"Each of us has been uprooted from one place and, through a great series of chance and circumstance not entirely our own, been made to reinvent ourselves somewhere else." Transplants, the first novel by Daniel Tam-Claiborne, is a mesmerizing study of the immigrant experience told with warmth, nuance, and quiet beauty.

Chapters alternate between the perspectives of Lin He, a college student in China, and Liz Chen, a Chinese American teacher of the English language. Lin, who has long felt more kinship with her pets than with other people, yearns for both independence and a sense of belonging. Liz, grieving her mother's death, realizes "that if she never set foot in China, there would always be a part of her she'd never fully understand." After meeting on a campus in Qixian, the two women build a friendship and unexpectedly trade places: Lin travels to the U.S. to attend college in Ohio and Liz chooses to remain in China to trace her family's roots.

The novel takes place over the course of a year, part of which is intersected by a viral pandemic and lockdown. Tam-Claiborne unflinchingly addresses the xenophobia and violence experienced by many Chinese Americans during this time and examines the conundrum faced by many immigrants: "Lin had done everything right--learned the language, kept her head down, followed the rules--and had still been met with cruelty."

Transplants, though set during a horrifying time in history, is a story of hope, strength, and resilience. --Grace Rajendran, freelance reviewer

The universality of grief makes it a popular subject for fiction, but by the same stroke it's challenging to approach with a fresh eye. Both humane and darkly comic, Peter Mendelsund's novel Weepers--the story of a group of professional mourners and the young man whose arrival casts their work in a dramatic new light--meets that standard.

Set in a dying small town in the hot, dusty American Southwest, Weepers's wry narrator is Ed Franklin, an aging and ailing cowboy poet who is part of the cohort of Local 302. Its members are paid to appear at funerals and weep copiously in order to inspire the grief of the true mourners.

One day, from out of state, a young man known only as "the kid" arrives with no belongings other than the suit on his back, and soon attaches himself to the ranks of this decidedly informal union. But what differentiates him from Dill, J-Man, Lemon, and the rest of the crew is his uncanny ability to evoke effusive displays of emotions from people, both at funerals and elsewhere, without shedding a single tear of his own, or seemingly even speaking a word. As he observes these events, Ed undergoes a crisis in his own practice, finding it increasingly difficult to summon up tears on demand.

Throughout, Mendelsund (What We See When We Read) raises often unanswerable questions, but though Weepers is the sort of novel that resists the easy consolation of a neat ending, that doesn't detract from its appeal. Reflective and atmospheric, it's a meaningful expression of our attempt to grapple with some of life's most profound mysteries. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Hiro Arikawa, internationally lauded for The Travelling Cat Chronicles, presents the poignant The Passengers on the Hankyu Line, which compiles quotidian glimpses of train travelers in Japan's Kansai region. An opening "Dramatis Personae" introduces 11 passengers traveling in one direction, then traveling back six months later.

Seven narratives emerge among the 11 passengers. Devoted library visitors Masashi and Yuki's mutual love of literature overflows toward each other. Shoko finds self-acceptance after upstaging her ex-fiancé's wedding. Tokié and her granddaughter, Ami, share canine-owning aspirations. Misa dumps her violent boyfriend, Katsuya. Etsuko worries about her future after high school graduation. Awkward university students Kei'ichi and Miho fall into first love. Yasué prioritizes her needs over the bullying expectations of the mothers' group she's outgrown. As they move between stations, random encounters inspire and bind these regular patrons.

Throughout Allison Markin Powell's thoughtful English translation, Arikawa's prowess as an observant, empathic writer unfolds in her seamless ability to capture small details that prove pivotal in individual lives: "A certain internationally recognizable mouse" on a tote bag is unforgettable; an "infamous textbook" means shared experiences; "fried rice" leads to a revelatory moment. Words, too--particularly delivered offhand--carry significance and transform whole lives: suggesting a "lovely station for a respite"; an overdue judgment of "that good-for-nothing"; entitlement called out with "What a waste of a nice handbag." In all these interactions, kindness wins, kindness rewards. Arikawa persuasively looks deep inside disparate souls, sharing illuminating realizations, supporting heartfelt decisions, and encouraging reinventions for everyday people living their everyday lives. --Terry Hong

We Don't Talk About Carol, Kristen L. Berry's debut novel, is a story of family, fertility, and personal trauma brilliantly layered over a thrilling investigation into six unsolved disappearances. Ex-reporter Sydney Singleton, who is in the process of undergoing fertility treatments, already has enough to worry about. Then she discovers the existence of her Aunt Carol, who disappeared in the 1960s along with five more Black girls from her neighborhood, and becomes fixated on their disappearances.

