He has no idea where his brother Sidney Bosco has gone—with Kilt’s share of stolen money—and following his “rebirth” even more miseries await Kilt who’s mauled by a lion. Passed out on his wandering mule he’s found by Bonnie Grace a 13-year-old Indigenous girl who nurses him back to health when not being brutally abused by the owner of the cabin in which she’s staying. Kilt rescues her from her circumstances but not before taking care of her abuser with his ever-active Luger which along with a copy of Moby-Dick is his prime possession. Flash back to 1912 Minnesota where Benjamin a sweet but passive 10-year-old who quit school after second grade cleans a barroom in exchange for a place to sleep—until he’s trained by a charismatic bank robber Nick Mercy as his getaway driver. Before fate catches up to Mercy he mysteriously urges Benjamin to head to Black Elk Montana where there are “nothing but answers” waiting for him at the Triple Nine Ranch. Its high-minded owner Royal Wainwright proves to know all about Benjamin. The promised answers are about the boy’s mother (who recently killed herself) the father he never knew and his never-seen half brother. Partly told in retrospect by the aged Bonnie this is a raw biblically heated tale about generational trauma the possibilities of redemption and predetermined fate. With its parade of blood-spattered victims its philosophical ponderings (“things evolve solely for the outcome of their own destruction”) and fiercely lyrical depictions of the American West (“the limbs of ponderosa bejeweled and frosted like enormous sticks of rock candy”) this is country noir at its grimmest while at the same time channeling hope. Its intensity never lets up.

Mina Murray lives with her yoga teacher mother in London Georgia a touristy town built around an impressive mythology of vampires human sacrifice and a snake-filled lake. With best friend Jackie Seward she creates the Lore Club to investigate London’s idiosyncrasies. The club members discover a pattern of sinkholes appearing before people go missing. Mina awakens the morning after a new sinkhole opens up with a strange bite mark on her wrist. When the body of a local resident is found drained of blood and classmate Buddy Swales goes missing the Lore Club plus Mina’s love interest Jonathan Harker must uncover London’s secrets in time to save Buddy—and the town itself. Mina has OCD and is adopted; she grapples with and explores both aspects of her identity through therapy and in her relationships with family and friends. Unfortunately the pacing in Dale’s young readers’ debut is sluggish throughout the first two-thirds making the later more exciting chapters feel rushed. The romance between Mina and Jonathan smolders and the plot threads are satisfyingly wrapped up although the ending hints at more adventures. An obvious nod to Bram Stoker’s seminal work this novel has engaging facets but falters thanks to uneven execution. Jackie is Black and Indian American and has ADHD and white-presenting Mina’s friend group is broadly diverse.

It may seem an impossible task to convince white Southerners living in poverty—without adequate health care or affordable housing—that they benefit from white privilege but Howard has spent a lifetime challenging entrenched fallacies and formidable foes. A lifelong activist and professional community organizer Howard feels a deep connection with the working poor the chemically addicted and the chronically ill because she writes “I am a working-class white Appalachian.” This compassionately told memoir traces the author’s trajectory from a chaotic childhood in a struggling working-class family in rural Kentucky to a career spent fighting for racial and social change in leadership roles with community organizing groups. The story is most vivid in her account of growing up on her grandparents’ tobacco farm with a mother who worked as a grocery clerk and a father who was a strip miner with weaknesses for alcohol and cocaine. He could turn violent on a dime. “Seeing men with guns in their hands was as common as seeing the sun rise and set each day” Howard writes. “It was just another way we marked time.” But her father had a keen mind was a voracious reader and had strong liberal leanings which informed Howard’s moral compass. She was in the seventh grade when she led her first protest against a school lunchroom monitor who refused students refills of water. Howard’s career took her to Florida West Virginia and back to Kentucky with various organizations and along the way she risked repeating family history by drinking herself into oblivion. A mental health treatment program and AA helped save her from depression after her father’s death.

