This book by communications professor Schatz (The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era 1988) covers 15 years—from 1989 to 2004—that set the table for the complex franchise-heavy film era we’re now in. Focusing more on business moves than aesthetics the book is mostly concerned with ever-merging studios and the big high-risk bets they made: Batman (1989) Jurassic Park (1993) Toy Story (1995) Independence Day (1996) Titanic (1997) and other exemplars of ever-bloating budgets and revenue. Though such projects seem like inevitable successes now Schatz shows how they were built out of complex production funding licensing and marketing deals and (quite often) panic. Disney for instance was flailing on its animation side until Beauty and the Beast (1991) and computer animation got it back on track. The explosion in event films occurred in tandem with the rise of what Schatz calls “Indiewood”—independent companies like Miramax (led by Harvey Weinstein) or arthouse-minded subsidiaries looking to reinvent the surprise successes of hits like Sex Lies and Videotape (1989) Do the Right Thing (1989) and The Blair Witch Project (1999). U.S. media deregulation opened the floodgates for a host of mergers and international partnerships but the shifts only seemed to serve the interests of big-budget plays on familiar intellectual property—hence the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Schatz covers all this thoroughly if a bit bloodlessly more concerned with the financial consequences of various projects that left everyone not named Steven Spielberg artistically compromised. The book’s scope means he can only briefly mention the rise of streaming players like Netflix and Amazon but his outlook is pessimistic: “truly memorable films are in increasingly short supply.”

Noa and Nicole 18 best friends make the pilgrimage from their hometown of Guayaquil Ecuador a place rocked by the violence of men and mountains alike. Noa is on the hunt for her father who left her as a child and Nicole is focused on Noa tied to her in the intensely intimate friendship of young women. Once at the festival Solar Noise they connect with others: Pamela and her partner Fabio; Pedro and his partner Carla; Mario and his friends Adriana and Julián. They mosh do shrooms have sex dance with Diablumas listen to songstresses and congregate around a mysterious figure known as the Poet. Over the days of the festival Noa seems to transform unlocking an inner voice as powerful as the volcanic landscape. Interspersed with the events of the festival are selections from Noa’s father’s notebook reporting on a long-ago visit from Noa and Nicole. Chapter headings tell us 10 years have passed on the Andean calendar; narrative cues tell us the passage of time here does not align with our usual linear conception. Outside of the journal the novel’s narrative voice is a rotating first-person that visits the minds of Nicole Mario Pamela and Pedro in turn with diffusely mythological interludes by the festival songstresses themselves. Each voice feels less like a singular character and more like a member of the chorus just another thread in the novel’s tangled web of words and ideas. Tonally too the prose—resonant brusquely declarative—is often reminiscent of classical theater. It’s an approach that reflects its subject matter leaving the impression of a symphony underpinning the world. At the same time polyphonic narrative satisfies best when each character brings a truly unique perspective and in reaching for cohesion Ojeda’s characters flounder for distinction. Pamela is the standout the one character instantly discernible from the novel’s morass regardless of context.

Lonely Vera makes a wish on her favorite star for Grace’s return but a few nights later her wishing star disappears. At the library Vera meets Malcolm a fellow night sky enthusiast who explains that stars move. “My star didn’t leave me! It’s just on the other side of the world—in Grace’s sky!” Vera realizes. Malcolm helps Vera feel connected to Grace who is seeing the same pattern and movement of stars where she is. Vera makes a map of the stars and mails it to Grace creating a meaningful way to stay in touch while spending time with her new friend. Swemba makes space for Vera’s sadness which notably doesn’t magically resolve by book’s end; while she enjoys her new friendship with Malcolm she still misses Grace. Walker-Parker’s soft illustrations are well matched to the text; though gentle and cartoonish they also convey complex emotions like longing loneliness and contentment. The night sky drawn full of stars is an important presence cluttered and bright a fixture and a comfort. The book ends with advice for how to handle a friend’s move as well as instructions for creating a star map like Vera’s. Vera is pale-skinned; Grace and Malcolm are brown-skinned.

