Theater kids of all ages will adore Take It From the Top, Claire Swinarski’s effervescently heartfelt and cathartic tribute to the joys and dramas that come with life in the limelight.
Each year, Eowyn and best friend Jules tread the boards at Lamplighter Lake Summer Camp for the Arts in the Wisconsin Northwoods. They instantly bonded in their first year, but now as they enter their sixth—at 13 years old—a once rock-solid friendship bolstered by elaborate plans for a shared future (they’ll be famous together!) has become a tenuous truce at best.
Eowyn’s not sure why Jules is icing her out, so she buries her feelings in intense audition prep for the big end-of-summer production, in which she’s determined to get a lead role. Jules is prepping too . . . but what if they both score big parts? Can a friendship that’s painfully broken be healed in time for a harmonious opening night?
As in her middle grade debut, epistolary mystery What Happened to Rachel Riley?—a BookPage Best Middle Grade Book of 2023 and 2024 Edgar Award nominee—Swinarski has created a story rife with realism, empathy and well-drawn characters navigating their figuring-themselves-out years. She also plays with structure to excellent effect, alternating Eowyn’s perspective in the present with Jules’ in the years leading up to this pivotal sixth summer.
It’s a genuine treat to follow along as the talented, hardworking tweens in Take It From the Top strive to understand others’ perspectives and translate their onstage performances into how they address real life. As Eowyn muses, “Up there on the stage . . . You could be someone you weren’t. Or maybe you could be someone you really were.” Bravo!
It’s a genuine treat to follow along as the talented, hardworking tweens in Take It From the Top strive to understand others’ perspectives and translate their onstage performances into how they address real life.
Shelley Burr’s gripping sophomore mystery, Murder Town, is set in rural Rainier, Australia, a fictional small town located halfway between Melbourne and Sydney. It used to be known as a nice place to take a break from that long journey, what with its pretty Fountain Park and popular local businesses like Earl Grey’s Yarn and Teashop. But then the “Rainier Ripper” came to town and murdered three people. Now, 17 years later, Fountain Park is but one sad stop on a proposed Ripper-centric tour some residents view as their last chance to return Rainier to its former prosperity. Alas, on the eve of the big vote, the potential tour guide is murdered, leaving Rainier awash in terror once again. Can teashop owner and amateur sleuth Gemma Guillory solve the mystery—perhaps with input from Lane Holland, the investigator from Burr’s bestselling debut novel, WAKE—before the killer strikes again?
Congratulations on your second novel! Your first, WAKE, won the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award in 2019 and soon after became an international bestseller. Now, here we are on the eve of Murder Town’s American debut! How has life changed for you between book one and book two? It’s been a whirlwind! The biggest life change between book one and two is that I gave up my day job in environmental policy and now write full time. Our family moved out to a rural area and I now split my time between writing and farm chores.
“I try to remember that a murder is a death, and a death leaves behind grieving people.”
Both of your books explore what life is like for survivors many years after a crime has occurred—their grief and anger, and their fear when mysteries remain unsolved and they don’t know if neighbors are friend or foe. What intrigues you about looking at these fictional cases from a longer-distance perspective, so to speak? I try to remember that a murder is a death, and a death leaves behind grieving people. It affects the person who found the body, the people who investigated the case, the people left wondering if they could have stopped it. I like to enter the story at the point where those impacts have had a chance to ripple outwards.
The challenge with a cold case is how to create a sense of urgency. If it’s been 10, 20 years, what’s the hurry to solve it now? I need to make sure I’m answering that question for the reader. Including a present-day crime changes that equation, but doesn’t solve it.
Did any real-life cases or favorite thrillers spark your desire to write crime fiction? For both WAKE and Murder Town, I had a moment where I was reading something about a real case that sparked an “I have to write this book” moment, but I wouldn’t consider either book based on the case I was reading about. When I read true crime or news stories, I’m not looking for details to add to stories, I’m looking for people in a situation that strikes a chord.
For Murder Town, that moment came while reading a news article about the South Australian town Snowtown. When I’m talking about the book at home, that’s all I have to say. At a writer’s festival, I can drop that name and watch the audience get what I mean immediately. Internationally it’s not as well known. The Snowtown murders are infamous here, both for their cruelty and for the unusual method of concealing the bodies. They were stored in barrels in a bank vault.
The article discussed the dilemma facing residents of Snowtown, a name synonymous with murder. Do they try to create distance? Change the name? Or lean into it? People stop in the town to take selfies in front of the bank. Should they capitalize on that?
I immediately empathized, and wanted to tell the story of people faced with a similar choice.
Your stories depict disturbing crimes and spend time in the minds of the people who commit them, the victims who endure them and those left reeling from grief and trauma. Is there anything in particular you do to get into the right headspace to craft these narratives, to inhabit these characters and to transition back to your real life afterward? Sunlight is my best friend. If I’m researching for a book, or if I’ve had to climb down into a dark place to write a scene, I make myself stop at lunchtime. That gives me a few hours to process it. Delving into those things in the evening and then trying to go straight to bed is a big mistake.
When I was writing my first book, I worked during the day, so I would write after my then-toddler daughter went to bed. There were some nights where I would write a sentence, go check if the window in her bedroom was locked, write a sentence, check the window . . .
You do an excellent, empathetic job of exploring the pros and cons of true crime tourism through the eyes of your characters, from victims’ disgusted families to business owners who acknowledge it’s unseemly (to say the least) but believe there are upsides. What did you hope to convey in Murder Town about “dark tourism,” as it’s been called: its popularity, its effects on survivors and more? It was important to me not to portray one side of the argument as right and the other as wrong. It’s a really difficult choice and the characters on every side have good reasons for feeling the way they do.
I did a lot of research into actual dark tourism. When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time in a town that runs on it. My grandparents lived in Glenrowan, which was the site of a shootout between police and the bushranger Ned Kelly. The town has a massive statue of Kelly, an animatronic show and just opened a new visitor’s center focused on the Kelly Gang. It’s a genuinely positive thing for the town, done with the full support of any living descendants. Another good example is the thriving industry of Jack the Ripper tours in London.
Those cases aren’t usually controversial, because the crimes were so long ago. What we tend to forget is that dark tourism and a fascination with true crime isn’t new. Ned Kelly tourism started immediately, it just survived a long time.
I don’t want to make a case for dark tourism being right or wrong, I just want people to remember that the victims are people, and their friends and family are hurting.
“We’ve always been a morbid species, and true crime has a long history.”
Money is of course on the minds of Rainier’s business owners, who’ve been struggling since a highway bypass compounded the town’s downturn after the murders and worry about descending into bankruptcy. What is it about that particular sort of financial desperation, that feeling of running out of options, that makes for compelling fiction? Money touches everything, and is very, very personal. It’s hard to imagine now, given how central money is to both books, but way back in the early drafts of WAKE, I actually tried to avoid making money a plot point. It had the opposite effect—it was distracting to early readers that the characters never seemed to worry about money or how to afford their lifestyle.
It’s easy to empathize with a character who is stressed about money, who wants to provide for their family and give their children a stable future.
It’s especially fascinating to read about Rainier locals who are parents, friends and neighbors—but also are the police officers who investigated the first murders, and must now keep everyone safe and calm while they contend with the new case. What about that particular collision of the personal and professional appeals to you? I live in a town about the same size as Rainier, and it’s impossible for the police to just be faceless uniforms. They’re behind you in line at the Country Women’s Association breakfast, they’re picking their kids up at the school gate, they’re grocery shopping at the same time as you. There’s a flipside to that as well—if you encounter the police in their professional capacity, the next CWA breakfast is going to be awkward.
In Rainier, every character is connected to every other character in at least two different ways. Every time one of them makes a decision, it echoes through that web of connections. The town’s two police officers are very much a part of that web.
You so fully paint a picture of Rainier’s landscape and how your characters move through those emotionally fraught spaces. Did you create an actual map, go on walks, etc., to help you get the physical and psychological aspects of that experience just right? The town has a significant geographical feature—it’s the exact halfway point between Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne. There is a real town in that location, Tarcutta.
I stopped in Tarcutta while on a road trip (I was transporting our cat to our new home), and was struck by a sign: Turn left for Sydney, turn right for Melbourne. The two cities are nine hours apart. The idea of a town that defines itself based on two other faraway places immediately fascinated me.
I don’t like to take a real town and layer a dark history over it, but my fictional towns are always based on real ones. I’m too bad at geography to invent one from whole cloth. I need to be able to look at a map, see what a realistic layout looks like: Would it have its own school, how many businesses are there, how many streets, how many police officers. But, being a fictional town, I can always tweak those details to fit what the story needs.