The Margini can’t afford the fees required for them to become apprentices in one of the guilds that dictate access to skilled work and education in the city. When clockmaker Maestro Giuseppi who refuses to join a guild arrives in town with his daughter Stella Vale at last has the opportunity to learn a trade. But violence against the guildless grows until the only option is for Vale and their community to begin fighting back. The community of the Margini is aspirational and supportive full of aid amid their hardship. But the story while providing a worthwhile lesson in the importance of organizing lacks engaging character development. Vale and Stella form a fast friendship but readers learn little about them beyond their desire to fight for what’s right. The world of Siannerra remains a highlight however: It’s rich lived-in plausible and filled with culture. Bi’s artwork is detailed vibrant and immensely visually appealing. Seeing the ways in which the underclass gets by an element that’s often forgotten in fantasy stories is worthwhile. Vale is nonbinary and has light brown skin and a mop of black hair with an undercut. Stella is pale-skinned and freckled with red hair. The supporting cast is diverse in appearance.

Professors Amelia Tarrant and Caleb Sterling have been soulmates since they met as children at boarding school—he an orphan she the neglected child of indifferent academics. They grew up together and became historians together. But double standards plague even the zany magical universe they inhabit and a stray moment of platonic touching sets tongues wagging. With Amelia’s job always at risk in a sexist academic environment she and Caleb decided to act like enemies so no one realizes the strength of their attachment. Pretending to hate each other is wearing on them however and the magical disruptions that accompany their “spats” increase when they’re assigned to visit a country house to catalog antique enchanted objects. Accompanied by a giggly secretary and a hulking security officer Amelia and Caleb try to discover why artifacts keep disappearing and what precise power lies in the ordinary-looking spoon that keeps appearing in Amelia’s vicinity. As in Holton’s earlier novels set in a fantastical 19th-century Britain the book is replete with Oscar Wilde- and Alexander Pope–style irony and goofball scenes with comic characters in a faux-gothic setting. This is also a satire of university culture highlighting the emotional and professional labor forced on women in academia who are mocked for being both too competent to be likable and too feminine for true intellectual work. The dual points of view Caleb’s consistent support for Amelia and a secret society of exasperated older women all help counter some of the bitterness of that inequality. The couple’s abiding love and their fake fighting complicates the usual enemies-to-lovers narrative and might appeal to fans of Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry. There’s no explicit sex but some passages are steamy enough to show that even professional thinkers do more than lecture.

Set in 2014 the story begins in Marquette Michigan after a small meteor falls to Earth. When advertising exec Carole Veilleux—unknowingly infected by a tick days earlier—bites bakery owner Booker she begins a chain reaction that spreads the strange contamination (the “mind-merge thing”) throughout Marquette and eventually all over the world. Billions of people become part of the hive mind: Booker’s preteen child Layla who wants to transition to a boy; autistic cop Lana Lannister; 61-year-old Jewish doctor Evelyn Schlapp who’s having an affair with her rabbi; and more. Within weeks the people of Marquette were “reindeer herders in Sápmi Scandinavian furries with mixed fursonas. They were the Bajau Darat forced out of the sea to live a sedentary life they were Lego designers Maasai Kazakhs Swiss bankers and snake milkers. They were David Bowie. That was really… cool.” Even hate-filled people like neo-Nazi thug William Willoughby find themselves seeing the world through more compassionate and accepting eyes. Suddenly everyone knows everything about everyone else. Humankind becomes collectively more intelligent more understanding. Months pass and humans make jaw-dropping scientific and societal advances. But what would happen if the hive mind suddenly disappeared and the world’s populace was forced to return to living with only their individual thoughts and limited knowledge? The speculation surrounding the planet’s organisms (humans animals plants etc.) being part of a massive hive mind is intriguing particularly as it deals with issues like racism sexism and systemic discrimination. The potential is there for some brass knuckles-to-the-skull revelations but the payoff is decidedly underwhelming: “The best people could do was to try and make [the world] a tiny bit better.”

