All Reviews

Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Oasis

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Dusty, sepia-toned darkness blankets the pages of Oasis, a  poignant and cinematic graphic novel by Guojing, whose prior acclaimed works include The Only Child and The Flamingo. Previously a concept artist for animated TV shows and games, Guojing has a knack for atmospheric lighting and a strong grasp of the power of scale, which is evident in this eerily beautiful story about two children named JieJie and DiDi (“older sister” and “younger brother” in Chinese) and their efforts to create and maintain a sense of family in an unrelentingly harsh world. 

JieJie and DiDi are adorably small, yet hardy and determined: Every day, they hike across massive dunes in a vast desert to a battered phone booth where they can call their mother, who works in Oasis City. In striking contrast to the kids’ lonely existence in a barren, polluted landscape, Oasis City is “a paradise with the purest water and air” that’s “designed, built, and guarded by AI robots.” But the humans—including the children’s mother—who build the robots are “forgotten ones,” who toil in an underground factory.

One fateful day, Mom misses their call. On their way home, the worried children detour into an Oasis trash dump where they discover a broken AI robot. The kids repair it and activate its “Mother Mode,” which kicks off a whirlwind of learning what it would be like to live with a mother every day—as opposed to the children’s reality of only seeing Mom during the annual moon festival. But the children’s longing for their human Mom does not abate, and when she unexpectedly returns, the characters must all reconsider who they are to each other. Can they create a new kind of household that offers hope for their future, and perhaps even the world at large? 

Oasis is a visually arresting, emotionally moving tale sure to resonate with readers drawn to stories about family in its many guises, as well as those compelled to contemplate the ways in which technology can pull us apart—or become a surprising catalyst for drawing us closer together.

Oasis is a visually arresting, emotionally moving tale sure to resonate with readers drawn to stories about family in its many guises.
Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

Upon a Starlit Tide

Review by Stephanie Cohen-Perez

Kell Woods’ second historical fantasy, Upon a Starlit Tide, is clearly inspired by classic stories such as “The Little Mermaid,” “Cinderella” and “Bluebeard”—but similar tropes is where the resemblance ends, as Woods has molded these elements into an original fairy tale all her own.

Lucinde Léon, one of three daughters of famed and revered Breton merchant Jean-Baptiste Léon, has always felt an inexplicable pull towards the ocean, one that her father encourages. Luce is used to doing things unconventionally: She spends her time at a sea cave watched over by a groac’h (a water fairy who stands in for the sea-witch from “The Little Mermaid”) and harbors strong emotions for her smuggler friend Samuel, a tattooed English sailor whom she’s convinced to teach her how to sail. As a naval war between the French and English rages on and Luce and her sisters are due to be married off to claim their places in society, her rose-colored views of their home, picturesque Saint-Malo, are being put to the test. She must make some difficult decisions about who to love, who to trust and who to protect—especially after saving a handsome, near-drowned sailor, Morgan de Chatelaine, unearths more mysteries than ever. 

How Kell Woods combined two classic fairy tales to create a magic all her own.

Upon a Starlit Tide creatively fuses elements of beloved tales to construct a wholly new world to immerse readers in. Gone is the typical fairy godmother, who is here replaced by a friendly lutine (a type of flower hobgoblin). Likewise, the groac’h has more secrets to her than meets the eye, overturning the typically villainous narrative. As with her previous novel, After the Forest, Woods celebrates femininity, heroines giving into their wild nature and femmes taking agency of their own lives to pursue their happily ever after. Readers will root for Luce whether she is in the throes of a love triangle between Samuel and Morgan, or in the throes of the unpredictable, tempestuous sea. Woods also provides countless wonderful descriptions of the fae, which lends an ethereal nature to Saint-Malo and makes the sad reality of the fairy folk’s exodus from Brittany (due to humans stealing their magic, their livelihood and their homes) hit all the harder. 

