Books

We meet Sarah LaBrie in 2017, when her grandmother calls to tell her that LaBrie’s mother is experiencing delusions and paranoia. Brie is living in Los Angeles, writing commissioned opera libretti that explore generational and racial trauma on a broad scale. Since she eagerly left her childhood home in Houston, Texas, her education and career

When one of the two central characters in your debut novel is dead, there are unintended consequences, as Anna Montague reveals at the start of our conversation about How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? In the book, Magda, a psychiatrist who is turning 70, takes a lengthy, life-changing road trip with the cremated

James Beard Award-winning author Alexander Smalls includes 120 recipes from 33 chefs, restaurateurs, caterers, cooks and writers in The Contemporary African Kitchen: Home Cooking Recipes From the Leading Chefs of Africa. It’s a massive undertaking that spans an entire continent filled with innumerable culinary styles. But that breadth is important to Smalls, who writes in

The crusading savant with messy hair and scattered papers is a common protagonist in legal thrillers. The archetype—played by Mark Ruffalo or Julia Roberts or Matt Damon in films over the years—comes to life in attorney Jim Scott, the center of gravity in Valley So Low: One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz, an enrolled member of the Lumbee tribe and a former advisor on homelessness and Native American issues in the Obama administration, loves data. When she noticed that the number of people self-identifying as “American Indian or Alaska Native” on the U.S. Census has more than doubled since 2000, while the number of

After solving an attempted murder in Emily Schultz’s Sleeping with Friends, book editor Agnes Nielsen is learning to navigate her newfound fame as a minor celebrity. She moves into an upscale condo building in Brooklyn and forms a quick friendship with her neighbor, the magnetic heiress Charlotte Bond. While attending a party at Charlotte’s, Agnes

Miss Leoparda, a delightful fable written and illustrated by Natalia Shaloshvili, opens with the titular character secure in the embrace of her treetop bed, surrounded by quiet rolling hills, which she traverses every day in her work as a bus driver. Miss Leoparda reliably shuttles a variety of animals—many of whom wear fetching hats and

Sure to inspire leisurely, locally crafted meals paired with excellent conversation and luscious wine, The Artful Way to Plant-Based Cooking: Nourishing Recipes and Heartfelt Moments is a breathtaking cookbook created by mother-daughter team Trudy Crane (a ceramic artist) and Chloé Crane-Leroux (a New York City-based food and lifestyle photographer) that could do double duty as an

We find out who we are through our favorite books, especially the ones we read as kids. Books can give us a place to hide or a place to be braver than we ever would be in real life. This is abundantly true for Stephanie Booth’s two like-minded protagonists in her debut novel, Libby Lost

Julie Heffernan is predominantly known as a self-portraitist. Her astounding large-scale oil paintings are baroque, surrealist, highly staged and detailed, and often feature a woman—herself, bare-breasted, surrounded by a riot of flora and fauna. She frequently toys with traditional representations of women in art, depicting herself in big headpieces and bigger skirts, and using titles

With Vikki VanSickle’s compelling rhyming couplets and Jensine Eckwall’s lush, moody illustrations, Into the Goblin Market has all the makings of a modern classic, while giving a delightful nod to European fairy tales. The book is a tribute to Christina Rosetti’s 1859 poem, “Goblin Market,” about sisters Laura and Lizzie. VanSickle has used the original

Bethany Bennett’s latest historical romance has a heroine with a secret life as an erotica writer; a hero who smolders, yearns and pines; and a mystery that begins in a library. A promising start to Bennett’s Bluestocking Booksellers series, Good Duke Gone Wild excels when it comes to its earnest, evenly matched main characters. Dorian

★ I Did Something Bad Set in Yangon, Myanmar, I Did Something Bad by Pyae Moe Thet War combines kisses-only romance and suspense. Freelance journalist Khin Haymar has two months of access to movie star Tyler Tun in order to write an in-depth exposé. It’s the chance of a lifetime and, even though she’s known

It’s probably manageable if the leader of the free world goes off the deep end, or if the continent that drives the world’s economy loses its collective mind . . . unless both things happen at the same time. In 1914, at the beginning of Robert Harris’ latest novel, Precipice, the stars align to create

Griso the unicorn is the last of his kind. Unhappy with his lonely life, he goes in search of another like him. As he travels across the plains, he encounters many animals in his search: antelope, buffalo and even “sea-unicorns.” But no matter where he goes, he finds “not a single unicorn—apart from Griso.” Suddenly,

George M. Johnson, who has spent their career thus far writing the books they wish they’d had when they were a teen (including the frequently challenged All Boys Aren’t Blue), has reached into history for more queer Black stories to share with Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known. “My heroes were hidden

Pulitzer Prize-winner Louise Erdrich is adept at creating all-consuming domestic plots that adroitly reveal broader insights about society, power, economics and our natural world. She’s done so again, to great effect, in The Mighty Red. The Mighty Red encompasses so much—a community of wonderful characters and a riveting plot, plus a profound look at our

My first novel, When Angels Left the Old Country, takes a historical story that’s familiar to many Americans—immigration through Ellis Island around the turn of the 20th century—and casts it as a fairy tale inspired by Jewish folklore. I knew I couldn’t repeat the same setting for my next work. A second book is always

Ezri Maxwell and their sisters fled the house they grew up in—a malevolent McMansion in a gated community where the Maxwells were the only Black residents—as soon as they were old enough. Their parents stayed, and now they’re dead, seemingly in a murder-suicide. To finally face the traumas of the past, Ezri and their sisters

“As a Diné person who has worked in forensics for 16 years, I saw death,” Ramona Emerson says. “I saw death all the time.”  She speaks by phone from her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, explaining how her Navajo heritage and work as a forensic photographer and videographer informed the creation of Rita Todacheene, a

Read if your Halloween plans are: A horror movie marathon, specifically A24 horror movies Ezri Maxwell doesn’t know whether their childhood home had ghosts, exactly, but they do know that it was haunted and determined to maim, traumatize and scare them and their Black family into leaving their mostly white Dallas suburb. Desperate to distance

Sabaa Tahir’s Heir kicks off a duology taking place 20 years after the events of her bestselling An Ember in the Ashes series. Heir follows Aiz, a lowborn orphan seeking vengeance; Sirsha, an exiled tracker who takes on a dangerous job; and Quil, the reluctant heir to the throne who faces a threat to his

In the woods of Nova Scotia, Drew is building a cabin. Save for the company of their dog, Pony, Drew is alone—a fact that everyone seems to have an opinion or an assumption about, much to Drew’s exasperation. But Drew is determined to live their dream life in their cabin, so they go to work,

In his beguiling debut novel, What I Know About You, Éric Chacour delicately explores the complicated circumstances that create distance between people, and the limits of what anyone can know about those they love. In 1980s Cairo, Tarek, a doctor from a Levantine Christian family, begins a relationship with a young man. Up until this

After reluctantly turning the final page of the beautifully illustrated Up, Up, Ever Up! Junko Tabei: A Life in the Mountains, readers will want to run outside and start hiking, pausing only to spread the word about the impressive woman at the heart of Anita Yasuda’s inspiring and poetic biography for young readers. As a

Erin A. Craig, bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows, takes readers on a journey through self-discovery and moral conflict in The Thirteenth Child. Hazel Trépas, the unwanted thirteenth child of a “foolish huntsman” and his “very pretty wife,” was promised to the Dreaded End—the god of Death—before she was even born. Years later,

At first, C.M. Waggoner’s third novel appears to be quite the departure from the author’s previous fantasy narratives (Unnatural Magic and The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry). Waggoner quickly immerses readers in the humdrum, day-to-day life of librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle, who resides in a quiet hamlet in upstate New York. The only out of the

For most of us, it is easy to take education for granted: Slogging our way from kindergarten to graduation is something we just have to do. They Call Me Teach: Lessons in Freedom, written by Lesa Cline-Ransome and illustrated by James E. Ransome, takes us back to a time before the Civil War, when education

When Joanna Brichetto sees potato chips, she craves goldfinches. An offbeat association? Sure. One imbued with enthusiasm and nature-loving logic? Absolutely. You see, she explains, the goldfinch’s call sounds like “potato-chip, potato-chip,” and the Lay’s Classic Potato Chips bag is a yellow “not unlike a male goldfinch in breeding plumage.”  That perspective-shifting, find-joy-in-daily-life revelation is

A seemingly doomed wedding is the focal point of Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, a propulsive novel that further justifies this Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s acclaim. Time and time again, with just a few words of perfectly placed description—like “the layaway bridal gown hung like an apparition on the outside of the closet door”—Erdrich lends Shakespearean