Books

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

Connie Chung broke the glass and bamboo ceiling when she became the first Asian American woman to co-anchor a national news broadcast program, joining Dan Rather at the desk of the CBS Evening News. Her visibility and success led generations of Chinese parents to name their daughters Connie. In her briskly paced memoir, Connie, Chung

Nemonte Nenquimo and her family lived within nature, with food from the river, the rainforest and their gardens. A monkey was her childhood pet. According to family lore, she knew she would become a spirit jaguar when she died. But things were changing fast: A huge metal tube had descended from the sky not too

As Gillian Anderson prepared for her role as a sex therapist in the British TV show Sex Education (which this writer quickly added to her Netflix queue), she read the 1973 cult classic My Secret Garden, a compendium of fantasies collected by novelist Nancy Friday. In Friday’s book, Anderson writes, it was revealed that “.

Emily Witt sets her arresting memoir, Health and Safety: A Breakdown, in New York City from 2016 to 2021, charting her entry into the city’s techno scene with its mind-altering drugs, ecstatic music and community of people sometimes embracing, sometimes resisting a changing new world. In her book’s first section, she describes learning the “geography

The publishing industry tends to shine a spotlight on memoirs by transgender people who are already famous: actors, models, Jeopardy! champions. Their transition stories hit similar beats as those of other trans people, but the circumstances of their lives do not. This makes Frighten the Horses by Oliver Radclyffe stand out—the author was a typical

Fans of The Thursday Murder Club mysteries will devour the first book in Richard Osman’s newest series, We Solve Murders. Amy Wheeler is a bodyguard for Maximum Impact Solutions, a British private security company. Her latest assignment has her protecting Rosie D’Antonio, a brash, bestselling author who offended a Russian oligarch with her latest book.

Rejection: Somewhere on the continuum between a casual date rebuff and a duo-destroying divorce, we’ve all experienced it. In Rejection, Whiting and O. Henry Award-winning author Tony Tulathimutte raises the experience to an art form. In seven connected stories, he chronicles several characters’ vivid responses to being turned down, or turned away.  By vivid, I

When circumstances force Christopher to spend time at his grandfather’s house in the middle-of-nowhere in Scotland, he expects it to be a bore—until he discovers the Archipelago. Home to creatures of myth and items of magic, Christopher’s family has protected the door to the Archipelago for generations. When a young girl named Mal breaks through

School’s out and Jesus is itching to run outside and play, but wait—Mama has to watch her telenovela first. “When you’re an only child, with no brothers or sisters to play with,” he remarks, “you have to make your own fun.” To pass the time, he sweeps, dusts and eats “all the cereal we’re running

TJ Klune’s gentle yet politically pointed tale of six magical orphans, their devoted caretaker, Arthur, and Linus, the government official who comes to love them, The House in the Cerulean Sea, was hailed as a beloved modern classic practically the second it hit shelves. Klune’s sequel, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, is told from Arthur’s perspective

An ibex stands on a mountain, peacefully grazing, until they are challenged for “the top spot.” In response, the ibex asks, “But what are we even fighting for?” When the ibex receives an attack instead of an answer, they flee from the challenge. Fleeing does not solve problems, however—and it certainly doesn’t get them the

The Dark Wives I’m a latecomer to the Vera Stanhope series: I’m not a total newbie, but I definitely have some back catalog to catch up on, especially as author Ann Cleeves’ latest, The Dark Wives, is a crackerjack mystery. Rosebank Home is a halfway house for troubled teens. At the moment, it is also

Hot Earl Summer New York Times bestselling author Erica Ridley returns to her Wild Wynchesters series with a heroine who has a penchant for finding trouble and a shy, brainy hero pretending to be his cousin. Combine that pairing with a castle siege and the mystery of a missing will, and you have a delightful

The Transit of Venus (15.5 hours), Shirley Hazzard’s 1980 novel and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, tells the story of two Australian sisters, Grace and Caroline Bell, from their arrival in postwar England to their middle age. It is a nuanced and richly detailed exploration of love, power, fate and remorse that

Godfather Death is a lively retelling of a Grimm fairy tale about a poor fisherman looking for a godfather for his newborn son. The fisherman rejects God’s offer because he doesn’t feel God treats people fairly, especially since the fisherman and his family live in such poverty. He is smart enough to also reject the

Flavia de Luce burst onto the cozy mystery scene in 2009, and now the precocious 12-year-old chemistry prodigy is back for the 11th time in bestselling author Alan Bradley’s What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust. Once again, Bradley beckons readers into post-World War II England—specifically, Bishop’s Lacey, a hamlet in the countryside. Flavia roams

Nadia Ahmed’s The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Everything is not only a charming Halloween tale, but also an excellent year-round story about facing one’s fears. Young Finn is scared of many things, including tree branches, butterflies, the color orange and flying. On Halloween, he stays home in his attic—noisy humans also make him anxious—while

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

You’re the Problem, It’s You Emma R. Alban adds a second book to her Mischief & Matchmaking series with You’re the Problem, It’s You. It’s the start of a new season in Victorian London, and second son Bobby Mason is finding his role as the spare particularly unrewarding. Everyone seems busy: his older brother and

Be careful what you wish for. That’s definitely true for Hannah, the seventh grader whose journal constitutes Remy Lai’s Read at Your Own Risk. Hannah and her friends search for a diversion while “some boring author” comes to their school assembly to “talk about his spooky books, which I bet aren’t even spooky.” Instead of

Over two decades of writing books, author Danzy Senna (Caucasia and New People) faced the same obstacle again and again: “I kept coming up against the problem of my work being uncategorizable and me being uncategorizable.” At 53, Senna has earned critical acclaim, but she’s still keenly conscious of “being a writer who doesn’t fit

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews wants out of his genre. Or that’s what the husband of Attica Locke, author of the Highway 59 mystery trilogy, said when he finished reading Guide Me Home, Locke’s exceptional final volume in the series.  “It’s as if he’s kind of done with the cops and robbers of it all,” Locke

“I don’t think people realize how many librarians are being attacked,” Amanda Jones says from her home in Watson, Louisiana. “I used to think it was just a Southern thing. But I have friends in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maine, California and New York who have experienced this.” Jones, the author of That Librarian: The

There Amanda Jones was, living in her hometown of Watson, Louisiana, working as a middle school librarian in the school she once attended—an unremarkable and happy life. Then, everything changed. On a mid-July evening in 2022, Jones gave a short, powerful speech against censorship at her local public library’s board meeting. Four days later, she

In his bestselling 2020 novel, The Midnight Library, Matt Haig told the story of a woman, who, after deciding to end her life, finds herself transported to a new metaphysical plane in the form of a magical library. With his new book, Haig sticks to our ordinary world and makes it magical, which makes The

It’s summertime, and 13-year-old Aidan Cross is looking forward to lots of fun with his closest friends: handsome athlete Kai, class clown Zephyr and studious Terrance. They’ll ride bikes, go swimming, play D&D and watch movies. And they’ll engage in the group’s favorite pastime, “yeeting crap at the Witch House,” a tumbledown Victorian mansion with