Subtle horror intersects with generational conflict when Josh Malerman revisits the characters from Bird Box in the worthy sequel Malorie.

Forced to leave the community they found in the first book, Malorie has raised the two children, now called Tom and Olympia, in safety and isolation until the age of 17. A chance discovery gives her reason to set out with them again on a longer journey than they have ever taken, in search of the only thing that would make her leave: family. But Tom and Olympia, just as they now have names of their own, have grown into people with their own ideas about life that no longer fit within the discipline Malorie developed to avoid the creatures, the sight of whom drives people to deadly violence. Tom dreams of creating inventions that will allow people to go outside without the defense of a blindfold.

Although the creatures still loom, eerie in their lack of definition or explanation, this is a story about change. A generation is nearing adulthood with no memory of the old world, and as Malorie and her family connect with more people on their journey, they hear stories of communities where people have found ways to live in this new world. Alternating perspectives from Malorie and Tom, with the occasional interjection from Olympia, let readers feel their compelling faith in vigilance and innovation, respectively. The familiar unknown menace and the larger view of the world will please Malerman's fans. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Joe R. Lansdale's steamy noir thriller More Better Deals ignites when a slick used-car salesman meets a blonde who can't handle her car payments or her abusive husband.

Ed Edwards earns every cent of his commission at Smiling Dave's Car Lot. Dave pays Ed well, but Ed's job description includes the dirty work of repossessing cars when customers like Frank Craig get behind on payments. Frank's out on a drinking binge when Ed shows up to take the car, which is perfectly fine with Ed because Frank's wife, Nancy, is a beautiful leggy blonde. Nancy tearfully confides to Ed that she's had enough of her hardnosed husband, who feels the need to smack her around before and after sex. When Ed takes back the Craigs' car, replacing it with one she can afford, Nancy lets him fill some of her other needs. Between the bedsheets, Nancy and Ed come up with a plan to get rid of Frank. What could possibly go wrong?

Lansdale's novel doesn't come with a smooth saxophone-laden soundtrack tucked into the dust jacket, but readers may imagine hearing it anyway from the moment Nancy answers Ed's knock on her screen door. From the moment the author describes her as "arched eyebrows and lips that could talk a man into anything, maybe some women," it's obvious poor Ed will be doing whatever this femme fatale wants. Chapters are short and packed with a tightly twisted plot reeking of smoke, alcohol, steamy sheets and blood. An enormously satisfying experience that'll tempt readers to dust off their trench coat, fedora and best Bogart impersonation. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

Video essayist and Hugo finalist Lindsay Ellis's debut science fiction novel is an intriguing entry in the lengthy tradition of first-contact stories, where humans meet alien lifeforms for the first time. Axiom's End features hallmarks of the genre--struggling to communicate, fear giving way to understanding, etc.--with at least one major difference: Ellis's close encounter is set in 2007. 

Cora Sabino is a young woman reeling from the unwanted attention her father's celebrity as an anti-secrecy activist in hiding has earned her. Her father is painted as ideologically rigid and obsessed with his own fame--it's difficult not to draw comparisons with Julian Assange. She's not concerned about her father's leaks suggesting the U.S. government engaged in first contact until the truth lands on her doorstep, and Cora is forced into an awkward alliance with an alien being she calls Ampersand. From here, the novel goes in surprising directions. Suffice it to say, Cora's bond with Ampersand grows as she serves as their interpreter, despite learning frightening truths about Ampersand's past and the threats facing Earth. Ellis weaves all of this into an alternate vision of 2007, where even the coming financial crisis is alien-related.

Perhaps because Cora is young and somewhat cheeky, the novel sometimes takes on a lightly comic tone, filled with sarcasm and nerdy Easter eggs. At its core, Axiom's End is warm-hearted, even--very cautiously--optimistic, more Carl Sagan's Contact than War of the Worlds. For all of its drama and philosophical conundrums, Ellis's book is ultimately about the power of empathy and kindness in a universe that never has enough of either. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine

The Year of the Witching is a dark, feminist fantasy debut that imagines a different kind of ending for those persecuted for their differences.

