Novelist Thomas Mallon has mastered the art of fictionalizing the lives of historical figures: Richard Nixon in Watergate, Ronald Reagan in Finale and so on. Dick Kallman--an American actor turned antiques dealer who was murdered in 1980--may not have been a prominent historical figure, but in Up with the Sun, Mallon leans on the not-quite star's biography to tell a story every bit as revealing about American ambition as the author's previous efforts centered on political giants.

The novel's even-numbered chapters unspool like a mystery. They're narrated by Matt Liannetto, a native New Yorker who makes his living as a pianist for musicals; he met Dick in 1951, when they were working on the same show. As it happens, Matt was at a dinner party at Dick's Manhattan duplex the night before Dick and his live-in boyfriend were fatally shot in what seems to have been a robbery gone wrong.

Dick's unlikability is on hilariously preening display in Up with the Sun's odd-numbered chapters; an omniscient narrator remarks that with Dick, "ambition stuck out like a cowlick or a horn, fatal to an audience's complete belief in almost any character he was playing." These chapters trace Dick's life as a well-born striver whose many attempts to set Hollywood afire, most promisingly with the doomed sitcom Hank (1965-66), ended in crushing disappointment refashioned into rage. The wonder of Mallon's characterization is that, for all of Dick's weaselly ways, he remains sympathetic--except when he crosses Lucille Ball. Then he's pushing it. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Even readers who don't know that the British writer Keiran Goddard is a poet will suspect as much from the lyricism of Hourglass, his debut novel. This slender work presents three periods in the life of a young man so distraught that he writes: "The year you arrived I had been shrinking myself." The person he writes this to is the woman with whom he becomes romantically involved. Readers experience this romance through the novel's three sections: the relationship's inception, when the unnamed woman buys one of the unnamed narrator's essays for her magazine and asks to meet him; three years later, during their relationship; and five years after their breakup, when the still-grieving narrator writes, "I do not know where you are."

Each section contains short chapters of a page or two of terse paragraphs, a structure that may remind some readers of the stories of Lydia Davis. At one point, the narrator writes that his girlfriend is "not the most beautiful person I have ever seen. The most beautiful thing. Which is a much bigger category. And I cannot turn away." In these more poetic moments, the novel echoes the rhythm and sentiments of Pablo Neruda's love poems. Goddard's narrator writes movingly of his emotionally fragile mother, his complicated relationship with faith and other factors that define his life. "You have to live," he says. "What else is there to do with a life?" Hourglass is an elegant testament to the difficulty of figuring out how to do that. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

Maureen, Rachel Joyce's slim, lyrical seventh book and her third Harold Fry novel, delves deeply into a character who is at once familiar and enigmatic: Maureen Fry, the prickly wife of walker-turned-public-hero Harold. Joyce's debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, followed Harold's impromptu journey to see a former colleague (whose story Joyce later told in The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy). Now, 10 years after Harold's walk, Maureen irons her "best blue blouse," leaves Harold with a freezer full of home-cooked meals and sets off on a pilgrimage of her own.

In brief, introspective chapters, Joyce (The Music Shop) follows Maureen as she drives north, making the journey to the memorial sculpture garden built by Queenie and now maintained by volunteers. She is searching for some sign of David, her son, whose death by suicide 30 years before has left Maureen unable, ever since, to move forward. Joyce explores the contours of long-term grief as well as the effects of the pandemic, the quiet loneliness (and sometimes joy) of encountering strangers and the difficulty, sometimes, of opening oneself up to new experiences. Maureen is a complicated woman, frequently held back by her painful memories and longstanding patterns, but surprised--eventually--by her own capacity for connection. Along her journey, she notices details such as birds, dune grasses and light, but she also (again, to her own surprise) finds herself relying on others for help and perspective.

Bittersweet and quietly stunning, Maureen is a poignant end to Joyce's trilogy about the Frys and a meditation on opening up and moving forward. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

The 10 short stories in Patricia Engel's fifth book, The Faraway World, contrast dreams and reality. Money and religion are opposing pulls for her Latinx characters as they ponder whether life will be better at home or elsewhere.

These stories, all told in the first person, are set in Colombia, Cuba or the U.S.--often, the narrators have roots in more than one, so their loyalty is split. In "La Ruta," Mago, a Havana cabbie, becomes infatuated with a passenger who's visiting churches 300 days in a row as a way of praying to join her aunt in San Diego. Mago in turn contemplates leaving his nagging girlfriend, Florencia, who delivers a grim punch line: "I realized life is hard and miserable no matter where you live." In "Guapa," 40-something Indiana works in a New Jersey factory and is addicted to cosmetic surgery, for which she regularly flies home to Colombia. When her crush on a younger co-worker leads to an ironically horrendous incident, she voices a conclusion similar to Florencia's: "Bad fortune is as certain yet unpredictable as the weather."

