author Feiwel & Friends (48 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-250-21162-0

There are special names for animal and human homes, but we all call Earth our home.

In her first solo effort, Mundorff (who illustrated Beth Ferry’s A Small Blue Whale, 2017) offers a clever but not entirely successful way to think about how context can change meaning. Beavers live in lodges, otters in couches, and lions in dens; pigs call pigsties home, and a red panda makes its home in a tree. A simple statement about each animal’s home is illustrated across the gutter by a picture of the animal in situ; this is followed by a bright, busy, full-bleed double-page spread showing 112

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CINDERELLA OF THE NILE

protestors’ camp, hoping to find out more about his look-alike.

During the process, he discovers a man in a black hoodie who’s also spying on the protesters. Gradually, Charles becomes convinced the look-alike is indeed his father. Conflicted about confronting his father and worried the stranger in the hoodie intends to harm the protestors, Charles finds himself in trouble as he grapples with everything. With honesty, humor, and self-awareness, Charles tells his story, emerging as an intelligent, sensitive kid who eventually makes the right choices. The environmental-awareness subtext fits in. The book adheres to a white default.

It’s hard not to like this realistic, convincing, comingof-age summer-camp story with a hint of mystery. (Fiction.

9-12)

Naidoo, Beverley Illus. by Vafaeian, Marjan Tiny Owl (40 pp.) $17.95 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-910328-29-3 Series: One Story, Many Voices

Cinderella is an actual slave in this illustrated Egyptian version of the story.

Born in Greece at a time when “pirates freely roamed the seas” and affectionately called Rhodopis, “rosy-cheeked,” she is pale-skinned with long, red hair and “eyes like sapphires.”

One day, while herding goats, she is kidnapped by a pirate wearing what looks like a turban. She is sold on an island, where she befriends Aesop, another slave, who is depicted as a black man. Her master doesn’t like her melancholy face, so he sends her down the Nile, where she is sold again, this time to a Greek merchant named Charaxos, who treats her well—which makes his Egyptian servants, three brown-skinned women, jealous.

Through her torments, Rhodopis sings the song Aesop taught her and befriends animals as a comfort. When the pharaoh, who has brown skin, hosts a feast, the Egyptian servants arrange to go. Rhodopis is washing clothes in the river when the falconheaded god Horus picks up one of her shoes. He delivers it to the pharaoh, who takes it as a sign and sets out to find the slender-footed owner of the slipper. Iranian artist Vafaeian’s stylized illustrations successfully evoke an older, different world, with meticulously textured coloring, unusual use of size and proportion, and ancient Egyptian aesthetic. As with most fairy tales, readers may disagree over whether this version is suitable for children.

A rich addition to the global fairy-tale collection. (Fairy tale. 8-12)

YOUR TURN, ADRIAN

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Öberg, Helena Illus. by Lidström, Kristin Trans. by Apelqvist, Eva Groundwood (72 pp.) $18.95 | May 7, 2019 978-1-77306-149-8

This Swedish import features a child in need of a friend.

Much of the narration is wordless, depicted in detailed black-and-white panels. Readers watch as Adrian is bullied at school and, later, is unable to respond when the teacher utters the titular phrase during reading. Adrian and time freeze, and the child imagines flying on a trapeze. Viewers will begin to understand that in contrast to the penciled scenes, these colorful gouache-and-ink spreads signal either a new chapter or joy. Entitled “Before I Met Heidi,” this first chapter ends with Adrian at home with loving but distracted parents.

Enter Heidi, with the size and shagginess of an Irish wolfhound.

The two bond outside the ice cream store, and Heidi follows Adrian home. Adrian reads well when touching her. Those with a low threshold for blurred reality/fantasy boundaries or deus ex machina solutions may be frustrated; others, including, perhaps, those who’ve benefited from “Reading with Rover”– type programs, will be all in. In the third section, child and dog encounter Heidi’s rightful owner, a woman with a cane. At her dwelling, she explains that she is nearly blind; seeing her performing on the trapeze in a scrapbook photograph, Adrian says “I can read to you.” Repeated perusals yield further clues to the child’s love of the circus and yearning for a pet. Some characters of color can be spotted in the background, but the primary characters are all white.

The minimal text and particular plot twists will garner appreciation from struggling readers; endearing characters and a fresh design will attract many more. (Graphic fiction. 6-8)

CEDAR DANCE

Nawrocki, Monica Great Plains Publications (128 pp.) $8.95 paper | May 1, 2019 978-1-77337-016-3 An awkward 12-year-old boy faces unexpected challenges during his school’s annual summer camp in this Canadian import.

Raised by his single-parent, hippie mother, Charles Cedar Dance, a scrawny, white sixth-grader, knows little about his father except that his mother met him at an anti-logging protest in 2005 and never heard from him again. Charles attends a private, alternative school for the “granola crowd,” where he’s “not a total outcast” but tends “to live at the edges of the action,” relying on his best friend, Jessica. Arriving at the camp, Charles encounters an anti-logging protest group, and Jessica points out that one of the protesters looks just like Charles. With mixed feelings, Charles surreptitiously spies on the neighboring |

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SUN

can analyze their haul and sum up their rewards.” Real-world connections are further clarified in an ice cream shop, when Bear and Adelaide get superduper cones and the tab is $12.45.

(Too bad it’s impossible for clever readers to use the price board to understand how the cashier arrived at that total.) Adelaide’s statement that bears understand that “math is everywhere” clinches it for Mrs. Fitz-Pea. Adelaide presents white, Mrs. FitzPea has brown skin, and the other students are diverse. While it’s a swift survey, it effectively conveys the importance of math in everyday life.

Adelaide and her buddy will help kids get “the whole picture.” (Picture book. 5- 7)

Oliver, Alison Illus. by the author Clarion (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-328-78162-8 A boy named Sun has a close encounter with a fox.

In this immensely appealing fantasy, the minimalist text takes a back seat to the boldly colorful illustrations. The central figure is Sun, a young boy who is introduced as a “soccer star.” But this picture book is not about soccer—it’s rather about Sun’s awareness that “something was missing.” Observing that his younger brother, Pablo, “looked happy” while “making art,” Sun heads for the beach, recalling that “he used to make art too.” Awaiting Sun are an unexpected encounter with a fox and a rekindling of his creativity, expressed in an explosion of collage-style montages.

The spread in which the fox shows Sun how to make art is a fabulously messy composition, colorful scrawls and squiggles in the background recalling Pablo’s exuberant experimentation on the walls even as Sun and the fox build sculptures out of found objects. Feeling “connected” at last, Sun notices that the day is drawing to a close and returns to an undefined “home” (sans parents), where he and Pablo explore their creativity together in a space that has the look of the outdoors but with those vigorous, unbridled scrawls and squiggles again on a blue-sky backdrop.

The soccer-themed introduction feels superfluous, as the notso-subtle message concerns the magic of art and nature. Both boys have dark brown skin and textured black hair.

A visual treat for the young imagination. (Picture book.

4-8)

TOBY IS A BIG BOY

Peacock, Louise Illus. by Pym, Christine Schwartz & Wade/Random (32 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-9848-4769-0 978-1-9848-4770-6 PLB Toby feels displaced in his elephant family thanks to his needy baby sister, Iris.

Like most young children, even anthropomorphic elephant ones, Toby is eager to be considered “big” and do things on his own. But being a big boy isn’t quite as exciting as Toby thought it would be when he realizes it comes at the expense of Mama’s attention, now devoted to his baby sister, Iris. Peacock’s text certainly includes accurate examples of Toby doing things “All

By Himself ” (yes, with the caps!), such as buttoning his coat (out of alignment) and putting on (two different) rain boots. And young readers with little siblings will certainly relate to the feelings of displacement. Pym’s illustrations—done in watercolor, colored pencils, and potato stamps—are charming and full of detail. When Toby is proudly explaining his milk-pouring and book-reading skills, he’s actually spilling milk out of the bowl and reading a book upside down. Toby ultimately decides to run away (that’ll show Mama!), packing his suitcase with a toothbrush, trumpet, and toys, a true preschooler moment. In the end, Mama reassures him with the tired cliché that he’ll “always be [her] baby.” This ending reads like a missed opportunity to instead affirm all of the ways Toby (or a young reader) is in fact a successful “big boy,” no longer a baby.

Familiar moments for children in growing families.

(Picture book. 3-5)

BEARS MAKE THE BEST MATH BUDDIES Oliver, Carmen Illus. by Claude, Jean Capstone Editions (32 pp.) $17.95 | Jul. 1, 2019 978-1-68446-079-3

In this follow-up to Bears Make the Best Reading Buddies (2016), Adelaide and her friendly bear are back to ace mathematics.

Dressed in a sweater patterned with geometric shapes and arithmetical symbols, Bear is ready to tackle math assignments.

Although her class is working on first-grade addition and subtraction, Adelaide makes far-reaching claims about Bear’s mathematical prowess. She proceeds to detail ursine creatures’ varied skills, and the brightly colored digital illustrations show Bear, with Adelaide’s help, demonstrating these. From building a treehouse using complex measurements and comparing a compass face to a watch face, they go on to simple geometry and arithmetic. When Adelaide and her friend go berry picking, he shows her how to “sort [the different fruits] into groups so they 114

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The cheeky tone combines a bit of snark with a lot of information. moles

PUPPY TRUCK

accounts of memorable incidents en route (“On the mission’s first day, Frank Borman vomited in the equipment bay. Lovell watched a chunky blob the size of a tennis ball float up”), exuberant quotes from mission transcripts (Pete Conrad: “Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me!”), and glimpses of their post-Apollo pursuits further this effect as well.

An engrossing portrayal of “a bold, complicated, dangerous, and expensive adventure,” at once broad in scope and rich in specific details. (index, glossary, endnotes, multimedia resources) (Nonfiction. 11-13)

Pinkney, Brian Illus. by the author Atheneum (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-5344-2687-0 A lively imagination is a beautiful thing.

“Carter wanted a puppy. / He got a truck.” So begins this whimsical tale of a little round-faced, brown-skinned, curlyhaired boy who doesn’t linger over what he lacks but makes the very best of what he does have. This toy truck with a bright red cab and a yellow cargo bed becomes his constant companion.

Carter pets Puppy Truck, attaches a leash to it, and takes it to the park, where it chases squirrels and exclaims, “Vroom beep bark!”—a frequent vocalization. Carter meets a little girl, whose brown skin is a little lighter than his own, sitting on a park bench; she admires Puppy Truck so much that she gets an idea of her own that surfaces at the end of the story. Pinkney brings this story to life with a pale-yellow background for the acrylic and India ink illustrations, in which the swift movements of the boy, Puppy Truck, and the squirrel are ever apparent. Since this story has so few words, preschool readers will easily be able to tell it on their own after a few times of hearing it read aloud.

An important mirror book for the youngest of black and brown readers, this lighthearted story will likely be a favorite for storytime—especially with little ones who love things that go VROOM! (Picture book. 3-6)

MOLES

Poliquin, Rachel Illus. by Frith, Nicholas John HMH Books (96 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-544-95107-5 Series: Superpower Field Guide

THE APOLLO MISSIONS FOR KIDS The People and Engineering Behind the Race to the Moon, with 21 Activities Pohlen, Jerome Chicago Review Press (160 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-912777-17-7 Series: For Kids

A frank account of our early space program’s ups and downs, with 21 low-tech, hands-on activities.

Readers old enough to be drawn in to Pohlen’s mission-bymission accounts of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs will likely find the interspersed projects—which range from making a balloon-powered rocket that runs along a string to chucking pebbles into a bowl of light and dark powders to create “craters”—laughably rudimentary. Fortunately, the author’s picture of the brilliant if too-often-slapdash effort that ultimately sent 24 men to the moon and brought them all back is compelling enough to survive distractions. Along with taking due note of the thousands of people, not all of them white or male, who labored to solve the program’s massive technological and logistical challenges, he humanizes the astronauts with frequent references to their families. Plenty of period photos, |

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Following series opener Beavers (2018), another field guide and another nuanced look at an underappreciated species.

In this installment, Poliquin explains how the wonders of evolution have led to the creation of the marvelous mole. À la the format established in Beavers, the narrator lists those superpowers that make the mole (named Rosalie) special. The list includes a plethora of fun reach words, including the “indefatigable paws of power,” “super-squidgibility,” and “doublethumb-digging dominance.” (Sure, “squidgibility” may be a new coinage, but it works well to describe how “Rosalie can fold herself in half to do a somersault through her hind legs,” effectively reversing in her tunnel. And it’s really fun to say.) Periodic humorous quizzes test readers’ knowledge (and ability to absorb new information). The cheeky tone works well overall, combining a bit of snark with a lot of information. Frith’s illustrations are similar to the previous book’s, with a white female narrator guiding readers. Sadly, Rosalie doesn’t have the same Hanna-Barbera cuteness of beavers Elmer and Irma, but Frith’s emphasis on realism over adorableness may be appreciated by scientifically minded readers. Backmatter includes a glossary (with sporadic phonetic spelling) and a brief bibliography, which includes nonfiction, fiction, and web links. The final pages hint at the next book in the series (and a trip to Africa).

No sophomore slump here. Pick up a copy. (Nonfiction.

8-12)

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These are illustrations that deserve to be explored again and again. it ’s not a bed, it ’s a time machine

UNDER THE WATER

When she uncovers a plot to turn the mermaid realm into a theme park, she sets off to warn the water-dwellers. It’s easy to imagine the action, which bounces from location to location, balancing urgency with fun, as a cartoon; the expressive illustrations add to the overall bubbly feeling. The story is busy enough that a subplot in which Hilma helps out in a search for a missing mercat comes across as pointless filler. Item descriptions from Maritza Mist’s Water Witch Catalog serve as clever foreshadowing even as they add extra laughs. A map of the mermaid world that shows locations of mermaid cities in relation to the seven continents helps readers track the action. Beattie has dark skin; Mimi, Zelda, Hilma, and Paris present white.

The artwork shows a diverse range of skin color among other mermaids.

Another mer-mazingly good time. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Porta, Carles Illus. by the author Trans. by Schimel, Lawrence Flying Eye Books (48 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 6, 2019 978-1-911171-68-3 Series: Tales from the Hidden Valley The annual celebration of Dragon’s Day to mark the beginning of summer is very nearly spoiled once again for the residents of Hidden Valley when all the fireworks disappear.

It’s really just a misunderstanding. Emerging as she does once a year from the lake, blue-skinned Aqua—described as looking “just like a mermaid” but with legs rather than fins in the illustrations—secretly gathers up the fireworks and other unattended treasures to keep them safe. When Yula, Ticky, and the other residents (who are drawn as diverse, anthropomorphic woodland creatures) confront the supposed thief, she swims off in a rage. Then her pursuers follow in a fishlike submarine they find that’s named Olivier—but are swallowed by the supposedly legendary dragon that had been sleeping at the bottom of the lake. High feelings turn to warm ones after everyone in the valley is treated to a spectacular display as the surprised dragon rises up, spouting a fountain of multicolored rockets (turns out Aqua had hidden them in the sub). Porta brings the ungainly charm of his three previous seasonally themed Hidden Valley outings to this (probable) closer, filling out the ensemble cast with further unconventional characters and leaving Aqua, Olivier, the dragon, and all the rest gathered at a festive banquet beneath moonlit trees.

Completes a seasonal round with dashes of mystery, adventure, and conflict resolved in a wash of bonhomie… plus some big explosions. (Picture book. 3- 7)

IT’S NOT A BED, IT’S A TIME MACHINE Rapkin, Mickey Illus. by Martinez, Teresa Imprint (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-250-16762-0

Where the Wild Things Are meets Harold and the Purple Crayon with an imagination that’s brand new.

Beginning with delightful endpapers of childlike dinosaur sketches, this story recasts bedtime as adventure time. A preschool-age child lies in bed, terrified, as mom says, “Be brave.

You’re the Boss of Bedtime!” Feeling anything but bosslike, the timorous kid peers nervously around the dark room, certain that trouble lurks nearby. But trusty stuffed bunny Floppy encourages the child to imagine the bed as a time machine that can take them anywhere, even to a land of dinosaurs! Off go the kid, bunny, and bed to a wild space of meadows and mountains (and a basketball hoop and a grill), where friendly dinosaurs play games and live together. Eventually the narrator’s bravery exceeds Floppy’s, even making friends with an affable T. Rex, who plays games and doesn’t want his new playmate to leave.

The lively and vivid digital art is full of details big and small, especially in the borders. These are illustrations that deserve to be explored again and again. The opening spread, in particular, contains key clues to this fantastical nighttime adventure. The protagonist appears to be a child of color, with light-brown skin and short, straight black hair.

Anyone who’s ever protested bedtime will surely want this story to continue in their own time machines. (Picture book. 3- 7)

BAD MERMAIDS ON THE ROCKS Pounder, Sibéal Illus. by Cockcroft, Jason Bloomsbury (272 pp.) $13.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-68119-979-5 Series: Bad Mermaids, 2

Mermaids Beattie, Zelda, and Mimi make more waves in their second adventure.

The story picks up from the cliffhanger of Bad Mermaids Make Waves (2018), with the trio hurtling through the Upper Realms in a sunken ship. They’re accompanied by talking sea horse Steve and vain, shoulderpad–-wearing fellow mermaid Hilma. How will they get home when the ship has a mind of its own? Back on dry land, H-word (don’t say “human”!) Paris, self-proclaimed GADGET QUEEN (she has a tendency to speak in caps-lock), has been tracking the mermaids (for an unidentified but apparently benign reason).

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THE GOTHAMITES

camp, she devises Project Unicorn, a glitter-shooting prosthetic arm, earning widespread fame; to involve kids with disabilities in design, she starts the Born Just Right organization. Unfortunately, Reeves’ clichéd assertion that “[t]he only thing that can stop us is our attitudes” rings somewhat hollow against her acknowledgement of various privileges that help her to feel “limitless,” such as her family’s ability to travel across the country. However, her enthusiasm for building an inclusive world where limb-different people can succeed “and it doesn’t have to be big news” is infectious. In a separate typeface, Reeves’ mom occasionally interjects her encouraging thoughts on parenting a limb-different child. Black-and-white photos appear throughout. Reeves and her family present white.

An affirmation that, with support and resources, kids with disabilities can shine—or sparkle. (Memoir. 9-adult)

Raud, Eno Illus. by Pärn, Priit Trans. by Cullen, Adam Elsewhere Editions (44 pp.) $18.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-939810-28-1 Wise men become fools to escape excessive demands in this Estonian import.

The male Gothamites of Turkeyland, renowned for their wisdom, travel extensively, advising foreign heads of state— while their homeland, run by the womenfolk, falls into chaos.

The desperate women plead for them to return, and upon doing so, the men decide that they must behave stupidly so their services will no longer be desired outside of Turkeyland. Ten short stories follow in the best noodlehead folklore tradition: A group of fools with tangled legs cannot get up because they don’t know which feet are theirs; another one attempts to catch light in a sack. The richly colored, Brueghel-like illustrations feature intricate, comical scenes of the Gothamites in all their splendid incompetence (and cheekily tuck in a hammer and sickle). In keeping with the sexism of the text, the big-bosomed and -bottomed women are clad in slip dresses even in the dead of winter; the men are modestly attired. Turkeyland seems to be Northern European, and all characters appear white apart from one black boy wearing a sweatsuit. The lengthy text and small-scale illustrations make this suitable for independent reading or oneon-one sharing. It may appeal to readers who enjoy the absurd and the slapstick, although many stories feel too long, diluting the impact of the humor—the printing of page numbers upside down underscores the loopiness.

Noodlehead stories are perennially entertaining, but better collections exist. (Picture book. 6-10)

THE HERO NEXT DOOR

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Rhuday-Perkovich, Ed. by Olugbemisola Crown (272 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Jul. 30, 2019 978-0-525-64630-3 978-0-52564631-0 PLB An intentionally diverse collection of stories about “everyday heroes” that kids come across in their daily lives, people who are heroic in ways that don’t involve

“special powers.”

In Juana Medina’s “Los Abuelos, Two Bright Minds,” young Juani spends the day with her grandparents, who inspire her with their loving connection and tales of immigrating from Bogotá, Colombia, to the United States. Stevie, the young hero of the story “Thrown,” by Mike Jung, is autistic and has just been promoted to the teens-and-adults aikido class; the special treat of this change is that his new sensei is also autistic. In “Home,” Hena Khan’s protagonist, Aleena, gets a new adopted brother, Hakeem, whom she and her parents pick up from an orphanage in Morocco. Soon the realities of a new little brother show her how annoying a younger sibling can be, but it’s Aleena who teaches Hakeem the true meaning of home. Compiled by Rhuday-Perkovich in partnership with We Need Diverse Books, the collection offers a vivid and vibrant assemblage of authors, experiences, and constructions of heroism. Other contributors include Lamar Giles, Ellen Oh, Joseph Bruchac, Cynthia Leitich Smith, R.J. Palacio, William Alexander, Rita Williams-Garcia, Ronald L. Smith, Linda Sue Park and her daughter, Anna Dobbin, and Suma Subramaniam.

A stellar collection that, in celebrating heroes, helps readers find the universal in the specific. (Short stories. 8-12)

BORN JUST RIGHT

Reeves, Jordan Jeter Children’s/Aladdin (176 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5344-2838-6 Born missing her left arm above the elbow, Reeves relates how she came to design a glitter-shooting prosthesis and start a nonprofit.

In her upbeat account, the middle schooler chronicles growing up in Columbia, Missouri, with a family who encourages her to “figure it all out,” enabling her to do everything her peers do and more. With and without a “helper arm” and task-specific hands, she plays everything from basketball to piano and attends mentoring and sports camps for kids with limb differences. Readers with disabilities will appreciate her humorous, candid approach to stares and recognize the “magical” understanding she finds among other limb-different kids. At the Superhero Cyborgs |

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BIRDS OF A FEATHER Bowerbirds and Me

Morningstarr Cipher. This time around the mystery is more complex, and some of the madcap fun has been replaced by a sense of deeper malice; “fixer” Duke Goodson and his “ladies” (all white, as all the villains here seem to be) are crafty foes who even manage to kidnap Tess’ preternaturally intelligent service animal. Meanwhile the “brown-skinned” female superhero from Jaime’s sketchbooks seems to have come to life, and the revelations she drops about the mysterious Morningstarr twins, who transformed the city after arriving there in 1798, move the series from mostly mystery to possibly science fiction but maybe fantasy, in the best way possible, all supported by overt discussion of inclusion, diversity, and social justice.

Woke magical mystery for preteens? Bring on Volume 3, STAT. (Mystery/fantasy. 10-15)

Roth, Susan L. Illus. by the author Neal Porter/Holiday House (40 pp.) $18.99 | May 14, 2019 978-0-8234-4282-9 Meet fellow artists Roth and her avian counterpart, the bowerbird.

Blending memoir and nonfiction with deep ruminations on what constitutes an artist, Roth presents parallels between her life as an illustrator and the life of an Australian bowerbird. The bowerbird uses both colorful natural materials and “manufactured junk” to elaborately decorate a bower to entice a mate, which Roth presents as a kind of bird “artist’s studio.” It’s heady stuff, and those looking for straight nonfiction should look elsewhere, as most of the factual information on bowerbirds appears in the backmatter. Those willing to follow the metaphor will marvel at the similarities between the two as Roth deftly depicts the bird creating his bower while she metafictively creates this book. Bold, decisively cut collages capture the artists at work, highlighting their shared tools, their uses of artistic principles like space and color, and their equal penchant for collecting “unusual objects of manageable size.” Bird and human are further connected by the black bird’s lush feathers and the white woman’s feathery gray hair. Occasionally, the profusion of stuff feels dizzying, and sometimes comparisons feel lofty—“We each try hard to give our delicate compositions some solidity”—but introspective readers will be satisfied by the reflective nature of the text and the behind-the-scenes look at dual artistic processes.

Roth persuasively argues that “all artists…seek praise,” and this ambitious hybrid demands to be seen. (bibliography) (Picture book/memoir. 4-8)

THE PARROT AND THE MERCHANT

Rumi Illus. by Vafaeian, Marjan Trans. by Rassi, Azita Tiny Owl (24 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2019 978-1-910328-03-3 Series: Tales by Rumi

A tale of Rumi, the famous Persian poet, in which interactions between humans and animals result in a memorable moral.

Mah Jahan is a Persian merchant who travels widely and trades in all sorts of things. On one of her trips to India, she brings back a “beautiful bright parrot” to add to her collection of caged birds; it quickly becomes her favorite bird, and she loves it dearly. Before traveling again, Mah Jahan asks her servants and the parrot what they would like her to bring them back as gifts. The servants share what they would like, but the parrot’s request is unusual: It asks Mah Jahan to tell all its old friends in India it misses them and to solicit their advice for it.

In seeking to bring the parrot’s requested gift, Mah Jahan does not get what she expected, and the gift eventually results in the bird’s freedom. This old Rumi tale is adapted by making the merchant a woman but is not otherwise significantly modernized. Iranian illustrator Vafaeian’s ornamented, often surreal illustrations depict Mah Jahan in enormous, colorful skirts and frequently surrounded by comparatively tiny servants. The parrot’s cage is likewise stylized, an ornamented circle that contains the unhappy captive. Despite the exuberant color used as highlights, the gray-and-sepia illustrations are often gloomy, befitting its theme.

This 900-year-old story has not lost its classic feel.

(Picture book. 6-9)

THE CLOCKWORK GHOST

Ruby, Laura Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins (464 pp.) $17.99 | May 14, 2019 978-0-06-230696-8 Series: York, 2 Following opener The Shadow Cipher (2017), Ruby’s York trilogy continues.

Ruby returns to her fascinatingly similar-but-different New York City (the Liberty Statue and the Underway replace the Statue of Liberty and the subway; machines such as an animate suit of armor that makes pancakes are not out of the ordinary—but gentrification and the PATH line remain the same). Picking up shortly after the destruction of their building by developer Darnell Slant, Jewish twins Tess and Theo Biederman and their best friend, Trinidadian-Cuban Jaime Cruz, are still on the trail of the treasure promised by the 118

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Convincing, humorous, warm, and definitely spooky. the haunting of henry davis

RISING ABOVE SHEPHERDSVILLE

survive the Spanish influenza pandemic in 1918. A session with a Ouija board and a letter and yearbook discovered in Henry’s attic tell part of the story. Edgar’s father’s journal, found in the public library archives, reveals the rest. Siebel cleverly weaves together the story of the developing friendships among Barbara Anne and her classmates and the story of Edgar’s friendship with Henry’s neighbor, Edgar’s playmate as a small child and now a very old woman. Henry, Barbara Anne, and Edgar present white; classmate Renee Garcia, who looks forward to eventually celebrating her quinceañera, and Barbara Anne’s teacher, Miss Biniam (“she looks like an Ethiopian princess”) are the only main characters of color.

Convincing, humorous, warm, and definitely spooky.

(Ghost story. 9-12)

Schoenbohm, Ann Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-4814-5283-0 A 12-year-old girl who’s been mute since her mother’s death discovers and bonds with a family of swans and struggles to adjust to her new life.

Her mother’s partner, Ray, says her death was accidental. Rejecting his efforts to spare her, Dulcie knows her mother’s struggle with depression defeated her. Dulcie feels responsible—she died while Dulcie competed in the 1977 state spelling-bee finals. Ray takes Dulcie to live in rural Ohio with her mother’s estranged sister, Aunt Bernie, whose life revolves around Redeemer Baptist Church. Dulcie likes Rev. Love but loathes his youth group’s bullies. One day Dulcie follows a swan and discovers a hidden pond containing a swan’s nest with an adult pair and five cygnets, a secret known only to Rev. Love and Evangeline Tucker, the new choir director, who puts Dulcie and Faith, a homeless girl sheltered by the Loves, to work sewing choir robes. (The church plays a key role throughout.) Though Dulcie’s beliefs remain ambiguous, most adults are devout. Some are racist. The only nonwhite character, saintly African-American Evangeline, has individuality but also serves as a bias-detection device. Characterization skews blunt and schematic. Secondary characters such as Ray and his new girlfriend are more nuanced. The strongest moments bring the natural world and its creatures, feathered and human, to life through Dulcie’s observant eyes.

An intermittently compelling debut enhanced by its rural Midwest setting. (Historical fiction. 8-12)

SNOW PLACE LIKE HOME

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Soontornvat, Christina Illus. by Szepesi Szucs, Barbara Scholastic (128 pp.) $5.99 paper | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-338-35393-8 Series: Diary of an Ice Princess

Ice princess Lina must navigate family and school in this early chapter read.

The family picnic is today. This is not a typical gathering, since Lina’s maternal relatives are a royal family of Windtamers who have power over the weather and live in castles floating on clouds. Lina herself is mixed race, with black hair and a tan complexion like her Asian-presenting mother’s; her Groundling father appears to be a white human. While making a grand entrance at the castle of her grandfather, the North Wind, she fails to successfully ride a gust of wind and crashes in front of her entire family. This prompts her stern grandfather to ask that Lina move in with him so he can teach her to control her powers. Desperate to avoid this, Lina and her friend Claudia, who is black, get Lina accepted at the Hilltop Science and Arts Academy. Lina’s parents allow her to go as long as she does lessons with grandpa on Saturdays. However, fitting in at a Groundling school is rough, especially when your powers start freak winter storms! With the story unfurling in diary format, bright-pink–highlighted grayscale illustrations help move the plot along. There are slight gaps in the storytelling and the pacing is occasionally uneven, but Lina is full of spunk and promotes self-acceptance.

A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre. (Fantasy. 5-8)

THE HAUNTING OF HENRY DAVIS

Siebel, Kathryn Knopf (240 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-101-93277-3 978-1-101-93278-0 PLB Henry, the new boy in Barbara Anne Klein’s Seattle fifth-grade class, dresses oddly, but that isn’t the strangest thing about him.

