Books

As a foreign correspondent, Sally Hayden spoke with many people whose lives had been overturned by disaster. In This Is Also a Love Story (9.5 hours) she presents stories of relationships—romantic, familial and platonic—that demonstrate the profound indomitability of humanity, even and especially in times of catastrophe. By juxtaposing world-shattering events with everyday experiences, the

If you’re prone to nightmares and paranoid habits, you’ll want to read Isabel Crowley’s debut dark romance, Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me, with the lights on. It’s preternaturally scary . . . and that’s a good thing.  Hazel Lewis is no stranger to things that go bump in the night, and she

In 1999, 13-year-old Domingo José Sepulveda’s beloved Papi died. “I knew that there was an invisible line splitting everything between the moment he lived and the moment he died. This was the beginning of the other side,” he muses in the opening pages of Ayendy Bonifacio’s Bless Me, Papi.  Domingo is offered solace in his

When Ana Dolabra and Dinios “Din” Kol are called to the heart of the empire’s cattle- and farmlands to investigate a murder, Ana anticipates that the hardest part of their job will be preventing further conflict between the two noble houses at the center of the case. After all, the case is presumably open and

Once upon a time, a couple met, fell in love and settled down with zero complications . . . said no rom-com ever. A relationship with only smooth sailing will always fall a little flat. A good story needs tension, complexity, conflict. The characters need to work through serious issues so they earn their happy

★ The Magic We Made Meg Cabot offers delightful entertainment in The Magic We Made. Therapist Frankie Giovanni considers herself a rational realist and has a very rational, very real dislike for Ash Merit, the owner of the vacation rental property next door, due to his too-loud renters and his too-handsome face. Then, to her

Thanks to the casual sensibility of social media, we seem to be living in a punctuation-optional age. But in On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World, scholar Florence Hazrat offers a lively defense of the squiggles, slashes and dots that have helped define human language since civilization’s early days. Though

In Laila Lalami’s chilling novel The Dream Hotel, Sara Hussein is detained by representatives from the Risk Assessment Administration, an organization that uses data from dreams to scrutinize the habits of private individuals. The agents—convinced that Sara is going to carry out a deadly crime—take her to an internment facility for women. Innocent of any

Matt Baker takes readers to scenic Capri in his cozy culinary mystery, A Taste for Murder. Still reeling from the unexpected loss of his wife, Sofia, Detective Chief Inspector Joe Mottrom takes his teenage daughter, Angelica, to Capri to spend the summer with Sofia’s parents. Maybe in Italy, the pair can begin healing and find

“How did I manage to change from a regular girl into an immigrant with an accent?” writes Yevgenia Nayberg in the author’s note of her playful new picture book, Another Tongue. “Life is full of surprises!” she adds, noting how incomprehensible English was when she first came to the United States at age 19. Born

A prince tries to fool the press and a diplomat tries to level up in two sparkling rom-coms. Originally published here.

The first few days in a new school are always a little stressful and a little exciting, but, in Who Knows the Way to Mr. Grimly’s Classroom?, they’re also quite intriguing and strange. In her first week at her new school, Grace, who “always put[s] her hand up in class,” confidently volunteers to return a

★ My Inner Child Wants to Kill A few months back, I had the double pleasure of reading Karsten Dusse’s Murder Mindfully while concurrently bingeing Netflix’s TV series based on the book. Both were comically macabre, and I am happy to report that the follow-up, My Inner Child Wants to Kill, also translated by Florian

Kindergarten Gets Ready is an exemplary back-to-school book with a clever focus: what happens as a teacher prepares his classroom before the school year starts. After Mr. Bee bikes to school, he opens up his dark, deserted room, where he sees stacks of chairs and boxes of supplies. Naomi Danis’ text is simple and straightforward,

Honor & Heresy While his country wages a relentless war, scholar Roy Dawnseve is offered an alternative to enlisting as a soldier: Alongside the irritating but talented Percival Atherton, he must research Northgard’s ancient enemies in a mystical and harrowing library. Max Francis’ debut, Honor & Heresy, throws readers into its vast and detailed world

