Late in Evanthia Bromiley's debut novel, Crown, a woman looks out the window as the early morning train she is on hurtles past two half-dressed, unattended children dangerously close to the tracks. They are nine-year-old twins Evan and Virginia, born when Jude--now pregnant again--was 16. Jude, a waitress until the Covid-19 pandemic slowed and then stopped her income altogether, has stayed on the move, trying to shelter her family however she can, but now she must face two undeniable truths: they are being evicted from their small trailer, and the baby is coming.

Bromiley's novel shimmers as it moves between the three voices: first Virginia, all hard edges and light like a diamond, then Jude, and then "architect of daydreams" Evan, addressing his unborn sibling directly: "You are tucked tight inside Mama, like a seed." Though each voice is singular, all three are full of artistry, a poet's rendering of an ordinary desperation. In labor and with nowhere for them to go, Jude leaves Evan and Virginia in the car near the hospital, assuring them: "You wait for morning time. In the morning, I will come for you. Wait for me." At the end of the long, unraveled night, Jude learns that strangers can unexpectedly show up for each other in times of trouble. Like the woman on the train, some might sit in their comfort and pronounce Jude and her family "trash," but she is a loving mother, and her deep and abiding care shines in every word: "You are my most perfect, truth-telling twins. You are everything precious, everything perfect to me." --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

Michelle Huneven's sixth novel, Bug Hollow, is a glistening portrait of one California family from the mid-1970s onward: beset by losses but expanded through serendipity and friendship.

Readers are introduced to the Samuelson family--dad Phil, an architect; mom Sibyl, a fourth-grade teacher; and three kids--through the eyes of eight-year-old Sally. Sally's older brother, Ellis, moved to Bug Hollow, a hunting lodge-turned-student rental (make that hippie commune) in the Santa Cruz Mountains, to work in an ice cream shop the summer after high school. When the Samuelsons drive to collect him so he can take up his baseball scholarship at Ole Miss, they find him deeply enmeshed with 20-year-old Julia. The aftermath of this, plus another short-lived romance, alters the course of the family's future forever.

A rotating close third-person perspective spotlights each family member, widening the view to include those who join via marriage and unexpected pregnancies. Through discrete chapters that function almost like linked short stories, Huneven (Blame; Search) builds an affectionate record of several generations. She invites equal compassion for all of them, even when they make bad decisions--such as when Sibyl avoids her grief by drinking spiked Hawaiian punch from a plastic tumbler all day long. Minor characters, including Sibyl's math wiz student and formidable principal, are just as charmingly quirky.

The Samuelsons and their hangers-on form a dysfunctional family that's easy to love, despite each character's flaws. Fans of Jami Attenberg, Ann Patchett, and Anne Tyler need to try Huneven's work pronto. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

In each of his five previous novels, which include The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart has delivered consistently high-quality fiction while avoiding the curse of predictability. Vera, or Faith brilliantly inhabits the consciousness of a young girl to produce a story of family and friendship that pleasingly engages the mind as it slowly insinuates its way into the heart.

Shteyngart's protagonist, precocious, charming 10-year-old Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, lives with her Russian-born father, Igor, a magazine editor; her "Tradwife" stepmother, Anne Bradford (known to her as Anne Mom); and her annoying younger stepbrother, Dylan. She aches to reunite with her Korean birth mother, Mom Mom, who she's been told abandoned her and Igor and who she believes is dying of cancer. Vera acts as something of a mediator for her parents, and must survive in the status-conscious hothouse that is her upscale elementary school, where she's tagged with the nickname "Facts Girl." But above all, she longs for friendship with classmates like Yumi, who becomes her debate partner.

Vera, or Faith takes place in a United States roughly a decade removed from the Covid-19 pandemic that has undergone some disturbing changes. The states are in the process of considering a constitutional amendment known as "Five-Three" that will grant an enhanced vote to Americans like Anne Mom whose ancestors arrived during or before the Revolutionary War (and were "exceptional enough not to arrive in chains").

