Little received his first camera from his father when he was 9 years old. With that serendipitous gift he embarked on an impressive career as a photojournalist that spanned 40 years. He largely worked for Time Incorporated and was given the opportunity to photograph everything and everyone—Cary Grant the Rolling Stones presidents and Playboy bunnies. His favorite genre was portraiture with his preferred subjects being writers. This is unsurprising since his father was a newspaper columnist and his mother a playwright: “Authors are my favorite subjects. Before an assignment if I haven’t already I try to read at least one of their books. It makes for more interesting conversation. And let’s face it photographers aren’t always held in the highest esteem. Writers often find it challenging to conceal their surprise that I am one of their readers.” This insightfully candid and self-effacing observation typifies the intriguing memoir one brimming with beautiful photographs. Little didn’t only shoot celebrities—he also captured wildlife in Africa and the war-torn streets of Belfast at the height of the Troubles. Nothing about Little’s career was pedestrian; even the nuptials he worked—for instance Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver’s wedding—were momentous.

The author shares two parallel stories: the arc of his professional life as well as his personal one told in a nonlinear fashion. He breaks his life into thematic packets of photos—for example some organized around smoking subjects and others around pets. Little reflects briefly but profoundly on the era itself—he largely worked during the 1970s ’80s and ’90s a time he considers a “golden age for freelance photojournalists” when they were given generous budgets and “treated like little gods.” Eventually this era was superseded by one considerably less hospitable to the industry—tightened budgets the rise of the internet and other factors led to this gilded age’s demise (The “magical jolly ride was over”). The author conveys this vivid reflection without a hint of resentment. In fact he is relentlessly grateful for his “front seat to history”: “With all that said am I bitter? Quite the opposite. Mostly I feel lucky that the accident of my birth date put me in the midst of the let-the-good-times-roll era of photojournalism.” This is not an edgy exposé digging up dirt on luminaries—Little is a professional of an older variety a consummate gentleman who admiringly describes all of his subjects. Even David Letterman who suddenly turned sour on the author for reasons unknown is largely portrayed favorably. Nonetheless this does not mean Little’s account is banal; quite the contrary this is a compelling rendering of celebrities a vanished age and a career that as the author acknowledges couldn’t possibly occur today. Even if Little did not provide such a charmingly thoughtful commentary the striking photos he reproduces here would make the book extremely worthwhile.

Following an injuryas a competitive runner during his senior year of high school Tao learned about the field of physical therapy and found it to be a “profound eye-opening experience.” By 2020 he’d taken the most difficult but potentially most rewarding first step in his career: residency at a health clinic in San Francisco. As Tao’s first mentor at the residency explained “The first trimester we break the resident down. The second trimester we break down the residents even more” before building them back up in the third. Tao found plenty of challenges as the already rigorous program took place during the Covid-19 pandemic. Patients challenged him due to his youthful looks or gave only vague information about their symptoms. This created difficult scenarios for the young PT but offered a wealth of experience which he relates in detail. Tao quickly appreciated a fundamental question as a healthcare provider: “To what extent do I as a physical therapist support patients with needs outside of what’s written on the referral?” That question becomes a main driver of Tao’s memoir as his second trimester coincided with the 2020 presidential election and Jan. 6 insurrection leading to constant heightened anxiety in the clinic and among patients. Tao also writes extensively about rising hate crimes against Asian Americans and their impact on him as the child of first-generation Taiwanese immigrants. He faced his biggest challenge going into the third trimester without having successfully passed his LPE (Live Patient Examination). The stress forced the author to dig deep to find the strength to persevere without burning out. 

