by Nadia Davids
South African novelist Nadia Davids's twisting gothic drama Cape Fever opens by highlighting narrator Soraya's ability to read, which she keeps from her employer. Soraya goes to work as combined cleaner and cook for the settler Mrs. Hattingh in 1920. In the colonial city in which Mrs. Hattingh reigns over a large, lonely home, Soraya's close-knit, loving family lives in the nearby Muslim quarter; Soraya is rarely permitted by her employer to visit. Soraya's fiancé, Nour, is an accomplished scholar who
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by Olivia Laing
The Silver Book, Olivia Laing's eighth book, is steeped in the homosexual demimonde of 1970s Italian cinema. Its clear antifascist message is filtered through the coming-of-age story of an Englishman trying to outrun his past.
Laing's second novel (after Crudo) opens with 22-year-old art student Nicholas Wade fleeing London for Venice in 1974. He falls in with Danilo Donati, a 40-something art director meticulously designing costumes for Federico Fellini's Casanova. Nico becomes Dani's apprentice--as well
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by Vanessa Lawrence
In her gripping and sharply observed second novel, arts and fashion journalist Vanessa Lawrence (Ellipses) offers an insider's view of the power dynamics within the beauty industry through a brilliant but flawed protagonist whose secrets threaten to destroy her career.
The novel begins when Maxine "Max" Thomas learns that the board of Reveal, the successful cosmetics company she founded, is planning to remove her after an explosive allegation. Holing up in her luxury NYC apartment over the next few days, Max
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by Natasha Siegel
An immortal creature of shadow and a young woman with an immense magical gift spar through the centuries in the atmospheric, romantically charged dark fantasy novel As Many Souls as Stars by Natasha Siegel (The Phoenix Bride).
Cybil Harding is born into Elizabethan-era English nobility and a terrible curse that's documented in the Harding grimoire "in ink that was no longer blood but might once have been." Each firstborn Harding in a generation will be a witch, but should that child be a girl, "she would be
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by Trina Moyles
Trina Moyles's stunning second memoir, Black Bear, is an exploration of the fraught connection between humans and bears, and a tender account of her complex relationship with her brother.
Moyles (Women Who Dig) probes the complicated bond humans share with black bears. Moyles's interest in the black bear grew when she spent several seasons as a fire lookout in the Albertan boreal forest. As she watched the nearby forest for smoke, she began to identify and eventually develop relationships with several black
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by Miguel Bonnefoy, trans. by Ruth Diver
Novelist Miguel Bonnefoy (Heritage) combines a layered and vibrantly imagined history of Venezuela with a multigenerational saga based on his own ancestry in The Dream of the Jaguar, an enchanting novel filled with colorful and unforgettable characters.
The novel begins in Maracaibo, Venezuela, when a surly beggar, Mute Teresa, discovers an abandoned infant, Antonio Borjas Romero, on the steps of a church and decides to raise him as her own. After a formative stint as a servant in a brothel, Antonio goes on
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by Chanel Miller
The Moon Without Stars by Newbery Honoree Chanel Miller (Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All) is an exemplary work of middle-grade realism that is both immediately relatable and intensely kind, accessible to any child reader no matter their (perceived) place in their social hierarchy.
Twelve-year-old Luna and Scott have been friends since they were little. They eat lunch together at the redwood tree, silently building their complementing talents of writing (Luna) and art (Scott). Luna, whose father is white and
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by Chris Duffy
Comedian Chris Duffy's cheerfully informative debut, Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy is itself funny. Duffy sets the tone for what's to come with a dedication that includes a tribute to "the little snort noise that people make when they are laughing really, really hard." He then proceeds to establish what he calls "the Three Pillars of Good Humor": "being present," "laughing at yourself," and "taking social risks." From there, Duffy branches off into many directions,
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by Katie Bernet
Young adult literature has no shortage of riffs on Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women. The best of these converse fluently with Alcott's novel while adding new perspectives that seem essential. Katie Bernet's audacious debut, Beth Is Dead, is an astonishingly successful addition to their ranks.
The 21st-century-set novel opens as Jo and Amy March find the body of their sister Beth near the house of Jo's friend and Amy's clandestine hook-up, Laurie. Bernet nimbly moves among the POVs of all four March
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by Mindy McGinnis
Three teen girls, all struggling with abusive men, support their classmates by running an after-school sex-ed class in the keen and sharply truthful How Girls Are Made by Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species).
Eighteen-year-old overachiever Fallon thinks sex ed should better prepare girls "for the reality of a penis" and launches a secret class with fellow "pretty-white-straight" seniors Shelby and Jobie. Shelby is a locally famous fighter whose new boyfriend, Baxter, showers her with admiration.
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by Elizabeth McCracken
Perhaps the greatest gift of A Long Game is Elizabeth McCracken's assumption that readers of this book are writers, students in her class, and she is here to encourage them. But, in fact, even for those who simply enjoy reading, this book is a gem and makes an ideal gift for all readers (and secret writers).
"I believe in modes of thinking, not rules," McCracken (Thunderstruck) writes in one of the book's 280 numbered sections. "Occasionally a student will beg me for a rule. 'Just one,' the student will say.
