High Tech

Devra Denniston is a very successful (and very private) scientist and academic, who, as the story opens, is at her 75th birthday party. Her best friend, journalist Alison Mellows, wants to write Devra’s biography, which she proposes as a gift. Devra resists strenuously at first, but later she falls mysteriously ill with a malady whose severity fluctuates dangerously. Alison (whom Devra calls “Angela”) later discovers a cache of her friend’s writings. Devra is not only a respected scientist but a talented wordsmith, and the bulk of the book consists of selections of Devra’s writings, which serve as fodder for Alison’s research into her subject. Some are clearly fictional tales, others are transcriptions of dreams, and still others lie in a tantalizing gray area. Devra may, in fact, be a fabulist of the first order, and neither Alison nor the reader ever really knows the truth. The key term here is uncertain —a term that permeates everything. Devra never warmed to her parents, for examp...

Bydlowska became a self-proclaimed “mid-list author” with her book Drunk Mom (2013), which chronicled her journey to sobriety as a young mother. Her latest memoir opens with a vivid description of a biking accident that occurred while she was secretly drunk. The accident was a result of a relapse during the Covid-19 pandemic, one of at least 20 relapses she’s had throughout her life. To help pay for the dental surgery she needed after crashing into a wall, she started a GoFundMe campaign for which she lied and claimed that her injuries were the results of a series of bad decisions rather than an end to her sobriety. As the author of a memoir about sobriety, she felt deep shame about the “optics” of relapsing. “Most addicts, unlike me, haven’t told the entire world of their sobriety, and then published a book about it,” she writes. Recounting the GoFundMe campaign led her to examine the many other sources of shame that continued to affect her, including her feelings about dating a man...

Beaudry-Losique, who has worked in the North American energy field for years, describes himself as an energy geek who lives and breathes electrons, molecules, and all things related to energy technology. He opens his book with a dire warning: The next energy crisis is already here. The U.S., he contends, bogged down by obstructionist legislation, byzantine regulation laws, and a cumbersome industry structure, is facing an oncoming disaster comparable to those experienced by the many countries dealing with chronic energy shortages and rolling blackouts on a regular basis. The nation’s demand for electricity is growing at a far greater pace than its aging and patchwork energy grid can handle, per the author; to fill in this picture, Beaudry-Losique provides a quick but detailed rundown of the energy demands now growing in the modern world and the industries and systems currently in place to fulfill those demands. Using copious amounts of data and plenty of charts and graphs, the author ...

Society, after suffering various crises (including pandemics), has returned from the brink via a carefully controlled, male-dominated technocracy called the “SCS.” Only “Upper Sphere” elites have the right to easily marry, bear children, and serve useful functions as artists, planners, legislators, and the like. “Outcastes,” at the opposite end of the social spectrum, are simply housed, tolerated, and kept amused. Former soldier John Wilson—who was raised in reduced circumstances in embattled Chicago, distinguished himself in military service in a war against an Islamist empire, and was rewarded with a Harvard Law education—has a modest legal practice. But he secretly opposes the establishment’s foundations, particularly its religious aspects. Though he cooperates with SCS strictures on “pragmatic” grounds, he avoids opportunities for coveted class advancement, dwelling in a condo in a committed relationship with a sex robot. After Wilson transgresses an absurd tangle of laws by preve...

Victoria Barrón was born in Mexico but was orphaned when she was 8 years old. Her paternal uncle, Elias, and his wife, Marta, adopted her and raised her in El Paso, Texas. Now, she’s an immigration attorney in that city with her own law firm called the Center for Help. In her office, she finds an envelope postmarked as coming from Zacatecas, Mexico; inside is a mysterious letter from a woman named Clarita Dávila, who claims that Victoria has a relative in Zacatecas whom the lawyer needs to see. Victoria soon travels to the small town, where a stranger named Eduardo Duarte meets her; he takes her to the Casa del Conquistador, where she’s introduced to the frail, elderly Doña Antonella Duarte—her maternal grandmother, whom she’s never met. She adopted Victoria’s mother, Estima, when she was small. Eduardo is also Antonella’s grandchild—the son of her oldest son—making him Victoria’s cousin. As the tale unwinds, the attorney learns that her grandmother has many secrets. Meanwhile, a grou...

