A married man (generously called Adonis) engages in various sexual escapades with a parade of different women. Readers begin the story knowing that Adonis has died and the author uses a variety of different formats to tell the story of his downfall. These include poetry short prose quotes (some of which are in French) and scripts (for both screen and stage). Each section is paired with a particular song that is meant to “run parallel to the works but not in real time not in sync.” These songs are listed in small blocks throughout while a separate companion book titled Crystalline Green includes a playlist with additional poems plays and song tracks that accompany Adonis’ journey. The songs range from mainstream (“Run This Town” by JAY-Z) to more obscure (“A Forest” by Clan of Xymox). Characters and scenarios throughout both volumes include the mundane (employees working at an office) and the fantastical (God massaging someone’s feet; the Devil surfing). Booras occasionally crafts some truly thought-provoking passages: “This is why I prefer foreplay to sex. This is why I write more than I live.” Unfortunately there’s not a relatable character to be found; Adonis’ immaturity is downright alienating. While Thaïs his married colleague and “true love” is in the hospital for example Adonis explains that he cheated on her because “You were sick.” Intense eroticism (“I penetrate myself / so I may feel what you feel”) alternates with performative introspection (“Have I not invented this pain? / This cock that bends / toward sadness / like a flower made heavy by rain?”). This results in a text that’s essentially an overblown ode to maleness. The experimental form is unique—but like its main character the book does little to endear itself to readers.

Now living in Germany Hanefeld who was born in 1958 grew up in England with her English mother and Czech father. The six relatives she knew on her father’s side were her grandparents an aunt and a great-uncle and great-aunt who’d all resettled in England. The family never spoke of their background and it was only in her late teens that Hanefeld realized they were German-speaking Czech Jews who fled their homeland just before the start of World War II. In 2004 a year before her father’s death he unexpectedly sent her his aunt’s 1935 passport with a note that she and other close relatives whom the family never mentioned were murdered in concentration camps in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. That document prompted her to undertake a painstaking investigation aided by family correspondence her own fluency in German and historical archives. As she tells of how she reconstructed the stories of her relatives’ lives Hanefeld details some of her own memories and the emotional impact of her discoveries. After providing some background with a family-tree diagram she devotes a chapter to each of 16 people concluding with a dialogue between herself and her first cousin about the family’s legacy of silence followed by an epilogue; she also includes a timeline and an extensive list of references. Overall this is not a dramatic novelistic memoir; at times the narrative is slowed by excessive detail and at others the author summarizes and speculates when research couldn’t fill in gaps. However her stories effectively reveal her family members as businesspeople lawyers homemakers and students with everyday unremarkable concerns and intriguingly that appears to be Hanefeld’s point: “This is the quieter less dramatic side of the Holocaust but it too deserves attention” and “the impact of personal narratives is greater than speaking abstractly about the vast numbers of people murdered.” She also discusses salient questions of identity and how suppressed trauma can affect succeeding generations.

After Crawford Cope hits his father with a baseball bat he’s sentenced to 300 hours of community service—working to revamp a baseball diamond that will be named Cope Field after his famous pops a hometown hero who played in the major leagues. Craw who’s white is paired with Hannah Flores a brown-skinned bisexual punk rocker with bright blue pink-tipped hair. They go to the same school but he doesn’t know her; Craw’s reputation as the son of a wealthy local legend precedes him. Hannah has no interest in baseball and Craw is initially annoyed by her constant talking but as they learn more about each other and their respective difficult home lives Craw falls for Hannah. His understandable anger toward his mercurial father fills him with shame even when it’s provoked by his protective feelings toward his funny precocious younger brother Sutton who doesn’t even remember their momma. Though he’s also tempted to play the hero for Hannah who faces bullying at school and at home Craw’s developing understanding that his well-intentioned barging in isn’t helping her plus his willingness to listen to what she really wants from him are refreshing. This heartbreaking finely drawn story will keep readers engaged.

Uthaug’s first novel to be published in English imagines a time several centuries in the future when 11% of men—enough to keep the genetic pool sufficiently varied—are allowed to survive infancy only to be kept captive and heavily medicated. Definitely not for the squeamish the novel follows four women who have trouble dealing with the system in which they have been raised. Medea and Silence are witches who live in a convent with an elderly “sister” and a nameless 7-year-old boy they have raised in secret. Wicca—Medea’s lover and a priest in the now-matriarchal Christian church in which cobras play a critical role—worries that she won’t satisfy the mothers who have raised her to follow in their footsteps as priests. And Eva is a doctor with a potentially damning secret she’s held since childhood. Though it’s not clear whether the rest of the world has also been transformed or just Denmark and its Scandinavian neighbors Uthaug builds her brave new world with care and confidence gradually revealing a civilization in which all new buildings must be round or ovoid testosterone is viewed as poison “manladies” with silicone penises service customers in the dodgier parts of Copenhagen and self-designated Amazons are assigned to teach the captive males their varied sexual “jobs.” Uthaug’s worldbuilding is more convincing than her plot-making which tends to long repetitive flashbacks and little forward momentum and her frequent colorful descriptions of the use of bodily effluvia of all sorts to make cakes and other delicacies may leave readers without an appetite. She certainly can’t be faulted for subtlety.

Two families stand at the center of Millet’s lovely keening tales: Buzz Amy and their children Liza and Nick; and single mother Helen with daughters Mia and Shelley. They are well-educated middle-class liberal Americans appalled by the state of their country and in the case of the parents bemused by their children. The younger generation “seemed to be void of ideology. Beyond naming and shaming each other for perceived identity bias” comments Trudy another character who turns up in several stories. This isn’t entirely true of Liza who impulsively married a “DACA kid” Luis while still in high school or Nick a Stanford grad enraged by Americans’ complacency in the face of the “five-alarm emergency” of climate catastrophe and impending global extinction. “What we need” he tells his therapist “is a worldwide revolution. Yesterday.” Nonetheless he’s stocking shelves in a big-box store and bartending in a gay bar and his attitude of “what can I do?” is shared by most of Millet’s wonderfully human believably flawed characters. A few creeps turn up—there’s one in “Pastoralist” about a man who preys on vulnerable women and another in “Cultist” where Shelley’s smug boyfriend Jake spouts “pieces of pat received wisdom from business school” to her amused mother and the horrified Nick who has become Mia’s boyfriend over the course of the stories. But generally the author is gentle with confused well-meaning people immobilized by the scope of the apocalypse they see looming. As she did in such novels as Dinosaurs (2022) and A Children’s Bible (2020) Millet blends a blunt assessment of our refusal to deal with the ecological catastrophes we have created and a tender portrait of human beings with all their foibles.

As a youngster writes Specktor actors and filmmakers were a common happy-hour sight around his home thanks to a father who worked as an agent for “an insurgent company called Creative Arts Agency.” One memorable visitor was David Lynch then at the beginning of his career who sized young Specktor up and pronounced him an artist. Specktor may not have made his mark in the art world but he certainly can write: This memoir is a sterling account of how Hollywood the company town works and of the strange people who inhabit a world very different from ordinary reality. It’s a place of glittering wealth and beautiful people but also a place where beastly behavior is the norm and the ideal. “What is it about the culture that creates such furious and pointlessly cruel people? Is it…the fact that trafficking in illusion makes you begin to expect the impossible even in real life?” Good questions. In the case of Specktor senior celebrated at the time of this book’s appearance as the oldest agent still working in the business the education was at the hands of the irascible deeply nasty Lew Wasserman brilliant at structuring business-enriching deals and “not just the star but the stage itself invisible to the inattentive eye”—and a terrifying boss. Jack Warner was just as scary but his old-fashioned empire was toppled by younger upstarts like Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty—to say nothing of aggressive new-school agents like Michael Ovitz who himself would be toppled by “a businessman even colder and more ruthless than he is Michael Eisner.” Literate and liberal with huge scoops of dish Specktor’s memoir is a sometimes shocking pleasure from start to finish.

Seventeen-year-old Rioyn Orro dreams of protecting his realm of Seivan. It would entail joining Sansyre University’s Order of Soldiers but his father a general who finds his son too impulsive won’t approve his enrollment. Rioyn plans to join anyway; histwin Ayva who thinks of herself as a “nerdy book girl” is already signed up for the Order of Galilei. As each sibling gears up for their orders’ tournaments their realm suddenly comes under attack. A sinister brother and sister wielding dark Ascendances (magical abilities) lead the Starless Army which consists of soldiers whose “lacquered black eyes” indicate apparent mindlessness. Rioyn and Ayva have their own Ascendances like many in Seivan but neither has mastered them yet. To restore peace in their realm they’ll need to find the Iyanndyre Born a fabled and enigmatic figure. With their loved ones in peril the twins trek across a mountain range to reach the towering Iyanndyre monolith. Sostman’s novel throws numerous obstacles in the siblings’ way; their journey to the Iyanndyre structure for example is rife with life-threatening dangers. However the characters also struggle with more relatable troubles such as Rioyn’s craving for his father’s approval and Ayva’s wish that she was popular like her brother. However much of this opening installment is deliberately cryptic about key topics such as who or what the Iyanndyre Born is and how the mysterious Infinite Void relates to Seivan and “the Outer Realms.” The alternating narrative perspectives primarily the twins’ provide useful insight. Unfortunately they also reveal Rioyn as a selfish and largely incompetent character; he’s essentially a detriment to the mission especially compared to the siblings’ traveling companion (and Rioyn’s embittered ex) Falla Kai. An effervescent secondary cast includes villains with startling well-developed origin stories as well as Jax Risor Ayva’s love interest and Rioyn’s best friend. The final act answers a lingering question while also deepening other mysteries.

Journalist and novelist LeBor author of Hitler’s Secret Bankers: The Myth of Swiss Neutrality During the Holocaust writes that losing World War I was no less disastrous for Hungary than for Germany. Formerly a full partner in the Austro-Hungarian Empire it emerged missing 70% of its former territory. LeBor describes Budapest as almost Parisian in its love of art food pleasure and politics with an enormous cast of characters. He emphasizes that the Hungarian government’s obsession between the wars was to regain lost territories. Since that was also Hitler’s obsession Nazism exerted a growing and malign influence. The nation remained neutral when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 but under increasing pressure joined Germany’s June 1941 invasion of Russia. During this period the government remained in place. Unlike in Poland there was no military occupation with the accompanying massive atrocities but plenty of scattered atrocities and antisemitic laws. Barely keeping Germany at arm’s length Hungary maintained a fairly free press political parties trade unions and cultural life until March 1944 when with the Red Army drawing near Germany took control and almost immediately began rounding up Jews. Following Hungary’s clumsy effort to switch sides in October Germany gave power to its right-wing pro-Nazi party which quickly began a reign of terror. One historian writes “Nowhere else in Nazi-occupied Europe were Jews killed in public in such large numbers over such a long period of time.” With access to new documents and diaries LeBor vividly recounts details of gruesome atrocities. He describes heroic figures who saved thousands of Jews but failed to save hundreds of thousands.

Weiss notes that Caitlin Clark’s intensity sometimes results in her losing her temper; she also touches on the racial double standard that some have claimed to see in her mega-celebrity. Still the author dwells much more on the positive from her subject’s strong work ethic her willingness to be a team player and her already-spectacular achievements on the boards to her electrifying effect on the popularity of women’s basketball. Clark played on boys’ teams from age 5 declared her intention to play in the WNBA in third grade and went on to become NCAA Division 1 basketball’s highest scorer of any sex—her example may daunt fans hoping to follow directly in her footsteps. Still for those inspired to try the author fills readers in on basic basketball skills and strategies that are applicable at any level of play. She also offers a sprinkling of biographical details and exciting game summaries (up to the July 2024 WNBA All Star Game) enhanced by many big dramatic action photos. Thumbnail introductions to other women who have starred at the collegiate Olympic and professional levels widen the general angle of view as do closing lists of WNBA champs and MVPs.

