Hunter Long a former professional boxer has worked hard to make his own way at the CIA despite constant comparisons between his own career and that of his late grandfather an agency legend. Hunter receives a classified briefing one day and learns that a notorious Russian operative Victor Chernov is actually a double agent who’s been secretly working for the United States for many years. Upon discovering that Chernov is actually a relative of his Hunter is presented with an opportunity to work alongside him as long as he’s willing to switch departments and finally “work in the field rather than from a desk at HQ.” After accepting the new role Hunter is immediately sent on a mission to Mexico where he begins an investigation into the Zacatecas cartel. Although seasoned readers of spy thrillers likely won’t be fazed by brutality or gore the graphic details in this novel’s more violent scenes are worth noting; the book opens with a man’s gruesome death as he’s quartered by four horses for example. Clark’s novel is sharp adrenaline-filled and wastes very little time lingering on sentimental moments. Its large cast as well as the various players’ relationships to one another though intriguing can be rather challenging to keep track of. Overall though Clark has written a lively novel with a memorable charismatic protagonist and a plot that’s both fast-paced and absorbing. The book’s cliffhanger ending suggestive of a possible follow-up novel will entice readers to stay tuned for updates about what the future may hold for Hunter.

The title refers to lists readers are encouraged to make which become the basis for the stimulating exercises games and prompts organized in six chapters. Hendrix approaches the topic with a rare mixture of wit sound advice and philosophical musings building to a work that’s far more than the sum of its parts. He establishes a dialogue with an imagined student—represented via forest green speech bubbles—then dispels myths such as “Your first drawing will always be the best one.” Vintage etchings the author’s art and his signature dimensional lettering are composed in green black and white with room for reader art. Interspersed are illuminating quotes from other mentors: Madeleine L’Engle Plato Yoda. Asterisks signal artistic vocabulary defined further in a glossary. The role of expected elements like line shape and observation are covered as are the more surprising notions of play memory and how limits can seemingly counterintuitively lead to more creativity. Particularly fascinating are Hendrix’s ruminations on the symbiosis between writing and drawing—and the conclusion in which he urges his audience to consider the “why” of art: “What will you help the world see?”

The struggle for belonging and self-acceptance drives this Midwestern family’s mini-dramas in the 2010s. The humorously upbeat narrative alternates between the third-person perspectives of three generations of Jewish women: Mona Grossman her teenage daughter Grace and Mona’s grandmother Esther “Bubby” Rosenfeld. Mona a full-time homemaker struggles to reconnect with Grace and to save her marriage with Rich. Her 20th high school reunion forces her to take a good hard look at herself and to reassess her priorities and her goals. Meanwhile high school freshman Grace resents both her controlling mother and her school’s popular cliques. She breaks free of her mother’s hold on her and she overcomes her social anxiety by joining the band Green Light as a guitarist. After Mona Grace and Rich persuade Esther to move to an assisted living facility called Enliven Esther befriends its other residents. While Esther’s judgment is not consistently reliable she’s ultimately portrayed as a wise old woman who manages to reconnect Mona and Grace encouraging them to accept their own selves and each other. While Grace rapidly morphs from an awkward and inhibited teenager into a confident and empowered guitarist Mona gradually spirals downward into anxiety and stagnation. She was voted “most likely to succeed” in high school but Mona can no longer keep it all together as signified by the accidental spillage of the contents of her purse at the reunion. By contrast Esther quickly accepts her relocation to Enliven. She experiences neither Grace’s growing pains nor Mona’s ambivalence about high school glory days. Yet as the title of Act II states Esther continues to learn that “Things Aren’t Always What They Seem.” Although the alternation between the Mona Grace and Esther chapters produces a rapid page-turner these different narrative strands keep the novel from feeling focused. The novel could also benefit from greater variation in the different characters’ sections which read too similarly despite their generational differences.

