Callan Wink's Beartooth is a meditative and startling literary heist tale about two struggling brothers. Their father has recently died, leaving them with medical bills they can't pay, and other expenses are piling up at the family cabin. Older brother Thad is desperate to keep things together; his younger brother, Hazen, doesn't have any of Thad's practical sense but more than his fair share of restlessness.

Enter the Scot: up to no good and refusing to take no for an answer, the Scot is looking to enlist the strapped brothers for a dangerous--not to mention illegal--job in the protected lands of Yellowstone. While Thad is reluctant, he's even more unwilling to let the house go, or to allow headstrong Hazen to take on the job alone.

Wink (August) is at home in rugged but beautiful settings, and he takes his time to look around at both the grandeur and the rot, the rippling muscles of this landscape and its bones. Rather than painting a static portrait, Wink makes this place the timeless one of the American West. While Beartooth's plot packs a punch, its natural rhythm builds gradually. Agreeing to the Scot's proposition sets a course into motion that Thad can't control. And Hazen's increasingly impulsive, wild ways will find an outlet that can't be bound, even by his brother's love. But despite Hazen's loaded personality, readers feel the same pull Thad does: to understand how deep Hazen runs, to embrace his perhaps more doomed but also more hopeful way of being in the world, a way of being that might be freer but is also more elusive. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Readers looking for tips on how to annoy a fascist government will savor Alba de Céspedes's (Forbidden Notebook) magnificently incendiary novel There's No Turning Back, first published in Italy in 1938, during Mussolini's reign. As Ann Goldstein, who translated from the Italian, notes in her introduction, this feminist manifesto about "eight young women living in a convent-boarding house in Rome," all of them university students and "united in the task of finding their way in the world," infuriated authorities so much that the government blocked further publication, albeit after 20 printings. This translation, based on de Céspedes's 1966 final revision, shows contemporary audiences what all the fuss was about.

Among the women studying at the Grimaldi school are Emanuela, who became an unwed mother after her fighter-pilot suitor died, which leads to deceptions when a new man enters her life; and Xenia, whose aspiring businessman boyfriend promises riches and security, a pledge that comes with an unappetizing side order of paternalism. Augusta is baffled by women who just want to stay home and marry, while wealthy Anna doesn't want to study anymore yet contends with difficult relatives, including an imperious Grandma so convinced that everyone wishes she'd hurry up and die that she suspects them of poisoning the meatballs. "To free herself from the tyranny of the man, the woman has to take his place," Augusta warns. Mussolini must have loved that line. Enlightened modern readers genuinely will, however, along with the rest of this forward-thinking novel. -- Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

In novels like Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and Breathing Lessons, Pulitzer Prize-winner Anne Tyler has displayed her mastery in creating slightly off-kilter but undeniably appealing characters whose flaws uncannily echo some of our own. In that sense, Three Days in June, her 25th novel, is certain to delight anyone looking to enter this familiar territory.

Gail and Max Baines are a divorced pair of educators reuniting temporarily to celebrate the marriage of their only child, Debbie. The wedding weekend comes at a moment of crisis in 61-year-old Gail's life, as she learns that she won't be elevated to the top job at the private girls' school where she's worked for 11 years, as she had expected.

When Max arrives from Maryland's Eastern Shore bearing the wrinkled khaki sports coat he plans to wear to his daughter's wedding along with a foster cat, his presence summons Gail's painful memories of the episode that led to the demise of their marriage. Still, Gail and Max are united by their love for Debbie, especially when a last-minute incident threatens to derail the wedding ceremony.

With a characteristic grace that combines economy of language and keen observation of the endearing oddities of middle-class American life, Tyler (The Beginner's Goodbye) guides the plot over some of the usual speed bumps that appear when not merely a couple, but their families along with them, are united by marriage. Three Days in June is a story about love in different forms, but at its heart it's a compassionate portrait of how muddling through may just turn out to be the path to happiness. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Pam Jenoff's gripping 13th historical novel, Last Twilight in Paris, follows the wartime experiences of two women whose lives are connected by a necklace. In dual narratives that alternate between each woman's perspective, Jenoff (Code Name Sapphire) portrays the courage of Helaine, a French Jew who is imprisoned in an unusual forced-labor camp in Paris during World War II, and Louise, a British housewife whose work with the Red Cross during the war left her with invisible scars.

