by Evelyn McDonnell
As she was in life, Joan Didion (1934-2021) in death is a subject of fascination. Evelyn McDonnell (Women Who Rock) indulges her own fascination in The World According to Joan Didion, an impressionistic tour of Didion's life, written with a feminist's eye, a poet's command of language, and a fan's yearning. McDonnell breaks her narrative into 14 chapters that could succeed as stand-alone essays. Each chapter is named for something that "figured large" in Didion's life. "Snake" is about the land of Didion's
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by J.M. Coetzee
To tell a story is to risk boring an audience. To tell a story an audience has heard before risks boring them twice over. But The Pole, from Nobel Prize Laureate and two-time Booker Prize-winner J.M. Coetzee (Late Essays; The Schooldays of Jesus; The Childhood of Jesus), sounds the depths of its characters' extraordinary inner lives contained within their familiar shells.
Beatriz is a board member for a musical organization in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona that invites esteemed performers for monthly recitals.
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by Amanda Gorman, illus. by Christian Robinson
In Something, Someday, Amanda Gorman tells one story with her words while Christian Robinson suggests another with his pictures. Intertwining text and art on the same page results in an exquisitely complementary achievement that amplifies each half to produce a remarkable whole.
Gorman's first book for children, Change Sings: A Children's Anthem, debuted in 2021 after she made history as the youngest presidential inaugural poet. Change is again at the heart of her verses here, about effecting change when "you're
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by Isle McElroy
Isle McElroy (The Atmospherians) takes readers on a mind-bending journey of gender exploration and body politics with People Collide. Much of the novel is told from the perspective of Eli Harding, an American man living in Bulgaria with his wife, Elizabeth, a highly accomplished writer with a prestigious teaching fellowship. Eli is also a writer, but less successful--at everything--than his impressive spouse. In the novel's opening pages, he discovers that he has woken up in Elizabeth's body. Elizabeth
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by Heather Cox Richardson
Historian Heather Cox Richardson (How the South Won the Civil War) dedicates Democracy Awakening to those who have joined her in "exploring the complex relationship between history, humanity, and modern politics"--a description that perfectly encapsulates not just those who may have inspired the book but also the book itself. The author of the popular newsletter Letters from an American offers an eye-opening history and her thoughts on the current state of U.S. democracy and asks: "Is the fall of democracy
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by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
Internationally renowned artist, author, and activist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas began melding traditional North Pacific Indigenous iconography and modern Asian artistic influences in the late 1990s to create "Haida manga," introduced in his award-winning Red (2009). In JAJ, Yahgulanaas returns with his spectacular hybrid artistry to brilliantly interrogate first contact between Europeans and the Indigenous people of his ancestral home, western Canada's Haida Gwaii archipelago. JAJ, the opening page reveals,
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by Carole Boston Weatherford, illus. by Jeffery Boston Weatherford
Coretta Scott King Award winner and National Book Award finalist Carole Boston Weatherford (Unspeakable) teams up once again with illustrator son Jeffery Boston Weatherford (You Can Fly) to explore their shared past and honor their enslaved ancestors through dignified poems and stunning artwork in Kin: Rooted in Hope.
Mother and son begin their narrative in 2016 at the Door of No Return, a trading post on Gorée, an island off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, where "captive Africans/ were held for weeks,
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by Terry J. Benton-Walker
Terry J. Benton-Walker's first middle-grade novel, Alex Wise vs. the End of the World, is a heartfelt and action-packed urban fantasy that follows a gay Black boy as he strives to save the world from evil gods seeking to usher in the apocalypse.
Twelve-year-old Alex Wise and younger sister Mags are displeased to be going on a summer cruise with their estranged father and his "upgraded" family. Worse yet, after the ship sets sail, a mysterious figure (the Shadow Man) snatches Mags overboard. Alex jumps into
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by Patrick Hinds
In his enthusiastic and hilarious memoir, Failure Is Not NOT an Option, true-crime podcaster Patrick Hinds (The Q Guide to NYC Pride) takes readers through his life by recounting (and embellishing) his failures with zeal. He starts with his " 'indoor kid' origin story" (spurred by the discovery of a human corpse on his route home from work), and moves through his high school and collegiate time on stage ("traveling competitive drama club--does it get any gayer?") before he attempts a more traditional
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