But as she investigates, she worries that her fixation is all too similar to her out-of-control obsession with a kidnapping case that led to an eight-day stay in the psychiatric department of a San Francisco hospital--events that ultimately caused her to leave journalism.

Berry pulls these two intertwined narrative threads taut, making for a compulsive read. Sydney is drawn to figure out what happened to her aunt and the other girls, particularly since cases of missing people of color often receive less media coverage and are "less likely to be solved than cases of missing white folks." But she's afraid that the stress may be impacting her attempt to conceive, and she's torn by her husband's fears that she might be headed for another breakdown. Conflicts within her own family and her personal trauma both become entangled with these fears.

There's so much to admire about this novel: a page-turning plot, multifaceted characters, and explorations of the issue that cases of missing persons of color are less likely to be solved, all seen through a compelling and intensely intimate lens. --Carol Caley, writer

The Brittle Age, winner of the 2024 Strega Prize, Italy's most prestigious literary award, is Donatella Di Pietrantonio's third work published in English and assuredly translated by Ann Goldstein. Once more, Di Pietrantonio (A Girl Returned; A Sister's Story), explores profound relationships between women, complicated by the consequences of neglect and abuse.

The Covid-19 pandemic has sent Amanda home from university, unsettling her mother, Lucia, a recently separated physiotherapist: "I didn't understand her, I didn't understand what she wanted from me. I was afraid of be­ing alone with her." Amanda isolates herself in her room, barely emerging even to eat. What looms between them is an attack Amanda survived--alone. Violence for Lucia is not unfamiliar. Nearly 30 years ago, when Lucia was 20, a man assaulted three girls on her family's campground, leaving two dead; the one who lived was Lucia's close childhood friend. What continues to haunt Lucia is all that she did and didn't do in response to what happened to two of the most important women in her life.

Di Pietrantonio intensely examines that gateway between waning childhood and waxing adulthood, splicing and overlapping Lucia's experiences as youthful friend and maturing mother. She writes without elaborations, often moving between events without immediate connection: Lucia pulling Amanda out of bed to bathe, a phone call with her estranged husband, his sweaters she still airs out in search of moths, her father's anger over the still-unfiled divorce. The hops and jumps require careful parsing--names, memories, happenings to be intuited by context rather than explication--but empathic engagement yields gratifying rewards. --Terry Hong

For an author who finds comfort in the healing properties of storytelling, the suicide of a former partner is bound to lead to a cascade not only of emotions but also of written words. The ameliorative effect of books and writing is one of the topics central to The Life of Those Left Behind, a tragic yet optimistic autobiographical novel by Matteo B. Bianchi, translated from the Italian by Michael F. Moore. In August 1998, three months after their breakup, Bianchi's partner of seven years, whom he refers to only as S., returned to the apartment they had shared in Milan and hanged himself from a pipe. Bianchi made the discovery when he groped for the light switch in the dark upon returning home.

"I seek comfort in literature," Bianchi writes at the start. Unfortunately, he couldn't find books that provided solace to survivors. "I wish that back then I could have read a book like this," he shares. This work is his attempt to provide a frank but encouraging reflection for others in his situation. He chronicles the many steps he went through--discussions with S.'s ex-wife and young son; coping strategies such as therapy and the services of a psychic; commiseration with colleagues at the ad agency he worked for--sparing no detail in charting his journey from shock to acceptance and, ultimately, renascence: "At some point you have to allow yourself to move on. You have to forgive yourself." This brave novel is Bianchi's path toward that goal. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

Fifty Fifty, the fifth book in Steve Cavanagh's Eddie Flynn series (The Defense; The Plea; Thirteen), is an exhilarating hair-raiser that combines the moral seriousness of a legal thriller with the blood-drenched villainy of a horror novel.

Late one night, 20-something Alexandra Avellino calls 911 and says that her sister, Sofia, has stabbed their father, a former mayor of New York, in his Manhattan home. Seconds later, Sofia calls 911 and tells the same story, but with Alexandra as the stabber. Which sister killed their father? Each woman is arrested at the scene, posts bail, and needs a lawyer. Representing Sofia is Brooklyn-bred Eddie Flynn, who, as he puts it, "spent many years as a con artist before I turned those skills into a law practice, with little adjustment." Flynn represents only those he believes are innocent and has a tough-guy exterior, but readers won't miss his marshmallow center.

