A narrator who resembles her author both in name and occupation guides readers through the sexual proclivities and shades of gender expression that populated belle epoque Paris (with a brief digression to Georgian-era Wales). In cafes cabarets and opium dens she introduces us to what translator Careau calls “the sexual underworld”: lesbians and gay men women who dress in men’s clothing a sneering misogynist Don Juan and others—many of whom wouldn’t have used the same language to describe themselves that we use now. (Careau believes that at least one of those cross-dressing women would likely have been a transgender man if she’d lived in our own time.) And as Careau notes in her informative if occasionally stiff foreword the book itself evades categorization of all sorts—it’s neither pure fiction nor nonfiction and that narrator is a lot coyer than Colette’s own life might lead us to believe. For periods of time Colette dressed in men’s clothing and took women lovers but you wouldn’t know it based on this account alone. Her descriptions can seem harshly—even cruelly—outdated: Of a circle of gay men she writes “I will carefully avoid saying that they were not manly.” Of the cross-dressing women she accepts without complaint this question from an interlocutor: “What’s more ridiculous and sadder than a…simulated man?” But it’s never entirely clear where Colette’s irony ends and her sincerity begins—nor who might be considered “pure” or “impure.” As Careau notes Colette’s work would have been wildly broad-minded at the time—and for the most part her tone is more sympathetic than cutting eager to unravel the many many different layers of “my favorite form of brutality love.” As a whole it’s best read not as a comprehensive guide to gender and sexual desire but as a singular account—one that was very much of its own time and yet paradoxically far out in front of it.

Blue-eyed Inna Pallo who dyes her auburn hair blond is the new heir to the Pallo empire. She’s determined to investigate her sister’s death while training to take over the family business the illustrious Horizon Club. The club’s allure is based on sprites—insectlike creatures whose magic makes people feel euphoric. The Pallos market the sprites as “harmless floating baubles” concealing their murderous potential which they’re trying to keep hidden at all costs. Rylan who has “shaggy blond hair pale skin and green eyes” is an orphan with cause to seek vengeance against the Pallos. He seeks the legendary hibernating Serpent God who’s rumored to grant a wish to whoever finds and awakens him. But to do so he needs a journal that he suspects is hidden within the heavily guarded Pallo Vault. Rylan’s break-in attempt leads him to cross paths with Inna who wants to find answers to her sister’s death and they work together on a heist that sends them on the run—and into each other’s arms. Despite Inna’s unearned trust in Rylan their slow-burn romance satisfies. Both embark on the quest of a lifetime shedding their old skins and making surprising choices that transform them by the end. This stand-alone work following Bridge’s debut Of Flame and Fury (2025) returns readers to the Republic of Salta and introduces new creatures and mythology.

Ezekiel is an artificial intelligence aboard the spaceship Delphi; the rest of the crew consists almost entirely of humanoid androids from the Solarian civilization. Their mission is to seek out other intelligent lifeforms throughout the galaxy attempt to contact them and learn more about them (“Our mission is to learn” notes Hero the ship’s captain). Although Ezekiel is humanoid too he’s not a Solarian; he’s an exact copy of the human scientist who created him with the same memories and feelings but less physically vulnerable than the ship’s only human Siaree. The crew is on a mission of peace to the planet Travoli which is entirely populated by humans; the robots there exist only to serve the inhabitants and are assumed to have subhuman intelligence. When the Delphi arrives they discover that Fesgard the warlike Travolian whom they already know isn’t on the planet. Instead he and his crew appear to have stopped on their way home from the Trappist-1 planetary system to take samples from an unknown asteroid. They soon became mysteriously dangerously ill—and cannibalistic. Now Ezekiel and his crew must investigate; fortunately they’re immune to whatever is infecting the humans. This is the final book in Dorman’s trilogy but it stands well on its own. The prose is lucid and flows well both in action sequences and in interpersonal scenes and it always keeps the scientific aspects of the story clear. There’s potential in the idea that Ezekiel is a human-derived AI and therefore significantly different from the other beings he works with; it’s mostly used as an excuse though to have Ezekiel think and act like a human from the late 20th or early 21st century which can feel a bit ham-fisted. Other elements of the book are a bit too similar to Star Trek including a female empath and a non-interference Prime Directive. Still this is an engaging read particularly for those interested in AI androids and artificial environments.

