Hamrick’s book opens with a prologue describing a tragedy—the death of a high school football player after he collapsed on the field during a game. Jason “Meat” Yancy was just 16 and his death hit his coaches teammates town and family hard. The book moves from his death to an earlier time when Jerry “Slugger” Hamrick the father of the author arrived as coach for the Bremond Tigers determined to revive the team’s program. Players including Yancy Matthew Yanowski Gary Nolan Daniel Green and Hunter Hamrick were key to his plan. The book is divided into two sections covering the events leading up to Yancy’s death and then the aftermath on the field and off. Coach Hamrick guided his team as they mourned the loss of their friend; their mantra became “Play like he would” referring to Yancy. The story is touchingly recounted and never too maudlin or sentimental; the author provides a realistic look at how young people go on with their lives after a traumatic loss even when there are no easy answers. The team did eventually find renewed success and the book’s epilogue takes place after player Gary Nolan’s death which was eight years after Yancy’s. Hamrick then updates the stories of many of the key players including his father. The author is smart enough to know that Bremond’s wins and losses are not the real subject of his book—what happens on the football field is secondary to what unfolds in the lives of the players their friends and their families and his strongest passages focus on the ordinary details of life off the field. Hamrick deftly leverages his dual roles as both witness to the events described and as the son of the coach involved to provide a uniquely insightful perspective. The result is a moving tribute to the memory of Jason Yancy and the steady leadership of Slugger Hamrick.

The story opens in 1877 in Marinella Sicily. Nine-year-old Saverio Mancuso is fighting off schoolmates who want him to declare his love for pretty Rosa Favale. After being pummeled Saverio proclaims his love for the young girl (“Yes I do love Rosa and I want to kiss her on the mouth”). In 1888 the couple marries. Frustrated by the lack of opportunity in poverty-stricken Sicily Saverio begins talking to Rosa about moving to America. In 1895 after suffering two miscarriages Rosa dies while giving birth to their son Tommaso. At only 5 years of age Tommaso finds himself an orphan after Saverio dies of lung cancer and with his father’s best friend Giacomo Capelli he takes a ship to America. Frightened the quiet little Tommaso (eventually called Thomas) taken under the protective wing of a kindly group of Sicilian men aboard the ship grows up to become the American patriarch of the Mancuso clan. After arriving in New York the men bring him with them to Detroit and place him in foster care under a brutal tyrant Nunzio Davanzo and his gentle wife Angelina. Nunzio immediately puts the child to work as a newsboy toiling 12-hour days even during the frigid winters. But Thomas is a smart youngster determined to make a success of his life as an American. Amato’s portrait of 19th-century Sicily is vivid and poignant. While the narrative verges into the melodramatic the author’s chilling descriptions of living conditions during the transatlantic crossing and of the reprehensible mistreatment Thomas suffers at the hands of Nunzio make for addictive reading. Amiable conversational prose and dialogue in addition to a sizable cast of secondary characters with their own intriguing stories capture the struggles of the Italian immigrant experience. Thomas is the emotional core of the novel; the intensity of the story eases when he moves to Norfolk Virginia and his life takes a dramatic positive turn. While still engaging the work becomes less riveting as the narrative moves forward with subsequent Mancuso generations.

Duck’s truck is his home on wheels. He’s en route to visit friends (“Ruckity ruck”) when a sudden downpour strands his rig in the mud. Naturally Duck is “mad (and also sad)” but his many pals begin arriving to push: “They heave. They ho.” Alas it’s no use. The animals are in despair. Duck plucks a lucky clover and realizes a change in perspective may be the answer. After carefully drawing up lists and plans he creates a mud pool attraction with a slide inflatables a picnic…and some very messy fun for all. So much fun that when the sun dries up the mud Duck decides not to leave; instead he gets a hose and creates more mud. Party on! The cartoonish heavily anthropomorphized characters are amusingly drawn in gentle colors; much humor derives from seeing smaller less muscular creatures such as Slug Bug and Pug giving it their all alongside the likes of Moose and Bear. Gholz’s jaunty verse contains plenty of rhymes most of which work effectively and may even lure readers into sounding out the words.