Eleanor Newton wasn’t able to be with her grandmother three years ago when she died alone in the hospital during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The loss lingers especially because Grandma’s ghost appeared to Eleanor soon after her death cryptically declaring “I’m early.” Trapped at home in lockdown and anticipating Grandma’s return Eleanor recalls that “The world outside shrank. The world inside grew to fill the space that remained.” New neighbor Justin Fletcher an 11-year-old from Greenwich who reads Black helps white-presenting Eleanor break out of her shell. One day while visiting a newly uncovered Roman mosaic of Orpheus and Eurydice beneath the London Bridge Tube station Eleanor and Justin are alone when a wall gives way water fills the tunnel and they drown. They find themselves in a forested underworld facing a forked path. Eleanor’s route ends at Eventide House a seemingly idyllic boarding school that’s shrouded in mystery. Her efforts to uncover Eventide’s secrets only lead her deeper into the afterlife’s many-layered strangeness. While the story imagines one child’s encounter with death it also powerfully captures the existential feeling of loss and unreality associated with the pandemic isolation. The dreamlike settings and Eleanor’s expressive narration lend the story a gentleness that makes its challenging premise memorable and emotionally manageable.

Twelve-year-old New Yorker Ria Bailey who has a “not-in-the-picture-at-all British dad” and a Bengali Indian mom is about to start middle school with her best friends Ghanaian immigrant tech genius Miracle Owusu and athletic Irish and Mexican American activist Annie Hernandez. When Ria’s art historian mother a vocal advocate for repatriating looted artefacts is pushed to resign from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Ria faces the prospect of leaving the only home she’s ever known. The plot thickens when a ruby resembling one stolen from the museum arrives at their apartment along with a cryptic message. Worried about Ma’s possible involvement Ria and her friends plot to return the ruby during their school’s annual museum sleepover. But their attempted reverse heist meets with unforeseen complications. They also encounter Zakir a mysterious—and distractingly cute—boy. Before long Ria and friends are racing through the city dodging menacing strangers meeting a tech billionaire and unmasking a long-hidden conspiracy. A brisk pace and well-developed characters enliven this adventure that celebrates the diverse immigrant communities that keep New York thriving; a supporting cast of helpful uncles and aunties from different communities aids the girls in their adventures. DasGupta deftly weaves themes of cultural identity and history into a fun contemporary storyline that explores the impact of colonization and capitalism on the Global South. Some suspension of disbelief is required but the story builds to a satisfying finale.

When she was growing up writes Machado Venezuela regularly held elections with peaceful transfers of power and enjoyed a degree of prosperity greater than many of its Latin American neighbors thanks to abundant oil. That changed when Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999. He “began by focusing on controlling the judicial system” replacing longtime jurists with his lackeys and enriched himself while immiserating his people. The universities were islands of resistance she writes but now “even private universities…have been compromised by the regime.” Despite winning election to Parliament she had to fight to take her place there and when she ran for president she was cheated out of victory by Chávez’s successor Nicolás Maduro. She also won the Nobel Peace Prize (which she later gifted to President Trump who is not mentioned in the book). Machado’s “manifesto” is a brief set of principles most unobjectionable on their face: “Our individual liberty will forever be fully realized within a Venezuelan ecosystem booming with liberty. …The people of Venezuela deserve a duly elected government that maintains the will and capacity to guarantee the safety of every citizen.” She remains out of power for all that Maduro having been kidnapped by the U.S. but with his lieutenant installed in his place. Machado’s book certainly gives insight into her antisocialist views and the agenda that might follow should she in fact take office one day but the book is a bit of a hodgepodge—a chronology a little autobiographical essay the manifesto itself and testimonials by various opponents of the regime—that seems done in a hurry.

