Several of this week's reading highlights dig up family secrets and root out old crimes. Charmaine Wilkerson's "layered and complex" second novel, Good Dirt, examines the provenance of a beloved heirloom and the ancestry connected to it throughout American history. Kristin Koval's "uncommonly impressive debut," Penitence, is a weighty family tragedy wrapped up in a suspense novel. And historian Tanya Pearson's "fiercely persuasive" Pretend We're Dead investigates the disappearance of female alternative rock performers of the '90s from the mainstream. Plus, Chickenpox by Remy Lai is a "side-splitting, pitch-perfect" graphic novel for middle-grade readers about the complicated responsibilities of being a big sister in a chaotic household under quarantine.
And in The Writer's Life, children's author Will Taylor invites readers into a corner of Oz that they've never seen before, and divulges a few special secrets about the foreboding academy at the heart of The School for Wicked Witches.