High Tech

This debut story collection lifts its title from a 1909 manifesto co-authored by urban designer Daniel H. Burnham, which also provides the epigram invoking the city’s motto: “ Urbs in Horto —a city set in a garden.” More than a century later, that garden is no Eden. There are way more cracks than flowers: cracks in the foundation; psychological cracks in the narrators and characters, whose vernacular provides the style of these stories. Cracks in their relationships, their marriages, their families. Yet there is also great resilience, through the survival skills necessary in a city that plays rough. In “Enumerator,” the opening and longest story, Margaret Cieslak-Jablonski, a Polish immigrant, loses her American husband and gains a job as a census taker. She lives on a block so undistinguished that it isn’t considered part of any of the northwest neighborhoods around it: “No one wanted to claim that swath of poor transients, weedy lots, and industrial waste.” Her temp job has her trac...

The war is on, and everyone must decide where they stand. Blacksmith’s apprentice Anthony Carter made his choice early: The 16-year-old militiaman was one of those who fired on the king’s soldiers as they marched back from Concord to Boston, and he helped defend Breed’s Hill until the ammunition ran out. Farther south, Edward Shields is the heir, on his mother’s side, to one of New York colony’s great mercantile dynasties…that is, if his family’s property makes it through the war intact. It’s hardly a sure thing, given that his loyalist father is seeking to win the crown’s favor by joining the British Army. Edward, a born rebel and member of the Liberty Boys, has decided to join the conflict as well—though not on the same side as his father. Lady Katherine Trent, a rare businesswoman of the era, has loved ones on both sides of the conflict; her unorthodox career has given her no love of the status quo, and she harbors a deep belief that “long shots had a habit of paying off, provided ...

This fourth installment of a series finds Farrell’s main characters, part-time private investigator Eddie O’Connell and his Uncle Mike, once again caught up in horse racing, bookmaking, and the mob. Mike, a retired cop, is the owner of O’Connell’s Tavern in Chicago, where Eddie acts as bar manager. As the novel opens, Eddie’s girlfriend, Nicole Nicoletti, gets a surprise visit from Jessie Rivera, who’s part of a “power couple” in Chicago horse racing. Jessie’s partner is Sal, Nicole’s horse trainer father, who is accused of doping his steeds. He maintains he’s being framed, but nevertheless, he faces a serious suspension. The mere hint of the crime initially chills Eddie’s sympathies, since he has grown up around the racing world and hates the idea of drugging horses. “I’d heard of other trainers being suspended for juicing, and all I had to say was ‘good riddance,’ ” he thinks. “Horses had suffered, and some had died during a race.” Eddie and Nicole begin to investigate Sal’s situati...

In a prologue, Peter Jay uses the key given to him by his recently deceased father, John, to access a manuscript that “looks beneath the record” with margins “crowded with a single name, written over and over—Mr. Smith.” The narrative then continues in chapters that jump back and forth in time to share the saga of the Doctrine, a covert agency led by Smith, that spans from the run-up to the American Revolutionary War to Andrew Jackson’s rise to the presidency. This latest series installment introduces a new fictional main character called Cyrus, a foundling brought by Smith—whose origin story was covered in Phantom Patriot  (2025)—to John Jay and his wife, Sarah, in Spain in 1780. The couple were residing in the country during Jay’s ambassadorship there. Cyrus is raised as part of the Jay family, eventually moving back with the clan to the United States. Meanwhile, he receives secret instructions on how to become a Doctrine asset. By the age of 16, he begins his assignments, with ...

Journalist and commentator Freedland, author of The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz To Warn the World , writes that Adolf Hitler enjoyed overwhelming support from everyday Germans soon after he took office—and nearly to the end. He drew their backing with his declaration that supposedly depraved foreigners working with perfidious fellow citizens were sucking the nation’s blood. But Nazi violence and suppression of liberty offended plenty of educated, upper-class, often religious Germans, many of whom lost jobs as teachers or civil servants. They expressed their unhappiness and took risks by hiding Jews or helping them flee the country. After the war began, they discussed ways to end it, perhaps by removing Hitler, and provided what aid they could to the few resisters still in the government. Their existence was no secret to Nazi security services that opened mail, tapped telephones, and employed an army of informers, including Jews. Even as Allied armies poured into ...