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by Christoffer Carlsson, trans. by Rachel Willson-Broyles
Nothing is as it first appears in this smart and twisty mystery that takes place in a small Swedish town during the waning days of the 20th century. Christoffer Carlsson's The Living and the Dead, translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles, emerges as a devastating, sharp intake of fresh air from the Nordic region, with less of Stieg Larsson's explicit gore and more of Patricia Highsmith's quiet intrigue. Although it certainly contains its share of shocking revelations, this is a mesmerizing work
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by Davey Davis
For some folks, beauty is like Halloween candy: great while it lasts, but it leaves a wistful feeling when it's gone. If only beauty--and good health--were as easy to replenish as a candy dish. That's what the protagonists of Davey Davis's graceful novel Casanova 20 discover, with heartbreaking brutality. California native Adrian has a problem many people might kill for: he's astonishingly beautiful. As a kid, all that beauty yielded attention from strangers that included "amorous postcards, billets-doux,
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by Emily Krempholtz
A young witch seeking redemption falls for a grouchy neighbor desperate to protect his family's legacy in Emily Krempholtz's charming feel-good debut romantasy, Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore.
Violet Thistlewaite is just like any other small-business owner: she has big dreams, a can-do attitude, and a secret past as a supervillain's right-hand henchwoman. A hero killed the evil sorcerer who raised Violet to be his weapon. She considered killing Violet as well, but spared her life on one condition:
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by Rebecca Armitage
In her debut novel, The Heir Apparent, Rebecca Armitage delivers a reimagined British royal family, one full of secrets.
Lexi loves her life in Tasmania: she has excellent friends and is in her second year of her medical residency. She is also third in line to the throne of the United Kingdom. When her father and brother die together in a skiing accident, she is thrust back into the world she fled after her mother's tragic death. With a scheming uncle, her brother's social-climbing widow, and her grandmother--the
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by Isabel Thomas, illus. by Daniel Egnéus
Frog: A Story of Life on Earth is the third absorbing, flawless nonfiction picture book collaboration between author Isabel Thomas and illustrator Daniel Egnéus (Moth; Fox), this time linking the evolution of frogs to the origins of the universe.
A child with a net wades through "a pond full of jelly-like eggs" that will one day grow legs and become "frogs that lay eggs of their own." The ensuing chicken-and-egg question--"if frogs come from eggs, and eggs come from frogs, where did the first frog come
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by Jazmina Barrera, trans. by Christina MacSweeney
Mexican author/publisher Jazmina Barrera and translator Christina MacSweeney reunite for a fourth lauded collaboration, Queen of Swords, winner of the independent bookseller-selected Cercador Prize for translated literature. Barrera originally intended to produce "a modest biographical essay" on Mexican writer, playwright, screenwriter, and poet Elena Garro (1916-1998), but instead "spent two years, six months, and two days" creating this hybrid, genre-defying biography/memoir, as delightful as it is disturbing.
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by Clare Jackson
The life and legacy of King James VI and I receives a sympathetic and compelling reassessment in The Mirror of Great Britain by Clare Jackson. Crowned King James VI of Scotland in 1567 as an infant and King James I of England and Ireland in 1603, King James is most known for the 1611 Bible translation that bears his name, the "most influential and widely sold English-language work ever produced." But there is much more to the man, Jackson argues, and a new appreciation to be had for the "sheer difficulty,
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by Ben Elcomb, illus. by Terri Po
A tiny, powerful investigative team of body cells uncover the mystery of a young girl's gastrointestinal illness in Tummy Trouble, the first title in Ben Elcomb and Terri Po's delightfully engrossing nonfiction picture book series Diagnosis Detectives.
When healthy Sophia least expects it, evil Queen Tox ("Antigen team: Flu virus") attacks, leaving Sophia curled up on the couch in distress. The detective cells--including immune system members neutrophil, T-cell, B-cell, and monocyte--are assembled in the Gastric
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by Robert Mgrdich Apelian
Robert Mgrdich Apelian makes his debut with the tantalizing YA graphic novel Fustuk, a sumptuous fantasy likely to be devoured by readers.
"I never knew my father, but I have dreams of him.... like memories that don't belong to me." Unlike his older sister, Talar, and older brother, Garaked, 19-year-old Katah was too young to know their father, a chef whose food was so good it "won the heart of a div" (a creature from Persian myth). Additionally, Katah is the only child who didn't inherit his father's skills;
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by Emily Winfield Martin
The Wildest Thing by Emily Winfield Martin (The Imaginaries; The Wonderful Things You Will Be) splendidly depicts one quiet girl's dream of "wild things" welcomed into her heart and home.
Eleanor "dreamed of things... with fur and fin./ And when the/ sun came up/ the Wild had come in." Bunnies hop through her bedroom, squirrels skitter through her kitchen, and her couch has turned into a bear. But Eleanor wants to be wild, too, so she flutters her wings, hides in a den, and howls. Deer, foxes, and wolves all
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by Katrina Leno
Katrina Leno (Summer of Salt) lyrically brings together the hallmarks of myth, gothic narratives, and the enduring bildungsroman of Little Women in Persephone's Curse, a retelling of the Persephone legend that takes place in a spellbound New York City.
The Farthing sisters are descendants of Persephone and know their lineage is a gift: Bernadette, the eldest, is a talented writer; Evelyn, the second eldest, is an excellent musician; Clara, the youngest, paints beautifully; and Winnie, the third, can see the
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by Nicholas Day, illus. by Hadley Hooper
In How to Have a Thought, Sibert Medalist Nicholas Day (A World Without Summer; The Mona Lisa Vanishes) and illustrator Hadley Hooper (Jump for Joy) give young readers an inspiring nonfiction picture book biography of Charles Darwin that uses his well-known meditative walking practice as a kickoff point.
"First you need a rock.... Next, find a stick.... Finally, trace a loop." This, Day says, is how Charles Darwin, the naturalist and "scientist of nature," found his way to "hard thoughts." Darwin often "found
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