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40 Articles

ABA Moves to Join Amazon Antitrust Suit

The American Booksellers Association has filed a motion to intervene in the FTC’s antitrust case against Amazon, seeking to fix what many observers see as a hole in the government’s complaint: that it does not specifically call out Amazon’s impact on independent booksellers. “We’re not talking about simply an unlevel playing field,” ABA executive director Allison Hill said in a statement announcing the filing, adding that Amazon’s actions in the book market “must be addressed explicitly.” ABA reps argue that Amazon’s strategy to sell deeply discounted books as a way to bring consumers to the site has devastated indie bookstores over the past three decades. When Amazon launched in 1994, there were 7,000 independent bookstores in the U.S., compared to roughly 2,500 today. David Grogan, ABA director of advocacy and public policy, said…

ABA Moves to Join Amazon Antitrust Suit

MWA Honors the 2024 Edgar Award Winners

The 78th annual Edgar Awards Banquet was held on May 1 in New York City. Chris Grabenstein, president of Mystery Writers of America, which hosts the awards, called Edgars “the Oscars of mystery awards.” Among those honored, James Lee Burke won the Best Novel award for Flags on the Bayou (Grove); Nathan Masters took home the top prize in the Best Fact Crime category for Crooked (Hachette); Adrianna Cuevas, only the second Latina ever nominated for an Edgar, won in the Best Juvenile category for The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto (FSG); and Linda Castillo took home two trophies, one for Best Short Story for Hallowed Ground as well as the G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award for An Evil Heart (both published by Minotaur). The MWA also honored Katherine Hall Page…

MWA Honors the 2024 Edgar Award Winners

Paul Auster Dies at 77

Acclaimed author Paul Auster died in his Brooklyn home on April 30 from complications from lung cancer. He was 77. Auster first gained renown in the 1980s for three unconventional, critically lauded books published collectively as The New York Trilogy. In a 1989 PW profile, Auster spoke of how City of Glass, the first volume of the trilogy, almost didn’t get published. “Everybody turned it down. All in all, there were 17 rejections,” he said. Eventually, Douglas Messerli of California-based indie Sun and Moon Press agreed to publish the book. “I told [Messerli] that there was going to be two more. It’s going to be a trilogy,” Auster said. “He said, ‘Fine, I accept the other two,’ sight unseen.”…

Paul Auster Dies at 77

A New Day at Copper Canyon

After celebrating its 50th anniversary last year, Port Townsend, Wash.–based poetry publisher Copper Canyon Press has announced new leadership. Longtime copublishers George Knotek and Joseph Bednarik retired on May 1, tapping the press’s publicist, Ryo Yamaguchi, to succeed them as publisher. In addition, Julie Johnson, finance and operations manager, has assumed the role of director of finance and operations, and executive editor Michael Wiegers has added the role of artistic director to his purview.…

A New Day at Copper Canyon

PEN Cancels 2024 World Voices Festival

Less than a week after canceling its 2024 Literary Awards ceremony amid criticism over the organization’s response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, PEN America has also canceled its upcoming World Voices Festival. At press time, the organization’s third tentpole spring event, the PEN America Literary Gala, is currently slated to proceed as planned on May 16. In recent weeks, PEN America’s leadership has made efforts to reconcile with its critics, including a commitment to a review of PEN’s work going back a decade and a pledge by PEN America’s chief officer of literary programming, Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, to host a town hall “to create a space to wrestle with the issues gripping the literary community, and our own organization.” YAMAGUCHI © KATE GODDARD; PEN © BEOWULF SHEEHAN…

PEN Cancels 2024 World Voices Festival

Christmas in April

In a statement accepting her role as the American Booksellers Association’s 2023–2024 independent bookstore ambassador, poet Amanda Gorman called indie bookstores “vital hubs of creativity and community.” And those qualities were on full display during the 11th annual Independent Bookstore Day on April 27. Booksellers around the country partnered on crawls and handed out passports to customers to get stamped for discounts on future purchases. Groups of stores in several cities chartered buses to whisk customers around. Many stores hosted authors and organized activities for children. Left Bank Books in St. Louis, Mo., offered customers cocktails inspired by a trio of novels. Roundabout Books in Bend, Ore., celebrated IBD’s motto “The Future Is Indie” by giving away fortune cookies and displaying time travel books. The following photos provide a glimpse into a…