Existence is bleak for some characters, but moments of connection can temper the tone. In "Libélula," a housekeeper resents her employers, yet learns that she, effortlessly, possesses something they covet. The standout is "Fausto," starring Paz, who works in her father's restaurant in Miami, and her boyfriend Fausto Guerra, a security guard. The couple are saving up to get married, but their plans go awry when Fausto is drawn into illegal schemes.

Engel (Infinite Country; Vida) spins morally complex and troubling stories featuring flawed but gutsy characters. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

A slender yet potent family drama set in an unnamed English town, Chetna Maroo's Western Lane is the story of a girl driven to become an accomplished squash player by her father, who channels his grief over his wife's death into athletic ambitions for his daughters. The novel opens at the onset of a mild autumn, the unpredictable moods of classic British weather serving as an atmospheric backdrop for the young narrator as she emerges from the shadows of her family and finds herself occupying its pulsating center.

Eleven-year-old Gopi has recently lost her mother. Her teenage sisters, Mona and Khush, are as bereft as Gopi, but the three girls are relatively okay compared to their devastated father. Pa is a self-employed electrician who, in his despair, has lost sight of his children's needs. The only time he truly communicates with Gopi and her sisters is when they discuss squash techniques or practice drills at the local sports center, Western Lane, a decrepit place with peeling paint, a bar and a couple of barely used glass-backed squash courts. As the sisters become increasingly unmoored from their emotionally unavailable father, squash serves as the family's only common language.

British Indian author Maroo, winner of the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review, is a marvelous and restrained storyteller. The hypnotic gloom of Western Lane is undercut with subtle humor and an innocence that radiates from Gopi as she tries with heartbreaking sincerity to embrace the future her father has chosen for her. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer

With Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships; Pandora's Jar) brings her authoritative expertise in Greek myths to bear on Medusa, whose story is fresh and surprising in this telling.

Medusa is delivered as an infant mortal to the two elder Gorgons who will be her sisters--in this version, they are monsters only in their unusual appearance, and they care for their fragile mortal sister with great tenderness. As a young woman, Medusa is raped by Poseidon in Athene's temple. The goddess is so offended by this sacrilege that she punishes the victim, replacing Medusa's hair with snakes and bestowing her most famous attribute: the ability to turn any living creature to stone by eye contact. In a third thread, the demigod Perseus comes of age as a bumbling incompetent: self-serving, lazy, whining, unnecessarily violent.

These threads come together in complex ways when gods are offended and angered and play out their dramas with mortal pawns. Traditional storytelling has cast Perseus as a hero and Medusa as a monster, but Haynes does not concur: "The hero isn't the one who's kind or brave or loyal. Sometimes--not always, but sometimes--he is monstrous. And the monster? Who is she?"

Haynes's genius lies not only in her subtle recasting of this story--with an emphasis on who assigns roles and draws conclusions--but also in her dryly scathing humor. Haynes writes in many voices: those of olive trees, Medusa's snakes-for-hair, a crow, the gods and mortals that make up this twisting tale. A surprising ending caps off her truly delightful and novel version of a very old story. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Dizz Tate's first novel, Brutes, is set in Falls Landing, Fla., a small town formed of theme parks, mall food courts, gated communities and swampland. At its center is the mystery of a missing teenage girl, and the group of younger girls who adored her: the narrative voice is the unusual first-person plural "we," which perfectly suits a girlhood of conformity and togetherness. The 13-year-old narrators yearn for individual recognition but also fear separation.

"Where is she?" the girls imagine Sammy's parents asking the morning after her disappearance, and this question will echo. They worshipped, followed and watched Sammy on the nights when she climbed over the wall of her exclusive community to meet her boyfriend, Eddie; they share her love for Eddie and, after she's gone, shift to attach themselves to Sammy's best friend and rival, Mia. Sammy and Mia had both been affiliated with Star Search, the local talent agency, and everyone in town wants to be selected, to be seen as special, to be given a business card or a plane ticket to L.A. "We squashed our faces against the glass of our own lives. Is this it? we asked. Are we having fun like they have fun?"

Tate's Florida is steamy and thickly rank, with blinding sunlight and shadowy depths, not least in the lake that many residents believe houses a monster--maybe the monster that took Sammy. Brutes is a dark coming-of-age tale and meditation on childhood and the cusp of adolescence: authentic, often grim, but with glimmers of hope. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Ernie Cunningham, the narrator of this clever mystery, isn't kidding when he says that everyone in his family has killed someone. He does joke a lot, but about murder he is serious. He even ups the ante by adding: "Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once." Benjamin Stevenson (Trust Me When I Lie) leverages his background as a stand-up comedian and work at several publishing houses and literary agencies to create a distinctive mystery that riffs on the genre while also respecting it. Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is resplendent in its sophisticated wit, characters with myriad motives and adroit plotting that indulges in clichés but manages to avoid the predictable. Stevenson also does the near impossible: he mixes the lightness of a cozy with the intensity of a hard-boiled thriller.