Bethel is, in many ways, reminiscent of 1600s New England: rife with a puritanical religious fervor, dominated by power-hungry men and full of myths of witches and dark magic. Except the witches in Bethel's history are very real, and their blood runs deep in the veins of Immanuelle, the orphaned daughter of a madwoman and her heathen lover, burned in a pyre to purge his soul--and the community of Bethel--of evil. That magic is called up by Immanuelle's accidental foray into the forbidden Darkwood that borders Bethel. The young woman is at first terrified, then repentant and, then, as she comes to understand more and more of Bethel's history, furious. Her anger erupts over what her parents were put through, the corruption simmering just below the surface of all of Bethel's neat and orderly rules, the burden placed on the shoulders of women and girls for centuries in the name of purity and divinity.

This transition, from penance to fury, drives the heart of The Year of the Witching, as Alexis Henderson deftly turns the tropes of historical witch hunts on their heads. Though the worldbuilding here is a bit uneven at first, once established, The Year of the Witching proves a compelling and haunting story of magic and power, and what it looks like when one girl finds both within herself. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Prolific author Jenn McKinlay (Buried to the Brim) departs from her long-running series and delivers a fun, feel-good, stand-alone novel that will delight readers. Paris Is Always a Good Idea, a bittersweet story, focuses on a disillusioned woman in her 30s who sets off on an exciting worldwide adventure.

After college, Chelsea Martin goes through seven years of struggle. Her beloved mother dies, and grief-stricken Chelsea buries herself in work, becoming a corporate fund-raising star for a prominent cancer coalition in Boston. When her "buttoned-down" mathematician father, a widower, proposes to a woman he's known for only two weeks, Chelsea suddenly takes stock of her own life, wondering why she isn't happy or in a fulfilling romantic relationship of her own.

Chelsea decides, on a lark, to return to a time in her life when she believed she was happy and carefree--full of love and joy, hope and promise. Taking a much-needed sabbatical from her successful career, she winds her way through Europe to try to recapture the spirit of the woman she once was--retracing a route she traveled after college. She seeks out and revisits old flames, starting in a quaint, small town in Ireland; returning to the glittering lights of romantic Paris; then on to a vineyard tucked into the rolling hills of Tuscany. By reuniting with lovable old beaus in the hope of rekindling romance in each picturesque locale, Chelsea learns much about herself and what she truly wants from life.

Readers will savor the feisty, adventurous journey of McKinlay's self-deprecating protagonist as she re-examines her past in order to chart her future. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Queer comix pioneer Howard Cruse died in November 2019, at the age of 75, but his monumental graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby lives on in this splendid 25th-anniversary edition. With a foreword by his partner, Ed Sedarbaum, as well as a new introduction by Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), this is a volume for the ages.

Toland Polk is a closeted white boy in the Jim Crow South. Milquetoast and directionless, he begins hanging around the local civil rights crowd as a means to impress Ginger Raines--a deeply involved member and the kind of white girl he thinks could be an answer to his prayers. They protest together, haunt the town gay bar together and awaken to the clear and present danger of white supremacists threatening the lives of the Black people around them. Toland and Ginger make quite a pair, even though her passion for the cause and the emerging fact of his homosexuality often throw them out of sync.

Stuck Rubber Baby is fiction, but it draws heavily on Cruse's experience growing up in Alabama. And to read it again in 2020, as protests against police brutality and racial discrimination arise again nationwide, is to be uncomfortably reminded of how much and how little has changed since. It is a profoundly ambitious work, in form as well as content. "Many of the pages are so finely cross-hatched that they appear to have a nap," Bechdel marvels, "as if they'd feel like velvet if you ran your hand over them." With a soft, self-deprecating touch, Stuck Rubber Baby continues to deliver hard, urgent truths. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness

An English-language debut, The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud is a label-defying collection of Kuniko Tsurita's gekiga--literally, "dramatic pictures," referring to more serious graphic work for adult audiences. Organized chronologically from 1966 to 1980, the historical compilation includes Tsurita's early magazine submissions as a teenager, as well as pieces written five years prior to her premature death at 37 in 1985.

Tsurita explores the role of women through numerous shorts in unexpected formats: the near-wordless "Woman" chronicles the tragic life of a rejected prehistoric woman; "The Tragedy of Princess Rokunomiya" explores stifling feminine standards of behavior and beauty; "My Wife Is an Acrobat" is a literal performance of womanhood. In other emerging themes, a careless regard for humanity dominates: in "Nonsense," a murderer kills only evil-doers; in "Anti," a fatal accident morphs into a riveting film; and in "Calamity," execution befalls the innocent. Surreal solitude looms as the world seems to disappear in the titular "The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud"; invisibility just happens in "Sounds"; isolation prevails in "The Sea Snake and the Big Dipper."

In their illuminating ending essay, translator Ryan Holmberg and manga editor Mitsuhiro Asakawa place Tsurita firmly in the graphic canon: "Tsurita may well be the earliest female cartoonist anywhere in the world who succeeded in producing comics... without being hemmed in by the commercial demands or the gender-based genre conventions and stylistic strictures of mainstream publishing." Drawn & Quarterly's meticulously curated presentation ensures Tsurita's legacy will continue to gain deserved recognition internationally, decades after her untimely death. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Leila Slimani (The Perfect Nanny) analyzes sexual oppression in her native Morocco in Sex and Lies: True Stories of Women's Intimate Lives in the Arab World, translated from the French by Sophie Lewis. "Moroccans' motto is simple: Do what you wish, but never talk about it," she says. Yet, during a book tour for her novel Adèle, which depicts unapologetic female sexuality, Slimani is besieged by Moroccan women who defy convention and "talk about it." Here, she amplifies "stories that shook me, upset me, that angered me and sometimes disgusted me."

Nour, single, exemplifies Morocco's patriarchal view of women. Even men with whom she's sexually active believe that women should be virgins. Many women themselves describe non-virgins as ruined. Hymen reconstruction surgery is big business because "sexual deprivation... amounts to a capitalist system like any other." Behavior such as homosexuality, prostitution, adultery, sex outside of marriage and abortion are illegal (rape, while a crime, is rarely reported) and yet, obviously, "the reality is different and many people bend the rules."

Slimani largely embraces the view, as a Muslim herself, that in the Arab Muslim world "sexual deprivation as a social fact" is a "vast problem and one whose effects clearly impact the political realm." This book is part oral history and part manifesto, claiming that "sexual rights are a part of human rights; these are not minor rights, small boons that we can do without... these are fundamental needs and rights that ought to be inalienable and guaranteed for all." --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

"Language can divide us, but it can also bring us together," writes Katherine D. Kinzler, a University of Chicago professor who endeavors to deconstruct how language and accent have a much deeper effect on daily life than one might realize. How You Say It, Kinzler's first book, examines why it is not only what people say that matters, but how they say it, and how and why language use is an even more intrinsic part of identity than other more visible signifiers.

Kinzler looks at how babies learn language, and through it, learn to recognize "in" and "out" groups. From there, language can shape discrimination and biases in children that they can then enact or be affected by as adults later on. Kinzler uses research--her own and that of others--and case studies to show how a part of language and communication taken most for granted can actually be filled with prejudices and strongly influence the construction of social identity in various settings. She also deconstructs some popular advice about language learning, and demonstrates how exposure to multiple languages can be valuable, and not just from a young age, when it is more likely that someone will gain mastery of a second language or multiple languages.

"By changing our relationship to language... we can harness the power of speech for the good. The time for this revolution is now," she writes, further connecting the data uncovered in various experiments on language and social interaction to a poignant point about how such research has real implications for improving societies. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Regarded as one of the 20th century's most radical and influential composers, John Cage's (1912-1992) passion for music was matched by his lifelong captivation with the humble mushroom. In the gorgeous two-volume John Cage: A Mycological Foray: Variations on Mushrooms, Cage's fascination with fungi comes into focus.

Cage's introduction to mushrooms was out of necessity, as he foraged for sustenance during the Great Depression. By the 1950s, Cage was the poster child for the postwar avant-garde, teaching music composition at Manhattan's New School and whisking students to upstate New York for mycological forays on weekends. By the end of the decade he was supplying mushrooms to restaurants and won five million lire on an Italian game show after identifying all 24 names of the white-spored Agaricus.

