McHugh’s emotive family narrative unfolds through multiple perspectives, showcasing the far-reaching, multigenerational effects of family secrets and trauma. Australian Joe Keneally, whose troubled and abusive mother, Alice, died when he was a baby, was raised by his father, Frank, and grandmother Winn—along with his adopted sister, Dot, a First Nations woman whose connection to Joe is much closer than either realizes. As Joe’s conscripted into the Australian Army to fight on the Vietnam front, and Dot tries to navigate home life without him, McHugh follows the Keneally family through several decades, charting their devastating life changes, loss, and enduring family bonds against the backdrop of World War II through the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Blended families, mixed race heritage, and devastating secrets with the power to destroy families punctuate this compelling debut. The Keneally family is richly drawn, their individual narratives bolstering the idea that family is what you make it, as McHugh probes the prejudice, PTSD, and mental illness that haunts their bloodlines. The heavy material is delicately handled, portraying trauma’s ripple effect with a gentle voice, as McHugh writes, when POW Frank returns home at the end of World War II to Winn’s attempts to nurse him back to health, “Mother and son were in need of each other’s love, but the scars of recent years remained for both of them.”

McHugh’s reunions are emotional and moving, while still relatable, and the characters’ family struggles and personal awakenings will engross readers, whether it’s Dot’s mission to protect and empower the First Nations Peoples or Joe’s reflections on the violence of Vietnam: “I believe there is a certain spirituality that transcends death and our understanding of it.” Amid the family saga, McHugh crafts an intriguing mystery centered on war-driven PTSD alongside a reckoning between Dot and her family that, though readers may see it coming, still resonates.

Takeaway: Moving story that interlaces trauma, loss, and family bonds.

Comparable Titles: Claire Lombardo's The Most Fun We Ever Had, Candice Carty-Williams's People Person.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Click here for more about Making Shadows

Jakal’s debut sets a historical melodrama of love, betrayal, and bombings in the Argentina of the first decade of the twentieth century, a time of political unrest, anarchist newspapers, government corruption, and shifting social norms—“Respectable ladies can’t dance Tango in Buenos Aires,” one character tuts. The brothel at the novel’s heart is the unexpected new home of 24-year-old Sofia, a woman of bourgeois background but radical political leanings, brought into the country by her uncle, an Argentine senator, after the murder of Sofia’s parents. Senator Hugo Montserrat realizes that Sofia’s cleverness will be a problem for his plans to secure inheritance of her parents’ ranch, especially as she becomes suspicious about the circumstances of her parents’ deaths, so he sends her off to Madam Josefina, where Sofia quickly becomes a bookkeeper tutored “through the Machiavellian ways of a brothel madam.”

The novel bursts with life and culture. As the masterpiece Teatro Colón opera house is raised in Buenos Aires, and Sofia falls in love with a man and the tango, the powers that be—including commander of the investigative division of the Police of the Capital—jockey for power and wealth, willing to do anything to secure their positions, right up to staging the kind of anarchist violence that they inveigh against. Despite the cruelties of its owner, the brothel affords Sofia an education, disillusioning her in ways that her dabbling with secessionist editorials in anarchist newspapers couldn’t. Her love of the tango inspires the richest prose, and her wiliness powers the plot.

Jakal’s storytelling favors ruminative flashbacks and colloquies that edge toward the explanatory. Scenes and key moments of action tend to be understated, while musings about them later—such as a murderer rationalizing that, since he kills in fits of rage, he “lacked full knowledge of his actions” so they couldn’t be “mortal sin”s. The pacing is uneven, but the politics and culture are vividly drawn, and Jakal lays bare his characters’ hearts.

Takeaway: Historical melodrama of 1900s Buenos Aires corruption and the politics of dancing.

Comparable Titles: Carolina De Robertis’s The Gods of Tango, Lloyd Jones’s Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: B+
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B
Marketing copy: A-

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Frost’s rousing Gen X-minded followup to KABOOMER: Thriving and Striving into Your Nineties offers hard-won practical guidance to strength training, nutrition, “sexercise,” and other aspects of a healthy lifestyle for an audience whose members he encourages to “Think of yourself as a real-life action figure born between the calendar years 1965 and 1984.” That phrasing exemplifies Frost’s upbeat tone and approach, as Strong to Save balances his playful inspirational exhortations to become “great” through developing strength (“A great GenX has a very good chance to become a healthy centenarian. Yup.”), easy-to-follow explanations of exercise techniques, ample “Flex Alert” pointers for more effective training, and illuminating breakdowns of what health-minded Gen Xers should know about the sciences of muscles, kinetics, and more.

