High Tech

When Mama Opossum goes out foraging, all 10 of her joeys come along for the ride, clinging to her back. When she stumbles and falls, all 10 roll off in different directions. Readers are invited to join Mama Opossum in searching the nighttime forest. (“There’s no time to lose. Let’s get to work!”) She finds Joey One singing silly songs with the porcupines, Joey Two sharing the raccoons’ breakfast, Joey Three listening to Grandma Bat’s stories, and so on. Readers encounter beavers, armadillos, skunks, flying squirrels, hares, white-tailed deer, and, finally, a great horned owl—a predator from whom a joey requires rescuing. With all her joeys back on board, Mother Opossum returns to her hollow-tree burrow…only to find one child too many in their midst. Somewhere along the line, she’s picked up a young mouse—the returning of which will be the opossums’ next adventure. Gallois and Bobrek, who collaborated previously on Opossum Opposites  (2020), present a simple but magical tale rooted in ...

In an alternate version of the mid-2020s, global famine, mass extinctions, and the mysterious exhaustion of soil and water all threaten humankind. A corporate-run fascist American government concocted a profitable formula to increase crop production and now holds a world food monopoly—but cancers and birth defects have spiked both at home and abroad. In Minneapolis, 26-year-old Caitlyn Svendsen defiantly tries to unravel the government’s secret formula and fight what the docile public accepts: “The health crisis was camouflaged as the new normal. As if a sixty-three percent cancer rate among the population could possibly be normal.” The rest of the planet is not so willing to ignore the crisis. Russia spearheads an alliance (including Mexico, Japan, and Israel) to blitzkrieg the American coasts, wipe out Food Traitors (a group based in Washington, D.C.), and seize the heartland. Russian hackers have been monitoring Caitlyn and her suppressed research; Commander Kaleb Volkov, a legenda...

It’s March of 1942. Ireland is determined to maintain its neutrality in the war, which the government refers to as the “Emergency.” But there’s dissension all around; some favor the Germans, believing that they offer the best road to a reunited Ireland. Others favor alliance with the Allies. Mixed into this chaotic cauldron is a diverse cohort of spies and conspirators. They include Julia Winter, who’s half German and half Irish and is working for German intelligence; American reporter Virginia Payne, who’s recruited by American intelligence; various government officials of questionable allegiance; and Karl Degler, a captured U-boat commander planning an escape. Fergus Finnan, a seasoned Dublin detective with a reputation for indulging in women and alcohol, is now a lieutenant colonel in Irish military intelligence. He grills Peter Moynihan, a member of the Irish Republican Army whose brother has just been executed for the murder of a garda (national police) detective. To save himself...

“Like food, songs too can speak without words,” writes the Seattle-based author at one point in this offbeat memoir. “A melody stirs a memory as a dish summons nostalgia. Both speak the language of the heart.” This creative book isn’t merely about the author’s love of music, though, but also her love of cooking, and how she found her way back to culinary masterworks that she experienced in childhood (she immigrated from Hong Kong to the United States nearly 50 years ago). She also discovered that her passion for writing, which she’d put aside decades ago, was not a dying dream but an awakening of herself and her talent. This rediscovery of who she was occurred unexpectedly when she witnessed a Macanese singer on a Hong Kong singing competition show called Midlife, Sing & Shine!  His talent and passion for his art touched the author greatly, she says; she goes on to explain how she came to learn more about the singer, German Ku, and found that his career somewhat paralleled hers, e...

As World War II winds down in 1945, Commander M.T. Kwan returns from serving with the British to his war-ravaged hometown of Guilin, China. As the Japanese pull back, Kwan—aka The Dragon—hopes to retrieve his family from where they’ve taken refuge farther inland. Colonel Lindsay Ride, his commandant with the British Army Aid Group, shows up at his family estate. He wants Kwan to scout occupied Hong Kong and determine the intentions of the Japanese, the Nationalists, the Communists, and the residential Hongkongers. Since no one knows when the Japanese surrender will come, Ride wants Kwan to leave immediately. Kwan is conflicted, but he finds another reason to go: It gives him an opportunity to locate his long-lost love, Iris, who last lived in Hong Kong. Once there, Kwan meets with and assesses the motivations of all the involved parties, assisted by James Chua, his loyal aide-de-camp, and Leck, a recalcitrant local BAAG agent. He also reunites with Iris, but he later learns that she h...

In Hopkins’ series opening debut, 11-year-old Astrid Crossley, who has “paper-white” skin and “white-blonde” hair, knows no life beyond the dark rhubarb shed where she’s kept safe from unspecified dangers by her mother. Her desperation to see the stars leads to her discovery by Mrs. Wairi, one of the winged Librae. Claiming Astrid is a Librae on the cusp of fledging, Mrs. Wairi whisks her away to a fantastical city above London, which is invisible to unauthorized people. But something is rotten in London Overhead. At Starminster school, unfledged children are treated as lesser. When they stage a protest, the ruthless Headmaster expels them, then exploits them as free labor. Meanwhile, Mama mobilizes London Underfoot to find Astrid, who learns that other children are missing—but where are they? Astrid is a resilient, poignant character who’s struggling with big questions. How could her loving Mama steal her childhood? Why do London Overhead’s mysterious Luddite Overlords treat some cit...

Thad Hanlon tries to balance his dangerous job as a private eye with careful fathering of his 11-year-old son, mindful that Zael Hanlon has already lost one parent: His mom, Marissa, is now on “angel duty.” But when a sniper’s bullets fly across California’s Pismo Beach during the junior surf trial competition, wounding Zael and two of his teammates, Thad vows to deliver vengeance. Those around him don’t agree with his plan; even “quasi-fiancée” and senior detective Naiya Ygnacio withholds information about the investigation from Thad, while his son’s surf team coach, Gev Burian, advises forgiveness over revenge. Meanwhile, the team seems to have found a way to keep safe, eventually practicing under the intimidating protection of a Bakersfield gang boss and some of his gang members. But Thad’s home is viciously vandalized, surf team member Sebastian Giuffrida’s gunshot wound becomes life-threatening, and two more murders take place. Thad and business partner Bri de la Guerra begin to ...

Jaycee Grayson is an Angelena who finds herself adrift in the rural town of Littleburgh, Wisconsin. Following the events of the previous book, Jaycee is still reeling from the collapse of the global doll empire she once worked for. Always an opportunist, she pivots to a new industry, joining forces with young Mennonite charcutier Naomi Petersheim. Their exploits in artisanal sausage-making catapult them to the center of the meat scene of the Midwest. Jaycee is determined to make her new business venture a success, whether she’s joining forces with a Hutterite brewmaster or badgering a counter girl at the restaurant Teddywedgers. However, she runs into serious trouble when Naomi is accused of murdering her new husband. In addition, the former owners of the Wonderful Girls doll factory are suing Jaycee for exposing their corrupt business practices. Jaycee must navigate civil and criminal law, burgeoning romances, and the finer points of making meat in this roller coaster of a read. Sipo...

Lemoine recounts the life and often difficult times of her son, Andrew Reaster, a young Georgia resident who died in August 2025 at the age of 30. Reaster, who had been diagnosed with advanced colon cancer only months before, had overcome academic, social, and career difficulties over the course of his short life; the cancer diagnosis was the final challenge he and his family faced together in his idiosyncratic and determined fashion. The author chronicles the educational and social difficulties Reaster faced during his childhood, related to the multiple diagnoses he’d been assigned at the time, including ADHD, bipolar disorder, and depression. The eventual, appropriate diagnosis of autism, made in his high school years, provided some comfort to Reaster’s family, but challenges remained. His difficulties were partially ameliorated as he gained self-confidence while helping to run an ice cream business and making and selling handcrafted necklaces. Reaster’s real jump into independent a...

The book’s novelistic terrain will be all too familiar to anyone who grew up in a small town in the Southern U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s. Readers first meet Liam, the youngest of the four Menschen kids. Their mother, Vivian, was a Marlowe, a firmly rooted family whose members were considered local gentry. They all live at the family plantation home, Vale Hollow, in Lawton, Tennessee. Dad is Franklin Menschen, and he writes the annual Christmas letter—always showing the family in a positive light—which in some ways is the foil to Liam’s account of events. (With wicked innuendo, Liam makes the point that if you’re a well-mannered white boy in this town, the cops will cut you some slack, no matter how many laws you break.) The novel’s pages are suffused with the usual melodrama of growing up and figuring life out. The book has plenty of tragedies as well: classmates killed in car crashes or in stupid pranks gone wrong. But for the most part, these are basically good kids; they succeed, g...

In this debut business book, Reedy offers her solution to a fundamental problem of the philanthropy sector: There’s no standard training model and no consensus on what makes a foundation and its employees good at the work they do. The author outlines five broad principles of philanthropy: Making change is often difficult; grantmakers give away both money and control when they fund projects; foundations face limited risk; philanthropists determine their organizations’ limitations; and philanthropic results are hard to measure. With these propositions at the core of her argument, Reedy makes a case for specific ways in which foundations and their employees should set goals, act strategically, and pursue their founders’ agendas in concrete ways. (An appendix addresses issues specific to community, corporate, and family foundations, and the author occasionally references a companion workbook.) The author’s straightforward tone and cleareyed approach to the strengths and weaknesses of the ...

