Robert Isaacs's first novel, It's Hard to Be an Animal, is a feat of humor, yearning, adventure, angst, and romance. In following a lonely, self-doubting protagonist, this remarkable debut manages to be about all of life, in its most unlikely twists.

Readers meet Henry on a first date with Molly at a sidewalk café in Manhattan. Coffee goes well, so they take a walk in Central Park, where Henry spots a magnolia warbler. The sweet, decorative little bird considers the pair, and then speaks. "Fuck off," it says clearly to Henry and then continues in a similarly foul-mouthed territorial vein. When Henry gets home, he discovers his housemate's two betta fish involved in an exchange of creatively nasty insults. The situation continues with dogs, a police horse, pigeons: Henry can now hear animals talking. If that fact were not shocking enough, they all seem to be terribly angry.

Painfully conflict-averse, Henry is challenged enough by human drama; fat-shaming sparrows and judgmental pythons threaten his threadbare mental health but also offer perspective. When he overhears subway rats discussing a body-disposal site, he inadvertently lets it slip to the unusually adventurous Molly. The budding couple soon find themselves enmired in the subway system and an intrigue of increasingly high stakes. And a neighbor's yappy Pomeranian turns out to be the font of wisdom that the pushover Henry needed. In a newly cacophonous world, he may finally find his own voice.

It's Hard to Be an Animal is one laugh, dire escapade, or poignant moment away from either disaster or nirvana. Hilarious, heartfelt, ever-surprising, Henry's story is one of hope, redemption, and self-discovery. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

A Perfect Hand by Ayelet Waldman (Bad Mother) is a captivating historical drama, an appealing romance, and a story of political awakening, cleverly packaged as a novel of manners. Set in English country estates and the grimy city of London in the 19th century, this rollicking narrative ranges from frivolous upper-class parties and fancy dress to the literal and metaphorical dirty laundry that the service class must process.

Alice Lockey, the daughter of a tenant farmer, has worked her way up to the position of lady's maid to Lady Jemima, the silly, indulged elder daughter of a lord. She meets Charlie, a valet to a viscount, and they tumble into a courtship, but they wish for more. Quickly realizing that their employers' marriage is the only route to their own, they determine to set up Lady Jemima and the deeply eccentric Lord Wynstowe. This is a tall order, but the young lovers are highly motivated and well positioned for persuading.

Even as their schemes near fruition, however, Alice learns and yearns and grows. She encounters pamphlets by Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. Questions of class reflect directly on her life and Charlie's, and Alice wonders what the suffrage movement might do for even a servant girl. A Perfect Hand works subtly on several levels, exulting in the details of the Victorian setting, exclaiming over Alice and Charlie's sympathetic romance, and pressing the exceptional heroine toward her best and truest self. With a nod to Jane Austen but a firm focus on the servant class, this versatile novel will entertain and stay with readers long past its final pages. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

In 2018, renowned author and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz (Magpie Murders) published The Word Is Murder, the first volume in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series about a Sherlock Holmes-like detective whose sidekick was a version of Horowitz himself. Five cases later, the entertaining A Deadly Episode revolves around the fictional screen adaptation of the series' first installment. Horowitz and the novel The Word Is Murder are real, but the film and Hawthorne are not. Got that?

A Deadly Episode opens three weeks into filming. Production is rudely halted when David Caine, the actor playing Hawthorne, is stabbed to death in his trailer. Suspects include the producer, the director, the writer, the actor playing Horowitz--pretty much everyone who has worked with Caine. Conveniently, Hawthorne is on location as a consultant and proceeds to investigate.

As he's done throughout this superb series, the real Horowitz delights in taking readers through the metaverse of his career and humiliating his fictional self. Every notable English actor--Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, even Miriam Margolyes, inexplicably--passes on playing the author in the film. Hawthorne gets a car and driver as the film's paid consultant, while Horowitz has to take the train and then walk to the set, where he's merely a spectator. But the real writer is the opposite of pedestrian. As his alter ego digs into Hawthorne's mysterious past, which seems connected to Caine's murder, A Deadly Episode's author reveals new layers to his characters, deepening the bond between them as well as between readers and this series.--Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, reviewer and freelance editor at The Edit Ninja

Fans of Allie Brosh are sure to love Anxietyland, the clever graphic memoir by Gemma Correll. Correll's story begins in the summer of 2018 when she was in the middle of a weeks-long anxiety spiral at her home in Northern California. She envisions her mind as a carnival of sorts. It's called Anxietyland and has attractions including the Worry-Go-Round, Hanxiety Falls, and more.