Through it all, Frost’s voice is engaging, informative, and funny, even punny—one section is titled “Good Things Come to Those Who ‘Weight’”—in the manner of an inviting trainer or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson guiding tourists through a jungle cruise. Johnson, a “paragon of GenX performance,” is frequently cited throughout as a source of inspiration as Frost explains, with buoyant urgency, the essential health and aesthetic impacts of strength training, chief among them the promise of being a “vital second-half performer for up to fifty years.”

Helpful photo illustrations demonstrate some finer points of stretching, squats, planes of body motion, different types of lifting, while Frost offers clarifying insights into the carb and fat impact of energy bars, and much more. He’s crafted a host of mnemonic acronyms (WIFM, DEEP, FITT, MORNINGS) and fresh metaphors crafted not just to inform readers about healthy mindsets and habits but to make sure the info sticks—like any good coach, his voice gets stuck in one’s head. The advice is smartly targeted at men and women both, though the book’s organization is eccentric, with introductory material on the basics (including the advice to consult a doctor before heavy lifting) coming in later chapters.

Takeaway: Rousing guide to strength training for Gen Xers eager for high performance.

Comparable Titles: Wayne Westcott and Thomas Baechle’s Strength Training Past 50, Timothy Caso’s Weight Training for Old Guys.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: A
Editing: B+
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about Strong to Save

Williams’s spare, moving, and illuminating debut poetry collection is written with rare feeling for silence, blankness, and the blurred reality of caring for a parent suffering from dementia. “Who are we now?” Williams asks, often, throughout White Doe, the inquiry voiced at times by the speaker, but also her father, her mother, and their voices in unison. Williams uses the question to signify much, especially the loss of identity on the part of the father with dementia and a corresponding one experienced by the surviving family members. The collection asks, amid observations of caring for him (“a new language from// a black cave// bats batsb atsbats mba tsbats”) and affecting memory and nature poems (“we hear a crack in the field, birds rush/ from their branches”), who does the speaker become as she loses her father?

Absence is multi-dimensional in Williams’s collection; on the page, the use of white space allows the size and scope of this absence to expand and contract, all while emphasizing for readers silences and at times snowy landscapes. Crucial bits of language, like the mind of the speaker’s father, at times are missing, and some poems seem to be crumbling on the page, the words like rubble. But even on the metaphorical level, Williams makes absence a living presence: “that missing // painting on the wall // shines its own sun like dirt.” The power of White Doe, though, comes from precision of language and a surprising sense of hope, as Williams captures an awakening in the loss.

Birds, their feathers, and the seeds they collect, along with coyotes, deer, snow, and ice, appear and disappear from poem to poem, contextualizing the speaker and her ailing father in the natural order of life and death. “Word of your passing has reached the tree line,” Williams writes in “Don’t Be Afraid,” “now the animals // sing,” and the loved ones grieve, and the necessary, beautiful cycle continues.

Takeaway: Wintry, feather-soft poems of caring for a parent with dementia.

Comparable Titles: Margaret Atwood’s Dearly, Beth Copeland’s “Falling Lessons: Erasure One.”

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about White Doe

Arnold pulls from years of leadership coaching experience to deliver a sharp debut bursting with interactive advice for readers. “The next frontier of true success in the twenty-first century will be profound, lasting, self-generating peace,” she predicts, and that cornerstone of “rooted peace” props up this guide, as Arnold delves into the mind-body connection, how to limit negative and damaging self-talk, and more. Whether teaching the need for gratitude, ways to cope with “fiery” emotions, or exploring the role spirituality plays in inner peace, Arnold leaves little room for doubt that the cost of stress, anxiety, and burnout is far too high, but “consistently generating internal peace..[is] priceless.”

Placing the responsibility squarely on individuals for creating inner peace that sticks, Arnold addresses the stumbling blocks that can get in the way, tailoring her advice to those readers who want a “purposeful, authentic life, rather than merely getting through the day.” The counsel is direct, but supportive, gently challenging stagnant patterns and offering healthy replacements, as in her admonition that readers need to re-evaluate their “relationship with time” and get comfortable with a little friction if they want to grow. She covers the basics invitingly, offering a clear breakdown of her three separate spheres of rooted peace (internal, existential, and relational), but beyond that she supplies readers with an overflow of activities and custom-styled exercises to implement her advice.

In contrast to the guidance found in many self-help books, readers will leave Arnold’s doorstep feeling refreshed, respected, and renewed. From her ideas on “dancing with mortality” instead of ignoring it to never being “afraid to stir things up,” Arnold consistently loops back to our ability—and responsibility—to “shake up your world for the good.” We may never be perfect, she comforts, but that certainly doesn’t mean we should allow the status quo to go on forever—instead, we “can generate deep fulfillment and joy on [our] own terms.”

Takeaway: Hands-on, refreshing guide to building lasting inner peace.

Comparable Titles: Nick Trenton’s The Art of Letting Go, Brianna Wiest’s The Mountain Is You.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about The Rooted Renegade

Knight masterfully balances the personal and the political in her young adult debut, an engrossing portrait of a Southern teenager who, in the midst of the social upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement, learns that he’s biracial. In 1966 Alabama, no one would have used that word to describe Mark Lawson. Instead, he’s called mixed, colored, and even mulatto, but the blue-eyed blonde so baffles racists that one dubs him a white n-word. With adroit first-person narration, Knight captures Mark’s amiability and thoughtfulness, even when he damages important relationships because of anger, fear, and a debilitating uncertainty. Knight is especially strong at dramatizing how it feels to grow up as monumental change happens in increments, with segregation making Mark’s search for identity a legal and moral minefield.

Mark’s family had moved from a tenant farming community to Montgomery after his father’s death, and his white mother allowed the 14-year-old’s appearance to determine their place in the segregated city. After the board of education expels Mark from a white school, they must relocate to a Black neighborhood, and his mother loses her subsistence job. Mark can deal with the privation—they’d always been poor—but his mother’s worsening porphyria is a constant worry, and while Frederick Douglass High School provides him with a heartening vision of Black community, he remains unsure of where he truly belongs.

Discussions about the drawn-out process of desegregation (an afterword provides helpful details) are deftly woven into Mark’s interactions with family, friends, teachers, and members of his integrated baseball team. Everyone knows they’re living through a major societal shift, and are trying to find—or regain— their footing. Through Mark’s experience on both sides of the racial divide, Knight shows the difference between having empathy and suffering the forced restrictions of segregation. In the process of reconstructing his fractured self, Mark gains the maturity to see that identity is forged from contradictions, and that struggle is another word for life.

Takeaway: Vivid and wise historical fiction about a biracial teen in 1960s Alabama.

Comparable Titles: Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin, Kristin Levine’s The Lions of Little Rock.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A-

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On her 16th birthday, Megan Elida Fay, descended from a long line of Wendy Darlings, is still haunted by her mother’s tragic death 10 years earlier. Abandoned by her father after her mother’s death, Megan moved in with her maternal aunt, the cryptic Georgia, in a clapboard cottage perched on the Maine coast, where she spends her time desperate to decipher whether her parents’ stories of Fable Island and Peter Pan were true. When Georgia informs her the magic is real—and that Meg’s expected to find the bridge to cross over to Fable Island—Meg feels trapped in someone else’s story.

Lewis (author of Restless) engraves this modern-day fairy tale with a deep sense of regret, from Meg’s debilitating grief to her aunt’s weariness at how to help to her father’s downward spiral when the magic feels impossible. Meg’s teen angst is palpable, as is her internal struggle between what she sees in the world around her and the mystery she senses hovering just out of her reach. Too practical and too wracked by grief, Meg works hard to convince herself that her mother can’t have transcended death to live on Fable Island, despite the glimmering signs that she is part of something much, much bigger than herself.

Part coming-of-age journey and part lesson in grief, Lewis’s tale encourages readers to let go while moving forward. Meg’s relationship with her father—and his failed attempt at reconciliation—is painful to watch, as is her best friend Theo’s quicker grasp of magical thinking, despite Meg’s legacy. After much effort, Meg eventually concedes: “Fable Island may not be real but it exists… It is in the hearts and minds of those who believe.” Lewis delivers a delicate balance between real life and the whisper of magic throughout, building moments of drama and whimsy that will stick with readers long after the last page.

Takeaway: A grieving teen undergoes a magical coming-of-age journey.

Comparable Titles: Liz Michalski’s Darling Girl, Alex Flinn’s Beastly.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Click here for more about The Faeries of Fable Island

Beamo Roamer scavenges a post-apocalyptic America one thousand years into the future in Wow’s gritty debut. When Beamo discovers a military map leading to the location of the Lost Fort Knox Gold—rumored to be the last treasure of the fallen “Merican Government”—he’s immediately captured by a gang of ruthless bikers, led by his once-friend Tee Sal and Tee’s sister Little Bit, prompting Beamo to quickly ingest the map. Rather than give up what he knows, Beamo shrewdly contracts with Tee to navigate them through the waste land known as Merica, bypassing once-thriving cities decimated by nuclear waste and fighting outlaws clothed in the literal skins of their enemies on a no-holds-barred treasure hunt.

Wow immerses readers in this jaggy, apocalyptic no-man’s-land, writing convincing characters that vibrate with appeal as they collide with all manner of monsters—both natural and human. Their tenuous hold on life is palpable throughout, and Wow bewitches with their stories before dashing hope in spectacular endings. The terrain here is deadly, no bones about it: take Roofy, who abandons her children to hunt for a better life, only to suffer a shocking attack when she’s at the cusp of controlling her own destiny. Beamo is a force to be reckoned with, winning over Tee with his cunning intellect and street-smart survival know-how, all while romancing Little Bit in an intensely passionate crescendo destined to upset the fragile balance of their alliance.

The characters here are explosive—and their interactions can be blistering even during the best of times—but that’s to be expected in a story where death breathes around every corner and “phantasms [stroll] along the edge of the grave plots in the bright daylight.” Wow draws eerie similarities to the problems plaguing contemporary American society, and the ending smashes expectations while delivering a sliver of hope for a more palatable future.

Takeaway: Brutal, no-holds-barred romp through post-apocalyptic America.

Comparable Titles: G. Michael Hopf’s Seven Days, C. Robert Cargill’s Sea of Rust.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: B
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A-

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The title of Griffith’s rousing treatise introduces the book’s central metaphor and argument: that a powerful “theater of lies” has corrupted contemporary life, distracting us, stressing us out, encouraging our biases and hatreds, diminishing trust in institutions and expertise, even—with hate crimes and science denialism—killing us. For Griffith, the “theater” is key to the lies’ success, and he makes a persuasive case for mis- and disinformation as deliberately crafted narratives in the Aristotelian and Hollywood traditions, with story hooks and villains chosen to grip the minds of target audiences. His analysis of the beats of Die Hard, and how they reflect the techniques of media propagandists, is especially illuminating. “The Theater of Lies is a provider of addictive substance,” he writes. “We, the audience, keep demanding more.”

Theater of Lies urges individuals and institutions to demand and defend something else: truth. Griffith opens with a sweeping—perhaps too much so—history of lies and the manipulation of the public, stretching back to the Garden of Eden, the origins of race as a concept, and Kipling’s insistence on a “white man’s burden.” This material is impassioned and sometimes illuminating, but the discussions are brief for such epochal subjects. More immediately compelling are examples from recent decades, mostly from the U.S. and Canada and many fresh accounts of events readers might not know about, showcasing how “purpose-driven lies and misinformation are produced, staged, and presented.”

With sharp insights, clear and inviting prose, and an upbeat belief in humanity’s capacity to do better, Griffith lays bare the craft and reach of those who lie for profit and power and the failures of mind that inspire their targets not just to believe propaganda but to spread it. Refreshingly, he seems unconcerned with being accused of bias when discussing, say, the “wrecking ball” that is Donald Trump. Instead, he models the healthy habits of thinking and analysis that he urges readers toward in the book’s last third, which encourages standing up for truth, acknowledging one’s own assumptions, and rebuilding trust.

Takeaway: Incisive history of lies and misinformation, and a call to action.

Comparable Titles: Lee McIntyre’s Post-Truth, Barbara McQuade’s Attack From Within.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about Theater of Lies

Veteran director Little (known for movies like Marked for Death, Rapid Fire, Free Willy 2, Murder at 1600, and Halloween 4) offers an insightful, often funny account of his up-and-down career, sharing close-ups of how he made his own way in a devilishly difficult industry. On-set anecdotes reveal not just the nuts-and-bolts of movie-making but what it takes to maintain control on set, from an untested Little brandishing a one-way ticket back to L.A. to call the bluff of the money men considering replacing him during a location shoot, to legendary cinematographer László Kovács giving Little a movie-saving sign of support in front of meddling producers.

A movie-mad Midwesterner-gone-Hollywood, Little writes in a refreshingly straight-forward style, telling the story of achieving success, first in indies and then at studios, while managing to raise a family and maintain his values. He demystifies the glamor of directing: on a shoot in India, he dealt with lost equipment, a case of dysentery, a hotel room invaded by ravenous feral monkeys, and a sudden flood that nearly destroyed their set and equipment. His accounts of tight deadlines, the pressure to score a hit in three “at bats,” the pressures of financing, and encounters with the likes of Mel Gibson, Sally Kellerman, and Clint Eastwood sparkle with surprise and authenticity. (Tommy Lee Jones turns down a submarine thriller because, Little is told, he always thought of subs “as bathtub toys.”)

Hollywood is a rough-and-tumble town that is not for the faint of heart: “When you’re young, you are invincible and play to win,” he notes, describing risk-taking as an up-and-coming director of action. “When you’re older, you play not to lose.” That’s also true in the executive suites where promises are broken almost as quickly as they are made. A captivating page-turner alive with surprising detail and jolts of wisdom, Still Rolling comes highly recommended for anyone eager to understand how the dream factory actually operates.

Takeaway: A director’s page-turning Hollywood, alive with insight and surprises.

Comparable Titles: Ed Zwick’s Hits, Flops and Other Illusions, Hal Needham’s Stuntman!

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about Still Rolling

Retired Air Force veteran Amelia Garcia works for her uncle, piloting remotely operated vehicles off the U.S. coast, and pacifies her guilt, left over from previous AF Reaper drone missions, with the refrain that “she had killed for her country to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.” The job leaves space for small pleasures, like collecting fascinating objects from the ocean floor, but when Amelia retrieves a strongbox emblazoned with a Nazi symbol, she can’t shake the feeling that something’s off. That sense escalates when, after sharing the find with her uncle, he winds up dead the next day, along with his wife and an influential justice department friend.

Hadden’s second Ike Rossi novel (after The Victim of the System) dives headfirst into forgotten history from the Second World War, thoughtfully investigating the price of truth and meditating on what it means to be a contemporary American patriot. Despite her training, Amelia knows this mission is over her head; she seeks out the help of Ike Rossi, a long-ago football star now turned private investigator, to sleuth her artifact’s importance—and uncover who’s willing to kill to get it. Thus ensues a brutal game of keep away, with Amelia and Ike pitted against dark forces that will stop at nothing to keep the enigmatic box’s contents hidden.

Hadden writes with noir flair, though Ike’s compassion, no matter the personal cost, forms him into a much different hero than those pulpy PIs of the past. Amelia holds her own—a fierce warrior sworn to protect her country from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. That resolve is tested at every turn, as Amelia and Ike quickly discover a conspiracy being nurtured by the upper echelons of American politics. Hadden deftly probes the limits of patriotism, leaving readers teetering on a knife edge of right vs. wrong—and eager for more Ike Rossi adventures.

Takeaway: Air Force vet and PI race to solve a dangerous conspiracy.

Comparable Titles: Robin James’s Burden of Proof, Iain King’s Secrets of the Last Nazi.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about The Secret That Killed You

Seventeen-year-old Jason Krabb is desperate to escape his small Idaho town and leave his mark on the 1990s rock world. He spends his time dallying with the local high school girls and doling out cash for music tapes from the mall, jamming with his best friend Doug in their band. Enter Betsy Aarsdrager, a junior at a rival high school, who “guzzle[s] beer [and] smoke[s] pot” while hanging out with her crew of rag-tag pipeliners, currently working on gas lines in the Idaho desert. Betsy’s unusual background is an immediate turn-on for Jason, who quickly inserts himself into her crowd.

Jason’s three-boy grunge band and their high hopes for fame form the backdrop of Hartje’s debut, making this edgy romance a paradise for music fans. Musical references pop throughout, from the newly discovered Stone Temple Pilots to Guns N’ Roses tracks buoying up a party scene awash with sexual tension and coke lines. There’s an unpretentious innocence to the plot and dialogue that aptly mirrors a teenager’s way of thinking, periodically scattered with idiosyncratic outbursts that are all part of growing up. Hartje bounces the narrative between Jason and his mother, Leah, a jarring change initially, but one that soon makes sense, as readers glimpse how a concerned mother sees things very differently from her troubled 17-year-old.

Though they feel suitable within the storyline, Jason’s preoccupations with the opposite sex have a juvenile slant, particularly his fixation on any teenage girl who strolls into his vicinity. As he sharpens his guitar skills—and branches into some seriously rad songwriting—he slowly comes into his own, gaining confidence in his band’s sound while yearning for the superficial markers of ‘90s adulthood—like his ultimate wish for just “one night with Betsy in some high-rise hotel, sexing up the sheets, eating room service hot dogs, and falling asleep to VH1.”

Takeaway: Edgy ‘90s romance that blossoms amid the grunge rock scene.

Comparable Titles: Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Patti Smith’s Just Kids.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Click here for more about Pipeliner

In Gil’s uproarious but informative middle grade graphic novel, five adults trapped in kids’ bodies rollick through S.T.E.M. based adventures, conducting scientific research while completing top-secret projects for the government. Known as the Whiz Kids of D.A.R.P.A (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), physicist Isaac, computer scientist Cody, mechanical engineer Quentin, Wade—a biologist and behavioral scientist trapped inside a bear’s body, and linguist Rosie escape tornadoes, study animals’ body chemistry as a form of communication, visit the “Spacecraft Cemetery” Point Nemo, and more in their pursuit of scientific quests tasked by the U.S. Space Force.

The unique blend of sarcasm and intellectual wit with complex science makes this graphic novel, the first in the series, stand out. Gil’s characters are deliciously diverse—both in their personalities and fields of expertise—and their tasks, from freezing mud to prevent a building cave-in to harnessing soundwaves when fighting a forest fire, create a no-holds-barred scientific adventure that never slows down. “Science Check” components at the end of every section sum up the facts and spell out the history behind each lesson, like how Leonardo DaVinci influenced propeller blades or the background of satellites, and Gil (author of graphic novel Last Knight in the City, among others) includes QR codes for more information.

The Whiz Kids definitely have their work cut out for them, but Gil’s fun, inviting text makes the job as entertaining as it is important. Whether it’s investigating reported alien sightings in Arkansas or the group helping Wade navigate how to be a talking bear and a scientist at the same time, readers will find much to love here. Serious moments dot the landscape as well, particularly Cody’s experience with gender dysphoria, which Gil handles respectfully, stirring powerful emotions for readers as Cody bravely tells his parents “I have a second chance to live my life truer to how I feel inside!”

Takeaway: Fun-filled, S.T.E.M-heavy graphic novel for middle grade readers.

Comparable Titles: Matthew McElligott's Mad Scientist Academy, Otis Frampton's Oddly Normal.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about The Whiz Kids from DARPA: Book One (First Printing)

Inspired by Frank Bramley’s evocative painting that shares the same name, George’s series starter captures life in the fog-laden, rugged backdrop of 19th century Cornish harbor town Port Quin, chronicling the life of fisherman’s daughter Effy and her unsettling ability to foresee events. Caught in a tumultuous love triangle between Cade, the boy she grew up with, and charming new resident William, Effy feels torn. Outsider William is mistrusted by many in the village, including Effy’s own father, but, despite her familiarity with Cade, she can’t quite ignore his calculating personality. Effy quickly discovers her world harbors secrets she never guessed—and her visions are hinting at dark affairs that could threaten the entire town.

George (Illuminating Darwin) meticulously lays out the history behind this enigmatic story, blurring the line between fact and fiction as she weaves a tale of passion and predestination amid a web of ancient customs and supernatural lore. The ornate descriptions of village life and its economy transfix, as George paints with stunning metaphor and dramatic imagery, from the townspeople’s dependence on fishing, that “silvery lifeblood of their very existence,” to the coastal storms that ravage the village with “wild, darkening majesty.” The saga races forward with escalating tension and stakes that surge, as Effy grapples with one threat after the other, ensuring a compelling and suspenseful read.

Harnessing the power of her prophetic sight is just one of Effy’s many challenges amid her quest to survive, and her efforts are rooted in the time period’s socio-cultural context, including her yearning for knowledge and agency in a community that views women as inferior. Female solidarity and Effy’s bid to break away from the clutches of abusive and strained relationships form important subtexts, transforming this gothic romance into a discerning survey of the hope and resilience that can break through even the most terrifying of circumstances.

Takeaway: Suspenseful gothic romance with a formidable female lead.

Comparable Titles: Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers, Buck Turner’s The Keeper of Stars.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A

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Contemplative and penetrating, Luidens’s debut examines her lifelong relationship with the concept of God, from her childhood as a minister’s daughter to an adult studying abroad in France. She begins with a lyrically beautiful retelling of her childhood, christened by her family’s deep belief in a God who celebrates with them, watches over them, and engages in long, intimate conversations that probe Luidens’s youthful musings. But as she grows, Luidens’s understanding of God transforms; when her reflections on what happens after death lead her to difficult questions, she discovers, in the absence of answers, a growing unease with the religion she grew up with.

Luidens writes with a philosophical hand, gently—but passionately—rifling through the religious precepts she was taught as a youth and sifting their weight against the reality she observes in the world around her. Her time spent attending a Christian college is recounted with fresh and frank power, revealing indecision, mistrust, and, above all, desperate yearning to hear God speak directly to her as he did when she was a child. When that fails—“I couldn’t hear his voice or sense his love. I couldn’t feel God. I used to, didn’t I? Not anymore” she laments—Luidens is plagued with a black, questioning cloud that eats at everything she’s ever known, eventually leading her to ruminate about her own death.

The last section of the memoir rebounds with hope, as Luidens travels to France to study abroad. Her time there is spent lapping up the local culture while holding conversations with long gone philosophers (David Hume characterizes her belief in God as a consequence of what she was taught growing up), wading through her anger, disappointment, and, in many ways, heartbreak at being failed by organized religion. The memoir closes, fittingly, on an intangible note, mirroring Luidens’s ongoing struggle to reconcile her newfound awakenings with those “past versions of myself.”

Takeaway: Contemplative reflections on religion, philosophy, and mortality.

Comparable Titles: Barbara Brown Taylor’s Leaving Church, Rachel Held Evans’s Wholehearted Faith.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B+
Marketing copy: A

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An epic SF political noir set on a generation ship as humanity faces perhaps the most consequential decisions in its history, Generations proves as brisk and engaging as it is ambitious. Eight generations after its launch, the Thetis is facing two crucial decision points: first, a once-every-quarter-century election for primo, “the number one citizen” on a ship of equals. Second: the question of whether to land at the original target planet, two generations away, or to press on in search of someplace possibly more habitable. Sandrine Liet, a “Gen7” traveler, is proud to have achieved the role of Senior Archivist despite not yet being 30, though she’s chagrined at the bureaucratic nonsense that denied her and her ex-partner the right to participate in a Birthing Year. But her world will be shaken by what she uncovers when she’s asked to look into the presiding primo’s report of an attempt at extortion.

Primo Sebastian Anderson (motto: “Stability and Unity”) insists that Sandrine file and forget the charge—and when she pokes around, discovering a coverup and a potential threat to all life on the ship, Anderson’s team threatens her with possibly missing all future Birthing Years, too. Josephides (author of Tuichi) honors expectations of multiple genres—the unsettling paranoia of political thrillers, the awe and invention of science fiction, the shoe-leather investigation of the procedural—as Sandrine chases down leads, interviews a host of shipmates who reveal fascinating detail about ship life, and faces accusations, hard choices, and danger.

Sandrine proves a compelling hero, one driven by duty and belief in the principles behind the mission—principles that Anderson seems all-too-eager to exploit. She’s driven but human (“Speak Thetan, please,” she snaps to a long-winded scientist), and her investigation offers a memorable tour through the ship’s people, culture, tech, and secrets. Seasoned mystery readers may find the identity of the villain obvious, but the civilizational stakes, lived-in worldbuilding, and assured storytelling all satisfy.

Takeaway: Satisfying generation ship mystery, with strong worldbuilding.

Comparable Titles: Patrick S. Tomlinson’s Children of a Dead Earth series, Nick Harkaway’s Titanium Noir.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A

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