Former thief Sparrow suffers nightmares stemming from the events in series opener Fateless (2025) and the Deathless King continues to pose a threat throughout the lands. For people to have any chance of fighting back Sparrow must find an artifact that may bestow upon her the powers of Maederyss the goddess of Fate. This object is hidden within the dangerous lava-covered World Scar where even the air is poisonous. Sparrow’s companions—Scarab Clan warrior Kysa and Halek the Fatechaser—swear to see the mission through with her and they set off riding on their giant flying rock beetles. Raithe the assassin who’s in a budding romantic relationship with Sparrow joins them but things grow complicated after they visit his mystic homeland of Irrikah. As the group traverses the Dead Lands encountering foes and allies deftly placed twists keep the pace engaging. Kagawa seamlessly incorporates plot points from the earlier book making this entry accessible to new readers. The rich narrative is balanced encompassing strong worldbuilding while developing each character’s emotional arc. The skillful weaving together of all these components results in a universe populated with fantasy-diverse characters that’s easy to get lost in. The cliffhanger ending will leave readers eagerly anticipating the next entry.

After a long and lively career O’Conner once known as the Warlord of Willow Ridge has settled into a relaxed lifestyle with longtime girlfriend Gwen Gardner who owns Fix & Go a chain of body shops. Phillips’ second O’Conner caper is long on banter backstories and outrageously named larger-than-life characters. The opening chapter features wide-eyed stripling OC taking in the activities of colorful felons like Shoe Dog and Dimitri “Teaflake” Strock. From there the plot ricochets freely from O’Conner’s childhood to his comfy present and various points in-between. The carrot that lures O’Conner back into larceny is a cache of reportedly untraceable millions that tech billionaire Palmer Van Noy keeps in a bunker beneath the new stadium of the Swashbucklers his basketball team. The road to the heist is predictably twisty and full of challenging obstacles all presented with comic panache. Multiple chases featuring diverse vehicles and collateral damage are involved. Given Phillips’ dozens of published short stories and comics it’s no surprise that the story’s chief attractions are its outrageous players and discursive detours. The latter include reminiscences of crimes from the good old days and a discussion of Alexandre Dumas’ African heritage. The denouement is never in doubt but the rollicking journey is sweet. The acknowledgements pay appropriate homage to Donald Westlake Phillips’ forerunner in this subgenre.

Cumming’s Box 88 series is notable for its focus on both the professional and personal life of its protagonist agent Lachlan Kite and for its strong impression of authenticity. The author dives deep into the complexities of the spy game relating it to the current international geopolitical situation. This fourth outing which is no exception opens in Istanbul in 2018 before jumping to present-day Sweden and finally settling on Kite in London. His reunion with Martha Raine a lover from the 1990s is interrupted by a distressed call from a colleague about a shooting near his home in Sweden—where his wife Isobel and their young daughter Ingrid are at home. As Kite strives to unpack the motive for this traumatic incident Martha contacts him with a special request: Locate and if necessary rescue her son Max Radinsky who’s gone missing in Greece along with his girlfriend Yasmine Bizri. The duplicitous Yasmine’s true identity and intentions become a major focus of Kite’s probe. Though Cumming sets the table with introductory scenes that introduce major villains and other players the story soon settles into a chase thriller on two alternating fronts: Kite’s accelerating rescue mission and Max and Yasmine’s efforts to escape. The plot is intricate and its incidents satisfyingly interconnected each small development fitting into a tapestry of espionage and international relations. Helpfully included are an Index of Characters and Lachlan Kite: Historical Timeline.