On a Tuesday morning in 2024, three Atlanta-based women receive the unfathomable news that the fourth member of their close-knit friend group is missing. From that devastating moment, various flashbacks reveal significant moments from the years and months leading up to the tragic revelation, uncovering the fractures in each woman’s seemingly ideal life: Stephanie Summer Rapputo was a Juilliard hopeful who struggles to find satisfaction in her roles as a wife and mother; Andrea Raznick Duncan tamps down her frustration at being overlooked again and again, despite her advanced degrees and expertise, for a promotion at the investment firm where she works; Molly Kimbrough Milford is recovering from chemotherapy while struggling to connect with her teenage daughter; and Catherine “Cat” Martin Wray has finally opened her dream bookstore, but she does so alone after one terrible decision results in her husband moving out with their daughters. Congregating for book club meetings at Cat’s book...

Ulises Linares is hard up. The 29-year-old con artist, living in World War II–era Mexico City, is down to his last few pesos, three years after his father and partner in crime died following a long illness. What little cash he’s able to bring in comes from postal scams—he corresponds with women who are willing to send him cash in the belief that he’s a Prince Charming who will someday sweep them off their feet. He decides he needs a bigger score and writes to a woman in her 40s named Perla Inclán, responding to an ad she’d placed in the lonely hearts section of a magazine. Ulises travels to the town of Puerco Ahogado in Veracruz to stay at Perla’s guesthouse, and senses a spark: “Even though she had the faint air of a Mother Superior at a convent, when he smiled that devilish smile of his, he saw in her eyes that her interest was piqued.” Unfortunately for Ulises, Perla’s niece, Inés, learns about his plan, and—desperate to make a life of her own away from her controlling aunt—demands...

The story opens in 1877, in Marinella, Sicily. Nine-year-old Saverio Mancuso is fighting off schoolmates who want him to declare his love for pretty Rosa Favale. After being pummeled, Saverio proclaims his love for the young girl (“Yes, I do love Rosa, and I want to kiss her on the mouth”). In 1888, the couple marries. Frustrated by the lack of opportunity in poverty-stricken Sicily, Saverio begins talking to Rosa about moving to America. In 1895, after suffering two miscarriages, Rosa dies while giving birth to their son, Tommaso. At only 5 years of age, Tommaso finds himself an orphan after Saverio dies of lung cancer, and, with his father’s best friend, Giacomo Capelli, he takes a ship to America. Frightened, the quiet little Tommaso (eventually called Thomas), taken under the protective wing of a kindly group of Sicilian men aboard the ship, grows up to become the American patriarch of the Mancuso clan. After arriving in New York, the men bring him with them to Detroit and place h...

The author visited Nepal in 2014 in the shadow of Sagarmatha, “goddess of the sky,” better known in the West as Everest, in the hopes of scaling the smaller but still imposing Island Peak. Nearing 65, he worried he was approaching the age where mountain climbing would be infeasible. Also present in Nepal was Joby Ogwyn, a daredevil attempting a feat of unparalleled audacity: leaping from the top of Everest in a wingsuit for a television special, Everest Jump Live , to be broadcast in over 200 countries. Oderman ultimately decided not to attempt the climb. As he returned home, he learned that a terrible accident had befallen the Sherpa porters carrying supplies in preparation for the special: A massive avalanche had descended, killing 16 in what Oderman describes as “the deadliest single accident in the history of Mount Everest.” Oderman’s descriptions are visceral, vividly conjuring precipitous slopes, thinning air, and the thunderous collapse of huge shards of ice. Though lacking in ...

The 17 tales herein feature an array of horrors. Some are blatantly sinister, like a serial killer who’s more than she appears to be; others seem innocuous but have the potential to become outright menaces, like an apparatus for keeping pests out of a garden. In still other instances, the true horror doesn’t reveal itself until the last few pages—as in the haunting “Ever Shall They Feed,” in which a boy named Beno plans to enact some relatively harmless revenge for his father embarrassing him at school. While hiding somewhere in the family’s funeral home, Beno inadvertently witnesses an event that rattles him; the situation grows increasingly unsettling for Beno (and readers) as it rolls along. In “Pujkamaunka Splash,” Trevor distinctly remembers the eponymous video game, which was immensely popular decades ago. Why does it seem everyone else has forgotten it? He recalls going to buy the game with his grandfather on a day rife with violent and bizarre incidents almost certain to traum...

