Phoebe Greenwood, a former staff editor and correspondent for the Guardian, swings for the bleachers with Vulture, her audacious debut novel, which is Joseph Heller's Catch-22 meets Fleabag. Sara Byrne is an acerbic, unstable freelance journalist from England assigned to cover the escalating tensions after the Israeli government kills Hamas commander Ahmed Al Jabari in November 2012. Now stationed at The Beach Hotel in Gaza, she's surrounded by fellow war reporters, photographers, and fixers.

Sara is desperate to get into a Hamas "terror tunnel," so she can write "a proper story," rather than what she calls "monkey journalism," by which she means reporting on the same events as everyone else. Complicating her risky efforts are personal issues that threaten to encroach on her professional ones. She is preoccupied with the festering wound left from her father's death two years ago. She's fixated on Michael, an old friend of her deceased father's with whom she had an affair while his wife was undergoing cancer treatment. Sara spirals further when she hears that Michael's left his wife for someone else. Her drive to succeed is not only for the sake of her career but also to impress Michael, and her ruthless pursuit of a scoop leads to all kinds of hijinks, and eventually, catastrophe.

Vulture is not for the easily queasy. Readers can expect comically rendered bad behavior, graphic bodily functions, and the devastating cruelties and tragedies of war. In Greenwood's keen and capable hands, the effortless prose makes the story all the more impactful. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator

The folkloric creature that belongs to the sea but is trapped on land takes on a new twist in Selkie, an atmospheric, melancholy fantasy novel by Nataly Gruender (Medusa).

Quinn is a selkie, a seal woman, abducted from a beach and trapped in human form by a fisherman who hides her seal pelt and forces her to have his children. She longs for the sea but can only gaze at it from her window, "glinting a gunmetal blue like the pearlescent inside of an oyster." Then one of her children finds the pelt. Quinn escapes back to the sea after seven years on land to search for her mother and herd, gone to unknown waters. A run-in with her vengeful husband leaves her wounded and back in human form to heal. She takes refuge in a lighthouse with Maisie, a young woman disguised as a man. Quinn has known nothing but suffering at human hands, but she slowly comes to trust the three people who keep the lighthouse. Her connection with Maisie grows as she recuperates, and Quinn must decide whether she is truly a daughter of the sea or the land.

Gruender puts a fresh spin on the selkie legend by focusing on what becomes of the seal wife after she returns to her true form. The coastal setting is an appropriately storm-tossed, windswept background for this story of anger, identity, and finding home again. Fans of folklore retellings and gothic atmosphere will enjoy this emotive fantasy with a sweet sapphic romance. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

John Englehardt's potent debut novel, Bloomland, offers a nuanced account of the backstory and aftermath of a mass shooting on a fictional Arkansas college campus.

The rotating second-person narration draws readers into the action and creates sympathy for three main characters: Rose, a student who is romantically involved with one of the people injured; Eddie, a professor whose wife dies in the massacre; and Eli, the shooter. Both Rose and Eli lost their mothers at age 11. Englehardt resists clichéd predictors of violence, such as a dysfunctional family (Rose had the more traumatic upbringing than Eli) or cruelty toward animals (Eli quit after one day of debeaking chickens at a poultry factory).

The narrative builds through engrossing flashbacks and vignettes, and moves into the future to examine how the Ozarka University campus and wider community address issues of guilt and vengeance. Gradually, it becomes clear that there is an "I" here: creative writing professor Steven Bressinger. Rose, Eddie, and Eli are all fully realized characters, yet the question of how Dr. Bressinger accesses their memories and emotions is intriguing.

Originally published in 2019 and winner of the VCU Cabell First Novel Award, Bloomland avoids lurid scenes and cheap cause-and-effect language. Englehardt writes gorgeous sentences, even about suburbia ("You start driving down MLK, past the mass grave of dollar stores, under the even clouds converging like one stoic slab of ice"). The perennial aptness of the novel is clear: "you wonder if the scariest thing about all this is not that life can't return to normal, but that it already has." It's a subtle and timely gem. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Leo Tolstoy may be right about unhappy families, but The Frequency of Living Things by Nick Fuller Googins (The Great Transition) proves that some pains are universal, even if the details vary. Those who have watched a loved one flail inside addiction may have certain things in common, and the Tayloe sisters are like any other hurting family, despite the fame that followed their band Jojo and the Twins' hit single, "American Mosh." Identical twins Ara and Emma are the talent; younger sister Josie, a scientist, manages everything else--except Ara's substance abuse disorder. After she relapses and ends up in prison, Ara is wracked with shame, but Janice, the "Queen Bee" of their unit at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, reminds her: "Family will amaze you with how deeply they can forgive. You just have to let them."