Ernie isn't thrilled to attend a "mandatory" family reunion at an Australian ski resort because of his unusual relatives. He especially dreads seeing his brother, Michael, newly released from prison where he served three years based on Ernie's testimony. Before Michael arrives to the gathering, Ernie is caught up in the murder of a stranger, whose death looks strikingly similar to the work of a known serial killer.

Though the plot seems straightforward, Stevenson's approach is not. Ernie loves crime fiction, often breaking the fourth wall and telling readers to look for clues on certain pages, then saying he is an unreliable narrator, reverently citing Ronald Knox's "10 Commandments of Detective Fiction"--and gleefully breaking each one. Stevenson never stumbles as his storytelling tricks lead to a satisfying ending. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

A crumbling mansion with hidden passageways and secret rooms makes a formidable backdrop in Kat Rosenfield's You Must Remember This, which skillfully explores dementia, family dynamics and greed. Rosenfield's second adult novel begins slowly, establishing the personalities and motives of each member of the dysfunctional Caravasios family in a realistic plot ramped up by an incisive mystery with a soupçon of the gothic.

To celebrate Christmas, 85-year-old Miriam's three adult children and granddaughter, Delphine Lockwood, bring her from an assisted living facility to the Whispers, her childhood home in Bar Harbor, Maine. Miriam's homecoming is rife with bickering by her children, each of whom expects to inherit a portion of her $20 million fortune. Only Delphine and Adam, Miriam's personal caregiver, seem to care about her. Miriam is suffering from accelerating dementia and has been near death for a while, so it's no surprise when it happens, but Delphine believes her grandmother may have been murdered. Those suspicions ramp up when details of Miriam's will are revealed.

Rosenfield (No One Will Miss Her; Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone) builds the novel's tension in the family's individual relationships with Miriam and with the house itself. To Delphine, Miriam is a loving grandmother with tales about a loving marriage cut short when her husband died in an accident when she was in her 30s. Miriam's three children have different opinions of their mother, who is often weighed down by her memories. The mansion's secret passageways, into which Miriam often disappears, also reflect her scattered mind. You Must Remember This delivers a haunting plot with surprises in every room. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

Ana Reyes deftly mixes themes of friendship, mental health and manipulation in The House in the Pines, her satisfying debut. The novel works as an intense psychological thriller that thrives on subtle, but forceful, action.

Before she left for college, Maya Edwards's best friend, Aubrey West, unexpectedly died while talking with Maya's boyfriend, Frank Bellamy. No foul play was uncovered, and the authorities ruled the 17-year-old's death accidental. Maya believed Frank was involved but couldn't convince the police or her mother of her suspicions. Seven years later, Maya's life seems to be on track: she lives in Boston with a nice boyfriend, Dan, with whom she feels she has a future. But she hides from Dan her addiction to a medication that helps her sleep while continuing to mourn Aubrey. One restless night she sees a trending video showing another seemingly healthy young woman dying in a diner while with Frank. Again, Maya is convinced Frank is responsible, so she travels to her hometown of Pittsfield, Mass., to confront him. Maya is sure the answer is at Frank's cabin in the woods where she and Aubrey used to visit. Again, no one believes her and, given her fixation on Frank, her mother is worried about her daughter's mental health.

Reyes's brisk plotting and believable characters keep The House in the Pines on track. Readers will root for the likable Maya as she tries to overcome her addiction and prove her sanity. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

Acclaimed Māori writer Michael Bennett jumpstarts a projected thriller series about police detective Hana Westerman with the thoroughly absorbing Better the Blood.

The past has a disconcerting way of reemerging in this sharply observed novel, which begins with the painstaking efforts of a daguerreotypist in 1863 attempting to capture for posterity the proud cadre of British soldiers standing around the Māori man they just hanged. Meanwhile, in modern-day New Zealand, Detective Senior Sergeant Westerman's past is catching up with her when video footage from earlier in her career resurfaces, documenting her unsympathetic policing of fellow Māori people at a protest. It's one of several videos she receives from an anonymous source as a bizarre series of killings begins to emerge around Auckland. Besides the videos, the murders also seem to be linked by a single signature left at the crime scene: a drawing "like something from nature, the perfect spiral on a hermit crab shell. The inward-circling meteorological map of a cyclone approaching landfall.... A shape that's organic, harmonious, pleasing to the eye."