An unseen narrator warns of Great White Shark’s “toothy scowl” though Filipina’s illustration shows a disarmingly goofy grin and googly eyes. Cuttlefish Flounder Dresser Crab Leafy Dragon and Octopus immediately exhibit their camouflage or concealment skills and escape being eaten. With no hiding place left Puffer Fish seems a goner. The little fish then inflates turning into a bristly “spiky sphere” and the mighty predator hastily withdraws. Before Great White can hunt down another victim he himself quails under the shadow of a pod of killer whales hiding just in time. A four-beat quatrain details each animal’s technique; the first two lines are repeated in the following stanza with the refrain “Whew he’s safe and sound.” (Or alternatively she.) Filipina’s art is exuberant the ocean floor a riot of deep pastels and the style while cartoonish is also accurate. Noting that “it’s a dogfish-eat-dogfish ocean out there” backmatter explains that sharks are occasionally prey for orcas and gives the proper names and descriptions for the evasive tactics these fish (and mollusks cephalopods and crustaceans) have deployed among them countershading inking burial and self-decoration.

As the story opens in 2001 journalist Elizabeth Allen drags herself up off the floor after her husband a disgraced rock star has brutally beaten her in their Upper West Side apartment before leaving. Across the city Fancy Maguire showers after being raped by her fireman spouse. The 9/11 attack brings these women together after Fancy’s husband dies as a first responder at the Twin Towers and Elizabeth decides to rehabilitate her own fading career by writing about the experience of survivors. Although the two women’s circumstances are different in many ways they find common ground in their shared despair at the hands of supposedly “good” men: “Was Frank a good man?” muses Elizabeth. “For all public accounts of his life he was. Only Fancy and I knew the truth.” Both women struggle with their knowledge of their husbands’ violent natures. At the same time Elizabeth and Fancy both mourn the men they once loved and think carefully about how they want the unsuspecting world to think of their spouses. Slevin structures the story around Elizabeth’s first-person narration interspersing transcripts of her interviews with Fancy and members of her extended family and friends. Although Fancy’s experience of domestic abuse ends with her husband’s death Slevin effectively maintains the narrative momentum with the ongoing story of Elizabeth’s traumatic marriage which continues for a year after the attacks. Her arc notably mirrors the city’s own journey from despair to hope as she suffers a final brutal attack recovers and experiences a new life as part of a larger community including Fancy and her family.

“Ruth and Nino”—as Rovin Murphy refers to Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia—both loved many of the same things from the law to travel food and opera. “But when they disagreed…they REALLY disagreed.” In a perspicuous study that will resonate with readers accustomed to seeing even the most casual dialogues in public forums quickly descend into rage and hostile ad hominem attacks the author focuses on how Ginsburg and Scalia maintained their legendary friendship despite holding diametrically opposed views of our treasured Constitution. She first considers how much they actually had in common (both were the children of immigrants for instance) but beneath the shared interests and experiences it was their solid mutual respect that she sees as the true foundation of their enduring relationship. “Disagree doesn’t mean disrespect differences don’t mean enemies” she concludes before closing with pointers for conducting discussions and expressing differences of opinion in positive fruitful ways. In nearly every illustration Beautyman depicts the two legal savants clad in street clothes or judicial gowns in a variety of settings making eye contact and sharing small often rueful smiles. Figures in group scenes are racially diverse.

Findley professor of History at Ohio State and author of The Turks in World History (2004) writes that the Ottoman Empire lasted six centuries under a single dynasty because Islam permits a man to have four wives and the children of concubines are easily legitimized. With so many male heirs until around 1600 it was routine for a new sultan to murder his brothers. Findley begins as Turkish nomads from the steppes migrated to the Middle East around 1000 and converted to Islam. By 1200 they formed the Seljuk Empire which competed with Islamic Persia and Egypt as well as the declining Byzantine Empire which occupied southeast Europe and the western edge of Anatolia present-day Turkey. Ottoman founder Osman I (c. 1258-1324) led a tribe in northwest Anatolia. His successors conquered more territory replaced the Seljuk Empire with their own and in 1453 captured Constantinople becoming the terror of Europe. By the 16th century Ottomans ruled Mediterranean lands and Europe as far as Vienna. This marked their peak but the belief that three centuries of decline followed has been called into question by contemporary scholars the author included. After a difficult 17th century matters improved in the 18th until the disastrous final decades featuring Russian and Napoleonic conquests. Entering the 19th century as the “Sick Man of Europe” the Ottoman Empire lost colonies a century before European powers lost theirs but Findley reminds readers Turkey was the only World War I loser that benefited. Despite losing its remaining colonies it successfully rejected Treaty of Versailles reparations defeated a Greek invasion and became the most stable and Western-oriented Islamic nation. Dense with battles politics unfamiliar names and Turkish and Arabic terms this should not be an introduction to the empire. For that try Jason Goodwin’s Lords of the Horizons (1998).

The 17 tales herein feature an array of horrors. Some are blatantly sinister like a serial killer who’s more than she appears to be; others seem innocuous but have the potential to become outright menaces like an apparatus for keeping pests out of a garden. In still other instances the true horror doesn’t reveal itself until the last few pages—as in the haunting “Ever Shall They Feed” in which a boy named Beno plans to enact some relatively harmless revenge for his father embarrassing him at school. While hiding somewhere in the family’s funeral home Beno inadvertently witnesses an event that rattles him; the situation grows increasingly unsettling for Beno (and readers) as it rolls along. In “Pujkamaunka Splash” Trevor distinctly remembers the eponymous video game which was immensely popular decades ago. Why does it seem everyone else has forgotten it? He recalls going to buy the game with his grandfather on a day rife with violent and bizarre incidents almost certain to traumatize any kid. Interspersed throughout the collection are several flash-fiction pieces which the author proves can be just as powerful as longer selections. In one memorable example the diner-patron narrator of “Boxed Breakfast” has seen all sorts of sidewalk passersby—just not anyone like the man who shows him something he’s not ready to see.

As in all great horror fiction Grass bolsters the stories with extraordinary characters. Such characterization allows the twists and turns to hit especially hard as when one man’s chair triggers memories of his sickly mother or when the aforementioned Trevor is taken aback when something actually frightens his stoic grandfather. The author also weaves in satire lampooning such subjects as medical industries and penal systems. “The EP™ Implant” tackles both excessive wealth and plastic surgery addiction; in the story Lupita’s latest cosmetic surgery comes with an app that allows her to adjust her new implant’s “contour and buoyancy” but she’s ill-prepared for what to do when a horrifying post-surgery problem arises. The author’s prose rarely strays from the somber even when humorous and it often reads like poetry: “Moving between rooms brought on dizzy spells. Total fatigue drained his bodily battery dead. By nighttime he was moribund his muscles aching and bloodless anatomically teetering toward a mortal deficit.” Grass’ metaphors are darkly evocative: “Violative in the way of a trussed-up sexual masochist loitering near a seesaw”; a “miasma that brings to mind a river overflowing with spoiled pigs’ blood.” One standout tale “Odd Egg” perfectly encapsulates the collection. It opens with an uneasy sight as Maryellen comes home to a stranger on her porch. The man with an egg-shaped head and long bumpy fingers just wants to give her a free carton of eggs courtesy of a growers’ association. But does Maryellen really want to eat those eggs or even know what’s inside them? This relatable protagonist one among many such memorable characters endures a progressively more disturbing experience that readers won’t likely soon forget.

Ulises Linares is hard up. The 29-year-old con artist living in World War II–era Mexico City is down to his last few pesos three years after his father and partner in crime died following a long illness. What little cash he’s able to bring in comes from postal scams—he corresponds with women who are willing to send him cash in the belief that he’s a Prince Charming who will someday sweep them off their feet. He decides he needs a bigger score and writes to a woman in her 40s named Perla Inclán responding to an ad she’d placed in the lonely hearts section of a magazine. Ulises travels to the town of Puerco Ahogado in Veracruz to stay at Perla’s guesthouse and senses a spark: “Even though she had the faint air of a Mother Superior at a convent when he smiled that devilish smile of his he saw in her eyes that her interest was piqued.” Unfortunately for Ulises Perla’s niece Inés learns about his plan and—desperate to make a life of her own away from her controlling aunt—demands to be included in the con insisting that should Ulises get his hands on the money she’ll take half of it. But it soon becomes apparent that Perla isn’t the easy mark Ulises and Inés had hoped. Moreno-Garcia has ventured into historical noir before with her excellent Velvet Was the Night (2021) and with her new novel she shows that she’s still comfortable probing the darkness in people’s souls: Ulises is a fascinating antihero with a charm that belies his amorality. The three principal characters who each get alternating chapters are drawn beautifully and Moreno-Garcia’s slow reveal of their motivations is executed well. This is yet another rock-solid novel from a born storyteller.