Elizabeth Lim’s dual-timeline historical fantasy, Fishbone Cinderella, follows three generations of women who must navigate heartbreak, secrets and a curse in order to heal as a family. Ha Yut Ying grows up during the 1940s Japanese occupation of China and is sent to her estranged father in Hong Kong by her mother, Lei Yuk Fong,

Norah Sullivan gains the power to manipulate probability—also called “navigation”—the same day she and her father are attacked by flickerbeasts, whose bites increase their likelihood of dying a horrifying death. Because Norah was only bitten once, she is able to manage the slow mystical effect of the attack; however, her father quickly becomes ill after

As a young girl in 1940s China, Yut Ying realizes she has the power to turn invisible. This power helps her survive the abusive household of her father and stepmother in Hong Kong, but 40 years later, she is at risk of disappearing altogether. Yut Ying’s daughter, Marigold, must uncover her mother’s past in order

At the start of Christine Hartman Derr’s wonderfully empowering debut, Raven, Rising, Raven Miller is indeed at a low point. Her parents recently died in an accident for which she feels responsible, and she and her Aunt Coral have just moved to Bear Creek Falls, where she is immediately tortured by a popular girl, Stella.

Bestselling author Carissa Broadbent returns to her Crowns of Nyaxia series with The Lion and the Deathless Dark, the first in a new duology. It’s a fine entry point into Broadbent’s backlist of interlinked stories set in the same world, though it may be a richer experience for readers who have started at the beginning,

In the opening scene of Furious Violet, true crime writer Violet “West” Shelley wakes up in a pool of blood in a hotel in Salt Lake City, where she has been conducting final interviews for her book about a cold case murderer known as the Crying Killer. Sarai Walker certainly knows how to draw readers

In her bold debut, Dietland, Sarai Walker took on the beauty industry, gender equality and America’s weight loss obsession, all in one deliciously funny, skewering bite. With her sophomore effort, The Cherry Robbers, Walker put a twisted feminist spin on gothic novels in a story about the lone survivor in a family of six cursed

Sparks fly in Talia Hibbert’s steamy The Princess Trap, in which an overworked and underappreciated HR staffer finds herself fake engaged to a hot prince with a bad reputation.  Too smart for both her HR job and the men she dates, Cherry has decided she’s only looking for a good time. So when she “bumps”

Historian and bestselling author of The Mapmakers Trilogy, S.E. Grove, uncovers the strongholds and corruptions of power within a mystifying dark academia world in her latest novel, Armor for Liars. In 1880s Salem, Massachusetts, Commonwealth University’s academic society longs for power to control both the living and the spirits beyond. Female “thew” spirits are captured

At this point in his career, Christopher Golden’s ability to spin an entertaining horror yarn is without question, but the bestselling titan (Snowblind, Dead Ringers) is still finding ways to surprise readers. His latest novel, Carry Me to My Grave, is a prime example, a book with a solid genre hook that takes flight via

After admiring the late Pat Conroy’s novels and memoirs for decades—and relating to the “father issues so boldly on display”—Matthew Quick began telling himself, “Your life has become a Pat Conroy book.” Quick and his wife had moved to Lady’s Island, South Carolina, to help care for his aging parents. Now, the author of The

You only need to glance at Textiles x Art: How Textiles Are Shaping Contemporary Art to see that it’s special. The cover is designed to look like a woven textile, and the motif continues across the book’s printed edges. Authors Ramona Barry and Beck Jobson have compellingly assembled 44 contemporary textile artists whose work expands

In the 1970s, an intensive program to eradicate drug addiction made waves. Synanon was at first seen as a positive force, endorsed by celebrities and politicians. Soon, however, darker truths were revealed about the group’s “healing” methodologies and the trauma it forced on innocent adults and children. Rowan Beaird’s sophomore novel, Tenderness, chronicles the 1976

As they approach the ends of their careers, writers, like criminals, often dream of one last big strike: the cherry on top of the sundae, the defining moment that will stand as the pinnacle of their craft. While we’re happy to report that Colson Whitehead has, by any reasonable measure, decades of writing ahead, his

Weirdness is currency in interior design, an area often crowded with boring disguised as tasteful. What sets This Must Be the Place: Homes With Atmosphere apart from the glut of interior design books is its weirdness. California-based designer Chloe Redmond Warner presents 11 homes and two showcase rooms. Each project begins with Warner and her