by Frode Grytten, trans. by Alison McCullough
Norwegian author Frode Grytten's The Ferryman and His Wife is a beautiful meditation on love and loss that answers the question of how to tell the story of one man's life, outwardly modest yet nonetheless striking. The man is Nils Vik, trusted for years to ferry people across the fjord, now facing the last day of his life. Though it mentions a recent diagnosis, the novel doesn't offer further explanation; still, Nil's intentions are clear as he readies the house, leaves a note for his daughters, burns the
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by M. Cynthia Cheung
M. Cynthia Cheung is both a physician and a poet. Her debut collection, Common Disaster, is a lucid reckoning with everything that could and does go wrong, globally and individually.
Intimate, often firsthand knowledge of human tragedies infuses the verse with melancholy honesty. "We all endure our personal/ disasters," Cheung affirms. Her struggles include the death of her grandmother, also a physician; pregnancy loss; and sandwich-generation concerns for her daughters and ailing mother. She broods on Covid-era
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by Maria Popova, illus. by Sarah Jacoby
Writer, critic, and blogger Maria Popova (Figuring) partners with author/illustrator Sarah Jacoby (Doris) to create The Coziest Place on the Moon, a soothing, enlightening picture book that celebrates the rewards of solitude.
Re, who resembles an adorable porcupine with a golden-tinted, sky-blue dye job, wakes up one Tuesday in July "feeling like the loneliest creature on Earth." Not one to wallow, Re resolves "to go live in the coziest place on the Moon." Re lands "on the edge of the Sea of Tranquility" then
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by Nadia Davids
South African novelist Nadia Davids's twisting gothic drama Cape Fever opens by highlighting narrator Soraya's ability to read, which she keeps from her employer. Soraya goes to work as combined cleaner and cook for the settler Mrs. Hattingh in 1920. In the colonial city in which Mrs. Hattingh reigns over a large, lonely home, Soraya's close-knit, loving family lives in the nearby Muslim quarter; Soraya is rarely permitted by her employer to visit. Soraya's fiancé, Nour, is an accomplished scholar who
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by Olivia Laing
The Silver Book, Olivia Laing's eighth book, is steeped in the homosexual demimonde of 1970s Italian cinema. Its clear antifascist message is filtered through the coming-of-age story of an Englishman trying to outrun his past.
Laing's second novel (after Crudo) opens with 22-year-old art student Nicholas Wade fleeing London for Venice in 1974. He falls in with Danilo Donati, a 40-something art director meticulously designing costumes for Federico Fellini's Casanova. Nico becomes Dani's apprentice--as well
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by Jules Howard, illus. by Gavin Scott
Oversized animals past and present run, hop, swim, slither, and fly through physical space and time in Mega, a fact-filled, mind-blowing, middle-grade nonfiction picture book written by science writer Jules Howard (Encyclopedia of Animals) and stunningly illustrated by Gavin Scott (Everything You Know About Sharks Is Wrong!).
Howard breaks down the important role megafauna has played in Earth's billions of years of evolution by first giving readers a brief introduction to megafauna and a definition. The term
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by Marissa Meyer
The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer (Cinder; Heartless) is a witty, romantic, and satisfyingly gory retelling of "Bluebeard."
Seventeen-year-old Mallory and 19-year-old Anaïs Fontaine are "descended from a long line of powerful witches." Due to a badly botched spell at age 10, Mallory is now "without a drop of witchcraft"; instead, she is dubiously gifted with the ability to see ghosts. Mallory and her sister, Anaïs (who hides her own powerful death magic) have been on their own for six years;
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by Natasha Siegel
An immortal creature of shadow and a young woman with an immense magical gift spar through the centuries in the atmospheric, romantically charged dark fantasy novel As Many Souls as Stars by Natasha Siegel (The Phoenix Bride).
Cybil Harding is born into Elizabethan-era English nobility and a terrible curse that's documented in the Harding grimoire "in ink that was no longer blood but might once have been." Each firstborn Harding in a generation will be a witch, but should that child be a girl, "she would be
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by Trina Moyles
Trina Moyles's stunning second memoir, Black Bear, is an exploration of the fraught connection between humans and bears, and a tender account of her complex relationship with her brother.
Moyles (Women Who Dig) probes the complicated bond humans share with black bears. Moyles's interest in the black bear grew when she spent several seasons as a fire lookout in the Albertan boreal forest. As she watched the nearby forest for smoke, she began to identify and eventually develop relationships with several black
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by Miguel Bonnefoy, trans. by Ruth Diver
Novelist Miguel Bonnefoy (Heritage) combines a layered and vibrantly imagined history of Venezuela with a multigenerational saga based on his own ancestry in The Dream of the Jaguar, an enchanting novel filled with colorful and unforgettable characters.
The novel begins in Maracaibo, Venezuela, when a surly beggar, Mute Teresa, discovers an abandoned infant, Antonio Borjas Romero, on the steps of a church and decides to raise him as her own. After a formative stint as a servant in a brothel, Antonio goes on
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by Chris Duffy
Comedian Chris Duffy's cheerfully informative debut, Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy is itself funny. Duffy sets the tone for what's to come with a dedication that includes a tribute to "the little snort noise that people make when they are laughing really, really hard." He then proceeds to establish what he calls "the Three Pillars of Good Humor": "being present," "laughing at yourself," and "taking social risks." From there, Duffy branches off into many directions,
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by Katie Bernet
Young adult literature has no shortage of riffs on Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women. The best of these converse fluently with Alcott's novel while adding new perspectives that seem essential. Katie Bernet's audacious debut, Beth Is Dead, is an astonishingly successful addition to their ranks.
The 21st-century-set novel opens as Jo and Amy March find the body of their sister Beth near the house of Jo's friend and Amy's clandestine hook-up, Laurie. Bernet nimbly moves among the POVs of all four March
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by Mindy McGinnis
Three teen girls, all struggling with abusive men, support their classmates by running an after-school sex-ed class in the keen and sharply truthful How Girls Are Made by Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species).
Eighteen-year-old overachiever Fallon thinks sex ed should better prepare girls "for the reality of a penis" and launches a secret class with fellow "pretty-white-straight" seniors Shelby and Jobie. Shelby is a locally famous fighter whose new boyfriend, Baxter, showers her with admiration.
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by Christoffer Carlsson, trans. by Rachel Willson-Broyles
Nothing is as it first appears in this smart and twisty mystery that takes place in a small Swedish town during the waning days of the 20th century. Christoffer Carlsson's The Living and the Dead, translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles, emerges as a devastating, sharp intake of fresh air from the Nordic region, with less of Stieg Larsson's explicit gore and more of Patricia Highsmith's quiet intrigue. Although it certainly contains its share of shocking revelations, this is a mesmerizing work
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by Davey Davis
For some folks, beauty is like Halloween candy: great while it lasts, but it leaves a wistful feeling when it's gone. If only beauty--and good health--were as easy to replenish as a candy dish. That's what the protagonists of Davey Davis's graceful novel Casanova 20 discover, with heartbreaking brutality. California native Adrian has a problem many people might kill for: he's astonishingly beautiful. As a kid, all that beauty yielded attention from strangers that included "amorous postcards, billets-doux,
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by Emily Krempholtz
A young witch seeking redemption falls for a grouchy neighbor desperate to protect his family's legacy in Emily Krempholtz's charming feel-good debut romantasy, Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore.
Violet Thistlewaite is just like any other small-business owner: she has big dreams, a can-do attitude, and a secret past as a supervillain's right-hand henchwoman. A hero killed the evil sorcerer who raised Violet to be his weapon. She considered killing Violet as well, but spared her life on one condition:
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by Isabel Thomas, illus. by Daniel Egnéus
Frog: A Story of Life on Earth is the third absorbing, flawless nonfiction picture book collaboration between author Isabel Thomas and illustrator Daniel Egnéus (Moth; Fox), this time linking the evolution of frogs to the origins of the universe.
A child with a net wades through "a pond full of jelly-like eggs" that will one day grow legs and become "frogs that lay eggs of their own." The ensuing chicken-and-egg question--"if frogs come from eggs, and eggs come from frogs, where did the first frog come
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by Jazmina Barrera, trans. by Christina MacSweeney
Mexican author/publisher Jazmina Barrera and translator Christina MacSweeney reunite for a fourth lauded collaboration, Queen of Swords, winner of the independent bookseller-selected Cercador Prize for translated literature. Barrera originally intended to produce "a modest biographical essay" on Mexican writer, playwright, screenwriter, and poet Elena Garro (1916-1998), but instead "spent two years, six months, and two days" creating this hybrid, genre-defying biography/memoir, as delightful as it is disturbing.
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by Clare Jackson
The life and legacy of King James VI and I receives a sympathetic and compelling reassessment in The Mirror of Great Britain by Clare Jackson. Crowned King James VI of Scotland in 1567 as an infant and King James I of England and Ireland in 1603, King James is most known for the 1611 Bible translation that bears his name, the "most influential and widely sold English-language work ever produced." But there is much more to the man, Jackson argues, and a new appreciation to be had for the "sheer difficulty,
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by Ben Elcomb, illus. by Terri Po
A tiny, powerful investigative team of body cells uncover the mystery of a young girl's gastrointestinal illness in Tummy Trouble, the first title in Ben Elcomb and Terri Po's delightfully engrossing nonfiction picture book series Diagnosis Detectives.
When healthy Sophia least expects it, evil Queen Tox ("Antigen team: Flu virus") attacks, leaving Sophia curled up on the couch in distress. The detective cells--including immune system members neutrophil, T-cell, B-cell, and monocyte--are assembled in the Gastric
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by Emily Winfield Martin
The Wildest Thing by Emily Winfield Martin (The Imaginaries; The Wonderful Things You Will Be) splendidly depicts one quiet girl's dream of "wild things" welcomed into her heart and home.
Eleanor "dreamed of things... with fur and fin./ And when the/ sun came up/ the Wild had come in." Bunnies hop through her bedroom, squirrels skitter through her kitchen, and her couch has turned into a bear. But Eleanor wants to be wild, too, so she flutters her wings, hides in a den, and howls. Deer, foxes, and wolves all
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by Katrina Leno
Katrina Leno (Summer of Salt) lyrically brings together the hallmarks of myth, gothic narratives, and the enduring bildungsroman of Little Women in Persephone's Curse, a retelling of the Persephone legend that takes place in a spellbound New York City.
The Farthing sisters are descendants of Persephone and know their lineage is a gift: Bernadette, the eldest, is a talented writer; Evelyn, the second eldest, is an excellent musician; Clara, the youngest, paints beautifully; and Winnie, the third, can see the
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by Nicholas Day, illus. by Hadley Hooper
In How to Have a Thought, Sibert Medalist Nicholas Day (A World Without Summer; The Mona Lisa Vanishes) and illustrator Hadley Hooper (Jump for Joy) give young readers an inspiring nonfiction picture book biography of Charles Darwin that uses his well-known meditative walking practice as a kickoff point.
"First you need a rock.... Next, find a stick.... Finally, trace a loop." This, Day says, is how Charles Darwin, the naturalist and "scientist of nature," found his way to "hard thoughts." Darwin often "found
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