Melia Raymond is so eager to support her 17-year-old grandson Droid né Andrew Morgan as he enters rehab for his addiction to alcohol and drugs that she tags along with him on the intake bus allowing herself to be checked in for her own nonexistent addiction. Her decision is a serious mistake since under the stewardship of Beatrice Dottson Best Way Health and Wellness is nothing but a scam designed to rake in government dollars for treatments it has no intention of providing. In fact many of the guards who make sure the clients surrender their cell phones and stay put till Best Way is ready to turn them loose actively push more liquor on them. Their time-tested strategy doesn’t work for Droid who promptly vanishes leaving Mrs. Raymond to pair up with his widowed father Greg Morgan to search far and wide for him. Meanwhile Officer Bernadette Manuelito of the Navajo Police faces a grave complication before the promised high-profile visit of U.S. Secretary of Energy Savanah Cooper: Members of Citizens United To Save the Planet a ferocious activist group have settled in at the elderly Yazzies’ property building an illegal sweat lodge and planning what’s clearly going to be a criminal protest against the scourge of uranium extraction from Native lands. Since the two stories never intersect their sum total is less a novel than a pair of novellas shuffled together in alternating chapters.

November 1895. Investigators Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn venture to the lively Shoreditch district of London in the middle of the night in search of the infamous Dawn Gang which has been burglarizing local shops. The duo gets some helpful intel from Dutch a streetwise beggar. As if on cue Llewelyn is struck in the head and a fight with the gang ensues in which “the Marquess of Queensbury Rules had no part.” After gang members spot the police and flee Barker and Llewelyn are hauled in and roughly questioned. Locating Dutch seems essential to their exoneration. A bizarre coda to the episode comes via Chief Detective Inspector Poole a friend who reports that all the gang members have been arrested and have hanged themselves in their cells. Case reluctantly closed if not explained. Meanwhile Barker and Llewelyn are engaged by stuffy Lord Danvers to discreetly locate the missing sister of his fragile distraught wife. Before she vanished May Evans spoke vaguely about leaving London and going to Rome. Barely has this investigation begun when the sleuths are drawn back to the Tenderloin by an explosion in a railway tunnel. Barker and Llewelyn’s shaggy 16th adventure is held together by Llewelyn’s engaging narration which combines the formality of Dr. Watson with the smirk of Archie Goodwin. And of course the colorful Dutch makes a return linking the cases.

Brielle Petitfour dreams of becoming a renowned chef serving up food from her Haitian culture to Miami’s upper crust via her elite supper club. But she’s also a zombie—or a zonbi as they’re known in Creole. Brielle’s immigrant mother suffers chronic pain from an injury sustained while working for the white Banks family the same people whose company makes the medicine she needs to keep her pain at bay. But now Mummy’s insurance is refusing to cover it. Then Brielle is offered a summer fellowship—with generous family health insurance benefits—by the outrageously wealthy and greedy Bankses who make this proposal in order to smooth over a situation involving Brielle that’s a potential “PR nightmare.” Brielle accepts: She can help her mother and with her zombie gifts maybe even get revenge. Creole phrases and Haitian folklore are woven into the story adding to the atmosphere. Brielle’s five sisters back in Haiti serve as a sort of Greek chorus and their interspersed chapters fill in the rich backstory. The authors have a lot of important things to say about generational wealth racism capitalism and class but the rules of Brielle’s monstrous zombie powers remain unclear and the many themes that are explored limit the deeper development of Brielle as a character.

When the author began the Friendship Bench project with 14 grandmothers in the early 2000s there were only six practicing psychiatrists in Zimbabwe. (Today the number remains less than 20.) Designed to address the limited access many Zimbabweans have to mental health professionals the Friendship Bench project deploys a team of “lay psychotherapists” to provide a listening ear sage wisdom and guidance to those in need. The project also helps to break down cultural stigmas associated with mental health; Chibanda came to realize that wooden park benches located under trees and occupied by welcoming grandmothers provided a welcome “safe space” and alternative to the “crowded clinic” where specialists like himself only had a few minutes with each patient. Featuring the stories of individuals whom Friendship Benches have helped the book highlights women like Farai an HIV-positive mother riddled with self-doubt and shame whose life was turned around after just one conversation with a compassionate grandmother on a bench. While the author a trained medical doctor and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is well versed in modern pharmacology he highlights the power of indigenous African approaches to mental health and explicates concepts like the Shona notion of kufungisisa(“thinking too much”). Chibanda also tells the fascinating story of the Friendship Bench project’s growth which exploded following a TED Talk delivered by the author that received millions of views. The project is now a “full-fledged NGO” with an administrative and training center; toolkits are offered to readers who want to “Join the Movement” and start Friendship Bench projects in their own communities. Chibanda’s writing style is empathetic and deeply personal—his text is accessible to readers both inside and outside of the psychiatric profession and it’s accompanied by a wealth of photographs.

