Linda M. Castellitto

Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Up, Up, Ever Up!

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

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!
NonfictionNatureEssays

This Is How a Robin Drinks

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

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.
Mystery & SuspenseThriller

The Sequel

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

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.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

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.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Mama’s Magnificent Dancing Plantitas

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

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.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

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.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

The House on Yeet Street

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

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.
NonfictionScience

Love Triangle

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Matt Parker has spent his career thus far promoting—and proving—the notion that math isn’t fearsome, it’s fun! In his 2020 bestseller Humble Pi, he examined math’s presence in daily life and what can happen when things don’t quite add up. And now, in his fascinating, funny and far-reaching Love Triangle: How Trigonometry Shapes the World, he explores the significance and celebrates the wonders of his pointy favorite shape, the triangle.

Parker, an Australian-born, U.K.-based comedian, mathematician and star of popular YouTube show “Stand-up Maths,” knows there’s a lot of discomfiture around the subject, particularly trigonometry: Many think it’s scary, boring, impenetrable or not relevant to our post-school years. We might remember the Pythagorean theorem, but that’s about it. 

With Love Triangle, the author is determined to change hearts and minds. “I think it’s a shame that being bored by Pythagoras is most people’s lasting impression of triangles,” he writes. “I love triangles! We all rely on triangles to keep our modern world ticking along. I would argue . . . that triangles unlock some of the most important bits of knowledge ever discovered by humans.” 

Armed with boundless enthusiasm and attention to detail, Parker educates and entertains while explaining triangles’ vital role in rainbows, civil engineering, the games of pool and baseball, stars in the sky and much more. For example, the “wake behind a duck on a pond always forms an angle of 39°. Big duck, small duck; fast duck, slow duck: always 39°. Which tells us something about the way waves move in water.” And while on a visit to Japan, he uses triangles (plus a map, ruler and shadows) to figure out the height of the Tokyo Skytree, the tallest tower in the world.

Such feats of curiosity, creative problem-solving and humor are plentiful in Love Triangle, which considers triangles past (papyrus), present (3D printing) and future (satellites). Parker presents scenarios with a wide range of specificity and complexity that are bound to please the math-hesitant and math-fluent alike—and have them agreeing that “triangles are everything and everything is triangles.”

Mathematician and comedian Matt Parker’s Love Triangle celebrates the wonders of the titular shape, and is bound to please the math-hesitant and math-fluent alike.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Death at the Sign of the Rook

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Fans of Kate Atkinson’s policeman-turned-private eye Jackson Brodie, who debuted in 2004’s Case Histories, will be thrilled to learn he’s back for a sixth outing in Death at the Sign of the Rook.

Jackson last appeared in 2019’s Big Sky, where he contended with crime in an English seaside village. In Death at the Sign of the Rook, a small Yorkshire town serves as a wintry backdrop for art theft and a chaotic murder-mystery party that blurs the lines between dramatic artifice and harsh reality.

We begin with Ian and Hazel Padgett, who have just hired Jackson. Their mother has recently died, an oil painting is missing from her home, and the Padgetts suspect their mother’s caregiver, Melanie, has stolen it. As Detective Constable Reggie Chase joins Jackson in tracking down Melanie, they learn that a painting went missing from nearby estate Burton Makepeace two years ago, and it’s suspected that it was taken by the housekeeper. At one point, Reggie thinks irritably about how Jackson always says “a coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen.” Is there a connection between the women, the paintings and the thefts? 

In and among the sleuths’ investigatory advances, Atkinson immerses the reader in the inner lives of her emotionally complex cast: the officious Lady Milton; Simon Cate, a vicar who doesn’t believe in God; and Ben Jennings, an injured former army major. Every character’s inner monologue is detailed and eccentric, rife with existential contemplation and dry wit. Their personalities gradually and tantalizingly unfurl, as do their connections to one another (and, perhaps, the mysterious crimes).

Death at the Sign of the Rook kicks into high gear when the cast converges at Burton Makepeace for a murder-mystery weekend. A major snowstorm traps everyone overnight, cell phone service has gone out, and an escaped prisoner—dubbed “Two-Cop Killer Carl Carter” by the media—might be roaming the area, too. While the detectives struggle to discern fact from fiction, murder most foul and hectic hilarity collide as dark secrets are finally revealed. It’s a twisty treat of a read that will totally absorb fans of Atkinson, Agatha Christie and, of course, the inimitable Jackson Brodie.

A murder-mystery party blurs the lines between dramatic artifice and harsh reality in Kate Atkinson’s sixth Jackson Brodie mystery.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Middle grade readers have long reveled in stories where museums and mystery intersect. Notable and beloved examples include E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer and Gillian McDunn’s When Sea Becomes Sky.

Bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Jasmine Warga joins in the artsy, sleuth-y fun with A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall, a creative and compassionate tale featuring a stolen painting, a confused ghost and an inquisitive turtle.

Eleven-year-old Rami Ahmed’s mom supervises the cleaning crew at the Penelope L. Brooks Museum, and Rami spends a lot of time there after school. Lately, he’s also been very worried: A painting called “Untitled” has been stolen, and security staff consider him and his mom to be suspects. Things haven’t been good at school either, since his best friends publicly rejected and humiliated him at lunch. A smart, confident girl named Veda has invited him into her friend group, but he can’t stop reliving his feelings of hurt and shame. 

When Rami encounters the girl depicted in “Untitled” floating around the spot in Cherry Hall where the painting once hung, he has to stifle a few screams, but he also feels a glimmer of hope. The girl insists Rami help her figure out who she is, and he realizes his investigation could unearth the art thief as well. Crime podcast-aficionada Veda decides to join him, and even Agatha the turtle has information to contribute, too—if only she can get the humans to see her as more than a creature silently sunning itself on a rock.

Warga deftly layers in suspense and intrigue as the kids research the painting’s provenance, investigate the crime and try to avoid arousing suspicion in the adults around them. (After all, one of them might be the thief!) Through it all, A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall exudes appreciation for the transformative nature of art—emphasized by Matt Rockefeller’s lovely grayscale illustrations at the book’s beginning and end—and exudes empathy for those who struggle with loneliness. After all, as one character notes, “It is a singular feeling to be understood. Seen. Connected. It is the best feeling in the whole world.”

Bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Jasmine Warga delivers artsy, sleuth-y fun in A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall, a creative and compassionate tale featuring a stolen painting, a confused ghost and an inquisitive turtle.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

The White Guy Dies First

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

How do you like your horror? Perhaps you’re a fan of creeping dread, or gory goings-on are more your speed? The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power, editor Terry J. Benton-Walker’s anthology featuring authors of color, explores a variety of tropes for readers who enjoy disturbing, thought-provoking fare.

Despite their varied approaches, settings and baddies, all the ominously entertaining stories in The White Guy Dies First have two things in common: They center people of color and, per the book’s title, the white guy indeed dies first. Also evident throughout is an appreciation for horror. As Benton-Walker—author of the bestselling Blood Debts and Alex Wise series—notes, “The genre has always been a medium to deliver terror that’s most often intertwined with a deeper message, which can be far more horrifying than any superficial scare.”

Chloe Gong’s blood-spattered slasher, “Docile Girls,” features Adelaide Hu, head of the prom committee that includes her ex Jake Stewart and his snide friends. Jake had relegated her to “an exotic smiling accessory,” but on the fateful night before the big dance, Adelaide is anything but docile. And in Mark Oshiro’s suspenseful home invasion story, “Wasps,” Nina Ortiz defends her Abuela Carmen’s Brooklyn house from a gentrifier who wants to take their home—despite not knowing just how dark things can get in the Ortiz family’s basement.

There’s body horror (Naseem Jamnia’s “Break Through Our Skin”) and occult magic (Lamar Giles’ “The Protégé”), too. And an angry, hilariously profane haunted house narrates Benton-Walker’s own contribution, “The Road to Hell,” in which a Florida manse that spent centuries wanting love from occupants who “abandoned me, deeming me unlovable, unworthy . . . haunted” pulls out all the terrifying stops in an effort to make its current residents stay put.

Readers won’t want to put down The White Guy Dies First until they turn the last spooky page of this creative and creepy collection in which expectations are subverted and underrepresented groups claim their power from ghouls and demons both real and supernatural.