“I want to know that I have affected people for eternity. I matter 10 billion years from now.” Thus said the normally retiring David Green founder of Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby. The location is no accident for Oklahoma has long been home to countless fundamentalist congregations and businesses a font of support for Christian nationalism. Privately owned Hobby Lobby has supersized this movement with financial support flowing from what investigative reporter Blanding reckons to be $8 billion in annual revenues. With this funding he says Hobby Lobby has pressed for the removal of contraception from the Affordable Care Act opposed gay marriage and civil rights protections for minorities and battled to make abortion illegal acting through dozens of organizations and churches. One approach the author reports has been to buy properties and donate them to fundamentalist churches on which Hobby Lobby spent $100 million between 2000 and 2002 alone. “Obviously it’s a tax write-off but we do it for the ministry that’s our motivation” said Green. In funding the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. Blanding writes “they built up the largest private collection of biblical antiquities in the world….And when it turned out that many of those items…had been looted stolen or forged they presented themselves as naïve victims of unscrupulous black-market dealers—paying little mind to the extent to which their reckless desire to obtain items to justify their religious beliefs had led them to ignore multiple red flags.” Elsewhere writes the author the Green family has turned its attention to such matters as introducing religion courses in public schools. A leading biblical studies scholar said one curriculum was founded on “oversimplifications misrepresentations logical fallacies and outright mistakes.” No matter writes Blanding in closing: “They’ll no doubt continue trying to impose their biblical worldview on America.”

In August 1993 Stevens was public defender for the courts of the North Slope Borough in Utqiagvik Alaska previously known as Barrow a fishing town with a majority Inupiat population. While on vacation in the Lower 48 Stevens learned of the possible rape and double homicide of sisters Bernice and Wanda Ipalook of a large and prominent local family. Back in Utqiagvik she was assigned to defend Amos Lane a prickly suspect in the killings who had yet to be charged but was being held for misdemeanors that authorities hoped would keep him in jail while they built their case. Stevens got his bail reduced and when the local investigator switched his suspicions toward Bernice’s fiancé John Adams she succeeded in getting Lane immunity in exchange for testimony as a witness for the prosecution meaning he would never be tried for murder. Though the case ended in a dramatic trial most of this book focuses on Stevens’ adventures as a tanik (an outsider) among the locals. They accept her (though never entirely) as one of their own. The heady mix of true crime and clashing cultures makes for a thrilling thought-provoking read. “The legal system was Anglo and the location was Native” Stevens writes. “The two didn’t fit….The Anglo system of written law due process and witnesses and juries…did not work well in a place where community and family values took precedence…and where even such seemingly universal qualities as time or factual evidence were blurred in the day-warping constant sunlight.” Stevens studied English before devoting herself to the law and her talents as a writer shine through in scene after memorable scene that evoke Scandinavian noir.

The author visited Nepal in 2014 in the shadow of Sagarmatha “goddess of the sky” better known in the West as Everest in the hopes of scaling the smaller but still imposing Island Peak. Nearing 65 he worried he was approaching the age where mountain climbing would be infeasible. Also present in Nepal was Joby Ogwyn a daredevil attempting a feat of unparalleled audacity: leaping from the top of Everest in a wingsuit for a television special Everest Jump Live to be broadcast in over 200 countries. Oderman ultimately decided not to attempt the climb. As he returned home he learned that a terrible accident had befallen the Sherpa porters carrying supplies in preparation for the special: A massive avalanche had descended killing 16 in what Oderman describes as “the deadliest single accident in the history of Mount Everest.” Oderman’s descriptions are visceral vividly conjuring precipitous slopes thinning air and the thunderous collapse of huge shards of ice. Though lacking in poetic flair the narrative is keenly attuned to the physical and psychological aspects of mountain climbing. Oderman’s description of hallucinations on the mountains may remind readers of Nan Shepherd’s classic The Living Mountain (1977) and he vividly describes the often devastating effects of the Everest-scaling industry on the local Sherpa community. As Mark Synnott did in The Third Pole (2021)he celebrates the human impulse to master extremes while lamenting the toll in dead bodies and poorly compensated guides. (After the 2014 tragedy the Nepali government offered the families of deceased Sherpa climbers less money than was given to victims’ families following a previous avalanche in 1922.) Also like Synnott he contextualizes the tragedy by recounting the past century of attempts to conquer the mountain including the ill-starred expedition of George Mallory in 1924. Citing the story of Daedalus Oderman wonders “Has the…industry grown into such a massive display of hubris that it requires divine correction?”

Democrats urges political journalist and podcaster Cohen need to stop playing nice which has been what allowed autocracy and plutocracy to rule the land. Instead he writes Democrats “need to understand [that] the old norms aren’t coming back”: Congress now functions like a parliamentary system where “there is no notion of bipartisanship no value placed on agreement across the aisle. There’s a majority and that’s where the power lies.” Americans also need to recognize that there’s “nothing conservative” about the so-called conservatives in power he writes; the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is “radical and revolutionary” and it means to strip Americans—pretty much everyone except straight white males that is—of their rights. The work after Trump will take years the author says and it will involve constitutional amendments and a wholesale remaking of the government: “Our goal should be the transformation of our institutions not merely their restoration.” To that end he argues a number of key steps will need to be taken. One is to eliminate the filibuster which “protects a status quo that the voters have rejected time and time again.” On that note he adds since the popular vote seems not to matter much anymore the Electoral College needs to be scrapped. Still more sweeping is Cohen’s call to remake the Supreme Court adding four more justices (one for each federal circuit court) term-limiting them to eight years (which Cohen notes 76 percent of Americans support) and requiring a justice’s retirement at age 70. Add to that his suggestion among many others to retool the Justice Department so a whole division is devoted to prosecuting “corruption cases throughout the Trump years.”

In a world that’s been divided into four rival factions in the wake of a devastating event known as the Annihilation 23-year-old Rubi Morningtail—an Azure refugee living in the Dominion of the Silver Tyger—finds herself thrust into a world of political intrigue powerful magic and deadly martial arts. When Rubi injures a battle tyger in order to save her own life she gains the unwanted attention of Blake Axefire the devastatingly handsome leader of the royal Tyger Warriors and a powerful metal mage. To hurt a tyger is a punishable offense so Blake sentences Rubi to the Bonding a deadly trial in which tygers choose their riders and the rest are slaughtered by the beasts. If she survives Rubi must join Blake’s elite magical team racing against time to seal the Anchors to the demon realm before it’s too late. To say there’s a lot happening in this novel would be an understatement. There are shifters as well as benders who can manipulate metal fire and water. Rival factions are distinguished by their blue and metallic hair. Giant tygers—which are indistinguishable from tigers but spelled with a y—roam the world and there are demons and a rebellion to contend with. The result while ambitious is messy and it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on. In addition the romance between Rubi and Blake progresses too quickly to feel authentic. One moment they’re strangers who are at each other’s throats the next they’re acting like inseparable soul mates—this only adds to the confusion and sporadic pacing of the book.

“What must be understood about tales like this one is that hardly any story has a true beginning”: So begins Tierney’s debut novel. In a village stuck between the intruding ocean sky and forest four sisters find themselves in the middle of a queer retelling of a Portuguese folktale. Elixane the youngest and the daughter of luck and fortune only remembers her older sisters in “faded scraps of memory.” Years earlier they were stolen by their future husbands: Adelina child of the night and sea married the king of the ocean; Borboleta child of the day and sky married the king of the air; and Dores child of the wind and rain married the king of Misery. Their lives and marriages are a blend of beauty and horror joy and fear fulfillment and longing. When a plea for help reaches her from Dores Elixane sets off on a hero’s journey full of adventure danger and anthropomorphic animals. With a little help from her previously unknown lifelong companions—Marquês Boaventura known as Luck the clever and foolish lord of good luck and his mischievous and gorgeous sister Marquesa Másorte or Jinx the marquesa of misfortune—Elixane tries to break magical curses stop an unending war and save her sister from the king beyond death. Tierney renders Elixane’s transness and queerness in beautifully understated ways. Describing how Elixane was at first mistakenly believed to be a boy the narrator says “These things happen and are remedied easily enough once the child can put a voice to the truth.” And Elixane lives her truth unapologetically if a little nervously especially around Jinx. If the repetitive nature of the narrative device leaves little space for suspense Tierney’s poetic prose consistently elevates the tale. The novel particularly shines when exploring sisterhood grief trauma and the process of stepping confidently into one’s power.

“Each night I hear noises—and I don’t mean Dad’s snores. My imagination takes flight and quickly it soars.” On Sunday a “BOOM! BASH! BAM!” is surely the result of a “donkey kicking a pan!” On Monday the youngster hears a “SLITHER! SCRAPE! SCRATCH!” But don’t worry; it’s just a “snake and it’s lighting a match!” Walton’s painterly artwork initially sets an eerie tone; the tale opens on a bedroom dominated by blue the sole contrast coming from beneath the coverlet: the young narrator’s pale face red hair and round white eyeballs. But the child’s fantasies are entirely goofy: The donkey sports a mustache and a chef’s cap; the bowtie-clad serpent lights a candle while gazing at a plate of spaghetti. Finally at breakfast on Saturday the child opens up about the strange sounds. The rest of the family begins hearing them too and after Dad and the protagonist investigate they find the true culprit bringing the tale to a satisfying conclusion. Walton’s chipper text will have kids happily anticipating the refrain (“What’s that in the wall?”). Alternating fearful moments with sillier ones Walton acknowledges that nighttime can be unnerving for youngsters while encouraging them to face their anxieties head-on.

Jazzy the “famous biking witch” and her gal pal Aggie are preparing for a new school year at the Enchantra School of Craft. On the first day of school Jazzy and Aggie meet their new classmate Estrella Moonbeam who over the course of just one day manages to provide all the right answers in Madame Melcha’s witchstory class take over Aggie’s role as assistant to Madame Henbane and insult Jazzy’s stitching of her broom seat. After Estrella challenges Jazzy to a bike race to school—and beats her—the friends declare that they must keep an eye on Estrella. Will Jazzy and Aggie ever find common ground with the new girl? The book approaches themes of insecurity bullying and unkindness with care and lots of comic touches that lighten the mood. Jazzy lives with her moms and Granny Titch broommakers who run a local besom shop. They’re always willing to dispense sage advice and following a comical mix-up with a broom supplies order lots and lots of popcorn. Mom Mama and Granny Titch help Jazzy see Estrella in a different and more compassionate light. The simple backgrounds primarily in white and shades of gray allow the brightly colored people and important objects to pop. Jazzy and her family read Black aqua-haired Aggie appears white and Estrella has tan skin and purple hair.

Zaza’s intriguing noir procedural moves kaleidoscopically with themes far more provocative than a traditional whodunit. At the center are three police detectives all in different stages of their careers. The story set in and around Helsinki opens with veteran detective Charlie Yeats staring at the detritus that a fire has wrought upon his home. Just hours earlier he was hosting a party whose guests included colleagues James Grey a fledgling mystery writer recently gone part-time at the precinct and Aija Kivinen the youngest of the group and Charlie’s assistant. The English speakers of the title have bonded over their non-Finnish status. Even Charlie’s residence in the suburb of Rastila rather than in the city stamps him as an outsider. Two cases follow: the murder of a woman identified as American Lucinda Barnaby and the possible suicide of Gerald Venter whose connection to James triggers something of a rift between the two men. As the tale scrolls in short chapters through the perspectives of these three characters Zaza provides a full description of the internal politics of the Helsinki precinct where they work. Microaggressions in the workplace and the subtleties of human interaction leave their mark on the developing investigations. Themes of ostracism and conflicts that color workplace performance add depth without overshadowing the tension of the whodunit.

This story for striving readers from acclaimed British novelist McKenzie is a fast-paced thrill ride. Hailey Jones who has light skin freckles and pink hair is a member of the Hightop Youth Singers teens who perform numbers from musicals. As they leave their latest gig at a clifftop retirement home an ominous storm is brewing. Even though their worried teacher is rushing them onto the bus Hailey is distracted—brooding over her crush a cute blond boy named Kit who’s taken with new girl Bex. Everyone seems fascinated with beautiful talented Bex who has glossy black hair and tan skin. Hailey takes a seat at the end of the bus far from her friends Rosie and Samira and her mood sinks even lower when Kit and Bex choose seats right in front of her and start eagerly chatting. Then disaster strikes: A tree crashes through the roof of the bus trapping Hailey Kit and Bex. They don’t know whether the others can hear their cries for help—and the back of the bus is teetering on the edge of a cliff overlooking the rocks and sea. In the ensuing series of nail-biting events relationships shift among the trio as Hailey grows in her understanding of their social dynamics. Badosa’s stylish dramatic illustrations appear throughout greatly enhancing the emotional stakes of this page-turner which is printed in a dyslexia-friendly font.

In a clever combination of fiction and outright coding instruction with inset vocabulary and snatches of actual samples high schooler and tech entrepreneur Mehta and co-author Stevens pitch fretful Sama into middle school. There while forming new friendships and seeing old ones change Sama also struggles for acceptance in Tech Club after finding herself odd girl out. But after she maps a quicker route for her beleaguered school bus driver she figures out a way to optimize bus routes for her whole district and town and even pitches in to improve an underwhelming amusement park ride. Along the way she and readers painlessly absorb coding techniques (the creation of stacks and arrays) and learn definitions of for instance “conditional statements” and “functions.” By the end Sama has not only invented an instructional board game (with a name similar to one that Mehta herself peddles) but also earned her way back into the Tech Club. Joining a racially diverse student body in Alvarado’s cleanly drawn panels this brown-skinned go-getter displays lively intelligence a vivid personality and strong emotions.