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THE SYNDICATE SPY

Set in a near future when the planet’s oil reserves are essentially gone—and former oil-rich nations are desperate to regain their power on the world stage—the story revolves around Juliet Arroway. She’s an operative for the Syndicate, a partnership of intelligence agencies whose mission is to hunt down and eradicate energy terrorists. Arroway’s main goal is to stop the mysterious Abu Hassan, the head of a terrorist group that has been responsible for the deaths of countless people over the yea

STRANGE SALLY DIAMOND

Sally’s father, a psychiatrist, diagnosed her as “socially deficient,” so although she’s 42, she’s always lived with him outside the small Irish village of Carricksheedy. He'd always said that she should “put [him] out with the trash” when he dies, so when it happens, she tries to burn his body in their incinerator. In the flurry of public attention that follows, ranging from concern about Sally’s ability to function on her own to outraged theories that she must have murdered her father and was

DIVISIBLE MAN

In this 10th installment in his contemporary adventure series, the author continues the exploits of Will Stewart, an air charter pilot, and his wife, Andy, a detective in Wisconsin’s Essex County Police Department (characterized by her husband as “an equal opportunity juggernaut of justice”). Will and Andy are briefed by FBI Special Agent Leslie Carson-Pelham and her colleagues on the inner workings of a paramilitary insurgency group known as Company W (“The W stands for White and the military

BOOK OF SCREAMS

Tanya is beyond excited to meet Joel Southland. His scary stories are so relatable, and she treasures the signed bookmark he gives her when he visits her school…until late one night, when the ink from the signature appears to come to life. When a new Southland story feels entirely too familiar, Tanya begins to piece together the clues about where he’s getting his ideas, and she patiently develops a plan to turn the tables. Interwoven with Tanya’s journey to stop Southland are many of the short

MELVILL

“Call me Herman.” Such a commandment could come from only one writer, Herman Melville, who stands at the center of Fresán’s narrative. Occupying much of that space, too, albeit in sometimes spectral form, is Melville’s father, Allan Melvill (the -e a typo that his son, the victim of a bureaucrat’s pen, stuck with, even as, later in the novel, he notes ruefully that his obituary in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, where several of his stories appeared, will render his name as Henry). Allan, born to a

PETUNIA THE PERFECTIONIST

Petunia is a little girl who believes that everything has its proper place and that anything done less than perfectly is unacceptable. (“If there was one thing Petunia knew, it was the importance of being PERFECT.”) Petunia has never heard of a “perfectionist,” but when she overhears her classmate call her one, she looks up the word in the dictionary and proudly shares her new nickname with her mother at home. Petunia isn’t convinced when her mother tells her that there are benefits to making m

THE YELLOW BUS

Deftly invoking the anthropomorphized objects in books of old (as in the works of Virginia Lee Burton), Long introduces readers to a small town and the yellow bus that serves it. Using charcoal and graphite, the author/artist portrays a mostly black-and-white world; he relies on colorful acrylics to depict those who enter the bus (who's described with female pronouns), including children ferried to school. Time goes on, and the bus is repurposed to take the elderly around town. Later, she’s aba

THE NIGERWIFE

Nicole Oruwari has lived in Lagos, Nigeria, for seven years, but she’s never really felt quite at home. The Black British woman moved to the city with her husband, Tonye, where they planned to raise their two sons in the palatial home of Tonye’s family. Nicole is a member of the Nigerwives, a group of foreign women in the city married to Nigerian men, and most of her social life revolves around the organization’s parties, seminars, and fundraisers. When one of her friends from the group suddenl

AN AMERICAN BEAUTY

Arabella Yarrington is helping to support her family in post–Civil War Richmond when Collis Potter Huntington, an industrialist and railroad tycoon, happens to visit the gambling saloon where she serves champagne to patrons. Immediately attracted to the woman 30 years his junior, Collis begins visiting the boardinghouse Belle’s mother owns. Quick to spot an opportunity to help her family escape the grinding struggle to make ends meet, Belle sets about using Collis’ affection to secure financial

THE KNIFE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

The star of the season is the Cliffs Hotel, a marvelous restored Victorian mansion overlooking the ocean. Building contractor Shannon Hammer and her crew are working on plans for a Christmas Fun Zone on the grounds highlighted by a carousel and of course Santa. Shannon is close to Bill and Lillian Garrison, who own the Cliffs, and their children, who all work there except for the eldest, Logan, who is in the Navy. Logan’s stunning but awful wife, Randi, is a close friend to Shannon’s archenemy,

