www.passions.com

LOST BELIEVERS

The Kol family has lived alone in southern Siberia for decades. They belong to an ultratraditional sect of Christianity known as the Old Believers, and persecution by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviets has driven them into the wilderness. Agafia, now in her 30s, has never met anyone outside her family, though she's sometimes visited by visions of Peter the Great. The Kols’ isolation ends when a helicopter delivers Galina, a successful geologist, and her pilot, Snow Crane, who are surve

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

GLORIA BEE'S BIG PICTURE DAY

There are many words to describe Gloria B. Wilson: enthusiastic, adventurous, dedicated, and most of all, artistic. She loves to paint scenes from her everyday life with her favorite brush, which has been passed down by female painters in her family for several generations. Without it, she doesn’t feel that she can make art at all. One day, Gloria is ready to complete her at-home art gallery when she realizes she’s lost the heirloom art tool: “How in the WORLD am I going to create my art and fi

THE DUSTY ROAD TO HOMICIDE

This novel tells the somber story of Gaithersburg, Maryland–basedDusty Sampson, whose father abandons the family to live with a girlfriend when Dusty is 4. His mother, Dolores, tries her best to raise Dusty alone while working two jobs alongside intermittent and verbally abusive boyfriends. Dusty lacks parental guidance and struggles with attention deficit disorder in grade school; years later, he begins bullying other students for money, then takes up shoplifting and experiments with drugs. He

RUPTURED

In her second verse novel, Fritz uses narrative free verse and the imagery of oceans and lighthouses in rhythmic poetry to tell the story of Claire Sloan, a 13-year-old who navigates an awakening sense of self along with the shock of witnessing her mother suffer a serious medical event. The poems, told in Claire’s first-person narration, are divided into three parts that build on one another like successive waves. In “Low Tide,” readers learn about Claire’s family’s summer vacation in Maine and

EVERYWHERE BEAUTY IS HARLEM

Roy DeCarava (1919-2009) gets off work, and now his “time is his own.” He loads a roll of film in his camera and pays attention to what he sees around him in Harlem. Relying on his senses, he takes in the city. With his camera, he captures a variety of sights. A boy drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. An artist showing his paintings as the sunlight catches his hat. A mother and son: the love in the boy’s eyes. A crushed soda can. And then there are the sights he can’t catch. A man holding a chi

THE MUD ANGELS

Attired in conservative skirts, heels, and jackets, American study-abroad students switch gears to help rescue books and manuscripts buried by the devastating Arno flood. The mud was full of adulterants, especially fuel oil. Adding a fictional detail, the author gives the Florentine child who narrates the story an ancestor whose “hand-printed, older-than-old, one-of-a-kind book” is imperiled. Despite the danger, the students work to save the texts. It’s a heartwarming but only partially told st

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

A HORSE NAMED SKY

Parry’s moving story follows the pattern of her recent animal tales, A Wolf Called Wander (2019) and A Whale of the Wild (2020), chronicling a wild animal’s life in the first person, imagining its point of view, and detailing and appreciating the natural world it inhabits. As Sky grows from wobbly newborn to leader of his family, he faces more than the usual challenges for colts who must fight their stallions or leave their herds when they are grown up. Fagan’s appealing black-and-white illustr

QUANTA IN DISTRESS

Hassani observes that quantum physics has always attracted those with an interest in New Age spirituality, especially since the “rush of gurus” to the West in the 1960s. The injection of Eastern thought into Western philosophy, and the fascination with occultism in the West, had much to do with this rush, as well as the inherent “weirdness of quantum physics.” Many of the founders of quantum physics, like Schrödinger, Bohr, and Heisenberg, encouraged this association by publicly linking their w

THE SHELL HOUSE DETECTIVES

Ally Bright has been a bit of a recluse since the death of her husband, Bill, last year. Though Bill was a well-regarded police detective in Porthpella, Ally prefers to spend her time at home in Shell House, fabricating sculptures from trash washed up by the sea, and isn’t close to her neighbors. When her daughter, Evie, tries to convince her to move to Australia, Ally—who has a hard time even leaving Shell House—is hard-pressed to answer Evie’s question about what’s left for her in the town. J

Homo Novus: A Brief His-story of Tomorrow

As he has watched flurries of technological innovations and trends toward interconnection change our world, the author has identified positive developments, but he is also alarmed by much of what he sees. He notes how a sense of impending doom seems to hang over contemporary civilization—but as a Christian, Welekwe believes that everything happens according to God’s plan. In his introduction, the author explains that his book is a response to the works Sapiens and Homo Deus by Israeli historian

THE WEIRD SISTERS

Hildegurp, Yuckmina, and Glubbifer are perhaps the most unusual residents of the town of Covenly. Lacking a car, they travel by broom, and they run a pet emporium and a detective agency out of their home. Sadly, their neighbors are too spooked to visit—except for young Jessica Nibley. The sisters are depressed by their lack of business, while Jessica is at loose ends with school out for the summer. When Jessica, attempting to elevate everyone’s mood, takes them to the tire swing, they’re shocke

LOVE NOVEL

In an urban apartment complex, a husband and wife are fighting again. He’s an unemployed writer and Dante fan, trying to protest government corruption. She’s an actress, now home with the baby. “Words, words, words,” he screams. She slams a door, waking the child. “There was no one to turn to for help, for support, for some understanding or a grain of optimism, because like they said on the news, and like he always claimed too, it will only get worse…” She’s right. Things do get worse. Yet out

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

UNREDEEMABLE AND OTHER STORIES

To read this debut collection is to confront the messy, fragile, joyful business of being alive. “Everyone is their most interesting while they’re becoming their best, not after,” says the eponymous character in “What Crissy Calls Becoming,” a wildly unpredictable story about a man who’s unlucky in love, his new acquaintance, and the intense, more-than-friends/less-than-lovers relationship they develop. It is this “becoming” that unites the characters in these stories, a broad cast that hails f

BEE CONSPIRACY

Special Agent Kelso Bagley is an entomologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who’s recently been disciplined for his unorthodox arrest of an Arizona butterfly thief. Det. John Alan “Duke” Wayne is a middle-aged Los Angeles police detective on administrative leave after stepping out of a bar and pursuing a criminal in a high-speed chase. Kelso’s fastidious and naïve, and Duke’s flighty and worldly. They get called to a scene where Howard Skulberry, a UCLA entomologist, died after honeybe

HATTIE'S WAR

Harriett “Hattie” Alanson Howell is only 14 years old but has already experienced major loss. When Hattie was 10, her closest sibling, Jennie, died of an illness. Hattie’s father, Hannibal—a successful sign painter who, like Hattie, loved to draw—was killed in the Civil War shortly before her birth. All Hattie’s mother will say is “I pray he had a good death.” As a teenager in New York state’s Finger Lakes area who battles depression, which she refers to as the “Raven,” Hattie decides to look f

PERFECTLY NICE NEIGHBORS

Welcome to Blenheim: There are homes with perfect lawns, “neat streets and perfectly nice neighbors.” Despite financial difficulties in the wake of the pandemic, Salma and Bilal Khatun have moved there out of concern for their 18-year-old son, Zain, who's gotten into trouble at school. At a May Day barbecue they're invited to in their first week, there are undertones of discomfort in the words of their mostly white neighbors, but, exhaustingly, that’s nothing unexpected—but then Salma sees her

THE HEXOLOGISTS

When the royal secretary interrupts the Wilbies’ teatime because the king is asking to be baked alive into a cake, it’s just a normal day for the magical investigators. It seems a blackmailer’s claim of an illegitimate heir is driving the king mad. Iz wants nothing to do with royalty, but Warren reminds her that an unrecognized heir creates a power vacuum, which means Luthland's vulnerable will suffer all the more. When a forest golem breaks down the cellar door and heads straight for the royal