In 1943, in Nazi-occupied Paris, Helaine is arrested and sent to Lévitan, a department store turned labor camp where prisoners are forced to sort household items looted from Jewish homes. Ten years later, in 1953, Louise finds a necklace in a box bearing the name Lévitan. Certain she has seen the necklace before and that it holds a connection to her best friend's death during the war, Louise travels to Paris to search for answers and seize a chance to reconnect with her younger, bolder self.

Jenoff ratchets up the tension as her narratives progress, making it clear that someone is actively trying to prevent Louise from solving her mystery. Meanwhile, Helaine's situation worsens as the Allies approach Paris and the Nazis grow desperate to erase the evidence of their crimes. Through the lives of these two women, Jenoff explores sacrifice and resilience, complicated family dynamics, and the knife's edge between acts of collaboration and resistance. Last Twilight in Paris is a heartbreaking account of a little-known slice of World War II history and a moving testament to the tenacity of women in wartime. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

End of August, a tenderly drawn family saga by first-time author Paige Dinneny, is rooted in the lives of three generations of strong, independent women.

Set in Indiana in the summer of 1979, the novel is narrated by deeply sensitive, 15-year-old Aurora Taylor. She and her restless, 31-year-old mother, Laine, have lived in 18 towns. Their roaming existence stems from Laine's tendency to fall in love easily and then cut-and-run for various reasons--"dead-end" jobs and a "revolving door of men." Aurora was a "mistake," birthed when Laine "was still a kid" herself. When the two learn that Aurora's grandmother has lost her husband--Laine's stepfather--Laine decides to attend the funeral and check on her mother, Katherine, a recovering alcoholic.

But what is intended as a short layover becomes a longer stay as Laine casts her wiles on a local, married mailman. She takes a job at a downtown diner, and the three women soon settle under the same roof in Monroe, a "blink-and-you-might-miss-it" small Midwestern town. Although Aurora's gran and her mom are "oil and water," that doesn't keep Aurora and Katherine from forging a deep bond, with the older woman discovering what a well-adjusted teenager Aurora has become despite her vagabond life. Gran, her house, and the small town become a refuge for Aurora, but Aurora fears that if her mother repeats history, they will be forced to uproot again.

Dinneny's emotionally evocative, multigenerational coming-of-age story shows how providence can pave a way through familial abandonment and addiction issues to build pathways to redemption. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

A childhood friendship haunts two young women living under Hitler's Third Reich--Hannah Kaufman, a Jewish prisoner, and Hilde Kramer-Bischoff, a fervent Nazi supporter--in Jennifer Coburn's heart-wrenching The Girls of the Glimmer Factory. Coburn (Cradles of the Reich) again displays her commitment to research and includes grim descriptions of life in Theresienstadt, the camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia where the two protagonists reunite.

Hilde and Hannah were best friends in Munich, but in 1935, Hannah's family fled to Prague, "thinking they would be safe from Nazi rule." Told in chapters that alternate between their perspectives, the story begins in 1940, after Hannah's family has escaped again, to Palestine. But Hannah contracted smallpox and stayed behind with her grandfather; they planned to leave once she recovered. By 1941, Hannah is imprisoned in Theresienstadt, a Nazi "model camp" built to appease Red Cross inspectors and serve as a set for propaganda films in which starving enslaved laborers act as "thriving" Jews. In reality, Hannah and the other women are assigned to the "glimmer factory," where they slice mica into tiny slivers used as electrical insulation for Luftwaffe aircraft. Hilde, meanwhile, endures bad luck and bad choices, leading her to feel that "the only thing she cared about was the future Hitler promised" and to scrap for a place in the Nazi Party. In 1942, Hilde wins a role as a film production assistant assigned to record the "paradise settlement." As strong as Hilde is narcissistic, Hannah stealthily uses their shared history to subvert the sham films and reveal the horrors of Theresienstadt. The Girls of the Glimmer Factory is a gripping, thoroughly researched novel and a reminder of the dangers of a despotic dictator. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.

