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OF LOVE AND PARIS

In his latest homage to Paris, Baxter, who has lived there since 1989, celebrates the city’s indelible association with love, sometimes blissfully romantic, sometimes madly obsessive. Paris, he writes, “has advertised itself as a venue for the exploration of passion in all its forms and its capacity for exaltation and despair.” In a series of brief essays, he chronicles liaisons from Napoleon and Josephine’s to his own marriage to Marie-Dominique Montel. Despair certainly characterized several

EVERY BEAUTIFUL MILE

Penelope Crawford is paralyzed by her grief over the loss of her charismatic husband, Travis, whose plane disappeared weeks ago. Travis had been a local hero, helping with relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Irma. Over the course of 17 years and the births of two children, they had enjoyed an idyllic marriage—then, “he got in his airplane, flew into a storm, and never came home,” as Penelope often reminds herself. “Travis died and time kept going, but I had stood still.” Now, she works at t

THE HEART NEVER FORGETS

In this story told from the perspective of a young child, a small town gathers for the masquerade—a West African event where people don masks representing ancestors, spirits, or deities. This masquerade, however, is different for our young protagonist—it’s the first one without Grandpa. Taking in all the sights, sounds, and smells, the child recalls the akaras that Grandpa loved to eat and the way he smiled as he shared them. The drums thump louder, and musicians join the din as the festival ra

THAT REMINDS ME

There’s a life packed inside the pages of this slim novel. One of Owusu’s most impressive achievements here is creating the space of a much larger life—both for the novel’s narrator, K, and for K’s family—through elliptical references. The prose is often stunning: “So now I breathe British air with airs akin to royal heirs—my mum thought she was making a dark life fair.” The first half is told in short vignettes, each a page or less, and even in the second half, the chapters remain brief. K spe

THE PERILS OF LADY CATHERINE DE BOURGH

This time, the bull’s-eye is trained on Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whom Elizabeth Bennet fans may have occasionally wanted to take a potshot at themselves. Gray makes the entitled heiress more sympathetic than Austen does. She’s still vain and preening, but genuinely frightened by the escalating attempts on her life. Some of the sympathy is generated by the protagonists, young Jonathan Darcy, the shy, introverted son of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Juliet Tilney, the daughter of a countr

EYES OPEN

Though Pai prayed he’d have sons, Sónia is one of five sisters. She’s smart and has the heart of a poet but is lackadaisical about school. She covers shifts at her family’s fado restaurant and sneaks time with 16-year-old José Miguel Machado, a newly promoted journeyman printer. Zé Miguel is a Communist and artist, and he helps create contraband books to “make a better world.” After he’s arrested and the family restaurant is shut down for hiring a banned fado musician to perform, Sónia wonders

EVERY DAY

Every day, A wakes up in a new body. They’ve had this uncontrollable ability since birth and have grown used to keeping people at a distance—that is, until A wakes up in Justin’s body and spends a romantic day at the beach with Rhiannon, Justin’s girlfriend. Unable to forget her, A conspires to spend more time with her. As Nathan, A attends a party and exchanges emails with Rhiannon, finally building an ongoing relationship. Unfortunately, Nathan remembers being a spectator in his own body and

SAM'S NEW SISTER

Sam is used to being the littlest button in the craft box. Sometimes that’s a pain, but it also means Sam gets a lot of attention for being the smallest. When a new, smaller button—Maggie—is adopted, Sam is frustrated: Maggie copies him, tries to do things that are too advanced for her, and steals his favorite toy. Sam has no choice—he has to run away. But when Maggie follows him and almost gets swallowed up by the vacuum cleaner, Sam swings to the rescue (“Sam realized his sister needed a resp

THE THIRD MAN

The first timeline of Cooper’s novel is set in Germany near the end of World War II. The SS recruits a German American scientist named Walter Muller, and they plan to infiltrate a research facility in Maine to use DNA to build a “superior” race and a Fourth Reich. Shortly after Muller’s arrival in Maine, he meets and marries another conspirator, Catherine Freeman. In the present day, after some Nazi artifacts turn up, college science professor Brad Parker works with his romantic partner, police

SWAN SONG

Hilderbrand fans, a vast and devoted legion, will remember Blond Sharon, the notorious island gossip. In what is purportedly the last of the Nantucket novels, Blond Sharon decides to pursue her lifelong dream of fiction writing. In the collective opinion of the island—aka the “cobblestone telegraph”—she’s qualified. “Well, we think, she’s certainly demonstrated her keen interest in other people’s stories, the seedier and more salacious, the better.” Blond Sharon’s first assignment in her online

LUCKY RED

Bridget Shaughnessy—the extraordinary, soon-to-be-orphaned narrator of Cravens’ welcome remix of a Western novel—is 16, uneducated, and impoverished when her feckless father dies after a rattlesnake bite on the trail they’re taking together from Arkansas to Kansas (and a “fresh start”). Relying on intuition and one remaining mule, Bridget crosses the plains alone and winds up in Dodge City, where her story parts ways with most cowboy novels of the past. Bridget’s bright red hair attracts the at

ONE SMALL SPARK

In this poetic reflection, Spiro and Tentler-Krylov shed light on “tikkun olam,” a Hebrew phrase meaning “repair the world” or “make right.” A “spark that lights your heart” turns into an idea, which becomes an action, which snowballs by inspiring people to act together. We’re all interconnected, after all, yet we each have agency. Readers are reminded that they should be motivated not by gratitude or praise, but by the desire to improve the world. Above all, children are reassured that while e

CHASING GUANO

What would cause scientists to suspect that this remote chain of islands hosted a colony of penguins? “Their poop is visible from space!” marvels Taylor—as readers can see for themselves in the satellite photos that kick off this lively account of a 2015 venture that uncovered not just a typical colony of Adélie penguins, but a supercolony numbering 1.5 million…more than the Antarctic Peninsula's entire population of that species. The author recounts how the researchers navigated treacherously

DARK DAYS

In his nonfiction debut, Reeves, the Whiting Award–winning author of the poetry collections King Me and Best Barbarian, rigorously analyzes works by Black cultural paragons, from Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison to Outkast and Michael K. Williams. The author balances this commentary with his own experiences as a Black man in America, including his childhood in the Pentecostal Church and conversations with his young daughter following the killing of George Floyd. “I gropingly understood that

MAKE IT COUNT

Born in Jamaica, Telfer, the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA title, shares anecdotes of her upbringing raised by her mother and volatile stepfather who, while her mother worked in Canada, sent her to live with her aunt. Despite being assigned male at birth, the author always believed she was female. She writes about how she was ridiculed by townsfolk and initially scorned by her mother, so she resolved to “hide my feminine side forever.” Running, which was “a way of life” in Jamai

HEAD FAKE

Mikey Cannon grew up in a racially diverse stretch of Los Angeles and played basketball in games where he was “the only white boy” (“I could set up plays like a pro”). Mikey was 15 years old when his mom died. A year later, he entered the Friedman Psychiatric Hospital suffering severe depression—a condition exacerbated by his dad’s tough love. His dad, a decorated high school basketball coach, considered Mikey his great disappointment. Now, at 25, Mikey has weathered two more hospital stints an

BADASS(ISH)

Alberta teens Davis Klein-Mah, Renzi Chan Cruz, and Jae Schmidt are fighting to protect the environment and their community from an oil pipeline. Unfortunately, local people rely on the pipeline for employment, complicating their task. Various personal circumstances also affect the girls’ involvement: Jae’s mother is a lawyer for Haus Oil, Davis’ parents are Haus Oil engineers, and Renzi is being pursued by Izzy Malone, a boy who’s a vocal activist—and Davis’ recent ex. The central characters a

THE HORSE

Until the rise of the automobile, humans were dependent on horses for transportation, “so paramount and pivotal to human society that we base our units of mechanical energy or engine output on horsepower.” Winegard, author of The Mosquito, takes a long view of the horse’s fortunes, suggesting that had it not been for human intervention, horses might well have gone extinct, with many former species now reduced to the common horse, Equus caballus, along with a small population of Przewalski’s hor

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

THE STRATEGISTS

O’Brien, author of The Second Most Powerful Man in the World, offers an exploration of grand strategy: decisions by a supreme authority for actions beyond the command of military forces. Readers will learn more from stand-alone biographies of the author’s five subjects, but he provides solid overviews of their decision-making processes. All maintained that they intended to eschew the mistakes made by leaders during World War I. However, despite innumerable proclamations that “what they were doi