The author, a self-described “Astronaut Intelligence” teacher, prepares kids who might be interested in space travel with what they can expect if they become astronauts—and what they can do to prepare. He reminds readers that space travel for kids is not a very far-off possibility, especially when it involves the space around the Moon and Earth—or what Mongo dubs “MEarth.” The book offers a blend of practical advice that readers will need to achieve their astronaut-related goals (such as pursuing STEM courses in school), as well as introductions to technical terms related to space travel, including “gravitational sweet spots” known as “Lagrange points.” Mongo also frequently injects humor and helpful tips into his discussions, including the idea that even the smallest things can make a big impact: “Real talk, future Kid Astronaut: nobody’s going to remind you to shower when you’re floating in a space station. Master the small stuff now, because in space, the small stuff keeps you aliv...

Social outsiders Rick Hicks and his best friend, Martina Lopez, just need to get through senior year—and hopefully along the way they won’t get into any fistfights with classmates or be expelled. Maybe they’ll even find girlfriends and avoid being murdered. That final task soon becomes their primary assignment in this steadily suspenseful and occasionally gory thriller. Soon after school starts, the previous year’s yearbooks arrive, and everyone discovers a shocking prank: Someone replaced the yearbook superlatives with descriptions relating to death (“Zara Moxley, Most Likely to Choke on Her Own Words”). Rick and Martina appear as “Homecoming’s Cutest Corpses.” When the body of grouchy guidance counselor Mr. Stephens (“Most Likely to Sleep with the Fishes”) is pulled out of a local lake, the other potential victims team up to find out who’s behind the gruesome stunt. Before they can solve the case, a few of the amateur sleuths meet their predicted creepy, bloody, or strange ends. McB...

Munro, who knows her way around a maze, here fits a series of them into a simple storyline about a child who’s taking a trip to visit Grandmother, accompanied by Mom and Dad. Written in second person addressed to readers, the book starts at Sunnyside Airport, and from there, we move—never in a straight line!—through departures, check-in, security, airport shops and the food court, and terminals into a wonderfully roomy plane interior. At last, it’s time to take off: “UP, UP, AND AWAY!” Large, intricate, full-color spreads are rendered in Munro’s familiar style, not drawn with super-sharp outlines but nevertheless perfectly clear. In addition to the winding mazes, each double-page spread includes a challenging list of items to find, including (on each spread) “a copy of this book.” Direct instructions (“After Security, you enter the FOOD COURT and SHOPS. First get a cold drink”) guides readers through the mazes; an answer key keeps frustration at bay while providing useful and reassuri...

After her boyfriend Carter’s funeral, art student Nieve Monroe drifts through a summer steeped in guilt and tinged with emotionally resonant colors. Raised by her superstitious maternal grandmother, Grandee, whose mystical sayings once felt foolish, Nieve now sees meaning in every hue: black for loss, red for love, indigo for goodbye. When she returns to Suttleton Academy of Fine Arts, classmates whisper that she’s responsible for Carter’s drowning, although Nieve can’t remember what really happened. Her cousin, Linden, and Carter’s furious best friend, Max, orbit her grief until a supernatural twist, foreshadowed by Grandee’s belief that time is “a fickle thing—a story,” allows Nieve to travel back in time to the first day of college. Aching realism is balanced with luminous magic, and Dwyer’s prose feels painted rather than written: Her language shimmers with sensory detail and emotional honesty. Nieve is caught in a loop of pain and healing, continually re-experiencing fragments of...

