
Vivek Shanbhag, trans. from the Kannada by Srinath Perur. McNally Editions, $19 trade paper (208p) ISBN 978-1-961341-29-6
Shanbhag (Ghachar Ghochar) zeroes in on the growing cracks in an Indian family’s facade in this rich and stimulating novel. The comfortable life of Venkat and his wife, Viji, in Bengaluru is disrupted when two young men knock on their door, asking for the whereabouts of the couple’s daughte... Continue reading »

Nicholas Meyer. Mysterious Press, $26.95 (264p) ISBN 978-1-61316-656-7
If Meyer’s sterling seventh Holmes pastiche (after Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell) is, as he suggests in the acknowledgments, his last, he ends on a high note, serving up his best revamp of the Conan Doyle canon in years. Lady Glendenning, owner of many London properties, is ref... Continue reading »

C. Robert Cargill. Subterranean, $40 (120p) ISBN 978-1-64524-288-8
In this page-turning novella, Cargill returns to the postapocalyptic future of Day Zero and Sea of Rust, in which robots threaten the extinction of humanity in a civil war. Nanny, a sophisticated robot designed to care for young children, is grieving the death of one of his charges... Continue reading »

Zac Hammett. Slowburn, $18 trade paper (336p) ISBN 978-1-63893-331-1
Hammett makes an effervescent debut with this enemies-to-lovers sports romance. Lucas, a cox for the Cambridge crew team, has always had issues with George, the club president, an underwear model from Wisconsin. After losing a big race against their rival, Oxford, the teammates hate each other more ... Continue reading »

D. Boyd. Conundrum, $25 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-77262-108-2
Boyd’s understated yet deeply moving second graphic memoir (after Chicken Rising) recounts her experience as a shy girl entering junior high in late 1970s Canada. Dawn’s mom, a bridge- and bingo-playing paragon of small-town decency, thunders against sex in movies, declares that the Legion ... Continue reading »

Rob Macaisa Colgate. Tin House, $16.99 trade paper (104p) ISBN 978-1-96310-824-8
The joyfully inventive debut by Colgate honors the disabled community. Complete with an access guide and legend denoting options for the reader to interact with the poems on their own terms, Colgate radically reenvisions how a text might support its reader. A poem about the speaker’s partner finding... Continue reading »

Marcus 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 »

John Abrams. Berrett-Koehler, $24.95 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-5230-0681-6
“When workers are sailing on the ship that they’ve built and charting its course, great things can happen to the economy, our democracy, and the quality of people’s lives,” asserts Abrams (Companies We Keep) in this standout guide to a more democratic workplace. He encourages businesses to ... Continue reading »

Edited by Mona Eltahawy. Unbound, $18.95 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-80018-371-1
Menopause is both “shit” and “amazing,” according to this spirited anthology edited by journalist Eltahawy (The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls). Aiming to present an “antidote” to a type of taboo-busting feminist approach to the topic that mainly appeals to “white, wealthy, cisgen... Continue reading »

Holly Berkley Fletcher. Broadleaf, $29.99 (272p) ISBN 979-8-88983-203-4
Historian Fletcher (Gender and the American Temperance Movement of the Nineteenth Century) incisively explores the dark underbelly of American evangelical missionary work via the experiences of missionaries’ children. Drawing on her own childhood in Kenya and interviews with 80 others who w... Continue reading »

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, illus. by Aaron Becker. Atheneum, $19.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-6659-5060-2
Via spare, poetic language as well as watercolor and pencil illustrations that take hazy, desaturated hues, Tallie (Layla’s Happiness) and Becker (The Last Zookeeper) celebrate the time shared between a child and caretaker as they together meander through a metropolitan neighborhoo... Continue reading »