Bennett writes about Māori culture and history with generosity and care, reflected in the final acknowledgments paid to those in his community who lent him additional insights and guidance. He also crafts a compelling detective in Hana Westerman, recently divorced from her senior officer husband, with whom she co-parents their teenage daughter, an aspiring singer and Māori rights activist. Under Bennett's strong command of tension in all directions, Better the Blood is a magnificently arranged confrontation with histories personal and public. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness

Single mom Finlay Donovan has been finding the life of a romantic suspense novelist to be unexpectedly dicey. "I needed a new career," she concludes. "One that didn't involve police officers, corpses, or the Russian mob." That Finlay keeps her magnet-for-meshugaas job will gratify readers of the third novel in Elle Cosimano's bawdy, resourceful and dependably funny Finlay Donovan mystery series.

Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun picks up where its predecessor, Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead, leaves off: narrator Finlay and her nanny/sidekick Veronica "Vero" Ruiz are desperate to sell a bullet-riddled Aston Martin to raise money to pay off Vero's $200,000 debt to a loan shark (long story). They must also determine the identity of EasyClean, who is blackmailing the Russian mob boss to whom Finlay owes a favor (longer story). Finlay has high hopes of finding EasyClean during her week with Vero at the Fairfax County, Va., citizen's police academy: a teenage hacker for the mob, whom she trusts (sort of), is convinced that EasyClean is a cop.

Cosimano (Seasons of Chaos; The Suffering Tree) is as in control of this material as Finlay is out of control of her life. Finlay may be writing romantic suspense, but Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun often plays like a comic action thriller. This isn't to say that the story doesn't feature romantic escapades. Frets Finlay at one point, fearing the worst: "We'd been involved in the murder and disposal of four men, but we were going to prison because of Vero's thong." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Bram Stoker Award-winner Christopher Golden (Dead Ringers; Road of Bones) blends 1980s nostalgia with eldritch horrors in Halloween terror-fest All Hallows. This ensemble cast horror story is a bloody race against the clock to survive the night set against a backdrop of family and neighborhood drama.

It's Halloween night in 1984 Massachusetts, and Tony Barbosa and his teen daughter Chloe have put extra effort into their annual homegrown Haunted Woods attraction. Financial troubles and an impending move are sounding a death knell for the tradition. Their neighbors on Parmenter Road face their own struggles. Barb Sweeney fights to stay strong for her kids in the face of her husband's constant infidelity. There are whispered rumors that the Burgess couple ran a brothel in their last town and abducted children. While conflict distracts the adults, the kids on Parmenter Road notice something odd while trick-or-treating: unknown, unkempt children in costumes that look like they came from bygone decades are appearing around the neighborhood. Tween Rick Barbosa and his best friend Billie are trailed by a little boy in a scarecrow costume whom they later must rescue, but Rick is sure something about the child is off. Other creepy children beg kids in the neighborhood for help hiding from "the Cunning Man," the monstrous being hunting them. His coming spells gruesome disaster as well as some surprising twists.

Golden captures the flavor of the 1980s suburb through accurate social dynamics and pop-culture references. Readers looking for supernatural scares dressed up in vintage garb will find both tricks and treats here. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, husband and wife team Iliza Shlesinger (a comedian) and Noah Galuten (a chef) started an Internet cooking series, "Don't Panic Pantry," to entertain and educate people stuck at home with pantries full of food they didn't know how to cook. Hundreds of episodes later, Galuten brings these lessons to the page in The Don't Panic Pantry Cookbook. Galuten calls it the cookbook he's "always wanted to write (deeply personal, filled with pasta and lentils and beans)," informed by his experience making videos for home cooks of every background and comfort level in the kitchen. He encourages home cooks to start with what they can, promising a set of skills and dishes that will ultimately rival any "mediocre take-out place" that tempts with convenience and ease. This mindset is then combined with seven instructions for eating well. Easy-to-follow guidelines like "balance is good" keep these from veering into toxic diet culture.

This seemingly simple approach to home cooking is not to say that the recipes in The Don't Panic Pantry are basic, boring or bland--anything but. Flavors abound in the breakfasts, snacks, sides and mains offered up here (many of which are vegetarian by default, though there are a few meat-forward dishes): Jalapeño-Pesto Hummus for a hearty snack, Ginger-Cilantro Chicken Noodle Soup for a warming meal, Krauty Beans for a fast dash of something savory. "You can cook," Galuten insists in the introduction, and with easy-to-stock ingredients and simple-to-follow instructions, The Don't Panic Pantry is an excellent tool for any home cook to find out just how true that statement is. --Kerry McHugh, freelance reviewer

Readers of Richard Bradford's Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer may leave it in a state of wonder--not at how Mailer managed to write so many amazing books, two Pulitzer Prize-winners among them, but at how he didn't spend more of his time in jail. Throughout his 84 years, Mailer dispensed punches like handshakes and abused four of his six wives, infamously nearly killing one. But Tough Guy makes a sturdy case for Mailer as, if not a great guy, the author of era-defining books and a cultural force worth reckoning with.