Throughout Fifty Fifty, Flynn shares the point of view with others, including the guilty Avellino sister as she goes about her evil business post-bail and pre-trial; Cavanagh conceals her name and, inventively, her identity until novel's end. The roving perspective enables Cavanagh to pull off another neat trick: at one point, while multiple characters assume they're safe, the murderous sister approaches one of them, but readers won't know who, until....

Cavanagh, a former attorney from Belfast, assigns Flynn the job of explaining the story's legal particulars for readers' benefit, which gives the character a break from doing battle with his nemesis: his conscience. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Anthony Horowitz's ingenious Marble Hall Murders begins with crime-solving book editor Susan Ryeland (featured in Horowitz's Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders) having just broken up with her boyfriend in Crete to return to London. Now freelancing, she receives a request to edit a continuation of late author Alan Conway's detective series featuring Atticus Pünd. Pünd's Last Case is being written by Eliot Crace, grandson of legendary children's book author Miriam Crace, who died 20 years earlier. Having nearly been killed twice in the past while editing Pünd novels, Susan wants nothing to do with the latest one.

But she does need money to pay for the new flat she just bought. So she reads the first chapters and immediately catches that Eliot, like Alan before him, is writing a fictionalized version of a real-life murder: his famous grandmother's. Curious, since all public reports indicate Miriam died of natural causes. Eliot has also seeded Pünd's Last Case with clues about who he claims killed his grandmother. Against her better judgment, Susan is once again drawn into a mystery that could end her life.

With this and his Daniel Hawthorne series, Horowitz is arguably the best metafictional crime author of his generation. He deftly crafts mysteries that function on dual levels, this time in Susan's 21st-century London life and Pünd's 1955 case in the South of France. Horowitz also pokes fun at himself; Susan says, "I have no love of continuation novels.... What exactly is the point?" though Horowitz has written such novels for the Sherlock Holmes and James Bond series. Clearly, Horowitz's point is to entertain, which he does with aplomb. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, reviewer and freelance editor at The Edit Ninja

When personal trainer Sarah Jones moves to Minneapolis, Minn., after a broken engagement, she's thrilled to find a group of women who all share her name. But in Kathleen West's twisty, hilarious fourth novel, the Sarahs--including a teenager, a yarn-bomber, a local Federal Reserve executive, and a crafty con artist--learn that making friends can be murder.

Soon after Sarah (known as "Thirty" since the women all go by their ages) joins the group, one of the other Sarahs--the high-powered banker--is found dead under a bridge. With the help of George, a rookie FBI agent who's keeping his own secrets, Thirty and her fellow Sarahs set out to solve the murder. Because they're rank amateurs--and one of them is a killer--the investigation quickly goes off the rails, leading Thirty to wonder if they'll ever catch the culprit, or if their antics will get Seventeen (the smart-mouthed mastermind of their group) expelled.

West (Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes) assembles plot threads involving dark family secrets, a tentative new romance, the dead woman's teen daughters, and a stern nun with an unexpected past. When George takes Thirty to the camp his family owns, she learns about a long-ago cold case with a surprising connection to the present one. The Sarahs break numerous rules of crime solving and friendship, but they still manage to navigate both with humor and heart. Making Friends Can Be Murder is a highly enjoyable ride for mystery lovers, Midwesterners, and fans of quirky women with unusual hobbies. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

YouTube sensation Uketsu--who sports a black body stocking and white mask in his surreal videos--expands his global reach with Strange Houses, his Japanese debut, which hits the U.S. as his second translated title. Like his previous Strange Pictures, Strange Houses is another unsettling, irresistibly entertaining horror mystery. Gratitude again goes to Jim Rion who both championed and translated Uketsu's uniquely unusual oeuvre.

