High Tech

Apples, carrots, bread, chicken, cereal, granola bars, milk, peanut butter, potatoes, and rice: These are the only 10 foods that Zillah Scriven will eat. Her extreme pickiness is one of several attributes that make the 23-year-old Zillah feel like a child. She’s also only five feet tall and still lives at home with her mother, Paula, whose obsession with safety causes her to indulge her daughter’s dietary restrictions, much to the chagrin of nutritionists and Zillah’s absent father. Zillah is slowly working her way through college—her fear of using public bathrooms limits how many classes she can take per day—but she’s hoping to land an internship and move in with her boyfriend, Cliff. One day, while sitting in her bedroom, Zillah hears a sentiment, spoken in the next apartment, that closely matches her own: “My life revolves around fear and the fear keeps me stuck here at home.…I want my adult life to begin.” She realizes that she’s listening to a neighbor’s conversation with her the...

Dragonfly and Ladybug are trying to get home when a storm hits; they end up overturned in a stream from which they can’t extract themselves. “My wings are stuck!” laments Dragonfly. “Today we’ll surely be eaten!” frets Ladybug. But, forced to look up at the sky (both are on their backs), they find tranquility. After the current pulls them downstream, they’re spotted by a frog and a fish, who suggests that they devour the bugs, but curiosity about what Dragonfly and Ladybug are doing wins out. Frog and Fish try lying on their backs in the stream; before long, other animals want in, and “together they all basked in the glow of the sunset.” The plot of this picture-book debut from Barillaro, who won an Oscar for his animated short Piper , feels less like a story than like stop-and-smell-the-roses advocacy, which isn’t a knock; the idea that unexpected setbacks can yield rewards for those paying attention is a worthy one. Washy, digitally tweaked pencil-and-watercolor art splendidly captu...

Clyde Williams, still haunted by his past in the Median—the mutable world of sleep and spirit—must descend once more into that realm to stop the Weaver from devouring consciousness itself. His fellow Hourglass agents Nat, Ace, and Rose mount their own desperate incursion through “holes…dug through the fabric of reality,” facing warped terrains where nightmares take physical form. The story’s emotional center is a man driven by remorse and devotion, his resolve echoing in a quiet promise: “The sooner I go to sleep, the sooner I can wake up.” His descent through the Median, a liminal dream world threaded with psychic architecture and ancient politics, brings him face-to-face with a reflection that stares back through a “mirror of broken glass,” wearing scars like trophies. Meanwhile, the ensemble around him—his furious mentor, his spectral comrades, his lover whose power hums to the rhythm of music—fight their own battles in splintered realities. One of Rose’s lines (“The dreams are in ...

Ever since her spouse died in a horse-riding accident, Ava Garcia has been living in survival mode. She finds herself unable to return to the ranch, Hidden Meadows, where the accident occurred, and she’s spent the past year raising her toddler, Nina, and working overtime as an office assistant. She’s been trying to save enough to put a down payment on the ranch property: “If I lost our ranch, I lost him forever.” She’s been working for her current boyfriend, a real estate agent, and she’s shocked to learn that he’s secretly arranged to sell the ranch to a luxury hotel developer. Their very public breakup at a strip mall leaves Ava without a job or a place to live. Help arrives in the form of Eli Anderson, a nomadic mechanic who rescues Nina from a near-accident in the mall’s parking lot and offers the pair his family’s trailer for the night. Eli’s in town to help his retired architect father with his own recently bought ranch, although neither of them have any ranch experience. He hel...

The protagonists in Clark’s short stories seem to yearn for desire itself—to lunge after it and to be left, somehow, with fistfuls of nothing but air. In “The Girl Gets Whatever She Wants,” Chrissy can’t quite track how she and her boyfriend—formerly her weed dealer—ended up together, though she “realize[s] you can fall in love with anybody if you hung around them enough.” She knows she wants more but not how to get it. In “Walks Like a Duck,” April introduces Itara, her friend from school, to her guinea pigs. “They’re all mine,” she says. “No one else’s.” Later, combing through a dirty book they’ve found in April’s sister’s room, April admits, “It’s weird, though. I kinda like everyone….But girls more. I think I might be a lesbian.” Many of Clark’s characters are queer, though many are only just awakening to their own hungers. The grade school protagonist of the title story—one of the book’s strongest—knows she “want[s] to be a mom really bad. I know girls who get pregnant young, and...