Nanae Aoyama's A Perfect Day to Be Alone, winner of Japan's Akutagawa Prize and translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood, is a slim coming-of-age novel of understated beauty.

A young Japanese woman named Chizu moves to Tokyo when her mother goes to China for work; Chizu is to live with a distant relative she's never met. "It was raining when I arrived at the house. The walls of my room were lined with cat photos." Chizu is 20; Ginko is 71. Over the course of a year, they move quietly around each other in a small apartment overlooking a commuter train platform. Chizu is periodically impatient, even cruel, toward the older woman, who placidly knits, embroiders, cooks, and, when solicited, imparts advice. Chizu is initially dismissive of Ginko, but notes that she "was turning out to be surprisingly normal," and that her friendship has something to offer.

Observations are made only very subtly, amid daily run-of-the-mill events, including the tiny dramas of Chizu's workplaces, her forays into dating, and shared meals at the apartment by the rail line. This restrained novel follows the four seasons of Chizu and Ginko's connection before Chizu moves on. Kirkwood translates Aoyama's writing with subdued loveliness: "I watched a boy taking a brown dog for a run, the two of them tracing a line across the grey concrete." A Perfect Day to Be Alone ends with less assured conclusiveness than its title implies, but in the spirit of the whole, it nods quietly toward positive change, or at least forward movement: "The train carried me onwards, to a station where someone was waiting." --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Exceptionally inventive author Margarita Montimore (Oona Out of Order, Acts of Violet) revitalizes the glamorous, draconian golden age of the Hollywood studio system in The Dollhouse Academy. Montimore sets the almighty Dahlen Entertainment empire--which produces TV, film, and pop music--in Owls Point in upstate New York. Dahlen was founded by Genevieve Spalding, who initially insists that "Hollywood is a cesspit, and there are a lot of powerful men taking advantage of young and naive performers. It's disgusting, and I was determined to run my school and studio with more integrity."

But then again, perhaps Genevieve protests too much. By the end of the 1990s, truth bends to Genevieve's demands as she reigns omnipotently over the Dollhouse Academy since creating its top-slot, long-running television show In the Dollhouse. Its supreme star--after 18 years in the spotlight--is Ivy Gordon. Now 34, Ivy begins a secret diary. She's finally gathered enough proof to expose Genevieve's nefarious machinations, possibly saving future generations.

Into the academy--rather like an exclusive boarding school--arrive Ramona Holloway and Grace Ludlow, both 22 and best friends since fifth grade. They've got exactly six months to prove they deserve this chance of a lifetime. How fast will dreams become nightmares?

Montimore divides her narrative into Ivy's slow-burn diary entries and Ramona's wide-eyed experiences of wavering between small successes and significant stumbles, even as Grace manages comet-like ascension. Hints of Valley of the Dolls, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and of course Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House linger as the twisted entrapment of enviable, must-have fame is chillingly revealed. --Terry Hong

Eowyn Ivey's poignant third novel, Black Woods, Blue Sky, is a moving, sometimes heartbreaking meditation on nature, wildness, motherhood, and whether deep love can change someone. Ivey returns to her native Alaska to tell an intimate story set at the edge of the wilderness, against the immense backdrop of the tundra and its unforgiving beauty.

Ivey (The Snow Child; To the Bright Edge of the World) centers her narrative on Birdie, a young single mother fed up with her dead-end waitressing job at the Wolverine Lodge. She adores her daughter, six-year-old Emaleen, and is managing to keep them both fed, but Birdie longs for more: physical and emotional freedom beyond the confines of the lodge, and a chance to let go of the strains of daily life.

When Emaleen wanders off into the woods one day, Arthur Neilsen, a towering, soft-spoken loner, brings her back and captures Birdie's attention in a new way. Before long, Birdie and Emaleen have moved out to Arthur's cabin far up in the mountains, accessible only by plane; Birdie is totally absorbed in the joy of living so close to wilderness. Ivey's descriptions bring the tundra to life, immersing readers in its details such as the sweeping vistas sometimes obscured by sudden, thick fog. But Arthur's true nature may be different than it seems--and Birdie's love for him may not be enough to combat the shadows that lurk just beyond her sight.