"This is the floor plan of a certain house," the novel opens--complete with visuals. First "normal" glance aside, of course, something's "off" and Uketsu promises "a truth so terrifying, you won't want to believe it." Uketsu's narrator here is a freelance writer specializing in "stories of the macabre." Because he knows "a lot about weird things," a friend calls to ask him about a "mysterious dead space" in a house he and his wife are interested in buying. The writer in turn reaches out to draughtsman Kurihara (who's also a horror/mystery fan) to consider explanations. Their detailed examinations together conjure an alarming possible scenario involving shut-in children and a murderous family, which soon proves shockingly plausible when "a chopped-up body"--missing its left hand--turns up near the house. When a stranger reaches out about a previous appendage-less murder that happened close to a similarly strange house, the writer and Kurihara can't turn away.

Uketsu expertly builds sprawling layers of bizarre revelations, and remarkably convinces with his controlled, methodical explanations about once-powerful multigenerational families, inheritance, sacrifice, loyalty. The angular, crisp floorplans enhancing the pages throughout underscore a sense of careful, contained planning, enticing and enthralling readers to undoubtedly believe. --Terry Hong

The titular character in Mary Dixie Carter's intense psychological thriller Marguerite by the Lake is a wealthy lifestyle influencer and author who is famous for her gardens, parties, and style advice. Marguerite Gray is also aloof, entitled, and jealous of anyone who takes attention away from her. Her portrait, titled Marguerite by the Lake, painted by famed artist Serge Kuhnert, whose works sell for millions, looms in Rosecliff, her Connecticut mansion with stunning lake views.

During an elegant garden party to launch Marguerite's new book, gardener Phoenix Sullivan notices a 100-year-old spruce tree about to fall; she rushes to save Marguerite's husband, Geoffrey Gray. The guests and Geoffrey credit Phoenix with saving their lives, but Marguerite is oddly cool, almost resentful. Geoffrey and Phoenix soon begin a clandestine affair, but little escapes Marguerite. A confrontation between the two women at a precarious cliff edge ends with Marguerite accidently falling to her death. Despite how it looks to the staff and the police investigating the death, Geoffrey and Phoenix ramp up their relationship and Phoenix moves into Rosecliff.

Carter (The Photographer) skillfully adds echoes of Daphne du Maurier's classic gothic thriller Rebecca, with touches of Vera Caspary's Laura, to her sophisticated plot. Phoenix, who comes from a humble background, is overwhelmed by living at Rosecliff, where "Marguerite took up all the space in the house." Phoenix comes to believe that Marguerite's ghost permeates Rosecliff and spies on her through Marguerite's portrait.

Carter artfully develops deliciously creepy undertones as Phoenix's uneasiness about Rosecliff and Marguerite's presence dismantles her mental state. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

In Harmattan Season, Tochi Onyebuchi (Goliath; Riot Baby) has created a fantasy noir tale perfect for fans of brooding sleuths and speculative magic. Onyebuchi's spare prose tells the story of Boubacar, a private detective in an alternate colonial West Africa where the French are very much still in charge. Bouba can move between the worlds of the colonizer and the colonized more easily than most, since he is a deux-fois, both Indigenous dugu and French.

But business has still been tough, and it's the beginning of harmattan season, when the dust of the Sahara blows in to scour everything. Bouba is in his room, thinking about his bad luck, when a girl abruptly appears and asks him to hide her. Bouba conceals her from the cops, but while they're questioning him about her, the girl vanishes. The next time Boubacar sees her, she's floating in midair above the marketplace, with streams of her blood spilling out into the sky all around her.

Clearly some nefarious magic is afoot, and Bouba is determined to find the source. As he digs for answers, however, Bouba uncovers even more questions--questions that might alter the future of the entire colony.

Clever and hard-boiled, Harmattan Season is both a throwback to 1930s crime novels and a wildly inventive take on colonial history. Fans of alternate history or stubbornly independent detectives are sure to enjoy spending time with Boubacar. --Jessica Howard, former bookseller, freelance book reviewer

Romancing the Stone meets Eat Pray Love in Love, Coffee, and Revolution, TV show runner Stefanie Leder's debut novel, a rom-com mash-up with gravitas. The rambunctious bildungsroman follows naive 21-year-old college dropout Dee Blum from the unfulfilling groves of academe at the University of California, Berkeley, to the steamy underbelly of the coffee farms of Costa Rica.

Dissatisfied with looming law studies, suffocated by a "close-knit" Jewish family, and trapped in a relationship with a domineering boyfriend, Dee dumps them all for the challenge of organizing ecotours for a Bay Area nonprofit through which deep-pocket travelers learn about organic fair-trade coffee. Dee, too, gets an education, though it's not quite what she anticipates.

