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RADIO HEAD GAL

In the 1960s, the author was born with deafness, but she wasn’t formally diagnosed until she was in grade school, largely due to her mother’s refusal to acknowledge her situation. One of Knill’s teachers gloomily predicted that Knill would probably be unable to get a job; the author later became a vice president at Wells Fargo.The author chronicles the trials and tribulations of navigating a world designed for people without hearing loss; at one point, she notes how even well-meaning people dis

THE LONG HISTORY OF THE FUTURE

It was sci-fi writer William Gibson who said that the future is already here; it’s just very unevenly distributed. Kobie, a contributing editor at Wired and the futures editor at PC Pro, would probably agree, as she romps through a series of gee-whiz ideas for machines that have failed to fulfill their much-hyped promise. The author examines AI, robots, hyperloop transport, brain-computer interfaces, and smart cities, among other concepts, with her eyes open and tongue in her cheek. She chronic

THE END OF EDEN

Attempting to fully comprehend the magnitude of global climate change can feel next to impossible. In this deeply researched and disturbing book, photographer and environmental writer Welz helps us understand it “through smaller stories.” Moving among far-flung ecosystems—e.g., the Mojave Desert, South Africa’s Cape Floral Region, the high-altitude grasslands of Central Asia—the author presents climate change in focused snapshots. Each case study of an ecosystem tracks how small increases in lo

DEEP COVER

In the 1970s, hundreds of highly trained operatives of the U.S.S.R. infiltrated the United States, posing as ordinary U.S. citizens and integrating themselves into American society. In 2011, Lisa Jones, a 28-year-old genetic researcher, receives a strange call, consisting of random Russian words spoken over the 18th-century musical arrangement “La Voltaire et La Franklein,” and goes into a trance. A week later, her 30-year-old boyfriend, Stephan Beck, who interprets intercepted Russian messages

BOG MYRTLE

Living together in a drafty house, pale-skinned siblings Beatrice and Magnolia are opposites in many ways. Short, wide Beatrice is happy and curious, whereas lanky Magnolia is cranky and tyrannical. One day Beatrice ventures into the nearby forest and meets Bog Myrtle, a giant, gray-skinned spider woman who’s deeply committed to protecting the forest and is known for turning people into flies and eating them. She gives Beatrice some of her magic silk. With the help of the spiders that live in t

THE WEDDING SHOE SNATCH

Shilpa’s older sister, Maya, is getting married, and Shilpa is nervous. What if she loses Maya to her new family? Maya’s future husband’s younger brother, Rishi, makes her especially uneasy. For one thing, he won’t stop calling Shilpa “Bean.” For another, Maya calls Rishi “sweet”—will Maya ever call Shilpa that again? Shilpa tries to get past these troubles and focus on her main responsibility: upholding the tradition of Joota Chupai, or stealing the groom’s shoes and returning them only when h

SCHOENBERG

In the prologue, Sachs, a music writer, Toscanini biographer, and educator at the Curtis Institute of Music, states explicitly that he aims to offer a "succinct interpretative study" of Arnold Schoenberg's life and work, not a full-scale biography or complete theoretical analysis. He includes basic biographical material such as Schoenberg's birth (1874, in Vienna), escape from Nazi Europe to America in 1933, and death in Los Angeles in 1951. Although Sachs presents a basic chronology of the com

LINGUAPHILE

In her fourth book, Sedivy, a Canadian academic specializing in linguistics and psychology and the author of Memory Speaks and Language in Mind, takes a personal tack, recounting how her life has been focused on the search for the essence of language. She grew up speaking several different tongues, which made her particularly sensitive to the twists and turns of language and how words connect to social conventions and the formation of identities. Eventually, “English would come to dominate all

TOGETHER IN A BROKEN WORLD

The story opens in Elk Springs, Montana, after society has fallen into ruin, due to a disease known as the Infection that either kills people outright or turns them violent. Seventeen-year-old Zach first sees 18-year-old Aiden passing through town, and after they form a relationship, Zach shares some of his supplies with the newcomer. Aiden aims to continue his trek to the University of Washington to deliver vials of the original version of the Infection to researchers looking for a cure. He at

EDDIE HEST VS. SUBURBIA

Eddie Hest loves living in Detroit and doesn’t want to move, but her landlord has sold the building where she resides. Divorced from her young daughter’s drug-addicted father, Eddie has only 30 days to find a new place for herself and Grace. Eddie has always been a bit of a nonconformist (think purple hair and a variety of tattoos) with a strong streak of independence, but she’s fiercely committed to being a “good mom” to Grace, and that requires setting up a stable home. After borrowing the do

THE NEW ANTISEMITISM

In his careful delineation of the causes of the most recent flare-up of antisemitism, Lappin, a professor of natural language processing, first looks at the big-picture forces that are feeding much of global society’s grievances, including widespread anti-immigration sentiment and ethno-nationalism. As the author demonstrates, extremist movements—such as those whose members chant, “Jews will not replace us”—seem to share four elements: loss of control over their lives and social context; dimini

LITTLE TRACTOR WANTS TO FLY

In this addition to the Little Tractor series, originally published in Belgium and the Netherlands, Little Tractor and his barnyard friends meet Gaston, a small one-seater airplane. Little Tractor envies Gaston’s ability to fly and do acrobatic stunts. A few days later, Little Tractor surprises his friends by strapping a wooden board to his hood—these are his wings, he explains. But when Little Tractor revs up to fly, he ends up plowing into a group of bushes. Though his friends remind him of a

SHADES OF MERCY

The elaborate 17th birthday party of Shiloah Roy is disrupted by a fireball in the sky, the explosion of a remotely piloted aircraft 92,000 feet above the Double J Ranch. The bizarre accident momentarily distracts Shiloah’s father, Jesse, from his customary attention to his volatile daughter. Meanwhile, Sheriff Porter Beck is responding to a distress call at the Pioneer Hotel. Though Lincoln County features ranches and wide-open spaces, its proximity to Las Vegas brings problems like the fatal

A PARTY FOR FLORINE

A light-skinned young child who comes across Florine’s self-portrait in a museum is startled to discover that the artist resembles her. The child explores the parallels between their lives as artistic Jewish girls and ultimately commits to embracing Florine’s vibrant spirit. If she could throw a party for Florine, she would serve “blue pancakes,” and the two would “paint and dance and write poetry!” Stepping outside, the child adopts Florine’s perspective: “The world around me is full of color

BEHIND MY DOORS

In 859, Fatima Al-Fihri, the daughter of a rich merchant, decided to build a mosque and school. “I began as a small corner for books, where Fatima spent hours reading, thinking, and dreaming.” Over time, the library explains that it “grew into a grand building.” The library, which served both Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and Al-Qarawiyyin University, was a tranquil space within bustling Fez. Visitors were greeted by a quiet courtyard filled with fountains and lanterns. A special room secured by copper

APPLE BLACK ORIGINS

In the kingdom of Youta on the Eden Continent, 13-year-old Willow Wantmore, a Black girl with vitiligo, dreams of joining the Youta Guild, but her tribe faces discrimination. Her estranged sorcerer father, Uzoh Olaocha, bestowed upon her a coveted and rare Golden Wand named Novajinx that she uses to keep her pale locs tied. Just as Willow achieves entry into the Guild, her life is thrown off course when she unexpectedly finds herself on a quest with Uzoh’s sworn adversary, Gideon Banburi, a Bla

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

A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) began composing music as a young man in Valencia, Spain, at a school for the blind, where he learned a complex variety of braille that allowed him to make musical notation before dictating it to his assistant. “Being blind affected every aspect of Rodrigo’s life and brought him closer to music through an acute aural sense,” write Suárez-Pajares and Clark, both professors of musicology. Today, he is best known for his Concierto de Aranjuez, “the key with which Rodrigo

SWEETNESS IN THE SKIN

Pumkin Patterson’s story starts when she’s 11, a bright student and the apple of her Auntie Sophie’s eye. Sophie lives with her half-sister—the resentful Paulette—Pumkin, and Pumkin’s beloved grandmother. Sophie and Paulette have a volatile relationship, impaired by Paulette’s belief that her mother favors the lighter-skinned and status-conscious Sophie. Sophie and Pumkin dream of escaping their deteriorated home in a disadvantaged Kingston neighborhood to live in France. When Sophie eventually

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