In the early 20th century, Frona grows up as the responsible oldest daughter in a hardworking family, troubled by her many appetites and guilty about the reproving looks she thinks are given to her by the family icon of Mary and Jesus. Betrothed at 14, she moves at 18 to a new village with the […]
Clarke recaps the Gospel Nativity story through the perspective of Maor, an old mouse living in the Bethlehem stable where Joseph and Mary take shelter and Mary delivers Jesus. (Other barnyard animals are present, including a nervous dove called Mendel, a stentorian goose called Gettel, and a cow called Rebecca, whose feed trough makes a […]
In the not-too-distant future, artificial intelligences and machine-minds handle most of humankind’s chores, including transportation, school admissions, and banking. Teenager Wyoming Plankston comes from a somewhat affluent family in the Washington, D.C., area (their fortune was largely lost in a poor investment in Crashlandia Airways). Wyoming is a good-natured, unmotivated third-year student at third-rate boarding […]
It’s 2021, and Charlie Minto is looking forward to a bright future in El Paso, Texas, when tragedy strikes him again. A decade ago, when he was 16,his parents were killed by a drunk driver. Charlie worked through his grief by completing a tour in Afghanistan as a U.S. Marine, then graduated from the University […]
Prince Elias of Gledann, the resentful heir of a domineering and abusive king, is forced into a politically motivated marriage with Princess Fu Liling of Toguan. Liling is both a dutiful daughter and a reluctant pawn; her bond with her own powerful father grants her unusual privileges as she steels herself to manipulate foreign courts. […]
The three young women at the center of O’Hare’s debut—Róise, Maggie, and Harley—are closing out their 20s with a bang. Though “Róise assumed they would evolve naturally from twenty-something buck eejits into secure and self-actualized young women who had skincare regimes and remembered to pay the council tax on time,” this is definitely not on […]
Auld focuses on an African beetle, but as her information-packed book notes, similar species are found on every continent but Antarctica, and “in forests, farmland, and deserts,” as well as in the savanna. Among the many books about the dung beetle, this one stands out for tracking a particular beetle’s life cycle, but without giving […]
Alyte learns about the world through a series of encounters with other creatures, all of them trying to comprehend their place in a great chain of being. It’s a fairly terrifying adventure: He continually learns that eating or being eaten is part of everyday life, and that dying is “the natural order of things.” In […]
Montana in 1906 may not be quite as wild as in the recent past, but it’s certainly exciting enough for Lord Atherly, who’s fossil hunting and awaiting the arrival of his heir, Viscount “Lyndy” Lyndhurst, and his wife, Stella, on the Ninebark Ranch owned by Ned Smith, the second husband of Stella’s mother. Stella and […]
Being stuck at work on her birthday seems fitting for Nora Bird, whose special day has felt marked by death since the untimely demise of both her parents on the same day 18 years earlier, when she was 8. It’s all the more fitting because Nora’s work is quite literally the work of death. Like […]