Martin ( Taming Spirit , 2024) makes valiant attempts here to pull off a complex blend of historical fiction and psychological thriller. The novel begins in Alberta where Hartman Meyer, the oldest boy in a family of five, obsesses with exploring the lagoon that runs between his family’s farm and the neighbor’s property. When he travels the water, he looks for chert, a hard, opaque rock that the area’s first peoples used to make spearheads. He makes his own spears, but they can’t rival a genuine serrated spearhead that he finds—one that seems oddly familiar to him. In 1974, when Hartman turns 12, the wealthy Barrymore family moves in across from the Meyer farm. Like Hartman’s family, the Barrymore’s have three children, one of whom, Elizabeth, tickles Hartman’s fancy. But her older brother, Tyrone, is a bully. One day, while in a canoe in the lagoon, Tyrone slingshots lead balls at Hartman’s face and then paddles at full speed at him. Hartman holds his spear at the ready, and when the ...

In a prologue set in Wisconsin, 51-year-old Robert Charles Landsness is at his mother’s deathbed, urging her to “tell me the God-damn truth.” He has “never quite been comfortable” in his military family, and he has visions of happier, distant past in a “beautiful suburban home.” His mother muses to herself about the “the night Robert had come to her” in 1955 Panama City, but she dies before answering his plea. The novel then jumps back to 1955 to unfurl a tale of young Long Island mom Colleen Goodson, who briefly leaves her 3-year-old son Bobby, along with his baby sister, outside an IGA supermarket, then returns to find them gone. The daughter is quickly found, but Bobby remains missing, resulting in “the largest search in the young history of Nassau County” in New York state. Local police pursue various false leads, at one point questioning a Black family whose car was seen in the area around the time of the disappearance. An ambitious young reporter scores an interview with Colleen...

The best stories among the 35 set in workplaces in this volume, the second such anthology released in recent months by Whisper House Press, skillfully highlight the breadth of horror. Barry Charman’s “The Ghouls” is a timely tale about the catastrophic impact of misinformation specialists on society. “Cute Aggression” by Emily Flynn-Jones details the increasingly unhinged actions of a merchandiser haunted by a cartoon rabbit (“All day, Bella Bunny stares at me with her too-wide eyes, adorable button nose, puffball tail, stubby limbs, and blank space where a mouth should be”). Adam Rotstein’s “Ooh That Smell” focuses on what occurs when food is left in an office refrigerator for far too long. “Second Amendment” by Robert Bagnall describes the bloody outcome when a designer’s shooter game works too well. Rose Skye’s “Alignment” follows a man whose life gets taken over by a popular app. “Koschei’s Thread,” by Eóin Dooley, debates the morality and effectiveness of cryogenics. John Mahoney...

Seamlessly segueing into the third volume, Pullman continues to juggle so many themes and characters that keeping track of them slows the pacing to a grand, deliberate sweep. Still, wedging in references to previous events in The Book of Dust series, he spurs Lyra, her scattered circle of allies, and the sinister President of the Magisterium’s High Council, Marcel Delamare, on toward the remote desert that is the source of the mysteriously powerful rose oil while inscrutable forces are forcing the entire world to become a dimmer, grimmer sort of place. Meanwhile, in a nearly self-contained subplot, the author once again shows his uncommon gift for inventing memorable nonhuman species by flying in a race of magnificent gryphons to engage in philosophical discussions about the inner and outer kingdoms and join a group of northern witches to battle a powerful enemy. This plotline and the climax add some dramatic moments to a tale that seems long and doesn’t satisfactorily resolve all its...

Seventeen-year-old Winnie Hayes wants to feel as excited as her Papa does about the free land in the Oregon Territory available to new arrivals settling there for a five-year period, but the family’s 2,000 mile journey there from Missouri as part of a covered wagon caravan is grueling. Winnie’s delicate newlywed sister, Nora, is even less enthused about the trip; however, her little brother, Elijah, perks up as he hopes to encounter some Indigenous people. Though Winnie misses the animals on the family farm, she soon finds other interests; one is the cowhand Hal Clark, who is sweet on her, and a friendship also grows with Mae Cook, daughter of the caravan’s trail guide, Big John. Winnie admires unmarried Mae’s freedom—she’s “a doer,” confident on a horse and able to handle firearms. Winnie wants to be similarly brave, but unlike Mae, she fears the Indigenous population. This distrust is one of the many attitudes Winnie must adjust during her eventful voyage. Bear and bandit attacks, i...

Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum th...