The engaging novel opens with an adrenaline rush, a "transformative" bungee jump off a bridge in Alajuela, which serves as a striking metaphor for Dee's new life. Having vowed to "resist a romantic entanglement," she is stunned by the "astounding hotness" of Adrián, her bungee jump guide. Her situation becomes more complicated when she thirsts after her on-site mentor, the older, "uncomfortably cute" Matías, an anticapitalist who represents the political views Dee aspires to. It's a tumultuous triangle of desire, deceit, and development.

Add in a high-profile executive director with her own aspirations, two teenagers who expose child labor infractions, and a scholarly revolutionary hero, and Dee must suddenly distinguish between "Cooperative Heaven," "Corporate Hell," and possible fraud.

Disappointment, betrayal, hypocrisy, and romantic hurdles culminate in an action-packed caper before Dee resets her moral compass, empowered and emboldened by self-discovery. --Robert Allen Papinchak, freelance book critic

Journalist Todd S. Purdum (Something Wonderful) makes a compelling case that the United States' most influential Latino Hollywood executive was also its first, the "I" in I Love Lucy, in Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television.

Those who recall anything about Desi Arnaz beyond having his role as Ricky Ricardo tend to know him as the creator of the three-camera standard for television comedy. A closer look indicates that acknowledging this innovation only begins to hint at the heights to which he ascended as one-half of the founders of Desilu, which was at one point the largest producer of television in the world and, later, the company behind Star Trek. Mining Arnaz's own memoir and making skilled use of family scrapbooks, oral histories, and interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, Purdum gives readers an intimate and unvarnished depiction of a man who was described as harder to reach than the president but who never overcame his own tendencies to drink and philander.

A book about Desi Arnaz is, by necessity, also a book about one of Hollywood's notable power couples. Purdum sensitively conveys both the stormy nature of their relationship--Lucille Ball first filed for divorce in 1944--and the affection that endured long after their marriage ended. Arnaz sometimes said that his greatest skill was picking people, and Purdum leaves readers with new admiration for how well Arnaz used that talent and fresh compassion for his struggles, including the self-inflicted ones. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

No one should have to endure a year like the one Molly Jong-Fast contended with in 2023, an ordeal she recounts with arresting honesty in How to Lose Your Mother. Her mother is Erica Jong, the author who grabbed the world by the lapels and shook it hard with her 1973 novel, Fear of Flying, and its unsanitized chronicle of female sexual desire. Born in 1978, Jong-Fast grew up privileged in New York, with a nanny and private schools. She became so addicted to drugs and alcohol as a teen that she had to spend a month in a Minnesota rehab facility. By 2023, she had been sober for 26 years but had plenty of new problems. Her mother was experiencing dementia; her stepfather was in a similar situation. And Matt, her 59-year-old husband, developed a mass on his pancreas. As doctors put it, "We think it's the bad cancer."

That Jong-Fast felt she had no choice but to put her mother and stepdad into "the World's Most Expensive Nursing Home" does nothing to mitigate her sense of being a "bad daughter." Neither did the knowledge that her mother was more devoted to her career than to her child. What could have been a Mommie Dearest revenge book is instead a sympathetic portrait of personal anguish and conflicting priorities, all of it leavened by Jong-Fast's wit, as when she refers to Jong's many boyfriends, all of them possible stepfathers, as "a Ferris wheel of potential lives." This memoir is a dauntless portrait of one family's reckoning with life's most difficult problems. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

The Dry Season is an exceptional memoir that grew out of author Melissa Febos's insight that, in the pursuit of the relationships, flirtations, and sexual adventures that had dominated her life since her teens, she had somehow lost track of herself and knowledge of what gave her genuine pleasure and satisfaction. The catalyst for this realization came at the end of a two-year relationship she dubbed "the maelstrom" because "the experience was less like sinking into an abyss of mediocrity than being sucked into a powerful vortex."

Febos (Girlhood; Body Work) granted herself a period of celibacy, during which time she researched chaste and celibate female communities and individuals throughout history--research she recounts in delicious and thought-provoking detail. Questions abounded during the early days of Febos's celibacy: Should she issue "rain checks" for potential future dalliances? Was masturbation permitted? Whom should she tell about her decision? What was the right amount of time to remain celibate? Did the relentlessness of her romantic involvement constitute addiction?

