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NonfictionGraphic Novels & ComicsBlack History

Six books reveal the dreams of America’s Black forefathers and foremothers

Feature by Matt Gifford

Our national conversation about anti-Black racism made 2020 a pivotal year—painful for many, cathartic for others, memorable to all. Now a new year brings new opportunities to listen to Black voices and stories. Pick up one of these titles to deepen your knowledge of our country’s past, and join the chorus of voices advocating for a better future.

Ida B. the Queen

Ida B. Wells gets the royal treatment in Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells, written by Michelle Duster, Wells’ great-granddaughter.

From the 1890s through the early 20th century, Wells was a pioneering activist and journalist who fought racism by publicizing heinous acts of violence toward Black Americans during the Jim Crow era. Crafted with empathy for and intimate knowledge of this American icon, the book recounts Wells’ many groundbreaking achievements, which caused the FBI to dub her a “dangerous negro agitator” in her time. Unlike in a typical biography, however, Duster integrates her own perspective of her great-grandmother into this narrative, inspecting her family’s legacy along the way. Duster also outlines the cultural impact Wells had on her contemporaries, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, and draws a throughline from Wells’ defiant voice at the turn of the 20th century to the struggle for Black lives today.

In addition to its compelling content, this book is also drop-dead gorgeous. Vibrant illustrations of Wells and other important history makers, such as Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Malcolm X and Bree Newsome, add even more color to their colorful lives. Wells was righteously indignant and wise beyond her era, and Duster translates her drive to today’s racial discourse with insight and grace.

★ Four Hundred Souls

If you’re looking for a single work that spans the entirety of the Black experience in America, pick up a copy of Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. This comprehensive meditation on Black history in the United States features 90 noteworthy Black authors and poets ruminating on the last 400 years—beginning with the date of the first recorded arrival of enslaved people from Africa on these shores.

Each author reflects on five years in America, focusing on a different “person, place, thing, idea, or event”—such as Phillis Wheatley, Oregon, cotton, queer sexuality and the war on drugs. At the end of each 40-year section, a poet captures that historical period in verse. With contributions from huge names in the community of Black thought leaders, such as Nikole Hannah-Jones, Isabel Wilkerson, Angela Davis and Jamelle Bouie, just to name a few, the scope of the writing is immense and powerful, the content both celebratory and harrowing.

You may feel drawn to this book because of its heavy-hitting roster of big names, but look forward to widening your familiarity with more up-and-coming writers, too. With so many authors and topics represented in these pages, you’re sure to gain new insight about every tumultuous period in our nation’s history.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Four Hundred Souls is the year’s most astounding full-cast audiobook production. Go behind the scenes with Kendi, Blain and the producers.

Julian Bond’s Time to Teach

One valuable yet often overlooked leader in the fight for Black equality is finally getting his due in Julian Bond’s Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. The late author’s lectures from his prolific teaching career, assembled here for the first time, are full of firsthand lessons from his direct involvement in the civil rights movement.

As one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Bond participated in myriad sit-ins and protests in the Southern United States and even worked directly with Martin Luther King Jr. Later he became an elected member of both the Georgia House of Representatives and the Georgia Senate and then began teaching at institutions such as Harvard, the University of Virginia and American University. As a lifelong activist, Bond not only protested for Black civil rights but was also an early advocate for LGBTQ rights and rights for disabled people, long before any legislation, courts or popular thought addressed these needs.

Reflecting his storied life of activism, Bond’s lectures offer a road map of the history of the United States and white supremacy, covering the formation of the NAACP, the treatment of Black soldiers through World War II, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case and other milestones. Along the way, he meticulously details the daily efforts to build and expand the Southern civil rights movement throughout the 20th century, highlighting the contributions of many underrecognized individuals.

During his life, Bond wanted to educate the world about the history of the Black experience, as well as about the nuts and bolts of starting and maintaining a protest movement. With this posthumous collection, and with the help of the editors who assembled it, he can finally share his teachings with the broad audience he deserves.

★ A Shot in the Moonlight

Imagine being woken up in the middle of the night by a mob outside your house, calling your name, accusing you of crimes that you didn’t commit. Then imagine that they start throwing explosives and firing guns at your house, at your family. You defend yourself and your home as best you can, and one of the assailants dies from the intervening fight. Suddenly you find yourself, a Black man, a formerly enslaved person, fleeing through 1890s Kentucky, trying to stay out of the hands of lynch mobs. With the Ku Klux Klan and newspapers calling for your execution, you’re forced to put your life in the hands of a lawyer who fought to uphold slavery.

This complicated tale is masterfully told in Ben Montgomery’s A Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South. Montgomery, the Tampa Bay Times journalist who covered the Dozier School for Boys (which would later inspire Colson Whitehead’s novel The Nickel Boys), guides us through the events that took place on the night of January 21, 1897, at the home of George Dining.

A Shot in the Moonlight reads like a riveting thriller, with multiple moving pieces and conflicting perspectives, but historical artifacts such as newspaper excerpts and first-person accounts also give it journalistic depth. Set during an era when being Black and accused of a crime was almost a guaranteed death sentence, this gripping history offers hope through the actions of an unlikely cast of characters who sought to save a man from a cruel and vindictive fate.

Soul City

If you’re looking for something lower octane that still offers an intriguing exploration of what could have been, take a trip to Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia. Author Thomas Healy tells the story of Soul City, North Carolina, an intentional community founded in the 1970s by the Black lawyer Floyd McKissick, aimed at helping Black people achieve the American dream. While not an exclusively Black community, Soul City was intended to be a place for Black people to grow, prosper economically and exercise their hard-won civil rights outside of segregated cities.

Envisioning a city whose main streets were named after the likes of Nat Turner, John Brown and Dred Scott, McKissick lobbied for help from the federal government to pursue his municipal dream, and surprisingly, the Nixon administration eventually granted him the seed money. However, despite years of effort, the town is now little more than a blip on the historical radar. And by some dark irony, Soul City’s largest industry today is the operation of a for-profit prison. 

So what happened? Was Soul City doomed from the beginning, like so many ambitious utopian experiments? As Healy shows, it’s not that simple. Soul City’s bumpy background is littered with statewide backlash, legislative resistance and financial undercutting, which prevented the project from flourishing. This chronicle of what went wrong, and who wanted it to go wrong, outlines both missteps by the city’s planners as well as outside obstacles that contributed to the experiment’s failure. Even so, McKissick’s shining vision for Soul City will inspire readers to dream of what kinds of communities we could create next.

The Black Panther Party

For education that’s easy on the eyes, snag The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History by David F. Walker (The Life of Frederick Douglass). Beautifully illustrated by Marcus Kwame Anderson and supremely informative, this graphic novel offers a digestible history of the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party, correcting many negative assumptions about them while still addressing their flaws.

The book especially excels in illuminating the motives of the party’s founders, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. Their original aims were to improve community security, defy the tactics of racist police departments, provide free community breakfast and offer support to underserved youth. However, the party’s faulty decision-making, along with efforts by police institutions and the FBI to sabotage the party every step of the way, led to its ultimate unraveling.

A breeze to read and a feast for the eyes (and mind), this book is perfect for every burgeoning revolutionary.

A new year brings new opportunities to listen to Black voices and stories. Pick up one of these titles to deepen your knowledge of our country’s past, and join the chorus of voices advocating for a better future.
Mystery

Whodunit: February 2021

Feature by Bruce Tierney

Some of the biggest names in the genre knock it out of the park, and one half of an acclaimed Scandi-noir writing team goes it alone in this month’s Whodunit column.

Serpentine

Cases don’t come much colder than the 36-year-old murder of Dorothy Swoboda, whose burned-beyond-recognition remains were found in a similarly scorched late-model Cadillac down a steep embankment off of Los Angeles’ serpentine Mulholland Drive, thus providing the title of Jonathan Kellerman’s excellent Serpentine. Now, all these years later, the case has been assigned to LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, who enlists consulting psychologist Alex Delaware as backup. Neither expects much to come of further investigation. The cops back in the day had their suspicions, but nothing panned out. Nowadays the case files are sketchy, and the best line of inquiry seems to be to interview some of the original investigating officers and witnesses and see what insights they might have had that never made it into the official case files. Only problem is, Milo finds that virtually everyone with any insight into the case has met an untimely death. There is no statute of limitations on murder, so it would appear that someone is doing his (or her) level best to stay one step ahead of this latest investigation, and in this case “level best” makes for a scorching good read.

Before She Disappeared

Lisa Gardner’s thriller Before She Disappeared introduces us to Frankie Elkin. For a time, Frankie struggled to find some purpose in her life, some reason to keep moving forward while in recovery for alcoholism. She discovered her niche as an advocate for missing persons, seeking out those who have disappeared, the unimportant, the hitherto forgotten. She does this on a volunteer basis, taking no payment, propelled along by a remarkable success rate, at least by one metric: She is very good at finding people. Unfortunately, the subjects of her searches routinely turn up quite dead. There is hope yet for her new case, however. Haitian teenager Angelique Badeau was a stellar and motivated student, intent on a career in medicine. Then, nothing. She disappeared nearly a year ago, leaving virtually no trace. As Frankie’s investigation progresses, it offers an up-close look into some of the issues that plague American society today—racism, antipathy toward immigrants and the trafficking of young women—while providing a blistering narrative and sympathetic characters (even an annoyingly endearing cat!). Before She Disappeared is billed as a standalone, but I’m thinking it would be the perfect setup for a terrific series.

Knock Knock

It’s likely that regular readers of this column are familiar with my gushing over mystery novels from Europe’s frozen north, a subgenre known as Scandinavian noir. After the death of his longtime writing partner Börge Hellström, Swedish writer Anders Roslund returns with Knock Knock, his first solo novel and the next installment of his and Hellström’s gripping series featuring police superintendent Ewert Grens and undercover informant Piet Hoffman. Every cop has one nagging case that they were unable to solve, a case that remains within their being, waiting for some kind of closure. For Ewert, it was the murder of a family 17 years ago in which only a 5-year-old girl was spared, although she was unable to yield any usable clues to the killings. Now there has been a break-in at the same apartment, and Ewert, who is on the verge of retirement, would like nothing more than to see this case resolved before he rides off into the sunset. Meanwhile, Piet, having been outed as an informant, is being blackmailed by lethal munitions brokers, his family threatened to the point that they must go into hiding. Roslund cleverly interlaces these two disparate storylines, and readers will marvel at just how much action can take place in a period spanning only three days. Knock Knock has handily reaffirmed all my Scandi-noir gushing.

★ Blood Grove

It is a fair bet that if Walter Mosley has a book coming out during any given month, a) it will get reviewed here, and b) there’s an excellent chance it will be the best mystery of that month. Case in point: his latest, Blood Grove. Private detective Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is nudging 50 years of age in this novel, which is set in late-1960s Los Angeles. The Vietnam War has taken its toll on the nation. Hippies are tuning in, turning on, dropping out. Racism is rampant. And in the middle of this uneasy milieu, Easy gets approached by a vet suffering from what we now call PTSD. The vet spins an incredible story: He went to the aid of a screaming woman in distress at a remote hilltop cabin, stabbed her attacker and then lapsed into unconsciousness. When he awoke, there was no woman, no stabbed man, really no indication whatsoever that any of his memories were anything more than a hallucination. Nothing is quite what it seems in this place, in this time, in this book. Lurking just beneath the surface are a heist gone bad, a gangster or three on the vengeance trail and a trio of lethal ladies. And there are all manner of ’60s cultural references, from Lucky Strike cigarettes to Edsel cars to free-love clubs—not to mention a character who bears more than a passing resemblance to real-life record producer Terry Melcher, who was briefly associated with Charles Manson. I read it all in one sitting, as I just could not stop turning the pages.

Some of the biggest names in the genre knock it out of the park, and one half of an acclaimed Scandi-noir writing team goes it alone in this month's Whodunit column.

RomanceWestern Romance

Romance: February 2021

Feature by Christie Ridgway

Whether you’re a longtime romance fan or are jumping in to the genre for the first time, celebrate Valentine’s Day with a love story.

★ Big Bad Wolf

Contemporary life looks different in the alternate reality of Suleikha Snyder’s Big Bad Wolf, where the existence of shape-shifters and other supernatural beings has recently been revealed to the public. Lawyer and psychologist Neha Ahluwalia’s new client is Joe Peluso, an ex-soldier and wolf shifter who committed murder in an act of vigilante justice. He’s big, brooding and so attractive that she can’t suppress her longing for him. When Joe manages to break out of jail, Neha is at his side, and he can’t turn her away. They hide out and then seek help from an underground team of supernatural beings devoted to people who, like Joe, were turned into shifters by the government. Big Bad Wolf is filled with cinematic action and blazing passion, but the characters (including an intriguing pansexual vampire) are well drawn, and the world building is first-rate despite the breakneck pace. Snyder’s vision of how the political and social order would change in the wake of such paradigm-­shifting news is spot on. Readers of sexy paranormal romance will thoroughly enjoy this first in a new series—and clamor for more.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: How Suleikha Snyder put her unique stamp on the shifter romance.

A Lady’s Formula for Love

A Victorian widow and scientist pursues her passion in A Lady’s Formula for Love by debut author Elizabeth Everett. Lady Violet Hughes has established a social club for ladies, the real function of which is to mask a collective of women interested in math and science. When Violet’s stepson asks her to use her scientific prowess for a secret government project, he also provides her with a bodyguard, Arthur Kneland, to protect her and the club. Violet is fascinated by the taciturn Arthur and even more by his rare smiles. Arthur is smitten as well, but he resists; he can’t afford distraction if he’s going to keep Violet safe. Though the pair are worlds apart in intellectual interests and social class, their hearts find common ground. Arthur represents a beloved romance trope: the silent hero who becomes a skilled linguist in the language of love. Sensual and tender love scenes and secondary female characters seeking their own empowerment make this an entertaining, standout debut.

★ Wild Rain

Adventure awaits in the Wyoming Territory in Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins. Rancher, horse-breaker and all-around badass Spring Lee (who stole many a scene during her first appearance in Jenkins’ Tempest) rescues an injured man during a blizzard. She brings Garrett McCray to her cabin, where she learns he’s a reporter from the District of Columbia who’s traveled all the way to Wyoming to interview her famous brother, Dr. Colton Lee. Garrett soon finds himself as intrigued by the independent and accomplished Spring as he is entranced by the surrounding mountains. The two discuss their families and personal experiences as a Black man and woman from very different parts of the country, and face down bigotry together in the neighboring community of Paradise. Spring is an engaging, action-oriented character, and she’s met her match in the more cerebral and softer-edged Garrett. Their love story is sigh-inducing, the scenes of passion sizzle, and the enriching historical details of the Black experience—including Garrett’s service in the Union Navy during the Civil War—make this a romance not to be missed.

Driven

An ex-FBI agent hunts a serial killer who appears to be back from the dead in Driven by Rebecca Zanetti. Angus Force shot the murderer himself and was grievously wounded in the process, but now women are dying in the same gruesome manner as before. As he and his team, the secret Deep Ops Unit, investigate the new deaths, the clues begin to point to Angus. Could he actually be responsible? Nari Zhang, the team’s on-staff psychologist, knows he’s innocent, even though it’s clear he’s a man driven by pain and guilt. She sticks close to help uncover the truth, even after it becomes clear that the killer has her in his sights. Angus is the sort of grim, wounded hero that every romance fan wants to see healed, but smart and self-aware Nari protects her heart even as the two reluctant lovers come together in spicy scenes that match the pulsing suspense. The story moves fast, and there’s an unexpected twist or two, as well as a scene- and booze-stealing German shepherd that provides a little levity to this dark and satisfying romantic thriller.

The Duke Heist

The Duke Heist by Erica Ridley introduces a new series via a delightful family of orphans. As the six adopted siblings of a wealthy and eccentric baron, the Wynchesters are determined to recover a painting dear to their hearts and to their dearly departed adoptive father. Chloe Wynchester takes point on the plan to retrieve the artwork from the newest Duke of Faircliffe, Lawrence Gosling. Rebuffed initial overtures mean she must resort to more nefarious undercover measures—something familiar to a woman who survived her childhood by picking pockets. A chance encounter leaves Lawrence in Chloe’s debt and begins an association that allows love to blossom. But the impoverished duke needs a respectable heiress to restore his family’s fortunes and make up for his father’s mistakes, and the scandalous Chloe wants a man to love her for herself, not her bank account. Both will have to learn valuable lessons about self-respect and the limitations of society’s rules before finding their happy ever after. Ridley’s motley crew of Wynchester siblings is as charming as it is unforgettable, signaling more great romance ahead. The Duke Heist is everything a Regency romance fan hopes for.

Whether you’re a longtime romance fan or are jumping in to the genre for the first time, celebrate Valentine’s Day with a love story.

Fiction

The Hold List: Thriller hangovers

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Private Eye July gives us so many opportunities to recommend our favorite thrilling, 100% entertaining, purely pleasurable reads. As mystery and thriller fans know, there’s nothing quite like a book that gets under your skin and ruins any chance of a good night’s sleep. Here are our favorite twisty novels that shook us to the core.

Behind Her Eyes

Single mom Louise meets a man, David, at a pub one night. They kiss, it’s great, what a night—but it turns out he’s her new boss. Then Louise meets a gorgeous woman named Adele while out for coffee. Adele is new in town, looking for a friend—and is married to David. Such drama! But what starts as an addicting love triangle thriller— the kind of domestic drama that seems a bit run-of-the-mill in this golden era of suspense fiction—becomes something completely different. It’s character-driven, flawlessly written, and it swept me along to an ending that made my brain into soup. In her 2017 interview with BookPage, Sarah Pinborough called her novel a “Marmite book,” as not everyone will love it. Color me obsessed.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

The Thirteenth Tale

If you love books (obviously you do, you’re reading BookPage) and haven’t yet read The Thirteenth Tale, I am legitimately jealous. This delightfully eerie tale of a reclusive author and her biographer is a love letter to bibliophiles and books, specifically the gothic masterpieces of the Brontë sisters and Daphne du Maurier. Echoes of Jane Eyre and Rebecca swirl in Diane Setterfield’s elegant, evocative prose as Margaret Lea, bookseller and biographer, listens to what Vida Winter says is the unvarnished truth of her life. I thought about this book whenever I wasn’t reading it and, upon reaching its moving conclusion and truly shocking final twist, felt as if I had been jolted out of a vivid dream.

—Savanna, Assistant Editor

Child 44

A serial killer in Stalinist Russia? If this premise sounds fresh to you, there’s a historical reason: Soviet propaganda. Stalin asserted that social problems like crime were a byproduct of capitalism. Therefore, in a socialist workers’ paradise, they couldn’t exist. Which puts MGB officer Leo Demidov in an awkward position, since he’s seen the files on dozens of children who died by similar, violent means. Though he’s sure one person is responsible, Demidov knows the consequences of questioning the state. In a society ruled by silence, fear and the inability to tell the truth, can a crime ever be solved? This tension gives the novel a depth that complements Tom Rob Smith’s talent for jaw-dropping twists. Child 44 is an attention-grabbing, one-sitting read.

—Trisha, Publisher

The Cat Who Saw Red

The last time I read a truly heart-stopping, hair-raising novel was . . . never. I’m a huge wuss, and when I settle in with a good book, my aim is to escape the horrors of the real world rather than to approach them. Cue Lilian Jackson Braun’s cozy, low-stakes murder mystery series starring reporter Jim Qwilleran and his two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum. Full disclosure: My grandma recommended this series to me when I was in middle school, and my level of literary courage hasn’t increased even a little bit since then. So to my fellow scaredy-cats out there, I recommend The Cat Who Saw Red for a charming murder mystery that will raise your curiosity more than your blood pressure.

—Christy, Associate Editor

Security

Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion, but I dislike about 90% of the horror novels out there. They often just don’t work as well as horror films can. One book that attempted to enter into the grand tradition of slasher movies—and in my opinion, pulled it off—is Security, Gina Wohlsdorf’s genre-rattling debut. It’s set in a luxe 20-story hotel in Santa Barbara 24 hours before its grand opening, and a masked killer is taking out members of the staff one by one. But the audacity of this thriller is that Wohlsdorf sometimes splits her narrative into columns, signifying different security cameras, allowing the reader to visualize different scenes at once. The stakes stay high, the horror never flags, and I have yet to come across another novel to surprise me in such a way.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

As mystery and thriller fans know, there’s nothing quite like a book that gets under your skin and ruins any chance of a good night’s sleep. Here are our favorite twisty novels that shook us to the core.
NonfictionMemoirBiography

Book Clubs: March 2021

Feature by Julie Hale

Celebrate Women’s History Month with terrific nonfiction titles spotlighting female pioneers and groundbreakers.

Adam Hochschild’s spirited biography Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes chronicles the life of Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933), a Russian refugee of Jewish descent who married millionaire James Graham Phelps Stokes. The two became members of the Socialist Party and mixed with figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois and anarchist Emma Goldman. Hochschild’s enthralling narrative shines a light on Pastor Stokes’ work as a champion of the working class and of the feminist cause. Pick this one if your group is ready for a dynamic discussion of social justice, women’s rights and the often overlooked history of American activism during the early 20th century.

In Horror Stories, musician Liz Phair—perhaps best known for her 1993 release Exile in Guyville—looks back at some painfully formative moments in her life. She writes with vibrancy and honesty about being unfaithful to her first husband, getting into a street brawl in Shanghai and giving birth to her son after 32 hours of labor. She's refreshingly upfront about her own personal shortcomings, but she's also compassionate about them, allowing her to connect with readers who've experienced their own missteps. Book groups will appreciate Phair’s skills as a memoirist and find rich topics for conversation, including the female experience in the music industry and riot grrrl-era feminism. 

Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph provides an in-depth look at a legendary lady. Dorothy Day (1897–1980) was a noted journalist, pacifist and advocate for labor and women’s rights. A Brooklyn native, she was also part of the Greenwich Village scene that included poet Hart Crane and playwright Eugene O’Neill. This lively biography documents her personal and political evolution in wonderful detail. Brimming with history and discussion topics related to religion and progressivism, it’s an inspired choice for Women’s History Month.

In her brave, probing memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence, essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit recounts her coming-of-age as a writer. Solnit settled in San Francisco as a teenager during the 1980s. While in grad school, she entered the writing world—an arena dominated by men—and worked to overcome gender barriers and find her place as an artist. Solnit’s astute observations of the literary life and the San Francisco art scene make for fascinating reading, and her evolving sense of her own identity and empowerment will prompt lively conversation among readers.

Celebrate Women’s History Month with terrific nonfiction titles spotlighting female pioneers and groundbreakers.

Mystery

Whodunit: March 2021

Feature by Bruce Tierney

Things aren't what they appear in some of this month's best mysteries—plus, a tale of murder during Hollywood's golden age.

Lightseekers

Many Nigerian-set suspense novels have riffed on the money scams perpetrated on gullible retirees abroad. Not so for Femi Kayode’s thriller Lightseekers, which centers the religious and class violence of Africa’s wealthiest country. Investigative psychologist Dr. Philip Taiwo, who has recently returned to his homeland after a stint in the United States, is hired to find out who murdered the son of a prominent local businessman. The assignment is a bit out of his wheelhouse, as he is much more comfortable theorizing about crime than taking part in a hands-on investigation. Plus, arrests have been made, and there is evidence galore, so Philip frankly doesn’t see what he can add to the investigation. That said, he is under a certain amount of pressure from the victim’s family, and there is a paycheck involved, so he unenthusiastically signs on. He is aided in his efforts by some unlikely sidekicks: a driver who is much savvier than one might expect; a vampishly beautiful attorney who causes Philip to question his marital vows; and a harried police chief, initially recalcitrant until Philip turns up evidence too compelling to ignore. The milieu is drawn especially well, which is unsurprising given that Kayode trained as a clinical psychologist in Nigeria. Steam-bath humidity, sizzling yams, road dust in every breath, danger lurking around every corner—welcome to Kayode’s Nigeria.

Nighthawking

The title of Russ Thomas’ latest thriller, Nighthawking, refers to a practice not dissimilar to grave-robbing—clandestine late-night metal detecting and potential plundering at archaeological sites, cemeteries or other locations of historical interest. One particular nighthawker got a bit more than he bargained for this time around: A foray into the Sheffield Botanical Garden in search of buried treasure instead turned up the body of a young woman, a stabbing victim, her eyes covered with a pair of coins from ancient Rome. It falls to Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler and his protégé, Detective Constable Mina Rabbani, to investigate. The case gains international implications when it is discovered that the victim was a botany student from a prominent Chinese family, and that her life in the U.K. was not what it seemed to be. Tyler and Rabbani are an interesting pair: He is gay, she is Muslim, both are relative outsiders with respect to the insular world of Yorkshire policing, and both routinely suffer the slings and arrows of innuendo. Nighthawking is their second adventure together, after last year’s Firewatching (also a terrific read), and I hope there will be many more to come. 

Smoke

Smoke, Joe Ide’s latest mystery featuring quixotic brainiac Isaiah Quintabe, finds our hero far afield from his Long Beach, California, home. He has disappeared into the unfamiliar wilds of the Golden State’s mountainous north, on the lam from more than one person who would like to see him dead. At other points in his career, he probably would have stayed to duke it out with the bad guys, but he has fallen in love and doesn’t want to risk putting his sweetheart in harm’s way. Isaiah’s once-sidekick, Juanell Dodson, assumes a larger role in Smoke than in earlier novels as he tries to leave his dangerous former career behind in a bid to save his marriage. Dodson holds down the SoCal part of the narrative as the street hustler reluctantly morphs into an ad agency account exec, while Isaiah becomes embroiled in the more perilous pursuit of a serial killer, drawn into the case by a none-too-stable escapee from a psychiatric hospital. Isaiah is something of a sucker for a person in need who presents him with a good story, and this story is perhaps the most intriguing he has come across to date. 

★ Windhall

Windhall by Ava Barry spins the tale of a modern-day copycat murder that echoes the high-profile slaying of a Hollywood movie star in 1948, at the beginning of the end of the golden age of Hollywood. The star in question, Eleanor Hayes, was found badly disfigured and quite dead in the garden of Windhall, the estate of film director Theo Langley, after a party that would have been regarded as legendary even if it hadn’t featured such a macabre coda. Initially, Theo looked pretty good for the murder—Eleanor had stopped showing up to work on his latest movie and seemed terrified of something—but as the investigation wore on, the so-called evidence became less compelling, and finally charges were dropped. Theo disappeared from view for decades. Although from time to time there were reported sightings from far afield, there was never much in the way of corroboration, and his story took its rightful place in Hollywood lore, one of the great unsolved mysteries of the golden age. The present-day murder piques the interest of investigative journalist Max Hailey, who is somewhat obsessed with Windhall and its closely guarded secrets. For years he has suspected that Theo was guilty, and when it turns out that the director has mysteriously returned to Windhall just in time for the new murder, it all seems a bit too preposterous to be simple coincidence. Windhall is Barry’s first novel, and it is one heck of a debut. She nails her protagonist’s first-person voice and vividly channels the Hollywood vernacular and vibe both past and present. 

Things aren't what they appear in some of this month's best mysteries—plus, a tale of murder during Hollywood's golden age.

Children's & YAPicture BookMiddle Grade

Standing on their shoulders

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

During Women’s History Month, we celebrate the contributions women have made to our country. These fascinating books about women who dared to dream big—and to act on those dreams—are sure to prompt young readers to follow in their footsteps.

Standing on Her Shoulders

From activists to athletes to ancestors through the ages, it’s important to honor those who came before us, writes Monica Clark-Robinson in Standing on Her Shoulders: A Celebration of Women: “When we remember them and speak their names, / We respect the struggles they overcame.” Her lyrical text makes a strong case for not just learning about historical figures but also thinking about how their accomplishments have impacted our lives today.

In the book’s vibrantly colored pages, illustrated by Laura Freeman, a multigenerational family discusses “women who were little once / just like you” and imagines the day when the children in the book—as well as the kids reading it—might offer their own proverbial shoulders to support future generations. The book highlights a diverse group of groundbreaking women from a range of places and eras, from gymnast Simone Biles and snowboarder Chloe Kim, to artists Frida Kahlo and Faith Ringgold, and politicians Deb Haaland and Hillary Clinton. There are activists (Harriet Tubman), explorers (Sacajawea) and scientists (Harriet Chalmers Adams), too. In the back matter, readers will discover beautiful portraits and brief biographies of the women they’ve met throughout the book.

Standing on Her Shoulders is an excellent resource, sure to serve as a starting point for further research and to help excited readers start planning for their own futures.

Kate's Light

Life as a lighthouse keeper can be grueling and lonely, filled with hard, unending physical labor and isolation. This is particularly true of open-water lighthouses like the one in Kate’s Light: Kate Walker at Robbins Reef Lighthouse by Elizabeth Spires, illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Emily Arnold McCully (Mirette on the High Wire). But it can also be invigorating and rewarding, as it was for Kate Walker. 

Walker emigrated from Germany to the U.S. in 1882 with her son, Jacob, and soon met and married lighthouse keeper John Walker. In 1885, when her husband was posted to Robbins Reef Lighthouse, located on a small island in the middle of the very busy and dangerous New York Harbor, Walker was skeptical. Where would her son play? Wouldn’t the family miss their friends, not to mention being able to walk to other places?

Walker grew to appreciate her unique situation and even became the assistant keeper of the lighthouse. For five years, she and her husband built a lovely, if unconventional, life together. But then John died of pneumonia, leaving Kate and their children worried for their future. Ever resourceful, Walker convinced the lighthouse board to hire her as a permanent keeper. For 33 years, she presided over the lighthouse. She became known for her heroism, carrying out more than 50 rescues, and for her dedication to keeping sailors and ships safe.

Spires, a poet, professor and author of several children’s books, creates a memorable tribute to an indomitable woman and her remarkable life. Walker’s willingness to step into the unknown is thrilling, and McCully’s illustrations add drama and impact to the swashbuckling story. Heavily applied watercolors create a massive thunderstorm on the page, and carefully rendered details will help readers imagine what it’s like to call an island lighthouse home. Kate’s Light is an unusual true story compellingly told.

Legacy

In her new tour de force of a poetry collection, Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance, bestselling author and Coretta Scott King Award winner Nikki Grimes stakes a claim for women in the pantheon of Harlem Renaissance poets.

As Grimes informs readers in her preface, Black women not only created poetry during the Harlem Renaissance but also headed up the publications that featured the male writers we know by name. In pursuit of making these women’s names and contributions known, Grimes has crafted a memorable and compelling volume of poems that pays tribute to the inspiration she has drawn from these women. 

Legacy’s poems follow a complex poetic form called the Golden Shovel, created by the poet Terrance Hayes. In this form, the poet begins by choosing a short poem or an excerpt from a longer poem. The words of this poem become the new poem’s “striking line,” and each word of the first poem becomes the last word in each line of the new poem. It’s an ambitious and fitting form that enables Grimes’ poems to be shaped by the words of the women honored in Legacy. 

Each of Grimes’ poems is preceded by the poem from which its striking line originates. Poems by Mae V. Cowdery, Esther Popel, Gwendolyn Bennett and more speak of beauty, dreams and determination, while Grimes’ work offers sketches of life, celebrates the natural world and declares self-confidence and pride. The book’s artwork, a feast of color that displays a range of techniques and styles, was contributed by 19 female artists including Cozbi A. Cabrera, Nina Crews, Laura Freeman and Jan Spivey Gilchrist.

Grimes lays claim to an amazing artistic legacy on every page, her poetic rejoinders building a stirring call and response. Legacy amplifies the words of these extraordinary poets and offers a road map for carrying them into the future.

The Fearless Flights of Hazel Ying Lee

From the moment she took her first flight in 1932, Hazel Ying Lee knew she was destined to become a pilot. “When the plane landed back on the runway like a skipping rock, Hazel stepped out with only the horizon in her eyes,” writes Julie Leung in her appealing picture book biography The Fearless Flights of Hazel Ying Lee. Lee was determined to make her dream a reality, no matter the obstacles—which included an era rife with racism, the exclusion of women from many professions and a mother who was firmly against the idea of Lee becoming a pilot.

Lee delighted in competition and applied the same vigor to her quest to become a pilot that she showed while racing and swimming with her brothers as a child. She worked as an elevator operator to save up for flying lessons, and when World War II began, she was ready. Male pilots were sent overseas, and the U.S. military created the Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) program, where Lee became a valued and accomplished member.

Julie Kwon’s illustrations superbly capture Lee’s experiences on the ground and on the wing. In a shadowy elevator, the light around Lee is a warm glow, illuminating her dreamy I’d-rather-be-flying expression. In the air, fluffy clouds contrast with the sharp edges of the WASPs’ airplanes. Lee’s spirit shines throughout; she never stopped learning and trying new things, even as she worked under dangerous conditions to protect her country.

The author’s note offers further details about Hazel and her fellow WASPs and elaborates on the racist treatment Chinese American families like Lee’s often endured. The Fearless Flights of Hazel Ying Lee is an edifying, exciting real-life adventure that will inspire readers to let their own dreams take flight.

During Women’s History Month, we celebrate the contributions women have made to our country. These fascinating books about women who dared to dream big—and to act on those dreams—are sure to prompt young readers to follow in their footsteps.

NonfictionBlack History

Glimmers of hope during dark times

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Inspiration has been hard to come by in a year marked by a devastating pandemic, economic hardship and shocking political turmoil. If your faith has been challenged, these books will encourage hope, offer guidance and provide glimpses of light amid the shadows.

Dusk, Night, Dawn

With her characteristic deadpan humor, Anne Lamott shepherds us through the darkness in Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage. In short, affectionately candid chapters, Lamott meditates on the beauty of nature, the power of forgiveness, the wonder of love and kindness and the benefit of recognizing specks of hope all around us. When she’s in an airport, exasperated by flight delays, for example, she notices a young girl’s absorption in some hair ribbons. Suddenly it dawns on her how we can recover our faith in life “in the midst of so much bad news and dread, when our children’s futures are so uncertain: We start in the here and now. . . . We start where our butts and feet and minds are. We start in these times of incomprehensible scientific predictions, madness and disbelief, aging and constantly nightmarish airport delays, and we look up and around for brighter ribbons.”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Anne Lamott shares some ideas for how to get by when the world seems especially dark.

Freeing Jesus

While Lamott explores how we restrict ourselves with limited ideas about grace, sin and forgiveness, Diana Butler Bass focuses on the ways we put Jesus in a cage, confining the universality of his life and message behind bars of dogmatism. In her moving Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence, Bass attempts to answer the age-old question, “Who is Jesus really?” Theologians have long responded to this question by focusing on either the human Jesus of history or the divine Christ of faith, but Bass writes that neither history nor theology, “neither intellectual arguments nor ecclesiastical authority elucidates the Jesus I have known.” She shares wonderful stories of finding Jesus during every stage of her life, noting that experiencing Jesus as a friend during one’s teenage years will be very different from experiencing Jesus as a friend in middle age. In this refreshing book, Bass tells readers of a Jesus “who shows up consistently and when we least expect him. Freeing Jesus means finding him along the way.”

Learning to Pray

Each of these books highlights practices that can heal fractured relationships or bring us closer to God, such as prayer. However, our understanding of prayer is often as constricted as our understanding of Jesus. In his monumental and elegantly insightful book Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone, James Martin, SJ, teaches a simple but enduring lesson: “Prayer is a personal relationship with God.” He gently guides the reader through reasons to pray and offers a richly detailed history of various types of prayer, from petitionary prayer and centering prayer to nature prayer and lectio divina, or praying with sacred texts. Martin reminds us of the many reasons we pray, including to praise God and to unburden ourselves. Because we often think of prayer as asking for favors from God, or as limited to a certain time and place, we don’t realize that we can pray without knowing it by “pausing to think about something that inspires you,” being “aware that you are grateful” or even simply wishing you could pray. Martin’s book is so abundantly full that it may be the only guide to prayer you’ll ever need.

The Black Church

In the book that accompanies his PBS series of the same title, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song, Henry Louis Gates Jr. sublimely evokes the power of worship to create both religious and political solidarity. Drawing on meticulous archival research, as well as on insightful interviews with a diverse group of religious leaders, Gates plumbs the history of the Black church in America, from its roots in slavery, through its development in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to its struggles during the 1960s and into the 21st century. Gates elegantly illustrates that “the signal aspects of African American culture were planted, watered, given light, and nurtured in the Black Church.” He also teases apart the two stories present within African American religious traditions: “one of a people defining themselves in the presence of a higher power and the other of their journey for freedom and equality in a land where power itself . . . was (and still is) denied them.” Gates’ enthralling book offers a powerful reminder that our actions affect the communities in which we live.

Inspiration has been hard to come by in a year marked by a devastating pandemic, economic hardship and shocking political turmoil. If your faith has been challenged, these books will encourage hope, offer guidance and provide glimpses of light amid the shadows.
Mystery

Whodunit: April 2021

Feature by Bruce Tierney

This month's mystery column features a globe-trotting quartet of thrilling reads.

Northern Spy

In 1998, the “Troubles” of Northern Ireland were brought to a close by the signing of the Good Friday agreement—in theory. The present-day reality is somewhat less resolved. As Flynn Berry points out in her new thriller, Northern Spy, “most Catholics still wanted a united Ireland, most Protestants wanted to remain part of the UK. The schools were still segregated. You still knew, in every town, which was the Catholic bakery, which was the Protestant taxi firm. How could anyone not have seen this coming? We were living in a tinderbox.” Two sisters, BBC producer and new mom Tessa and paramedic Marian, occupy center stage in the narrative. They are exceptionally close, so Tessa is shocked to her core when she sees raw news footage of a gas station holdup and recognizes her sister as one of the Irish Republican Army perpetrators. Now Marian is on the run, and the police are convinced that Tessa knows more than she’s saying. When Marian seeks her help, Tessa is faced with a Sophie’s choice: Should she come to her sister’s rescue, putting her baby in peril by getting involved? Berry’s thriller is an excellent and sympathetic look at family bonds, ideological enmity and the difficulty of maintaining some semblance of balance in a situation outside one’s control. 

Dance With Death

Nobody born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1958 should be able to channel 19th-century London as splendidly as Will Thomas does in his well-loved series featuring private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn. The latest installment, Dance With Death, is a tale of duplicity and murder centered on an upcoming royal wedding. The future Nicholas II, who will one day become the last czar of Russia, plays a pivotal role in the narrative, as does the daughter of Russian revolutionary Karl Marx, the future King George V of Britain and legendary prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska. These real historical figures mingle freely and seamlessly with fictional characters, some of whom are prepared to die for them, while others seek the opportunity to kill them. Barker and Llewelyn are tasked with safeguarding the future czar from an assassin known only as La Sylphide. Politics and privilege, Russian and English alike, come into play as the suspense mounts at a high-society masked ball, where identities are concealed every bit as cleverly as lethal intentions. A bit of good news for readers: If you like this book, there are a dozen previous Barker & Llewelyn mysteries to keep you entertained for the foreseeable future.  

Transient Desires

European cities’ ubiquitous surveillance cameras are often criticized as intrusive, but on the occasions that they identify criminals, everyone is happy. Well, everyone but the criminals—such as the two boatmen who, at the outset of Donna Leon’s latest Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, Transient Desires, unceremoniously unload two badly injured and unconscious American women onto the dock of a Venice hospital emergency room. The boatmen turn out to have been friends from childhood. One is now a fledgling lawyer, the other a manual laborer for his uncle’s canal-based delivery business. There are rumors, however, that said uncle is involved in human trafficking. Brunetti enlists the help of colleague Claudia Griffoni, who in turn brings on board a Neapolitan coast guard captain named Ignazio Alaimo. Italian interagency cooperation, while not unheard of, can be difficult. Vast geographical and cultural chasms separate different regions of the country (in this case Naples and Venice), raising troubling questions about whom Brunetti can trust. Transient Desires is the 30th installment of Leon’s series starring Brunetti, and like the 29 mysteries that preceded it, it’s a splendid read. Through Brunetti’s observations and ruminations, the author weaves Venetian history, architecture, aromas, tastes and snippets of daily life and family interactions into an immersive narrative. 

★ In the Company of Killers

It is uncommon for a first novel to earn a starred review in the hallowed halls of this column, but Bryan Christy’s In the Company of Killers ticks all the right boxes. Far-flung locales (Kenya, the Philippines, South Africa)? Check. A protagonist of few words but lots of action? Check again. Properly villainous villains? Yep, got those. Filled to the brim with tension and suspense? Yes and yes. Central character Tom Klay is an investigative journalist for The Sovereign, a magazine that bears a certain resemblance to National Geographic, for whom author Christy once worked (though one hopes he encountered less murder and mayhem than Klay does). The reader quickly discovers that Klay’s occupation is deep cover for a clandestine position as a CIA asset. As the book opens, Klay and his closest friend, Captain Bernard Lolosoli, probe the Kenyan bush country following a lead they received about elephant poachers. But someone has set them up for an ambush; Klay survives, Lolosoli does not. Klay is sure he knows the identity of the killer, and he means to exact justice or perhaps revenge (if indeed there is any difference) for his friend’s murder. Mercenaries, global superpowers, religious leaders, environmental activists and more are players on this chess board where nobody seems to know which directions the pieces are allowed to move, nor perhaps even the object of the game. In the Company of Killers is not a long book, so my suggestion is to block out time to read it in one sitting. You will not want to put it down.

This month's mystery column features a globe-trotting quartet of thrilling reads.

In the words of Rita Dove, ‘Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful’

Feature by Julie Hale

Writing in a refreshingly defiant voice, Yemeni American poet Threa Almontaser offers a razor-sharp interrogation of home, gender and cultural norms in her first collection, The Wild Fox of Yemen. In “Muslim Girl with White Guys, Ending at the Edge of a Ridge,” Almontaser articulates the challenges of living between two cultures: “Neither muscle nor mouth / devoted to one way of speaking. Every language / I borrow from somewhere else.”

While addressing the generational differences and frictions that exist within her extended family, Almontaser reveals herself to be exceptional at playing with shape, manipulating a page’s white space in order to underscore her ideas. (The lines of “Feast, Beginning w/ a Kissed Blade” form the shape of a knife, crafted to conclude on a pinpoint.) Winner of the 2020 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, Almontaser’s daring debut both speaks to and transcends the times.

Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems, 2001–2021 offers a wonderful overview of recent work by beloved, acclaimed poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Spanning 20 years, the volume brings together selections from his previous books and features 12 new poems.

A Louisiana native, Komunyakaa enlivens observations about youth, music, race, love and war with singular, spellbinding imagery. His poems capture the magnitude of everyday moments and the mysteries of the natural world. In “Slingshot”—as “summer rambles into a quiet / quantum of dogwood & gum”—a boy’s experiment with a homemade weapon proves to be transformative. In “Our Side of the Creek,” the poet is attuned to the ominous: “The Jim Crow birds sang / of persimmon & mayhaw / after a 12-gauge shotgun / sounded in the mossy woods.” Komunyakaa, who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1994, writes majestic yet deeply human poems that make this a collection to savor.

In his innovative and urgent first collection, The Perseverance, British Jamaican poet Raymond Antrobus reflects on finding his place in poetry as a deaf person. In “Echo,” he writes, “Even though I have not heard / the golden decibel of angels, / I have been living in a noiseless / palace where the doorbell is pulsating / light and I am able to answer.”

Themes of misunderstanding and the nature of communication run through Antrobus’ work. “When you tell someone you read lips you / become a mysterious captain,” he says in “I Move Through London Like a Hotep,” which takes its title from a misheard phrase. Throughout the collection, he adopts different forms and registers with the ease of a seasoned writer. His appealing book, which has already received numerous honors, including the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, deserves a wide readership.

Update: April 7, 2022
Headline updated to reflect attribution to Rita Dove.

In the pages of these poetry collections, you’ll meet three extraordinary poets whose work provides prismatic perspectives on the human experience.
Children's & YAPicture BookMiddle Grade

Make every day Earth Day

Feature by Alice Cary

Climb a tree, splash in a creek, dig in the dirt, bask in the sun—and take these wonder-filled books along as you discover all the marvels of nature and explore our responsibility to preserve and protect this beautiful planet.

Once Upon Another Time

To introduce a child to Earth’s natural splendor, start with Once Upon Another Time. This poetic ode, written by Charles Ghigna and Matt Forrest Esenwine, is short on text but packs an understated, powerful punch about stewardship. Without an ounce of sanctimony, it vitally conveys how humans have transformed Earth’s landscape.

Opening with idyllic scenes of snowy mountain peaks, rivers running through golden canyons and wild animals grazing in a lush valley, the book pivots to show how humans have filled these vistas with highways, skyscrapers, smog and machinery. Andrés F. Landazábal’s luminous illustrations span the long sweep of history, depicting everything from the cosmos, when “Earth and moon / and stars awakened,” to a modern cityscape observed by a child through their apartment window.

Once Upon Another Time concludes with a stirring call to action, urging readers to “take a step outdoors. / Breathe in air that once was shared / by monstrous dinosaurs!” Scenes of kids playing in a city park, exploring a meadow and camping under the stars will appeal to readers’ senses, urging them to hold an oak leaf, taste the rain, smell the clover and listen to the bees. This stellar book is sure to send kids outdoors equipped with new ways of observing and appreciating their surroundings.

Hello, Earth!

For readers ready to dig a little deeper, Hello, Earth! Poems to Our Planet is the perfect next step. In a collection of appealing and accessible poems, Newbery Honor author Joyce Sidman examines geology, the solar system, natural history and geography. Several pages of back matter, including short scientific explanations of each poem and website links and suggestions for further reading, complete the package. 

Sidman’s verses zoom through our planet’s long history, with stops in a jungle teeming with wildlife, a seemingly barren desert and more. In “Big and Small,” Sidman writes, “We need to figure out / the way / we fit together.” Many of the poems gently speak to the need for respect: “Earth, / you are our ship / through light / and darkness. / We will honor you.”

Miren Asiain Lora’s art depicts vast spaces in which humans are small figures amid wide-angle landscapes, a subtle but effective reminder of our place in this big world. Her spreads are bathed in slate blues and earth tones, so splashes of warmth from erupting volcanoes or the beams of a lighthouse really pop. Hello, Earth! is an excellent handbook for the youngest of Earth’s caretakers.

★ Wonder Walkers

Yearning to transform an ordinary day into an extraordinary adventure? Micha Archer’s Wonder Walkers is an exceptional, radiant tribute to the power of curiosity.

On a bright, sunny day, a girl and a boy lounge inside on the couch and pose a magical question: “Wonder walk?” This is their code for a special journey they’ve obviously taken many times before. Once outside, they ask—but don’t answer—a series of “wonder” questions that are guaranteed to perplex and delight: “Is the sun the world’s light bulb?” “Are trees the sky’s legs?” “Is the wind the world breathing?”

Archer’s exceptional collage illustrations are full of vibrant colors and textures, from striations in underground rocks and roots to swirling clouds at sunset. This book is about not only observing and pondering but also actively exploring, and on page after page, the young explorers peer into a cave, climb a massive tree, run through a valley and sink their toes into a sandy beach. Wonder Walkers is chock-full of joy, beauty and creative thinking, certain to encourage young readers to head straight outside and dream up their own imaginative questions.

★ Fatima’s Great Outdoors

For the ultimate outdoor adventure, nothing beats a camping trip. In Fatima’s Great Outdoors, Fatima Khazi is looking forward to her first such expedition after a difficult week at school dealing with microaggressions from her classmates and culminating in a bad grade on her math quiz. On the drive to the campground, excitement builds as Fatima, her parents and her older sister snack on homemade samosas and belt out Bollywood tunes.

Once the family arrives at the state park, things don’t exactly go smoothly. Fatima’s father puzzles over tent setup until Fatima suggests they read the instructions, and then she has a hard time falling asleep after spotting the frightening shadow of a spider. Despite the setbacks she encounters, Fatima’s time spent in nature, which includes wilderness chores like gathering kindling, makes her feel like a “superhero” and reminds her of “how she used to feel in India: She had fun, she didn’t feel sad or scared, and she loved how adventure was around every corner.”

Ambreen Tariq’s writing is buoyant and full of wonderfully specific details, such as Papa’s “bear claw” hand on Fatima’s shoulder and Mama’s fearlessness in the face of creepy-crawlies. Stevie Lewis’ illustrations make each page sing, and her background in film animation especially shines when depicting the Khazis’ emotive faces. Lewis’ use of light is also splendid, from the golden glow of late afternoon sun through the trees’ canopy to the tiny sparkles of fireflies under the gleaming moonlight. 

A closing spread shows the Khazis posing for a photo on a beach near a group of people holding a banner that reads, “Brown People Camping,” a real organization founded by Tariq to promote diversity in the outdoors. Fatima’s Great Outdoors seamlessly combines a celebration of adventures in nature with the story of an Indian American family navigating their new life in the United States.

Treaty Words

Treaty Words: For as Long as the Rivers Flow is an unusual book. At 60 pages, it’s longer than most picture books, and with minimal text, it takes its time in a quiet, purposeful way, just like the flowing river at the heart of its story about an Indigenous girl and her Mishomis (grandfather) who spend a day together by the river in front of his home.

The granddaughter is a city girl, but her Mishomis’ small parcel of land is “the closest thing to home for her.” Not only is her Mishomis an outdoorsman, backpacking for six weeks each spring, but he’s also actively involved in a host of environmental projects, including sturgeon restocking and territorial mapping. On this spring day, as they listen to the sounds of trees rustling, geese honking overhead and ice breaking on the river, the girl recognizes the “privilege to be there in that moment, witnessing this intense transition.” 

Author Aimée Craft’s language is exquisitely lyrical. An Anishinaabe/Métis lawyer in Manitoba, Canada, a professor at the University of Ottawa and a leading researcher on Indigenous law, Craft writes beautifully about our responsibilities as Earth’s caretakers and the importance of treaties, which Mishomis calls “the basis of all relationships.”

Anishinaabe illustrator Luke Swinson uses seemingly simple shapes filled with gentle gradients of color; there’s a stillness to them that perfectly complements Craft’s text. This contemplative book is reminiscent of a great sermon, providing a springboard for deep thought. As Craft writes, “Every person was born with a set of spiritual instructions or understandings, my girl. It’s what we do with it that defines us as human beings.”

The Outdoor Scientist

Imagine having a chance to roam around with Temple Grandin, a Colorado State University professor renowned for her pioneering research on animal behavior and her work as an autism spokesperson. That’s exactly the treat in store for readers of The Outdoor Scientist: The Wonder of Observing the Natural World. This unique book is memoir, science guide and activity book all rolled into one. Perfect for independent readers, it’s Grandin’s personal invitation for children to become citizen scientists while exploring nature. The many projects she suggests (seashell wind chimes, pine cone animals and so on) are straightforward, with no fancy equipment required. 

“I’ve always been curious about pretty much everything in nature, especially when some sleuthing is required,” Grandin writes. As a kid, the outdoors were her sanctuary, “away from everyone trying to make me catch up in reading and writing.” Grandin’s childhood stories are fun as well as fascinating, as she describes hours spent unsupervised, playing and exploring with her siblings—and family photos are included.

Discussions in each of the book’s six chapters (rocks, the beach, the woods, birds, the night skies and animal behavior) are wonderfully far-reaching, spanning everything from the pet rock craze of the 1970s to whether marbles are made of marble. Each subject transitions effortlessly to the next. Short sidebar biographies touch on other relevant scientists as well, emphasizing their childhoods and including kid-friendly facts. Did you know, for instance, that Charles Darwin was seasick nearly every day during the five years he spent aboard the Beagle? 

Grandin’s enthusiasm for citizen science is contagious, and readers of all ages will adore spending time with The Outdoor Scientist. After all, as Grandin reminds us, “You don’t have to be a professor or a professional” to make a difference—“just someone who cares about the environment.”

Climb a tree, splash in a creek, dig in the dirt, bask in the sun—and take these wonder-filled books along as you discover all the marvels of nature and explore our responsibility to preserve and protect this beautiful planet.

NonfictionBlack HistoryBiography

Book Clubs: May 2021

Feature by Julie Hale

These terrific titles shed new light on fascinating figures and monumental moments that have shaped our world today, and will make you wish you had read them years ago.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar illuminates the life of a freedom fighter in Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. Born into enslavement in Mount Vernon, Virginia, Ona Judge moved with George and Martha Washington to Philadelphia, where, under Pennsylvania law, enslaved people were to be freed after six months—an edict Washington flouted. When Judge fled the Washington household, she became the center of a protracted search. Books clubs may view Washington in a new light after reading Dunbar’s revealing narrative, which also explores social justice, gender and notions of heroism.

In The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America's Urban Heartland, Walter Thompson-Hernández tells the remarkable story of the Compton, California, ranch where local youngsters have the opportunity to learn firsthand about the long history of America’s Black cowboys. The narrative focuses on a core group of characters, including single mother Keiara, who hopes to win a rodeo championship. A lively blend of reportage and history, the book provides a fundamental new perspective on the concept of the American cowboy and its legacy within the Black community.

Gareth Russell’s Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII provides fresh insight into the life of Catherine Howard, whose brief reign as queen of England ended when she was charged with treason and executed. Too often a side character in the story of her husband, Catherine is given new depth and dimension in Russell’s narrative, which focuses on her innermost circle and explores the court intrigue that brought about her end. Rich in detail and talking points, including Tudor politics and the role of aristocratic women in the 16th century, this compelling biography is a can’t-miss pick.

In Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, Adam Higginbotham delves into the mysteries behind the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl atomic energy station. The Soviet government tried to cover up the truth about the catastrophe, which sent radioactive clouds across parts of the Soviet Union and Europe. Incorporating newly available archival material and extensive interviews, Higginbotham pieces together the events that led to the accident and dispels the mythology that has since surrounded it in this darkly fascinating book.

These terrific titles shed new light on fascinating figures and monumental moments that have shaped our world today, and will make you wish you had read them years ago.

Mystery

Whodunit: May 2021

Feature by Bruce Tierney

Two 1940s-set mysteries, a striking new series and a real doozy of a final twist await you in this month’s Whodunit column.

A Gambling Man

To be known by only one name lends a certain je ne sais quoi to the stature of a hard-boiled PI. It has worked well for Andrew Vachss’ dark avenger Burke and Robert B. Parker’s sybaritic strongman Spenser, and it works just fine for David Baldacci’s mononymous sleuth Archer. It doesn’t hurt that Archer’s second outing, the 1949-set A Gambling Man, takes place during the gumshoe golden age, when men smoked “Luckies,” drove luxurious European roadsters and were pursued by women of rapier wit. Archer is an ex-con, so some shenanigans are required to obtain a license to ply his trade in his new home of California. The ink isn’t even dry on said license before he’s assigned his first case, an extortion attempt on a mayoral candidate in the seaside community of Bay Town. Then an alluring chanteuse who was connected to the case is brutally murdered. It will not be the last death to rock Bay Town, and the newly minted PI’s mettle will truly be tested. Baldacci establishes bona fides for this historical mystery with great delicacy, deftly navigating the cliche minefield and giving his readers a sense of the milieu without drowning them in minutiae. He delivers a cracking good suspense novel in the process.

Thief of Souls

Brian Klingborg’s Thief of Souls features one of the best opening sentences I have ever read in a mystery: “On the night the young woman’s corpse is discovered, hollowed out like a birchbark canoe, Inspector Lu Fei sits alone in the Red Lotus bar, determined to get gloriously drunk.” Lu Fei is a deputy police chief in Raven Valley, a backwater township in northeast China, close to the North Korean border. Not much happens in Raven Valley as a rule, but that somnolence is about to be upended. Almost immediately after the victim is discovered, a suspect is identified: a wannabe boyfriend whose phone yields surreptitious photos of the young woman and whose job in a meatpacking plant would afford him access to the sort of surgical knife that was used to eviscerate her. The city police officer called in to take over the investigation wants a quick solution to the case and is perfectly willing to let the “boyfriend” fill that bill. But Lu has doubts, and he conducts a quiet side investigation that turns up additional unsolved killings with the same modus operandi. Politics and turf wars ensue as Klingborg, who has lived and worked in Asia, peppers the story with narrative detours into Chinese history and pertinent commentary from the likes of Confucius, Mao Tse-tung and other Chinese philosophical luminaries. This auspicious mystery begs for a sequel. Please let it be soon. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Brian Klingborg on why modern China is the perfect setting for a mystery.

A Peculiar Combination

The title of Ashley Weaver’s series starter, A Peculiar Combination, is a sly reference to the main character’s occupation as an opener of locked boxes—and more specifically, locked boxes that do not belong to her. Set in London during World War II, the novel opens as Electra McDonnell, safecracker extraordinaire, and her mentor, Uncle Mick, get nabbed in a sting operation set up by a British spy agency. They’ll be given a Get Out of Jail Free card if they participate in a government-sanctioned safe heist in which some phony sensitive papers will be substituted for the real documents, thus misleading the Nazis. It all goes hopelessly awry when they arrive at the scene of the would-be crime and discover the safe is wide open, its owner dead on the floor. In the wake of this failure, Electra finds herself in the unusual (for her) position of wanting to see the operation through to its conclusion, even though she’s been freed from her contract with the government. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that. It’s a lighter read than many a mystery with the same setting, but A Peculiar Combination delivers the requisite suspense and misdirection that will keep the hard-boiled crowd on board as well.

★ The Final Twist

Jeffery Deaver’s The Final Twist lives up to its name admirably, even delivering said twist on the very last page of the book. (Don’t cheat by looking at the ending.) Main character Colter Shaw could scarcely be more different from Deaver’s famous sleuth, the brilliant forensic consultant Lincoln Rhyme. Colter is a mountaineer and a survivalist; he’s action-oriented where Rhyme is cerebral. And unlike Rhyme, who works closely with law enforcement, if Colter has to bend the law to serve his ends, he will do it without remorse. He supports himself by finding missing people and collecting the reward money. His life’s mission, however, is finishing his father’s work and destroying BlackBridge, a mercenary corporation that has been distributing drugs in a San Francisco neighborhood to drive down property values so they can swoop in and purchase tracts for pennies on the dollar. Shaw strongly suspects that BlackBridge had a hand in his father’s “accidental” death, and he means to dispense some Old West justice once he finds out the truth. A couple of subplots, one involving Colter’s long-lost brother and another centered on a legal document from a century ago that may have a breathtaking impact on modern-day California politics, flesh out the narrative, distracting the reader until Deaver wallops them with the shocking final page. 

Two 1940s-set mysteries, a striking new series and a real doozy of a final twist await you in this month’s Whodunit column.

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