Mailer was born in 1923, the first child of an accountant with a gambling addiction and his long-suffering wife. Growing up in Brooklyn, Mailer wasn't much of a reader, but he was a brain and, at age 16, began attending Harvard, where he first tried his hand at writing the superb, hard-edged realistic fiction for which he would initially become known. Veteran biographer Bradford (Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires; Martin Amis) reliably illuminates how Mailer's work reflected his life at the time; in 1991's Harlot's Ghost, for example, Mailer "found in his fictionalised world of espionage parallels with own lifelong addiction to cheating and infidelity." Bradford is unsparing in his criticism of Mailer, referring to his "career as a shifty literary narcissist," but he justifies the existence of this biography on the grounds that Mailer's life story "comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel; beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive." Tough Guy has the latter two qualities. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Even a generally rosy marriage has its thorns; "Toss in male privilege, ruthless ambition, narcissism, misogyny, infidelity, alcoholism, and a mood disorder or two," writes Carmela Ciuraru in Lives of the Wives, "and it's easy to understand why the marriages of so many famous writers have been stormy, short-lived, and mutually destructive." Lives of the Wives offers scintillating, no-prisoners-taking portraits of five such marriages.

Ciuraru (Nom de Plume) includes among her subjects--all of whom reached adulthood in the early to mid-20th century--the same-sex partners Radclyffe Hall, a writer, and Una Troubridge, a sculptor and translator. Being gay didn't stop them from following a sexist script: the masculine half, Hall, left domestic matters to the other partner--to the detriment of Troubridge's career. The Italian novelists Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia may have never legally divorced, but their respective successes corresponded with the erosion of their marriage. Writer Elaine Dundy and critic Kenneth Tynan were another pair of incompatible writers, but, to readers' certain relief, they do ultimately divorce. Novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard also doted on a writer spouse, Kingsley Amis--and eventually came to the realization that "she had not only put herself at a crippling disadvantage as a writer, but lost the interest of her husband." Rounding out the trio of overdependent men is children's literature's Roald Dahl, who bore an appalling grudge against his movie star wife Patricia Neal's artistic hunger.

Part cautionary tale and occasional horror show, Lives of the Wives is fundamentally a shimmering love story--that is, a story of love for the creative life, if not always for the person doing the creating. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

"My mother loved a windfall," journalist Erika Bolstad explains in her memoir, Windfall: The Prairie Woman who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her, which delves into a family legend about Bolstad's great-grandmother Anna. A North Dakota homesteader who supposedly staked a claim independently, Anna was an important but fuzzy figure in the author's family history. Bolstad, curious about Anna's story (and the possibility of money from mineral rights on Anna's land), took multiple research trips to the Dakotas, searching for information about Anna's life and the land laws that governed her homestead. She found much more than that: complicated oil field politics, the effects of climate change on the Great Plains, the erasure of Indigenous people from the land and the treatment of women in Anna's time and afterward. Windfall, Bolstad's first book, chronicles her quest for information, her interviews with city clerks and oilmen in the Dakotas and the uneasy parallels between Anna's story and her own fraught attempts to have a child.

Bolstad places her family history in the context of oil field fever and the American Dream writ large: the promise, always, of riches hovering just out of frame. She visits towns bearing the scars of boom-and-bust cycles and traces the long-term effects of fossil fuels and unstable economics on this often-overlooked part of North America. Windfall names and explores the conflicting politics of land use, mineral and other resource rights and who holds the decision-making power. But it's also a compelling family treasure hunt--and a thoughtful, sometimes wry, exploration of the American obsession with striking it rich. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In her cheerful debut memoir, My What If Year, Alisha Fernandez Miranda documents a year of exploring creative work while on a career break from her consultancy CEO role. Miranda, a Cuban American from Miami, had relocated to London. By early 2020, she was eager to avoid stagnation and take risks by moving into new arenas. She'd long been obsessed with musicals and was lucky to have a friend whose father was a theater writer for Broadway. Her time with Assassins and Flying over Sunset mostly amounted to refilling water jugs and filing invoices, yet it granted behind-the-scenes access to rehearsals, "the dreamiest two and a half weeks of my life."