The morning starts off with chaos. None of Mom’s alarm clocks go off on time, and the kids awaken feeling discombobulated (“Annie’s…still in her bed, / Her feet on the pillow instead of her head,” Leo “had a bad dream and awoke in a muddle, / But it’s too late to go get a comforting cuddle”). And Dad’s attempts to get a head start walking the dogs backfire when the rambunctious pooches take off. As everyone heads out, they encounter more disappointments, from Annie’s ruined painting in art class to Mom’s stressful day at the office. Everything culminates in a misdelivered pizza dinner, but as parents and kids prepare a homemade dinner together, they talk about their day and finally feel its frustrations melt away. Because, after all, “Each day isn’t perfect; no family is, ever. / But what makes it all work / Is being together.” Readers of all ages will relate to the travails of this harried but loving family; the authors infuse the tale with zippy rhymes and positive, meaningful messa...

“Sometimes my neighborhood feels forgotten.” While walking to school, a Black child with bubble braids passes trash piles and concrete-choked trees, but, with a warm teacher’s prompt, “We write about rights and wrongs and all the things we’d change.” Accordingly, the youngster brainstorms ways to enhance the quality of life and aesthetics in the community. “I’ll paint rows of sunflowers, rainbows, and smiles” along brick walls and walk to city hall to “ask for more murals.” Envisioning soaring playgrounds and “gardens on every block,” this creative exercise offers more tangible problem-solving and self-actualization than many of its affirmation-focused peers. City improvements such as water cleanliness and reclaimed housing go beyond beautification to meet basic human needs, emphasizing empathy and collaboration. Full-page spreads feature wide urban expanses in vibrant colors, and Hemans’ upbeat digital portraiture highlights a dynamic and diverse community. There’s a buoyancy to the ...

In her first book to be published in the U.S, Baal, whose style is described in her bio as a “marrying of politics and ass,” writes about young rebels roaming London, engaging in adolescent tomfoolery, getting drunk, gossiping, and ultimately discovering their friends aren’t really their friends. Gritty and profane, these stories are marbled with deliciously slangy dialogue and irreverent lists and rants. In “Pain in the Neck,” a woman does a favor for an old friend with whom she once had “sad, gray-area sex” which she’s “probably blanked for sanity’s sake” and winds up stuck on his roof with his rich Spanish girlfriend. The formally brilliant and hilarious “Change :)” is a group text gone awry: Ed texts everyone in his address book to drum up political engagement, only to be accused of predatory sexual behavior by several women in front of dozens of people, many of whom claim not to know him. A story titled “Victim Blaming” marks a change in the collection, as an older narrator—a wom...

In this first installment of The Erynvor Cycle, Elorah’s home of Eolemar is dying. She sees no way to save it—until she receives a dream vision from a Founding Dragon that names Elorah as “Erynvor,” the one true Uniter who will lead her people “from Destruction to Revival.” To do this, she must embark on a perilous journey to revive the legendary city of Therrania. Elorah assembles a ragtag group of comrades with varying abilities to accompany her, including Mierrle, her loyal best friend; the dreamwalker Rachmyn and his trusty wolf, Elgre; and Rachmyn’s best friend, Haedyn, who longs for adventure and finds himself falling for Elorah. Along the way, they encounter horrific enemies like the Zenzae, whose grudges are known to follow their targets “both here and beyond.” As the group fends off enemies in both the waking world and the one found in dreams, Elorah will eventually discover that some ancient myths and legends are actually true—and that she may be just the one to save them al...

Lexie, a gifted Canadian 10th grader, is caught in a whirlwind of competing demands: striving for a sports scholarship to prestigious Sunridge High’s Fine Arts and Music program, grieving a beloved mentor, juggling swim team obligations, and navigating her parents’ post-divorce tension. While her mother and friends are supportive, her father—who’s charming but controlling—undermines her plans. He launches a renovation business and demands help from Lexie and her brother; he gets Lexie a dog she never asked for as a birthday gift and then complains she doesn’t care for it when she’s at her mom’s house. Lexie, who’s volunteering at a retirement home, dating lifeguard boyfriend Rhys, and dealing with anxiety (with help from a therapist), feels the pressure building until something has to give. Told with clear-eyed emotional insight and a sharp ear for teen voices, Azzam’s posthumously published novel gently but powerfully explores the costs of people-pleasing, the subtleties of emotional...

