When something seems too good to be true, it probably is. In her U.S. debut, Miss Aldridge Regrets, British author Louise Hare illustrates that idea with deliciously suspenseful, Agatha Christie-esque results.
The year is 1936, the place is Soho, London, and the star of the show is 26-year-old Lena Aldridge. She has a regular gig at the Canary Club, owned by sleazy criminal Tommy Scarsdale. When she’s not singing, she goes on dates with her married lover and tries not to think about how much she misses her late father, Alfie.
Every day, Lena wonders: Will her big break ever come? The future’s looking bleak, but then a stranger named Charles Bacon appears with an astonishing proposal. His employer, an old friend of Alfie’s, is offering Lena a role in his Broadway play, and he’ll pay for first-class passage to New York City aboard RMS Queen Mary. Lena is thrilled and trepidatious, but then her boyfriend dumps her. And then Tommy’s murdered. After deciding that fate is urging her to exit stage right, Lena sets sail.
Readers will be enchanted by the period charm of Hare’s ocean liner setting and will swoon as Lena gets to know Will, a Black musician. Will notices right away that Lena is also Black, even though she’s been successfully passing as white for years. Lena knows that being Black will be even more of an issue in America than it was in England, a big change she’s not sure she’s ready for.
She’s also not ready for what happens on the Queen Mary: Someone murders one of the Abernathys, a wealthy family that Charles insisted Lena spend time schmoozing. As the ship glides across the Atlantic, its posh sheen gradually dulls in the wake of destructive secrets and even more murders. Everyone’s a suspect, and the red herrings pile up as an alarmed Lena thinks, “I felt as though I were trapped inside my own detective novel.” Readers will enjoy playing sleuth, racing to figure out who did it, how and why, even as they ponder the ultimate question: Will Lena survive the trip to New York unscathed?
Miss Aldridge Regrets' 1930s ocean liner setting will enchant mystery readers even as author Louise Hare seeds disquiet and red herrings amid all the glam.
What better to read on a hot summer day than a chilling thriller set in, well, Iceland? In Outside, Reykjavik native and internationally bestselling author Ragnar Jónasson turns the snowy “fjord-indented coastline [and] reindeer-haunted wilderness” of the Nordic island’s eastern highlands into an antagonist just as dangerous to the book’s central characters as the murderer (or perhaps murderers?) in their midst.
At first, there’s no thought of life-threatening peril when four college friends reunite for a woodsy weekend hike to hunt ptarmigan and catch up on one another’s lives. There’s Daniel, an aspiring actor who lives in London; Gunnlaugur, an argumentative lawyer; Helena, an inscrutable engineer; and Ormann, a wealthy tour company owner and leader of their trip.
An unexpected blizzard catches the quartet off guard, its fierce winds and zero visibility sending them into survival mode. Ormann knows of a hut they can hole up in until the worst of the weather passes—but just getting there is onerous as the snow piles higher, the air gets colder and the mostly amateur hikers’ nerves become frayed.
Once they get to the cabin, things get even scarier as frustration transforms into fear and life-or-death decisions are made more difficult by years-old resentments boiling up to the surface. Their paranoia grows in the cabin’s suffocatingly small space as Helena thinks to herself, “Guns, isolation, fear, and uncertainty—they were such an explosive cocktail.”
Jónasson inspires fast page turns via quick cuts among the four characters as they reflect on the past (so many secrets!) and frantically strategize about the present. Mini cliffhangers keep the story humming along; the author doesn’t shy away from ending chapters with lines like, “He had never been so afraid in his life.”
Spare prose and brisk pacing make for an immersive read that’s less about the individual characters and more about what they become when they’re forced together, no longer able to dissemble or hide. Will they work together to save themselves before it’s too late? Can they? Outside is an intriguing study of isolation, claustrophobia and the particular menace to be found in beautiful yet unforgiving terrain.
Outside is an intriguing study of isolation, claustrophobia and the particular menace to be found in beautiful yet unforgiving terrain.
Smart, tenacious teen sleuths star in three remarkable mystery novels. These detectives have curious minds, a knack for sussing out secrets and a thirst for justice.
★ Hollow Fires
In Samira Ahmed’s powerful Hollow Fires, 17-year-old aspiring journalist Safiya Mirza describes herself as “a giddy teen rom-com cliché, but with more panic and terror churning in the mix.”
True, the high school senior does enjoy fun times with friends and a budding romance with a handsome classmate at Chicago’s private DuSable Preparatory High School, where she’s a scholarship student. But Safiya is also deeply troubled by the disappearance of 14-year-old Jawad Ali, a freshman at a nearby public school. When Jawad brought a cosplay jetpack to class, his English teacher mistook it for a bomb and he was arrested, suspended and dubbed “Bomb Boy” by right-wing media. Jawad was quickly cleared of all charges, but he and his family became the targets of harassment, unfounded accusations of terrorism and death threats.
Jawad’s disappearance attracts scant press coverage or police interest, so Safiya angrily decides to investigate on her own. She’s urged on by a soft but insistent voice that she realizes is Jawad, imploring her to find him so his parents can find closure amid their fear and grief.
When Safiya discovers Jawad’s body, some questions are answered, but even more are raised about who could’ve done such a horrible thing. Classism and racism abound at school and in Safiya’s neighborhood; could the culprit be someone she’s encountered? After all, as Jawad muses, “The most terrifying monsters are the ones you know.”
Ahmed unfurls this story through chapters that alternate between Safiya’s and Jawad’s perspectives, while also layering in news articles, blog posts, phone transcripts, tweets and other social media posts. The result is a compelling portrait of how hate spreads, radicalization takes root and danger grows.
In an author’s note, Ahmed shares that she wrote Hollow Fires to call on readers to “step forward, to face the truth of all we are.” Her devastating and inspiring book is at once a gripping thriller and a passionate call for change that’s urgent and timely—and sadly, also timeless.
Murder for the Modern Girl
As 1927 turns to 1928 in Chicago, Ruby Newhouse toasts the new year in a “party frock that was practically required by law to set heads turning.” The sassy 18-year-old daughter of the Cook County state’s attorney is gorgeous, and she knows it. She also knows what everyone around her is thinking, because she can read minds “like a supernatural radio antenna.”
Ruby keeps that power secret, while using it to reduce the number of terrible men who prey on vulnerable women in her beloved city. Poison is her preferred method (the lethal stuff fits nicely in tiny needles or hollowed-out hairpins), and so far, she’s gotten away with it.
But in Kendall Kulper’s sparklingly clever Murder for the Modern Girl, Ruby’s anonymity and freedom are threatened when a young morgue employee named Guy Rosewood begins investigating a strange series of poisonings in an effort to impress Dr. Gregory C. Keene. The doctor’s research on cellular metamorphosis has been met with derision, but Guy is a shape-shifter who desperately wants to control his abilities, and he believes Dr. Keene could help him learn how.
When Guy meets Ruby, he wants to impress her as well—not realizing she’s the vigilante he seeks. And when Ruby discovers Guy’s secret, she agrees to keep it quiet while charming him into assisting her as she tries to track down the people responsible for an attempt on her father’s life.
Ruby leverages sexism (underestimation!) and sexiness (distraction!) to her advantage as she pursues her quarry; Guy assists when he’s not pursuing his own mysterious goals. Both characters are intelligent, caring and driven by a shared belief that, as Ruby says, “you’ve gotta protect the weak and punish the wicked.” Murder for the Modern Girl is a smart, suspenseful and action-packed period piece that thoughtfully explores whether all crimes are truly criminal..
Gideon Green in Black and White
As the title of Katie Henry’s winning and inventive Gideon Green in Black and White indicates, the 16-year-old Gideon Green spends a lot of time immersed in absolutes. For example, since honesty is the best policy, Gideon doesn’t understand why everyone keeps getting mad any time he merely states the truth, however inconvenient.
Gideon’s penchant for clarity is bolstered by his favorite noir films, which he watches every day after school. Despite his frustrated dad’s pleas that he consider a new hobby, Gideon finds comfort in the movies’ familiar beats. He also emulates his noir detective idols by wearing a trenchcoat and fedora, never mind that he lives in sunny California.
Although Gideon is impressively astute, he didn’t understand why his best friend, Lily Krupitsky-Sharma, ghosted him in middle school. But Lily approaches him as the book opens. She wants a promotion to editor-in-chief of the school newspaper next year and thinks a splashy investigative feature will do the trick. Will Gideon help her secretly investigate a recent uptick in their town’s nonviolent crime rates?
Lily gets Gideon a copy editing gig as a cover, and he revels in being welcomed to the tightknit staff, led by lovely editor-in-chief Tess. For the first time, Gideon feels like he’s part of something, but too soon, there’s another first: discovering a dead body in the course of the investigation.
Gideon’s interactions with his town’s police officers are a hoot, thanks to the cops’ exasperation at his confident matter-of-factness. His blooming romance with Tess is delightful, too, as is his growing awareness that there might be more to life than being precisely correct. It’s enjoyable to watch Gideon discover meaning in the grays. Gideon often contemplates how scenes might unfold differently if his life were a noir film, complete with excerpts from the movie scripts in his imagination, upping the fun factor in this highly entertaining, empathetic mystery.
Can you solve these cases before their teenage detectives? There’s only one way to find out.
Sometimes when tragedy strikes, a family draws closer, weaving itself into a tightly intertwined bulwark against heartache. Other times, however, tragedy can drive family members apart as they try to avoid feeling—let alone expressing—their grief.
The titular 11-year-old protagonist of Zoraida Córdova’s heartfelt and imaginative Valentina Salazar Is Not a Monster Hunter would never have predicted the latter outcome for her family. As far back as Valentina can remember, the Salazars have been dedicated monster rescuers, scooping up magical beings that stumble into this dimension and sending them back to the realm of Finisterra before monster hunters can find and perhaps kill them.
However, in the eight months since their father died on a mission gone horribly awry, the Salazars have been trying to live a more ordinary life. Their mother moved the family to upstate New York, took a job in the city and retired their tricked-out camper van, the Scourge, to the garage. Everyone has adjusted pretty well to the changes, but Valentina can’t stop wishing she could repair her family’s close bonds and get them all back to doing what they were born to do.
A viral video provides the opportunity Valentina needs: A boy discovers an unusual-looking egg and believes it to be a dragon egg. Millions of viewers are watching online as the egg seems ready to hatch at any moment, but Valentina knows it’s a recipe for disaster. After all, her father often liked to say that “people liked the idea of magical beasts, but if they knew the truth? They wouldn’t be able to handle it.” Valentina convinces her siblings to climb back into the Scourge and race to the egg before any TV reporters or monster hunters get there—and before something terrible happens.
Córdova sends her characters on a delightfully detailed wild ride of a road trip. As they visit foreboding and fantastical locales, Valentina and her siblings encounter monsters of all stripes, from sinuous, threatening beasts to creatures so cute and fluffy you’ll wish they were real. Monsters appear in the most unexpected places, as do humans scarier than any mythical creature.
Valentina Salazar Is Not a Monster Hunter swirls fantasy, adventure, comedy, action, coming-of-age and even a few hints of romance into a magical, memorable elixir of a story. Córdova makes a powerful case for friendship, imagination and hope as she reminds readers that “not everything that looks like a monster is monstrous.”
This heartfelt elixir of a story combines fantasy, adventure, comedy, action and coming-of-age for an unforgettable wild ride.
Meg Williams, the magnetic central character of Julie Clark’s new novel, The Lies I Tell, is a highly intelligent woman with a gift for transforming social graces into social engineering. She’s always learning, adept at innovating on the fly. But unlike other “disruptors,” such as the tech bro founders of hot new startups, Meg is a con artist with 10 years of experience (and counting).
Despite that decidedly dodgy resume, Meg makes for a compelling protagonist as she attempts to right both personal and systemic wrongs, one awful man at a time. Her methods are strategic and well tested: She trawls social media to ascertain things like a target’s wealth, trusted friends or favorite coffee shop. Then she insinuates herself into their life in a way that seems casual but is absolutely calculated, playing whatever role is required to breach their boundaries and defenses.
As The Lies I Tell begins, Meg is back in California after many years away, and she has set her sights on Los Angeles politician Ron Ashton, who tricked Meg’s mother out of their family home some 15 years ago, a life-altering injustice Meg has long wanted to rectify.
In a call to her home in Santa Monica, California, Clark says her deep dive into the world of chicanery and subterfuge involved research on everything from business development to the California real estate market to the typical mindset of the successful grifter. “I learned about the psychology of it, the different types of cons and con artists throughout history,” she says.
Clark is familiar with con women prominent in the current zeitgeist, too, from the likes of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to the imprisoned faux socialite Anna Delvey. But Clark says that The Lies I Tell‘s Meg is a very different type of person. “I didn’t want her to be working with a team of people; she needed to be isolated and on her own,” she says. “But I also wanted her to be likable. And I wanted her to not leave destruction and despair in her wake.”
“I love it when you can root for somebody who’s doing something wrong and still want them to succeed.”
Whether she’s writing about two women who make a spur-of-the-moment decision to swap identities in a busy airport (the plot of her 2020 New York Times bestseller, The Last Flight) or pitting Meg against her dauntless rival, journalist Kat Roberts, Clark nimbly avoids misogynistic stereotypes. “That’s just not what I do as a writer,” she says. “The women that I write, they’re strong, they’re savvy, they’re quick on their feet.”
Kat is convinced that Meg is the reason her life went terribly awry ten years ago, when Kat’s investigation into a predatory high school principal resulted in a deeply traumatic experience. Meg is the person who started Kat down that path, and once Kat realizes the con artist is back in California, she decides it’s time for a reckoning. She figures she’ll take a page from Meg’s playbook and gain her trust before making her pay for what she’s done.
Readers who admired the alternating points of view in The Last Flight will be happy to know that Clark returns to that structure in The Lies I Tell. Details of the pain and injustice that drive both women toward retribution—their origin stories, if you will—unspool across the pages, and both characters struggle to maintain their relentless sense of self-righteousness, even as they deceive others with relative ease.
The process of gradually realizing, scam by scam, layer by layer, what compels Meg to lie, cheat and steal is as captivating as the beguiling con artist herself, and Kat comes to a similar realization as she spends time in close proximity to the woman she thinks is the locus of all her miseries. “I want to climb inside Meg’s mind, inside her life, and piece it all together, dot by dot,” Kat muses. “Take something from her, the way she took everything from me.” But what Kat doesn’t anticipate is that they will end up becoming friends of a sort, establishing an easy (albeit lie-saturated) camaraderie. There is a delicious tension as they circle each other, probing for the truths that lie beneath each other’s facades, determined to get what they want before they’re found out or somebody skips town.
“At the beginning of the book,” Clark says, “Kat thinks she knows what she wants, which is to expose Meg, get her career back on track, be the writer she wanted to be when everything was pulled out from under her. But by the end of the book, she realizes she needs something different.”
It’s a theme the author often returns to in her work. “I talk a lot about an emotional third rail,” she says, “the way the characters grow and change as a result of trying to get what they want and what they need. And what they want and what they need are often not the same thing. I think that is the heart of every book I’ve written so far and probably will continue to be part of every book that I write.”
Clark gets a lot of practice identifying and exploring characters’ evolutions in her other job as a fifth grade teacher. “At the end of every book we read, my students have to answer the question, what is this book really about? What is it that the author wants you thinking about when you’re done?” she says. “I have to answer that same question with every book that I write. . . . With The Last Flight, it was about female empowerment, it was about trauma, it was about reclaiming your voice, it was about getting a second chance. And then with The Lies I Tell, it’s about justice, it’s about taking back what you think belongs to you.”
As Meg says in the book, “The difference between justice and revenge comes down to who’s telling the story,” and it’s important to Clark that readers feel some empathy for and identify with her central con woman. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t moments where you won’t trust what she’s saying or wonder what her motivation is—but at the same time, you’re still rooting for her,” she explains. “That’s what I wanted more than anything. I love it when you can root for somebody who’s doing something wrong and still want them to succeed.”
It’s particularly easy to root for Meg when she encounters sexism everywhere and doesn’t let her justifiable anger keep her from adroitly turning it to her advantage. Smugness and condescension from men, she realizes, can have its benefits. “She realizes that it’s actually really easy for her to [con people] because she’s a woman, because people don’t take women seriously,” Clark says.
While other characters may not take the novel’s leading ladies at their word, it’s important to Clark that readers do. “When I sat down to write [these] female characters . . . it just didn’t feel right to me to portray them as unreliable. I love the unreliable narrator as a reader! It’s super fun to figure out! But I’m not really inclined to perpetuate that stereotype for women, being a woman myself.”
Fortunately, Clark says, “people have been really receptive. I haven’t had a single reader say, ‘I wish you would’ve made them more unreliable.’ In fact, I get the opposite.” She adds, “I think people are hungry for that. I think they like to see characters they can count on. A character doesn’t always have to be 100% honest with the reader’we’re not 100% honest with people in our lives or even with ourselves’but the intention has to be good.”
Clark says that she feels an obligation to herself, her sons and her readers to portray women in an empowering and positive way. “We’re hardworking, sane, determined people who are not going to back down from a challenge. Those are the women that I know,” she says. “So that’s who you’re going to get when you pick up a book from me.”
The author of 2020's blockbuster thriller The Last Flight doesn't need unreliable narrators to keep fans frantically turning the pages of her follow-up novel.
All three of these gorgeous and talented authors have played pivotal roles in movies that are meaningful to fans worldwide. Their Tinseltown lives are glamorous, to be sure, but their heartfelt life stories reveal a darker side to fame, where inspirational journeys and cautionary tales collide.
★ Out of the Corner
Jennifer Grey knows that her life has been charmed from the beginning. As a child, her famous parents took her to holiday parties with the likes of Stephen Sondheim, Patti LuPone and Leonard Bernstein. But although she breathed in rarefied air, Grey felt lonely and lacking. The rising star of her father, Joel Grey, meant the family moved numerous times, and so many instances of starting over, with her parents largely absent, took a heavy toll.
In Out of the Corner: A Memoir, Grey writes, “I’d been so consumed by feeling abandoned that I hadn’t seen the ways I had abandoned myself.” In the decades before she reached that perspective, the actress searched—for affection, connection, approval—even as she achieved great fame.
Grey became America’s sweetheart in 1987, thanks to her indelible work as Baby Houseman in Dirty Dancing, but as she reveals with raw and moving candor, her sunny smile at the premiere belied her physical and emotional suffering. Just before the film’s debut, she and then-boyfriend Matthew Broderick were in a head-on car crash in which two people died. Even before that, her relationship with Broderick had turned toxic, and she’d had other unhealthy relationships earlier in her life. “My first drug of choice was romantic fantasy,” she writes. Other drugs followed, amplifying behavioral patterns from which she’s worked to recover—efforts she recounts with empathy for her former self and encouragement for those with similar struggles.
Grey also addresses what she calls “Schnozageddon”—when a revision rhinoplasty famously and irrevocably altered her face and professional identity—with bravery and clarity. And when she writes about dance, her prose sings with gratitude for the lifelong pursuit that’s taken her marvelous places, from Dirty Dancing to “Dancing With the Stars.” Time and again, Grey reveals herself to be tenacious and dedicated to the show going on—a fitting metaphor for a singular life, which she shares with wit, warmth and wisdom.
★ We Were Dreamers
Simu Liu’s fans are enchanted by his previous work as a stock photo model. They loved him in the Canadian sitcom “Kim’s Convenience.” And they rejoiced when he landed the lead in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. He shares these stories and more in his engaging, uplifting memoir, We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story.
Liu has had an incredible journey so far, but as with any origin story, it hasn’t been without painful obstacles. We Were Dreamers begins with his 1989 birth in Harbin, China, where he lived with his loving grandparents for four years. Then his parents, engineers who had moved abroad after he was born, brought Liu to Canada to join them. After so many years of pursuing a better life, they were not interested in Liu’s dreams for his own life, and they emotionally and physically abused him when he couldn’t achieve their definition of perfection.
As a young adult, getting laid off from an accounting job for which he was spectacularly ill suited brought shame but also opportunity, as Liu finally felt free to try out performing gigs, from acting to stunts to playing Spider-Man at kids’ parties. He recounts his step-by-step approach, providing a helpful blueprint for other aspiring artists who lack a supportive family or industry connections. For him, this plan worked marvelously: He obtained life-changing work as an actor in the U.S. and became an advocate for Asian representation in media in the process.
As an adult, Liu forged a truce with his parents, and he writes that “families today could learn from us and steer themselves from the same mistakes.” A compelling case for pursuing an authentic life, We Were Dreamers provides fascinating insight into a newly minted Marvel superhero who wants readers to take to the skies along with him.
Since birth, Selma Blair has struggled to unstick the labels others applied to her. As an infant, she had a sneer on her tiny face that caused neighbors and family to call her a “mean baby.” As she grew older, her mother said she wasn’t enough—pretty enough, thin enough, good enough, talented enough . . . the list goes on. And yet, as Blair writes in her painfully lovely Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up, “I lived for her approval.”
Although that approval was ever elusive, Blair loved her mother. However, she had learned from her mother that if she showed she was in pain, it would only be met with laughter. So even as Blair began to experience strange sensations in her limbs, facial pain and other ailments that lasted for decades, she told herself she was fine. Fans already know where this is going: In 2018, Blair was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As she writes with a poignant mixture of grief and relief, “There is great power in words. In an answer. In a diagnosis. To make sense of a plot you could hardly keep up with any longer.”
Blair writes about what fans may not know, too, such as her alcohol addiction that began at age 7 and surged and receded over the years. Blair also shares many thrilling Hollywood encounters, vividly conveying the profound feeling of disorientation that was her constant companion even as she starred in movies like Cruel Intentions, Legally Blonde and Hellboy; modeled for high-end fashion magazines; and developed friendships with the likes of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Karl Lagerfeld and Carrie Fisher.
Blair drew from her journals, her favorite books and her love of writing to craft this memoir, which is an elegiac contemplation of her life through the lens of a chronic illness that only recently made her past clear. For those seeking a similar sense of enlightenment, reading Mean Baby is a worthy and affecting undertaking.
Memoirs by Jennifer Grey, Simu Liu and Selma Blair reveal that even out-of-this-world stars have down-to-earth problems.
Tabitha Carvan’s This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something—Anything—Like Your Life Depends on It is very funny. She introduces herself by telling readers, “I am writing this from inside Benedict Cumberbatch.” (But don’t worry; she means a sweatshirt with his face on it, not a skin suit.) When describing the book, she quips, “What’s something that this book has that Benedict Cumberbatch does not? That’s right! An appendix.” From start to finish, the author is impressively informed and hilariously enthusiastic about the English movie and TV star.
But as she shares in a delightful phone call to her home in Canberra, Australia, Carvan wasn’t always so upfront about her infatuation with the man whose fans call themselves “Cumberbitches.” (See also: Cumbercookies, Cumbercommunity and Benaddicts.) Rather, she viewed her sudden surge of interest in him as an alarming signal that something was wrong with her.
Carvan, a mom of two, says her fascination with the actor sparked several years ago, at a time when she was “completely strung out by motherhood—that sense of having just nothing left in me.” She’d recently moved from Vietnam, where she had a flourishing career, back to Australia with her husband. “Here I was, alone at home in a new small town with no job,” she says. “The extent of the feelings I had at that time were tiredness and busyness. I think there was just a part of my soul that needed to be filled up with something that allowed me to feel alive—allowed me to feel anything.”
When a newspaper ad for the BBC television show “Sherlock” caught her eye, Carvan experienced an unexpected yearning. She began to watch that show, and then other shows and movies and interviews featuring Cumberbatch, until she was fully hooked. But it wasn’t just his “eyes that are too far apart . . . and yet somehow also perfect,” as she puts it in her book, or even his “Cumberbottom” that enchanted her; it was the giddiness she felt when she watched him, the smile that spread across her face when she thought about him.
Carvan says that, as her desire revved up, so did her curiosity. After all, it’s one thing to appreciate an actor’s art and skill and another thing for that appreciation to kick off—for millions of people—what she viewed as a swoony regression. So the science writer put her investigatory chops to work, determined to figure out, “Why was this happening to us? Why Benedict Cumberbatch? Why did it happen at that particular time?”
The author dove into books like Brigid Schulte’s Overwhelmed, about the components of modern life that eat away at our leisure time, and Ethel S. Person’s By Force of Fantasy, about the value of having fantasies. She also interviewed numerous fellow Cumberbatch fans, who spoke openly about the whats and whys of their devotion. For example, there’s Kyndall, a high-powered executive who makes digital paintings of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock in lingerie; a professor named Emma who writes copious fan fiction; and Lea, a nail salon owner in Ohio who adorns the shop’s walls with photos of the actor and chats about her Cumberlove with clients.
“When something brings people so much joy, why can’t we just let it?”
Carvan says their conversations “were affecting me hugely in the way I saw myself.” And over time, she says, “I began to realize that [the fandom] was not the most interesting thing that was happening to us. The most interesting thing was that we were all so happy.”
But that happiness was clouded by self-consciousness. “So many of them would be like, ‘Don’t tell anyone about it, don’t share it, I don’t want anyone to know,’” Carvan says. “And so that became the real question of the book: When something brings people so much joy, why can’t we just let it? Why can’t we just be open to feeling that?”
The author, who is the youngest of four children, says some of her own hesitancy began in childhood. “I think my parents and siblings contributed to my idea of ‘smart people,’” she says—including the idea that smart people “don’t care about trivial feelings. . . . We focus on the things that really matter, which is being clever and being academically good.”
Then there are the societal norms around infatuation. If a man blankets his home in sports or Star Wars memorabilia, for example, it’s acceptable, even cool. But if a woman does something similar, it’s odd or inappropriate, especially if she’s a mother. As Carvan writes in her book, “Women mature out of their pleasures. Men, on the other hand, get to hang on to theirs, turning them into a lifelong passion, or even better, a career.”
“If it was in you once, the ability to lose yourself in something purely fun, I assure you the ability is still in there somewhere.”
Living in a culture that worships the hustle can make people “feel like our free time has to be used to do everything, to make us fitter, look better, tick boxes for being good citizens,” Carvan says. Through writing her book, however, she’s learned that finding “a way to have completely pointless fun in your life seems to be quite a transformative step—a way to open up your emotional memory of what makes you feel good and what you actually want to do.”
Carvan says she hopes This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch helps readers realize that “if it was in you once, the ability to lose yourself in something purely fun, I assure you the ability is still in there somewhere, and you shouldn’t feel guilty.” Happily, she adds, “I do not feel guilty at all anymore.”
And what of Carvan + Cumberbatch: Are they still a thing? She says with a laugh, “It’s been six years, so our relationship is now just a fond, everlasting love, not a fiery passion. We’re lifelong companions; he just doesn’t know about it.”
Author photo of Tabitha Carvan by Jimmy Walsh Photography.
The debut author of This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch describes her plunge into obsession, followed by her ascent into unabashed superfan joy.
When do pleasures become guilty, transforming from sources of pure fun into fodder for defensiveness? And why is it so difficult for so many adults, especially women, to enjoy their interests regardless of what other people think?
Australian science writer Tabitha Carvan found herself asking these questions when, much to her surprise, she suddenly became a devoted fan of English actor Benedict Cumberbatch at age 36. As an overwhelmed and exhausted mother of two young children, she was “stuck in an interminable holding pattern, circling the airport and dumping fuel. . . . I was praying for something to hit me, just to break up the monotony.”
Turns out, watching Cumberbatch in the BBC series “Sherlock” was just the thing. But the intensity of her interest confounded Carvan, not least of all because of its similarity to her teenage obsessions with U2 and INXS. She thought she’d left those sorts of fanatic feelings behind, she explains in her clever and charming debut, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something—Anything—Like Your Life Depends On It. And she had no idea why they were surging back in response to this man, at this time.
She dove into Cumberbatch’s repertoire in search of answers, following a “viewing schedule [that] was being determined by Benedict Cumberbatch’s IMDb page like it was the actual TV guide.” Along the way, Carvan found that she felt the need to hide her infatuation, even as it was reviving her sense of self. So she investigated her new dedication to fandom: She read books on identity and fantasy, pondered friends’ comparatively dull obsessions (“that bird was very boring and Benedict Cumberbatch is very interesting”), and interviewed numerous fellow Cumberbatch fans.
Carvan’s candid revelations about the ways in which passion, bias, identity and motherhood intersect are hard-won and insightful, not to mention humorous. As she shares them in This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, she makes an excellent case for taking time to figure out what you like and embracing the delight it brings—no shame allowed. Plus, a witty, well-researched appendix offers copious information for the Cumber-curious; “Top ten Benedict Cumberbatch characters, hairwise, according to me” is particularly enlightening.
In her funny, thought-provoking memoir, Tabitha Carvan makes an excellent case for figuring out what you like and embracing the delight it brings—no shame allowed.
Atinuke (Too Small Tola,Catch That Chicken!), the acclaimed Nigerian-born author of Anna Hibiscus, is an accomplished traditional oral storyteller. In this illustrated chapter book, it’s easy to see why: Using straightforward yet elegant prose, she creates a sweetly moving and eminently memorable young protagonist.
Anna is a bright, active girl who lives with her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings and parents in a sprawling compound in a big, bustling city in Nigeria. The compound is a wondrous place with unusual architecture, lush gardens, fragrant mango trees and goats and chickens. There is always someone to play with, talk to or even—when the cheerful noise and spirited bickering of such a busy home becomes overwhelming—hide from for a little while.
Each of Anna Hibiscus’ four self-contained chapters begin the same way: “Anna Hibiscus lives in Africa. Amazing Africa. In a country called Nigeria.” This refrain highlights Anna’s pride in her identity and her homeland. In Atinuke’s quartet of tales, readers are drawn into Anna’s “amazing” world, where they join her on a trip to the beach, meet her supercool auntie who lives across the Atlantic Ocean and learn what it’s like to sell oranges on the street. Anna is smart and engaged in her family’s life, and each story showcases different ways to express love and understand new perspectives.
Although Lauren Tobia’s illustrations are done in pen and ink with a gray wash, the people and events she depicts always have a feeling of cheerful vibrancy. Mischievous children tumble across the pages, and framed snapshots (complete with little pieces of scrapbook tape) capture scenes of Mother’s life growing up in Canada, where she met and married Father as he visited one summer.
Whether they share Atinuke’s stories aloud with a grown-up or pore over them quietly by themselves, emerging readers will find much to enjoy and discover as Anna and her family impart wisdom and wit, blend the contemporary with the traditional and revel in having fun together.
The Puffin Keeper
Sometimes we’re lucky to have a special person enter our lives and become an emotional touchstone, a beacon of light during dark times. In The Puffin Keeper , lighthouse keeper and artist Benjamin Postlethwaite becomes such a figure for young Allen Williams.
At first, it’s because Ben rescues 5-year-old Allen, his recently widowed mother and 28 other passengers from a shipwreck near Ben’s lighthouse on the Scilly Isles, then gives Allen a painting to keep. Later, it’s because memories of Ben’s heroism and kindness resonate through Allen’s life, especially when the boy longs to escape his difficult circumstances. At his strict grandfather’s house, Allen lives in terror of being rapped on the hands with his cruel governess’ ruler, and at boarding school, he is forced to run cross-country as punishment for repeated attempts to run away.
Allen discovers that he loves running and, inspired by Ben’s painting, also develops his own artistic talents. He even paints the envelope of a letter he sends to Ben, but Ben doesn’t reply. Finally, teenage Allen decides to make a “journey of exploration” to the lighthouse. He reunites with Ben, who never forgot him, and the arrival of an injured puffin at the lighthouse augurs new beginnings for humans and birds alike. When Allen must eventually make a far more perilous journey, thoughts of Ben and the puffin help him once more.
The Puffin Keeper is an emotional tale of people and creatures who forge joyful bonds, endure storms and carry on. As Michael Morpurgo’s affecting story makes clear, Allen is a touchstone for Ben as well, in a sweet reminder that we may affect others more than we ever realize.
The emotional impact and classical feel of illustrator Benji Davies’ artwork are just right for this book. Many illustrations’ sepia tones hint at days gone by, while roiling seas rise up in ominous hues of gray and blue. Davies’ depictions of human characters are nicely expressive, and the puffins are both accurate and adorable.
Morpurgo is no stranger to crafting appealing and meaningful tales. The award-winning British author has written more than 100 children’s books, with War Horse being perhaps the best known among them. In an afterword, Morpurgo reveals a personal connection to the real-life figure who served as inspiration for the character of Allen, a historical tidbit that sheds warm light on an already luminous story.
Families come in all shapes and sizes. These lovely books for emerging readers explore how our families enrich and bring joy to our lives.
The pull of shared history is incredibly strong, as demonstrated in this trio of new sister-centric thrillers. There’s strangeness and estrangement, intertwining and unraveling, joy and terror as these sets of siblings revisit the past in hopes of forging a better, less frightening future.
Blood Will Tell
In Blood Will Tell, a tense new thriller by Heather Chavez (No Bad Deed), a quick trip to the gas station kicks off a chain of increasingly frightening events that thoroughly upend Frankie Barrera’s life.
The single mom and middle school math teacher has no idea why other customers are glaring at her as she pays for her gas. She figures it’s due to mistaken identity or perhaps just a case of the grumpies. Then a text alert brings everything into sharp, shocking focus: Her pickup truck was included in an Amber Alert. Her first reaction? Utter confusion. Her second? Curiosity about whether Izzy, her impulsive and unpredictable younger sister, had anything to do with it.
Frankie soon realizes Izzy was indeed involved, but figuring out how and why will require upsetting trips back into long-suppressed memories of a chaotic night five years earlier when a scared, drunk Izzy had called Frankie for help because she had been in a terrible car crash and wasn’t sure what had happened. Chavez does an excellent job of conveying both the disorienting haziness of a painful past and the push-pull of the sisters’ desire, and reluctance, to face the truth.
Criminals circle and legal issues loom as the sins of the past collide with those of the present. Time is running out, and Frankie and Izzy must decide: Can they end their codependence while solving the mysteries of that fateful night once and for all? Through its unflinching focus on the unhealthiness of entrenched familial roles, Blood Will Tell shines a light on the ways loyalty can become more damaging than nurturing, more misguided than wise.
I’ll Be You
If you had to guess which identical twin and former child TV star would be the one to disappear at the beginning of bestselling author Janelle Brown’s I’ll Be You, you probably wouldn’t pick Elli.
She and her twin, Sam, have had a painfully tumultuous relationship for many years. Sam’s struggles with addiction made it impossible for them to maintain the closeness they reveled in as children, and their former-manager mother’s insistence on reminding them of their so-called good twin/bad twin personalities (that would be Elli and Sam, respectively) has never been helpful either.
But even when things were at their worst, Elli was always there, ready to help or listen. She wouldn’t just check herself into a spa for an indefinite amount of time, leaving everyone, including her recently adopted toddler daughter, behind . . . right? Despite her mother’s refusal to acknowledge that harm might’ve come to Elli, Sam decides to follow her instincts and investigate her estranged sister’s life in hopes of bringing her back home.
After all, Sam thinks, “Who else had ever studied her as closely as I had? Who had ever seen me the way that she did?” But as Sam pores over Elli’s files and tries to talk to her prickly new friends, a distressing pattern emerges, and she realizes the Ojai spa Elli is visiting might not be a place for relaxation but something more sinister, even cult-like. Even worse, the Elli with whom she had swapped places many times has now become an enigma. Elli might not even want to be found.
Readers will enjoy the on-tenterhooks feeling of I’ll Be You as Sam tries to simultaneously maintain her sobriety, fend off her mother’s barbs and track down the elusive Elli. Brown’s depiction of addiction and the toll it takes on Sam, Elli and their family is empathetic and affecting, as are the sisters’ attempts to establish individual identities while keeping a close connection—an eternal struggle for all of us, certainly, but especially challenging when the singular intimacy of twinhood is involved.
The Children on the Hill
What if intimacy that once was a balm for trauma transformed into something twisted, perhaps even deadly? Jennifer McMahon explores this painful possibility in The Children on the Hill, her follow-up to 2021’s bestselling The Drowning Kind. Deliciously gothic details and eerie vibes set the stage for a supremely creepy, often incredibly sad tale inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
In 1978, Violet “Vi” Hildreth and her brother, Eric, enjoy an idyllic childhood on the grounds of Vermont’s Hillside Inn, a psychiatric hospital presided over by their beloved Gran, the renowned psychiatrist Dr. Helen Hildreth. The kids have created a monster club, even collaborating on The Book of Monsters, which is all about the beings they believe are lurking in the darkness.
When Gran brings an orphaned patient named Iris to stay with them, Iris and Vi form an intense bond. Vi resolves to help the traumatized Iris figure out where she came from, even if (especially if) subterfuge and sneaking around are involved.
In a parallel storyline set in 2019, returning to Vermont is the last thing Lizzy Shelley wants to do. She’s a popular author and podcast host who travels the country in pursuit of scary creatures. She believes that monsters are real, and that her long-lost sister is one.
McMahon’s teasingly gradual reveal of the event Lizzy is referring to provides copious thrills as bizarre goings-on unspool, bit by bit. (And yes, a secret basement laboratory is involved.) The alternating timelines converge in shudder-inducing ways that invite readers to ponder these questions from The Book of Monsters:“Don’t we all have a little monster hiding inside us? A little darkness we don’t want people to see?”
Through its innovative take on Shelley’s tragic and memorable classic, The Children on the Hill offers an absorbing contemplation of a sisterhood forged in shared pain, in longing to feel less alone even under the most monstrous of circumstances.
Family secrets and sins cast a long shadow in these thrillers, which center on the relationship between sisters.
Malaysian author Hanna Alkaf’s Queen of the Tiles combines two irresistible elements: wordplay and murder. It’s the story of Najwa, a Scrabble whiz whose best friend, Trina, collapsed mid-game during the Word Warrior Weekend tournament a year ago. As Najwa continues to deal with her grief, she competes in her first tournament since Trina’s death, where she discovers that her friend may have been murdered—and the killer could be sitting on the other side of the Scrabble board.
What initially sparked your interest in writing about Scrabble and the competitive Scrabble community?
I love Scrabble. Malaysia has a thriving, active Scrabble community, and as a teen, my older brother had been part of it. I remember many weekends spent ferrying him back and forth from our house to the Parkroyal Hotel in downtown Kuala Lumpur, where meets were usually held. Naturally, I ended up representing my school at a few competitions when I was in my teens as well. The strategies employed by top Scrabble players have always fascinated me, and when you combine that with my love of wordplay, Agatha Christie mysteries and teen angst, well, that’s how Queen of the Tiles was born.
The Scrabble competition in Queen of the Tiles is suspenseful and incredibly detailed. How did you research that aspect of the book? What did you learn that surprised you?
I watched many hours of Scrabble competitions, documentaries and interviews, read as much and as widely as I could on strategy and gameplay, and mapped out moves on a Scrabble board that I kept by my desk throughout the entire process.
I am now a repository of absolutely fascinating and utterly useless Scrabble trivia. For instance, the highest scoring Scrabble word ever was played by Karl Khoshnaw in 1982: caziques, for 392 points. But Dan Stock from Ohio worked out that, in theory, the highest scoring Scrabble word possible is oxyphenbutazone, which, if the stars somehow align and all conditions on the board are just as they need to be, can get you a ridiculous 1,778 points. Yes, I am very fun at parties.
“Mysteries work best when readers can play along.”
At the beginning of each chapter, you feature a word with its definition and Scrabble point value. Did you already have words in mind for this when you began writing?
I kept a Google Doc called WORD LIST, and every time I came across a word and definition that I thought I could work into the plot—whether for the words at the beginning of each chapter, tournament scenes or Najwa’s own internal monologues—I’d note it down.
Sometimes I needed something specific, like, “Oh, for this chapter, I need an obscure word that means ‘enemy.’” I’d open Thesaurus.com, plug the word in and find the most obscure but still relevant synonym. Then I’d cross-check it with an online Scrabble word checker to make sure it was valid and read what the official definition and point value would be.
Najwa’s internal dialogue was harder to work through. She floats from word to word depending on the definition or how that word is tied to her memories or her analysis of other people. It’s a tricky thing to pull off, and every time I did it felt like a tiny miracle.
One of my favorite such moments happens early on in the book. Najwa’s thought process takes her from the word arenite (a sedimentary clastic rock) to clastic (composed of fragments) to fragment (to break into pieces), and that’s how she feels right in that moment: like she’s falling apart.
The tournament aspect of the novel is thrilling on its own, but Queen of the Tiles also contains a murder mystery! Do you enjoy reading mysteries? What was challenging about plotting one yourself?
I grew up raiding my older sister’s collection of Agatha Christie novels and still go back to them as comfort reads—particularly the Poirot books. Yes, you read that right: I read murder mysteries for comfort.
The most challenging part of it all was laying down the breadcrumbs. It’s easy to say this big reveal needs to happen in this chapter, or this plot twist goes here, but if you don’t show a logical path to get there, then you’re not really earning it. Mysteries work best when readers can play along; they’re most fun when you can go back and realize the clues were there waiting for you, and you just didn’t realize at the time that they were clues at all.
“If [Najwa] feels real to readers, then I’m grateful, because the emotions were all too real to me.”
Najwa has developed an obsession with Trina’s Instagram account, and social media plays a vital role in the story. Why was it important to you to include this in the book?
Trina was a social media star; she had a large following and we catch glimpses of how obsessed she was with maintaining a certain image for her public. But the more we get to know Trina, the more we see how much more depth and darkness lie behind the facade.
And it isn’t just Trina. In all instances where we see social media use in Queen of the Tiles—and we see it a lot—there’s always the underlying question of what we present to the world versus who we really are. How much is being shown, and how much is being hidden? How do you evaluate what is real when you don’t know how much is being shared and how much has been withheld?
In her grief after Trina’s death, Najwa experiences memory issues, intrusive thoughts and more. Your portrait of Najwa is so real and raw. What was it like for you to craft this moving depiction of loss and healing?
I did some research on therapy and coping mechanisms for loss, grief and PTSD, but to be honest, writing Najwa was difficult not because I couldn’t understand what she was feeling, but because I understood it too well. I mined my own memories and emotions and buried shards of my own remembered grief in Najwa; if she feels real to readers, then I’m grateful, because the emotions were all too real to me.
I loved how often Najwa refers to her therapist when she talks about what she’s been going through. Why was it important to you to include therapy as part of Najwa’s experiences and to depict her openly relying on its lessons?
In Malaysia, we’re still working on destigmatizing mental illness and therapy. I really wanted to show a Malay Muslim teen struggling with her mental health and the ways in which she reaches out, gets help, develops coping mechanisms and puts those tools in practice—all things that I think we need to work on normalizing.
You recently tweeted, “I cannot tell you what it means to me to see a hijabi on the cover of a book that has absolutely nothing to do with Muslim pain or oppression. A book where she just gets to play Scrabble and solve a mystery and be a teenage girl.” That’s such a powerful statement. What do you hope Najwa and her story might mean for teen readers?
All too often, Muslims and hijabis have to perform our pain in order for our stories to be taken seriously. And those stories are important and necessary. But they’re not all we are. The Muslim experience is varied and colorful; we contain multitudes. We should have stories that showcase all of that! Our pain and our joy and our fears and our loves and our friendships—the sum of our lives and not just one aspect of it.
What do you think draws us to word games like Scrabble, crossword puzzles or, recently, Wordle and makes us want to play them time and again?
I can only really speak for myself, but in my case, I am endlessly fascinated by language and the way that the smallest changes in letters, word choice, tone, inflection or emphasis can entirely change the message we’re trying to get across. My dedication in this book reads simply, “This one’s for the word nerds.” I might as well have said, “This one is for me.”
Author photo of Hanna Alkaf courtesy of Azalia Suhaimi.
Hanna Alkaf’s new YA novel is a murder mystery set in the cutthroat world of competitive Scrabble.
Malaysian author Hanna Alkaf’s Queen of the Tiles is a raw, moving exploration of complicated grief, a celebration of teenage determination and a nail-biting murder mystery set at a cutthroat Scrabble tournament in Kuala Lumpur.
At last year’s Word Warrior Weekend competition, Trina Low, the titular Queen of the Tiles, made it all the way to the final round before she slumped over her board—dead. Najwa Bakri, Trina’s best friend, has been experiencing traumatic flashbacks, depression and memory loss ever since. “It’s as if Trina’s death cracked me open, and now pieces of me keep escaping, scattering themselves everywhere,” she explains.
Seeing a therapist has been helpful for Najwa, as will be attending this year’s Word Warrior Weekend. Along with ensuring that no one will tarnish Trina’s legacy, Najwa is also intent on proving that she is still an accomplished Scrabble player in her own right. This year, it’s Najwa who will become Queen of the Tiles.
Of course, other competitors have the same idea, setting the stage for round after round of precisely crafted, often mesmerizing gameplay. Queen of the Tiles brims with the skills a player must possess to become a Scrabble champion: sharp focus, quick thinking and a prodigious vocabulary. Every chapter opens with an esoteric word (plus its definition and Scrabble point value, natch). Alkaf builds an immersive, complex world but doesn’t stop there, layering in a compelling locked-room whodunit, too.
Indeed, the Word Warrior Weekend is upended when Najwa begins to receive anagrams via direct message from Trina’s long-inactive Instagram account. You wouldn’t think a word puzzle could seem threatening, but in Alkaf’s clever hands, the brainteasers foment unease and hint at a truly horrifying possibility: Could Trina have been murdered?
Scrabble frenemies become amateur sleuths, and everyone’s a suspect. During high-level Scrabble battles, shocking secrets are revealed and edgy suspense builds as the tiles click and slide. Readers will be guessing until the very end of this ensorcelling (15 points), sesquipedalian (26 points) mystery.
If Gary Janetti’s keenly observed memoir of his formative years, Start Without Me: (I’ll Be There in a Minute), is any indication, he’s always had a sharp eye and a sharper tongue.
That sarcastic sensibility has earned him fame and acclaim as a writer and producer for “Will & Grace” and “Family Guy,” creator of the British sitcom “Vicious” and star of the HBO Max animated show “The Prince.” Now, in this follow-up to 2019’s Do You Mind If I Cancel?, which focused on his career beginnings, the raconteur extraordinaire journeys back to his precocious childhood in 1970s and ’80s Queens, New York.
Those years had many glorious moments for Janetti, and readers will gleefully snort at his hilariously spot-on recollections. In grammar school, “The Carol Burnett Show” provided life-affirming joy. In freshman gym class, he discovered a prodigious talent for and love of square dancing. During his sophomore year, horrified by the prospect of football, he cleverly manipulated the system by spending gym periods with a guidance counselor (and drawing from soap operas to keep her hooked on his imaginary troubles). Always, movies and TV were a balm for his inability to connect with other kids and his fear of people finding out who he really was. “The things I liked, I liked too much. The things I didn’t, all other boys did,” he writes.
Some essays give insight into how things got better for the grown-up Janetti, providing moments of loveliness among the operatic complaining. For example, after a lengthy critique of destination weddings, Janetti reveals with a wink that he married TV personality Brad Goreski on a Caribbean cruise.
Start Without Me is equal parts acid and heart. It’s a collection of sardonically funny stories about a firecracker of a kid who hadn’t yet found his kindred spirits. It’s a series of entertaining tirades about life’s indignities. And it’s an engaging look at the origin story of a man who, despite years of self-doubt, has finally embraced his particular superpowers.
Gary Janetti’s keenly observed, hilarious memoir of his formative years in 1970s and ’80s Queens is equal parts acid and heart.
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