Bartov a Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies offers a frank sure-to-be-controversial analysis of Israel’s past and present arguing that the country has “engaged in systematic war crimes crimes against humanity and genocidal actions” in Gaza in response to Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 2023 attack. The native Israeli and Israel Defense Force veteran’s conclusions arise from historical research personal observation and scrutiny of international law. His years in the IDF had him question the role he and other soldiers were playing in Gaza. “I saw firsthand the poverty and hopelessness of Palestinian refugees eking out a living in congested decrepit neighborhoods” he writes. “For the first time I understood what it meant to occupy another people.” Visiting in June 2024 he notes “the utter inability of Israeli society to feel any empathy for the population of Gaza.” He links this to Israel’s earliest days. Had the nation adopted a constitution and “a bill of rights for all human beings” he writes “the creeping racism of Israeli society might have been tempered.” He asserts that the country has “abused” its “status as a unique state rooted in a unique Holocaust” which frees it “from the constraints imposed on all other nations.” Bartov worried that “the exclusion and violent domination of Palestinians” will trigger Israel’s “implosion” means to “contribute to an opening of minds.” Most explosively he claims Israel has become “the best excuse for antisemites everywhere” its “addiction to violence and oppression reliance on great powers and financial clout and constant harping on the horrors of the Holocaust as an excuse for untethered violence against Palestinians” provoking “horror and disgust.” Bartov writes that Israel is “in multiple senses my home and my homeland.” Poignantly however he now feels “increasingly estranged from it. It seems to be a different strange and threatening place whose people including some of my friends have been transformed perhaps irretrievably.”

A conservationist Horn accompanied George Schaller on expeditions to India where “locals still sought his guidance on how to resolve life-or-death conflicts between humans and wildlife—pressed into closer proximity there than anywhere on Earth” and to the Arizona-Mexico border where President Donald Trump’s border wall threatens the region’s jaguars. Horn was not the first to watch Schaller at work: He taught Jane Goodall how to study primates mentored big-cat biologist and writer Alan Rabinowitz and guided Peter Matthiessen across the Himalayas in search of the elusive snow leopard. Yet by Horn’s fluent account Schaller prefers the company of animals to people a preference perhaps born of a fraught early life his father a German diplomat during the years of the Third Reich his mother an American bullied for his mixed parentage throughout his childhood. Horn has a biological explanation: Zoologists recount that play is essential to socialization and Schaller grew up a loner with a deep connection to animals and not people. “Trying to safely navigate a world that fears you…is almost like dropping into another species” she writes. His alienation was science’s gain. Studying animal populations in nearly three dozen countries he contributed immeasurably to our understanding of animal societies and minds (“Lions possessed theory of mind: the ability to inhabit the perspectives and intentions of others and anticipate their responses”). On top of that he was an alpinist of distinction who wrote photographer and mountain climber Galen Rowell “has spent more time in remote Asian mountains than any mountaineer I know.” Now 92 Schaller is of a kind who will not come again Horn argues—for instance in his knowledge of animal signs which has been made obsolete by both technology and the disappearance of so many species.

Wildly prolific in both poetry and prose Pessoa (1888-1935) (The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos 2023 etc.) wrote pseudonymously as a network of fictional writers and the translation and collation of this multifaceted oeuvre is the subject of a new publishing project by New Directions. In 1928 Pessoa explained that his “heteronymic work is done by the author outside his personality” and compared his varied bibliography to the “sayings of characters in any of his dramas.” This bilingual collection compiles all the work of “Ricardo Reis” a neoclassical Whitman-esque odist in search of transcendental epiphanies. The poems trace a philosophical quest toward recognizing the power of the present and a belief that those who look toward the future (or the afterlife) are doomed to unfulfillment. “Be fully yourself today” he urges in one poem “don’t wait. / You are your life.” Let us be what we are” he writes in another. Despite each poem striving to reach this same sense of enlightenment they rarely feel redundant and instead recapitulate like a recurring motif. Classical imagery courses through imbuing the poems with Dionysian ecstasy. “Happy the man to whom life kindly / Granted a knowledge of the gods” he writes in one poem “So that like them he could see / In the earthly things among which he lives / A mortal reflection of immortal life.” An illuminating section of prose concludes the volume including curious prefaces written by Reis for Alberto Caeiro another of Pessoa’s heteronyms. Here Reis writes of his intentions to usher in a “lucid re-visioning of the gods the rebirth of ancient beliefs which the whole troop of false Christian gods and saints had buried.” In this marvelous introduction to Pessoa’s multitudes readers will find a wealth of material to explore among the subversive paganism of Reis’ odes.