The national conversation surrounding AI, writes author Wang, “remains a manic seesaw between glee and terror.” Compounding the confusion is that the most informed sources on AI are riddled with technical jargon and buried in academic publications. In response, Wang offers readers a thorough, yet decisively nontechnical work (readers looking for in-depth discussions of loss functions or tanh activations can look elsewhere). Divided into three parts, the book’s opening chapters place AI within a larger historical context of technologies that have disrupted now obsolete professions while opening new avenues elsewhere. The rise of the computer in the 1950s, for example, eliminated a range of logistics and navigation jobs that relied on human computations. But by the 2020s, almost a quarter of all jobs in the U.S. were in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Rather than closing off workers’ access to jobs, the computer created entirely new fields of expertise. This favorable...

It’s 2023, and Ashley Bellamy is a history major at the University of California, Los Angeles, who’s staying with her father, Clive, in London, doing research for her thesis. Clive is the Chief Yeoman Warder (otherwise known as a Beefeater) at the Tower of London, who gives tours of the site in official dress and takes great pride in his work. The job also allows Clive to live on the Tower grounds, giving him intimate knowledge of the structure’s every nook and cranny. Ashley, though, is more interested in diamonds, including their “history and legends.” She has a strained relationship with her father, but his position affords her access to the famous Kohinoor diamond—a piece at the Tower that has a long and supposedly cursed history. One afternoon, an unattended bag prompts an alert, resulting in the deployment of a bomb squad and the evacuation of the area. Clive senses that the situation isn’t what it seems and discovers that the so-called bomb squad has taken hostages. The Beefeat...

The Pulitzer Prize–winning Johnson ( The Orphan Master’s Son, 2012) has established a reputation for spinning complex, colorful, and plausibly rococo yarns from civilizations remote from and mysterious to outsiders. Here, his audacious, unruly imagination roams with confidence through the island kingdom of Tonga as it undergoes societal uncertainty and the potential of war with other islands. At or near the center of this whirlwind is Kōrero, bold and insatiably curious daughter of a fisherman and a tattoo artist, whose discovery of a fishhook-shaped pendant in an ancestral graveyard signals the beginning of a grand, perilous, and transfiguring adventure that puts her, her family, and her friends on a sea voyage whose outcome could mean either salvation or oblivion for their people. The perilous odyssey is led by a figure known only as the Wayfinder, whose near-intuitive grasp of navigation by both the shifting waters and the celestial patterns of the night sky arouses in Kōrero her ...

Taylor’s contemplative and sensuous third novel concerns Wyeth, a young gay Black painter in New York who’s hit an artist’s block. During the pandemic he enjoyed a brief bit of Instagram-driven fame with a stark painting of a dead Black man, which observers assumed was a post–George Floyd commentary on race. But he was mainly tinkering with a composition he admired in an Ingmar Bergman film, and he bristles at identity politics. Still, Wyeth’s principled distancing has mostly just made him anxious and impoverished, working at a gallery and for an art restorer to afford a fifth-floor walkup. A random meeting with Keating, a white man who’s recently abandoned the Catholic priesthood, suggests an opportunity for positive change—if Wyeth isn’t too ambivalent and self-abnegating to pursue it. In broad strokes, the novel has the shape of a romance—boy meets boy, boy ghosts boy, etc.—but it’s also a fine social novel, thick with urbane particulars. Taylor writes about the meticulous details ...

Cassie Bousquet has been estranged from her mother, Marla, and her twin sister, Ana, for years, ever since her marriage to Marsh, a wealthy California businessman. After her mother’s death, she returns to rural Connecticut to help her sister settle their mother’s affairs. While cleaning Marla’s house, they find a manuscript left for them written by their mother’s best friend, AJ Porter, about the unsolved murder of their mother’s distant cousin—the killing occurred in 1985, the year the twins were born. As they read the story, both sisters learn shocking secrets about the mother they thought they knew and begin to repair their relationship (“We need to sort this out, okay? This thing between us”). Cassie questions her marriage, finding something horrifying on a storage drive that her husband gave her; it transpires that she and Ana are in danger, and their family’s dark past is coming full circle. Blanchard’s novel is a masterfully constructed work, balancing the story within the stor...

Assassin Erica Banks returns to New Orleans to execute a series of high-profile hits contracted by a Cuban drug ring. Banks is a highly experienced professional, and at first, the murders leave law enforcement baffled. Lawyer Harry Barnes, a fixer who doesn’t always stick to the right side of the law, gets involved when an ex-girlfriend asks him to help clear the name of her uncle, who was one of the victims: Chick Charbonnet, the umpire who “handed the World Series to the wildly underdog New York Mets” over the Red Sox. Accusations of game-fixing have been stirred up again by his gruesome murder. Barnes enlists his colleague, astute hacker Rhonda Dickerman, to help him look into Chick’s past, and they begin to uncover a much larger conspiracy involving high-rolling gamblers, the international drug trade, and an assassin. While this is technically an Erica Banks novel, with her perspective included, the protagonist of this series installment is very much Barnes. With connections to ev...

In a preface, the author isn’t joking when he warns that Loading  “isn’t a story you’ll wanna tell at parties”; rather, it’s “what crawls out when the screen gets a hard-on for your eyeballs,” and his cleverly designed layout opens each chapter with a warning: “If you want to stop the installation process, press the ‘Esc’ key.” Marshall, born Markus Jensen, endured a nightmarish childhood—a dad who rejected him, a drug-addicted mom, and a raging bully of a stepfather—and things didn’t go much better after he hit college, where his ex-boyfriend put their sex tape all over the internet, shortly after their breakup. Now, Marshall is a 30-something sex worker in Thread City who entertains male clients out of his hotel room and uploads the resulting sex videos, all in a grab for attention and money, which he achieves—although he feels like he’s starting to lose his humanity. Marshall feels “empty” and “hollow,” which, it turns out, makes him the perfect vehicle for a concoction someone...

After leaving the gay club they’ve snuck into with IDs belonging to a couple of Ren’s college student friends (fortunately the bouncer is a “White Person Who Can’t Tell Asians Apart”), Ontario high school seniors Colin and Ren get harassed by homophobic bullies while taking their usual path home. They reroute through the woods, where they encounter a demonic force that snatches Ren. Seconds later, Ren reappears, acting as though nothing happened—and soon, he seems to be dating someone new, someone not quite human, as evidenced by the disembodied voice Ren speaks to when he thinks no one’s around. Then there’s his unusual avoidance of mirrors (Colin observes, “This is noteworthy because Ren loves looking at himself”). Colin is determined to figure out how to save Ren from his demonic boyfriend’s grasp. Though the supporting characters are underdeveloped, by emphasizing Colin’s and Ren’s friendship, Liu refreshingly lets the boys’ platonic love eclipse romance. Portraying a boyfriend’s ...

Even the most avid mystery buffs may be unfamiliar with the work of short-story writer Kreppel, who published these 15 tales as pulp fiction pamphlets in Poland circa 1908. Among his fans, writes translator Yashinsky in his excellent introduction, was Nobel Prize–winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who eagerly followed the adventures of Spitzkopf, “the Viennese Sherlock Holmes,” in his youth. Spitzkopf, like Holmes, is a genius investigator with a fondness for disguises; he even has a Watson-like assistant. However, Spitzkopf is unlike Holmes in at least one significant respect: As Kreppel’s pamphlets’ covers declared, Spitzkopf  “IS A JEW—and he has always taken every opportunity to stand up FOR JEWS.” “Kidnapped for Conversion,” set in Galicia (now part of Ukraine), revolves around a deranged Christian man’s plot to marry a Jewish woman—after kidnapping her and forcing her into a convent; in another tale, a young Christian boy’s disappearance sparks vile, antisemitic rumors th...

In Elkhorn Canyon, Oregon, a man explodes a small bomb that temporarily disrupts power in the area. The ominous note he leaves behind reads, “We bring you an hour of darkness.” This is the work of the Jack Frost Collective, a small group dedicated to stopping development of a new ski resort in a forested area where a lynx is rumored to live. Damage and disruption are minimal, as intended. Although local citizens call the group members eco-terrorists, they have no intention of harming anyone, ever. That’s a dramatic lowering of the stakes, which is fine for the locals but deflating for readers. Almost no one is ever in physical danger, not even Tish Threadgill, editor of the Flyer , the underdog daily newspaper scrambling to scoop the more powerful Bulletin , nicknamed the Bully , to get to the bottom of the story. Meanwhile, the Collective’s tactics are curious. For example, they burn a man’s house only after ensuring that no one is inside. In fact, they remove all furniture and perso...

Marcia Farrar loses her Italian lover when she is young and pregnant. A settlement awarded after his death helps to support the single mother as she raises their son Howie while working at various dead-end jobs, but it also ties her to the town of Round Stone, home to her rival and former foster sister, Nina. Marcia unexpectedly finds herself an empty nester when Howie receives and accepts a linguistics fellowship. Marcia worries about Howie, who leaves to conduct research on What Island, near Kanz-_ika, which is run by a murderous dictator. Then, her ancient dog Orson dies just after Howie’s departure. The grieving Marcia takes him to a pet crematorium, where, instead of Orson’s cremains, she receives the ashes of Mr. Whiskey, a cat who soon reconstitutes himself. Mr. Whiskey, in addition to being able to communicate telepathically with Marcia, can also time travel. (“This was ridiculous. She was talking to an ash-cat about the fact that they’d just time-tripped back to the past.”) H...

