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NARCAS

As a feminist journalist, Bonello, Mexico City–based senior editor for Latin America at VICE World News, is acutely aware of gender stereotypes held by both the drug cartels as well as the mostly male journalists who cover the narcos and don’t question those stereotypes. “The patriarchy of the cartels seems very real,” she writes, “but to assume women don’t have a capacity for violence or a thirst for power and status is just another narrow gender stereotype that grossly misunderstands and unde

A BIG JUICY EARTHWORM

Chicken pals Pipo, Bud, and Kenny create ingenious playthings from found objects: A box becomes a pirate ship; a bag becomes a kite. Above all, they love being together. One day, they find half a watermelon. While Bud and Kenny immediately start devouring the succulent fruit, Pipo is more interested in the nearby earthworm whose head temptingly rises aboveground. But, as hard as Pipo pulls, he can’t dislodge it. Finally, Pipo uses a fishing rod to yank it out: success! Except…this worm’s no wor

FAR OUT

After rescuing, falling in love with, and marrying movie star Goldie Saint Helen, Iraq veteran and former FBI agent Blake Deco has the perfect life: He spends his days screenwriting and managing his popular restaurant along the beach, and Goldie is up for an exciting part in Far Out, a movie about a 1960s private eye named Gypsy Star. But their Shangri-La implodes when Goldie bonks her head in a bad car accident and develops dissociative amnesia. “Her reality and fantasy have overlapped, and sh

AGREEMENT UNDER THE STARS

Thanks to farms, homes, and development, the forest is getting smaller and smaller. Animals who used to live in harmony find themselves in a cramped, loud environment. At an emergency meeting, a committee decides that some of the animals will be active during the day, while others will be active at night. The night animals postulate that they were assigned their time slot because they aren’t as beautiful as the others. When a poacher sets traps at night, the nocturnal animals try to warn the ot

TEACHING EDDIE TO FLY

Arthur, a small bear, is friends with Eddie, an ostrich. After Arthur asks Eddie why he doesn’t fly, Eddie explains that he wasn’t taught. Solicitous Arthur decides to play teacher. He enjoys giving lectures and illustrates aeronautical principles on a chalkboard. Next, Arthur instructs Eddie to flap his wings, but nothing doing. More lessons ensue. Eddie is lifted in a hot-air balloon, jumps off a diving board, tries stilts, and dangles from a parachute. Arthur decides to ask some birds how th

YOUR VOICE, YOUR VOTE

Young Quetta and her mother and grandmother take a long ride on two different buses (standing room only). Once they arrive at their polling place, they see a long line of community members, and they settle in to wait…and wait…and wait. It’s a big day—Grandma has even donned her Sunday hat, though it’s Tuesday. If it’s such an important day, though, why does Quetta’s mother still have to go to work? the girl wonders. And as it begins to rain, Quetta suggests going home. That opens up a conversat

HAVE YOU SEEN MIKKI OLSEN?

According to the to-do list tacked to the wall, the penguin has three very important responsibilities every day: fishing, chopping plenty of wood, and purchasing “sticky icky fish.” Through it all, the penguin has a constant companion by his side: Mikki Olsen, his beloved, bright pink bear. They are inseparable. But one day, a “sticky icky fish” accidentally gets stuck to Mikki Olsen. When the penguin sits on the toy, Mikki Olsen gets stuck to the penguin’s posterior, and his routine starts to

STARLING HOUSE

Opal’s life in Eden, Kentucky, has never been easy. When their mother died, teenage Opal faked her way into getting custody of her younger brother, Jasper, and years later Opal and Jasper are still struggling to make ends meet. Jasper is an exceptionally bright and creative boy, and Opal desperately wants to scrape together enough money to send him out of Eden to a fancy private school with all the resources he deserves. Opal has always been mysteriously drawn to Starling House, a big old mansi

CRAB BAIT

In 1888, the city of London is abuzz over the sensational murders of Jack the Ripper in the East End, but over on the West End—in a neighborhood known as “Clubland” for its concentration of gentleman’s clubs—another murderer is at work. The most infamous of the clubs is Sizar’s, a place where boys from poor backgrounds can rise in the world so long as they’re willing to “bend.” Former Navy man Stewart Marsh sorts boys for Sizar’s; when he can, he sneaks down to Brighton to go for a run on the b

AN OTHERWISE PERFECT PLAN

All Gwen Pendergrass knows about her father is that her mother, Karen, met him in Las Vegas. The only pictures Gwen has of him are on a strip the couple took in a casino photo booth. For the 16 years since then, it’s been just Gwen and her mom, living in a one-bedroom apartment on Karen’s waitressing earnings. Karen wanted to be a writer, but mothering duties took precedence. Trying to help her mom realize her dream, Gwen secretly applies, on Karen’s behalf, to a writing program at Yale, but ev

MIRANDA MOOSE LOVES ORANGE JUICE

Miranda Mae Meredith Moose has a passion for orange juice. One morning, she awakes craving gooseberry jam and her favorite drink, but the latter is nowhere to be found in her home. The local shopkeeper is also out of orange juice, and thus unable to help her, so she tries her friend, Miss Hallie Hen, but to no avail. Hallie directs Miranda to Miss Cassie Cow, but she only has milk and butter at home, regretfully telling Miranda (in Brazdzionis’ signature rhyming couplets): “Oh noooo, Miss Miran

TAP DANCING ON EVEREST

In 1988, Zieman, then a 25-year-old medical student, signed on as the medical officer for a team of climbers aiming to ascend the challenging East Face of Mount Everest. As she recounts in a lively, gritty memoir, the project was daunting: “Our small team of six had four climbers, a photographer, and me.” Besides taking a route that had been climbed only once before—with a large team and more guides—her team “were purists, nimble, using no oxygen or Sherpa support.” Her decision to go confounde

CLARION CALL

Neve and her girlfriend, Alexandria, have made it back to Newgrange Harbor, Massachusetts, after traveling through the Gate that Neve has spent her life protecting from the monsters that try to pass through it. But Aodh, her antagonistic cousin, has followed her—and even worse, her sisters are stuck on the other side. Neve isn’t supposed to get back any memories of her previous lives until she turns 18, but they’ve started trickling in anyway, making her more confused than ever about whom to tr

A PLACE TO PAUSE

The latest in a series presents 32 pieces with settings that range from Africa to Asia to North America, with many stops along the way. The collection is evenly split between poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, with three interviews with authors added for background. Outside of the table of contents, the book makes no effort to distinguish when a piece is fiction or not, although with the poems this is generally self-evident, as with Mark Jacobs’ quasi-dystopian story “After the Meltdown,

GALLOP TOWARD THE SUN

Popular historian Stark, author of Astoria and The Last Empty Places, offers a kind of thought experiment at the outset: What might have happened if Tecumseh, the builder of a geographically extensive and ethnically diverse Indigenous confederacy, had been successful in keeping White settlers out of the Ohio River Valley and environs? After all, for a time, when he was a young war fighter, it looked as if the Native peoples might have been able to pull it off, having inflicted “the worst massac

AUSTRAL

Julio Gamboa, the protagonist of Costa Rica–born Fonseca’s third novel, has headed from Cincinnati to a small town in northern Argentina’s desert, where Aliza Abravanel, a friend and mentor from decades back, has recently died. Aliza was a brilliant novelist and photojournalist, but a stroke rendered her mute in the last decade of her life and slowed her career. Still, she’s completed a pair of unpublished manuscripts, titled Sketches for a Private Language and Dictionary of Loss, and one of he

MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD

Beginning with the book’s title and the appearance of a dapper, spectral gent named Winston Ono on the first page, Goldblatt makes good on his claim at the outset that John, Paul, George, and Ringo are all over this exercise in misdirection. Not that the many embedded Fab Four riffs add anything significant beyond opportunities for readers to feel clever for spotting them. His mom may be just a voice on the phone and his dad an emotional wreck, but David Salmon keeps up a semblance of normalcy

PURPLE UP!

When a group of friends witness a camouflage-clad mom saying goodbye to her family before leaving for military service, they wish desperately that they could help. Some research leads them to a website for Purple Up! Day, which is observed on April 15. The kids’ efforts widen from their school to the entire town, until a full celebration takes place, including a Hero Wall on which people place posters and photos honoring not just military families, but also first responders and teachers. An aut

HIGHER ADMISSIONS

New Yorker staff writer and journalism professor Lemann, author of a previous title on the SAT (The Big Test), contributes to Princeton’s “Our Compelling Interests” series by addressing the problem of access to higher education. With some selective colleges and universities reinstating the standardized SAT as an admissions criterion (after dropping the requirement during the Covid-19 pandemic) and with the Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action, his examination is timely. Lemann’s deta

AMBER BROWN IS NOT A CRAYON

Third grader Amber Brown can be messy and forgetful, but her best friend, Justin Daniels, doesn’t mind. The two mesh and love teaming up to help each other out. The humor from the original novel is left intact, from overly imaginative Amber’s dramatic warnings about why Justin shouldn’t eat leaves off the ground to their inside jokes about ordering pizza (“Hold the anchovies!”). Their friendship is on borrowed time, however, as Justin’s family is about to move to Alabama. Amplifying Amber’s str