Quietly suspenseful, laced with beauty and shot through with darkness, Black Woods, Blue Sky explores the nature of courage, the limits of love, and what happens when nature and civilization collide. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Brigitte Giraud, the author of more than a dozen novels, won the 2022 Prix Goncourt for Vivre vite. Now published in the U.S. under the title Live Fast, this is Giraud's first book to be translated from French to English. The highly autobiographical novel examines the 1999 death of the narrator's 41-year-old husband, Claude, in a motorcycle accident. She writes: "There was only one thing I was truly obsessed with... I'd persisted in trying to understand how the accident happened.... My brain had never stopped running wild."

Brief, taut, and tortured, Live Fast begins as the narrator, Brigitte, sells the house she and Claude had been moving into at the time of his death 20 years earlier. Letting the house go is significant, but she has never let go of her confusion and despair over her loss. "The house is at the heart of what caused the accident," she insists, then embarks on a list of hypotheticals, such as "If only I hadn't wanted to sell the apartment," "if only my mother hadn't called my brother to tell him we had a garage," "if only it had rained," and on and on. These wishes form the novel's chapter titles, and Brigitte compulsively dissects each point on a diagram about cause and effect.

In examining these large and small, exceptional and mundane events, Giraud maps grief and yearning as much as the tragic death of a beloved husband and father. Cory Stockwell's stark translation blends emotion and analysis in the voice of a woman as bereft as ever. Live Fast is a pained but lucid look at loss in its long term. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Tradition and progress clash when a young man's dramatic death brings outsiders to an isolated, windswept Scottish island in Laura McCluskey's haunting debut gothic mystery, The Wolf Tree.

Eilean Eadar is a rocky, barren dot in the sea, accessible from the mainland only by boat or air and best known for the unsolved disappearance of three lighthouse keepers a hundred years ago. In the present day, a young man apparently jumped from the top of that same lighthouse, but his alleged suicide looks enough like foul play to merit a closer look. Two detective inspectors arrive after a rough, rain-soaked sea passage and disembark "with all the dignity of two wet socks." DI Georgina Lennox, called George, is eager to get back to investigating after an accident sidelined her for months. Her partner, Richie, is less enthusiastic, especially since this assignment takes him away from his wife and children.

The inspectors' investigation takes them not only into the last days of the deceased but on a winding exploration of the hidden ways and beliefs of a community largely untouched by the outside world for hundreds of years. Then George hears howling in the night and sees a figure wearing a wolf mask watching her from outside her croft, and she begins to wonder how far the island might go to keep its secrets.

McCluskey skillfully crafts a gloomy, brooding atmosphere of tension and isolation through her descriptions of the little isle caught between sea and sky and its inhabitants living at the mercy of both. Readers desiring a generous helping of spine tingles with their justice need look no further. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

In The Oligarch's Daughter, Joseph Finder delivers a searing, action-packed novel that handily wraps a love story inside a political thriller.

The Oligarch's Daughter seamlessly moves back and forth between the present and several years earlier, when investment analyst Paul Brightman falls in love with photographer Tatyana Belkin. Her down-market East Village apartment and simple lifestyle lead Paul to believe Tatyana struggles financially--until he meets her father, a Russian oligarch with a mega-opulent lifestyle. Paul quits his firm to join his future father-in-law's investment company, where he is almost seduced by the high salary and benefits. But Paul soon realizes his father-in-law runs a criminal organization with ties to the Kremlin, and deals in insider trading, among other illegal enterprises. That twist will come as little surprise, but Finder adds others to ratchet up the tension. In the present day, Paul has reinvented himself as New Hampshire boat-builder Grant Anderson after he went on the run. But the past is about to resurface, and if he wants to stay alive, he'll have to learn he can trust no one and develop survivor skills.

Finder (House on Fire; Judgment; Guilty Minds) superbly builds suspense as Paul tries to outstrip his past. There's little doubt Paul and Tatyana are deeply in love, but Tatyana is her father's daughter--choosing between her husband and her family may be impossible. Finder's ingenious use of betrayal throughout the relentless plot makes the question of who to believe into an enthralling puzzle. The Oligarch's Daughter is a riveting thriller shot through with love and money. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

In fiction and memoir alike, Lidia Yuknavitch impresses with her audacious subject matters. In Reading the Waves, she sets out to read and interpret her own life as literature, focusing on pivotal scenes and repeated themes. The penetrating memoir-in-essays reckons with trauma and commemorates key relationships.