You grew up in Newcastle but also spent a lot of time on your grandparents’ farm. How did that experience translate into writing about remote, isolated places? Are there any other aspects of your growing-up years that tend to infuse and inform your stories and characters, whether you realized at first or not? Newcastle and Glenrowan are in different states; every handover was a 16-hour round trip, so I saw a huge number of small Australian towns growing up. Out of all the characters, the nomadic upbringing of Lane Holland feels the closest to my own. Seeing all those towns left me fascinated by how different they all were, but also by the similarities. A lot of highway towns have a “thing” that sets them apart: Holbrook has a World War II submarine installed in a park, Gundagai has the Dog on the Tucker Box. That really informed the town of Rainier.
My core memory of my time on the property (my grandfather has asked me to stop calling it a farm, as while they had livestock and orchards and acres of paddocks, they didn’t actually make a living farming) is of walking those paddocks. We’d be turned out in the morning and told to come back when we were hungry. There were moments I could look up and realize I was the only person for kilometers. I wanted to capture that feeling of isolation in WAKE.
After the events of WAKE, private investigator Lane Holland is now a resident of the Special Purpose Centre prison facility. What was it like to spend time with Lane again? What sort of research did you do to help you capture the atmosphere of the prison? What was the most surprising thing you learned? I was surprised by how easy it was to slip back into Lane’s voice. Despite his circumstances, his story is far from over.
I read and listened to a lot of first-person accounts of life in prison. As with my towns, the Special Purpose Centre is fictional, but based on a real facility used for vulnerable prisoners. I also had to do a lot of dry reading of policy papers and prison rules (much of which is redacted for security reasons) and white papers on topics like how aging and dying prisoners live.
The most surprising thing I found is a case where a convicted murderer was placed in a prison where the aunt of his victim worked as a guard. I’d assumed there had to be policies to prevent a situation that explosive. Heartbreakingly, it was the aunt who ended up vulnerable—her niece’s killer went out of his way to torment her, and she had to leave her position.
What do you think about the ever-increasing interest in true crime? Do you think the help can ever justify the harm? Why do you think there’s such an intense societal fascination? I’m not convinced that it is increasing. We’ve always been a morbid species, and true crime has a long history. I think what is increasing is access to opportunities to create it; these days anyone with the drive and a microphone can start their own podcast or video series, whereas decades ago, creating a radio show or television series was much more challenging. I think that can be a wonderful thing—where would we be without Michelle McNamara’s work on the Golden State Killer? There are a lot of cases getting attention and resources from the true crime industry with the grateful approval of the friends and family of the victims. Other cases, not so much. That lack of gatekeeping also means a lot of content being produced by people who don’t feel bound by any journalistic code of ethics.
I love true crime. Respectful, compassionate, victim-centered true crime. I love works like A Light in the Dark, written by Ted Bundy survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin, or The Five by historian Hallie Rubenhold.
Are you a plan-things-ahead writer, especially when multiple secrets and surprises are involved, or are you more of a let’s-see-what-comes-up sort? Did anything that ended up in the book surprise even you? I’m very much a planner. I’m so impressed by writers who prefer to write crime fiction without an outline. Mine is my safety net. Any time I find myself stuck, I can go back to the outline, and every time it turns out that I left something out of a previous scene that’s essential to move forward.
But there are always surprises. Sometimes the characters develop in ways that mean they would never act the way they do in my outline. Sometimes I’ll stumble over something in the research that changes the direction of a subplot. Sometimes a character turns out more or less sympathetic than I expected and their ending feels too cruel or too lenient. That’s the fun part.
What’s up next for you—is there anything else you’d like to share with readers, in terms of upcoming books or other news? I’m hard at work on a third Lane Holland novel—we’re in the editing stage now.
Picture of Shelley Burr by Yen Eriksen Media.
In Murder Town, the acclaimed Australian author investigates the allure of so-called “dark tourism.”
The work of award-winning actor and comedian Jenny Slate—whether her stand-up comedy, voice performances (Bob’s Burgers, The Great North), acting (Parks and Recreation, It Ends With Us), or beloved Marcel the Shell With Shoes On multimedia universe—leaves an indelible impression. Unsurprisingly, the prolific creator’s first memoir-in-essays, 2019’s Little Weirds, had the same effect thanks to its inventive language and poignant, poetic takes on her life thus far.
In Lifeform, Slate again beckons readers into her wonderfully idiosyncratic, colorfully kaleidoscopic mind as she recounts her latest adventures in five pivotal phases: Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby and Ongoing. Of course, fans know that despite Lifeform’s organizing principle, the author isn’t inclined to stick to prescribed formats or expectations. Instead, she dances through multifaceted, playful musings that tip over into surrealism, and dwells in quiet spaces alongside her insecurities and fears.