After she lays this foundation, Febos blends discussions of her growing self-awareness of her own patterns and the "invisible topographies of [her] early life" with accounts of female religious communities in which "yielding to the divine was the only way to avoid yielding to men." She also explores literary and philosophical figures such as Virginia Woolf and Octavia Butler, whose passions lay outside the realm of the interpersonal, at least from time to time.

Febos's writing is expressive, striking, and singular. The connections she makes expand this work from memoir to intellectual history with profound resonance. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.

Catherine Lacey's sixth work, The Möbius Book, is a lissome philosophical experiment that blurs the lines of (auto)fiction through its two narratives: a novelette about two brokenhearted friends facing an existential quandary and a brief memoir. Though fundamentally discrete, they are linked by the aftermath of a breakup and some repeated imagery--a pay phone, a crowbar, a broken teacup--as well as themes of memory, religion, and autonomy versus risk.

Marie spies a pool of blood outside a neighbor's door but, disbelieving her eyes, puts it out of her mind during her friend Edie's visit. Edie split from her partner three months ago; Marie's infidelity ended her marriage to a woman. The characters' stories unfold via conversation and cogitation, in the vein of a Rachel Cusk or Sheila Heti novel.

Turn the book over for the companion part, more straightforward but equally cerebral. It opens on Lacey (The Answers; Biography of X) in the guest room of her home in Chicago, in shock after her partner of six years dumped her for another woman, over e-mail. She moves to California and rebuilds her life on friendship and casual sex. Autobiographical vignettes ponder fear, coincidence, the body, and male violence.

As in Ali Smith's How to Be Both, the two storylines meet in the middle. The title makes the intention explicit: for autofiction and memoir to form a continuous text. Some readers may find this dual approach to storytelling profound; others may pinpoint pretension. Nevertheless, this potentially divisive work is sure to lure fans of high-brow and mesmerizing writing by R.O. Kwon and Sarah Manguso. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Those who wish to bear witness to Ukrainians enduring the Russian invasion that began in February 2022 should turn to Danielle Leavitt's moving and poignant By the Second Spring: Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine. Leavitt, who has a PhD in history from Harvard University, creates a nuanced--and often devastating--portrait of life in Ukraine under the Russian siege. Motivated by the urge to depict Ukrainians beyond the popular portrayals of "desperate victims or nearly superhuman heroes," Leavitt's work is deeply felt; her humanistic approach brings "names, faces, personality, and identity to the often anonymous Ukrainians."

The seven people profiled vary in age, ethnic identity, class, and location. They are Anna, Maria, Polina, Tania, Vitaly, Volodymyr, and Yulia, and Leavitt introduces them within family and historical contexts, mingling history with the personal and creating dynamic storytelling. With Vitaly, for example, Leavitt succinctly summarizes his father's work for the Soviet housing administration and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, then relates the origins of Ukrainian statehood and the myth of the Cossack. Through Maria's introduction, readers learn about Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, which happened when she was in high school. By Second Spring rotates through the seven people in each of the five parts, which track the seasons of the first year of the war. Readers follow the hopes, dreams, and even love stories of these people, which makes it all the more heartbreaking when the war fractures their lives. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator

"The principles and values of good manners, of course, are universal." Just Good Manners: A Quintessential Guide to Courtesy, Charm, Grace, and Decorum is a humorous, accessible guide by British etiquette expert and social media personality William Hanson (Help I S*xted My Boss).

Hanson defines manners as "the guiding principles of putting people at their ease." He observes that, in the 21st-century digital world of social media and the comments sections of news apps, manners are needed more than ever.

Although Hanson's advice pays homage to the past, it is tailored to meet the needs of the present. For example, a chapter on dining etiquette includes both a breakdown of a traditional china service as well as suggestions on navigating technology at the dinner table. On the topic of taking disruptive group photos while dining out, Hanson makes the point that "no one in that photo is going to frame it."

Every chapter is filled with personal anecdotes and historical and cultural contextual information. Hanson highlights differences between British and American etiquette, including a particularly humorous story featuring the late actor Sir Michael Gambon that showcases how the two cultures diverge in their responses to direct questions.

