Optional Practical TrainingShubha Sunder. Graywolf, $17 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-64445-324-7
In Sunder’s astute and stimulating debut novel (after the collection Boomtown Girl), an Indian woman reckons with racial prejudice and draconian immigration laws in post-9/11 America. It’s 2006 when Pavitra graduates from college in the U.S., hoping to extend her stay as long as possible. S... Continue reading »
The Four Queens of CrimeRosanne Limoncelli. Crooked Lane, $19.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 979-8-89242-227-7
Limoncelli makes a splash with her riotously entertaining debut, which imagines real-life crime writers Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham teaming up to solve a murder in 1938. At the outset, the women, all friends, have agreed to host a fundraising gala for the W... Continue reading »
The Hymn to DionysusNatasha Pulley. Bloomsbury, $29.99 (416p) ISBN 978-1-63973-236-4
This fresh and stylish reimagining of the myth of Dionysus from Pulley (The Mars House) follows Phaidros Heliades, who, trained as a knight in the Theban army from childhood, grows up traveling all over the region with his regiment and his commander, Helios Poly. At age four, he and Helios ... Continue reading »
A Lady Would Know BetterEmma Theriault. Entangled Amara, $17.99 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-64937-744-9
A woman with amnesia falls for the earl who saves her in this glittering, Austenesque historical from Theriault (Rebel Rose). In 1877 Surrey, England, Jasper Maycott, the Earl of Belhaven, is still grieving the death of his parents, eldest brother, and fiancée from scarlet fever when he fin... Continue reading »
The Legend of KamuiShirato Sanpei, trans. from the Japanese by Richard Rubinger, Noriko Rubinger, and Alexa Frank. Drawn & Quarterly, $39.95 (600p) ISBN 978-1-77046-729-3
Shirato’s politically aware ninja manga, which ran from 1964 to 1971, makes its English-language debut in this glorious collection, the first of 10 volumes. In 17th-century Japan, the ninja Kamui is born an “outcast,” the lowest caste in the feudal system. He rabble rouses tirelessly against the pea... Continue reading »
Something About LivingLena Khalaf Tuffaha. Univ. of Akron, $16.95 trade paper (82p) ISBN 978-1-62922-273-8
The brilliant third collection from Tuffaha (Kaan and Her Sisters), who is of Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian descent, evokes the weight of a homeland’s genocide, but is equally about the joys of heritage and the righteous pursuit of justice for one’s oppressed brothers and sisters. She ... Continue reading »
The Long March HomeMarcus Brotherton and Tosca Lee. Revell, $26.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-8007-4275-1
In this tour de force from Brotherton (A Bright and Blinding Sun) and Lee (A Single Light), four friends’ lives change irrevocably when America becomes embroiled in WWII. In 1930s Mobile, Ala., preacher’s son Jimmy Propfield shares an idyllic upbringing with childhood sweetheart Cl... Continue reading »
Murder the Truth: Threats, Intimidation, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the PowerfulDavid Enrich. Mariner, $32.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-337290-0
New York Times editor Enrich (Servants of the Damned) offers a chilling deep dive into “a largely under-the-radar legal movement that is weaponizing [an] obscure field of libel law.” Ever since the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1964 decision in New York Times Company v. Su... Continue reading »
Hot Date!: Sweet & Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, from Party Food to Everyday FeastsRawaan Alkhatib. Chronicle, $35 (272p) ISBN 978-1-79722-644-6
The stunning cookbook debut from poet and artist Alkhatib (King Crab, a board book) sings the praises of dates. She provides a mouthwatering history of the “holy fruit,” extolling it as a symbol of survival and bounty for many cultures. With more than 3,000 varieties, the date is a remarkab... Continue reading »
Aflame: Learning from SilencePico Iyer. Riverhead, $30 (240p) ISBN 978-0-593-42028-7
Novelist and essayist Iyer (The Half Known Life) shares in this luminous account the lessons that more than 30 years of visiting a Benedectine monastery in California have taught him about silence. Convinced by a friend to visit the retreat in 1991, he describes it as less a place of solitu... Continue reading »
We Leap TogetherChristopher Silas Neal. Knopf, $19.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-593-81264-8
Though whales live in the water and human beings live on Earth, their mammalian lifeways parallel each other, Neal shows in a series of side-by-side portraits. On most spreads’ verso, a humpback whale mother swims with her baby through ocean depths (“We move side by side”). On the recto, a pale-skin... Continue reading »
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