Though he received a full scholarship after graduating high school in 1971, the author took a detour to embrace his interests in music and exploring some of America’s most remote wild places. The detour became an adventurous road that he ably chronicles in this memoir. Leaving behind his Long Island, New York, nightclub-junk-food-drug-filled life for healthy living in California, he encountered the first of his travels’ trials in 1978, when a poisonous scorpion sting sustained in remote Yelapa, Mexico, led to a near-death experience and a spiritual awakening. After recovering in Long Island, he returned to California. Backpacking en route to the Great Western Divide in 1980, Cooper saw a backpacker who had navigated an off-trail course; this was “the inspiration for [the author] becoming an expert cross-country navigator, planning and executing over the following decades scores of remote wilderness routes far from paint-by-number trails.” In 1981, he moved to Oregon, where he was ...

San Francisco, 2019: Until recently, attorney Ellie Benvenuto was a rising star at one of the city’s top law firms. Unfortunately, the responsibilities of her home life led to her unceremonious dismissal. The older of Ellie’s two young sons, Luca, was diagnosed with several disabling conditions, and Ellie—who has held primary custody of the boys since her divorce—needed more time to see to Luca’s needs than the firm was willing to give. Now, she works for the Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative, where the paychecks are significantly smaller and the cases are more emotionally draining. Even with her neighbor and best friend, Anika Owens, to lean on, Ellie struggles to figure out how to provide for her family in a world that seems to despise women. When her grandfather dies, the diary of Ellie’s great-great-grandmother, Theodora Ellis, comes into her possession. Teddy (as Theodora was known) recorded her life in the 19th century, including her overland journey from Chicago to San Fran...

It’s difficult parenting an unusual child. Silas doesn’t sleep much, wears a cape with an actual wolf head to school, disappears in the woods for days at a time, and claims his best friends are Golnaar, a giant, and Shjineluft, a wizard. Unlike most kids, Silas muses deeply about subjects such as maturity (“If you surround yourself by the right elements, they all feed off each other”) and death (“The forest tells some of us to thrive and it tells some of us to die”). His caretaker Leigh has difficulty coping with some of his behavior, but their bond is profound; when Silas was a baby, his family’s van hurtled over a bridge, plunging them into the river. Leigh, riding by on a bike, managed to save Silas and his older brother from drowning, and Silas’ eccentric grandma, Dolly Doubloon, then gave him to Leigh, recognizing that she herself wasn’t the right guardian. Silas and Leigh collaborate on a YA graphic novel about his exploits called Wolf Boy & the Doubleback Giant , which unex...

Eighteen-year-old Laila Bansal, a descendant of Draupadi (from the Hindu epic the Mahabharata), lives with her three immortal rakshasi aunts and is bound by her bloodline to bear a child before age 25 in order to maintain the cosmic balance. Laila’s masis raised her in remote areas—Mauritius, forests in Indonesia and Germany, and now, a winery in upstate New York. She longs for normality, scrolling social media and envying her friends’ college experiences (she’ll be attending college classes online). Laila’s world explodes when Karan Singh, “descendant of warrior and demigod Karna,” arrives, hunting an asura, or supernatural monster—and their forbidden connection triggers apocalyptic consequences. Sharma authentically integrates Hindu mythology into contemporary settings, drawing from oral traditions and regional variations. The romance develops organically despite the leads’ star-crossed origins, and a late revelation adds layers of tension and tenderness. Central themes of autonomy ...

“This book is about the mighty weapon of candor, which most people in Washington, D.C., have only a casual relationship with,” writes Kennedy, who relies on folksy, often groan-worthy witticisms to get him through his contentious narrative. His take on Washington, where he’s been since the first Trump term, is that it’s a “place full of deceptive, ambitious, self-absorbed ex-class presidents who would unplug your life-support system to charge their cell phones.” Most of Kennedy’s subsequent observations are meant to support the thesis. He professes at many points to be an equal-opportunity critic of a wobbly system, and he gets off a few zingers in the direction of fellow Republicans like Lindsey Graham (“Invite him to dinner, and you don’t know if he’ll sit down for an intelligent conversation or get drunk and vomit in the fish tank”). But mostly he’s all in for President Trump and contemptuous of liberals, who, he quips, are “partial to man-purses and organic broccoli.” Trump, he co...