While Hanson admits that many of these so-called "rules" originated "from a more rarefied environment" of social class, he also points out that there will be times when using them won't be the politest way to behave. His desire is to provide readers with enough knowledge of the rules of etiquette to break them as needed. -- Grace Rajendran, freelance reviewer

From 1934 to 1968, the Motion Picture Production Code kept Hollywood movies scrubbed clean of queer content--or so enforcers thought. Some filmmakers responded to the Production Code with another kind of code: the queer coding that Michael Koresky (Films of Endearment) identifies, dissects with uncommon insight, and celebrates in Sick and Dirty: Hollywood's Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness.

Koresky dives deep into a handful of cornerstone Code-era queer-coded films, noting that in them, "queerness is perceptible as a trace, as a wink, as an identity, as a sensibility." In Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948), the unspoken homosexuality of its two male leads, who are clearly cohabitating, is, like the body of the man they've killed, hiding in plain sight. Koresky explores his chosen films' origin stories, their sociopolitical contexts, and the fights (there were always fights) to get them made, albeit often in compromised form. Lillian Hellman's 1934 play, The Children's Hour, in which a charge of lesbianism against two headmistresses threatens their school, became These Three, a 1936 film that swapped out the source material's queer allusions for a heterosexual love triangle. The story's lesbianism would ultimately be, as Koresky puts it, "done 'right' " in a 1961 film treatment.

Koresky is a beautiful writer, and his scholarship accommodates bursts of lightheartedness. He devotes a chapter to Judy Garland because "any endeavor to describe the contours, discernible or not, of queer cinematic history would be incomplete without her." That history comes to shimmering, affirming life in Sick and Dirty. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Time travel. Politics. Science fiction. Cultural conflict. Romance. Skipshock, the first title in a planned duology, is a gripping, mind-bending novel, layered in multiple genres, about a girl who accidentally slips through a portal and is now expected to save the world--"Or some of them."

Pale, redheaded, 16-year-old Margo is headed to a boarding school in Dublin, Ireland, for a "fresh start" after her father's death, when "a weird situation" occurs. Margo has inadvertently "bounced... undetected" through a portal into a different world--many of them, in fact. By doing so, she has become a crucially important weapon in the eyes of both sides of a burgeoning war. "If we can learn how you did it, we could do it, too," a local revolutionary tells her. Margo is drawn into the struggle, unwillingly at first, through the passion of her guide, Moon, a salesman between the realms. Moon, whose work is tightly regulated and requires rigorous licensing tests, is suffering the effects of skipshock, the condition that results from frequent travel between world time scales, giving the sense that "a whole handful of sand from your life's personal hourglass has been thrown out the window."

Caroline O'Donoghue (All Our Hidden Gifts) has built a remarkable and complex series of worlds in which two people from extravagantly different backgrounds collide. Alternating chapters represent Margo's voice (in third person) and Moon's (first person), pulling the reader along on a harrowing, heartbreaking, life-or-death campaign to bring balance back to the worlds. Breathtaking and relevant. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Thai American Matt Braly, creator of Disney's Amphibia animated series, debuts with the marvelously energetic Family Force V. Chinese American character designer Ainsworth Lin vividly illustrates Braly's kaiju-filled contemporary Los Angeles.

"Decades ago, alien invaders attacked Tokyo." Their "demonic appearance" earned them the moniker the Mazoku, meaning devil tribe. The universe sent mankind the "Moon Computer [which] gifted five young Japanese siblings incredible powers" that transformed them into "the Moon Troopers." The Mazoku spread, and the original five Moon Troopers scattered to helm new divisions worldwide. Fifteen-year-old Maise belongs to the L.A. branch, led by her father, Ken, "a real 'honor and duty' kinda guy." Her mother, the daughter of Thai immigrants, excels at this superhero life, and her younger twins, Axl and Alex, are small but impressively mighty. Only Maise is reluctant about her inherited identity, racking up six tardies (just this month) to life-and-death situations. "I keep telling you guys," she says to her angry parents, "I don't want this responsibility." Her father insists, "you don't always get to choose your responsibilities--sometimes they choose you." His final words to her the next day will both haunt and motivate her "to be the best Moon Trooper the world's ever seen."