Celeste’s mother Queen Halia has always considered her to be too emotional—like the irrational humans. In order to prove herself Celeste has spent several cycles the sirens’ unit of time training to become a member of the Chorus a militarized unit that patrols the seas. Before her final test Celeste comes across an attractive human prince Raiden whose father is King Leonidas—her mother’s sworn enemy. She ends up saving Raiden’s life but when her mother learns of her transgression she offers Celeste the chance to go on a mission that requires her to become human and avoid being executed for treason. The narrative which initially is strongly reminiscent of “The Little Mermaid” has some slower moments and repetitive elements that are offset by witty commentary that helps engage readers. The opening drags but the pace picks up as the story unfolds. Impicciche does a good job of creating a detailed world of siren customs and traditions. Her characters exhibit emotional depth conveying what it feels like to be lost and betrayed. Sirens have skin of varying colors including blue purple and green; Celeste’s skin is “soft peach.” Raiden presents white and there’s racial diversity among other humans.

Just as in Are You Stronger Than an Ant? (2024) Morgan peppers readers with intriguing questions: “Could you…climb up and down cliffs without any gear at all?” “Could you…ward off bad guys without a shield?” “Could you…light up the dark by giving off an inner glow?” Kids will likely respond with a resounding no but the author goes on to describe creatures who do possess these abilities; she notes for instance that “a mountain goat’s hooves make steep climbing easy.” Text in a smaller font goes into more depth about each animal’s ability while the accompanying image depicts a child attempting the feat (in this case a youngster clings uncertainly to the side of a cliff as a bemused mountain goat looks on). Nine of the examples relate to animals. The inclusion of an oak tree whose limbs “make a home…for oodles and oodles of others” will be a surprise. At times the writing is awkward. The last words of each question and answer rhyme; some words seem to have been chosen for the sake of rhyme not meaning. Morgan introduces the sea star (referred to here as a starfish) by asking if readers could “go through life without a brain”; the answer and subsequent explanation don’t discuss its lack of a brain. A final list of facts summarizes the information. The children are diverse; one uses a wheelchair.

Jacob is a Brooklyn native staying on in Atlanta after graduating from Morehouse to take a job with a real estate developer who has won the contract to “revitaliz[e]” (aka destroy and gentrify) the Black neighborhoods near the Olympic Village. He knows he’s gay but has had very little experience and has not come out to his parents. He works closely with Daniel an Atlanta native whose white mother has recently died without ever having explained to him how he is Black while his siblings and her husband are all white. Daniel too is dealing with confusion about his sexuality. As the book lays it out in characteristically passionate prose “Was a life—this life—between two Black men possible? Two Black men in love and protecting each other against whatever was out there in the world moving together toward an unknown future?” The dual aspirations of this debut novel—to create a detailed fact-based portrait of Atlanta on the cusp of change and to depict the pressures on gay Black men coming of age in the 1990s—are both realized the former with detailed research about the specific neighborhoods involved the latter with intense dramatic situations and inner monologues. Anger breaks through in fistfights verbal showdowns and a near-riot. Sometimes the author seems not to trust us to keep the stakes and the big picture in mind. In the middle of a conversation with a new man in his life Jacob begins ruminating on “the conversation that lurked just beneath their discussion” and “the unvoiced masculinity code” themes already strongly articulated in the novel. During a tense meeting in the school principal’s office about a teacher who has made a remark about Daniel’s parentage obviously different than his siblings’ it occurs to Daniel’s mother that “life roamed beyond them in that office—wild reckless unpredictably wonderful and unexpected. Life large and sweeping filled with gasps of intensity and excitement.” These are lovely observations but seem unlikely to have occurred to her in the moment. Another issue is that Jacob and Daniel’s boss a white woman is a two-dimensional villain though her portrayal is explicitly linked to “the history of what little Black boys and little white girls have always been told about each other.”

Leo promises Ben a wild summer full of hunky “unsupervised perverted beach maniacs” but when they arrive in Port Dorian the beach is closed. Instead of lifeguarding and partying they’re stuck cleaning up the rotting sea life littering the shore. One glimpse of a cute boy gives them hope that maybe the hotties are just “hiding away like hermit crabs.” If they can clean up the beach fast enough maybe they can save their “sexy summer.” However their summer soon turns from stinky to suspicious when they drag a man with glowing eyes out of the water. The danger escalates when tentacled creatures emerge from the waves and start possessing the locals. The illustrations’ dramatic color palette effectively conveys the atmosphere and foreshadows the shift in tone as the story veers into a supernatural mystery. The art is vivid dynamic and emotionally expressive but the characters as written lack depth and development and are insufficiently differentiated so the buildup of romantic potential loses wind. Apart from some background characters most of the cast is depicted with pale or lightly tanned skin. Although the plot moves at a fast pace and has suspenseful appeal overall the story is underwhelming.

For the past five years 11-year-old Nico Lombardi the child of an Italian immigrant has lived and worked at the Precipice Inn in Pennsylvania. When he was 6 he and his artist grandfather (his only guardian) visited the inn; his grandfather died unexpectedly leaving the newly orphaned Nico with only a few of his paintings and a debt to the innkeeper that has continued to grow. But change is in the air as three elderly final subscribers to a tontine (a type of financial arrangement) arrive at the inn with their families. The tontine is worth $150000 and the trio are meeting to decide if they should split the funds now or continue to hold out until only one survivor remains to take it all per the tontine’s rules. But everyone has secrets and it’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out. This fast-paced humorous caper features witty descriptive chapter titles and spot art including character profiles sprinkled in making for an accessible entertaining tale. The distinct eccentric characters—some lovable some loathsome and some in the middle—are all intriguing as readers catch glimpses into what they’re each scheming. The historical setting is necessary for some plot points but mostly this reads like a modern or timeless story focused on the characters and their antics. Characters are cued white.

The calmadrug administered by the Servants via calmasprings to keep the populace docile doesn’t work on everyone. The immune are called Resistors; Abstainers are those who choose to avoid it. Like many others whose parents died during the societal collapse called the Great Calm 16-year-old Resistor Owyn Caldwell lives in a state residential school. Warned by a teacher that he’s in danger when the calmadrug stops working on him Owyn goes on the run. Meanwhile 14-year-old Tiegan Archer and her 8-year-old brother Joel who are white witness their Resistor parents’ abductions by the Servants. After being sheltered by neighbor Mr. Khan they flee too hiding in safe houses and trusting precious few adults. The journey is dangerous but there are rumors of Resistor strongholds in the north and eventually the three young people’s paths cross. Still going unnoticed in a society of the emotionless presents unique challenges. After Owyn who’s Black experiences racism for the first time an older man observes that “life free of the calmasprings has its drawbacks.” Although using the drug means experiencing “no passion no joy no delight” it also results in “no hate no anger.…No fear of difference.” In her page-turner debut author Baker evokes dystopian despair reminiscent of classic titles. Morally ambiguous characters give the story depth; readers will not know whom to trust.

Of 35 animal groups one is vertebrates from sharks to humans. The remaining 34 have no backbones; most live in the ocean and turn out to be abundant often grotesque and possessed of “superpowers” useful not only in their struggle for existence but also through chemicals and structures that may improve human lives and fight disease. Fish and mammals remain in the background but few readers will complain as marine biologist Harvell author of Ocean Outbreak: Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease describes the creatures she loves whose complexity belies their ancient evolutionary history. Passing over billions of years of single-celled life she begins more than 600 million years ago when the first multicellular organism appeared probably a sponge. A sponge has no eyes limbs head or organs and it can’t move. It’s basically a collection of cells that suck in water extract bacteria-size food and then expel it. Despite this simplicity it carries on sophisticated life processes. Corals exist in symbiosis with algae which provide them with food; together they build the world’s largest living colonies which may stand over 40 feet high and extend hundred of miles. Intelligent octopuses giant clams rapacious sea slugs deadly jellies (they aren’t fish) and essential keystone stars (also not fish) reveal their secrets and display their superpowers a description less hyperbolic than it appears at first. It has become traditional to conclude natural histories with bad news and Harvell does not break the mold. Warming and acidifying oceans continue to kill coral reefs across the world. Also to blame not surprisingly are overfishing and pollution.