Fabulist inner monologues abound, as in “Stork Dream: Scroll,” wherein the mythical baby-deliverer embodies “how bizarre this experience is of making a lifeform while being a lifeform. I woke myself up laughing, and the laughter was like a string of bells being pulled from inside of me.” Slate tackles waking-hour concerns in her series of whimsical yet pointed “Letters to a Doctor.” In one, she expresses her frustration with traditional dinner-party seating: “Why would you split a couple up against their wills? It is already so incredibly hard to come together and become a couple.”
Intimate and vulnerable revelations simmer throughout, too, such as the bittersweet experience of watching her ailing grandmother and baby Ida “sip soup together, two beings with caretakers who make sure that they stay clean and can get the food into their mouths.” Birth and death, beginnings and ends, are on Slate’s mind (and in her dreams) as she assumes the new role of mother and ponders how she has changed as the phases of her life have unfurled. Fans old and new will revel in Lifeform’s self-effacing humor and imaginative writing style. It’s a delightful, memorable immersion in the lifeform that is Jenny Slate: “Mother/New Wife/Jenny/Wart-Gobbler Goblin/Bad Visual Artist/Fine Clown.”
In her new memoir, Lifeform, Jenny Slate beckons readers into her wonderfully idiosyncratic, colorfully kaleidoscopic mind as she recounts her latest adventures with signature whimsy.
Anyone who’s lived in a small town (or enjoys thrillers about them) knows that secrets, lies and betrayals are heightened by close proximity—especially in an isolated area that’s hard to get to, and even harder to escape.
Shelley Burr deftly captures and conveys that particular brand of tension in Murder Town, and turns it up several notches by making her fictional Rainier, Australia (located halfway between Sydney and Melbourne) a place once charming, now cursed.
Seventeen years ago, travelers routinely popped into Earl Grey’s Yarn and Teashop or picnicked in Fountain Park. But then a serial killer murdered three people in Rainier, and the town and its traumatized residents have never recovered.
In the present, over the objections of victims’ families, some residents are campaigning for outsider Lochlan Lewis to set up a “Rainier Ripper” tour that could bring in desperately needed revenue. Ghoulish true crime fans routinely show up to gawk and ask intrusive questions, so “Why not make it formal?” teashop proprietor Gemma Guillory muses. “Why not scrape a little bit of a living back from the horror they’d all endured?”
Alas, an entirely new horror emerges when Lochlan is found murdered in the fountain. Gemma decides to secretly investigate; it won’t be easy, but she’s tapped into the gossip pipeline and a pro at “glid[ing] through the day greasing every interaction with white lies and fakery.” Fans of Burr’s 2022 bestseller, WAKE, will be thrilled when private investigator Lane Holland joins her quest: He’s working remotely this time (from prison, to be precise) but has his own urgent reasons for pursuing the case. Can they pull it off before the Ripper’s legacy destroys Rainier once and for all?
Murder Town is a twisty rural noir rife with cleverly tangled character dynamics, claustrophobic suspense and an intriguing exploration of true crime fandom through the lens of a community struggling to heal even as terror strikes once again. And Gemma makes for a compelling tour guide through life in Rainier: She’s a community mainstay, protective parent and risk-taking undercover novice determined to drag the town’s darkest truths into the light, no matter the danger or consequences.
Shelley Burr’s rural Australia-set mystery Murder Town explores an intriguing angle of true crime fandom: so-called “dark tourism” of serial killer-related sites.
Umami, a little brown-and-white penguin, lives with lots of other penguins in a snow-blanketed village by the sea. It’s a lovely place, with one unfortunate exception: “Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the penguin village ate cold fish. For dessert? Cold fish. Your birthday? More cold fish.”
The budding gastronome and eponymous star of Jacob Grant’s Umami has had enough. While the other penguins seem content with their limited menu, Umami craves variety and she’s determined to find it, even if she has to take a solo journey across the sea.
When she lands in a new place bustling with a variety of food stands patronized by all sorts of animal customers, tantalizing aromas convince Umami to dive right in. “Oh, my sweet little beak!” she thinks, “Nothing ever smelled so spectacular.” A whirlwind of gastronomic delirium ensues as the plucky penguin samples everything she’s been missing: Salty or sour, bitter or sweet, spicy or her namesake umami, Umami tries it all, her taste buds tingling as her gustatory horizons open wide. She must share these wondrous new foods with the village!
Back home, Umami nervously presents her neighbors with a surprise feast. It’s a sweet gesture—and the backdrop for hilarious tableaux in which her guests’ widened eyes and sidelong glances crescendo into glorious milk-glugging, fire-breathing, table-flopping chaos. Dramatics aside, though, they finish every bite. Perhaps Umami has a future as chef for her newly hungry village?
Grant’s art for Umami won the 2024 Bologna Children’s Book Fair Illustration Exhibition, and it’s easy to see why: It’s expressive, adorable, visually witty and the perfect accompaniment to his inspiring, amusing story about the joys of living life with flavor and gusto. Umami will prompt readers to have fun identifying dishes they recognize or choosing new ones to try, as well as spotting loads of amusing details throughout (the squirrel who’s shocked at the size of Umami’s pasta order is not to be missed). Umami is a festive treat of a book sure to make storytimes and mealtimes even more delicious.
Umami is a festive treat of a book sure to make storytimes and mealtimes even more delicious.
As bestselling fantasy romance author Jodi Meadows’ smart, funny, perfectly paced Bye Forever, I Guess, opens, 13-year-old Ingrid is in the waning moments of her so-called friendship with Rachel, a master manipulator who loves to make Ingrid feel less-than.
Rachel has certainly succeeded—but much less often lately, perhaps because Ingrid is going online, where she enjoys a cyber-life that offers a welcome contrast to Rachel’s lunch table drama. Ingrid runs an anonymous Scrollr account, Bye Forever, I Guess, a fun compendium of wrong-number texts that boasts hundreds of thousands of followers. And she’s made a dear friend, Lorren, via hours of enthusiastically playing the MMORPG Ancient Tomes Online and sharing their devotion to a book series called the Essa Lightborne Chronicles.
Now, eighth grade’s beginning in the small town of Deer Hill, Virginia, and Ingrid’s ready to bring some of her online mojo IRL. She has a supportive, communicative relationship with her grandma (who runs a popular YouTube channel, Yarn Star), but she’s still lonely at school and Lorren lives 500 long miles away. New kids Alyx and Oliver seem promising, but Rachel’s meanness and Ingrid’s awkwardness add up to lunchtime in the library for the latter, where she despairs of finding the in-person connections she craves.
Then, a misdirected text from a boy who goes by Traveler pops up, and thanks to lots of ensuing witty text exchanges, a new online friendship—and a crush!—blossoms. But something nags at Ingrid: Traveler’s original text was directed to a “Rachel.” It couldn’t be Ingrid’s Rachel . . . could it? As she strives to find the answer to that nauseating question, Ingrid excitedly prepares for an Essa Lightborne event and ponders the vagaries of longing to be closer to someone she might not truly know: “I’d fastened my heart to a boy I could only half have, and I wanted more.”
Bye Forever, I Guess makes an excellent case for wanting more for ourselves in all areas of our lives, and for insisting on being seen, even if it’s awkward or scary at first. Meadows’ middle grade debut is a well-written, winning coming-of-age tale with loads of hilarity, empathy and heart.
Jodi Meadows’ middle grade debut, Bye Forever, I Guess, is a well-written, winning coming-of-age tale with loads of hilarity, empathy and heart.
After reluctantly turning the final page of the beautifully illustrated Up, Up, Ever Up! Junko Tabei: A Life in the Mountains, readers will want to run outside and start hiking, pausing only to spread the word about the impressive woman at the heart of Anita Yasuda’s inspiring and poetic biography for young readers.
As a young child, Junko Tabei was enchanted by the natural world, especially the peaks that provided a dramatic backdrop to her home in Japan. As Yasuda writes, “Stories of mountains drifted all around her until silvery domes and icy peaks unfurled as far as she could see.”
Tabei took the first step of her big mountain dreams at age 10 by climbing Mount Chausu (elevation: 4,643 feet) with friends. As she grew, so did her desire to ascend ever higher: She set her sights on becoming the first woman to summit Mount Everest (elevation: 29,032 feet). Naysayers emerged all around, from mountaineering clubs that excluded women, to sponsors who said mothers should stay home with their children. But Tabei found kindred spirits in her climbing aficionado husband and two children, as well as other adventurous women who shared her determination. Together, they felt unstoppable.
Despite dizzying heights, gear that fit badly because it was made for men, and even an avalanche, Tabei and her compatriots persisted. This exciting story of scaling great heights and blazing trails captures their trials and triumphs for those who will come after. Yuko Shimizu’s gorgeous, often fantastical illustrations—finely detailed via Japanese calligraphy brush, vibrantly colored, and rife with movement and texture—combine with Yasuda’s compelling, uplifting words to vividly convey Tabei’s indomitable spirit.
In the book’s back matter, Yasuda notes the numerous high points of Tabei’s life and expands on her environmental advocacy, a pursuit she engaged in until her death in 2016 at age 77. Readers of Up, Up, Ever Up! will surely agree that “Junko’s remarkable life inspires others to pursue their dreams, step by step, up, up, and ever up!”
Yuko Shimizu’s gorgeous, fantastical illustrations combine with Anita Yasuda’s compelling, uplifting words to vividly convey the indomitable spirit of trailblazing mountaineer Junko Tabei in Up, Up, Ever Up!
When Joanna Brichetto sees potato chips, she craves goldfinches. An offbeat association? Sure. One imbued with enthusiasm and nature-loving logic? Absolutely. You see, she explains, the goldfinch’s call sounds like “potato-chip, potato-chip,” and the Lay’s Classic Potato Chips bag is a yellow “not unlike a male goldfinch in breeding plumage.”
That perspective-shifting, find-joy-in-daily-life revelation is just one of many the blogger and certified Tennessee naturalist shares in her wonderful, wonder-inducing debut, This Is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature.
Brichetto—a former BookPage contributor —believes that “by paying attention to the natural world we have a chance to figure out who, where, and when we are.” Fortunately, “nature is all around”—and in this almanac organized by season, she encounters and explores nature in places we expect, like parks and gardens and birdbaths. But what about thrift stores, grocery bags and abandoned mall parking lots?
If we stroll rather than stride through our yards and neighborhoods, Brichetto assures us, we can find nature everywhere, too—despite humans’ relentless efforts to constrain, pave over or poison it. Readers will relish her thoughtful essays rife with idiosyncratic humor and poetic reverence, like her observation that a purchased-turf lawn has been “gentrified by sod.”
In her summer section, Brichetto is particularly reverent toward cicadas, which can fall prey to new construction (the Nashville-based author was treated to two overlapping broods this summer). “He will sing with the moon,” she writes of one, “but I have his skin, which once held the sun.” In fall, her pockets “surrender snail shells, turn out twigs of spicebush, fumble oak apples round and dry.” A red-tailed hawk transforms her from a winter commuter to “a character in a fairy story.” And she composes a spring ode to catalpa trees, which she suggests may be “admired by pressing one’s face into a pyramid of blossom.”
This Is How a Robin Drinks is sure to trigger an uptick in meanderings—urban or rural, day or night—suffused with new appreciation for and a renewed determination to preserve our endlessly fascinating yet increasingly vulnerable environment. And not a moment too soon; after all, Brichetto writes, “Spoiler alert: nature’s best hope is us.”
Naturalist Joanna Brichetto uncovers the beauty of urban landscapes in her wonder-inducing debut, This Is How a Robin Drinks.
Hell hath no fury like Anna Williams-Bonner in Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Sequel, a cleverly conceived matryoshka doll of a tale that employs pitch-black humor and nail-biting suspense to excellent effect.
It’s also, well, the sequel to The Plot, the audacious 2021 bestseller that’s soon to be a TV series alongside Korelitz’s other adapted works: Admission, The Latecomer and You Should Have Known (the basis for HBO’s The Undoing).
Fans of Korelitz’s work will be delighted that The Sequel follows in the artfully twisted footsteps of her previous thrillers, this time via the very intelligent and deeply angry Anna, who’s determined to preserve authorship of her life at all costs.
As the story opens, Anna’s on tour for her husband Jacob’s posthumously published book when his editor and agent suggest she write a novel based on her life as bereaved widow of a beloved author. Anna “couldn’t think of a novelist whose next work she was actively waiting for, or whose novel she even cared enough about to keep forever, or whose signature she wanted in her copy of their novel,” but realizes it could be entertaining, if not entirely interesting. After all, she muses about other writers, “If those idiots can do it, how fucking hard can it be?”
The resulting novel, The Afterword, is an immediate bestseller, of course. Anna is jauntily casual about her increased fame until a Post-it note in a book she’s signing reveals her past is not as buried as she thought. Who wrote it? What do they know? And most important: What do they want?
Anna’s cross-country tour of fact-finding and retribution will have readers eagerly flipping the pages to see what on earth she’ll do next. (Hint: It’s not good) She moves from threat to threat, so hell-bent on squelching the truth about her past that she increases her present-day peril. Jacob published and perished; will Anna, too?
Rife with delicious tension and sharply honed satire, The Sequel is a gripping, disturbing and wild ride, with a humdinger of a conclusion that explores just how deadly it can be when someone feels their story isn’t being properly told.
Gripping, disturbing and absolutely wild, The Sequel is a more than worthy, well, sequel, to Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot.
Rene is a chef with a dream: to open a café that serves her carefully crafted “fine cuisine.” And after hard work saving up “every bean” and constructing “a building beam by beam,” she’s thrilled to be opening The Café at the Edge of the Woods.
In his picture book debut, London-based Mikey Please—a BAFTA award winner and Oscar nominee for animated short films—fills every page with expertly and engagingly rendered cartoon art. His color palette glows with browns, greens and oranges, perfect for a woodsy café overflowing with funky flower arrangements.
To Rene’s chagrin, this charming eatery doesn’t make a splash right away. Her “Waiter Wanted” sign resulted in just one applicant, a little green fellow named Glumfoot. And although it’s been days since the grand opening, no customers have arrived.
Fortunately, Glumfoot’s a go-getter. He heads into the woods and returns with a gigantic ogre, who listens politely as Rene reads him her hand-chalked blackboard menu. When she suggests truffle stew with peas and long grain rice, the ogre requests “bats! And slugs and buttered mice!” Would he prefer a cheddar tart? No, he wants “a bag of bats! That smells like fart!”
Rene is frustrated, but Glumfoot urges his boss to hang in there: The ogre will try the tart after all. Little does Rene know that, after some artful rearranging by Glumfoot (a master of marketing and diplomacy if ever there was one), the tart gets “flipped onto its back, so it looked like a pickled bat” and “The rice became . . . maggot fondue! The whole lot looked disgusting.”
Of course, to the ogre, disgusting is delightful! And to Rene, serving the food she adores (even if it looks ickier than she planned) is a dream come true. The Café at the Edge of the Woods is a wacky and wonderful ode to ingenuity and flexibility, topped with a hearty serving of teamwork and a dash of panache. Fans of Please’s funny, expressive illustrations and clever storytelling will be happy to know a second book in this new series will be served up soon. Chef’s kiss!
The Café at the Edge of the Woods is a wacky and wonderful ode to ingenuity and flexibility, topped with a hearty serving of teamwork and a dash of panache.
School’s out and Jesus is itching to run outside and play, but wait—Mama has to watch her telenovela first. “When you’re an only child, with no brothers or sisters to play with,” he remarks, “you have to make your own fun.” To pass the time, he sweeps, dusts and eats “all the cereal we’re running low on. That way, we can start on the new box!”
When a stunned Mama encounters the chaos wrought by Jesus’ helpfulness, she conjures up an idea to keep him entertained so she can enjoy her afternoon TV: “What I really need is someone to look after my dear plantitas. . . . Someone who will be a big brother to these magnificent plants.”
In 2023’s Papa’s Magical Water-Jug Clock, which received a Pura Belpré Honor for both writing and illustration, readers learned that Jesus is a sweet, spirited little boy who takes pride in helping his family. First, he assisted Papa with outdoor landscaping; now, in Mama’s Magnificent Dancing Plantitas, he’s excitedly dubbed himself indoor “Chief Plant Officer!”
Jesus takes his job seriously, and as he waters and chats with the greenery in his charge, he also shares his takes on them, including a “grumpy” sunglasses-wearing cactus and a Swiss cheese plant with holey leaves: “By the way, don’t eat them,” he warns. “They definitely don’t taste like cheese!”
When his attempt to cheer up a droopy golden pothos via impromptu dance party goes terribly awry, Jesus’ anxiety is hilariously illustrated by Eliza Kinkz in double-page spreads of soaring despair. He ponders his fate as a “murderer” and envisions a somber yet delightfully punny plant funeral. What will his parents think? Does Mama’s favorite plant have a chance at survival?
Stand-up comedian and TV writer Jesus Trejo has created another warmly funny story that highlights the value of improvisational thinking, the beauty of a loving family and the joys of houseplants. Kinkz’s kinetic, colorful illustrations serve as a wonderful counterpoint to this winning treasure of a tale that reminds us that “breaking things is part of life. Sometimes, it’s even what helps us grow.”
With Mama's Magnificent Dancing Plantitas, Jesus Trejo and Eliza Kinkz have created another warmly funny story that highlights the value of improvisational thinking, the beauty of a loving family and the joys of houseplants.
Flavia de Luce burst onto the cozy mystery scene in 2009, and now the precocious 12-year-old chemistry prodigy is back for the 11th time in bestselling author Alan Bradley’s What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust.
Once again, Bradley beckons readers into post-World War II England—specifically, Bishop’s Lacey, a hamlet in the countryside. Flavia roams the area on her bicycle, Gladys, searching for things to test in her home laboratory (ensconced in Buckshaw, the crumbling de Luce manor) and, lately, places to escape “pestilent little cousin” Undine, who’s come to Buckshaw after becoming an orphan.
Flavia, now an orphan as well, tends to the mansion with the help of two beloved adults: Dogger, handyman and helpmeet, and the estate’s housekeeper, Mrs. Mullet, who’s also been cooking for their neighbor Major Greyleigh, a former hangman who is found dead as the book opens. Alas, the police consider Mrs. Mullet the prime suspect because she accidentally served the major a dish of poisonous mushrooms directly before his demise.
Convinced of Mrs. Mullet’s innocence, Flavia resolves to solve the crime and clear the cook’s name. After all, she’s so important to her—and as a bonus, it’s yet another opportunity to test her sleuthing mettle: “I have to admit that I’d been praying . . . for a jolly good old-fashioned mushroom poisoning. Not that I wanted anyone to die, but why give a girl a gift . . . without giving her the opportunity to use it?”
As Flavia questions locals, sneaks into crime scenes and conducts experiments, she realizes the murder is just the tip of a very strange iceberg looming over Bishop’s Lacey. Is the usually chatty, now oddly reticent, Mrs. Mullet hiding something? And some of the American soldiers still stationed at nearby Leathcote air base seem especially interested in the goings-on. Might they be involved?
Bradley’s intrepid amateur sleuth is witty and whip-smart as ever, and Bishop’s Lacey remains both a colorful backdrop and a microcosm of a nation in transition, paralleling Flavia’s own trepidation at entering adulthood. A layered plot rife with dastardly deeds and shocking revelations makes for an intriguing and entertaining read, and nicely tees up the (one hopes) next installment in the irresistible Flavia de Luce series.
In Alan Bradley’s 11th mystery starring preteen sleuth Flavia de Luce, the chemistry prodigy faces murder by mushroom and her own impending adulthood.
It’s summertime, and 13-year-old Aidan Cross is looking forward to lots of fun with his closest friends: handsome athlete Kai, class clown Zephyr and studious Terrance. They’ll ride bikes, go swimming, play D&D and watch movies. And they’ll engage in the group’s favorite pastime, “yeeting crap at the Witch House,” a tumbledown Victorian mansion with “broken and shattered windows . . . like hungry mouths with glass teeth.”
Aidan has something specific in mind for the yeeting session at the beginning of Preston Norton’s The House on Yeet Street. In addition to sticks and stones, he’ll yeet his notebook into the Witch House, where it’ll be safe from prying eyes. “The inside of this notebook was the one place Aidan was allowed to be himself. It was nice to invent a version of him that did and said the things he was afraid to say and do”—like confessing his romantic feelings for Kai.
But the thrill of a successful yeet turns appallingly sour when his friends announce an impending Witch House sleepover. Aidan is desperate to grab his notebook before someone else does, and he sort of succeeds: His friends don’t find it, but a ghost does. She’s Gabby Caldwell, a teenaged girl who was found dead in the mansion 20 years ago and has been stuck inside since. Gabby wants Aidan to find out what happened to her so she can escape the house. She also wants him to continue the story he’s been writing in his notebook (his first positive review!).
Aidan and friends spring into action, investigating Gabby’s demise and delving into the Witch House’s disturbing past. They encounter landmines galore, including a terrifying specter stalking them around town, a mean girl stealing and posting Aidan’s notebook online and extreme parental exasperation. Can the group make sense of the supernatural goings-on before the house claims another victim?
Norton, author of Hopepunk (one of BookPage’s Best YA Books of 2022), has crafted an action-packed, compelling coming-of-age tale about coming out and becoming brave, all wrapped up in a supremely creepy horror story rife with ghosts and legend, hilarious dialogue and daring adventures. It’s scary, sometimes sweet, rollicking good fun.
Preston Norton has crafted an action-packed, compelling tale about coming out and becoming brave, wrapped up in a supremely creepy horror story rife with ghosts and legend, hilarious dialogue and daring adventures.
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