It’s 2023 and it’s been two weeks since Beatrice Carter awoke from seizure-induced unconsciousness and she still has no idea who she is. The only identification on her person was a gym membership card and even then she’s unsure if the name on the ID is truly hers as a police search yielded no results: “Beatrice knew who the president was how to drive a car and where to get the best chicken marsala in Fairview [in Upstate New York]but her own hands were foreign things.” She has a scar above her eye which she apparently got during the seizure. She sets out to find clues to her identity by following the pull of déjà vu. It’s a frightening ordeal—after all she’s forced to second-guess not only who she is but also the intentions of others. “So we don’t know each other then?” she asks someone at one point. Is she the Bea “who owns the bookshop and bakery across the street”? Then there’s the case of gallery owner Vivian Sterling the only witness to her accident—who can’t quite place her at first. Flashback sequences from the protagonist’s childhood detail her great-grandmother Gigi’s battle with a strange form of dementia that seems to plague the family. This shadowy trip into Bea’s past      brings forth new revelations and there’s one shadowy figure in particular who benefits from Bea not knowing the truth. Over the course of this novel Wren offers readers an edgy twist on journeys of self-discovery adding in elements of romance and betrayal. Throughout Beatrice never knows who to trust and the prose vibrates with the resulting tension: “Maybe there was a reason she didn’t remember everything and maybe she was better off for it. Maybe this blank slate really was a blessing.” As Bea comes to understand just what took her memory away the good and bad aspects of such knowledge effectively come to the fore.

As the story opens 12-year-old Dylan Dearborne is yearning for a bit of permanence. She and her mother Maggie are living in Springfield Oregon in the early 1980s with a nice decent man named Joe and his teen daughter Anna. Maggie’s been wandering aimlessly with Dylan for years (“She’d been shuffled from one place to the next her entire life torn from any attachments she’d made time and again”) but it finally seems like they’ve found a real home; Dylan’s even hoping to attend junior high in the fall and Joe’s gone so far as to buy a ring. But the call of the vagabond life is too strong for Maggie and soon mother and daughter are on the road again with Dylan always looking in the rearview mirror hoping that Joe and the stability he briefly represented are following them. She encounters a possible version of this when she returns to the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho from which her mother fled years before. As she settles in Dylan discovers a diary her mother has kept a secret a diary that might shed light on a past that Dylan has always found maddeningly vague. Uncovering history is likewise the theme of the parallel narrative the author interweaves with that of Dylan and her mother—steadily throughout the book readers are taken through the history of the Nez Perce from their creation myth to their initial encounters with the famous Lewis and Clark expedition (Westron includes the fact that William Clark fathered a child with a Nez Perce woman) and all of their subsequent dealings and treaties with the white people steadily encroaching on their ancestral lands.

The author handles this dual-narrative framework with considerable skill moving the Maggie-Dylan story ahead by days or hours while advancing the Nez Perce timeline by years and sometimes decades always with a teased personal connection between the two threads that grows in strength as the novel progresses. Dylan feels a deepening connection with the Nez Perce school as readers are given glimpses of the community’s past. Dylan is certain that her mother’s photo album contains “the only stories she needed” and readers will be caught up in her journey of personal revelations. Westron conveys the world of the ancient Nez Perce (and its initial discovery by outsiders) with exultant prose that’s deeply affecting: “And beneath the bunch grass the soil they [the original white settlers of Nez Perce land] found was the color of the coffee they drank when they could afford the beans so dark and rich that even the city men among them could recognize its worth.” The only flaw in this fascinating historical narrative is its tendency to overwhelm the more relatable story of a young woman looking for her own identity. By the time the novel ends (in currents of predictable exploitation and injustice) readers will know much about the Nez Perce but perhaps not as much as they’d like to know about Maggie and her daughter.

Bobb has been immersed in STEM education at Georgia Tech Google and the National Science Foundation. He weaves together the many threads of race technology and American history alongside his own personal history as an immigrant son of Guyana to clarify the stakes for Blacks as we enter an AI-dominated world. From school segregation to today’s bans on teaching accurate American history he argues elite education has remained largely closed to Black students shutting them out of AI leadership positions. He identifies this as a dangerous political moment in which “the president of the United States asserts that Black people eat dogs diversity and equity are criminally divisive and Critical Race Theory is the ideology of radicalized terrorists.” Math and computer science are keys to equity he argues. He invokes voices—including James Baldwin Derrick Bell W.E.B. Du Bois and Nelson Mandela—in assailing tech giants who have abandoned their ethics: “They are building the equipment for modern slavery and not considering their responsibility to the modern slave.” The author dismisses much AI-literacy rhetoric as “training masquerading as collective investment” and cautions that “neither will AI prevent racial animus from strangling the country. On the contrary it may tighten its grip.” Bobb’s final arrow is aimed squarely at tech leaders’ claims of the benefits of AI for all: “Does it render the path to freedom or slavery?...will this render freedom and for whom?” This valuable and wide-ranging cultural and social analysis offers an eye-opening recontextualization of the tech industry’s embrace of AI illuminating the entanglement of race and technology.

