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THE DARKEST WATER

The head found by a jogger on Drigg Beach turns out to be attached to painter Leo James, who’s been buried up to his neck and left to drown in the incoming tide. D.I. Imogen Evans, still levelheaded and unflappable despite the celebrity status her last case brought her, promptly identifies the body, but suspects and motives are few and far between. And since James, who lived like a hermit, left no one to mourn him or hound the police, Imogen’s investigation is soon eclipsed by the travails of C

THE PARTITION PROJECT

Pakistani American seventh grader Mahnoor Raheem, an aspiring journalist, and Talha, her older brother, are instructed by Abba to greet their grandmother with “happy faces”—Dadi is leaving Lahore to live with them in Sugar Land, Texas. But smiling is hard for Maha. She’s had to give up her bedroom for Dadi and move into the attic, and she even has to take care of her after school. She’s excited about media studies, her new elective, but even that goes awry when they’re assigned to make document

BIRD NERD

Nyla Braun, unkindly dubbed “Encyclopedia Braun” by her classmates, is taking the spring birding tournament between Anderson Elementary’s City Birders and Penn Elementary’s Burb Birders very seriously. She’s determined to count the most birds and learn all the bird songs and calls, allowing her to leave Anderson “on a high.” Becoming obsessed with her interests isn’t new—but this time, she also wants to improve her social status by leading the City Birders to victory. Nyla’s dreams start to com

A MYRIAD OF TONGUES

Everett, a professor of anthropology and psychology and author of Numbers and the Making of Us, offers an enlightening examination of human communication based on the findings of linguist fieldworkers—himself included—as well as researchers in areas such as cognitive psychology, data science, and respiratory medicine. Whereas early theories about language commonalities and evolution were largely based on languages spoken in “Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societ

FIVE DAYS IN BOGOTÁ

Ally Blake, a widowed mother of two and owner of a financially strapped art gallery in San Diego, risks everything to exhibit at a Bogotá art fair and hopefully make it big. Specializing in Latin American art, she’s joined by Uruguayan artist Mateo Lugano, who’s also hoping to get his big break at the fair. After struggling to get her crates full of valuable art—on which her livelihood depends—free from customs, Ally notices additional paintings have been added to her collection. To her astonis

PROJECT F

When 13-year-old Keith Arlo’s family receives word that his aunt and uncle have unexpectedly passed away, he is sent to collect Lulu, his 6-year-old cousin, and bring her back to live with them. Most people in Keith’s country live in one of seven cities surrounded by nature, and most people do not travel far, so Keith is excited to finally experience train travel. On the journey, he happens upon a man who’s involved with the mysterious Project F, and he cannot contain his curiosity. Even after

THE HUNTER

In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there m

THE LOCKMASTER

After the outbreak of water wars across all the world’s continents, access to freshwater streams and precious inland reservoirs becomes top priority for the planet’s fracturing assemblies of dissolving city- and nation-states. The narrator of Austrian writer Ransmayr’s enthralling short novel, a hydraulic engineer, sets off to build dams in Brazil, only to learn that his father, the Master of the Falls, responsible for manning the locks in their Central European hometown, has committed a horrib

BARRACOON

Among her many accomplishments, Hurston was a trained anthropologist, and one of her works of scholarship—based on interviews conducted in the late 1920s but not published until 2018—was the story of Cudjo Lewis, the last person to endure the Middle Passage. Although the slave trade was outlawed in 1808 in the United States, in 1859, the captain of the Clotilda secretly traveled to West Africa to purchase enslaved people. Lewis recounts his harrowing tale, including being imprisoned in an enclo

NERO

To borrow a philosopher’s phrase opining on another era, life in ancient Rome was nasty, brutish, and short—and being on top of the heap didn’t seem to help much. In the year 37 CE, the brutal Emperor Tiberius is dying. Agrippina is related to him by marriage and has a young son, Lucius, who will one day become known as Nero. Sit back and enjoy—or cringe at—this bloody tale that is littered with the bodies of the powerful, the ambitious, and the innocent. The story roughly follows Agrippina and

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

FOWL PLAY

Since the untimely death of Will Calhoun, her beloved maternal uncle, due to an unspecified genetic condition, Chloe Alvarez’s world has felt muted. In his will, Chloe’s uncle leaves her Charlie, his beloved African Grey parrot who possesses a robust vocabulary and is a skillful mimic. When Charlie starts blurting out words such as homicide and cyanide, Chloe becomes convinced that something—or someone—sinister is behind Uncle Will’s sudden demise. She channels her grief into uncovering the tru

BUNNY LOVES BEANS

What’s not to love? Adorable kids and cuddly animals eat their favorite, super-healthy foods—and teach readers about colors along the way. What role modeling! What savory, crunchy deliciousness! What yummy learning opportunities! Vivid photos are organized as spreads: Each left-hand page highlights a color and shows an animal eating a food of that hue. On the right-hand side, a child is seen savoring the same food item. A bouncy, rhythmic phrase accompanies the introduction of each color. Enhan

LOOT

Abbas, the hero of James’ lively and symbolically rich third novel, is a poor 17-year-old artisan in Mysore in 1794 when he’s recruited by Tipu Sultan, the local ruler, to apprentice with Lucien Du Leze, a French clockmaker. Together they are charged with making an automaton of a tiger attacking a British soldier. The experience hones his carving skills, but just as importantly it introduces him to an intercontinental power play: Tipu, aka the Tiger of Mysore, is attempting to fend off an incur

HALLOWEEN CUPCAKE MURDER

O’Connor’s American heroine Tara Meehan’s search for Halloween decorations for her architectural salvage shop in Galway leads her to a curiosity shop, where she buys a painting that might provide a motive for murder. When Tara finds the shop owner dead, possibly poisoned by a Halloween cupcake, she’s both witness and suspect and must turn sleuth to extricate herself from a dangerous situation before she can enjoy an Irish Halloween. Ireland spins a Halloween fantasy set in Santaland, with Mrs.

GLASSWORKS

Glass—sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque, both sturdy and fragile—serves as the novel’s primary metaphor while anchoring its plot. Characters sometimes see each other with joyous clarity but often with distortions or not at all. In 1910, Boston socialite Agnes Carter renounces wealth and respectability (and perhaps her moral compass) for glass blower Ignace Novak, drawn to his talent, passion, and lucidity. The glass bee he gives Agnes will thread its way through the novel, a small detail

BLUE RUIN

Kunzru’s seventh novel is narrated by Jay, who in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic is in ill health, getting by delivering groceries in upstate New York. His route takes him to an estate that’s coincidentally occupied by Alice, a former flame, and her husband, Rob, Jay’s one-time art school rival. Alice is disinclined to bring him into their pod for fear of infection—or of stoking old drama—so instead hides him in a barn while his health improves. In the weeks that follow, Jay recalls th

NO ONE LEAVES THE CASTLE

When Baron Vargus Angbar’s ancestral treasure goes missing, butler Gribbinsnood Flornt must hire a bounty hunter to capture the famous wizard the baron believes to be guilty. Lured by a bard’s song, Flornt hires the Lilac—before learning that she’s 14 and in cahoots with the bard, Dulcinetta. The wizard hunt is an extended setup to get the Lilac and Netta to the baron’s castle, where they are invited by the baroness to dinner and the real mystery can begin. The narrator intrudes to occasionally

POCKET FULL OF TEETH

The story begins as police interview Eddy Sparrow for reasons that aren’t immediately clear to the reader.Eddy is a woman whose recently deceased mother—chair of the history department at Georgia State University—was sent a manuscript before her death that was found buried in a canister in the backyard of an abandoned estate. The property, located in northern Alabama, was allegedly haunted, as was the manuscript, which is rumored to curse anyone who reads it. As Eddy talks to the police officer

WANDERING THROUGH LIFE

Leon’s approach to autobiography is pretty much the opposite of what readers may expect from the author of a successful series of whodunits. “I am feckless and unthinking by nature and have never planned more than the first step in anything I’ve done,” she announces early on, and then proceeds to illustrate this proposition by one charming non sequitur after another. After brief chapters on her family, she turns to more or less disconnected anecdotes and discussions—e.g., the tomato-selling sca