Meyers debuts with a riveting memoir chronicling her life story from an early childhood diagnosis of polio through her unyielding determination to attend and graduate from college and build for herself a successful career as an engineering executive at Apple. Sharing details about her family history and legacy, key friendships, and the experience of becoming a wife and a mother, Meyers shares her story with vivid transparency and raw honesty that is endearing and inspiring. Meyers's parents received the terrifying telegram that their 11-month-old daughter had polio, which Meyers describes with precision, from diagnosis to treatment to life-long impact: “My right leg is around two inches shorter than the left and doesn’t have much muscle development,” she writes. “It looks more like a stick than a leg."

Though her disability has led to setbacks and obstacles, including unfair treatment from peers and adults, Meyers persevered, as the title playfully suggests. She continually sets goals for herself and maps out the best course to achieve them. Despite her early goal to be accepted and graduate from college, difficulties in her native home of China, where most colleges have unyielding physical education requirements, prompted Meyers to eventually apply to schools in the United States, where she was accepted at Ohio University with a full scholarship and completed her PhD. From her first position as a software scientist in Silicon Valley to an executive role at Apple, Meyers’s determination fueled her ambitions, and her hard work led to successful achievements. "I heard from people what I couldn’t do, I limped forward and did all those things anyway, and I am not done yet," Meyers notes.

From competing in a 100-mile bike ride to challenging herself in karate classes, Meyers reflects on the ways her weaknesses became her strengths, delivering an inspirational narrative of a young woman constantly pushing herself, pursuing her dreams, and always believing in herself no matter what others had to say. The result is inspiring.

Takeaway: An inspirational memoir that highlights living with a disability and persevering.

Comparable Titles: Rebekah Taussig’s Sitting Pretty, Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility.

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

Click here for more about Limp Forward

Told from the perspective of Molly, the family dog, Mengay’s ambitious debut novel follows the evolution of a young man named Jake as he explores his identity in a 1970s Rust Belt family of conventional ideals. Jake’s first romance, with Romeo, is turbulent and toxic. Romeo is controlling in more ways than one with a naïve and besotted Jake, and quitting the relationship is complicated. When it does end, Jake pivots in a completely different direction, to Peacoat, a member of a cult-like religious group. Jake finds a sense of peace and more with Peacoat, but this relationship is threatened by Pastor Billy’s obsession with Peacoat and his jealousy of the pair’s relationship. Peacoat’s disappearance throws more upheaval into Jake’s life, before he eventually finds peace with Tommy glimpsed at the novel’s start.

“I know not only his tread but those of the others, though he assumes I’m oblivious,” Molly notes, the line exemplifying a narrative voice that’s rich, inventive, at times somewhat dense. Stories told through the perspective of pets offer a unique view into relationships dynamics between family, friends and lovers, and from the eyes of a character that sees everyone at their most unfiltered–Molly knows that Jake sees her as “Anything but myself: a thinker like him.” Through this dog’s-eye-view, the reader has the opportunity to see Jake searching for himself in both simple and complicated ways, and learns through Molly’s perspective truths like the reason Peacoat disappeared —a mystery to everyone else.

The novel’s ambitious language, perspective, and narrative approach leaves it to readers to chart the relationships between characters based on Molly’s observations, as they’re never explicitly outlined in a traditional way. Readers who appreciate that kind of literary challenge will find much depth, feeling, and startling insights here, as Molly watches Jake grow and change after the “loss of Romeo-heaven” and other heartbreaks. Also arresting: Molly’s vivid, incisive surveying of the upper midwest, from lakes to teen culture to factories that “shoot sparks and rain debris that mixes with snow, the tyranny of whiteness starting to obliterate everything.” Often beautiful, always surprising, Molly’s storytelling makes the familiar feel fresh.

Takeaway: A dog’s POV provides a unique look at a young man’s growth..

Comparable Titles: W. Bruce Cameron’s A Dog’s Purpose, Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain.

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

Click here for more about The Lede to Our Undoing

Louise’s debut is a multigenerational, character-driven slice-of-life story, centered on the Kristoff family, in search of love and success in the changing face of 20th century America while struggling to overcome poverty, heartbreak, childhood trauma, and a brace of dark secrets. Overshadowing the seven adult Kristoff children’s lives is their parents’ turbulent marriage. Loosely based on a real-life family, Love Laugh and Row is about families, love, betrayal, heartbreak, loyalty, childhood trauma, poverty, and healing during tumultuous times, covering the years from 1929 to 1955, as the Kristoffs face the Stock Market Crash, the Great Depression, the second World War, and even the Mafia.