 

Readers won’t want to put down The White Guy Dies First, a creative and creepy collection in which expectations are subverted and underrepresented groups claim their power from ghouls and demons both real and supernatural.
Mystery & SuspenseThriller

No Road Home

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Wait for the next dark and stormy night to dive into John Fram’s No Road Home. This twisty murder mystery, rife with cleverly employed elements of horror and the supernatural, comes to a head during a mighty deluge.

As in his debut novel, The Bright Lands, a BookPage Best Book of 2020, the Texas-born Fram sets this darkly dramatic, gothic tale in the Lone Star State. He draws readers into Ramorah, an expansive compound home to the uber-wealthy Wright family, presided over by patriarch Jerome Jeremiah Wright, a fire-and-brimstone televangelist.

Things are off-kilter at the estate these days: Jerome has been making increasingly fatalistic prophecies, and the Wrights are worried about the future of their family business. It doesn’t help that threatening messages in blood-red paint have begun appearing on the mansion’s bedroom doors.

Toby Tucker has no inkling of the danger that awaits him when he sets out to visit Ramorah with his son, Luca, and brand-new wife, Alyssa, Jerome’s granddaughter. Luca is a sweet child, who “wore his hair long and dressed in lots of pink and mauve and called himself a boy, which was fine with Toby.” This combination is not, Toby soon realizes, fine with the Wrights, who stare at and mutter derogatory comments about Luca despite Alyssa’s assertion that “[her] family’s too rich to be bigoted.”

Toby’s already-present desire to flee Ramorah multiplies a thousandfold when Jerome is found murdered, but floodwaters make that impossible. As the storm rages outside and the Wright clan whispers that their newest visitor may to be blame for Jerome’s death, Toby resolves to solve the murder, clear his name and get himself and Luca the hell out of there—especially since Luca claims to have seen a ghost, and Toby believes him. 

Fram expertly ratchets up the tension as Toby and Luca desperately search for allies and answers as the devious Wrights circle around them. Fans of everyone’s-a-suspect stories will be riveted as long-held secrets float to the surface, twisted motivations are revealed and revelations of generational trauma and abuse prompt them to consider whether the most outwardly pious might just be the biggest sinners of all.

Set at a televangelist’s compound as floodwaters rise, John Fram’s No Road Home is a darkly dramatic murder mystery-thriller hybrid.
NonfictionNatureAnimals

Meet the Neighbors

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Brandon Keim’s thought-provoking, beautifully written Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-Than-Human World is perfect for those who love to read al fresco, surrounded by the very creatures the author urges us to view with curiosity, compassion and kinship.

From adorable bumblebees to fearsome grizzly bears and everything—well, everyone—in between, Keim is a staunch advocate for viewing animals as fellows, and not just those we’ve brought into our homes: “Even as we recognize our beloved pets as thinking, feeling beings with a first-person experience of life, and grapple—however inconsistently—with the selfhood of animals used for food and research, that’s not how we’re socialized to regard wild animals.”

So what if, in addition to cats and dogs plus “a select few stars, such as chimpanzees and dolphins,” we acknowledge that raccoons, coyotes and salamanders are just as capable of thinking and feeling as we are? There’s plenty of scientific evidence that wild creatures are self-aware and think strategically, Keim explains, even if it’s not always in a form we recognize. To wit, earthworms can distinguish between soil displaced by their own slithering and the push of a shovel, coyotes can invent games, and starlings are more relaxed after having bathed—just like us!

In addition to translating copious scientific revelations with reverence and aplomb, Meet the Neighbors sheds light on damaging biases in conventional wisdom, such as the value of instinct. ’Tis true, humans are encouraged to follow their instincts to boost awareness, safety or success. However, Keim notes, “When applied to animals, it’s used dismissively. Then instinctive means thoughtless, the opposite of reasoned, a lesser form of intelligence than our own.”

The journalist and author of 2017’s The Eye of the Sandpiper also delves into animal rights philosophy, hunting regulations, wildlife management and more. Through it all, Keim exhorts readers to consider: “How might an awareness of animal minds shape the ways we understand them and, ultimately, how we live with them on this shared, precious planet?” Meet the Neighbors offers an edifying, awe-inspiring start.

Brandon Keim’s awe-inspiring Meet the Neighbors exhorts us to consider that all animals, from dolphins to salamanders, are just as capable of thinking and feeling as we are.

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