When her grandfather gets sick, Madeline Andersen takes leave from her job at Le Tableau Bleu in Los Angeles to help run her family bakery in the touristy Danish-themed town of Solvang, California. When he dies, she decides to stay on to help Grandma Ruth, who can’t bake, to keep the place going. It takes a while for people to warm up to her French pastries, but business continues to improve. Even so, her business improves more than her social life, especially once Mallory, a rude customer, competes with her in a local baking contest and accuses her of stealing her éclair recipe. Even though Madeline wins the contest, the victory comes with a load of problems. When Ruth and Madeline find Mallory’s body in the alley behind the bakery, the rumor mill paints them as murderers. Madeline has established a friendship with good-looking Det. Ashton, who’s known Ruth for years, but they’re still suspects, and she decides that a bit of independent sleuthing might help prove them innocent. Meanw...

Eighteen-year-old Josephine Marzynski has had the best opera training available in Boston, but to advance in her art, she must go to Berlin. “I wanted to learn from the best in the world,” she narrates, and “the best were German.” Normally, it would not be a problem for Josephine to study in her mother’s native land, but the year is 1916, and Germany is at war with America’s closest allies. Simply by being an American in Germany, Josephine invites suspicions that she’s a spy. She stays with childhood friends of her mother’s, the Müllers, and she has her cousin Jack Meyers with her to help navigate the cultural divide. Josephine finds herself simultaneously seduced and alienated by the culture of Berlin, the city of her operatic dreams, and by Gustav von Lüben, a captain in the German army whose lungs are permanently damaged from poison gas. She’s just beginning to come to terms with the contradictions of her situation when, on April 6, 1917, the thing she most dreads comes to pass: Th...

Eleven-year-old Lizabeth “Liza” Gordon is used to moving house; as her grandmother says, her dad “was bitten by the gobug when he was young.” This time, Liza’s dad aims to start a family gelato business in Greenblossom, South Carolina, that he’ll call Gordon’s Gelato. Liza and her older brothers, Pete and Brad, are going to help run the shop. Liza doesn’t want to leave her friends, but when they prove to not care about her, she says good riddance to the Richmond, Virginia, area and heads to her new home. It’s worse than she imagined: The new residence is a “rundown, bi-level style house,” her room is “puss yellow with prune-purple trim,” and she’s starting school with only six weeks left before summer vacation. Stepping into her new life, she has to figure out how to work in a gelato shop, determine whether her new friends actually like her, and plan for her 12th birthday. Liza’s dad becomes a contestant on a reality show, competing for a grand prize of $1 million, which makes things ...

Few can claim the star-studded oeuvre that was Ursula Nordstrom’s (1910-1988). Born in New York City to actor parents, she lived a childhood that was magical “until it wasn’t.” Her parents divorced, and she was shipped off to boarding school—difficult experiences for this shy child, but her love of reading proved invaluable. Guided by the belief that only “fresh,” “original,” and “honest” stories were worthy of young people, she climbed the ranks at Harper & Brothers, and from here, Hudgins focuses squarely on the titles that Nordstrom helped to bring into existence. Everything from Charlotte’s Web to Harriet the Spy gets its day in the sun, with ample backstories and fun tidbits of information tucked into each chapter. Where a rote biography of an editor could easily devolve into a dull affair, Hudgins peppers her pages with “Writing Tips From Ursula,” advice on how to “Be Like Ursula,” and sidebars throughout. She notes how Nordstrom championed books about Black children and t...

A lifelong resident of Palm Beach County, Florida, Ryles experienced discrimination firsthand growing up in the segregated city. Telling his story with autobiographical vignettes that jump across multiple timelines, the author emphasizes both the pervasiveness of racism and the resilience and determination of the city’s Black residents. He notes, for instance, that when the integrated Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball team trained in South Florida, the Black players were not allowed to stay in segregated hotels. This situation prompted Palm Beach’s Black community, including Ryles’ parents, to offer lodgings to all-stars like Dusty Baker, who wrote the book’s foreword. The author discusses the influence of his grandparents’ neighbor, Edward Rodgers, who served a pivotal role in advocating for civil rights reforms before becoming the county’s first Black judge. The author would follow in Rodgers’ footsteps as a lawyer whose legal work overlapped with his activism. (Ryles would serve...