Henry and narrator Barbara Anne (or Bitsy as her parents and grandmother call her) bond over their need to escape their assigned lunch table, and Barbara Anne soon discovers the subject of Henry’s absorbed sketching at recess: the boy who seems to be haunting him. Irrepressible, strong-minded Barbara Anne is not always aware of her limitations, and Siebel’s voice for her is both funny and warm. Henry battles a respiratory infection throughout much of the story even as he and Barbara Anne begin to realize that young Edgar, Henry’s ghost, did not |

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Tanco’s open, loose-lined illustrations offer visual dimension and definition. count on me

MY FOURTH OF JULY

be read aloud: “You bear the scars of asteroids / cratering your crust, / a dozen spaceman footsteps / imprinted in your dust.”

Several others are a good deal less compelling for the intended audience. Some of the poems play with typography and design.

“Moonlight,” a poem ultimately describing moon shadows, has each line repeated, offset and in lighter print, with an attractive sketch of a child casting a very long shadow at the bottom.

Altogether, an attractive collection of poems to share with young moonstruck listeners. (Poetry. 7-11)

Spinelli, Jerry Illus. by Day, Larry Neal Porter/Holiday House (40 pp.) $18.99 | May 14, 2019 978-0-8234-4288-1 An exuberant, old-time–y celebration of the Fourth of July.

An energetic young child breathlessly narrates the day, from waking up bursting with excitement to conking out after the fireworks. In between, Spinelli’s nostalgic narrative hits all the expected notes.

The child helps prepare the picnic (hot dogs and cherry pie, natch) and loads it into the little red wagon. A train festooned with bunting and pulled by a steam engine crosses Main Street.

Once at the park, the family picnics and partakes in all the traditional Fourth of July activities, including face painting, sack racing, a concert in the bandstand, a visit to the zoo (this small-town park is extremely well-appointed), and, of course, the fireworks.

Spinelli’s present-tense text combines a childlike voice (“Mama hands me a banana. I’m so excited I forgot to eat breakfast”) with poetic fervor (“My eyes cannot hold the wonders I see. My heart is cheering”). The only nods to patriotism are the abundant flags and mention of standing for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Day’s small town is a Norman Rockwell–esque place of white frame houses and unleashed, well-behaved dogs. The narrator and family present white while the narrator’s best friend and some of the other festivalgoers are people of color.

Despite somewhat inclusive visuals, this book can’t help feeling like it’s stuck in amber. For a true celebration of America and its diversity, opt for Stephanie Parsley Ledyard and Jason Chin’s Pie Is for Sharing (2018). (Picture book. 4-8)

COUNT ON ME

Tanco, Miguel Illus. by the author Tundra (48 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-7352-6575-2 A young child explains a love of math and how it shapes the world.

Finding one’s passion is no easy feat, even (perhaps especially) when surrounded by everyone else’s. Dad loves to paint, Mom thrills at entomology, and a brother excels at music, but none of those quite fit. Neither does acting or dancing or cooking or singing or sports—all worthy activities but none of them the stuff of passion for the determined narrator. When everything has been tried, the protagonist is left with the simple truth—the one thing this child likes the most is math. Tanco unhurriedly unspools the protagonist’s passion as the text (occasionally punctuated with new vocabulary) notes how thoroughly the world is immersed in math, whether it’s in the form of geometric shapes on the playground, group problems at the dinner table, or paper-airplane trajectories. With each page turn, the lens and framework of math as a way to see the world takes shape. Without softening or hiding basic (but still complex) mathematical concepts, Tanco’s open, loose-lined illustrations offer visual dimension and definition, bridging, for instance, the unfamiliar concept of concentric circles with the everyday occurrence of water ripples. Further information can be found in a visual glossary. The narrator has light brown skin and a mass of brown, kinky curls; Mom has a similar look, and Dad presents white.

If readers aren’t math-curious at the start, they will be by the end. (Picture book. 5-8)

MOONSTRUCK! Poems About Our Moon Ed. by Stevens, Roger Illus. by Boxall, Ed Otter-Barry (96 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2019 978-1-91095-978-7

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, here is a collection of poems about Earth’s glowing satellite.

Of the 58 poems, eight were composed by editor Stevens, and the rest come from a wide range of both contemporary and less-recent poets. One is a traditional verse from Kenya presented first in English and then in Nandi. Two were composed by children. Boxall’s imaginative black-and-white illustrations accompany the poetry. A few of the verses include brief explanations of their significance, especially in connection with the space program. Some of the poems are delightfully evocative: “Look at the moon! / A crescent skyship sailing / out of a cloudy cocoon. / Look at the moon! / A cauldron of amber / spelling, rain-come-soon.” Others beg to 120

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BAD ORDER

family reconciliation, and recovery—are addressed, but warmth and humor, often in the vehicle of Sab’s pet duck, bring lightness to Sab’s story. The detailed writing offers a true look at life in Manila, with alluring descriptions of Filipino foods and landscape. The text is interlaced with Tagalog phrases and words, especially cultural honorifics. Sab’s father is now in a same-sex relationship with a man Sab considers Dad No. 2, while her mother’s boyfriend is Dad No. 3, details shared matter-of-factly and with love.

This immersive novel bursts with life. (Fiction. 8-12)

Ullman, B.B. Sterling (224 pp.) $16.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-4549-3106-5 A group of kids attempts to save the Earth from rampant negativity.

Mary, 13, considers herself average at best. But to her little brother, Albert, she’s Pearl: the one person who can understand the “memos” he sends via mental telepathy. Their father disappeared when Albert was a baby, leaving the siblings with only Ma and Meemaw. One snowy day, Mary receives a startling memo from Albert about an ominous red mist: “bad order.” The mist’s presence plagues humans and animals alike with negative thoughts. Mary, Albert, and their friends Brit and Lars are the only ones who seem to notice. Rather like Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin before them, the heroes collaborate with a trio of human-disguised aliens (or, rather, “smart-mass-holograph-research units”) to restore (good) order. But can they successfully patch a rip between the dimensions? Ullman’s quick pace and atmospheric worldbuilding are, unfortunately, overshadowed by a derivative plot. The buffoonish aliens—named Commodore, Med Tech Tek, and Citizen Lady—provide some mitigating comic relief.

Eccentricities such as nonverbal communication, picky eating, and a sorting game he plays with dust particles suggest that Albert is on the autism spectrum. Conflated with his telepathic abilities, however, these details exemplify the problematic magical-disability trope. The cast defaults white.

Skip and reread A Wrinkle in Time instead. (Science fiction.

8-12)

IS 2 A LOT?

Watson, Annie Illus. by Evans, Rebecca Tilbury House (32 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-88448-715-9

MY FATE ACCORDING TO THE BUTTERFLY Villanueva, Gail D. Scholastic (240 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 30, 2019 978-1-338-31050-4

A superstitious girl tries to fix her broken family before death catches her.

Ten-year-old Filipina Sabrina “Sab” Dulce believes all the superstitions her artist dad used to tell her before he and Mom split up. So, when she sees the Butterfly, a giant black omen of death, she knows she only has a week left to live. Determined to make the most of her last days, she convinces her American best friend, Pepper, a white girl, to help her reunite her family. Sab must uncover the truth behind the broken relationship between her college-age sister, Ate Nadine, and their father. Spying on her sister’s journalism work and adventuring across Manila, Sab discovers family secrets that change her forever. Villanueva’s debut is a beautiful #ownvoices middle-grade novel. Tough topics—the brutal war on drugs in the Philippines, |

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A picture book that accurately depicts how children think about numbers and values in a fun and engaging way.

What is a lot? Joey has many questions about what “a lot” means. “Is 2 a lot?” What about four—or 100? As Joey and his mother drive out of town into fantastical settings from the past and present (“Fasten safety belt before time travel,” reads a road sign), his mother explains that a number of anything can be a lot or not a lot at all. The examples that Joey’s mother gives are humorous (“TWO is not a lot of pennies,” she observes, “but TWO is a lot of smelly skunks”) and will make people of all ages laugh as they read this book. Numbers are both written as words and shown numerically to help readers identify the two different systems, making it a great book to add as a supplement to math curricula. Evans’ playful watercolor illustrations encourage engagement. Readers will want to count the number of skunks, cowboys, and other imaginative creatures and objects Joey and his mother discuss throughout the book, and they will enjoy seeing various characters from the places they visit pile into the trunk of the station wagon. Joey and his mom present East Asian, and other humans they meet are diverse.

Children who are learning the meaning of value and numbers will both learn from this book, with its whimsical examples of what “a lot” means, and find much to enjoy.

(Picture book. 4-6)

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BLAZING A TRAIL Irish Women Who Changed the World

a wheelchair—are tightly woven from palm and charmingly displayed for readers’ delight. The jumble of fish in the net of the “fisherman or fisherwoman” is amazingly detailed. Weill’s commendable effort to showcase an art form predating the Spanish invasion joins the others in her series featuring the varied talents of native Mexicans (Animal Talk, 2016, etc.). As with those other concept books, the design features bright, vivid colors (fuchsia, lime green, swimming-pool blue, etc.) that background both the intricate figures and the text, which is printed in contrasting colors or white. A note and photograph introducing the artisans rounds out this whimsical bilingual offering.

Gives a delightful sense of possibility in two languages.

(Bilingual picture book. 3- 7)

Webb, Sarah Illus. by O’Neill, Lauren O’Brien Press/Dufour Editions (64 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-78849-004-7 Tributes to more than two dozen women born or resident in the Emerald Isles who scored firsts or otherwise made their marks as social, artistic, athletic, or scientific movers and shakers.

“Changed the World” may be overstating some cases, but with the possible exceptions of Mother Jones and Anne Sullivan, these 28 women will at least be new to young readers on this side of the Atlantic, and all are or were strong, colorful sorts. The chronological roster begins with 16th-century “Pirate Queen of Connacht” Granuaile (O’Malley), then skips ahead to 19th-century novelist Maria Edgeworth, physician Margaret Bulkley (who dressed as a man and practiced as Dr. James Barry), prominent nationalists such as Maud Gonne and Countess Markievicz, film star Maureen O’Hara, Olympians Maeve Kyle and Sonia O’Sullivan, astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and former Irish President Mary Robinson. Webb begins each single-page profile with references to her subject’s origins and social class, goes on to brief descriptions of noteworthy experiences or feats, and closes with a handful of additional facts or observations. O’Neill adds lifelike, usually full-body portraits of each figure in period or working dress and smiling confidently.

A closing gallery offers eight younger up-and-comers for readers to get acquainted with—including two people of color, track star Gina Akpe-Moses and actor Ruth Negga, who diversify the otherwise all-white cast.

Far from comprehensive but a grand gathering of exploits and role models. (Collective biography. 8-11)

GHOST HOG

Weiser, Joey Illus. by the author Oni Press (168 pp.) $21.99 | $12.99 paper | May 7, 2019 978-1-62010-654-9 978-1-62010-597-9 paper A wild pig’s ghost must choose between seeking revenge against the hunter who killed her or freeing her stillliving parents, who have been enslaved by

a demon.

When Truff, the deceased wild-pig protagonist, scares off two teenage boys out to pick “luminous plums,” her “disembodied squeal” echoes so loudly it catches the attention of Claude and Stanley, two forest spirits interested in “keeping the peace.”

Claude and Stanley sense Truff ’s “serious negative vibes” and, after investigating, conclude this “haunting” results from a spirit “bound due to strong, unresolved feelings, or unfinished business.” Claude and Stanley convince Truff to search for her parents, but when they reach Truff ’s home, they discover her parents have been captured by Mava, a mountain demon. Just as the three stand ready at the entrance to Mava’s domain, the distant sound of the hunter draws Truff ’s focus back to desires of retribution, and she must decide between payback and family. The story’s approach to the afterlife, mention of vegetarian “monks,” and moral relativism reflect a modern outlook with roots in Eastern philosophies. Even the demon’s name may remind readers of the Buddhist figure of Mara. Weiser’s graphic novel, with its lively artwork reminiscent of Sunday comic strips, renders the complex themes both entertaining and understandable. Additionally, Stanley’s straight man to Claude’s funny man provides comedic moments.

A light look at “vengeance” and what it really takes to “calm a wounded spirit.” (Graphic fantasy/folklore. 8-12)

LET’S WORK!

Weill, Cynthia Photos by Boucher, Bryant Cinco Puntos (32 pp.) $14.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-947627-15-4 From artist to professional athlete, 28 career choices are jauntily displayed against neon-bright backgrounds.

Nurse, doctor, bike racer, boxer, gardener, hairdresser, soccer player, jockey—these and more are presented for curious children to ponder. These handmade miniature figures by master Mixtec artisans from the Mexican state of Puebla tease the imagination to explore the possibilities open to anyone with a dream and a goal. The featured professions are introduced in both English and Spanish without gender restrictions or value judgments—no one career is given precedence over another. The many characters—including a musician who uses 122

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Williams’ watercolors recall Beatrix Potter’s with their lovingly anthropomorphic details. rabbit ninja

THE STARTUP SQUAD

children will recognize, such as blowing out a candle or riding in an elevator. Some are less universal in terms of the background knowledge they draw from, such as “Oatmeal Breath” and “Redwood Breath.” Illustrations are soft and gentle, including kids of varied skin tones. Minus the unfortunate cultural appropriation with the inclusion of “Ninja Breath,” no indicators of children’s ethnicity or culture are present. The book lacks any information or guidance about mindfulness or how to use the specific breaths, which may limit its utility for casual readers. However, for educators and other adults searching for simple, age-appropriate breathing techniques to share with young children, this resource is a treasure trove.

Simple and accessible techniques for breathing your way through the alphabet. (Picture book. 4-8)

Weisfeld, Brian & Kear, Nicole C. Imprint (176 pp.) $16.99 | $7.99 paper | May 7, 2019 978-1-250-18040-7 978-1-250-18041-4 paper Series: Startup Squad Can Resa Lopez learn to balance leadership and teamwork in time to run a successful business that wins the school contest?

When Resa finds out that the sixth-grade trip is to Adventure Central and that the team whose lemonade stand raises the most money for the trip gets QuickTix—wait-free access to all the thrilling rides—she is beyond excited. She and her best friend, Didi Singh, are happy to be on the same team, but Resa quickly judges their other team members wanting: unreliable fashionista Harriet Nguyen and quiet Amelia Grant, the new girl. Resa assumes that Amelia is “stuck-up” because she doesn’t speak much, but Amelia finds her voice when Resa insists on bossing everyone around. Didi normally tries to smooth things over on Resa’s behalf, but even she gets fed up with Resa’s attitude. The team’s setbacks and failures are almost unbearable, but the chuckleworthy snark will keep readers going. The team members learn not only about listening to each other, using their strengths, and stepping out of their comfort zones, but also about important business skills such as marketing and location, which are expounded upon in an endnote. Resa makes for a daringly flawed early-middle-grade protagonist, with room for growth that’s realized satisfyingly. Resa (Teresa) is Afro-Latina, Didi (Indira) is Indian, Amelia is white, and Harriet is Asian.

A refreshing depiction of drama turned positive, this series opener is perfect for young entrepreneurs. (Fiction.

8-12)

RABBIT NINJA

y o u n g a d u lt

Williams, Jared T. Illus. by the author Godine (32 pp.) $17.95 | May 30, 2019 978-1-56792-628-6 A young bunny thinks life would be better as a ninja.

Real life is so dull. One has to get up, rush through breakfast, get to school on time, and endure long days inside. Recess offers relief, but only because that’s when the little bunny can play at ninjas with friends. It’s not all bad: Walking home from school with dad is nice, and “radish nights” make eating everything on the plate a pleasure. But bedtime? Ninjas don’t mess with bedtime—there are always “enemies to defeat.” Though the trim size is that of a conventional picture book, Williams’ watercolors recall Beatrix Potter’s with their lovingly anthropomorphic details. Double-page spreads juxtapose the young narrator’s real life against the far superior life of a ninja rabbit, such kid-friendly details as a Carrot Clusters cereal box and a rumpled tablecloth contrasting amusingly with the vision of the serene ninja munching noodles with disciplined concentration, a katana in the foreground. One spread of the bunny on the floor intently reading ninja reference material both perfectly captures the child autodidact at work and transmits some ninja factoids. But even though life as a ninja is objectively better than real life, real life does offer compensations, like those walks home with dad and, when a dream of fighting a katana-wielding red-eyed rabbit villain gets a little too intense, a mother’s comforting presence.

Adorable. (Picture book. 4-8)

ALPHABREATHS The ABCs of Mindful Breathing Willard, Christopher & Rechtschaffen, Daniel Illus. by Clifton-Brown, Holly Sounds True (32 pp.) $17.95 | May 28, 2019 978-1-68364-197-1

Each letter of the alphabet offers an opportunity for mindful breathing.

Much like Teresa Power and Kathleen Rietz’s The ABCs of Yoga for Kids (2009), this text offers instruction in lieu of narrative. Each fully illustrated page presents a letter, the name of a breath that begins with that letter, and a very brief instruction for how to practice the breath. “A [is for] Alligator Breath / Open your arms wide like alligator jaws on the in-breath.

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Shifts in perspective allow young listeners to become immersed in the story within a story. a quieter story

JADA SLY, ARTIST & SPY

additions a bit intimidating and soon enough declares that it is all “TOO MUCH!” The appealing artwork was created using a variety of media, resulting in a nicely varied, upbeat look. Round eyes and heads, simply drawn shapes, and black outlines give the pictures a cheerful, cartoony feel. Shifts in perspective allow young listeners to become immersed in the story within a story, while subtle details ground the adventure in the cozy real-life setting. Speech balloons and type colors clearly indicate who is speaking in the brief conversational text. The child has pale skin and straight, black hair.

Lively and amusing, this story about making stories will likely find eager listeners—and may just inspire some writing projects, too. (Picture book. 5-8)

Winston, Sherri Illus. by the author Little, Brown (272 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2019 978-0-316-50536-9

Stylish 10-year-old Jada Sly does not believe that her diplomat mother died in a plane crash; can her new top-secret spy crew help her decode the mystery behind her disappearance?

Jada’s father has been named the new director of the African-American Sly family museum, causing the little family to relocate from France to New York City. Papa calls her a “strong little black woman,” but she’s been having panic attacks since that crash. She also insists that her mother is alive. After all, Jada’s convinced Mama was really a spy, so her disappearance must just be part of a mission. At her new school, she befriends Brooklyn, another African-American girl, who introduces her to the secret spy club, and Jada is thrilled to enlist their help with her real-life mystery. All Jada knows is the name of a coworker her mom mentioned before rushing off to allegedly catch her flight. Armed with that knowledge and glimpsing furtive men everywhere, she hatches a plan with her friends. While Jada’s family history and her interest in art are memorable, her narration doesn’t quite find its footing, at times sparkling but at others repetitive. The thriller plot is aimed squarely at genre beginners, requiring readers to follow Jada’s reasoning without question in order to find satisfaction in the over-the-top conclusion. The book’s design, however, with both Winston’s own grayscale illustrations and select text picked out with red highlights, is as snazzy as Jada.

A beginner thriller with some real gems in it. (Mystery.

8-12) (Note: Winston is a freelance contributor to Kirkus.)

THE GREAT GRAN PLAN

Woollard, Elli Illus. by Lenton, Steven Godwin Books/Henry Holt (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-250-18603-4 A fractured fairy tale about one of the three little pigs and his brave quest to save Little Red Riding Hood’s granny from being eaten by the wicked old wolf.

The little pig (presumably the third) is living safe and secure in his snug little house when he learns that the wolf is now trying to gobble up Little Red Riding Hood’s poor old grandmother.

He springs to action to save her in this lively, rhyming fairy tale mashup, racing through his magical fairy-tale village to collect items to help him on his mission. Vivid, colorful, and humorous illustrations fill every page and will engage both child and adult readers. Readers will have tremendous fun searching out all of the other fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme details hidden throughout the main story, making this an interactive experience as well as a delightful read-aloud. A man with rosy red buttocks walks serenely away from the Emporium of New Clothes dressed only in a crown; Goldilocks and a little bear get into a jolly food fight at the Fairy-Tale Fete. Children will eagerly keep turning the pages to find out what happens next and will learn that maybe granny doesn’t need much saving after all. There is great appeal here for both lovers of fairy tales and silly adventures. Despite the gobbling-up-granny theme, there are no scary images to frighten even the youngest reader. Most of the human characters are white.

Great fun. (Picture book. 4-6)

A QUIETER STORY

Woodruff, Liza Illus. by the author Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House (32 pp.) $18.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-8234-4164-8 A child writes a story about a pet— with some help.

The unnamed protagonist is clearly a creative type who loves this little tiger kitten. Pictured on the title page is evidence of a previous story as well as two larger than life-size portraits of her kitten. Pencils, crayons, and craft supplies spill from a nearby bookcase. Sprawled on the flowered rug, the child begins a new saga. Initial efforts are rejected by the cat, who demands to be referred to as a tiger and advocates for more exciting exploits than chasing yarn and drinking milk. Inspired, the young author is soon wielding watercolors to create a dark jungle, dripping with snakes. Initially enthusiastic, the kitten finds the next few 124

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STOP! BOT!

at the campsite, they go shopping again at the camp store. Their only contact with nature is gathering wood for a fire. (Experienced campers know that’s often a no-no, but there’s no mention of this.) When their campfire is interrupted by rain they shelter in the tent that Croc bought at the camp store. Why don’t they just sleep in the RV? The cheerful reptile driving the bright blue camper van shows up on every page, but the overall lack of consistency will confuse readers. Instead of seamless spreads, each page is a new picture drawn from a different perspective and to a different scale. This is most disorienting on the pages about the grocery store. The frequent positioning of the same characters across the gutter from one another is developmentally unsound; toddlers will not recognize them as the same characters depicted twice but will rather think that they are separate characters. The wordy text, crowded pictures, and disjointed storyline ultimately disappoint. Simultaneously publishing are Birthday Bus, Safari Park, and Train Trip.

Camping can be fun, but this outing isn’t worth the trip. (Board book. 1-3) (Birthday Bus: 978-1-948418-81-2; Safari Park: 978-1-948418-83-6; Train Trip: 978-1-948418-84-3)

Yang, James Illus. by the author Viking (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-0-425-28881-8

MUD, SAND, AND SNOW Agell, Charlotte Illus. by the author Islandport Press (24 pp.) $10.95 | Apr. 9, 2019 978-1-944762-63-6

Simple, elegant watercolors and rhymed text convey the magic of the seasons and the elements.

A preschool-age child, their family, and their friends illustrate the sights, sounds, smells, and favorite activities they associate with each of the four seasons. The text is poetic but deceptively simple; the rhyme scheme for each of the four segments is the simple cadence of a limerick: “Mud makes me dance in the spring. / I fly up to the sky in my swing. / Let’s poke holes and plant peas / on our wet muddy knees. / In the quince bush, two little birds sing.” There is a lovely economy to the watercolor illustrations, with bold black outlines partially filled in and punctuated with warm sweeps and dabs of color. The images capture the warmth of family life and the richness of seasons shared in outdoor play with friends. Agell portrays the seasons as experienced in coastal New England. Children play in grassy fields, on the beach, or running in the woods, and they live in warm, cozy houses. There is nary a hint of urban existence to be found; while the cast is fairly inclusive (the protagonist child is white, but they interact with children and adults of color), the experience depicted is less so.

Though the specific experiences are not universal, there is an intrinsic appeal to sun, snow, mud, and play that broadens this book’s reach. (Board book. 2-5)

b o a r d & n o v e lt y books CAMPER FUN

Ackland, Nick Illus. by Clarkson, Jackie Clever Publishing (10 pp.) $8.99 | May 14, 2019 978-1-948418-82-9 Series: Wonder Wheels Board books about camping are hard to find, so this book die cut in the shape of an RV is initially appealing.

Croc, Lion, Giraffe, and Bear are cute stuffed animals, but they’re sadly unprepared for camping. Hardly are they on their way but they stop to buy snacks for the road. When they arrive |

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It’s a quiet day, until….

“I have a bot!” An excited child’s happiness is short-lived, for the remotecontrolled toy escapes its wireless tether and begins an ascent up the side of a skyscraper. The building’s doorman launches a race to recover the bot, and soon everyone wants to help. Attempts to retrieve the bot, which is rendered as a red rectangle with a propeller, arms, and a rudimentary face, go from the mundanity of a broom to the absurd—a bright orange beehive hairdo and a person-sized Venus’ flytrap are just some of the silly implements the building’s occupants use to try to rein in the bot. Each double-page spread reveals another level of the building—and further visual hijinks—as the bot makes its way to the top, where an unexpected hero waits (keep an eye out for falling bananas). The tall, narrow trim size echoes the shape of the skyscraper, providing a sense of height as the bot rises. Text is minimal; short declarations in tidy black dialogue bubbles with white courier-style typeface leave the primary-colored, blocky art to effectively carry the story. Facial expressions—both human and bot—are comically spot-on. The bot-owning child has light skin, and there are several people of color among those trying to rescue the bot. One person wears a kufi.

The visual details invite interaction, making it a good choice for storytime or solo inspection. (Picture book. 2-6)

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SWEET DREAMS, PEPPA A Projecting Storybook

While the pages are thick, they are thinner than typical boardbook stock and may not hold up well to robust play.

Unsuccessful; look for offerings by Hervé Tullet and Betsy Snyder for better versions of this gimmick. (Board book. 1-3)

Adapt. by Auerbach, Annie Illus. by eOne Scholastic (32 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-338-26835-5

WHEN THE BEES BUZZED OFF!

Two bedtime tales for George and Peppa Pig, with a built-in projector for lights-off visuals.

Auerbach adapts the tales from two episodes of the animated TV show. Peppa and George aren’t sleepy, so Mummy and Daddy Pig each spin a yarn. One features George, who grows to giant size after eating Baby Bear’s magic porridge and finds a dragon’s treasure. The other leads Peppa and friends, playing pirates, to bury a “treasure” chest filled with found materials—and then dig it up because Pedro Pony’s eyeglasses were accidently included. The projector, powered by replaceable button batteries, lights up when the cover is opened and is strong enough to send clear, still images of 20 details from the pictures, mostly single characters, onto a darkened room’s ceiling or nearby wall. Reading the stories and viewing the illustrations while projecting may require some dexterity though, as a flashlight (or cellphone) would be needed to see the pages. Also, there is no “off ” switch aside from closing the book, so the batteries will run down quickly.

The conjoined stories are bright and lively enough without the gimmick—but it is a clever one. (Novelty. 4-6)

Bell, Lula Illus. by Bennett, Stephen Tiger Tales (32 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 1, 2019 978-1-68010-148-5

Something is wrong in the garden: The bees have inexplicably vanished in

this lift-the-flap story.

The insects and other things that crawl decide to send “the bravest and cleverest bugs” to find the bees and bring them back. They’re not in the vegetable garden, triggering instant concern that their “poor, precious vegetables” will fail. Maybe the bees have gone underground to get out of the hot sun? They aren’t at the garden pond, either. As the little critters search, dialogue balloons provide comic relief—a beetle impatiently demands of one comrade, “Do you ever stop eating?” “I’m a very hungry caterpillar,” is the mildly abashed reply—as the straightforward narrative conveys the plot and bee-related facts are revealed beneath flaps. Since often these facts are related by bees that are supposedly missing (“I’m very good at [pollinating] because I’m furry and pollen sticks to my body,” explains a bee underneath a flap on an otherwise bee-less spread), readers will have to maintain some flexibility of mind to negotiate the narrative dissonance. The thin plot comes to a conclusion when the scouting party arrives at a field full of flowers and bees— “ ‘Why did you leave?’ the bugs cried. ‘We were hungry,’ buzzed the bees”—and decides to spread wildflower seeds back in their own patch of garden. Children will wonder, what were the bees eating before they abruptly left?—to no avail. The flaps, often die-cut in the shapes of leaves, are quite flimsy.

It doesn’t make much sense, but the bugs are cute. (Nov­ elty picture book. 4-8)

PLAY WITH ME

Baruzzi, Agnese Illus. by the author Minedition (24 pp.) $9.99 | Mar. 1, 2019 978-988-8341-71-9 Two fingers can slide through the two holes cut through the book to act as stand-ins for arms or legs of the characters within.

Each scene represents a different sport, activity, or artistic pursuit, with the text a simple three-word invitation with the appropriate verb swapped in. For example, in the spread captioned “Swim with me,” a bikini-wearing swimmer floats in an inner tube as readers’ fingers act as kicking legs, and in “Walk with me,” the readers’ digits become an astronaut’s legs on a spacewalk. The gimmick works well when the fingers act as legs, with the ballet dancing, swinging at the playground, and skateboarding pages some of the most satisfying. However, it is unclear what the fingers-as-arms are supposed to do in the “Celebrate with me” party spread and the volleyball scene. Baruzzi’s highly saturated images with smooth lines feature one solo figure in each tableau. Only three people with darker-than-pale skin tones are depicted out of the 13 figures presented, and some of these activities veer toward stereotype (two of the children who look to be of African descent drum and play basketball).

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TWINKLE, TWINKLE, UNICORN

Burton, Jeffrey Illus. by Waring, Zoe Little Simon/Simon & Schuster (7 pp.) $5.99 | Mar. 5, 2019 978-1-5344-3973-3 A young unicorn frolics with friends and family to the tune and lyric structure of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

Predictably, the singable text reads: “Twinkle, Twinkle, unicorn, / sparkle with your magic horn. // Leaping over clouds so high, / like a diamond in the sky.” Each double-page spread shows the titular creature, yellow and with a rainbow mane, |

The simple, clean images are surprisingly rich in detail, affording ample opportunity for conversation. row, row, row your boat

PEPPA AND PALS A Magnet Book

tail, and horn, leaping over rainbows, cavorting with bumblebees, and dancing with a pink bunny, among others. As night falls, the unicorn enjoys a story from what are likely parental figures, an older pink unicorn sporting a necklace and a blue unicorn with bow tie (it seems gender stereotypes exist among legendary creatures, too). Waring’s childlike art is a candy-colored explosion, with big-eyed critters, both legendary and real, all with chunky, toddler-esque physiques. While the verse is nothing new (“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” has arguably been rewritten more than any other children’s song) and there is little substance, it scans and sings relatively easily. Youngsters will be drawn to the sparkly rainbow on the cover.