Readers familiar with Harriet Smith as Emma Woodhouse’s mousy unmarriageable protégé will be surprised to learn that Harriet (not her real name by the way) is already at age 18 an accomplished con artist trained by the father she turned on and fled who’s hired by Mrs. Lavinia Churchill to recover some prized jewelry Jane Fairfax pinched from her and prevent Jane from marrying Frank Churchill the client’s nephew ward and heir by any means necessary. Throwing herself into the assignment with vigor Harriet gets intermittent help from her friend Robert Martin a tenant farmer and aspiring author whose lover Reuben Denny is the “heartthrob of the Derbyshire militia.” The plot seriously shades Emma and her future husband George Knightley who have little more than walk-on roles. But it does make room for multiple poisonings a scorpion planted in a box on a dressing table and Harriet’s growing fear that the force behind all these alarums and excursions is none other than her father determined to avenge himself on his treacherous daughter. The melodramatic climax places multiple interested parties three of them armed with guns on a cliff two of them end up plunging over. That aptly summarizes the principal pleasure of this improbable series debut: The tension that arises from Andrew’s desire to duplicate the characters of Austen’s novel inviting the reader to wonder if she’s willing to bend their possible fates—will any of Austen’s own characters emerge as victim or killer?—and then unleash a criminal fantasia that borrows only some names from its celebrated source.

Naina Shetty has no time for romance. If she did she wouldn’t have become the best junior legal associate at Akhtar Kumble & Co. in Bangalore India or be the top pick for a major promotion as the only woman on her team. Naina is a self-proclaimed workaholic with little time for relationships which she swore off for good after last year’s sexy summer fling. Reeling from a broken engagement Naina found herself in Goa 17 months ago in search of two weeks of no-strings-attached fun. She found it with her handsome hostel roommate Tejas who was nursing his own broken heart following his ex-boyfriend’s wedding. Together they ran through the items on Naina’s Anti-Honeymoon Checklist including skinny-dipping attending a rave and kissing a stranger. When the summer ended so did their fling and neither expected to see each other again. But then Tejas unknowingly takes a position at Naina’s firm where they’re placed on the same assignment—a high-profile Bollywood murder scandal. As Naina and Tejas work together to uncover the details of the Preethi Acharya case they discover that a relationship they’d thought was just casual might be something much deeper. Are they willing to let the sparks between them catch fire or are they too afraid of getting burned again? Hegde’s latest romance follows two unlucky-in-love people afraid that committing means getting hurt again. Naina and Tejas embody the phrase "opposites attract" with her studious perseverance and his sunny demeanor and it’s refreshing if slightly out of character to see them let loose in the flashback scenes as they navigate heartbreak and hookup culture. As a second-chance romance their journey will be rewarding to readers who want to see them face their relationship anxieties head on and come out stronger.

It takes time Barack Obama warned for a community to recover from disaster discarding poor prior practices and experimenting with new ones. Vigliotti’s on-the-ground account suggests that at least some of the Los Angeles fire disaster of 2025 was the result of a rush to rebuild in the same old ways and in the same dangerous places after the previous devastating fire of 2018. That hurry he writes has certainly been at play in the aftermath of the 2025 fire and its demand for speedy recovery because the 2028 Olympics are slated to be held in Los Angeles and politicians will pay a price if the venue has to be changed for lack of that recovery—especially L.A. Mayor Karen Bass but also Governor Gavin Newsom. Preparing for the Olympics has included a costly and ineffective effort to remove homeless people from the city’s streets which among other programs diverted significant funds from the L.A. Fire Department—and as one firefighter said “we still have nearly 100 broken-down fire engines trucks and ambulances sitting in the maintenance yard because of those cuts.” Those vehicles could have come in handy amid cascading failures that the author writes included lack of leadership (Bass was in Ghana when the fire that ravaged the Palisades neighborhood broke out though she had ample warning of its likelihood) lack of coordinated communications lack of firefighters and equipment in the face of ever-worsening climate change and the blazes it fuels. That chain of failures Vigliotti writes instantly took on a political dimension with firefighters rendered as “collateral in a political war.” The fire is now out but the gold rush is on: Even as future conflagrations loom speculators have bought up the ash-covered lots “cashing in on ruin.”