When this first of four unpaid internships was cut short by Covid-19, her husband and two children had retreated to their Isle of Skye vacation home, where she homeschooled their twins and apprenticed at Retroglow, a friend's fitness company. Exercise classes adapted to lockdowns and went virtual; Miranda handled the social media promotion. Next up was helping a contemporary art dealer at Christie's in London, followed by an internship at Scotland's exclusive Kinloch Lodge. Miranda worked in the restaurant and behind the front desk, exhausting toil that made her, a perfectionist, feel like a klutz.

Miranda self-deprecatingly recounts the mishaps of her interning year, careful to recognize the privilege that allowed "a small hiatus from my real life." This self-help memoir, ideal for readers of Gretchen Rubin and Helen Russell, suggests reclaiming a beginner's mind--a humbling, invigorating experience. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

In Waco Rising, author and journalist Kevin Cook (Ten Innings at Wrigley) revisits the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Tex., with new reporting and insights tying the tragedy's legacy to the rise of modern-day militia movements. He begins with Vernon Howell, aka David Koresh, who "rolled in like blustery weather" to the small compound of co-religionists at Mount Carmel, outside Waco. A "self-appointed prophet," Koresh was a charismatic preacher with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible, particularly the book of Revelation, that eventually led to fiery sermons laced with "conspiracy theories that anticipated those of the decades to come." The heavily armed compound attracted the attention of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), which staged an ill-conceived raid in February of 1993, lighting the fuse on a catastrophic 51-day siege.

Cook chillingly portrays the final days of those inside and outside Mount Carmel, "a tinderbox on its best day," as negotiations failed and tanks finally crashed through on April 19. The eyewitness accounts Cook tracked down are breathless and bring readers closer than ever before to the true story of Waco--one, Cook cautions, that defies a black-and-white telling. Ideas about whom to blame for the deaths of 76 Davidians "are promoted by zealots seeking to turn Waco to their own purposes. After thirty years, partisans from both ends of the political spectrum [are] still stirring Mount Carmel's ashes." This is a painful yet necessary read. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver

Aubrey Gordon (What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat), co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase, writes of herself: "Since grade school, I have been taught that some bodies are meant to be seen, and that mine isn't one of them." In "You Just Need to Lose Weight": And 19 Other Myths About Fat People,Gordon methodically debunks anti-fat bias and 20 commonly expressed myths about fat people. "The BMI is an objective measure"; "accepting fat people 'glorifies obesity' "; and "fat people should pay for a second airplane seat": all possess flaws exposed by Gordon's research.

As Gordon explains, so much of how people think about obesity is influenced by anti-fat bias, whether consciously or not. Most fat people would be able to produce countless examples of body shaming, "helpful" food advice from strangers and interference into their lives and bodies, all of which would feel invasive and shocking to thin people. All too often, fat people are treated with disgust for "daring to show our faces and bodies in public." There's also a great deal of anti-queer and racial bias in the way that fat people have historically been treated, which further complicates issues.

Each chapter includes a myth that is carefully debunked and ends with reflection questions and/or action steps, making Gordon's book an excellent tool for those working to end anti-fat bias. Perfect for fat and thin readers alike, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" is smart and informative--and will spur many important conversations. --Jessica Howard, freelance book reviewer

From John Pastor, ecologist and professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, comes White Pine, a concise account of North America's eastern white pine tree. Pastor's book, which combines a charming professorial sensibility with the expertise and keen observations of a veteran scientist, is history for a layperson, an introduction to forest ecology, a cautionary tale of reckless natural resource harvesting and a roadmap for sustainable foresting practices to conserve precious woods and enable their flourishing. After a sobering account of the extractive logging practices that reduced once ubiquitous eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) forests into rarities, Pastor (What Should a Clever Moose Eat?) acknowledges there is a place for some harvesting, as white pine is a powerful material that can improve the material conditions for humans in a variety of ways. However, such harvesting must not submit to capitalist zealotry and, instead, should incorporate the breakthrough science of sustainable foresting with ancient wisdom from Indigenous methods of stewardship that, prior to the arrival of European settlers, maintained white pine forests for centuries.