Missing from this equation is Bertie, their mother. A disbarred lawyer and lifelong activist, Bertie has been more absent than present in her daughters' lives. Despite that, Bertie is a vital force, the hub around which the whole novel spins. The women imprisoned in MCI-Bogastow know the ferocity of a mother's love: "Lots of women miss sex, dope, music, internet, floss, cigarettes, but there's exactly one thing that unites almost everyone, and that's what they'd do to see their babies." Although she seems indifferent, Bertie knows that ferocity, too, as she tries whatever she can to save her daughter. The Frequency of Living Things is a heartbreaking novel, full of unhappiness, but it also offers some comfort in the assurance that damaging cycles might be broken, and forgiveness is always possible. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

A professor of probability whose life was shattered by a cataclysm known as the "Low-Probability Event" makes one last attempt at doing something meaningful in Lucky Day, a wildly inventive horror novel by Chuck Tingle (Bury Your Gays; Camp Damascus).

On the day that Vera Norrie comes out to her mother as bisexual and announces her engagement at her book-release party, an outbreak of terrifyingly absurd violence kills nearly eight million people. Four years later, she remains in the grips of depression. Then Agent Layne from the Low-Probability Event Commission asks for assistance investigating a casino that Vera wrote about in her book. The casino should be statistically impossible to operate at a profit and may be connected to the LPE. Vera's anger is enough to go back into the world.

In his erotica, Tingle has long been an expert at using the absurd to startle his readers into new ways of thinking. Never has he done so more thoroughly in his horror work than in Lucky Day. Scenes such as an attack by a typewriter-wielding chimpanzee dressed as William Shakespeare are as brutal as they are surreal. The central characters, Vera and Layne, are affected by their respective experiences during the LPE in markedly different ways. Layne, with his startlingly contrasting combination of ruthless Machiavellianism and enjoyment of simple things such as different kinds of ice cream, is simultaneously a delightful foil and a menace. As Vera discovers how to find meaning in the face of powerlessness, Tingle once again reminds readers that love is real. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Racism, bribery, political corruption, and a disregard for players' well-being score thematic touchdowns in Mississippi Blue 42. Eli Cranor's skill in creating fully formed characters, especially FBI Special Agent Rae Johnson, elevates the plot in this first volume of a planned series.

Fresh out of Quantico, Rae is sent to Compson, Miss., to work with burned-out agent Frank Ranchino, who's more focused on retirement than on the stymied undercover investigation into fraud in the University of Central Mississippi Chiefs football program. Rae is ambitious, laser-focused, and--as the daughter of legendary University of Arkansas coach Chuck Johnson, whom she worships--an authority on football. The investigation takes a turn when the Chiefs' star quarterback, Matt Talley, a white senior who was poised for national attention, dies after falling from the rooftop of a college bar. Money from a gym bag is found scattered next to his body. Rae wonders whether Matt jumped, was pushed, or fell accidentally. Disregarding Frank's insistence that they are supposed to probe financial crimes, not murder, Rae ramps up her investigation by posing as a sports journalist, because she believes a politician is trying to bribe Chiefs backup quarterback Moses McCloud, a Black freshman, and she wants to get to the bottom of it.

Although Edgar Award-winning author and former professional football player Cranor includes myriad scenes on the field coupled with details about the game, it's not necessary to have an intimate knowledge of football to enjoy his riveting novel, Mississippi Blue 42. Instead, Cranor's brisk narrative explores greed, the perversion of the sport, its often naive players, and hero worship. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

Hell is a campus. Or at least, the lower circles are, as Cambridge student Alice Law discovers when she makes the decision to journey into the underworld to retrieve the soul of her academic adviser after an unfortunate accident, and finds it a mirror of the world she descended from. Acclaimed fantasy author R.F. Kuang's Katabasis interrogates themes of loss, grief, and human nature in her refracted version of Cambridge University where Analytical Magick is a field that allows those able to master mathematics, logic, linguistics, and philosophy to bend the rules of reality.

Alice Law's dream has been to dominate that field; the only person who could stand in her way is Peter Murdoch, her adviser's other graduate student. They have been pitted against each other from the beginning as the two potentially brightest students of their cohort, so when he tags along at the last moment as she prepares for her descent into Hell, she does not know what to think. But while they both are at the top of their class and exceptionally well trained, nothing could have prepared them for the reality of the shifting landscape where they now are reliant on each other to survive.

Kuang (Yellowface; Babel) depicts a hellscape that is dark, gory, and brutal, but more ruthless is the mirror she holds up to institutional norms and structures that will feel all too familiar to those in the know. With enthralling prose that makes it impossible to put down, Katabasis is a timeless fantasy that explores what it might mean to travel through death to discover the meaning of life. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

With Gabriela and His Grace, Liana De la Rosa returns with the final book in her Luna Sisters historical romance trilogy, one readers have been salivating for since the series began. Gabriela Luna and Sebastian Brooks, Duke of Whitfield, have been butting heads and trading barbs since they met. Now, Gabriela is fleeing Britain to escape an unwanted marriage, and she finds herself on a ship heading back to Mexico with none other than Sebastian, her nemesis. Though Gabriela is loath to face her parents and their familiar criticisms, she is thrilled to have a long visit with her sister Isabel and her new husband, whom readers met and fell in love with in the trilogy's second novel, Isabel and the Rogue.

The Luna Sisters trilogy is more interconnected than many series romances, and readers will be rewarded for reading all three volumes, but Gabriela and His Grace can still be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel. De la Rosa delivers the romance and steamy love scenes that readers have come to expect, including a delightful take on the popular "only one bed" trope.

Gabriela and His Grace is full of the delicious dialogue, intriguing history, and compelling characters that De la Rosa is known for. Her romance touches on real events, offers more than ballrooms and proper manners, and proves that a heroine doesn't have to be white, British, and of noble birth to marry a duke. Gabriela and His Grace is a joy that will have readers smiling giddily at two enemies finally figuring themselves out and becoming lovers. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller

In Children of the Book, American-born Israeli writer, editor, and translator Ilana Kurshan combines a charming memoir focused on the joys and challenges of parenthood with a thoughtful exploration of the power of books and reading to shape young lives. Kurshan's candid yet warmhearted story is enriched by her skill in relating her family's experiences to ancient sources of Jewish wisdom in which their lives are rooted.

Kurshan (If All the Seas Were Ink) is a voracious reader, revealing that she comforted herself between contractions as her eldest child was being born with Shirley Jackson's Life Among the Savages. In five sections corresponding to the books of the Torah--the Five Books of Moses, or Chumash in Hebrew--Kurshan gently recounts a journey of shared reading with her children. In doing so, Kurshan, a dedicated student of Hebrew texts, invokes the practice of midrash--rabbinic commentary on the Torah found in sources like the Talmud--to relate her family's experiences to Judaism's timeless wisdom.

Examples of Kurshan's skill at this task are an analogy she draws between the day-by-day structure of the biblical creation story and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and the marvelous way she connects the miraculous salvation of Wilbur the pig in Charlotte's Web to the tale of Moses and the Israelites' exodus from Egypt.

Children of the Book is filled with moments like these that make it a singularly wise and thought-provoking reading experience. Many parents will recall the closeness that shared reading with their children engendered. Kurshan's book is guaranteed to stir those happy memories and perhaps inspire anyone able to do so to create new ones. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Losing her father and sister to suicide has left an indelible mark on author Miriam Toews. In the sardonic and original A Truce That Is Not Peace, her 10th work, she seeks to come to terms with that legacy of loss.

The title and epigraph are from a Christian Wiman poem that expresses yearning for "coherence that is not/ 'closure.'  " Toews (All My Puny Sorrows; Swing Low) builds the memoir around the conceit of preparing for a "Conversación" in Mexico City on the topic "Why do I write?" What follows is not a straightforward answer but a raft of discursive attempts at one. For instance, the inclusion of long letters to her late sister, Marj, shows Toews fulfilling a promise ("Why do I write? Because she asked me to"). In them, Toews recalls a shoestring 1982 tour of Europe with an egotistical boyfriend and the angst preceding the publication of her first novel in the mid-1990s. Reminiscences of early jobs, therapist appointments, and her octogenarian mother's and grandchildren's antics share space with whimsical plans to start a "Wind Museum" and quotations from other authors. Extended stream-of-consciousness sections are interspersed with shorter fragments; together, they constitute a meditation on the fine line separating randomness and meaning.

Alternating past and present and flowing by free association, this is something of a cross between a memoir and a commonplace book. "Is writing the acceptable alternative to killing oneself?" Toews asks. For her, writing is indeed a bulwark against despair. The result here is more incisive than sad--a heartening encouragement to persist. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Guns, money, and dangerous secrets come together in Anonymous Male, retired sniper Christopher Whitcomb's fever dream of a memoir of his life after resigning from the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team in 2001.

After publishing Cold Zero, an account of his high-octane experiences within the Bureau, Whitcomb appeared frequently in a wide variety of media outlets as a commentator and journalist specializing in his analysis of terror. He then used his press contacts to access remote areas of Pakistan, gleaning information for the CIA. From there, Whitcomb drove himself even deeper into increasingly dangerous situations, including a hair-raising stop in Somalia and a trip to Timor-Leste, a conflict-riven island in Southeast Asia, where he assembled a private army to provide security for a new government. After surviving a coup attempt, Whitcomb found himself disconnected from his family, his life, and his entire belief system. It wasn't until he nearly drowned while surfing off the coast of Bali that Whitcomb realized his true self had become buried under layers of deception, and he finally returned home to the U.S.

Whitcomb's writing style is at once tangential, aggressive, and hazy, as if he is watching and reexperiencing pasted-together clips of the action film of his life. As entertaining as his adrenaline-fueled adventures are to read, one senses that an existence spent at either end of a loaded gun takes a toll on the psyche and that, eventually, there will be a reckoning. Whitcomb, however, leaves it to readers to draw these conclusions. His goal, at which he succeeds with Anonymous Male, is to deliver one wild ride. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor

Historian Peter Cozzens brings the infamous Wild West South Dakota town to life with Deadwood, his highly entertaining and meticulously researched account of a place whose history is even more colorful than the myths and legends that have sprung up around it.

A mining town established in 1876 after the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, Deadwood not only hosted gamblers, gunslingers, and desperados, but was, itself, an illegal settlement founded against the orders of the federal government on land sacred to the Lakota people. The lure of gold proved to be a stronger force, however, and within months, Deadwood was populated by miners, prostitutes (or "soiled doves," as they were known), and all manner of chancers looking to make a profit. Cozzens offers in-depth profiles of Deadwood's most memorable characters, many of whom were brought to life in the HBO show of the same name. There is villainous saloonkeeper Ellis Albert "Al" Swearingen, for example; outspoken prostitute Martha Jane "Calamity Jane" Canary, who often dressed in men's clothing; and, of course, James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, who met his end during a poker game.

As captivating as these portraits are, the town itself is the real star of Deadwood. Cozzens's descriptions of frontier life, which was especially harsh for women--who often found refuge in opium--are brilliantly detailed. Most revealing, however, is how, despite its lawless reputation, Deadwood became a prosperous and self-reliant town that was unique in its acceptance and integration of Chinese immigrants, Jews, and African Americans. Revelatory and multilayered, Deadwood is a fascinating portrait of a complex and singular place. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor

Before Times Square looked like Disneyland and Tompkins Square Park was a family-friendly urban oasis, New York was a crime-ridden city in crisis. Jonathan Mahler's The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990 is an era-defining portrait with the grip of a first-rate political drama.

The four years that Mahler spotlights correspond with the final term of beleaguered New York mayor Ed Koch, whose 12-year reign ended when the city's first Black mayor, David Dinkins, was sworn in on January 1, 1990. During the book's time frame, New York endured a heartbreaking number of racially charged, city-dividing tragedies, as well as the crack and AIDS epidemics and an accelerating homeless problem spurred by unfettered real estate development. As his mayoralty wore on, Koch's catchphrase, "How'm I doin'?," elicited fewer and fewer favorable responses.

Mahler (Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning; The Challenge) takes a novelist's approach to this material, interweaving multiple storylines and fleshing out characters who are quixotic, self-aggrandizing, charismatic, and vindictive, frequently all at once. Throughout The Gods of New York, Koch spars with just about everyone, and some of his adversaries are still in the news. Among them are Rudy Giuliani, who, having served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1989 (he would later win the gig), and a spectacularly debt-ridden real estate developer who would one day set his sights on a job even bigger than mayor of New York. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

In Black Moses, Caleb Gayle (We Refuse to Forget) illuminates an often overlooked period in U.S. history: Black settlement in the American West. As Reconstruction faltered, the promise of freedom shifted into new forms of oppression. Thousands of Black people, called "Exodusters," undertook a mass exodus out of the South. They ended up in Kansas, Oklahoma, and other new territories that were created by forcing Native Americans onto smaller reservations.

Black Moses vividly portrays the pervasive inequalities of the Reconstruction era, when systemic racism and violence denied Black citizens their fundamental rights and ripped lands from their original Indigenous inhabitants. It focuses on these issues through the case of Edward McCabe, who envisioned an all-Black homeland in Oklahoma as a refuge from white supremacy. Born unenslaved in 1850 in Troy, N.Y., McCabe was educated and dared to dream of "an answer to the enduring question: What do we do with the Black people that America won't make adequate room for?"

McCabe's audacious ambition forms the heart of this saga. He first rose through the political ranks in Kansas, and then, once the Oklahoma Territory opened in 1889, he fought to promote his claim that "the advancement of Black people... might best be achieved in Oklahoma." After decades of activism, his struggle was ultimately unsuccessful, since "Oklahoma was becoming the South... a part of America where Black people were directed to accept separation and be satisfied with less." Although McCabe eventually died with his dream unrealized, Black Moses is a compelling testament to the vision of a man for a better future. --Jessica Howard, former bookseller, freelance book reviewer

Pure catnip for booksellers and bibliophiles, Shelf Life by Michael Robb is a warm, meticulously researched history of books, bookselling, and publishing, packed with fascinating detail, surprising facts, and the author's love of the trade. Although Robb's focus is on the evolution of bookselling and publishing in Great Britain, the history of the book trade is global.

Though the written word has existed for millennia, Robb's history really gets going with William Caxton, the English merchant who introduced the printing press to England in 1476 and subsequently became the first retailer of books in the English language. As every bookseller knows, however, the one constant when it comes to the trade is change. Robb, who owned an independent bookstore in England for many years, charts these seismic shifts through key figures and events. For example, he introduces James Lackington, who was so eager to share his love of books that he discounted their price and, in 1793, opened London's the Temple of the Muses bookstore, which stocked more than a million books. Allen Lane's 1930 introduction of inexpensive Penguin paperbacks also changed publishing, allowing millions of readers access to classic works.

Robb describes the rise of chain bookstores and how they affected independent booksellers (his own bookstore was a victim of this development), how Amazon rocked the industry, and, finally, offers a look forward as the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the decline in childhood reading threaten the existence of the trade in the 21st century. Nonetheless, Shelf Life ends on a positive note--that those who love books will continue to share them and get them into the hands of readers. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor

Author, performer, and "gender defector" Jacob Tobia (Sissy) leads off their taut, iconoclastic essay collection Before They Were Men with a provocative gambit: "Men and boys are now the ones suffering the most under the gender binary." How is it that the identity marker stacked at the tippy-top of the patriarchal hierarchy suffers most? Tobia lovingly and painstakingly elucidates the pressures and abuses intended to transform boys into men, as well as the indiscriminate rage cultivated in the process. In doing so, Tobia draws on vital personal experiences and sheds necessary light on a hidden turn in the cycle of gender-based trauma.

"Before they were men, they were children," Tobia asserts, proceeding to unpack the insidious ways that boys are groomed for violence, bullied into masculinity, judged according to a single anatomical member, dismissed by hardened feminist discourse, and introduced to treacherous ideologies within the Internet's "manosphere." Buttressing each chapter are sobering statistics about male suicide, job-related deaths, friendship, penis shame, self-image, incarceration, and more. The result is nothing short of a cri de coeur for the male soul.

Before They Were Men's double-helix structure wisely addresses both men's heartache and the inadequacies of feminism's response. In re-examining popular usage of terms like "toxic masculinity" and "male privilege"--finding the definitions flimsy, the utility dubious--Tobia presents a rare and radical voice for human empathy, balancing their incisive critiques with the panache of a "quirky, hot, fashionable professor." Tobia's admirable benevolence reminds readers how fractured everyone has become under the imperatives of patriarchal capitalism. Here begins a crucial new chapter in the ongoing conversation about what liberation means. --Dave Wheeler, senior editor, Shelf Awareness

In Rehab: An American Scandal, journalist Shoshana Walter provides an in-depth, gripping, and often shocking report on the state of the billion-dollar addiction-treatment business in the United States through the personal stories of four individuals who have been through it.

These include Chris Koon, a young white man from Louisiana who opted to attend Cenikor, a treatment center, instead of serving time in a state prison, only to find himself bound by forced labor and punitive rules; April Lee, a Black woman from Pennsylvania, who struggled to overcome a heroin addiction that robbed her of her children and her home; Larry Ley, a doctor and recovering alcoholic in Indiana who opened a practice prescribing Suboxone, an effective medical treatment for opioid addiction; and Wendy McEntyre, a white woman from a wealthy California enclave whose son died at a sober-living facility.

Through these perspectives, Walter demonstrates how difficult it is to obtain and sustain treatment for addiction, and how racial disparities and political maneuvering make it nearly impossible for some to do so. What emerges as the biggest culprit is the motive for profit over lasting treatment. For example, prescribing rules make it easier for doctors to give patients addictive opiates than Suboxone, which remains scarce. Treatment centers bill insurance companies for the maximum amount and then boot patients from 28-day programs before they are ready to leave, putting them at high risk of relapse and overdose. Private treatment centers operate with little oversight, even when patients die. Walter's reporting is flawless and her writing is excellent. Rehab is an important look at an out-of-control industry in dire need of reform. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor

Dedicated "to independent booksellers everywhere," The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews celebrates the way bookstores do more than just sell titles: they build community and foster a love of language, ideas, and deep conversation. Each of the 20 interviews reflects the famed Parisian bookstore's ethos of supporting writers, dating to its 1951 origins, when George Whitman "started hosting free seminars, workshops for artists and writers and informal discussions." Whitman's daughter, Sylvia, who now runs the store, explains that he "considered these 'an evening school for those who regard education as a permanent life process.'  " Interviewee George Saunders concurs, arguing that generations of visitors to the fabled store have come "because they knew they didn't know enough. And they knew that if they didn't know enough, they'd live smaller lives."

Adam Biles, literary director at Shakespeare and Company, conducted the interviews. He chose selections for this volume because "the guest rejected the comfort of the trusted anecdote and pre-scripted answer, in favour of the more precarious but exciting route of new thought." Much of that excitement is due to Biles himself. When he asks Olivia Laing about the reparative function of art and whether it serves as a cure for loneliness, he's inviting her to reconsider her work, and her response feels like an act of discovery: "I think the cure wasn't for loneliness. The cure was for shame. And the shame of loneliness is the component that causes the pain of it." Offering additional insights from authors such as Colson Whitehead, Carlo Rovelli, and Katie Kitamura, this collection will enlarge the lives of its readers, one interview at a time. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

At a time of increased danger to transgender and gender-nonconforming people, the 17 essays in Both/And, edited by Denne Michele Norris, represent a joyful call to action. Authors of color reimagine the future, transcending traumatic memories and others' expectations through activism and the arts.

Akwaeke Emezi and Autumn Fourkiller question gender-specific standards of beauty. Edgar Gomez and Caro De Robertis observe how the Spanish language is evolving to become less gendered and allow nonbinary pronouns. Raquel Willis, a speaker at the Brooklyn Liberation March, was spurred to protest after the deaths by suicide of fellow young trans people. Meredith Talusan addresses the sex-work client who assaulted her, an event that proved to be a turning point in her life.

Often, the arts accompany transition journeys. Addie Tsai found a model of gender fluidity in her father's Mandarin-language theater productions, which involved cross-dressing. Vanessa Angélica Villarreal discusses the controversy over nonbinary and trans characters in role-playing video games. Several authors take strength from goddess imagery, as when Gabrielle Bellot visits a Hawaiian volcano and ponders the transformative nature of fire. Others are inspired by the daring acts of "transcestors" from legend and religious history.

Confessional and creative modes coexist here. Kaia Ball's piece is a shining example, contrasting current freedom with the constraints of a mixed-race Mormon upbringing and exploring their relationships with their estranged father and ultrafeminine mother by imagining both parents transitioning.

These vibrant essays blend the personal and the political in fascinating ways, tracing shifting identities and standing up for artistic expression. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

During the 75th-anniversary year of what Billy Wilder called "the swimming pool story" during its development, Ready for My Closeup: The Making of Sunset Boulevard and the Dark Side of the Hollywood Dream by David M. Lubin offers a lovingly detailed look at the production of the classic film.

Lubin, professor of art at Wake Forest University and former writer for Rolling Stone, begins with writer-director Billy Wilder's youth and coming-of-age in Vienna during the heyday of silent movies. He presents a thorough yet chattily accessible history of the people involved in Sunset Boulevard and how they came together in a film that dances on the line between reality and fiction. Recounting how Gloria Swanson had gone from silent-film "it" girl to low-budget talk-show host, how William Holden's failure to break out of handsome but bland secondary roles fostered in him a sense of desperation, and how Erich von Stroheim's directing career abruptly ended after his sole collaboration with Swanson, Lubin sets forth a clear case for how these actors portrayed funhouse-mirror versions of themselves to create an incisive Hollywood satire. Lubin's examinations of film conventions found in crime thrillers and screwball comedies also illustrate how Wilder played with genres and maintained suspense in a movie that depicted its narrator as dead in its first scene.

Aficionados of movie classics and those intrigued by storytelling will enjoy peeling back the layers of one of the great films of its era. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

In the captivating and unconventional Legendary Frybread Drive-In, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids), 17 Indigenous writers collaborate to explore and celebrate a range of Native experiences. Through "winks, nods, and overlaps in their writing," the authors create a naturally interconnected anthology of stories centering on a fantastical setting.

Sandy June's Legendary Frybread Drive-In is a lively but humble-looking gathering place that appears when people from countless tribes, locations, and even times most need it. They go to the drive-in for the intertribal community, the healing, the warm, down-to-earth support of the "legendary grandparents," and--of course--they go for the ever-changing traditional fare: elk soup, Navajo tacos, and frybread. How characters get there, though, is always different. Whichever way they make it to Sandy June's--via a fridge portal in Arizona ("I Love You, Grandson" by Brian Young) or while lost in a Hawaiian rainstorm ("Braving the Storm" by Kaua Māhoe Adams)--young people from the Cherokee, Muscogee, Ojibwe, Blackfeet, and other Nations come together, again and again.

Stories in this noteworthy and absorbing compilation work as stand-alones, but to get the full benefit and sense of intertribal community, read them together. In voices, styles, and scenarios as varied as the tribes and locations represented, the stories and poems in Legendary Frybread Drive-In capture often-pivotal moments in young people's lives. Themes of displacement and loneliness, as well as the importance of connection to family, friends, and tribe, permeate the entries, making the collection relevant and accessible for teen readers of any background. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Catherine Bailey's rhyming text and Fiona Lee's enchanting illustrations harmonize in Good Morning Main Street, a picture book companion to Goodnight School (illustrated by Cori Doerrfeld), which transforms an ordinary street into a whimsical world filled with personality and discovery.

A red cat observes as "Main Street blinks awake,/ quiet, still, and gray" and "soft light slowly spreads,/ bin by sleepy bin." A bookstore clerk leaves his apartment to do some morning errands, and the red cat follows unnoticed. "Shadows slip away" under rosy skies, and a "fountain gurgles on" while "yawning awnings stretch." A firehouse Dalmatian and a baby peeking over a parent's shoulder both peep at the red cat. With morning in full swing, residents congregate at a farmers' market displaying "cheery goods and crafts/ in every eager stall." The shop clerk picks up tinned fish and flowers before making his way to the kite festival in the park: "kites in midair dance/ for the crowds below." There the man notices "a purring sound,/ tender, soft, and slow." The clerk carries the red cat to the bookstore where they both start their day.

Bailey's sweet, gentle rhymes and the fanciful, childlike illustrations of Lee (illustrator, Can't Stop Kissing That Baby) are a superb match. The artwork, which treats inanimate objects like residents of Main Street, brings Bailey's text to (literal) life with a playful use of shading and expressive faces on buildings and trees. Clever wordplay is a treat for the ear while richly detailed pages filled with subtle hints of what's to come beg to be pored over. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

A plucky child meets her match in Aggie and the Ghost, author/illustrator Matthew Forsythe's delightfully droll picture book about navigating rules and unlikely friendships.

Aggie, a pale-skinned, rosy-cheeked child, is "very excited" to live alone, but there's a problem: her new house is haunted. A shapeshifting "ghost follow[s] her everywhere," never giving her any alone time. Frustrated, Aggie establishes ground rules: "No haunting after dark. No stealing my socks." Aggie's attempt to set boundaries proves futile, forcing the pair into a spirited game of tic-tac-toe to win ownership of the house. A perpetual tie results in more edicts from Aggie; the ghost breaks "every single rule" that night, then departs the following day. A series of sequential art vignettes depict Aggie engaging in activities previously shared with the ghost, but she now feels "something [is] missing." She crafts one final, cleverly worded rule--"Don't ever visit me from time to time"--and reunites with her frenemy.

Forsythe's wry humor and whimsical illustrations are a masterclass in comedic timing. His signature watercolor, gouache, and colored-pencil art appears more muted here, enhancing key moments and visual gags through strategic switches in palette. The page-turn to Aggie and the ghost's melodramatic stare-down, illustrated entirely in shades of terracotta, is so effective that Forsythe (Pokko and the Drum; Mina) uses it twice. Remarkable character design remains central to Forsythe's storytelling; the titular duo's opposing teardrop silhouettes reinforce that they are at odds. Fans of Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen's collaborations are likely to appreciate Forsythe's style while introverts will surely sympathize with Aggie's efforts. --Cristina Iannarino, children's book buyer, Books on the Square, Providence, RI.

Eisner Award-winning author Mariko Tamaki (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me) and Eisner-nominated artist Nicole Goux (Everyone Is Tulip) collaborate for the first time in This Place Kills Me, an electrifying YA graphic novel about ongoing abuses at elite, all-girls Wilberton Academy.

Abby Kita isn't impressed with this "hellhole these idiots call a school," as she sits in the audience watching Romeo & Juliet, the "esteemed" Theater Society's latest "stunning performance." Fifty-two days into being the new girl and she's still a pariah who's constantly (loudly) whispered about. She escapes the after-party and runs into the evening's star, Elizabeth, who assures Abby that "not fitting in here... that's a good thing." Their conversation proves eerily prescient: Elizabeth's corpse is discovered the next day while Abby's outsider status provides the zoomed-out perspective to figure out what really happened.

The "years... spent on this massive undertaking," as Tamaki acknowledges at book's end, are evident throughout the creative duo's impressive performance here. Tamaki sets the stage, mixing murder with bullying, homophobia, silence and collusion, and predatory abuse. Goux gloriously captures and enhances every scene, working in moody blues and muted peaches over black-and-white: predominantly blue signals "now"; more peach for "then." Goux's offsetting of the standardized school uniform via distinct socks and shoes is delightfully clever. Her entertainingly meticulous attention to detail manifests in placing Devo and Dune on the same bookshelf and "50% MORE" on a shared chips packet. Reference to "another mystery" teases a possible sequel; devoted audiences will surely appreciate an encore. --Terry Hong

In the dynamic, thought-provoking Squirrel and Bird by Laura Baker (Monsters Everywhere series), illustrated by Stacey Thomas (The Inventor's Workshop), an increasingly irritated Bird chafes at being typecast by a narrator's narrow interpretation.

A narrator states, in no uncertain terms, that Squirrel is so loud, "you can hear Squirrel from anywhere." And Bird "hardly makes a sound at all." Squirrel is "busy, busy, busy," while Bird "prefers to sit and do nothing." Frustrated, Bird tries to explain otherwise but is repeatedly ignored by the adamant narrator. The two friends are preparing for a concert: gathering instruments, sheet music, and inviting all the animals in the forest to attend. When the stubborn narrator decides that perhaps Squirrel, who is "oh-so-easy-breezy," should perform alone because Bird is "freaking out," Bird finally shouts "ENOUGH!" Bird vehemently insists that there is "so much more" to each of them, and now that Bird has spoken up, the narrator agrees. Bird is a lot of things, most notably a thinker and a performer, while Squirrel can be loud, excitable, and shy. With the narrator duly chastised, Squirrel and Bird can begin their story all over again. And, this time, they will tell it their way!

Baker's irresistible tale playfully demonstrates the downside of making assumptions and judgements. The entertaining text is thoughtful and full of energy, with Bird actively breaking the fourth wall. Delicate, predominantly yellow and gray illustrations cleverly contradict the narrator, showcasing the true nature of Bird's contributions and highlighting the multifaceted personalities of both endearing characters. Squirrel and Bird may appear lighthearted, but it packs an undeniable wallop of wisdom. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author