Hugo’s forgetfulness leads to lost belongings, overlooked responsibilities, and messed-up schedules. Not fun. Hugo suffers so much that he imagines a “sneaky little trickster” who might be behind it all, undermining him. Artistically inclined Hugo even provides a droll labelled portrait of the creature! We follow Hugo through his disasters: missing a soccer session with his friends because he’s looking for his cleats, neglecting to take his puppy for a walk, and forgetting about a field trip. Even his short-term memory is wonky. Then Hugo finally decides to make some changes. He implements common-sense steps: early preparation, checklists, calendars and scheduling planners, and other memory helpers, like mnemonics. He also enlists help from trusted adults and peers and rewards himself when he does well. Hugo’s forgetfulness doesn’t vanish, but he tames the goblin. A final spread summarizes all the strategies covered. This Czech import offers useful advice, presented in a gentle, nonpr...

Evelyn has had enough. She’s decided to leave her husband, Jack. He micromanages everything she does, including how she packs her suitcase—and why is she packing a suitcase? She can’t quite remember. Still, she’s had enough of his affairs (with her ex-roommate, an art student, and a mother from the park). She’s tired of being the family breadwinner, stretched thin at Investor Media, while Jack pursues his passion, which is freelance sound design. Sure, Jack is an involved parent who finds the joy in ordinary moments by discovering frozen ponds to skate on or lunching in Moroccan olive groves, for example. After their first near-meeting, Evelyn would dream of his smile for the next six years until they bumped into each other again in a moment of NYC commuting magic. Yet despite their seemingly charmed past, she’s leaving him. Told in a series of meandering, splintered recollections, this novel tenderly charts the scope of Evelyn’s life from a childhood shadowed by loss on the Upper Eas...

Dr. Harold “Harry” Goodman is part of a team tasked with an investigation of the famous Shroud of Turin. The Shroud is said to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, but can such claims hold up under scientific scrutiny? Goodman and a group of scientists head to Italy to find out; Decker Hawthorne, a journalist and acquaintance of Goodman’s, tags along. Years later, Goodman shares some information with Decker that he isn’t quite expecting: Goodman has a theory that “Jesus’ reported abilities to heal and such, resulted from the fact that he came from an advanced alien race.” Additionally, Goodman found live dermal cells in the Shroud that he intends to clone. Goodman goes ahead with the plan and creates a child he names Christopher. Goodman pretends that Christopher is his grandnephew whom he has taken in, but Decker quickly figures out the ruse. While a living, breathing clone of Christ is certainly a big deal, Decker heads off to Israel when another major development occurs: Jerusalem’...

Hall reflects upon his 27 years as a teacher, most of which were spent with fifth graders in Cheboygan, Michigan. The book has 27 chapters, or “lessons,” one for every year of the author’s teaching career. They all follow a similar format, beginning with an anecdote about a classroom project, field trip, or problem. Hall then explains what sparked the anecdote and often throws in a twist; a story about a student’s ill-advised gift shop purchase turns into a reminiscence of buying and selling classroom “property” as part of a lesson to teach financial responsibility. A story about trying to teach boring improper fractions shifts into an account of a nighttime spy game in which the secret clues are all improper fractions. To teach adjectives, the author transformed himself into a French chef with an unconvincing costume, allowing his students to laugh as they learned. After each entry, Hall asks, “What did I learn from all of this?” Often, the answer is lessons about the value of commun...

As the “Letter to Caregivers” at this book’s start explains, the days are long and the years are short when it comes to raising toddlers. But help can be found in these 50 rhymes. Each page contains a brief verse, a takeaway, and a conversation starter for events as mundane as brushing one’s teeth and as complex as respecting personal space. Entries are broken up into sections covering health and hygiene, social skills, and safety. Burk’s straightforward, workmanlike rhymes get the job done. Far more impressive, however, is the range of difficult topics they cover; for example, children are instructed to tell someone when they know a “bad secret.” Holmes’ brightly colored, simple art peppers the pages. The diverse cast of kids remains consistent throughout—and readers will enjoy looking for familiar characters—but it is unfortunate that the same Black female character is the instigator in both the “No Name-Calling” and the “No Hitting” sections (arguably two of the most contentious to...