Combining deep humanity with Gary Shteyngart's customary intelligence and wit, Vera, or Faith is a reminder of why he's a writer whose works are good ones to keep close at hand in challenging times. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Mia McKenzie's These Heathens recounts one formative weekend in the life of Doris Steele, a pregnant teenager with no desire to become a parent at such a young age. "I thought about God's will. I thought about my own. And I decided. I have to get rid of it." But deciding is different than doing, and options are limited for a poor Black girl in rural Georgia in 1960, so Doris turns to a onetime teacher for help. When Mrs. Lucas takes her to Atlanta for a weekend procedure, Doris expects to return home a changed woman: pregnant one moment, not the next. Instead, she spends a weekend surrounded by folks whom her small-town, religious upbringing insisted could not exist: feminists, activists, queer people, atheists. "I didn't know anybody who didn't talk about life like it was small, its possibilities limited to whatever they, themselves, could imagine," Doris reflects. But just two days in Atlanta open her eyes to the civil rights movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, women's liberation, and all the possibilities of a life well lived.

McKenzie (Skye Falling) has crafted Doris's story with care, bringing readers along as Doris discovers a world beyond the confines of the small town that raised her "on shame, gorged and fattened on it, like all the girls around [her]." Expertly incorporating historical events into the imagined life of a young woman exploring a world of choice instead of expectation, These Heathens is a powerful novel that speaks to the real and perceived limitations placed on women--particularly young Black women--in the past and into the present moment. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer

Of the handful of qualities that humans share, one of the biggest is the desire for contentment. Lee Cole's Fulfillment, his winningly brittle follow-up to Groundskeeping, his first novel, explores the ways in which members of a Kentucky family seek satisfaction. Of the two half brothers, Joel, the older one, would seem to have found it. He's a published author living in New York and married to Alice. Emmett has returned to Kentucky after a stint as a line cook in New Orleans to work at a fulfillment warehouse. Unlike wealthy Joel, Emmett went into overdraft "just a week earlier buying Goobers and a pack of cigarettes." He's also a would-be screenwriter, toiling away on "an evolving, never-ending autobiographical work."

As the novel begins, Joel and Alice have moved in with the brothers' mother, owner of Bibles and a shed full of guns, for Joel's visiting professorship. Soon, Emmett realizes Alice and Joel's marriage is unhappy. He begins a clandestine affair with Alice. Add a grandmother who claims "men in the woods" watch her sleep, a stranger who calls Joel with messages like "You're a fraud," and a warehouse colleague who tries to recruit Emmett into a side hustle involving stolen drugs, and the result is a perceptive portrait of sibling rivalry and the perpetual battle between desire and attainability. "You have to reach for the impossible thing sometimes, not because it's realistic, but because it will save your life," Alice tells Emmett. The risks inherent in that quest form the moral complexity of this worthy sophomore novel. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

Heather Clark's finely wrought first novel, The Scrapbook, captures the lingering melodrama of an international--and intellectual--romance in one's early 20s. Harvard grad Anna, the primary narrator, looks back at her year with Christoph, a handsome German student she meets in 1996 when he visits Cambridge, Mass., excavating what happened between them.

Clark (Red Comet) writes, "His beauty dazzled and destabilized me. I was in thrall to it and yet it weighed upon me. Things came too easily for him. I came too easily." Over the course of a year, Anna travels to Germany several times to see Christoph. When Christoph plays tour guide, taking her to Nuremburg, Hamburg, and Munich, among other places, he often points out where Germans have failed to reckon with the past by, for example, leaving a former Jewish quarter in Nuremberg unmarked.

Despite warnings from Anna's former roommates, who are Jewish and dislike Germans, Anna is smitten. Christoph, however, is more of an enigma, and part of the engine of this novel is tracking the subtle shifts between the two. The couple is attracted to each other through a shared interest in history. In fact, much of their conversation revolves around their grandfathers' respective roles in World War II, as well as thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno. The novel contains several sections set in the 1940s that follow those grandfathers on their sides of the war. The Scrapbook is a fascinating tangle of yearning, history, and legacy. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator

The facile, baroque imagination of Joyce Carol Oates pays homage to the literary shadows of Edgar Allan Poe and Vladimir Nabokov, with nods to gothic novelist Charles Brockden Brown and Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata, in the astounding Fox. This novel is at once a psychological thriller, police procedural, and fair-play puzzler with the carbon footprint of a serial predator at its core.

That would be 41-year-old poet and English teacher Francis Harlan Fox, transformed from his identity as Frank Howard Farrell, who was accused of molesting students in Pennsylvania. Despite headmistress Paige Cady's vow not to hire "another (white) male" at the Langhorne Academy in Wieland, N.J., her niece's strong recommendation and Fox's ingratiating interview convince her to put the fox in the hen house. He endears himself to the girls with desk-drawer treats "dusted with a mere pinch of Ambien innocent-looking as powdered sugar." Langhorne Academy seems an ideal circumstance until Fox's pearly white 2011 Acura is found in Wieland Pond--but "animal activity" has rendered his remains unrecognizable. Is it an "accident, suicide or homicide"?

That's what Detective Horace Zwender must uncover. He believes a "serial pedophile is like a serial killer: hiding in plain sight," and finds a website Fox made "radioactive with felonious filth." Suspects proliferate. Oates's adept, diabolical manipulation of the onslaught of lurid details and incipient evil is both memorably mesmerizing and disturbing. Readers might suss out the murder weapon, if not the murderer, before Zwender. Oates finds a new way around an old genre, blending familiar tropes with her distinctive, well-wrought technique and measured stylistic rhythms. --Robert Allen Papinchak, freelance book critic.

Moving from vibrant Brooklyn, N.Y., to Riverburg, Maine, is a necessary compromise for the Blums. Gus's offer to be department chair at a respected liberal arts college will dramatically boost their finances, Claire can revitalize her clothing design career, and Hazel, 18, and Wolf, 11, will adjust. "Wasn't Maine like upstate, only more so?" Claire muses. But in Jessica Berger Gross's compulsively readable first novel, Hazel Says No, Hazel's first day of her senior year upends not only the family but also their new rural community.

Hazel is a studious and empathetic aspiring writer who is focused on her college applications, and when her principal blatantly propositions her, Hazel's firm "no" is clear. The close-knit Blum family doesn't keep secrets, and they each react to the administrator's egregious act in ways they begin to question. Meanwhile, precocious Wolf maneuvers sixth-grade insecurities, Gus grapples with possibly being "canceled" by his students, and Claire struggles with her own midlife doubts. After the popular principal's supporters malign Hazel, social media scorn escalates into antisemitic graffiti and hate notes. As Riverburg continues to debate the controversy, Hazel's bravery attracts national support and unexpected opportunities.

A strong indictment of predatory behavior and misplaced power, Hazel Says No also introduces a witty, loving family and an eclectic cast of supporting characters. Gross tempers Hazel's painful coming-of-age story with entertaining regional details of the Blums' adjustment to Maine, including "long johns and wool socks and pointy icicles." Hazel Says No is a timely and often laugh-out-loud funny novel of courage and hope. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.

The challenges of love and fidelity provide the grist for Helen Schulman's smart and often witty collection, the aptly titled Fools for Love. In its 10 well-shaped stories, set mostly in reasonably well-to-do segments of New York City's populace, Schulman (Come with Me) creates an engaging cast of characters struggling to balance their desire for stable relationships with the allure of sexual adventure.

Though it wouldn't be entirely accurate to characterize this as a collection of linked stories, Schulman does display an affinity for recurring characters. In "Parents' Night," Mirra is a divorce attorney who encounters her ex-husband, Mike, at a school event. She then returns in "The Interview," and there's an allusion to her in "I Am Seventy-Five," as the eldest daughter of Lily Weilerstein, who discovers after the death of her husband that he had been meticulously documenting his serial infidelity in a collection of journals.

One of Fools for Love's strangest and most entertaining stories is "My Best Friend," where Jake Kaminsky weds Jeannie, the ex-wife of Phil, a failed novelist, in a ceremony where Phil serves as his best man. The divergent paths their careers take afterward set up a wild climax to the story. "The Memoirs of Lucien H." is narrated in the voice of an infant whose young mother, an ex-model, is engaged in a desperate search for a mate after Lucien's father abandoned them.

In these and other stories, Schulman's characters make enough foolish and self-indulgent choices to fill a volume twice the size of this slim one. But that's the stuff of enjoyable fiction, and she delivers it with style here. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

The Poppy Fields is a mesmerizing work of speculative fiction by Nikki Erlick. Researcher and overachieving do-gooder Ellis Jones has developed a controversial cure for grief that requires patients to go into an extended sleep at a facility called the Poppy Fields. Erlick explores what lies at the heart of love and what it means to grieve.

Three strangers--Sasha, Ava, and Ray--are brought together during a tornado warning at a Kansas airport. After their flight is canceled, they split a rental car to embark on a drive to California, each seeking the Poppy Fields for their own reasons. They deal with the wounds of their past and attempt to move into new phases of their lives.

As she did in her debut, The Measure, Erlick here poses a fascinating what-if that powers the narrative and uses it to reveal the complexities of the human condition. While love is a central theme, each character has individual views on what a person should live for--views that will be challenged throughout the narrative. Readers will find deep satisfaction in this tender, thoughtful philosophical journey with equally thoughtful characters.

This is a crying-in-public kind of novel, with beautifully rendered emotional landscapes. Even its short vignettes about those who've visited the Poppy Fields contain moving descriptions, such as how a grieving parent recalls "the baby who'd grown inside of her, the boy with her nose and his ears, the reason for all their saving and working, the capsule for all their dreams." Nikki Erlick is on a streak, writing moving and captivating speculative reads. --Carol Caley, writer

Anna Fitzgerald Healy's debut novel, Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, is a darkly humorous, lighthearted romp of a mystery set in mid-1960s Down East Maine with an unusual heroine. Billie McCadie is a townie in Eastport, where "fishermen squatting in trailers" abut "Vanderbilts languishing in mansions." She's never felt at home with the other locals, who fail to appreciate her sarcasm or her ambition to study linguistics and work in a museum.

But then comes the fateful summer when Avery Webster notices her. Billie receives an envelope containing a love letter to an unknown Gertrude, along with an engagement ring. She is invited to a solstice party at the fabulously wealthy Webster family's estate, where she discovers a freshly murdered corpse--Gertrude. Avery has the potential to be Billie's first taste of romance, but the strange communications pile up, along with the bodies, in sleepy, previously crime-free Eastport. Billie leaps into all of it, because "Who needs a life when you're busy investigating a murder?"

Billie's never been in such danger, but she's also never had as much fun, finally coming into herself and learning what she might want from life aside from a museum job: "So what if I've ended up in a Highsmith rather than an Austen? I'm the main character, and I need to start acting like it."

Stylish, playful, and more than a little tongue-in-cheek, Etiquette for Lovers and Killers blends intrigue and romance into a perfect cocktail. Billie herself offers a delightful combination of bookishness, wit, and questionable decision-making that will keep readers on edge until the final pages. Healy's debut is good, not-so-clean fun. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

A vibrant, enchanting world of dark saints, magical contracts, and unshakeable fate emerges in Italian novelist and comic book writer Giovanni De Feo's first novel in English.

The 18th-century Neapolitan village of Lucerìa pays reverence not only to the Catholic saints of the waking Day world but also to seven unusual Saints who live in the dreamworld of "the Night that is just on the other side of Lucerìa." The village is also the home of eight-year-old Oriana, who dreams of the day she and her twin brother, Oriano, will inherit their father's smithy. Then Oriano is nearly trampled during a parade. When Oriana asks the statue of Saint Anthony to save him, help comes instead from the magic of a Night Saint called the Duke of Under-earth.

Oriana's adventure for the Duke into the Secret Market of the Dead is perilous, but the true fight of her life comes years later when she learns the Smith's Guild will recognize only Oriano as their father's heir. Oriana issues a challenge that will determine the smithy's fate, and with all of the Day, including her family, standing against her, she must embrace the Night to find her true destiny.

This meditation on the twin powers of destiny and choice as well as the indomitable human passion to create comes wrapped in layers of whimsy, folklore, and darkness. The community of Lucerìa is as intricately realized as the fantastical Night with its talking cats, wondrous creations, and fool's bargains. The Secret Market of the Dead reads like a lucid, impossible dream and should enchant fans of Erin Morgenstern and GennaRose Nethercott. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston (A Novel Love Story; The Dead Romantics) explores the remarkable ways that love, family, and music can connect us. Joni Lark, a hit songwriter, left her hometown of Vienna Shores, N.C., to make it big in Los Angeles. But after her mother's dementia diagnosis, she's left utterly empty: no lyrics, no melodies, and no idea how to fix it. Joni can't imagine how the situation could get worse, until her parents announce that this summer will be their last running the Revelry, their iconic music venue. Joni feels disconnected from everything she's ever known. Then she hears a voice in her head. One that isn't her own.

Joni figures that the enticing male voice and unfinished melody playing in her thoughts must be her mind playing tricks on her, but it doesn’t go away, and it seems alarmingly more real by the second. Sebastian Fell, the very real former boy band member with a bad boy reputation, shows up to put a face to the voice and figure out how to break their mysterious connection.

The arrogant and admittedly handsome Sebastian suggests they face the music and finish the mystery song. The pair's songwriting journey creates a harmonious love story out of witty dialogue and stunningly vulnerable reflections. Deeply moving elements of familial love and loss reflect how relationships grow and change, for better or worse. As the song comes together, so do Joni and Sebastian. Sounds Like Love imaginatively portrays how life leads us exactly where we are meant to go. --Clara Newton, freelance reviewer

A former speechwriter for Barack Obama chronicles the challenges of learning to ride the waves in It's Only Drowning: A True Story of Learning to Surf and the Search for Common Ground. David Litt (Thanks, Obama) braved New Jersey's cold Atlantic waves and unpredictable hours with his teacher: his conservative brother-in-law, Matt.

At 34, Litt felt isolated by the Covid-19 pandemic, had "situational depression," and struggled with "existential terror" for the future. In contrast, Matt, a Harley-driving, anti-vaxxer Joe Rogan fan, was content. Pursuing Matt's hobby seemed reasonable, although Litt soon realized that "learning to surf is like learning a language that wants to kill you." His hope of surfing simply to achieve "not being depressed" soon became a goal of surfing Hawaii's North Shore, the sport's mecca. Litt tenuously enlisted Matt's help, and Litt's self-deprecating descriptions of their skill differences are hilarious but poignant as the eager student and the expert teacher slowly bond. Passages of the men's time together are rife with surfing vocabulary. A "cleanup set" of waves might cause "ragdolling," or a surfer could "get barreled." Evocative details of frigid water, intense waves, and surfing techniques give a sense of thrill and danger. Through regular sessions on their New Jersey beaches and "surf travel" trips to Costa Rica, California, and Hawaii, Litt and Matt committed to sharing their common passion. "We hadn't changed each other's minds," Litt concludes, but they did discover neutral ground, an outcome Litt warmly savors. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.

In 2011, Stephen Starring Grant moved his wife and two daughters back to his hometown of Blacksburg, Va. In early 2020, Grant, the family's primary wage earner, was laid off from his consulting job. He found himself unemployed at the start of the pandemic in a town that had limited employment options, and with a recent cancer diagnosis to boot. Unable to find anything in his field, he took a job as a rural-route carrier for the United States Postal Service. Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home offers his stories and reflections on a year spent in a position he'd never thought much about before.

Grant began with a bit of an ivory-tower complex, as he imagined his intellectual background overprepared him for the simple drudgery of mail delivery (which turned out to be untrue), but he ended with a profound respect for postal and other service workers, and balanced thoughts on class and background. These pages are by turns hilarious and thoughtful. Grant describes religious experiences, being threatened at gunpoint, bonding with strangers over their deliveries and finessing their political differences. Along the way, he informs the unschooled reader of the process that mail carriers undertake to sort, order, and "case" the mail for delivery, and the hazards: backbreaking labor, the ergonomic disaster of right-hand drive (especially in a left-hand-drive vehicle), extremes of heat and cold, and dog attacks.

Via an adventure with unfamiliar blue-collar work, Grant discovered new values, new people, and a new relationship with home. Mailman is a classic memoiristic blend of whimsy, storytelling, and insight. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

In The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature, Charlie English (The Gallery of Miracles and Madness) explores decades of literary resistance in Poland, which occurred in part because of the support of a little-known though expansive operation by the CIA. The covert intelligence operation known as the "CIA books program" distributed censored materials beyond the Iron Curtain. It was headed by operative George Minden, who was an exile from Romania who worked in the Free Europe Committee's (FEC) New York office. Under the guise of the International Literary Centre, it would, over the course of 35 years, disseminate close to 10 million items. It supported underground publishing movements that broke through the state-sponsored propaganda that kept citizens from their histories, stories, arts, and cultures.

Shaped by his experience as a journalist, English's straightforward, no-holds-barred reportage-style narrative tells a complex story that has many moving pieces and opinionated characters. English examines the risks taken by many individuals in a vast, dispersed network that considered the printing press and access to information as much a weapon as any tank could be in a war zone. He celebrates the work of everyday people choosing to resist, without romanticizing the very real dangers they faced in making those choices.