Yuknavitch (Thrust; Verge: Stories; The Misfit's Manifesto) is fascinated by how memory is stored in the body. She was invited to give a reading in Houston, Tex., but a panic attack stopped her from boarding the plane--her subconscious knew her last trip to Texas was for the funeral of her cousin, a victim of misogynistic violence. She shakes her head at her younger self staying with a lover who punched her, blaming a combination of his toxic masculinity and her failure to value herself. The author identifies as sexually fluid and recounts several obsessions with older women. But her most haunting bond is with her second husband, Devin, who died in a drunken fall in 2015; she only summons the courage to read his autopsy report years later.

Some content will be familiar to readers of Yuknavitch's previous works, especially the references to her mother's limp and alcoholism, her father's abuse, and her baby daughter's death. However, as always, she effectively deploys water-related metaphors and cycles gracefully between topics. There is also experimentation with form, including a third-person segment in her "Ever After" story and a section of aphorisms. This vibrant work of self-revelation and -mythologizing is ideal for fans of Pam Houston and Rebecca Solnit. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Novelist Karolina Ramqvist's vivid memoir Bread and Milk, elegantly translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel, depicts in moving detail the relationships the author has with important members of her family, seen through the lens of her memories of food. Whether eating in one go all the tangerines her mother bought at the store or whipping up an ill-fated rice pudding for her daughter, all the episodes show the dominant role that food has occupied in Ramqvist's life.

She writes, "I've found myself thinking that all lovers of food must be abandoned children because, in most families anyway, food is the only thing within reach for a child who can't handle all that it means to exist." The increasingly sinister nature of the relationship Ramqvist had with food creeps up on readers. First, she centers the extent of her childhood isolation when living with her mother, whose job, social commitments, and romantic adventures frequently took her out of the house, leaving the girl alone into the nighttime hours. By the middle of the memoir, Ramqvist's full-blown eating disorder--or as she thought of it at one time, addiction--is clearly on display.

Ramqvist's telling is focused more on her development and self-knowledge rather than the physical effects of disordered eating or a difficult 12-step journey. Still the trajectory is one of recovery. At its heart, Bread and Milk is a sensual personal reflection, filled with the love Ramqvist (The White City) has for the people in her life, and inextricably tied to her memories of food and its preparation. A moving, beautifully crafted and translated journey about what sustains and connects us. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Kim Christensen--who died last year--takes on one of the United States' oldest youth organizations in On My Honor: The Secret History of the Boy Scouts of America, unraveling the abuse scandal that stretched for decades through the history of the Boy Scouts. Christensen's journalistic style makes for an approachable, if harrowing, narrative. Tracing the organization from its founding, On My Honor gives voice to those who have been hurt through this multigenerational trauma. And still, the extent of the abuse (its perpetration and the cover ups, handled internally, without being reported to the appropriate officials) is almost unfathomable: more than 82,000 former Scouts have filed claims against the organization, which, as Christensen notes, is seven times the number of allegations put forth against the Catholic Church over recent decades.

On My Honor outlines the problems as institutional, while it also thoroughly traces the political reach and impact of the organization. Christensen calls readers to examine not only how the Boy Scouts of America was complicit in youth harm for generations, minimizing accountability of perpetrators and enforcing a culture of silence, but also how other formal and informal cultural and political institutions have helped to legitimize this cover-up culture.

Never professing a personal view in the text, Christensen instead gives space to facts, historical context, and personal experiences of survivors willing to speak to him. On My Honor is a long-overdue reckoning, right down to what it truly means to live out the last condition of the Boy Scout Oath: to keep morally straight. It poses big questions about the future of the BSA. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Marginlands: A Journey into India's Vanishing Landscapes by Arati Kumar-Rao is a collection of eloquent essays by a writer and photographer immersed in the environmental transformation of her subcontinental home. Kumar-Rao's observations about how "slow violence" is destroying Indian ecosystems contain sparks of cautious optimism ignited by the faith and resourcefulness of the farmers and shepherds who steward the land.

Kumar-Rao abandoned a lucrative corporate job to become an environmental storyteller, one who spends her time "gathering string" from the places she visits and weaving it to form a more refined, "just and equitable land ethic." This involves patiently witnessing the seasons in the desert, river, and glacial landscapes of her homeland and spending unhurried time with those most impacted by the dams, highway, pollution, and rising temperatures wreaking havoc on India's life-giving waters.

During months spent in the sand dunes of the Thar desert observing an ancient method of rainwater harvesting, Kumar-Rao admired how digging wells was a community effort for the benefit of all. "Water acknowledges no division of religion, caste or status," she observes; "in the desert you never deny anyone water." Regrettably, the desert dwellers armed with the muscle memory to " 'divine' water" are dwindling in number, and the lived language of the desert is being "officially undermined" by the authorities.

A National Geographic Explorer, Kumar-Rao includes textured black-and-white illustrations and reflections on mythology, which add a graceful dimension to her writing. She draws the attention of a global readership to the endangered treasures of India's stunning landscapes. --Shahina Piyarali

What is education for, or, better yet, who is it for? This is the central question that Eve L. Ewing, associate professor in University of Chicago's Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity, asks in Original Sins: The (Mis)Education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism. Ewing traces how education has become tied to conceptions of the American Dream, and how that dream, and the foundation of the country itself, is built on "two cornerstones": "the genocide and displacement of Indigenous peoples, and the institution of chattel slavery that held African people in bondage." "The schoolhouse," she writes, has "played a central role in furthering the work begun by slavery and settler colonialism." Ewing then demonstrates through stories, anecdotes of teaching, and copious research how that racialized dynamic exists still. She skillfully connects the normalization of standardized testing, academic tracking, under-resourcing, and various disciplinary policies and their unequal application to eugenics, race science, and policies of disenfranchisement with the intention of limiting the possibilities and potentials for Black and Indigenous students.

Ewing makes a convincing argument through her analysis and unparalleled storytelling that unless education in the United States is radically reconsidered, schools will simply continue to maintain the legacy of inequality at the core of the nation. Importantly, she concludes with suggestions for ways forward, including pointing out that none of the habits of cruelty are inevitable: "people made it, and people can unmake it." Ewing challenges readers to reimagine schools that will help Americans to reimagine the world, so long as they go forward with the knowledge of the past, and actively reconstruct it. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Debut author Jules Bakes and illustrator Niki Smith (The Deep & Dark Blue) portray the exciting highs and despondent lows of young friendship in the delightful middle-grade graphic novel Sea Legs.

Fourth-grader Janey is a "boat kid" whose family constantly sets anchor in new places. It's January 1993, and they are leaving Florida for the Caribbean, forcing Janey to leave behind best friend Rae. Once in St. Thomas, a lonely Janey spies a girl on another vessel and flings herself into her orbit. Astrid, who isn't even sure what grade she's in ("Fifth? Sixth?"), cares for her younger siblings while her captain dad drinks beer and lets the boat collect barnacles. His abuses against Astrid go unnoticed by Janey, who is enamored by the older girl's cool vibe. Astrid is, in fact, all Janey can talk about when she finally gets to call Rae, causing turbulence in their relationship. And when Janey acts too oblivious, Astrid lashes out.  

Smith gives each character a dazzling range of visible emotion through exaggerated features and body language in splashy art that bursts with color. The illustrator regularly shows Janey breaking free of the graphic novel's panels in proudly corny outbursts and whiplashing displays of overwhelming feelings. Also brilliantly depicted are Janey's initial nerves ("I can't... I'll get tetanus... I'm dehydrated") then overzealousness ("I was no little kid") as she finds her legs with rule-breaker Astrid. Nautical imagery and local scenery complete the atmosphere, and guides (such as one devoted to "The Head") help readers develop their own sea legs. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

