Poet Birdsong (Negotiations) makes her fiction debut with a searing portrait of three young Black women who live with albinism in Shreveport, La. Suzette Elkins, 20, is held back from becoming an adult by her sheltering parents. As a child, a friend’s parent threatened to cut out her strang... Continue reading »

This outstanding psychological thriller from Wrobel (Darling Rose Gold) centers on two estranged sisters. Natalie Collins, an executive at a Boston branding agency, and Kit Collins, a receptionist at a Brooklyn accounting firm, are both wrestling with guilt, anger, fear, and the horrible “b... Continue reading »

Hairston (Master of Poisons) conjures a powerful coming-of-age saga highlighting hoodoo magic and the power of storytelling and set in an alternate 1890s American South. Black teen Redwood Phipps’s magic might be even more potent than her mama’s, and her confidence, fiery spirit, and hoodoo... Continue reading »

Bestseller Silver (One Day in December) spins gold from the story of two lost souls whose paths cross on a remote Irish island. London dating columnist Cleo Wilder is sent on assignment to Salvation Island to “self-couple,” à la the actor Emma Watson. Her plans are derailed by Boston photog... Continue reading »

The Hoeys, the Eisner-nominated brother-and-sister team behind the Coin-Op series, present a delightfully strange collection of linked stories pondering just how little people truly know about animals. Each tale is based on an initially mundane animal-human interaction that pivots into more unreal, ... Continue reading »

In her lush and transformative debut, DesAutels teases out pain and joy, building them into poems that are “tender and green, reaching/ charged, humming.” When the author’s daughter was six months old, DesAutels tested positive for a second pregnancy, which was later identified as cancer: “the test ... Continue reading »

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 »

With a poet’s sensibility, journalist’s rigor, and patient’s personal investment, O’Rourke (The Long Goodbye) sheds light on the physical and mental toll of having a mysterious chronic illness. “I got sick the way Hemingway says you go broke: ‘gradually and then suddenly,’ ” she writes befo... Continue reading »

Fresh Eggs Daily blogger Steele (Duck Eggs Daily) lays down as many tips and recipes as her chickens do eggs in this innovative and plucky collection. Combining her expertise as a fifth-generation chicken keeper in Maine with inspiration from her Scandinavian forebears, she succeed... Continue reading »

Biblical scholar Stavrakopoulou convincingly argues for understanding the Christian God as an embodied being in this fascinating comparative mythology. Despite encountering “broad assumption” among Jewish and Christian insistence that God is “formless,” Stavrakopoulou found “ancient texts conjured a... Continue reading »

Interspersing direct quotations throughout, Weatherford offers a thoughtful biography of Black civil rights advocate and congressman Elijah Cummings (1951–2019), who represented Maryland’s seventh congressional district from 1996 until his death. This thorough profile traces formative influences in ... Continue reading »