Over the course of this memoir Tao narrates his experiences with an approachable personable tone offering plenty of concise descriptions that bring lighthearted humor to the proceedings. The frustration he feels for example trying to steer a patient away from ramblings about vitamins and ethnic backgrounds to describe their symptoms will speak to anyone who’s starting out in the healthcare industry. He also does not shy away from revealing his own emotional struggles including the panic that he experienced before some difficult cases and the feeling of “slowly drowning sinking under the standard expected of the residency.” His accounts of trying to perform at his best despite the grim national political situation is relatable as are his broader reflections on healthcare being “one of the great intersections of humanity.” However Tao’s book is clearly intended for an audience of readers who are already on the path to becoming physical therapists or those possessing enough medical knowledge to appreciate his very specific point-by-point breakdowns of consultations. Nonexperts may find it difficult to connect with these passages but those readers who may be seeking a friendly voice to offer advice on his chosen field will be happy to learn it from him.

This year marks the centenary of the birth of James Baldwin an essayist and novelist whose reputation seems only to grow by the year. “Long before terms like ‘intersectionality’ and ‘non-binary’ entered our common parlance Baldwin recognised the complex ambiguities that define our sexual identity” writes activist and educator Stella Dadzie in her introduction. “His bequest to future generations was a fierce abhorrence of injustice and an equally fierce belief in the enduring power of love.” This anthology collects essays and poems inspired by Baldwin’s life and work from people who knew him personally or simply came to know him through his writing. Lindsay Barrett recalls meeting the author in Paris where the famous Baldwin complimented him on a piece he had published and offered to read a draft of his novel. Nii Ayikwei Parkes writes about first discovering Baldwin “when I needed him in a library in Reading after a newspaper round on the same foldable green bike that I had ridden into a busy traffic intersection when I felt my father leave the earth.” Scholars like Toyin Agbetu and Michelle Yaa Asantewa excavate the worldview that underpinned Baldwin’s writing while poets including Roy McFarlane and Ewuare X. Osayande grapple with his ideas in verse. The book also contains numerous photographs of Baldwin from various periods of his life. The pieces are numerous and relatively short treating the reader to a sampling of perspectives on Baldwin that demonstrate his profound influence not only on writers but also on various academic fields and artistic media. Uniting them is Baldwin’s belief that despite the tragedies of the past and present there may still be a bright future ahead. As Parkes writes “His essays carried and still carry more hope in the world than I have and I desperately needed hope.”

In “The Contagion” the Dreiyer family’s annual road trip includes a stop at a bed-and-breakfast—that’s where 7-year-old Sylvia peeks into a trunk of dolls one of which she swears moves on its own. Decades later when looking for inspiration for a TV show she’s working on she returns to the inn and makes a startling discovery. Von Hessen’s 14 stories herein tackle such diverse subgenres as the undead body horror and something more Lovecraftian (“Spectral Golem”) but there’s a discernible theme of identity that runs throughout the book. Characters interrogate their pasts; the narrator of “The Patent-Master” travels to an island coastal town where the discovery of their late mother’s former profession is the first of many surprises. In one of the collection’s highlights “The Obscurantist” Brooklyn-based Andrei’s lifelong obsession with a girl who once appeared on an obscure variety show ultimately leads him down a dark path. These tales are bleak forgoing humor and zeroing in on individuals who find themselves in miserable appalling or lethal circumstances. A few of the entries dive deep into visceral and grotesque imagery; one that’s sure to turn stomachs is “Roscoe’s Malefic Delights” which is about a newly opened eatery with only one item on its menu: These “delights” (“reminiscent of blood-drained white worms or skinned flattened rats’ tails or stringy strips of tripe”) definitely don’t look appetizing but their appearance may not be their worst attribute. In every chilling moment and unexpected turn the author’s prose is nothing short of intoxicating—unforgettable passages equate one man with “the human embodiment of a prolonged sigh”; a “sloshing” akin to a “half-empty jar of preserves” describes something that ideally shouldn’t be making that sound.

