In this merciless exposé, CNN anchorman Tapper (All the Demons Are Here) and Axios correspondent Thompson recap Joe Biden’s mounting cognitive issues from his 2020 campaign to his catastrophic, campaign-ending 2024 debate with Trump. They catalog his symptoms in unsparing detail, noting his whispery mumble, empty-eyed gape, halting gait, memory lapses, 4 p.m. sundowning, and incoherent speech. There were serious policy repercussions to Biden’s frailty, the authors argue, chalking his chaotic immigration policies up to his inability to resolve clashes between different administration factions. The authors also describe an extensive cover-up of these deficits by Biden’s aides, who scripted and teleprompted every utterance while smearing anyone who questioned his mental fitness. (White House lawyers even pressured the Justice Department to remove comments on Biden’s poor memory from a report on his mishandling of classified documents.) Drawing on extensive interviews with Biden administration insiders, Tapper and Thompson paint an intricate, appalling panorama of hubris and delusion on the part of Biden, who imagined himself a man of destiny, and his tunnel-visioned handlers, who ignored critics and polls. They convey it all in pungent scenes of Democratic dismay over the president’s disintegration (“Hooooooooooly shit,” gasped George Clooney, when a zombie-like Biden couldn’t recognize him at a fundraiser). The result is a colorful and telling indictment of the blinkered self-interest that rules American politics. (May)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this poignant and thought-provoking memoir, journalist and essayist Faye (The Transgender Issue) pairs a cultural analysis of love with a chronicle of her own experiences with the emotion. What begins as a reflection on the complexities of Faye’s queer and trans identities and her search for self-acceptance evolves into a broader critique of love’s evolving definitions and its roles in contemporary society. Faye nimbly knits together musings on romance, family life, and self-love, reflecting on the breakdown of multiple relationships—particularly a significant one that ended because Faye’s partner, a cis man, wanted biological children—and delving into the impact of her father’s alcoholism on her own struggles with substance abuse. Elsewhere, she writes ambivalently of Grindr and casual hookups (“I have, at certain points, considered my sexual desire for men a personal liability”). These intimate stories are enriched by references to writers and thinkers including bell hooks, Simone de Beauvoir, and Germaine Greer, whose ideas help Faye make sense of love’s shifting meanings across decades and contexts. The resulting narrative is rigorous and illuminating without tipping into excessive self-seriousness. This lyrical reflection on love is a sure bet for readers who like their memoirs raw and their cultural criticism sharp. (May)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Palestinian-American journalist and Fulbright fellow Aziza delivers a visceral debut autobiography that braids mental illness, queer identity, and generational trauma into a striking meditation on exile. Centering on her struggle with anorexia, Aziza recounts the collapse of her body and marriage to a man she calls “C” in lyrical, often harrowing detail, describing herself as “a marionette with severed strings” before her psychiatric hospitalization in 2019. Her recovery was tenuous, hampered by subpar medical care and stubborn self-loathing. As she recounts those struggles, Aziza also writes of her budding queerness, cataloging the emotional toll of suppressing her desires in order to save face within her religious family. Threaded throughout is a reflection on Aziza’s Palestinian heritage and the impact of Israeli occupation, particularly in Gaza. Aziza’s disconnection from her body mirrors her family’s geographic and psychic distance from their homeland, where longing for peace has calcified into “patience, sumud, and grief.” It all adds up to a poetic and politically potent exploration of survival. Fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Rabih Alameddine will find much to admire. Agent: Elias Altman, Massie & McQuilkin Literary. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Sayo debuts with a dazzling hard-boiled mystery set in contemporary Toronto. Grizzled private investigator Seamus Caron is struggling to make ends meet since, in his estimation, “there [isn’t] enough crime and desperation for a man to make an honest living these days.” In recent months, he’s turned to parlor tricks to convince prospective clients of his deductive talents, craftily swiping one woman’s driver’s license before pretending he learned her identity from “the brand of your shoes, the time of your arrival on this particular Tuesday, the specific brand of perfume on your wrists.” He gets a legitimate inquiry, however, when his friend, Toronto homicide detective Sandra Blair, asks for help with a tricky case. Criminal defense lawyer John Ryba has disappeared from his hospital bed, leaving behind nothing but a set of bloody sheets. Ryba’s friends and the Toronto police assume he was murdered, but Blair isn’t so sure. Caron agrees to investigate, and finds that Ryba was secretly involved with the distribution of a potent new street drug called Platinum, whose side effects may be far graver than advertised. Then another person connected to the distribution of Platinum turns up dead. Sayo nails the wry, fatalistic tone of the best neo-noir, and he sketches even minor characters with careful attention to detail. Fans of Robert B. Parker will be thrilled. (June)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