Sixteen-year-old Julia Anderson is unhappy about moving across the country from Toronto to Campbell River, a small town on Vancouver Island dubbed “the Salmon Capital of the World.” Following an ugly divorce that was hard on both mother and daughter, Jules’ lawyer mother got a new job as executive director of the environmental organization Eco-Guardians. Her father has married a much younger woman whose dislike for Jules is clear. In Campbell River, Jules meets 17-year-old Cody Romano, and they quickly connect. After some informal encounters, the two finally make plans to go out—and that’s when they figure out that Cody’s father owns the lumber mill that Eco-Guardians is trying to protect against logging. Once the teens become aware of the bitter rivalry between their parents, they hide their relationship, which is hard in such a small town. Can they keep their secret while the court case rages? Readers looking for a feel-good version of Romeo and Juliet —with a little bit of danger a...

Cartoon-style illustrations use wordless opening scenes to show two children (one is brown-skinned; the other presents Asian) reading books with plain gray covers. Then an offstage speaker interrupts to judge these books by their covers, deeming them “BORING and HO-HUM” and “VERY SERIOUS BOOKS!” The tone becomes congratulatory and subtly conspiratorial as the narrator encourages the children to find ways “to let EVERYONE ELSE know you are reading a very serious book.” What follows is a humorous scene as the kids read the supposedly serious books in front of others while wearing mustaches, sporting glasses, sipping tea, and so on. When some rambunctious squirrels disrupt their picnic and send the books flying, illustrations reveal that these gray books have panels as in a graphic novel—much like the layout of this story’s own spreads. The punchline seems to be that the children’s books weren’t so serious after all, though the sophistication of the interplay between text and art cleverl...

From 1907 to 1938, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus was one of the biggest in the world, and its star attraction was an elephant named Topsy. In North Carolina in 1922, Topsy was spooked by a barking dog and “broke loose from her chains, ran into the night and disappeared into the heart of downtown Wilmington.” After a brief rampage through town, including a moment when she tried to drink from vats at a local dye factory, Topsy found herself sinking into the mud of a nearby lake. Wilmington police officer Leon George arrived on the scene and “with some kind words, a few apples, peanuts, and hay, he coaxed Topsy out of the sticky slime,” allowing her to be captured and returned to the circus. Now, the anniversary of Topsy’s escape is an annual celebration in downtown Wilmington. Knickerbocker’s watercolor-style illustrations are appealing, done mostly in sepia tones with occasional bright pops of color. The story feels somewhat overly long at times—in particular, it lingers on the relative...

What’s unsaid often leaves the strongest impression, as Tye suggests in this unflinching account of growing up in 1970s Texas. The book’s title nods to the Austin neighborhood where his father moved him and his brother, Kenny, in June 1970. But the author’s hopes for stability there—after attending eight schools and living in 10 different areas—were crushed by the abusive actions of Beulah, his new stepmother. When she broke all his record albums and demanded that he quit his after-school library job, the author, weary of a life that was “turning into a fight of old versus new,” left home for good. The move would consign him to sleeping in secluded areas or on friends’ couches, even as he continued attending school and worked toward a better future. He quickly began maximizing his street smarts (“I learned that people treated me better if I didn’t have my pack with me”), which enabled him to gain a string of entry-level jobs and more stable living situations. However, the era’s casual...

While making a glittery art project at school, Tracy notices something strange. Odd symptoms—trouble hearing, glitter and obnoxious sounds emanating from her ear—become bothersome, so her parents bring her to Dr. Lewis, who diagnoses her with “Acute Fantastical Impaction.” (Translation: “There’s a teeny-tiny unicorn in your ear.”) Apparently copious amounts of glitter attract these mythical creatures. When the good doctor’s interventions fail, she shares a pamphlet filled with ideas, and Tracy tries strategy after strategy in attempts to coax the unicorn out. Her obstructed hearing leads to hilarious misunderstandings; Mom’s suggestion of a dance party is greeted with a bemused “Pants safari?” Leist’s playful illustrations are infused with whimsical details, from the scribbly fog surrounding Tracy’s curly orange mane to the unicorn, free at last, emerging from Tracy’s ear with a gleeful “WHEEEEEEEEEEE!” Squiggles and splashes of pink add to the magical undertones, while the quirky hum...

