Alice Cary

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Trust Her

Review by Alice Cary

Set aside some time once you start reading Trust Her, because after a page of what seems like an idyllic summer outing on the Irish coast, Tessa Daly is plunged into a nightmare: held hostage and forced back into a life she thought she had left behind forever. Flynn Berry fans will recognize Tessa as the heroine of Berry’s bestselling novel Northern Spy. In that book, Tessa’s sister, Marian, was an IRA member who was secretly feeding information to MI5 in hopes of fostering peace talks, and she recruited Tessa to help carry out this task. 

Berry’s crisp prose, artful plotting and short chapters make for another thrilling read. Trust Her takes place three years after Northern Spy’s explosive finale, with the sisters now living in Dublin and focusing on their young children. Narrator Tessa notes early on, “I’d stopped being scared of the IRA in the daylight. Stupid, unbelievable logic. . . . We should have seen this coming.” While the two mothers have been immersed in strep throat, croup and pickup times, Tessa notes, “The IRA haven’t gone away, after all. We’d only stopped thinking about them.” 

Why Flynn Berry wrote a surprise sequel to ‘Northern Spy.’

Now the IRA demands that Tessa reconnect with her and Marian’s MI5 handler, Eamonn, to try to turn him into an informant. Tessa wants absolutely no part of this, but nonetheless, when she sees Eamonn again, their mutual attraction resurfaces. It’s a cat-and-mouse game of the best kind, interspersing plenty of high-octane, frightening moments with Tessa’s quotidian joys, concerns and exhaustion as a single mother to 4-year-old Finn. This juxtaposition is the rocket fuel of spy dramas, and Berry tackles both the mundane and the extraordinary equally well, with perfect pacing throughout. While this is a story full of long-held secrets and startling revelations, newcomers will have no trouble coming up to speed—even if they will likely want to read the book they’ve missed.

On top of her love-hate relationship with Eamonn, Tessa harbors complicated feelings toward Marian for drawing her into this web in the first place. Trust Her is brilliantly titled, gesturing towards “the long chain reaction” of personal ties and vendettas that led to political turmoil and splintered lives for so many families. As Tessa notes, “I know, in my bones, that the conflict won’t end in my lifetime. We’re all trapped in it, caught in lockstep.” Perhaps, at least, this might mean readers will be hearing more from Tessa and Marian Daly.

Set aside some time once you start reading Trust Her, because Flynn Berry’s return to the world of Northern Spy is nothing short of thrilling.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman

Review by Alice Cary

Gennifer Choldenko’s The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman is a moving story about an 11-year-old abandoned by his single mom and left to care for his 3-year-old sister, Boo, inspired by Choldenko’s own childhood experiences of having undependable parents and a caring older brother who acted as a surrogate parent. Fans of the Newbery Honor author’s Tales from Alcatraz series won’t be disappointed. Hank is an engaging narrator, and his desperate plight, as well as the caring community of characters he encounters, are reminiscent of Kate DiCamilo’s Beverly, Right Here.

After about a week alone in their apartment, facing eviction with no money, food, or electricity, Hank, who has no idea who his father is, realizes that his mother isn’t coming back anytime soon. Hank loves his mom, but he knows  that sometimes she “will drive to Mexico in the middle of the night or invite strange people to our apartment or not come home at all.”

A dreamer, but also smart and responsible, Hank wonders how he and Boo will survive, musing that at least the kids in From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler had money for tickets to the museum they found themselves living in. Instead, he lands on the doorstep of Lou Ann Adler, a friend of his late, beloved grandmother. This hard-nosed, 60-ish daycare provider welcomes Boo with open arms, but peers sharply at preteen Hank, announcing, “I’m not wild about teenagers.”

Hank does an excellent job coping with the endless uncertainties in his life, which are expertly channeled via Choldenko’s succinctly effective prose. Despite Hank’s grim situation, this is an upbeat, hopeful book that shows how supportive communities can rise up out of seemingly nowhere. Hank befriends Lou Ann’s kindhearted neighbor Ray Delgado, as well as Ray’s large, extended family. He attends a new school, where he finds an inspiring basketball coach as well as a lively, diverse group of friends. His relationship with Boo, who equally adores him, forms the heart of this novel: “Without Boo I feel like a shoe in a sock drawer,” Hank explains. Their journey features diligent social workers and a dangerous and dramatic appearance by Hank and Boo’s mother that forces Hank to make a gut-wrenching choice.

Readers will immediately be drawn into the world of The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, whose endearing and memorable characters will inspire repeated readings. This book tackles a tricky subject with grace, showing readers that even seemingly hopeless situations can offer happy endings.

Hank Hooperman does an excellent job coping with the endless uncertainties in his life, which are expertly channeled via Gennifer Choldenko’s succinctly effective prose.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

The Lion Women of Tehran

Review by Alice Cary

“Writing about Iranian women has been a central theme of my life,” Marjan Kamali says in the author’s note to The Lion Women of Tehran. On the heels of The Stationery Shop and Together Tea, Kamali continues this pursuit with the riveting saga of the friendship between Ellie and Homa, which begins in 1950 in Tehran, when the girls are 7, and continues through 2022. The events of their lives are interwoven with Iran’s recent history, including the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the 1979 Revolution and the violence and brutality of the following fundamentalist regime. Prepare to lose yourself in a historical drama that evokes the sights and sounds of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, with its maze of stalls and bartering merchants, while artfully exploring the labyrinthine complexities of deep friendship—especially jealousy, betrayal and forgiveness.

After Ellie’s father dies suddenly, Ellie and her mother are forced to move to a new neighborhood, where she meets Homa. Ellie’s mother likes to constantly remind her daughter that they are descendants of royalty and is horrified by their new surroundings, as well as Ellie’s new friend: Homa comes from a poor family, and her father is in jail for opposing the monarchy. Ellie, however, loves Homa’s warm, welcoming household, and wishes Homa’s family was her own. Their class difference, along with Ellie’s mom’s disapproval, drives a wedge into the girls’ friendship. At one point, Ellie muses that Homa “would always see me as too privileged, too shallow, too rich.”

Kamali closely examines how the country’s changing regimes have affected women’s rights, bringing the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in police custody (after allegedly violating the mandatory hijab law) into the novel’s conclusion. From an early age, Homa hopes to become a lawyer who crusades for change and women’s freedom, but the government as well as an accidental betrayal by Ellie cruelly sidetrack those plans. Homa notes, “That’s how losses of rights build. They start small. And then soon, the rights are stripped in droves.” Kamali writes deftly of the intersection between personal and political issues. She also excels at exploring the bonds of female friendship, as well as the changing and complex nature of mother-daughter relationships, especially in terms of heritage, family shame and secrets.

Reminiscent of The Kite Runner and My Brilliant Friend, The Lion Women of Tehran is a mesmerizing tale featuring endearing characters who will linger in readers’ hearts. 

Prepare to lose yourself in Marjan Kamali’s The Lion Women of Tehran, a historical drama that evokes the sights and sounds of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar while artfully exploring the labyrinthian complexities of deep friendship.
NonfictionHistoryBlack HistoryAmerican History

Night Flyer

Review by Alice Cary

National Book Award-winning author Tiya Miles has tackled a variety of tough, intriguing subjects in books like Wild Girls and All That She Carried. She felt stymied, however, as she approached the life of the legendary Harriett Tubman. As one friend told her, “No one could catch her then. It’s going to be hard to catch her now.” 

And yet that is exactly what Miles so beautifully achieves in Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People. One of the biggest hurdles Miles faced was Tubman’s illiteracy, which meant her life experiences were all documented by others—“typically white, middle-class, antislavery women who recorded her speech and told her story.” Despite the roadblock of such “swamped sources,” often “submerged in the perspectives and biases of others,” Miles applauds a number of existing traditional biographies. As she explains, her goal was not to replicate these, but rather to explore Tubman’s eco-spiritual worldview. 

In her trademark deeply researched, thoughtful and exquisite prose, Miles successfully avoids popular depictions of Tubman as a superwoman “prepackaged in a box of stock stories and folksy sayings” among other “abolitionist avengers.” Instead, she places her firmly within the realm of Black female faith culture, noting that she was “one of a kind—singularly special and part of a cultural collective.” To illuminate Tubman’s spiritual purview, Miles delves into several memoirs written or dictated by Black women evangelists of Tubman’s time, writing that their relationships with the divine mandated “challenging entrenched social systems of racial and gender subjugation at the risk of [their] own safety, health, and social acceptance”

Calling her “arguably the most famous Black woman ecologist in U.S. history,” Miles also brings to life the haunting sights, sounds and dark, bewildering moments that Tubman experienced as she led herself and others to safety through the night wilderness. Tubman studied the plants, animals and stars as a matter of necessity for survival, believing that these god-given guides were proof of the need for spiritual and political liberation. 

Often, when Tubman told her story to biographers, she touched the writer, as if “by laying her hand on this person, her feelings may be transmitted.” With Night Flyer, Tiya Miles seems to transmit the weight of her subject’s hand and heart.

With the exquisite Night Flyer, Tiya Miles looks at Harriet Tubman from an entirely new perspective: her spirituality.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Pizza Face

Review by Alice Cary

“The big ‘P’ is the worst,” according to Rex Ogle’s Pizza Face, a spot-on graphic novel featuring the talented, prolific author as a scrawny 12-year-old suffering through the onset of puberty in seventh grade puberty. It’s a welcome sequel to Four Eyes, which chronicled Rex’s sixth grade year.

Middle grade readers will readily identify with Rex, whose acne erupts like a “volcano on my forehead” on the first day of seventh grade. “I’m a mutant, but without any cool superpowers,” he laments, his angst readily transmitted through Dave Valeza’s emotion-filled illustrations, which showcase Rex’s ongoing mortification via facial expressions, body language and onomatopoeia—especially the dreaded early morning beep of Rex’s alarm clock, and Rex’s frequent foot stomping.

Ogle and Valeza effectively spotlight brief scenes from Rex’s unfolding school year, including the horrors of first-period gym, where Rex, the smallest and least sporty, is often picked last. “You’re like our wittle baby,” one girl tells him. Things get worse day after day, week after week, as friendships unravel and misunderstandings multiply, especially with his best friends Scott and Kennedy (who is also sort of his girlfriend). Rex faces several bullies, and starts hanging out with a troublemaker when his friends desert him, ratcheting up the action. Each heartfelt scene draws readers into Rex’s misery as he longs for a growth spurt and a deep voice like the other boys.

Rex’s supportive but exhausted, constantly working parents can’t afford acne cream or deodorant, adding to Rex’s frustrations. His Abuela comes to the rescue, sending Zit-Zapper cream, offering helpful advice and taking Rex to a dermatologist.

This book has broad appeal, showing a variety of characters with different challenges. A boy named Brody, for instance, has the opposite problem of Rex, confessing, “Look at me. I’m a hairy, oversized monster. I’m thirteen and look like I’m almost twenty.” Meanwhile, female characters are teased and feel self-conscious, while both a wealthy and a popular boy grapple with their own issues. As Rex concludes, “It took all year to realize most kids are going through the same things as me.” Pizza Face is a fresh take on an age-old crisis and will help adolescents feel more empathetic and less alone while navigating their own physical and emotional changes. Here’s hoping Rex’s misadventures continue in future installments.

Pizza Face is a fresh take on the age-old crisis of puberty that will help adolescents feel more empathetic and less alone while navigating their own physical and emotional changes.
NonfictionMemoir

Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones

Review by Alice Cary

As a child in Kashmir, India, Priyanka Mattoo cherished time spent at her maternal grandparents’ family compound, its several buildings full of her “outspoken and uproarious” relatives. “Imagine an empty cup under a gushing faucet,” she writes. “It fills up, it tips over, the faucet keeps gushing, and the cup thinks, I really don’t need any more water, but, okay, this feels nice. That’s the adoration I felt from my family.”

That luxurious, gushing feeling is exactly what readers of Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones will experience while reading this memoir in essays. Stylistically, it’s The Secret Garden meets Nora Ephron: Mattoo serves up memories with both fairy tale-like charm and thoroughly modern, riotously funny observations.

The book’s title comes from a Kashmiri phrase used to describe “things so rare and precious that the listener should question their very existence.” That sentiment has defined Mattoo’s life since political upheaval prevented her family from returning to their beloved homeland. Luckily, Mattoo’s father was an internationally renowned pediatric nephrologist, and his career took them around the world to London, Saudi Arabia and, finally, America. This expat life blessed Mattoo with intriguing experiences, but also left her longing for Kashmir with “a deep well of sadness that follows me around.”

But Mattoo keeps her sense of humor, as when describing the day she taught her 9-year-old son how to microwave a hot dog (“I briefly drifted into a vision of reading magazines while my child makes dinner.”). The essays can be read separately, but are roughly chronological, explaining how she veered away from her “life plan” and married an American Jew instead of “a nice Kashmiri boy,” didn’t become a doctor and instead followed her creative spirit, forging a life as a writer, filmmaker and talent agent.

In “How to Be Alone,” she writes of her middle school years, enduring painful prejudices that turned her into a loner, until she eventually realized, “I could make anyone my friend, and I would make anyone my friend.” She does just that with Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones—a book of enormous heart, humor and insight that will leave readers wanting more of Priyanka Mattoo’s company.

The Secret Garden meets Nora Ephron in Priyanka Mattoo’s riotously funny memoir in essays, Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Age 16

Review by Alice Cary

Rosena Fung’s much-lauded debut, Living with Viola, explored the mental health and cultural challenges faced by a middle school girl. Her second graphic novel, Age 16, is an excellent examination of a familiar theme—a teenage girl trying to find herself—which Fung explores more fully through depicting the inheritance of trauma and misunderstandings over generations.

In Toronto in 2000, Rosalind (Roz) begins her morning by stepping on the scale before heading off to high school. It’s a dizzying time, with friends applying to college and talking about prom, the latter of which causes Roz to fantasize about a slimmer version of herself attending. But at home, her mother, Lydia, chastises her for her eating habits and claims Roz “inherited my slow metabolism and bad genes.” Then Roz’s grandmother, Mei Laan, appears unannounced from Hong Kong after an absence of 10 years. This thin but clearly unhappy woman offers nothing but criticism to her daughter and granddaughter.

Two additional timelines, following Roz’s mother and grandmother in their own youths, are naturally woven into this present narrative. Readers travel to Hong Kong in 1972, where 16-year-old Lydia loves to dance but faces nonstop barbs about her weight: “Get your head out of the clouds,” Mei Laan advises. “A girl like you can’t be a star.” Thankfully, a family friend, Auntie Ping, provides encouragement and guidance. In scenes from Guangdong, China, 1954, miserable Mei Laan works in the fields and is always hungry. When she complains, her anguished mother cries, “We didn’t survive the Japanese only to have our family ruined by a big mouth!”

“I wanted to make sure each place was a character in its own right.” Read our Q&A with Rosena Fung here. 

The graphic novel format is the perfect medium to succinctly convey Age 16’s heavy themes of inherited trauma, and how Roz, her mother and grandmother share dreams, doubts and difficulties as they make their own way regardless of absent fathers and husbands. Fung’s lively art makes each generation’s needs feel urgent and relevant. She expertly glides between time periods, making Roz the focus, while examining how all three women’s behaviors are tied together by their shared history. Roz is a likable, realistic character who dreams of going to art school, perhaps becoming a photographer. Alongside her, a cast of high school girls, including Roz’s best friend Victoria, worry about their futures—especially their prom dreams.

With its unique multigenerational approach, Age 16 expertly tackles perceptions of weight, self-worth and parental conflict. In the face of seemingly impossible relationship repair and resolution, Fung offers an engaging, naturally evolving conclusion. As Roz’s mother explains, “When things get tough and you feel like you don’t belong, you can make the world fit you.”

With its unique multigenerational approach, Age 16 expertly tackles perceptions of weight, self-worth and parental conflict.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Until You Find the Sun

Review by Alice Cary

By day, Aminah stays busy seeing friends and eating mangoes while basking in the sunshine of her tropical home; at night, she enjoys cozy times with her grandfather, Da, as he reads aloud stories of great adventurers. Aminah’s world suddenly changes, when her parents announce they are moving and Da will stay behind. “I am always with you,” he advises. “You will find sunshine wherever you go.” Debut author Maryam Hassan, a first-generation child of Pakistani immigrants, writes in a realistic, reassuring way about displacement in Until You Find the Sun, a story that will appeal to a wide audience of young readers, whether the changes they face in their routines are big or small. 

Despite Da’s encouragement, Aminah struggles to find any sunshine in the cold, bustling city of her new home. Her only source of joy comes from calls with Da, to whom she yearns to return. Anna Wilson’s buoyant art energizes every page, highlighting the stark contrast between Aminah’s hometown—bathed in bright colors and “full of sparkles”—and her dreary new world, drenched in dark blue shadows. Eventually, a new winter coat, as bright as the sun, gives Aminah “a new glittering glow in her heart,” while an overnight snowfall opens her eyes to fresh types of beauty and joy. 

A new friend further rejuvenates Aminah, allowing her to start enjoying her situation. Wilson uses patterns and shades of bright orange and yellow as motifs that connect Aminah to both her native land and to Da. Toward the end, Aminah gazes with anticipation at her vision of a wintry, icy-blue castle high on a hill, a symbol of new adventures waiting to be discovered.

Until You Find the Sun is a joyful book that celebrates new adventures while acknowledging the challenges that transition may bring. It’s also a reminder of the powerful bond between grandparent and child, which remains even when distance keeps them apart.

Until You Find the Sun is a joyful book that celebrates new adventures while acknowledging the challenges that a big move may bring.
NonfictionPhotographyLifestyles

The Heirloomist

Review by Alice Cary

If you are the sort of person who can’t bear to part with sentimental objects—“That belonged to Mamaw!”—this book is for you. Packed inside The Heirloomist: 100 Heirlooms and the Stories They Tell are photographs and stories of 100 items belonging to everyday as well as famous people, including Gloria Steinem, Rosanne Cash and Gabby Giffords. Their treasures might be a Rolex watch or a Rolleiflex camera—or simply scribbled notes, ticket stubs and even a plateful of spaghetti and meatballs.

After becoming curator of her family’s important items, Shana Novak turned to other people’s stuff. Her photography and storytelling business, The Heirloomist, has documented over 1,500 keepsakes since 2015. No matter their financial value, she writes, “all are priceless, precisely because their stories will play your heartstrings like a symphony.” Take, for example, the daughter of a New York City firefighter who died on 9/11. Several years after that tragedy, she and her mother opened a toy chest and found an old Magna Doodle, on which her father had written: “Dear Tiana, I love you. Daddy.”

The Heirloomist is meant to be shared with loved ones, especially those who harangue you to declutter. They may even start rummaging through basement boxes with a freshly appreciative eye.

Shana Novak’s gorgeous, poignant The Heirloomist documents 100 treasures beloved by everyday and famous people.
FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

Swift River

Review by Alice Cary

“This isn’t a mystery or a legend,” Diamond Newberry says. “It’s a story about leaving.” She’s the 16-year-old narrator of Essie Chambers’ debut novel, Swift River, a mesmerizing account of inherited trauma in what was once a sundown town, where residents threatened violence towards nonwhite people after sunset. In 1987 in the fictional New England mill town of Swift River, Diamond—the only nonwhite resident—lives with her unemployed white mom. They have been alone since the mysterious disappearance of Diamond’s Black father seven years ago. He was presumably the victim of racial violence, although the town rumor mill churns out sightings of him from time to time.

Diamond and her mother inhabit her deceased grandmother’s decaying house, which may be repossessed at any moment. Now that enough time has passed to have her missing husband declared legally dead, Diamond’s mother is counting on his life insurance money to turn their lives around. Meanwhile, Diamond yearns to escape and is secretly taking driving lessons. She and her mother hitchhike to get around, especially after Diamond, who weighs 298 pounds, allows her bike to be stolen because it had become too difficult to ride.

Diamond feels like a misfit in both society and her family, noting of her maternal lineage, “I am a break in their pure Irish stock; the first Black person, the end of the whites.” Chapters set in 1980 explain the events leading up to her father’s disappearance; at that time Diamond told her father, “You ruined my skin!” Her understanding of his family blossoms when the teenager receives a series of letters from Southern relatives. Black people once ran Swift River’s mills, until escalating racist hostility forced all but one to flee to Georgia during an event that became known as “The Leaving.”

While Diamond may sound like a down-and-out, tragic character, she’s anything but. This gutsy girl has a keen intellect, a beautiful singing voice and an irrepressible, hopeful outlook. Her often-humorous narration is the novel’s central, propelling force. She befriends a white girl, Shelly, and their page-turning misadventures offer sharp insights into friendship, class, racial bias and discrimination, and coming of age.

With finely crafted prose, never a saccharine moment and a plot that skillfully weaves together past and present, Chambers masterfully delivers the message of Swift River: “Our instincts, our deepest intuitions, are really our ancestral memory; our people speaking through us.”

Swift River is a mesmerizing account of inherited trauma in a “sundown town,” propelled by the insightful and often-humorous narration of 16-year-old Diamond Newberry, the town’s only Black resident.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Mouse on the River

Review by Alice Cary

After sharing a year with Mouse in Mouse’s Wood, young readers can now enjoy a day on the river with Mouse on the River: A Journey Through Nature, a quiet picture book full of charm. As the titular hero spends the day rowing down a river that eventually meets the sea, the most dramatic event is a passing rainstorm—making this a good choice for a soothing bedtime tale.

William Snow’s rhyming text moves the story along as Mouse begins his solo journey early in the morning, while fellow anthropomorphic friends wave goodbye from the dock. This is very much an experiential book, with a multitude of details to scour, beginning with the full-spread map showing Mouse’s planned route. Numerous die-cut flaps encourage keen observation as they reveal cozy, detailed interiors of buildings along the way, including a floating house, a café and a treehouse. Additional fold-out flaps appearing as trees enhance the sense of Mouse’s ongoing progress, enlarging several scenes beyond the book’s borders. Once the journey is complete, an illustrated list of Mouse’s equipment—as well as depictions of flora and fauna encountered along the way—will encourage enthusiastic readers to go back and find these items. 

The star of this show is Alice Melvin’s rich illustrations, which are chock-full of details: squirrels having tea inside a bright cafe; a fox waiting on a customer in a well-stocked bakery; Mouse camping snugly in the rowboat underneath the stars. The book brings to mind another one that quickly became a favorite in our house when my girls were young: Welcome to Mouse Village, written by Gyles Brandreth and illustrated by Mary Hall.

Mouse on the River is a well-planned, enchanting adventure worthy of repeat enjoyment.

Mouse on the River is a well-planned, enchanting adventure in which the most dramatic event is a passing rainstorm—making this richly illustrated picture book a good choice for a soothing bedtime tale.
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Challenger

Review by Alice Cary

Adam Higginbotham’s international bestseller, Midnight in Chernobyl, chronicled the disastrous 1986 nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine that was caused by a Soviet program plagued with a toxic combination of unrealistic timelines and dangerous cost cutting. His new book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, describes a surprisingly similar catastrophe that very same year, this time at the hands of NASA: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger that killed all seven people aboard. Hefty, compelling and propulsive, Challenger overflows with revelatory details.

Reading this book is like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion. One can’t help but hear a drumbeat of dread while getting to know the astronauts—Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee and Michael Smith—and their families. Details will stay with readers long after they close the book: McAuliffe’s appearance on The Tonight Show, her husband’s increasing anxiety at launch time, the horror and disbelief of the families as they watch their loved ones die, the grim details of the recovery efforts and the attempts of professionals both to warn against the mission and to bring to light why it failed.

Among the latter is engineer Roger Boisjoly, who, over a year before the explosion, wrote a memo voicing fears to senior management, stating, “It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action . . . we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch facilities.” Unbelievably, in the hours just before the mission commenced, Boisjoly and a team of 13 other engineers unanimously advised against the launch, yet their concerns were not even voiced up the command chain. After the explosion, physicist Richard Feynman sought to bring clarity to the commission tasked with investigating the tragedy. The scientist noted that “the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product to the point of fantasy.”

Higginbotham excels at delineating not only the science, technology and history of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, but also the bureaucratic snafus and mismanagement that led to the catastrophe, including economic pressures and a nonstop race to get people into space. As with Midnight in Chernobyl, Challenger proves Higginbotham is a master chronicler of disasters, demonstrating an unflinching ability to pierce through politics, power and bureaucracies with laser-sharp focus.

Challenger proves Adam Higginbotham is a master chronicler of disasters, piercing through politics, power and bureaucracies with laser-sharp focus.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Safiyyah’s War

Review by Alice Cary

In 1940, Safiyyah lives in the Grand Mosque of Paris with her parents, grandmother Setti, toddler sister and several other families. Smart, curious and spunky, she loves exploring the city—especially the map room of the nearby library, as she dreams of becoming a world explorer. Her carefree ways quickly change, however, as Nazi soldiers approach and invade, plunging her orderly world into the chaos of World War II. Setti warns Safiyyah, “There will come a day when you have the choice to use what you’ve been given in one way or another. . . . There is no use in a million maps unless they lead you to light.”

Hiba Noor Khan’s debut novel, Safiyyah’s War, is a beautifully written, well-plotted work of historical fiction based on the heroic efforts of Mosque activists who forged identity documents for Jews, hid them in the mosque and led an estimated 500 to 1700 through the catacombs to safety. Khan does a particularly good job at making Safiyyah not only an eyewitness but also a bold heroine who dives into action, risking her life for others. 

As Paris becomes increasingly dangerous, Khan introduces a diverse, multigenerational cast that enriches the soul of this novel. There’s Setti, who longs for her native Algeria, which she was forced to leave as a teenager; Safiyyah’s father, who tends to Mosque business and taught Safiyyah to always help others; Monsieur Cassin, an elderly, well-known botanist who shows Safiyyah the wonders of an adventurous life; Timothée, a refugee shepherd boy from northern France; and Hana, a Jewish classmate whose parents have been captured by the Nazis and who comes to live with Safiyyah’s family. 

Khan builds an intricate drama around these characters, ramping up the tension with each chapter as Safiyyah carefully observes what is going on outside in the city as well as within the confines of the Mosque. Adept at investigating, Safiyyah soon finds herself helping the resistance out in unimaginable ways, especially during the novel’s thrilling climax. 

Safiyyah’s War brings WWII Paris clearly into focus as it shows how people of all ages—from different cultures and religions—can band together in the face of evil. Khan is a writer to watch, and Safiyyah is a heroine worth remembering.

Hiba Noor Khan’s debut novel, Safiyyah’s War, is a beautifully written, well-plotted work of historical fiction based on the heroic efforts of activists at the Grand Mosque of Paris who led Jews to safety.

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