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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

HOW TO CATCH A MAMASAURUS

The long-running series continues its successful formula with this Hallmark card of a book, which features bright illustrations and catchy rhymes. This time, the mythical creature the racially diverse children set out to catch is an absent mom who does it all (lists of descriptors include the words banker, caregiver, nurse, doctor, driver, chef, housekeeper, teacher, entertainer, playmate, laundry service, problem solver, handywoman, cleaner, and alarm clock) but doesn’t seem to have a job outs

I'LL GIVE YOU A REASON

In the opener, “Great American Scream Machine,” a teenager named Eva uncovers a secret her parents have kept since she was born: her undocumented status. Later, in “The World as We Know It,” a white couple who call Child Protective Services on their downstairs neighbors inadvertently kick-start the deportation process. In “The Fake Wife,” Chris, an American man, begins to fall for Marisa, the Dominican woman marrying him for a green card. López works where American and international identities

THE EQUINOX TEST

Rose Vera is a fifth-year student at Brooklyn School of Magic. She wishes she were better at school, like her best friend, Amethyst Vern. Unfortunately, Rose is easily distracted, and her spell-casting abilities are limited. The school principal meets with Rose and her parents to discuss her academic performance and the possibility of transferring to the nonmagical Rogers Middle School. Rose is embarrassed at the prospect of not moving up to Middle Magic with everyone else, and she’s certain th

MISBELIEF

Duke psychology professor Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, Payoff, and other books, begins by chronicling how he was accused of being a shill for big pharma and the “Deep State” for supporting Covid-19 vaccination. Why him? The conspiratorial echo chamber, he notes, searches high and low for heretics, aided by “technology, politics, [and] economics.” The technology is beyond individual control, the politics and economics thorny, and the battle against what Ariely characterizes as m

HOUSE OF FLAME AND SHADOW

When we last saw Bryce Quinlan, she was escaping an attack from the all-powerful Asteri, the despotic rulers of the planet Midgard. Bryce manages to leap through a portal and finds herself in the Fae’s original home world, where the Fae she meets are recognizable to her, but also somehow more powerful than the Midgardian Fae, who live under the Asteri thumb. These new Fae don’t fully trust the strange woman who appeared in their world out of thin air, and Bryce doesn’t have time to convince the

FLAGS ON THE BAYOU

Seriously in debt to business associate Minos Suarez, Charles Lufkin rents him Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman he’s recently purchased. Things don’t go well for either Hannah, whom Suarez unmercifully assaults, or Suarez, who’s found castrated with his throat cut shortly after Hannah parts company with him. Just as Hannah is haunted by Samuel, the son from whom she was separated during the bloody Union attack on Shiloh Church, Lufkin’s nephew, Wade, who volunteered as a medical officer on the

ROGUE JUSTICE

Last time out, Keene, a Black woman in her late 20s who worked for loose cannon Justice Howard Wynn, who’s White, used damaging information he had gathered before falling into a coma to help force the semi-Trump-ish President Brandon Stokes (a reviled authoritarian wannabe but one with a deep intellect) at least temporarily out of office, as his Cabinet used the 25th Amendment to sideline him. Now, on the eve of Stokes’ impeachment trial, Keene stumbles on what turns out to be a revenge plot to

THE NOTEBOOK

British publisher and diarist Allen brings his love of notebooks to a lively, wide-ranging history of bound blank pages. Notebooks, he writes, “interest me as a technology that has had tangible effects on the world around us.” The author started keeping a journal in 2002: “Writing a diary made me happier; keeping things-to-do lists made me more reliable (which in turn made those around me happier), and I learned never to go to a doctor’s appointment, or a meeting of any kind, without taking not

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

WHO GOT GAME?

The author positively pours out facts and anecdotes about lesser known, or at least less celebrated, “batters, buzzer-beaters, and record-breakers”—from tributes to the early barnstorming “Black Fives” and Wataru “Wat” Misaka, the NBA’s first non-white player, to accounts of Scott Skiles’ 30 assists in 1990 and Bernard King, who came back to finish a Hall of Fame career after shattering a knee. Despite noting that basketball is enjoyed across the world, “from Boston to Barcelona to Beijing,” he

THE WHITE BONUS

Award-winning journalist McMillan, author of The American Way of Eating, combines investigative reporting and memoir in a penetrating look at the material advantages of racial privilege. “For a very long time,” she writes, “I thought race and racism ‘happened’ only to people who were not white.” Using her own family as one example, and profiling four others, she investigates the impact of whiteness on individuals of different generations, from different parts of the country, who have one thing

LAWYER NATION

Since colonial days, the legal profession has been proud of “its role in the founding of the republic, the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, and the defense of democracy and the rule of law.” Today, however, the profession faces an “an existential crisis” on which “the American democratic experiment hinges,” writes law professor Brescia, author of How Cities Will Save the World. According to multiple studies, the legal system that helped create what can be called the longest-running democratic

PLAYING WITH WILDFIRE

Early on, a woman named Gretel—the closest thing to a central character you’ll find here—explains her situation: “I live on the evacuation perimeter of what is now Colorado’s largest wildfire, which has been burning for months.” That she does so as part of a grant application—the text of which is one of several found documents included in the book—is an early indication that this novel isn’t a simple narrative of humanity at the mercy of a changing climate. Later, Pritchett includes the text of

THE FIRE KING

Castien Varic is a Stormless—a person born without magical abilities. On the continent of Auris, this puts him at a disadvantage: The crystal-wielding Summoners are able to call upon the powers of the seven Tempests in battle, but Castien is forced to rely on his skills with a bow. He is in a particularly tricky spot at the moment, since one of his friends, the Summoner Ilyana, turned out to be a spy and assassinated Castien’s liege lord, the king of Arvendon, Avenos Titansworn. Now, Castien is

COURAGE, EVERY DAY

Tomorrow marks a momentous occasion for an East Asian–presenting child with pale skin and straight black hair: a musical performance in front of a crowd of people. “But there are thousands of butterflies fluttering in my tummy,” the child tells us. White-outlined butterflies surround the youngster. “I believe in you,” Papa says as he hands the protagonist a violin. “Have courage.” But what is courage? Papa catalogs many different types of bravery, from saving the day to making small but meaning

QUIET...

Although the late author wrote the poems in this book between her diagnosis in November 2010 and her death just even months later, their subject matter spans decades of her life. Reflecting on her youth in “Phyllip, the boy next door,” she muses, “We used to have such dreamy dreams.” “Our Lady of Angels” hints at her being a victim of bullying in a parochial school. She recalls moving from Chicago to Berkeley, California, as an adult, where “everything was a first.” “Augenblinck” consists of sn

AMSTERDAM ASCENDANT

It’s 1572 and the Netherlands are under the control of Catholic King Philip II of Spain, who is out to bring the Dutch to heel and beat back what he sees as Calvinist heresy that has taken root. The story proper opens dramatically with Maarten van der Voort and the Sea Beggars, essentially privateers, capturing a Spanish warship, which sets the tone for the next several years of back-and-forth fighting. Philip sets up a version of the Inquisition in Amsterdam, but eventually the Calvinists prev

LIFE CLUES

“What is true for children is true for all of us,” asserts the author, the co-creator of the Blue’s Clues franchise as well as the creator of the Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and Super Why! children’s television shows. In this book, Santomero outlines 20 “life clues,” concepts for adults to ponder while relating how these principles were weaved into her programs. A protégé of Fred Rogers, Santomero starts things off with Life Clue #1, “I Like You Just the Way You Are,” discussing how the vener

BROTHERS

Slate, author of Colored Cosmopolitanism and Lord Cornwallis Is Dead, worshipped his older brother, Peter, “my best friend and the closest thing I had to a father.” As an adult, the author realized that Peter would always be a mystery to him not just because of their seven-year age gap, but also because of the different experiences race imposed upon their lives. The brothers shared the same White American mother, but Nico’s father was White, Peter’s Black. Slate’s maternal grandparents at first