In the opening author’s note Guralnick quotes novelist Lee Smith: “I have always felt that I can tell the truth better in fiction than nonfiction.” This hints that his 11 stories illuminate emotional truth and depth of feeling more than autobiographical fact. Proceeding from coming-of-age awkwardness through middle-aged angst they generally present a young white man who reads voraciously though he’s indifferent to school develops an increasing affinity for music by Black artists before he has ever met any Black people and is both wildly romantic and totally clueless toward women. The protagonists have different names in each story and attend a variety of colleges but much remains the same: They’re generally set in Massachusetts in the 1950s and ’60s (Boston Cambridge a family-run summer camp) and the father is usually a doctor returning home after World War II. The mother has a hearing problem she does her best to hide. Divorces occur as does an occasional flirtation with homoeroticism and heroin. There is depression and therapy. The boy has little notion where he wants to end up but bookstores baseball and an increasingly bohemian social circle provide clues. The two longest stories are among the most ambitious: In “Forgiveness” the protagonist has become a creative writing professor who embarrasses himself after falling for a student. In the closing “Franny and Zooey” two precociously literary high school lovers reunite by chance after decades apart renewing a relationship after both have achieved and suffered plenty. Throughout this collection one senses an author trying to explore the roads not taken—as much for himself as for the reader.

“At home I was the center of everything.” Wild Princess has it good and knows it. The words “She showered me with attention” are paired with an image of a pair of peach-colored human hands with painted fingernails giving Wild Princess a beauty treatment. One day some cardboard boxes appear and “then the suitcases came out.” Wild Princess knows the score. “I wanted to go with her.” Terrified of being left behind Wild Princess “did a very quiet thing”: An illustration shows the kitty stowed away in a packed suitcase. “Where was I going? I didn’t know. Maybe the city? Maybe the beach?” As it turns out—and here’s a twist readers won’t see coming—the suitcase is actually heading for a donation bin as Wild Princess is informed by the possum who finds her there. Will Wild Princess make it back home? Much humor lies in the contrast between Wild Princess’s innocent remarks (e.g. “Tape had never been my friend”) and Fabiani’s truth-telling digital illustrations (one reveals that Wild Princess has mauled one of the taped-up cardboard boxes). A wry touch: While the bodies of Wild Princess’s human family are depicted in this book their faces aren’t. After all she is “the center of everything.”

Margaret Ford was married to Derek who died a few months ago of cancer. She now lives alone in an English village not far from Tunbridge Wells and struggles to connect with her friends and neighbors especially now that her spouse the father of her only child and touchstone of her life is gone. Readers quickly learn that Margaret and Derek’s daughter Jeanie is also gone but more slowly learn what happened when Jeanie was 11 and left home to deliver newspapers. The slow pace mirrors Margaret’s emotional journey between her recollections of the last time she saw her child and the sudden appearance of the titular visitor who’s the perfect Watson to Margaret’s Holmes in ferreting out what happened to Jeanie. Without spoiling the fragile conceit—fragile not because it’s weak but because it’s beautifully delicate—it will be evident that it works on different levels from supernatural to emotional. As Margaret’s visitor settles in and encourages her to look for information Margaret herself gets stronger and braver visiting some of those friends and neighbors who haven’t seen her for a while. If these visits were only in service of details to help Margaret discover Jeanie’s circumstances they might feel formulaic but Cannon takes care to show how intertwined lives in this small village are whether two people are having a hidden affair or someone’s son has returned without knowing his father’s whereabouts. Almost everyone around her Margaret will learn has someone who once loved them fiercely—a niece a beloved pet a proud parent. One of the triumphs of this well-modulated story is when Margaret has to confront the real (and often ignored) reason behind what happened to Jeanie one that parents of tween daughters today will recognize for the scourge that it is. However the author never allows her novel to turn into preaching; the focus remains on Margaret and how she will move on now that she has some resolution.

