by Solomon J. Brager
Historian Solomon J. Brager explores their place within a complex ancestry in the vulnerably illuminating debut memoir, Heavyweight: A Family Story of the Holocaust, Empire, and Memory. Choosing a graphic format suggests a literal piecing together of personal, familial, and global histories. The title's function is (at least) two-fold: the titular heavyweight is Brager's great-grandfather Erich Levi, a German boxing champion and Holocaust survivor; three generations later, Brager assumes the heavy weight of
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by Lonnie Garcia
Illustrator and comics artist Lonnie Garcia shapes a surreal model of forced affection in the surprisingly tender graphic novel Putty Pygmalion.
Derryl, a lonesome vegetable wearing cat-eye glasses, fashions a floppy-eared companion he calls Peter from a children's molding substance known as Putty Pals. But as Peter gains consciousness and assesses his surroundings, he begins to understand that he's a captive in Derryl's solipsistic fantasy. It doesn't help that Putty Pals were outlawed years ago, after being
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by Billy Mills, Donna Janell Bowman, illus. by S.D. Nelson
Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills shares his inspiring story of overcoming extreme adversity to achieve his goals in his first children's book, Wings of an Eagle. Author Donna Janell Bowman (Step Right Up) collaborates with Mills to create a soulful narration that pairs with the striking artwork of S.D. Nelson (Crazy Horse and Custer) to deliver an impassioned tale of determination and grit.
Mills, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, is born into a large family and great poverty. "Love keeps us warm," though.
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by M.T. Anderson
The cleverness of this page-turner begins with its title, Nicked. It triples as the book's central action, the object of the theft, and the humble monk whose dream sets the chain of events in motion.
National Book Award-winning author M.T. Anderson (Feed; The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge), making his adult debut, sets the stage with eerily modern elements for this 11th-century tale set in Italy and based on true events. Invaders and a pox are rapidly spreading throughout the land,
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by Beth Ferry, illus. by Claire Keane
A young gardener has a distinct talent for macabre plants but struggles to find peer acceptance in Prunella, a ghoulishly goodhearted picture book by Beth Ferry (Swashby and the Sea), illustrated by Claire Keane (I Want 100 Dogs).
Prunella's green-thumbed master gardener parents stare at each other in shock when their baby brandishes her astonishing purple thumb. Prunella grows into a gap-toothed, tawny-skinned child with a deep affinity for flora with thorns, spines, spores, or carnivorous tendencies. Her
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by Kate Quinn
Historical novelist Kate Quinn (The Alice Network; The Huntress) stirs up a spicy, complex gumbo of female friendship, tricky gender politics, and McCarthy-era rhetoric in her taut, vivid novel The Briar Club. Quinn weaves together the narratives and secrets of a motley collection of neighbors in 1950s Washington, D.C., and draws back the (lace) curtains on their complicated lives.
Quinn begins her narrative in 1954, with a shocking double murder at the genteel boardinghouse, Briarwood House. She then flashes
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by Benjamin Dean
How to Die Famous by Benjamin Dean (The King Is Dead) is a heart-palpitating thriller that effectively unveils the dangers of celebrity and fame.
Abel Miller, a teenaged, mixed-race, Black-presenting British actor, has landed the role of a lifetime playing a character in the latest reboot of "one of the most cursed TV shows in Hollywood history," known for its scandalous past filled with mental breakdowns, disappearances, and deaths. What the TV executives who hired him don't know is that Abel is working with
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