Patchwork: A Sewist's Diary

by Maddie Ballard

"Again and again I fumble with needle and thread. This is a love story." So begins writer and editor Maddie Ballard's slim, gentle Patchwork: A Sewist's Diary, which reflects on years spent learning to sew and how that journey ultimately came to mean much more than the clothes she made. Following instructions she didn't understand, "certain [she was] doing something wrong," as she and a former partner hunkered down at his parents' home during the Covid-19 pandemic, Ballard slowly learned the warp and weft

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The Everlasting

by Alix E. Harrow

In The Everlasting, a provocative, heartrending fantasy by Alix E. Harrow (The Once and Future Witches; A Mirror Mended), a historian learns to question the purpose of legends after being sent to the past to record the story of one inspiring knight.

Owen Mallory first fell in love with Sir Una Everlasting in a children's book adaptation of her legend, which he read when he was nine. Around a thousand years after Una's tragic death in service to the country of Dominion, her picture on a recruiting poster inspired

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Broken

by X. Fang

In Broken, the exceedingly talented X. Fang (Dim Sum Palace; We Are Definitely Human) passionately describes a dramatic incident in which Mei Mei breaks Ama's cup. How the cup--and Mei Mei--are subsequently made whole again involves glue, understanding, and cake.

Mei Mei is bored while visiting Ama. So, "naturally," the child decides to scare Ama's cat, Mimi. Mei Mei jumps out and bumps into a table; Ama's patterned yellow mug flies "up, then down, down, down, until CRASH!" Mei Mei doesn't know what to do,

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Raising Brows: My Story of Building a Billion-Dollar Beauty Empire

by Anastasia Soare

Influential beauty executive Anastasia Soare shares her improbable journey from communist Romania to Southern California in Raising Brows: My Story of Building a Billion-Dollar Beauty Empire. Trained as an artist, Soare is founder and CEO of Anastasia Beverly Hills, a "global beauty empire." She is known in the industry as "the Queen of Brows." Her A-list clientele includes Jennifer Lopez and Oprah Winfrey.

Soare is an animated narrator, combining her Macedonian roots and rebellious family spirit into a riveting

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Radicle, or When the World Lived Inside Us

by Stephanie Catudal

"Beauty abounds even as the world burns." Steph Catudal's resolute first poetry collection, Radicle, offers hope of renewal despite burnout, bereavement, and fear.

The poems fall into three sections representing stages in a plant's life: "Germinate," "Grow," and "Anchor." Sarah Kellogg's black-and-white illustrations depict the step-by-step development of a juniper from seed to mature tree. A radicle is the root of a plant embryo, but it's no accident that it's a homophone of "radical." Catudal bravely confronts

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The Leaving Room

by Amber McBride

Author and poet Amber McBride's bewitching, breathtaking debut, Me (Moth), won a slew of awards and was a National Book Award finalist. Her third novel-in-verse for young adults, The Leaving Room (also a National Book Award finalist), is a mere hair's breadth away from the majesty and sheer power of her debut.

Gospel is a Keeper, a being made of "only atoms,/ matter & some otherness." She lives in "a closet that you can't escape" that she has covered with paintings and filled with soft furniture, making

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