For the youngest of unicorn fanatics; others may want to look for their magic elsewhere. (Board book. 2-4)

eOne Scholastic (10 pp.) $12.99 | Feb. 26, 2019 978-1-338-30764-1 Series: Peppa Pig

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON PAINTED BIRDS Coombs, Kate Illus. by Lucas, Seth Gibbs Smith (22 pp.) $9.99 | Mar. 19, 2019 978-1-4236-5151-2 Series: Little Naturalist

Learn about birds through the lens of John James Audubon.

Part of the Little Naturalists series, this entry reimagines Audubon’s paintings as accessible cartoon-style drawings.

Mimicking the dramatic poses and simple, natural settings that defined the iconic painter, the flat, stylized versions do retain some essence of Audubon’s art. These bold versions have rounded bodies, thickly outlined in brown and filled with a minimal palette of matte, earthy colors like straw and skyblue. Rhyming text in a predictable pattern begins with “He painted…” and ends with a bird-related term such as “NESTS” and “LEGS” printed in an outsized typeset that’s complementary to the colors of the picture opposite. As an early introduction to the avian world, the likable rhymes and clean, stylish illustrations work. As an introduction to Audubon? That’s dicier. Besides the bird poses and a short blurb on the back cover, the painter feel less like an integral part of the text than an adult-centric name check. An equally attractive companion title about John Muir similarly suffers. Though it delves slightly deeper into his life and work, and Muir’s appearance in the art makes it resemble a proper biography, only adult readers with a deep familiarity with Muir’s writings will make any kind of deeper connection from the short rhymes.

Appropriate for nature-loving tots, but don’t expect them to learn too much about the naturalist. (Board book. 1-3) (The Adventures of John Muir: 978-1-4236-5150-5)

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A dozen small magnetized figures allow Peppa and friends to play-act or to play with toys in five settings.

Leading suggestions (“Who has the royal princess invited?”) provide prompts for placing the toys and costumed characters around a picnic, under the sea, in a playroom, or other locale.

The figures are not identified, and most are so generically drawn that, for instance, either of the bunnies, one crowned and the other in a spacesuit, could be designated Rebecca or Richard Rabbit. The “Wild West” setting includes a teepee, but the four figures in that period’s dress—two fixed in the illustration and two movable ones—are wearing stylized vests and Stetsons, giving it the dubious distinction of participating in both appropriation and erasure. A reusable bubble pack is attached for storage, but the magnetic layers are strong enough to keep the figures in place when the volume is closed or tipped up for display. The offering is labeled for ages 3 and up, and accordingly there is no “choke hazard” warning, though Peppaphiles with younger siblings may need to take extra care.

Playtime possibilities aplenty, at least until the loose pieces are lost. (Novelty. 3-5)

ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT Illus. by Frost, Maddie Workman (12 pp.) $5.95 | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-5235-0510-4 Series: Indestructibles

Frost contributes another eye-catching and extraordinarily durable volume to this series for the very youngest of readers.

The aptly named Indestructibles series is the perfect marriage of form and function: books that are colorful enough to engage a baby and tough enough to withstand all the drooling, chewing, grabbing, tearing, and spilling a child can throw at them. The paperlike miracle substance on which these books are printed is nontoxic, won’t tear, and has a grain that makes the colors on the pages really pop. The minimal text offers the lyrics to the familiar round (the companion volumes in this release are The Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star). The illustrations are peopled with appealing animals and insects enjoying summer scenes; the simple, clean images are surprisingly rich in detail, affording ample opportunity for conversation beyond the rhymes in question. Family scenes abound—a parent dog and puppy go rowing in the park, both clad in their requisite floatation vests, as two adult squirrels, their child, a frog, and a family of ducks and ducklings enjoy the day. Roller-skating |

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The book is visually stimulating without being overwhelming. babies of the great bear rainforest

bears, bicycling foxes, a raccoon on a scooter, kite-flying cats, and bunnies painting en plein-air are also on hand. The dogs row into the sunset, arriving home beneath a moonlit, starry sky, ready for bed.

Read, sing, discuss, and even spill milk on it. (Board book.

6 mos.-3) (The Itsy Bitsy Spider: 978-1-5235-0509-8; Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star: 978-1-5235-0511-1)

alone and in tears. Finally, a passing bumblebee asks, “Do you want to play with me?” Delighted to find someone who doesn’t fear him, the little wolf plays hide-and-seek with his new friend, and they chase each other through the forest. Predictably, their laughter catches the attention of the squirrel, bunny, and fox.

After the squirrel inquires, “Can I play, too?” the others join in, followed swiftly by a bear, owl, mole, mouse, deer, boar, and bat.

The final illustration is a lovely, two-page image of the 12 friends watching a gorgeous sunset together, a poignant reminder that they’re more alike than different. The obvious irony, of course, is that while discrimination has an arbitrary, unfair quality, responsible squirrel and rabbit parents would be quite right to warn their offspring against playing with wolves. The animals who disregarded the warnings of their parents could well have ended up as dinner.

Even though it’s a little odd to see a harmless predator in the lead role, the book’s message is clear, and the artwork is colorful, distinctive, and engaging. (Board book. 2-5)

KAHLO’S KOALAS 1, 2, 3, Count Art with Me Helmer, Grace Andrews McMeel (24 pp.) $8.99 | Apr. 9, 2019 978-1-4494-9728-6

Count groups of animals painted in the styles of various artists in this hybrid art and math book.

In a decidedly cheeky take on art history, this glossy-paged board book re-creates animals in different art genres, such as the pop art “3 Lichtenstein Llamas” composed of the trademark tiny dots, with text inside a distinctive starburst. It’s structured as a traditional counting book with increasing increments of animals, with satisfying alliteration introducing 10 different artists (all white men save for Kahlo). Playful illustrations do a remarkable job of capturing the essence and medium; those five splattery, splotchy dogs are clearly “Pollock Poodles.” Are toddlers likely to make the connections to the original art? Unlikely, but that doesn’t mean they won’t chortle at eight Technicolor Warhol Warthog heads—and one rump. The featured artists are famous enough that most adults will recognize the references, but if not, the backmatter concisely explains the art style and the thoughtful reason for choosing the animal that embodies it, suggesting that since pointillism was “was slow and painstaking,” a sloth was a perfect representation of that style. Older audiences may find it useful as a bridge to connect with the original artwork. Some colors and styles aren’t perfect emulations of the artists—the brushy koalas don’t mimic Kahlo’s fine technique, for instance—but it’s a refreshing change to see the topic of fine art handled so lightly.

Artsy fun. (Board book. 2-4)

BABIES OF THE GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST McAllister, Ian Photos by the author Orca (24 pp.) $9.95 | Feb. 26, 2019 978-1-4598-2166-8

An introduction to some of North America’s weird and wonderful wildlife.

Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest is the largest remaining temperate rainforest on the planet. Every spring, this diverse ecosystem becomes home to a fascinating array of baby animals, birds, and other wildlife. From the adorably inquisitive Kermode bear cub through the ridiculously fuzzy glaucouswinged gull chick to the shimmering, squishy baby opalescent squid, the youngest inhabitants of the Great Bear Rainforest are all wonderful in their own, unique ways. Nature photographer McAllister’s stunning images are paired with colorful, simple, thoughtfully designed captions stating the names of the wildlife pictured. Since the book includes land mammals, birds, and marine life, the photographs also provide an introduction to the habitats that form the rainforest’s ground, canopy, and waters as well as a glimpse into the creatures’ homes and, at times, dietary habits. The book is visually stimulating without being overwhelming, making it perfect for very young readers who are more engaged with pictures than with text. The careful selection of unusual creatures also makes it more interesting than the typical baby-animal book. Older children will enjoy the photographs but may wish for more information than the book contains; McAllister’s collaborations with Nicholas Read (A Whale’s World, 2018, etc.), while aimed at early-elementary children, may be a better bet.

A gorgeously rendered set of photographs and captions that will delight the family’s littlest naturalists. (Board book.

6 mos.-2)

WHO IS AFRAID OF LITTLE WOLF? Kawamura, Yayo Illus. by the author Prestel (24 pp.) $12.95 | Apr. 16, 2019 978-3-7913-7381-2

A lesson in the cruelty of discrimination and the benefits of inclusion.

A little wolf encounters fear and mistrust from the other kids in the forest when he sets out in search of playmates. After being rebuffed by a squirrel, a bunny, and a fox, who all say, “I’m not allowed to play with wolves,” the overalls-clad cub ends up 128

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HOW DO APPLES GROW?

watery and accessible. The final pages allow children to reflect on their favorite ocean animal as the art reviews all the creatures depicted.

A gentle underwater excursion. (Board book. 1-3)

McDonald, Jill Illus. by the author Doubleday (26 pp.) $7.99 | Feb. 5, 2019 978-0-525-57875-8 Series: Hello World!

GOOD NIGHT, SLEEPY MOON McLean, Danielle Illus. by Hahessy, Róisín Tiger Tales (12 pp.) $8.99 | Mar. 1, 2019 978-1-68010-573-5

Simple factual information is delivered on sturdy board pages about a topic popular in most early-childhood curricula.

One or two short sentences per page simply outline the process of growing apples: planting the seed, tending the seedling, nurturing the sapling, blossoming, pollination, harvest, and beyond. Proper scientific terms label illustrations of a cut apple and blossom. A series of numbered pictures show how a blossom becomes fruit. An added fact in a smaller font (“It takes two to three years for a seed to become a sapling”) on each spread extends the usefulness of the book beyond the boardbook audience. Some of the cheery illustrations may elicit more questions than can be answered by the text, however. There is no explanation as to why two children are staking the sapling, for instance. The children depicted are a multiracial mix, and several appear in more than one picture. All are included in the apple-picking scene, but that is not the end of the book. The next spreads show a truck being loaded to deliver apples to market, then children at a table eating foods made from apples, and finally an apple tree in all its stages with the adage “Good things are worth waiting for!”

Useful when apple trees bloom and again during applepicking season. (Board book. 2-4)

OCEAN LIFE

McDonald, Jill Illus. by the author Doubleday (26 pp.) $7.99 | Feb. 5, 2019 978-0-525-57877-2 Series: Hello World!

FIRST WORDS Early Learning at the Museum

An ocean-themed entry in the Hello World series.

A white youngster with long hair sporting a swim mask encourages little ones to “Dive in and take a look!” at ocean life.

Each double-page spread presents a different marine animal, including whales, dolphins, sharks, an octopus, a crab and a lobster, sea turtles, fish, and jellyfish. Two or three conversationally conveyed facts of interest are included per double-page spread, one of which is usually in a smaller type and marked with an asterisk for obscure reasons. “What’s that? It’s a sea horse? It can quickly change colors to blend with the background, helping it hide from enemies,” reads the larger text in one representative spread, while the text in the smaller font reads, “A sea horse father carries eggs in a pouch until they are ready to hatch.” A trio of children, all of whom have light complexions, build a sand castle on the beach and collect shells to highlight the wide variety of the latter that can be found. McDonald’s jewel-toned art has the look of watercolor and is appropriately |

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A large brown bear puts a smaller bear to bed in this board-book offering with nearly circular pages.

The duo begins their nighttime routine by bidding birds and the sun each good night. Another grown bear wearing glasses, necklace, and eyelashes joins the scene, and the family says good night with a kiss and another bedtime story.

Forgettable rhyming quatrains are spread out over two double-page spreads, with one word or phrase per line highlighted within a little cloud: “Good night, sleepy birds, / Singing softly in your nest. // We sleepy bears are going home. / It’s time for us to rest.” Hahessy’s endearing, pastel-toned illustrations have the look and feel of colored pencil, with circular panels superimposed on subtly striped backgrounds.

The companion title, I Love You, Little Chick, follows the protagonist and a much larger but equally immature-appearing yellow bird celebrating spring and their love for each other on egg-shaped pages. Die cuts of a moon and an egg appear on each title, respectively. The bindings of both offerings do not look as though they will hold up to robust play or rambunctious readings, but the staggered pages, growing larger front to back, are a nice touch for little fingers.

A sentimental read for baby and caregiver (Board book. 6 mos.-3) (I Love You, Little Chick: 978-1-68010-574-2)

Nosy Crow Illus. by The Trustees of the British Museum Nosy Crow/Candlewick (22 pp.) $7.99 | May 7, 2019 978-1-5362-0584-8 Series: Early Learning at the Museum A vocabulary-building board book featuring artifacts from the collection of the British Museum.

Each item chosen from the museum’s historically and geographically expansive collection is paired with large, bold text, introducing children to representations of each term that hail from a variety of cultures. Along with companion title Animals, it showcases a range of artistic styles, from paintings and prints through plaster of Paris, brass, and wooden sculptures to |

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GOD LOVES YOU, LITTLE ONE

well-worn household materials. Although the concept behind the curation is interesting, unfortunately, neither this title nor Animals rises above the aesthetic level of a typical board book of its ilk. This title in particular lacks cohesion, as the images are not organized alphabetically or according to theme, as many vocabulary books are, making the images and words feel arbitrary. Several pages feature multiple images that are separated only by bold blocks of color, which creates a cluttered look.

Furthermore, a number of the artifacts featured in both books appear to have been made during the pre-independence era in countries that were once part of the British Empire, suggesting that they may have become part of the collection as a result of colonization, a fact that the book’s creators leave disturbingly unaddressed.

A visually interesting but disorganized reader that features images from a museum with a problematic history.

(Board book. 6 mos.-3) (Animals: 978-1-5362-0583-1)

Sweeney, Samantha Illus. by Kolanovic, Dubravka Tiger Tales (16 pp.) $9.99 | Mar. 1, 2019 978-1-68010-569-8

Anthropomorphized woodland creatures celebrate God’s love and guidance in a child’s life.

This board book features sweet illustrations of animal caregivers expressing their love for their young alongside rhyming text that explains God’s presence in a child’s world. The pages are die cut along the top in arcs, so they look like a rainbow behind a cloudedged cover; with each turn of the page, another layer of the rainbow is exposed. The shiny effect of the rainbow’s arches is eye-catching and will certainly appeal to young readers. Kolanovic’s illustrations are adorable if not particularly imaginative, including some sweet details, such as a baby squirrel clutching a teddy bear and a duckling joyfully splashing. Though quite charming, the panda duo feels a little out of place among all of the temperate woodland creatures. The rhyming text has a singsong feel, which makes it an easy read-aloud for adults with little lap listeners. It includes all of the usual sentiments about God in a child’s life: “He sent you from above”; he is “always in your heart”; and “Lord God will guide your way.” While familiar and comforting, these statements are also unremarkable and a bit tired. This book is a good fit for those in the Christian faith who want a traditional, formulaic book about God’s presence in a young child’s life.

This book contains pretty much what you’d expect.

(Board book. 6 mos.-2)

LOIS LOOKS FOR BOB AT THE BEACH Nosy Crow Illus. by Turley, Gerry Nosy Crow/Candlewick (12 pp.) $8.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5362-0588-6

Uncluttered illustrations in muted shades set a beachy tone for Lois and Bob’s third outing.

Following the pattern established in Lois Looks for Bob at Home and Lois Looks for Bob at the Park (both 2018), Lois, a bigeyed tuxedo cat, looks behind a bucket, a rock, a beach bag, a sailboat, and an ice cream cone before finding Bob the bird behind a beach ball. Lois is always on the left-hand page; the large, die-cut gatefold flap is on the right. A hint of what might be hidden behind each flap is visible. On the final spread, Lois is also behind the beach ball, having found her friend. Where the gatefold is hinged changes on each spread. While this adds to the guesswork, it also presents a challenge for youngsters just learning how to manipulate pages and suggests an audience with some degree of small-motor skills. The flaps are also thinner than the board pages and may tear when pulled by strong little hands. As in the earlier titles, each hidden animal is greeted by a proper name (the sea gull is Geoffrey, the sea turtle is Maureen, etc.) rather than the name of the species. Most adult readers will automatically supply that missing information. A followup question printed on the inside of each flap (“Aren’t his feet a lovely color?”) invites further adult/child interaction.

Another pleasant outing with Lois and Bob. (Board book.

1-3)

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SHARE YOUR SMILE Raina’s Guide to Telling Your Own Story Telgemeier, Raina Illus. by the author Graphix/Scholastic (144 pp.) $12.99 | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-338-35384-6

A guide on how to distill the extraordinary from your own life and find a story to tell.

The unabashed Telgemeier (Smile, 2010, etc.) once more shares her personal experiences on storytelling in a how-to book on finding your own story. Explaining that for her, “the process of creating Smile was therapeutic,” Telgemeier coaxes readers to think about their own experiences by posing questions that will encourage closer looks into themselves, their environments, their families, their personal travel and school stories, their sources of inspiration, and even those supernatural elements that fascinate them. Although the book focuses heavily on creating stories from personal experience, the skills developed are |

The flaps open in different directions, which adds variety and movement to the illustrations. seek and count

meant to naturally translate into other types of storytelling. By beginning in the known world, Telgemeier gives readers a solid foundation from which to launch their artistic exploration. The book focuses mostly on the brainstorming process, offering lists of questions with space for answers, but it also provides other spaces to write full stories and to storyboard ideas. Readers also get useful tips, such as starting with loose shapes when drawing faces, with step-by-step instructions on how to illustrate faces and facial expressions. It’s very much a place to start rather than a full-on manual, and it does not offer a bibliography for kids who want to pursue graphic storytelling further.

Honest and encouraging, this will get young storytellers started—and perhaps leave them wishing for more.

(Nonfiction novelty. 8-12)

THE FRUITS OF YOUR LABOR

This board book for parents-to-be compares a baby’s growth in utero to fruits and vegetables alongside jokes and witticisms.

Beginning with Week 6 and progressing through Week 40, Tobin’s “baby-sized guide to your baby’s size” attempts to garner laughs as well as to show more-or-less accurate representations of the baby’s growth. Each week receives its own two-page layout with the accompanying watercolor illustration of a beaming fruit or veggie. The watercolor foods are very cute, if a bit one-dimensional, each rendered with the same simple smiley face. Two real standouts are the Swiss chard, with its brightly colored veins, and the stunning subtlety of color in the mango.

The jokes that accompany each illustration include scattered references to Questlove, Benjamin Button, and Sponegbob as well as gags about nose-picking and passing gas. There are the obligatory references to male anatomy (“the [eggplant] emoji is one hundred percent male”) and sexuality, which demand readers with similar senses of humor. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot that is laugh-out-loud funny, and the book can’t stand on either the illustrations or the text alone. This is certainly nice enough to toss in with other baby-shower gifts for an expectant parent, but it’s not a must-have by any means.

A board book for grown-ups that’s mostly unremarkable; some of the best material is on the cover itself. (Board book. 0-1, adult)

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Yonezu, Yusuke Illus. by the author Minedition (20 pp.) $11.99 | Mar. 1, 2019 978-988-8341-39-9

A counting, lift-the-flap book in which each page reveals a hidden picture.

Each spread of this simply structured board book features a white page with a bold, black numeral and letters spelling that number on the left-hand side and an accompanying countable image beneath a flap on the right. On the page for the number five, for example, beneath a mitten-covered hand is a naked, pink-skinned hand with five fingers; the act of lifting the flap makes it seem as though readers are removing the mitten from the hand themselves. Underneath each flap, the illustration features items that can be counted along with brief, descriptive text that repeats the numeral: “5 warm fingers.” By and large, this concept works well, as readers find “1 baby chick” hatching from an egg or pull “6 fresh potatoes” from the ground.

The flaps open in different directions, which adds variety and movement to the illustrations. Some of the images are harder to decipher, such as a blanket and a sea anemone, and they really only make sense once the image below is revealed. A paper-wasp nest, once lifted, reveals “9 buzzing bees,” perpetuating a common mistake. The illustrations themselves are very plain, with bold colors outlined in black, allowing readers to focus.

While not a complete standout in a crowded field of similar books, this attempt at a different approach does succeed overall. (Board book. 6 mos.-2)

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Tobin, Andrew Illus. by the author POW! (72 pp.) $12.99 | Mar. 26, 2019 978-1-57687-907-8

SEEK AND COUNT

continuing series SING WITH ME, LUCY MCGEE Amato, Mary Illus. by Meserve, Jessica Holiday House (176 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 23, 2019 978-0-8234-3876-1 Series: Lucy McGee, 2 (Fiction. 8-12)

SURF’S UP!

Barton, Chris Illus. by Cummings, Troy Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | Apr. 30, 2019 978-0-06-234476-2 978-0-06-234475-5 paper Series: Mighty Truck (Early reader. 4-8)

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VOLCANO DELUXE

TBH, IDK WHAT’S NEXT

Bernstein, Ariel Illus. by Malbrough, Mike Viking (96 pp.) $14.99 | $5.99 paper | Apr. 2, 2019 978-0-451-48102-3 978-0-451-48104-7 paper Series: Warren & Dragon, 3 (Fantasy. 5-8)

Greenwald, Lisa Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $12.99 | May 7, 2019 978-0-06-268999-3 Series: TBH, 4 (Fiction. 8-12)

DANNY AND THE DINOSAUR IN THE BIG CITY Hale, Bruce Illus. by Grosvenor, Charles & Cutting, David A. Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | May 7, 2019 978-0-06-241060-3 978-0-06-241059-7 paper Series: Syd Hoff ’s Danny and the Dinosaur (Early reader. 4-8)

MARVIN & JAMES SAVE THE DAY and Elaine Helps!

Broach, Elise Illus. by Murphy, Kelly Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (112 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 9, 2019 978-1-250-18607-2 Series: Masterpiece Adventures, 4 (Animal fantasy. 6-9)

THE CHESTNUT CHALLENGE Hecht, Tracey Illus. by Yee, Josie Fabled Films (32 pp.) $12.99 | $5.99 paper | Apr. 23, 2019 978-1-944020-22-4 978-1-944020-23-1 paper Series: The Nocturnals (Early reader. 5-7)

EXTRA WEIRD

Do, Anh Illus. by Faber, Jules Scholastic (160 pp.) $5.99 paper | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-338-30562-3 Series: WeirDo, 3 (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)

FLAT STANLEY AND THE BEES

SPLAT THE CAT AND THE LEMONADE STAND

Houran, Lori Haskins Illus. by Pamintuan, Macky Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | May 7, 2019 978-0-06-236601-6 978-0-06-236600-9 paper Series: Flat Stanley (Early reader. 4-8)

Driscoll, Laura Illus. by Eberz, Robert Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | May 7, 2019 978-0-06-269709-7 978-0-06-269708-0 paper Series: Splat the Cat (Early reader. 6-9)

LOST STARS

ROBO-RABBIT BOY, GO!

Hunter, Erin Harper/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 9, 2019 978-0-06-282351-9 Series: Warriors: The Broken Code, 1 (Fantasy. 8-12)

Flintham, Thomas Illus. by the author Branches/Scholastic (80 pp.) $4.99 paper | $15.99 PLB | May 28, 2019 978-1-338-23981-2 paper 978-1-338-23982-9 PLB Series: Press Start!, 7 (Graphic fantasy. 5-7)

FAST BREAK

Jeter, Derek with Mantell, Paul Jeter/Simon & Schuster (176 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 16, 2019 978-1-5344-3627-5 Series: Derek Jeter, 6 (Fiction. 8-12)

ANNE’S KINDRED SPIRITS George, Kallie Illus. by Halpin, Abigail Tundra (64 pp.) $12.99 | May 7, 2019 978-1-77049-932-4 Series: Anne of Green Gables (Early reader. 6-8) 132

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FISHTASTIC!

DAVID BOWIE

Sรกnchez Vergara, Isabel Illus. by Albero, Ana Frances Lincoln (32 pp.) $14.99 | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-78603-332-1 Series: Little People, BIG DREAMS (Picture book/biography. 4-7)

Kann, Victoria Illus. by the author Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $4.99 paper | May 7, 2019 978-0-06-284039-4 978-0-06-284038-7 paper Series: Pinkalicious (Early reader. 4-8)

GANDHI

A SQUIRRELLY SITUATION

Sรกnchez Vergara, Isabel Illus. by Arrayas, Albert Frances Lincoln (32 pp.) $14.99 | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-78603-787-9 Series: Little People, BIG DREAMS (Picture book/biography. 4-7)

Kelly, Jacqueline Illus. by Meyer, Jennifer L. Godwin Books/Henry Holt (112 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 9, 2019 978-1-62779-877-8 Series: Calpurnia Tate, Girl Vet, 5 (Historical fiction. 7-10)

THE HAWAIIAN HEIST

ESCAPE TO THE MESA

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Stilton, Geronimo Scholastic Paperbacks (128 pp.) $7.99 paper | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-338-30623-1 Series: Geronimo Stilton, 72 (Adventure. 6-10)

StacyPlays Illus. by To, Vivienne Harper/HarperCollins (224 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 9, 2019 978-0-06-279640-0 Series: Wild Rescuers, 2 (Fantasy. 8-12)

THE AGE OF EXPLORATION Totally Getting Lost

BENTLEY

Thompson, Ben & Slader, Erik Illus. by Foley, Tim Roaring Brook (160 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 16, 2019 978-1-250-15054-7 Series: Epic Fails (Nonfiction. 8-11)

Miles, Ellen Scholastic Paperbacks (96 pp.) $5.99 paper | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-338-30302-5 Series: The Puppy Place, 53 (Fiction. 6-9)

SPILL THE BEANS

CARS Engines That Move You

Mlynowski, Sarah Scholastic (176 pp.) $14.99 | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-338-16297-4 Series: Whatever After, 13 (Fantasy. 7-10)

Zettwoch, Dan Illus. by the author First Second (128 pp.) $19.99 | $12.99 paper | May 28, 2019 978-1-62672-821-9 978-1-62672-822-6 paper Series: Science Comics (Graphic nonfiction. 9-11)

THE MOST AWESOME OF ALL Pennypacker, Sara Illus. by Frazee, Marla Disney Hyperion (208 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-4847-0154-6 Series: Waylon!, 3 (Fiction. 6-8)

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young adult GIRL GONE VIRAL

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Ahmadi, Arvin Viking (416 pp.) $17.99 | May 21, 2019 978-0-425-28990-7

LAST BUS TO EVERLAND by Sophie Cameron................................ 137 HUNGRY HEARTS ed. by Elsie Chapman & Caroline Tung Richmond.................................................................... 137 ALL EYES ON US by Kit Frick.......................................................... 140 PATRON SAINTS OF NOTHING by Randy Ribay...........................145 THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT by Misa Sugiura........................ 146

On a quest to find her missing father, a teen and her friends create a virtual reality experience that goes viral.

Seventeen-year-old Opal Hopper has a talent for coding, an entertainer’s instincts, and an entrepreneur’s drive for disruption. She’s also haunted by an old mystery: Why did her father disappear, and what is his old partner, Howie Mendelsohn, keeping secret? When Howie’s firm, Palo Alto Labs, launches a contest on their VR platform, offering the winner a chance to meet with Howie himself, Opal leaps at the chance to get some answers—even if it means stealing private data.

But every strategic step that this smart, complex heroine takes toward fame, fortune, and closure lands her on shakier moral ground and stretches her loyalties. The absorbing narrative takes readers to a near future where smart-voice assistants, selfdriving Teslas, the Hyperloop, and delivery drones are du jour.

But men still run the big tech companies, female entrepreneurs still struggle with harassment and inequity, and anti-technology movements are on the rise. Despite the unsatisfying ending, Opal’s journey raises good questions: Can we be better than our internet selves? What if we allowed computers to track our most private thoughts and feelings? Could robots and humans live in harmony? The answers, of course, are still under development. Opal is assumed white and her best friend is Nigerian.

An immersive ride through the near future with a compelling heroine at the helm. (Science fiction. 12-17)

BREAKING BAILEY

Anonymous Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $19.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5344-3308-3 Series: Anonymous Diaries Patterned after Go Ask Alice, this faux diary chronicles a teen’s descent into drug addiction and becoming a victim of abuse.

Still grieving her mother’s sudden death, shipped off to a prestigious boarding school by her new stepmother, and finding herself completely alone, Bailey is vulnerable. She’s also a

PATRON SAINTS OF NOTHING

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chemistry whiz, and when the most popular students ask her to participate in the school’s exclusive Science Club, why would she refuse? The title of this book plays on the title of the popular TV show Breaking Bad, as Science Club is not an innocuous extracurricular but a front for a secret meth lab. Of course, Bailey knows meth is harmful, but classmate Warren convinces her that they’ll make it safe for addicts who are going to use anyway. She soon writes of the pressures to balance schoolwork with her meth production quota. Not wanting to fail Warren, who becomes her first love, she accepts his Adderall and Percocets to get through long days. And she can stop them anytime, unlike meth addicts—or can she? While this series can veer toward the sensational, the message of this “diary” is less about anti-drug propaganda and more about how young women can be victimized. Warren’s manipulation of Bailey, such as gaslighting her when she questions the meth operation, is spot-on. The book assumes a white default.

Readable—and relatable for many. (Fiction. 14-18)

Love abounds, heartache happens, and friendship endures in this hilarious and timely coming-of-age novel.

Alek Khederian, an Armenian-American New Jersey sophomore, is happily besotted with his handsome skater boyfriend, Ethan. Not only is he out of the closet, but his family accepts him and welcomes Ethan, a white senior. Alek, while in love, is not ready for sex, which Ethan seems to accept. During their six-month anniversary celebration, however, Ethan unwittingly reveals news that threatens to rip their relationship apart. Barakiva (One Man Guy, 2014) creates an engaging central couple whom readers will root for and smartly surrounds them with a flawless cast of three-dimensional supporting characters who round out the protagonists while standing out in their own rights. Alek’s parents are grade-obsessed, old-fashioned, and controlling to the point of hilarity, but their love and unconditional support of their son suffuses every interaction they have with him. The Khederians are ardent Christians, and Alek attends St. Stephen’s Armenian Orthodox Church on both Saturdays and Sundays. The scenes between Alek and Reverend Father Stepanian are some of the tale’s most gripping. Their ongoing debate regarding the church’s stance on homosexuality is handled sensitively and intelligently, providing Alek with character growth while also acknowledging the priest’s difficult position. The novel is enriched with vividly textured Armenian cultural details.

An honest and compelling teen romance. (Fiction. 14-18)

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Bonneau, Moe Henry Holt (272 pp.) $17.99 | May 21, 2019 978-1-250-17093-4

Lucy “Lu” Butler is in heart-wrenching, agonizing love.

Lu believes there are only two kinds of love: “Never-Ending Pending Love” and “Happily Never After,” and she assumes that both end in heartbreak. Lu first pines for her English teacher, Ms. Hayes, but after a high-stakes chance encounter in the bathroom with her former best friend, Evelyn “Eve” Brooks, Lu’s feelings shift. Unfortunately, Miss Popular Eve is dating the school’s universally beloved Nate Gray, and Lu doesn’t know how to own and accept her sexuality let alone pursue a former friend. Lu’s senior year brings heartache, loss, and complication: an aging grandmother, an absent mother, an overworked father who spends more hours performing trauma surgery than at home, conflicts with her sister, and growing doubts about her long-held assumption that she’ll grow up to be a doctor too. Although Bonneau’s debut novel offers an unconventional lesbian romance and is narrated in original language, the confluence of young adult tropes feels slightly derivative: stress around prom, using drugs to escape, pining lust, and insurmountable familial conflict—none of which is explored in sufficient depth. The prose is highly stylized and evokes the mid-20th century: cigarettes are “tars,” friends are “appleJacks,” and girls are “betties.” The onslaught of invented slang is ultimately disorienting, distracting readers from the heart of the novel—a tender, queer coming-of-age story. All characters are assumed white.

An experimental story that teaches young readers that love takes courage. (Romance. 14-18)

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HOLD MY HAND

Barakiva, Michael Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pp.) $17.99 | May 21, 2019 978-0-374-30486-7

THE PURSUIT OF MISS HEARTBREAK HOTEL

A QUEER HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Bronski, Michael Adapt. by Chevat, Richie Beacon (336 pp.) $18.00 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-8070-5612-7

An adaptation for teens of the adult title A Queer History of the United States (2011).

Divided into thematic sections, the text filters LGBTQIA+ history through key figures in each era from the 1500s to the present. Alongside watershed moments like the 1969 Stonewall uprising and the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, the text brings to light less well-known people, places, and events: the 1625 free love colony of Merrymount, transgender Civil War hero Albert D.J. Cashier, and the 1951 founding of the kirkus.com

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identity: fluid and complex Anyone who has been paying attention to the YA social media world over the last few months will be aware of a couple of high-profile instances in which writers of color chose to withdraw their books before publication due to criticism over the way they wrote about identities outside their own. Some commentators have indulged in a bit of schadenfreude as they’ve contemplated all that has happened. Maybe I’m an eternal optimist, but I see this as part of the necessary growing pains that come with any radical change.

People from communities who have long been shut out of the conversation, previously only allowed to publish stories that fit narrow mainstream notions of what they “should” write or what was considered marketable, are now pushing past these boundaries—and that is exciting. It is also fraught with pitfalls, as some have learned to their great sorrow. However, the very thing that makes fiction so interesting—the fallibility of humans with all our messy contradictions—is precisely what we are seeing play out in real life.

This winter and spring we’ve seen the appearance of several YA titles that explicitly explore identity through angles that were previously absent or vanishingly rare. The Beauty of the Moment, by Tanaz Bhathena (Feb. 26), is a charming romance featuring teens from two distinct Indian ethnic and religious backgrounds; rather than framing the story as Indian immigrants versus white Western society, it’s centered on two young people whose identities intersect in some ways and differ in others.

The latest from Mitali Perkins, Forward Me Back to You (April 2), takes three young people— 136

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a boy adopted from India as a toddler by white Americans, a Mexican-American girl, and a brownskinned biracial girl (white mother/father of unknown ethnicity)—and sets them down in India, where they all fit in and stand out in different ways and to different degrees. It’s a sensitive and complex take on identity.

The protagonist of In the Key of Nira Ghani, by Natasha Deen (April 9), is growing up in Canada as the daughter of Guyanese immigrants, navigating her parents’ high academic expectations and the challenges of attending a nearly all-white school where her peers are ignorant of Guyana’s complex history and ethnically diverse population—and therefore struggle to understand where she comes from.

What all these books have in common is that they probe questions of belonging from perspectives that go far beyond simple binaries or “check one box” limitations and are therefore much more in line with the realities of life today. As identity becomes more complex, the notion of who belongs “here” (wherever that may be) is understood by most to be more fluid, and cultural borders grow more permeable, there will be ever more challenging, painful, uncomfortable, and frank conversations about how accurately and respectfully authors translate people’s lives into fiction. I hope that honest criticism will be tempered with kindness and respect, and I look forward to seeing even more compelling and original stories that result. —L.S. Laura Simeon is the young adult editor.

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Mattachine Society, to name a few. Throughout, the author and adapter take care to use accurate pronouns and avoid imposing contemporary terminology onto historical figures. In some cases, they quote primary sources to speculate about samesex relationships while also reminding readers of past cultural differences in expressing strong affection between friends.

Black-and-white illustrations or photos augment each chapter.

Though it lacks the teen appeal and personable, conversational style of Sarah Prager’s Queer, There, and Everywhere (2017), this textbook-level survey contains a surprising amount of depth.

However, the mention of transgender movements and activism—in particular, contemporary issues—runs on the slim side.

Whereas chapters are devoted to over 30 ethnically diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer figures, some trans pioneers such as Christine Jorgensen and Holly Woodlawn are reduced to short sidebars.

Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future. (glossary, photo credits, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 14-18)

Cameron, Sophie Roaring Brook (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-250-14993-0 Bullied by two of his female classmates, Scottish teen Brody Fair is saved by a handsome Spanish boy wearing blue fairy wings.

Nico Clark Calderón invites Brody— via an invitation written on an origami lily—to meet him on an Edinburgh hill on Thursday at 11:21 p.m. precisely. Charmed and eager to see Nico again, Brody sneaks out and enters Everland— a magical place where no one dies and the passage of time is ambiguous. At home, Brody, who is white, feels invisible to his overworked mother and agoraphobic father, caught between his gifted older brother and intense younger sister. In Everland, he is the drummer in a band and unafraid of being out as gay.

He encounters a gang of misfits escaping their realities, including bisexual Argentinian Dani; Muslim Zahra, whose mother has multiple sclerosis; talented but stressed Japanese violinist Miyumi; and Polish Kasia, whose ex-girlfriend stopped coming to Everland. Challenges at home and changes in Everland eventually force Brody to make a difficult decision. Brody is a protagonist worth caring about; his insecurities and struggles are genuine and sympathetic, as is his temptation to run away and never look back. With empathy, Cameron (Out of the Blue, 2018) creates a cast in which every character is prone to being misjudged and has depth beyond their face value. She seamlessly weaves the two worlds together, creating a story that is deeply emotional and evocative.

For the lost and misunderstood. (Magical realism. 13-18)

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Ed. by Chapman, Elsie & Richmond, Caroline Tung Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-5344-2185-1 A collection of 13 #ownvoices stories that amplify the central role food plays in families and cultures.

The web of stories in this anthology unfolds in Hungry Heart Row, a neighborhood where myriad cafes, bakeries, and restaurants abound, renowned for their great food, unsurpassed hospitality, and—in some cases—magical meals to cure every malady. In Sandhya Menon’s (There’s Something About Sweetie, 2019, etc.) “Grand Ishq Adventure,” Neha writes a blog and has no problem advising her readers what to do, but her own love life is going nowhere—until she takes some of her own advice. The heroine in “Panadería-Pastelería” by Anna-Marie McLemore (Blanca & Roja, 2018, etc.) expresses herself through the language of baking rather than words, showing her caring through carefully chosen, lovingly made baked goods. The cast of unconventional, diverse characters—who run into one another in different stories—includes a Muslim superhero, a teen of Native (nation unspecified) and white ancestry, and a Jewish girl struggling after trauma. The stories use food and restaurant settings to frame engaging narratives connecting to themes of first love, belonging and isolation, family conflict, and loyalty, spiced up with elements of the supernatural, fantasy, and magical realism.

A brilliant multicultural collection that reminds readers that stories about food are rarely just about the food alone. (map, about the authors) (Anthology. 13-adult)

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LAST BUS TO EVERLAND

HUNGRY HEARTS 13 Tales of Food & Love

WICKED FOX

Cho, Kat Putnam (432 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-984812-34-6 A gumiho, or nine-tailed fox from Korean folktales, fights for survival in contemporary Seoul, South Korea.

Gu Miyoung is not your typical teenager: She’s half gumiho and must feed on gi, the energy from living beings, every full moon. Conflicted over needing to kill to survive, she finds some moral reprieve by seeking out murderers as her prey with the help of Nara, a young shaman who sees the unsettled ghosts of the murdered. Unlike her legendary mom, Yena, who devours her prey’s livers, Miyoung humanely gives hers painless deaths, slowly draining their energy. Her family has moved whenever suspicions are raised or she accidentally shows her superhuman strength, and Miyoung has resigned herself to her nomadic life, staying emotionally detached and avoiding friendships. When kirkus.com

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With this deeper tumble into the web, more intricate the weave becomes. the missing of clairdelune

she rescues high school classmate Jihoon from a goblin, her fox bead, or soul, falls outside her body. Things get complicated when Jihoon touches it, inadvertently connecting them through dreams. Faced with failing health from the removal of her fox bead, Miyoung lets Jihoon in, entrusting him with her secret mythical heritage—and the two are engulfed in adventure. The story is reminiscent of a K-drama with sweet romantic moments, lovable friends, and impossible obstacles, although there are some plot inconsistencies. Still, this is an addicting read with complex main characters and unexpected twists.

This fantasy debut will be eagerly devoured, and readers will clamor for a sequel. (Fantasy. 12-18)

THE MISSING OF CLAIRDELUNE

Dabos, Christelle Illus. by Serle, Hildegarde Europa Editions (540 pp.) $20.95 | May 7, 2019 978-1-60945-507-1 Series: Mirror Visitor Quartet, 2 Illusions, treachery, and abductions abound as Ophelia’s perilous adventure continues.

With the true reason behind Thorn’s proposal revealed at last and the cruel extent to which the Pole’s nobility is willing to go to gain and keep power now starkly clear, Ophelia is in more danger than ever and must seek protection from the ark’s mercurial family spirit, Farouk. But every favor in the Pole comes at a cost, especially when it is a favor from an immortal with a singular obsession. Ophelia, with her talent as a reader of objects, is thrust unwillingly and precariously into the center of the court even as other prominent nobles begin to disappear under suspicious (even impossible) circumstances. When she receives anonymous threats demanding that she abandon her impending marriage and leave the Pole lest she die, Ophelia must decide whom she can possibly trust in a world whose schemes and illusions go centuries deep. The author continues her masterful architecture in this second installment as the arks, the family relationships, and the characters’ histories all gain greater depth and dimension. The “fragments” that comprise the mythology punctuating the narrative have shifted from intermittent mystery to fundamental memory underpinning the entire world history. Ophelia remains refreshingly awkward and clumsy, and, though unlabeled, she continues to offer a mirror to asexual spectrum readers. Major characters default to white.

With this deeper tumble into the web, more intricate the weave becomes. (Fantasy. 14-adult)

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THE VOICE IN MY HEAD

Davis, Dana L. Inkyard Press (384 pp.) $18.99 | May 28, 2019 978-1-335-00849-7

A dysfunctional family sets off on a road trip after God speaks directly to one of them.

Indigo Phillips is not coping well with her terminally ill sister’s plan for assisted suicide and, in her grief, tries to kill herself. The African-American teen cries out to God in despair—and hears an answer. After she wakes up in the hospital, God proceeds to urge her to persuade her family to go on a road trip from their Seattle home to the Wave rock formation in Arizona, promising that her twin, Violet, will be cured if they reach it. The road trip includes Michelle, their controlling, know-it-all big sister; her husband, Drew, a Colville Indian man; their two spirited children; the twins’ brother; their parents; and the family’s white pastor from their nondenominational New Age church. The course of the road trip reveals a host of underlying issues the family members have yet to make peace with. Violet and Indigo’s parents’ behavior can come across as avoidant, as their continual joking deflects engagement with some of the serious topics raised, including Indigo’s suicidality. Davis (Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now, 2018) takes readers on an emotional, heartbreaking journey that may feel predictable at times but addresses strong themes that will resonate with many readers.

Family connection, religious exploration, and death with dignity form the beating heart of this moving novel.

(Fiction. 14-adult)

STRONGER THAN A BRONZE DRAGON

Fan, Mary Page Street (384 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-162414-733-3

Destiny. Vengeance. Glory.

Anlei has spent much of her young life fighting the shadow spirits plaguing her village and imagining herself as the Warrioress of legend. When Viceroy Kang visits, he makes the villagers an offer: In exchange for the protection of his bronze dragon army, he will take one girl to be his latest wife—but he also wants their enchanted River Pearl. The bride he selects is Anlei. Though her thirst for vengeance and hunger for adventure and personal glory have not been sated, she resigns herself to this exchange for the sake of her people. Before the ceremony, however, the pearl is stolen by the Masked Giver, a young man on his own quest to save his people from the Courts of Hell and Mowang, the demon king.

Of course, Anlei joins him. A Chinese-inspired fantasy, mixing |

magic and science, cyborgs and magical swords, this story tries to incorporate many topics (some more successfully than others), including a commentary on womanhood and sacrifice for the community, destiny vs. self-determination, Chinese legends, and politics. The main character, who is prone to histrionics and makes a distracting number of oaths to the Gods of Heaven and Earth for vengeance and violence, seems to have dyslexia.

Though full of action sequences and dramatic reveals, unfortunately the journey of self-discovery is lacking.

Ultimately, this is more flash and over-the-top drama than substance. (Fantasy. 14-17)

SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS

Foley, Jessie Ann HarperTeen (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-06-257191-5

A coming-of-age novel about loss, grieving, and family.

Sixteen-year-old Pup Flanagan is struggling. He is not doing well at school, he has an (unrequited) crush on his best friend, Izzy, and above all, he is still grieving the loss of his brother Patrick, who died suddenly at age 20 of bacterial meningitis. As the youngest of eight siblings and one of 27 loud family members who unfailingly gather for Sunday dinners, Pup knows his whole family is also hurting, but no one talks about it. Not even his brother Luke, who is drinking far too much (and far too often), or his lesbian sister Annemarie, his favorite. Things start to change when his art teacher takes an interest in him, suggesting that Pup take up photography.

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Through photography he befriends Abrihet, an immigrant girl from Eritrea whose family is as close-knit and warm as Pup’s.

While the story primarily focuses on Pup as he learns how to express himself through art and companionship, Printz Honor winner Foley (Neighborhood Girls, 2017, etc.) deftly paints a portrait exploring the different ways that grief and loss affect the members of a loving yet broken Chicagoan family who are finding their ways back to each other with the help of their youngest, most underrated member. Pup and his family are white.

An introspective novel about the healing power of art with light touches of tears, laughter, and romance. (Fiction.

14-18)

I WANNA BE WHERE YOU ARE

Forest, Kristina Roaring Brook (272 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-250-29488-3

Seventeen-year-old Chloe goes on a road trip to audition for a dance conservatory.

With her mom away on a cruise, good girl Chloe Pierce resolves to attend auditions in Washington, D.C., for her dream school, a prestigious ballet conservatory, even though her widowed mom said no, wanting her to remain closer to home. Just as she leaves New Jersey, handsome-but-loathed neighbor Eli Greene fake blackmails her into taking him—and his dog—along and giving them a ride to the train station in D.C., therefore shortening his trip to see his father in North Carolina. Chloe unhappily complies, her anger toward him eventually explained by an incident from their shared past. The plot meanders along, and so do the pair of black teens (and the dog), eventually reaching the auditions and talking openly about their unresolved history. Chloe’s former crush on Eli is resurrected, but thankfully only after he’s properly apologized for his misdeeds. The ending feels a bit pat, as does Chloe’s assumption that Eli’s insistence that everything happens for a reason is indeed the truth. This is a slow, quiet book best suited to contemplative readers who can forgive the uneven pacing and minimal character development.

A decent debut from a promising new writer—readers will hope for a stronger sophomore offering. (Fiction. 12-18)

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ALL EYES ON US

Frick, Kit McElderry (384 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-5344-0440-3

Two teens from opposite sides of the tracks have their worlds rocked by a threatening stalker.

Frick (See All the Stars, 2018, etc.) returns with an intricate, page-ripping psychological thriller involving dual—at times dueling—white protagonist narrators. Seventeen-yearold Amanda Kelly and Rosalie Bell are classic foils. Upper-class, pretty, straight Amanda is used to being the center of attention, a queen bee and steady girlfriend of Carter Shaw—the blond, athletic senior class president who is heir to his father’s real estate empire. By contrast, Rosalie hails from a working-class suburb of Amanda and Carter’s posh West Virginia town. She sports a casual style and prefers to keep a low profile ever since her fundamentalist Christian family subjected her to conversion therapy to try to “cure” her lesbian orientation. Frick initially brings the lives of her intriguing first-person narrators together through Carter, who is cheating on Amanda by seeing Rosalie.

She is using Carter as a beard to mask her intimate relationship with her girlfriend from her parents. Later, Amanda and Rosalie find their fates intertwining when an anonymous texter threatens physical harm and exposure of their darkest secrets.

Though largely plot-driven, Frick’s narrative challenges all sorts of social and class conventions, encouraging teens to examine critical assumptions about haves and have-nots and the sacrifices one might be asked to make on the road to self-acceptance.

A captivating page-turner enriched by probing social commentary. (Thriller. 15-adult)

SWAN DIVE

Hasiuk, Brenda Groundwood (192 pp.) $17.95 | May 7, 2019 978-1-77306-146-7 A Bosnian teen whose family fled Sarajevo for Winnipeg in the late 1990s struggles at home and at school.

Told in journal entries that his therapist suggests he write, 15-year-old Cris relates his history and the experience he and his parents and three sisters have in their new home. This format works exceptionally well for the story, allowing Cris to offer a narrative that is matter-of-fact, bitingly funny, and intensely reflective of his internal state. He deals with the experience of otherness and the constriction of gender norms and writes plenty about his withdrawn but loving Muslim father; caring but almost comically critical Serbian Orthodox mother; and the distinctive personalities of his sisters. But mostly he focuses on his closest friend, Elle, an outspoken white girl who |

Gripping, heartfelt, and layered. call it what you want

befriends him when they are in grade five. At first Cris accepts her friendship perfunctorily, but it eventually becomes central in his life even as she begins to change and seemingly grow away from him, a story arc linked to her weight loss. With few physical descriptions, whiteness is assumed throughout although a multiracial secondary character is called out for her appearance.

A short exposition at the end by one of Cris’ sisters gives a pithy overview of the political and religious history of Sarajevo.

A brief, poignant novel that winds up a bit abruptly, this is a heartfelt exploration of one boy’s experience as a refugee. (Fiction. 13-18)

TECHNICALLY, YOU STARTED IT

Johnson, Lana Wood Scholastic (384 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-338-33546-0

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Aiko spends the summer in rural Japan with her biological father in this sequel to Gadget Girl (2013).

Aiko Cassidy feels like she doesn’t fit in with the perfect family her mother has created with her Latinx stepfather and their new baby. Aiko is biracial (her mother is white) and has cerebral palsy. Hoping for a sense of belonging and some inspiration for her manga, Gadget Girl, she accepts her biological father’s invitation to spend the summer with his family on their indigo farm in Japan. Aiko attends school with her half brother, goes on tours with her father and his wife, and tries to please her disapproving Obaachan. As long-buried family secrets emerge, Aiko’s view of her entire family changes. Kamata has created another engaging comingof-age story about finding one’s place in the world. The inclusion of the Japanese language and cultural details adds richness to Aiko’s journey of self-discovery. Past disasters that have deeply affected Japan—atomic bombs, earthquakes, and tsunamis—are in turn shown to influence Aiko’s view of the world.

So much happens in the book that some elements are not fully developed, and readers may be left wanting more resolution.

However, overall the storylines weave together beautifully.

A lovely sequel that focuses on finding strength in one’s self and maintaining hope when all seems lost. (Fiction. 12-17)

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Haley Hancock has been texting Martin Nathaniel Munroe II on the daily…but which Martin is it?

Born just a few days apart, both Martin N. Munroe IIs are named after their famously wealthy grandfather. Haley is confident she knows which Martin is the good one because the other one broke her friend’s heart in the eighth grade. One of the Martins begins texting her outside of the history class all three share, and over time, both are surprised to find their banter enjoyable and comforting. But, believing her negative opinions of one cousin will hinder their friendship, Haley decides to stop messaging him.

In response, Martin proposes a solution: start over with a clean slate as if they were strangers who met on the internet. By connecting only via cellphone, Haley and Martin find it easy to be honest and vulnerable about all aspects of their lives, including family and friends. The two open up to each other about questions of sexual orientation, and Haley also confides in Martin about her generalized anxiety disorder. Told entirely in chat conversations, the potentially perplexing narrative will be understood by readers who are accustomed to communicating online and reading deeply into text messages. The format does not make space for physical descriptions, and most characters are assumed white.

Johnson’s clever debut speaks to Generation Z’s cyberculture by validating online friendships. (Fiction. 12-18)

INDIGO GIRL

Kamata, Suzanne Gemma (256 pp.) $14.95 paper | May 15, 2019 978-1-936846-73-3

CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT

Kemmerer, Brigid Bloomsbury (384 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-68119-809-5

Two ostracized teens forge a relationship in this dual narrative that delves deeply into family dynamics.

Rob’s a former golden boy whose father sustained a profound brain injury when he almost died by suicide after he was turned in for illegal activity with his investors’ money. Rob is wracked by guilt that his father’s clients, many of whom are his peers’ families, lost everything. Maegan is the dutiful and caring daughter of a police officer who struggles in the shadow of her lacrosse-star older sister, who is home from college unexpectedly pregnant. Maegan is still living down having cheated on the SAT a year earlier, causing the scores of everyone in the room to be invalidated. When the two are thrown together for a school assignment, they slowly become confidants and chip away at one another’s defenses—and their burgeoning attraction causes fallout of its own. A lot is tackled in this romantic realistic fiction novel with forays into thriller territory toward kirkus.com

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Jenn Bennett

SERIOUS MOONLIGHT IS AN ATMOSPHERIC, SEX-POSITIVE ROMANCE FROM THE TALENTED WRITER

By Alex Heimbach Photo courtesy Heidi Darbo

Jenn Bennett grew up surrounded by mysteries. Her mom is a huge fan of detective stories and would update Bennett on what happened as she read. “I felt like I was kind of living these mysteries with her,” she says.

Bennett’s new novel, Serious Moonlight (April 16), is something of a tribute to her mother’s obsession.

Mystery-loving Birdie has just finished high school and gotten her first job, working the night shift at a hotel’s reception desk. There she runs into Daniel, with whom she had a brief and awkward fling and planned to never see again. Instead, he enlists her to help him solve a real-life mystery.

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and Daniel work, but it serves mostly as a way for the two teens to grow closer. “I love the forced proximity of a couple having to work together to solve something,” Bennett says. From Moonlighting to Castle, the trope of crime-solving partners who fall in love is a classic for a reason.

Though Bennett embraces the romance genre and the conventions that come with it, she also wants to put a modern, feminist spin on them. “I love writing where the female character has agency and desires and wants and needs, and that’s shown on the page, and it’s a good thing,” she says. “It’s not dirty; it’s not unclean; it’s something that we all experience.” Birdie and Daniel have sex before they even exchange names, but that never defines them or their relationship—it’s just a choice that they each made (for what turn out to be extremely relatable reasons).

Her protagonists reflect identities not often seen in YA literature in other ways as well. For one, Daniel is half-Japanese and half-white and deaf in one ear. Birdie is dealing with a chronic health issue: undiagnosed narcolepsy. Finally, neither character is interested in the typical fictional teen trajectory of high school to college to a pre-decided career. Daniel is considering trade school to become a carpenter while Birdie is just trying to find her way in the world after spending her adolescence homeschooled and isolated.

Inclusiveness is important to Bennett because she sees diversity as vital to American society.

“There’s a Muslim girl who lives next door to me; |

Alex Heimbach is a writer and editor in California. Serious Moonlight received a starred review in the Feb. 15, 2019, issue.

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its end, but the story is well-grounded with funny dialogue and complex characters who grow believably as they wrestle with questions about ethical responsibility and grief and begin to trust one another. Rob and Maegan are white, there is some ethnic diversity in secondary characters (and a brief discussion about racism and white privilege that emerges naturally) as well as two secondary characters who are gay.

Gripping, heartfelt, and layered. (Fiction. 14-18)

TEETH IN THE MIST

Kurtagich, Dawn Little, Brown (352 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-316-47847-2

Multiple generations seek truth and find horror in this Faust-inspired gothic tale.

On a remote mountain in North Wales, two main storylines follow Zoey in the present day and Roan in 1851.

After Roan’s father dies, she discovers that his very recent will grants custody of her to a Dr. Maudley, and she’s packed away to live with him in Mill House. Upon arrival, she learns she’s not Dr. Maudley’s only ward. She meets fiery Emma and Seamus, who uses a wheelchair—Irish siblings—and starts to unpack the lies covering up the house’s secrets and her own. In the contemporary storyline, Zoey’s drawn to the long-abandoned Mill House—her father, researching his family, made a pilgrimage there only to return, sans memory, as a shell of himself. Zoey, who shares strange gifts with her father, hopes she can find answers for him. But strange experiences she has leave her feeling like she isn’t alone; she only starts finding answers after it’s too late. The complicated stories are organized through design and format choices that also enhance narrative tension and skillfully manipulate the pacing. Even the romances, straight and lesbian, have creepy elements. Delightfully disturbing imagery culminates in a quick finale. Most characters default to white—there’s brief mention of Zoey having an aunt Sanjeet and, in diary entries from the 1580s, mention of a woman of African descent.

An eerie, atmospheric, satanic, spooky story. (Horror.

14-adult)

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there’s a Latino family across the street; there’s someone disabled down the block,” she says. “It’s my world, I see it every day, and I wanted to represent that as best I could.”

That commitment to reflecting the lives of those around her also meant tackling issues of mental health and suicide, which she had watched friends struggle with. But Bennett didn’t want to sensationalize suicide or suggest that depression was life-ending. “I wanted to show someone surviving and dealing with it and that it’s a struggle, but it’s worth it,” she says. The character coping with the aftermath of a suicide attempt is open but matter-of-fact about their struggles: They talk about going to therapy, taking antidepressants, and finding healthy coping mechanisms. It’s realistic but hopeful.

Bennett acknowledges that a lot of people look down on romance, but she feels that snobbishness ignores the joy to be found in stories about falling in love. “It’s considered throwaway or fluffy—I see that description a lot and it used to bother me, but I’ve kind of embraced it now,” she says. “Yes, it’s fluffy. It makes you feel good.”

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BETTER THAN THE BEST PLAN

Morrill, Lauren Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-374-30619-9

Seventeen-year-old Maritza—Ritzy— is used to her flaky mom’s ever changing pseudo-spiritual obsessions, but things take an unexpected twist when she embarks on a voyage to Mexico, leaving Ritzy behind.

To her mom, this is encouraging her daughter to find her own path. To the state of Florida, this is child abandonment.

Ritzy, who is white, finds herself removed from her apartment and placed in the system, fortuitously landing with a loving foster mom in an affluent island community. Ritzy navigates the shift in her identity that comes with this move from strip malls and concrete to country clubs and beach bonfires. Her African-American best friend and Indian-American crush feel a world away in this community that seems to be homogeneously white, as indicated by the sudden lack of racial descriptors. She also grapples with a family secret revealed by her entree into foster care. Ritzy starts to settle when sparks fly between her and Spencer, the privileged yet troubled boy next door. When her mom returns, Ritzy faces a tough choice between the life she has and the life that’s possible. Family drama, romance, and Ritzy’s scrappy charm provide enough intrigue to keep readers turning the pages, though no new territory is explored in any depth. Its portrayal of life in the American foster care system bears little resemblance to reality.

An escapist fantasy of upgraded family and financial circumstances. (Fiction. 14-18)

WHEN THE GROUND IS HARD

Nunn, Malla Putnam (272 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-525-51557-9

A 16-year-old girl finds friendship and questions social hierarchies at her boarding school.

After Adele Joubert is demoted from her favored place among the popular girls and sent to live in a room where a former student died, she begins to question the carefully structured hierarchy of her community. Within Keziah Christian Academy, a school for mixed-race students in 1965 Swaziland, a class system separates the rich from the poor, dictating who eats first at meals and who gets access to the best textbooks. Hair texturism, colorism, and the legitimacy of their parents’ relationships also create divisions that Adele, who is of black and white ancestry, challenges with her budding friendship with her new roommate, Lottie Diamond, a poor outcast of Jewish, Scottish, and Zulu heritage. When classmate Darnell Parns, who is coded 144

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as neurodivergent, goes missing, Adele pushes boundaries aside to search for him and, in the process, learns more about her own complicated origins in the sweeping hills where Keziah is situated. With a critical emphasis on power dynamics among the multiracial students, the story moves quickly, focusing on Adele’s interpersonal development. The gorgeous imagery sets the scene wonderfully, and there is mention of the religious and geographical colonization represented in the book, the hazy morals of the adults, and the relationships between black, white, and mixed-race citizens of Swaziland, but the narrative doesn’t dig too deeply into these subjects.

An engrossing narrative that gently but directly explores complex relationships. (Historical fiction. 14-adult)

CASTLE OF CONCRETE

Raina, Katia Young Europe Books (304 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-9995416-3-0 Love triangles tend to make people angry.

This novel—a coming-of-age story set in the Soviet Union in the early days of perestroika—may make readers upset for other reasons. Sonya is a 15-year-old Jewish girl, and the guy she’s dating might genuinely be one of the worst people on Earth. Ruslan is violent and bigoted, and he tends to patronize Sonya. He says things like, “it’s time you learned life a little…you little hedgehog in a fog.” Readers may wonder if Sonya is entering into an abusive relationship, especially when Ruslan tries to beat up his romantic rivals, like her other love interest, a perpetually tan Jewish boy named Misha Aizerman. The novel might have provided valuable insight into survivors of abuse if Ruslan were the least bit appealing, but the attraction seems to be mostly chemical. His eyes are apparently enchanting, because Sonya describes them every few chapters. Debut author Raina’s prose is often repetitive and clumsy, though from time to time it’s possible to glimpse the novel she meant to write, a moving story not only about love, but about political freedom and religious identity.

Unfortunately, even Team Edward may find Ruslan difficult to defend. (Historical fiction. 12-16)

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A refreshingly emotional depiction of a young man with an earnest desire for the truth. patron saints of nothing

PATRON SAINTS OF NOTHING

Ribay, Randy Kokila (352 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-525-55491-2

TELL ME HOW YOU REALLY FEEL

Safi, Aminah Mae Feiwel & Friends (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-250-29948-2 Rachel Recht and Sana Khan are either mortal enemies or star-crossed lovers.

Jewish-Mexican Rachel has hated South Asian–Persian Muslim Sana ever since Sana asked her out during their freshman year at their exclusive private school as a prank. At least, Rachel assumed it was a prank—why else would a perfect cheerleader like Sana want to date a scholarship student like her, even if Rachel is a brilliant filmmaker? So when Rachel’s film teacher forces her to cast Sana in her final film class project—a project that will determine whether she gets a scholarship to her dream college, NYU—Rachel is sure that the whole thing will be a disaster.

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THE VIRTUE OF SIN

Schuren, Shannon Philomel (432 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-525-51654-5

Teens living in a desert cult botch a marriage ceremony, with drastic results.

Miriam, at 16 one of the oldest of the Second Generation of New Jerusalem, expects Caleb to choose her as his wife.

Though boys and girls are kept separated, Miriam has kept her eye on Caleb, and he leaves her symbols drawn in the sand. But the boys choose wives out of order, and when Aaron’s planned wife gets chosen by Jacob, Aaron picks Miriam, and Caleb is left unwed. Devastated, Caleb attempts to reason with the cult’s leader, Daniel, only to be shamed and rebuffed. Miriam can’t fathom being intimate with Aaron, who, along with his parents, is the only convert to join New Jerusalem in Miriam’s memory, but he doesn’t seem to mind and eventually reveals a deep secret. Despite knowing little about life outside the compound, Miriam is intrigued, not horrified, when Aaron begins to speak against Daniel. Debut author Schuren’s choice to alternate the point of view between Miriam and Caleb gives her more control over the plotline but weakens the book, as the two sound virtually indistinguishable. Caleb’s storyline is also less compelling and its ending, unsatisfying. At no point is it clear how the cult manages to survive with limited resources in a hostile environment. Race is unclear for most characters, although Aaron is implied half-Japanese through his mother’s surname.

Not a bad first effort, but there are better choices. (Fic­ tion. 14-18)

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Seventeen-year-old Jay Reguero searches for the truth about his cousin’s death amid President’s Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs while on an epic trip back to his native Philippines.

Shocked out of his senioritis slumber when his beloved cousin Jun is killed by the police in the Philippines for presumably using drugs, Jay makes a radical move to spend his spring break in the Philippines to find out the whole story. Once pen pals, Jay hasn’t corresponded with Jun in years and is wracked by guilt at ghosting his cousin. A mixed heritage (his mother is white) Filipino immigrant who grew up in suburban Michigan, Jay’s connection to current-day Philippines has dulled from assimilation. His internal tensions around culture, identity, and languages—as “a spoiled American”—are realistic. Told through a mix of first-person narration, Jun’s letters to Jay, and believable dialogue among a strong, full cast of characters, the result is a deeply emotional story about family ties, addiction, and the complexity of truth. The tender relationship between Jay and Jun is especially notable—as is the underlying commentary about the challenges and nuances between young men and their uncles, fathers, male friends, and male cousins.

Part coming-of-age story and part exposé of Duterte’s problematic policies, this powerful and courageous story offers readers a refreshingly emotional depiction of a young man of color with an earnest desire for the truth. (author’s note, recommended reading) (Fiction. 14-18)

her own demons—including her family’s unreasonable expectations and her own doubts about her future. Before long, sparks start to fly, and Rachel and Sana discover parts of each other that they cannot help but love. Safi (Not the Girls You’re Looking For, 2018) expertly weaves a fast-paced will-they-or-won’t-they story of two American girls trying to decide who they are and what they want. While Sana and Rachel’s sexual orientation is an important part of the story, it is just one part, allowing Safi to create layered, nuanced characters who keep readers enthralled.

A queer romance that will sweep readers away. (Romance.

13-18)

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Essential. this time will be different

CURSED

Silverstein, Karol Ruth Charlesbridge (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-1-58089-940-6 A teen fights to put her life back together after developing a painful chronic illness and secretly skipping school for six weeks.

Ricky lives in Philadelphia in her father’s one-room “Batch Pad,” sleeping on a lumpy “Sofa-Bed-From-Hell.” Her parents unilaterally decided she’d live there because Mom’s house, in another neighborhood, has three stories—and Ricky, as of four months ago, has juvenile arthritis. She has chronic pain—“dull and sharp,” often excruciating, her joints on fire. Her feet feel like she is walking on broken glass. So she bailed on school—the bullying didn’t help either—and, instead, waits each morning for Dad to leave, then crawls into his (non-sofa-)bed, desperate for sleep. Naturally, she’s caught. This justifiably furious kid who says “Fucking asshole!” to a teacher’s face launches “Operation Catch-Up-So-I-Can-Get-The-Hell-Out-Of-This-Crap-AssSchool”—in other words, somehow pass ninth grade. Ricky’s sharp, flowing, uninhibited voice makes this a page-turner.

Her life improves: accessibility accommodations, a proper bed, agency (sometimes!), a new doctor, more treatment options.

The ending’s a bit glossy, but Ricky’s pain and future aren’t romanticized. Ricky’s white and Jewish, and her family is middle-class; characters default to white, and brown skin and curly hair are sometimes exoticized.

Protagonists with chronic nonmalignant pain and illness are far too rare; this does the job. (Fiction. 12-16)

THE PATH KEEPER

Simmonds, N.J. BHC Press (416 pp.) $26.95 | May 28, 2019 978-1-947727-80-9 Series: Indigo Chronicles, 1 Debut novelist Simmonds blends romance with fantasy in the first book in The Indigo Chronicles.

Nineteen-year-old half-Spanish, halfEnglish Ella, who swears loudly and frequently, has recently moved from Spain to London following her mother’s marriage to a wealthy hotel owner. She hasn’t made any friends in London, and her mother mostly leaves Ella to herself as she becomes immersed in her new husband’s life. After a few seemingly accidental encounters with blue-eyed hot guy Zac where he comes to her rescue—helping to carry her books after they fall out of her bags, coming to her aid in an exclusive nightclub when she’s injured by a broken champagne glass—Ella falls for him. Zac, however, has long ago fallen for her. This is where the novel begins to feel contrived: It turns out Zac is harboring 146

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a life-changing secret, and when he reveals too much to Ella, they must run for their lives. Despite touching on some weighty topics, the novel remains firmly in romantic fantasy territory.

While it may appeal to those who like their romance laced with a bit of grit, the writing lacks finesse, with pedestrian dialogue and characters whose feelings are spelled out in repetitive detail.

The worldbuilding fails to be immersive, making it difficult for readers to suspend disbelief.

An interesting premise but the execution lets it down.

(Fantasy. 14-18)

THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT

Sugiura, Misa HarperTeen (400 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-06-247344-8 Sugiura’s (It’s Not like It’s a Secret, 2017, etc.) sophomore novel deftly questions accountability for past injustices.

Seventeen-year-old Japanese-American CJ Katsuyama lives with her single mother and free-spirited aunt in present-day Silicon Valley.

Though pushed by her mother to aspire to greatness, CJ feels she only excels at arranging flowers at the family flower shop. CJ is intimately familiar with the history of the store, sold for a pittance to Robert McAllister, a white man, while her family was was interned during World War II, purchased back at the market rate after 30 years, and now floundering while the McAllisters have prospered (CJ’s high school is even named after them).

A discovery about the McAllister patriarch leads CJ and other student activists to embark on a campaign that creates tension within their community and further complicates CJ’s relationship with her mother, a partner at McAllister Venture Capital.

Sugiura tackles an abundance of topics with finesse, including social and economic injustice, allyship, and feminism, simultaneously breaking down the Asian-American immigration narrative and the myth of the model minority. CJ lacks confidence and is flawed but grows, along with other characters, into selfrealization in part through addressing prejudices. A majority of the cast members are people of color, and many characters are biracial; several are queer. Two nations who first lived in the area, the Miwok and Ohlone, are named in the text.

Essential. (Fiction. 14-18)

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WHEN RAVENS SCREAMED OVER BLOOD

Vaughan, William Y Lolfa/Dufour (111 pp.) $9.00 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-78461-605-2

THE HAUNTED

Vega, Danielle Razorbill/Penguin (304 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-451-48146-7 Further misfortune befalls a girl who can’t escape her ghosts.

Being the new girl in Drearford, New York, means heaps of unwanted attention for Hendricks Becker-O’Malley, who’d much rather begin anew with a clean slate. Her traumatic past was the main reason behind her family’s relocation to the small town, with its dreary gray skies and sinister secrets. However, her new home—Drearford’s derelict Steele House—offers no comfort. The disturbances start small: the usual moans and groans of an old house, a creepy doll singing of its own accord, devious laughter from another room. At first, Hendricks’ past shrouds her in self-doubt fueled by shame.

But then she meets Eddie Ruiz, a damaged boy who lost an older brother and younger sister to Steele House’s cursed, evil spirits. Together the pair plan to vanquish the ghosts, attempting a misguided cleansing ritual in the process. As Hendricks |

THE GRIEF KEEPER

Villasante, Alexandra Putnam (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-525-51402-2

A Salvadoran teen joins a grief transference experiment in exchange for asylum for herself and her family.

Fearing their asylum request will be denied and they’ll be deported back to a life threatened by gang violence, 17-yearold Marisol Morales escapes with her 12-year-old sister, Gabi, from an immigration detention center. The sisters attempt to trek to New York in search of Mrs. Rosen, an American woman their mother used to work for back in El Salvador. When discovered by Indranie Patel, an Indian immigrant working for the government, Marisol agrees to join a trial that will guarantee her and her family approval for their asylum applications. The catch? She must become a “grief keeper” for people with PTSD. Her first task is to convince Rey, the white girl for whom she’s supposed to be a grief keeper (and who offers her a second chance at love), to wear the grief-transmitting cuff. Flashbacks provide snippets of the sisters’ lives in El Salvador and the anti– LGBTQ environment they escaped and slowly chip away at the true reason for their flight. In her debut, Villasante captures the pressures of internalized racism in immigrants, for example, as Marisol worries people believe her to be stupid because she doesn’t have perfect command of English. However, shifting the focus from loss and the complexities of immigration to the romantic relationship risks implying that relationships can remove grief.

Will grip readers and provoke empathy. (Science fiction.

14-18)

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Star-crossed gay lovers meet in ancient Wales.

Vaughan (Blood Month, 2013, etc.) reworks legends from the early Welsh tales of the Mabinogion and Irish mythology into a powerful novella. In recompense for killing a deer being hunted by Anguish, High King of Achren, kindhearted Rhydian, Prince of Dyfed, agrees to exchange bodies with the surly monarch. Having slept chastely with Anguish’s royal consort for a year, Rhydian returns to his sister, Rhiannon, who suggests he visit the holy Mound of Modron to find a wife. There, under mystic circumstances, he meets Daire, an Irish prince exiled for kissing a boy. Though the lads are forced to flee, disguised as servants, after Rhydian kills an infuriated retainer who catches them snogging in a river, they find joy in each other’s arms—for a while. Battling a giant in the course of all this, and later rescuing Rhiannon from an imperious suitor, Rhydian is cast throughout not only as a hero, but the bearer of a spiritual “Force for Good” that tames the violence and arrogance in others. Unfortunately, the Romans, marching in at the end, turn out to be immune. The cast is all white except for one “Nubian” soldier. The rich language, evocative of folklore, will appeal to readers who enjoy Celtic mythology and storytelling such as Daniel Morden’s Dark Tales from the Woods (2006).

As raw as its title. (author’s note) (Fantasy. 14-adult)

and Eddie develop a close bond, Steele House launches its final onslaught. Vega’s (The Merciless IV: Last Rites, 2018, etc.) take on the haunted house subgenre features an eclectic, well-fitted mix of supernatural spookiness and gore. Overall, the novel doesn’t rise above its creaky cliché-riddled plot, but the author excels at portraying the aftermath of a toxic, abusive relationship from Hendricks’ perspective. Though Hendricks is assumed white, the supporting cast offers some diversity.

A gently horrid reminder that some ghosts can be very real. (Horror. 14-18)

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WHEN WE WERE LOST

Wignall, Kevin Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-316-41779-2 A group of students survive a catastrophic plane crash only to be stranded deep in the Amazon.

Seventeen-year-old Tom Calloway, who is not much of a joiner, is on his way to Costa Rica for a two-week field trip at his guardian’s insistence. To their horror, after violent turbulence turns out to be the plane shearing in half as it crashes, only Tom and 18 other students survive out of all the passengers. Now comes the hard part: Having flown for several extra hours on a different course in what seems to be an intentional pilot deviation from the route, the teens are now isolated in the sweltering jungle with little hope of rescue. To survive the heat and predators, the group will have to rely on their skills and each other—easier said than done when insecurities and stubbornness become lethal. Wignall (Blood, 2018, etc.) doesn’t quite deliver on a promising concept here. The tried-and-true tropes of survival narratives along with empowering teen expertise are featured well; questions and consequences of leadership vs. collaboration play out effectively if a little ham-handedly. Things fall apart with the clumsier contrivances, like the recycling of Final Destination plot points, the utter lack of development around the characters’ experience of trauma that crashes just about any suspension of disbelief, and some action-over-quality scenes. South American drug runners and a single black student are the extent of diversity among the cast.

Marginal. (Adventure. 14-18)

WINTER WAR AWAKENING

Eves, Rosalyn Knopf Books for Young Readers (432 pp.) $18.99 | Mar. 19, 2019 978-1-101-93611-5 Series: Blood Rose Rebellion, 3 (Fantasy. 12-18)

THE QUEEN’S RESISTANCE

Ross, Rebecca HarperTeen (480 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 5, 2019 978-0-06-247138-3 Series: The Queen’s Rising, 2 (Fantasy. 14-18)

THE ODD SISTERS

Valentino, Serena Disney (288 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2019 978-1-368-01318-5 Series: Villains, 6 (Fantasy. 12-18)

continuing series A QUESTION OF HOLMES

Cavallaro, Brittany Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 1, 2019 978-0-06-284022-6 Series: Charlotte Holmes, 4 (Mystery. 13-18)

DEATHCASTER

Chima, Cinda Williams HarperTeen (656 pp.) $18.99 | Mar. 5, 2019 978-0-06-238103-3 Series: Shattered Realms, 4 (Fantasy. 13-18)

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indie MAYAN STAR

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Allan, Howard Self (365 pp.) $12.95 paper | $4.99 e-book May 27, 2018 978-0-692-13196-1

THE RED RIBBON by Nancy Freund Bills........................................ 151 KID CONFIDENCE by Eileen Kennedy-Moore..................................159 POLLEN by Darcy Pattison; illus. by Peter Willis.............................165

Pattison, Darcy Illus. by Willis, Peter Mims House (34 pp.) $23.99 | $13.21 paper | May 7, 2019 978-1-62944-119-1 978-1-62944-120-7 paper

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POLLEN Darwin’s 130 Year Prediction

A debut religious thriller follows the consequences of the unearthing of an ancient Mayan codex.

Father Colvin McNeery is an archaeologist and infamously unconventional priest. He’s made a name for himself presenting a heterodox interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew that suggests its author was not a contemporary of Jesus— McNeery claims the star of Bethlehem is Halley’s comet, indicative of a new dating. In search of some astronomical confirmation of his theory, he leads an archaeological dig near Valladolid, Yucatán, in hopes of finding a Mayan record. Mayans were obsessed with the scrutiny and analysis of the stars. His teenage assistant, Humberto Perez, finds a Mayan codex at least 1,500 years old that contains historically transformative information. But shortly after, McNeery is found dead—and the codex is missing—which makes Humberto the prime suspect.

Allan slowly unravels a deliciously entangled skein that proposes a shocking possibility—the codex implies that one of two articles of prevailing wisdom is incorrect: the historic discovery of America by Columbus or the timeline regarding the birth of Christianity. Dr. Isabel Reyes, who performs an autopsy on McNeery, strongly suspects he was murdered. She joins forces with Simon Press, a former rabbi and a friend of the priest’s, intent on finding out what McNeery discovered. To make matters even more perilous (and complicated), Miguel Felicio Catalán, also known as El Gato, and León Cortés, descendant of the famous conquistador, two powerful drug lords, have their own interest in the codex. The author constructs a plot not only tantalizingly suspenseful, but also religiously provocative, raising thoughtful questions about the claims of foundational Scriptures in authoritative dogma. In one way or another, all three of the main characters—McNeery, Press, and Reyes—must confront the distance between rational findings and spiritual beliefs. In addition, Allan artfully traces the historical lineage of the suppression of truth—that Mayan codex was brutally concealed in 1562 by a Franciscan monk. This is a wonderful brew of genres—murder mystery and irreverent religious thriller—that is sure to titillate readers in search of both literary action and philosophical stimulation.

A captivating and intelligent theological tale deftly composed.

the beat goes in (your pocket) If you need a poem for your pocket this April, Indieland editors present these starred poetry collections that celebrate: the enduring, flexible haiku; The Tempest reimagined and illustrated for kids; a beachcomber’s account of a sojourn; and the Buckeye State.

The Wonder Code: Discover the Way of Haiku and See the World with New Eyes, edited by Scott Mason: Mason’s 500poem anthology shows the “versatility of moods and subject matter haiku can address and the vividness of its stripped-down but potent imagery,” says our reviewer. “There are many landscapes and nature scenes (‘winter hills / with each boot crunch / the scent of sage’ by Jo Balistreri) as well as lyrically grungy urban tableaux (‘dumpster / the iridescence / of starlings’ by Bill Kenney).”

The Wild Waves Whist by Erin Nelsen Parekh, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini: “In their second Shakespearean board book, Parekh and Amini adapt Ariel’s songs from The Tempest for a tale of two children discovering the wonders of an island world….For the very young lap readers intended as this reinvented story’s audience, the sounds of the words will be more important than their meanings (‘Courtsied when you have and kiss’d / the wild waves whist’). Amini’s textured, mixed-media illustrations create a gorgeous paradise.”

The Sandpiper’s Spell by Tom Pearson: “ ‘The Sandpiper’s Spell’ is a sixpart poem and epilogue that in its simplest interpretation is a walk along a beach to a forest....Both vastly panoramic and deeply introspective, Pearson’s writing explores both the wonders of nature and the shifting landscape of the human mind.”

An Everyday Thing by Nancy Richardson: “The geographic inspiration for Richardson’s masterful book is the industrial heartland of Ohio….Here, the powerful beauty of a sunset mirrors the infernal glow of the steelworkers’ toil.” —K.S. Karen Schechner is the vice president of Kirkus Indie.

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C IS FOR CHICKASAW

Barnes, Wiley Illus. by Long, Aaron K. White Dog Press (40 pp.) $19.95 | $14.95 paper | Oct. 2, 2014 978-1-935684-19-0 978-1-935684-45-9 paper This debut picture book links the alphabet to words from Chickasaw culture, history, and language.

Abecedarian works for children are thick on the ground, but they almost always stick to English vocabulary and mainstream culture concepts. This is a rare volume that connects the ABCs to Native Americans, focusing on the Chickasaw. Each entry includes a usually English word with its Chickasaw translation, a rhyming couplet, an illustration, and a short paragraph with more specifics. For example, under Y is “yarn” (or “nantanna’ toba’ ”): “Lovely belt made by a Chickasaw hand / Finger weaving each individual strand.” The image shows a woman weaving on a wooden frame; the text explains: “Finger-weaving is the art of weaving items without a loom. Chickasaws use finger-weaving to make straps, garters, belts, and sashes. Yarn is used today, but ancient Chickasaws used woven plant fibers.”

These several levels of information make the book useful for both younger and older readers; a helpful glossary, study questions, and activities are included. Barnes and debut illustrator Long, Chickasaw and Choctaw, respectively, bring authenticity to these educational and intriguing ABCs. The couplets sometimes scan roughly, but youngsters won’t mind; the compelling entries will pique their interest. The images, which “reflect the style found on ancient shell engravings from the Mississippian period,” are very pleasing: detailed but easy to decipher, in attractive soft colors with bright accents.

Teaches much more than the ABCs with solid Native American information and beautiful illustrations.

POPOVERS AND CANDLELIGHT Patricia Murphy and the Rise and Fall of a Restaurant Empire

Biederman, Marcia State University of New York Press (268 pp.) $19.95 paper | $19.95 e-book Nov. 1, 2018 978-1-4384-7154-9 Biederman’s (Sismo, 1993, etc.) biography tells the story of an eccentric restaurateur.

From the 1930s to the ’60s, Patricia Murphy started several profitable restaurants in greater New York and Florida. She was,

by Biederman’s account, a character; she was exacting, telling her staff to “Avoid flurried manner, even when you must work fast,” and superstitious, often crossing herself in public despite

THE RED RIBBON A Memoir of Lightning and Rebuilding After Loss Bills, Nancy Freund She Writes Press (216 pp.) $16.95 paper | $9.95 e-book May 28, 2019 978-1-63152-573-5

A debut memoir that recounts a woman’s tragic loss and hard-won survival.

On July, 23, 1994, lightning struck Bills’ husband and their son—pseudonymously called “Geoff ” and “Teddy” here, respectively—as they were kayaking off the coast of Maine. The strike took Geoff ’s life and nearly did the same to Teddy. The author and several members of her family, including Teddy’s older brother, “Simon,” and his wife, rushed to the hospital in the nearby town of York, Maine. It was initially touch and go for Teddy, but he came through. Then, as Teddy recuperated physically, he and the author faced psychological and spiritual recuperation—which sometimes seemed to be a matter of taking one step forward and two steps back. After this tragedy, death seemed to shadow the author for the next few years; her aged parents back in Montana passed away, as did her uncle and Geoff ’s sister, who was such a rock for her after the lightning strike. These losses engender a booklong meditation on

mortality. However, Bills does survive the ordeal, and an afterword lets readers know that today, she, Teddy, and Simon are all doing OK. Memoirs of loss and survival are rather common, but what sets this one apart is Bills’ extraordinary perceptiveness and writing talent, as when she notes that “I’m a woman with an emotional thermometer always in her mouth.” Bills also raises intriguing questions, such as whether the obituary cliché “he died peacefully” is really ever true. Essentially the book is a collection of essays, but she uses fictional techniques when appropriate, and some chapters are given over to very impressive poetry. She poignantly evokes a happier past in her chapters about Geoff (they were separated at the time of his death) and their young family. And a chapter titled “The Myth,” in which she asks Geoff questions directly, is exceptionally and deeply moving. There are even moments of goofiness in a chapter on a graveside service (“Planting Iris”), which may take some readers aback, although it’s clear that the author understood the need for occasional levity.

A keeper of a book by a talented author.

FIRE DOESN’T INNOVATE The Executive’s Practical Guide to Thriving in the Face of Evolving Cyber Risks

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not being religious. She was also given to tall tales; she owned a plane that she falsely claimed to pilot herself. But her unparalleled business sense—evidenced in such moves as opening a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale just before it became a retirement destination—didn’t always guarantee her happiness, and Biederman illuminates her highs and lows with humor and compassion.

In her earlier years, Murphy struggled to get by in New York City as a musician before investing her last few dollars in a failing Brooklyn restaurant around the start of the Great Depression. Following her initial success, she’d prove to be an expert at branding, and she advanced in the restaurant business and high society through sheer determination. Biederman’s meticulous research provides intimate details of her subject’s life, noting, for instance, that Murphy, before her success, would “pass up dinner to splurge on a twenty-five-cent bunch of daffodils.”

These illustrative flourishes create a vivid narrative, anchored by interviews with Murphy’s friends, family members, and colleagues as well as letters, restaurant documents, and other primary source material. Along the way, the author offers insights into the racial dynamics of Brooklyn’s past restaurant scene, the era’s changing gender politics, and the class tensions that followed Murphy’s rise. Of particular interest is the lifelong feud that she had with her siblings, who broke away from her patronage early on to run a competing restaurant chain. Biederman follows Murphy’s life to its end in 1979, noting how time and circumstance worked together to undermine her empire.

A snappy, well-researched account of a trailblazing woman.

Boyle, Kip Lioncrest Publishing (266 pp.) $14.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Jan. 10, 2019 978-1-5445-1319-5

A cybersecurity expert breaks down what every manager needs to know about the ever evolving threat of hackers in this debut manual.

Fire brings necessary warmth and light, but it can also be a destructive force, one whose power humanity has often had to find ways to protect against. Technology and the internet have become equally ubiquitous, but unlike fire, the perils they pose are always changing, requiring a special vigilance to combat.

For executives, vigilance doesn’t mean absolute expertise, and Boyle, in his manual, shares with readers the “lite” version of the easily understandable lessons he has crafted to help businesses both large and small become shrewd cyber-risk managers. Mitigating these dangers underscores cyber-readiness as not just a matter of tech, but also worker education. Numerous templates are offered for addressing employees on the subject of cybersecurity, not just informing them, but also discovering what they already know and can contribute. The adaptive NIST Cybersecurity Framework, developed by the Department of Commerce, is explained as well as strategies for identifying problem areas, preventing hacking, and addressing the crime after it happens, internally and through press releases. The book is divided into two parts, the first emphasizing good cyberhygiene, offering helpful tips free of confusing and unnecessary technical jargon. Where technical information is necessary, the text provides simple-to-understand history lessons, looking at past cybercrime and espionage like the Equifax hack, the National |

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Security Agency’s EternalBlue exploit, the infamous Evgeniy Bogachev, and the dark web. Though human error and education are emphasized, the guide does not neglect the technical tools available, walking readers through useful programs like password managers and virtual private networks and providing advice on the best ones. The second part is a condensed version of the lessons the author teaches directly to his customers. Charts, tables, and equations provided here help calculate risk mitigation and cost/benefit analysis with relative ease. In both parts, helpful “phases” sections and accessible lists make revisiting the multitude of tips and tricks a breeze. The Online Cyber Risk Workbook this manual links to is also immensely informative.

A comprehensive, valuable, and reader-friendly cybersecurity guide.

TWEETS FROM THE TRENCHES Little True Stories of Life & Death on the Western Front

Carmichael, Jacqueline Self (168 pp.) $18.95 paper | Aug. 12, 2018 978-1-71802-146-4

This debut compilation combines American-Canadian journalist and poet Carmichael’s poems with historical photographs, documents, diaries, letters, and stories related to the First World War. The author writes that she took her inspiration for this book from the “trench letters” written by her World War I veteran grandfather, George “Black Jack” Vowel. She’d turned them into posts on Facebook and Twitter and then broadened the project, traveling in 2016 and 2017 to the former Western Front and collecting a wide variety of letters, memoirs, journals, and other firsthand accounts of the war. The result is this self-described “flash documentary creative non-fiction” book, which includes Carmichael’s poetry and a few songs. Arranged chronologically and amply illustrated with photographs, sketches, and documents, the work offers the personal experiences of a wide range of people. The viewpoints of Canadian soldiers dominate the text, but Carmichael importantly offers a much more diverse assemblage of wartime participants than most other histories do. For example, she highlights the important contributions of First Nations fighters, such as Lt. Albert Mountain Horse or Alexander Wuttunee DeCoteau, and of women, whether they were nurses or those who disguised themselves as men, such as Serbian Milunka Savic, “the most decorated female fighter in the history of warfare, period.” The horrors of trench warfare come through clearly, as do the courage and wit of soldiers trying to survive; the book also covers the grief of loss and the ravages of PTSD, formerly called “shell shock.” Carmichael’s poems, mostly free-verse lines with pauses indicated by virgules, include snippets from “Black Jack” in italics, which provide poignant commentary: “Must try to remember why I am here / I am done / I am played out / I look like a loose button on an overcoat.”

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occasionally too obvious, as in a reflection on “The ‘Great War for Civilisation’ ” : “How could something that lays waste an entire generation…ever be great?”

A harrowing, compelling, and moving scrapbook of primary sources and reflections.

NO PERSON ABOVE THE LAW A Novel Based on the Life of Judge John J. Sirica Cooper, Cynthia Barbera Foundation (199 pp.) $9.99 e-book | Apr. 1, 2019

A historical novel dramatizes the tumultuous life of the judge who presided over the infamous Watergate trials.

John Joseph Sirica was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the son of an Italian immigrant who toils indefatigably to provide his family with a modest living. Sirica inherits his father’s work ethic—it is evident in his love of boxing and training—but he is an inconstant student who lacks intellectual confidence. Still, after graduating from high school, he follows his cousin Fonsy and applies to George Washington University Law School and, after an inauspicious start, Georgetown Law School. He is never a spectacular student, but he graduates and passes the bar on the first try. He has a rocky start as a lawyer, too, but draws inspiration from his time in the ring: “Didn’t plan it this way, but boxing gave me the courage to stand up in court.”

He is eventually appointed an assistant United States attorney for the District of Columbia, but a new Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, ensures a stretch of lean periods for the young Republican, what his wife calls the “starvation years.” Sirica even joins forces with heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, one of his heroes, to promote boxing matches in an attempt to make ends meet. Sirica eventually lands a blue-chip position at a prestigious law firm and then gets appointed as a judge to the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. In 1973, he presides over the Watergate trials, which balloon from what President Richard Nixon calls a “third-rate burglary” to one of the most consequential events in American history, thrillingly depicted by Cooper (Cheating Justice, 2012, etc.). An installment in the Barbera Foundation’s Mentoris Project—which focuses on notable Italians and Italian-Americans—this biographical study artfully chronicles Sirica’s ascendancy from a timid, academically challenged young man to a major legal luminary. The author’s prose is largely unadorned—she writes in plain, matterof-fact language. But her research is impeccable. Cooper picks an admirable topic to flesh out in novelistic terms—a life both inspirational and historically captivating.

A skillful reconstruction of the gripping events in Judge John J. Sirica’s life.

The author manages to speak effectively to a particular sociopolitical issue using the medium of short fiction. portland zionists unite!

MY FATHER KNOWS

El, Yusuf Ali Illus. by Carrington, Janine Natural Resources Unlimited (35 pp.)

This picture book, told from the perspective of a man who identifies as Moorish-American, celebrates the role of fathers and father figures in their chil-

GETTING THE BEST CARE Rescue Your Loved One from the Healthcare Conveyor Belt

Fitzpatrick, Margaret Urpoint (224 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jan. 31, 2019 978-0-9747002-1-2

A nurse advocates proactive care for the elderly in this manual.

Many older patients, writes Fitzpatrick (co-author: What to Ask the Doc, 2003), face “unnecessary treatments,” including “tests, surgeries, and medications” that may actually exacerbate health problems. Her sensible approach is to start with the simple question “What is the goal?” as a guiding principle to help caregivers and patients make wise medical decisions. This practical book lays out a clear path to answering that question in a variety of situations, each of them well-illustrated via real patient examples.

For instance, the author relates the stories of her own mother and brother, demonstrating how a proactive caregiver who understands what her relatives want can lobby for an appropriate plan of care. Other anecdotes depict how undefined goals lead to consequences, the importance of informed consent, how

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dren’s lives.

As African-American educator and poet Haki R. Madhubuti states in a foreword, this children’s book “provides us with a necessary primer that puts Black men at the center of working families without negating the critical role of Black women.” The narration, from a child’s point of view, explains in rhyming couplets how fathers are important: They know how to fix things; they teach school subjects, life lessons, manners, morals, and history; they take kids on trips, meet with teachers, and cook meals. In the end, the child concludes, “When I grow up I’m going to be / as good to Father as he’s been to me” and present him with a brand-new truck. El (Thank You and Please, 2017, etc.) writes verse that scans well as it sums up the best qualities of a parent. Although the book may help children appreciate fathers, its true audience may be adults. It starts off with a “Vow of Fatherhood” for a reader to fill in, and the narrator’s statements could be seen as ideals for dads to meet.

The expressive, varied illustrations by Carrington (Everything Is Wonderful II, 2018, etc.) depict a wide range of black skin tones.

Positive and encouraging—as much for fathers as for children.

to address the special requirements of a patient with dementia, and the differences between palliative and hospice care. In one case, a patient with advanced lung cancer “and his entire family needlessly suffered because they were on the healthcare conveyor belt.” But the book is not merely a collection of tales; it also offers helpful information about DNRs (“Do Not Resuscitate” orders), patient specifics like feeding tubes and pressure sores, things to consider before going to a hospital, and advice about nursing homes and medication management. In addition to 14 highly informative chapters, the author includes six useful appendices, such as a decision guide focusing on whether or not to go to the emergency room, detailed items to discuss at medical appointments, and a chart of potentially harmful medications. All of the material is presented in comprehensible text with a minimum of medical jargon. Fitzpatrick is consistently positive and goal-oriented throughout; she does not hesitate to put the needs of the patient first, counseling caregivers on how to question medical professionals and, if necessary, challenge them. Writes the author: “In my experience, both personally and professionally, planning and communication hold the keys to a lower stress level.”

A compassionate, thoughtfully considered approach to caregiving.

PORTLAND ZIONISTS UNITE! And Other Stories Flamm, Eric Inkwater Press (230 pp.) $18.09 paper | $4.99 e-book Feb. 1, 2019 978-1-62901-598-9

A debut short fiction collection examines the relationship that modern Jews at home and abroad have to Israel.

A month after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, a Long Island–raised volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces confronts his disillusionment manning checkpoints and conducting house-to-house searches in Hebron, all in the name of protecting Zionist settlers in the West Bank city. In Portland, Oregon, in 2014, the self-identifying liberal chairwoman of a pro-Israel organization attempts to explain to that same IDF soldier why his use of the term “occupation” precludes him from being able to serve on the group’s committee, but she has trouble elucidating—to him and to herself—why her progressive views do not extend to the treatment of Palestinians. The ambivalent executive director at a tony Portland synagogue is tasked with putting together a counterprotest to a boycott, divest, and sanction demonstration, but the division lines are not as clear as his rabbi thinks they are. Three IDF soldiers on vacation in Thailand look to decompress with sex, drugs, and spiritual exploration, but the specter of Israel dogs them wherever they go—whether in the form of Westerners’ opinions or the presence of other Israelis. Over the course of six interconnected stories, Flamm explores the myriad tensions that exist between Jews regarding their spiritual homeland. The |

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author’s sharp and insightful prose molds the varying perspectives of his narrators, as here when the disillusioned soldier explains his reading of the fractured Jewish identity: “No longer were the Jews, Israelis, and IDF of the same body and mind, breathing the same air. These things had become nuanced and removed from one another, like three circles of a Venn diagram moving in opposition, where the point in common grew smaller each day.” More than simply analyzing the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Flamm shows what these complexities mean to contemporary (mostly male) Jews who find themselves at different points along the ideological spectrum. It’s a finely crafted and highly nuanced work that makes excellent use of the linked story format. What’s more, the author manages to speak effectively to a particular sociopolitical issue using the normally hermetic medium of short fiction.

A smart and empathetic look at the ways Zionism can manifest itself in modern Jewish life.

PASSIVE INCOME FREEDOM 23 Passive Income Blueprints to Finally #ClaimYourFREEDOM

Gabrielle, Gundi Self (315 pp.) $14.99 paper | $2.99 e-book | Jan. 6, 2019 978-1-79324-212-9 An entrepreneur shares ideas for generating passive income in this business manual.

Gabrielle (Influencer Fast Track, 2018, etc.) is no stranger to passive income. As author of the self-published SassyZenGirl series of guides and other titles, she has achieved Amazon bestseller status numerous times and claims to generate a six-figure passive income from her endeavors. In this chatty, informative book, Gabrielle willingly opens her bag of tricks, presenting 23 “passive income blueprints” for both novice and seasoned entrepreneurs. The volume starts with some smart tips that include a caution against false get-rich-quick expectations and advice on how to build an income-producing asset (“Creation-SystemsAutomation”). Then the author launches into overviews, or blueprints, of ideas to produce a stream of passive income, most of which focus on online creation and marketing of one kind or another. Several of the concepts are cleverly designed to leverage and build on top of what others have done; for example, “AirBnB Arbitrage” involves renting properties owned by landlords that can then be offered through AirBnB at higher nightly or weekly rates. Other ideas take advantage of certain online characteristics, such as employing search engine optimization locally to achieve a high-ranking video or website on search engines and then renting that spot to another business. More than one concept seems to be essentially designed to make money via repurposing or remarketing the work of others. As a result, more conservative marketers may wonder whether some of these notions are too risky, and opportunists will likely view them as shrewd, if not ingenious.

Regardless, each tantalizing idea is described in an engaging, 154

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conversational style, with just enough breathless detail to tease readers into wanting to know more. The guide itself is the very model of passive income, incorporating many references to other resources available from the author, including a slew of her books.

Gabrielle is marvelously adept at mining the depths of passive income, and she writes with vitality and verve. The real magic, though, will be in each reader’s ability to select and execute the most appropriate concepts.

Audacious ideas aplenty in this breezy financial guide.

RISE OF THE GIG LEADERS Why Interim Leaders Are Vital in Today’s Organizations Grant, Neil Outskirts Press (229 pp.) $19.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Nov. 13, 2018 978-1-977200-66-2

An expert examines the role of interim leaders as an important part of

business strategy.

In this debut book, Grant draws on both research and case studies based on his own professional experience working with a variety of companies to make the case for the value of interim executives, or “gig leaders.” The author distinguishes between these interims and acting or consultant executives, seeing the former as high-level workers with specific skills who are hired under short-term contracts to accomplish certain corporate goals, a highly paid professional tier of the broader gig economy. The volume guides readers through evaluating the need for interims using Grant’s copyrighted SCILL model, which describes the five “attributes” of these executives (Savvy, Critical, Impact, Leadership, Legacy). And the author shows how to assess those leaders through GREAT (Gravitas, Resilience, Engagement, Attitude, Transformational) competencies.

While the book largely discusses these roles in general terms (“An interim makes the most impact, however, when intentionally hired to deliver specific results that require a leader with experience and dynamism”), case studies offer more concrete examples of the positive use of interims, from refreshing a company’s technology infrastructure to implementing turnaround plans without the complications of long-term employee politics. Grant is clearly experienced and knowledgeable and makes a compelling argument in favor of employing this short-term workforce to execute clearly defined goals. The title’s intended audience is corporate decision-makers who will hire interim leaders. Although readers looking to follow this career path will read glowing descriptions of interims (“An interim has battle scars from crisis management and like a first-responder in a disaster zone, is objective, decisive, and has emotional stability shaped from years of being in the front line”), they will not find guidance on pursuing this road. But for its target audience, the volume is a useful tool for appraising the need for interims and establishing a framework for their success. Although recent

Harris’ romance is a warmhearted, breezy treat bolstered by strong characters and sharp writing. eyes on me

EYES ON ME

research suggests that gig employment is less widespread than previously thought, the author presents a context in which it can be fruitful for both employers and employees.

A thorough and coherent discussion of how companies can make effective use of interim executives as part of the broader gig economy.

UNDENIABLE SOLIDARITY How Dogs and Humans Domesticated One Another

Hagner, David AuthorHouse (198 pp.) $23.99 | $13.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Oct. 18, 2018 978-1-5462-5637-3 978-1-5462-5638-0 paper

therapy animals.

Despite the incredulity of his colleagues, Dr. Boris Levinson pioneered the use of canines as therapy animals back in the 1950s by bringing his pet dog, Jingles, to his practice to make his child patients feel more comfortable. As it turns out, Sigmund Freud had earlier seen similar results with patients and his own dog, Jofi, though his findings were not made public until years after his death. What makes canines such effective therapy animals?

As Hagner (Career Advancement, 2002, etc.) writes in his preface, humans’ history with dogs is “so long, in fact, that our two species have undergone biological changes over the millennia as we adapted to one another. The secure feeling we get when man’s best friend is near us is by now hard-wired into our biology.” In this book, the author traces the history of this alliance with dogs, which began when the first friendly wolves entered into a symbiotic relationship with humans over 36,000 years ago, guarding sleeping people in exchange for food. Hagner credits this security innovation—and the increased sleep it afforded—for the explosion of new technologies that occurred during the late Paleolithic era, which began 35,000 to 40,000 years ago. From domestication to sensory interaction to the place of dogs in world mythologies and their uses across cultures, the author shows how this unique pact developed, placing an emphasis on how canines shaped humans. Hagner writes for the layperson, clearly elucidating a number of complex areas, including anthropology, psychology, and human biology: “The genes that control digestion in dogs have adapted to digest the foods humans enjoy better than the diet of wolves. This is part of the reason why what are called feral dogs today primarily eat scavenged human food.” The author is an unabashed dog lover, which sometimes shines through in his preferences for discussing canines. His contentions are generally quite convincing, and those who already attribute great importance to dogs should be happy to be armed with these arguments as to their role in the development of civilization.

An engaging and informative account of the special bond between people and canines.

An academically driven high school student discovers a new perspective on life—and a chance at love—when she signs up for dance lessons in this YA novel.

For Lily Bailey, the high school experience is all about preparing for the future. A senior at Brighton High in Texas, she plans to become class valedictorian, then attend Harvard University, her parents’ alma mater. When the pressure of trying to maintain a perfect academic record lands her in the hospital for stress, her father, Steven, decides she needs to spend her Saturdays focused on an activity other than studying. She signs up for dance lessons at Ilusiòn, a studio run by the mother of classmate and star football player Ágoston “Stone” Torres. After Stone helps Lily with her first salsa lesson, her father offers the athlete a substantial amount of money to be her partner at the studio and convince her to keep taking lessons. Stone is conflicted; he does not want to lie to Lily or his mother, but the studio is struggling financially, and he could use the money to help keep it open. As the lessons continue, an attraction develops between Stone and Lily. She attends his football games and enjoys a life outside of school.

They soon fall in love; but the weight of Stone’s secret could jeopardize their relationship. Harris’ (The Nanny Arrangement, 2017, etc.) romance is a warmhearted, breezy treat bolstered by strong characters, an engaging and multilayered story, and sharp writing. Lily and Stone are winsome protagonists who initially seem to have little in common. As their relationship develops, they discover they share similar experiences. Lily’s mother died of cancer while Stone’s sister, Angéla, survived a battle with the disease. The chapters alternate between Lily’s and Stone’s first-person perspectives, an approach that allows the author to explore their romance and their relationships with their parents, particularly Lily’s bond with her father. Her mother’s death was difficult for them, and Lily discovers a new connection to her through the dance lessons. The compulsively readable narrative is crisp and incisive, with flashes of wit. For example, when describing her dancing ability, Lily says: “I have zero rhythm. Like, think of your favorite dancer, subtract every ounce of talent they have…take a little more, and then you’ll have me.” This tale may appeal to fans of Sarah Dessen.

A charming and delightful romance with dynamic characters.

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A former university research professor argues that humans’ ancient relationship with dogs makes them the perfect

Harris, Rachel Entangled Teen (320 pp.) $7.40 paper | $5.99 e-book Mar. 26, 2019 978-1-64063-526-5

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

James Altucher

A SUCCESSFUL SELF-PUBLISHER OFFERS UP HIS HARD-EARNED LESSONS

By Rhett Morgan Photo courtesy MaverickOcean

With such a varied career, how do you primarily see yourself?

I guess I consider myself a performer. A performer of my own stories. And then the rest (business, writing, podcasting) flows from that.

You’ve published your personal phone number to receive questions directly from readers—why do you prefer to engage with your fans this way?

Every day I try to get out of my comfort zone a little bit.

When I published my number, I was afraid. My wife said, “If you publish that, I might have to kill you.” So I published it. We did get divorced. But I’ve had many great phone conversations and texts with my readers, some of whom have become my best friends, and one of them became my new wife.

James Altucher once lost $15 million in a single summer; another time, he lost $9 million in a single day. As an entrepreneur and angel investor, Altucher has seen incredible highs and lows since the early 1990s—but he has always been consistent in writing about his experiences. Thanks to his unique perspective and outrageous stories, Altucher has become a quirky guru for millions, offering up his hard-learned lessons about business and self-care for readers. So far, he has published 21 books, including the 2013 bestseller Choose Yourself. He also spends his time developing new acts as a stand-up comedian and running a successful blog and podcast where he discusses everything from technology to politics while always staying in close touch with his fans. He recently spoke with us about his views on life, writing, and selfpublishing his work.

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What effect has self-publishing had on your writing?

Freed me up to focus directly on my readers instead of worry about what an editorial assistant will think, an editor, a marketing department, an agent, a buyer for bookstores, etc. I like to be in direct contact with the people who enjoy my writing.

What do you think generally about the self-publishing landscape today?

On Amazon (and even in bookstores), you cannot tell the difference between self-published books and traditionally published books. And, on average, according to authorcentral.com, the average self-published book sells more copies than the average traditionally published book and has higher star reviews on Amazon…..That doesn’t mean there aren’t many poorly written self-published books.

But, percentagewise, there are less poorly written selfpublished books than poorly written traditionally published books.

What is the main thing you hope readers take away from your books?

That it’s OK. It’s OK to fail and try to learn from it and become stronger. It’s OK to be afraid and know that fear is the only way to expand your comfort zone. It’s important to take charge of your own health, your own relationships, your own creativity, your own spirituality and create the unique footprint you can then leave on this world.

Your releases are mostly categorized as self-help. What ultimately led you to this genre?

I don’t think of myself as self-help. I NEED help. I’ve needed help. I only write the stories of what I did to get help. I try to write as well as possible. I’ve been writing every day for 25 years. I really want to improve and be better every day. Sometimes people call it self-help because I describe what I did and maybe they can relate.

Other times people want to stick me in a wheat thresher.

Rhett Morgan is a writer and translator living in Paris.

Henrik, Anna CreateSpace (310 pp.) $12.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Dec. 7, 2012 978-1-4801-7901-1 Henrik’s debut novel tells the story of two teenagers dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.

Nate Stanek is about to begin his junior year of high school, and he’s excited to be doing so with his first girlfriend, Gabrielle Brandt.

They’ve been inseparable all summer, sneaking away to spend time together whenever possible: “He would never say this to Gabrielle—not cool—but he had it in his head that the two of them were sort of their own little family.” Just as summer ends, however, Gabrielle starts to act oddly. Nate figures out what’s wrong during a visit to the state fair; she vomits while on the Ferris wheel: She’s pregnant. Gabrielle, who’s still reeling from her parents’ divorce, is worried about what this will mean for her future. Will she go to college? Will she even finish high school? She’s certain that her reputation will be forever tainted.

Nate is more worried about the reaction from his conservative Christian parents. The possibility of abortion never even enters his mind until Gabrielle brings it up: “I haven’t made my mind up yet, but I’ve been considering maybe…maybe not having this baby at all.” Nate initially reacts with anger, thinking that if a pregnancy would bring on the wrath of his parents, an abortion will get him disowned—but he ultimately agrees to stand

by Gabrielle, whatever she decides. She faces her own troubles when she tells her family and friends about her situation; many react more judgmentally than she expected. Can the two high schoolers figure out a solution, and can their relationship survive whatever decision they make?

The style of Henrik’s prose is breezy yet restrained even when she gets deep into the conflicting emotions of her two main characters. She depicts their inner voices in a manner that’s completely believable and yet also unexpectedly poignant: “He’d barely started figuring out who he was, and yet this tiny being inside Gabrielle already contained more of him than he even knew existed. And more of Gabrielle, too. How could she just throw that away?” The book is paced more slowly than most other modern YA novels, and it lacks any melodramatic tendencies. Instead, Henrik simply allows the teens’ situation to play out in an organic way. Nate is flawed but sympathetic, and Gabrielle is heroic without losing an ounce of verisimilitude. The latter’s interest in numerical facts—she writes a blog in which she discusses mathematical concepts, such as the Pythagorean theorem—becomes a motif of the book; it effectively illustrates how some decisions require one to use a cold calculus, as well as the limited solace that such calculations bring. The author seems to have no agenda other than to show how impossibly difficult such a situation can be for those involved. She delivers a book about hope, youth, innocence, the pain of first love, and how major trials in life seem to come far too early.

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What can we look forward to next? (A new book, company, presidential run?)

If I was president I would forgive all student loans. I’d also force congresspeople to only vote from their districts (this way lobbyists could never get to them). Then I’d get rid of the presidency. I’m also planning many more books. And I like to get on stage and tell stories to 27 people in an audience on a Tuesday night. That was my dream when I was a kid, and I’m living it now. Maybe a novel is next.

ABSOLUTE VALUE

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THE SEED OF CRONUS

Hughes, Jack CreateSpace (403 pp.) $10.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Sep. 9, 2017 978-1-981575-14-5

Secret societies and superheroes with ties to an ancient, alien power battle a fanatical right-wing Christian dictatorship in 21st-century America.

In 2033, Clay Bradley is an ex-cartoonist languishing in a torture cell in a Kansas prison (named for Jerry Falwell). A fascist dictatorship assumed power after a coup by militant Gospel-pounders and right-wingers replaced the U.S. government with a rogue Christian police state. Bradley is visited, granted superior powers and a “Star Dagger,” and liberated by swashbuckling Frederick Dixon, an authentic Tuskegee Airman who underwent a similar transformation during his own jail ordeal in the Jim Crow 1950s. In a manner not unlike DC Comics’ Green Lantern Corps, an ancient alien entity called Cronus, directing human progress from the moon, periodically assigns exceptional and persecuted males to be “Bringers” (as in bringers of justice)—Knights of Cronus do-gooders with enhanced life spans and perceptions and physical/mental prowess that seem to defy physics. Bringers work in concert (and sometimes in love) with “Nurses,” a female secret society (or two) also dating back to antiquity. Over centuries, their deeds were distorted by church bigotry and superstition.

Debut author Hughes’ sci-fi/fantasy dystopia novel—combining comics-style avengers with a nightmarish future fundamentalist America—shouldn’t hang together as well as it does.

Initially, the author seems to be aiming for Rabelaisian satire or at least the tongue-in-cheek flavor of Robert Anton Wilson or Kurt Vonnegut (recipient of a shoutout). But the happenings get grimly transfixing as the author introduces the Bringers’ new foe, the fanatic “Dominionist” Jesus-centric ruling political junta. Their sins include female genital mutilation and sundry oppression of women; public stonings of abortionists and ex–porn stars; destruction of the Mount Rushmore monument as idolatry; widespread cigarette smoking (big tobacco being backers of the theocracy); a revived Confederacy, with Jehovahapproved slavery on the table; incompetent handling of the economy; and so on. (Readers might ponder whether Islam also gets routinely pilloried in similar literary terms. All we hear of American Muslims here is that Dominionists banished them to “their cold Michigan ghettos.”)

Hughes’ work makes S. Andrew Offut’s virulently anticlerical, very similar sci-fi novel Evil Is Live Spelled Backwards (1970) read like the Chronicles of Narnia, and one wonders whether this novel would have worked better minus a gee-whiz paranormal angle (as Offut did it). But the way-out stuff does allow an extremely imaginative tangent with the colorful narrative within the narrative of “the Hun,” a rebellious Knight of Cronus from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hughes has a flair not only for history, but also bigger-than-life storytelling and characterizations, though expository dialogue tends to get 158

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top-heavy. Additional matters, such as invisible “demons” that feed on human suffering and a scantly described opposition cult of evil mystics, are not dwelt upon and are presumably fodder for sequels. The author warns against real-life religious conservatives in government in a brief afterword.

An implausible mix of Planet Krypton heroics with a condemnation of barbarous arch-conservative misrule works well enough that one might call it a small miracle.

THE FOURTH QUARTER

Kaufman, Alex Intervale Publishing

A writer offers a personal perspective on aging.

In relating the stages of life to the quarters of a business year, Kaufman (On the Road to Halicz, 2016, etc.) appropriately labels his own situation the “fourth quarter,” a time that “is full, rich and a regrouping exercise.” With a certain amount of wistfulness combined with wry humor, the 90-year-old author serves a poignant, wide-ranging, first-person narrative that addresses the physical, emotional, and mental aspects of aging. He also discusses and reacts to some of the subjects that can be both fascinating and perplexing to old and young alike, including artificial intelligence, globalization, and medical technology. Kaufman’s informal style is engaging, especially when he reflects on the realities of aging. He observes, for example, that he is always surprised by “everybody trying not to accept this rusted mechanism called age.” His descriptions can be downright funny when he considers “the little whammies” that happen to the elderly, such as having “a brigade catering to my health….Practically every little piece of me has a specialist.” Behind the humor is insight into the harshness of longevity. He notes, for instance, that “it is puzzling to see the tremendously accumulated” and invaluable “knowledge of the aged being disregarded and squandered.” But later, the author exudes optimism: “Age has its sunny spots too. Lots of them. One of them is to talk to toddlers, children and young people.” These somewhat contradictory pearls of wisdom are representative of a time of life that can be simultaneously hopeful and hopeless, which Kaufman fully acknowledges. While his astute observations make for intellectually stimulating content, this long essay is for the most part a broad conversation that abruptly moves from one subject to another in an almost stream-of-consciousness fashion. The writing is a bit sloppy at times, but it doesn’t mar the author’s sincerity. Kaufman speaks directly to others who are living in the “Fourth Quarter,” and it is hard not to embrace his exhortation to “live it up in any shape and manner.…Go out and start some fires. It is invigorating.”

A spirited, perceptive, and honest look at longevity.

On every topic, from sibling rivalry to cyberbullying, the author’s tone is always specifically practical. kid confidence

KID CONFIDENCE Help Your Child Make Friends, Build Resilience, and Develop Real Self-Esteem

Kennedy-Moore, Eileen New Harbinger Publications (240 pp.) $16.95 paper | $13.55 e-book | Jan. 2, 2019 978-1-68403-049-1

children have the potential to be incredibly mean—and she offers several helpful tips on countering bullying. At the same time, however, she stresses that children can also bully themselves with a pattern of self-criticism and that parents can help them to counter this tendency.

A wise and realistic program for instilling genuine selfesteem in children.

EAST

A guide to increasing children’s confidence and helping them realize their

A teenager from Oregon becomes an illegal immigrant in China.

In this near-future novel, Kjeldsen (The Depths, 2018) takes readers into a world where the United States has dissolved into a collection of failed states, and China is the destination for those with hopes for jobs and stability. Fourteen-year-old Job and his older brother, Eli, fend for themselves in an Oregon village. Before Eli dies of an untreated illness, he tells Job that their mother is not dead but left to work in a Chinese factory a decade earlier. With nothing to keep him in Oregon, Job decides to make his way to China, paying a smuggler and working for his keep on a decrepit cargo ship filled with refugees, including Ynez, on whom he develops a crush. After the harrowing journey, Job is held prisoner in a Chinese factory, where he must work off his debt to the smugglers. When it becomes clear the bosses will never let him go, Job and another worker manage to escape, and he sets off in search of his mother. The hunt is unsuccessful for months, although he does manage to achieve some financial stability as a bike messenger and to save Ynez, whose own refugee experience has been one of despair. Job ultimately tracks down his mother, but she is unwelcoming, although she does help after he is beaten and imprisoned. Despite the unanswered questions about his family, Job decides to let the past go and focus on his future with Ynez as they strive to look after themselves in an unwelcoming land.

Kjeldsen does an excellent job of building Job’s damaged world, drawing vivid scenes: “Big, smoke-belching buses, gleaming town cars, and scores of taxis and motorcycles choked the busy avenues and boulevards, and drones rose and fell and rose again like horses on an amusement park carousel.” The book’s biblical themes are evident from the start; one of Job’s few possessions is “what was left of the family Bible, which his grandfather had used to teach him and Eli to read with and which only included the latter portions of the Old Testament from Ezra to Malachi and the first four books of the New Testament.” The parallels to present-day illegal immigration, human trafficking, and refugee crises are also hard to miss, with the story’s American characters experiencing the conditions that people in other countries currently face, though the text does not address these connections directly. While the writing is generally strong, there are some awkward moments, including Job’s descriptions |

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full potential.

In this book, clinical psychologist Kennedy-Moore (What’s My Child Thinking?, 2019, etc.) promises readers a wide range of practical and effective parenting strategies. But first, the author takes pains to debunk some key concepts of contemporary child-rearing philosophy—the worst of which, she says, is the idea that one must compulsively and universally offer kids uninterrupted affirmation in order to build up their self-esteem.

Kennedy-Moore cites recent studies that hint at the problems of such an approach, and her tone is refreshingly blunt as she does so: “self-help gurus and inspirational articles often promote the idea that we have to love ourselves to have a happy, fulfilling life,” she writes. “This is nonsense.” In the place of this concept, she lays out a comprehensive set of guidance tips, designed to help parents to understand their kids’ needs and encourage them with direct communication and honest assessment—not blanket assurances that everything that they do is perfect in every way. Each of the book’s sections offers helpful subheadings, and a separate “Take-Home Points” graphic is designed to summarize key items from the text as a whole. Kennedy-Moore addresses the topics of making parental connections, assessing and building children’s competencies, and helping kids to become more decisive and deal with bullying. Throughout, she employs a clear, concise prose style and an unfailing directness, typified in lines such as “As parents, we can’t protect our children from having bad things happen to them.”

Kennedy-Moore has written many books on the subject of parenting and is on the advisory board of Parents magazine, and her expertise is obvious on every highly detailed page of this smart and assured manual. She buttresses each of the book’s subsections, and all of its points of contention, with ready citations as well as a comprehensive 19-page bibliography. On every topic, from sibling rivalry to cyberbullying to proper hygiene, the author’s tone is always staunchly realist (“Winning feels good, but it’s unrealistic for any of us to believe that we will win every contest”) and specifically practical (“To avoid [a] no-win battle, reach for the feelings behind the complaints, and try to tie them to a particular situation or a specific time”). Along the way, she always maintains the tone of quiet compassion that animates the book throughout. The author’s focus returns again and again to her conception of children’s self-esteem, which aims to anchor their sense of self-worth more solidly that other parenting guides tend to do. As a result, crucial insights abound in these pages. For instance, Kennedy-Moore acknowledges the extensive research into what many parents already know—that

Kjeldsen, Kirk Grenzland Press (166 pp.) $6.99 e-book | May 28, 2019

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of characters’ races (“Filipino or some other mixture of Latino and Asian”; “Asian Caucasian children”) and the frequency with which beaten-up characters are “sucking for air.” But the fastpaced plot will keep readers turning pages. And while the resolution of Job’s quest for his mother leaves the audience with few concrete answers, the novel’s ending is satisfying, showing persistence and hope for the future without an optimism that would be out of place in the narrative.

A generally strong tale of a bleak future seen through the eyes of one determined individual.

B PLUS Dancing for Mikhail Baryshnikov at American Ballet Theatre

Langlois, Michael Epigraph Publishing (358 pp.) $24.95 | $18.95 paper | $9.99 e-book May 29, 2018 978-1-948796-14-9 978-1-948796-13-2 paper A middling dancer reaches for heights just beyond his grasp in this wry, bittersweet memoir.

