Seasons of PurgatoryShahriar Mandanipour, trans. from the Persian by Sara Khalili. Bellevue Literary Press, $16.99 trade paper (208p) ISBN 978-1-942658-95-5
Mandanipour (Moon Brown) skillfully fuses the poetic and the brutal in this complex and intense collection. The care and humanity of his voice adds poignancy to plots anchored by violence. Many of the stories feature animals: an elusive leopard is at the center of “The Color of Midday Fire,... Continue reading »
Find MeAlafair Burke. Harper, $26.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-285336-3
The fate of Hope Miller, as her friends in Hopewell, N.J., know her, drives Edgar finalist Burke’s scintillating sixth novel featuring NYPD Det. Ellie Hatcher (after 2014’s All Day and a Night). Fifteen years earlier, Manhattan defense lawyer Lindsay Kelly pulled Hope, who had lost her memo... Continue reading »
Leviathan FallsJames S.A. Corey. Orbit, $30 (528p) ISBN 978-0-316-33291-0
Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, writing as Corey, stick the landing in their spectacular ninth and final Expanse space opera (after Tiamat’s Wrath), set in a future where humanity has begun to expand beyond the solar system. For decades, human communities on a number of planets have been subj... Continue reading »
Weather GirlRachel Lynn Solomon. Berkley, $16 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-593-20014-8
Solomon’s wildly appealing sophomore rom-com (after The Ex Talk) takes readers behind the scenes of a drama-filled TV news station. KSEA 6 morning weather reporter Ari Abrams loves her job and has always looked up to Torrance Hale, the reigning queen of all things meteorological at KSEA 6. ... Continue reading »
Free Speech Handbook: A Practical Framework for Understanding Our Free Speech ProtectionsIan Rosenberg and Mike Cavallaro. First Second, $28.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-250-61975-4
Taking a rare general-interest approach to constitutional issues that doesn’t speak down to its audience, this savvy nonfiction graphic narrative provides an excellent introduction to the little-understood theory and practice of free speech in America. Adapting his 2021 The Fight for Free Speech... Continue reading »
Gigantic Cinema: A Weather AnthologyEdited by Paul Keegan and Alice Oswald. Norton, $19.95 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-0-393-54075-8
Keegan and Oswald (Falling Awake) deliver a dazzling anthology of more than 300 numbered works of poetry and prose that enact, contemplate, and celebrate the fluctuations of the weather. As they note in their introduction, "Weather has no plot. It is all mutability and vicissitude, and so i... Continue reading »
An Unexpected Amish ChristmasRachel J. Good. Zebra/Kensington, $8.99 mass market (352p) ISBN 978-1-4201-5040-7
Good (An Unexpected Amish Courtship) returns with a jovial story about finding hope in the aftermath of tragedy. Jeremiah Zook can’t walk and struggles to use his hand as a result of the horse and buggy accident that also killed his mother. But after he reads an article about Ketubah Etsch,... Continue reading »
The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval WorldShelley Puhak. Bloomsbury, $30 (384p) ISBN 978-1-63557-491-3
Poet Puhak (Guinevere in Baltimore) delivers a lyrical and astute assessment of the political maneuvers, battlefield strategies, and resilience of medieval queens and rivals Fredegund and Brunhild. Members of the Merovingian dynasty, noble-born Brunhild and her sister-in-law Fredegund, a fo... Continue reading »
New Native Kitchen: Celebrating Modern Recipes of the American IndianFreddie Bitsoie and James O. Fraioli. Abrams, $40 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4197-5355-8
Bitsoie, former executive chef of Mitsitam Native Foods Café at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, explores the vastness of indigenous cuisine in his exceptional debut. As he draws inspiration from both his Navajo background and a wide sampling of native communities, territori... Continue reading »
Martin Luther King: A Religious LifePaul Harvey. Rowman & Littlefield, $35 (224p) ISBN 978-1-5381-1592-3
Historian and professor Harvey (The Color of Christ) plumbs the background and writings of Martin Luther King Jr. to provocatively build a religious frame around the civil rights leader’s beliefs and tactics. Delving into the formative intellectual and theological influences on King’s writi... Continue reading »
Living with ViolaRosena Fung. Annick, $22.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-77321-549-5
After transferring to the “ ‘better’ school in the district” to pursue her family’s lofty expectations of eventual career success, sixth grader Olivia “Livy” Siu Leen Tong struggles to adjust in this slice-of-life graphic novel, inspired by Fung’s experiences growing up in Canada as the daughter of ... Continue reading »
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