The richly inventive Dream Rider adventure continues in this second appealing entry, pushing the young heroes of Smith’s epic YA series to face new realms, old villains, wild dangers, and, most terrifying of all, the truths of their pasts. The facts of billionaire Toronto teen Will Dreycott’s life would fascinate even without all this entry’s new developments. In his white skyscraper, agoraphobic Will continues to wonder about his artifact-collecting parents, seemingly lost years ago on an expedition to Peru, and to travel the realm of Dream as the hero Dream Rider, whose adventures he has chronicled in wildly successful comic books. His girlfriend Case, a street kid looking for her own long-gone mother, has convinced him to open a hostel offering fresh starts to young people in need, but she’s chafing at feeling “kept” in a tower that Will himself can’t bring himself to leave.

Smith deftly blends ongoing tensions between these characters—especially questions of whether the two people closest to Will can ever tell him what they know about his parents’ past—with an exciting plot kicked off by the arrival of a bird-masked swordswoman in the tower who demands that Will hand over a “llave de cristal,” a crystal key. Secrets will spill and new worlds will be traversed, the storytelling always enlivened by the Smith hallmarks of crack dialogue, fun sleuthing and puzzle-solving, a strong throughline of emotion, a swift pace despite the book’s bulk, and a principled refusal to settle for the familiar.

Be ready for memorable beasts, weird magic, and fantasy worlds that are truly fantastic, such as “the glowing path to the Realms of the Dead” or a “crystal mountain rising from a crystal jungle in the center of a crystal island.” For all the wonders, though, the series is also compellingly engaged in Toronto street life and its characters’ very human hearts. New readers should start with book one.

Takeaway: This thrilling superpowered urban fantasy series continues to grip.

Comparable Titles: Lindsay Smith’s Dreamstrider, Robert L. Anderson’s Dreamland.

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

Click here for more about The Crystal Key: The Dream Rider Saga, Book 2

Accredited master coach Curtis writes out the road map to achieving greatness in this easy-to-follow debut. "Have you ever felt that there is another level of success available to you?” she asks, before sharing sensible advice on how to achieve it: how to break out of routine and habits, conquer feeling overwhelmed, and even enjoy the simplest pleasures of daily life. Readers will find a wealth of practical tools and tips, delivered in an engaging and interactive format,for reaching that next level in the workplace and in life.

Curtis breaks this guide into four parts, focusing on growth as "the perpetual finish line." Often drawing on illuminating personal anecdotes, she shares times in her life that pushed her to slow down, breathe, and direct her attention to the situation at hand to successfully come out on the other side, although she acknowledges that outcomes have not always been as easy as she expected. That down-to-earth attitude flavors every page, even when Curtis shares interviews with and advice from renowned business leaders, including Lara Merriken (founder of LÄRABAR), CEO at Overstock.com Jonathan Johnson, and Richard Branson, among others.

Filled with pull quotes and interactive graphics, Choosing Greatness is an engaging resource that invites readers to dig deeper into self-awareness and explore different perspectives on what success really means. Not intended as a short term fix, Curtis’s guide is suggested as a “lifelong companion” to “push yourself one step further, climb up one step higher, and make the choices that will have the greatest impact every step along the way.” Curtis ends each chapter with clear-eyed takeaways, explorative questions for self-reflection, and tasks that will help readers put her advice into practice. Those seeking inspiration on finding and then walking their own paths to greatness, however they define it, will find much to appreciate here.

Takeaway: An informative guide on changing ones' mindset, focusing on growth and choosing greatness.

Comparable Titles: Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead, Luvvie Ajayi Jones’s Professional Troublemaker.

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

Click here for more about Choosing Greatness

In the village of Parmigiano, Italy, Mimi dreams of being a “mousetro,” but her brothers Matteo and Marco scoff at her ambitions, calling the idea preposterous since she’s a girl and they’re the ones who are going to be famous conductors. Undeterred by her brothers’ derision and inspired by the legacy of her “mousician” parents, Mimi finds herself on a journey to becoming a mousetro after her brothers leave her behind to follow their own mousetro ambitions. Written with heart and delicious punny humor, Mimi & the Gold Baton encourages all budding musicians, or anyone who’s been told they can’t achieve their goal, to go after those drea

Mimi’s journey is reminiscent of multiple fantasy and fairytale protagonists in a way that evokes nostalgia rather than feeling derivative or overdone. One such moment is her conversation with the caterpillar, when he tells her she can “go this way or that way or sideways” pointing his legs in different directions, a decidedly Wizard of Oz move. An event even earlier in the narrative, when Mimi is bestowed a magical gold baton by the kind maestro, feels appropriately grandiose, marking the true start to our hero’s journey.

With a deft hand, Nicolò Carozzi’s intricate illustrations set the scene and are downright atmospheric. The illustration style itself, with the visible pencil marks and (mostly) muted color palette, conjures the nostalgic visuals that perfectly complement the text, bringing to mind the imaginative worlds and immersive illustrations of Chris Van Allsburg. Mimi’s determined nature and the connections she makes with fellow animals along the way show those who are shy or not quite ready to pursue their dreams just yet that perseverance and teamwork goes a long way. Sprinkled with magic and featuring detailed and immersive colored pencil illustrations, Mimi & the Gold Baton is sure to charm readers young and old.

Takeaway: The enchanting tale of a mouse’s journey to become a “mousetro.”

Comparable Titles: Giles Andreae’s Giraffes Can’t Dance, Kristy Dempsey’s A Dance Like Starlight.

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

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Milligan’s biting-but-inspirational debut blends insights about healthy leadership and management styles with a fable of corporate America. The narrative centers on three LED manufacturing companies that bid for the chance to lead the charge on a $30 million lighting project in the Midwest, a scenario that Milligan uses to offer detailed a taxonomy of personality types Milligan has encountered during his three-decades in corporate life. Drawing on a background in psychology, Milligan also breaks down the motivations and common behaviors of each type (Coach, Pacesetter, Narcissist), all represented by different characters in the fictional companies. The Sociopath cultivates a “highly toxic” culture and “to calm his nerves and justify future carnage” tells himself this: The “company would have had a completely different outcome if only they had all performed as he had demanded.

Milligan dubs employees and leaders of the first company, General Light, “Corporate Savages,” while Technical Illuminations and City Public Power are “A Civilized Culture” and “The Emotionally Intelligent.” While the use of savage-civilized language is off putting, Milligan’s careful and often amusing descriptions of the businesses and their interactions with one another do well to illustrate the functional and behavioral differences between toxic and healthy companies. A clear dichotomy is set up between the money-grabbing, emotionally abusive, Machiavellian business on one side and the collaborative, compassionate, and fiscally responsible company on the other.

Readers with experience in the corporate world at every level will recognize these professional personalities and even see themselves in many of them, and while The Corporate Menagerie offers a clear-eyed dramatis personae introducing the kind of people readers are likely to meet, plus a survey of familiar and preventable workplace culture problems, it also shows readers how they deserve to be treated and the kind of behavior they shouldn’t tolerate in their professional lives. Professionals looking for a cohesive, accessible guide to understanding personalities at work will find Milligan’s refreshing debut useful.

Takeaway: A field guide to corporate personalities—and leading a healthy company

Comparable Titles: Michael O’Neill’s The Healthy Workplace Nudge, Susan Hetrick’s Men>Toxic Organizational Cultures and Leadership.

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

Click here for more about The Corporate Menagerie

Vaknin’s imaginative and exciting first picture book for young children follows a little girl and her father on a magical walk home from school. The story begins with the pair deciding to do something “unordinary” by wandering into an old, rundown toy store. The father is unimpressed by the shabby items he sees, but the girl becomes fascinated with a red umbrella, calling it her “shiny shield.” She proclaims herself to be a “magical, sparkly unicorn” and draws on the animal’s bravery as she and her father encounter a sudden rainstorm and a small dog with a thorn stuck in its paw. In their quest to find the dog’s owner, the girl learns to be courageous, kind, and compassionate.

One of this book’s biggest strengths is the relationship between the father and daughter. While the father shows patience and tenderness toward his child, he clearly has other things on his mind and says more than once that he needs to hurry home for an important work call. This will be relatable for kids and parents, as most families have likely experienced similar moments where the adult must get things done before they can play. Ultimately, the father in this story embraces his imaginary role as the “mighty knight,” which will be rewarding for kids and remind grownups that it’s okay sometimes to put fun first.

Margaret Breen’s warm, homey illustrations burst with both everyday life and, later, the fantastical, transporting readers into the story and capturing something elusive: the imagination unleashed on regular life. Little details like the father’s rumpled shirt, the puddles on the sidewalk, and the changing leaves on the trees ground the story in reality, while others show the girl’s vibrant imagination of herself as a valiant unicorn with a rainbow mane and her father as a knight in glistening armor. In the end, this story will inspire families to seek out their own unordinary adventures.

Takeaway: Vaknin’s imaginative picture book finds a girl and her father making everyday magic.

Comparable Titles: Matt Forrest Esenwine’s Flashlight Night, Samatha Berger’s What If.

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

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Oliver’s debut digs into the coming-of-age of Gene Oliver Dickson, introduced as a five-year-old in Denver in 1997, stealing the toy of the title from his neighbor. This incident triggers a surprising economic downslide that eventually leads Gene and his mother Anita to live in their own not-at-all-a-toy car. Their financial situation improves when his mother marries Jacob Nelson, a religious zealot who brutalizes Gene, who amid all this is discovering himself—and his biological father. Graduating from school, leaving home, and seeing the world, Gene savors his newfound freedom, especially writing and playing music, but also finds himself caught up in what just might be a religious cult.

Told largely in a loosely plotted linear fashion, and handling topics like abuse with sensitivity, Oliver’s story rings true, especially as he explores “how resilient we are as human beings, but at the same time very delicate.” His love for the mountains comes through in his evocative descriptions, while Gene’s emotional distancing from his mother is described with poignant detail. Her silence about Jacob’s brutal ways is heart-rending. Of the many varied characters, two that linger in the mind are Melissa, the perfect parasite, and Harriet, the snobbish, quirky, tantrum-throwing British writer Gene meets in Australia. Both are finely drawn and surprising.

A major plus point of the narrative is the author’s ability to dramatize travel experiences, like a South American road trip, without sounding like a tourist guide book. Atop a volcano in Ecuador: “Dangling our feet from the back of the car, we strummed our ukuleles and sang songs to the night.” Gene’s search for meaning and purpose is engaging, though his discussions with others on these subjects disrupt the telling of the story. The novel explores these questions most effectively through scene, drama, and the lived experience of the protagonist. At its best, this is an engaging, inspiring story.

Takeaway: An inspiring coming-of-age story of resilience and the joy of the road.

Comparable Titles: Amy Jo Burns’s Shiner, Carol Bensimon’s We All Loved Cowboys.

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

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This warm yet inventive novel from Averett (author of Cameron and the Girls) blends a midcentury coming-of-age story with a bold dash of magic and incisive generational inquiry. Born in 1950, Henry James George faces curious tragedies in his childhood in coastal Washington State, but he’s also often told how epochal his life will be, especially by Mrs. Obregon, a healer of the Chehalis, who informs Henry he has been “chosen” as a curandeo, a healer who must not boast of his gifts. (Why this rare honor goes to a white kid she can’t say.) His school teacher, meanwhile, sees his generational possibility: “You are the blessed children of the future,” she declares to his class, “the beneficiaries” of the unprecedented prosperity and innovation of the post-war era.

The century is Henry’s. Such great expectations can’t work out as everyone hopes, of course. These mentors—including Mrs. Pinckney, the pillbox-hatted proprietor of the titular museum—see in him the chance to improve the world. But Henry must grow up and prove himself: first that he’s not the murderer he’s accused of being when, at age seven, his friend goes missing, and then later, when greatness is expected of him as a healer, that he’s not a fake. Averett conjures surprising trials and choices for his hero, plus some unexpected intimate relations. Often the story considers what it means or costs to heal—including the wrenching question of what responsibility Henry has to one friend who didn’t want his intervention.

This is a heady, at times provocative novel that never settles into predictability or easy answers. The nature of Henry’s healing is resonant: he must read to a patient, connecting with them, a tribute to the power of the written word, which the mass-media explosion of Henry’s would diminish. That’s one of many fascinating threads here, like that museum enshrining the boundless promise of an age long past.

Takeaway: A fascinating novel of healing and mid-century generational promise.

Comparable Titles: Thomas Berger, Donald Barthelme.

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

Click here for more about The New Prosperity Museum

Poet, singer, and songwriter McPhillips’s spirited novel tells the story of three devil-may-care wild men of the Australian bush at the end of the 19th century, during the days of the Gold Rush. The gang spends their days gallivanting across the continent in search of gold and adventures, as shanty towns become municipalities. The companions earn their keep with periodic bouts of gambling and robbery, and they face marshas, chain gangs, and other hazards, all as the Aboriginal tribes don’t fully “understand the fascination of the white man and Chinese for the yellow metal.” McPhillips draws on history and the western genre for both adventure and to explore national identity and mythmaking, plus the moral question of whether gaining wealth by devious means ultimately brings regret.

True to form, the plot is alive with action, horses, prospecting, and crimes committed in the name of gathering resources, with a distinction drawn between civilization and the rugged world the protagonists inhabit. McPhilips’s action is sharp and clear, but he also digs deeper, illuminating characters' states of mind, which makes for some beautiful prose. McPhillips’ writing often resembles a kind of oral storytelling, where the plainspoken language, oratorical flourishes, bursts of clarifying history, and stories within stories can make you feel like you’re listening to a fable rather than reading words on a page.

McPhillips covers the history of bushmen and aboriginal peoples in welcome detail, both in introductory material and the story proper. Readers expecting a simple story about three heroes may be put off by the layered narratives, mythic touches, and abundant historical context. But McPhillips's writing will keep adventurous readers hooked, and those who manage to get past the information overload are in for some really interesting facts and stories surrounding Australia’s history. Lovers of Australian history will enjoy this book, which is as informative as it is lively.

Takeaway: The wild story of bushrangers from Australia’s gold rush, with an emphasis on history.

Comparable Titles: Jane Smith, David Hill’s The Gold Rush.

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

Click here for more about The Lifestyle and Adventure of Ace McDice, Stretch Deed & moonshine Melody

Debut novelist Strommen breathes life into the YA coming-of-age genre with a novel overflowing with love, faith and grace. Velvet Mary Underwood doesn’t know her father, Diamond Jim. He absconded with her mother’s heart when Velvet was just six months old, slipping out into the night without a word. Her dancer mother, Lynette, was heartbroken, but continued to live life out loud, even in the face of being an unwed mother in the 1950s in the small town of Sack City—and all that entails. Now, on the cusp of sweet sixteen, Velvet finds herself wondering more about her father, worried about her mother’s drinking, and coming to terms how her Catholic faith fits into everything.

Told primarily from Velvet’s viewpoint with interjections from Lynette’s journal, the nebulously era-ed novel draws readers in with a literary cadence made approachable and vibrant by realistic characters speaking in a timeless voice. Velvet’s struggles with how her father’s absence has formed her identity and how her mother’s alcoholism affects her entire life come to life, particularly in interactions with the women who make their lives difficult—Mrs. Evans for Lynette and her daughter, Janet, for Velvet. Luckily, Velvet has quite a few things on her side: From the lessons left to her by her only father figure, the now-deceased Pops, to her best friend and confidante, Mercy, to her grandmother’s quiet love and wisdom.

Of particular note is the care and normalization of Velvet’s faith. She describes herself as a mix between her grandmother’s strain of religious devotion—“God hears me whether I’m sitting in an old wooden pew or right here at this kitchen table”—and her grandfather’s. Her conversations with God will resonate in a simple, honest manner. Her private, prayerful apologies for her mother’s cursing, plus a budding romance with Bobby Johnson, add perfect notes of humor and sweetness to the achingly poignant plot crafted with a lyrical touch.

Takeaway: A poignant tale of growing up with big questions and a heartbroken, yet not broken, mother.

Comparable Titles: Joan F. Smith’s The Half-Orphan’s Handbook, Alex Richards’s When We Were Strangers.

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

Click here for more about Velvet

Bianco's debut collection takes readers through the lives of ten individuals who, at first glance, hold in common a string of resolve. Bianco takes readers into the lives of brothers, friends, and loners with a ghostly yet fulfilling narration of each life. Upon entry into the tense world of the first short story, in which a man scarfing tarts while driving gets caught up in a potential altercation with a truck driver, readers may expect that the worst will befall these characters. But in stories like “The Monroes”—a coming-of-age beauty about a friendship between two families of different classes in the 1970s—Bianco demonstrates how closely related we are, how our individual experiences reveal greater species-wide truths. In each humane piece, as Bianco’s characters process loss, time, loneliness, and memory, readers will find more comfort than heartache.

Bianco's approach is, in each crisply told story, to focus first on incidents rather than the protagonist experiencing them, and then building up to an affecting climatic summation. From “Dot,” a sweeping examination of an Ohio woman’s life from 4H to computer programming to divorce from a man who wanted a less ambitious wife: "She somehow survived without anger or regret, and without once considering herself remarkable or entitled to more than the cards of life dealt her." Often, in stories like “That Hoffman Girl,” Bianco guides the reader to inferring the characters’ feelings, a part of solving the riddle of emotions and memory. Since the people and situations feel so real, and since the storytelling is so skillful, this is a pleasure.

Throughout, Bianco’s people seem to be presenting themselves without qualms, asking us to take them as they are. Yet each story also offers reason to doubt this, to pick at the questions that the narrators seem to prefer to leave un-asked. Bianco writes invitingly of experience, survival, and what we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Takeaway: Resonant stories of life as it’s lived, told with welcome empathy.

Comparable Titles: Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver.

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

Click here for more about Throwing Tarts at the King and Other Stories

Published tête-bêche style in a single volume, Bigelow’s debut poetry collections,Science & Mysticism and The Veil’s Cipher comprise a twin set that reaches with impressive depth into the scientific, spiritual, and physical mysteries of the universe. Offering what Bigelow calls “ruminations on the infinite from a finite being,” the collections draw heavily from particle physics and quantum mechanics, finding in these theories tools to conduct a spiritual inquiry. In other words, Bigelow creates a union between the scientific and the divine, consciously disrupting the binary between the two to illuminate the universe and humanity’s relationship to it.

While the poems are galactic in scope, they aren’t out of reach, nor do they lack playfulness. Most are lyrical and abound with wordplay, as in “Dream Data”: “Light is the measure of all matter / and it’s all just a matter of Time.” Bigelow also plays with form and structure, publishing distinct yet aligned collections of poetry that focus so acutely on polarities. Science & Mysticism is, in general, concerned with the melding of just what its title promises, while The Veil’s Cipher focuses on the enigma of time and the struggle of humanity to cope with its own temporality (“I don’t see / a start / or end / to time”).

Still, Bigelow’s heady ideas flow freely across the physical divide between the volumes, the verses within penned in clear, engaging, surprising language. The collections create a oneness that reflects Bigelow’s ideas about the oneness of the universe (“All inhabits / every moment”) that has split itself into varied, seemingly self-contained forms. According to the speaker in “Heirlooms,” as the “rare metals” of existence collide and connect in “intense chaotic energetic refinement,” “we are making jewelry.” Readers searching for a home in the intersection of poetry, science, and spirituality will find one in Bigelow’s debut.

Takeaway: Electric poetry concerning spirituality, quantum physics, and other mysteries.

Comparable Titles: Pattiann Rogers’s Holy Heathen Rhapsody, Sarah Howe’s Relativity.

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

Click here for more about Science & Mysticism and The Veil's Cipher

This chilling novel-in-stories from Benacre, the first of two volumes, charts the life of Michael McCann, the “cleanskin”—that is, not clearly connected—Irish Republican Army operative who, in Benacre’s novel Easter, Smoke and Mirrors attempts to stage a bombing in London in 2016. McCann digs deep into the question of how Michael came to this, covering nearly fifty years of recent history, starting before Michael himself is conceived. Early stories focus on his doomed mother in Dublin in the tumultuous late 1960s, her miserable marriage to an alcoholic, and her dalliance with the charming Frank O’Neill, a criminal with IRA connections who’s eager to see the “the North burning” and the Troubles to follow.

It's no spoiler to say that Ireland is so wracked with explosive violence or that Frank will be a guiding, paternal figure in Michael’s life—in fact, as McCann makes clear, it will be Frank who eventually impresses Michael into undertaking the 2016 attack. Young Michael faces horrors and loss that will rattle readers, but the tension threading through the collection concerns why his 41-year-old self will eventually attempt a bombing, especially when, early on, an attack tears his family apart.

That story illuminates Michael’s mother’s own secrets and hardiness, her drive to do what needs to be done, no matter how distasteful. Much of McCann unfolds from Michael’s perspective, as he comes of age, grows strong under Frank’s eye, and fights the Russians in Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen. But Benacre’s keenly interested in the context of that life, offering a clutch of stories that read as sharp colloquies between characters facing the news of a changing world—and how they must change with it. Readers see Frank’s response to many epochal events, with the most harrowing on September 11, 2001: “these are the lengths we’re going to have to go to. You get it?”

Takeaway: A novel in stories tracing the life of a “cleanskin” IRA bomber and a half century of fractious history.

Comparable Titles: Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man, Wendy Erskine’s Sweet Home.

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

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“Our actions over the next ten years can change the course of history on the planet,” Sam Arroyo, the son of the genius owners of a private aerospace company, declares early in Martin’s fiction debut. If anything, Sam’s downplaying the leap his family’s ushering humanity towards: a propulsion drive that manipulates gravitational fields, allowing space flight without rockets—and potentially eliminating our need for fossil fuels. The Arroyos understand how much the powers that be will want to control or eliminate this technology (and a cloaking device another son’s developing). That’s especially true of a greedy American president who fancies himself a king. But that won’t stop the Arroyos from building spacecraft and plotting a mission to Mars and possibly beyond, all of which Martin games out in vivid, conversational detail.

This is upbeat, big-picture science-fiction, alert to the technical complexities of Arroyo Aerospace’s ambitions but not bogged down in them. Martin, a documentarian and author of many nonfiction books, prizes convincing scenes of decision-making and problem-solving. That’s not to say the novel lacks tension—it starts in a 2017 rocked by right-wing militias, with the intelligence agencies sniffing around the Arroyos’ progress. As they prepare the Galaxy Two for launch over the next few years, the family faces the fraught politics of the real world in that era, from the pandemic to election denialism.

Crisp dialogue carries the story, though tense shifts and an expository tone mean the storytelling’s not as polished as it could be. The blunt emphasis on contemporary politics, including a conservative Arroyo sister who initially is kept out of the loop because of her affiliations, will put some readers off, but Martin’s ultimately empathetic with her—and he’s invested in how great things might be accomplished within our current Earthly systems. As their new space age dawns, complete with a space station, the Arroyos explore PR campaigns, private-public partnerships, deals with corporations, and other practical approaches.

Takeaway: This upbeat novel imagines a family-owned aerospace company’s new space age.

Comparable Titles: Daniel Suarez’s Delta-v, Kim Stanley Robinson.

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

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Linden’s ambitious collage of a novel of stories-within-stories and plays-within-lives celebrates and interrogates questions of truth, fiction, and storytelling. It opens with a woman, also named Nicolette, who has gained possession of her “bequest” from her mother, a pair of manuscripts, the first being The Walrus, a personally revealing play that her mother forbade her from reading until she turned 30. The Walrus follows William and Jilian—the name of the mother of the novel’s Nicolette—as they navigate the waters of a relationship, with William often rejecting Jilian sexually until she can prove that she is in touch with her true feelings. The Bequest also includes scenes of Nicolette speaking to Morton Seiden, who championed her mother’s work, and his lecture notes for his teaching of The Walrus. Along the way, these characters discuss literature, love, legacy, and how we “metabolize” them all.

The novel is clever and complex—another manuscript, Jillian’s Confession, figures in as well—but easy to follow. It will appeal to readers who love literary puzzles, interlocking portraits of relationships, and playful but dead-serious inquiry into the complexities of love, sex, and family. While the characters all offer their own incisive commentary about the central relationships, Linden leaves it to readers to reach their own conclusions: the William of the play seems intended as enlightened and sensitive yet comes off as controlling and manipulative—if that’s intentional, which author intends it? (Late in the book, Linden smartly upends some assumptions about authorship and perspective, casting a new light on what’s come before–and stirring more questions.)

Dr. Seiden’s lecture notes, meanwhile, gush with comic overstatement about the very works we’re reading (“the most beautiful, tender and erotic in all of literature”) yet also reveal striking insights that enrich the whole. Readers who find such play rewarding will find this novel a fest of ideas, surprises, and consistent sharp, engaging, prose.

Takeaway: A playful meta-novel whose stories within stories examine love.

Comparable Titles: Nicole Krauss, John Barth.

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

Click here for more about The Bequest: The Enhanced Edition

Cunningham (Reflections of a Southern Boy) adds an inspirational religious element to a story of intense horse racing rivalry in pre-Civil War Alabama in his latest offering. In 1852 Alabama, Gideon Deshler rejects his Christian faith after his wife Harriet dies during childbirth along with his newborn son. Gideon seeks comfort in the bottle and directs his anger at his friend Luke who tries to curtail Gideon’s excessive drinking. Though Gideon almost kills Sam Quarles in a duel over an insult against Harriet, Sam becomes a changed man after attending Luke’s church. But Gideon continues his disdain for religion as he courts Elvira Sturgis, an avowed atheist, whose mistreatment of her slaves is almost unparalleled. When Gideon’s butler Thaddeus, a free man, dies saving him, Gideon has his own reformation back to religion. But Sam fears his brother Joe may commit suicide if he can’t restore the family name with his horse’s victory.

Cunningham laces the novel with a multitude of biblical references, beginning with the first name of the main protagonist, Gideon, and story elements that will appeal to readers of faith, such as the subplot regarding Gideon’s friends and neighbors trying to get him back into the fold of church. The intense thematic references to religion and good versus evil work well with the plotline, and Cunningham faces the era’s true darkness: while Elvira is portrayed as being very beautiful, her beauty includes a dark side, embodied by her brutality towards the family slaves.

The heart of the storyline, though, focuses on the intense horse racing competition between the turfmen and the landed gentry’s devotion to horse racing, especially as Gideon and Sam search for the killer of the Quarles’ former champion racehorse. Alive with vivid historical detail surrounding jockey club dinners and balls during the racing season, Cunningham’s novel also highlights the dangers inherent in the Underground Railroad for both slaves and abolitionists.

Takeaway: An inspirational historical novel of faith, freedom, and horse racing in old Alabama.

Comparable Titles: Geraldine Brooks’s Horse, Katherine C. Mooney’s Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack.

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

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A little girl who’s more than she seems is the heart of this surprising novel of grief, adolescence, and mysteries both supernatural and practical, all set in a marvelously evoked small Ontario town. Justin Lambert’s mother went missing in 1996, when he was two. A decade later, long after the authorities have given up on the case, Justin makes an unexpected new friend in tiny Ferguston: a little girl named Billie who seems much smarter than her age, doesn’t go to school, and in conversation speaks to Justin like “anthropologist would interview an elder from some remote culture.” She asks fascinating questions like “Are these the only colours you have?” and, when adults take too much interest in her, somehow manages to vanish. Meanwhile, the residents of Ferguston report strange lights in the sky and strange fish in Lake LeClair, and local ne’er-do-well David Raymond, a suspect in Justin’s mother’s disappearance, is cruising Justin’s neighborhood in his great neon green truck, apparently on the hunt.

Especially in the opening and closing chapters, Bourgault, making his debut, deftly balances the novel’s mix of coming-of-age literary fiction with its exciting supernatural and suspense elements. Scenes with Billie are both charming and unsettling, as Justin at first refuses to ask hard questions about this strange little girl who knows so much about him. The answers to just who and what she is, when they come, are inspired, not settling into any genre convention. She’s an original, like the book itself.

The novel’s middle passages can feel protracted, such as chapters covering the aftermath of a strange accident or a trip to the American Southwest. The Perpetual Now is long, and at times feels like it, though its central mystery and relationships are compelling, and the prose is touched with unfussy observational poetry. “Ferguston sometimes felt like a war-torn city where all the buildings were left standing,” Bourgault writes, capturing a rich sense of place in a line.

Takeaway: A smart, heartfelt novel blending speculative and coming-of-age fiction.

Comparable Titles: Graham Joyce’s The Tooth Fairy, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.

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

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