If We’re Being HonestCat Shook. Celadon, $28 (304p) ISBN 978-1-250-84754-6
Shook’s delightful and perceptive debut follows a family through an eventful week that begins with a funeral and ends with a wedding. One sweltering Georgia summer, the Williams clan has gathered to mourn the death of patriarch Gerry, but they’re thrown for a loop when Gerry’s best friend announces ... Continue reading »
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for MurderersJesse Q. Sutanto. Berkley, $17 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-593-54922-3
At the start of this stellar mystery from Sutanto (Dial A for Aunties), 60-year-old, strong-willed widow Vera Wong discovers a body with a flash drive in its hand in her tea shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Vera contacts the police, but confident she can do a better job at pinpointing the... Continue reading »
The Insatiable Volt SistersRachel Eve Moulton. MCD X FSG, $18 trade paper (464p) ISBN 978-0-374-53832-3
This vivid and masterful domestic horror novel from Moulton (Tinfoil Butterfly) centers on generations of women locked in loving mortal combat. First introduced are the eponymous Volt sisters, Beatrice (or “B.B.”) and Henrietta (“Henrie”), who, in the 1980s, grow up together on Lake Erie’s ... Continue reading »
The Secret Service of Tea and TreasonIndia Holton. Berkley, $17 trade paper (368p) ISBN 978-0-593-54726-7
Holton returns to a magic-infused Victorian London in her fiendishly clever third Dangerous Damsels romantic adventure (after The League of Gentlewoman Witches). When the Agency of Undercover Note Takers (A.U.N.T.) learns that a pirate is plotting to assassinate Queen Victoria, rival agents... Continue reading »
Blood of the VirginSammy Harkham. Pantheon, $30 (296p) ISBN 978-0-593-31669-6
L.A. Times Book Prize winner Harkham (Crickets) delivers an ambitious panoramic period piece set in the early-1970s Hollywood exploitation film milieu. Seymour, a 20-something Iraqi Jewish immigrant, works as an editor for Reverie, a production company specializing in cheap grindho... Continue reading »
Chrome ValleyMahogany L. Browne. Liveright, $26.95 (160p) ISBN 978-1-324-09227-8
Browne’s moving latest (after I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love) commemorates the struggles of Black women, drawing on episodes from her life and stories from family members. While these poems vividly relay the threat of violence (“the gun answers the door before/ anyone ever... Continue reading »
The Sisters of Sea ViewJulie Klassen. Bethany House, $17.99 trade paper (448p) ISBN 978-0-7642-3426-2
Jane Austen fans will delight in this nimble series launch from Klassen (Shadows of Swanford Abbey). In 1819, the four Summers sisters face reduced circumstances after their father’s untimely death, and they move into a seaside home in Sidmouth, England. Their mother is ill and the family i... Continue reading »
The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World WarChad L. Williams. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30 (544p) ISBN 978-0-374-29315-4
In this stirring intellectual history, Williams (Torchbearers of Democracy), an African American studies professor at Brandeis University, suggests that the failure of WWI to advance Black Americans’ civil rights profoundly affected sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois and fueled his “maturation into... Continue reading »
Design Happy: Colorful Homes for the Modern FamilyBetsy Wentz. Gibbs Smith, $45 (224p) ISBN 978-1-4236-6154-2
Interior designer Wentz debuts with a striking tour of 12 homes she’s decorated, including her own, that showcase her vibrant, “modern-meets-traditional” style. “Design is about finding the happy,” she contends, showing how she’s applied that mantra to homes in Florida, Maine, Ohio, and Pennsylvania... Continue reading »
Oral Roberts and the Rise of the Prosperity Gospel Jonathan Root. Eerdmans, $26 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-0-80-287727-7
Root, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Missouri, debuts with a fascinating biography of pioneering televangelist Oral Roberts. Roberts, one of the 20th century’s most recognizable evangelical figures, left behind a legacy build on three pillars, each of which Root shrewdly analyzes. First,... Continue reading »
The Story of the SaxophoneLesa Cline-Ransome, illus. by James E. Ransome. Holiday House, $19.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-8234-3702-3
A young visionary introduces a new musical sound to the world in an underdog story pulled from lesser-known music history. In early 19th-century Belgium, often bored Joseph-Antoine Adolphe Sax (1814–1894) works at his father’s instrument shop, playing “nearly every instrument you can imagine,” and i... Continue reading »
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