Langlois, a massage therapist and writer for Ballet Review, recounts his early years as a dancer, from childhood lessons to ballet school in New York to a prized job with American Ballet Theatre, the country’s premier troupe, in 1980. ABT was the fulfillment of the 19-year-old dancer’s dreams, but it later became a purgatory of thwarted ambition. Langlois started in the corps de ballet, dancing minor ensemble parts around soloists and principal dancers, and he stayed there for six years while colleagues rose to starring roles. Relegated to bit parts—his one significant turn was wearing a cat costume in Cinderella, which won him positive reviews for his feline piquancy—Langlois rarely saw his name on casting lists and had little to do on tours, except in Japan, where he was mobbed by autograph-seeking schoolgirls who mistook him for an ABT principal. He worked long hours, got private coaches, and starved himself down to 135 pounds, hoping to get the superthin physique that choreographers wanted. Working against him, though, were the cursory teaching standards in the industry, which he painstakingly describes in well-observed passages on ballet training and technique. Rather than getting help and direction, he was left to sink or swim by teachers who either ignored him or tossed out baffling koans (“I turn, but I don’t turn”). Yet even when he felt he’d made progress and was able to try out for better roles, he never quite made the cut.

Langlois recalls disappointments with good humor but doesn’t hide the pain or neuroses that plagued his career, as his mind shrank into a “narcissistic, incredibly self-critical little box.” Centering his narrative is his vivid portrait of Mikhail Baryshnikov, the world’s greatest dancer and ABT’s artistic director, who emerges as both inspiring and maddeningly neglectful. The enigmatic “Misha” gave Langlois little feedback other than Latvian-accented asides—“Mikey, 160

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vaad you doink?”—and vague suggestions to try something different with the placement of his arms; their annual 5- or 10-minute conferences are portrayed as ordeals of fraught, uncommunicative squirming. Nonetheless, Baryshnikov’s brilliant performances, which the author analyzes here in passionate appreciations, were central to Langlois’ aspirations as a dancer. Pirouetting around this relationship is an entertaining ballet picaresque that’s full of sharply etched thumbnails of luminaries, such as the sublimely gifted but drug-addled ballerina Gelsey Kirkland, and the straight Langlois’ efforts to politely fend off gay colleagues and patrons. Threaded throughout are evocative performance scenes that marry technical detail to aesthetic impact: “out I came, stomping out the rhythm in my absurdly deep, absurdly turned-out second position as Prokofiev’s music lurched forward, its odd timbre a perfect reflection of the off-kilter characters…we marched across the apron of the stage like a drunken caterpillar.” The result is an absorbing saga that finds enduring value in artistic effort despite humiliations and questions of what might have been.

A sometimes-jaundiced, sometimes-comic, but always revealing view of life in the ballet.

FEATHER ON THE ‘WIND OF CHANGE’ Safaris, Surgery and Stentgrafts

Lawrence-Brown, Michael XlibrisAU (506 pp.) $41.39 | $27.59 paper | $4.99 e-book Nov. 15, 2018 978-1-984502-43-8 978-1-984502-44-5 paper A debut autobiography chronicles the diverse life of an esteemed medical pioneer.

Lawrence-Brown, an innovative western Australia vascular surgeon, grew up in East Africa in a time demarcated by Harold Macmillan’s “Wind of Change” speech signaling great upheaval in the British Empire. It was a time that heralded independence and republic change for countries like Kenya, where the author was born to a charismatic, fourth-generation colonial father who became a professional safari guide. The author’s mother was a former British navy veteran who felt lonely once her husband’s business blossomed thanks to the postwar economy and an influx of American tourists. Readers will get a proper history lesson on the region as LawrenceBrown writes descriptively and authoritatively about local unrest due to rebellions against the British colonial regime and the many moves he and his family made to achieve safety and a quality education for him. The author’s exhaustive, predominantly anecdotal memoir moves smoothly through time to boarding school, high school with its strict rules, boyhood adventures climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and going on safaris, and the political turmoil leading to the end of Britain’s colonial rule that crushed his aspirations of studying overseas.

LeValley’s breezy, engaging prose regales readers with plenty of intriguing historical lore and sharp-eyed, aesthetic appreciations. art follows nature

THE WEST INDIAN

Lester, Valerie Browne Mason & Fraser (271 pp.) $14.99 paper | Apr. 12, 2019 978-1-7335984-0-8 Lester’s (Marvels, 2018, etc.) first novel, set in Jamaica in the 18th century, reveals that paradise can be a mixed bag.

In 1762, plucky Martha Grant is offered a proposal of marriage by her cousin, Henry Mason, a Jamaican planter. She’s finding herself adrift after the death of her own true love, and fearing spinsterhood, she accepts Henry’s offer. Now she’s ready to fall in love with her new home of Jamaica, and the rest of the book mostly consists of her letters home to England and entries from her diary. Compared to his wastrel brother Jonas, Henry initially seems to be a good man, but readers quickly learn that he’s a tyrannical, arrogant, self-centered monster. Nonetheless, Martha is determined to make the best of it. Then Henry impregnates his half sister Pearl, whose mother is an African slave. In an elaborate ruse, it’s made to seem that the offspring, Peter, is actually Martha’s child. Things become particularly insufferable for Martha when Jonas dies and his widow, the outlandishly crude Antoinetta, comes to live with the Masons. This is Lester’s first novel, but she’s a much-published writer of biographies and histories, and it shows. Martha is a wonderfully well-rounded character—a romantic and an idealist but not at all naïve; she ekes out small victories with the brutish Henry and always leaves her surroundings just a tad better than how she found them. Lester also effectively shows how the Jamaican settlers have the trappings of civilization—such as a Governor’s Ball

and expensive finery—but at bottom, they’re revealed to be ruthless materialists and exploiters. The childish and grasping Antoinetta—representing the worst of the colonial infestation—strikingly contrasts with the beautiful, childlike Pearl, a happy and generous local. Interspersed are snarky poems, presumably from Martha’s witty imagination, which skewer the society’s pretensions and its matrons’ cattiness in a kind of off-key Greek chorus.

A historical novel with an exotic locale, well-wrought historical details, tidbits about flora and fauna, and wonderful characters.

ART FOLLOWS NATURE A Worldwide History of the Nude LeValley, Paul Edition One Books (572 pp.) $119.90 978-0-9992679-0-5

Vibrant works of art prove the eternal popularity of nudity in this lavishly illustrated collection of essays.

Gathering his columns from the nudist magazine Naturally, the author explores the social, cultural, and aesthetic significance of nudity in societies around the world as evidenced in the visual arts (pornography not included). It’s a wide-ranging tour, visiting prehistoric cave paintings, the Egyptian fad for spoon handles shaped like naked women, clothing—or, usually, the absence of it—in ancient India, nude figurines from pre-Columbian Mexico, the surprisingly widespread tradition of nude baptism and worship in Christianity, and Lady Godiva’s family tree. LeValley (Seekers of The Naked Truth, 2018, etc.) devotes much space to the Western tradition, from the Greek enthusiasm for nude athletics and nude everything else—he discusses eight styles of naked Aphrodite statues, including “Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks”—to modern and postmodern art. The erudite chapters are thematic, some surveying whole eras and civilizations, others examining particular themes and genres in artistic nudes, like the Christian church’s campaign to clean up racy art by affixing fig leaves and wisps of cloth to offending genitalia or the naked boys at swimming holes that used to decorate middlebrow American magazines. Included are hundreds of vivid, full-color reproductions, from nude icons like the Venus de Milo and Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe to obscure gems. There’s a pronounced naturist perspective in the author’s commentary, which notes the wholesome moral associations of nudity with innocence, holiness, truth, independence of mind, and revolution. He rhapsodizes that nudity in anti-slavery art reminds “us that a person can throw off his chains like throwing off unwanted clothes, and can burst forth in a more natural and healthy freedom,” and he muses that “a return to simple, honest, athletic nudity” might “lessen some of the corruption” in the modern Olympics. LeValley’s breezy, engaging prose keeps the nudist propagandizing unobtrusive while regaling readers with |

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Lawrence-Brown eventually went to Australia in 1965, seeking to further his education in surgical medicine, which became sandwiched between navigating a tricky new culture and dating and embracing commingled “flat life.” After years of creatively documented medical school study, the author writes proudly of finding his footing in surgical and vascular medicine: “I still wanted the bright lights of real surgery, and my path was set.”

Lawrence-Brown ultimately gained great renown for inventive and groundbreaking research and clinical development, and he eventually married, though a medical scare found him in the operating theater as a patient. The author is most at home sharing the many anecdotes that proved formative in the shaping of his adolescent character as well as those integral to his success as a visionary surgeon working with the human aorta.

With vivid characterization, florid prose, and dramatic flair, Lawrence-Brown offers stories of how helping ailing people became the cornerstone for many of his actions up to and including his development of the revolutionary stent graft for abdominal aortic aneurysms.

Readers interested in African history or cardiac medicine will find this atmospheric, meticulously detailed personal opus enticing, vastly informative, and entertaining.

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plenty of intriguing historical lore and sharp-eyed, aesthetic appreciations (Michelangelo’s David “is not David the relieved victor, but David anticipating battle—with the figure’s left side tense and alert, but its right half relaxed and confident”).

An absorbing, browse-able art study that’s a feast for the eyes and the brain.

ABOVE AN ABYSS Two Novellas

Masters, Ryan Radial Books (116 pp.) $13.00 paper | Dec. 10, 2018 978-0-9984146-6-9

In this debut book, two novellas focus on loners whose seemingly unremarkable lives simmer with darkness.

In Trampoline Games, 12-year-old Jake Lore and his mother move to Sandy, Utah, in the summer of 1986. His father remains in California on business while Jake adjusts to an almost exclusively Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints neighborhood. He’s immediately smitten with Debra Hanson, the girl next door who’s the same age, but even more drawn to neighbor Finn Levy. The two boys jump on the Hansons’ trampoline when the family attends Sunday morning church. But their activities become increasingly riskier and more violent: poltergeisting homes (nightly invasions to move around or take small items) or throwing lawn darts with little warning to others.

In the more mysterious The Moth Orchid, Alasa Memnov raises orchids in Fairbanks, Alaska, and periodically visits her mother, Bebe, in a nursing home. That’s where research physician Dr. Rene Funes approaches Alasa. Evidently, Bebe had given Funes her daughter’s genetic material years ago, and Alasa is susceptible to the same rare form of dementia afflicting her mother.

The doctor suggests Alasa return to her hometown of Lotus as a “cognitive exercise.” Though the intent is to aid her memory, the trip may instead prove too revealing for Alasa. Masters skillfully puts ordinary characters in troubling and sometimes-dire circumstances. Jake, for example, is a typical tween (he gets gum in his hair) while Finn introduces precarious elements into the boy’s life, like ingredients for a bomb. In the same vein, Alasa’s hometown excursion is nostalgic but also becomes a struggle to remember her past. Both disconcerting novellas have startling turns, including a sudden physical assault in Trampoline Games that may be the book’s most horrifying moment. Though Orchid relies heavily on a late twist, it doesn’t make its coda any less unsettling. The prose, like the stories, is somber but lyrical: “Bright, crisp stars shone like tiny holes poked in oilcloth, as if the night sky had been draped over an adjacent world made of blinding light.”

A pair of quietly disturbing tales that will surely resonate with readers.

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DARK TRADE Lost in Boxing

McRae, Donald Hamilcar Publications (537 pp.) $20.99 | $16.99 e-book | Feb. 26, 2019 978-1-949590-05-0 A sportswriter takes a deep dive into the “brutal but strangely beautiful world” of boxing.

McRae (A Man’s World, 2015, etc.) was smitten with boxing as a youngster in his native South Africa when he saw a newsreel that showed Muhammad Ali “destroying Cleveland Williams” in a 1966 fight “with a speed that made the savagery look lustrous on monochrome film.” As a sportswriter, he got to indulge his obsession up close, attending matches and interviewing fighters while traveling across the U.S. for five years. At least for fans of the sport, his illuminating book exploring this fierce world may rival the works of such famed boxing writers as Bert Sugar, Norman Mailer, and A.J. Liebling. The athletes McRae has followed, he writes, “are all men who have dreamed that they might one day be as great as...Muhammad Ali.” The author skillfully describes his boxing-related adventures of the 1990s in 15 action-packed chapters, devoting particular attention to such legendary fighters as Mike Tyson, James Toney, and Oscar De La Hoya. Much about Tyson exudes menace—in their first encounter, McRae recalls, he “moved toward me, reminding me of a giant hammerhead swerving in for the kill.” But the author deftly finds the pathos of the former heavyweight champion, noting that “his whole life had been chiseled from themes of loss and deceit.”

De La Hoya appeared to be cut from a wholesome cloth but “beneath the glitter, it was easy to sense the strain. His rich stardom was muddied by loss and distrust.” At the heart of this engaging and eloquent work, though, is McRae and his intriguing attempts to explain his “seemingly illogical but enduring love” of boxing. An 11th-round knockout punch that turned “defeat into stunning victory” has a strong effect on him: “When else as an adult, if not in sex or sleep, had I been so beyond the mundane?” The serious, and even fatal, brain injuries suffered by boxers in the ring give him reason to pause, but “for those of us still lost in the maze, there is always another fighter to follow.

A new version of an ancient story is always waiting to be told.”

Boxing fans should enjoy the author’s close encounters with the likes of Tyson, Toney, and De La Hoya.

For audiences who like their space operas thoroughly daffy, Melbourne offers an all-you-can-read buffet of batty goodness. percival gynt and the conspiracy of days

PERCIVAL GYNT AND THE CONSPIRACY OF DAYS

Melbourne, Drew Ruesday Books (354 pp.) $16.95 paper | $4.99 e-book May 24, 2018 978-0-9998748-0-6

In this novel, a solitary woman gets lost in the woods—and finds herself.

On a “cool spring morning,” an initially unnamed woman wakes up and decides to go for a hike. She packs some snacks and a bottle of water, then drives to a remote area and heads into the woods for what she expects to be a brisk afternoon hike. Then she loses her way. Wandering in the forest, she battles hunger and injury as she gradually adapts to surviving in the wild. In her poetic debut, Miller offers few details about her protagonist’s everyday life, but she does reveal that she’s already isolated herself from society: “Friendship, intimacy, even neighborly acquaintance had become mere words, notions, like islands seen from afar.” There’s a fairy-tale quality to the first part of the woman’s journey. On one of her first nights in the woods, for instance, she encounters a woman in a dream who’s similar to the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”

Later, she explores the cellar of a ruined house and seems to pass into another world; she also finds plants that have magical healing properties. But just as the woman is finding peace in her new surroundings, a man named Luke intrudes upon her solitude, and the woman (who eventually reveals that her name is Annie) must decide whether to trust this stranger—and whether to leave the safety of the wood. The quietly fantastical quality of the book’s first third dissipates as Miller introduces Luke’s perspective, and his story lacks the emotionally resonant intimacy of the sections told from Annie’s point of view. Still, Miller ably brings to life the two characters’ tentative steps toward friendship, with each of them hesitant to open themselves up to the other. Not all of the author’s gambits work; a discovery of a mysterious box, buried in the sand, doesn’t really pay off, and some flashbacks may leave readers scratching their heads. But overall, this is an insightful look into one woman’s heart and mind.

A richly imagined literary exploration of life and love.

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Melbourne’s sci-fi adventure stars an accountant swept up in the battle against a reality-altering weapon.

In the year 20018, Percival Gynt is an accountant on the planet Sanctuary-8. As he waits for the morning train, a beautiful woman approaches. She asks him, “Are you honest and clever and kind...and does danger always seem to find you?” He eventually answers, “Yes.” She kisses him, apologizes, and steals his bowler hat. Before he can give chase, two police officers take him into custody. They bring him to a government agent named Fred, who explains that the woman who kissed him is Millicent Lamb, the former nanny of an 11-year-old named Kevin. Kevin is missing, and Fred knows that Percival—last survivor of the Gynt Massacre—has the guts to retrieve the boy. The first catch is that he must team up with Officer Um (a froglike Indulian). The second catch is that Kevin embodies an ancient evil known as the Rider, which must not be reunited with the Engine of Armageddon, a machine that can (and does) erase large swaths of reality. Percival will cross paths with the enchanting Tarot (aka Millicent), Aryan soldiers of the Nth Realm, and Matthew “Mouse” Holden, former apprentice to the magician Illuminari, whose death began this crisis. For audiences who like their space operas thoroughly daffy, author Melbourne (Archenemies, 2007) offers an all-you-can-read buffet of batty goodness. Like Douglas Adams, Melbourne’s ideas are off-kilter and funny, but—as importantly—his execution is off-kilter and funny, too. One scene, for example, features alien blobs called Fummers that are “humming a tune that sounded strangely like that old Earth ditty, ‘Hey Ya.’ ” The romance between Percival and Tarot is as charming as it is torturous. Elsewhere, mentions of Grimsouls (reanimated killing machines) being the product of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline skewer a future in which corporations join humanity in colonizing space. Longtime sci-fi fans should appreciate Melbourne’s creative endurance as he crafts an ever twisting plot that lets dust settle on none of his characters, including the legendarily “not dead” Vargoth Gor. A fun space romp that’s equal parts goofiness and grandeur.

HEARTPRINT

Miller, Amy Epigraph Publishing (258 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jun. 8, 2018 978-1-948796-24-8

A CHICKASAW HISTORICAL ATLAS

Nelson, Stanley Chickasaw Press (276 pp.) $64.95 | Oct. 5, 2018 978-1-935684-68-8 In this full-color atlas, Nelson (Toli, 2016, etc.), a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, relates the history of that Native American people through maps drawn by them and others.

The Chickasaw Nation—whose members formerly lived in the woodlands of what are now Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee and now reside primarily in Oklahoma—has a |

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QUEERIES

We talk to Hal Schrieve, author of Out of Salem

By Karen Schechner Photo courtesy Micah Brown

Z, the genderqueer zombie who stars in Out of Salem (March 5), has brains and heart to spare—and doesn’t need or want anyone else’s. Z and their best friend, a lesbian werewolf, are trying to survive their fascistic, anti-monster hometown of Salem, Oregon. Our reviewer says the queer YA fantasy is “on fire with magic and revolution.” Here, we talk with debut author Hal Schrieve about the treatment of trans kids, romance narratives, and Turkish pop stars.

Out of Salem, unlike most zombie tales, is told from the perspective of a zombie—the contemplative, genderqueer Z. Why tell the story from the undead’s point of view?

Classic zombie apocalypse stories tend to be individualistic macho survival narratives. Zombies in these stories mostly aren’t real characters. They are usually a distilled version of our own fear of our bodies’ aging/mortality/vulnerability to illness. But all of us are sick, disabled, or dying at some point, and people who experience this are not monsters.

Another reason for Z’s undead status is that it’s a thing, in psychiatric treatment of trans children, for doctors to tell the parents of trans kids that it is OK to mourn their liv-

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ing children before they manifest any support of their child’s medical or social transition. Cisgender people have so much anxiety about trans people existing and potentially making permanent medical decisions about our own bodies. They would often literally rather think of us as dead than adjust to that potential future, and they choose to understand their living trans child as a replacement for a dead person.

So much discourse about trans kids in popular media denies trans kids agency over their narratives. So I wanted to have Z be a trans kid who is literally undead but still living and moving toward a future—and for their parents to be the ones who are actually literally gone and completely silent in the narrative.

Out of Salem tackles homophobia, racism, homelessness, nationalism, censorship. It’s about social justice but is also a fantasy novel. It’s deep, funny, and traffics in spells and shape-shifting. As a debut author, how did you keep the work from growing unwieldy?

The original plot spiraled spontaneously all over the place.

There have been five different endings, and characters’ roles in the plot have changed a lot. I would credit my editors Jeanne and Sanina with making sure I didn’t go off on impossible tangents or try to pack in too many characters.

One of the leads, Aysel, who’s a lesbian werewolf, is also Turkish, and we learn about culture, including the nazar bead she wears around her neck. How did you research her character?

My mom’s Turkish-American friend Filiz was like an aunt to me for a lot of my early childhood. Some of what I remember of her personality is in Azra [Aysel’s mother], including her simultaneous loyalty to certain things about traditions she grew up with and her mild sarcasm about it.

But I still don’t know a lot about Turkish-American experience. During my revision process, I worked with Leylâ Çolpan, a poet whose experience in rural Virginia as a kid and teenager was as close as I was likely to find to Aysel’s experience of Oregon. Hir input on things like nazar beads,

regional food, and what Aysel’s attitudes might be toward Islam and toward her mother were crucial, as was hir advice on ’90s Turkish pop stars. I really admire Leylâ’s poetry, and working with hir was amazing.

So many LGBTQ YA novels are all about romance. Out of Salem includes queer crushes but is much more about abiding friendship. Is this where the characters led you, or was friendship your focus from the start?

I think that romance and sex are super great to read about for teenagers, and romance narratives are really fun for me to write. For my book, though, it felt important to emphasize the kinds of life-sustaining connections between queer people that are unrelated to sexual desire. Those kinds of connections are possible long before we have lovers or know how to navigate relationships, and they can make us healthier and more emotionally ready to navigate (or choose not to navigate) sexual relationships when we are adults.

Which queer books are on your nightstand?

Karen Schechner is the vice president of Kirkus Indie.

POLLEN Darwin’s 130 Year Prediction

Pattison, Darcy Illus. by Willis, Peter Mims House (34 pp.) $23.99 | $13.21 paper | May 7, 2019 978-1-62944-119-1 978-1-62944-120-7 paper

Sometimes scientists take a long time to reach a conclusion—and the team of Pattison and Willis (Clang!, 2018, etc.) explores that idea in this look at a hypothesis about a moth and a flower.

In 1862, Charles Darwin received orchids in the mail (the variety is depicted in the beautiful mixed-media illustrations from Willis, who painted on newspaper to create textured images). When Darwin noticed that the star orchid’s nectary was unusually long, he envisioned the type of creature, a huge moth, that would have had to evolve to allow the flower to reproduce. In 1903, two entomologists found the hawk moth, which they believed to be the insect that Darwin imagined, |

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Eli Clare’s Brilliant Imperfection, which, like the earlier Exile and Pride, explores disability and ableism in connection with other systems of devastation. John Rechy’s City of Night on advice from a lover. Also, Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, Pat Schmatz’s Lizard Radio, and Sassafras Lowrey’s Roving Pack.

long history of mapmaking. As Nelson puts it in his introduction, an early deerskin map, credited to Chickasaw Fani’ Minko’ and drawn in 1723, looks like “a fantastic backyardfootball play diagram or a primitive, whimsical star chart,” but it is, in fact, an accurate map of an area in the Carolinas.

It’s appropriate that the Chickasaw people have continued to be respected mapmakers into the 21st century considering how much of their history has been shaped as maps of North America have changed—drawn by agents of other powers and interests. Nelson’s collection documents this history, including a 1593 map from the Aztec Codex Quetza­ lecatzin and charts of would-be conquerors, such as Spanish explorer Alonso de Santa Cruz, who, in 1572, drew a map marking Native settlements along the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico. There are dozens of charts from the 19th century that, in order, seem almost like a flip book of U.S. government policies of forced relocation. As the maps shift to counties and municipalities in Oklahoma, the full scope of what was lost becomes disturbingly clear. Nelson includes brief chapter introductions as well as informative captions that alert readers to notable features of each map. However, the charts often speak quite well for themselves, as in an 1805 map of Chickasaw lands that the French mapmaker labels, in large letters, “Country Quite Inhabited.” With more than 150 maps covering several centuries, this book offers a remarkable visual representation of the arbitrary nature of borders and the massive impact that they can have on defining—or erasing—entire civilizations. It’s a haunting reflection on the dynamism of culture and geography. “Maps have always been alive and changing,” Nelson reminds readers. “And so are Chickasaws.”

A beautiful work of post-colonial criticism in the form of cartography.

with a lengthy, trunklike proboscis. But there was a problem: “No one had seen the hawk moth pollinate the star orchid.” It wasn’t until 1992 that entomologist Lutz Thilo Wasserthal was able to verify that the moth and flower depended on each other. Using plenty of science vocabulary made approachable through conversational text and Willis’ kid-friendly illustrations, Pattison captures the sense of wonder that comes from discovery, even if the proof arrives 130 years after the initial idea. The intriguing moment is well-told in this third installment of a picture book series, giving real insight into the scientific process and celebrating the determined researchers who strive to further human knowledge.

An illuminating introduction to Darwin and evolutionary development for young readers.

CAMP STRANGE

Perez, Renee Black Rose Writing (224 pp.) $18.95 paper | Mar. 21, 2019 978-1-68433-251-9 In this debut fantasy, a boy who is bullied at school gains confidence and acceptance in magic camp.

Fifth-grader Ezekiel Raroso has magic in his blood. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know this, and when strange things happen around him—the disastrous eruption of his science project, for example—he starts thinking of himself as a weirdo. Ezekiel has a few friends at school, but for the most part, he is shunned and bullied. His loving family has never told him the truth about his past—not even when Ezekiel’s powers become too strong to cover up and he’s sent to magic camp. Camp Strange, as Ezekiel dubs it, is for Faerman children—what the outside world would call fairies. Ezekiel’s ignorance makes him an outsider here, too, at first; but his good nature allows him to make friends with other Fledglings (first-year campers), and he soon begins to enjoy himself. He even sprouts wings. Camp Strange, in fact, is the best thing ever. But there are sinister happenings behind the scenes: rumors that the Hematites (dark, wingstealing Faerman) have returned. Will Ezekiel and his friends survive their first camp? Perez follows squarely in the footsteps of J.K. Rowling—from Ezekiel’s unmitigated bullying, dark legacy, and natural aptitude for both magic and flying to such facets as magical houses and cuisines and the camp’s bearded Magnus Magister. But Ezekiel is a less hotheaded 11-year-old than Harry Potter was. Ezekiel’s most prominent quality is his empathy, and this, more than anything, forms the crux of the book. He and his friends are distinct characters with their own idiosyncrasies. For all their excited companionship and adventures around the camp, though, what comes across most is their awareness of one another’s feelings. Although the novel has flaws—most notably a danger element put too easily out of mind, explored more as historical backstory than immediate threat—Ezekiel and the others 166

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are strong and likable enough characters to compensate. All told, middle-grade readers should approve.

A longish but high-spirited read with a powerful young hero.

IS GOD IN THAT BOTTLE CAP? A Search for Truth

Sambalino, John D. Vanishing Circle Press (284 pp.) $9.99 e-book | May 14, 2019 978-1-73265-781-6 978-1-73265-780-9 paper

A debut spiritual book examines a lifelong practice of meditation and the winding road to enlightenment.

Sambalino centers his highly detailed and intensely personal account on his longtime exploration of the world of Eastern meditation in search of answers to questions he’d been asking from a very young age: “Was I really this person trapped in a small body, just waiting to grow old and die?”

In 36 fast-paced and very engaging chapters, the author takes readers from his boyhood in New York and New Jersey during the 1950s to his years studying engineering at North Carolina State University, where he read a book on karate and discovered the broader world of Eastern philosophy. He then started pursuing an informal study of Zen Buddhism and the concept of enlightenment. The narrative moves on to his law school years at the University of Florida, where he met his future wife, Niki, and first encountered transcendental meditation. At first he found the technique something of a chore until he began to learn its finer points. His studies in meditation broadened to include yogic breathing practices and further dimensions of transcendence. He bounced from one master to another, always delving into new applications for his knowledge, often journeying to far-off places like Egypt and the Himalayas. Most of these applications are inward and personal, although some take the form of startling real-world anecdotes, as when Sambalino used intense meditation techniques to help him cope with the pain of a rattlesnake bite. The latter portions of the book incorporate the author’s spiritual readings as well, and the resulting narrative is both an accessible overview of various enlightenment practices and an invitingly personal search for the meaning of life. Sambalino advises his readers: “Don’t concern yourself with when you’re going to get there; just enjoy the path.” Those readers should certainly enjoy this absorbing book.

A lively and intensely readable story of one man’s use of a variety of spiritual practices to reveal the nature of reality.

Some stories have a fabulist quality—as if Simmonds is attempting to pause the world and see the machinations whirling beneath its surface. the orchard

THE ORCHARD Selected Stories

SURVIVING THE CITY

Spillett, Tasha Illus. by Donovan, Natasha HighWater Press (56 pp.) $18.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Mar. 1, 2019 978-1-55379-756-2

Simmonds, Ira Sumner BookBaby $9.99 e-book | Feb. 14, 2019

A debut YA graphic novel finds a teenager emotionally and then physically adrift as her home life worsens.

Miikwan and Dez are Indigenous Canadian teens. Miikwan, who is Anishinaabe, has lost her mother. Dez, who is Inninew, lives with her grandmother (or kokum). The girls are best friends—like sisters—who completed their yearlong Berry Fast together (which teaches girls entering womanhood patience). One day, Dez learns that her diabetic kokum might need to have her foot removed. Further, Dez would have to live in a group home. In school, the girls choose to present their Berry Fast for a class Heritage Project. Before starting work on the project, they visit the city mall, where Miikwan’s mom “always used to tell me to be careful.” When the girls notice the predatory stares of older men, they leave and visit the Forks historical area. The last time they were there, they attended a rally for No More Stolen Sisters. A memorial sculpture dedicated to missing women reminds Miikwan of her own beautiful mother, whose spirit still guides her.

Later, Dez returns home only to see through the window that a social worker speaks with her kokum. Devastated, she wanders into a park. Her cellphone dies, and she curls up on a bench as night falls. In this harrowing but hopeful tale, illustrator Donovan (The Sockeye Mother, 2017) and author Spillett spotlight the problem of “Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People.” While this is a global issue, the graphic novel focuses on the Winnipeg area and highlights for its target audience situations that may pose risk. While Miikwan travels alone on a bus or in the city, readers see both benign and ghoulish spirits present. Spillett knows when to hold dialogue back and allow Donovan’s superb facial expressions to carry the moment, as when Dez spots the social worker in her home.

Radiant colors and texting between characters should draw teens into the story, which simply and effectively showcases the need for community solutions to society’s worst ills.

This engrossing Indigenous tale remains a tribute to the missing and murdered and a clarion call to everyone else.

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In this short-fiction collection, Simmonds (From Siberia to St. Kitts, 2018) explores the lives of people and animals on islands in the Caribbean and New England.

In “Jeremy,” a dog recounts the time that his master and his family got their boat stuck beneath Brooklyn’s Marine Parkway Bridge.