Jan Sorrensen is still scarred from his last encounter with a ghost, an experience that he turned into a bestselling novel, which gave him the funds to invest in a forthcoming tourist attraction: coal mine tours in small-town Dundee, Pennsylvania. The mine that’s set to reopen was the site of a fatal fire back in the 19th century; now, people are hearing strange noises from inside the mine, some of which utter specific names. These disquieting incidents bring Jan’s friend, Sheriff’s Detective Kaveetha “Kathy” Jensen, into the story. Meanwhile, a seemingly possessed boy escapes a local psychiatric hospital and gives Jan an ominous warning: “Stay out of my mine.” The mine’s sordid history, which includes “open warfare” between the Pinkerton Detective Agency and the secretive, violent Mollie Maguires, may somehow explain the apparently ghostly events in the present day. Johnson’s second installment in his Ghostly Poconos series delivers a fair amount of mystery. The copious evidence of p...

From a 12-neck guitar to a euphonium that pours beer, there is no limit to the musical instruments a human mind can dream up. In this encyclopedic collection, Loughridge and Patteson expand on their website of the same name to bring an illuminating historical survey of “fictophones.” The chapters are divided into loose taxonomies. “Historical fictophones” include Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of the “viola organista” (“a keyboard instrument in which the strings were sounded not by plectra or hammers, but by constantly turning wheels”) and “glissando recorder” (“whose pitch could be continuously controlled”). “Living instruments” include two ways to bring music out of a swine: a pig organ and a pig bagpipe. “Cosmic instruments” count the universe itself as an instrument, citing the ancient Greek notion of the music of the spheres. “Computational instruments” twist our understanding of instruments even further, such as with Torricelli’s trumpet, a mathematical shape with a finite volume ...

Winston “Wince” Fisher Jr. is in a rut. After his daughter was born, Wince tried to leave his high-octane life of crime behind for a safe career in wealth management, but then his business partner forced him out, and he signed a two-year noncompete clause. Now, the former criminal and three-time divorcé has nothing to do but laze around his rental home in Austin, Texas, watching action movies and consuming massive amounts of cocaine. Everything changes when his dealer’s son invites him to assist on a drug run, which makes Wince miss his old ways. Soon enough, he’s building and selling AR-15s to Mexican cartels, leading to another decision that could jeopardize his chance at ever having a normal life. Smith’s second novel, following Arcade (2016), is a significant pivot, offering a portrait of red-blooded Southern masculinity. It’s hard to tell exactly what sort of satire is intended; Wince’s highly traditional worldview is rarely subverted or challenged, and many of the women and nonw...

Mikaberidze, professor of history at Louisiana State University, writes that Spain claimed North America in the centuries after Columbus but gave it a low priority. In 1682, La Salle sailed from Canada down the Mississippi and claimed all of North America for France. France’s priorities, however, remained local, leaving its colonies under-resourced and politically marginalized. In 1763, after the disastrous Seven Years’ War, Britain acquired America east of the Mississippi, while France, in a futile effort to persuade Spain to enter the war, had ceded her the west. By 1799, Spanish America faced pressures from American expansion and Napoleon, who, determined to match Britain’s empire, wanted Louisiana back. A reluctant Spain returned it in 1803. By then, Napoleon had changed his mind. War with Britain was about to resume. Colonies seemed a waste of money, and, in any case, Britain’s huge navy made them indefensible. Only months after the handover, Napoleon offered it to America. Mikab...

Rachel Sinclair is about to turn 40, as her doctors, her friends, and even strangers keep reminding her. As she prepares to enter a new decade, she reckons with her past—from the accidental drowning of her father to the self-centered behavior of her “wacko” mother, and, later, an ectopic pregnancy when she was 29. Since then, she’s built a strong community around herself as the owner of the beloved restaurant Palms on the Cape. Her clientele is made up of visitors and diehard regulars, but especially close to her heart is her longtime friend Carlos Hannigan, a retired Boston Red Sox pitcher who now owns a construction business. During the restaurant’s karaoke night, Rachel meets the charismatic Tripper Chambers and his friends, who make up the self-styled “A-List”—a study group at the Vermont Business Collaborative on vacation for the week as they work on their capstone. She feels an immediate attraction to the 32-year-old Tripper, who questions her close bond with Carlos. Later, the ...

The author tells of when, as a lawyer looking for a change of pace, he stumbled into a job as assistant prosecutor in Camden County, Missouri, in the late 2010s. This job was different from anything he’d ever done before, and in these pages, he details the trials and tribulations of starting fresh in a new position. The problems that rural Missouri faced while he was on the job were unique, and Cunningham’s narrative moves seamlessly between the appalling and the absurd. One chapter details the brutal trial of an abuser and master manipulator and explores what it takes to put a monstrous criminal behind bars. The next chapter tells the story of a defendant who was charged with assault and multiple counts of witness tampering but was “physically too big to go to prison,” which caused logistical issues that officials had never encountered before. The stories culminate in the author’s attempt to run for head prosecutor, the ensuing small-town political drama, and the damaging aftermath. ...