Mason James, currently a resident of Hermosa Beach, grew up in San Francisco’s East Bay; he’s back in town after he gets word that his father, Max, was mugged. Max was exiting a card room in Emeryville when he was assaulted. On closer inspection, it appears this was no simple robbery, but rather a targeted attack related to organized crime. Max has “lived a life of capability and ruthlessness,” and neither of them are strangers to the world of shady activities. Mason spent more than 20 years as a member of the Unit, “a squad that took care of problems around the world too hot for official channels.” The Unit has had some lingering troubles that have “exploded over the past few months,” but Mason’s main concern at the moment is his father. (Mason may be a little worse for wear, but with his background in boxing and his many California connections, he’s not one to be trifled with.) Max’s problems are not the only thing on Mason’s plate. McKnight Holdings is a legitimate company with an ...

Political science professor Williams ( City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York , 2013) focuses this new exploration of New York City’s modern development on three key areas that “embody the tensions…at the heart of political life in a democratic capitalist city”: housing, schools, and policing. Williams’ analysis of these issues inarguably bears out his points that the “unequal geography of opportunity aligned closely with the geography of race” and that the city’s issues stemmed from “the existence of concentrated, racialized deprivation.” The book begins with New York’s “interlocking crises of the 1970s.” Housing abandonment, untenable rent increases, and a dearth of new construction all contributed to the “destruction of the housing stock.” The issue of rent regulation especially “engendered remarkable political passion” from supporters and detractors alike. Citizens had dismal confidence in the NYPD’s ability to address street crime, and many public sch...

Solis and Dougherty aim their skillfully written and smartly designed primer at “experts who are writing—or exploring the idea of writing—a nonfiction book.” Whether the reader is an educator, consultant, academic, or simply someone with a wealth of knowledge and “something useful and important to say that will impact readers’ lives in a transformative way,” the authors provide supportive strategies and a streamlined process for publishing. Their expert guidance focuses primarily on “advice-based nonfiction,” or “a type of transformational  nonfiction…that changes…the reader in a positive way” (the type of book that offers a solution to a problem: Think self-help, how-to, and industry-insight books). After the authors have emphasized the importance of the “foundational steps” of writing “not just a good book, but a publishable  one,” the book proceeds in four parts, providing readers with advice on preparing to write the book, mapping out the book, actually writing the book, and, perh...

Finlay chronicles the life of a man working for an ambitious (and possibly delusional) chief executive. A third of the way through the book, the narrator describes protagonist Hugh Snell as “god-like, ant-like, altogether paranoid.” It’s a good summary of his contradictory nature; Hugh is at once talented enough to be entrusted with a high-level corporate job and incompetent enough to cause frequent disasters in his personal life. Hugh works at AstroLabs™ for a tech CEO with the auspicious name of Lex Ramesses, who has his sights set on interplanetary colonization and a predilection for residing in a “carbon free emission cube.” A series of countdowns provide a signpost to just how far from a groundbreaking event the company is—though there’s also a lingering question of whether Ramesses’ reach has exceeded his grasp. Hugh’s corporate anxieties coincide with familial drama involving his twin brother, Ernst—who’s more skeptical of Ramesses’ project—and their cousin Martin. Finlay takes...

The author, a historian, interrogates the life of Donald Trump and the rise of Trumpism in U.S. politics by elevating recent history to the level of scripture. Calder (signified by the title “the scribe”) begins with the story of Donald J. Trump’s rise to becoming one of the most recognizable figures in real estate, finance, and popular culture. The author acknowledges the role of the art of making the proverbial “deal” (which the subject has often boasted about mastering) in Trump’s success. As Calder clarifies, “the deal is not primarily about money,” but messaging. What matters is the story told by the major players in any negotiation, and, as Trump learned very early on, control of the story means eventual success. This theme underlies the rise of Trumpism in politics as well—the author documents Trump’s unexpected success as a presidential candidate by citing the many times when Trump gained the upper hand through persistence, the projection of gravitas, and keeping control of th...

Greyson Grim is a grumpy old man—and understandably so. After all, as the current owner of the world, he’s solely responsible for ridding it of all the bad things in it, which are referred to in the ownership manual as “Thingamajigs.” According to the hefty tome, the only way to void the world of its troubles is to eat them, which Greyson has done for a very long time. Now, he’s decided, it’s time to sell the world—a transaction that requires no money, and just a signature on a contract. He has just the person in mind to be the new owner: a pure-hearted 8-year-old orphan named Tobi. Van Rensburg’s book is clever, to be sure, if a bit silly, as when “bad Thingamajigs” are consumed as food items. Greyson, for example, drinks a Thingamajig called “RUDE TO MY SISTER,” mixed with “NOT VERY NICE” and “BEING BAD”—as coffee, sugar, and milk, respectively. He later eats “LYING” and “STEALING” as bacon and eggs. But although the book is a brisk read, some of it feels like filler, even when it’s...