Billionaire Orson Darcy’s fatal plunge from the eighth floor of his Fifth Avenue apartment building would have seemed suspicious even if it weren’t for the sign his killer left behind: “DDD&R I AM COMING FOR YOU.” The “YOU” presumably includes Darcy’s partners Peyton Danforth Richmond Dingell III and Butch Rapp and Det. Bridget Washington the newly promoted head of the NYPD’s Prime Cases Squad will have her hands full keeping them safe. So it’s lucky that Frank Verity a New York Examiner reporter fired after he was sued for libel by a crooked developer is constantly being pushed forward by Sonny McHale his best friend at the Examiner who’d like nothing better than to cradle Frank in her arms. The intruder who defenestrated Darcy is soon identified to the reader and not long thereafter to Frank Sonny and Bridget as Jeffrey Hayder whose scheme to secure his future by slipping illegal tips to the partners hit a snag when they framed him for insider trading and he was imprisoned. The many bite-sized flashbacks designed to provide information about the characters’ motivations mainly have the effect of sowing confusion and the billionaires marked for extinction manage to be both corrupt and uninteresting. But even readers untroubled by the prospect that Ceci Darcy the widow who’s suddenly been catapulted into a partnership may be targeted may well root for Bridget Sonny and Frank because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

It all begins when Virginia Kent the newest server at Shepherd’s Pies on Florida’s Laguna Key asks Preston Shepherd if he’ll pretend to be her boyfriend in order to keep her mother Deandra who’s found her there from dragging her home to her family of wealthy soulless lawyers. Shepherd who’s not much for the ladies reluctantly agrees but Deandra ends up leaving the place with Michael Martin Shepherd’s wealthy landlord instead. Problem solved—until Deandra fails to return to the family manse herself because she’s been kidnapped by ruffians who kill Martin and demand over a million dollars for her safe return. When the Kents convene to vote on whether to pay the ransom Ginny and her father Deandra’s ex-husband Bradley are the only family members to endorse the plan. (The naysaying motive of Ginny’s brother Vincent a Laguna Key councilman who thinks his campaign for mayor would benefit from some “poor us” publicity is especially despicable.) So it’s up to Ginny and Shepherd who’s slipped from playing her fiancé to becoming her actual lover to join Charlie Cardello a mobbed-up former client of the Kents who’s been playing dead for five months in a robbery that will give them enough money to satisfy the kidnappers. The rest of the tale is relatively routine surprising only readers who thought the heist would go off without a hitch.

In I Who Have Never Known Men which was republished in a revised translation in 2022 Harpman’s eerie prescience was on full display in a tale about 39 women and a girl held for decades in a bunker for reasons never made clear to them. The book which was first published in 1995 in the Belgian writer’s native French became a sleeper hit of sorts in part because of Harpman’s interest in fascist or otherwise authoritarian control freethinking and the status of women in society among other topics that have once again become painfully relevant. Harpman returns to these topics in the new collection. In “The Ardennes Forest” a squad of men and women soldiers patrol a mysterious wooded area in the service of a war that may or may not have ended but that they are forbidden from fleeing. In “The Outcast” a woman remembers her early school-aged acts of defiance when—like Harpman herself—as a young girl in WWII-era Casablanca she refused to parrot France’s (wavering) party line in her schoolwork. And in “The Broom Closet” a woman boards a train where she then imagines alternative lives for the character she becomes in her own mind bringing the act of fiction-making itself into the spotlight. As a whole the volume speaks to Harpman’s exquisitely subtle prose style psychological acuity and almost terrifying foresight—but it also hints at her sense of humor which has previously been overshadowed perhaps by other qualities. Renewed interest in Harpman’s oeuvre isn’t just warranted: In works like this she reveals herself to be one of the major writers of the 20th century comparable to Gogol and Kafka but with a style and outlook entirely her own.

