A Celebration of Books,
Writers & LIterary Excellence

Save the Date


Gaithersburg
Book Festival

May 18, 2024

10am – 6pm

Bohrer Park


Books

Arranging Words by Fran Abrams
Arranging Words
Arranging Words by Fran Abrams

Arranging Words is Abrams’ second chapbook collection. Like her first chapbook, The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras, this book is a series of light-hearted poems that asks the reader to look at the world from a new perspective. These poems approach letters, words, and everyday phrases in a way that pokes fun at the eccentricities of the English language.

For example, her poem titled “K Knows How to Hide and Seek” begins with the line “K knocks twice, but we only hear him once,” reminds us how often “k” is a silent letter. The poem “Poetry Exercise” plays on the meaning of the word “exercise” with the line “Brain cells stretch, lift your arms, reach for words.” Phrases are deconstructed into literal meanings, such as in the poem “Beside Myself” that asks, “Am I myself or the one beside myself?”

This collection illuminates the quirks of the English language in a lively, humorous way while demonstrating a love for words themselves.

About Fran Abrams

Happy Medium

“The perfect alchemy of romance, humor and quirky originality.”—Sophie Cousens, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Next Year and The Good Part

“A sincere and sincerely funny romance.”—Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of Starling House

A clever con woman must convince a skeptical, sexy farmer of his property’s resident real-life ghost if she’s to save them all from a fate worse than death, in this delightful new novel from the author of Mrs. Nash’s Ashes.

Fake spirit medium Gretchen Acorn is happy to help when her best (read: wealthiest) client hires her to investigate the unexplained phenomena preventing the sale of her bridge partner’s struggling goat farm. Gretchen may be a fraud, but she’d like to think she’s a beneficentone. So if “cleansing” the property will help a nice old man finally retire and put some much-needed cash in her pockets at the same time, who’s she to say no?

Of course, it turns out said bridge partner isn’t the kindly AARP member Gretchen imagined—Charlie Waybill is young, hot as hell, and extremely unconvinced that Gretchen can communicate with the dead. (Which, fair.) Except, to her surprise, Gretchen finds herself face-to-face with Everett: the very real, very chatty ghost that’s been wreaking havoc during every open house. And he wants her to help ensure Charlie avoids the same family curse that’s had Everett haunting Gilded Creek since the 1920s.

Now, Gretchen has one month to convince Charlie he can’t sell the property. Unfortunately, hard work and honesty seem to be the way to win over the stubborn farmer—not exactly Gretchen’s strengths. But trust isn’t the only thing growing between them, and the risk of losing Charlie to the spirit realm looms over Gretchen almost as annoyingly as Everett himself. To save the goat farm, its friendly phantom, and the man she’s beginning to love, Gretchen will need to pull off the greatest con of her life: being fully, genuinely herself.

“Sarah Adler nails the ultimate rom-com alchemy.”—Carley Fortune, New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After and Meet Me at the Lake

About Sarah Adler

Nothing Else But Miracles

From the author of A Place to Hang the Moon comes a hopeful World War II story about three scrappy siblings on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

When 12-year-old Dory Byrne’s pop left New York City’s Lower East Side to fight Hitler, he promised her and her brothers that they’d be safe. Like he always said, “the neighborhood will give you what you need.”

There’s the lady from the bakery, who saves them leftover crullers. The kind landlord who checks in on them. And every Thursday night, the Byrnes enjoy a free bowl of seafood stew at Mr. Caputo’s restaurant. . . which is where Dory learns about the abandoned hand-pulled elevator that is the only way to get to Caputo’s upper floors.

But when a new landlord threatens their home in the community that’s raised them and kept them safe, the secret elevator—and the abandoned hotel it leads to—provides just the solution they need.

Based on a very real place in old New York and steeped in the history of World War II, Nothing Else but Miracles is a warm and inviting story of resilience, the tight-knit community of the Lower East Side, and the miracles that await in unexpected places.

Kate Albus is the award-winning author of A Place to Hang the Moon, a JLG Gold Standard Selection, An Indie Pick, An ALSC Notable Children’s Book, A CCBC Choice book, and an SCBWI Crystal Kite Award Winner. Nothing Else But Miracles is rich with details from her grandparents’ stories of Coney Island and the Fulton Fish Market.

About Kate Albus

Poet of the Port by Indran Amirthanayagam
Powèt Nan Pò A / Poet of the Port
Poet of the Port by Indran Amirthanayagam

Indran Amirthanayagam is a true global poet, and this book in Kreyòl ayisyen (Haitian Creole) is his most important thus far. Here, an outside observer, living in the land as a cultural attaché, gives the language and culture of Haiti the ultimate respect-poems that bring the joys and pain, love, mysteries and history of the everyday life of the people into Poetry’s orbit. Amirthanayagam is a poet like no other (he also writes in Spanish, French, Portuguese), and this book is a grand achievement. -Bob Holman, Poet, Professor, Producer: The United States of Poetry, founder: Bowery Poetry Club

This book is a Love poem to Haiti written in the language of the Haitian people by a Sri Lankan-born poet who lives in the United States where, among other things, he writes a Poetry/Culture column for the newspaper Haiti en Marche. His love of that island is real and in the finest tradition of immigrant culture. -Jack Hirschman, emeritus Poet Laureate of San Francisco

Here is a long love note to Haiti-a beautiful centering of it by poet and diplomat Indran Amirthanayagam. Written on the eve of his taking the country’s leave, the poems offer up the complicated negotiations of the heart’s farewell: to the land, to relationships forged, to a specific cultural sensibility and cosmology. Amirthanayagam situates himself simultaneously as insider and outsider, a stance that supports a space of great sympathy, clarity and fertile opacity. Here is a poet keenly aware of the work of poems, and poets, to word the world-and to create the bridges that connect us.

-Danielle Legros Georges, Boston Poet Laureate, 2015-2019

Language takes center stage as subject and objective in these intelligent and essential poems by Indran Amirthanayagam. How to recenter what is personally important and politically necessary? The solution is radical poetic license. License as in drive, marry, shoot. In these poems written by the poet in Haitian Creole, and then self-translated into English, readers are given Haiti in this urgent moment, and in presenting us with Haiti, we are given

humanity. -Kimiko Hahn, Chancellor, The Academy of American Poets, author of Foreign Bodies

About Indran Amirthanayagam

When She Left by E.A. Aymar
When She Left
When She Left by E.A. Aymar

A young couple fleeing a criminal family confronts a reluctant assassin in this heart-pounding thriller from E.A. Aymar.

When Melissa Cruz falls hard for a dreamy-eyed photographer named Jake, she can’t resist the urge to run away with him. The problem is that she already has a boyfriend, a rising star in his family’s crime organization. Betrayed and humiliated, Chris isn’t going to just let her go.

To find Melissa, Chris turns to Lucky Wilson, one of his family’s professional assassins. But Lucky has his own problems. After years of lying about his day job, his marriage is in shambles and he suffers from relentless panic attacks. He’ll do this job if Chris will let him out of the killing life.

Lucky knows this is his best chance at salvaging the home life he always craved. But Melissa and Jake aren’t going to abandon their chance at something real—something they’ve both been lacking in their lives. But they aren’t the only ones desperate to survive, and a powerful criminal family isn’t the only danger.

And soon, it’s clear that an unlikely partnership might be the only way for any of them to make it out alive…

About E.A. Aymar

How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi by Matt Wasowski
How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi: Collected Quirks of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math from Nerd Nite
How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi by Matt Wasowski

In the vein of acclaimed popular-science bestsellers such as Atlas Obscura, Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry, The Way Things Work, What If?, and Undeniablethe co-founders of the global science organization Nerd Nite bring readers a collection of wacky, yet fascinating STEM topics.

For 20 years, Nerd Nite has delivered to live audiences around the world, the most interesting, fun, and informative presentations about science, history, the arts, pop culture, you name it. There hasn’t been a rabbit hole that their army of presenters hasn’t been afraid to explore. Finally, after countless requests to bring Nerd Nite to more fans across the globe, co-founders and college pals Matt Wasowski and Chris Balakrishnan are bringing readers the quirky and accessible science content that they crave in book form, focused on STEM and paired with detailed illustrations that make the content pop. The resulting range of topics is quirky and vast, from kinky, spring-loaded spiders to the Webb telescope’s influence on movie special effects.

Hilariously named after Dale Carnegie’s iconic book, How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi features narratives, bursts, and infographics on all things STEM from scientists around the world. Chapters are sure to make you laugh-out-loud, with titles such as “The Science of the Hangover,” “What Birds Can Teach Us About the Impending Zombie Apocalypse,” and “Lessons from the Oregon Trail.”

With fascinating details, facts, and illustrations, combined with Chris and Matt’s incredible connections to organizations such as the Discovery Network and the Smithsonian Institution, How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi is sure to reach joyful STEM enthusiasts of all ages around the world.

About Nerd Nite: Started in 2003, Nerd Nite is a monthly event held in 100+ cities worldwide during which folks give 20-minute fun-yet-informative presentations across all disciplines, while the audience drinks along!

About Dr. Chris Balakrishnan

African Icons by Tracey Baptiste
African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History
African Icons by Tracey Baptiste

“In African Icons, Baptiste engages in the hard work of unveiling the myths about the African continent to young readers . . . This is a great beginner’s guide to pre-colonial Africa.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of 
Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist

 
Meet ten real-life kings, queens, inventors, scholars, and visionaries who lived in Africa thousands of years ago and changed the world. 

Black history begins thousands of years ago with the many cultures and people of the African continent. Through portraits of ten heroic figures, bestselling author Tracey Baptiste takes readers on an empowering, energetic journey through time to meet some of the great leaders and thinkers whose vision built nations and shaped the course of history.

  • Menes: Creator of Dynasties
  • Merneith: A Queen Erased
  • Imhotep: From Peasant to God
  • Aesop: The Wisest Man in the Ancient World
  • Hannibal Barca: Unparalleled Military Strategist
  • Terence: North African Playwright
  • Amanirenas: Warrior, Diplomat, Queen
  • Tin Hinan: Founder of a City on the Dunes
  • Mansa Musa: The Richest Man of All Time
  • Queen Idia: Kingmaker

Illustrator Hillary D. Wilson’s brilliant portraits accompany each profile, along with vivid, information-filled landscapes, maps, and graphics for readers to pore over and return to again and again. This rich and thrilling work, which celebrates Black excellence and provides an essential correction to Eurocentric tellings of history, will enthrall readers of all ages.

About Tracey Baptiste

Who Got Game?: Basketball: Amazing but True Stories!

From superstar author Derrick Barnes, here is a middle-grade celebration of the people and stories that helped shape the game of basketball, from unsung pioneers to unforgettable moments of the game.

Capturing all the joy and energy that mark the sport of basketball, bestselling and award-winning superstar author Derrick Barnes shines a light on the amazing ballers, buzzer-beaters, and record-breakers who haven’t always gotten the attention they deserve. Who Got Game? Basketball, the second book in his sports series, following Who Got Game? Baseball, weaves together great storytelling, lively illustrations, and a far-ranging selection of facts, stats, sidebars, and quotes.

Middle-grade readers will discover the highest-scoring game in NCAA history. The influential center, George Mikan, who created the modern big man role, and 5’3″ Muggsy Bogues, the shortest player ever to star in the pros. The pioneering Senda Berenson Abbott, creator of the women’s game. The legendary Rucker Park b-ball court in Harlem, New York. Plus the first African American players and coaches, greatest comeback victories and earth-shattering slam dunks, longest winning streaks, and so much more. This book will hit you like a three-pointer from half-court!

About Derrick Barnes

The House Is on Fire

A “wildly entertaining” (NPR), “gripping” (The Washington Post) work of historical fiction about an incendiary tragedy that shocked a young nation and tore apart a community in a single night, from the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever.

Richmond, Virginia 1811. It’s the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the long and arduous journey to the capital in hopes of whiling away the darkest days of the year. At the city’s only theater, the Charleston-based Placide & Green Company puts on two plays a night to meet the demand of a populace that’s done looking for enlightenment at the front of a church.

On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers. In the third-floor boxes sits newly widowed Sally Henry Campbell, who is glad for any opportunity to relive the happy times she shared with her husband. One floor away, in the colored gallery, Cecily Patterson doesn’t give a whit about the play but is grateful for a four-hour reprieve from a life that has recently gone from bad to worse. Backstage, young stagehand Jack Gibson hopes that, if he can impress the theater’s managers, he’ll be offered a permanent job with the company. And on the other side of town, blacksmith Gilbert Hunt dreams of one day being able to bring his wife to the theater, but he’ll have to buy her freedom first.

When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions that will not only affect their own lives but those of countless others. And in the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined.

Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House Is on Fire is a “stunning” (Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle), “all-consuming exploration” (E! News) that offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption.

About Rachel Beanland

Animal Albums by Cece Bell
Animal Albums from A to Z
Animal Albums by Cece Bell

From the inimitable creator of El Deafo, this all-ages alphabet book is also a hand-wrought, high-fidelity, hilariously tongue-in-cheek homage to the golden days of album cover art.

Cece Bell loves music and collecting old record albums, her introduction explains, especially albums featuring animal artists. The bouncing harmonies of the Barbershop Beagles, the elegant crooning of the elephant Ella Fontaine, the hilarious rhymes of the Hip-Hop Hedgehogs—all are represented in this quirky ABC book that draws on the creator’s personal collection of albums, memorabilia, and lyrics dating between 1944 and 1984, the heyday of album design. With wry, witty text, silly and sumptuous sound play, and biographical end matter on all twenty-six musical acts, the book commands and stands up to repeated readings. Bright, zany art—all painted and lettered by hand—a stellar design, and an album-size trim make it a collector’s item in its own right, sure to grace the coffee tables of vinyl- and design-loving adults even as it tickles young funny bones. A hootenanny hosted by the creator of the Newbery Honor Book and Eisner Award winner El DeafoAnimal Albums from A to Z also quietly reminds us just how much music can mean to everyone.

About Cece Bell

Glenn Burke, Game Changer: The Man Who Invented the High Five

An inspiring picture book biography about Glenn Burke, the first Major League Baseball player to come out as gay, and the story of how he created the world’s most recognizable handshake, the high five.

Playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Glenn Burke could do it all―hit, throw, run, field. He was the heart of the clubhouse who energized his teammates with his enthusiasm and love for the game. It was that energy that led Glenn to invent the high five one October day back in 1977―a spontaneous gesture after a home run that has since evolved into our universal celebratory greeting.

But despite creating this joyful symbol, Glenn Burke, a gay Black man, wasn’t always given support and shown acceptance in return.

From acclaimed author Phil Bildner, with illustrations from Daniel J. O’Brien, this moving picture book biography recognizes the challenges Burke faced while celebrating how his bravery and his now-famous handshake helped pave the way for others to live openly and free.

About Phil Bildner

Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems

A rich, accomplished, intensely intimate collection with 2 full sections of new poems bookending Blanco’s selections from his 5 previous volumes

“An engineer, poet, Cuban American . . . his poetry bridges cultures and languages—a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future—reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.”—President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Richard Blanco, 2023

“What a gift, this new gathering of poems from the singular Richard Blanco. A cause for rejoicing!”—Krista Tippett, author of Being Wise and host of On Being

“Blanco’s poems are journeys to a homeland within the heart, a welcome homecoming earned from a lifetime’s wise voyaging.”—Sandra Cisneros

“A triumphant anthem to a rich life in all its ages and awakenings.”—Naomi Shihab Nye

In this collection of over 100 poems, Richard Blanco has carefully selected poems from his previous books that represent his evolution as a writer grappling with his identity, working to find and define “home,” and bookended them with new poems that address those issues from a fresh, more mature perspective, allowing him to approach surrendering the pain and urgency of his past explorations. Pausing at this pivotal moment in mid-career, Blanco reexamines his life-long quest to find his proverbial home and all that it encompasses: love, family, identity and ultimately art itself. In the closing section of the volume, he has come to understand and internalize the idea that “home” is not one place, not one thing, and lives both inside him and inside his art.

The poems range in form, voice, and setting, showcasing his command of craft, but in essence they are one continuous reflection on the existential question at the core of all of Blanco’s poetry: how can we find our place in the world. All are characterized by his keen eye, deep sensibility, and polished craft, without pretense. This volume is a gift to Blanco’s many readers but even more to those who have yet to discover that they can understand, and fall in love with poetry, that a poet can speak to them about his own and their own lives so profoundly, and that this poet, as Barack Obama discovered, can speak for all of us.

Richard Blanco has been justly celebrated for his poetic gifts and his command of the many forms poetry can take, from the finely structured to the prose poem formats. His previous volumes have been praised by Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Alexander, and many others. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and dozens of other publications.

About Richard Blanco

Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction

NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil—when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government to dismantle the KKK

The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as “the first organized terrorist movement in American history,” rose from the ashes of the Civil War. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members, no small number of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. And their mission was to obliterate the muscular democratic power of newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable.

To repel the virulent tidal wave of violence, President Ulysses S. Grant waged a two-term battle against both armed Southern enemies of Reconstruction and Northern politicians seduced by visions of postwar conciliation, testing the limits of the federal government in determining the extent of states’ rights. In this book, Bordewich transports us to the front lines, in the hamlets of the former Confederate States and in the marble corridors of Congress, reviving an unsung generation of grassroots Black leaders and key figures such as crusading Missouri senator Carl Schurz, who sacrificed the rights of Black Americans in the name of political “reform,” and the ruthless former slave trader and Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Klan War is a bold and bracing record of America’s past that reveals the bloody, Reconstruction-era roots of present-day battles to protect the ballot box and stamp out resurgent white supremacist ideologies.

About Fergus M. Bordewich

Extra Innings by Fred Bowen
Extra Innings
Extra Innings by Fred Bowen

A baseball book full of on the field action perfect for middle grade readers.

“Strike one is the best pitch in baseball.” Mike loves pitching, and he loves knowing his team counts on him to deliver wins. But Mike’s father starts to worry that Mike is getting too carried away with baseball and not spending time working at after school jobs and developing a sense of responsibility. Can Mike and his father reach a compromise in order to let Mike play the game he loves and help his team win the league championship? 

Read “The Real Story” of Harvey Haddix, who pitched a perfect game against the Atlanta Braves in 1959 and LOST. Baseball fans will love this extra dive into sports history.

About Fred Bowen

Swimming With Ghosts by Michelle Brafman
Swimming with Ghosts
Swimming With Ghosts by Michelle Brafman

From the acclaimed author of Washing the Dead and Bertrand Court comes a satirical and chilling, yet deeply-sensitive, tale that captures the ethos and ruin of children’s competitive swimming, where parents must face the haunting spirits of their own tumultuous upbringings or risk losing their way and—in turn—themselves.

It’s June 2012. The magical and slightly cultish River Run swim club is alive with the spirit of fun competition when a perfect storm brews between team moms and best friends, Gillian Cloud and Kristy Weinstein. The ghost of family addiction has turned up, looming over their carefully planned pasta parties, tie-dye nights, and pep rallies, forcing them to face their unresolved childhood trauma.

Gillian responds by trying to control everyone around her, while Kristy relapses into her dangerous addiction to love. Real sparks fly on the night of the derecho—a freak land hurricane—which sweeps through Northern Virginia, knocking out power for days. The storm ignites a tinder box of secrets, leaving Gillian and Kristy alone in the hot dark—their shame their only company.

At times humorous and devastating, Swimming with Ghosts is a hauntingly dark, yet uniquely tender story of the various entrapments of addiction and lingering trauma, and what it takes to overcome our hidden legacies of disgrace and discover a once unimaginable freedom made possible by confronting life’s greatest storms with the people closest to us.

About Michelle Brafman

Bad Animal

Bad Animal is a collection of poems about the body, about violence, about safety, a meditation on love, sex, and death. It explores the body’s changing relationship to desire in the aftermath of incredible sexual trauma, and how we societally reconcile the beauty of the world we live in with intense emotional pain. Bad Animal is a collection of poems that remind the reader we are all made of flesh and bone and while flesh is temporary and fragile, bone is hard and resilient: both are needed to be whole. Nature is present throughout these poems which echoes the real world-a world that needs both vulture and carcass, a world that needs both dark and light.

***

Oh, Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer’s Bad Animal is a marvelously macabre and bewitching book! Here is a poet who plunges headlong into haunting intersections of faith, nature, sex, and violence, evoking for us the allures and the horrors of death, enlivening the body and stirring up questions about the future. Conjuring a world where Danger sometimes wears the face of Pleasure, and vice versa, these poems unfold a menagerie of incisive, visceral images you won’t soon forget. Bratt-Pfotenhauer’s language glows and pulses like an ember in the dark.

Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat Bad Animal is fierce, smart, knows language as a kind of mating dance with the reader, a lever into the interior, and a demon possession. It’s aware of its body as text and texture, a source of hurt and a source of rapture. It has a hawk heart and a crow mind. Bad Animal is memorable for its avidity, its “renegade” desire, its scholarship of “little violences”. It puts you under a spell. It gallops inside you.

Bruce Smith, author of Devotions

It’s a miracle for a poetry collection to wind up so smart and so moving at once. I read Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer’s Bad Animal in one gulp, then reopened it and started over, for it rewards study. Brave new offering to the literary world, and the first of many books I’ll buy from this astonishing young poet. Buy this book!

Mary Karr, author of Tropic of Squalor and The Liar’s Club

Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer’s Bad Animal subtly questions the contours of comfort throughout the inevitable cycles of life-beginnings, endings, death, pain, love. This book is at once a soothing lyrical balm with the sonic authority of a bomb. Read it and experience the power of a deftly written and precisely conceived work of art.
Airea D. Matthews, author of Simulacra & Bread and Circus

About Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer

Little Monsters

A National Bestseller!

“Juicy…simmers with tension as secrets explode out into the open.” —The Washington Post * “So alluring…I raced happily through the pages.” —The New York Times Book Review * “Compulsively readable.” —Vogue * “An absolutely captivating read.” —Elin Hilderbrand

From the author of the bestselling memoir Wild Game comes a riveting novel about Cape Cod, complicated families, and long-buried secrets.

Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated—and as adults their relationship is strained. Now, years later, the siblings’ lives are still deeply entwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.

As the novel opens, Adam is approaching his seventieth birthday, staring down his mortality and fading relevance. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he’s determined to make one last scientific breakthrough and so he has secretly stopped taking his pills, which he knows will infuriate his children. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family—Steph, who doesn’t make her connection known. As Adam grows more attuned to the frequencies of the deep sea and less so to the people around him, Ken and Abby each plan the elaborate gifts they will present to their father on his birthday, jostling for primacy in this small family unit.

Set in the fraught summer of 2016, Little Monsters is a “smart, page-flipping novel…[with] shades of Succession” (The Boston Globe) from a writer who knows Cape Cod inside and out—its Edenic lushness and its snakes.

About Adrienne Brodeur

Can't We Be Friends by Denny S. Bryce
Can't We Be Friends: A Novel of Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe
Can't We Be Friends by Denny S. Bryce

Award-winning author Denny S. Bryce and USA Today bestselling author Eliza Knight collaborate on a brilliant novel that uncovers the boundary-breaking, genuine friendship between Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, and iconic movie star Marilyn Monroe.

One woman was recognized as the premiere singer of her era with perfect pitch and tireless ambition.

One woman was the most glamorous star in Hollywood, a sex symbol who took the world by storm.

And their friendship was fast and firm…

1952: Ella Fitzgerald is a renowned jazz singer whose only roadblock to longevity is society’s attitude toward women and race. Marilyn Monroe’s star is rising despite ongoing battles with movie studio bigwigs and boyfriends. When she needs help with her singing, she wants only the best—and the best is the brilliant Ella Fitzgerald. But Ella isn’t a singing teacher and declines—then the two women meet, and to everyone’s surprise but their own, they become fast friends.

On the surface, what could they have in common? Yet each was underestimated by the men in their lives—husbands, managers, hangers-on. And both were determined to gain. Each fought for professional independence and personal agency in a time when women were expected to surrender control to those same men.

This novel reveals and celebrates their surprising bond over a decade and serves as a poignant reminder of how true friendship can cross differences to bolster and sustain us through haunting heartbreak and wild success.

About Denny S. Bryce

Myrtle, Means, and Opportunity by Elizabeth C. Bunce
Myrtle, Means, and Opportunity (Myrtle Hardcastle Mystery 5)
Myrtle, Means, and Opportunity by Elizabeth C. Bunce

In the fifth book of the Edgar Award-winning series, Myrtle Hardcastle uncovers a string of murders during a treasure hunt on a haunted Scottish estate.

When her governess inherits an estate on a Scottish island, amateur detective Myrtle Hardcastle couldn’t be more excited. Unfortunately, the ancestral castle is both run-down and haunted. Ghostly moans echo in the walls, and there are rumors of a cursed treasure lost on the island—an ancient silver brooch that may have cost the former lord his life. But who had the motive, means, and opportunity to kill him? And could this Scottish trip mean the end of Myrtle’s plans to get her father and governess together?

Then Myrtle’s investigation stirs a villain out of hiding. The estate’s boat is stolen, so there’s no escape from the island. Myrtle is forced to play a deadly game, hunting for the brooch with a thief breathing down her neck—someone who will stop at nothing to get the treasure, even if it means murder.

About Elizabeth C. Bunce

Something Kindred

Magical realism meets Southern Gothic in this commanding young adult debut from Ciera Burch about true love, the meaning of home, and the choices that haunt us.

Welcome to Coldwater. Come for the ghosts, stay for the drama.

Jericka Walker had planned to spend the summer before senior year soaking up the sun with her best friend on the Jersey Shore. Instead she finds herself in Coldwater, Maryland, a small town with a dark and complicated past where her estranged grandmother lives―someone she knows only two things about: her name and the fact that she left Jericka’s mother and uncle when they were children. But now Jericka’s grandmother is dying, and her mother has dragged Jericka along to say goodbye.

As Jericka attempts to form a connection with a woman she’s never known, and adjusts to life in a town where everything closes before dinner, she meets “ghost girl” Kat, a girl eager to leave Coldwater and more exciting than a person has any right to be. But Coldwater has a few unsettling secrets of its own. The more you try to leave, the stronger the town’s hold. As Jericka feels the chilling pull of her family’s past, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about her mother, her childhood, and the lines between the living and the dead.

About Ciera Burch

Fly With Me by Andie Burke
Fly with Me
Fly With Me by Andie Burke

“A modern, tongue-in-cheek view…Fly with Me makes you laugh right before it makes you cry.” – The New York Times

A one-way ticket to love or a bumpy ride ahead?

Flying-phobic ER nurse Olive Murphy is still gripping the armrest from her first-ever take-off when the pilot announces an in-flight medical emergency. Olive leaps into action and saves a life, but ends up getting stuck in the airport hours away from the marathon she’s running in honor of her brother. Luckily for her, Stella Soriano, the stunning type A copilot, offers to give her a ride.

After the two spend a magical day together, Stella makes a surprising request: Will Olive be her fake girlfriend?

A video of Olive saving a life has gone viral and started generating big sales for Stella’s airline. Stella sees their union as the perfect opportunity to get to the boys’ club executives at her company who keep overlooking her for a long-deserved promotion. Realizing this arrangement could help her too, Olive dives into memorizing Stella’s comically comprehensive three-ring-binder guide to fake dating. As the two grow closer, what’s supposed to be a ruse feels more and more real. Could this be the romantic ride of their lives, or an epic crash and burn?

A sparkling and steamy Sapphic romance, Fly with Me by Andie Burke is filled with sharp banter and that sweet, swooping feeling of finding “the one” when and where you least expect it.

About Andie Burke

My Dear Comrades by Sunu P. Chandy
My Dear Comrades
My Dear Comrades by Sunu P. Chandy

In this poetry collection, Sunu P. Chandy includes stories about her experiences as a woman, civil rights attorney, parent, partner, daughter of South Asian immigrants, and member of the LGBTQ community. These poems cover themes ranging from immigration, social justice activism, friendship loss, fertility challenges, adoption, caregiving, and life during a pandemic. Sunu’s poems provide some resolve, some peace, some community, amidst the competing notions of how we are expected to be in the world, especially when facing a range of barriers. Sunu’s poems provide company for many who may be experiencing isolation through any one of these experiences and remind us that we are not, in fact, going it alone. Whether the experience is being disregarded as a woman of color attorney, being rejected for being queer, losing a most treasured friendship, doubting one’s romantic partner or any other form of heartbreak, Sunu’s poems highlight the human requirement of continually starting anew. These poems remind us that we can, and we will, rebuild.

About Sunu P. Chandy

Loud and Proud by Lesa Cline-Ransome
Loud and Proud: The Life of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm
Loud and Proud by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Three starred reviews!

“History shines” (School Library Journal, starred review) in this inspirational, “vibrantly colored, boisterous, and well-paced” (Booklist, starred review) picture book biography of trailblazer Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman in Congress and the first woman and African American to enter the Democratic presidential race, by award-winning author Lesa Cline-Ransome.

Shirley Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York, where her immigrant parents scraped and saved while Shirley learned all the love in the world couldn’t pay the rent. Her father encouraged her ambition early on, telling her, “God gave you a brain, use it.” Shirley worked hard and landed a full scholarship to Brooklyn College where she started advocating for people like her by starting a club for Black women.

When her political science professor told her she should go into politics, Shirley paid attention. She broke new ground and heard “Go home to your husband” and “You don’t belong here” when she was campaigning. But that didn’t stop her; in fact, it made her work harder until she became the first African American woman in Congress in 1968, where she ended up serving seven terms, and advocated for important bills such as the Equal Rights Amendment. She even sought the nomination for president of the United States in 1972.​

Shirley Chisholm’s life and legacy served as a catalyst for progress in America and changed the world.

 

About Lesa Cline-Ransome

Real Life and Other Fictions by Susan Coll
Real Life and Other Fictions
Real Life and Other Fictions by Susan Coll

Cassie Klein has always used stories to help her fly, but now her plot points aren’t lining up.

In her 50s, Cassie has already weathered more than most. She was orphaned at the age of two and has never fully understood why her DC-based parents were on a bridge in West Virginia that just so happened to collapse as they drove across it. Her search for answers prompted a failed career in journalism, and now she’s an aspiring novelist teaching at a local community college waiting for her literary dreams to finally come true. She stood by her once-doting husband when his meteorology career took a nosedive, and now she has learned that the man who became an internet meme has been cheating on her.

She’s had enough. She scoops up a teething puppy and embarks on a road trip that’s heavy on impulse and light on planning. She’s not sure where she’s going, but she knows she might as well start at the beginning. What really happened to her parents all those years ago?

In this comically surreal, warmhearted journey, she encounters people she never knew existed—chief among them, an enigmatic cryptozoologist, who helps her in the quest to discover her past. And along the way, she looks for answers regarding curious sightings of a creature known as the Mothman in the months before her parents died. As the line between real life and fiction blurs, Cassie finds herself grappling with the nature of stories, myths, and who gets to write the endings.

About Susan Coll

Aguas/Waters

The Washington Writers’ Publishing House will publish their first-ever translation with Aguas/Waters by Miguel Avero, translated by Jona Colson on May 16, 2024, representing a major expansion of the regional press’s mission to include works in translation from cultures/languages that have significant representation in the Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia area. The Washington Writers’ Publishing House has committed to publishing a biennial translation collection from a DMV translator going forward—global writers translated by our regional translators.

“Miguel Avero’s poems demonstrate linguistic experimentation and music, which is infused in both the original and the translation. Aguas/Waters by Avero helps make sense of life and the self, highlighting the tradition of magical realism, and this translation will bring this important author to readers in the DMV and in the nation,” notes Jona Colson, author ofSaid Through Glass and co-president of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Partial funding from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has made this project possible.

Miguel Avero, author of Aguas/Waters, is a prolific contemporary writer in Uruguay. Uruguay is the smallest Spanish-speaking country in South America and is often overlooked for its literary significance. Uruguayan poetry is difficult to find in translation, and his work carries themes that include his love for his motherland, civil war, and political corruption. Avero’s poems elevate impressions of the everyday into something that we can only know through language and image.

About Jona Colson

Don't Forget to Write by Sara Goodman Confino
Don't Forget to Write
Don't Forget to Write by Sara Goodman Confino

In 1960, a young woman discovers a freedom she never knew existed in this exhilarating, funny, and emotional novel by the bestselling author of She’s Up to No Good.

When Marilyn Kleinman is caught making out with the rabbi’s son in front of the whole congregation, her parents ship her off to her great-aunt Ada for the summer. If anyone can save their daughter’s reputation, it’s Philadelphia’s strict premier matchmaker. Either that or Marilyn can kiss college goodbye.

To Marilyn’s surprise, Ada’s not the humorless septuagenarian her mother described. Not with that platinum-blonde hair, Hermès scarf, and Cadillac convertible. She’s sharp, straight-talking, takes her job very seriously, and abides by her own rules…mostly. As the summer unfolds, Ada and Marilyn head for the Jersey shore, where Marilyn helps Ada scope out eligible matches―for anyone but Marilyn, that is.

Because if there’s one thing Marilyn’s learned from Ada, it’s that she doesn’t have to settle. With the school year quickly approaching and her father threatening to disinherit her, Marilyn must make her choice for her future: return to the comfortable life she knows or embrace a risky, unknown path on her own.

About Sara Goodman Confino

Romney: A Reckoning

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! A remarkably illuminating biography of one of America’s most fascinating political figures—including news-making revelations from Mitt Romney himself about dissension within today’s Republican Party—written with his full cooperation by an award-winning writer at The Atlantic.

Few figures in American politics have seen more and said less than Mitt Romney. An outspoken dissident in Donald Trump’s GOP, he has made headlines in recent years for standing alone against the forces he believes are poisoning the party he once led. Romney was the first senator in history to vote to remove from office a president of his own party. When that president’s supporters went on to storm the US Capitol, Romney delivered a thundering speech from the Senate floor accusing his fellow Republicans of stoking insurrection. Despite these moments of public courage, Romney has shared very little about what he’s witnessed behind the scenes over his three decades in politics—in GOP cloakrooms and caucus lunches, in his private meetings with Donald Trump and his family, in his dealings with John McCain, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema. Now, exclusively for this biography, Romney has provided a window to his most private thoughts.

Based on dozens of interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals and private emails, this in-depth portrait by award-winning journalist McKay Coppins shows a public servant authentically wrestling with the choices he has made over his career. In lively, revelatory detail, the book traces Romney’s early life and rise through the ranks of a fast-transforming Republican Party and exposes how a trail of seemingly small compromises by political leaders has led to a crisis in democracy. Ultimately, Romney: A Reckoning is a redemptive story about a flawed politician who summoned his moral courage just as fear and divisiveness were overtaking American life.

About McKay Coppins

Yours, Creature

Yours Creature is composed of epistolary poems in the voice of Mary Shelley. Often written as missives to her famous literary mother, Wollstonecraft, the poems address months, years, and her own monstrous creation as they contend with exile, transience, and desire. These poems ask us to imagine the physical elements of Shelley’s existence in language that is both luminous and visceral. This is not a book that simply recreates a past, but one that transcends time as it threads together the loss and violence that history has asked women to suppress. The poems recognize the unspoken pairing of scarcity and creation; they explore how the monstrous is born out of rejection. Yours, Creature responds to a literary and historical narrative, but the poems exist as lyric, singing of the pleasure of creation and its transformative power.

About Jessica Cuello

Exordia by Seth Dickinson
Exordia
Exordia by Seth Dickinson

Michael Crichton meets Marvel’s Venom in award-winning author Seth Dickinson’s science fiction debut

Viciously funny, vivid to the point of horror, and entirely profound.―Arkady Martine

Magnificent. . . . A science fiction action juggernaut.―Tamsyn Muir

A most anticipated book of 2024 according to Goodreads, LitHub, and The New Scientist

Anna, I came to Earth tracking a very old story, a story that goes back to the dawn of time. It’s very unlikely that you’ll die right now. It wouldn’t be narratively complete.

Anna Sinjari―refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker―has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. Enter Ssrin, a many-headed serpent alien who is on the run from her own past. Ssrin and Anna are inexorably, dangerously drawn to each other, and their contact reveals universe-threatening stakes.

While humanity reels from disaster, Anna must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror. If they can manage to face their own demons, they just might save the world.

About Seth Dickinson

Becoming Madam Secretary

She took on titans, battled generals, and changed the world as we know it…

New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and dramatic new novel about an American heroine Frances Perkins.

Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference.

When she’s not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite Mary Harriman Rumsey, the flirtatious budding author Sinclair Lewis, and the brilliant but troubled reformer Paul Wilson, with whom she falls deeply in love.

But when Frances meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. She thinks he’s a rich, arrogant dilettante who gets by on a handsome face and a famous name. He thinks she’s a priggish bluestocking and insufferable do-gooder. Neither knows it yet, but over the next twenty years, they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House.

Frances is destined to rise in a political world dominated by men, facing down the Great Depression as FDR’s most trusted lieutenant—even as she struggles to balance the demands of a public career with marriage and motherhood. And when vicious political attacks mount and personal tragedies threaten to derail her ambitions, she must decide what she’s willing to do—and what she’s willing to sacrifice—to save a nation.

About Stephanie Dray

Rocket Men by John Eisenberg
Rocket Men: The Black Quarterbacks Who Revolutionized Pro Football
Rocket Men by John Eisenberg

An acclaimed sportswriter offers an inside look at the Black quarterbacks whose skill and grit transformed the NFL 

In Rocket Men, John Eisenberg offers the definitive history of Black quarterbacks in the NFL—men who shaped not only the history of football but the cause of civil rights in America. From early pioneers like Fritz Pollard to groundbreaking modern standouts like Marlin Briscoe and James “Shack” Harris, Black quarterbacks had to be twice as good as their white counterparts to get playing time—and even then, many never got that chance. That didn’t begin to change in earnest until the 1990s and the 2000s, when racist notions about what Black quarterbacks supposedly couldn’t do began to fade, paving the way for today’s stars like Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson. 

Drawing on deep historical research and exclusive interviews with Black quarterbacks and players, coaches, and talent evaluators who have worked alongside them, Rocket Men is a celebration of the athletes and activists who transformed the game. 

About John Eisenberg

Bea and the New Deal Horse by L.M. Elliott
Bea and the New Deal Horse
Bea and the New Deal Horse by L.M. Elliott

This lyrical middle grade historical novel set during the Great Depression from award-winning author L. M. Elliott is a moving tale of the spirit of American persistence, found family, and the magical partnership between girl and horse.

Bea wakes to Daddy’s note in a hayloft, where he abandoned her with her little sister after the stock market crash took everything: Daddy’s job at the bank, their home, Mama’s health and life.

How is Bea supposed to convince the imposing Mrs. Scott to take in two stray children? Mrs. Scott’s money and Virginia farm are drying up in a drought and the Great Depression, too. She might have to sell her beautiful horses, starting with a dangerous chestnut that has caused tragedy in the past and injures her stableman shortly after Bea arrives.

But wrestling with her own hurts and fears, Bea understands the chestnut’s skittish distrust. She sees hope in the powerful jumper—if he can compete at horse shows, they might save the farm, and maybe Bea can even win a place in Mrs. Scott’s heart.

About L. M. Elliott

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge by Helen Ellis
Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage
Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge by Helen Ellis

Even twenty years into marriage, Helen Ellis’s husband still makes her heart pitter patter. The New York Times bestselling author paints a portrait of true romance for our times in these surprising, sexy, and hilariously frank essays about love, marriage, and her last first kiss.

“Ellis is one of our greatest living humorists, in the same league as Sedaris and Irby…A fascinating portrait of middle-aged love.” —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward

Welcome to the Coral Lounge, a room in Helen Ellis’s New York City apartment painted such an exuberant shade that a Peeping Tom left a sticky note asking for the color. It is in the Coral Lounge where all the parties happen: A game called “What’s in the box?” makes its uproarious debut, the Puzzle Posse pounces on a 500-piece jigsaw of a beheaded priest, and guests don blindfolds for a raucous bridal shower.

When the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge, where Helen and her husband binge-watch Joan Collins’s Dynasty, dote on two spoiled cats, and where Helen discovers that even twenty years into marriage, her husband still makes her heart pitter patter.

About Helen Ellis

Set for Life by Andrew Ewell
Set for Life
Set for Life by Andrew Ewell

A wryly funny and moving novel that captures the complexities of marriage, art, friendship, and the fictions we create in order to become the people we wish to be.

A creative writing professor at a third-tier college in upstate New York is on his way home from a summer fellowship in France, where he’s spent the last three months loafing around Bordeaux, tasting the many varieties of French wine at his disposal, and doing just about anything but actually working on his long overdue novel. A stopover in Brooklyn to see his and his wife’s closest friends—John, a jaded poet-turned-lawyer with a dubious moral compass, and Sophie, a once-promising fiction writer with a complicated past and a mysterious allure—causes further trouble when he and Sophie wind up sleeping together while John is out serenading Brooklyn coeds with poems instead of preparing legal briefs.

But instead of succumbing to his failures as a teacher, writer, and husband, an odd freedom begins to bubble up. Could a love affair be the answer he’s been searching for? Could it offer the escape he needs from the department chair, Chet Bland, who’s been breathing down his neck? Relief from the gossip of colleagues and generational tension with students? Respite from embarrassment over his wife, Debra Crawford, and her meteoric rise as a novelist? His escapades might even make the perfect raw material for an absolutely devastating novel, which would earn him tenure, wealth, and celebrity—everything he needs to be set for life. If only he could be the one to write it.

A brilliant case of art imitating life, Andrew Ewell’s gem of a debut is a hilarious and poignant tour de force that asks who owns whose story, skewers the fictions created from our lives and others’, and brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “publish or perish.”

About Andrew Ewell

Solar Bear

An empowering picture book from New York Times bestselling author Beth Ferry (Stick and Stone) and Caldecott Honoree Brendan Wenzel (They All Saw a Cat) told with lyrical text and luminous illustrations.

Journey with a solar bear who shines a light on the endangered species around the world and join the cause with your own mighty roar in this hopeful love letter to planet Earth and those who inhabit it.

The Earth is ours.

Yours and mine.

So dare to care.

To glow. To shine.

‘Cause if you would,

and when you did,

then you will be a solar kid.

About Beth Ferry

Once in a Blue Moon by Sharon G. Flake
Once in a Blue Moon
Once in a Blue Moon by Sharon G. Flake

A beautiful and uplifting novel in verse about family, friendship, journeys that take us far from home and back again, renewed and more courageous from the three-time Coretta Scott King Honor winner of The Skin I’m In!

James Henry used to be brave. He hasn’t been the same since that fateful night at the lighthouse when his ma went searching for Dog. Now months later, he feels as small as the space between the numbers on a watch, nervous day and night, barely able to go outside. Even words have a hard time leaving his mouth. The only person he speaks to is Hattie, his courageous twin sister, who fiercely protects him, especially from bullies.

James Henry wants nothing more than to be brave again. However, finding his voice will mean confronting the truth about what happened at the lighthouse-a step James Henry isn’t sure he can take. Until a blue moon is forecast, and as Gran has said, everything is possible under a rare blue moon . . .

* “An evocative, immediate novel with compelling characters and a wonderfully well-paced plot.” —The Horn Book, starred review

About Sharon G. Flake

The Long War on Drugs

Since the early twentieth century, the United States has led a global prohibition effort against certain drugs in which production restriction and criminalization are emphasized over prevention and treatment as means to reduce problematic usage. This “war on drugs” is widely seen to have failed, and periodically decriminalization and legalization movements arise. Debates continue over whether the problems of addiction and crime associated with illicit use of drugs stem from their illegal status or the nature of the drugs themselves. In The Long War on Drugs Anne L. Foster explores the origin of the punitive approach to drugs and its continued appeal despite its obvious flaws. She provides a comprehensive overview, focusing not only on a political history of policy developments but also on changes in medical practices and understanding of drugs. Foster also outlines the social and cultural changes prompting different attitudes about drugs; the racial, environmental, and social justice implications of particular drug policies; and the international consequences of US drug policy.

About Anne L. Foster

The House on Sun Street

A young girl grows up in a family uprooted by the terror of an Islamic Revolution, where her culture, her gender, and her education are in peril.

For the curious and imaginative Moji, there is no better place to grow up than the lush garden of her grandparents in Tehran. However, as she sits with her sister underneath the grapevines, listening to their grandfather recount the enchanting stories of One Thousand and One Nights, revolution is brewing in her homeland. Soon, the last monarch of Iran will leave the country, and her home and her family will never be the same.

From Moji’s house on Sun Street, readers experience the 1979 Iranian revolution through the eyes of a young girl and her family members during a time of concussive political and social change. Moji must endure the harrowing first days of the violent revolution, a fraught passage to the US where there is only hostility from her classmates during the Iranian hostage crisis, her father’s detainment by the Islamic Revolutionary Army, and finally, the massive change in the status of women in post-revolution Iran. 

Along with these seismic shifts, for Moji, there are also the universal perils of love, sexuality, and adolescence. However, since Moji’s school is centered on political indoctrination, even a young girl’s innocent crush can mean catastrophe. Is Moji able to pull through? Will her family come to her rescue? And just like Scheherazade, will the power of stories help her prevail?

About Mojgan Ghazirad

American Shield by Aquilino Gonell
American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy
American Shield by Aquilino Gonell

American Shield is an all-American tale of duty and determination—beautifully told by an immigrant, a veteran, and a patriot.” —Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emerita of the United States House of Representatives

Set against the extraordinary events of January 6, 2021, Aquilino Gonell’s inspirational memoir is rooted in the joys and struggles of the immigrant experience that have long defined the American experiment

Aquilino Gonell came to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a young boy. Although he spoke no English, he dedicated himself to his adopted land, striving for the American dream. Determined to be a success story, he joined the army to pay for college. He saw action in Iraq and returned home with PTSD. Believing in the promise of our government, he focused on healing himself and supporting his family. His hard work paid off when he landed a coveted position with the United States Capitol Police and rose to the rank of sergeant.

January 6, 2021, changed everything. When insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, Gonell bravely faced down the mob attempting to thwart the peaceful transfer of power. The brutal injuries he sustained that day would end his career in law enforcement. But when some of the very people he put his life on the line to protect downplayed or denied the truth of that day, he chose to speak out against the injustice done to him and the country. Chronicling what it means to live a life of conviction, one that adheres to the best ideas of our democracy, American Shield is a bold testament to the power of truth, justice, and accountability from a highly decorated officer and immigrant who exemplifies the greatest aspirations of a grateful nation.

About Aquilino Gonell

Rewind by Lisa Graff
Rewind
Rewind by Lisa Graff

Back to the Future meets When You Reach Me in this powerful novel by National Book Award nominee Lisa Graff, in which a young girl is able to make sense of the present—and change her future—by meeting her father in the past.

As far as twelve-year-old McKinley O’Dair is concerned, the best thing about living in Gap Bend, Pennsylvania, is the Time Hop—the giant party the town throws every June to celebrate a single year in history. That one day is enough to make the few things that aren’t so fantastic about McKinley’s life—like her crabby homeroom teacher or her super-scheduled father—worth suffering through. And when McKinley learns that this year’s theme is 1993, she can’t wait to enter the Time Hop fashion show with a killer ’90s outfit she’s designed and sewn all on her own. But when the Time Hop rolls around, nothing goes as planned. In fact, it’s the biggest disaster of McKinley’s life.

Before she knows what’s hit her, McKinley somehow finds herself in the real 1993—and it’s not all kitschy parachute pants and Jurassic Park. All McKinley wants is to return to the present, but before she can, she’s going to have to make a big change—but which change is the right one?

This humorous and heartfelt novel about destiny and self-discovery shines a poignant light on the way life could play out—if a person is given a chance to rewind.

About Lisa Graff

InvestiGators: Agents of S.U.I.T.

InvestiGators fans, rejoice! Get ready to dive into the first volume of AGENTS OF S.U.I.T., featuring the weird and wacky co-workers of everyone’s favorite sewer-sleuthing super-agents, Mango and Brash!

At S.U.I.T. headquarters, Cilantro the Chameleon finally gets what she’s been waiting for: a field assignment. Only…it’s literally out in the middle of a field, and her orders are so vague, she can hardly tell what she’s supposed to be investigating. But as she begins to uncover a sheep-led worker’s rights revolt and an alien invasion conspiracy―not to mention a spooky haunting at the abandoned S.U.I.T. field outpost―Cilantro steps into her own V.E.S.T. as a valued member of the S.U.I.T. team. From InvestiGators mastermind John Patrick Green, the world of S.U.I.T. has never been more fun!

About John Patrick Green

Senorita Mariposa by Mister G
Señorita Mariposa
Senorita Mariposa by Mister G

A captivating and child-friendly look at the extraordinary journey that monarch butterflies take each year from Canada to Mexico; with a text in both English and Spanish.

Rhyming text and lively illustrations showcase the epic trip taken by the monarch butterflies. At the end of each summer, these international travelers leave Canada to fly south to Mexico for the winter–and now readers can come along for the ride! Over mountains capped with snow, to the deserts down below. Children will be delighted to share in the fascinating journey of the monarchs and be introduced to the people and places they pass before they finally arrive in the forests that their ancestors called home.

About MISTER G

Sympathy for the Monster by Michael B Gushue
Sympathy for the Monster
Sympathy for the Monster by Michael B Gushue

Within these pages, Gushue masterfully captures the essence of the silver screen, infusing his verses with the haunting allure of the celluloid world.

“Sympathy for the Monster” unveils a highway-laden landscape, where each automobile becomes an iron lung of speed, enveloping its driver in a relentless pursuit. The roads themselves emerge as frames, holding captive those who traverse them, reminding us that escape is but an illusion. With poetic finesse, Gushue delves into the depths of taxidermy, unraveling the enigmatic process of transforming sawdust into a pure substance that breathes life into inert bodies. The truth of skin and the gestures of fight or flight take center stage, revealing that our outer appearances shape our very existence.

Contemplating the enigma of freedom, Gushue invites readers to ponder whether it lies in being true to oneself or in the process of becoming who we are meant to be. He deftly weaves together the metamorphosis of identities, from Clemens to Twain, revealing the complex interplay between personal transformation and the shackles of societal expectations. The author’s exploration of the role of money as an answer to the yearning for freedom adds a thought-provoking layer to the tapestry of his verses.
In a poignant address to the Monster, Gushue unearths the inner turmoil that propels one into a world steeped in hate. The Monster’s reflection in the lake mirrors a broken face, a drowning flower, perpetually pursued by men whose blood surges with an unquenchable flicker. The haunting struggle of the Monster to find solace becomes a shared experience, as the windmill of torment burns through its very core. Together, we navigate the barren moors of asphalt and gravel, stepping outside the movie theater to confront the realities that resonate within us all.

A spellbinding tapestry of words, infusing the cinematic realm with an ethereal quality that captivates.

About Michael B Gushue

The Familiar

“‘The feminists lied,’ she tells me. ‘They said we could do everything / we wanted.’ ‘Anything,’ I correct her.” A book-length narrative in poems, The Familiar explores female mid-life existential crisis through two characters: the Ordinary Self and the Extraordinary Self. A true homebody, satisfied with routine and the comforts of domesticity, the Ordinary Self wakes one day to find that while she’s been sleeping—for months? for years?— the Extraordinary Self has wreaked havoc in a blind, desperate attempt to accomplish something—anything—truly great. As the Ordinary Self works to reestablish harmony and order within the household, the Extraordinary Self must come to terms with her failure to meet both the ambitions of her youth and the standards that society has set for her as a mother, as a colleague, and as a spouse. Fabulist and absurdist, The Familiar features a mix of high and low language, philosophy, and pop culture while exploring the effects of second and third-wave feminism. It’s a book for anyone who’s vacillated between dreams, desires, and ambition on the one hand, and on the other a deeply ingrained need for stability and calm. It’s a book for anyone who may be approaching or going through mid-life and thinking, “Oh no. What have I done?”

About Sarah Kain Gutowski

The Ghostly Photos by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Mysteries of Trash and Treasure: The Ghostly Photos
The Ghostly Photos by Margaret Peterson Haddix

New York Times bestselling middle-grade thriller author Margaret Peterson Haddix returns to the Mysteries of Trash and Treasure series as Colin and Nevaeh unravel a mystery from the 1930s and explore the emotions associated with death and dying.

Colin and Nevaeh are great at finding things. After all, they found each other and became best friends—even though their parents are business rivals. They also found hidden boxes of secret letters, which led them to unravel mysteries about kids from the 1970s.

But when they started Mystery Solvers Inc., they didn’t expect to be asked to find a ghost.

Ree recruits them to investigate a series of old, spooky photos left behind in her family’s new house. The photos show a boy who looks totally see-through. And in some, he’s in a coffin.

That’s not so odd for Ree, who lives above a funeral home. But when Colin and Nevaeh start investigating, they discover other sightings of the boy—and other secrets Ree is hiding.

The more clues they find, the more they realize this mystery goes back to a time called the Great Depression. Will history, once again, help them solve the case?

About Margaret Peterson Haddix

The House of Plain Truth by Donna Hemans
The House of Plain Truth
The House of Plain Truth by Donna Hemans

A lyrical, lush, evocative story about a fractured Jamaican family and a daughter determined to reclaim her home.

When Pearline receives grave news about her ailing father, she abruptly leaves Brooklyn for her childhood home in Jamaica. But Pearline isn’t prepared for a tense reunion with her sisters or for her father’s startling deathbed wish that she repair their long-broken family legacy and find the sister and two brothers no one has seen in more than 50 years.

Moving through time and place, from modern-day Brooklyn and Montego Bay to 1930s Havana and back again, The House of Plain Truth is a journey through generational secrets and a family coming to terms with its past.

Inspired by the author’s own history, this soulful novel explores a fascinating story of immigration, divided loyalties, and what one woman must sacrifice in her attempt to find home.

About Donna Hemans

A Little Bit Super by Leah Henderson
A Little Bit Super: With Small Powers Come Big Problems
A Little Bit Super by Leah Henderson

In these hilarious stories by some of the top authors of middle grade fiction today, each young character is coping with a minor superpower—while also discovering their power to change themselves and their community, find their voice, and celebrate what makes them unique.

The kids in these humorous short stories each have a minor superpower they’re learning to live with. One can shape-shift—but only part of her body, and only on Mondays. Another can always tell whether an avocado is perfectly ripe. One can even hear the thoughts of the animals in the pet store! But what these stories are really about is their young protagonists “owning” a power that contributes to their individuality, that allows them to find their place in the world, that shows them a potential they might not have imagined.

Because if you really think about it, we all have something special and unique about ourselves that makes us a little bit super. We all have the power to change as an individual, to change our communities for the better, to have a voice and to speak up. These playful, thought-provoking tales from some of today’s top middle grade authors prompt readers to consider what their own superpower might be, and how they can use it.

Written by Pablo Cartaya, Nikki Grimes, Leah Henderson, Jarrett Krosoczka, Remy Lai, Kyle Lukoff, Meg Medina, Daniel Nayeri, Linda Sue Park, Mitali Perkins, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Gary D. Schmidt, Brian Young, and Ibi Zoboi; coedited by Leah Henderson and Gary D. Schmidt.

About Leah Henderson

Exploding Head by Cynthia Marie Hoffman
Exploding Head
Exploding Head by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

A vivid memoir-in-prose-poems about life with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) from Cynthia Marie Hoffman, author of Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer.

This collection of prose poems chronicles a woman’s childhood onset and adult journey through obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which manifests in fearful obsessions and counting compulsions that impact her relationship to motherhood, religion, and the larger world. Cynthia Marie Hoffman’s unsettling, image-rich poems chart the interior landscape of the obsessive mind. Along with an angel who haunts the poems’ speaker throughout her life, she navigates her fear of guns and accidents, fears for the safety of her child, and reckons with her own mortality, ultimately finding a path toward peace.

About Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Like it Never Happened

Decades ago, four friends concealed a deadly secret–but not all lies stay buried in this psychological suspense for fans of Ashley Winstead and Alison Gaylin.

Thirty years ago, Tommy, Malcolm, Henry, and Kevin were best friends graduating high school, brothers almost, until the night they did something terrible. The decision to keep hidden what they did in that parking lot shattered their friendship and warped their lives. But when Kevin, struggling with a heroin addiction, drives his motorcycle into the side of a truck, the other three find themselves together again—at Kevin’s funeral.

When they meet Kevin’s wife Naomi at the wake, they can tell that she knows everything, and when they learn that she’s a reporter, they’re terrified. When she sends them to visit one of their victims from that night—at the nursing home where he’s been suffering for decades—they do as they’re told, even though they know it won’t stop there.

After watching her husband pay a steep price for keeping the friends’ secret, Naomi has crafted a plan to make Tommy, Malcolm, and Henry pay their fair share. When the three men decide to fight back, they’re forced to decide just how far they’ll go this time.

About Jeff Hoffmann

Brought Forth On This Continent by Harold Holzer
Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration
Brought Forth On This Continent by Harold Holzer

From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln’s grappling with the politics of immigration against the backdrop of the Civil War.

In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry.

Abraham Lincoln’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln’s Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society.

Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize, charts Lincoln’s political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, “The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln’s leadership; but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the ‘nation might live.’” An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln’s life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.

About Harold Holzer

A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself

From New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe comes a daring first-hand account of one young woman’s unbelievable adventure as one of the most terrifying sea rovers of all time.

In Boston, as the Golden Age of Piracy comes to a bloody close, Hannah Masury – bound out to service at a waterfront inn since childhood – is ready to take her life into her own hands. When a man is hanged for piracy in the town square and whispers of a treasure in the Caribbean spread, Hannah is forced to flee for her life, disguising herself as a cabin boy in the pitiless crew of the notorious pirate Edward “Ned” Low. To earn the freedom to choose a path for herself, Hannah must hunt down the treasure and change the tides.

Meanwhile, professor Marian Beresford pieces Hannah’s story together in 1930, seeing her own lack of freedom reflected back at her as she watches Hannah’s transformation. At the center of Hannah Masury’s account, however, lies a centuries-old mystery that Marian is determined to solve, just as Hannah may have been determined to take it to her grave.

A True Account tells the unforgettable story of two women in different worlds, both shattering the rules of their own society and daring to risk everything to go out on their own account.

About Katherine Howe

Invincible: Fathers and Mothers of Black America

This lyrical picture book explores the birth of Black America, focusing on the little-known men and women who fought for justice and for an America where freedom truly rang for all.

We’re familiar with the founding fathers of white America, but who are the founding fathers (and mothers!) of Black America?

In a poetic narrative of the origins of Black America, acclaimed Black author and publisher Wade Hudson teaches us about the little-known men and women who had a profound effect on the history of the nation. Black America was built by brave pioneers—men and women taken from Africa, who suffered and struggled to build a country, a culture, and institutions. Emphasizing that freedom didn’t ring for all when the United States gained its independence from Great Britain, Hudson shows the slow process by which Black Americans fought for justice over the course of many generations.

Ending with a call to consciousness and to action, Invincible is a powerful, informative, and inspiring account of a history that deserves to be better known.

About Wade Hudson

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

New York Times Bestseller
Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best Books

In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a page-turning 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation’s last segregated asylums, that the New York Times described as “fascinating…meticulous research” and bestselling author Clint Smith endorsed it as “a book that left me breathless.”

On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports readers behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum.
 
In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
 
As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital’s wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America’s new focus.
 
In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.

About Antonia Hylton

Rescue is Elsewhere by Donald Illich
Rescue is Elsewhere
Rescue is Elsewhere by Donald Illich

In Rescue is Elsewhere, humans are abducted by disappointed UFOs, an astronaut is returned home to Earth by aliens, moon creatures steal our comedians, and a boy dreams of building a rocket to fly to another planet. Alternately serious and satirical, Donald Illich explores the phenomenon of UFOs and how they shape our imagination and lives. His poems unravel from the outer reaches of space to the neighborhood that you or I might live in, and the magic of language brings to the page multiple worlds hidden in the universe. Illich’s collection belongs in the sci-fi section of the library, where its tales can rub up against the fiction in classic pulp magazines of the 20th century.

The collection also features two bonus sci-fi stories, Paper Dad and Apple Sky.

This book is published by Red Ogre Review via a grant from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Readers Say

A good book of poems finds its way into your days, into your thoughts and habits. A great book of poems, though, wraps you in its light and pulls you into its own universe. This is exactly the experience I get reading Donald Illich’s new collection, Rescue is Elsewhere. These poems whisk you into space. They probe and they reveal. More than anything, these lines yearn for connections. They lead us toward communion with the vastness of space through the tiniest of keyholes, the most human of wishes. Pick up this book. Follow this poet. You’ll be grateful for the journey.

Jack B. Bedell, Against the Woods’ Dark Trunks & Poet Laureate of Louisiana, 2017 – 2019

– – – – –

These poems take us to other worlds, literally. Donald Illich has crafted a collection of space poems, reminiscent of 50s drive-in movies and pulp magazines. In the style of great sci-fi, many times, the aliens in Illich’s poems represent other things: jingoism, a launching place for talk of environmental destruction, fears about the future.

“I don’t want to know what I don’t know,” one character says. In most cases, the aliens represent something beautiful and otherworldly, something that can lift us out of the humdrum day-to-day focus on ourselves. The question is are we going to hide in the basement or embrace the light?

CL Bledsoe, You Hated Us for Our Wings So We Never Flew

– – – – –

The poems of Rescue Is Elsewhere take us to outer space and back, but our real journey involves the mind of Donald Illich: a place of intelligence, wit, and compassion. Like Tony Hoagland and Campbell McGrath, he is a chronicler of attention and wonder, and a singular fabulist for our time.

J.D. Smith, Transit

About Donald Illich

The Year of Living Constitutionally by A.J. Jacobs
The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning
The Year of Living Constitutionally by A.J. Jacobs

The New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically chronicles his hilarious adventures in attempting to follow the original meaning of the Constitution, as he searches for answers to one of the most pressing issues of our time: How should we interpret America’s foundational document?

A.J. Jacobs learned the hard way that donning a tricorne hat and marching around Manhattan with a 1700s musket will earn you a lot of strange looks. In the wake of several controversial rulings by the Supreme Court and the on-going debate about how the Constitution should be interpreted, Jacobs set out to understand what it means to live by the Constitution.

In The Year of Living Constitutionally, A.J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers by living as closely as possible to the original meaning of the Constitution. He asserts his right to free speech by writing his opinions on parchment with a quill and handing them out to strangers in Times Square. He consents to quartering a soldier, as is his Third Amendment right. He turns his home into a traditional 1790s household by lighting candles instead of using electricity, boiling mutton, and—because women were not allowed to sign contracts— feebly attempting to take over his wife’s day job, which involves a lot of contract negotiations.

The book blends unforgettable adventures—delivering a handwritten petition to Congress, applying for a Letter of Marque to become a legal pirate for the government, and battling redcoats as part of a Revolutionary War reenactment group—with dozens of interviews from constitutional experts from both sides. Jacobs dives deep into originalism and living constitutionalism, the two rival ways of interpreting the document.

Much like he did with the Bible in The Year of Living Biblically, Jacobs provides a crash course on our Constitution as he experiences the benefits and perils of living like it’s the 1790s. He relishes, for instance, the slow thinking of the era, free from social media alerts. But also discovers the progress we’ve made since 1789 when married women couldn’t own property.

Now more than ever, Americans need to understand the meaning and value of the Constitution. As politicians and Supreme Court Justices wage a high-stakes battle over how literally we should interpret the Constitution, A.J. Jacobs provides an entertaining yet illuminating look into how this storied document fits into our democracy today.

About A.J. Jacobs

Loot by Tania James
Loot
Loot by Tania James

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A spellbinding historical novel set in the eighteenth century: a hero’s quest, a love story, the story of a young artist coming of age, and an exuberant heist adventure that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across two continents and fifty years.

A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Kirkus Reviews

“Addictively absorbing.” —The New York Times Book Review

This wildly inventive, irresistible feat of storytelling from a writer at the height of her powers is “an expertly-plotted, deeply affecting novel about war, displacement, emigration, and an elusive mechanical tiger” (Maggie O’Farrell, best-selling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait).

Abbas is just seventeen years old when his gifts as a woodcarver come to the attention of Tipu Sultan, and he is drawn into service at the palace in order to build a giant tiger automaton for Tipu’s sons, a gift to commemorate their return from British captivity. His fate—and the fate of the wooden tiger he helps create—will mirror the vicissitudes of nations and dynasties ravaged by war across India and Europe.

Working alongside the legendary French clockmaker Lucien du Leze, Abbas hones his craft, learns French, and meets Jehanne, the daughter of a French expatriate.  When Du Leze is finally permitted to return home to Rouen, he invites Abbas to come along as his apprentice. But by the time Abbas travels to Europe, Tipu’s palace has been looted by British forces, and the tiger automaton has disappeared. To prove himself, Abbas must retrieve the tiger from an estate in the English countryside, where it is displayed in a collection of plundered art.

About Tania James

Red String Theory by Lauren Kung Jessen
Red String Theory
Red String Theory by Lauren Kung Jessen

Booklist: The Biggest, Buzziest Romance Books of 2024

In this charming rom-com about two star-crossed lovers, a woman whose life is guided by her belief in the red-string of fate finds her perfect match—but his skepticism about true love puts a knot in their chances.

Just a date . . . or a twist of fate?

​When it comes to love and art, Rooney Gao believes in signs. Most of all, she believes in the Chinese legend that everyone is tied to their one true love by the red string of fate. And that belief has inspired her career as an artist, as well as the large art installations she makes with (obviously) red string. That is until artist’s block strikes and Rooney begins to question everything. But then fate leads her to the perfect guy . . .

Jack Liu is perfect. He’s absurdly smart, successful, handsome, and after one enchanting New York night—under icy February skies and fueled by fried dumplings—all signs point to destiny. Only Jack doesn’t believe. And after their magical date, it looks like they might be lost to each other forever . . . until they’re given one more chance to reconnect. But can Rooney convince a reluctant skeptic to take a leap of fate?

About Lauren Kung Jessen

Flying to America by Luther Jett
Flying to America
Flying to America by Luther Jett

W. Luther Jett’s new poetry collection begins with the question, “Who made this house?”, reminding current residents “You did not get here on your own, / and when you sleep and dream, / you do not dream alone.” He closes observing, “There it lingers, unfinished – / the story we labored to sing,” but that’s as it should be for “we do not want this hymn to end. // Glory to the muck.” Throughout the poems in between, he sings his hymn, and prayer, to the muck and unfinished business that is America, the place and the dream, and to all who have had a hand in the making of it. And if those dreams often are foreboding (“Ground Zero”), that is an accurate mirror of the myth of America, and of our current fractured state. (He even accomplishes that rare feat, a truly original poem memorializing the victims of 9/11.) He imagines future archaeologists trying to recover our music, of libraries devoured by invading foxes and memories lost “until but a word remains — / then not even that, only the language of stones.” But he’s not ready to give up just yet (“Can U hear me / Ameri-ka in the rishrush / roar of the big trucks?”), and he offers this lesson from his own “Heritage” of ancestors “making war upon each other”: “At the last, / it’s neither the battle nor the war / but the peace which comes after \ that makes this world spin on and on.”

Praise for W. Luther Jett & Flying to America

Luther Jett’s book, Flying to America, is an invitation to exploration through visual, sensual, and often melancholy poems that immerse the reader equally in beauty and tragedy, offering an introspective immersion in empathy and love, and also conveying heartbreak and carnage through “Ground Zero,” and “Broken Code”, his gripping 9-11/war poems. Disillusionment rings strong in his poem, “American Dream”. Jett’s poems lay bare for reckoning the roughness and cruelty of humanity, yet defy the notion that we have no worth, that hope is in vain. In his “A Psalm for the Archaeologists,” Jett offers as much an admonition as a prayer that despite what our “dry bones” will one day say of us, “the carbon will not be deciphered” to adequately assess us. Luther Jett is masterful in his ability to entice with poems that are at once universal and personal. His imagery and list poems are intense and intimate, speaking of our humanness, if not at times our seeming inability to be humane. This collection is a must-read. It carries the reader swiftly yet calls us to re-read such elegance and beauty. Flying to America beckons us. The message is worthy of our embrace.

J. Joy “Sistah Joy” Matthews Alford, Prince George’s County Poet Laureate Emerita (2018-2023)

In this meditative and powerful collection, Jett tells us, “you do not dream alone.” These poems get at the spiritual underbelly of life, the mysteries of existence, love, and loneliness, the “dream of yourself” we’re always struggling to remember. Jett writes evocative poems that recall “the nameless ache” we all carry through our day-to-day tasks. He’s carrying it right there with us, guiding us through while we tremble at the beauty of life.

CL Bledsoe, author of Having a Baby to Save a Marriage & The Bottle Episode

Luther Jett’s poems diagram “the fulcrum of our age” scattered across little towns with their “slow progress of lamps”, which are but a sacrament for the “highway[s] of crows” to “a dusky smear of molecules spreading in the autumn wind”. The mementos of Flying to America are suburban dreams turned nightmares, generational conflicts and conquerings that have imprinted a nation of people, “their blood, once opposed, mingles in me”. Jett asks a country drowning in her own egoism to “[t]ear up those papers, your bills of passage, your manifests, destinies, and all that come after” and to suppose instead, “an angel passed among these narrow streets at midnight”. There is a deeply rooted logicism in Jett’s writing, one that lays bare the brutalism of historic moments against oozing taboo fantasy, the perfect foil for shocking political theater: “Let’s play pretend. You be the daddy.” Tragic histories in Flying to America are “an animal which was never given a name, cries in the night”. Jett masterfully anchors the vastness of the American ideal in realism seen through “eyes sealed with copper, our hands eroding to bone, to radium”. This is not magical realism, the “windsea washing away the little shells on which we have scratched our names / the only mark remaining”, but American realism.

Sara Cahill Marron, author of Call Me Spes, publisher at Beltway Editions

About the Author

W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals, including The GW Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon (now The Mid-Atlantic Review), New Verse News, Potomac Review, Little Patuxent Review, Rockhurst Review, District Lit, Footnote, Third Wednesday, Live Encounters, Tuck Magazine, Algebra of Owls, Lines & Stars, and Main Street Rag. His poems have also appeared in several anthologies, including Proud to Be (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2013), My Cruel Invention (Meerkat Press, 2015), Element(ary)My Dear and Secrets and Dreams (both from Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2015 & 2016), Written in Arlington (Paycock Press, 2020), The Great World of Days (Day Eight, 2021), and 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press, 2021). Luther’s poem “Zeta” was named a co-winner in the 2022 American Writers Review competition, sponsored by San Fedele Press. Most recently, “How Many Fingers”, published in Bourgeon, was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.

He is the author of five poetry chapbooks: Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father (Finishing Line Press, 2015), Our Situation (Prolific Press, 2018), Everyone Disappears (Finishing Line Press, 2020), Little Wars (Kelsay Books, 2021), and Watchman, What of the Night? (CW Books, 2022).

Portions of this book were performed as a spoken word piece during the 2009 Capital Fringe Festival in Washington D.C.

About Luther Jett

Invisible Son by Kim Johnson
Invisible Son
Invisible Son by Kim Johnson

From the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of This Is My America comes another thriller about a wrongly accused teen desperate to recclaim both his innocence and his first love.

Life can change in an instant.
When you’re wrongfully accused of a crime.
When a virus shuts everything down.
When the girl you love moves on.

Andre Jackson is determined to reclaim his identity. But returning from juvie doesn’t feel like coming home. His Portland, Oregon, neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying, and COVID-19 shuts down school before he can return. And Andre’s suspicions about his arrest for a crime he didn’t commit even taint his friendships. It’s as if his whole life has been erased.

The one thing Andre is counting on is his relationship with the Whitaker kids—especially his longtime crush, Sierra. But Sierra’s brother Eric is missing, and the facts don’t add up as their adoptive parents fight to keep up the act that their racially diverse family is picture-perfect. If Andre can find Eric, he just might uncover the truth about his own arrest. But in a world where power is held by a few and Andre is nearly invisible, searching for the truth is a dangerous game.

Critically acclaimed author Kim Johnson delivers another social justice thriller that shines a light on being young and Black in America—perfect for fans of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and Dear Justyce by Nic Stone.

About Kim Johnson

Midlife Abecedarian by Melissa Fite Johnson
Midlife Abecedarian
Midlife Abecedarian by Melissa Fite Johnson

Midlife Abecedarian is a nostalgic collection that takes the reader on a journey through time. It provides a template for a life well-lived, even if you’re only halfway through. Conjuring memories and a sense of satisfaction and comfort, Midlife Abecedarian is a map to things remembered and things best left forgotten. It does not reminisce on the one that got away, instead it shows the reader that the one who stayed is the one to build a life with. With a keen eye for making the ordinary extraordinary, Melissa Fite Johnson pulls the reader into her world, which may not be cool to the high schoolers she teaches, but it is a world you’ll find yourself reflected back in. And it is a world you’ll want to return to, again and again.

**

With deep, unapologetic attention to the revelations of midlife, Melissa Fite Johnson’s MIDLIFE ABECEDARIAN reads as devotional to the miraculous present and as fearless, honest reckoning with the past. What does it mean to find peace, to be grounded in our own right at the midpoint of our lives, even as God is a glass / drying on the counter, even as the wind insists and every blade of grass bristles? Who are we as women if we do not choose to be mothers? Who are we as women if we choose to love ourselves and to be loved? MIDLIFE ABECEDARIAN accounts for what remains unresolved in our histories, but it also insists that we acknowledge the sacred and ordinary moments of daily life as they unfold. In this striking collection, Johnson acclaims the power of forging one’s own path, in a world which tries relentlessly to define us.

-Joan Kwon Glass, author of Night Swim

This collection revels in formal skill and inventiveness, filled with sonnets, villanelles, pantoums, and of course abecedarians as well as free verse and prose poems. These poems invite the reader to engage not only with the contemporary but also with American literary tradition, particularly represented by Whitman, who appears in several poems as a kind of ornery muse. In response to Whitman’s cosmic perspective, Melissa Fite Johnson asks us to pay attention to the inescapable, ineffable texture of the now: “I am trying to write the present. / A quiet night, a photo of a moment // I wouldn’t think to photograph. Isn’t this / the origin of all poems? The blink, the breath.”

-Laura Passin, author of Borrowing Your Body

In Midlife Abecedarian, Johnson “miracles” the ordinary, claiming “no one wants to hear that shit” and then “writing the opposite.” She states, “I was beginning,” as she is, and as we all are, every day, beginning anew. These poems insist on vulnerability, on NOT pretending, as they urge the reader to believe that “there are many paths to happiness.” The speaker is inviting-part 90’s teen, part woman, part teacher, part poet. This book is one of those paths. These poems are a balm, offering, “This is why / we’re here-to live and to die, for someone to care.” Isn’t that the point of poetry? To find magic in the ordinary? She admits that loving her life might not be a popular opinion, but it is. We should all be so lucky. Let these poems inspire love, attention and overall, care.

-Leah Umansky, author of Of Tyrant

About Melissa Fite Johnson

Destroy the Day

In the thrilling conclusion to the Defy the Night series, New York Times bestselling author Brigid Kemmerer crafts heartrending twists and devastating turns that will keep readers breathless to the very end.

Left for dead, but desperate to survive . . . they have one last chance to save their kingdom.

Prince Corrick is out of options. Held captive by the vicious Oren Crane, he’s desperate to reunite with Tessa, but will need to ally with the rebel leader Lochlan, who until now wished him dead. An unlikely but deadly pair, Corrick and Lochlan must plot their next moves carefully. . .

An island away, Tessa Cade is heartbroken and angry. Grieving Corrick, and unsure how to find a way back to Kandala, she doesn’t know who to trust. Until Rian–the man she trusts least–makes an offer: aid in a plot to finally oust Oren Crane and see what the future holds. . .

Meanwhile in Kandala, Harristan is dethroned and on the run. He’s struggling to unite the rebels in his fractured kingdom, but he finds support–and maybe more–in unexpected places.

Can Harristan be the king his people need? Can Corrick and Tessa find their way back to each other? As outside threats loom and the fires of revolution burn from within, time is running out to save their kingdom.

About Brigid Kemmerer

Drawing Deena by Hena Khan
Drawing Deena
Drawing Deena by Hena Khan

From the award-winning author of Amina’s Voice and Amina’s Song comes a tenderhearted middle grade novel about a young Pakistani American artist determined to manage her anxiety and forge her own creative path.

Deena’s never given a name to the familiar knot in her stomach that appears when her parents argue about money, when it’s time to go to school, or when she struggles to find the right words. She manages to make it through each day with the help of her friends and the art she loves to make.

While her parents’ money troubles cause more and more stress, Deena wonders if she can use her artistic talents to ease their burden. She creates a logo and social media account to promote her mom’s home-based business selling clothes from Pakistan to the local community. With her cousin and friends modeling the outfits and lending their social media know-how, business picks up.

But the success and attention make Deena’s cousin and best friend, Parisa, start to act funny. Suddenly Deena’s latest creative outlet becomes another thing that makes her feel nauseated and unsure of herself. After Deena reaches a breaking point, both she and her mother learn the importance of asking for help and that, with the right support, Deena can create something truly beautiful.

About Hena Khan

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
Happiness Falls
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • When a father goes missing, his family’s desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another in this thrilling page-turner, a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.

OPRAH DAILY’S #1 NOVEL OF THE YEAR • ONE OF PEOPLE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR •  WASHINGTON POST, BOOKPAGE, KIRKUS REVIEWS, NEW YORK POST, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, BOOK RIOT, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, REAL SIMPLE, CRIMEREADS, AND SHE READSBEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Belletrist Book Club Pick • 
Finalist for the New American Voices Award • “This is a story with so many twists and turns I was riveted through the last page.”—Jodi Picoult

“A brilliant, satisfying, compassionate mystery that is as much about language and storytelling as it is about a missing father. I loved this book.”—Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“I fell in love with the fascinating, brilliant family at the center of this riveting book.”—Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful

“We didn’t call the police right away.” Those are the electric first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything—which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut, Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing-person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.

About Angie Kim

Luigi, the Spider Who Wanted to Be a Kitten by Michelle Knudsen
Luigi, the Spider Who Wanted to Be a Kitten
Luigi, the Spider Who Wanted to Be a Kitten by Michelle Knudsen

From the New York Times best-selling creators of Library Lion comes a warm (and delightfully fuzzy) storybook about learning to be—and be loved for—exactly who you are.

On a street of old houses, a big hairy spider is searching for a home with dark corners to hide in. But when he wakes up, he finds a hand reaching for him and a lady proclaiming that she has always wanted a kitten—and will name him Luigi! At first, a somewhat puzzled Luigi, used to being left alone to creep and dangle and spin webs, resists her kind advances. But soon, tasty breakfasts and getting tucked into bed (no one’s ever wished him good night before) have him thinking that kittens surely live magical lives. I will be a kitten! he decides. But how long can he keep up his facade, and what might be at stake in pretending to be someone you’re not? The award-winning duo behind Library Lion delivers another classic in the making, marked by humor and depth, endearing characters, and the assurance that the right people will accept and adore us, unconditionally, just as we are.

About Michelle Knudsen

Chasing Hope by Nicholas Kristof
Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life
Chasing Hope by Nicholas Kristof

From New York Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize winner, and best-selling author Nicholas D. Kristof, an intimate and gripping memoir about a life in journalism

Since 1984, Nicholas Kristof has worked almost continuously for The New York Times as a reporter, foreign correspondent, bureau chief, and now columnist, becoming one of the foremost reporters of his generation. Here, he recounts his event-filled path from a small-town farm in Oregon to every corner of the world.

Reporting from Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo, while traveling far afield to India, Africa, and Europe, Kristof witnessed and wrote about century-defining events: the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the Yemeni civil war, the Darfur genocide in Sudan, and the wave of addiction and despair that swept through his hometown and a broad swath of working-class America. Fully aware that coverage of atrocities generates considerably fewer page views than the coverage of politics, he nevertheless continued to weaponize his pen against regimes and groups violating basic human rights, raising the cost of oppression and torture. Some of the risks he took while doing so make for hair-raising reading.

Kristof writes about some of the great members of his profession and introduces us to extraordinary people he has met, such as the dissident whom he helped escape from China and a Catholic nun who browbeat a warlord into releasing schoolgirls he had kidnapped. These are the people, the heroes, who have allowed Kristof to remain optimistic. Side by side with the worst of humanity, you always see the best.

This is a candid memoir of vulnerability and courage, humility and purpose, mistakes and learning—a singular tale of the trials, tribulations, and hope to be found in a life dedicated to the pursuit of truth.

About Nicholas Kristof

Fixer by Edgar Kunz
Fixer
Fixer by Edgar Kunz

From the author of the award-winning Tap Out – “a gritty, insightful debut” (Washington Post) – Edgar Kunz’s second poetry collection propels the reader across the shifting terrain of late-capitalist America.

Temp jobs, conspiracy theories, squatters, talk therapy, urban gardening, the robot revolution: this collection fixes its eye on the strangeness of labor, through poems that are searching, keen, and wry. The virtuosic central sequence explores the untimely death of the poet’s estranged father, a handyman and addict, and the brothers left to sort through the detritus of a life long lost to them. Through lyrical, darkly humorous vignettes, Kunz asks what it costs to build a home and a love that not only lasts but sustains.

About Edgar Kunz

A Step Past Darkness

SIX CLASSMATES. ONE TERRIFYING NIGHT. A MURDER TWENTY YEARS IN THE MAKING…

There’s something sinister under the surface of the idyllic, suburban town of Wesley Falls, and it’s not just the abandoned coal mine that lies beneath it. The summer of 1995 kicks off with a party in the mine where six high school students witness a horrifying crime that changes the course of their lives.

The six couldn’t be more different.

  • Maddy, a devout member of the local megachurch
  • Kelly, the bookworm next door
  • James, a cynical burnout
  • Casey, a loveable football player
  • Padma, the shy straight-A student
  • Jia, who’s starting to see visions she can’t explain

When they realize that they can’t trust anyone but each other, they begin to investigate what happened on their own. As tensions escalate in town to a breaking point, the six make a vow of silence, bury all their evidence, and promise to never

About Vera Kurian

Sona and the Golden Beasts

From Newbery Honor and Walter Award–winning author Rajani LaRocca comes a gripping middle grade fantasy perfect for fans of The Serpent’s Secret and The Last Mapmaker.

Though music is outlawed in the land of Devia, Sona hears it everywhere. Sona is a Malech, a member of the ruling class that conquered Devia centuries ago. Malechs forbade music to prevent the native Devans from using their magic, and Sona hides her abilities lest they put her in danger.

Then Sona discovers an orphaned wolf pup. She believes the pup, with its golden ears, might be related to one of the five sacred beasts of Devia, and she vows to keep it safe. That means bringing the pup in tow when Sona embarks on a perilous quest, along with a Devan boy, to secure the nectar of life for a loved one who has fallen gravely ill. On the journey, as Sona uncovers secrets about the Malechian empire and her own identity, she realizes that the fate of the sacred beasts, and the future of Devia, just might come down to her.

This captivating fantasy novel by award-winning author Rajani LaRocca will sweep readers into Sona’s quest across the land of Devia as she grapples with the lasting impact of colonial rule and learns to fight for what she knows is right. 

About Rajani LaRocca

Go and Get with Rex

The Geisel Award–winning creators of See the Cat channel their comic sensibility into a rousing alphabetical exercise in thinking outside the box.

Jack, Jill, and Rex are excited to play a game of Go and Get! The rules are simple: on the count of three, each player must go and get something that begins with a certain letter. While Jack’s and Jill’s picks always fit the bill (What starts with F? Frog! Fish!), Rex keeps getting it wrong (a duck?)—or does he? David LaRochelle and Mike Wohnoutka share a laugh-out-loud primer on subverting expectations that will have readers clamoring to play Go and Get themselves—and competing to see who can come up with the most creative answers.

About David LaRochelle

The Weekend Retreat by Tara Laskowski
The Weekend Retreat
The Weekend Retreat by Tara Laskowski

A wealthy family’s vacation at their lush winery estate becomes a weekend to kill for in this deliciously twisted novel of suspense

“Absolutely captivating! A riveting and immersive puzzle for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware.” —Hank Phillippi Ryan

Every year, the illustrious Van Ness siblings, heirs to a copper fortune, gather at their secluded winery estate for a joint birthday celebration. It’s a tradition they’ve followed nearly all their lives, and now they are back with their significant others for a much-needed weekend of rest and relaxation, away from the public spotlight.

With lavish comforts, gorgeous scenery, and indulgent drinking, the trip should be the perfect escape. But it soon becomes clear that even a remote idyllic getaway can’t keep out the problems simmering in each of their lives. As old tensions are reignited, the three couples are pushed to the edge. Will their secrets destroy them, or will they destroy each other first? And who’s been watching them from beyond the vineyard gates?

When a torrential rainstorm hits, plunging them into darkness, the answers prove all too deadly…

“Clever… [A] satisfying mash-up of Succession and Agatha Christie.” —Publishers Weekly

About Tara Laskowski

Her Whole Bright Life

Her Whole Bright Life is a collection of poems that weave together the trauma and exhaustion of a life lived with disordered eating and the loss and grief of the death of the poet’s father. Love and hunger intertwine and become inseparable as the poet grapples to find, and listen, to both. With a distinct and feminist voice, this collection delves into a life now lived without a beloved parent, while trying to survive a pandemic and battling demons that have lived inside her for most of her life. With both fierceness and tenderness, we see a woman trying to find her place within her own body and within an ever-changing world. This collection of poems is both an elegy and an anthem – praising both those who’ve been lost and those who remain.

About Courtney LeBlanc

The Rough Patch by Brian Lies
The Rough Patch
The Rough Patch by Brian Lies

A Caldecott Honor Book

An ALA Notable Book

A breathtakingly beautiful and luminescent book that is pitch-perfect for anyone of any age who has experienced any type of loss or disappointment, from New York Times–bestselling picture book creator Brian Lies.

New York Times–bestselling author-illustrator Brian Lies has created a beautiful, accessible, and deeply personal story about friendship, loss, and renewal. The Rough Patch was awarded a Caldecott Honor and features stunning paintings from the award-winning creator of Bats at the Beach.

Evan and his dog do everything together, from eating ice cream to caring for their prize-winning garden, which grows big and beautiful. One day the unthinkable happens: Evan’s dog dies. Heartbroken, Evan destroys the garden and everything in it. The ground becomes overgrown with prickly weeds and thorns, and Evan embraces the chaos.

But beauty grows in the darkest of places, and when a twisting vine turns into an immense pumpkin, Evan is drawn out of his isolation and back to the county fair, where friendships—old and new—await.

A deeply hopeful and positive book, The Rough Patch was awarded a Caldecott Honor and is a story about love, loss, and hope, and the healing power of friendship and nature. “Weepy and wonderful.”—Wall Street Journal

About Brian Lies

Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior by Carole Lindstrom
Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior
Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior by Carole Lindstrom

From New York Times bestselling picture book author Carole Lindstrom and illustrator Bridget George comes Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior, an inspiring picture book biography about two Indigenous Rights Activists, Josephine Mandamin and Autumn Peltier.

The seventh generation is creating
A sea of change.

It was a soft voice, at first.
Like a ripple.
But with practice it grew louder.

Indigenous women have always worked tirelessly to protect our water―keeping it pure and clean for the generations to come. Yet there was a time when their voices and teachings were nearly drowned out, leaving entire communities and environments in danger and without clean water.

But then came Grandma Josephine and her great-niece, Autumn Peltier.

Featuring a foreword from water advocate and Indigenous Rights Activist Autumn Peltier herself, this stunning picture book from New York Times-bestselling author Carole Lindstrom and illustrator Bridget George gives voice to the water and asks young readers to join the tidal wave of change.

About Carole Lindstrom

Red Clay Suzie by Jeffrey Dale Lofton
Red Clay Suzie
Red Clay Suzie by Jeffrey Dale Lofton

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize

A novel inspired by true events

The coming-of-age story of Philbet, a gay, physically-misshapen boy in rural Georgia, who battles bullying, ignorance, and disdain as he makes his way in life as an outsider—before finding acceptance in unlikely places.

Fueled by tomato sandwiches and green milkshakes, and obsessed with cars, Philbet struggles with life and love as a gay boy in rural Georgia. He’s happiest when helping Grandaddy dig potatoes from the vegetable garden that connects their houses. But Philbet’s world is shattered and his resilience shaken by events that crush his innocence and sense of security; expose his misshapen chest skillfully hidden behind shirts Mama makes at home; and convince him that he’s not fit to be loved by Knox, the older boy he idolizes to distraction. Over time, Philbet finds refuge in unexpected places and inner strength in unexpected ways, leading to a resolution in the form of a letter from beyond the grave.

About Jeffrey Dale Lofton

The Washington Book by Carlos Lozada
The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians
The Washington Book by Carlos Lozada

The Pulitzer Prize–winning opinion columnist at The New York Times explores how people in power reveal themselves through their books and writings and, in so doing, illuminates the personal, political, and cultural conflicts driving Washington and the nation.

As a long-time book critic and columnist in Washington, Carlos Lozada dissects all manner of texts: commission reports, political reporting, Supreme Court decisions, and congressional inquiries to understand the controversies animating life in the capital. He also reads copious books by politicians and top officials: tell-all accounts by administration insiders, campaign biographies by candidates longing for high office, revisionist memoirs by those leaving those offices behind. With this provocative essay collection, Lozada argues that no matter how carefully political figures sanitize their experiences, positions, and records, no matter how diligently they present themselves in the best and safest and most electable light, they almost always let slip the truth. They show us their faults and blind spots, their ambitions and compromises, their underlying motives and insecurities. Whether they mean to or not, they tell us who they really are.

In his memoirs and speeches, Barack Obama constantly invoked the power and meaning of his life story, Lozada notes, a sign of how the former president capitalized on his personal symbolism, trying to transform it from inspiration on the campaign trail into an all-purpose governing tool. In a soliloquy about his hair in a self-help book published two decades ago, Donald Trump revealed not just his vanity, Lozada explains, but his utter isolation from the world, long before he entered the bubble of the White House. In deft and lacerating prose, Lozada interprets the unresolved tensions of Hillary Clinton’s ideological beliefs. He imagines the wonderful memoir George H.W. Bush could have given us but instead left scattered in throughout various books and letters. He explores why Kamala Harris has struggled to carve out a distinctive role as vice president. He explains how Ron DeSantis’s pitch to America is just a list of enemies. And he even glimpses what Vladimir Putin fears the most, and why he seeks conflict with the West. He does so all through their own books, and their own words.

Lozada reads these books so you don’t have to. The Washington Book is the perfect guide to the state of our politics, and then men and women who dominate the terrain. It explores the construction of personal identity, the delusions of leadership, and that mix of subservience and ambition that can define a life in politics. The more we read the stories of Washington, Lozada contends, the clearer our understanding of the competing visions of our country.

About Carlos Lozada

Clever Creatures of the Night

When Case’s best friend Drea goes missing, Case dives into the bizarre, cultlike–and possibly murderous–behavior of Drea’s roommates in this gripping literary horror novel for fans of The Honeys and Mexican Gothic.

WHERE IS DREA?

When Case shows up at the isolated West Texas house where her best friend, Drea, lives with friends from school, Drea is nowhere to be found. Why would she ask Case to visit and then disappear? With twenty-four hours until her ride home, Case intends to find out.

But Drea’s roommates can’t–or won’t–answer any questions. They leave Case to search alone, to find bits and pieces of Drea’s life hidden in and around the house, while they continue playing out a rural utopian fantasy. Their bizarre behavior puts Case on edge, and she’s not the only one. The animals nearby are lashing out, strangely aggressive.

Something bad happened in this house. Something that must be connected to Drea’s disappearance–and if she gets too close to the truth, Case might just be next.

About Samantha Mabry

The Secret Library by Kekla Magoon
The Secret Library
The Secret Library by Kekla Magoon

Travel through time with National Book Award Finalist Kekla Magoon in a page-turning fantasy adventure about family secrets and finding the courage to plot your own life story.

Since Grandpa died, Dally’s days are dull and restricted. She’s eleven and a half years old, and her exacting single mother is already grooming her to take over the family business. Starved for adventure and release, Dally rescues a mysterious envelope from her mother’s clutches, an envelope Grandpa had earmarked for her. The map she finds inside leads straight to an ancient vault, a library of secrets where each book is a portal to a precise moment in time. As Dally “checks out” adventure after adventure—including an exhilarating outing with pirates—she begins to dive deep into her family’s hidden history. Soon she’s visiting every day to escape the demands of the present. But the library has secrets of its own, intentions that would shape her life as surely as her mother’s meticulous plans. What will Dally choose? Equal parts mystery and adventure—with a biracial child puzzling out her identity alongside the legacy of the past—this masterful middle-grade fantasy rivets with crackling prose, playful plot twists, and timeless themes. A satisfying choice for fans of Kindred and When You Reach Me.

About Kekla Magoon

Medusa by Katherine Marsh
Medusa (The Myth of Monsters Book 1)
Medusa by Katherine Marsh

“Here is a novel that casts young people as agents of that change, while acknowledging the risks they face when adults, or a pack of patriarchal gods, lie in wait to silence those who speak truth to power.” —The New York Times

From National Book Award finalist Katherine Marsh: Percy Jackson meets Wednesday Addams in this fantastical adventure about Ava, who attends a boarding school for the descendants of Greek monsters and uncovers a terrible secret that could change the world forever. One of Kirkus’s most anticipated books of 2024!

Ava Baldwin has always tried to keep her anger in check, just like her mom taught her. But when know-it-all classmate Owen King tries to speak over her yet again, Ava explodes . . . and Owen freezes, becoming totally unresponsive.

Although Owen recovers, Ava’s parents whisk her off to her mother’s alma mater, the Accademia del Forte, a mysterious international boarding school in Venice. There, Ava and her brother, Jax, discover that the Olympian gods founded the Accademia to teach the descendants of mythological monsters how to control their emotions and their powers and become functioning, well-adjusted members of society.

But not everything at the Accademia is as it seems. After her friend Fia is almost expelled for challenging a teacher, Ava realizes the school is hiding a dangerous secret. To uncover the truth, Ava and her new friends embark on an adventure that could change the way they view history, mythology—and themselves—forever…or end their lives.

Praise for Medusa

“It’s a treat to encounter a fearless heroine in Katherine Marsh’s Medusa. Here is a novel that casts young people as agents of that change, while acknowledging the risks they face when adults, or a pack of patriarchal gods, lie in wait to silence those who speak truth to power. In this feminist retelling, girls take the lead while boys support and trust them.” —The New York Times

“A unique and distinctly feminist fantasy series launch set in a contemporary world.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A fast-paced adventure offering a fresh, feminist take on popular themes.” —Kirkus Reviews

 

About Katherine Marsh

Absolution by Alice McDermott
Absolution
Absolution by Alice McDermott

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Named a Best Book of the Year by TimeEsquireGood HousekeepingKirkus ReviewsLos Angeles Times, NPR, Oprah DailyReal Simple, and Vogue

A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.

You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.

American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery—of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands’ convictions—have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

A virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant, most affecting writers, about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.

About Alice McDermott

Dawnbreaker

The king is dead. The world is lost. Long live the queen.

The thin membrane of magic separating the human and demonic planes has been destroyed. Nightrender, the immortal warrior of the gods, must find a way to rebuild it, but Hanne—the serpent girl, always too cunning to be trusted, too hungry for power—has become High Queen, and is too consumed with ambition to cooperate. Meanwhile, Rune—married to Hanne, but in love with Nightrender—is lost in the realm of demons after a disastrous battle, wandering alone in a twisted landscape of mercury seas, black-glass spires, and winds blowing ash … In this second and final installment of the Nightrender duology, the circle will close, and the world will be saved—or burnt to a cinder.

About Jodi Meadows

This Book is Full of Holes by Robert Meganck
This Book Is Full of Holes: From Underground to Outer Space and Everywhere In Between
This Book is Full of Holes by Robert Meganck

This book is chock full of holes—shallow and miles deep, microscopic and visible from space, human-caused and natural, mysterious and maddeningly familiar.

When you think of holes, what comes to mind? Maybe the irritating hole in your sock. Or the hole on the shelf where you plucked out this book. But did you know there are holes that suddenly devour entire gas stations? Big holes in the ocean that are visible from space? Small holes in balls that prevent a backyard home run?

A hole is a part of something where there’s nothing at all. Holes are investigated by scientists, used by artists, designed by engineers, and fixed by problem-solvers. They can be natural or human-made, big or small, plentiful or scarce, mysterious or painfully familiar. Many are important to our everyday lives, whether we give them credit or not. After going down the rabbit hole, readers can check out the back matter for fun activities for your home or classroom.

About Robert Meganck

Winnie Nash is Not Your Sunshine by Nicole Melleby
Winnie Nash Is Not Your Sunshine
Winnie Nash is Not Your Sunshine by Nicole Melleby

In this powerful new novel by award-winning author Nicole Melleby, 12-year-old Winnie Nash is forced to live with her grandma for the summer and finds herself torn between her family’s secrets and the joy of celebrating Pride.

Winnifred “Winnie” Nash is not a senior citizen, despite what anyone thinks of her name. And she is definitely not excited to live with her grandma in New Jersey for the summer. Not only are they basically strangers, but Winnie—who’s always known she’s gay—has been pushed into the metaphorical closet by her parents, who worry what Grandma will think. So Winnie keeps quiet about the cute girls she befriends; plays card games with seniors, which she does not enjoy; and dreams of the day she can go to the Pride Parade in New York City—a day that can’t happen when she’s hiding the truth from Grandma.
 
Meanwhile, her mom’s latest pregnancy is approaching its due date, and Winnie is worried it might end like the ones before, with Winnie still an only child. As she tries so hard to be an agreeable, selfless daughter, getting to NYC for Pride is feeling more and more like her only escape from a family who needs her to always smile. Winnie Nash is not your sunshine—and maybe it’s time to show the world who she really is.

About Nicole Melleby

Blight by Emily Monosson
Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic
Blight by Emily Monosson

Science News Favorite Book of 2023

A prescient warning about the mysterious and deadly world of fungi―and how to avert further loss across species, including our own.

Fungi are everywhere. Most are harmless; some are helpful. A few are killers. Collectively, infectious fungi are the most devastating agents of disease on earth, and a fungus that can persist in the environment without its host is here to stay. In Blight, Emily Monosson documents how trade, travel, and a changing climate are making us all more vulnerable to invasion. Populations of bats, frogs, and salamanders face extinction. In the Northwest, America’s beloved national parks are covered with the spindly corpses of whitebark pines. Food crops are under siege, threatening our coffee, bananas, and wheat―and, more broadly, our global food security. Candida auris, drug-resistant and resilient, infects hospital patients and those with weakened immune systems. Coccidioides, which lives in drier dusty regions, may cause infection in apparently healthy people. The horrors go on.

Yet prevention is not impossible. Tracing the history of fungal spread and the most recent discoveries in the field, Monosson meets scientists who are working tirelessly to protect species under threat, and whose innovative approaches to fungal invasion have the potential to save human lives. Delving into case studies at once fascinating, sobering, and hopeful, Blight serves as a wake-up call, a reminder of the delicate interconnectedness of the natural world, and a lesson in seeing life on our planet with renewed humility and awe.

About Emily Monosson

The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA

The acclaimed author of Code Girls returns with a “rip-roaring” (Steve Coll), “staggeringly well-researched” (The New York Times) history of three generations at the CIA, “electric with revelations” (Booklist) about the women who fought to become operatives, transformed spycraft, and tracked down Osama bin Laden.

“This masterful book cements Liza Mundy as one of our foremost historians.”—Kate Moore,bestselling author of The Radium Girls

SMITHSONIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down. Women sent cables, made dead drops, and maintained the agency’s secrets. Despite discrimination—even because of it—women who started as clerks, secretaries, or unpaid spouses rose to become some of the CIA’s shrewdest operatives.

They were unlikely spies—and that’s exactly what made them perfect for the role. Because women were seen as unimportant, pioneering female intelligence officers moved unnoticed around Bonn, Geneva, and Moscow, stealing secrets from under the noses of their KGB adversaries. Back at headquarters, women built the CIA’s critical archives—first by hand, then by computer. And they noticed things that the men at the top didn’t see. As the CIA faced an identity crisis after the Cold War, it was a close-knit network of female analysts who spotted the rising threat of al-Qaeda—though their warnings were repeatedly brushed aside.

After the 9/11 attacks, more women joined the agency as a new job, targeter, came to prominence. They showed that data analysis would be crucial to the post-9/11 national security landscape—an effort that culminated spectacularly in the CIA’s successful effort to track down bin Laden in his Pakistani compound.

Propelled by the same meticulous reporting and vivid storytelling that infused Code GirlsThe Sisterhood offers a riveting new perspective on history, revealing how women at the CIA ushered in the modern intelligence age, and how their silencing made the world more dangerous.

About Liza Mundy

Down the Steep

“An engaging novel and a beautiful coming-of-age story.” ~Rebecca Makkai, author of Pulitzer-finalist The Great Believers

The year is 1963 in small-town Virginia. Willa McCoy is a strong-minded teenager who longs to follow in the footsteps of her father, an important member of the KKK. Willa believes the Klan is daring and brave—like the father she idolizes. She wants only to rise in his esteem; he wants only to keep everyone in their place. When Willa is sent to babysit for the new minister’s wife, Ruth Swanson, she finds herself at Ruth’s kitchen table with Langston Jones, a smart young Black man. At first they despise each other, but they have one thing in common: they both love Ruth. When Langston reveals a secret he’s discovered–that Willa’s father is having an affair–the once-loyal daughter plots to destroy her father’s reputation, unwittingly setting into motion a series of events that leads to her family’s demise.

About A.D. Nauman

You Know What You Did

In this heart-pounding debut thriller for fans of Lisa Jewell and Celeste Ng, a first-generation Vietnamese American artist must confront nightmares past and present. . . .

Annie “Anh Le” Shaw grew up poor, but seems to have it all now: a dream career, a stunning home, and a devoted husband and daughter. When Annie’s mother, a Vietnam War refugee, dies suddenly one night, Annie’s carefully curated life begins to unravel. Her obsessive-compulsive disorder, which she thought she’d vanquished years ago, comes roaring back—but this time, the disturbing fixations swirling around in Annie’s brain might actually be coming true.

A prominent art patron disappears, and the investigation zeroes in on Annie. Spiraling with self-doubt, she distances herself from her family and friends, only to wake up in a hotel room—naked, next to a lifeless body. The police have more questions, but with her mind increasingly fractured, Annie doesn’t have answers. All she knows is this: She will do anything to protect her daughter—even if it means losing herself.

About K.T. Nguyen

The Music of Being

Poet Jean Nordhaus distills a lifetime of experience in her ninth collection.

The title of Jean Nordhaus’s new collection suggests something light and lyrical – until you read the title poem and find yourself among the corpses in a concentration camp, at which point you understand that while the music of being is often harsh, atonal, dissonant, still we are meant for resolution, “to go on.” A lifetime of experience is distilled here, of all the things she recounts having been (“swaddled bundle,” “love quake,” “gestator”) or will go on to be (“a cane dibbler, a doughty dowager,” “a whisper / a breath among leaves”) in “I Was One”. This includes the chance that “Four Visas” might have made all the difference had hers been the family leaving loved ones behind to board “the final train” and lie among the corpses. Even so, she bids farewell to the tragic and troubled prior century with almost jaunty celebration of “your / restless hemlines, / your vaccines / and holocausts, / your trail / of obsolescent maps.” One section recounts the death of her husband after long marriage, forcing her to learn a new “Grammar of Grief,” but once more she finds perfect words to recall her former life, describing it as “a country / with a language only I speak. // It was a large enough space.” Even contemplating her own death, she determines “I mean to grow / a larger, shinier body” and to enter an endless past, “a kingdom crammed / with everything that ever was.” So in the end, even if not light these poems indeed are lyrical, filled with the music of being, “whether the voices / hold flowers or flames.”

“The poems in Jean Nordhaus’s ninth collection arise from a sensibility that is at once astute in its particulars and ample in its reach, arising as it does from a childhood lived in the shadow and aftermath of the Second World War and then by subsequent rites of passage deftly observed alongside external events–marriage and family, the hover of ancestral memory, ardent reading, late widowhood, and calm contemplation of her eventual end as “a death-canoe drifting asleep on my back.” In these times that bristle with young voices rightfully demanding their say, and with diverse histories fighting for a place in a divided culture even as many lessons of history are being denied or forgotten, this collection offers a long view rendered with elegant restraint, each poem fine-boned, wise, and inclusive–a still point amid the swirl.”–Leslie Ullman

“We can all find ourselves in the poetry of this captivating book, THE MUSIC OF BEING. In it, Jean Nordhaus dances, sings, grieves, listens and observes with boundless and unique imagination. She tells us of the tender voices she hears, ‘each one absolute in grief or joy.’ The voices are in a minor key, she says, while the poetry they enter, I say, is majorly enthralling from start to finish, through poems about childhood, family, marriage, friendship, history, spirituality, and loss. The heartbreaking title poem about the atrocities of genocide and war is testimony to the human desire for the continuation of life, which is the very music of being.”–Anne Harding Woodworth

“‘The body / wants to go on, wants to take up the music / of being and go on,’ Jean Nordhaus tells us in the title poem of her remarkable new book which shows how ‘chant and song,’ a simple but fluent ‘grammar of grief,’ and unswerving persistence give us the courage and resilience to contend with the countermanding forces of ‘darkness and light.’ THE MUSIC OF BEING is written with clear and direct urgency, the result of Nordhaus’s own persistent attention to the forceful melodies of her experience.”–Michael Collier

Poetry. Family & Relationships. Jewish Studies.

About Jean Nordhaus

The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters

The definitive biography of the most successful female broadcaster of all time—Barbara Walters—a woman whose personal demons fueled an ambition that broke all the rules and finally gave women a permanent place on the air, written by bestselling author Susan Page.

Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960s to its waning dominance in a new world of competition from streaming services and social media half a century later. She was not just a groundbreaker for women (Oprah announced when she was seventeen that she wanted to be Barbara Walters), but also expanded the big TV interview and then dominated the genre. By the end of her career, she had interviewed more of the famous and infamous, from presidents to movie stars to criminals to despots, than any other journalist in history. Then at sixty-seven, past the age many female broadcasters found themselves involuntarily retired, she pioneered a new form of talk TV called The View. She is on the short list of those who have left the biggest imprints on television news and on our culture, male or female. So, who was the woman behind the legacy?

In The Rulebreaker, Susan Page conducts 150 interviews and extensive archival research to discover that Walters was driven to keep herself and her family afloat after her mercurial and famous impresario father attempted suicide. But she never lost the fear of an impending catastrophe, which is what led her to ask for things no woman had ever asked for before, to ignore the rules of misogynistic culture, to outcompete her most ferocious competitors, and to protect her complicated marriages and love life from scrutiny.

Page breaks news on every front—from the daring things Walters did to become the woman who reinvented the TV interview to the secrets she kept until her death. This is the eye-opening account of the woman who knew she had to break all the rules so she could break all the rules about what viewers deserved to know.

About Susan Page

Baby X by Kira Peikoff
Baby X
Baby X by Kira Peikoff

When any biological matter can be used to create life, stolen celebrity DNA sells to the highest bidder–or the craziest stalker–in this propulsive thriller.

With a vivid imagining of the future, Gattaca meets Black Mirror in Kira Peikoff’s Baby X.

In the near-future United States, where advanced technology can create egg or sperm from any person’s cells, celebrities face the alarming potential of meeting biological children they never conceived. Famous singer Trace Thorne is tired of being targeted by the Vault, a black market site devoted to stealing DNA. Sick of paying ransom money for his own cell matter, he hires bio-security guard Ember Ryan to ensure his biological safety.

Ember will do anything she can to protect her clients. She knows all the Vault’s tricks–discarded tissues, used straws, lipstick tubes–and has prevented countless DNA thefts. Working for Thorne, her focus becomes split when she begins to fall for him, but she knows she hasn’t let anything slip–love or not, his DNA is safe. But then she and Thorne are confronted by a pregnant woman, Quinn, who claims that Thorne is the father of her baby, and all bets are off.

Brilliantly plotted and terrifyingly prescient, Baby X is an unpredictable and relentless speculative thriller perfect for fans of Blake Crouch and John Marrs.

About Kira Peikoff

Night Watch

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War—and a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds

“A tour de force.” —Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.

The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.

Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.

About Jayne Anne Phillips

Why We Love Baseball by Joe Posnanski
Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments
Why We Love Baseball by Joe Posnanski

NEW YORK TIMES bestseller
WALL STREET JOURNAL bestseller

#1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball’s history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again.
 
Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It’s Willie Mays’s catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, and Kirk Gibson’s limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters. But these are also moments raw with the humanity of the game, the unheralded heroes, the mesmerizing mistakes drenched in pine tar, and every story, from the immortal to the obscure, is told from a unique perspective. Whether of a real fan who witnessed it, or the pitcher who gave up the home run, the umpire, the coach, the opposing player—these are fresh takes on moments so powerful they almost feel like myth.
 
Posnanski’s previous book, The Baseball 100, portrayed the heroes and pioneers of the sport, and now, with his trademark wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and acute observations, he gets at the real heart of the game. From nineteenth-century pitchers’ duels to breaking the sport’s color line in the ’40s, all the way to the greatest trick play of the last decade and the slide home that became a meme, Posnanski’s illuminating take allows us to rediscover the sport we love—and thought we knew.
 
Why We Love Baseball is an epic that ends too soon, a one-of-a-kind love letter to the sport that has us thrilled, torn, inspired, and always wanting more.

About Joe Posnanski

Lightfall: The Dark Times

The Lights have gone dark in Irpa.

Danger lurks as the air grows colder and threats lie in the shadows at every turn. While the rest of their fellowship seeks safety, Bea and Cad team up with a small group of survivors to travel to the Citadel of Knowledge, pursuing answers to their world’s darkest mysteries.

But their journey reveals even more secrets. Until an unexpected ally shines a light in the darkness, providing a clue to a mystery from long ago…and a beacon of hope for the future.

Praise for Lightfall: The Girl and the Galdurian

Harvey Awards Book of the Year Nominee

Kirkus Best Books of 2020

Fall 2020 Indie Next List

Junior Library Guild Selection

2021 Texas Library Association’s Little Maverick Graphic Novels Reading List Selection

Nominated for the Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award

About Tim Probert

Fighting with Love: The Legacy of John Lewis

The story of a groundbreaking civil rights leader, John Lewis, comes to life in this compelling and beautifully told nonfiction picture book.

John Lewis left a cotton farm in Alabama to join the fight for civil rights when he was only a teenager. He soon became a leader of a movement that changed the nation. Walking at the side of his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Lewis was led by his belief in peaceful action and voting rights. Today and always his work and legacy live on.

About James Ransome

Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices

A warm, personal guide to building a strong ethical and moral compass in the midst of today’s confusing, scary global problems

The moral challenges of today are unfamiliar in the history of philosophy. Climate change is the paradigm example of what Travis Rieder calls “The Puzzle”: How do you make your everyday choices fit with what the planet urgently needs? How do we decide the right thing to do in the face of a massive collective challenge? Should you drink water from a plastic bottle or not? Drive a Tesla? Or is that just what Elon Musk and all the other corporations want you to think? What makes individual ethics difficult to think about in the case of catastrophic climate change makes ethics difficult to think about in many other contexts as well. The Puzzle, as Rieder explains, is everywhere now.

The chapters in this book include a lively, meaningful tour of traditional moral reasoning looking at the contributions of Plato, Mill, and Kant, among others. But they could not grasp the Puzzle we now face. Old-fashioned exercises, like trolley problems involving sacrificing one person on this track for a bunch of people on the other, don’t address the huge, consequential, and complex crises our global community faces today. The tools most of us unthinkingly rely on when we try to “do the right thing” don’t help when it comes to reasoning about individual responsibility for large collective problems.

Expanding our suite of ethical concepts is now urgently required. Rieder defines exactly how to change our thinking, addressing mundane issues like bottled water and life-changing decisions like whether to have children. This is a way to live a morally decent life in our scary, always complicated world. It’s how to build your own catastrophe ethics.

About Travis Rieder

Rook

This standalone adventure set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Jackaby series brims with humor, heart, and—of course—a hefty dose of supernatural mayhem.
 
Abigail Rook never intended to be the mortal bridge between the human and supernatural world. But now, the power of the Sight–and all the chaos that comes with seeing the essential truth of everything, every human, fairy, werewolf, enchanted slip of paper, and municipal building, at all times–is hers alone. With this overwhelming new gift, she should be able to solve crimes and help New Fiddleham, New England find calm in its supernatural chaos. 

The only problem? She has no idea what she’s doing.
 
And New Fiddleham isn’t waiting for Abigail to be ready. Local witches and other magical beings are going missing, as tensions between human and supernatural residents curdle into a hatred that could tear the city apart. Abigail’s fiance, Charlie, works alongside her to unravel the magical disappearances, but as a shapeshifter, he’s under threat as well. Then Abigail’s parents appear, ready to take her back to England and marry her off to someone she’s never met. Abigail has no choice but to follow her Sight, her instincts, and any clues she can find to track a culprit who is trying to destroy everything she holds dear.

About William Ritter

Corona/Crown

“Corona” is Italian for crown. This series of prose poems and photographs borrows from the formal tradition of heroic crowns of sonnets, in which each section is connected to the last by a repeated line or phrase. The coronavirus was named for its shape: the series of spikes radiating outward from a sphere-like core resemble the sun’s rays, or the crowns worn by royalty.

About Kim Roberts

Unicorn Boy

The first few years of Brian Reyes’ life were unremarkable―nothing weird about this kid, no sir. Then, one day, a bump appeared on his head, and it grew…and grew…and grew until it was a full-blown, sparkling, SINGING unicorn horn. That’s absolutely the last thing a shy kid like Brian wants, but destiny waits for no unicorn boy.

Luckily, Brian has his reassuring pal Avery to keep him grounded as weird occurrences start stacking up, like Brian’s breakfast muffin talking to him, or a bizarre black cat offering him a business card. But when shadowy creatures from another realm kidnap Avery, Brian has to embrace his fate to rescue his best friend.

In the pages of Unicorn Boy, Dave Roman has created a cast of charming oddballs reckoning with normal, every day problems like heroic destinies and the fate of all magic in the universe. Readers of Narwal and JellyGrumpy Unicorn, and InvestiGators will also endear themselves to these lovable characters.

About Dave Roman

The Pursuit of Happiness by Jeffrey Rosen
The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America
The Pursuit of Happiness by Jeffrey Rosen

A fascinating examination of what “the pursuit of happiness” meant to our nation’s Founders and how that famous phrase defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy.

The Declaration of Independence identified “the pursuit of happiness” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives.

By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good—the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles.

The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration’s famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.

About Jeffrey Rosen

Crushed & Crowned by Joseph Ross
Crushed & Crowned
Crushed & Crowned by Joseph Ross

Crushed & Crowned guides the reader through a “museum of bodies,” seeking to “illuminate the darkest corners of our history. From sanitation workers killed in Memphis, to elegies aimed at resurrection, these poems forbid sleeping. Murals of saints guard refugees, statues replace enslavers with confident Black teens, a high school teacher observes the joys and sorrows of his students. These poems also stop us at one of the world’s largest refugee camps, inviting us to see LGBTQ refugees and their plight. These poems center the lives of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, considering their places in our history. These poems believe that if we read and live with the right spirit, the “crushed” of our world can end up “crowned.”

About Joseph Ross

Rover and Speck: Splash Down!

Everyone’s favorite space rovers take on a dangerous rescue operation – inside the belly of the Beast! – in this hilarious title in the early graphic novel series.

Interplanetary space explorers Rover and Speck have set out on a dangerous mission deep into the mysterious unknown: a visit to Unexplored Planet K2-18b. Though all seems calm to Rover when they first splash down on the watery surface, they soon find themselves in the mouth of a gigantic blubber beast! With a little ingenuity (by Rover) and some furious paddling (by Speck) they manage to escape unharmed. But when the pair meet two local spikey-spikes whose brother was swallowed by the Beast, Rover knows the brother’s only hope is for the two brave explorers to go back inside the Beast to find him. Do Rover and Speck have what it takes to rescue the spikey-spike? Or will they – gulp – get swallowed, too?

Jonathan Roth’s series about two space rovers with wildly different personalities hits all the right notes for early graphic novel fans, with loads of action and humor and the funniest space rover buddy team (okay, maybe the only one) ever written. The drama is interspersed with just enough silliness to keep readers enthralled. Brightly colored traditional comic art adds to the book’s appeal. As a bonus, illustrated science fact boxes containing fun and accessible background information about marine biology, underwater creatures and other relevant science topics (and jokes!) appear throughout the story. The book ends with an engaging interactive art lesson from Rover and Speck on how to draw waves.

About Jonathan Roth

This Could Be Us by Kennedy Ryan
This Could Be Us
This Could Be Us by Kennedy Ryan

“Heart-searing, sensual, and life affirming.” ―EMILY HENRY, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Featured on 
The Today Show!

Soledad Barnes has her life all planned out. Because, of course, she does. She plans everything. She designs everything. She fixes everything. She’s a domestic goddess who’s never met a party she couldn’t host or a charge she couldn’t lead. The one with all the answers and the perfect vinaigrette for that summer salad. But none of her varied talents can save her when catastrophe strikes, and the life she built with the man who was supposed to be her forever, goes poof in a cloud of betrayal and disillusion.
 
But there is no time to pout or sulk, or even grieve the life she lost. She’s too busy keeping a roof over her daughters’ heads and food on the table. And in the process of saving them all, Soledad rediscovers herself. From the ashes of a life burned to the ground, something bold and new can rise.

About Kennedy Ryan

Company

A masterful debut story collection named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2023

Shannon Sanders’s sparkling debut brings us into the company of the Collins family and their acquaintances as they meet, bicker, compete, celebrate, worry, keep and reveal secrets, build lives and careers, and endure. Moving from Atlantic City to New York to DC, from the 1960s to the 2000s, from law students to drag performers to violinists to matriarchs, Company tells a multifaceted, multigenerational saga in thirteen stories.

Each piece includes a moment when a guest arrives at someone’s home. In “The Good, Good Men,” two brothers reunite to oust a “deadbeat” boyfriend from their mother’s house. In “The Everest Society,” the brothers’ sister anxiously prepares for a home visit from a social worker before adopting a child. In “Birds of Paradise,” their aunt, newly promoted to university provost, navigates a minefield of microaggressions at her own welcome party. And in the haunting title story, the provost’s sister finds her solitary life disrupted when her late sister’s daughter comes calling.

These are stories about intimacy, societal and familial obligations, and the ways inheritances shape our fates. Buoyant, somber, sharp, and affectionate, this collection announces a remarkable new voice in fiction.

About Shannon Sanders

Night Life: A Folk Horror Poetry Collection

“Let me give you a tour…”

Tucked away in the mountains lays a small town where old gods, demons, and creatures with long forgotten names live frighteningly—and hopelessly— entangled with the humans who call it home. Quick, take the clawed hand of your guide, slip into the skins of the town’s inhabitants, and let this eerie collection of folk horror poetry ensnare you in the tales of the town, and awaken you to the coming rapture of the world.

Containing new and previously published poetry, multi-award winning poet Alba Sarria debuts a narrative folk horror collection spoken through the unusual eyes of 2nd and 1st person. This is a read for a lone dark night.

“Grotesque, haunting, and beautiful—NIGHT LIFE is Folk Horror at its finest. Sarria is a poet to watch.”
Freydís Moon, Pushcart Prize nominee and bestselling author of Heart, Haunt, Havoc.

“Reading NIGHT LIFE is like stepping into another world. Equal parts stunning and haunting, Sarria’s poetry lingers long after you’ve finished reading. If you only pick up one collection this Autumn, make sure it’s NIGHT LIFE.”
Elou Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of Crow & Cross Keys.

About Alba V Sarria

A Little Bit Super by Leah Henderson
A Little Bit Super: With Small Powers Come Big Problems
A Little Bit Super by Leah Henderson

In these hilarious stories by some of the top authors of middle grade fiction today, each young character is coping with a minor superpower—while also discovering their power to change themselves and their community, find their voice, and celebrate what makes them unique.

The kids in these humorous short stories each have a minor superpower they’re learning to live with. One can shape-shift—but only part of her body, and only on Mondays. Another can always tell whether an avocado is perfectly ripe. One can even hear the thoughts of the animals in the pet store! But what these stories are really about is their young protagonists “owning” a power that contributes to their individuality, that allows them to find their place in the world, that shows them a potential they might not have imagined.

Because if you really think about it, we all have something special and unique about ourselves that makes us a little bit super. We all have the power to change as an individual, to change our communities for the better, to have a voice and to speak up. These playful, thought-provoking tales from some of today’s top middle grade authors prompt readers to consider what their own superpower might be, and how they can use it.

Written by Pablo Cartaya, Nikki Grimes, Leah Henderson, Jarrett Krosoczka, Remy Lai, Kyle Lukoff, Meg Medina, Daniel Nayeri, Linda Sue Park, Mitali Perkins, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Gary D. Schmidt, Brian Young, and Ibi Zoboi; coedited by Leah Henderson and Gary D. Schmidt.

About Gary Schmidt

Louder Than Hunger by John Schu
Louder Than Hunger
Louder Than Hunger by John Schu

Every so often a book comes along that is so brave and necessary, it extends a lifeline when it’s needed most. This is one of those books.” —Katherine Applegate, author of the Newbery Medal–winning, The One and Only Ivan

Revered teacher, librarian, and story ambassador John Schu explores anorexia—and self-expression as an act of survival—in a wrenching and transformative novel-in-verse.

But another voice inside me says,
We need help.
We’re going to die.

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books—the weird one, the outsider—and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears? A fictionalized account of the author’s experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder, Louder than Hunger is a triumph of raw honesty. With a deeply personal afterword for context, this much-anticipated verse novel is a powerful model for muffling the destructive voices inside, managing and articulating pain, and embracing self-acceptance, support, and love.

About John Schu

A Long Time Coming: A Lyrical Biography of Race in America from Ona Judge to Barack Obama

This YA biography-in-verse of six important Black Americans from different eras, including Ona Judge, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama, chronicles the diverse ways each fought racism and shows how much—and how little—has changed for Black Americans since our country’s founding.

Full of daring escapes, deep emotion, and subtle lessons on how racism operates, A LONG TIME COMING reveals the universal importance of its subjects’ struggles for justice. From freedom seeker Ona Judge, who fled her enslavement by America’s first president, to Barack Obama, the first Black president, all of Shepard’s protagonists fight valiantly for justice for themselves and all Black Americans in any way that they can. But it is also a highly personal book, as Shepard — whose maternal grandfather was enslaved — shows how the grand sweep of history has touched his life, reflecting on how much progress has been made against racism, while also exhorting readers to complete the vast work that remains to be done.

About Ray Anthony Shepard

Nowhere Like Home by Sara Shepard
Nowhere Like Home
Nowhere Like Home by Sara Shepard

“Twisted friendships, toxic pasts and tangled motives—this is Sara Shepard doing what she does best!”—Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author

#1 New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars Sara Shepard’s next adult novel follows a group of mothers living in a mysterious “mommune,” each of whom is running from something

When Lenna gets a call from her old friend Rhiannon, she is startled; Rhiannon disappeared years ago without a trace. But Lenna is even more startled to learn that Rhiannon has a son and that she lives off the grid with a group of women in a community called Halcyon. Rhiannon invites Lenna, a new mother herself, to join them. Why suffer the sleepless nights by yourself? It takes a village, after all.

Lenna decides to go and hopefully repair her relationship with Rhiannon, but as she drives into the desert and her cell service gets weaker, she becomes suspicious. Who are these women and why did Rhiannon invite her here? And that is before she learns about the community’s rules (no outside phone calls, no questions about people’s pasts) and the padlock on the gate that leads out to the main road. But Lenna has other concerns, secrets from her past she is terrified will come out. When a newcomer arrives in the community, Lenna’s worst fears are confirmed—she was brought here for a reason.

Nowhere Like Home tackles themes of complicated friendships and trauma but all with Sara Shepard’s expert twists that you don’t see coming.

About Sara Shepard

If I Promise You Wings by A. K. Small
If I Promise You Wings
If I Promise You Wings by A. K. Small

Hold Still meets You’ve Reached Sam in this lyrical novel about one young woman’s journey through the Paris fashion scene as she chases promises, overcomes grief, and falls in love.

Alix Leclaire has a plan: graduate high school and land her dream job as a feather artist at Mille et une Plume, where her creations will help define high fashion. Her best friend Jeanne will get a record contract and they’ll take over the Paris art scene together. 

But then Jeanne dies.

Alix is lost, until the day she feels Jeanne pushing her to the feather boutique. Soon, Alix is living a life she hardly recognizes—pursuing a passionate affair with an alluring artist, stealing feathers for her own creations, risking everything as Jeanne once did. But then Alix meets Blaise, the dreamy musician who comforts her, centers her, challenges her. 

Torn between two beautiful boys and coping with grief, Alix’s art takes on a frightening and wild beauty. Living like Jeanne has given her everything she thought she wanted—but she must decide whether to hide in Jeanne’s shadow or soar on her own wings.

About A. K. Small

Above Ground by Clint Smith
Above Ground
Above Ground by Clint Smith

A remarkable poetry collection with “inextinguishable generosity and abundant wisdom” (Monica Youn) from Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed.

Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith’s lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children’s lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up—through the changing world of which we are all a part.

Above Ground is a breathtaking collection that follows Smith’s first award-winning book of poetry, Counting Descent.

About Clint Smith

Blue Stars by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Blue Stars: Mission One: The Vice Principal Problem
Blue Stars by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Two everyday superheroes set out to save the world—starting with their school—in an exciting new middle-grade graphic series from two award-winning authors and a debut illustrator.

When cousins Riley Halfmoon and Maya Dawn move to Urbanopolis to live with their activist grandma, they get off to a rocky start. Outgoing Riley misses her Muscogee cousins but is sure that she and Maya will be instant BFFs. Meanwhile, introvert Maya misses her parents, on active duty in Japan, and just wants some space to herself. At school, Maya joins Robotics Club and Riley bonds with fellow gymnasts. Just when they start to feel at home, their school culture is threatened by an influential foe in disguise. Joining student council feels like a way to help, so both cousins toss their hats in the ring for sixth-grade class president. But when they realize what they’re up against—money, power, and lies—they quickly shift from competition to cooperation, joining forces as superheroes. Riley is savvy with people; Maya is a whiz with gadgets. In no time, this dazzling duo is off to save the day! Relatable and rich in themes of family, community, and compromise, the Blue Stars series will entertain and empower, inspiring readers to be the stars they are.

About Cynthia Leitich Smith

Bullet Points

The debut book from attorney and writer Jennifer A Sutherland.

Part prose poem, part lyric essay, BULLET POINTS considers an American courthouse shooting, its aftermath, and its echoes in law, history, and capitalism. Tracing a woman trial lawyer’s experiences of violence–from the intimate and domestic to the national–attorney and poet Jennifer A Sutherland brings a deeply perceptive tenderness to the reality of historical abuses grounded in law and capitalism. Drawing on acts of language and power, art and trauma, BULLET POINTS raises questions about the systems and structures that enable violence via a poetry brilliantly awake to this truth: “Language is one way of doing business across time and into spaces. Image is another.”

“Jennifer Sutherland’s book-length poem BULLET POINTS is relentless, harrowing, and tremendously smart. With uncommon acuity and force, Sutherland chronicles experiences of both public and intimate violence, writing back from trauma and toward something new and necessary. This book is an absolute accomplishment.”–Natalie Shapero, author of Popular Longing

“A crucial addition to the literature, a sharp outline around a stopped heart. In BULLET POINTS, Jennifer Sutherland writes her way into the body that remains back there. It is meaningful to make art out of any day, but maybe especially a day like this one.”–Patricia Lockwood, author of Priestdaddy

“BULLET POINTS is not merely a lyric; rather, it is a narrative of what happens when the space between ‘victim’ and ‘witness’ becomes collapsed. It is unflinching — an interrogation of both violence (particularly against women) and the retraumatizing nature of storytelling. Sutherland wields the precise imagery of a poet alongside the disciplined language of a lawyer, delivering us a profoundly necessary look into what we’ve allowed to be normalized in the United States. This is a story we need now.”–Stephanie Lane Sutton, author of Shiny Insect Sex

“A book-length poem composed for the purpose of binding and banishing a trauma, and which successfully does so, is called a masterpiece. Read and participate in a banishing spell, sealed by the grit-in-your-kneecap-skin, up-and-running-again determination that compels Jennifer Sutherland’s writing.”–Eve Ettinger

Poetry. Essay. Hybrid. Family & Relationships. Women’s Studies.

About Jennifer A Sutherland

The Deerfield Massacre by James L. Swanson
The Deerfield Massacre: A Surprise Attack, a Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in Early America
The Deerfield Massacre by James L. Swanson

From the New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt (now an Apple TV+ series) and in the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon comes a spellbinding account of a forgotten chapter in American history: the deadly confrontation between natives and colonists in Massachusetts in 1704 and the tragic saga that unfolded.

Once it was one of the most infamous events in early American history. Today, it has been nearly forgotten.

In an obscure, two-hundred-year-old museum in a little town in western Massachusetts there stands what once was the most revered relic from the history of early New England: the massive, tomahawk-scarred door that came to symbolize the notorious Deerfield Massacre of 1704. This impregnable barricade—known to early Americans as “The Old Indian Door”—constructed from double-thick planks of Massachusetts oak and studded with hand-wrought iron nails to repel the tomahawk blades wielded by several attacking Native tribes, is the sole surviving artifact from one of the most dramatic moments in colonial American history: In the leap year of 1704, on the cold, snowy night of February 29, hundreds of Indians and their French allies swept down on an isolated frontier outpost to slaughter or capture its inhabitants.

The sacking of Deerfield led to one of the greatest sagas of survival, sacrifice, family, and faith ever told in North America. One hundred and twelve survivors, including their fearless minister, the Reverend John Williams, were captured and forced to march three hundred miles north into enemy territory in Canada. Any captive who faltered or became too weak to continue the journey—including Williams’s own wife—fell under the tomahawk or war club.

Survivors of the march willed themselves to live and endured captivity. Ransomed by the royal governor of Massachusetts, the captives later returned home to Deerfield, rebuilt their town and, for the rest of their lives, told the incredible tale. The memoir of Rev. Williams, The Redeemed Captive, published soon after his liberation, became one of the first bestselling books in American history and remains a literary classic. The Old Indian Door is a touchstone that conjures up one of the most dramatic and inspiring stories of colonial America—and now, at last, this legendary event is brought to vivid life by popular historian James Swanson.

About James L. Swanson

The Adventure of the Castle Thief by Art Taylor
The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions
The Adventure of the Castle Thief by Art Taylor

A man hears a melody in the night and begins a dangerous quest to locate its source. Ghosts of the past haunt the present in hotels, at an office party, and on a date that takes a dark turn. And an elderly woman named Marple sets out to prove she’s every bit as capable as Christie’s own famous sleuth.This second short story collection from Edgar Award winner Art Taylor spans the spectrum of crime fiction-from light-hearted traditional mystery to noir-tinged tales and even toward speculative fiction-and features two previously unpublished stories and an introduction by Martin Edwards. (Official Pub Date: 2/14/23)

“Only the very best succeed in making a career from short stories. Art Taylor stands out for his wit, fine writing and beautifully observed snapshots of modern life.” Peter Lovesey, author of the Peter Diamond series and winner of the Gold, Silver, and Cartier Diamond Daggers from the British Crime Writers’ Association

“You can count on two things with Art Taylor’s stories-not only will they be very, very good, they’ll also surprise you. I love the way he plays with the short story form, sometimes in diabolical ways, but never at the expense of giving the reader a damned good read.” Donna Andrews, NYT-bestselling author of Round Up the Usual Peacocks and Dashing Through the Snowbirds

“Art Taylor is our present-day Edgar Allan Poe. His carefully crafted tales dig into the darkness of human desires and loneliness. This short story collection is beautifully arranged, first lulling us into delight and then surging into a madness only seen behind closed bedroom doors. A definite must-read!” Naomi Hirahara, a Mary Higgins Clark Award winner of Clark and Division

About Art Taylor

Rain Breaks No Bones

Set in 1955, this final installment in Taylor’s best-selling Scranton Trilogy explores a family’s legacy of loss and a sometimes mystical vision of a better tomorrow

EVERYBODY HAS SECRETS. EVEN THE DEAD.

Fifty-year-old Violet has had a good life. The love of an honest man. The joys of motherhood. Yet, even in 1955, her heart still aches over the death of her sister more than four decades earlier. Lately, Violet can’t help thinking about the little girl, picturing her in the moments before the accident, wearing that pleated white dress and a hair bow to match. Maybe if her big sister were here now, she could tell Violet what to do about the secret she’s been keeping from her daughter Daisy.

Daisy has a secret of her own. When she first moved back home to Scranton, she wasn’t ready to give up her dreams of performing in Atlantic City. Then she met Johnny, a man who needs music as much as she does. Her first real chance at love. If only they can find the courage to buck small-town thinking when it comes to interracial dating.

Small-town thinking. Zethray had seen her fair share of it. That’s why she advertised a room to rent in The Negro Motorist Green Book. Give folks a safe place to stay away from home. That’s how Johnny ended up at her door. Now he’s sweet on some young woman. Not that he told Zethray, but she knows. The dead like to talk, and she listens. If only her mother would tell the secret behind her shocking death. Instead, she stands silent, while that little girl with the bow in her hair runs wild.

Rain Breaks No Bones, is the final novel in the Scranton Trilogy, starting with Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night, followed by All Waiting Is Long. Though the novels are connected, they each stand alone.

About Barbara J. Taylor

I'll Stop the World

“Lauren Thoman’s I’ll Stop the World is a whip-smart mystery with a vibrant cast of characters that gives off great eighties vibes. I was absolutely dazzled by this unputdownable genre-bending novel that’s equal parts coming-of-age suspense and emotional tale of forgiveness and second chances.” ―Mindy Kaling

The end and the beginning become one in a heart-pounding coming-of-age mystery about the power of friendship, fate, and inexplicable second chances.

Is it the right place at the wrong time? Or the wrong place at the right time?

Trapped in a dead-end town, Justin Warren has had his life defined by the suspicious deaths of his grandparents. The unsolved crime happened long before Justin was born, but the ripple effects are still felt after thirty-eight years. Justin always knew he wouldn’t have much of a future. He just never imagined that his life might take him backward.

In a cosmic twist of fate, Justin’s choices send him crashing into the path of determined optimist Rose Yin. Justin and Rose live in the same town and attend the same school, but have never met―because Rose lives in 1985. Justin won’t be born for another twenty years. And his grandparents are still alive―for now.

In a series of events that reverberate through multiple lifetimes, Justin and Rose have a week to get Justin unstuck in time and put each of them in control of their futures―by solving a murder that hasn’t even happened yet.

About Lauren Thoman

Congratulations, the Best is Over by R. Eric Thomas
Congratulations, The Best Is Over!: Essays
Congratulations, the Best is Over by R. Eric Thomas

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The beloved author of Here for It returns with an all-new collection of heartening, deeply relatable, and laugh-out-loud essays about what happens after happily ever after.

“Funny, insightful, and hopeful . . . a profound meditation on what it means to come home, and on finding your way again after the chaos of life takes you off your path.”John Paul Brammer, author of ¡Hola Papi!

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, 
Garden & Gun, Real Simple

After going viral “reading” the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas finally knew who he was and where he was going. He was living his best life.
 
But then everything changed.

In this collection of insightful and hilarious essays, Thomas moves back to his perpetually misunderstood hometown of Baltimore (a place he never wanted to return, even to be buried) and behaving completely out of character. They say you can’t go home again, but what if you and home have changed beyond recognition? From attending his twenty-year high school reunion and discovering another person’s face on his name badge, to splattering an urgent care room with blood à la The Shining, to being terrorized by a plague of gay frogs who’ve overtaken his backyard, Thomas provides the nitty, and sometimes the gritty, details of wrestling with the life he thought he’d left behind while trying to establish a new one.

With wit, heart, and hope for the future, Congratulations, The Best Is Over! is the not-so-gentle reminder we all need that even when life doesn’t go according to plan, we can still find our way back home.

About R. Eric Thomas

Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy
Sipsworth
Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy

Over the course of two weeks in a small English town, a reclusive widow discovers an unexpected reason to live.

Following the loss of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. She retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit: “Each day was an impersonation of the one before with only a slight shuffle—as though even for death there is a queue.”

Then, one cold winter night, a chance encounter with a mouse sets Helen on a surprising journey.

Sipsworth is a reminder that there can be second chances. No matter what we have planned for ourselves, sometimes life has plans of its own. With profound compassion, Simon Van Booy illuminates not only a deep friendship forged between two lonely creatures, but the reverberations of goodness that ripple out from that unique bond.

About Simon Van Booy

Not a New York Love Story by Julian Voloj
Not A New York Love Story
Not a New York Love Story by Julian Voloj

Is this a dream or reality? He can feel her presence. He knows she’s there… But she isn’t. She takes him on a trip around New York. In all the places he wouldn’t go before. Before the accident. From Coney Island to the Lower East Side, he’s turning the pages of his life with the one he loved. The one he lost. NOT A NEW YORK LOVE STORY is a tale of emotions, grief and a love letter to a city like no other in the world.

Dream or reality? Julian Voloj’s tale plays tricks on your mind and your emotions but never loses his way through a powerful but simple story about two people forever intwined.

Andreas Gefe’s art brings a mix of fine art and raw expressiveness with a muted color palette that puts New York at the center of the story.

NOT A NEW YORK LOVE STORY is not a romantic comedy. It’s a drama, a tale of two lost souls with “the Big Apple” as its witness.

The kind of story you’ll need to read twice to peel its many layers!

About Julian Voloj

Help Wanted
 

About Adelle Waldman

Women of Good Fortune by Sophie Wan
Women of Good Fortune
Women of Good Fortune by Sophie Wan

Set against a high-society Shanghai wedding, a heartfelt, funny, dazzling novel about a reluctant bride and her two best friends, each with their own motives and fed up with the way society treats women, who forge a plan to steal all the gift money on the big day

“Joyous, indulgent, immensely clever.” —Grace D. Li

“A glittering debut and delightful romp.” —Carley Fortune

Lulu has always been taught that money is the ticket to a good life. So, when Shanghai’s most eligible bachelor surprises her with a proposal, the only acceptable answer is yes, even if the voice inside her head is saying no. His family’s fortune would solve all her parents’ financial woes, but Lulu isn’t in love or ready for marriage.

The only people she can confide in are her two best friends: career-minded Rina, who is tired of being passed over for promotion while her male colleagues are rewarded; and Jane, a sharp-tongued, luxury-chasing housewife desperate to divorce her husband and trade up. Each of them desires something different: freedom, time, beauty. None of them can get it without money.

Lulu’s wedding is their golden opportunity. The social event of the season, it means more than enough cash gifts to transform the women’s lives. To steal the money on the big day, all they’ll need is a trustworthy crew and a brilliant plan. But as the plot grows increasingly complicated and relationships are caught in the cross fire, the women are forced to face that having it all might come at a steep price…

About Sophie Wan

The River Within by Ping Wang
The River Within
The River Within by Ping Wang

I have a long history of communication with Wang Ping, who has had an instructive and fascinating life between China and the United States. She has been remarkably creative with her time here and her expanding understanding of the American nation and the N. American continent…. her AWP award-winning book Life of Miracles along the Yangtze and Mississippi, was totally refreshing and important.

—Gary Snyder

Every day is different. Every row is different. Every stroke is different. Nothing stays the same. Every day, the Mississippi. Every day, a different river. Wang Ping is a poet by profession and a rower by routine.
She sees a deep connection in these things. Flow. Rhythm. Cadence.

—John Branch, in “A Long Shining River of Verse, Flowing from a Rower and Writer,” NYT,

“We have poetry—words with wings,” Wang Ping declares in The River Within. Ping’s “words with wings” render the vitality of natural forces through corporeal experience. Her love poems extol life forms as varied as elephants, cephalopods, and the virus…. At the center of this sublime collection is the stunning extended poem “How a Droplet Becomes a Tsunami: Field Notes from Standing Rock” that recalls the years-long oil pipeline protest, the history of Sioux genocide, and a consequential canoe trip that led to the Kinship of Rivers project. With precision and pathos, Wang Ping follows the pipeline account as it flows into the story of rivers, of water, drop by droplet. This is a book to be savored.

—Martine Bellen, author of An Anatomy of Curiosity

Since her first book of poetry, Flesh and Spirit, Wang Ping has been a major moral and spiritual force in American letters…. Her model of consciousness: the cephalopod, which thinks with its limbs. As she writes in the poem,“Magic,”“This is the sound of magic / running through our veins / Moving the sky and earth / Passing though us like rivers / All the noise on earth will die / But not this silence of faith / The innocence persisting to believe / To see more than can be seen.” … she is doing the good work of saving us. One strategy: a crown of river sonnets of nearly perfect formality.

—Paul Hoover, editor of Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology

About Ping Wang

How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi by Matt Wasowski
How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi: Collected Quirks of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math from Nerd Nite
How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi by Matt Wasowski

In the vein of acclaimed popular-science bestsellers such as Atlas Obscura, Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry, The Way Things Work, What If?, and Undeniablethe co-founders of the global science organization Nerd Nite bring readers a collection of wacky, yet fascinating STEM topics.

For 20 years, Nerd Nite has delivered to live audiences around the world, the most interesting, fun, and informative presentations about science, history, the arts, pop culture, you name it. There hasn’t been a rabbit hole that their army of presenters hasn’t been afraid to explore. Finally, after countless requests to bring Nerd Nite to more fans across the globe, co-founders and college pals Matt Wasowski and Chris Balakrishnan are bringing readers the quirky and accessible science content that they crave in book form, focused on STEM and paired with detailed illustrations that make the content pop. The resulting range of topics is quirky and vast, from kinky, spring-loaded spiders to the Webb telescope’s influence on movie special effects.

Hilariously named after Dale Carnegie’s iconic book, How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi features narratives, bursts, and infographics on all things STEM from scientists around the world. Chapters are sure to make you laugh-out-loud, with titles such as “The Science of the Hangover,” “What Birds Can Teach Us About the Impending Zombie Apocalypse,” and “Lessons from the Oregon Trail.”

With fascinating details, facts, and illustrations, combined with Chris and Matt’s incredible connections to organizations such as the Discovery Network and the Smithsonian Institution, How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi is sure to reach joyful STEM enthusiasts of all ages around the world.

About Nerd Nite: Started in 2003, Nerd Nite is a monthly event held in 100+ cities worldwide during which folks give 20-minute fun-yet-informative presentations across all disciplines, while the audience drinks along!

About Matt Wasowski

Transplant by Bernardine Watson
Transplant
Transplant by Bernardine Watson

Transplant: A Memoir, is a page-turning, personal journey into one Black woman’s battle with kidney disease and the American medical system. Bernardine Watson’s book is at once a truth-telling and an affirmation of the life force propelling us all toward love and hope. A vibrant, powerful portrait of what it means to be Black, female, and confronting a deadly disease in today’s America. Winner of the first annual Washington Writers’ Publishing House Creative Nonfiction Award, 2023. Named one of the ‘5 over 50’ debuts in 2023 by Poets & Writers magazine.

About Bernardine Watson

Carole Boston Weatherford
Kin: Rooted in Hope
Carole Boston Weatherford

A powerful portrait of a Black family tree shaped by enslavement and freedom, rendered in searing poems by acclaimed author Carole Boston Weatherford and stunning art by her son Jeffery Boston Weatherford.

I call their names:
Abram Alice Amey Arianna Antiqua
I call their names:
Isaac Jake James Jenny Jim
Every last one, property of the Lloyds,
the state’s preeminent enslavers.
Every last one, with a mind of their own
and a story that ain’t yet been told.
Till now.

Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.

Carole’s poems capture voices ranging from her ancestors to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman to the plantation house and land itself that connects them all, and Jeffery’s evocative illustrations help carry the story from the first mention of a forebear listed as property in a 1781 ledger to he and his mother’s homegoing trip to Africa in 2016. Shaped by loss, erasure, and ultimate reclamation, this is the story of not only Carole and Jeffery’s family, but of countless other Black families in America.

About Carole Boston Weatherford

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

A blood-soaked and nauseating triumph that cuts like a scalpel and reads like your darkest nightmare.

New York Times bestselling author Andrew Joseph White returns with the transgressive gothic horror of our time!

Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.

London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.

After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world—so long as the school doesn’t break him first.

Featuring an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting, Andrew Joseph White’s much-anticipated sophomore novel does not back down from exposing the violence of the patriarchy and the harm inflicted on trans youth who are forced into conformity.

About Andrew Joseph White

The Last Time She Saw Him

A woman is left reeling when her former fiancé appears to take his own life, and she becomes desperate to prove it was actually murder—in the latest psychological thriller from New York Times bestselling author Kate White

As Kiki Reed heads out to a party at a friend’s house in the Connecticut countryside, she’s more than a little nervous. Her ex-fiancé Jamie, a great guy who just wasn’t “the one,” will be attending, and she hasn’t seen him since she broke his heart a few months earlier. But when they come face to face, their exchange is brief and pleasant, which is a huge relief.

Then, as the party is winding down, a noise pierces the night. The last few guests run outside to find Jamie inside his car, dead from a gunshot wound.

Shocked and grieving, Kiki learns that the police believe Jamie took his own life, but she knows he was moving on from the breakup and just doesn’t believe it. Determined to find the truth, she searches for any evidence that will get the police to take her seriously. But as she peels away the layers, she uncovers something far more sinister than she’d imagined—and it may be her life on the line next. . .

About Kate White

Shakespeare Was a Woman by Elizabeth Winkler
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature
Shakespeare Was a Woman by Elizabeth Winkler

An “extraordinarily brilliant” and “pleasurably naughty” (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy…and who the Bard might really be.

The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard’s biography is a “black hole,” yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable, even (some say) “immoral.”

In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo. Whisking you from London to Stratford-Upon-Avon to Washington, DC, she pulls back the curtain to show how the forces of nationalism and empire, religion and mythmaking, gender and class have shaped our admiration for Shakespeare across the centuries. As she considers the writers and thinkers—from Walt Whitman to Sigmund Freud to Supreme Court justices—who have grappled with the riddle of the plays’ origins, she explores who may perhaps have been hiding behind his name. A forgotten woman? A disgraced aristocrat? A government spy? Hovering over the mystery are Shakespeare’s plays themselves, with their love for mistaken identities, disguises, and things never quite being what they seem.

As she interviews scholars and skeptics, Winkler’s interest turns to the larger problem of historical truth—and of how human imperfections (bias, blindness, subjectivity) shape our construction of the past. History is a story, and the story we find may depend on the story we’re looking for.

“Lively” (The Washington Post), “fascinating” (Amanda Foreman), and “intrepid” (Stacy Schiff), Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies will forever change how you think of Shakespeare…and of how we as a society decide what’s up for debate and what’s just nonsense, just heresy.

About Elizabeth Winkler

Between Monsters and Marvels

A standalone high-stakes middle grade fantasy by Alysa Wishingrad, author of the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection The Verdigris Pawn.

Monsters are still lurking on Barrow’s Bay.

Dare Coates is sure of it. No drifter or ruffian could have killed her father, the Captain of the Guard, while he was on patrol. But everyone insists that monsters have been gone for years now. Dare’s mother. Her classmates. Even the governor, who swiftly marries her mother just months after her father’s death.

Dare’s suspicions grow even stronger when the governor suddenly ships her off to the mainland, away from any hope of uncovering the truth about her father’s death.

Or so she thinks. Soon Dare finds solid proof that monsters still exist and she starts to question everything she’s always known. Was her father who she thought he was? Who can she trust? Where is the line between good and evil?

The truth hides behind danger and deception. But with the help of an unlikely crew of cohorts and a stray beastie, nothing can stop Dare from finding out what happened to her father and exposing who the real monsters are.

Perfect for fans of Ellen Oh’s Spirit Hunters and Lauren Oliver’s The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street.  

About Alysa Wishingrad

The Hive and the Honey: Stories

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
New York Times Editors’ Choice
Time Must Read Book and Top 10 Fiction Book of 2023
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New YorkerVanity FairLibrary JournalElectric Literature, and the New York Public Library

From the beloved award-winning author Paul Yoon comes a spectacular collection of unique stories, each confronting themes of identity, belonging, and the collision of cultures across countries and centuries.

A boy searches for his father, a prison guard on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. A samurai escorts an orphan to his countrymen in the Edo Period. A formerly incarcerated man starts a new life in a small town in upstate New York and attempts to build a family.

The Hive and the Honey is a bold and indelible collection by celebrated author Paul Yoon, one that portrays the vastness and complexity of diasporic communities, with each story bringing to light the knotty inheritances of their characters. How does a North Korean defector connect with the child she once left behind? What are the traumas that haunt a Korean settlement in Far East Russia?

Lauded as a “quotidiansurreal craftmaster” (New York magazine), Yoon’s stunning stories are laced with beauty and cruelty, and The Hive and the Honey is the work of an author writing at the very height of his powers.

About Paul Yoon

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