by Robert Winder
Europe looks different from the water. Three rivers: the Rhine, the Rhône, and the Po, all start within a few miles of one another in the Alps, fed by snowmelt from the same high granite, before splitting apart to carve their separate paths toward three different seas. Robert Winder, former editor at Granta and the Independent, investigates how this geographical accident is the key to understanding Europe itself.
Winder moves through centuries of history, interested in how water shapes behavior: how
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by Margrét Ann Thors
The unsolved disappearance of a childhood friend comes back to haunt a single mother in Freyja, the tense debut thriller from Icelandic American author Margrét Ann Thors.
When she was 11, Unnur spent the summer on a farm in the Dark Valley. She and Freyja, the almost otherworldly daughter of farmer Elias, became inseparable. Freyja disappeared around a year later, and Unnur was the last person to see her. Unnur doesn't remember what happened to Freyja, but what she does remember about that night doesn't
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by Emil Wilson
Emil Wilson's magnificent graphic novel debut, The Nightingales, melds startlingly vulnerable storytelling with extraordinarily spectacular art. His protagonist, Lou, introduces herself as "almost eighteen. Almost out of high school. Almost ready to go to college and get my life started." Over the course of 400 pages, her path will take sharp, unexpected turns.
It's April 1985 in small-town Oregon. "This story is based on something that happened years ago. It's mostly true," Lou insists. She's often caught
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by Kaela Rivera
Kaela Rivera's The Hungry Forest is a tightly edited, cinematic middle-grade treat that pulses with action, horror, and humanity.
Situated across from the middle school in Traveler's Rest, S.C., is "a missing persons black hole"--a dense forest into which countless people have disappeared over the decades. Brothers Ryan, 12, and Teddy, eight, know especially well not to wander into the forest thanks to their search-and-rescuer father. He maintained a trove of research about those lost to the woodland until
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by Valentina Gottardi, Danio Miserocchi, Maciej Michno, trans. by Sylvia Notini
The Italian author/illustrator trio Valentina Gottardi, Maciej Michno, and Danio Miserocchi score a hat trick with their third collaboration, Still Water: The Wonders of Ponds, Pools, Wetlands, and More. This second title in the Spectacular STEAM for Curious Readers series, translated by Sylvia Notini (Who Hid the Stars?), is an exploration of the critical ecosystems in and around "still waters." Gottardi's stunning illustrations act as part of the environmental enlightenment in this eye-opening nonfiction
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