National Book Award finalist and Coretta Scott King Award winner Ibi Zoboi (American Street; Nigeria Jones) enters the world of young adult fantasy with the groundbreaking (S)Kin, a novel-in-verse inspired by Caribbean folklore that focuses on two struggling teens in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Fifteen-year-old Marisol and her mother, Lourdes, have just arrived from the Caribbean and have settled into a small apartment in Brooklyn. Marisol and Lourdes are soucouyants: every (metaphorical) new moon they shed their skins, shapeshift into "deadly smoke," and sip from unsuspecting souls to sustain themselves. Lourdes knows that in this new place they will be called "Undocumented. Illegal" but hopes "they will never call us monsters." Marisol, though, already feels like a monster. Seventeen-year-old Genevieve is the biracial daughter of a white anthropologist and an absent Black mother. The young woman yearns to make sense of herself, her history, and the "Itching. Burning" skin condition that is relieved only by the (metaphorical) full moon. Genevieve and Marisol meet when Lourdes is hired as a nanny for Genevieve's baby siblings; Lourdes and Marisol move in, and the girls develop a profound kinship.

Zoboi displays her immense talent by creating a first-class, haunting fantasy. The author's passionate verse is relayed in alternating first-person points of view, with Genevieve's lines on the left-hand side of the page and Marisol's on the right. Caribbean folklore blends with the urban environment, showcasing both characters' aching experiences as they struggle with loneliness and feeling like misfits in their own homes. (S)Kin is an outstanding, dark, and fast paced fantastical YA novel likely to be loved by fans of Children of Blood and Bone or Blood Scion. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer

Bookseller and debut author/editor Vania Stoyanova and author Rosiee Thor (Tarnished Are the Stars) unite speculative and contemporary authors in this blazingly funny and heartwarming YA anthology of interconnected stories about teens--alien and human--banding together.

Teenage aliens on a botched mission to bring home Hollywood-famous (and disguised alien friend) Max Spencer have crash-landed across the U.S. Their landings cause panic and the group is separated, but each receives unexpected help from teenage humans. The friends must regroup and find Max, who they presume is in danger. Meanwhile, Max is happily living on Earth and anxiously awaiting an awkward reunion.

Why on Earth is a splendid celebration of openness, interconnection, and found family. Empathetic human protagonists know the hurt of being prejudged: "The world makes assumptions about me all the time. Just like they're doing with those aliens," says a gay Black boy in "One Last Shot Before the End of the World" by Julian Winters. They, too, feel uncertain in foreign locales ("She's lost, just like I am. She doesn't understand me, like I can't understand her," observes a Brazilian teen in "Skill Issue" by Laura Pohl). The humans also fear ostracization, as do the aliens, like the trans guy who avoids coming out to his dad in "Impact Crater" by Maya Gittelman.

These diverse tales are warm and entertaining; there's a genderqueer species, a snarky AI trapped in a "Loud Mouth Bobby Bass," awesome jokes ("This shit never happened to the Love, Simon kids"), and tender exchanges between interplanetary friends. A wild ride. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

National Book Award-winner Neal Shusterman (Challenger Deep; The Arc of a Scythe series) has made an indelible mark on YA with his engrossing, clever, and haunting dystopias. All Better Now is yet another gift for teen sci-fi fans. Earth is dealing with a deadly pandemic: the Crown Royale virus has a 4% mortality rate. Those who survive, however, emerge from their illness with an abiding sense of calm and happiness.

Mariel and her mother, Gena, have lived in their car ever since Gena's mother lost her job during the Covid-19 pandemic. Gena lives "in a constant state of denial" and Mariel is a realist, but perhaps not when it comes to Crown Royale. While Gena doesn't want to catch it, Mariel thinks it might not be so bad--the survivors have "something in their eyes," something "wise" and "centered." Sixteen-year-old Rón's father "is the third-richest man in the world" and has every resource to keep himself and his children safe. Rón, though, has "blue-cone deficiency" and the CDC says that those with this type of color blindness are "seven times more likely to die from Crown Royale." Nineteen-year-old uncompromising genius Morgan has received a summons to attend an interview on a "grand estate in the lush English countryside." There, she receives an outrageous offer.

Shusterman narrates the growing crisis using the third-person perspectives of Mariel, Rón, and Morgan as each realizes they personally wield more power than any one individual should have. While the more than 500 pages of this opening installment to a new series may seem daunting, short chapters help keep up a rapid pace. Shusterman delivers another contemplative, enthralling work for teens. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness