Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for fiction, Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book is a searing portrayal of the Black authorial experience. At the center of the novel is an unnamed Black author on his first book tour struggling to navigate the publishing industry and make sense of the modern world. His narrative is offset by chapters recounting the story of Soot, a young Black boy in the South. Poignant and often funny, Mott’s novel draws readers in as it scrutinizes race in American society and the power of storytelling.
Marlon James’ epic fantasy Black Leopard, Red Wolf is narrated by Tracker, a hunter with an acute sense of smell. Accompanied by a shape-shifter named Leopard and a band of misfit mercenaries, Tracker travels through a landscape inspired by African mythology and ancient history on a dangerous quest to find a lost boy. Hallucinatory and violent yet marvelously poetic, this first entry in James’ Dark Star trilogy won the 2019 L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction. There are an abundance of potential topics for discussion, such as James’ folkloric inspirations and Tracker’s unreliable narration.
Following the death of her aunt from an uncommon ailment called Chagas, or the kissing bug disease, Daisy Hernández decided to research the illness. She shares her findings in The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease. Hernández talked to physicians and disease experts throughout the United States, and her interviews with patients reveal the human cost of the American healthcare system’s inadequacies. Hernández displays impressive storytelling skills in this masterfully researched volume, which won the 2022 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.
In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado’s powerful chronicle of a toxic love affair, won the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ nonfiction. In the book, Machado reveals that she fell hard for a magnetic, emotionally unpredictable woman who became abusive. In structuring her memoir, she draws upon various narrative devices and traditions (coming-of-age, choose your own adventure and more), and the result is a multifaceted, daring and creative portrayal of a deeply dysfunctional relationship.
So, you made your way through not only “Bridgerton” but every other historical miniseries you could get your hands on, and now you’re faced with the daunting task of picking out a Regency romance novel from approximately one million titles. Don’t worry—we’re here to help. There are tons of terrific books out there, and because the subgenre has more variety than you might expect, we’ve added a complementary television series to each recommendation below to help you scope out the vibe.
A Duchess by Midnight
Miss Drewsmina “Drew” Trelayne is determined to make a name for herself as a guide for young debutantes embarking on their London season in A Duchess by Midnight by Charis Michaels. When her newly royal stepsister, Cynde, uses her connections to secure Drew’s first paying client, Drew has her work cut out for her. How can she teach the Duke of Lachlan’s troubled nieces proper deportment and etiquette when she can’t seem to stop herself from breaking all the rules with the irresistible, scandal-ridden duke?
Read if you loved “The Baby-Sitters Club”
Yes, we’re really comparing a Regency romance to a TV show based on a series of chapter books, and here’s why. Both A Duchess by Midnight and the recent Netflix adaptation of Ann M. Martin’s popular series, which launched in 1986, take a story that had grown a bit stagnant in our imaginations and make it feel fresh without losing the magic of the original. Drewsmina is a Regency version of the stepsisters from Disney’s Cinderella, and through her, Michaels breathes new life into a slightly dusty fairy tale. Far from being a two-dimensional figure, Drewsmina becomes the fully realized heroine of her own story by being willing to grow and change. Her less-than-perfect past makes her the ideal person to reach the lonely, isolated duke and his two wary girls in this charming twist on an age-old story.
Nobody’s Princess
Kunigunde “Kuni” de Heusch is determined to become the first Royal Guardswoman of Balcovia. She can’t get distracted by anyone or anything—not even Graham Wynchester. But when Graham interferes with her mission at the beginning of Erica Ridley’s Nobody’s Princess, Kuni ends up falling in with the astonishing Wynchester clan—going on adventures, learning acrobatic skills and discovering a brand of heroism and service that is like nothing she’s ever known. Her time in England is limited, and the future of her dreams is waiting for her in Balcovia. She’ll soon have everything she ever wanted . . . except for a certain remarkable man.
Read if you loved “The Umbrella Academy”
Unlike the characters in the comic book-inspired Netflix series, the Wynchesters don’t have supernatural powers, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to make the world a better place. These adopted siblings use their fortune to right wrongs and protect the innocent. They bicker with and tease and aggravate one another, while still coming together when there’s an enemy to face. It’s lovely to see Kuni fall for not only the eminently lovable Graham but also his entire family and their appreciation of and support for one another. Ridley’s take on the Regency period is quirkier and broader than the norm, but that just makes Nobody’s Princess all the more compelling and fun.
The Rake’s Daughter
In Anne Gracie’s The Rake’s Daughter half sisters Clarissa and Isobel Studley have no one but each other—and if their father had had his way, they wouldn’t even have that. Isobel is the illegitimate daughter whom the unscrupulous baronet had no interest in raising, and only Clarissa’s stubborn loyalty kept the girls together through childhood. They cling to each other even tighter when their father dies and they are sent to London to live with their new guardian, Leo Thorne, the Earl of Salcott. Because his opinion of Isobel stems from her father’s viciously cruel descriptions, Leo is appalled by his instantaneous and fierce attraction to her. As they both try to shepherd Clarissa through her first season, the fiery Isobel challenges Leo to see past his preconceptions.
Read if you loved “The Good Place”
Gracie takes a warmer, sweeter view of Regency high society; there are still challenges and prejudices, but there are also examples of extraordinary kindness, devotion and compassion. Like Eleanor and Michael in the afterlife-set TV show, the characters in The Rake’s Daughter have vibrant, rich personalities that make it easy to root for them. Leo has a particularly impressive character arc, starting off almost as an antagonist before becoming the hero he always had the potential to be. And it’s not just the lead characters who will steal your heart: Loyal, kind, insightful but insecure Clarissa is reminiscent of Chidi from “The Good Place,” and one can only hope she gets her own book soon.
★ A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting
Kitty Talbot, the heroine of Sophie Irwin’s A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting, is left with four sisters to care for and an ocean of debt after her father dies and her fiancé jilts her. The only thing left of value is herself, so it’s off to London and the marriage mart to find a rich match. Luck seems to be on her side when she’s able to catch the eye of sweet, easily manipulated Archie de Lacy, but her hopes are punctured when his disapproving older brother, Lord Radcliffe, comes to break up the match. Desperate to the point of recklessness, Kitty manages to convince Radcliffe to make a trade: She’ll leave his brother alone if he helps her find another match. But what starts out as a grudging alliance blooms into something more, something built on growing respect, admiration, attraction—and maybe even love.
Read if you loved “Inventing Anna”
If you loved the high-wire tension of the miniseries featuring Anna Delvey’s con artist exploits, then this is the Regency romance for you. But unlike Anna, Kitty is a heroine you can genuinely like, even as you marvel at her audacity. She’s clever and cunning, but she’s also wry, funny and refreshingly honest, with admirable reasons for her manipulative fortune-hunting. From the start, her sharp mind and ruthless practicality make the story relentlessly readable, charging scenes with terrific tension and biting wordplay. Crucially, however, there’s so much more to Kitty than her diamond-hard facade. She’s not a cipher but a vivid and relatable character. The more Radcliffe understands her, the more he loves her—as will readers.
Overwhelmed by the amount of Regency romances out there? Let us be your guide to this season's best reads.
Maria Vale sweeps readers into a compelling paranormal world in her fifth entry in the Legend of All Wolves series, Wolf in the Shadows. Julia Martel, pampered shifter princess of Montreal, has been kidnapped by the Great North Pack, who live apart from human society and ritualistically shift to their wolf forms every full moon. Though she was raised to be “exquisitely inconsequential,” Julia finds her inner strength as she lives with the pack and gets to know Arthur, a wolf at the bottom of the pack’s hierarchy. Vale’s storytelling is immersive and fascinating as she chronicles Julia’s metamorphosis from plaything to predator. And Arthur is a uniquely appealing love interest: keenly attentive, sensitive and always willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Lushly described set pieces, from Julia’s embrace of her animal nature to the couple’s smoking hot love scenes, make for a fiercely beautiful read.
Husband Material
A couple grapples with life, love and being true to themselves in Husband Material by Alexis Hall. It’s been two years since Lucien “Luc” O’Donnell and Oliver Blackwood got together in Boyfriend Material, and the opposites-attract pair are happy together—and happy to witness the people around them tie the knot. But does that mean they should follow suit? Narrated by Luc in a self-deprecating and often sarcastic first-person voice, the next phase in the men’s romance plays out with the help of their loyal but sometimes screwball friends. Family drama adds serious layers and provides an opportunity for soul-searching, even as Hall’s bouncy dialogue tumbles along through plenty of rom-com fun. As they grapple with their future, examining both compatibility and commitment, Luc and Oliver are amusing, authentic and eminently deserving of their happily ever after.
Quarter to Midnight
Karen Rose’s latest romantic suspense novel, Quarter to Midnight, begins a new series set in New Orleans. When his father, a former police officer, dies under suspicious circumstances, chef Gabe Hebert hires a PI agency to look into the matter. Molly Sutton, former cop, former Marine and forever badass, takes on the case. A patron of Gabe’s renowned restaurant, she’s long admired his culinary skills and his good looks, and she’s committed to getting answers for him, no matter what she may uncover in the process. Rose always constructs an appealing team to aid her main couple and further engage the reader’s emotions; this time, the crew includes a brave young med student, a pair of canny brothers and two witty and determined older women. It’s a twisty, dangerous ride all the way to the end, with the French Quarter setting and the descriptions of Gabe’s food adding an extra je ne sais quoi to this entertaining read.
The long-awaited sequel to Boyfriend Material is finally here, plus two thrilling love stories in this month's romance column.
Everyone’s favorite French police chief Benoît Courrèges—aka, Bruno, Chief of Police—faces a new threat to his usually bucolic Périgord existence: Spanish terrorists protesting the Catalonia separatist movement. As Martin Walker’s To Kill a Troubadour opens, controversy swirls around “Song for Catalonia,” a wildly popular song that, because of its tacit support for the separatists, has recently been banned by the Spanish government. Les Troubadours, the music group that popularized the song, are gearing up for a free concert in Périgord that promises to be the best-attended event of the summer. Meanwhile, Spanish nationalist extremists have been observed crossing the border into France, intent on inflicting mayhem—or worse—on the assembled music lovers who have given voice to the separatist movement. Then a bullet is found in the wreckage of a recently stolen car, a bullet designed for a high-powered sniper rifle that can kill from several kilometers away. Bruno fears snipers will set their crosshairs on the crowd, on the band or on the songwriter, who openly sympathizes with the Catalonia movement, but the real scheme is much, much worse. But do not fear—despite the tenser-than-usual plot, all of Walker’s fan-favorite characters are present and accounted for, as well as all of Bruno’s treasured pastimes: sports competitions, gourmet cooking and, of course, his engaging basset hound, Balzac.
★ The Shadow Lily
Swedish author Johanna Mo returns with The Shadow Lily, the suspense-laden second book in her series featuring police detective Hanna Duncker, who, after years of working in Stockholm’s urban center, has returned to her small island homeland of Öland. Both Hanna and the other islanders have mixed feelings about her return, as her father was convicted of one of the most brutal murders the community has ever seen. In her latest case, Hanna is tasked with locating a missing man and his infant son, knowing that as the hours tick by, the chances of finding them alive grow smaller and smaller. Mo employs alternating perspectives to great effect, using them to deepen the reader’s understanding of the events and the characters involved. One arc covers the final day of a character who is killed off relatively early in the narrative; in the second, we observe the day-to-day police procedural; in the third, Mo reveals the backstory of the victim from the first arc and the decisions that led to his untimely end. But most compelling of all, The Shadow Lily sheds further light on what drove Hanna back home: the visceral need to know the whole story about her father.
Death Doesn’t Forget
Jing-nan, a dumpling stall operator in a Taipei night market, is not your typical food dude. He is a tech-savvy social media influencer, a born marketer—and an inadvertent sleuth. While Jing-nan is cursed with nefarious family members and cronies, Death Doesn’t Forget starts out with some good fortune: Jing-nan’s girlfriend’s mother, Siu-lien, wins half of a sizable lottery, which she must share with her ne’er-do-well boyfriend. But by the very next day, the good fortune has all dried up. The boyfriend has been killed, the winnings are in the wind and Jing-nan is on the hook for finding, if not the murderer, at least the missing money. Complicating matters further is the fact that Jing-nan’s girlfriend, Nancy, wants to get married. Barring that, she wants a proposal that she can consider, so that “the egg timer would be set . . . a countdown to either getting married or breaking up for good.” Siu-lien looks on this union with disfavor, but successfully returning her money would go a long way toward warming her chill toward Jing-nan. Author Ed Lin recounts all this cultural and familial interplay with good humor, peppering the text with Taiwanese bromides both old and new. (My favorite is this gem regarding prison terms: “Sentences handed down were longer than the gaps between Ang Lee films.”) With its great suspense and plot development, Death Doesn’t Forget is good fun all-round.
★ The Murder Book
Mark Billingham’s Detective Inspector Tom Thorne books are consistently excellent, but his 18th entry in the popular series, The Murder Book, raises the bar considerably. In a twist that will thrill longtime fans of the series, arch villain Stuart Nicklin, described as “the most dangerous psychopath [Thorne] has ever put behind bars,” is back for a return engagement. This time, Nicklin is serving as Svengali for Rebecca Driver, a female serial killer who mutilates her victims a la the dictates of the three wise monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. For bonus points, she even honors a fourth monkey that is sometimes included in the traditional crew, along with the maxim “Do no evil.” (I will leave the details of Rebecca’s gruesome methodology to your imagination.) Nicklin’s own bad deeds were well chronicled in Thorne’s 12th adventure, The Bones Beneath, and suffice it to say that the intervening years have done nothing to mellow his penchant for brutality. Thorne turns to the ubiquitous British camera surveillance system to bring Rebecca to justice, but as Billingham takes pains to point out, surveillance cameras can be employed with devastating results on either side of the thin blue line. How, exactly? Thorne, and the reader, will soon find out.
This month's cleverest whodunits feature idiosyncratic, complicated gumshoes.
In a world unspeakably darkened by crisis, it might seem trifling to even think about appreciating, cultivating or devoting our attention to beauty. Focusing on beauty might even read as an act of oblivious privilege. But perhaps a fuller contemplation of what beauty is, can be and has been, and what it can mean in our everyday lives, is in fact one step toward repairing massive-scale damage. Writer and illustrator Ella Frances Sanders believes it is. In Everything, Beautiful, she envisions learning to see beauty as a curative, even redemptive process, “like putting a delicate, very broken vase back together.” No matter how broken our world, it is nevertheless full of “tiny, beautiful things,” she writes. “Some are so invisible or silent that you may never see or understand them, but they are there.” Through text, illustration and guided prompts, Sanders upends and expands our notions of beauty and urges us to notice the ingredients for beauty that are all around us, such as “light, slowness, and the kind of air temperatures that feel like honey.”
Lost Places
I live in a boomtown where every old structure seems to either meet the wrecking ball or get a second life via adaptive reuse. Paging through the images in Lost Places, I’m swept into another world, one where the vestiges of America’s past are left, silent and uninhabited, to be transformed by weather and time. Heribert Niehues’ photographs of abandoned cars, houses, gas stations and other structures tell a story about our country’s past. They are also suffused with mystery: What lives did these places once contain? Who last passed through these doors? Scenes of decaying diner interiors are among the spookiest, with guests’ checks, condiment containers and fry baskets left behind. Car buffs will enjoy Niehues’ many images of rusted-out, early- to mid-20th-century models. Many of the abandoned edifices captured here fell victim to the interstate system when it rerouted travel in the 1950s and ’60; one wonders what of our present might be left behind a century from now, as climate change remaps the landscape.
Forever Beirut
Forever Beirut, a cookbook with accompanying essays and stunning photographs, was conceptualized by Barbara Abdeni Massaad as a way to help her beloved home country in the aftermath of a terrible 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut. In response to disaster and economic collapse, the book passionately preserves the treasures of Beirut’s culinary heritage, with recipes for favorites such as kibbeh, a dish of ground lamb, beef or vegetables kneaded together with bulgur; man’oushe, a traditional flatbread; mezze, small dishes served together such as chickpeas and yogurt; and semolina cake. This is the stuff of my culinary dreams: food that is aromatically spiced, uncomplicated and yet bursting with flavor, served to the reader within a deep, loving sociocultural context.
Look a little closer, and you’ll find beauty lurking in unexpected places. The three books in this month’s lifestyles column will help you spot it.
Many of us have an aversion to novels that claim to be the next American epic in the tradition of John Steinbeck, particularly when they’re about World War II. These novels, purporting to be the next necessary heart-wrenching tale of wartime heroism, are seemingly everywhere, but rarely do they live up to expectations. Properties of Thirst defies, dispels and demolishes those expectations and biases in the best way. Read our review.
Sister Mother Warrior by Vanessa Riley
The complexity of Sister Mother Warrior suits the complicated, difficult history of the Haitian revolution, which Vanessa Riley brings to life through the stories of a soldier and a future empress. Read our review.
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford
Exploring the bonds that transcend physical space, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is an enthralling, centuries-spanning tale, a masterful saga that’s perfect for fans of The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende and The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain. Read our review.
Best ancient tale for acolytes of Madeline Miller:
Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane
Some prior knowledge of the Iliad will maximize the enjoyment of this novel, if only to provide some context for Maya Deane’s beautifully realized Mediterranean landscape and her depiction of the Greek gods as vivid, often malicious beings. Wrath Goddess Sing is a mythic reinvention for the ages that asks questions about topics such as trans identity, passing and the politics of the body. Read our review.
Best perspectives on the American West:
Fire Season by Leyna Krow
Leyna Krow plays fast and loose with the tropes of the frontier novel, leaning in to the notion of the unsettled West as a place where people could reinvent themselves. Read our review.
Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Woman of Light retains a mythic quality while following the stories of five generations of an Indigenous North American family, from their origins, border crossings, accomplishments and traumas to their descendants’ confrontation and acceptance of their family history. Read our review.
Best for book clubs:
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
Geraldine Brooks returns to themes she explored so well in previous works, such as her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, March, which chronicles many of the injustices that occurred during America’s Civil War. Loosely based on a true story, Horse involves a discarded painting and a dusty skeleton, both of which concern a foal widely considered “the greatest racing stallion in American turf history.” Read our review.
Most glamorous subterfuge:
The Lunar Housewife by Caroline Woods
Caroline Woods’ historical thriller, set in the final days of the Korean War and the onset of the Cold War, spins a tale of big-city intrigue as it follows a promising young waitress-turned-writer and the increasingly disturbing secrets she uncovers. The result is an addictive binge of a read that’s equal parts intelligent introspection and nail-biting suspense. Read our review.
The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin
Madeline Martin is known for her deeply researched historical fiction and romance novels, and The Librarian Spy is a delight as we follow the World War II adventures of an endearing, quiet bookworm. Read our review.
Last Call at the Nightingale by Katharine Schellman
Vivian Kelly, the protagonist of this Prohibition-era mystery, is a seamstress in what we would now consider a sweatshop, and by night she is a regular at the Nightingale, a Manhattan speakeasy of some note among Jazz Age cognoscenti. When Vivian stumbles upon a dead body in the alley behind the club, the speakeasy’s hitherto bon vivant ambiance begins to melt away, revealing something altogether more sinister. Read our review.
Best love stories in historical settings:
A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall
Alexis Hall takes on the Regency with his angsty new historical romance. Following the Battle of Waterloo, Viola Carroll abandoned her previous identity, as well as her aristocratic title, to finally embrace life as a trans woman. But Viola’s dearest friend, Justin de Vere, the Duke of Gracewood, is not coping so well. He drowns himself in alcohol and opium to cope with his despair over Viola’s death, the lingering pain of a war injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. The term “slow burn” doesn’t begin to capture the agonized pining of this romance, which is absolutely suffused with yearning. Read our review.
The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian
Cat Sebastian returns to the Georgian-era setting of 2021’s The Queer Principles of Kit Webb with The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes, a charming story about two chaotic bisexuals who cross each other’s paths while pursuing their criminal endeavors. Read our review.
Best picks for Hilary Mantel fans:
Joan by Katherine J. Chen
This Joan of Arc is hungry, earthy and scrappy—a natural fighter. For readers who love Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy or Lauren Groff’s Matrix, Joan offers similar pleasures with its immediacy and somewhat contemporary tone. It’s an immersive evocation of a character whose name everyone knows, all these centuries later, but whom, perhaps, none of us knows at all. Read our review.
Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel
Sure, it’s a little on the nose, but these seven stories, arranged chronologically, offer an unusual and ultimately fascinating amalgam of fact and fiction as two-time Booker Prize-winning British author Hilary Mantel sorts through the puzzle pieces of her past. As Mantel reflects loosely on her English childhood, she explores, as she writes in the preface, “the swampy territory that lies between history and myth.” Read our review.
Best supernatural or magical touches:
Briefly, a Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
In 1838, the French novelist George Sand (pen name for Aurore Dupin) decided that a winter away from Paris would be good for her, her two children and her ailing lover, Frédéric Chopin, who had tuberculosis. This is where the debut novel from Nell Stevens begins, and she quickly reveals an inventive, imaginative approach to historical fiction, full of comic moments but also sorrow, violence and beauty. Her ghostly narrator is full of life, a wonderful guide to another time and place. Read our review.
Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro
The first in a planned trilogy, Ordinary Monsters traverses 19th-century America, England, Scotland and Japan before eventually landing at the Cairndale Institute outside of Edinburgh, where Talents are learning to control and hone their powers. J.M. Miro (the pen name of a literary novelist) plays off the well-loved and well-worn tropes of chosen ones and magical institutions for children, but freshens things up with a large, sweeping scope and a likable, diverse cast of characters. Read our review.
Summer reading allows us to get away from it all—and with transportive historical fiction, we can go really, really far away. Discover the season’s best historical novels!
True-crime books are frequently framed as guilty pleasures. Often sensational or even lurid, they feed our inner rubberneckers. But in the hands of a tenacious reporter, true crime can also expose devastating truths about human nature.
★We Carry Their Bones
We Carry Their Bones is Erin Kimmerle’s firsthand account of the discovery, exhumation and identification of 51 bodies buried in unmarked graves on the grounds of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Truthfully, it is obscene to call Dozier a school. The inspiration for Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, Dozier was a prison where boys and young men were exploited, abused and often left to die from their injuries, beginning in 1900 and lasting until its closure in 2011. Kimmerle, a professor of forensic anthropology, led the team of volunteers and students who combed through layers of obstinate Florida clay to find and reclaim these lost boys, despite fierce opposition from townspeople and politicians.
Kimmerle’s commitment to finding the truth was grounded in her identity as a scientist. She didn’t fit facts to a predetermined answer but allowed the facts to lead her. Her dedication to clarity is reflected in her writing style as well. Without ever losing the thread of her story, Kimmerle outlines precisely, patiently and clearly each step of her task—including dealing with court appearances, bureaucratic battles and hostile town officials, as well as the myriad engineering and scientific difficulties she faced.
But We Carry Their Bones is not just a procedural: Kimmerle’s account of how her investigation unfolded also illuminates why it was so important. Unearthing these boys’ bodies likewise unearthed Dozier’s history, forcing onlookers everywhere to confront the racism and classism that sanctioned the crimes Dozier employees committed against so many young people. And most of all, restoring the boys’ names and returning their remains to their families brought both healing to the survivors and a measure of justice to the dead, demonstrating that something like peace is possible if amends are sincerely made.
★Trailed
In 1996, Julianne Williams and Laura Winans, two young women deeply in love, were murdered while backpacking in Shenandoah National Park. Kathryn Miles, a journalist and science writer, learned about their murder several years later while teaching at Unity College, where Laura had been a popular student. An enthusiastic backpacker herself, Miles was fascinated by the case and set out to write an article about the double murder. Instead, she ended up writing her fifth book, Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders.
Reading Trailed is like taking an interesting and often treacherous hike with a friend who is not afraid to explore the side trails. The main trail in the book is, of course, the story of Julianne and Laura, their deaths and the investigation that followed. But as Miles became more immersed in their story, she discovered other trails that looped back to Julianne and Laura: similar murders in and around the National Park System, especially of young women, members of LGBTQ communities and people of color; the lack of law enforcement resources allocated to park rangers; the many flaws in the initial investigation of Julianne’s and Laura’s murders that eventually led to the prosecution and persecution of a man who was probably innocent; and the community of cold case investigators and exoneration attorneys who helped Miles hunt for the real killer.
Like Kimmerle, Miles uses a true-crime story to shed light on society’s ills. Miles believes that Laura and Julianne weren’t murder victims who happened to be lesbians; they were murder victims because they were lesbians. Similarly, the flawed investigation shows the disastrous impact that confirmation bias can have on an innocent man—while letting the guilty man remain free. Meticulously honest and lyrically written, Trailed is an elegy to two young women and an indictment of the system that failed them.
★Rogues
In Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks, a collection of 12 articles previously published in The New Yorker, author and journalist Patrick Radden Keefe undertakes a different kind of sleuthing. There is no single crime that unites these pieces; for that matter, not every piece concerns a crime. The article on Anthony Bourdain, for example, is remarkably crime-free, if you discount his use of illegal drugs. Instead, Keefe focuses on “rogues”—not the jolly scallywags that the word often evokes but rebels, outliers, rule-breakers and operators who recognize no boundaries between themselves and the objects of their obsessions.
Keefe introduces readers to a notable rogues’ gallery, including a woman who must spend her life in hiding after informing on her mobster brother, an assistant professor who went on a shooting spree after being denied tenure, an IT guy in a Swiss bank who spilled the beans on hundreds of tax evaders and a lawyer who defends only death penalty cases. “Buried Secrets,” which details the struggle between an honest Guinean president and an unscrupulous Israeli diamond merchant over the world’s richest iron ore deposit, could easily have come straight out of a John le Carré novel. “The Avenger,” on the other hand, is a heartbreaking account of a man’s search for his brother’s murderer, the Lockerbie bomber.
Keefe has written several lengthy investigative books, including Empire of Pain, the comprehensive story of the Sackler family’s complicity in the opioid crisis. By contrast, he is working within the confines of 10,000-word articles in Rogues, so there is little room for self-reflection or digression. Instead, he makes full use of journalistic tools for fact-finding: keen observation, meticulous research and insightful interviews with the rogues, their associates and their victims. As a result, each essay is a taut, highly honed yet powerful reflection on the creative and corrosive effects of obsession.
When you’re dealing with a murder mystery set in a possibly haunted high school, you need a practical, analytical lead investigator whose sense of humor is solidly intact. Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur is my methodical queen, her assessments of characters both living and dead as sharp as a jagged piece of glass, her self- deprecation just the right amount of wicked. She’s been underestimated enough in her life—and experienced enough prejudice—to gain a significant chip on her shoulder, which is more pronounced now that she’s been called back to her alma mater to investigate a murder in Elly Griffiths’ The Stranger Diaries. A line from fictional gothic author R.M. Holland’s most famous story is found with the body, so Kaur pays special attention to English teacher Claire Cassidy. Scenes from Kaur’s family life (she lives with her Sikh parents) provide a soft place to land after her most biting appraisals, such as when she’s considering the inanity of celebrity dancing shows. Why do people like dance competition shows? DS Kaur knows many things, but she hasn’t got a clue there.
She may not wear a trenchcoat or carry a magnifying glass, but novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro can investigate a mystery with the best of them. In her 2019 blockbuster memoir, Shapiro does an at-home genealogy test on a whim and accidentally uncovers a 52-year-old family secret: Her late father was not her biological father. This revelation kicks off a search for the truth that winds its way through all manner of thorny questions. What role did the emerging field of fertility science play in Shapiro’s conception? Were her parents aware that she was conceived using donor sperm? Did they intentionally keep this a secret? Were they duped by their doctor? Is her biological father still alive? Shapiro’s chops as a novelist shine in Inheritance, which is plotted as well as any mystery, with enough twists to keep you guessing about what detail she might uncover next. Determined to get to the root of her family tree, she is as indefatigable, dogged and determined as any fictional gumshoe.
The ursine protagonist of Jon Klassen’s debut picture book, I Want My Hat Back, is an exemplary detective. Faced with the mystery of his hat’s location, he immediately begins questioning potential witnesses. He’s polite and thanks everyone he meets for taking the time to speak with him, even though they offer no useful leads. He stays focused on the task at hand and isn’t waylaid by existential meanderings, such as when an armadillo asks, “What is a hat?” He’s helpful to his community, as we see when he offers assistance to a turtle who’s been trying to climb a rock all day. He believes the best of everyone, even rabbits wearing familiar red hats who claim they would never steal a hat. When he hits an investigative wall, he does exactly what I would do: He lies down and despairs until the solution comes to him. And he would never, ever, ever eat a rabbit. Not even a rabbit who stole his hat.
In Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water, Samuel “Sammy” Pipps is basically a globe-trotting, 17th-century Sherlock Holmes. When a mysterious, seemingly demonic force begins to haunt Saardam, the ship he’s sailing on from the Dutch East Indies back to the Netherlands, you’d think that Sammy would immediately be on the case. There’s just one problem: Sammy’s locked in the Saardam‘s brig, where he is to remain for the entire voyage. Enter his bodyguard, Arent Hayes, an enormous former mercenary and all-around nice guy who’s deeply grateful to Sammy for giving him a purpose beyond body-slamming anybody dumb enough to face him in battle. As Turton gleefully tilts things into Grand Guignol horror, Arent is the down-to-earth port in the storm: humble to a fault, instinctively feminist when faced with a few female passengers who might be better at this whole sleuthing thing than he is and possessed of an unshakable (but still somewhat flexible) sense of justice. Turton maintains that he never conceived of Arent as being, well, sexy—but rather tellingly, many readers insist that he very much is.
—Savanna, Associate Editor
None Shall Sleep
To catch a teenage serial killer, the FBI recruits Emma Lewis and Travis Bell, who are teenagers themselves, for their capabilities as well as their atypical circumstances: Travis lost his father to a serial killer, and Emma is the sole survivor of one. The heroes of Ellie Marney’s thriller None Shall Sleep are remarkably refreshing as their personal and professional involvement in the investigation builds genuine tension and inner conflict. However, despite the novel’s many plotlines, Emma is at the heart of it all. I felt attached to her early on, especially when witnessing her navigate her sense of duty toward solving the case while grappling with the crime’s triggering nature. Her unique perspective and talents provide forward momentum, as she comes to conclusions that people who lack her insight would never think of. At the novel’s end, I wanted to keep following her as she drove away.
—Jessie, Editorial Intern
It takes a certain spirit to leap into action and pursue the slightest of clues. Our favorite sleuths, both real and fictional, get right down to business exposing the evidence and solving seemingly unsolvable quandaries, and we love them for it.
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.
Maggie Moves On by Lucy Score is a rom-com that will especially delight lovers of HGTV and will charm practically everyone else. Happy-to-wander Maggie Nichols makes a living as a house flipper and documents her success on a popular YouTube channel. When she selects a mansion in Kinship, Idaho, as her next fixer-upper, she meets hunky landscaper Silas Wright and promptly loses her heart. Can she learn to settle down with a man who’s firmly rooted in his charming hometown? An Old West-style myth (lost gold!) adds to the fun, which also includes hilarious family group texts and a real standout of a hero. Silas oozes confidence and charm, especially when he’s crooning impromptu with his stepmother on a bar stage. Maggie Moves On is a sexy, sweet and easy read, but readers may still find themselves wiping away sentimental tears at its unabashed and all-encompassing happily ever after. Relax and enjoy this one while dreaming of dream houses, blissful blended families and Idaho finger steaks.
★ You Were Made to Be Mine
Julie Anne Long offers a historical romance to savor with You Were Made to Be Mine. Former British spy Christian Hawkes is fresh out of prison and out of funds. For an exorbitant fee, he agrees to find Lady Aurelie Capet, the Earl of Brundage’s runaway fiancée. Christian has his suspicions about the earl, suspicions that prove horribly true when he tracks down the beautiful Aurelie, who has taken a new name and is hiding out at the Grand Palace on the Thames boarding house in an effort to escape from her wicked fiancé. As with the four previous novels in the Palace of Rogues series, this book is teeming with fascinating characters, and every paragraph crackles with life. Long’s third-person narration allows for entertaining glimpses into the cast, from would-be footmen to the delightful proprietresses of “TGPOTT” (as embroidered on signature handkerchiefs). Christian and Aurelie are a couple that is eminently worth rooting for, and their desperate yearning and aching tenderness are sure to linger long in readers’ hearts.
The Romance Recipe
Two women deal with career, family and romantic turmoil in The Romance Recipe by Ruby Barrett. Amy Chambers, the owner of struggling restaurant Amy and May’s, and Sophie Brunet, the restaurant’s chef, are each harboring a secret crush on the other. Sophie has recently realized that she’s bisexual, and Amy’s confidence in herself makes her as intimidating as she is alluring. Amy isn’t wont to open up to anyone, especially someone like Sophie, who Amy worries might be looking for new experiences instead of commitment. But even as they attempt to keep things between them casual, Amy and Sophie’s potent physical chemistry draws them together. Sensual feasts abound, both in luscious culinary creations and detailed sex scenes, as Barrett masterfully portrays the sensation of infatuation growing into true love.
Dive into two romances that are as emotional as they are steamy, plus a sweet and sexy rom-com for HGTV lovers.
The orphan son of Chinese immigrants, Ming Tsu is brought up to be an assassin by a California bandit in Tom Lin’s one-of-a-kind Western, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu. Ming hopes for a better future after he elopes with Ada, the daughter of a railroad mogul. But when Ada is abducted and Ming is forced to go to work for the Central Pacific Railroad, he’s determined to seek retribution. Supernatural elements blend seamlessly with the epic plot, which makes room to note the prejudices of the 19th century.
Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse looks at the life of an orphaned Ojibway boy in 1960s Ontario, Canada. Saul Indian Horse attends a bleak Catholic boarding school. A professional sports career becomes a possibility for Saul after he joins an Ojibway hockey team, yet he faces prejudice and hostility due to his heritage. As he comes of age, he must also come to terms with his past—and prepare for an uncertain future. Wagamese draws upon Ojibway language and lore as he traces Saul’s remarkable personal journey, and the result is a starkly beautiful neo-Western novel.
Set in the American West during the gold rush, C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold tells the epic story of a Chinese American family. When their father, a hardworking miner, dies, orphans Sam and Lucy decide to give him a traditional Chinese burial. After being forced to leave their home, they embark on a quest to find the right place to lay their father to rest, traveling through harsh terrain with his corpse carried on horseback. Zhang plumbs myths about the American West as she dissects themes of nature, home and immigration in this rewarding book club pick.
Anna North reimagines the traditional Western with Outlawed. In an alternate 1890s, happily married Ada finds that she’s unable to bear children. Afraid that she’ll be charged with witchcraft—a typical occurrence for childless women—Ada flees her home and eventually joins the Hole in the Wall Gang. A collective of female and nonbinary fugitives, the gang hopes to establish a town where marginalized people can flourish. Ada’s adventures with the gun-toting band make for great reading, with gender, community and identity being but a few of the novel’s rich discussion topics.
These innovative takes on the Western breathe new life into the genre and will spark enthralling group discussions.
Lapsed Amish police chief Kate Burkholder returns in The Hidden One, the 14th entry in Linda Castillo’s popular series. This time, church elders call on Kate after the police unexpectedly make an arrest in a high-profile murder case that dates back more than a decade. It’s a little outside Kate’s bailiwick, but special circumstances apply: The suspect is Jonas Bowman, her first-ever boyfriend. He’s accused of killing Amish bishop Ananias Stoltzfus, whose remains have been unearthed in a recently cleared field. The murder weapon, an antique rifle found buried alongside the deceased, belonged to Jonas, a fact he freely admits while maintaining he had nothing to do with the crime. Kate’s nosing around brings to light some disturbing information about Ananias, suggesting that he had not been the upright individual one might have expected a bishop to be. And thus the suspect list lengthens, and then lengthens some more, as stories surface about Ananias’ malicious actions toward some of his parishioners. With great suspense, well-drawn characters and a totally unexpected ending, The Hidden One is a standout installment in a rightfully beloved series.
Vera Kelly: Lost and Found
The titular character in Rosalie Knecht’s Vera Kelly: Lost and Found is a PI (and ex-CIA operative) who lives with her girlfriend, Max, in Brooklyn in the early 1970s. When Max’s wealthy parents summon her to their home in Los Angeles, Vera joins her for moral support, although Max’s homophobic family would more likely refer to it as immoral support. Max disappears the next morning, and her parents’ cluelessness about what could have happened to her seems highly suspect to Vera. Seeing as she’s already persona non grata, Vera liberates Max’s Avanti sports car from the garage and sets off in search of her missing lover. And then, as they say, hijinks ensue. In addition to providing a fascinating and spot-on look at the LA of the 1970s and the lifestyles of the wealthy, entitled and dysfunctional, Vera Kelly: Lost and Found also contains my favorite line of the month: “To my surprise, I saw she was trying not to cry. It was like watching watercolor wick through paper.”
Hatchet Island
Paul Doiron returns with Hatchet Island, a new adventure featuring Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch. As the tale opens, Mike and his girlfriend, Stacey Stevens, are en route by kayak to Baker Island, home of the Maine Seabird Initiative, a project to restore puffin habitats and protect endangered avian species. It seems that the project manager, an irascible woman named Maeve McLeary, has gone missing, perhaps because of her anti-lobster fishing activism and the threats that followed. Three other researchers share the island with Maeve. In the following days, two of them are murdered and the third, Garrett Meadows, disappears. It is unclear whether Garett is another victim or the perpetrator, and the fact that he is the lone Black man in the lily-white community does not improve his prospects for vindication. Doiron paints a complex portrait of coastal Maine, where residents are caught up in uneasy alliances and squabbles among the townsfolk, the fishing community, eco-activists and the wealthy summer residents. It is a comparatively rare thing for tensions to rise to murderous levels, but when they do, it is a mighty fine thing to have a Mike Bowditch on hand to sort things out. Fans of C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett mysteries will particularly enjoy this gripping tale.
★ Little Sister
Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens has just settled in for a pint of lager in the garden of the Spreading Oak pub when a teenage girl covered in blood emerges from the trellised gateway adjacent to the road. Concerned, he asks if she needs some help. She replies, “I don’t. But maybe Nina does.” When queried as to Nina’s current whereabouts, the girl replies enigmatically, “Oh, I’m not going to tell you yet, detective. That would be too easy.” And thus begins Gytha Lodge’s Little Sister, a cat-and-mouse game between the seasoned DCI and the girl, Keely, while the life of Nina, her younger sister, may hang in the balance. The story unfolds at a tantalizing and deliberate pace, especially in the first-person chapters from Keely’s perspective that detail years of abuse in the English foster care system. Jonah and his team begin to notice small discrepancies in Keely’s narrative that they take for clues, despite worrying that these breadcrumbs might just be clever manipulations on her part. And the clock ticks on. . . . Despite its borderline improbable premise, Little Sister is suspenseful to the nth degree as Lodge raises the bar for twists and turns to lofty nosebleed heights and saves a deliciously diabolical surprise for the very end.
A PI searches for her missing girlfriend in 1970s California and an Amish bishop has some dark secrets in this month's Whodunit column.
Louis lives with his determined, free-spirited grandmother. When neither she nor City Hall can tell him how many dogs live in their neighborhood, Louis takes Grandma’s advice to heart: “Sometimes if you want something done you’ve just got to do it yourself.”
Louis decides to go door to door to take a census. Along the way, he learns a lot about his neighbors and their pets. Two corgis named Wilbur and Orville enjoy bird-watching, while a small white terrier named E.B. “dreams of writing stories.” Such clever references elevate the story, even if younger readers might not immediately grasp their meanings. An older man tells Louis that he has learned many lessons from his dogs, Aesop and Fable, while a house in which musicians practice saxophone and flute is also home to a pair of hounds named Thelonious and Monk. All of these touches are artful and light, just there for the taking.
Meanwhile, Grandma is occupied with a project of her own, as she’s unsatisfied that the city has fenced off an abandoned lot. Her efforts and Louis’ dovetail pleasingly, and there’s a lovely surprise for Louis in the end.
Every Dog in the Neighborhood is an easy book to fall in love with. Philip C. Stead’s writing is exquisite, and illustrator Matthew Cordell’s artwork portrays a delightful menagerie of humans and their four-legged friends. Stead (author of the Caldecott Medal-winning A Sick Day for Amos McGee) makes every word count, while fellow Caldecott Medalist Cordell (Wolf in the Snow) brings the bustling sidewalks of Louis’ neighborhood to life. His signature loose, expressive lines have fabulous energy and personality reminiscent of the work of Quentin Blake and Jules Feiffer.
Every Dog in the Neighborhood is a memorable story about energetic grandparenting, the importance of being a good neighbor and the fruits of civic engagement.
The Pet Potato
Move over, Sophie’s Squash: Albert’s potato has arrived. In Pat Zietlow Miller and Anne Wilsdorf’s beloved 2013 picture book, a young girl befriends a squash she finds at the farmers market. Josh Lacey and Momoko Abe’s The Pet Potato pays similar tribute to the power of imagination through the story of Albert, a playful boy with circular red glasses and a mop of curly hair who longs for a pet but whose parents have squashed all of his suggestions.
Despite his parents’ firm stance, Albert pleads unrelentingly until, one day, his father hands him a small wrapped package, which turns out to contain a potato. “You wanted a pet,” Dad tells Albert. “It’s a pet potato.” Albert sets the potato aside, then notices that it looks sad. The next day, he gives the potato a ride on his train set, and soon the pair are inseparable.
British author Lacey is no stranger to unusual pet tales; he’s also the author of the Dragonsitter chapter book series. Here, he employs excellent comic timing as he describes Albert and the potato’s adventures at home, on the playground and even at the library, where, “for some reason, the potato particularly liked books about pirates.”
Abe’s illustrations capture it all, from Albert and the potato palling around on the playground to Albert drifting off to sleep at night, the potato resting on the pillow next to him. A limited color palette of greens, reds, yellows and browns allows Albert’s and the potato’s facial expressions to shine. Using minimal linework and an arsenal of adorable potato-size hats, Abe creatively animates the potato, who becomes an intrepid safari explorer, a railway engineer and more.
Of course, like all pets, potatoes don’t live forever, and Lacey crafts a satisfying ending that leaves everyone happy, including Albert. A final spread portrays a diverse array of neighbors discovering how much fun a pet potato can be.
With great style and gentle humor, The Pet Potato demonstrates how a vivid imagination can transform an ordinary spud into an extraordinary buddy.
The Surprise
When Kit receives a guinea pig as a surprise birthday gift, her household’s other animals are perplexed by the creature. Bob the pug, Dora the cat and Paul the bird pronounce, “If you’re not a cat or a dog or a bird, you’re an oddball.” Co-authored by award-winning novelist Zadie Smith (White Teeth) and her husband, Nick Laird, The Surprise is a spirited celebration of the unexpected. In the world of this story, anything can happen—and it does.
The Surprise (as the newly arrived guinea pig is called for most of the book) is dressed for judo, which she loves, but her new companions abandon her to watch TV, leaving her feeling sad and lonely. As she experiments with ways to fit in, the Surprise winds up in big trouble. Fortunately, she is rescued by a fellow oddball, an older woman named Emily Brookstein who lives in a flat below Kit’s. “Life’s too short not to be an oddball,” Emily advises.
Illustrator Magenta Fox’s artwork is well suited to this tale of anthropomorphized animals. The guinea pig is an immediately adorable and sympathetic protagonist. Ginger-haired, exuberant Emily Brookstein and loving new pet owner Kit make perfect foils to the disapproving trio of Bob, Dora and Paul. Fox excels at facial expressions, whether it’s a smug yet puzzled look on a bespectacled pug’s face or the Surprise’s downcast eyes as the other animals talk about her as though she can’t hear them. There’s plenty of action, too, including an airborne guinea pig and a dynamic series of panels that depicts an exciting elevator journey.
When Kit returns home from school, she finally christens her new pet Maud. It’s clear that Maud will fit right in with the animals and humans of her new family, but she has also gained an appreciation for what makes her stand out, too.
There’s nothing quite so wonderful—or as challenging—as bringing a new pet into the family. These three picture books showcase the happiness that these companions add to our lives.
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