by Callan Wink
Callan Wink's Beartooth is a meditative and startling literary heist tale about two struggling brothers. Their father has recently died, leaving them with medical bills they can't pay, and other expenses are piling up at the family cabin. Older brother Thad is desperate to keep things together; his younger brother, Hazen, doesn't have any of Thad's practical sense but more than his fair share of restlessness.
Enter the Scot: up to no good and refusing to take no for an answer, the Scot is looking
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by Arati Kumar-Rao
Marginlands: A Journey into India's Vanishing Landscapes by Arati Kumar-Rao is a collection of eloquent essays by a writer and photographer immersed in the environmental transformation of her subcontinental home. Kumar-Rao's observations about how "slow violence" is destroying Indian ecosystems contain sparks of cautious optimism ignited by the faith and resourcefulness of the farmers and shepherds who steward the land.
Kumar-Rao abandoned a lucrative corporate job to become an environmental storyteller, one
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by Jules Bakes, illus. by Niki Smith
Debut author Jules Bakes and illustrator Niki Smith (The Deep & Dark Blue) portray the exciting highs and despondent lows of young friendship in the delightful middle-grade graphic novel Sea Legs.
Fourth-grader Janey is a "boat kid" whose family constantly sets anchor in new places. It's January 1993, and they are leaving Florida for the Caribbean, forcing Janey to leave behind best friend Rae. Once in St. Thomas, a lonely Janey spies a girl on another vessel and flings herself into her orbit. Astrid,
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by Alba De Céspedes, trans. by Ann Goldstein
Readers looking for tips on how to annoy a fascist government will savor Alba de Céspedes's (Forbidden Notebook) magnificently incendiary novel There's No Turning Back, first published in Italy in 1938, during Mussolini's reign. As Ann Goldstein, who translated from the Italian, notes in her introduction, this feminist manifesto about "eight young women living in a convent-boarding house in Rome," all of them university students and "united in the task of finding their way in the world," infuriated
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by Lidia Yuknavitch
In fiction and memoir alike, Lidia Yuknavitch impresses with her audacious subject matters. In Reading the Waves, she sets out to read and interpret her own life as literature, focusing on pivotal scenes and repeated themes. The penetrating memoir-in-essays reckons with trauma and commemorates key relationships.
Yuknavitch (Thrust; Verge: Stories; The Misfit's Manifesto) is fascinated by how memory is stored in the body. She was invited to give a reading in Houston, Tex., but a panic attack stopped her from
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