Daniel Morrison is a man at rock bottom dealing with a terrible job divorce and drug addiction. He’s late for work after another fight with his soon to be ex-wife Judy when he gets a call from his bully of a boss. The pressure is too much—he takes a pill while speeding down the road and crashes into a car driven by Claudia Grant. She is also speeding talking on the phone with her lover; her marriage to congressional candidate Hayden Grant has hit a dead end. When the car crash results in her death Hayden offers a million-dollar bounty to anyone who can find the responsible party. Daniel first makes his way to his sister Jessica and brother-in-law Ron’s house where Ron hears of the bounty and tries to turn Daniel in. A violent and chaotic turn of events sends Daniel on the move again. Tracking him down is Detective Roya Navarro who lives in the shadow of a scandal in which she agreed to a televised interview that ended in her slapping the reporter after he asked about her abusive ex. Now that same reporter Gary Grey is also on the case dedicated to getting the story on Daniel before anyone else. Bridges uses brevity in his prose to emphasize the exhilarating events: “The passenger door is ripped open. Daniel holds onto the frame and his foot drags in the road. Panic sticks in his throat. He blurts out one word. ‘Drive.’” Bridge’s thriller is a fast-paced action-packed story with a cast of memorable characters. Daniel is a complex protagonist not entirely likable but always relatable. Detective Navarro drives the narrative forward with her intelligent decisions and grounded character. Both characters pick up an additional person who helps them along their journeys adding parallel narratives to the cat-and-mouse chase. The ending surprises while tying up all the threads of the story in a satisfying manner.

It is easy to think of electric vehicles green energy and other advanced technology as surefire ways to save the planet but award-winning journalist Beiser author of The World in a Grain advises us to look at the issues more deeply to assess the true costs. The author focuses on the metals required to power new-gen tech which include huge amounts of copper and nickel as well as cobalt boron lithium and less familiar substances like gallium and germanium. These elements are necessary for batteries and chips that support everything from EVs and smartphones to wind turbines and solar panels. A critical problem is that mining and refining these metals can if not done carefully create horrifying environmental and humanitarian problems. The key players in the global business are China and Russia which deliberately chose to accept the damage in order to cut costs and corner the market. Both countries have shown themselves willing to leverage their positions for geopolitical advantage. Other countries have acknowledged the danger and are trying to catch up in the marketplace but there is a long way to go. Beiser also investigates the global market in scrap noting that the recycling of the metals in tech devices is useful but often exploitative to laborers. The U.S. has huge mineral resources but to develop them without damaging the environment would be expensive. Beiser argues that the higher costs must be borne and that the cheap ride enjoyed so far is not really so cheap. This is a message that many people might not want to hear but the author underlines the point that there is no real alternative.

Working under the cover of media investor Falk is supposed to help Russian opposition journalists come up with stories damaging to the Kremlin. His latest success is with blogger Anton Basmanny an openly gay provocateur known for his outrageous man-on-the-street livestreams whose viral performance video from a high-ranking Russian official's secret villa leads to the official's deposal. On the same flight as the one intended to whisk Falk to safety tech billionaire Paul Obrandt is seen seated with a mystery woman (her identity is key) shortly before he's reported dead by an elaborately planned suicide. Not believing her Russian-born father did such a thing his feisty and fearless 23-year-old daughter Maya leaves their Los Angeles home to pursue the truth in Portugal where he left her a house. Hooking up (in both senses of the term) with Falk she risks her life to find out not only what happened to her old man but also where $5 billion missing from his investment account went. A classic globe-trotter the novel spreads its cold-blooded killings among several countries. But unlike most spy fiction it's driven in the liveliest sense by young characters who reflect their generation. Falk a millennial who wears Weezer tees and Maya who was up for a part in a Peacock vampire series are an irresistible pairing. The aspirations of youth also drive the backstory of Paul Obrandt's efforts as a 25-year-old billionaire to effect positive political change in Russia during the fading days of the Yeltsin administration through the creation of a telecom firm. Good luck with that.

Clever wordplay immediately elevates Smith’s story beyond mere moralizing about the value of a growth mindset: “Habit” is the name of a tropical island home to the eponymous creature a large rabbitlike being who prefers the tried-and-true to the new and unfamiliar. A “very small creature” a bespectacled blue sphere with skinny limbs encourages the very big creature to stretch himself first by finding a way for the two of them to leave the island for a snowy place with “trees shaped like triangles. And rocks covered in moss. And snow that [falls] from the sky like dust like magic like stars.” Here the very small creature excels at trying new things such as climbing trees and riding a bicycle. The very big creature struggles and fails to do the same much to his disappointment but a shift in his thinking makes all the difference. The very big creature soon realizes that attempting to be the best is fruitless; it’s better to try to be the best at trying. Throughout Espinosa’s comic-style illustrations have a retro feel that will appeal to fans of Zachariah Ohora and Bob Shea with an expressive flair that captures a range of emotions from frustration to triumphant glee.