Recent Irvine California high school graduate Edelweiss “Edie” Birch seeks her inheritance: the Hart Creek Maine home of her estranged late maternal grandmother Ludmilla Vovk. The pointy red-and-white structure out in the woods is a character unto itself not least because it can grow chicken legs and move around like Baba Yaga’s house. Pale red-haired Edie meets up with her aunt Darya and Darya’s student Leander. The Vovk family came to America from Ukraine in the 1800s bringing their “nature worship” traditions with them. They practice magic including casting an annual spell that protects Hart Creek from menacing goblins. This task now falls on Edie’s shoulders and she’d much rather offload the responsibility onto someone else. Edie and Leander who has brown skin and Afro-textured hair are young adults struggling with the weight of others’ expectations although Edie’s are rooted in horrifying family secrets. Edie’s growth from passive avoidance to engaged action forms a satisfying character arc. The goblins often depicted as silhouettes or bright glaring eyes turn out to be more than they seem. The color palette’s shifts—green and black during moments of menace and an intense flashback sequence in greens and reds against a black background—provide thrills amid the angst. References to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen King are earned touchstones in Hender’s YA debut.

As in previous volumes the puzzles are set up as games of logic and deduction for competing players or teams with solutions and point scores for difficulty hidden beneath flaps. Some are simple enough such as an optical illusion featuring two rectangles that only seem to be different sizes. The titles and setups are often funny; for “A Study in Scarlet” for example a panicked patient’s red poop turns out to be caused not by internal bleeding but the beet and celery smoothie he consumed the day before. Often though young readers will likely be left more confused than amused due to the absence of crucial clues or possibly translation issues. A statement that the cornea is the only body part without blood vessels leaves one young sherlock’s guess about hair unanswered for instance and on a section devoted to reproduction a grinning sperm cell named “ProtoPablito-18754” beats the competition to make eye contact with smiling egg “ProtoMartita-1” but then says “I’m leaving!” without any mention or sign of an actual union. In Escandell’s droll duotone illustrations most human faces are line drawings and so mostly as white as the paper but some do show variation in skin tones.

Kevin Reyes a newly out gay high schooler in the Philippines is still discovering his path. After coming out to his parents and being “met with silence” before they changed the subject Kevin leaves with a group of friends from the school journalism club. They’re attending a party hosted by Raymond an out classmate who appears to embody everything Kevin wishes to be: wealthy popular and with a “fancy boyfriend.” At the party Kevin’s friend Gaby broaches the idea of putting her name forward for student council president with Kevin as her running mate but his self-defeating attitude quickly shuts her down. Later Kevin gets drunk and confesses his feelings of inadequacy to Raymond who decides to take him on as a project. He presents Kevin with the same offer as Gaby—and this time Kevin agrees. He’s captivated by Raymond’s glamorous world and wants to impress his parents by running for student government. But the more time Kevin spends with Raymond the more he sees beneath the glittering surface and he’s forced to take stock of the kind of person he truly wants to be. The story authentically explores internalized homophobia the process of self-discovery and the complicated family dynamics that arise when one sibling is held up as a perfect role model. Mercado’s loose dynamic artwork in dark navy with washes of pink conveys the intensity of the characters’ emotions.

Ten-year-old Kevin Aurelius and his two siblings travel with their vampire parents and a slew of creatures including an ogre werewolves and trolls—all members of a traveling circus known as the Carnival Monstromo. When a wrong turn strands them in the quiet human town of Lower Drudging the carnival delays travel to the Festival of Fear and instead advertises a performance for the townsfolk. Kevin has never met a human but he’s heard his Uncle Dax’s stories and is quite nervous despite his mother’s reassurance. He soon encounters Lower Drudging resident Susie Cabbage who each day toils away at a near-endless list of chores for her cruel aunts Vileous and Dingy Cabbage who took her in years ago. Susie isn’t missing much though since village leaders have forbidden fun to appease the “You-Know-What” living in nearby Cold Mountain. Kevin and Susie team up to save both the Carnival Monstromo and Lower Drudging along the way finding friendship and personal growth as monsters and humans alike learn not to make snap judgments about one another. Sorrentino’s energetic black-and-white illustrations depict human and monster life (both varied in skin tone); Brown’s occasional potty humor (farts a dragon’s toilet) tween-friendly ick (nose hair toe jam) and creative names will tickle funny bones.

