Julia Robinson and Cassie Burnes found each other at age 4 in the middle of the nursery school playground, but their glorious best friendship crumbles when they're middle schoolers. Julia, with her supportive parents and a stable home, watches as Cassie, the only child of...
That Clara Shin's favorite place – a hilltop overlooking her native Los Angeles – was made famous by the classic movie Rebel Without a Cause is perfectly fitting. Since getting suspended freshman year for smoking, 16-year-old Clara's been all about causing mayhem – just because. Nominated for...
*STARRED REVIEW With her eloquent contralto, Mozhan Marnò exquisitely embodies the Persian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad – her experiences as a young bride, maturation as a writer, hesitant then strident steps toward independence, and refusal to be silenced through the violent horrors of the autocratic...
An 11-year-old's daring 1934 dip at Brooklyn's Manhattan Beach introduces the tautly twisted threads of Jennifer Egan’s first novel since 2011's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. This tripart historical hybrid – part family saga, part noirish mystery, part testimony to women's war-fueled...
Talking Mormon Murder Mysteries with Mette Ivie Harrison Trust me: Linda Wallheim is a sleuth like no other. She’s a devout Mormon, for starters, and the wife of a respected Utah ward bishop. And yet her sense of justice gets her into plenty of trouble, especially...
*STARRED REVIEW When an author is as spectacular reading his work as his writing is on the page, the result is a literary treasure. Having created these characters, Roddy Doyle (Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha) knows exactly who endures, who lashes out, who threatens, who flirts,...
Journalist Elizabeth Flock's intention to write about "the Indian love story" – "because it seemed more honest and vulnerable," especially when compared to her parents' multiple failed marriages – began in 2008 when she first lived in Mumbai. Although a spinal injury unexpectedly sent her...
At 16, Twinkle Mehra is the youngest junior at her Colorado Springs charter high school. She doesn't have a cell phone and she can't drive because she doesn't have her license (nor a car). Twinkle knows "[s]ome might call people like [her] losers," but Twinkle...
Emulating the larger-than-life characters in Joseph Cassara's debut novel, narrator Christian Barillas’s gender-defying performance vacillates smoothly from sass to introspection, rage to desperation, elation to detachment. During the 1980s New York City ball scene, the House of Xtravaganza was the first Latinx house, later made...
After a decade of driving the same bus route, "Mr. Bertram Brown has had quite enough." He resents the old ladies, "old blokes," "dippy mothers," "babies puking," "lovey-dovey" lads and lasses "going coo coo coo," but "[d]on't get Bert started about kids! ...
When Chinese American immigrant Bobby Han died, entrusting his Beijing Duck House restaurant to the next generation, he couldn’t have fathomed how quickly his 30-year-old legacy would go up in flames. His younger son, Jimmy – dubbed “little boss” by the restaurant staff, many of whom...
*STARRED REVIEW Narrator Henry Goodman self-righteously sputters, resignedly accepts, viciously plots, frantically searches, and plays especially well the Fool – all in the service of expertly, effortlessly voicing the latest in the Bard-updated-by-famous-contemporary-authors "Hogarth Shakespeare" series. In Edward St. Aubyn's (Patrick Melrose series) wickedly compelling, guiltily provocative...
*STARRED REVIEW In nursery school, Keiko pragmatically suggested that the dead bird in the park could become a grilled treat for her father. In primary school, she ended a forbidden brawl by hitting a boy on the head with a spade. She stopped a teacher’s hysterics...
The first thing Walter Mosley (Charcoal Joe) devotees will want to know is whether Joe King Oliver is getting a series of his own. That future seems currently unclear, but should King proliferate on the page, then Dion Graham must be conscripted to continue his...
Riding the subway after a visit to the pool with his grandmother, young Julián notices three glamorous fellow passengers he's convinced are mermaids. And, of course, "Julián LOVES mermaids." Inspired by the company, the rest of Julián's train ride morphs into a dazzling underwater daydream...
*STARRED REVIEW Difficult life circumstances bring together two Indian village girls: Poornima meets Savitha because Poornima's recently widowed father needs help weaving saris; clever, kind Savitha must help support her impoverished family. The pair are soon inseparable, nurturing each other in a society in which their...
Nigerian-born Akwaeke Emezi makes a double debut as both author and narrator of her autobiographical first novel. As creator, she knows precisely how her story should flow, where emphasis is required, when to draw back, push forward, add breathing space. Her stand-in is Ada who, from...
Candace Chen arrives in New York City post-college because "it seemed like the inevitable, default place to go." After a summer of wandering Manhattan wearing her dead mother's dresses – taking pictures and getting picked up – she unexpectedly falls into a publishing job. She...
Never mind the children who play in the Upper East Side schoolyard of St. Timothy's just off Park Avenue – it's the parents who display the serious behavioral issues. On everyone's radar is Philippa Lye, whose elegant aloofness makes her the most coveted friend. Into this...
*STARRED REVIEW Memoirs by North Korean defectors have proliferated, but Masaji Ishikawa's, originally published in 2000, might be the first available in English translation by a Japanese-born escapee. The Japanese bestseller, I Was Kim Jong Il's Cook (2004), by pseudonymous Kenji Fujimoto, could be the only other...
