by Sidik Fofana
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, Sidik Fofana's electric debut, consists of eight stories featuring eight residents of a low-income apartment building in Harlem where rents are rising and eviction notices are multiplying. These men and women struggle at the edge of making ends meet and cope by various means, including hard work, stiff upper lips, bluffing, bluster and despair.
Mimi runs a hair salon out of apartment 14D, spends beyond her means and dreams of a house in the suburbs with her son's father,
Read More »
by Nina Mingya Powles
Magnolia, the lush first poetry collection of 39 pieces by essayist Nina Mingya Powles (Small Bodies of Water), crosses cultures and languages, searching for a home amidst a riot of colorful flora. "Mulan" translates as magnolia, and Disney's take on the Chinese legend of Mulan, as well as the magnolia tree and its hue, are recurring references. For the mixed-race Powles, the film was an introduction to Asian representation: "The first movie I watched with a Chinese character in it was Mulan./ To help
Read More »
by Diane Zahler
Goblin Market is a delightfully imaginative story about the unbreakable bond between two sisters--one who unknowingly falls in love with a goblin, and the other who is driven to save her.
Sisters Lizzie and Minka are extremely close despite being very different: vivacious and outgoing Minka enjoys going into town; quiet and introspective Lizzie, for whom "each sound [is] a color," prefers to stay home. One day, when Minka comes home from the market, Lizzie notices that her words are "a little brighter than
Read More »
by Kathleen Hale
One of the most notorious crimes of the Internet Age took place in Waukesha, Wis., on May 31, 2014, when two 12-year-old girls stabbed a third girl 19 times, in order to appease a fictional ghoul they had become obsessed with online. As the victim recovered in a hospital and the assailants awaited trial, the media went viral with what was soon fearsomely misconstrued as the "Slenderman killings." But in the wildly unsettling Slenderman, Kathleen Hale, who originally covered the case for Vice, finds
Read More »
by Natalie C. Parker
Five tweens stand between their werewolf pack and a magic-devouring monster in Natalie C. Parker's first middle-grade novel.
"All her life, Riley Callahan had been looking forward to becoming a real wolf." Twelve-year-old "mosaic-green"-eyed Riley is the daughter of two werewolves and expects to join her family's pack when she transforms into a wolf "on the night of the first full moon of summer." But Riley and four other kids don't change when the full moon arrives. None of the pack leaders have an explanation
Read More »
by Alice Sedgwick Wohl
It was likely with tongue in cheek that Andy Warhol titled one of his movies starring Edie Sedgwick (1943-1971) Poor Little Rich Girl. That's precisely how the world saw Sedgwick: "The gossip columns called her a debutante, an heiress, and a Boston Brahmin, but Edie was nothing of the sort." So writes Alice Sedgwick Wohl, Sedgwick's older sister, in As It Turns Out: Thinking About Edie and Andy, a remarkable biography centered on a tragic American icon.
As It Turns Out has three parts, each of which offers
Read More »
by Ray Robertson
The life of a middle-aged used bookseller in Toronto might not sound like promising fictional material, but in Estates Large and Small, Canadian novelist and critic Ray Robertson provides a warmhearted and unconventional love story that's also an opportunity for a gentle encounter with some of life's fundamental questions.
After a rent increase and the complications of commerce in the time of covid-19 force Phil Cooper to close his physical bookstore, he moves his inventory of 10,000 books online. When
Read More »