A four-time Emmy-nominated actress and transgender rights activist, Cox elaborates on a journey that’s been filled with joyful and challenging moments and, ultimately, liberating experiences. The book is split into three parts, each representing an era in the author’s evolution. She was raised in Mobile, Alabama, by an exasperated single mother. Even playgrounds became unsafe spaces, as Cox was bullied by classmates: “I couldn’t help the lilt of my voice, hide the natural fluidity of my wrists, the balletic expressiveness of my hands as I talked….Everybody was telling me I was a boy, but I knew I was a girl.” After being shuffled off to an orphanage at age 10 and attempting suicide many years later, Cox hardened her “armor,” reclaimed her footing, and embarked on an identity “reinvention.” Together with her brother, Lamar, she enrolled in the Alabama School of Fine Arts and honed her dance and performance skills as well as academic acumen. The book smoothly moves through Cox’s young a...

“It is still not widely known in the United States just how deeply mambo and Cuban son seeped into American popular music,” writes Radanovich Wildman of Rhythm: The Life and Music of Benny Moré (2015). In this biography of bandleader, composer, and “King of the Mambo” Pérez Prado, Radanovich seeks to remedy this by using Prado as a focal point in a cultural history of the mambo. From Prado’s birth in East Matanzas, Cuba, in 1917, to his death in 1989 and beyond, the author traces the mambo’s evolution from the slower danzón to Prado’s greatest successes, such as his numerous film roles or his Billboard #1 song, “Cherry Pink Apple Blossom White.” The book is most compelling when delving into Prado’s character, such as when the author cites Margo Su, a staple of 1940s Mexican nightlife, in describing Prado as a “diva” who “bought a Cadillac and had the seats covered with tiger skin, wore heavy shiny gold chains adorning his neck and wrists.” Unfortunately, these insights are rare—Radano...

Naja and her best friend Sylda witness a shipwreck one stormy night near their jungle village of Karahvel, discovering a lone survivor: an albino woman in the throes of childbirth. The child who emerges is Rowan, who brings not joy but terror when a mysterious red crescent mark on his neck leads his mother to abandon him. While the village turns its back, a midwife named Kialla claims Rowan as her own before Naja does, despite the shaman Isakora’s rants that Rowan is cursed. Naja, a skeptic of the shaman and her predictions, eventually takes Rowan in only after her father and friends have all died. Crushed by grief, Naja is determined to teach Rowan to take care of himself before she dies. Told through the eyes of Naja, Rowan’s fourth guardian-mother, the narrative deftly pivots from a simple origin story into a complex exploration of society and motherhood imbued with strains of feminism. The author explores the costs of social ostracism, both forcefully inflicted and self-imposed, o...

“Jefferson survives.” These, it is said, were John Adams’ last words, as he died—as did Jefferson—on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That document, write historians Onuf and Cogliano in this distillation of their popular seminar for schoolteachers, was heavily edited by a committee of the Continental Congress, introducing certain ambiguities and deleting a key passage in which Jefferson lay blame for slavery on King George III—editing that, Jefferson believed, “fatally compromised the integrity of the Declaration [Congress] finally adopted.” The irony, of course, is that Jefferson himself was slaveholder to the end of his life, which has led to his being canceled in many progressive quarters, leaving it to the right wing to claim Jefferson as their own. This is overreach, the authors suggest, for although Jefferson held out for states’ rights and mistrusted a too-powerful central government, he, of course, supported the creation of ...

Teenager Winnie, her wizard boyfriend, Kip, and her younger stepbrother, Mikey—multiversal travelers—have just returned to Earth from an alternate world. But a time guardian needs them to stop the nefarious wizard Thaddeus Krell, who’s determined to steal a Frama-scope (a device for traveling to other realms). He’s located in Frama-12, now called Boge-Landia, a place the youngsters have already traveled to. Mikey is happy to return; his soul is tied to General Takka, a toad-like “voga” prince who’s currently frozen in a block of ice there, and Mikey/Takka hopes to reunite with his Boge-Landia mother, Queen Bogen, even if he’s in his 6-year-old human “vessel.” The region’s oracle threatens to take away Kip’s magic if he keeps using it, as it interferes with her own search for Krell. But how can Winnie and Kip help track down the fiendish wizard without magic? Winnie also worries about Mikey, since he’ll no longer exist if Takka “decide[s] to reinhabit his original body.” Supplee’s bree...