Trained as a Shakespearean scholar Bicks was hired a decade ago to hold a chair at the University of Maine endowed in Stephen King’s name. It happened that she was a huge fan of King’s work a teenager when “a whole posse of King’s creatures danced their way into my imagination and made themselves at home.” A request for a classroom visit led to friendship and along with it Bicks’ layering of King’s work onto a template dominated by the likes of Macbeth and Hamlet. The great Kingly lesson to which the Bard would surely assent: “The world is never going to be 100 percent safe: The Boogeyman never goes away—­although your mother will.” Bicks is a smart and inventive reader of King to be sure and it’s an interesting exercise to think of the bloody conclusion of Carrie as something that wouldn’t be out of place in Birnam Wood as well as to ponder the connection of Jack Torrance of The Shining to poor mind-beset Prince Hamlet. But of greater interest to die-hard King fans is Bicks’ tour through the archives of the title as she works her way through draft after draft of King’s novels and stories to discover how the master of horror shaped his work. One way she finds is through clusters of words that appear and reappear in various forms in any given text—in Pet Sematary for instance the words “dirt/grit/gritting/grating/grave/gravel.” There’s good gossip along with the scholarly insights (and the scholarship is lightly worn and not for a moment pedantic) one highlight being the real reason why King didn’t like Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining. And rest assured after reading this book you’ll know the good and true reasons to keep your closet door closed tight.

While many of the 22 essays included in this collection contain memoir material others report on topics such as the Hatfield-McCoy feud or a shooting at a church in Kentucky; there are moving portraits of writers Stephen Crane and Breece D’J Pancake and a lovely tribute to Barbara Stanwyck and The Big Valley. Phillips’ prose is unflagging in its beauty and rhythm and the memoir-leaning pieces have a special glow infused with her profound nostalgia for her Appalachian childhood. From a dreamy seductive recollection of the beauty salon in her small West Virginia town: “Quiet now they lay back in their chairs heads swallowed up by the deep slotted sinks. I noticed how their legs fell slightly apart. Their hands relaxed. Uniformed girls massaged their scalps with careless efficiency and the women closed their eyes….Women went to the beauty shop to be with other women to engage in private rituals that supposedly had to do with men yet the men were wholly absent.” Her mother is a strong presence in the book; the topic of her death is the ultimate topic of the final essay “Premature Burial.” An essay devoted to refuting Kenneth Tynan’s assertion that writers hate to write contains an encomium to the novelist’s labor that begins like this: “We might compare getting started on a story to starting a relationship (oh that first time together lying down skin to skin!) or beginning a novel to committing to a marriage. Each long-term liaison is laden with its own miracles and traps: There is the young marriage the second marriage the late marriage in which indolent time does not exist and all is revealed at the first touch.” Buy the book to read the rest of this paragraph alone. But know that it grew out of many previously published pieces and is more enjoyable if you don’t go into it expecting the immersive flow of a memoir.

“Peace is not something we wait for” life coaches Hamilton-Guarino and Eastman point out in the book’s introduction adding that it is instead “something we practice—every day in every interaction in every breath.” The authors challenge popular misconceptions of peace that relegate it to an abstract ideal reduce it to passive inaction or defer its value onto others and they argue that it begins inside oneself and in one’s interactions with family members colleagues and communities. Central to the book’s convincing premise is that peace starts with compassion (“When you commit to practicing compassion” they write “you promote peace”) and that actively choosing compassion not only helps bring inner peace but is also a contribution to global peace movements. As a guidebook the volume provides pragmatic advice often in bulleted lists on how to embrace its central concept while emphasizing that it requires constant vigilance and patience. A wealth of practical ancillaries includes journaling prompts (included on lined paper throughout the book) real-world exercises to help break an “autopilot cycle” in stressful situations and prompts for group discussions. There are memoiristic vignettes from the authors’ own lives as well as inspirational stories contributed by people they’ve encountered as life coaches licensed therapists and motivational speakers. Hamilton-Guarino a bestselling author of nearly a dozen works joins Eastman whose academic background is in clinical psychology for this book; the pair who previously worked together on Percolate: Let Your Best Self Filter Through (2014) are particularly adept at blending a welcoming personable writing style with a solid understanding of best practices in contemporary psychology and peace theory that’s backed by scholarly references. Although the authors’ overall goal of a more peaceful world is admirable they’re also careful to emphasize that the book “doesn’t ask for perfection.” Instead it effectively encourages readers to contribute to this goal—one small change and action at a time.