Joe’s superwealthy-by-marriage “Grandma B” whom he adores has befriended one-time protection racketeer Arman Babylon at the exclusive LA cancer treatment center where both are living. The repentant Babylon hires Joe to find his long-missing granddaughter Twyla Mann now 38 and tell her the woman she thinks is her mother actually isn’t—a domestic coverup instigated by Babylon decades ago in connection with the disappearance and possible murder of a jazz singer Dalia Shorts. It doesn’t take Joe long to be threatened and beat up by the goons of Malto Lamming a serial rapist and murderer who desperately wants to keep his past and present crimes under wraps. The case takes the detective back to New York where the trail leads to Minnie Fulton Dalia’s one-time pianist who’s now the organist at the Ministry of the Divine Orgasm. At this rather...unique church Joe is required to get naked like Minnie the male preacher and the congregants—but thankfully not to copulate like they do in full view of each other. His sexy encounters are reserved for his free-spirited long-absent lover Leaf. There’s enough plot here for two novels and indeed after going a bit flat midway through and then going off in new directions with added characters the book has the feeling of two novels stitched together. But with his command of the scenery his shoutouts to literary and jazz heroes and his sly commentary on Black and white culture Mosley keeps things interesting. The book’s title comes from a Yiddish curse the mother of Arman Babylon né Babel was fond of which translates as “You should be like a chandelier hanging and burning.”

Guest editor Gessen who won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Opinion Writing for their work in The New York Times gathers 20 essays that try as they put it to “make meaning of human experience…even when it seems as if we all might be living in hell.” After a wry meditation on the essay form by Zadie Smith the collection turns toward illness and mortality: In her achingly beautiful New Yorker essay the late Tatiana Schlossberg writes with restraint about the leukemia diagnosis that would kill her within six weeks of publication; Ben Lerner recounts an open-heart surgery that “changed the prosody” of his body; and Jennifer Senior folds her own chronic insomnia into a wider reckoning with how medicine and culture treat sleeplessness. A mid-collection standout is Elizabeth Bruenig’s Atlantic essay on serving as a witness to executions—the fruit of five years spent among condemned men on death row and the families of both the condemned and their victims. Another high point is Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s essay ostensibly the story of her friend’s dying father and his survival of the Holocaust a story she resisted writing for decades despite his personal request. It becomes too an account of her own evolving relationship with the Holocaust and its survivors. “What would become of stories like Mr. Lindenblatt’s” she asks “if the generation of mine that was supposed to inherit them…decided not to listen?” The collection saves its most damning essays for last. Benjamin Moser indicts American Jewish leadership for being “complicit” in the destruction of Gaza and Mary Turfah a physician who has written about Palestine for years closes the book with a scathing examination of American apathy.

Etta Wheeler moved to Manhattan in 1873 with her husband Charles who had accepted a position as a journalist at The New York Daily News. Although married for nine years the couple had no children. Etta a devout Methodist sought to make herself useful and what happened next made her famous: On a missionary outing to distribute baskets to the poor of Hell’s Kitchen she learned about a child named Mary Ellen McCormack whose adopted mother Mary Connolly beat her brutally; the girl’s screams could be heard daily. Etta spoke to clergy and police about Mary Ellen’s plight but it wasn’t until she was introduced to Henry Bergh founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that she was able to intervene. Between Wheeler Bergh and attorney Elbridge T. Gerry’s work Mary Connolly was convicted and sentenced to hard labor. Happily Mary Ellen went to live with Etta’s sister and her family in Spencerport near Rochester New York. Evans best known for The Christmas Box (1995) and its sequels often brings ideas central to Christianity into his work and this is no exception. Etta and Charles along with her family and their social circle are portrayed as good and firm in their convictions with only a few scenes straying into tooth-achingly sweet territory (such as when Charles prepares dinner for Etta one night and then they embrace deciding to “go to bed” rather than eat that dinner). On the other hand those scenes of sweetness do help balance out the descriptions of Mary Ellen’s horrific treatment.

