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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

RABBIT HOLE

Teddy Angstrom was 16 when her older sister, Angie, disappeared after sneaking out to a party. Afterward, everything seemed to fall apart. Now, 10 years later, her father has driven his car off a bridge, and Teddy and her mother are left to pick up the pieces. Cleaning her father’s things, Teddy discovers that he was deeply invested in the online community built up around Angie’s disappearance. What began as a daughter trying to close up loose ends in the wake of her father’s death slowly devol

ASH'S CABIN

Ash has always felt like an outsider, and ever since Grandpa Edwin passed away, that feeling of isolation has only gotten worse. Their parents haven’t fully accepted Ash’s recent name change or newly shorn hair, and school isn’t much better. When Ash learns that their family plans to sell Grandpa Edwin’s old ranch, they come up with a plan: to find Grandpa’s secret cabin in the woods and stay there—forever. They earn money, watch online videos to pick up survival skills, and buy food, gear, and

THE NEOREALIST IN WINTER

In the collection's eponymous opener, an aspiring director must choose between his next film or his family. "Do I Amuse You?" profiles an English professor, stuck in a no-tenure job and unmoored by his parents' death in a car crash, who latches onto Goodfellas as his emotional safety blanket. In "Zeitgeist Comics," a comic-book editor fires his whole department to save his job, newly expanded to include writing six monthly issues. A woman goes through a medical operation to "Take It Out of Me,"

FORGIVING IMELDA MARCOS

From a hospital bed where he is suffering complications from kidney surgery, Angelito Macaraeg begins a letter to his estranged son. Lito insists that he simply intends to tell “a good story”—something that might be useful for his son’s career as an American journalist. However, the deeper Lito delves into his memories, the more apparent becomes his struggle to make peace with the past. As Lito tells the story of his youth in the Philippines, he recounts his mother's murder, his father’s freque

THE MALE GAZED

In this absorbing fusion of memoir and cultural analysis, media critic Betancourt examines his boyhood in Colombia. He was obsessed with Disney films like Sleeping Beauty and Hercules, identifying with the female roles while staring desirously at the “bulging pecs and towering torsos” of the male heroes. These movies, he writes, offered “glimmers of possibility about what kind of man I wanted. And what kind of man I wanted to be.” Since Betancourt’s mother ran an animation studio in Bogotá, his

A WHISPER IN THE WALLS

As expected, Landwin Brood doesn’t appreciate Theo’s new bond to Ren Monroe; despite her brilliance and magical prowess, Landwin won’t look past her Lower Quarter origins. Although Landwin attempts to separate them, Ren maintains her single-minded focus on revenge. Unbeknownst to Thugar, the eldest Brood, Dahvid and Nevelyn Tin’Vori, who are in hiding, are also out for vengeance as descendants of another family who fell victim to the Broods. Their alliance with Ren and Theo (if he can be truste

YOU ARE HERE

Marnie Walsh, a 38-year-old London copy editor, embraces the fact that she has more control over her time than her friends with spouses and children do—but she starts to question the appeal of her lifestyle when an autogenerated year-in-review photo compilation reveals only “her oven light-bulb, a recipe for hearty lentil soup, a close-up of an ingrowing hair…all accompanied by Carole King’s ‘You’ve Got a Friend.’” Marnie’s most steadfast friend, Cleo Fraser, is eager to capitalize on Marnie’s

YAQUI DELGADO WANTS TO KICK YOUR ASS

Piedad Maria Sanchez, Piddy for short, is starting sophomore year at a new school in Queens while her best friend, Mitzi, is off to school in Long Island. Piddy is Cuban and Dominican, but she struggles to find a place with her Latine peers in her new school. In fact, Yaqui Delgado wants to kick her ass; as Piddy says, “I don’t fit her idea of a Latina at all.” Though Piddy tries to keep her head down and avoid confrontation, the bullying at school continues to escalate from threats and misogyn

WHAT FIRE BRINGS

Bailey Meadows is not her real name. But the false identity and backstory created by her mentor, Avery Turner, win her an invitation to live as writer-in-residence at the palatial Topanga Canyon estate of Jack Beckham—the son of famously unpleasant and successful author J.D. Beckham—while she helps him write a thriller. Shortly before, Avery’s partner, Sam Morris, who’d recently suffered some weird fugue episodes, vanished in Topanga Canyon while searching for a missing woman on behalf of their

ANGEL AND THE PAPER TRAIL

Angel wants the bright orange book lying on top of the library shelves, but he’s too short to reach it. Summoning his courage, he asks taller classmate Oliver for help, and a note falls out of the book: “I hope your day is as bright and sweet as this shining sun.” Oliver immediately sees this as a mystery to solve and takes Angel around to his various friends at recess in an attempt to find the note’s author…and along the way introducing Angel. The handwriting looks like Rose’s, the picture of

REDEYE

Seven years ago, Nate Durant weighed over 300 pounds and was deeply unhappy. After getting bariatric surgery and slimming down, he’s resolved to dedicate himself to working extra hard at whatever he tries, whether it’s writing, DJing, podcasting, or doing stand-up comedy. His wife Cynthia has also lost a dramatic amount of weight, but through rigorous exercise. While her husband throws himself into work to keep them financially afloat, Cynthia is at a loss for what to do next in her career. She

THE TRUMP INDICTMENTS

Four court cases, three prosecutors, 91 criminal charges, possible sentences totaling more than 700 years in prison: Trump has always dealt in superlatives, and those are the staggering numbers, well known to anyone who follows the news—though, as MSNBC host Velshi writes in his introduction, they are so many and so thoroughly laid out “that we risk becoming numb to their monumental importance.” There are the payoffs to Stormy Daniels and the cooking of corporate books to hide them, set in New

HOW TO MAKE YOUR SOCK TALK

A young narrator with pale skin and short brown hair initially invites readers to make their own sock puppet. Starting, of course, with a sock—“One that doesn’t stink works best!”—and other craft items, such as felt, yarn, glue, and a cardboard tube, the narrator goes through the puppet-making process. The first step is forming an idea of the character, followed by constructing the puppet out of various materials, creating a unique voice for the puppet’s character, and finally learning ventrilo

THE WILDES

When their mom, respected conservation biologist Dr. Jane Wilde, goes missing during a research trip in Brazil, sister and brother Asia, 13, and Ring, 11, are plunged headlong into the heart of the rainforest. The kids’ veterinarian dad is kept busy at home in Texas as director of the family’s enormous animal park. The omniscient narrator moves between the characters, focusing mainly on the siblings. Asia, despite her encyclopedic scientific knowledge, is desperate to attend a regular school ra

NOBODY NEEDS TO KNOW

As a child, Chicago native Pagonis never felt at ease with the name their parents had given them—Jennifer—or with the trappings of girlhood. The author had always felt different because of the many surgeries they underwent to eliminate what their mother said was infantile ovarian cancer. Pagonis’ anxieties about femininity only worsened as they grew older and especially after they began having problems with urination, which led to more surgeries, including the enlargement of a small vagina. Doc

DESERT DEADLINE

Dante O’Donnell is the VIP concierge at Sunny Junket Vacation Rentals, helping his famous and wealthy guests get the most out of their stays in Palm Springs. When private eye Jazz Friendly—who previously helped Dante get out of a very tight spot—asks him to hook up a friend of a friend with a place to stay, Dante is happy to oblige. The client in question is famed, reclusive romance novelist Maude Movay, who needs a quiet hideaway where she can finish the final book in a bestselling series. Jaz

PROBABLY OVERTHINKING IT

Sometimes we seem to be drowning in data and statistics that are complex, contradictory, and opaque. Downey, a professor emeritus of computer science at Olin College and author of several books on computer programming, sets out to make understanding it easier. In this book, the author works his way through a number of problems. He sees statistical analysis as an important and useful tool for decision-making, but he admits that things can go terribly wrong, regarding issues ranging from health d

THE SCROLLS OF A TEMPLE SWEEPER

In an island monastery in a nameless land, a one-eyed monk known as the Temple Sweeper tells another monk, called Enduring Sound, about his past in fragmented soliloquies, stories and poems. They coalesce into a narrative about a war fought during the Temple Sweeper’s boyhood in which his family is massacred; the conflict escalates into a campaign to exterminate orphans, known as the Lost Children. The future Temple Sweeper roams the war-torn landscape encountering mythic personalities, includi

THE WILD ONES

Valentina and her best friends, Jasmine, Andy, and Xander, live in an apartment complex at risk of being torn down by developers to make way for “businesses that all look the same.” Certain that there’s a monster hiding in a nearby forest, the kids decide to find the creature and use it to scare away the developers. Each believes the monster hails from their own country of origin. Valentina thinks it’s La Tunda, a Colombian creature with a leg made from a wooden kitchen utensil. Xander thinks t