Braly is a brilliant storyteller who impressively balances family drama, teenage independence, and social interactions with plenty of fantastical adventure. Lin gives the narrative fabulous shape and form; his marvelous full-color art highlights distinct, expressive characterizations, including Maise's beanie with the power on/off symbol, and even a nod to L.A.'s elderly Asian women with their overly wide-brimmed hats. Audiences will surely be ready and waiting for Book Two. --Terry Hong

In The Aliens Do NOT Want to Go Home, author/illustrator Adam Gustavson follows The Froggies Do NOT Want to Sleep, another playful look at rebellion, with a gleeful, high-energy story that taps into the inner mischief of Earthbound children everywhere. A group of aliens have gathered on Earth for a day of wild fun, but as UFOs appear overhead and their beams shine down, it's time for the visitors to head home. What follows is a parade of hilarious and relatable delay tactics: the aliens claim it's not quite dark yet, insist their elaborate games can't be abandoned, and chase after an ice cream truck for one last treat.

Gustavson's expressive illustrations balance realism and imagination, grounding the action in familiar settings--cornfields, small-town streets--even as he populates them with a riot of colorful, endearing extraterrestrials. One pink, fuzzy creature with candy cane-striped legs lumbers around in oversized hiking boots; others of all shapes and sizes cause (and clean up) chaos, only ever disturbing an unimpressed pig and a skeptical rooster. The contrast between the grounded, everyday settings and the exuberantly imaginative alien designs heightens the humor and underscores book's the playful spirit.

Gustavson keeps the energy high while weaving in small, thoughtful details, like the eight-tentacled alien wearing a tee shirt that says "meep." The story brims with humor and warmth, capturing the universal reluctance to say goodbye when the day has been too much fun. --Julie Danielson

Enter the world and mind of Alex Ramirez, a neurodivergent seventh grader with out-of-this-world aspirations, in Jasminne Paulino's The Extraordinary Orbit of Alex Ramirez. Paulino creates a fascinating and immersive reading experience using first-person verse with flourishes of composition and design that reflect Alex's complicated feelings.

Alex, a Latino boy who thinks and speaks in both English and Spanish, wants more than a life inside his "Self Contained" classroom for students with various learning disabilities. He's bored of the monotony of daily math sheets, the condescension from teachers who call him "friend," and the embarrassment of having to sell coffee to students in non-SC classrooms as "a work-based learning opportunity." Selling coffee is not the future Alex wants--he wants to work for NASA. Even though Alex's mother and some of his teachers don't think he's ready, Alex is anxious to join the other seventh graders in the mainstream science class so he can start his journey toward being an astronaut. Astronauts, Alex knows, "need courage/ .../ they must be scared/ blasting off/ leaving everything they know/ and yet/ they suit up/ and/ GO!" When he finally gets the chance to join the science class, though, Alex must navigate tricky social dynamics in and outside of his self-contained class, his relationship with his parents, and intrusive thoughts that fill him with self-doubt.

Paulino's debut creates a compact world for Alex, his friends, and his family and the author's precise, illustrative writing develops a protagonist with a clear voice and an unmistakable personality. Every word Paulino includes is precisely deployed to deliver significant emotional heft, making for a zippy and satisfying read. --Luis G. Rendon, freelance reviewer

Tae Keller, Newbery Medalist for When You Trap a Tiger (2020), presents a glowing first picture book, We Carry the Sun, dazzlingly illustrated by Rachel Wada (From the Tops of the Trees). "This is the story of sunlight," Keller's preface opens, and "this is the story of us, too--how we reached into the sky and carried the sun home."

Four billion years after the sun's birth, some 6,000 years ago, "we humans" nurtured an idea: to harness the sun's warmth for our homes. But the bright rays weren't enough. Fast forward to the 1800s, when coal burns, "poisoning our planet in the process--but we don't know that yet." Thankfully, innovators persistently continue to explore the sun's potential: Augustin Mouchot's solar steam engine, Charles Fritts's first solar panel, Maria Telkes and Eleanor Raymond's solar heating, Rina and Levi Yissar's solar water heater. Yet "instead of looking up, we look down," relying on coal, gas, and other fossil fuels. "We hurt the earth. We hurt each other." Global leaders--supported by Earth's protectors--respond by prioritizing solar energy: "We reached into the sky and carried the sun home."

Keller remarkably condenses vast history into succinct summaries, while deftly clarifying complex ideas. The appended "Solar Energy Timeline" underscores the impressive breadth of distilled information. Wada's energetic spreads, gloriously favoring earth tones, seem to extend beyond the pages, her consistent addition of sunbursts and sunbeams throughout reflecting the potential for unlimited power. Keller impressively balances human ingenuity with arrogant destruction, yet concludes with encouraging hope: "and what if we could do more?" --Terry Hong