THE MAN IN THE MCINTOSH SUIT

This graphic narrative is several things at once—a noirish mystery, a vibrant work of historical fiction, and a tale of immigrant dreams and adversity. The year is 1929, and although he was trained as a lawyer back in Manila, Bobot now picks fruit in the fields of Watsonville, California, living in a crowded shack with other homesick Filipinos and pining for the wife who hasn’t replied to his letters in months. But a tip from his cousin Benny brings him to San Francisco in search of Elysia, who

WOLFPACK

Nine young women are being raised in a cult—though that’s a word they never use—the kind with a handsome male leader and strictly proscribed roles based on gender. We may think we know what’s coming, but these girls have carved out a safe, even happy, space at Havenwood. They share their own cabin with a door that locks, and in some ways their home really is a haven; the girls have lived in this bucolic setting since childhood, have the freedom to focus on skills they love (beekeeping, foraging

LUCY’S LANE

The narrator and protagonist, Lucy Beacher, is in fourth grade and has suffered from severe anxiety since moving with her family from Michigan to Connecticut. Lucy’s big brother Charlie is a “yes-man” and has already befriended Alex, a popular kid (and a bully), but Lucy’s anxiety makes forging new friendships seem impossible. She’s not just terrified of being “weird”; Lucy also seems lonely, although she is close with her family. A few weeks after starting at her new school, the Covid-19 lockd

I SWEAR

Since her election to the House of Representatives in 2018, Porter has established a reputation as a no-nonsense single mother fighting on behalf of everyday people. As an Iowa native who spent her early childhood on the family farm, Porter comes by her Everywoman persona honestly. Later, she graduated from Phillips Academy, Yale, and Harvard Law School, and she counts Elena Kagan, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris among her mentors. Had Hillary Clinton won the presidency in 2020, Porter woul

EXTINCTION

What a glorious way to spend a honeymoon: Mark and Olivia Gunnerson go backpacking through the vast Erebus Resort in the mountains of Colorado, where scientists have “de-extincted” species like the woolly mammoth and other Pleistocene megafauna. Just watch the peaceful beasts at their watering holes. Behold the giant armadillos, and the indricothere that make mammoths look like dwarfs. The scientists have removed genes for aggression in these re-creations, so humans will be safe unless they’re

MISSING WHITE WOMAN

Baltimore-based Breanna Wright is at the “let’s take a trip” stage in her budding relationship with Ty Franklin, her first serious boyfriend in more than a decade. When he invites her to spend a long weekend with him at a luxurious Airbnb townhouse in Jersey City, where his company is based, Bree jumps at the chance. But her romantic getaway turns into a nightmare when Bree descends the stairs on her final morning to discover the bloodied body of a white woman in the foyer and Ty gone. Could th

THE SNIPER

With 103 confirmed kills, Chuck Mahwinney is “the US Marine Corps’ deadliest sniper.” Raised in rural Oregon and used to hunting rabbits and deer, he scored at the top of his boot camp class. Early on in his account of Mahwinney’s training, Lindsay telegraphs his main point: “Little did Chuck know that the rifle he held in his hands was a copy of the rifle he would use to outscore all marine snipers before and after that moment.” Mahwinney was thoroughly trained as a sniper before landing in Vi

HOW DO YOU FEEL?

Using concise, repetitive wording, this striking book covers a range of sentiments, from simple (“feeling safe”) to complex (“feeling connected”). A quizzical, large-eyed lemur is “curious”; alone in a nighttime forest, a small bear clutching a lovey is “anxious.” Against a background of daisies, a squirrel, eyes blissfully shut, holds paws with a smiling mouse, both indubitably “feeling happy.” A similar squirrel is “feeling guilty” for not sharing. We don’t know what irked them, but three def

YOU'RE THE DUKE THAT I WANT

Sandrine Oliver has spent her life in quiet Squalton-on-Sea, longing for adventure. Though she’s generally stifled by her overprotective mother, she’s decided to enjoy one moment of “delicious, unpredictable freedom” in the sea. Unfortunately, it’s short-lived, as she’s suddenly hauled out by a strange man who thinks she’s in need of rescuing. That man is Lord Dane Walker, brother of the Duke of Rydell, but as the Rydells are not well liked in Squalton, he’s pretending to be Danny Smith. Though

WHAT NAILS IT

For Marcus, perhaps the most insightful student of the works of Bob Dylan, writing is fun and play, but more, exploration: “I write to discover what I want to say and how to say it—and the nerve to say it.” The “want to say” part unfolds in its own time, but the “how to say it” part enters into the realm of the ineffable. In this latest installment in the publisher’s Why I Write series, Marcus examines how certain words fall in a certain order from a writer’s pen: how Dylan arrived at the lyric