In this lively account entrepreneur filmmaker and Sustainable Media Center executive director Rosenbaum takes readers on a road trip through contemporary thinking on AI and truth. From anecdotes lectures blog posts and interviews with both prominent and lesser-known scholars and cultural commentators he assembles a curated collage of issues. Rosenbaum repeatedly notes that AI-moderated truths are slippery especially when motivated by profit. His discussion of the GameStop meme stock saga is emblematic noting that “Truth was whatever enough people decided it would be. Artificial intelligence doesn’t create this phenomenon—it perfects it.” The observation underscores the invocation of “alternative facts” by Kellyanne Conway then-counselor to President Donald Trump. As Rosenbaum writes “Human truth-making was always imperfect—influenced by bias limited information emotional responses. Machine systems introduce a different kind of distortion: a Truth so mathematically complex so rapidly generated and validated that it becomes incomprehensible to human perception.” AI’s algorithmic biases can distort the news medical insurance employment and many other fields. While the book offers numerous examples of AI’s ethical shortcomings connecting the dots between anecdotes is less clear. Readers may wish for more scrutiny of who is building these systems and how power operates within major AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. Rosenbaum concludes “The most urgent question…is not whether AI is inherently good or bad. Rather it is whether the people and institutions developing funding and profiting from AI are willing to confront the profound ethical dilemmas that arise.” Although the book does not resolve these dilemmas or cover much new ground it sketches a cautiously optimistic framework for disentangling truth technology and human responsibility.

Fitzgerald a devotee of tattoos and booze might have been tempted to go gonzo in this rollicking travelogue but he plays it reasonably straight. The author of Dirtbag Massachusetts (2022) opens with a scene out of Steinbeck: On one of the moments that finds him “choosing sobriety occasionally” he’s on the run from a railroad bull a mean-spirited cop enforcing the private property rights of the rail line along which Fitzgerald has been walking narrowly avoiding getting smacked by a locomotive. But Fitzgerald’s options are limited: The supposed Johnny Appleseed Trail is really just a placard on a northern Massachusetts highway as a spokesperson tells him: “‘It’s to encourage tourism in the area’ she says before adding with an almost concerned tenor in her voice ‘for motorists.’” Searching out the path of John Chapman aka Johnny Appleseed puts plenty of wear and tear on his legs but it also gives him the vantage point of seeing small-town America up close. And although that America is sad and frayed it’s also full of interesting and well-meaning people who speak to “human civility.” Having groused at points about how the whole nation though is built not around humans but cars he gives in and buys a used Jeep which affords him a less rigorous journey (and puts a tiny bit of lie to his subtitle). All to the good though for he gets everywhere Chapman did including Chapman’s grave. What we learn about the real Appleseed is fascinating. He was well-to-do religious an abolitionist well-spoken and not at all crazy (and planted apples mostly to make alcoholic cider). What Fitzgerald learns about himself and the state of the nation is more compelling still with all their triumphs and tragedies.

Divya Joshi who’s Indian has grown up in a loving household with no dietary restrictions and has caring friends. But repeatedly experiencing rejection for her size drives her to desire not only to resemble her thin East Asian–presenting classmates but to be accepted by them. She even tries straightening her curly hair to resemble their “silky straight locks.” For her 17th birthday Divya asks for a treadmill. Intense exercise and conscious food choices lead to substantial weight loss—but in public she’s still self-conscious. After a Diwali celebration involving indulgent eating and praise from guests about her thinness Divya descends into obsessive calorie counting. She loses mental clarity and half her body weight isolates herself from friends and realizes she hasn’t had her period in nearly two years. Her family members stay by her side struggling to understand—and when she tells them she may have anorexia they take her to an eating disorder clinic where she receives help including antidepressants. Her recovery is complex and nonlinear but eventually Divya unlearns her own conditioning and embraces a life unrestrained by disordered eating. Divya’s narration is candid and solid—and when her words falter Wong’s illustrations in browns oranges and white fill in the gaps and have a powerful effect. The surreal sometimes dreamlike artwork captures the irrational thinking that accompanies these disorders and renders them tangible.

