Brussig (Heroes Like Us) offers a delicious slice of life in 1980s East Berlin. Micha Kuppisch lives in the shadow of the Berlin Wall during his teen years, forever taunted by this view of freedom and abundance in the West. He spends his days getting into trouble with a crew of friends by h... Continue reading »

Seven years before the opening of this excellent near-future mystery from Mullen (Midnight Atlanta), life changed irrevocably when a catastrophic event, the Blinding, led to global human blindness. Technology has been developed to give people vision: small metal discs called vidders have be... Continue reading »

The discovery and death of a serial killer brings the unspoken dramas of an outside-of-the-law small town into focus in this intricate but efficient horror novella from Tierney (Letters from the End of the World). In the near future, Bina Morton works for an autoline, a newfangled alternati... Continue reading »

Collins (Wedding Night with the Wrong Billionaire) puts a delightful twist on the mail order bride trope when scandalous divorcée Marigold Davis takes her sister’s place as the mail order bride of Virgil Gardner. Her old life is in shambles, so how bad could roughing it in 19th-century Denv... Continue reading »

A cartoonist wrestles with sobriety in this forthright, wickedly funny graphic memoir by Wertz (Tenements, Towers, & Trash). While pursuing a career she loves and sharing a Brooklyn art studio with her buddies, Wertz attributes her regular solitary drinking to an introverted disposition. Sh... Continue reading »

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 »

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 »

Historian Gwynne (Empire of the Summer Moon) delivers a fascinating account of the bad decisions, distractions, naivete, and sheer incompetence behind the crash of the massive British airship R101 in a field outside Beauvais, France, in October 1930. In the late 1920s, when airplanes were “... Continue reading »

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 »

In this heartfelt outing, actor Wilson (The Bassoon King), of Dwight from The Office fame, offers a broad array of spiritual ideas for finding hope in a cynical world. While there are no easy solutions to many contemporary problems—climate change, materialism, a lack of real commun... Continue reading »

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 »