“Like cherry blossom petals, excitement [is] in the air” as Hoon and his family shop at Koreatown in preparation. Back at home, Hoon’s Eomma explains each ritual as she sews little Binna’s first hanbok. Hoon’s Appa notes that a child’s 1st birthday is significant because in the past, many babies died young, including several of Hoon’s great-grandmother’s siblings. That revelation fills Hoon with worry for Binna’s well-being. According to Korean tradition, the first object a baby picks up at the doljabi ceremony will predict the child’s future, and Hoon hopes that Binna will choose the thread, which symbolizes long life. The day finally arrives, and Hoon tries to nudge his sister toward the thread, though she’s more interested in the rainbow rice cake. His parents tell him to let Binna choose for herself—and at last she does as a crowd of smiling family and friends look on. Korean terms and cultural markers are well explained and skillfully integrated into this gently told narrative. B...

In 1940, series protagonist Arista Kelly’s forebear, Barry Kelly, is a dog breeder in California. After a neighbor poisons one of his dogs, Barry enacts revenge by killing the man. In turn, the dead man’s wife puts a curse on the Kelly family, using “dark magick.” In the present, a man named Mateo has been hired to work on Arista Kelly’s home. Something catches Mateo’s eye: a suitcase containing “a cache of papers and trinkets.” The papers include instructions for a vision spell; since Mateo’s young son has sight problems, he takes the case home with him. Upon closer inspection, the vision spell proves to be of little use to Mateo, and his possession of the suitcase starts to cause problems. Meanwhile, Arista’s neighbor, a “strong, well-seasoned witch” named Iris, has gone missing. When Arista and her aunt investigate, they find evidence in Iris’ home of the curse that was put on the Kelly family—Iris, it transpires, is the original hexer’s granddaughter, and she is on her own adventu...

In 1877, Mary “May” Cassatt is already making a name for herself in the French art scene, having had some paintings exhibited at the Salon, the establishment arbiter of the art world at the time. She is excited by the work of Edgar Degas, who has rebelled against the Salon and is a founder of the Impressionist movement. They finally meet, and she is enthralled. They become colleagues, then personal friends, and then, seemingly inevitably, lovers. Another strand in the story deals with Mary’s relationships with her family members. The Cassatts, from Philadelphia, are well-off, and her parents and older sister Lydia move to Paris to support Mary (and because they remember France so fondly). Mary is very close to Lydia, her faithful confidant, who lost her fiancé in the Civil War. Many famous real-life artists get cameo roles or mentions, showing Mary’s milieu, and Camille Pissarro gets more than that; as a happy husband and father, he contrasts with the tortured loner Degas, who can be ...

To accompany an exhibition at the Image Centre in Toronto and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, this volume of nearly 100 images represents a particular focus of the work of eminent photographer Richard Avedon (1923-2004): aging. Famous for his fashion photos and celebrity portraits, Avedon takes an unsparing view of famous people in old (or older) age. Dorothy Parker, for example, was 65 when he photographed her. With deep bags under her eyes, she looks, curator Vince Aletti notes, “like she hasn’t slept or been entirely sober for years.” Aletti is among several writers providing context and commentary on the images: Others are Roth, director of the Image Centre; New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, who was a close friend of Avedon; and Gaëlle Morel, exhibitions curator of the Image Centre. Along with an introduction, Roth contributes an informative biographical essay on Avedon’s father, Jacob Israel Avedon, the subject of Avedon’s first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1974. Th...

One night in March 1996, 14-year-old Nadine discovers that her 6-year-old sister, Laurel, is missing from the Wisconsin home they share with their mother, Ayita, and great-aunt Rosebud. The search for Laurel stirs up trouble from the past, including her often violent father, who left before Ayita knew about her second pregnancy and who is initially accused of kidnapping Laurel. It also begins Nadine’s discovery of the powerful inheritance she had dismissed as superstition: the traditional healing ways and visionary gifts of her people that go back centuries. Nadine’s disconnection from her legacy began long before her birth, when her grandmother obeyed her own father’s command to “stay godly” and avoid “the medicine, the witchery.” The novel is intricately structured, following two timelines through its first half, one beginning with the loss of Laurel and the other beginning in 1899, with an encounter between Nadine’s great-great-grandmother Sophronia and the ucv’kse, or Little Peopl...

High school sophomore Libby Dawson lives by herself in an Ashton, Ohio, apartment. Her mother stays with a rich boyfriend (who’s unaware she has a daughter) and gives Libby just enough money to survive. While perusing her favorite thrift store with best friend Toni Moore, Libby scores a retro tote-bag-sized denim purse. It’s big enough to carry quite a lot; the only problem is that things she puts in the purse often disappear. They pop up again eventually, as do items she’s never seen before, like a perfume bottle and an old photograph. Curious, Libby tries identifying a girl in the photo and discovers she’s been missing for 20 years. As the purse continues providing clues, Libby digs deeper and soon suspects that someone in Ashton has made sure this girl disappeared. Is Libby now putting herself in danger? Baer’s supernatural premise kicks off an absorbing whodunit and enhances the narrative’s sense of melodrama. (The purse stirs up problems in Libby’s personal life as it vanishes he...

The author opens her rabble-rousing new book at full throttle, describing the current world as “a hell-hole, slaughterhouse, and never-ending Auschwitz from the perspective of nonhumans” filled with “millions of little Hitlers, wantonly splattering blood, asserting unfettered dominance, desperately clinging to the theory that ‘might makes right,’ and deluding themselves into believing humans are the anointed ones.” This is strong stuff—necessarily so, since Laws is here proposing an entirely new set of governing principles deeply rooted in the ethos of the animal rights movement and dedicated to addressing the practical issues of free will, agency, and collective good. She points out that the world’s natural resources are dwindling due to human activities such as deforestation, grazing, and urban sprawl, with the obvious observation that this is a concern to all living beings on the planet, whether they are aware of it or not. The author describes the role of animal “advocates” who ac...

On a family holiday in Kent, England, the meticulously organized August and her husband, Andrew, visit Shepherd Neame, Britain’s oldest brewery, for a tasting tour. August is suddenly transported to an alternate timeline when the historic beer, called Five Bees, was first brewed. Waking up naked and confused, August stumbles to a doorstep, guided by a black cat named Hazel. Margaret, a local healer and wise woman, welcomes the strange traveler to the community. Mental to-do lists and a desire to get back to her daughter, Ripley, rage in August’s mind as she slowly learns Margaret’s way of living by the lunar cycle and the healing powers of natural ingredients. But all is not well in the village: The fields of “cosmos” mushrooms that provide sporelock—a turf mixed from “the pulp of the fungi with hay and manure” used for building—are being destroyed at “the hands of the Divine Sphere,” a patriarchal religious organization that threatens Margaret’s way of life and destroys the surroundi...

She’s Cricket Abernathy, owner of the run-down Camp Abernathy by gorgeous Lake Willa in the Poconos; he’s Charlie Thorpe, a Philadelphia lawyer tasked with convincing her to sell the camp to his real-estate developer client—with a promotion to partner riding on his success. When Cricket rejects the offer, Charlie decides to look for secrets that could force her to sell by signing up for the two-week-long Comic-Camp for adult nerds who are into everything from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings.  Cricket knows about his subterfuge, but lets him in anyway because of his granite jaw, muscular chest, and adorable dimples. Other campers include Adam, who plays a Sith Lord; Stefan, who dresses as a Viking; Hunter, who portrays a zombie from an apocalypse-set game; 11-year-old Olivia, who’s a dead shot with foam-tipped arrows; Angela, a cougar on the hunt for a fourth husband; and Esther, an old lady who crochets plushie penises as gag bridal gifts. Charlie, who is basically a nice guy and ...

Pale-skinned, bluish-gray-haired Alma, curator at the Museum of Shapes, and her dog Max are planning an exhibit—with a little help from readers. They start with the simplest shape, a point, and build out from a line to an angle to a triangle to other shapes, eventually including an octagon. Along the way, readers learn about curved shapes such as circles or semicircles, as well as three-dimensional shapes. Of these, shapes like cones and cylinders both have circles as their base. Different shapes combine to form items readers will recognize from real life, such as a sailboat and a leaf. Wiggly lines can create objects, too, such as an oak leaf or cooked spaghetti. Völker periodically poses thought-provoking questions to readers, asking them to find all the triangles on a page, to pick a favorite shape, or to determine if a sunset is made up of one circle or two semicircles. Once Alma sets up the exhibit, it’s time for opening night. Völker observes that even outside, the city’s skylin...