“There once was a girl who wished she was brave. But mostly…she was not.” Our unsure protagonist encounters another girl a bold youngster who invites her to embark her on an adventure. First they must climb a hill. The not-so-brave girl has a list of excuses why she can’t but her new friend offers some gentle words of wisdom: “The first step is the hardest but it’s also the bravest.” After they make it to the top they confront other challenges like a rope swing (“Just because you have to try something again doesn’t mean you failed” reassures the brave girl) and a tree (“Sometimes being brave means asking for help”). Budde who knows something about bravery herself narrates this fablelike tale with a gently guiding tone that rings true. Notably she stresses that being courageous is a work in progress: “I think we’re all learning to be brave all the time.” Hatam’s illustrations depict sweet-faced cartoonish characters against collage-style backdrops that pop with tactile textures. The protagonist has paper-white skin and black hair; her friend has brown skin and hair.

Basciano is a journalist based in both São Paolo and London and fittingly for in this narrative he recounts the travels and fortunes of leprosy in both the northern world where it raged for centuries and tropical Brazil an epicenter for the disease today. Medieval Europe with its leprous monks “dead to the earthly world” once saw untold thousands of cases a rebuke to the “racist idea of leprosy as a ‘tropical disease.’” Nonetheless Basciano writes it is the outsider from the Global South who is depicted by populist politicians elsewhere as a “walking pathogen.” Caused by a bacillus and related to tuberculosis leprosy can indeed be contagious though transmittal usually requires extensive contact and the mechanisms are poorly understood. Leprosy has thus acquired both mystique and stigma with the afflicted suspected of immoral behavior and the conclusion that “only the dirty became diseased.” Basciano’s wide-lens approach takes in numerous historical episodes such as the introduction of numerous diseases to native Siberian populations by Russian explorers and that motif of the “walking pathogen” as a powerful driver to help the Nazis demonize Jews as “dirty and a corrosive influence.” Other outlandish approaches to the disease involved forced abortions and sterilizing not just the afflicted person but whole families in the mistaken belief that leprosy was hereditary. In Brazil Basciano notes while leprosy is “not simply a disease of poverty” poverty is certainly a dimension with an outsize representation in the country’s poor northeast. While leprosy is almost absent in the temperate world and is declining in the tropics hundreds of thousands of people still harbor the bacillus serving as Basciano writes empathetically as “receptacles to hold all society’s ills living litmus tests for discrimination.”

Thomson begins this book’s last chapter like so: “You may be saying ‘Look shifting from one shot to another I don’t know where this book is going.’ You have a point but I have no sympathy for either of us. It’s a book trying to keep up with every fresh screen I see.” He has seen numberless fresh screens in his long career as a film historian and critic and the observations gathered here can leave the impression of a loosely chronology-driven film-centric free-associative word spree—but what a spree it is. The book is a cascading selective history of cinema with chapters considering toward the top the likes of the Lumière brothers and Erich von Stroheim and rounding out the proceedings New Hollywood’s auteurs and unexpected industry player Netflix. The British-born Thomson who makes his home in the United States and has authored a backbreakingly large number of books on film and its practitioners traffics in nutrient-packed but unfussy sentences that can be deliciously coy and playfully elliptical. Director Blake Edwards is “so versatile as to seem unstable”; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) succeeded because of Jack Nicholson’s “shabby mercury.” Thomson is one for pronouncements about what he calls “movie”: “Movie is the industrialization of voyeurism”; “Writing urges you to see; movie leaves you no choice.” Beginner cinephiles: It’s probably best to sit this one out as Thomson presumes a high level of film literacy in his readers. At one point he begins to quote from Chinatown (1974) and then abandons the quote midway through saying “You know the rest of that line.” It doesn’t seem to occur to him that the reader might not.