Christmas in April

Rise and Disrupt

The Independent Book Publishers Association’s Publishing University 2024, which ran April 25–27 in Denver, drew some 325 attendees and 37 exhibitors, addressing topics under the theme “rise and disrupt.” At the opening roundtable, IBPA CEO Andrea Fleck-Nisbet said trade distribution and market access issues remain top priorities for the indie sector. “It’s never been easier to put a book into the market, and it’s never been harder to sell that book,” Fleck-Nisbet added, striking a tone for the conference. “Revenues are not growing commensurate with new titles being introduced,” and there are “not enough outlets for discoverability.” Independent Publishers Group CEO Joe Matthews told attendees that building a backlist is crucial, estimating that small presses need to see 65% of their revenue from backlist sales. He urged publishers seeking distribution to hone…

Rise and Disrupt

DEAL OF THE WEEK Hachette Nabs New Priscilla Presley Memoir Lauren Marino at Hachette Books has acquired world rights to a memoir by Priscilla Presley (with Headline to publish for Hachette UK). Alan Nevins at Renaissance Literary & Talent brokered the deal. Nevins said Presley—whose previous memoir Elvis and Me was a bestseller—will open up about “life after Elvis; the passing of her daughter, Lisa Marie; Lisa Marie’s marriage to Michael Jackson; and forging her own identity as an actress and businesswoman, as well as offering never-before-shared intimate stories about her romantic life with Elvis.” The book is tentatively set for a fall 2025 publication. Doubleday to Feature Wang’s Bugs In a preempt, Edward Kastenmeier at Doubleday has acquired North American rights to conservation biologist Yang Wang’s Little Things That Run the…

Behind the Bestsellers

LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK Emily Henry’s latest contemporary rom-com, Funny Story, is the #1 book in the country. The author “takes on fake dating in this equally poignant and charming tale of love after loss,” according to our review, making for “a heartwarming take on summer love.” The fakedating trope is resonating with romance readers—look for our deep dive in PW’s May 13 issue—as is Henry herself, whose latest book cracked the six-figure print unit sales mark in its first week. NEW & NOTABLE EXTINCTION Douglas Preston #7 Hardcover Fiction “Preston spins a creepy and creative variation on Jurassic Park,” per our starred review. The author “tweaks the ‘resurrected species go haywire’ trope with a series of ingenious plot twists, and his well-rounded characters make this more than a knowing genre…

Behind the Bestsellers

In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on an unexpected public health threat. The report, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” drew associations between loneliness and “a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death,” with an impact on mortality “similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.” It outlined a national strategy aimed at fostering social connection: building more shared public spaces, for instance, and investing in local institutions that bring people together. Publishers were already on the case, with a host of forthcoming books that reinforce the importance of friendship and community. Closing the gap Social health researcher Kasley Killam, author of The Art and Science of Connection (HarperOne, June), is among those who note that the link between social…

All Kinds of Bodies

Vogue culture writer Emma Specter describes her struggles with binge eating and yo-yo dieting, and how she made peace with her body, in her memoir More, Please (Harper, July). PW gave the book a starred review, calling it an “incisive report [that] will intrigue readers of all sizes.” Specter spoke with PW about wellness culture, queerness, and the importance of fat influencers. What prompted you to write about binge eating? The thing that felt the thorniest and least examined in my life was my eating disorder and my binge eating specifically. Writing about eating disorders has become mainstream, but I hadn’t yet seen what I was feeling, which is, “I’m going to work, I have friends, there are a lot of things that are going right in my life, and yet I…

All Kinds of Bodies

Beyond the Blues

Can Anyone Tell Me? Meghan Riordan Jarvis. Sounds True, Oct. Clinical psychotherapist Jarvis, who hosts the podcast Grief Is My Side Hustle, explores loss as a form of trauma with physical and psychological consequences. Using a q&a format with sections devoted to the body, the brain, and emotions, she pulls from scientific research to explain why someone grieving may have trouble remembering things or may suddenly dislike their friends. Understanding what’s behind the myriad effects of grieving, Jarvis says, is the first step toward recovery. The Grief Cure Cody Delistraty. Harper, June Unable to move forward several years after losing his mother to cancer while in his 20s, the WSJ magazine editor set out to discover what traditional beliefs and contemporary science have to offer against protracted grief. He researches the psychedelic (magic mushrooms), the…

Beyond the Blues

Workbooks and guided journals are self-help staples. This season, a pair of bestselling authors are extending their brands with new books and products that encourage readers to fill in the blanks. Gretchen Rubin’s mini empire includes The Happiness Project and other self-help titles, as well as calendars, a podcast, an app, and a newsletter. She’s also published guided journals, first with Potter Style and, since 2021, under her Gretchen Rubin Media brand. A 2024 distribution deal with Cardinal Publishers Group is making her homegrown products more widely available. The May release of Five-Senses Journal, illustrated by Gretchen Rubin Media creative director Emmanuelle Joyeux and previously available only via Rubin’s website, coincides with the paperback reissue of 2023’s Life in Five Senses (Crown). October sees the release of Don’t Break the Chain, illustrated…

A Quest for Home

It should come as no surprise that Ayşegül Savaş’s new novel The Anthropologists (Bloomsbury, July) is about a couple searching for home and community, hoping to belong somewhere and put down roots. The 38-year-old author was born in Istanbul; grew up in Turkey, England, and Denmark; and went to college in Vermont, where she met her future husband, who is from Latvia. After graduation, they moved to San Francisco; they currently live in Paris. “This is probably the most autobiographical book I’ve written,” Savaş says over Zoom from a book-lined room in her home. “There’s that sense of trying to make a life together when you have nothing that grounds you.” The Anthropologists follows married scholarship students living in an unnamed city in a foreign country, each from a different culture. Asya…

A Quest for Home

★ Nicked M.T. Anderson. Pantheon, $28 (240p) ISBN 978-0-593-70160-7 YA author Anderson (Feed) makes an auspicious adult debut with this rollicking tale of 11th-century relic hunters. After Brother Nicephorus, a Benedictine monk in the pox-riddled Italian city of Bari, has a dream about St. Nicholas, the archbishop orders him to travel to Myra, in the Byzantine Empire, to procure the saint’s bones, which are reputed to leak a mysterious liquid that can heal those afflicted with the disease. Accompanied by legendary relic hunter Tyun and his dog-man sidekick, Reprobus, Nicephorus sets sail for Myra, only to discover they are in a race with a rival crew of Venetian relic hunters. After reaching Myra, Nicephorus and company experience many setbacks on their way to disinter the bones from the basilica where they are…

★ Beggar’s Bedlam

This uproarious novel from Bhattacharya (1948–2014), originally published in 2003, exemplifies the author’s penchant for freewheeling magical realism and raucous revolutionary narratives. The action takes place in 1999 Kolkata, where three severed heads are discovered on the shores of a river, prompting the police to write them off as tidal refuse from a cremation site or a garbage dump. The scene turns out to be a prelude for an uprising against the local communist government led by Bhodi, a member of the Choktar black magic sect, who joins forces with three mischievous Fyatarus, flying creatures who ransack people’s homes. Over the course of their campaign against “governmental assbuggery,” they wreak pandemonium to deliriously comic effect. In one of many madcap episodes of Pynchonesque action, the Fyatarus salvage a cannon once…

★ Beggar’s Bedlam

Doris Allen Tracie Amirante Padal Allen Appel Robert Beauregard Davina Bell Vicki Borah Bloom William Boisvert Arvyn Cerézo Stephi Cham Jessica Daitch Natalie Danford Nora E. Derrington Stefan Dziemianowicz Andrew Farago Barbara Finlay Maya Fleischmann AJ Frost Shaenon Garrity Krystyna Poray Goddu Jazmen Greene Marene Gustin Patricia Guy Todd Hafer Erika Hardison Ash Holland Katrina Niidas Holm Marc Igler Jon N. Jeffryes Michael M. Jones Rob Kirby Peggy Kurkowski Michelle Lee Marc Leepson Erin Lewenauer Eloise Lindblom Nicholas Litchfield Linda Lowen Cecilia Lynne Pooja Makhijani Elyse Martin Michael McCann Sheri Melnick Jacquelyn Miller Erica Obey Ellen O’Connor Tim Peters Leonard Picker Christina Rinaldi Antonia Saxon Martha Schulman Kira Sexton Suzanne Shablovsky Nikki Silvestrini Julian Stuart Laura B. Weiss Erica Wetter Cady Zeng Michael Zimmerman…