With beautifully flowing prose and countless twists, Woods concocts a tale of love, betrayal and revenge that will drag unsuspecting readers along with its currents. One may recognize elements that feel fitting for a traditional fairy tale—a parent’s hidden secrets, a dashing stranger who seems too good to be true. And in Luce herself, they may also recognize a part of themselves that yearns to be set free to explore the world, following their heart’s desire, unfettered by society’s requirements and expectations.

With beautifully flowing prose and countless twists, Kell Woods’ Upon a Starlit Tide combines “The Little Mermaid” and “Cinderella” to enchanting effect.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Stone Yard Devotional

Review by Robert Weibezahl

Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional, shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, is something rare: a jewel-like, introspective novel in which not all that much happens, yet worlds are revealed. Set in a sparsely populated abbey in rural Australia, the story unfolds through the diary-like ruminations of an unnamed woman who has come seeking spiritual retreat from personal turmoil. After separating from her husband, who has gone to England, this self-described atheist was drawn to the circumscribed religious life of a small community of nuns near the provincial town where she was a girl. This sudden proximity to her childhood feeds her deepest thoughts, reviving specific memories and recasting truths about her loving, nonconforming parents, who shaped her worldview and whose deaths left a hole in her heart. 

The first driving episode of this gentle novel is a plague of mice that infests the abbey. Depicted in all their relentless, squirming vehemence, the vermin are the consequence of a regional drought that brings home the inescapable environmental threat hovering over the wider world (the novel is also set during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, although Wood is careful not to make that the focal point of the story). The second event that rattles the otherwise isolated community is the discovery of the remains of a nun who disappeared in Thailand decades ago. The planned repatriation and burial of Sister Jenny’s bones triggers a third incident: the arrival of Helen Parry, a globe-trotting, celebrity activist nun whose presence is taxing for all, but most particularly upsetting for the narrator. As the second half of the novel plays out, the reason for this nettlesome friction, and the emotional hold Helen has over the narrator, deepens our understanding of her need for redemption.

Grief and forgiveness are undeniably the central tent poles propping up the novel, but Wood takes things further and deeper—wrestling with timeless human questions of faith (even among the faithless), mortality and kindness, parsing them with bare-bones clarity. With its absorbing and deceptively simple narrative, Stone Yard Devotional is a beautiful testament to the rudiments of shedding the unessential and living a life of intention.

With its absorbing and deceptively simple narrative, Stone Yard Devotional is a beautiful testament to the rudiments of shedding the unessential and living a life of intention.
RomanceContemporary Romance

Single Player

Review by Elizabeth Mazer

Girl gets hired for her dream job only to discover her boss is a nightmare—and unfairly hot. Sound familiar? But what if I told you that the dream job was working for a video game company, and that both the girl and the superhot boss in question are queer people of color? Non-white, non-straight, non-cisgendered protagonists are still the exception rather than the rule, both in romances and in the gaming industry, which is exactly why Tara Tai’s Single Player is a breath of fresh air. Because everyone deserves the chance to have a goofy, tumultuous, accident-prone rom-com of their very own.

It starts with Cat Li, who gave up a profitable but soul-sucking career and her family’s approval to chase her dream of working in the gaming industry. She’s beyond thrilled when she’s hired to write romance arcs for a hot new game overseen by her idol, Andi Zhang, a wunderkind writer and creative director who uses both she and they pronouns. But when Cat and Andi actually meet, sparks fly in the worst possible way. Their interactions are full of misunderstandings, insecurities and a surprising mutual ex-girlfriend, and some readers may become frustrated by their inability to communicate. But then Cat and Andi finally, truly start to connect.

While Single Player waves its nerd flag proudly—there were probably about a million references that sailed directly over my head—there’s a lot here for even the least gamer-savvy reader to enjoy. Cat and Andi face hurdles aplenty to reach success, both romantically and otherwise, but that just means that by the time they reach the end of their gameplay, they’ve more than earned their happy ending.

Single Player, Tara Tai’s extremely nerdy romance set at a video game company, is a much-needed breath of fresh air.
NonfictionCookbooks

My (Half) Latinx Kitchen

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

A refreshing take on the increasingly popular cookbook-memoir subgenre, My (Half) Latinx Kitchen: Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American by Kiera Wright-Ruiz is a soul-searching journey that uses food as a navigating force. The daughter of an Ecuadorian man and Korean woman, Wright-Ruiz has dealt with the anxiety-provoking question “What are you?” her entire life. She notes that her food life isn’t the type you typically read about in cookbooks, where the author is taught recipes handed down through generations. Wright-Ruiz learned to cook from her parents, grandparents, foster parents and the bubbling cultures around her, and that’s how she has found her identity too. “This cookbook is a celebration of Latin American dishes and how the journey to embrace a culture isn’t always linear,” she writes. 

The result is a cookbook of (mostly) Latin American dishes emphasizing the Mexican-, Cuban- and Ecuadorian-inspired recipes from those who raised and influenced her, such as menestra de lentejas (a deliciously flavorful lentil stew from Ecuador), ropa vieja (slowly stewed shredded beef and bell peppers from Cuba) and champurrado (a chocolaty corn-based Mexican drink). She includes recipes that are funny and personal, such as “3 Salsas You Must Know How to Make Before You Die” and “My Perfect Cuban Breakfast.” An intro to each recipe explains and clarifies the ingredients, cultural context and impact of that particular dish on Wright-Ruiz’s life. All are interspersed with witty stories and personal reflections, like her love letter to plantains and the culinary prowess of her “Aunt TT the Kitchen God.” An informative ingredient section lists interesting facts about Latin American foods used in her recipes, such as hominy (soaked corn kernels processed through nixtamalization, which was invented by Indigenous Mesoamericans), naranjilla (a small orange fruit that was enjoyed by the Incas) and Tajin (a Mexican seasoning that’s “a little salty, a little citrusy, and a little smoky”). 

My (Half) Latinx Kitchen is richly imagined with fun, full-color illustrations by Zyan Méndez: Smiling plantains are suspended in outer space, and an amused woman with big hoop earrings lounges on an avocado slice in a pool of a stew. Coupled with enticing, full-bleed photos of the dishes and highly stylized spreads of ingredients, Wright-Ruiz’s cookbook is a pleasure to page through. 

Kiera Wright-Ruiz explores a host of Latin American cultures in her richly imagined cookbook-memoir, My (Half) Latinx Kitchen.
NonfictionMemoir

Memorial Days

Review by Kelly Blewett

On Memorial Day weekend in 2019, Geraldine Brooks received a life-changing phone call from a brusque hospital resident. Her husband of more than three decades, the writer Tony Horwitz, had died suddenly while on his book tour. In Memorial Days, Brooks describes the confusing and difficult weeks that followed: the rush from her home on Martha’s Vineyard to Washington, D.C., the sleepless first night, her reaction to his public obituaries and the headlong rush into the endless details that suddenly needed her attention. She intersperses these vivid renderings of grief’s early days with the story of her subsequent retreat three years later to Flinders Island, a remote island near Tasmania (Brooks was born in Australia) where she sequestered herself to finally, at last, grieve.

Brooks, who is the author of 10 books, including 2005’s Pulitzer Prize-winning March, paraphrases the writer Jennifer Senior, whose essay “On Grief” compares survivors of loss to passengers on an airplane that crashes on a mountaintop. The passengers emerge injured and each must travel down the mountain alone. This is the story of Brooks’ own journey down. With her in this dramatic and solitary landscape are Tony’s journals and books in which he’d written marginal notes, including Joan Didion’s acclaimed memoir about grief, The Year of Magical Thinking, which Tony, who was a judge on the National Book Award committee that year, found “name dropping” and “padded.” (Nonetheless, the book won the honor.) Brooks, reading his comments in her own moment of grief, wishes he’d given Joan Didion a break. “She worked in the movies; her friends happened to be famous. She can’t help that.” There is both humor and sorrow in these pages, and Tony emerges as an interesting and complicated figure, someone who loved life and was deeply driven. Brooks worries that his commitment to his final book, Spying on the South, accelerated his demise.

Tony has no grave. Instead, following his wishes, his ashes were tucked inside a baseball mitt and buried in the field where he played weekly ballgames. Memorial Days, a title which at once pays homage to the date of Tony’s death and the duration and purpose of Brooks’ solitary retreat, is another place of grief and memory. In its spare and direct pages, Brooks honors the writer, father and husband that she loves, and she offers her own story as a companion for others who are walking grief’s lonely path.

 

Geraldine Brooks’ memoir Memorial Days is a momentous, resonant companion for others who are walking grief’s lonely path.
NonfictionBiographyArts & Culture

Lorne

Review by Amy Scribner

The 50th anniversary season of Saturday Night Live is the perfect time to release this definitive biography of the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels. In Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, New Yorker articles editor Susan Morrison uses meticulous research and pleasurably crisp writing to tell the life story of a man who has shaped pop culture for a half-century.

So many biographies are weighed down by ponderous recollections of a subject’s early years. Morrison wisely spends only a few chapters on Michaels’ childhood. She includes important contextual details, like how Michaels’ father died when Michaels was a teenager and how his mom was tough and distant. But Morrison knows what we want to hear about: SNL! 

And boy, do we. Morrison has unparalleled access to the workings of SNL, from cast auditions to the writing room, costumes and makeup, and the sometimes sublime, sometimes sweaty minutes of live airtime. She conducted hundreds of interviews, including with many of the show’s stalwarts, like Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Bill Hader and Chris Rock, to name just a few. (If only we could hear stories from late cast members like Gilda Radner, John Belushi and Phil Hartman . . .) Most importantly, she interviewed Michaels extensively. 

Lorne offers a fascinating blow-by-blow of the sometimes harrowing months leading up to SNL’s 1975 premiere. Belushi played hard to get, but ultimately wanted to be on the show more than anyone. Chevy Chase was initially hired as a writer, but with his preppy good looks, he quickly became the first anchor of Weekend Update, signing on each week with, “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not.”

Morrison does not shy away from the less endearing aspects of Michaels’ persona. A known name-dropper, he casually mentions “dinner with Paul” (leaving one to wonder, Simon or McCartney—he’s dear friends with both). He’s also notoriously conflict-averse, leaving firing and other tough managerial decisions to others on his staff. 

It’s been observed that everyone says Saturday Night Live was best during the years they were in high school. Yet Morrison gets to the heart of why the show has survived all these years despite such naysayers: Lorne Michaels understands comedy—and comedians—more than perhaps anyone in Hollywood. “One of Michaels’s rules is ‘Do it in sunshine,’ which means, don’t forget that comedy is an entertainment,” Morrison writes. “Colors should be bright, costumes flattering. He likes hard laughs, he says, because ‘I search for anything that makes me feel free.’ ”

In her dishy, comprehensive biography of Lorne Michaels, Susan Morrison gets to the heart of why SNL has survived for 50 years and counting.
NonfictionLiteratureBiography

Love and Need

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

For many readers, Robert Frost looms large as the American poet who captured the rhythms of New England life and the patterns of nature in poems like “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Celebrated for capturing ordinary speech in his poetry, Frost incorporated influences such as Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley in his verse, as well as philosophical influences regarding the spirit and the self from Ralph Waldo Emerson to William James. In his moving and insightful Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry, literary critic Adam Plunkett performs elegant close readings of Frost’s poems as a way of mapping the poet’s development, his struggles with self-doubt and his relationships with his family and friends.

Born in San Francisco, Frost moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1884, following his father’s death. Always curious about the natural world—he kept hens in his yard in San Francisco—he composed one of his first poems, “My Butterfly,” when he was 20. As Plunkett observes, at the time Frost had been reading Francis Thompson’s 182-line poem “Hound of Heaven” as well as Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.” “My Butterfly” writes Plunkett, “reads like a spell that conjures the experience of grace as the poem describes its having passed.” Frost’s first collection, A Boy’s Will (1913), which he wrote following the death of his mother and his son, resembles Tennyson’s elegy “In Memoriam” and, Plunkett argues, forms Frost’s spiritual autobiography. 

Plunkett’s brilliant readings of Frost’s best-known poems offer refreshing, alternative interpretations. For example, rather than being a sentimental reflection on hopes lost or chances not selected, “The Road Not Taken” is a poem about friendship, “the kind that can witness your deepest uncertainties and remember you as you were, long after you have forgotten yourself.” The struggle between the spiritual and the natural animates all of Frost’s poems, and a “measured sense of transcendence touched all things in the best of his poetry like intimations of gold in nature’s first green.” 

Plunkett’s refined prose and his astute readings of Frost’s poems in Love and Need offer a candid portrait of the poet’s enduring creative genius.

Adam Plunkett’s elegantly written Love and Need offers a candid portrait of Robert Frost’s enduring creative genius.
RomanceFantasy Romance

I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com

Review by Katie Garaby

I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com (say that three times fast) is a steamy and adventurous alien rom-com by Kimberly Lemming, who has been charming readers with her campy and humorous books since her Mead Mishaps fantasy romance series went viral. Lemming’s fans are sure to love this utterly hilarious and ridiculously sexy start to a new series.

Dorothy “Dory” Valentine is working on her Ph.D. in wildlife biology when she is attacked by a lion in the field. Fear not! Dory is quickly saved—or rather—abducted by aliens. On the spaceship, Dory and the lion forge an unlikely alliance and commandeer an escape pod, only to crash-land on a planet filled with massive dinosaurs. Dory and Toto (the name she gives the lion) are aided when they land by an extremely hot alien, Sol. As they travel in this new world, they also run into a charming and dangerously sexy ex-warlord named Lok. While they battle prehistoric animals and fight off the primal lust they feel for one another, the group learns more and more about what brought them to the mysterious planet. Though this world isn’t what she expected, Dory can’t help but wonder if she really wants to go back to Earth at all.

Kimberly Lemming’s pretty sure she’d be killed by a dinosaur if she got abducted.

This book is a trip. What is so fun about reading a Lemming book is that you just never know what she is going to do next. Not exactly in regards to her plotting—readers will find all the well-loved rom-com beats here—but with all the eccentric, small flourishes. One of the best bits in the book is that instead of her having a language chip or a translation device, Dory’s alien captors seem to have done something to her saliva: She just has to kiss everyone and then they can understand one another. This leads to a hilarious existential crisis for a massively oversized frog, who was wholly unprepared to be able to communicate with humanoids. In another funny moment, when a massive pink T. Rex is chasing them, Dory uses some shampoo to blow bubbles at the creature and make it have a sneezing fit. Amid this hilarity, Lemming’s three romantic leads are building rapport and falling in love. This trio is a funny mix of personality and ego, and in the beginning, it isn’t clear what we’re meant to make of their relationship. (Do they really have feelings for one another or is it the mating serum they’ve all been hit with?) But this book is so much fun that you won’t really worry about what brought them together, only that they stay together and have lots of hot, steamy encounters (like one notable scene that takes place while they’re riding a dinosaur through the jungle). What a delight it must be inside Lemming’s brain.

Buckle up, y’all. I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com is a wild and silly ride that’s sure to tickle your funny bone and also get you hot under the collar.

Mead Mishaps author Kimberly Lemming’s first sci-fi romance is a wild, silly and steamy ride.
NonfictionLifestylesBody, Mind & Spirit

Flamingo Estate

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

Los Angeles-based company Flamingo Estate is known for the home goods it sells, but it’s also an actual estate—a midcentury mansion that has been painstakingly, lovingly transformed into a modern-day oasis and pleasure garden. Flamingo Estate: The Guide to Becoming Alive is a perfect encapsulation of Flamingo Estate itself, which is to say that it’s lush, deeply considered and extremely difficult to describe with any kind of concision. As Flamingo Estate founder Richard Christiansen himself says about the book in its first pages, “It’s less a blueprint and more of a practice.” But beyond its structural extravagance, the book’s premise is simple: It’s a guide to radical pleasure, which Christiansen believes comes from the garden. He crams gorgeous photography, astute personal observations and interviews with visionary entrepreneurs like Martha Stewart and Kelly Wearstler into a nearly 500-page, beautifully bound volume, and what follows is almost like an anthology of high-end design magazines like Purple or Apartmento. The book opens with a conversation with famed environmentalist Jane Goodall, who distills Christiansen’s naturecentric philosophy of living into a series of wise observations. “Even though the world is bleak today, we’re surrounded by little miracles,” she says, “and we’re surrounded by people who tackle the impossible and succeed.” Flamingo Estate may be best known for its luxury candles, but after reading this book, you’re likely to consider it as a self-help resource as well.

Lifestyle company Flamingo Estate is most well known for its niche-but-luxury candles, but after reading its founder’s book, you’re likely to consider it a self-help resource as well.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Good Golden Sun

Review by Norah Piehl

In the opening pages of Caldecott honoree (They All Saw a Cat) Brendan Wenzel’s radiant new picture book, Good Golden Sun, the sun’s rays just barely glint over the hilly horizon, tinting a deep purple night sky with the first shimmering roses and violets of dawn. A bee, still a shadowy silhouette in the early daylight, approaches a flower whose newly opened petals have been transformed to a luminous gold. The bee sips from the flower and . . . voila! It too has taken on the sun’s golden hue.

On subsequent pages, bee makes honey, bear eats honey, mosquito bites bear, bird eats mosquito, and on and on. As each takes on the sun’s golden glow, readers can visualize, in the most beautifully evocative way imaginable, the transfer of the sun’s energy to all of Earth’s living things, including, as the sun recedes into twilight, a young human.

Wenzel’s gorgeous artwork, rendered in cut paper and other mixed media, accompanies a series of questions posed by each character to the sun. These questions reflect particular concerns. For example, the mouse asks questions stemming from justified fears: “Good golden sun, / are you up there staying safe? / Do you think about the scary things that sometimes lie in wait?” On the other hand, the grain crops, baking under the midday sun, ask “Good golden sun, / could you take a tiny break? / For your rays are scorching hot / and so often there’s no shade.”

Good Golden Sun shows it’s possible to integrate STEM topics in an age-appropriate way that doesn’t sacrifice lyrical language, discussion-sparking philosophical questions, gorgeous artwork or moments of humor (young listeners will giggle to see how energy is transferred from the fox to the earthworms and plants). This is a joyful ode to the Earth’s interdependence, one that grows alongside readers.

Good Golden Sun shows it's possible to integrate STEM topics in an age-appropriate way that doesn't sacrifice lyrical language, discussion-sparking philosophical questions, gorgeous artwork or moments of humor.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Dream State

Review by Alice Cary

From the very first pages of Dream State, Eric Puchner draws readers right into the seemingly charmed world of a multigenerational summer lake house in the imaginary town of Salish, Montana—a house graced with outdated carpet, board games, bric-a-brac on every windowsill, Adirondack chairs, apple orchards, raspberry bushes and cherry trees. “Fingers stained red,” Puchner writes, “bloated with fruit, you’d run across Route 35 and jump into the lake to clean off, whooping lustily at the cold, feeling like a character in a Russian novel.” The year is 2004, and the cottage belongs to the Margolis family, who are ready to celebrate the wedding of anesthesiologist Charlie Margolis and his fiancée, Cece, a medical school dropout who “was sure she had something great to offer the world, something big and pure-hearted and indispensable. If only she could figure out what it was.” 

Into this scene walks Charlie’s best friend, Garrett, an airport baggage handler who is hiding from life, tending to his dying father and struggling with the fallout from the accidental death of their mutual college friend, for which he feels responsible. This is a packed saga of the very best kind, spanning from the characters’ college days through their old age, examining a multitude of themes that include friendship, betrayal, marriage, parenting, aging—and also the road not taken, climate change and addiction. Not many authors could successfully pull off such a sprawling, multifaceted chronicle, but Puchner excels at both the big picture and the small details, creating funny, believable dialogue throughout and using characters’ expertise to enrich the plot (such as Charlie’s medical knowledge or Garrett’s later career as an environmental scientist specializing in wolverine protection). 

“If you look for a meaning, Tarkovsky once said, you’ll miss everything that happens,” a character says near the end of the novel, citing the Soviet filmmaker. Happily, however, this novel overflows with both meaning and intriguing plot, layer by layer, year by year, and even doubles back on itself in an artful way, returning to the Margolis wedding at the very end. 

Although very different books, Dream State shares remarkable similarities with Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red: They both skillfully and humorously center on a wedding and a young love triangle, a tragic accidental death, and concerns about climate change and the ways humans damage the environment. Don’t miss Dream State, whose memorable characters leave readers with plenty to contemplate about life’s most vital aspects.

Dream State is a packed saga of the very best kind, full of funny, believable dialogue and memorable characters who will leave readers with plenty to contemplate about life’s most vital aspects.
NonfictionBiography

Daughter of Daring

Review by Catherine Hollis

Hollywood film historian Mallory O’Meara specializes in recovering the lost feminist history of filmmaking. O’Meara’s celebrated 2019 biography of Milicent Patrick, original designer of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, uncovered the true story of how Patrick’s achievements in cinema were co-opted by male coworkers. In Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman, O’Meara tells the thrilling story of Hollywood’s first and best stuntwoman. 

In the early years of Hollywood, Helen Gibson starred in hundreds of silent serial pictures, eponymously known as The Hazards of Helen. Gibson jumped onto trains and out of planes, and took rodeo tricks to an entirely new level of daring and general badassery. Unlike today’s stuntworkers, Gibson wore no safety devices and had no mentors; all she possessed was a love for adventure and a drive to be something other than a domestic drone. What’s even more remarkable about Helen Gibson’s story is that she wasn’t unique. The 1910s in Hollywood were something of a golden age for women writers, directors, producers and actors.

O’Meara’s great achievement in Daughter of Daring lies in capturing this brief chapter in Hollywood history, before the studio system and censorship board asserted control over the film industry and marginalized the achievements of women like Gibson, Helen Gardner, Lois Weber and Marion E. Wong (director of the first all Chinese American made film in 1916). Establishing the parallels between the suffrage movement, the “New Woman” era and the Wild West cowboy shows that gave Gibson her start as a stuntwoman, O’Meara provides a well-researched guide to a heady cultural moment for women in film. 

The experiences of these artists continue to reverberate today: Women and filmmakers of color still struggle for a seat at the Hollywood table, and the #MeToo movement of the 21st century uncovered scandals and abuse that echo what O’Meara’s subjects endured in the 1920s. O’Meara is not only invested in film history but also in its future. Entertaining and educational, Daughter of Daring will attract and inspire readers of all ages. 

Mallory O’Meara’s Daughter of Daring chronicles Hollywood’s first stuntwoman and celebrates the brief, vibrant golden age for women in film.

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