Pushcart Prize L: Best of the Small PressesEdited by Bill Henderson. Pushcart, $38 (624p) ISBN 979-8-98546-978-3
The essays, poems, and stories in this dazzling anthology of Pushcart Prize winners explore a fascination with technology’s darker side and anxieties about being made obsolete. Sarah Green’s poem “Tinder,” composed of lines taken from men’s profiles on the app, crafts a chilling view of online datin... Continue reading »
Cape FeverNadia Davids. Simon & Schuster, $27 (240p) ISBN 978-1-6680-9073-2
Set in a fictional British colony in 1920, this striking psychological thriller from Davids (An Imperfect Blessing) finds a housemaid questioning her employer’s motives. It dismays Soraya Matas to learn that her new job cooking and cleaning for widowed British settler Alice Hattingh is live... Continue reading »
ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative EcofictionEdited by Marissa van Uden. Violet Lichen, $21.95 trade paper (310p) ISBN 978-1-955765-40-4
This first of a series exploring humanity’s “communal fears, grief, and passion as we try to protect our natural world” is a triumph. Van Uden (editor of The Off-Season) brings together 23 stellar tales offering creative and varied takes on the book’s themes. Established genre names like Eu... Continue reading »
Pitcher PerfectTessa Bailey. Avon, $18.99 trade paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-338083-7
Bestseller Bailey’s sparkling fourth Big Shots romance (after Dream Girl Drama) pairs a playboy hockey player with a prickly softball pitcher. Boston Bearcats rookie Robbie Corrigan is smitten from the moment he meets college senior and Division 1 softball star Skylar Page. Unfortunately fo... Continue reading »
My Life in 24 Frames Per SecondRintaro, trans. from the French by Montana Kane. Kana, $29.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4197-8404-0
Metropolis director Rintaro goes behind the scenes of the golden age of anime in his expansive and impassioned debut manga. Born in 1941, Rintaro is captivated by movies from an early age, particularly the first animated “manga film” he sees in a temple converted to a theater: “How is that possible?... Continue reading »
Death of the First IdeaRickey Laurentiis. Knopf, $27 (160p) ISBN 978-0-593-80270-0
Laurentiis’s visionary sophomore outing (after Boy with Thorn) showcases her incredible lyric range and incisive commentary. At its core, the collection charts a 10-year period from 2015 to 2025 chronicling the speaker’s gender transition; along the way, the poems address the speaker’s poli... 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 »
Cells: The Illustrated Story of LifeChristian Sardet. The Experiment, $29.95 (224p) ISBN 979-8-89303-083-9
Biologist and illustrator Sardet (Plankton) delivers a dazzling illustrated overview of the origin and evolution of living things, from the first protocells to complex multicellular organisms. Sardet’s history of evolution and biodiversity begins with Charles Darwin’s first sketch of the tr... Continue reading »
For the Love of Chocolate: 80 At-Home Recipes from a Master Chocolatier’s ImaginationPhillip Ashley Rix. Harper Celebrate, $32.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4002-4454-6
“I consider myself a storyteller, and chocolate is my love language,” writes debut author Rix, the founder of Phillip Ashley Chocolates, in this irresistible collection of melt-in-your-mouth recipes. Rix opens with a crash course on “Chocistry 101,” covering chocolate’s origins (the cacao tree’s Lat... Continue reading »
Beard: A Memoir of a MarriageKelly Foster Lundquist. Eerdmans, $28.99 (250p) ISBN 978-0-80288-473-2
Lundquist, an English professor at North Hennepin Community College in Minnesota, debuts with a wrenching account of the breakup of her marriage to a gay man. Lundquist met her future husband in the late 1990s at a Christian camp, where the two bonded over their love of TV soaps and off-kilter humor... Continue reading »
What a Small Cat NeedsNatalia Shaloshvili, trans. from the Russian by Lena Traer. Enchanted Lion, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-5927-0477-4
Conjuring a wee feline with “Two small eyes./ Two small ears./ A mouth, full of small pointy teeth,” and more, Shaloshvili (Bear) deftly kicks off a tenderly wrought picture book meditation on the power of unconditional love. The work’s unnamed kitten protagonist is a smudgy gray and black ... Continue reading »
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