It’s springtime in Nunavut, Canada, and children on Baffin Island are enjoying “the promise of long summer days and warm sunshine.” After an argument with his parents about school, David goes for a walk. Annoyingly, his younger brother, Samuel, tags along. David heads to the beach and starts running out onto the chunks of floating ice, despite adults’ warnings—after all, kids sometimes slip beneath the ice pans and disappear. Eventually he realizes how far he’s traveled from shore—and that he’s not alone. Two terrifying creatures have emerged from the sea, and soon David is caught in a tug of war between the monsters. David, who’s “tired of listening to adults,” dismisses his grandfather’s stories about the creatures—and he must deal with grief and guilt as consequences. The authors, co-founders of the Inuit-owned publisher, draw from traditional Inuit stories about the child-snatching qallupilluit, seamlessly melding contemporary and timeless elements. Each two-page spread features a...

The prolific biographer Ackroyd turns his gaze to W.H. Auden (1907-1973), a poet who straddled Britain and America, traditional verse and innovative drama, and canonical high culture and an active gay life. Ackroyd’s Auden is a product of his family and his heritage. His name, perhaps, goes back to Old English. His forbears may have gone back to the Old Norse. His early life was lived among the mines and forests of the English landscape. Auden’s youthful poems become, in effect, excavations, mining experience for deeper feeling. Noticed early on by T.S. Eliot, Auden became the poetic voice of England, between the wars: skeptical, ironic, longing for intimacy, but always shying away. His trip to Iceland and his eventual resettlement in America only enhanced his sense of being something of a temporary visitor on this earth. And yet, for all his otherness, Auden became an arbiter of mid-20th-century literature, as influential as Eliot. As such a figure, he returned to Oxford as professor...

Forty-one-year-old Amber Tambon—surgeon, spitfire, and bride-to-be—readies herself for the wedding of her dreams to her much younger fiancé, Xavier. The wedding venue: Mayguard Manor, a “castle poised upon the waters of Lake Superior.” The castle has been shut down for over 50 years after the disturbing and mysterious deaths of its owners, but it’s opened its doors with “a new lease on life.” In the hours leading up to the wedding, things begin to go disastrously wrong: The ferry driver is set ablaze by an unknown hooded figure, the castle’s governor sinks beneath the icy and tumultuous waves of Lake Superior, and the news channels report on a “Pyromaniac Serial Killer” who leaves a single maroon candle at the scene of each grisly crime. As tensions rise between the bride and her estranged parents and plenty of old friends with shameful secrets they intend to take to the grave, a storm rolls in…and then Victoria, assistant to the castle’s governor, finds one maroon candle. With guests...

Not linked to any specific space program but bearing a close resemblance to NASA’s upcoming Artemis initiative, this account of a fictional space flight dubs readers “mission specialists” and sends them—accompanied by a racially diverse crew—on an ice-finding expedition to Shackleton Crater near the Moon’s south pole. Along with providing once-overs of the 11-layer spacesuits, massive booster rockets, reusable lander, and other major gear, the presentation goes into unusual detail about more personal items and experiences—from the prelaunch enema and surprisingly varied meal choices to step-by-step instructions for using a space toilet for “Number Ones” and “Number Twos.” In contrast, Woo’s human figures are generic rather than individualized, and she takes a pass on depicting finer details of equipment, control boards (and alimentary functions). Still, from her neatly drawn illustrations, prospective astronauts will come away with a good sense of how such an expedition will be equipp...

Arden, best known for her Winternight Trilogy, here turns from medieval Russia to Europe during the same period. Anne of Brittany—a real person—is 19 when the novel begins in the late 15th century, a sovereign duchess whose father, the duke, has been dead since she was a child. Described as “small and glossy as a cat in a dairy,” she’s desperately trying to avoid marrying Charles VIII, the king of France, which would mean the dissolution of her country. She conceives a plan to conduct a unicorn hunt in the ancient, haunted forest of Broceliande, thinking she will be able to secretly arrange a proxy wedding to Maximilien of Austria, heir to the Holy Roman Empire. While there, she encounters not only an actual unicorn but an evil enchanter who has designs on her kingdom. With the unlikely aid of the chivalrous (and undeniably attractive) Louis of Orleans, who has been sent by Charles’ sister Marguerite to betray Anne, as well as Anne’s spunky younger sister, Isabeau; a clever peasant gi...