★ The God of the Woods

The gripping and revelatory latest from Moore (Long Bright River) revolves around a prominent banking family’s troubled legacy in the Adirondacks. In 1975, 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar goes missing near the end of her first summer at Camp Emerson. It’s the second time a Van Laar child has vanished from the area; 14 years earlier, Barbara’s older brother Bear disappeared from their summer house when he was eight. The nonlinear narrative lays bare the family’s pain and unhappiness, showing how Peter Van Laar pressures his wife, Alice, to have another child shortly after Bear’s disappearance, and how Barbara frustrates the couple by being comparatively more difficult as a young girl, leading them to send her to boarding school. Moore gradually reveals the truth behind Barbara’s disappearance in scenes told from…

★ The God of the Woods

Mystery/Thriller

★ Our Kind of Game Johanna Copeland. Harper, $30 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-332968-3 Former attorney Copeland stuns with this audacious debut thriller about the extremes to which some people will go to protect the ones they love. In 2019, Stella Parker is dissatisfied with the life she’s built for herself in the D.C. suburbs, having traded her law career for marriage and motherhood. Her ennui turns to terror after her neighbor, Gwen, drops her phone in Stella’s driveway while limping down the block one evening. When Stella picks it up, she sees messages suggesting Gwen may know one of her long-buried secrets. In a parallel story line set in 1987, high schooler Julie Waits hopes that making the cheerleading squad will provide a distraction from her mother’s string of abusive relationships and the…

Mystery/Thriller

SF/Fantasy/Horror

★ Navola Paolo Bacigalupi. Knopf, $30 (576p) ISBN 978-0-593-53505-9 Bacigalupi (The Tangled Lands) dazzles in this addictive account of the rivalries between powerful families in a brilliantly rendered fantastical world inspired by 15th-century Florence. Narrator Davico di Regulaif’s father, Devonaci, owns a rare dragon’s eye, still “burning with inner fire as if it retained life.” Davico’s obsession with the orb, which seems to trap a “flaming rage,” eventually has significant consequences. Father and son belong to one of the most influential banking families of Navola and Devonaci, who has many enemies and seeks every opportunity to “shape the politics of [the] city to his will,” hopes that Davico will succeed him as the family’s head. Unfortunately, that aspiration is imperiled by a betrayal that forces Davico to undertake a desperate flight to…

SF/Fantasy/Horror

Romance/Erotica

★ Ne’er Duke Well Alexandra Vasti. Griffin, $18 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-250-91094-3 An American in London pairs with a seemingly respectable lady with a licentious secret in the captivating first Belvoir’s Library Regency from Vasti (the Halifax Hellions series). New Orleans native Peter Kent never expected to inherit a British dukedom, but now that he has, he’s determined to use the position to care for his recently discovered young half siblings. Kent faces some hurdles to becoming their guardian, however, due to his foreign status and outspoken views on abolition. Kent turns to his only ally, the esteemed Lady Selina Ravenscroft, to improve his standing in British society and find a suitable wife. Selina quickly realizes that she herself is the best candidate for the marriage of convenience—but she has a…

Romance/Erotica

Money, Medicis, and Magic

What were the origins of this book? It started as a bit of creative play. It wasn’t intended for publication. I would play around a little bit, then walk away and come back—and over time it started to grow. You see the different pieces of that in the book—now we’re going to have a myth, or there might be a song. At some point I ended up with just a vast amount of written words. It had become so big that it actually did look like a book-thing. So then I worked on it again with a much more intentional eye toward making it into an actual book-like object. How did you approach the Renaissance Italy–inspired worldbuilding? The seed was probably a book called Medici Money about the early stages of merchant banking…

Money, Medicis, and Magic

What We Hide Colleen Coble and Rick Acker. Thomas Nelson, $18.99 trade paper (368p) ISBN 978-0-8407-1198-4 Bestsellers Coble (Break of Day) and Acker (Guilty Blood) team up for a heartpounding tale of stolen artifacts and murder. History professor Savannah Webster has struggled to pick up the pieces after her marriage fell apart in the wake of her toddler’s death three years ago. While researching the Willard Treasure, a collection of pre-Columbian artifacts housed in a small museum at her Alabama university, Savannah discovers a stack of fake provenance letters and becomes suspicious that someone is trying to steal from the collection. She goes in search of answers from “slimy” university president Ellison Abernathy—only to stumble on his dead body in his office and become a prime suspect in his murder. When Savannah’s…