A middle school administrator in “Backyard Overture,” vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, witnesses an array of creatures visiting his yard. In “Caribbean Vacation,” a man invites his wife on a trip from New York City to St. Kitts only to have her insist on bringing her very elderly and mostly immobile parents along. An assistant principal attempts to dissuade a foulmouthed teen from cursing in class in “Peter’s Performance.” In these short stories, Simmonds examines small moments that frequently involve family dynamics or wildlife.

Some are realistic while others have a more fabulist quality— as if the author is attempting to pause the world, remove its casing, and see the machinations whirling beneath its surface.

In the title story, for example, a man named Paul builds his dream house in an area of St. Kitts called Valley Views, complete with an Edenlike orchard of tropical fruit, only to find himself engaged in a war of wits with the local vervet monkey population. The volume is fewer than 100 pages long, but its stories’ settings manage to cover many different times and places. The author’s warm prose is speckled with moments of humor, as when he describes one of the vervet monkeys: “Ticky could be seen peeking into the house through the rear windows overlooking the orchard, casing the joint perhaps, an advance reconnaissance special forces raider gathering intel for a grand monkey plot.” The stories are simple and straightforward; indeed, most lack a clear plot turn or epiphany, which one may expect from works of short fiction.

Some read more like memoiristic vignettes or amusing, spoken anecdotes, and Simmonds’ pleasant voice and interest in nature and travel make for a calming reading experience.

A brief compilation of light, good-natured tales.

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DOG TALES

GHOSTLY DEMARCATIONS Stories

Tankersley, Thomas Little Creek Press (50 pp.) $7.99 e-book | Jun. 17, 2018 In this debut autobiographical novel, a man pays tribute to the many canines that have enriched his life.

Although the book’s narrator doesn’t actually remember the stray black-andwhite dog his grandparents took in when he was a child, the family story about his relationship with the pup named Pete previews what would become a lifelong connection to a delightful assortment of canines. The narrator’s mom found the pair lying side by side on the living room rug: “Pete was chewing one of my wood toys to splinters. I was gnawing on one of his old bones.” Now, decades later, the narrator walks to a park with Pippa and Pershing (two of his three current dogs) and ruminates about canines and the changes he has witnessed across the decades. Expecting two important calls during this walk, he muses: “I was struck by how new it all was. Grandparents with one phone, parents with extensions upstairs and down, and me with one I carried in my pocket.” When the narrator left for college, it was the beginning of 15 dogless years, which included “marriage, fatherhood, divorce and visitation.” Then he met Darcy and her dog, Albert: “He looked like the floor part of a push broom.” Eventually, the narrator and Darcy married, and their life together has been filled with canines ever since. At Darcy’s instigation, they began showing Parker, the third member of their current pack.

Tankersley (a pen name) informs readers in an author’s note that “the people he writes about are fictional” but “the dogs are not.” Good-humored, conversational prose makes this book a quick, enjoyable read: One breeder “had a ‘how can I help’ you pleasantness like a Siri or Cortina of today” but with a “human undertone of ‘what do you really need?’ ” Yet one section dealing with the Irish derivation of a pup’s name, Grainne, runs on a bit too long. Still, there is an inevitable poignancy sprinkled throughout the novel each time the narrator recalls a beloved companion taking that final trip to the veterinarian. But he doesn’t linger long on those episodes in this lighthearted story.

He quickly moves on to the next canine acquisition.

Tender, witty, and articulate with a satisfying conclusion; should appeal to readers who never tire of one more dog tale.

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Taylor, Joe Sagging Meniscus Press (230 pp.) $19.95 paper | Jun. 1, 2019 978-1-944697-75-4

Taylor’s (Pineapple, 2017, etc.) collection of linked short stories features a recurring protagonist who has a series of spooky encounters.

Kentucky is evidently a hub for spirit activity. At least, that seems to be the case for this book’s narrator, whose real name no character ever utters. In the opening tale, “Galen’s Mountain Child,” he’s only 10 years old when he and his older friend Galen search for a ghost that appears to be periodically calling out for help. In “Hey-hello/hey-goodbye/ hey-weep-no-more,” Galen warns the teenage narrator of two high schoolers who had a fatal car accident about 20 years ago on prom night. Since then, 13 kids have died in similar accidents in that same allegedly wraith-cursed spot. The entries in this collection are chronological, unfolding during the 1960s and ’70s. The narrator eventually attends the University of Kentucky and works at the campus bookstore. While at UK, he sees apparitions in the stories “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Louie, Louie and the Blonde Hippie”; in the latter tale, he has the chance to thwart a potential serial killer. Not every story, however, has a ghost. In “Angel’s Wings,” the narrator hears voices on his staticky crystal radio, including Galen’s, who’s currently away in the Navy. Likewise, “Faithful Companion” is a humorous tale of his blind date, which heats up at a dentist’s office after hours. But the comedy is gleefully dark: When the dentist unexpectedly shows up, the narrator must hide in a closet— with a skeleton.

Taylor primarily takes the traditional route with his horrorcentric tales. One of the collection’s tales, “The Perfect Ghost Story, Plus One,” addresses narrative tropes in ghost stories.

A character lists conventions in a tale she relates to the narrator: “Mine is a legitimate ghost story, complete with doll motif, haunted house…mood, moral, warnings, turning point, and climax.” The author’s book is likewise filled with familiar horror imagery: There’s a string of creepy dolls in “I Am the Egg,” and the narrator investigates a haunted house in “Ms. Sylvia’s Home Cure.” There is, however, occasional repetition, such as several characters’ dying in car wrecks and the narrator’s experiencing plot-turning visions (often of someone who’s dead). But Taylor excels at establishing unnerving moods: At a séance in “Tacete,” the narrator recounts, “The hairs on my neck and forearm did a tiny dance. It was as if a gentle overhead air-conditioning had just started up.” The author’s greatest triumph is his protagonist. Even nameless, the narrator is distinctive. Readers, over the course of the stories, watch him move from a Catholic boarding school to college and endure such adolescent woes as his persistent virginity. Galen is equally diverting: Though his relationships with women rarely last, he has a soft spot for Louie, Louie, the Labrador mix he adopts. Throughout, Taylor has fun avoiding the narrator’s moniker: hobby-shop owner

Wang’s autobiography intelligently chronicles the grand forces of history without ever forgetting about the lives caught up in them. inconvenient memories

INCONVENIENT MEMORIES A Personal Account of the Tiananmen Square Incident and the China Before and After

Max Howard of “I am the Egg” sifts through a handful of incorrect names while Sylvia simply calls him Bookstore.

Unabashedly conventional horror tales with an understated but remarkable lead character.

THE MILLENNIAL WHISPERER The Practical, Profit-Focused Playbook for Working with and Motivating the World’s Largest Generation Tuff, Chris Morgan James Publishing (190 pp.) $24.95 | $12.99 e-book | Feb. 12, 2019 978-1-64279-279-9

A woman recounts her upbringing in China as the country struggles to gain full entry into the modern world.

Debut author Wang was born in China in 1966, and before she was 1 year old, her mother entrusted her to her grandmother, in whose care she would remain until she was 12. While the author lacked official status as a resident, her father managed to get her into a Beijing school, where she developed a lifelong love of reading, an avocation sometimes challenged by the widespread lack of electricity: “As the room grew dark, I would unconsciously move to the faintly stronger light of the window, to squeeze out every last bit of sunlight before I was finally defeated.” Wang attended Peking University from 1984 to 1988, the volatile years of social change and protest that ultimately climaxed with the Tiananmen Square massacre, an event that she describes with impressive nuance. An unsuccessful microelectronics major, she later became a student of Chinese literature. The author lived on the dizzying precipice of two warring worlds: an older, more traditional version of China—her grandmother had endured the brutal practice of foot binding as a child—and one that yearned for the prosperity and sophistication of the West and experimented gingerly with an open market economy. She would later leave China—she pursued graduate work in the United States, had her second child in New Zealand, and finally settled in Vancouver, where she studied film.

Wang’s memoir artfully braids the personal and the political—she fits the arc of her own life into the trajectory of China’s tumultuous, often painful transition away from autocracy in a way that’s ultimately illustrative of both. Her China is an intellectually challenging one, filled with contradictions, intent on “opening up its economy while tightening its political control.” And while she of course laments those killed in Tiananmen Square, she also criticizes the “reckless and impatient” demonstrators (“We believed that change could come instantly in response to our protests”). The author’s remembrance can be overly detailed and as a result meandering, although her candor—her first unbelievably awkward sexual encounter involved a knife being pulled on her—is remarkable. Furthermore, she vividly and astutely paints the horizon within which Chinese popular angst emerged—the contest between a government humbled by foreign invasion and lack of progress and a people furious with a lack of immediate reform and swelling inequality. But the most impressive feature of the account is its unwavering circumspection—even when denouncing totalitarianism, Wang is careful to chasten any hint of strident dogmatism in her judgment: “I believe that democracy and autocracy can never coexist in harmony. I believe that democracy works better than autocracy, though in the last thirty |

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An instructional guide focuses on the care and feeding of millennials in the workplace.

As an ad agency managing partner, Tuff found himself in charge of a team made up entirely of millennials. This appealing debut chronicles his challenges in this role while offering very specific, sensible tactics for how to lead those employees, who are now statistically the largest generation in the American labor force. The author begins by debunking some of the more negative, common myths about millennials, such as their supposed laziness and narcissism, citing research studies and his own firsthand observations. He also points out an important distinction between older millennials, who are less technologically savvy and more cynical, and younger ones, who are more connected and feedback-oriented. The heart of the well-executed book is Tuff ’s philosophy of millennial management, which flows through eight short chapters that address company culture, recruitment and retention, rewards and recognition, motivation, and morale.

Each chapter details ideas and on-the-job stories designed to assist any manager to become more adept at leading millennials appropriately. Perhaps most helpful are the “Make It Happen” sections that close each chapter with step-by-step tactics. For example, to create a millennial-friendly workplace, Tuff suggests such actions as “Hero your people,” “Permit your Millennial team members to help craft the culture,” and “Delete your negative attitude.” For those managers who scratch their heads about building relationships with millennials, he advises, “Follow your employees on social media and engage with their social channels” and “Provide Millennials with an opportunity to pursue their passions within their work.” Some of the author’s advice, such as encouraging millennials to be entrepreneurial, perhaps even by “starting a business incubator program” within a company, may give pause to traditionalists, but it reinforces Tuff ’s premise that managing millennials requires a different mindset. Interestingly, the author has found that with millennials, public recognition of effort is as important as a reward and that small, regular, meaningful perks, such as concert tickets, may be perceived as more valuable than cash bonuses. Insights like these confirm Tuff ’s selfproclaimed status as “The Millennial Whisperer.”

Perceptive, passionate, and actionable tips on managing millennials.

Wang, Anna Purple Pegasus Inc. (402 pp.) $26.95 | $9.99 e-book | May. 15, 2019 978-0-9966405-7-2

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years or so, China’s economic development seems to argue otherwise.” This is an analytically rigorous and exceedingly thoughtful autobiography that intelligently chronicles the grand forces of history without ever forgetting about the lives caught up in them.

A moving recollection of personal and national identity.

OVERTURE Her Passion, His Rules

Warren, Skye Book Beautiful (312 pp.) $8.99 paper | $3.99 e-book | Jan. 24, 2019 978-1-940518-91-6 A young violin prodigy falls in love with the man sworn to protect her in this novel.

At the age of 12, Samantha Brooks endured a horrific tragedy when her father, Alistair, an ambassador, died suddenly of a heart attack. Alistair’s death left her completely alone; her mother was not in the picture, and her brother was not interested in raising her. Samantha was rescued from an uncertain future by Liam North, a former soldier and founder of the security firm North Security, based in Kingston, Texas.

Liam never met Samantha before her father died, but he knew Alistair and believed he had a “civic responsibility” to care

A THREAD SO FINE

This Issue’s Contributors # ADULT Belinda Acosta • Maude Adjarian • Paul Allen • Mark Athitakis • Colette Bancroft • Joseph Barbato Sarah Blackman • Amy Boaz • Jeffrey Burke • Catherine Cardno • Lee E. Cart • Kristin Centorcelli Dave DeChristopher • Kathleen Devereaux • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Rodney M.D. Fierce • Mia Franz • Marcie Geffner • Amy Goldschlager • Michael Griffith • Gerry Himmelreich • Natalia Holtzman • Dana Huber • Jessica Jernigan • Paul Lamey • Tom Lavoie • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Elsbeth Lindner • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Clayton Moore Sarah Morgan • Ismail Muhammad • Jennifer Nabers • Christopher Navratil • Mike Oppenheim Jim Piechota • William E. Pike • Margaret Quamme • Carolyn Quimby • Stephanie Reents • Evelyn Renold • Michele Ross • Lloyd Sachs • Bob Sanchez • E.F. Schraeder • Rosanne Simeone • Linda Simon • Margot E. Spangenberg • Rachel Sugar • Claire Trazenfeld • George Weaver • Steve Weinberg Wilda Williams • Kerry Winfrey • Marion Winik • Bean Yogi CHILDREN’S & TEEN Lucia Acosta • Maya Alkateb-Chami • Autumn Allen • Alison Anholt-White • Elizabeth Bird • Marcie Bovetz • Jessica Anne Bratt • Christopher A. Brown • Jessica Brown • Timothy Capehart • Patty Carleton • Hicham Chami • Alec B. Chunn • Anastasia M. Collins • Jeannie Coutant • Erin Deedy Lisa Dennis • Luisana Duarte Armendariz • Rodney M.D. Fierce • Ayn Reyes Frazee • Laurel Gardner Judith Gire • Hannah Gomez • Melinda Greenblatt • Vicky Gudelot • Gerry Himmelreich Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Darlene Sigda Ivy • Elizabeth Leanne Johnson • Deborah Kaplan Megan Dowd Lambert • Wendy Lukehart • Meredith Madyda • Pooja Makhijani • Joan Malewitz Michelle H. Martin PhD • J. Alejandro Mazariegos • Jeanne McDermott • Kathie Meizner J. Elizabeth Mills • Lisa Moore • Katrina Nye • Tori Ann Ogawa • Hal Patnott • Rachel G. Payne John Edward Peters • Andrea Plaid • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Asata Radcliffe • Nancy Thalia Reynolds Amy Robinson • Leslie L. Rounds • Katie Scherrer • Dean Schneider • Karyn N. Silverman • Laura Simeon • Lenny Smith • Rita Soltan • Mathangi Subramanian • Jennifer Sweeney • Deborah Taffa Deborah D. Taylor • Lavanya Vasudevan • Tharini Viswanath • Christina Vortia • Angela Wiley Bean Yogi INDIE Alana Abbott • Kent Armstrong • Darren Carlaw • Charles Cassady • Michael Deagler • Stephanie Dobler Cerra • Steve Donoghue • Jacob Edwards • Megan Elliott • Matthew Heller • Justin Hickey Ivan Kenneally • Barbara London • Mandy Malone • Tara Mcnabb • Alana Mohamed • Randall Nichols • Jim Piechota • Sarah Rettger • Jerome Shea • Barry Silverstein

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for her. Liam became her legal guardian and raised her on his Kingston compound where she could develop her talent as a violinist. Six years later, Samantha is on the verge of turning 18 and embarking on a high-profile tour with a tenor named Harry March. Before she leaves for the tour, Samantha tells Liam how much she desires him. Liam lusts for the beautiful violin prodigy, but there are aspects about her father’s death he does not want her to discover. Samantha and Liam give in to temptation, but her impending tour and dangerous secrets from the past threaten their intense connection. Warren’s (The Evolution of Man, 2018, etc.) latest romance deftly mixes music, eroticism, and international intrigue. Liam is a strong and focused alpha male, committed to protecting Samantha’s safety at all times so she can pursue her music career. Samantha grew up in the glare of the media spotlight as a prodigy, but she kept her ardor for Liam a closely guarded secret. The shift in their relationship unfolds slowly in scenes that build a considerable amount of erotic tension. The author is adept at incorporating music into Samantha and Liam’s encounters, particularly in a scene where her violin playing is a prelude to passion (“My limbs feel like they’re made of jelly as I play the opening rise of Beethoven’s 5 Secrets again. Liam’s fingers work with devastating accuracy to bring me to the peak”). A subplot involving the death of Samantha’s father gives the narrative a healthy dose of mystery and provides the groundwork for a sequel.

A racy guilty pleasure that should appeal to fans of erotic romance.

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Welch, Susan Aia Publishing (378 pp.) $33.29 paper | Nov. 26, 2018 978-0-648-41718-7 The intense love shared by two sisters is challenged by crises in Welch’s debut novel, set in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Ithaca, New York, during the mid20th century.

Shannon and Eliza Malone, born less than 11 months apart, were inseparable as children. The younger sibling, 17-year-old Eliza, is taller and more scholastically successful, and she has a social confidence that Shannon wishes she could emulate. Their mother, Nell, has always been more attentive to Eliza; meanwhile, Eliza “wished she could intervene and overwhelm Shannon with the security she craved but never got from the very same mother.” The girls have different dreams for their futures, but their devotion to each other is total. Then, in August 1946, Shannon contracts tuberculosis and is hospitalized for 10 months. Eliza begins seriously dating David Whitaker, a respectable young man, and in September, she enters her freshman year at a local college. One night, near the end of December, while the girls’ parents are at the hospital watching over Shannon, David’s war hero cousin, Patrick Whitaker, attacks Eliza and rapes her. She tells no one what happened, but the assault results in a pregnancy. Ashamed and traumatized,

Throughout the book, the prose style is engaging, not preachy, and Widick intersperses the text with her own poems. gluten free soul pilot

she still refuses to reveal the truth, even to Shannon. After the baby is born in October 1947, Eliza transfers to Cornell University, breaking off all contact with her family members. In skillful, straightforward prose, Welch sets her character-driven narrative against the backdrop of postwar societal changes.

Along the way, she implicitly contrasts the more traditional St. Paul society with the nascent progressive movements in Ithaca.

The addictive melodrama weaves a tale of secrets, misunderstandings, resentments, and squandered opportunities for reconciliation that keep the sisters apart for almost two decades.

Shannon, the more creative of the two siblings, is a more fully drawn character than Eliza, and readers get to know her more intimately through her unmailed letters. A strangely ethereal epilogue offers a mostly satisfying conclusion even if it leaves a few questions unanswered.

An engaging and poignant historical novel.

GLUTEN FREE SOUL PILOT Simple and Soulful Self-Care for the Healthy, Inspired Life You Want to Live

Widick, Jet & Alden, Kristen Self (214 pp.) $26.99 paper | Oct. 24, 2018 978-0-578-40091-4

Blogger and former nurse Widick and creative consultant Alden offer a debut self-help book with recipes for readers who want to go gluten-free.

Although celiac disease is now a well-known phenomenon, there was a time, not long ago, when many people suffering from gluten intolerance were misdiagnosed. Widick should know; it was an agonizing 15 years before she found out what ailed her.

The focus of this book is to dispel readers’ fears of changing their diet—whether they have celiac disease or not—and it aims to make the transition to healthier choices as smooth and easy as possible. This isn’t, however, a one-size-fits-all approach; rather, the book celebrates individual needs and tastes: “Wellness is a dynamic, individual, ever-changing, fluctuating process. We should aim to strive for a personal harmony that feels most authentic to us.” Everything in the book is designed to get readers thinking about steps that they can immediately take on a journey to better health. To facilitate this process, the authors suggest journaling ideas and offer mental exercises to foster inspiration. Because any life-changing decision requires a plan, the authors model their strategies after classic aviation principles. As such, readers are urged to create an individual “flight plan” by progressing through metaphorically titled chapters, including “Flight Route,” “Timeline,” and “Fuel Calculation,” among others. Overall, this collaboration brings a fresh approach to the gluten-free movement. Throughout the book, the prose style is engaging, not preachy, and Widick intersperses the text with her own poems. Alden, meanwhile, brings her eye for design to the colorful photo illustrations, which add a welcoming element to the recipes, such as a “strawberry spring mix salad with flaked crab.” An image of a plate of “artichoke hearts

with bacon parm crisp,” for example, is mouthwatering. The “shrimp tacos with chili-lime mayo,” meanwhile, appear to be ideal for a summer dinner party or a satisfying weeknight meal.

An upbeat, approachable culinary guide.

PHINEAS AT BAY

Wirenius, John F. CreateSpace (522 pp.) $21.65 paper | $8.99 e-book | Jul. 16, 2014 978-1-4991-7732-9 A political novel presents a detailed reinvigoration of a beloved Trollope-an character.

Phineas Finn is the eponymous hero of two novels in Anthony Trollope’s Palliser series, a political epic set in the 19th century. In the first book, the personable and dashing young Irishman heads to Victorian London to train as a lawyer and inveigles his way into high society. By the close of the second volume, Finn is weary after unsuccessfully standing for Parliament and enduring a grueling murder trial. Wirenius’ (First Amendment, First Principles, 2000) offering picks up the story in the 1890s, two decades after Trollope brought Finn’s tale to a close. Finn is appointed as counsel for Ifor Powlett-Jones, a Welsh miner charged with, among other things, criminal mischief, rioting, and assault after striking his foreman during a fracas following an explosion in a mine. The case becomes of further interest to the hero when he realizes that the mine is owned by William McScuttle, a significant figure in the Liberal Party, of which Finn himself is a member. In terms of his political standing, Finn appears to be disillusioned and drifting, looked on by members of his own party as an outsider. Wirenius captures a moment in a rapidly evolving political world as Finn becomes increasingly involved with the newly established Labour Party. The hero’s shifting sensibilities form only part of an intricately embroidered narrative that describes the social machinations—including the dangerous liaisons—that provide a backdrop to the political scene. At one point in the story, Finn even finds “himself dragged into a duel.”

Trollope’s political novels were fueled by his skillful use of detailed characterization to create a realistic social world animated by a large cast of individually distinguishable personalities. In this intriguing tale, Wirenius displays similarly acute powers of observation. This is exemplified by his elegant description of the social standing of a prominent socialist: “The Right Honourable John Oswald Theobald Phineas Standish— Lord Chiltern, in Society—was in a position that would have excited the disapprobation of his relatives and friends, knew it, and, flushed with emotion, did not care.” The author adopts an appropriately clipped evaluative tenor—which was employed

by Trollope—to strip the character to his essence in the space of a sentence. Such is Wirenius’ stylistic understanding of Trollope that it is entirely possible to finish reading the 19thcentury Phineas Redux and begin the contemporary elaboration |

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in smooth transition. This is in no small part due to Wirenius’ depth of research, which he discusses in his afterword. The author has a profound knowledge of how Trollope writes— from the way he borrows characters from other authors to his tendency to keep the “dates of his novels vague.” Readers not up to speed with the Palliser series would benefit from perusing Trollope, although Wirenius’ thoroughly plausible tale can be read as a stand-alone novel. Fans of Trollope will surely delight in reuniting with their old favorite Finn, even if it is to form their own conclusions on how he compares to the master’s original rendering.

An expert and gracefully executed follow-up to Trollope’s Palliser series.

THE PERIHELION COMPLETE DUOLOGY

Wozniak, D.M. CreateSpace (748 pp.) $24.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Jun. 8, 2018 978-1-72033-063-9 In this two-novel sci-fi saga, selectively bred human/animal genetic hybrids plot to break free of their surveillance and exploitation.

Wozniak (The Gardener of Nahi, 2013, etc.) previously published this dense saga in separate volumes, The Perihelion and An Obliquity. The first finishes at a high point; the second picks up moments later. Gene-spliced together, they constitute a 700-plus-page epic spanning mainly one catastrophic day in early 2069. Medical science has experimented with blended human/animal DNA, yielding a few boons (a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease) but mainly generating a handful

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of much-feared, genetically modified hybrids incorrectly called 99ers—for 99 percent human. (Readers are told that “an average 99er would have to have twenty times more animal genes in their DNA” to be truly considered “99% human.”) Like the android replicants of Philip K. Dick, these mutants are close to Homo sapiens but harbor personality/physiological disorders in addition to the traits making them valuable in espionage and dangerous dirty work. But society regards the hybrids as nonhuman, to be tightly regulated and constantly monitored. Gavivi, a snoopy “hummingbird”—not a hybrid but a freelance video reporter wet-wired into an airborne spy minicam—senses an international scheme to kill all the badly flawed “leopard” 99ers and wants to expose the conspiracy for fortune and fame. Meanwhile, Aspen, gifted with radiation-resilient wasp DNA, plots an escape for herself and fellow hybrids, even if an entire city must fall to a weapon of mass destruction. Formerly Chicago, the endangered city is now a high-tech “Bluecore 1C” metropolis in a disunited America, where wealthy, elitist liberals live.

The more rural, working-class, socially conservative folks reside in the “Redlands.” Longtime bestseller readers may experience déjà vu and recall James Clavell’s supersized,non–sci-fi Noble House as Wozniak’s diverse, well-drawn characters—ranging from a trendy but fraudulent photographer to a Roman Catholic priest once forcibly conscripted as an African child soldier— are swept into the 99er-pocalypse. The author’s richly detailed canvas explores religion, redemption, aesthetics, parenthood, relationships, and (naturally) the meaning of being human. If his big-ideas reach sometimes exceeds his grasp, there are still more solid thematic hits than misses here. In a few peculiar asides, the actual land itself comments on the action and what God wants, and it’s impressive that even this risky gambit works as well as it does.

A massive, thoughtful sci-fi saga, weighty in more ways than one but rewarding.

INDIE

Books of the Month AMAZING THINGS ARE HAPPENING HERE

DENVER MOON

Mordant, humorous stories that display a fine understanding of the human condition.

The skilled, perpetually poised detective shines brightly in this series, be it a novel, comic book, or any other format.

Warren Hammond & Joshua Viola Illus. by Aaron Lovett

Jacob M. Appel

THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF BONTHE AND OTHER STORIES OF WEST AFRICA

Florencia Ramirez

Impeccable writing and practical, relevant, planetfriendly alternatives to reducing water consumption in cooking and agricultural production.

Gregory A. Barnes

A superb collection full of color and subtle explorations of character.

ELLIE AND HER EMOTIONAL DRAGONS

A MUTUAL ADDICTION

Mary Widdicks

Joseph Goodrich Illus. by Traci Van Wagoner

A dark, delightfully bizarre story that dives deep into the psyches of unbalanced characters.

The dragons’ acceptance of the heroine’s reactions, their solid advice, and a kidfriendly elephant children can identify with should resonate with young readers struggling to manage their emotions. |

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Fi e l d No t e s Fr o m t h e N B C C Awa r d s Photo courtesy Paper Monday

Photo courtesy Paper Monday

By Megan Labrise

—Zadie Smith, author of criticism winner Feel Free: Essays

Submissions for Field Notes?

Email fieldnotes@kirkus.com.

—Ada Limón, author of poetry winner The Carrying

Photo courtesy Kerry Arsenault

“I’d like to remember Bob Silvers, who was the late editor of the New York Review [of Books], for whom I wrote many of these essays. He was a model of rigor, of clarity, of engagement. He made you a better writer, deletion by deletion, query by query….Bob knew how to prompt writers—easily some of the most narcissistic people on Earth—to think outside of and beyond themselves. To consider the work of other writers and artists, the politics of other places, the struggles of other peoples, and the past itself, which is always ‘other’ by definition. I miss him, and I thank you.”

“While writing may seem like a lonely venture, the introvert’s isolated stadium, we know we never write in a vacuum. We write with all the good ghosts in our corners. I, for one, have never made anything alone. Never wrote a single poem alone.”

Tommy Orange receives the Leonard Prize for best debut book

“Maybe this act of telling the audience how nervous [I am] before I go up is getting old, but I spoke in front of high schoolers today twice, in two different 45-minute sessions, and that was the scariest thing ever. But they were very sweet, not like I remember.”

—Tommy Orange, author of There There, who received the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for best first book

“I was at Penn during the 1980s, the heyday of deconstructionist criticism. I hated putting my critical language through the deflavorizing machine of deconstructionist criticism. And I was alienated by the literary culture of Penn at that time, the English department, where we had mandatory Friday afternoon sherry hours with our professors to talk critical language.”

—Maureen Corrigan, of NPR’s “Fresh Air,” who received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing 174

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Appreciations: Rand Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac Turns 70

B Y G RE G O RY MC NA MEE

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Born on the banks of the Mississippi River in 1887, Rand Aldo Leopold did not feel a pull to join his father’s furniture manufacturing firm when he became a teenager. Instead, he spent his time exploring, looking at birds’ nests and bat caves, and reading any book about natural history that he could find until his indulgent parents packed him off to Yale. From there he joined the recently founded Forest Service and, at the age of 22, trundled off to the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico.

There, he found that he was expected to be a hired gun for the ranchers of the high country, killing predators such as mountains lions, bears, wolves, and coyotes. He did so, dutifully. In time, though, he had doubts. The critical moment came, he wrote in his memoir A Sand County Almanac, when his hunting party killed a wolf and her pups, then scrambled down an embankment to take count. As he recalled, “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes….I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

From then on, Aldo Leopold tried to spend his time “thinking like a mountain,” figuring out how to keep predators alive and well in their natural habitats while working against greater dangers—desertification, water pollution, and so forth. He campaigned vigorously for land in those mountains to be set aside and protected.

Somewhat to his surprise, he was successful, and in 1924 Congress set aside more than 750,000 acres of land to become the Gila River Forest Reserve.

The Forest Service wasn’t quite sure what to do with him, so that year it transferred him to a “forest products” lab in Wisconsin—which suited him just fine, with woods and rivers and lakes and plenty of wild creatures. As ever, he worked dutifully by day, but at night he was writing, forging what he called his land ethic, an elegantly simple declaration of rights for soil, water, wind, plants, and animals: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Leopold did not live to see the publication of his book. He died on April 21, 1948, of a heart attack while helping a Wisconsin neighbor fight a small grass fire. But the following year, A Sand County Almanac appeared, and it instantly became both an environmental manifesto and a literary classic. In the 70 years since, it has remained in print, and environmentalists consider it as important as Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and John Muir’s essays in shaping the modern wilderness movement. If anything, it is more influential now than ever before—and, 70 years after it first appeared, even more urgent in calling for the preservation of the wild world.

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