For generations members of Lili’s family have been delegated as the Town Council’s hunters tasked with killing the monster that slowly eats away at the adults in the community. Lili’s own father is “riddled with holes / can no longer walk”—and she’s desperate to save him. Thanks to rumors about her family particularly her deceased mom Lili is a local outcast so she’s surprised when 17-year-old Caleb comes to her with a proposition. He’ll help her locate the monster if she can find a way for him to escape before his upcoming birthday when “the first hole” will appear and he’ll start to be eaten alive. Their alliance turns into an unlikely friendship and romantic feelings blossom. In Saltview “to be hungry / is to be / monstrous” and the deadly swamp is full of tricks but when Lili learns the truth about the monster she must decide if what she learns will become her burden or set her free. Written in lyrical free verse this evocative story bursts and oozes with the life of the swamp’s flora and fauna. The worldbuilding is gradually revealed and deep feelings—desire shame loneliness and grief—take the spotlight over plot. This lush cross-genre tale swerves between gnarly body horror and sweet romance while maintaining a thoughtful emotional core. The minimally described cast presents white.

But before long Bea becomes upset by her friends’ reminders of her previous reliance on her stuffed rabbit Roger to face social situations. At 13 Bea and her friends are now Froglings the oldest kids at Camp Chordata and they quickly discover that since the camp is “super understaffed” this status comes with less supervision and guidance during activities. They and the two other Froglings are also asked to take on additional responsibilities with younger campers which doesn’t feel fair. Between her disappointment over the way the Froglings are being treated and Virginia’s comments about “the Old Bea” Bea finds herself regretting coming back. The story moves at a rapid pace while still keeping the characters’ emotions front and center. Readers will relate to Bea’s desire to grow and change without being continually compared to her past self. Montague explores healthy communication and the importance of learning to love yourself at every stage of your life as the friends work through relationship hiccups. Her clean boldly executed art accentuates the girls’ expressively drawn faces. Bea has curly brown hair and brown skin Roxy has tan skin and blond hair and Virginia has dark brown skin and red hair.

Lili who is of Chinese descent is excited to pick strawberries from her garden plot to share at the upcoming block party. Her Nai Nai (Mandarin for Grandmother) is busy making fried rice and asks Lili to water the plants and bring back some green onions. Lili’s mother gives her some banana peels to feed “Mr. Nibbles.” (Readers curious about the enigmatic Mr. Nibbles will be rewarded by book’s end.) As Lili works Abuela another grandmother visits asking Lili to pick some tomatoes so she can make arroz roja—and reminding her to check for pests. More grandmothers appear each saying hello in her native language asking for an item from the garden for a dish she’s preparing and help with a chore and offering something for Mr. Nibbles. The ensuing party is a joyous gathering with every grandmother bringing a rice-based dish from her culture. Lili and her world rendered in soft colors and thin-lined details are as charming and adorable as in her first outing. The repetitive parallel construction of the story allows Iwai to pack in a lot more information than she did in her earlier book but the sense of community still shines above all. And Mr. Nibbles? He’s a compost tumbler—explained in Iwai’s copious backmatter.

Cultural critics Druckman and Sen are adoring longtime soap opera fans who infuse their enthusiasm and analysis into a dozen “episode” essays examining the ascent and fanatical obsession of these serials as well as their incremental replacement by modern “reality” versions. In a delightful introductory piece the authors quiz each other about how their fascination with soaps began (Druckman in the mid-1970s Sen in the late 1990s) and is currently sustained through media streaming platforms and wildly opinionated fan-frenzied online message boards. They examine how drama teacher and actress Irna Phillips created the first scripted serialized daytime soap opera Painted Dreams in the 1930s and why the show would evolve into the progenitor of a parade of soon-to-become wildly popular daytime television serials. The authors spotlight the feminist perspective of pivotal soap opera plots like Erica Kane’s abortion on All My Children combined with more convoluted riffs on paternity twins AIDS race queer characters split personalities and more. Druckman and Sen credit provocative prime-time dramas like Dynasty Dallas and Falcon Crest with beefing up the soap playing field through controversial storylines commanding performances dazzling costume design and outrageous cliffhangers. Though the plotlines are frequently repetitive and consistently ludicrous production staff would weave in human interest issues to balance the preposterous with the socially responsible like Guiding Light scriptwriter Agnes Nixon who introduced a uterine cancer storyline to inform viewers about the importance of triennial Pap smear testing. Chatty and personable the authors’ volleying discussion is informative and entertaining and includes updated profiles of long-term soap actors as well as a forecast of the future of the genre and informed opinions on the advent of the soap series reboot. From the “shoulder-padded brio” of Dynasty to more recent productions like CBS’s culturally significant Beyond the Gates these essays appreciate the soap opera as an artform that’s “eternal and eternally changing.”

A tan-skinned child named Amelia appears disorganized—her messy bedroom is a riot of loose crayons fabrics and yarn. But Amelia is an artist with unstoppable drive using “every LOOSE PART imaginable” in her work. While Amelia struggles to clean her room her Auntie Teya and her cousin Jayce arrive ready for their camping trip. The thrill of the outing is blunted when they discover that the campsite’s now missing its playground. While looking out at the empty site Amelia notices that the park is packed with “giant loose parts” everywhere from scattered leaves to logs. The cousins set out to design their own “teeter-totter” but they don’t stop there—they can re-create the entire playground complete with a slide and a new swing making everything by hand. There’s a touching moment of discovery when the cousins realize that “The WORLD is our playground we just have to CREATE it.” Later Amelia with the help of her parents finally organizes her bedroom’s array of “loose parts” by creating “a HOME for every piece.” The engaging text includes a section with advice for aiding a child’s development by incorporating everyday items into playtime. Youngsters will be enthralled by Medonza’s stunning digital illustrations—especially the images of stars—which create moments packed with childish wonder and energy.

It’s 1978 and the protagonist known as Brother Khang is “hung butterfly style on a barbed-wire pole” between two men—the trio are also connected by their communist ties. It’s been a year since Brother Khang and his fellow anti-Revolutionaries from South Vietnam lost their freedom under an initiative led by the Ministry of Public Security. Having lived “under the maligned puppet regime and the overseeing imperial Yankees” Brother Khang is now being reeducated by the socialist government due to his previous political affiliations. He’s locked away in solitary confinement with little to eat; the story captures moments of a life lived in forced isolation as Brother Khang tracks the days replays past conversations hungrily craves salt and mentally rereads books. He nearly dies from a health issue until smuggled-in vitamins aid in his recovery and he’s finally released back to the main lodging—though he’s now a different man. Even when he’s back among the other prisoners his isolation only continues through “self-confessions” in which he’s forced to betray his old life. As he slips further into solitude the story asks a disquieting question: Even if he could escape what would he return to? Ha’s prose is sharp and haunting: “Sometimes it’s crueler to deprive a man of death.” The narrative is infused with cultural and political insights that explore the factors that shape freedom and the lack thereof: “Freedom is a luxurious word in a communist state. Freedom of movement freedom of thought freedom of expression. When you’re stripped of all freedom what then?” Brother Khang’s story vividly conveys a profound sense of alienation born of a personal identity split by war.

Growing up in the South as the sort of person who “loved solving problems and figuring things out” Vivien Thomas never enrolled in college but worked his way up as a white medical researcher’s lab assistant to become an expert on the malady known as “blue baby syndrome.” Breaking the color bar he joined a team of white surgeons at Johns Hopkins that in 1944 used techniques that Thomas developed on dogs to perform the first successful open-heart surgery on a child. Thomas then went on to perform and teach the procedure there for many years while Schoettler points out being so underpaid that he had to tend bar and work other jobs to make ends meet. He was not she goes on pointedly even awarded a doctoral degree until 1976 when he was 65 years old or given proper credit in the procedure’s formal name until 2023. Still the author tells his story in positive tones overall reserving further specifics about the discrimination he faced to her afterword. Walthall’s illustrations add helpful details of the surgery to views of the sober Thomas hard at work later surrounded by increasingly diverse groups of his patients and students.

With this story translated from Italian Pisi plays deftly with other fairy-tale tropes. Though our princess inhabits a far-off castle with a dragon the scaly creature isn’t an adversary but an ally who supports the princess as she practices karate navigates thrilling rapids and builds a flying machine. It’s far better than the boring palace where there’s “nothing to do” and she can’t wear trousers or even “use a screwdriver.” Her father the king believes she’s an unwilling captive and has even offered a rich reward for her rescue but as the knights arrive one by one she exclaims “Can’t you see I don’t want to be saved?” She reinforces her words with “a mighty karate chop” sending each soaring “away beyond the mountains.” But when the Green Knight shows up the flying machine enthralls him and the two (along with the dragon) set off collecting other princesses “in search of adventure.” The splotchy goofy-looking pale-green dragon eyes at half-staff is never threatening. All the characters are child-size; the feisty princess is pale-skinned while the supporting cast is diverse. Rovira’s delicate and precise line art with spare but effective use of color is lively and droll with some amusing details like the cat and bird kibitzers. Text and illustrations work together well exalting girl power.

When the peach-stick’s planted the youngster’s best friend Maya suggests that they plant sticks too. As the little tree grows roots underground (prodigiously illustrated by Tahboub) more change ensues. The protagonist celebrates a birthday in August Maya moves in the autumn and our hero endures a cold lonely winter. The children write letters—a lovely testimony to nurturing a friendship—and Maya asks about their stick forest. (Tahboub cheekily obliges providing scribbly spring-green foliage.) With the arrival of an elder named Ruth the following spring a mutually welcome bond liberally sweetened with Ruth’s oatmeal cookies sprouts between her and the narrator. She describes her childhood cherry tree which also grew taller than she maintaining that the tree kept growing while she stopped. Yet she agrees when the child counters “You grew underneath.” A single flower—“a promise”—appears on the peach tree. In summer the child shares a peach wedge with Ruth vowing “Next year you get a whole peach.” Imagining the tree after many years Day’s narrator bestows a final gem: “My tree will be old. But its peaches will always be new.” The child’s different friendships and the tree’s slow maturation yield thematic treasures about growth change and aging anchored by the titular refrain by turns reflecting sarcasm and genuine pride. Most characters are pale-skinned; Maya is brown-skinned.

Using cumulative verse reminiscent of “The House That Jack Built” Aamodt chronicles a forest’s journey from lightning strike through conflagration to rebirth. The rhythm builds momentum through repetition and strategic line breaks while onomatopoeia adds tactile energy (“Tack! Tack! Tack!” “Ker-SPLASH”). The narrative begins ominously with dry clouds and parched land before pivoting dramatically: “Dead? No. Not dead at all!” “Pine cones unseal” releasing seeds “finally / finally / FINALLY freed / by the heat of the fire.” MacKay’s distinctive three-dimensional paper art photographed as layered dioramas crafted from ink pencil and cut paper creates depth and atmosphere. Her palette tells the emotional story: Menacing grays and blues during the lightning strike explode into ferocious oranges reds and yellows as flames consume the forest then transition through muted ash-grays and browns before bursting into hopeful pinks greens and soft golden light as life returns. Compositional choices amplify the narrative arc—tight claustrophobic framing during the fire’s fury gives way to sweeping expansive vistas as renewal takes hold. The layered paper technique creates theatrical dimensionality with silhouetted deer bounding across smoky backgrounds and delicate wildflowers rising in the foreground. Human helpers appear throughout—smoke jumpers scientists diverse volunteers planting seedlings—anchoring ecological science in community action.

Kyrie was 6 when a fine green dust rained down from the clouds. Those outside Peakin California died from a mysterious illness but supplements have kept locals alive. Mayor Heathe is at the top of the community’s hierarchical structure while Pastor Basil watches over people’s souls. Eighteen-year-old Kyrie spends much of her time journaling and working at the local mercantile which helps her family afford the supplements they need to remain healthy. She resents her harsh angry father who often stumbles home drunk. After Kyrie’s friends 21-year-old orphan Maple and Morgan the son of town Council members decide to marry a violent event shatters the facade of their small-town life introducing a more sinister storyline. The fallout prompts Kyrie to explore beyond Peakin’s borders joining Thatch a mysterious newcomer who shares uncomfortable truths. This action-packed dystopian novel offers attention-grabbing reveals and escapes along with a bit of romance amid the ensuing tensions. Unfortunately the treatment of Kyrie’s father’s alcohol abuse while empathetic hinges upon a scientifically inaccurate plot point and is framed in a way that feels problematic. Snippets from Kyrie’s journal open each chapter showing inner turmoil that supports the book’s themes including criticism of power structures and their deceptive control over the public. The Christian faith-based messaging naturally interweaves an interrogation of the problem of evil.