★ Her Frankenstein Kawashima Norikazu, trans. from the Japanese by Ryan Holmberg. Smudge, $19.95 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-961581-91-3 A businessman’s past comes back to haunt him in this stunning psycho-horror manga by Norikazu, which was originally published in 1986. Plagued by visions of a shadowy, faceless woman, Tetsuo recalls suppressed memories of his brief and tumultuous friendship with Kimiko—an infirm teenage girl whose obsessions with old movies and violence prove to be a deadly combination when she manipulates Testuo into donning the guise of a vindictive Frankenstein monster and lashing out against those who have wronged them. When their role-play crosses the line from mean-spirited pranks to mayhem, the results shatter both of their lives. Kawashima’s suspenseful thriller is cinematic and beautiful, full of the indelible imagery—an eerily calm seascape, a…

★ A Hunger to Kill: A Serial Killer, a Determined Detective, and the Quest for a Confession That Changed a Small Town Forever Kim Mager, with Lisa Pulitzer. St. Martin’s, $30 (320p) ISBN 978-1-250-27488-5 Ohio police detective Mager’s chilling true crime debut recounts her 2016 interrogation of serial killer Shawn Grate. Arrested after a woman escaped from his home in Ashland, Ohio, Grate was initially booked for rape and kidnapping. But as the hours ticked by and Mager began to question Grate, she realized she might have stumbled on the most consequential case of her career. Over the course of a week, Mager convinced Grate to open up to her, offering him cigarettes and coffee as he confessed to kidnapping and torturing one woman, then two, then five. As their conversations progressed,…

★ The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual

The “very existence of public schools” is being threatened, according to this essential overview of recent right-wing attacks on the teaching of material concerning race, gender identity, and sexuality. Journalist Berkshire and education policy scholar Schneider (coauthors of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door) contend that such attacks are merely the latest iteration of the right’s longstanding agenda to privatize public education. By slandering public schools as radically leftwing, activists hope to siphon off students into charter schools and private Christian academies, starving the public education system of funding, according to the authors. Emphasizing that a common education is crucial to a healthy democracy, Berkshire and Schneider argue that broad resistance to what can otherwise seem like a niche culture war issue is necessary. Treating education as a public good…

★ The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual

★ The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It

Political scientist Brettschneider (The Oath and the Office) provides an exceptional survey of crises of democracy provoked by American presidents. He opens the account by describing anti-democratic activities and attitudes commonly associated with former president Trump—including plotting to undermine the certification of an upcoming election’s results, considering journalists enemies, using the attorney general against political foes, and making common cause with white nationalists—then reveals that the actions he’s summarizing were actually committed by five previous presidents. In chapters vividly recreating those crisis points, Brettschneider profiles the presidents—John Adams, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon—and the people who opposed them. Adams persecuted journalists and likely formulated a plot to steal the 1800 election; Buchanan, Johnson, and Wilson all used federal power to roll back African Americans’ civil rights.…

★ The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It

★ The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change

Pediatrician Hendrickson debuts with an affecting report on climate change’s dire effects on young people. Hendrickson—who practices in Reno, Nev., the “fastest-warming city in the United States”—recounts such heartbreaking stories as watching a mother struggle to comfort her four-year-old son, who was hospitalized after wildfire smoke gave him respiratory problems, as he squirmed with discomfort caused by the nasal cannula feeding him oxygen. Profiles of young people across the country underscore the climate crisis’s devastating scope. For instance, Hendrickson shares the stories of a boy from Houston, Tex., who was traumatized after barely escaping severe flooding from Hurricane Harvey when he was five, and a sixth grader from Phoenix, Ariz., who died of heatstroke after going on a hike on a 112-degree day in 2016. Such accounts are harrowing, and…

★ The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change

Food & Cooking Dolci!: American Baking with an Italian Accent Renato Poliafito, with Casey Elsass. Knopf, $38 (320p) ISBN 978-0-593-53718-3 James Beard nominee Poliafito (Baked) draws from “that part of me that lives in the in-between,” where Italian, Italian American, and American food cultures intersect, in this heartfelt collection. The roughly 100 sweet and savory recipes are sorted into breakfast bakes; cookies, bars, and biscotti; pies, tarts, and crostatas; breads and snacks; cocktails; pastries; cakes; frozen treats; granitas and puddings; and foundational recipes like pasta frolla. Among the standouts are a tri-color almond-enriched spumoni loaf and a dazzling chestnut puree–domed monte bianco. Less successful are the strained attempts to Italianize American classics, including honey-ricotta black and white cookies and tiramisu-inspired Rice Krispie treats. Still, there’s much to like in this gorgeously photographed work,…

Breaking the Circle

What was the genesis of this project? I was on assignment when I ran into a group of young people standing on a street corner in Kensington, which is the Philadelphia neighborhood most stricken by the opioid crisis. I knew even by looking at them that they probably belonged to a church, and that they were doing some deeply service-oriented work. When we think about evangelicals in America, we think of conservative Christians, and that’s the overwhelming majority of the evangelicals today. But at the edge of the movement, there’s a very different understanding of what following Jesus literally means, and I was especially interested in how this group lives their lives because there were two different realities at the same time—the overwhelming growth of conservative evangelical churches right up against…

Breaking the Circle

Religion/Spirituality

★ Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church Eliza Griswold. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30 (352p) ISBN 978-0-374-60168-3 Pulitzer winner Griswold (Amity and Prosperity) delivers a riveting chronicle of the fracturing of a progressive Christian church during a period of social and political turmoil. In 1996, “hippie church planters” Rod and Gwen White founded the Circle of Hope church in Philadelphia as an alternative to “hypocrisy, GOP politics, and rote Bible learning.” By the 2010s, they’d expanded into four congregations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. But fissures that developed after the Whites stepped back from day-to-day operations in the 2010s deepened in 2020 as the church’s four pastors grappled with Covid lockdown policies; the disconnect between the church’s antiracism efforts and its struggles to interrogate…

Religion/Spirituality

www.publishersweekly.com FICTION Ask Me Again Clare Sestanovich. Knopf, ISBN 978-0-593-31811-9, June ★ Clete: A Dave Robicheaux Novel James Lee Burke. Atlantic Monthly, ISBN 978-0-8021-6307-3, June ★ Coexistence Billy-Ray Belcourt. Norton, ISBN 978-1-324-07594-3, May War Louis-Ferdinand Céline, trans. by Charlotte Mandell. New Directions, ISBN 978-0-8112-3732-1, June NONFICTION Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums: Stories and Memorable Moments from People Who Love Museums Bob Eckstein. Princeton Architectural Press, ISBN 978-1-7972-2439-8, May ★ Gaslight: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Fight for America’s Energy Future Jonathan Mingle. Island, ISBN 978-1-64283-248-8, May ★ Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders Vanessa Angélica Villarreal. Tiny Reparations, ISBN 978-0-593-18714-2, May A Product of Genetics (and Day Drinking): A Never-Coming-of-Age Story Jess H. Gutierrez. Tiny Reparations, ISBN 978-0-593-47507-2, June Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World David Van Reybrouck. Norton, ISBN 978-1-324-07369-7, Apr. ★ The Rise…

★ Noodles on a Bicycle Kyo Maclear, illus. by Gracey Zhang. Random House Studio, $18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-593-70608-4 Dynamic spreads by Zhang pulse with energy as they capture the casual grace of Japan’s demae—cycling food deliverers—who, from the 1930s to the 1970s, per an end note, balanced stacked trays loaded with “ceramic soup bowls and wooden soba boxes” on one shoulder while piloting their bicycle with the other hand. Maclear describes their feats via the voice of a group of neighborhood children who look up to the cyclists, taut lines echoing the tension behind their work: “They are artists./Architects./ Tough talkers./ Speedy spinners.//But mostly,/ they are acrobats.” The children try balancing trays and dishes themselves, only to “Rattle,/ wobble…/clatter,/ crash!” As the day wears on, the figures cast long shadows that underline…

Jaden Powers and the Inheritance Magic Jamar J. Perry. Bloomsbury, $17.99 (320p) ISBN 978-1-54761-278-9 Twelve-year-old Jaden Powers is reluctant to start seventh grade without his BFF Elijah, who will be attending a fancy new school for unknown reasons. Yet before the year begins, Jaden is told that Elijah has died, which he doesn’t believe. After Jaden finds a note from Elijah explaining that he needs Jaden’s help, strange things begin happening, such as Jaden suddenly being able to hear other people’s thoughts and produce fire from his fingertips. Then Jaden is invited to attend the otherworldly Five Emergences School of Magic, the same place where Elijah had been a student, so he can practice his magic and train to become a sorcerer. Once there, Jaden is informed that Elijah had been stealing…

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING

Feelings Are Wild Sophy Williams, illus. by Gavin Scott. Odd Dot, $18.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-2503-4323-9 A simple counting narrative notes how emotions can change over the course of a day in this sweetly rendered work. As the pages open, “One koala feels grumpy./ His nap time was too short” attends an illustration of a blanket-toting toddler kicking a Lego tower while a worried adult looks on. A page later, “Two bunnies feel nervous./ What if they get caught?” accompanies an image of two hungry culprits filching cookies. Feelings of restlessness, frustration, sadness, shame, shyness, worry, and fear follow before Williams reverses direction “to count back down/ and check in on our friends.” The bunnies now “feel relieved. They only got a warning,” and the koala is now “safe and warm,/ snuggled up…

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING

SOCIAL + EMOTIONAL

Insha’Allah, No, Maybe So Rhonda and Nadia Roumani, illus. by Olivia Aserr. Holiday House, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8234-5441-9 Ranya responds with frustration after her mother answers “insha’Allah” to multiple asks; “You said insha’Allah, and that means no!” But her mother reassures her that the term means, instead, “God willing.” As Ranya asks further questions, her mom explains that the word has many connotations: “We say it when we want something to happen, but we don’t know if it will,” as well as “because sometimes things happen that we can’t control” and “to talk about our hopes and dreams.” After her mother agrees to stop using the phrase “when I really want to say no, or when I don’t have an answer,” Ranya again takes up the original asks. Mom does her best,…

SOCIAL + EMOTIONAL

Lion Dancers Cai Tse. Simon and Schuster, $23.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-66592-724-6; $13.99 paper ISBN 978-1-6659-2723-9 Wei has always dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a champion lion dancer. With his dance partner and best friend Hung, the pair were primed to be the future of lion dance. But when Wei’s dad dies in a car accident, Wei quits lion dancing and distances himself from Hung. Two years later, Wei is unhappy—he’s stuck warming the bench for the Bird’s Beak Middle School basketball team, keeps to himself, and feels uninspired. But when, on a whim, he joins a junior lion dance team for practice, his passion for the sport reignites, and he immediately impresses the group with his talent and dedication. The only problem is that Hung is also on…

World More Beautiful: The Life and Art of Barbara Cooney Angela Burke Kunkel, illus. by Becca Stadtlander. Random House Studio, $19.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-593-48438-8 Quiet gouache spreads with an appropriately folk-art feel give a sense of meditative calm to this picture book biography of two-time Caldecott Medalist Barbara Cooney (1917–2000). Burke Kunkel (Make Way) describes how Cooney’s love of art bloomed early, fostered by a mother who was herself an artist, and that her childhood summers consisted of leaving “the city for the sea…. Summer is Maine.” After she attends art school, publishers demand that Cooney work only in black-and-white scratchboard art—until the beauty of a rooster in her family’s farmyard inspires her to produce a story, “in five simple colors,” that turns out to be a success. Travel fills the next…

BookLife Reviews

BookLife Reviews are paid reviews of independently published books. A lightning bolt indicates an Editor’s Pick, a book of outstanding quality. PICTURE BOOKS Don’t Worry: A Story of Community, Friendship and Family Nicola Orichuia and Carla Dipasquale | Tartuca Books 32p, hardcover, $18.99, ISBN 979-8-988-67400-9 In Orichuia’s lighthearted picture book for young children, a little girl named Nina relies on the generosity of her neighbors to help bake her mother’s birthday cake. As Nina and her father are preparing to whip up the celebratory dessert, they realize their cupboards are bare. “Don’t worry, Papa,” Nina says. “We can ask Zia Maria for the ingredients.” She happily sets off down the road with her lovable pet turtle, bopping from house to house to acquire what she needs. On the way home, Nina trips and spills her supplies—but…

BookLife Reviews

EMILY NUSSBAUM Author “Cue the Sun! is the untold origin story of reality TV—it’s all about the wild, spaghetti-against-the-wall experimental period, from the early radio days to the invention of the Survivor format to the rebranding of Donald Trump. It’s a thoughtful look at a subject people too often dismiss as trivial.” SUZANNE GLUCK Partner, William Morris Endeavor “When I began working with Emily, I made a two-book deal with Ben Greenberg at Random House, for a collection of her most memorable New Yorker pieces as well as this history of reality television. So Cue the Sun! is the long-awaited second book in the deal. You’ll never watch reality television the same way!” BEN GREENBERG V-P and Editor-in-Chief, Random House “Emily is a joy to work with. She did a gigantic amount of reporting, talking to showrunners, casts,…

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