A Rogue's Company, the third entry in Allison Montclair's Sparks & Bainbridge series, is a historical romp through postwar London. The Right Sort Marriage Bureau is doing remarkably well, and Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge are quite pleased with how their matchmaking venture is going. If only their personal lives weren't so complicated: Iris, who goes by "Sparks," is having flashbacks to her time spying for Great Britain during the war, and juggling a relationship with an unsavory bloke, and Gwen has been unable to regain custody of her son since her in-laws took him away after her mental breakdown upon her husband's death.

Gwen, determined to prove she is now mentally stable, confronts her irascible father-in-law, Lord Bainbridge, who has just returned from six months in Africa, only to be summarily kidnapped along with him. Sparks, alarmed by Gwen's disappearance, calls on some wartime contacts for more information. Soon, willingly or not, both ladies find themselves hobnobbing with crooks and thieves as they try to figure out exactly what Lord Bainbridge has been up to.

Montclair ably captures the relief of the postwar era in the fast-paced and funny A Rogue's Company, as those who survived the Blitz and the battles try to put their lives back together. Gwen and Sparks have a delightful repartee, and A Rogue's Company further fleshes out their already enjoyable characters as they scurry about London in search of the truth. Readers of Ashley Weaver or Rhys Bowen are sure to adore the adventures of Sparks & Bainbridge. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

Discover: In this delightful historical mystery set in postwar London, a pair of matchmakers find themselves embroiled in murder and mayhem.

Ava Reid's debut novel, The Wolf and the Woodsman, is a captivating story about a young woman named Évike and her quest to survive in the tyrannical kingdom of Szarvasvár. Every year, the king sends his Woodsmen, a devout religious order of the Patrifaith, to the pagan village of Keszi to take a young woman, a wolf girl, back to the capital; Évike's mother was taken when Évike was a young girl and she has lived a life of scorn, abuse and unacceptance ever since. But this time, Keszi gives up Évike, the only woman in the village with no skills. When Évike and the Woodsmen are attacked by monsters, only she and one of the men survive. As war rages both at and within the borders of Szarvasvár, Évike and the Woodsman, who is not who he claims to be, enter an uneasy pact to face the growing evil in the kingdom.

Reid draws from Jewish mythology and Hungarian history, weaving a dark, complex world that is horrifying yet beautiful in its depictions of life from Évike's first-person perspective throughout the adventure fantasy. Reid's deployment of magic at key moments bolsters both the mystery and the internal mythos of the narrative. At its heart, it is a story about culture, identity, stories, histories, religion and finding oneself despite the darkest circumstances, as Évike finds herself, reclaims a bond with family she thought she lost, and works to build a new world and return home. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Discover: A complex and enthralling fantasy filled with myth, history and magic that pits the strength of a young woman against growing tyranny.

In his thoroughly electric debut, Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir, Brian Broome will shatter your heart. Then make you laugh, sweat and cringe. And--all while eviscerating stereotypes and expanding notions of Black masculinity and queer identity--he'll shatter your heart again, then carefully, exquisitely, piece it back together.

Broome structures his multidimensional memoir around two through-lines: Gwendolyn Brooks's seminal poem "We Real Cool" and a thread detailing a bus ride during which Broome watches a young Black father offer lessons on how to behave--how to "be a man"--to his toddler son. Interspersed between lines of Brooks's poem and vignettes from the bus ride, Broome offers brutal memories and beautifully rendered stories from his own life, fleshing out the various ways he, too, has been taught, encouraged or forced to be a man. The sum is an exploration that with unflinching honesty and style creates room for Black masculinity like his: queer, sensitive, reflective, funny, flawed, terrible at basketball. (See that story for monumental cringing.)

With his book's dedication to "Brother and Sister Outsiders everywhere," Broome honors Audre Lorde, and he pays consistent, vocal homage to the Black women who have supported him throughout his life. He is also generous with the forgiveness that thrums through recollections of even the most brutal abuses--sometimes even his own. As a boy, Broome accidentally burned down his family's house. Now, he incinerates preconceived notions: of Black manhood, of storytelling and of their stakes--both for the writer himself and anyone lucky enough to be his audience. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

Discover: Brian Broome's stunning memoir, full of tender empathy and searing intellect, is an expansion of Black masculinity that explodes with heart, power and verve.

Dara McAnulty notices things other people don't--a hen harrier in the trees, a forgotten feather on a trail, a butterfly's wings fluttering against his chest. This knack for observation makes him an excellent recorder of changes in the natural world in his insightful and heartfelt book, Diary of a Young Naturalist. Over the course of a year, McAnulty keeps a journal as he and his family explore various landscapes near their Northern Ireland home. Only 16 years old, McAnulty writes with the wisdom of someone much older. His lyrical prose mourns the destruction of nature, but also something more personal--the loss of the childlike ability to revel in new experiences and express unbridled joy when bullies and the rote tasks of adulthood loom. "Wildlife is my refuge," McAnulty declares. "When I'm sitting and watching, grown-ups usually ask if I'm okay. Like it's not okay just to sit and process the world, to figure things out and watch other species go about their day."

McAnulty's fascination with nature serves a dual purpose: it keeps him connected to his work as an environmental activist and, as an individual with autism in an increasingly overwhelming society, it also helps him remain centered. In particular, McAnulty struggles to connect with peers who routinely misunderstand and mock him. Instead, he finds a sense of belonging with other naturalists and within his close-knit family, as his mother and two siblings are also on the spectrum. Moving and inspiring, McAnulty's book offers an invigorating and ultimately hopeful look at the world. --Angela Lutz, freelance reviewer

Discover: Sixteen-year-old Dara McAnulty's insightful, lyrical journal offers his perspective on the natural world, as well as the challenges of living with autism.

As a 20-something, Liz Hauck hatched a plan with her dad, Charlie, to start a cooking program for teenage boys in state care at the agency where he worked. But when Charlie died unexpectedly, Liz decided to press on alone. Home Made is Hauck's moving memoir of the three years she spent shopping, cooking, washing dishes and building a tenuous bond with a rotating cast of boys facing all kinds of trauma and challenges.

Hauck writes with deep compassion, not only for the boys but for her grieving, idealistic younger self. Visiting the group home, upstairs from her dad's former office, brings her into contact with his longtime colleagues and shows her a new side of the work to which he dedicated his life. The actual cooking is often fraught with frustrations: disappearing pots and knives, the occasional kitchen disaster, boys who refuse new foods or don't show up at all. But Hauck perseveres, planning elaborate birthday dinners and simpler weekly meals of stir-fry and homemade pizza. She captures the humor and pathos of interactions with young men already wary of well-meaning adults, and shares glimpses of the ordinary conversations that took place around the table. Home Made is not a prescription for sweeping social change or a story of a white woman saving young men of color (or even herself). Rather, it is a tender, insightful, often funny account of what happens when people show up--and keep showing up--to cook and eat together. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Discover: Liz Hauck shares a moving, often funny account of the time she spent cooking with teenagers in a group home while also mourning her father.

Winner of the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction as well as the 2020 Indigenous Voices Award, this harrowing yet hopeful memoir from Métis-Cree professor and homelessness advocate Jesse Thistle is already a runaway sensation in his native Canada. In plainspoken prose and original poetry, Thistle tells a jaw-dropping story of trauma, struggle and healing.

When Thistle was a preschooler, his mother gave him and his brothers to their father, a drug addict. Neglected and starved, the boys learned to beg for change, dumpster dive and pull petty thefts before their father abandoned them. A stint in a children's home led to a dark time in a foster home, "my brother Jerry fighting off the giant wolf that... floated over our beds and ripped him apart." Eventually the boys landed in the care of their paternal grandparents, where their grandfather tried to toughen them with constant work and corporal punishment. Thistle continued to miss his parents deeply, struggled in school and faced casual racism. Disowned by his grandfather for drug use, he spent his early adulthood in a spiral of addiction, homelessness and stealing for survival before finding his purpose through connecting with his heritage.

Thistle delivers an unvarnished description of his past without judgment or self-pity. His colloquial metaphors and unpretentious style make the narrative both accessible and as sharp as glass. Candid and unflinching, From the Ashes illustrates the impact of losing contact with culture and community. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Discover: A bestseller in its native Canada, Jesse Thistle's memoir of trauma, addiction and homelessness is harrowing and hopeful.

Jane Rogoyska's Surviving Katyń investigates a tragedy that continues to haunt Poland and poison Russo-Polish relations almost a century after it occurred. Rogoyska is a historian, biographer and the author of a novel, Kozlowski, born from her research into the Katyń massacre in 1940, when 22,000 Polish prisoners of war were murdered and buried in secret by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. Though millions died in World War II, the massacre is notable because the murdered prisoners, largely officers, constituted a significant swath of the Polish intelligentsia, and because of what came after. Soviet officials maintained for half a century that Katyń was a crime committed by the Nazis, a lie that muddied the waters around an already inscrutable tragedy and put Katyń at the heart of difficult questions about politics and historical truth.

At least until the first mass graves were found by the Nazis in Katyń Forest, the remaining Polish officers were left with the mystery of how and where their friends and comrades had disappeared. Rogoyska sensitively recounts how that uncertainty tortured the survivors and the families of the deceased. After the discovery of the bodies, the Soviets and Nazis blamed each other for the killings, and the truth became secondary to their propaganda war.

Surviving Katyń feels remarkably modern not only because the narrative extends to the present day, but because the arguments about the truth of Katyń recall the fake news and conspiracy theories that proliferate today. At a time when even historical facts are disputed, Rogoyska's efforts to get as close to the truth of Katyń as possible are more necessary than ever. --Hank Stephenson, the Sun magazine, manuscript reader

Discover: Surviving Katyń vividly reconstructs an infamous World War II-era massacre that became a decades-long propaganda battle over the truth.

In this riveting debut novel, Alexis Schaitkin delves into the ripple effects of a tragedy on two individuals from seemingly polar-opposite walks of life. Claire Thomas is seven when her 18-year-old sister, Alison, goes missing during a family trip to the Caribbean island of Saint X. After Alison's body is discovered, an investigation results in the arrest of two resort employees with whom she was last seen: Edwin Hastie and Clive Richardson. But with only circumstantial evidence, the men are soon released, and Alison's death goes unsolved.

Claire's and Clive Richardson's paths cross 20 years later when she steps into his New York City taxi. When she sees his license and name displayed on the cab's partition, she becomes obsessed with learning the truth about what happened that fateful night on Saint X.

Schaitkin vividly paints the emotional struggle Claire experiences after leaving the island. Her identity, her relationship with her parents, the expectations of friends are all defined by her sister's death. The author weaves Clive's story into Claire's. The contrast in their lives is stark--Claire lives a privileged life, while Clive is lucky to scrape by--but they are both haunted by the death of Alison. Clive loses his home and his family because of the fallout from the investigation. The differing points of view remind readers that both are unreliable narrators; readers must parse for themselves what the truth is, if it actually can be found. While Saint X on its surface presents a mystery, this is an engrossing tale of human relationships. --Jen Forbus

Discover: In her debut novel, Alexis Schaitkin presents a riveting tale of family, privilege and finding one's way in the labyrinth of life.

Seemingly light reading featuring a New York family and friends headed to an Indian wedding morphs into a spectacularly entertaining examination of race, privilege, hybrid identity, family dysfunction and maybe even a love story (or five).

Tina Das, still single at 32, has plateaued at her television producing job. While she waits to board her flight to her cousin's almost week-long nuptial celebration, she's with her BFF-since-Yale-days Marianne, her divorced parents Neel and Radha, and her mother's boyfriend David. Once in Delhi, the family is accommodated at a posh country club in oversize private cottages with onsite staff. Marianne, whose partner stayed home, is enjoying the groom's brother's attentions. Neel anticipates a date with widowed Mrs. Sethi. Radha hopes she might reconnect with Tina, who still resents her for the divorce a decade ago. And then there's Tina: she's got plenty of drama balancing Sid, the gorgeous personal trainer from the Mumbai slums, and trying not to fall (again) for the charming Australian expat who dissed her in London.

Diksha Basu, who made keeping up with the Joneses bitingly insightful in The Windfall, gives a similar eyebrow-arch to her characters here. Her revealing glimpses into the lives of passing strangers include a young lover searching for privacy in public with her boyfriend, the butler's after-hours life and Mrs. Sethi's grumpy dessert-loving cook. Basu balances the haves and have-nots--both socioeconomically and emotionally--with deft assurance and expert timing. Her astute, often scathing, commentaries beneath the irresistible humor transform her fiction into a must-go literary destination. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Discover: Diksha Basu's sophomore title, Destination Wedding, provides the perfect balance between hilariously entertaining and ingeniously divulging.

Warrior sisters with a fraught history attempt to steal the heart of a planet in Gamora and Nebula: Sisters in Arms, a richly imagined Marvel Universe science-fiction novel by Mackenzie Lee (Loki: Where Mischief Lies; The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue).