White pines, which belong to a special category of organisms called foundation species, are not only singular organisms but they also, collectively, create microenvironments within which many other organisms can survive and thrive. While not admonishing the conservational attention paid to rare and endangered species, Pastor urges readers not to lose sight of those foundational species which make so much other life possible. White Pine's information and reverence for life, as well as the conditions life requires, endow it with value for the layperson, historian and seasoned scientist alike. --Walker Minot, freelance writer and editor

In Claire Belton's comics collection Pusheen the Cat's Guide to Everything, the rotund, gray cat familiar from the world of GIFs has a starring role. Good-natured scenes delight in the endearing quirks of cats and other cute creatures. Pusheen, like any feline, excels at wreaking havoc in lovable ways. With an onomatopoeic "plop" and "squash," she sits where she doesn't fit, whether in a fruit bowl or wedged behind a laptop. She knocks a mug of coffee onto an open book, then promptly falls asleep on the pages. Turning her nose up at her bowl, she'll steal water elsewhere; ignoring her own bed and toys, she'll sit in a box or play with wrapping paper instead. Belton (The Many Lives of Pusheen the Cat) creates a whole family circle for Pusheen, with parents Sunflower and Biscuit; Stormy, the sister "too cute to get mad at"; and little brother Pip, who imagines himself a brave adventurer. Other pals include Sloth, Cheek the Hamster and Bo, a parakeet prone to unrequited crushes.

Rather than a single narrative, the collection features stand-alone one- or two-page spreads, largely in pastels. Seasons and holidays are prominent; topics include tips on how to beat the heat and pre-Christmas anticipation. Animals sometimes live up to stereotypes (the vacuum cleaner is Pip's archnemesis) or undertake anthropomorphized activities, such as road trips. Often, though, they wear costumes (unicorns, mermaids) or are whimsically envisioned as something else entirely (coffee drinks, baked goods). Who could resist spending time with everyone's favorite cartoon cat since Garfield? --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Decade of the Brain is the second poetry collection from Janine Joseph, born in the Philippines. Through formal variety and with thematic intensity, she ruminates on her protracted recovery from a traumatic car accident and her journey to U.S. citizenship. Joseph (Driving Without a License) is a co-organizer for Undocupoets, a consortium for undocumented immigrant poets and their supporters; her piece "The Night Before You Are Naturalized" recalls when she became a U.S. citizen.

In 2008, a driver rear-ended her vehicle, and Joseph suffered a concussion. It took years to reclaim her concentration and sense of self. In poems like "Janine vs Janine," she refers to herself in second person to communicate her dissociation. The faltering phrases of "Every Good Boy Does Fine" (a mnemonic for musical notes) reflect her aphasia. In "Four Darks in Red," she turns frustration into an alliterative litany: "Bad body is so/ negative. Bad body won't get dressed." She sees a counselor for lingering trauma and tries alternative medicine, including acupuncture and massage, for the "commotion in my cranium."

No two poems are the same. They differ not only in length and form, but also in alignment. For instance, the lines of "My Chiropractor Gives Me a Name" curve down the page much like a spine, while "The Reverse of Volume" repeats each couplet again and again in a staticky overlap. "Erasure," in the burning haibun form, reprints one of her neurological reports and then blacks out most of its text on the following page before reducing it to a final haiku. These inventive poems pack a punch. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

In this refreshing, revealing picture book, Cecilia Payne's growth from driven, inquisitive girl to celebrated astronomer is perfectly paired with a lyrical description of the birth of a star.

Young Cecilia "realizes all by herself" that orchids have petals like a bee's belly to trick the bees and her body hums with a "lightning bolt of discovery." The "fields and flowers" inspire Cecilia, but the family moves to London. Cecilia's new school feels like "a black hole," so she pursues scientific study on her own. She eventually wins a scholarship to the University of Cambridge and "yearn[s] to feel that lightning bolt of discovery again." When Cecilia attends a lecture by a noted astronomer, "her brain buzzes." She switches her focus to physics and becomes "the only woman in a galaxy of men." After graduation, Cecilia works at Harvard where she is finally surrounded by other like-minded women. She devotes herself to studying the mystery of "what stars really are" and, through "careful calculations and hours of observation," she discovers "the exact recipe for what makes the stars."

Kirsten Larson (A True Wonder) deftly weaves together her compelling biography of an important woman who "stick[s] to her path" despite the odds. The decision to parallel Cecilia's development with that of an emerging star is an inspired one, and Katherine Roy (Red Rover) uses pencil, ink and digital color to create luminous illustrations that crackle with energy. Extensive back matter includes further discussion of Cecilia's life and accomplishments, along with an elaboration on the process of how "a star is born." --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

Readers looking for picture books featuring people who look like them: rejoice! The 70-odd pencil and gouache vignettes that illustrate the spare, prayerlike text for In Every Life by two-time Caldecott honoree Marla Frazee (The Farmer and the Clown) depict people of different skin colors, abilities, ages and so on. And if the art alone wasn't inviting enough, Frazee has paired it with marvelous text.