The most notable characters are the oldest sibling Filippa, the heart of the family, her volatile younger sister Bepa, and their strict but loving father Alek, who has a keen insight into other people. Some readers will be disturbed by descriptions of Bepa physically and verbally abusing her husband, youngest daughter, and nieces while spoiling her older daughter, turning her into a bully. It’s fascinating to see the way each generation influences the next: Alek and Filippa and her daughter Lana are caring and protective.

While it’s a compelling tale of a family struggling to remain close, the pacing is often slow, despite frequent time jumps and the Kristoffs’ numerous romantic disasters—they tend to fall in love too quickly with near strangers without learning from their mistakes. Hints of family secrets add mystery, such as involvement with the Mafia, or why the Kristoff siblings were removed from their home by social workers in childhood, and the milieus of Russian immigrants, the opera world, Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach, Milan, and more are all evoked with precision and heart. Sometimes it’s even infectiously upbeat: “Didn’t you know—I’m dizzy on a dame named showbiz?” asks Julian, née Boris, striving to make it as a tenor, buoyant with the possibilities of what can be achieved in the American century.

Takeaway: Century-spanning tale of a family struggling to overcome heartbreak and trauma.

Comparable Titles: Sana Krasikov’s The Patriots, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake.

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

Click here for more about Love Laugh and Row

Multi-platinum songwriter, recording artist, and producer Frasca brings readers into the life of a young creative with Not My Fault, her electric and rousing literary debut. Through the voice of Hy, an aspiring young painter and graffiti artist, Frasca invites readers into a drama of the creative process, following a small, impassioned idea—Hy’s “Not My Fault” tags and pieces, a raw artistic declaration of self—bloom into a major project and exhibition, all powered by urgent concerns over social injustice. Each day Hy uses the Not My Fault project to discuss just how easy it is to be criticized for personal choices and inevitabilities, by bullying peers and indifferent adults. Hy explores death, parenthood, lust, sexual orientation, friendship, and self-worth with art and journal entries, while at last making vital connections with others.

The narration, like Hy, is proudly unorthodox, tinged with poetry, sometimes a bit passive, and at others somewhat jumpy. But it’s powerful, especially as Hy’s journaling turns to planning increasingly elaborate artistic efforts. Hy draws on encounters with family, bullies, and friends to find exciting new forms for the words “Not My Fault.” Each piece reflects very personal relationships with each character, like the one written across the bandshell near Mr. Fadikar’s convenience store, where Hy writes the words in Hindi. Alongside exploration into injustices, Hy also deals with more personal concerns, asking “What am I” over “Who am I” as a relationship with a bully takes an unexpected turn, all as a new friend inspires new feelings of self-worth. Readers will watch Hy’s project –and self-esteem–grow across bedroom walls, library tables, and public spaces.

“I’ve got an I’m worth something forcefield around me now,” Hy declares. “Until I don’t.” Throughout, in frank and wise lines like that, Frasca powerfully evokes the breakthroughs and setbacks of creating a self and finding a voice and community, and also the process of artists, which is likely to inspire young readers in their own creative pursuits.

Takeaway: Urgent, touching YA novel about finding one’s voice through art.

Comparable Titles: Jennifer Mathieu’s Moxie, Rachhpal Sahota’s Chasing Dignity.

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

Click here for more about Not My Fault

Gandbhir’s memoir chronicles the life of four generations of the Rege family, beginning with the matriarch Ba, in the mid-nineteenth century, in the rainforest village of Kochare in India’s Konkan region, and ending with her great grandchildren as the 20th century draws to an end. What shines through all these years and history is the indomitable spirit of the women and their wonderful adaptability. Life in rural Konkan in the times covered here was tough, especially for barely literate women, who worked non-stop, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children and the elderly. But as the situation improves with the coming of basic amenities and education, not everyone celebrated all the new ways. “To the aunts, indoor toilets were anathema,” Gandbhir writes. She quotes them: “‘Our home is like a temple. We have gods in the house. We are soiling a temple.’”

A foreword, family chart, and photographs help in anchoring the reader to the narrative. The simple linear chronicle is narrated for the most part in a detached, anthropological voice with its own charm (“Some babies were happy to be massaged. Others screamed bloody murder”), even when describing dramatic events like living in a jungle to avoid the plague epidemic, the death of a woman from “in-law harassment,” or the horrors of a difficult childbirth, where the midwife asks the family “mother or baby?” and proceeds to save the life of one according to the answer.

Except when writing of her own father and of Kaki Aie, her widowed aunt, who took care of the author and her sister after their mother’s death, the author sticks to this matter-of-fact tone. The author’s sister Kunda is more forthcoming in her reminiscence about Kaki Aie where she opines that maybe the two sisters were a form of protection for the young widow, as Kaki Aie would shake her awake at night if someone knocked at their bedroom door sending the unwelcome visitor scurrying away. Death during childbirth or in the marital home was a fact of life, a truth driven home by this concise family history and act of love.

Takeaway: Study of four generations of a family from the Konkan region of India.

Comparable Titles: Jung Chang’s Wild Swans, Firoozeh Dumas’s Funny in Farsi.

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

Click here for more about Tales Across Time: My family's life in India, 1846 to 1990

This bold, decades-spanning historical novel from Wagner-Wright (author of Saxon Heroines) centers on rival families in 18th century Salem, Massachusetts, set to forge an unlikely alliance via marriage to build upon their fortunes and travel the seas, as tensions rise between Great Britain and the American Colonies. But amid the matchmaking, which often involves ulterior motives, the young people themselves have grand personal ambitions: as they start a new life together, George Crowninshield vows to Mary Hodges Derby that he’ll only work for either of their wealthy fathers as a last resort, promising instead to build a shipping business called George Crowninshield and Sons. Better still, Mary senses that with him she’ll never be treated as property—a rarity for women in an era where beauty “requires a perfect silhouette.”

By contrast, George’s sister Eliza aspires to great social standing in Salem, while Mary’s brother Haskett, striving to be his father’s favored son and run the family business himself someday, declares to Eliza “I need a wife as ambitious as I am.” Wagner-Wright alternates perspectives as she details these relationships and ambitions–and those of the next generation—over decades, amid dances, weddings, funerals, Thanksgiving dinners, and ever-worsening news about relations with England. Wagner-Wright covers the challenge, after the “chaos in Boston,” of longtime tea drinkers adopting coffee.

Such telling detail—about maritime trade, love, politics, and social mores in the American colonies—creates an immersive sense of the textures of life. “The rowdies in Boston have ruined everything!” Mary thinks, some four decades after we meet her. “Sons of Liberty, indeed. More like Sons of Disaster.” That level of detail and sweeping scope sometimes comes at the cost of narrative momentum, but never at the cost of character: Wagner-Wright lays bare the hearts, minds, and dreams of several generations, offering historical fiction fans the chance to feel what life might have been like.

Takeaway: Transportive historical novel of Colonial marriage, shipping, and life.

Comparable Titles: Natasha Boyd’s The Indigo Girl, Anya Seton’s The Winthrop Woman.

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

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Even little kids have some very big dreams. In Vidalón’s inspiring picture book for children, a young girl named Penelope learns the importance of believing in herself and being true to her goals. When the story begins, Penelope’s dream follows her everywhere, taking the form of a blue, cloudlike shape with large, expressive eyes, a heart-shaped nose, and a broad smile. Her dream fills her life with excitement— “she knew that with her dream anything was possible.” Over time, her dream grows larger—and her friends begin to laugh at her because her dream seems too big, which causes her to feel embarrassed. She begins leaving her dream at home when she goes out, causing it to wither and shrink to almost nothing.

When Penelope abandons her dream, its anthropomorphic features are most effective, its dewy eyes twinkling with tears as Penelope leaves it sitting alone on her bed. Adults will recognize this devastating sensation as one that comes with abandoning once-cherished desires, prompting an opportunity to discuss why kids should always follow their hearts, no matter what their friends and classmates say. Penelope’s dream is also not specified—she’s shown wearing a stethoscope, a pilot’s cap, and a superhero cape, giving kids the chance to fill in the blank with their own deepest wishes.

Vidalón’s illustrations mostly show Penelope and her dream interacting on plain pastel backgrounds—they play together, hug each other, and bring joy to each other’s existence. Making Penelope and her dream the primary focus helps highlight the strength and necessity of their relationship, which corresponds, in essence, to the reader’s relationship with their own goals. Penelope eventually rediscovers her dream in the bottom of a drawer, shriveled but still grinning, leaving readers with the encouraging sentiment that “we all have a dream; some of us have simply lost sight of it.”

Takeaway: A young girl learns the importance of believing in herself and being true to her goals.

Comparable Titles: Kobi Yamada’s What Do You Do With an Idea?, Ashley Spires’s The Most Magnificent Thing.

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

Click here for more about Penelope's Big Dream

This superb third entry in Atrium’s Tribal Wars series showcases the author’s great strengths. As always, Atrium builds worlds and cultures with anthropological rigor—in this case, the Earth-colonized planet of Dolvia, where local tribes clash and are increasingly bold in challenging the power of the Consortium and the Company—and tour-guides readers through those creations with such exacting prose and immersive detail that the textures of life and conflict come to feel real. Atrium populates these new realms with compelling, all-too-human characters, especially women and outsiders, trying to do the right thing despite the tangled mess of politics and power. The result is heartening, humane, often exhilarating, even as Atrium’s cast faces grief, revolution, vicious violence, censorious media bosses, and above all else the challenge of respectful connection.

The sprawling plot of Home Rule, like the other Tribal Wars novels, is too densely populated with invented proper nouns to offer a simple thumbnail summary, but as Dolvia reels from the death of a tribal leader—and the money-minded rule of a Consortium-backed stooge in the planet’s largest city—the themes binding the story’s disparate perspective characters are clear and urgent. Here’s a novel of colonialism where the protagonists strive not to oppress, where one protagonist’s heroism isn’t acts of violence but of the sharing of knowledge: Jessup must train a tribal woman from the desert in the art of scuba diving.

Other story threads involve ongoing war between tribes, the self-immolation of women protesters, much ado about weddings and pregnancies, and a photojournalist’s efforts to report the truth about what the planet’s tribes are facing. His idea for an ad to help his startup captures the fears and practical needs of any good foreign correspondent as well as the first Tribal Wars novel captured that of field medics: “Help wanted: Dolviets who write in three dialects and don’t judge me.” Atrium’s worlds compel both in their alien detail—and what they reveal about our own. The glossary helps, but the storytelling’s inviting, despite its complexity.

Takeaway: First-rate SF novel of revolution, oppression, and the urgent textures of life.

Comparable Titles: Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos: Archives series, Joanna Russ.

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

Click here for more about Home Rule (The Tribal Wars Book 3)

This heart-wrenching novel-as-memoir, drawn from the experiences of author Daniels’s daughter, explores the experience of a young girl with borderline personality disorder. Through fictionalized diary entries, online posts, and emails, this firsthand personal account is told in vivid detail as Lina, growing up in Tokyo, contends with and descends into the muddled, often pitiless thoughts consuming her mind. Sharing her life story from early childhood into her 20s, and exploring family dynamics, self-esteem issues, mood swings—“When my best friend kept talking, I punched her”—and her feeling that “the whole world was out to get me,” this memoir is insightful and educational in explaining the inner workings of a mind controlled by mental illness, building to a welcome burst of hope and recovery in the final pages.

Spending most of her adolescence in Singapore, Lina is an angry, depressed young girl whose "false memories" cause her to nurture an irrational hatred of her family and most authoritative figures in her life. Though she is highly intelligent, Lina sabotages her education to spite her parents and is constantly rebelling against their concerns and advice for her life path. A talented writer and singer, Lina fluctuates between dreams of being a tattoo artist and being a famous actress or musician. In her states of delusion, Lina believes the only cause for her lack of success is the overbearing rules of her father, who is often away on business. In truth, Lina and her older sister, who also is sinking into depression, have little structure and guidance in their lives aside from him.

At times wrenching in its candidness—there are references to suicidal thoughts and rape— Lina's story is touching, heartbreaking, and moving, a stark exploration of mental illness, undiagnosed and unchecked. Readers will become immersed in Lina's reflections and come to understand what it is like for an individual and a family facing Borderline Personality Disorder.

Takeaway: Unflinching novel of growing up with borderline personality disorder.

Comparable Titles: Hilary Smith’s Welcome to the Jungle, Bassey Ikpi’s I'm Telling the Truth but I'm Lying.

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

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Tiess’s second collection of timely, urgent “ecopoetry” and essays, following last year’s debut The Humbling, could serve as an expansive syllabus for a course on the Earth amid its ecological and climate crisis and why its preservation matters. The instructor, though, is not necessarily the poet. That role belongs to “Gaia,” Mother Earth, and all her creations: the Susquehanna River, the Colorado Rockies, Sequoia trees, hummingbirds, meerkats, bears, butterflies, and all the other natural wonders in Tiess’s poems that impart the wisdom Tiess has learned by paying the Earth attention. As Tiess writes in his introduction, “Earth, as a university, remains forever open, extending its lessons to anyone who would attend.”

Yet its lessons offer “organic truths'' that are difficult to accept; “with knowledge comes the weight of worlds,” Tiess writes in “From Carefree to Caring”, and he doesn’t mince words in “Earth Education” when the speaker calls on humanity—“alumni of oblivion”—to “examine your calamities.” Though stark and often brutal in their confrontation of humanity’s role in environmental disaster, Tiess’s poems and essays are rooted in hope that by shifting humans’ collective attention from themselves to their environment, they can “resurrect what’s dying to be borne again,” and create a balanced, symbiotic world.

The principal challenge of ecopoetry, which seeks to “maintain a consciousness of Earth while engaging environmental considerations more directly,” is to make nature’s complex system of responses to human activity accessible and digestible for all types of readers, and Tiess’s May We Learn From the Earth ambitiously meets that challenge and goes further. With his back matter of related digital, literary, and scientific resources, readers inspired to continue their education under the tutelage of Earth and her advocates have an entry point to “rethink [their] relationships and practices with nature,” and perhaps “in some small or substantial way” “save the world.”

Takeaway: Ecopoetry and prose urging humanity to shift attention from the self and toward the Earth.

Comparable Titles: Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street’s The Ecopoetry Anthology, Juliana Spahr’s “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache.”

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

Click here for more about May We Learn from the Earth

Baltay’s debut offers a comprehensive history, instructional guide, and recipe book for all things pressure cookers, along with an engaging memoir about her own lifelong “affair” with the equipment, dating back to the second world war, when she and her mother stretched scarce wartime portions. Penned in a tongue-in-cheek, very gently suggestive style, A Steamy Affair reads like a warm hug to those readers who might feel scared at the prospect of attempting to cook with the wide variety of pressure cookers (and instant pots) available today. Baltay sets out to demystify this sometimes polarizing but never quite out-of-style piece of cooking equipment that previous generations have relied upon, but which has sometimes gotten a bad rap from contemporary cooks.

Baltay describes her mother seeing an ad for a pressure cooker in Woman's Day in 1943 but waiting three more years to acquire one, once metal appliances went back into production. Once they had it, there was no going back, and Virginia began cooking with pressure cookers in earnest, beginning a lifelong obsession and passion. This is evident throughout this informative, entertaining book, which covers the history of the pressure cooker, the science behind it, how to identify which one is best for you, and how it can alleviate the problem of food waste. Step-by-step illustrated diagrams detail each piece of the pressure cooker and how to use it safely, while QR codes link to videos covering recipe techniques and the process of cooling a cooker down.

The bulk of this book is recipes, and they run the gamut from hearty and classic American favorites like soups and stews, roasts, and apple sauces to international offerings like vichyssoise, each explained in an encouraging style with a photo and, often, a personal story. The personal touches and stories offer a real connection to the author and her delight in the subject. Baltay’s knowledge is thorough, her style is winning, and her enthusiasm is contagious.

Takeaway: Inviting guide to pressure cookers, with 100+ recipes and a personal touch.

Comparable Titles: Bren Herrera ‘s Modern Pressure Cooking, Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough’s The Great Big Pressure Cooker Book.

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

Click here for more about A Steamy Affair... with a Pressure Cooker

Set in the year 2045, Doyle’s ambitious novel vividly depicts a world where synthetic human hibernation has been invented to save the world from its destruction. Revealing its story through blog posts, academic journals, and dream diaries and letters, Hibernaculum gradually lifts the veil, revealing a mysterious dome where people voluntarily sign up for three months or more of sleep for the love of Mother Earth—rehabilitation, rest, or a means to a temporary end. Blogger Seth Macy believes he could contribute to reducing the world's carbon footprint by going under a deep sleep. Megan Selz, unlike other curious journalists, gets the opportunity to access the Hibernaculum itself and plumb its mysteries. Yumi Almeida wakes up from her hibernation and starts to document her experience through dream diaries her doctor asks her to do.

Doyle achieves a rich, multifaceted portrayal of the Hibernaculum through intricate illustrations of its architecture and descriptions from the eyes of Megan and the Ferryman. In the beginning, where Seth laid his insights about synthetic hibernation and its possible positive effects on a dying world, the plot thickens once the enigma of its possible effects on humans is hinted at in Yumi's dream diaries. Doyle guides readers through the complexities of the story and its implications by providing outsider and insider viewpoints, as well as in teasing the inherent tension of what's in store for the Sleepers once they wake up. This approach is provocative, occasionally satirical, and will appeal to fans of thoughtful, literary-minded science fiction, though it demands attentive reading.

Although Doyle's writing is spare on character development and emotional grip, he touches upon the diversity of motivations people surrender to and the wonders and possibilities biomedical facilities could do. The story ends more eerie than it started, giving the whole a decidedly cinematic feel as it plumbs pressing questions about life and its value in the Anthropocene. Doyle has hit on something rare: an original approach to climate fiction.

Takeaway: Inventive, provocative novel probing what humanity owes the Earth.

Comparable Titles: Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes, OMar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise.

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

Click here for more about Hibernaculum

Sanamon debuts with a captivating and imaginative fantasy novel that seamlessly blends the realms of dream and reality. Mining the vein of fanciful classics like the work of L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carroll, the story follows Theodora Brondsted on her 14th birthday, as she learns about her mother, Galatéa, and the generations of women in her family who have all fulfilled their destinies to discover and share secrets with a magical lion on the island of Tzia, hidden from the modern world by either a spell or a curse. Sanamon skillfully intertwines Theo's story with that of Galatéa, her mother, and the adventurous tale of her own fourteenth birthday—which involves wonders like PumPum, a bespectacled talking cat, and the teasing possibility that the world shifts and surprises us just when we look away.

Galatéa, a witch and one of four quadruplets, embarks on a journey to find the legendary lion, pitting her against her jealous sister, Agatha, and an ensemble of malevolent witches (known as “The Vicious”) determined to stop her. While Theo's narrative occasionally feels sidelined in favor of Galatéa's, the dual perspectives converge spectacularly, keeping readers invested in the plot. The story falters slightly during Galatéa's extensive quest, which moves rather slowly. However, the rich world-building, immersive storytelling, and imaginative illustrations more than make up for this minor flaw, and readers will likely forgive the occasional drag in the plot because of the captivating nature of the story.

At its heart, Tzia: The Book of Galatéa is a story of family, destiny, and magic. Its unique storytelling format and host of engaging and surprising characters will appeal to readers who enjoy fantasy novels with a lot of spirited invention, a love of language and mischief, and a touch of family drama. The intricate, dream-like plot offers a captivating reading experience that will leave readers eager for Theo's next adventure.

Takeaway: This riveting fantasy is perfect for fans of fairy tales and mystical adventures.

Comparable Titles: Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Sylvia Mercedes’s Of Wolves and Wardens.

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

Click here for more about Tzia: The Book of Galatéa

Giambri (author of the bohemian coyote romance The Amorous Adventures of Blondie and Boho, among other titles) offers vivid vignettes of his upbringing, starting in South Philadelphia in the 1940s, where the women cleaned marble stoop steps with Ajax and young Giambri gaped at mushroom clouds from atomic bomb tests broadcast on his grandparents’ 12” Philco TV, the first in the neighborhood. In brisk, crisp passages filled with striking detail—about writing for his ship’s newspaper during Naval deployments; about jitterbugging in Delaware county dance contests, fueled by apple wine; about staging theater in New York City in the late ‘60s; about discovering in the Summer of Love that he’s an exhibitionist—Giambri reveals a great deal from his days in a boys Catholic school to his service days as a seaman, all building to his wild adventures in theater before meeting his wife in the early 1970s.

Perhaps the most intriguing character arc covers his youth as a Catholic schoolboy admiring war ships in the harbor and imagining himself as a sailor, and then becoming one. Giambri does not shy away from his (mis)adventures, some charming, some blending trouble-making with impressive ingenuity, such as Giambri and his teenage coterie enjoying the use of a “borrowed” pharmacy coup the owner doesn’t seem to miss, or having a good time crashing weddings, often seeking out one that “looks good… with a crowd smoking outside,” and then wandering in “as though they’ve been there all along.”

Giambri’s focus throughout is less on his most important moments than the textures of a searching, creative life, packed with sharp character portraits (like the openly gay Francine, marching in drag at the Philadelphia Mummer’s Parade in the 1950s, ready to beat up anyone who made fun). The collection often reads more fascinating context than a standalone story, but it bursts with compelling context about an exciting life and culture at times of great change.

Takeaway: Vivid memoirs of an inventive midcentury life, from Philly to the Navy to NYC.

Comparable Titles: Anatole Broyard’s Kafka Was the Rage, Judith Stonehill’s Greenwich Village Stories.

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

Click here for more about Good Boy, Bad Boy, a Better Man

Klebba’s (I Am: A Day in the Life of a Tyrannosaurus Rex) short anthology of five science-fiction stories set in an anthropomorphic world where the good persevere to do the right thing is a welcome change from the stories of conflict and war that often pervade the genre. The world of Aontech is populated by a native crystalline life form called crystalikes, as well as intelligent reptiles, birds, bats, sea folk, and orcs who have settled there. Everyone more or less gets along. The first story, “Try a Little Kindness,” finds crocodile bodyguard Morrigan Clatch escorting magic using bard and peace negotiator Declan Derry, a scarlet kingsnake. After Morrigan violently dispatches cockroach, woodpecker, and hammerhead shark bandits, Declan encourages her to use her emotional support talents instead of punches to reduce conflict in the future.

The anthropomorphic cast, reminiscent of a Sing movie, gives the gentle tone and optimistic outlook of the stories an Aesop’s Fables flavor as they fix society’s ills. The Scaled Guild implores: “Our world is constantly changing…why can we not see our own flaws and become better?” The accompanying stories follow a beetle private investigator searching for a missing teenage bat who was taking pictures of corrupt cops; a gay orc couple who decide not to move away when bigotry enters their jewelry store; and an orange bat gun-for-hire who’s encouraged by her crystalike roommate to leave the business.

The final story celebrates compassionate parenting as a mako shark archeologist guides his adopted seagull daughter through the Natural History Museum, providing a brief but tantalizing origin story of Aontech, whose mysteries can still power future stories. This book provides a welcome message of goodwill, morality, and people risking their lives to do the right thing and seeking justice. Readers of all ages will enjoy these stories of intelligent animals who can teach us about the better angels of our nature.

Takeaway: Anthropomorphic animals in a fantasy world offer gentle lessons in morality and justice.

Comparable Titles: Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw, Jasper Fforde’s The Constant Rabbit.

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

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This compelling romance from Merrill (author of Haunted, among others) showcases the ways love can be defined and redefined through the complexities of a life riddled with chronic pain, trauma, and second chances. Joe, a renowned dancer and former college cheerleader, finds himself caught between worlds when reunited and falling for Leslie, a retired NFL star, for whom he has always kept a steady flame. Their connection began over a decade ago in college, and continued over messages and lavish displays of affection over distance for years. Focused on his career and not ready to commit to the long-term relationship Leslie has wanted, Joe has kept his distance. Until now.

Leslie and his brother Barry are revamping the athletics program at the college of their meet-cute, and want Joe there to coach cheer. Joe commits to a year of coaching, both to prove to himself that he’s more than just a dance star, and also to explore the love for Leslie that has always been bubbling under the surface of his life. The first few months are exhilarating, a budding competition between the two programs makes a perfect environment for playful banter and flirtation. However, as time wears on, Joe and Leslie must decide the life they want to build together and what each is willing to do to create it.

Merrill writes sexual tension and chemistry with irresistible charge, and the leads’ attraction and connection pulses on every page, building to satisfying scenes of intimacy and love. The prose is quick and witty, even as characters’ conflicts within the building of their relationship are believable and relatable, as Merrill takes seriously the difficult but common worries that thread together beautifully human lives. This strength only ties into others within Merrill’s writing, which is focused on the representation of queer joy in the romance genre. Gender disparities and prejudices are addressed with poise and wisdom.

Takeaway: Standout second-chance romance showcasing love, trust, and joy.

Comparable Titles: Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue, Liz Bowery’s Love, Hate & Clickbait.

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

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