As with all human endeavors, the tech industry has seen its fair share of blunders. From minor errors in grammar and punctuation that lead to temporary interruptions in service to massive catastrophes that result in fatal consequences, the author, a veteran “IT guy,” has seen them all. He provides a meticulous postmortem analysis in this volume, scrutinizing the data, hardware, and systems designs that few consider on a daily basis. Korga summarizes the famous, infamous, and forgotten events that have led to data breaches, the losses of billions of dollars, and (in the most extreme cases) deaths. Each section of the book contains a careful explanation of technical terminology and lists of lessons readers can learn from these famously spectacular gaffes. It all boils down to a single axiom: “Systems do not fail because they are poorly built. They fail because they are built by people.” Korga’s accessible analogies and approachable prose open a gateway to understanding for those readers...

In “Room,” an unnamed narrator finds herself locked inside a white room in Vienna, where she has come to finish a book, and becomes increasingly agitated. “Night,” the longest section by far, brings us another unnamed narrator in a room. This woman—a German writer—suffers from insomnia and spends her hours sifting through her own memories, imaginings, and histories, particularly those of women artists in pre–World War I Berlin. These pursuits swallow her present, which appears as a surreal kaleidoscope reflecting an almost painful sensitivity to the world around her. Her only companions are the “nameless woman” she shares the room with—a bizarre, mutable figure—and a neighbor she watches through the window. “Medusas,” told in the third person, follows a group of women and their children on a beach vacation. The women are glued to news of atrocities on their phones, only roused when their children are badly stung by jellyfish. The book closes with “Burials,” a second-person account of ...

Genevieve (Genna) Summerford, a young psychotherapist from a socially prominent family, and her beau, Simon Shaw, a captain in the Tammany political machine and the proprietor of a fledgling horse farm in upstate New York, are at an auction in the City, where Simon’s first yearling is up for bid. While they’re celebrating Fair Corner Farm’s first successful sale, Genna’s longtime friend, Bartie Matheson, learns that his oyster business–owning father, Edgar, has just died in an accidental fall down the stairs. Within several days of the funeral, Bartie and his brother, Ned, have their grief-stricken mother placed in a private sanitarium. When Genna, under the guise of a family medical consultant, visits their mother, she realizes that not only has May been misdiagnosed as a hysteric, but also that Edgar’s fatal plunge involves some serious questions. As she delves more deeply into the oyster industry on Long Island Sound, she discovers that the business is rife with rivalries, thievery...

To commemorate 75 years of the publishing house Thames & Hudson, historian Nyburg contributes three essays chronicling its evolution from its founding in 1949 to the present. From the start, Austrian émigré Walter Neurath and his partner, Eva Feuchtwang, aimed to produce a “museum without walls”: beautiful and affordable illustrated books on arts and culture. They chose to name their company after two important rivers, in London and New York, nodding to their international aspirations. Their inaugural volume, published in 1950, was English Cathedrals . Early partnerships with the American publisher Abrams and the French publisher Fernand Hazan expanded their list, and more international alliances followed; the company eventually had offices around the world. Titles often were suggested by the many cultural figures who served as T&H’s eyes and ears. As their publication of art books grew—100 titles about Picasso alone—so did their reputation for the high quality of their reprod...