A bookseller embarks on a surreal ontological quest in poet Mimosa Montes’s brilliant debut novella (after the collection Thresholes). Upon waking in the two-bedroom apartment she’s just started renting for the summer, the unnamed narrator is momentarily confused as to where she is and when, and sees bloodstains on the sheet. She’s also plagued by visions of rabbits with horns. These destabilizing visions, coupled with thoughts of suicide, compel her to “become a narrator, so that I might appreciate the world.” Determined to “pass through time like a tongue without a body,” she stops paying her phone bill, quits her job at a bookstore, and puts an indefinite hold on her mail, all in pursuit of the silence her “experiment” requires. The narrator considers the boundary between life and art on a visit to an artist’s open studio in her building, where she observes a painting in progress bisected by a green line (“Something was getting worked out.... Though nobody, not even the painter, knows where this green really comes from, nor where the essence of this green is going”). For such an abstract story, the ideas conveyed are succinct and artful, and the narrative moves toward an unexpectedly poignant conclusion. This is luminous. (June)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Bloomsbury editor Oliver cues up The Devil Wears Prada for the music industry in her incisive debut. South Bronx native Billie Grand, 24, dreams of a job in A&R, spotting talent and using her position to lift up the voices of other Black people. When she finally lands a coveted assistant position at Lit Music Productions in Manhattan, it’s far from what she’d imagined. Not only is she underappreciated and overworked, but her suggestions are ignored, and she’s pressed instead to give Black validation to mediocre white talent. After catching an opening set by singer Samirah, she knows right away that she’s found the kind of artist she wants to represent. She keeps in touch with Samirah and her manager, holding out hope that she’ll soon be able to sign her own clients. As Samirah and other artists of color are insulted with lowball offers from Lit, Billie tries to determine whether it’s possible to change the industry from the inside, or if she’s becoming part of the problem. Oliver adroitly tackles ethical issues about capitalism and race, and conveys an infectious passion for music. Pop fans ought to snatch this up. Agent: Angeline Rodriguez, WME. (June)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Mount Shasta, Calif., high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.” But Japanese American Izzy, conceived during a one-night stand in her mother Hanako’s final year at Harvard, has never known the identity of her father. So when she and her best friend find a letter in Hanako’s bedroom, the duo jump at the chance to ferret out Izzy’s dad’s true identity—only to find out he’s the Crown Prince of Japan. Desperate to know her father, Izzy agrees to spend the summer in his home country. But press surveillance, pressure to quickly learn the language and etiquette, and an unexpected romance make her time in Tokyo more fraught than she imagined. Add in a medley of cousins and an upcoming wedding, and Izzy is in for an unforgettable summer. Abrupt switches from Izzy’s perspective to lyrical descriptions of Japan may disrupt readers’ enjoyment, but a snarky voice plus interspersed text conversations and tabloid coverage keep the pages turning in Jean’s (Empress of All Seasons) fun, frothy, and often heartfelt duology starter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Kelkar’s (Bindu’s Bindis) novel features Oceanview Academy middle schooler Sonali, whose stoicism contrasts with her love of Bollywood movies’ melodrama. Stuck in a Los Angeles home with constantly arguing parents and her sensitive nine-year-old brother Ronak, Gujarati American Sonali, 11, tries to make sense of her world through the Hindi movies she’s seen all her life. Ever since an earnest public attempt five years ago to stop her parents’ fighting led to widespread embarrassment in front of family, Sonali has resolved to hide her emotions and do her best to ignore her parents’ arguments. But her efforts prove futile when her parents decide to try the “nesting” method of separation, where they take turns living in the house with Sonali and Ronak. The contemporary narrative takes an entertaining fabulist turn as Sonali’s life begins to transform into a Bollywood movie, with everything she feels and thinks made apparent through her “Bollywooditis.” Sonali’s first-person perspective is sympathetic as she navigates friendship and family drama, and Kelkar successfully infuses a resonant narrative with “filmi magic,” offering a tale with universal appeal through an engaging cultural lens. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

When she was six, Justice Kasric watched her blue-eyed merchant father play chess with the Faerie King. Now 15, Justice believes the event was merely a dream. She spends her days yearning for adventure, watching from the sidelines while her 16-year-old sister Faith, as slender and golden-haired as Justice but not as curious, becomes the toast of Victorian London society. One night, however, their father shatters their comfortable lifestyles when he forces the family—Justice, Faith, their younger brother Henry, and their constantly medicated, distant mother—into a locked carriage that takes them to a shadowy mansion. Justice’s discovery that the Faerie have invaded the human world and are targeting her family gains further urgency when she learns that her parents are on opposite sides of the conflict. Together, the Kasric siblings—including older brothers Benedict and Joshua—must find a way to save their family. While characters lack depth at times, and insufficient historical details don’t fully evoke the Victorian setting, Klaver’s (the Supernatural Case Files of Sherlock Holmes series) rich, lyrical descriptions augment the fantastical source material in this engaging series starter. Ages 13–up. Agent: Lucienne Diver, the Knight Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Nine years before this novel begins, eight-year-old best friends Esme Randal and Kayla Price snuck out of their cabin at Camp Pine Lake in Texas. They swore never to discuss the terrible events that followed, but when the girls, now 17, return to the camp as counselors-in-training from their hometown of Lewisburg, Pa., that proves easier said than done. Someone begins sabotaging camp activities, and ominous—and increasingly public—threats appear, referencing that fateful summer. The only other person who knows Esme and Kayla’s secret is a local girl named Lillian Campbell, whom they left to fend for herself that night in the woods. They’re loath to voice their suspicions of revenge lest they get in trouble or look bad in front of hunky fellow counselors Jake and Olly, but as events escalate, they realize they may not have a choice. Narrating from Esme’s increasingly apprehensive first-person perspective, Preston (The Twin) pays homage to classic summer camp slasher films. The underdeveloped, predominantly white cast relies heavily on stereotype, and the clichéd tormenter’s motive feels unearned, but horror fans will likely appreciate this paranoia-fueled tale’s gruesome, shocking close. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jon Elek, United Agents. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink