Texas author Meacham began writing novels in retirement; this last was completed before her death in 2021 at age 83. Her heroine, Kathryn Walker, is the put-together, 40-something wife of a successful orthopedic surgeon; both have come a long way from their impoverished, almost Dickensian backgrounds. Now their daughter is at college in Boulder and […]
Following an injuryas a competitive runner during his senior year of high school, Tao learned about the field of physical therapy and found it to be a “profound, eye-opening experience.” By 2020, he’d taken the most difficult, but potentially most rewarding first step in his career: residency at a health clinic in San Francisco. As […]
Boaz’s novel opens two weeks after George’s mother, Louise, vanished from Willow, New Mexico. In the year or so before her disappearance, George and their girlfriend, Truley, had been living with Louise in her home. Cobbling together part-time jobs, the two semi-adrift 20-somethings pursued their creative pursuits while Louise, a native New Yorker and former […]
Even after a generation, the small Vancouver Island town of Tass is feeling the effects of the Big One, a sinkhole that swallowed an entire church full of people. No bodies were ever recovered. Sixteen-year-old Hudson has always delighted in exploring the area’s sprawling cave systems, but he’s recently become increasingly worried about the looming […]
One day, Dustin is planning to spend an epic summer in Japan with his baseball team, playing the sport he loves more than anything. The next, he’s at the funeral of his 20-year-old cousin, a college baseball player with an undetected heart condition. There, Dustin meets Andrea, and despite his negative first impressions, they grow […]
Allen opens by describing how AI’s increasing prevalence has created new jobs and altered existing ones—for example, by automating many repetitive tasks. At the same time, AI is requiring people to develop new skills in areas such as writing, legislation, ethics, and machine-learning engineering. Five subsequent chapters go into more detail about the impact of […]
Rowan James and her sisters, born with magical gifts, live in Caball Hollow, West Virginia, where the townspeople treat them with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Rowan has a special ability to smell lies, so she becomes confused when she can’t detect dishonesty where she expects to find it. This discovery leads her to […]
Wolfgang—a gray wolf with a large gray guitar case strapped against his red-jacketed back—puts up a poster on a tree: “WOLF SEEKS GANG to form a rock band…Let’s howl!” Wolfgang becomes increasingly disappointed when no one responds. Just as he’s about to tear down the sign, a white rabbit named Rex—clad in a dark jacket […]
Every Sunday, Martin, his parents, and his dog, Maize, go to his grandparents’ house. Every visit is the same; bored one day, Martin decides to “[step] out into the unknown.” In detailed, action-packed double-page spreads in muted colors, Martin and Maize trek across several landscapes, from the “freezing cold of ice caps” to the “baking […]
With their lives destabilized by war and a devastating sickness spreading, Sabel, who has “wood-coloured” skin, sits down with her family to share a last meal before leaving home. But instead of the family leaving together, Appa and Amma send the kids—Sabel, Reya, Theri, Verlane, and S’Jin—off on their own. After a turbulent and disorienting […]