by Anne Byrn
Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories offers 200 recipes to savor, along with history, stories, tips, vintage snapshots, and mouthwatering full-color photos, but prepare to pause to bake up a tempting Southern treat. Baking in the American South is longtime food writer Anne Byrn's attempt to answer the question, "What makes Southern baking so special?"
Byrn (A New Take on Cake; Skillet Love) credits the book's recipes and insightful tips to cooks and bakers from 14 Southern states,
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by S.J. Naudé, trans. by Michiel Heyns
Children, from infants to adult offspring, have a rough go of it in Fathers and Fugitives, South African author S.J. Naudé's uncompromising novel composed of a quintet of connected stories. Translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns, these pieces span decades in the life of Daniel, a gay South African journalist based in London, "the British broadsheets' tattletale from the colonies." At the novel's outset, he meets two Serbian men at the Tate Modern and begins an intimate relationship with them
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by Tigest Girma
Immortal Dark is a fabulously bloody and intricate reimagining of the vampire myth, wherein an ancient agreement between vampires--or "dranaics"--and humans is all that keeps a massive slaughter of mortals at bay.
Nineteen-year-old Kidan Adane is a murderer. And she'll kill again when she finds the "shadowy vampire" she is convinced kidnapped her twin sister. Kidan is heiress to her parents' legacy, which should include the great House Adane, located on the hidden campus of Uxlay University. But in a baffling
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by Rob Harrell
Popcorn by Rob Harrell (Wink) depicts the "glorious mess" that is life for seventh-grader Andrew Yaeger as he endures a series of misadventures on picture day.
Andrew lives with his mother, Susan, and his grandmother G, who has Alzheimer's disease. Today is picture day. It also happens to be Susan's first day at her new job. Susan's best friend, Mika, comes to take care of G, and Andrew heads off to school with his best friend, Jonesy, Mika's daughter. Andrew has "an issue with worrying. Stressing. Obsessing,"
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by Mai Mochizuki, trans. by Jesse Kirkwood
Mai Mochizuki's delectable The Full Moon Coffee Shop, cozily translated by Jesse Kirkwood, follows other whimsical, welcoming café-themed Japanese novels, like Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold and its multiple sequels. Here the eponymous shop "has no fixed location," but rather just appears, with lunar cooperation, when would-be patrons most need the encouraging refuge. Orders aren't possible, however, because the staff--yes, of course, they're cats!--happen to bring out just the right
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by Terry Fan, Eric Fan, Devin Fan
The Fan Brothers--Terry and Eric, joined again by youngest brother, Devin--bring back one of the "Perfect Pets" from their award-winning The Barnabus Project (2020) in the maybe-even-better companion title, Barnaby Unboxed.
Barnaby is a genetically engineered "half mouse and half elephant, with just a dash of flamingo." One day, Barnaby is chosen by a pleading "little voice": "Can we take him home? PLEASE?" The little girl waits until returning home to unbox Barnaby in front of a camera "so her father could
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by Attica Locke
Guide Me Home, Attica Locke's tense, gripping final novel in her Highway 59 trilogy, examines the political landscape of East Texas during the presidency of Donald Trump and probes the inner landscape of a Black man forced to reckon with his choices and his complicated family history.
Struggling with the ethical implications of his last case (detailed in Heaven, My Home), Texas Ranger Darren Mathews has turned in his badge. As he considers what to do next (including whether to resist the siren call of bourbon),
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by Sophie Escabasse
In Sophie Escabasse's delightfully entertaining and strikingly illustrated middle-grade graphic novel Taxi Ghost, Adèle is anticipating a low-key winter break when she inherits the "family gift." Adèle's grandmother, who sees it less as a gift and more as a curse, explains to her, "People like us... have the power to stand in the middle"--they are mediums, "a bridge between two worlds." As Adèle comes to terms with the startling fact that her first period brought with it the ability to
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