Melinda, who’s clever, sarcastic Elias’ therapist, reassures him that he’s not a psychopath, but Eli persists in feeling it may be so. After leaving one of their sessions, he decides to deliberately commit a “ruthless act,” testing whether he can feel guilty, and settles on stealing a phone from a random girl at a bus stop. He sets in motion a complex series of twists and turns that leave him questioning all he knows about himself. Eli’s funny, self-deprecating narrative voice balances the grim details of his past, which are parsed out in quick increments, rapidly building the novel’s tension. These details include his diagnosis of ADHD, medication that caused a hypomanic episode, and an event that left him with scars on his head and chest—as well as a sweetly real but forgotten romance. Eli’s experience as the odd man out in his high-achieving family—his father is a well-known member of Parliament, his mother is a crown prosecutor, and his brother (who’s “Perfect Son Material”) atten...

In Union Springs, Alabama, 13-year-old Nova Jones desperately wants to terminate the pregnancy her school nurse has confirmed. Knowing her personal and professional risk, Dr. Bria Gaines performs the procedure and is soon arrested for committing the Class A felony of performing an abortion, punishable by 99 years in prison. The law allows no exceptions even for rape or incest, and the doctor looks certain to be convicted. “I don’t have a prayer,” Gaines tells her lawyer. Presiding over the case is Circuit Judge Mary Stone, who is up for re-election later in the year. She is a Black woman who graduated at the top of her class at the University of Alabama Law School and who hosts Saturday morning community breakfasts at her farm. The case will split the town, and Stone is under heavy pressure from both sides to recuse herself: “Mark my words, Mary. This case will destroy you,” her sister says. The district attorney wants Gaines to be found guilty and punished to the max. A sanctimonious...

Brave enough to steal a walrus’ tusk, Neville’s a born risk taker who earns the admiration of his friends. Shockingly, he’s engulfed by a killer whale one day. Trapped inside the creature’s mouth, Neville meets Reg the seal. Though the pair seem doomed to the digestive tract, Neville realizes a very important fact: “We are not eaten yet.” Despite Reg’s discouraging words, Neville persists—he checks each tooth to see if any are loose, and when he finds himself unable to reach the whale’s blowhole, he builds a tower out of furniture. Both Neville and Reg have compelling personalities, developed over just a few pages, with cautious Reg serving as a deft foil to daring Neville. Avery’s dramatic illustrations use color to great effect, with the penguins’ stark black-and-white world standing in sharp contrast with the vibrant depictions of the whale’s mouth, suffused by deep magenta. There’s plenty to giggle over, too, from the slyly funny narration to visual gags galore (for instance, Nevi...

A narrator referred to once, in a text, as Iv. looks out the train window as he leaves the Croatian coastline behind. An intellectual, he’s long been part of a minority “constantly invoking a better tomorrow as the majority zeroed in on the shitty today.” Europe is in crisis and the Balkans under pressure; when the train stops for track repairs, passengers immediately blame “the fucking migrants.” As in Sajko’s earlier work, the characters here are firmly caught within their historical moment. Both Iv. and his translator girlfriend watch their work dry up while their expenses rise. Iv. relives a traumatizing disaster he witnessed when police fired on unarmed migrants suffocating in a train car. After that, he stopped writing, falling into a depression. As in Love Novel (2024), Sajko writes in long, breathless sentences, and each chapter is comprised of a single one. As the train moves on, the narrator reflects on his violent, alcoholic father; his estranged older brother who drained...

The story is set against Atlantic City’s decaying glamour. Lucy Moon, a magician born into one of America’s most famous magic families, is preparing for a career-defining performance when her co-star, Van, vanishes. Minutes later, the illusion meant to cap the night (the sawing in half of a woman) becomes real in the worst possible way: Van’s body is discovered inside the very box used onstage, transforming a classic magic trick into a crime scene. From that moment, the story moves between the investigation and its aftermath, following Lucy as she navigates grief, shock, and suspicion. The venue itself is central to the plot; the Black Widow Theatre is a historic space layered with wartime memory, corruption, and whispered legends, where performances never quite end and the past refuses to stay buried. (“Despite having only three hundred and thirty-five red-velvet seats, the Widow is grand. Chandeliers drip diamond-lights from an intricately carved sky filled with Nordic gods.”) As th...