It’s been almost a decade since Ruskovich published her debut novel Idaho (2017) a lyrical kaleidoscopic narrative about the murder of a young girl. Her new collection is quieter in theme but still probes doubt grief and challenging family dynamics with her signature grace and care. Like Idaho this book has a compelling slipperiness both in time and reality. Ruskovich’s characters are often in two places in time at once and she expertly weaves memory and observation to fuse the past and present together. In some stories this quality mimics a character’s experience of instability. For instance in “Victor’s Room” Rebecca questions her husband’s origin story and must grapple with how the truth reshapes their shared life both in the present and in her memory of their meeting. As the collection progresses the slippery qualities of narrative apply themselves to the idea of what is real and what is possible. In “I Heard You Singing” Will regains his intuitive ability to locate people in danger after grieving the unexpected death of his brother. And in the title story a young girl discovers she can skim the reflection from the surface of a water pail in a goat pen. “Earlier and earlier she rose and came out to pluck the skin from the surface of the water to hold it shimmering in her hands to spread the reflection out upon the boulder” Ruskovich writes. “She watched it become the stone. The stone became the memory of the water. The stone became the trees the sky the past itself.” Much like Ruskovich’s writing the boulder becomes a palimpsest—a strange pleasurable embodiment of mysteries layered one on top of the other.

Middle schooler Margot Stafford has known her share of trouble; her mother is unemployed and struggles with depression. But things have been OK lately. Then Margot learns she’ll need tutoring to improve her math performance. Suddenly she barely has time to see her best friend after school. Then there’s her mother’s boyfriend JP who recently moved in his anger upending her quiet home. Margot starts working in a local art gallery escaping her increasingly turbulent home life. Curious about some paintings she finds in one of the gallery’s closets she takes them—compounding the troubles in her life. Wolff draws a clean distinction between the problems we’re handed and those we have control over. Margot’s helplessness in the face of JP’s increasingly violent outbursts and her inability to draw anyone’s attention to the problem even her beloved older brother also lends a bolt of desperation to the narrative. Margot’s plan for dealing with JP works to an unbelievably successful degree such that it may strain readers’ credulity but otherwise the book is honest in portraying the messy complications that come with close relationships. Major characters present white.

Mattie Wilkerson has mental health issues and she disappears from time to time but until now she’s always returned. Lila Dixon a 33-year-old baseball scout learns that her mother Mattie is truly missing this time and that her father John “Dix” Dixon is in jail on suspicion of murdering her. He’s already been to prison once for killing someone though that was unintentional. Even the deputy thinks Dix did nothing wrong and he’s soon released. Lila deeply resents both parents who divorced long ago and left her to grow up in foster care. Yet now she feels responsible for finding her mother as the police’s missing person investigation is going nowhere. Dix insists on teaming up with her and their sharply different personalities make for lively amusing and profane dialogue. Dix is a hometown hero due to his fabled minor league baseball career though maturity issues and a lack of talent beyond hitting home runs kept him out of the big leagues. Back in Los Armarios he oozes charm. Calling himself “aggressively hospitable” he says “I am beloved in this town.” That’s mostly true the sheriff being one exception. Lila is more straightforward and is determined to be the responsible adult her parents have never been. Mattie rarely promised Lila anything knowing she was incapable of delivering. Dix on the other hand constantly made and broke promises leaving Lila perpetually disappointed. But now father and daughter work together and Lila discovers that her mom recently deposited $250000 in her own bank account and then sent most of it to a charity for Burkina Faso. This prompts many questions on top of the basic one: Where’s Mattie? The almond-growing business a distribution warehouse and Mattie’s collection of lighthouse figurines add intriguing details to the plot. When Lila suggests that one of Dix’s ideas is illegal Dix philosophizes that “criminality is just industriousness before it’s had its coffee.” When it’s all over he expects to have “a doozy of a story.”

As the “Letter to Caregivers” at this book’s start explains the days are long and the years are short when it comes to raising toddlers. But help can be found in these 50 rhymes. Each page contains a brief verse a takeaway and a conversation starter for events as mundane as brushing one’s teeth and as complex as respecting personal space. Entries are broken up into sections covering health and hygiene social skills and safety. Burk’s straightforward workmanlike rhymes get the job done. Far more impressive however is the range of difficult topics they cover; for example children are instructed to tell someone when they know a “bad secret.” Holmes’ brightly colored simple art peppers the pages. The diverse cast of kids remains consistent throughout—and readers will enjoy looking for familiar characters—but it is unfortunate that the same Black female character is the instigator in both the “No Name-Calling” and the “No Hitting” sections (arguably two of the most contentious topics). On the whole though this one should be a go-to for anyone with a little one in their life.