The first book in this seven-volume novel series introduced readers to Tara Selter a bookseller who has mysteriously been forced to relive November 18th over and over. In that book Tara chronicled her sometimes desperate efforts to recruit her husband for clues about the rationale behind her predicament. As the second book opens a year of reliving the same day with no explanation hasn’t exactly defeated Tara but she’s listless: “I have no pattern of sounds and silence around which to organize my day I have no plans I have no calendar.” And no changing seasons either—the bulk of the book chronicles Tara’s efforts to travel across Europe to capture the sensations of winter summer and spring that reliving the same day has denied her. From France she heads to her native Belgium where she visits her family then heads to Norway for winter London for a sense of a rainy spring southern France for a whiff of summer. After two years of traveling she settles in Dusseldorf Germany where she sinks into a fall-like contemplation of her next move. A cliffhanger ending suggests an accelerating plot in the coming books but here Tara’s situation is more an opportunity for Balle to consider how much our identity is tied to sensory details and our sense of time’s passage: “I want the cold and dark of winter not just a single day of showers and chilly sunlight not just mild days with rain and more rain not just gray skies and a nip in the air.” Tara contemplates this intellectually: An ancient Roman coin she carries with her is a symbol of history boundaries and mortality but Haveland’s translation also captures the twitchy urge to both keep moving and seek the comforts of home.

Sadyk is born in the mountains of Azerbaijan and on the very day he begins his tumultuous life he loses his mother. He’s raised by his father Nadzhaf who sells muskmelons grown on the village’s collective farm and his Aunt Medina. One day with little ceremony Nadzhaf announces that he’s sold the family’s cow and will leave town likely never to return; he’s been conscripted to fight against the German fascists in the war and author Aylisli heartbreakingly renders the character’s farewell to his loved ones: “I’ll say what I must. I stand guilty before you Medina: I’ve driven you into this wretched hole. I’m not coming back. Forgive me for God’s sake!” He never does return and Sadyk is raised by Medina and her belligerent husband Mukush who’s bitter about the fact that his grandfather’s land has been commandeered by a newly established Soviet collective. Mukush is called to war as well and the village is stripped of its able men by a conflict that as Sadyk sees it is “poisoning every living thing around it.” In this haunting work expertly translated from Russian by Young Aylisli chronicles the transformation of the village through the maturing eyes of Sadyk who grows from a bookish boy into a student headed for university. The author vividly portrays how Soviet ideology aggressively alters traditional ways of life as when a factory is sacrilegiously built within a building that houses a mosque. For all its political insight though the novel’s heart is its depiction of the relationship between Sadyk and Aunt Medina; even during the most troubled of times the protagonist takes great solace in believing that “there [is] just the two of us in this endless expanse.” Overall this is a remarkable work that’s historically edifying and dramatically arresting.

Thirteen-year-olds Eowyn Becker and Jules Marrigan became best friends during their first Wisconsin camp summer. Over the years though their friendship has developed cracks. Talented Eowyn suffers from severe stage fright desperately misses her deceased mother and resents her doctor father and Broadway-star brother who have little time for her. She covets Jules’ supportive family and effortless onstage presence. For her part West Virginian scholarship camper Jules covets Eowyn’s wealth and connections and feels that Eowyn doesn’t understand her less-fortunate circumstances. Jules is also bothered by Eowyn’s oblivious need for attention which ruined last summer’s show taking the spotlight off Jules in her lead role. When both girls (who present white) earn starring roles in Wicked this summer can they like Galinda and Elphaba find their way past their mutual loathing and become friends who truly see each other? Told in Eowyn’s first-person voice in the present and Jules’ third-person perspective in the past this masterful exploration of friendship gone wrong is permeated with a bone-deep warts-and-all love of both camp and theater. Evocative worldbuilding brings Lamplighter to life for the intimately developed well-intentioned characters who often struggle to see other points of view. The well-paced interweaving of multiple summers’ experiences builds tension and shines light on how the past reverberates into the present.

Frank editorial director of New York Review Books presents his essays in three parts chronologically ordered. The text he notes is a working example of “descriptive criticism as practiced by such critics as Clement Greenberg Randall Jarrell Pauline Kael Elizabeth Hardwick and Greil Marcus.” Following a preface about Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground (1864) which “resembles nothing so much as a swept-up heap of broken glass” the first section encompasses works from the last few decades of the 1900s through the end of World War I including titles by Wells Proust Joyce and Thomas Mann whose book The Magic Mountain (1924) Frank deems “a new form of the twentieth-century novel a form born of the war whose new significance could only be fully appreciated after the war.” The middle beginning with Mrs. Dalloway covers a “period of astonishing invention.” In the final section the author examines the novels of the mid- to late 1900s from Things Fall Apart to One Hundred Years of Solitude and beyond. Frank is a dogged enthusiast whose optimism almost always wins out often for reasons related to positive emotions. Writing about Kafka’s Amerika for example he comments “The book is one ongoing disaster yet much of it is oddly cheery in tone.” Frank’s curiosity and scope are both admirable and his prose style is consistently punchy despite some repetition—e.g. “Kipling was a restless man”; “Thomas Mann…is a restless man”; D.H. Lawrence was the “most restless of writers.” The most controversial thing about this book may be the appeal that it makes for its own existence. While it may strike some as gratuitous devoted literature fans of canonical literature will relish it.

A couple of dramatic prologues and some early exposition bring readers up to speed about the mysteries and players of Hemlock Falls. Winnie Wednesday Erica Thursday and Jay Friday have formed a clue-gathering trio collectively known as the WTF triangle. The three agree to work together to uncover the truth behind mysteries involving Winnie’s missing father and Erica’s late sister. Winnie’s star has risen in this entry: Characters who teased her during the events of the first book are now cheerfully welcoming toward her and her romance with werewolf Jay continues to heat up. Her ongoing guilt and trauma over deaths from prior books ground the narrative while sprinkled-in pop-culture references and a recurring Emily Dickinson motif showcase her nerdy personality. Changes in the format—such as scriptlike dialogue sequences and daily schedules for the Nightmare Masquerade—break up the narration in creative ways. The eventual reveal of a looming threat that’s targeting everyone Winnie knows starts the countdown of a ticking clock within the story. Meanwhile a slew of fantasy monsters ensure high enough stakes suspense and action to bring the story to a heart-racing and satisfying conclusion. Winnie and Jay present white and Erica is cued Latine.

American yacht designer Cassandra Brenner has spent five years in Singapore working for the family business Ocean House on her most extravagant project ever building the superyacht Red Dragon. Cass is also involved in unspecified spying activities for something dubbed Operation UNDERTOW. Heading to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel one evening to meet her contact she is instead bound and gagged by a sinister duo who want to know all about Red Dragon. The scene then shifts to her sister Nadia who receives a cryptic message from Cass shortly before a family meeting at Ocean House headquarters in Seattle concerning a powerful competitor. As a result of all this Nadia is dispatched to Singapore to assist Cass who’ll need all the help she can get because she is being stalked by the self-described killer and citizen spy Charlie Han née Han Chenglong. Nadia arrives to the devastating news that Cass has fallen from the 40th floor of her hotel and the police are calling it suicide. Questions about Charlie’s true allegiances simmer beneath the surface as Nickless unspools several familiar tropes: dark figures pursuing Nadia a mysterious astrologist who predicts danger secrets withheld even by her family back in Seattle. Nadia can trust no one not even Cass’ faithful assistant Emily. The plot regains traction when Nadia returns to Seattle for a showdown fueled by family history. Nickless’ thriller offers local color and occasional chills with the behemoth Red Dragon standing in for the traditional haunted house but it sags a bit in the middle striking the same notes over and over before a clever eleventh-hour twist provides a boost for the closing chapters.

Lady Georgiana Rannoch is cousin to David (King Edward VIII to you) sister to a duke and wife of Darcy O’Mara a spy for Great Britain. Happy to leave her exciting past behind and devote herself to doting on her adorable infant son she lives with her family on the estate she’ll inherit from her godfather Sir Hubert. Darcy’s just returned from Germany where Georgie’s beautiful mother spends a lot of time with her wealthy industrialist lover apparently unaware of the dark clouds gathering in 1936. Trouble arrives in the form of Wallis Simpson the mistress David wants stashed somewhere quiet while his subjects absorb the news that he’s determined to marry her despite all the warnings that he can’t. Georgie appalled at the idea is aggravated further by her brother Binky her bossy sister-in-law Fig and their children who plan to use her home as a base while they investigate boarding schools nearby. Next Hubert arrives with a Hollywood production company; they may be staying elsewhere but they still disturb the routine of the estate while they’re filming. Mrs. Simpson vanishes. So does a child star who seems to have been kidnapped. New mother Georgie is more upset by the second of these developments than the first and in the course of her search for the child she discovers something distinctly odd about the kidnapping. Things get even worse when Georgie’s dogs find the strangled body of the film’s leading lady. Georgie and Darcy must use all their skills and connections to thwart a murderer.

These inquisitive strands of commonalities form the basis for Gervais’ eclectic bilingual word book a hodgepodge of animals vehicles everyday items and natural phenomena. Each spread opens to a catalog of things—faithfully rendered via stencils and brushes against mostly solid color backgrounds—collected around a declarative statement in all caps. “THINGS THAT SMELL GOOD” boasts a scrumptious apple cake a lush rose and a bar of soap. “THINGS THAT ARE FAST” presents a rocket in flight a rather proud-looking ostrich and an almost toylike race car. Groupings and page arrangements vary from spread to spread as does sizing for each featured item labeled by name in both English and Spanish. Flashes of playful cheeky humor emerge in unexpected ways. Gervais juxtaposes morsels of popcorn with a formidable kangaroo under “THINGS THAT JUMP” and on the spread labeled “THINGS THAT ARE STICKY” she includes a jar of jam along with a toilet plunger. A few interludes with an entire page devoted to just one thing allow readers to draw unexpected connections between the mundane and everyday wonders. Under “THINGS THAT ARE…EXTRAORDINARY” for instance Gervais lists a rainbow followed by a colander on the next page. Little ones who appreciate a more ruminative pace will find much to muse on here.

Forret whose previous books examined various aspects of American slavery here focuses on the emancipation by British authorities of enslaved people after the ships carrying them—the CometEncomiumEnterprise andHermosa—were wrecked off the Bahamas in the 1830s. The incidents occurred after the international slave trade was outlawed but the ships were transporting their human cargo between two American states and thus in theory operating lawfully. British sentiment favored abolition and the colonial governors gave the enslaved people the choice of returning to their masters or becoming free residents of the islands. Not surprisingly almost all chose freedom. The southern states’ reaction was predictable leading to fiery debate in the halls of Congress and strenuous diplomatic efforts to get recompense for the enslavers’ lost human “property.” John C. Calhoun Daniel Webster Martin Van Buren and Thomas Hart Benton were among the prominent figures caught up in the debate which was not just about Britain’s willingness to pay for those who were freed but also about the potential for extending slavery to still-unsettled western territory. Forret reproduces numerous official documents and transcripts of congressional speeches and explores the biography of some of the affected parties. Little is known of the lives of the formerly enslaved people after they were freed so that potentially interesting perspective on the story remains undocumented. The author’s style is a bit dry but this is a story that students of antebellum history will want to know—especially for the light it shines on some of the historical figures who figured in the debate.

In what is in many ways a bookend to 1Q84 Murakami blends science fiction gothic novel noir mystery horror (think Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film Pulse) and coming-of-age story. His protagonist and narrator as the novel opens is a 17-year-old boy aswoon in love with a 16-year-old girl. “At that time neither you nor I had names” he sighs and when the girl slips away he knows too little about her to find her. Before that though she transports him to a walled city that’s not on any map: “Not everyone can enter. You need special qualifications to do that.” Both of them have those qualifications the young man filling the urgently needed role of a reader of dusty and long-backlogged dreams. The girl moves on the boy becomes a middle-aged man and back in the real world where “silence and nothingness as always were my constant companions” he abandons Tokyo for a little mountain town to become its librarian curating real books not dreams. There he encounters two otherworldly characters one a neurodivergent teen Yellow Submarine Boy who memorizes every book he reads whatever the subject. The other—well as he explains “without hesitation I’d say that although it’s rather dated and convenient you could call me a ghost.” Both characters point in their own ways to a fleeting world where all that matters in the end is love—and where love is always just out of reach. It’s an elegant fable that deftly weaves ordinary reality—“something you have to choose by yourself out of several possible alternatives”—with a shadow world that is at once eerie and beautiful.

August Hodges may be a football star but he’s happy to stay behind the scenes when it comes to Sugar Blitz the cupcake shop he runs with Donovan Dell and Nicholas Connors his best friends and fellow football players. But when he’s caught on camera defending cupcakes and women and the appropriateness of football players owning a bakery to some sexist bros that all changes. Unsurprisingly women love a football player with a feminist side. Now he’s known as SugarBae and he can’t escape the crowds that come into the shop to meet him. With Sugar Blitz opening a new location August’s partners know they need to capitalize on his 15 minutes of fame so Donovan wants to hire his little sister Sloane Dell to manage their social media. What Donovan doesn’t know is that August and Sloane have a complicated romantic past that led to a broken heart for Sloane; she has no intention of spending her work hours around August or riding her brother’s coattails but spearheading a social media campaign for an up-and-coming company could help her get the job of her dreams. She agrees to help out which means she’s now spending lots of time taking videos of August—and realizing that her feelings for him never really went away. The more time they spend together the harder it is for them to deny their feelings for each other but they’ll have to figure out if they’re ready to be vulnerable enough to take a second shot at love. August is a picture-perfect romantic hero—a football player who owns a cupcake shop and is secure in his masculinity. The obstacles in Sloane and August’s way never feel insurmountable though—there’s a gentrification plot line in particular that feels underbaked—and their journey toward a happily-ever-after doesn’t always feel urgent.

Familiarity with She Rides Shotgun (2017) Harper’s Edgar Award–winning debut about gang warfare in California’s Inland Empire is not necessary to follow this sequel. What is necessary is a strong stomach for graphic violence and toxic masculinity summed up by the Combine family’s mantra “Blood is love.” Initiation into the family involves receiving a heart tattoo that combines ink with the blood of a murdered Combine member. At age 7 Luke Crosswhite witnessed his father Bobby the leader of the Combine kick a man to death in a bowling alley parking lot. Bobby went to prison (where he remains) and Luke was sent to Colorado to live with his long-absent mother’s law-abiding relatives. His uncle Del is running the Combine for Bobby—think theft and drug-dealing with occasional gang warfare thrown in—when 19-year-old Luke returns as the unlikely heir apparent a college dropout still struggling with debilitating flashbacks to his father's crime. Luke finds himself torn. His basic decency and sensitivity are challenged by the adrenaline rush that acts of extreme machismo offer. Affection for a lovable pit bull named Manson (the novel’s only joke) plays a central role in the battle within his soul but the pull of being part of a family however defective is hard for the lonely outsider to resist. In contrast Luke’s childhood playmate Callie now a small-time drug dealer has always been part of the family's operations. She yearns to escape with her drugged-out sweet-natured boyfriend to a life she imagines outside the gang. As Luke and Callie make fateful decisions the larger scarier gang Aryan Steel threatens the Combine’s autonomy while California wildfires rage beyond human control.  A novel in which needless deaths pile up somehow manages to be heartbreaking yet oddly hopeful even a tad sentimental.