In Every Life begins with the words "In every birth, blessed is the wonder"; below it are 10 delicate little drawings of adults holding newborn babies (or, in one case, cupping a pregnant belly). Two pages later, "In every smile, blessed is the light" introduces 10 images of one or more people indulging a happy moment: a child double-fists ice cream cones, two older women enjoy each other's company, a kid in a wheelchair catches a ball. The five ensuing spreads show people who are, respectively, engaged in activities, experiencing sadness, appreciating something interesting, shedding tears and feeling love. Following each spread, a single wordless illustration encapsulates the sentiment that precedes it--e.g., in the image after "In every moment, blessed is the mystery," an adult and a child at the beach gawp at surfacing dolphins.

In an author's note, Frazee says that she got the idea for In Every Life at a church service: "I heard a call-and-response version of a Jewish baby-naming blessing and immediately felt its potential as a picture book." Fellowship is precisely the feeling that she captures here, in uplifting word and luminous image. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Once Upon a Book by Grace Lin (A Big Mooncake for Little Star) and Kate Messner (Chirp) is a fabulous (in both senses) adventure that earns a spot in the pantheon of picture books celebrating the transformative power of reading.

One rainy day, while stuck indoors with her mom, Alice grouses, "I wish I were someplace that wasn't so frozen and gray!" She hears the pages of a book flutter and picks it up. The story inside, which features colorful birds in a jungle setting, seems to be speaking to her: "Once upon a time, there was a girl.... She went to a place alive with colors, where even the morning dew was warm." The birds invite Alice to "turn the page and come in"; she does, and her book comes with her. Alice reads until it starts to rain, and she wishes she were "someplace that wasn't so steamy and drippy." She's at the part in the story where the girl "went to a place of sparkling sands, where the sun would dry her," which leads Alice to....

Illustrator Lin seems to dedicate a gloriously fresh palette to each new setting. In a beguilingly enigmatic touch, Alice's dress adapts with every adventure: it changes from a garment printed with text into a green frock that's impossible to see against the jungle's green backdrop, and so on. Not that Alice would notice: she can't get her head out of her book. The same may go for readers of Once Upon a Book. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

In this tender, comical and thrilling (yes, all three!) middle-grade novel, a cautious, thoughtful boy--more inspired by virtual adventures than real-life escapades--finds himself embroiled in a mystery involving stolen beehives, a wild pig named Penelope and more puns than can be BEElieved.

Leo's father, who is fixated on a personality quiz site called Fatefinder.com, claims that 11-year-old Leo is an "Auditor," someone who envisions "everything that can possibly go wrong." Leo's younger sister, Lizzie, to his chagrin, is an "Adventurer." Leo is indeed nervous when he and Lizzie are left for a few days with their grandfather, who has become very grumpy ever since his wife died. When their grandmother's beloved apiary goes missing, Leo decides it's time to shed his Auditor ways and find those bees. What he doesn't realize is that it's his careful, questioning Auditor nature that this mystery needs.

The Big Sting is as much a family and identity story as an adventure mystery. Leo and Lizzie barely know their grandfather, but the awkwardness and uncertainty begin to melt as they launch their investigation. Rachelle Delaney (Clara Voyant) does a marvelous job illustrating the pitfalls of labeling people. "I think we [label] to make people seem less complicated, so we can predict what they're going to do," Grandpa's friend Mo says. "But people are complicated, and that's a good thing. We're all delightfully complicated." This sweet family mission makes those human complications delightfully relatable. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Birdwatching and a new friend give a 12-year-old boy unexpected purpose while he awaits his mother's heart transplant in Rare Birds, a tender and emotionally resonant middle-grade novel by Jeff Miller (The Nerdy Dozen).

Florida is the fourth stop in two years for Graham Dodds and his mom, Lindsay, who was diagnosed with a fatal heart condition on Graham's 10th birthday. At the Florida Clinic, in his mom's swampy hometown of Sugarland, Graham meets sage Lou, who is "weird, but good weird. Kind of like me," and equally well versed in hospital secrets. A contest to spot a snail kite, an elusive bird his mother sought in high school, unites Graham and Lou on a journey that offers each child a satisfying opportunity to shift their perspective about what it means to make the most of life: "Mom always says birds deliver messages. Maybe this one will deliver something more. A miracle, maybe."

Quick chapters--some only a page long--and Graham's dryly humorous first-person narration keep Rare Birds solidly hopeful even when the story turns heart-wrenching. Side plot lines around a third child, Nick, offer readers a meaningful opportunity to explore youth agency and acceptance of change. Miller, while tackling tough subjects, includes a range of coping mechanisms, such as Nick's avoidance, Lindsay's "it all happens for a reason" mantra, and the mental reprieve Graham calls "My Waiting Room." The characters also all model exceptional emotional growth alongside solid environmental stewardship.

Rare Birds is a vulnerable, emotionally complex dive that urges readers to find solace and intention in small moments that make life worth living to its fullest. --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf