The Big Door Prize tackles the existential question "Why would you think there's another life for you, perhaps another possibility inside of you already...?" M.O. Walsh (My Sunshine Away) crafts a surprising and heartwarming contemporary drama about looking back and looking forward. A machine, DNAMIX, shows up in a small Louisiana town to reveal "your potential in life, what your body and mind are capable of doing." Walsh clearly understands the tendency for middle-aged people to look in the rearview mirror and second-guess their choices.

Cherilyn's DNAMIX readout is "Royalty," and she immediately believes the machine sees behind her housewife exterior. Her husband, Douglas, for his part, is reluctant to use the machine. The whole procedure seems laughable, but even so, he acknowledges that he, too, has "hit a wall in his life" and that it's time to "make big-picture changes."

Juxtaposed with adult angst is a sympathetic portrait of the prospects for contemporary teenagers in a world not of their making. Jacob, a high-schooler, grapples with life after the accidental death of his popular twin brother, Toby. Jacob doesn't need a machine to foresee that his future looks desolate. His mother died young, his father is acting like a cowboy after his DNAMIX reading, and there are unsettling rumors about the night of Toby's death.

Because each "choice we make today is an extension of, and an opportunity arisen from, the choices we have previously made and will make in the future," readers of this singular, nuanced story will, quite possibly and without a machine as prompt, undertake their own personal reflection. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

The world built by Andrea Stewart in the debut fantasy Bone Shard Daughter is beautiful, complex and enticing, and the narrative is driven by questions of identity, connections to community and finding one's place in the world, despite what one's predetermined position in it might be.

Lin doesn't remember anything from before five years ago, but she knows one thing for certain: she is the emperor's daughter and she will not fail, despite her father's refusal to recognize her as his heir or to educate her in the same way he is training his foster son, Bayan. Meanwhile, Sand doesn't know who she is or how she got to the island she lives on, but she knows she needs to remember more, and to pull others like her out of the fog. Phalue is the governor's daughter on Nephilanu Island, but is being drawn into the revolution by her lover, Ranami. And finally, Jovis just wants to find his lost wife, but the powers that be seem to have other plans for him and Mephi, a strange creature that has attached itself to him as they fled a sinking island. As these four individuals navigate their paths through the Empire, the world they know is changing, as signs that the mysterious Alanga might be returning.

Stewart's characters are complex and push toward one other in ways that draw readers in and keep them wanting more. If there is anything to criticize in this captivating fantasy, it is the cliffhanger ending with no expected publishing date for the sequel. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

In Rachel Howzell Hall's complex, emotionally charged mystery-thriller And Now She's Gone, an African American PI with a troubled past investigates the discrepancy-laden disappearance of a woman who may have fled an abusive relationship. 

Although she's excited Rader Consulting has asked her to work in the field, instead of just writing the reports, 39-year-old Grayson Sykes still feels "nervous" and "nauseous" about her first missing person case. Nick Rader, a family friend and her boss at the firm in Los Angeles, wants Gray to find Isabel Lincoln, fiancée of gorgeous cardiologist Ian O'Donnell. Gray takes the case with caution, knowing some women vanish on purpose. And as Gray digs further, she begins receiving text messages from Isabel, claiming that Ian will kill her if he finds her. But the more Gray learns, the less sense Isabel's story makes. Soon Gray finds herself caught between her own dangerous past and Isabel's manipulations--if the person texting her is really Isabel.

This #ownvoices mystery keeps to a fast pace and has plenty to say during the ride, offering a strong, likable sleuth. Wry, smart-mouthed Gray may forget to bring a pen for notetaking, but she makes up for her lack of organizational skills with intelligence and a keen understanding of human behavior. Her will-they-won't-they dynamic with sexy, honorable Nick adds a sweeter layer of tension in an already suspenseful atmosphere, but Hall (They All Fall Down) also showcases a dynamic cast of supportive women coworkers. And Now She's Gone combines heart, smarts and wit in one package. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Welcome to the New World made its debut as a biweekly comic strip in the New York Times that "chronicle[d] the arrival and experience of a single [Syrian] family." The author/illustrator team, Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan, went on to win the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Cartooning. The resulting illuminating book documents the Aldabaan family's exodus from war-torn Syria and eventual Connecticut relocation. Diverging from the Times comics in which identities were originally protected with pseudonyms, here the family reclaims their true names.

The Aldabaans lived comfortably in Homs, Syria, until the Assad regime brutally imprisoned three of five brothers. After one of the wives managed to secure their miraculous release, the family fled to Jordan, awaiting U.S. entry permits. Brothers Ibrahim and Issa, their wives and children are approved, landing in New York City on Election Day 2016. Trump's victory all but ensures their left-behind relatives remain barred from the U.S.

With housing, money and jobs arranged by sponsoring organizations, the family is expected to be self-sufficient within three months. Halpern and Sloan focus on Ibrahim, his wife, Adeebah, and their two oldest (of five) children. Meaningful employment eludes Ibrahim; Adeebah's art offers solace; teens Naji and Amal deal with school. Racism looms, from microaggressions to a vicious telephoned death threat. The kindness of strangers is a healing balm.

Rendered in stark black-and-white, with blue shading, Sloan's panels seem constantly in motion, a fitting reflection of the family's ongoing adaptation, negotiation and assimilation. Welcome is not always the response the Aldabaans encounter, but their resilience shines as they work to build the safety and security that will someday allow them to feel at home. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Bullied as a child in her small Indiana town, Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon learned early on that staying quiet meant staying safe. The daughter of Chilean and Filipina immigrants, Aragon excelled in school, especially math class, but learned to keep her brilliance under wraps. She found her way to a career in computer science, but still struggled with crippling fear and anxiety. When a coworker's love for flying ignited her own, Aragon--to her own surprise--found herself spending weekends at airfields, learning to fly increasingly complex maneuvers and dreaming of buying her own airplane. Her memoir, Flying Free, chronicles her journey from INTF--her own "personality label" of Incompetent, Nerd, Terrified, Failure--to a strong, confident woman who became the first Latina to compete on the U.S. Unlimited Aerobatic Team. 

Aragon's crisp, straightforward narration mirrors the steps she had to take before, during and after every flight: plot a course, perform the necessary mechanical checks, load the plane, strap herself in, take off. Soon, readers are following Aragon not only to the airfields near her home in San Francisco, but up to Seattle and over to Oklahoma in pursuit of higher-level planes and more advanced instruction.

Today a professor of engineering and data science at the University of Washington, Aragon has used her flying experience to build confidence and overcome fear elsewhere in her life. Her memoir is a paean to flying, a testament to grit and hard work, and a real-life model for anyone longing to cast their fears aside and fly free. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America, journalist Ellis Cose (The Rage of the Privileged Class) provides a comprehensive history of the United States Constitution's First Amendment and the many ways that the ideal of free speech has evolved over the course of the country's relatively short history. It feels too limiting to describe this as a book solely about the topic of free speech, however--perhaps fitting given that the concept of free speech has touched so many aspects of American political, social and cultural history.

"The issue of speech--particularly in a society polluted by racism and largely defined by economic inequality--is endlessly complex," Cose explains in the introduction to his work. He then proceeds to untangle that complex history in a way that is accessible to a layperson without a law degree. In doing so, Cose provides readers with tools to understand better the concept of free speech in the United States--including the fact that, despite being enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, it was rarely enforced until the 20th century--and how various limits to free speech have played out in well-known (and some less well-known) court cases. The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America uses this historical analysis to urge readers to consider important questions about what constitutes free speech, and what lengths we are willing to go to as a nation to protect that speech, even as the United States--and the world--sees rises in hate speech (and corresponding acts of violence). --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

When Anne Helen Petersen wrote an article about millennial burnout for BuzzFeed in early 2019, readers responded in droves--mostly with a resounding YES--and the article went viral. Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation is Petersen's brilliantly researched, thoroughly engaging, expanded exploration of how evolving culture and policy have shaped the opportunities and precarity of many millennials' lives.

A senior culture writer for BuzzFeed, Petersen (Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud) makes her case in clear, catchy prose. Also a scholar of media studies, she seamlessly stitches sociohistorical and economic theory alongside frank interviews with millennials from diverse backgrounds, offering blistering analysis throughout. Insightful in the vein of Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique and powerful in the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, Petersen's Can't Even manages to engross and infuriate while still entertain: "[Burnout] isn't a personal problem. It's a societal one--and it will not be cured by productivity apps, or a bullet journal, or face mask skin treatments, or overnight f***ing oats."

Petersen repeats throughout: "It doesn't have to be this way." She doesn't claim any panaceas (especially via breakfast hacks), instead turning a mirror and fluorescent light on a generation and a culture reckoning with where and how they assign value, and a glimpse at their trajectory. It's bleak. But Petersen makes a critical case for better understanding the scope and structures of these problems--so that people can start doing something about them before they're too burned out. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

After decades of disposable fast fashion (and years of Kondo-ing), mending is trending, and Kate Sekules is here for the visible mending revolution. A British journalist, historian, vintage clothing junkie and avid mender, Sekules (The Boxer's Heart) delves into the scrap heap of mending's history in Mend! Training her keen eye on the practice through chapters titled "what," "why" and "where," Sekules unfolds a brief history of clothes and mending (chiefly focused on the now-industrialized West), followed by a quick rundown of the global fast fashion industry and its enormous abuses of both garment workers and the environment.

Having made her compelling case for avoiding overconsumption, Sekules moves on to the fun parts: "how, "when, "whether" and "which" to mend. These chapters are illustrated with photos of her own visible mends and advice on purchasing supplies, plus detailed diagrams of patches, various finishing methods and more than a dozen stitches. Mending, Sekules believes, should be proud and decorative, and she shares a broad range of simple techniques, from the humble (running stitch and backstitch) to the downright fancy (herringbone, feather stitch, couching). She also provides plenty of details on fabrics: stretch, weave, wearability, which ones go together and when to throw her advice out the window.

Both practical and political, with a directory of "menders" whose work Sekules reveres, Mend! is a slow-fashion manifesto, a DIY manual and an argument for adding a little flair to any old garment--either by necessity or just because. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Allie Brosh is back with her first book in seven years, and Solutions and Other Problems is a gem well worth the wait. With Brosh's trademark unconventional illustrations and delightful wit, this is a graphic memoir sure to be loved by many.

Brosh, creator of several famous Internet memes--including "Clean all the things!"--was open about her mental health struggles in her earlier blog posts and first book, Hyperbole and a Half. Solutions and Other Problems continues in that vein, with essays detailing her depression, her fears and the traumas in her life over the last few years. She has undergone some heartbreaking things and explores them candidly--and occasionally brutally. But there are also laugh-out-loud essays about a wild babysitting experience in her youth; a fight with her ex-husband about bananas; and the mysterious piles of horse poop that kept appearing in her childhood home.

The balance of sadness and humor brings great depth and allows readers to empathize with Brosh's losses while laughing at her antics. The quirky illustrations add to the story, showcasing Brosh's ability to create meaningful art, even if the style is unusual. Fans of Jenny Lawson, Jen Lancaster and Nathan W. Pyle are sure to enjoy the mix of hilarity, poignancy and the downright bizarre that characterize Brosh's work. Solutions and Other Problems will leave readers wanting more, and hoping that another seven years will not elapse before Brosh creates another graphic memoir. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

Through four books of poetry and an essay collection (the aptly named Book of Delights, one of Shelf Awareness's Best Books of 2019), Ross Gay has proven his ability to ramble to good effect. His winding, conversational poems often expand far beyond where they begin, and his book-length poem Be Holding is no exception. It begins as a paean to "Dr. J" Julius Erving, whose basketball wizardry Gay confesses to watching in slo-mo video clips in the wee hours. But it soon draws in not only the other pros on the court but Gay's own experience playing summer basketball, "all that Negro gathering/ and celebration and care and delight."