Garrick’s family owns a theme park called Fairytale Gardens. After an unfortunate situation leaves them on shaky financial ground they’re in need of good PR. Ripley’s mom created the dating app Beeloved which is struggling in a crowded market. And thus a reality dating show is born with Garrick as the star Beeloved as the matchmaker and the theme park as the setting. Ripley a 17-year-old white girl has doubts about true love—her mom has been married (and divorced) four times she barely knows her father and her sister’s marriage is fraught. Garrick’s mom died and he avoids love to protect himself from the pain of future loss. Though the charming Garrick who’s cued white is meant to choose a love match from the show’s racially diverse contestants he finds an unlikely romance with Ripley who’s interning on the set. The story takes place during the Christmas season unfolding against a backdrop of over-the-top decorations a gingerbread house–decorating contest a Polar Express–style train ride and the requisite sprig of mistletoe. The romance between Garrick and Ripley is delightfully tension-filled with a suspenseful buildup even if the plot feels a bit contrived and at times plods along. The stand-alone read is set in the world of Enchanted To Meet You (2026) which focused on Garrick’s twin Tristian.

Sixteen-year-old Jasmine Costa has a deep passion for the “Christmas light extravaganza” held in her hometown of Cherry Ridge. This massive event regularly attracts media coverage and tour buses and this year’s festivities are amplified by something new: A competition to name the town’s best-decorated home. Dampening Jasmine’s festive spirit is a long-standing feud between her family and their neighbors the Morenos. The conflict dates back to a cruel prank Mr. Moreno played on one of Jasmine’s mothers in high school. Years later a cherished Christmas elf ornament made by Jasmine’s grandmother vanished and her mom is convinced Mr. Moreno stole it. Although Jasmine has kept her distance from Ryan Moreno the pair find themselves locked in a pantry at the annual Season Kickoff party held at a community member’s home. Sparks fly but they hide their burgeoning relationship from their feuding families. Meanwhile an unknown party is suing Cherry Ridge over the traffic noise and light pollution caused by the holiday lights. Unfortunately the pacing lags and the stakes don’t feel high enough to compensate. Jasmine would have benefitted from being developed as a character beyond her obsession with Christmas and her mission to identify the person trying to shut down the festival. Although the romance doesn’t fully comes to life the Christmas atmosphere is well realized. Ryan is cued as having some Latine ancestry and Jasmine presents white.

Very little is known about Bonny’s life and Wright has filled that blank canvas edge to edge with a saga as wild lusty and bloody as any pirate could want written in maximalist prose combining Old World nautical and invented idioms into sentences of befuddling enchantment. His version of the character is named Amethyst Connell called Meeks raised by a widowed father she calls Mr Connell until his sudden death thankfully puts an end to the nightly “tuck-in kiss” she endures throughout her early years. Next stop Miss Haywood’s Hall for Friends of Females where Meeks has more pleasant bedroom experiences with her best friend Ash; where she later inaugurates a long career of bladework by stabbing the headmistress with scissors; and where she’s deemed a “cloven colleen” and sent to Mrs Grainne’s “sewing shop for recalcitrant maids.” There she quickly becomes involved in a regular threesome with indistinguishable twin brothers one of whom she marries and accompanies off to war where she’s quickly widowed remarried to a woman widowed again then captured by pirates where her real destiny unfolds. Experiencing ecstasy verging on nirvana while disemboweling some unfortunate opponent (if you can’t handle cheerfully outlandishly graphic gore rape and torture don’t read this book) she concludes that piracy is “the natural state of woman.” Her extraordinary capacity for bliss is expanded by her romance with Captain Halley Chevers. "Meeks had always known what love was she’d been in love before or so she thought but she now discovered to her surprise there were other continents adjoining that world places previously unknown uncharted uncivilized and the apprehension of this newer wilder almost barbarous element lurking within the entire concept of love only added to the overall elation." Wright’s wild sentences propel Meeks through murderous battles more threesomes and orgies and even a scene where she and her beloved companion Tasya use the ship’s head side by side an activity described as “deposit[ing] a fresh tantadlin tart into the waves.” A tantadlin tart research shows was a term coined in the mid-1600s to describe a pastry filled with miscellanies. Indeed.

The perpetually gas-masked 16-year-old Benny continues to bring levity to any situation as she worries about her career options and watches her friend group grow and change in this second collection of the WEBTOON series. Her friends include the studious (and constantly bored) Timothy artsy Isaac and makeup YouTuber Fae who all accept Benny’s quirks. The story segments shine a light on the creative teens’ blooming social and work lives. The short scenes convey some meaningful developments like a time-lapse of Fae hardening in response to criticism from adults in her life. Bits of fourth wall–breaking humor and hijinks (doing a handstand after eating 10 yogurts or fixing a shirt with a stapler) mix with sentiments like Benny’s declaration that she’s “a free soul who needs to settle down on something real soon.” The artwork includes many gag reactions set against blank panels but the outdoor scenes for example by a river and at a haunted house show a flair for the effective use of color and light. Graduation budding romance and a new internship among the friends place some understandable pressure on Benny to grow up too. By the time the gang gathers for a farewell selfie at the end readers may feel like they too are parting ways with close friends. The cast members present white.

Latham begins with an explanation of the “wordspinner” poem a form inspired by one of Nikki Grimes’ exercises: a poem that “defines a word by spinning together” its sound and function the sole rule being that word must end the first line. Dozens of examples follow. Latham writes poems about various kinds of homes among them the treehouse (“a high-up word”) the loft (“a soft word / it floats in your mouth”) and the townhouse (“an upright friendly word”). Later she pens verses on the attributes or interiors of these homes. In a section devoted to the “Townhouse” we learn that “parlor” is a “proper word / a-we-want-to-impress you word” and that “lamp” is a “shaded word / it brightens with the flip of a switch.” Many characterizations are spot-on: “Seashell” is a “surfswept word” “swing” is “a swaying word” and “piano” is “a songbird word / that tickles your tongue.” Sometimes though the words don’t seem to fit their location: Why is “lighthouse” the place for “closet” “hanger” and “shoe”? Still the concept is easily grasped the vibes are cozy and the wordplay enticing; children will eagerly pen their own wordspinner verses. Gentle edges easy shapes and sherbet colors enliven Hevron’s naive art featuring a cheery all-animal cast.

Cindy is joining her cousins Yangyang and Mandy at their grandmother’s California home as she does every year. This summer is different though. For one thing Ama who’s been a suffocating figure is dead leaving her two daughters Cold-Blooded Ayi and distant Elizabeth to raise their own children in a house that feels like a phantom of their mother. Cindy whose memory is peppered with holes wakes up every morning with her “mouth broken into” and strange objects—a button a berry a claw a coin—left behind on her tongue. Mandy who has a secret and Yangyang who’s spending the summer trying to figure out how to “undo the knots that bind [her] to [her]self” are frustrated by their cousin’s strange behavior but are drawn deeper into Cindy’s struggle when the being behind her nightly visitations turns out to be a demon the “hungry ghost” of a woman who died without “legitimate descendants…to feed [her] offerings” doomed to wander the afterlife until her hunger “becomes a form of torture.” Needlemouth as the girls name the demon enlists the cousins as the tools of her own terrible vengeance imbuing them with desires that are as heinous as they are horrifyingly familiar. Chang braids chapters told from the girls’ alternating perspectives into a tightly woven storyline that is almost claustrophobically thick with simile. But as the novel oscillates from a pinpoint focus on the body’s most private workings to larger mythological references the resulting story of loss love duty and suffering explores universal truths with a deft and striking hand.

High school junior Violet has a plan for getting to Harvard becoming a lawyer and helping her financially struggling widowed father. She was awarded the only scholarship that her elite private school gives out and as one of the top students in her grade she’s able to participate in Bell-Haven’s Law Society. One of their activities is conducting mock trials for minor student infractions. Because Violet is undefeated when Theo Hudson is accused of vandalism he pleads with her to take his case—he’s desperate to stay on the basketball team and insists he’s innocent. But Violet isn’t interested in helping another privileged rich kid. Then Theo discovers a secret she’s determined to keep from her beloved dad and he blackmails her into taking his case. Earlier two classmates offered her $1000—money she needs—to lose the case so she secretly plans to get her revenge by sabotaging his defense. It’s a great plan until she gets to know Theo and realizes he’s not what she thought. This is a fast-paced romance with a fun setup that fans of Legally Blonde will appreciate. Although the setting feels underdeveloped and some characters are one-dimensional Violet’s growth is satisfying. Violet is Puerto Rican and other main characters present white.