Starred Review

Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate

by James Tate

The poetry of James Tate (The Government Lake) lands like a perfectly wrapped gift for those who love words and love the way images can take flight in unexpected and hilarious ways. The editors of Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate--Dara Barrois/Dixon, Emily Pettit, and Kate Lindroos--know it and offer this collection of his work, complete with a stunning foreword by poet Terrance Hayes. Hayes spins Tate's own words into newfound gold, weaving them throughout as he explains the "defamiliarizing

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The Mantis

by Kotaro Isaka, trans. by Sam Malissa

It's a rare author who can make killers come across as empathetic and wise, but Kotaro Isaka (Three Assassins) has done just that with the superb and intricately plotted thriller The Mantis, translated from the Japanese by Sam Malissa. It's the third of Isaka's loosely connected novels about the crime shadow world in Tokyo that started with Bullet Train.

Kabuto (an alias) has been an assassin for decades. Despite being one of the best in the trade, he now has a wife and son--who know nothing about his side

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Where He Can't Find You

by Darcy Coates

Where He Can't Find You by Darcy Coates (The Whispering Dead) is the prolific adult author's first YA title, an eerie and viscerally frightening work of horror in which a former coal mining town is terrorized by an evil entity known as "the Stitcher."

Abby Ward lives in dull and lifeless Doubtful, Ill. For the past several decades, denizens of Doubtful have disappeared under mysterious circumstances, only for their dismembered body parts to be found days or weeks later, sewn together with bright red thread.

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Ruined

by Sarah Vaughn, illus. by Sarah Winifred Searle, Niki Smith

A marriage of convenience turns into happily-ever-after in Ruined, a character-driven graphic novel and historical romance from powerhouse team Sarah Vaughn (Sleepless), Sarah Winifred Searle (The Greatest Thing), and Niki Smith (The Deep & Dark Blue).

When society declares Catherine Benson "ruined," she's forced to marry. Enter penniless, brooding, and devastatingly handsome gentleman Andrew Davener, who needs her dowry to restore his crumbling estate. After an intensely awkward wedding day and an unsuccessful

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Old Town Road

by Chris Molanphy

The hit song "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X (a persona of Montero Lamar Hill) drew more attention than most chart-topping tunes for a number of fascinating reasons that Slate columnist Chris Molanphy (Kurt Cobain: Voice of a Generation) elucidates in Old Town Road. For one, the single stayed at the top of the charts for longer than any other. Also, Billboard, which tracks song performance by genre, forbade it from being tracked as a country single, despite its signifiers as one.

Molanphy's investigation of the

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Duel

by Jessixa Bagley, illus. by Aaron Bagley

Author Jessixa Bagley and illustrator Aaron Bagley's genuine and heartwarming middle-grade graphic novel Duel tells the story of an intense sibling rivalry that worsens after the death of their father.

Biracial sisters Gigi and Lucy have never attended the same school before and, since their fencer father died, they've been "at each other's throats." On their first day together at Butler Middle School, eighth-grader Gigi and sixth-grader Lucy get into a heated argument and Gigi trips Lucy in the cafeteria.

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Welcome

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Learn more about Shelf Awareness.

Shelf Discovery

Transitory

by Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Subhaga Crystal Bacon's 52 poems--most of them elegies to the trans and gender-nonconforming people murdered in the United States in 2020--represent a valuable exercise in empathy.

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Novelist as Vocation

by Haruki Murakami, trans. by Philip Gabriel, Ted Goossen

The celebrated author of Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle offers opinionated essays on the craft of writing fiction.

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Ndima Ndima

by Tsitsi Mapepa

Tsitsi Mapepa's memorable debut novel, Ndima Ndima, which consists of intertwined stories, invitingly explores the mother-daughter bonds of a Zimbabwean family.

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It Ends at Midnight

by Harriet Tyce

Harriet Tyce's third thriller is a feat of narrative engineering centered on a London-based deputy district judge whose sunny present is darkened by a grisly crime from her past.

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All the Broken Places

by John Boyne

A German nonagenarian living in contemporary London has spent a lifetime burying her family's shameful wartime past in this standalone sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

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Pilgrims 2.0

by Lindsey Harding

This satirical romp of a novel explores issues of body and femininity aboard a plastic-surgery cruise ship while still managing to reach moments of real poignancy about grief and trauma.

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The Olympian Affair

by Jim Butcher

In the action-packed second novel in the Cinder Spires series, a steampunk world prepares for war--if the negotiations don't prove fatal first.

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unOrdinary: Volume 1

by uru-chan

An audacious teen without abilities unflinchingly defends himself and others in a brutal high school where the superpowered reign, in this artful first volume of a popular, action-packed WEBTOON.

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Again and Again

by Jonathan Evison

In this life-affirming novel, an endearing eldercare resident claims to be more than a thousand years old and regales his sympathetic caregiver with tales of adventures.

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Roaring Brook Press: Juniper's Christmas by Eoin Colfer

Media Heat

Thursday, November 30, 2023

The View: Brian Stelter, author of Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy (Atria/One Signal, $30, 9781668046906).

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Fresh Air: Tim Alberta, author of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (Harper, $35, 9780063226883).
 
Good Morning America: Scout Bassett, author of Lucky Girl: Lessons on Overcoming Odds and Building a Limitless Future (Worthy Books, $27, 9781546003861).

Drew Barrymore Show: Kerry Washington, author of Thicker than Water: A Memoir (Little, Brown Spark, $30, 9780316497398).

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Fresh Air: Joy Buolamwini, author of Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines (Random House, $28.99, 9780593241837).
 
Good Morning America: Omid Scobie, author of Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival (Dey Street, $32, 9780063258662).

CBS Mornings: Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett, authors of This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained (Rodale, $28, 9780593580950).

Monday, November 27, 2023

Fresh Air: Garrett M. Graff, author of UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here--and Out There (Avid Reader Press/S&S, $32.50, 9781982196776).

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Good Morning America: Mark Seliger, photographer of Vanity Fair: Oscar Night Sessions: A Decade of Portraits from the After-Party (Abrams, $80, 9781419754784).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert: José Andrés, co-author of Feeding Dangerously (TKO Studios, $44.99, 9781952203978).
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