Correll takes readers back to her childhood in England, revealing how anxiety stalked her from an early age. Her first panic attack occurred in the elevator at the mall, but at the time, she didn't have words for what ailed her. Throughout school and university Correll struggled to cope, but she always felt that therapy sounded "very fancy and self-indulgent. And therefore, very un-British," so she'd never tried it. However, in 2018, she became desperate and admitted herself into a voluntary daytime "partial hospitalization program" near Berkeley, Calif. There, Correll spent eight hours a day working through her anxiety and the depression she was diagnosed with in college. Correll's simple, whimsical art comes in two shades: blues for her present mental health work, and reds and pinks for her undiagnosed and stressful early years.

Tender and vulnerable, Anxietyland sensitively explores one direction that anxiety and depression can take. Correll shares anecdotes from her darkest days but also shows how the hospital program helped her finally confront her distress. Anxietyland is perfect for those who believe in using humor to get through hard times. --Jessica Howard, former bookseller, freelance book reviewer

In Carley Fortune's Our Perfect Storm, Frankie's biggest fear at the beginning of her wedding weekend is that her childhood best friend and best man, George, isn't going to attend. What she doesn't anticipate is her fiancé standing her up. He leaves Frankie with only a brief note written on hotel stationery, and she spends months wondering what she did wrong. When George suggests they go on Frankie's honeymoon together, she agrees, seeing it as an opportunity to mend fractures in their friendship.

After they arrive at the beautiful coast of British Columbia, George presents Frankie with his plan: "We have seven days in Tofino," he tells Frankie, "Seven days to heal your broken heart." George's extensive itinerary includes daily themes such as "wallow" and "memorialize." Corresponding activities--relaxing on a tranquil private beach, learning to surf in glistening waves, hiking through the magnificent rainforest--make Frankie face the past and begin to view George through a fresh, enticing lens.

In chapters that shift between past and present, Fortune (This Summer Will Be Different; One Golden Summer) portrays the endearing childhood memoires, awkward teenage tensions, and heated adult attraction that develop into a beautifully nuanced friends-to-lovers romance. Frankie and George's playful friendship is perfectly paired with captivating romantic sparks, producing witty banter and a strong connection. As Frankie finds her spirit again and imagines what it would be like to follow her heart, Fortune's talent for capturing the sparkle of true love shines under the Tofino sun in Our Perfect Storm. --Clara Newton, freelance reviewer

Cuban American historian Ada Ferrer (Cuba: An American History) delves into her family's experiences in her powerful, bittersweet memoir, Keeper of My Kin. Through a combination of archival research, personal experience, and family letters, Ferrer recounts her immigration as a young child to the United States with her mother, her life in the States, her family's deep and lasting connections to Cuba, and the troubled life of her older half-brother Poly, who initially stayed behind. While Ferrer's narrative is a parallel accounting of two children's lives--one with American advantages and one without--it is also a haunting reflection on storytelling, who creates narratives, and who gets to decide whose story is worth telling.

Ferrer weaves together her experiences of childhood in the U.S. with stories of her extended family back in Cuba. She portrays the triumphs and challenges of Fidel Castro's regime, linking well-known historical events to her family's particular narrative: for example, Poly's journey from Cuba to Florida during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. She explores the effects of both chance and choice, the weight her mother carried due to her children living in two different countries, and Poly's complicated experiences as a young man in Cuba and the U.S. Ferrer also points out the complications of visiting Cuba on a tourist visa and as a historian; though her blood and family history tie her to the island, paperwork has often made it complicated for her to visit.

Sprinkled with family photos and excerpts from letters, Keeper of My Kin is a poignant tribute to the bonds of familial love across history, geography, and political and personal challenges. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Brigid Washington's mouthwatering memoir, Salt, Sweat & Steam, makes liberal use of its three titular components to season the story of Washington's time as a student at the Culinary Institute of America.

Reeling from a breakup, Washington left her life in North Carolina to enroll at the CIA, plunging into its famously rigorous chef-training curriculum: knife skills, restaurant law, gastronomy, the history of various cuisines from around the world. As a Trinidadian immigrant, Washington knew the value of her own culinary tradition but quickly learned she was out of her depth in the Institute's rarefied, exacting atmosphere. She writes candidly about her sloppy habits, lack of sleep, and apparent inability to juggle all the ingredients of life at the CIA. However, she carved out a place for herself as editor of the student newspaper, La Papillote, and relished the challenge of interviews and article-writing alongside studying for demanding practical exams.

Working to prove herself in the kitchen, Washington came to ask herself what she wanted outside of it, and some interpersonal drama and an illuminating trip back to Trinidad clarified her desires. A complicated fight for the perfect internship threatened to derail her plans, but in the end, Washington emerged from the CIA stronger, grounded, and more confident: seasoned, like the dishes she'd spent endless hours learning to make.

Brimming with tasty descriptions and lashings within the kitchen, Salt, Sweat & Steam is an insightful look at how one woman learned to nourish herself. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Former professional runner Mary Cain lays bare her tumultuous experience as a teenage running phenom in her debut memoir, This Is Not About Running. Through a brutal, no-frills structure with short, journal-esque chapters, Cain effectively conveys how hard it is to recognize abuse as it happens, especially as a teenager or young adult. Cain discovered her talent for and love of running in middle school, paired with a relentless work ethic. Her growing list of accomplishments spurred jealous bullying from other athletes and their parents, which affected her ability to find a consistent, supportive coach.

As a teenager, Cain landed at Nike's Oregon Project, which focused on sourcing and training the best runners in the U.S. She came under the tutelage of prominent coach Alberto Salazar and hoped she had finally found a safe, supportive space. Instead, she tumbled into an environment where elite athletes were pushed to their physical limits, injuries were disregarded, extreme weight loss was demanded, and emotional manipulation occurred daily. After Cain left professional competition, allegations about Salazar's abuse surfaced and were investigated. Cain spoke out publicly in a way that ultimately helped dismantle the Oregon Project, and Salazar eventually was banned from the sport permanently.

This Is Not About Running bravely censures the culture and systems that demand so much from young athletes while ignoring abuse in the pursuit of money and success. Cain unflinchingly reclaims her story from this culture, which spoke on her behalf for too long, and shares the beginning of her healing journey while adamantly calling for change in the sport she loves. --Kristen Coates, editor and freelance reviewer

In her debut YA novel-in-verse, An Expanse of Blue, Kauakanilehua Māhoe Adams offers an intimate slice of life about grief, sisterhood, and the power of being seen.

Aouli Elizabeth Smith, a Kānaka (Indigenous Hawaiian) teen living in Hawk Valley, Wash., is unmoored. In Hawaiian, her name means "blue, sky, expanse," and she holds that meaning close to her heart. But lately, she feels lost in that great swathe--she is not pliant and perfect like her sister Kāia; not silent and godly like her mother; and is one of the few brown faces in the crowd of white that is her suburb and church. Her stoic father's moods have begun to shift unpredictably, the entire household subject to their sway. Aouli finds some solace in her journal, a place for "all the songs in [her] head to go," though they are less songs and more "lyrics/ aching/ for a melody." But when Aouli discovers a life-altering secret on her father's phone, even that safest of havens becomes tainted.

In the tradition of Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X and Dean Atta's The Black Flamingo, An Expanse of Blue is a novel-in-verse with spare text and expansive feeling. As Aouli moves through a particularly turbulent time, Adams uses the urgent language of poetry to convey Aouli's inner world. Additionally, Adams tells the story from inside a specific diasporic community, which, because of its diaristic format, makes An Expanse of Blue intrinsically intimate. But as is so often true of poetry, its specificity is what lends to its universality--in the wide expanse of space between Aouli's words, anyone might find a piece of themselves reflected. --Mariel Fechik DesLaurier, librarian, freelance writer, music reviewer

Kaya Doi, creator of the Chirri & Chirra series (The Snowy Day), presents her first standalone picture book, the charming Tama and Baby, an import translated from the Japanese by David Boyd (Chirri & Chirra translator since the fourth title) and International Booker Prize shortlisted Asa Yoneda.

"A baby has come to Tama's house": Doi visually signifies an immediate connection between Tama and baby through the infant's rosy cheeks, which match the kitty's calico markings. Tama is initially cautious--she's "never seen a baby before." Baby just sleeps at first, "but Tama is in for a big surprise" when the baby cries through the night. When Tama notices Baby fussing, she learns to make Baby laugh. Tama becomes Baby's constant companion, even when Baby grabs Tama's tail and gnaws on it. The duo become "the best of sisters," but like all siblings, occasional conflicts are unavoidable. Tama graciously acknowledges that she should know better: "I am the big sister. Baby is still so little." Baby keeps "growing and growing and growing..." but to Tama, she'll "always be her baby sister."

Doi uses gently textured color-pencil drawings to underscore Baby and Tama's unbreakable bond through recurring matching colors. In contrast, Doi's depiction of the parent is a clever, artful exercise in capturing negative space that uses flowing black outlines and shadows; this technique adds energy to Baby and Tama's tumbling play, interactive meals, and symbiotic rest. Younger audiences, especially those with beloved non-human siblings, will recognize and celebrate Tama and Baby's invitingly irresistible devotion. --Terry Hong

Stonewall Book Award Honor winning creator Maia Kobabe (Gender Queer) collaborates with debut author and illustrator Swati "Lucky" Srikumar in Kobabe's first book for middle-grade readers, Opting Out, a perceptive graphic novel about a gender nonconforming Indian American tween.

Newly 12-year-old Saachi is just about to start seventh grade and wants nothing to do with the changes that come with growing up. To her horror, her life begins to shift immediately: she gets her first period; her peers begin splitting into boy/girl couples; and she feels her BFF Lyla drifting away. Saachi feels "in the middle" of the gender binary and wishes she could be perceived for her writing, not her body: "I want people to read my words, but not look at me. Is that a gender?"

As Saachi navigates uncomfortable peer dynamics and increasing pressure from gender expectations, she finds comfort and inspiration in both her Indian and Hindu identities. Detailed depictions of the 10 avatars of Vishnu emphasize Saachi's connection to her religion as her kind and understanding Appa delivers gentle wisdom: "Growing up is part of life, kutti. Even the gods change." Saachi's authentic bilingual (English and Tamil) voice shines through in her journal, inner monologue, and conversations with loved ones.

The thickly lined illustrations take shape inside traditionally square and rectangular panels and interpret Saachi's fluctuating emotions and flourishing selfhood in several ways. The result is a meticulously developed character whose experience will likely resonate, especially with queer and Indian American readers. --Kieran Slattery, freelance reviewer, teacher, co-creator of Gender Inclusive Classrooms

In Rhiannon Richardson's delightful, heartfelt LGBTQ+ YA romance, Sweet Clarity, a Black teen learns more about her faith and identity as she falls in love for the first time.

Clarity Jones, a Black high school senior, had both the best and worst summer at Camp Refuge, a Christian camp run by her church. While there, she developed a relationship with "rosy"-skinned Hannah, a fellow camp counselor and classmate. Hannah opened something inside Clarity that felt right: "I had never kissed anyone before. And I had never thought about kissing a girl.... But it made sense." When the girls are caught, though, Clarity and Hannah are forced to deal with judgment from peers and Clarity confronts questions about her sexuality, her faith, and her future.

Clarity decides to hide her feelings about Hannah from her Baptist parents and her best friend, Kristen--"old-school Baptists, don't take so nicely to the idea of someone being gay." Once the school year begins, however, Clarity must interact with Hannah as co-presidents of the school fall festival. As she attempts to navigate the expectations of her community and religion, Clarity struggles to find the very thing for which she was named.

Richardson (The Meet-Cute Project) delivers a sweet and accessible romance that thoughtfully explores themes of sexuality, race, and religion. Clarity's alternating reflections on her summer camp and school ("Then" and "Now") relationship with Hannah add depth to the narrative and highlight Clarity's internal conflicts. Readers who enjoyed You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson and The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes may also appreciate Sweet Clarity. --Natasha Harris, freelance writer