The newspapers, the shared literature, and the networks to smuggle them all became part of a "living social movement." The underground education of the people through censored literature continued to show other ways to live. The CIA Book Club is a gripping lesson in long-term resistance and the resilience of the human spirit. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Peter Hunt explores the real-life parallels to elements of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass in this fun, short work. Alice's Oxford brings to life the Oxford in which Carroll and Alice Liddell, the "real" Alice, lived. With plenty of illustrations, maps, and quotations from the books, this is a treat for Alice fans and Oxford lovers alike.

Hunt begins with an introduction to Carroll's Alice books, their connections to a Victorian childhood and academia, their author, their original illustrator, John Tenniel, and the child whom the "Alice of the books was clearly a very affectionate portrayal" of. Though most of the book assumes more than a passing familiarity with the texts and their contexts, this introduction provides enough information for amateur Alice aficionados to join Hunt's exploration of Alice-related aspects of Oxford as well. In three sections focusing on city, church, and river, Hunt progresses along the streets of Oxford with stops at buildings and locations that may be referenced in the Alice books. Under each location heading, Hunt provides a description, historical context, occasional gossip, and possible connections to the Alice books, like the hatter and hosier who became a grocer and might have inspired the Mad Hatter, as well as the marmalade jar that Alice finds at the start of her Wonderland journey.

In addition to engaging wonderfully with Carroll's work, Alice's Oxford could serve as a literary tourist's guide to the city. Filled with amusing and insightful anecdotes, including the real-life Alice’s adult perspective, it will delight Alice enthusiasts and keep them returning to the texts for more. --Dainy Bernstein, freelance reviewer

Joseph Jebelli (How the Mind Changed) uses the latest neuroscience and his own personal experiences to show readers why rest is vital in The Brain at Rest. Jebelli begins with the story of his father's extreme burnout and finding himself on the same path, then sets out to learn why working less and resting more caused such a dramatic improvement to his health. He discovers that "rest is actually the key to human flourishing."

Chapter names include "Sleep on It," "Playology," and "The Science of Tree-Hugging." Jebelli brings readers on his journey through the many and varied types of rest. While not everybody can find a forest in which to bathe, parks, community gardens, or grassy backyards can do the trick. An hour or two of video games can also be good for the brain. He includes discussions with experts as well as his own experiences, enabling readers to enjoy thorough descriptions rather than mere bullet points.

Ideal for readers of Tricia Hersey's Rest Is Resistance and Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing, The Brain at Rest tackles the neuroscience behind why humans need rest in an engaging and accessible way. Jebelli acknowledges that the concept of rest and the proposed ways to rest he describes are often at odds with Western ways of working and living, and he makes a case for societal shifts.

With old and new ideas, The Brain at Rest is a useful guide for readers looking to rest more and stress less. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller

A glorious celebration of silly science, The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog by Carly Anne York (Queens of the Jungle) is an intensely readable, funny book that treats its audience to a plethora of scientific discoveries. Each is described in its own bite-size chapter, making this a perfect beach read for the science-oriented set. With topics as wide-ranging as the discovery of penicillin and duck genitalia, York offers a fun fact for every occasion.

Why was the first recorded recipient of a bone graft subsequently excommunicated from his church? What does Urban Decay-brand liquid eyeliner have to do with spider sex? Who is Winter the llama, and what does she have to do with Covid-19 vaccines? And what the heck is a salmon cannon, and how does a frog levitate? York answers all these questions and many more.

Published at a time when scientific research funding in the U.S. is increasingly at risk from federal budget cuts, Salmon Cannon explains why funding such experiments can be controversial and makes an unequivocal case for their continued support. Informative but not dense, entertaining, and well-researched, Salmon Cannon is perfect for fans of Mary Roach's oeuvre and readers who enjoy learning about the scientific world.

A thoroughly engaging and fascinating read, Salmon Cannon opens up the less-serious aspects of scientific research and demonstrates the role that curiosity plays in everyday scientific innovation. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller

All the Lands We Inherit, Darby Price's debut, is a lyric memoir about her mother's hardships. Equal parts love song and lament, this touching hybrid work of prose poems, set in post-Hurricane Katrina Louisiana, illuminates the difficulty of caring for someone who resists intervention and attributes the vicissitudes of fortune to spiritual forces.

"Everything I've done has just been to keep her alive. I will--I must--fail. Before then, I do as much as I can," Price vows. "Fill out applications for Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, free meals, free rides. We turn out our pockets and find faith struggling among the lint." A car crash landed her mother in the hospital, where she had to confront long-neglected medical conditions. Price and her siblings encouraged her to quit smoking and pursue necessary treatment for her lungs. However, she remained addicted to cigarettes and her health continued to deteriorate. A history of insecure employment left her in a precarious financial situation, with unaddressed trauma as well. Price felt "the years stretch out behind and before me, full of shame and terror" and wished "to lay this burden down."

Price's prose poems are in abecedarian trios--three each for most letters of the alphabet, totaling 66. A concluding note reveals that this complex structure is modeled on a specific chapter of the Bible: Lamentations 3. Throughout, the language is saturated with allusions to scripture and hymns, apt given her mother's piety. Through alliteration, salient details, and piercing fragments of memory, Price captures a "low-simmering," anticipatory grief. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

A cursed harpoon that can kill sea ghosts brings together a blacksmith's son and a forlorn spirit in the wondrous and enthralling middle-grade novel Graciela in the Abyss.

One hundred years ago, the "ruthless" fisherman Fernando Gonzalo and the "pitiless" blacksmith Ignacio Leon forged a weapon to kill sea spirits. Now, Ignacio's great-grandson, Jorge Leon, has found the weapon. The boy's unkind parents want to use it, but Jorge won't let them harm the spirits. He steals the harpoon with the intent to destroy it but, Fernando, now a vengeful ghost, attacks and reclaims the weapon, plunging Jorge beneath the waves.

During the struggle, Amina, a specter of the sea, is stabbed by the terrible harpoon, terrifying her friend, Graciela. When the severely injured Amina gives Jorge the ability to breathe underwater and asks Graciela to help him find and destroy the harpoon, Graciela begrudgingly agrees.

The awe-inspiring characters in this mesmerizing folkloric story exude a dazzling defiance against unjust power. Jorge, who thinks himself worthless, finds the might to disobey his parents; similarly, Graciela's Papá "had deemed swimming unladylike," yet still she swam. Newbery Medal winner and 2023-2024 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Meg Medina (Merci Suárez Changes Gears) uses hypnotic prose to conjure an oceanic realm teeming with wonders that speak to the interconnectedness of land and sea. Anna and Elena Balbusso, who have together illustrated more than 50 titles, create enchanting mixed-media art featuring diaphanous shapes and layers of texture. The Balbusso twins' illustrations are as inky as the deep's dark waters. Seemingly insurmountable odds and grief bring suspense to a supernatural underwater tale as immersive, majestic, and alluring as the deep sea itself. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

I Come from Another Galaxy humorously, compassionately--and with a healthy dose of cuteness--relates the story of a dauntless young human who finds that things are very different away from Earth, where they are now the alien.

"Hello, friends." Intrepid adventurer James, who's zooming off to school in another galaxy, explains that they're writing in their little book to share "discoveries from outer space." Their new classmates are all aliens, adorned with slimy tentacles, big googly eyes, and noodle arms. At school, no one knows how to pronounce the young traveler's name ("Joo-mez?"), and the bathroom has so many buttons that James decides to "hold it in." Not only is James not slimy enough for slime-ball, but when it's time for show and tell, James realizes that all they have is their little book. Slowly, they open it and read what they've written. Turns out communicating helps! Once the aliens learn how to say the name "James" correctly, they cheerfully say "hi," after which they advise "PRESS RED! THEN GREEN! THEN SQUARE!" to help James use the toilet. With the help of new friends James can even be slimy enough to play slime-ball.

James Kwan (Dear Yeti) takes the familiar premise of aliens coming to Earth and spins it 180 degrees. James (the character) is an earnest adventurer who's exhilarated by all the exciting new things they can learn, and their counterparts in the other galaxy are likewise eager to find out about James. Kwan's pencil drawings are digitally colored in dark pastels, and his characters are engaged, unthreatening, and frankly adorable as they demonstrate how easy it might be to help someone new feel at home. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

In their nearly flawless first co-written YA novel, Olivia A. Cole (Ariel Crashes a Train) and Ashley Woodfolk (The Beauty That Remains) reveal that revenge isn't always a dish best served cold; in their talented hands, it's actually heartwarming.

Beautiful, biracial Maia Moon is newly single. Well, sort of. She has broken up with Tatum Westbrook three times in the last six months. In that time, she's been kissing badass white lesbian Beau Carl and flirting with Charm Montgomery, her Black trigonometry tutor. But when Maia accepts Tatum's elaborate promposal, Beau and Charm realized Maia's been playing them both. The teens form a plan to "make her feel what [they] feel." Charm, who has only kissed one girl, will take "Lesbian Lessons" from Beau to ensure that Maia will say yes when Charm asks Maia to prom--where Charm will dump her. Readers will likely know what's coming: as Beau teaches Charm the skills she'll need to win Maia's heart, they realize that seeing their plan through will be a lot harder than expected.

Call Your Boyfriend is a smart, buoyant YA romance. Cole and Woodfolk clearly respect rom-com formulas and tropes, and expertly demonstrate how to deploy them with skill, using formulas (the revenge plot, the unlikely allies) as narrative scaffolding to firmly ground a novel that becomes satisfying, even reassuring, in its predictability. Call Your Boyfriend easily fits on a shelf--alongside Becky Albertalli's Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, Jenny Han's To All the Boys I've Loved Before, and Alice Oseman's Heartstopper series--of the 21st century's most beloved contemporary rom-coms for teen readers. --Stephanie Appell, freelance reviewer

Margaret A. Edwards Award winner Tiffany D. Jackson (The Weight of Blood; Grown) delivers a tightly paced, captivating summer murder mystery in her middle-grade debut, Blood in the Water.

Twelve-year-old Brooklynite Kaylani's focus this summer is to study for the entry exam for a pre-law camp, where she hopes to learn how to help reverse her dad's wrongful conviction and free him from prison. But her parents have different plans for her: she'll be spending the next four weeks on Martha's Vineyard with her grandma's "bougie church friend" and her granddaughters. Twelve-year-old London and 16-year-old Cassie make Kaylani feel like an "out-of-place piece of furniture" for not having a phone and being a rule follower, so she's resolved to spend her days at the library. But a local boy's mysterious death prompts Kaylani to find out what happened, and in doing so, she unveils secrets that will send shockwaves through the island's wealthy Black community.

Jackson successfully adapts her trademark sharp social commentary and propulsive plotting for a middle-grade audience in this adeptly layered thriller, where scandal, secrecy, and mystery abound. Not only does she balance thrills and chills with the escapism of a good beach read, she also masterfully delves into the complexities of wealth disparity. Jackson showcases the rich cultural history of the island's affluent Black community, then adroitly contrasts it with Kaylani's experience growing up poor with an incarcerated parent. This atmospheric summer thriller is both riveting and illuminating. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Something sticky this way comes in the creepy-cute, humorous picture book Vampire Jam Sandwich by Casey Lyall (A Spoonful of Frogs), illustrated by Nici Gregory (Where's Speedy).

The reader is greeted by a gap-toothed elfin child with a blond cowlick shining a flashlight on his face. A tabby cat looks on. "Would you like to hear a scary story?" The child narrates a scene in which a shadowy vampire--"possibly named Terrence"--takes a bite of a jam sandwich under the assumption that the flowing red jam "was... something else." "You know what a bite from a vampire means," the narrator hints as an alert eyeball pops up on the bitten sandwich's upper slice. The Vampire Jam Sandwich rises, oozing red jam between its now-fanged crusts. "It's a cursed creature of the night," the narrator warns as the sandwich ransacks kitchens searching for "MORE JAM!" But there's a way to keep your jam safe, the narrator advises a small child in a nightgown: hide all the jam jars in a box marked "No Vampire Jam Sandwiches allowed," spelled "T-E-R-R-E-N-C-E." One page-turn later, two shadowy figures depicted sneaking the box out of the house are shown to be the cat and the narrator himself, revealed as the fanged, be-caped vampire--jampire?--of the legend.

Lyall's playfully unreliable narrator leaves the audience to interpret the goings-on through Gregory's red-on-sepia pencil and digital illustrations, which give the proceedings a soupcon of early horror cinema glamour. This delicious addition to the ranks of gently spooky picture books belongs on the shelf alongside the likes of Creepy Carrots and Go Away, Big Green Monster. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Allen County Public Library