Gay goes on to explore several photographs portraying Black people and their pain: one Pulitzer Prize-winning image displayed for white audiences who are "mostly not noticing," and another of a Black woman standing in a doorway with a young boy. These images lead Gay to muse on the white gaze, sharecropping, the violence continually done to Black bodies in the U.S., and the ways in which he might himself be "a docent/ in the museum of black pain." His expansive gaze, though, is as intent on joy as it is on suffering, and he writes about the boy holding an origami bird, which leads to dreams of flight, constellations and "all the beloving/ that is the child." Gay's poem asks urgent questions ("how do we be?") and provides, at least, a way toward a hope, if not an answer: "we in here/ talking about joy." --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Hollywood glam girl Marilyn Monroe remains an icon decades after her tragic death. Though Monroe's life was shrouded in a seemingly endless web of myths, author Carole Boston Weatherford (Schomburg; Freedom in Congo Square) separates fact from fiction in the evocative Beauty Mark, a narrative written in verse and told from Monroe's first-person perspective.

Grounded in verified historical details, Weatherford's story conveys Monroe's vulnerability as a young girl (then known as Norma Jeane Baker) who bounced between dysfunctional households until she married for the first time at 16. When Monroe entered modeling, she found where she belonged "and who [she] belonged to: the public./ Frame by frame, photos gave [her] to the world." The author also captures the sincere emotions that came with the pin-up model-turned-starlet's ambition to be respected as a serious actress; her frustration at being underpaid for films (even after becoming a box office star); and the constant scrutiny surrounding her personal life: "I am not made of stone but of porcelain./ I am a Fabergé egg that has broken into a thousand pieces./ I am glued together with tears."

Such haunted musings are cemented by notable events well publicized during Monroe's tempestuous career, and her inner dialogue, crafted in stanzaic structure, evokes an emotional resonance rarely found in biographical prose. With images throughout and back matter that points readers to more information on Monroe, Weatherford's lyrical ode humanizes a woman who was a living legend long before she became a tragic one. --Rachel Werner, Hugo House and The Loft Literary Center faculty

Thirty-five years after readers were introduced to Imogene in the beloved picture book classic Imogene's Antlers, she's back! In this hilarious follow-up, Imogene further stupefies her family and gives her stuffy mother even more reasons to faint.

When blonde-haired, blue-eyed Imogene wakes up, "wondering what the day would bring," it is quickly apparent that the "parade of peculiarities" established in the first book will continue. Despite her proper, old-fashioned family's disapproval of her giraffe's neck, Imogene cheerfully puts the additional height to good use. A new day brings yet another surprise. Imogene, now sporting the head of an elephant, helps out by employing her trunk to water "the lilies... the lavender.../ the lilacs... and the lady next door." But, finally, when a diminutive Imogene flies through the house on butterfly wings, it's all too much. In a fit of pique, Mother bellows, "Enough is ENOUGH!!!" and promptly faints. The next day, a nervous family waits for Imogene. When she steps into the dining room as her own "self, once more," everyone rejoices. "Especially Mother. Until... suddenly--"

The surprise ending of this picture-perfect sequel should leave readers howling with laughter. Working in pen, ink and watercolor, Small (Stitches; One Cool Friend) envisions a lively world, one he casts with characters full of emotion. The exuberant illustrations feature the artist's signature style, detailed yet fluid linework brushed with washes of carefully chosen colors. In keeping with the spirit of the first book, this joyful ode to imagination offers readers plenty of encouragement to buck conformity and celebrate what makes them extraordinary--even if it makes their mothers swoon! --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI