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THE POSTCARD

The arrival in 2003 of an unsigned postcard, delivered to her mother Lélia’s postbox in Paris, bearing the names of four family ancestors murdered at Auschwitz, forces Anne Berest properly to consider her Jewish heritage. The result is this autofiction sharing the tragic saga of one branch of her forbears, the Rabinovitches, seeking peace and a safe home in the shifting European landscape of the 20th century. Lélia, who has methodically pieced together the story of her grandparents, now shares

THE CLIFFS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA

While in preschool, at only 4 years old, Jake McCook displayed such remarkable focus his teacher noticed and recommended, to his parents’ dismay, that he be put on medication. Laurette McCook saw her son as quirkily eccentric and impressively creative, not the bearer of some treatable dysfunction. As he grew older, though, he showed more troubling signs: “Crippling social anxiety,” paranoia, and panic attacks became increasingly common. Sometimes, he was afraid to eat food he was convinced was

MISSING WHITE WOMAN

Baltimore-based Breanna Wright is at the “let’s take a trip” stage in her budding relationship with Ty Franklin, her first serious boyfriend in more than a decade. When he invites her to spend a long weekend with him at a luxurious Airbnb townhouse in Jersey City, where his company is based, Bree jumps at the chance. But her romantic getaway turns into a nightmare when Bree descends the stairs on her final morning to discover the bloodied body of a white woman in the foyer and Ty gone. Could th

LIVING THE ASIAN CENTURY

A descendant of Hindu Sindhi people who left what became Pakistan during Partition, Mahbubani (b. 1948), author of The Great Convergence, was born in Singapore, where his father worked as a laborer. Often drunk and mired in gambling debts, his father was not a stable provider, and the author, his mother, and his sisters struggled to make ends meet. At the same time, they lived amicably among Malay, Chinese, and Muslim neighbors, as Singapore was an entrepreneurial hub fighting for independence

THE FUTURE LIES

After her father’s death, Juniper sets out for Denver. She arrives injured, repressing the traumatic events that claimed her sister and left Juniper pregnant. Her entry into the city disrupts the Network, the all-pervasive artificial intelligence that oversees humanity’s degradation. The disruption allows Calvin (avatar name: Doc) to abscond from the deadly, immersive video game that he and others play for extra privileges and the entertainment of the masses. Freed from his gritty gilded cage,

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

LOOK

The premise of this book is that contemporary people have lost the capacity for mindful observation of the world around them. As an entrepreneur, corporate consultant, and instructor at the New School, Madsbjerg teaches people how to take note of phenomena that we often fail to recognize as important—if we even see them at all. Using Wittgenstein as his guide, the author argues that it’s only through paying attention to what happens in the background that we fully understand what’s happening in

THE WAR CAME TO US

It is easy to think about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in terms of geopolitical maneuvering and armchair commentary. The value of this book is that it demonstrates the real toll in lives lost and broken. Miller is a journalist who writes for a number of publications, but he has a deep connection with Ukraine, going back to a stint as a teacher in the Peace Corps. He emphasizes that the invasion is merely the latest chapter in the long story of conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and he delves

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

WESTFALLEN

It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to communicate across time, it doesn’t take long before they share information that changes history. Can the two sets of kids work across a 79-year divide to prevent the U.S.A. from becoming the Nazi-controlle

THE COLLECTED REGRETS OF CLOVER

When she was 5, Clover witnessed her kindergarten teacher’s collapse, and then, when she was 6, her parents died in an accident while on vacation in China. Taken in by her maternal grandfather, she moved from Connecticut to New York City, where he raised her lovingly, if in some isolation. Now 36, she still lives in her grandfather’s West Village apartment, though he’s been dead for 13 years; works as a death doula; and counts as her only true friends her pets and her 87-year-old neighbor. Her

MELVILL

“Call me Herman.” Such a commandment could come from only one writer, Herman Melville, who stands at the center of Fresán’s narrative. Occupying much of that space, too, albeit in sometimes spectral form, is Melville’s father, Allan Melvill (the -e a typo that his son, the victim of a bureaucrat’s pen, stuck with, even as, later in the novel, he notes ruefully that his obituary in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, where several of his stories appeared, will render his name as Henry). Allan, born to a

BONESMITH

In the Dominions, smithing makes and breaks nations. Long extinct ghostsmiths raised the dead, recently eradicated ironsmiths mined too deeply and rediscovered those undead revenants, and in the wake of that cataclysm, the bonesmiths, who utilize dead bone to fight the dead, rose. Impetuous Wren, an heir to the House of Bone, makes bad decisions in hopes of holding her father’s attention. As a result, she’s exiled to the Border Wall that holds back the dead—only to make another bad decision and

REBEL BICYCLE CLUB

First, though, Nessa and Demelza—with Demelza’s goose, Captain Honkers, and the ancient severed head of Penfurzy knight Sir Calenick, met in the previous episode, in tow—must fetch the cup from the reclusive Lady of the Lake, escape a mob of shocked villagers after new kid Nessa slathers the jam on her scone after rather than before the cream (an unpardonable breach in Cornwall), break into a barrow hidden beneath a closed and creepy theme park, rout a trio of pesky boys, and like challenges. T

PILIPINTO

The author was born in the Amazon in 1955 to American evangelical missionary parents Jim and Elisabeth Elliot, whose lives she detailed in her previous book, Devotedly (2019). This memoir for children details her time as a child in Ecuador, which included a family tragedy when she was still an infant. Shepard tells the story in the third person, narrating the first several years of her life. Her parents mainly worked with the Quechua people, but they were intrigued by the Waoroni people, who ha

ALL SYSTEMS WHOA

Abby’s Mami and Papi are renowned scientists on the Oasis, and now that it’s Career Day, Abby feels the pressure to live up to their example. “I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. I don’t even know what I’m good at,” Abby laments to friends Gracie Chen (who presents Asian) and Dmitry Petrov (depicted as light-skinned and cued as Eastern European), who seem to have their own futures all planned out. As Abby shadows various adults on the space station, learning about what they do, she m

PENANCE

True crime has become such a ubiquitous genre over the last 10 years—through podcasts, television, and nonfiction books—that it’s now fodder for fiction. Clark, who was recently named to the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta, approaches the genre with both a critical eye and an instinct for the lurid. The novel is framed as a nonfiction account of the brutal murder of a teenage girl by three of her classmates, written by disgraced tabloid reporter Alec Z. Carelli, who has unethically ti

FIX AND STITCH

Squirrel neglects to prepare for winter. But unlike Aesop’s lazy grasshopper, he is motivated by benevolence or perhaps by the need to be needed. Though Squirrel, an expert tailor, has a plan to build his winter home, he is willingly deterred when his many friends successively need help. Fox has a torn coat; Porcupine would like to cover her spines to make hugs possible; a floral coverall could mask Skunk’s stench; Rabbit has no way to corral her kits. Squirrel, conscious of the shortening days

SLEEPERS

Centuries from now, mankind wages war against the alien Flock, fearsome, saurian creatures (flightless but with vestigial wings and avian culture) wielding superior technology looted from other civilizations they defeated. After billions of casualties, the “birds” surrender when the more creative (and desperate) Homo sapiens invent Homo eximius, alias HE: “enhanced humans for military use...Special Forces players who had volunteered for physical upgrades.” Once seemingly unstoppable, the Flock

BINDING 13

Beautiful, waiflike, 15-year-old Shannon has lived her entire life in Ballylaggin. Alternately bullied at school and beaten by her ne’er-do-well father, she’s hopeful for a fresh start at Tommen, a private school. Seventeen-year-old Johnny, who has a hair-trigger temper and a severe groin injury, is used to Dublin’s elite-level rugby but, since his family’s move to County Cork, is now stuck captaining Tommen’s middling team. When Johnny angrily kicks a ball and knocks Shannon unconscious (“a so