Gamora and Nebula, the adopted daughters of the Mad Titan Thanos, are trained warriors. But Thanos glorifies Gamora and shames Nebula, sowing distrust between the two and making them bitter rivals. When Gamora is tasked to retrieve the heart of a valuable mining planet, Nebula secretly follows, seeking glory for herself. The young women unexpectedly bond when they find themselves forced together: "The desperation of a warrior who had never had anyone but herself to rely on, craving support. Two thirsty beings drinking the ocean." The sisters yearn to trust each other despite their painful history, allowing them to question their rivalry and consider joining forces. But can they overcome a lifetime littered with violence, jealousy and treachery and survive a journey into the depths of a crumbling planet?

In Gamora and Nebula, Lee has written a riveting Marvel origin story charged with emotional tumult that gives delicious depth to the existing literary and film franchise. With gritty descriptions of a planet disfigured by mining trenches, saloon shoot-outs and enormous space ships, Lee's creation is an action-packed sci-fi western, fantastic in its intergalactic reach yet accessible through its emotionally (and physically) scarred heroines. Fans of the Marvel universe as well as newcomers will relish Lee's complex characters and the beautifully rendered universe she imagines. --Jennifer Oleinik, freelance writer and editor

Discover: A richly imagined Marvel Universe origin story follows the rival daughters of Thanos on a mission to collect the heart of a dying world.

A Los Angeles Korean American lifestyle influencer, forced to detox from social media, finds a new way to connect while at a Midwestern farm in this thoughtful and funny novel.

Seventeen-year-old L.A.-born Korean American Sun-Hee "Sunny" Song was thrust into Internet fame as a toddler when a video of her went viral. Now a teen, she's amassed nearly 100K followers on YouTube, but her parents and her school's headmaster aren't impressed. When a cooking livestream gets unintentionally racy, it elicits the hashtag "#BrowniePorn" and jeopardizes her school enrollment. Sunny's parents, in damage control mode, send her to Iowa's Sunshine Heritage Farms for a month-long digital detox camp. Despite a strict no-devices policy, Sunny sneaks in a cellphone so she can keep tabs on an influencer contest in which she's competing. But as she participates in group sessions and farm work and grows closer to the farm owner's son, Theo, she questions whether there's more to life than likes and subscribers.

In Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous, Suzanne Park (The Perfect Escape) smartly explores identity, specifically when it is intertwined with social media. She shows not only social media's toxicity but also its use as a crutch, such as how "online Sunny could edit and delete posts when she didn't like how they came out." Park also effortlessly weaves in details about Sunny's Korean American experience, including both the commonplace, like being a second-generation American, as well as the ugly, such as casual racism and bullying. This is an insightful, pertinent and humorous novel. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Discover: A Los Angeles Korean American social media influencer is sent to a digital detox summer camp on an Iowa farm in this thoughtful, funny novel.

A scoffing superhero finds it easier to defeat villains than to make new friends in Sophy Henn's delightfully cynical graphic novel series starter, Pizazz.

Pizazz, 9¼, hails from a proud line of superheroes, complete with obligatory cape and costume, much to her chagrin. Pizazz is mortified by her name, convinced she is saddled with "the least cool of all the super powers" and (eye roll) "not particularly thrilled with being SUPER."

Making matters worse, her family has recently moved. Pizazz's overachieving, fire-breathing little sister, Red Dragon, has no trouble settling in at their new school while Pizazz's competitive streak and world-saving experience earn her the dreadful job of class "eco monitor." Flying off to fight super baddies like Farterella and Twerknado leaves Pizazz little time to solve an ecological threat to a nearby park; her Gramps offers a different perspective that helps Pizazz both save the day and make a new friend.

Over 10 action-packed chapters saturated with black ink, Henn (Where Bear?) crafts a resigned, endearingly sarcastic tween who aches for normalcy after her family's recent move. Energetic digital pop artwork calls to mind Roy Lichtenstein with its liberal use of Ben Day-like dots (a spotted printing method) while the mix of full-bleed and spot illustrations delivers high visual impact. Meanwhile, Henn's spirited blend of comic strips, dynamic graphic elements and punchy first-person prose should interest even readers as skeptical as our superhero. Just don't ask Pizazz about her super power... or that llama incident (it's a long story). --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf

Discover: A skeptical superhero navigates a new school in between resenting her sister and saving the world in this charming, visually explosive series starter for middle-grade readers.