This book by an Atlantic staff writer argues that the past decade has transformed for the worse the way we think about engagement with each other. The impersonality of the internet has eroded our civility—Garber recalls getting death threats even for small-stakes criticisms of TV shows. Yet crucially it’s also preserved and even intensified our appetite for narrative. So thinking of “performance as an American cultural script” she considers the ways the internet motivates us to be the heroes of our own story. Social media lets us star in our own heavily stage-managed reality show; AI chatbots encourage us to pursue friendship and even romance without the messy uncertainty of fellow humans. This depersonalization has more serious consequences Garber notes. It fuels conspiracy theories like QAnon where followers await every new cryptic plot twist and blurs the lines between fact and fiction. It also sanctions inhumane acts: Consider how red-state leaders have shuttled immigrants to blue states solely to score political points (or more precisely likes) or how Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of health care CEO Brian Thompson made him a kind of folk hero. This warping of reality matched to needless harm to everyday Americans finds its apotheosis in the “carnivalized cruelty” of the Donald Trump presidency. But Garber doesn’t let Trump swallow the narrative; he’s just one example of how language and intention have grown fuzzier and more weaponized now. Anybody who spends time online will sympathize with Garber’s insightful well-curated considerations. But as for what to do about it she can only shrug offering no policy or legislative redresses only a plea that we approach the internet “wisely.” Now that we all consider ourselves the smartest person in the room who’s taking that note?

As the co-founder of an apartment management business Salkeld oversaw an operation with assets that are currently valued at more than a half-billion dollars. At the same time he and his wife Delane participated in multiple short-term Christian mission trips to sub-Saharan Africa and the two spearheaded Christian philanthropic work that included funding a Zambian orphanage. The duo’s story of how they achieved the American dream while also making positive contributions to the world is the topic of Salkeld’s 2025 memoir God Whispers Are Life Changers. This volume designed as a practical workbook for those inspired by the memoir urges readers to use its spiritual and life lessons as motivation to serve others with the time and gifts God has given them. The book’s 26 chapters are divided into four sections beginning with far-reaching advice to fellow Christians on how to listen to God’s “whispers” and take the leap of faith required to follow his promptings. Parts 2 and 3 center around living a “God-Led Adventure” in one’s career and personal service to others. These chapters emphasize the importance of maintaining a work-life balance that affords financial security personal fulfillment and the ability to serve others. The book’s final section “God’s Whispers Are Everywhere” highlights the author’s belief that God speaks to us daily not only through grand epiphanies and divine revelation but also through nature itself. From sunsets to birds Salkeld writes “it’s impossible not to experience His whispers.”

As an ancillary to Salkeld’s memoir this volume focuses on the practical applications of the author’s lessons in readers’ daily routines. As such its chapters follow a similar outline eschewing lengthy narratives to prioritize pragmatic advice personal reflection and journaling. Each chapter begins with an excerpt from the author’s memoir along with a short anecdote and Bible verses before transitioning to “Action Items” that prompt readers to think back on their own personal experiences reflect on specific aspects of their lives and plan for the future. (The author encourages readers to use free artificial intelligence platforms to help them align their personalities and interests with volunteer opportunities in their local communities.) Salkeld has an accessible writing style and the text includes bulleted lists blank lined pages for journaling and visual aids that span from full-page illustrations to charts and tables. As a lay Christian the author avoids complex theological jargon taking a down-to-earth approach to theology that emphasizes rightful living over following complicated doctrinal frameworks. The work is broadly ecumenical offering an array of inspirational Bible verses without pushing any specific denominational approach to Christianity. And while the more secularly inclined may not find much use in Salkeld’s religious approach to making life-altering decisions the workbook may appeal to other believers from various traditions. The author’s avoidance of sociopolitical issues and topics central to the heated battles of America’s culture wars will further broaden the book’s reach.

To be a well-educated child lies not in mastering a canon of concepts or major authors skills and subjects. Rather it lies in the mastery of love. Kenny is the founder of Harlem Village Academies a network of charter schools as well as the Deeper Learning Institute and as singer-songwriter John Legend writes in a foreword to her book “She reminds us that joy and academic rigor are not opposites….great teaching means helping children learn how to think not just how to follow.” Kenny illustrates how caring teachers rely on “student discourse complex questioning and students taking ownership of their learning.” Her book makes much of how the “highest purpose” of school is “the shaping of the soul the inner life.” Guidelines for “ethical purpose” and “quality thinking” break out of the book’s pages like tag lines on a PowerPoint presentation. Like many recent manifestos for the mind the book has a utopian feel: If we could only stop teaching to the text and start learning from the life. Some teachers may find these ideals hard to earn in rooms filled with the hungry and unhoused. “The development of agency requires a shift in school culture as well as an infrastructure of practices” Kenny writes. “Routines for example can teach the skills of self-direction.” The book’s appeal to “Emersonian self-reliance” however may not work for those who have relied on others all their lives. Finding your soul and seeking yourself have been the goals of classroom innovators from the Puritans and Louisa May Alcott to John Dewey and beyond. Just how to achieve them will take more than good faith.

In an autobiography in the campaign genre for she’s now running for governor of her native Georgia Bottoms writes of growing up on what in the Black church is called “the rough side of the mountain”—rough to be sure but as she quotes Aretha Franklin as saying “the smooth side doesn’t have anything for you to hang on to.” Bottoms’ family life was tumultuous. In a climactic moment of the book her father an influential but troubled R&B singer is taken off to prison for selling drugs. Left to provide for her family her mother launches a beauty salon while Bottoms knuckles down and through dint of hard work becomes a consistently high-scoring honor student later attending an HBCU and earning a law degree. “As a product of the Atlanta Public Schools in the 1970s and 1980s I hadn’t had exposure to many integrated spaces” she writes but her varied work in what she called “the People’s Law” gave her a view of the whole metropolis one with marked inequalities and plenty of neighbors in need of help. She ran for city council perhaps one of the few candidates in any race whose foundational question was “Is all well with my soul?” Later she ran for mayor tested in the wake of the George Floyd killing by the police shooting of a young Black man at an Atlanta fast-food restaurant that drove yet another wedge into a divided community. Bottoms served only one term believing that too many politicians stay in office past their prime. Her candor isn’t entirely unusual but it’s still good to read that rather than try to hide away her “blemished family past” she unhesitatingly steps up to bear witness to it.

There’s a lot on the line for Naomi Sinclair star of A Word From the Kitchen when her boss Bronwyn Friedrich pits her against fellow cooking-show celebrity Travis Spriggs in a contest to determine which of them will host the network’s new culinary mystery show. They each have 12 months to develop a pilot episode that solves a food-related crime. Travis stays in his hometown of Charlotte working on The Carolina Barbecue Murders and readers see very little of him. But Naomi chooses to investigate the unsolved murder of her Aunt Ursula the late owner of a tea shop in Charlotte Amalie. Toggling back and forth in both time and place Bernier artfully crafts her puzzle—really a nested box of half a dozen puzzles. She gives Naomi a sharp tongue which comes in handy when crossing swords with oafish Travis along with a keen mind and a tender heart. Naomi solves six other crimes in the run-up to unearthing Ursula’s killer showing compassion for many of those whose misdeeds she exposes. Through Naomi’s eyes Bernier also provides a comprehensive look at the culture of St. Thomas. Naomi celebrates the particular joys of growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands with their breathtaking seascapes beloved foodways and close-knit communities. In the end Naomi’s investigation is not so much a battle against a rival but a journey into herself her family and what it means to grow up Caribbean.