The first volume of A Mycological Foray presents dozens of photographs and musings about mushrooms from Cage's diaries; Indeterminacy, a collection of stories, each of which is meant to be performed in 60 seconds; and Mushrooms et Variationes, consisting of 60 mesostics (a poem with horizontal text that also forms text vertically) arranged in a renga (a form of Japanese poetry where stanzas are linked but written by different authors). The second volume, a reprint of 1972's The Mushroom Book, contains 20 loose lithographs of illustrations by Lois Long, overlaid with translucent paper that contains descriptions by mycologist Alexander H. Smith along with the text of Mushrooms et Variationes, so "word and image cluster and disperse across the page, mimicking the reproductive structure of spores." The result is an unorthodox and whimsical monograph that is essential to understanding the foundations of John Cage's oeuvre. --Frank Brasile, librarian

Chris Frantz has written an evocative, resonant and provocative coming-of-age memoir about his life as drummer/songwriter and founding member of both Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. Fans of Patti Smith's Just Friends will find much to admire in Frantz's Remain in Love, especially the sensory way he describes life as a struggling musician in the early 1970s on New York City's Lower East Side. He remembers stepping over corpses on the sidewalks; avoiding five-dollar hookers and their pimp armed with a baseball bat; and never making eye contact with anyone on the streets. But Frantz also recalls neighbors including Debbie Harry, Lauren Hutton, William S. Burroughs and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Frantz shared an apartment (with toilets in the hall) with future wife Tina Weymouth, as well as David Byrne. In 1975, their musical group Talking Heads made its debut opening for the Ramones at CBGB bar. Jerry Harrison joined the group in 1977. Frantz offers fascinating stories of world travels, working with idols and how the group's style repeatedly changed. There are also tales of conflict within the band, which Frantz tells with remarkable clarity, fairness and insight. In 1991, "David sneaked out of Talking Heads," with Byrne announcing the end of the band without consulting the other members. A decade later, there was finally a happy ending when the band reunited to play at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Fans of the new wave music scene will appreciate Frantz's generously detailed and compelling memoir of those volatile and exciting times. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

In this riveting middle-grade novel, the story of 17-year-old Private Firestone's fight in World War II is told alongside his present-day gradual acceptance of a decision made on the battlefield, as he retraces his steps with his war-obsessed great-grandson.

Twelve-year-old Trevor Firestone is fanatical about all things war and idolizes his great-grandfather, Jacob Firestone (whom he calls G.G.), a World War II veteran. To commemorate the 75th anniversary of American soldiers liberating a French village from the Nazis, the village is honoring G.G., the sole living survivor. Not all people agree, though, that G.G. was a hero that day. In fact, one group called La Vérité floods the celebration's Facebook group with threats that G.G. isn't welcome, and Trevor swears someone is following them on their journey through France. As the day of the event nears, Trevor learns more about the truth of what happened that day and starts questioning whether this great war was as "glamorous" as he's been led to believe.

In War Stories, Gordon Korman (Restart; The Hypnotists #1; Ungifted) flawlessly switches between dual timelines to present two sides of war. The glorified event that was "vivid, exciting, even funny sometimes" is laid out in the present-day timeline that follows Trevor, his dad and G.G. as they retrace G.G.'s steps in 1944; the narrative of the past shows 17-year-old Private Firestone's real-time experience of those events. Korman's detailed account helps explain that, rather than being a "gigantic chess match," as it's often portrayed in video games and movies, war was more like a "wheel of fortune, where the difference between life and death was pure luck." The two stories parallel each other in tone, character growth and suspense, while blending together to form a cohesive narrative. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

For debut author Julie Lee, the Korean War is deeply personal: her mother was 15 and living in North Korea when the war commenced on June 25, 1950. Drawing on her mother's memories of her north-to-south escape and relocation, Lee's Brother's Keeper is a compelling #OwnVoices middle-grade novel that is both edifying and inspiring.

Even before the war, under North Korea's Kim Il-sung, freedoms have all but disappeared. Whole families are vanishing--either taken by the regime or escaping to the south. By late November, 12-year-old Sora's father decides they must leave their village and join her uncle in Busan, at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. A few days into their journey, an aerial bombing separates Sora and her eight-year-old brother, Youngsoo, from their parents and baby brother. For the rest of the odyssey--crossing frozen rivers, avoiding bullets, escaping kidnappings, fighting hunger and illness--Sora becomes her brother's keeper, determined to deliver them both to safety.

"The stories of refugee survivors remain largely untold--narratives full of courage, love, and hope," Lee writes in her ending author's note. Beyond the harrowing passage, the resonating power of Lee's narrative lies in the familial relationships she presents raw and unfiltered. Forced to leave school at 12 to care for her two younger brothers, Sora is understandably resentful. Aware of culturally stringent gender limitations, Sora's mother is excessively demanding of her only daughter, preparing her to survive in a society that values sons, not daughters. Overlapping historical accuracy with personal testimony, Lee presents a nuanced story of strength, tenacity and everlasting family bonds. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon