This week's issue is brimming with satisfying reading recommendations! Andrew Knighton crafts "a fresh take on the reluctant hero" in Forged for Destiny, turning ideas of valor and villainy upside down in a morally complex fantasy world. Meanwhile, in The Lilac People, novelist Milo Todd reaches into the "nearly lost history of trans people in the Holocaust" to tell a "heartbreaking" story of love, friendship, hope, and survival. And The Mother by graphic novelist Rachel Deutsch is a "balm to new parents" that's "blisteringly honest." Plus, for teen readers, Candace Fleming's Death in the Jungle conveys "with the tension of a thriller" the devastating details about the infamous Jim Jones while recognizing the humanity of his victims in the People's Temple.
And in The Writer's Life, novelist Kevin Nguyen discusses the book that helped him understand the current political moment, offers a cunning pro-tip on how to fake reading nearly anything, and provides an antidote for getting you out of a reading funk.