Historian Brands (America First) examines George Washington’s life with an eye to uncovering what gave him his unique character in this immersive biography. Brands tracks how the resourcefulness, bravery, decisiveness, and diligence of a talented young officer who “[found] war invigorating and seductive” morphed into the signature mix of authority and modesty of the general who famously accepted command of the Continental army while proclaiming his unworthiness, and who possessed an almost preternatural ability to inspire while exhibiting an extreme devotion to duty. These traits led Washington to relinquish power not once but twice—first giving up his command of the army at the end of the war, and then again giving up the presidency after two terms—inspiring the fledgling nation with confidence in the soundness of its republican ideals. In Brands’s assessment, Washington was painfully self-aware that his every move set a precedent—he wasn’t a creature of pure instinct—but, on the other hand, the gentlemanly disinterest at the bedrock of his persona was partly a product of his aristocratic upbringing. A passage depicting Washington’s idle handling of the fates of his slaves showcases the unsettling side of such a disinterested persona, though Brands doesn’t peer too far into those depths. This detailed character study reveals a Washington who manifested his own myth. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Szpila’s wild ecofeminist debut centers on bipolar antiheroine Anna Frenza, CEO of Poland’s national oil company. Brash and abusive, Frenza rails against what she views as empty rhetoric from environmental activists who “claim to be the saviors of the planet but would, in reality, do pretty much anything for a Hass avocado and an almond milk latte.” Ironically, Frenza is revealed to be a tree hugger of a different kind when she’s caught on camera having sex with a tree while sleepwalking and loses her job. The incident gives way to a whopping tale of time travel through medieval Poland where, in the 17th century, the Earthen Ones, a tribe of nature-worshipping women, are led by Mathilde Spalt. The Earthen Ones have renounced conventional life to live in the forest and have carnal knowledge of plants—their lovers are trees, moss, twigs, and branches. Most fascinating is the latter part of the novel, in which Frenza, back in the present, is in a mental institution populated with modern-day Earthen Ones. Driving the bizarre material are intriguing ideas on gender, climate change, and religion. There’s an arresting quality to this strange tale. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Debut author Rader expands on his social media account of the same name for this entertaining look at the visual parallels between art and athletics. He organizes the book by sport, finding the “violence, chaos, and tension” of football in Juan Gris’s cubist Portrait of Pablo Picasso, which he sets alongside an up-close shot of quarterback Trevor Lawrence, his features askew from a hit to the head. For basketball, an image of women’s college coach Dawn Staley cutting down the net after winning the national championship is paired with Benvenuto Cellini’s sculpture Perseus with the Head of Medusa, whose serpentine hair and entrails mirror the net in Staley’s hand. Elsewhere, a photo of baseball star Jackie Robinson sliding into a base is juxtaposed with Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau’s The Shepherd David, whose biblical subject straddles a lion in victory. (All three, the author writes, were pioneers—Robinson for breaking the color barrier in baseball when he joined the Dodgers in 1947, Bouguereau for succeeding in the male-dominated painting world, and David for “taking on the larger-than-life Goliath.”) That’s as deep as the analysis gets, but the parallels drawn here are surprising and often irresistibly funny. This will delight the author’s fans and win him some new ones. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Entrepreneur Bradford-Scott debuts with a stranger-than-fiction account of growing up in Ontario and Florida as the daughter of a career criminal. Though Bradford-Scott’s father, Jean Claude Garofoli, was ostensibly a jeweler, the author learned of his criminality at age 12 in 1977, when she stepped off the school bus to find police cars on her lawn. Instead of explaining the scene, Bradford-Scott’s mother bundled her into her grandmother’s car and announced they’d be moving to Florida while her father handled some “business.” In the late ’80s, Garofoli went to prison on drug trafficking charges, and Bradford-Scott made peace with his legacy. Decades later, however, Bradford-Scott’s mother presented her with a binder containing a manuscript her father had written behind bars. Reading it revealed that Garofoli’s shady dealings went far deeper than she realized, and may have included helping the CIA fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Eventually, Bradford-Scott found closure by expressing her complicated feelings in letters she addressed to Garofoli after his death (“Your legacy isn’t just in the challenges I’ve had to overcome; it’s in the courage I’ve developed to keep moving forward”). Propulsive and emotionally nuanced, this satisfies. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

This ambitious romantasy from Corland (the Broken Blades series) gets off to a slow start but develops into a tense locked-room murder mystery rife with political intrigue and secrets. Twenty years ago, the senators of Pryor murdered their tyrannical king and exterminated his magical Elusian bloodline, ending a century-long war and establishing a republic. Every year, these events are commemorated in the Revelry, a night of indulgence coinciding with the annual conclave, a weeklong gathering of the Republic’s leaders to debate and pass legislation. When one of the senators is murdered, Praetorian Torren Morvane’s investigation leads him to Kerasea Vestal, High Priestess of the Temple of Truth, though it quickly becomes clear that she is being framed. With the conclave under lockdown and more bodies piling up, Torren and Kerasea must overcome years of mutual distrust to determine who among them is a killer. Meanwhile, as the two grow closer and eventually give in to newfound desire, Kerasea hides her secret heritage as the last surviving Elusian. The ancient Rome–flavored worldbuilding gets somewhat muddled, but surly Torren and resourceful Kerasea have satisfying chemistry and, once the claustrophobic mystery picks up, it’s fun to watch them navigate this fraught situation. An abrupt cliffhanger ending leaves much to be developed in further installments. Corland fans will be eager for more. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

This engrossing if formulaic grimdark adventure from the prolific Moore (The War Born), who died in 2024, provides red meat for sword-and-sorcery devotees. The eponymous protagonist is introduced looking back on his time as a prisoner of the Alhakka, a reptilian people at odds with his bloodthirsty father, Forris Grimm, who has already sacrificed the lives of Korrigan’s siblings by not adhering to the terms of a truce with his foes. During his years in captivity, Korrigan became enamored of Whisper, an Alhakkan princess, who trained him to fight. When he was 19, Korrigan escaped, with the help of pearls produced from the glands of dragons, after Whisper warned him that his execution was imminent. Following a brief reunion with Forris before his death, Korrigan seeks out the mightiest dragon, the immortal Great Wyrm, to gain immortality for himself. The prose can be clunky, but there’s never a dull moment as Korrigan fights battle after battle, utilizing magic to take on legions of foes. Readers looking for high fantasy with a classic feel should check this out. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

The disappearance of a teenage boy sends shockwaves through a British beach town in the overstuffed latest from bestseller Clarke (The Surf House). The morning after Jacob Symonds’s 17th birthday party, his mother, Sarah, awakes in the family’s beach hut near Bristol to find him gone. The date of Jacob’s disappearance is exactly seven years after his childhood friend, Marley, drowned in the same area, stirring up speculation among the Symondses’ neighbors that Marley’s death and Jacob’s disappearance might be linked. Clarke alternates narration between Sarah and Isla, Marley’s mother, slowly teasing out the relationships between the boys’ families and the precise circumstances of Marley’s death. Eventually, the fragile tissue of the lies about his drowning, which have kept the women’s friendship alive and maintained peace in their town for nearly a decade, begins to dissolve, and the search for Jacob forces them to face long-buried truths. The novel’s first quarter lacks heat, and when the pace picks up, Clarke lays the implausible misunderstandings and wanton cruelty on too thick. It’s a bumpy ride. Agent: Gráinne Fox, UTA. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

A French coast guard officer confronts the existential dilemma of her job in the thought-provoking English-language debut by novelist and philosopher Delecroix. As a coordinator of sea rescues in the English Channel, the unnamed narrator is regularly forced to decide whether to send or withhold assistance for sinking boats. Most often the doomed crafts are carrying refugees making the perilous crossing to the U.K., and her decisions frequently come down to whether the craft is in her country’s waters, among other calculations. One evening, she communicates with a man on a raft of refugees drifting somewhere along the line between French and English waters. He calls her 14 times over the course of a couple of hours as the boat slowly sinks. All but two of the 29 aboard end up drowning. The news causes intense hand wringing on both sides of the Channel, and most of the novel consists of the narrator replaying that night as well as her subsequent exchange with a police investigator. The narrative takes on intriguing layers as the investigator grills her about her decisions and the recordings of her radio calls with the man, in which she attempts to absolve herself of guilt (“I didn’t ask you to leave”). It’s a satisfying exploration of a moral gray area. (Apr.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review misdescribed a plot point.

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Journalist McDougall’s ambitious debut traces the evolution of modern dance in New York City in the 20th century. He explores how the city’s dancers and choreographers reworked familiar forms, with George Balanchine making New York the epicenter of American ballet in the 1930s and ’40s while drawing subtly from jazz in dances that broke “ballet’s familiar lines.” In later decades, Alvin Ailey Jr. reshaped modern dance, jazz, and ballet in performances like Revelations, a gospel-influenced ballet that drew on his Texas roots to “speak to African Americans’ shared experience of struggle and hope” and attracted new, nonwhite audiences to the art form. McDougall also explores how vastly different dance styles coexisted in the city, with the high-kicking “militant unison” of the Rockettes, whose popularity climbed in the ’30s and ’40s, contrasting with the looseness and abstraction of jazz and downtown troupes like the Communist Workers Dance League. While the author sometimes struggles to synthesize the wealth of material, he comprehensively catalogs the people and places who shaped the city’s dance innovations and teases out how dance intersected with or served as a testing ground for questions about race and gender. Dance aficionados will find plenty of interest. Photos. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Retired U.S. Navy officer and bestselling author Campbell (the Doomed Earth duology) puts his military experience to good use in this action-packed account of an extraplanetary mission to investigate new planets. Navy ensign Osiris Aquino has been assigned to command the marines stationed onboard the Darwin, a civilian vessel. While working to overcome his charges’ distrust of a leader from a different part of the military, Aquino must also figure out how the understaffed contingent, only half of a full squad, can function, a task made harder by his suspicion that the six marines and their sergeant are not the cream of the crop. Those concerns are tested after an interstellar jump takes Darwin to Janus Five, a planet whose former inhabitants appear to have gone extinct with no evidence of why they vanished. A reckless decision by the scientific team dispatched to that planet’s surface, possibly linked to the agenda of the private entities funding the expedition, puts lives in danger, and forces Aquino to learn his capabilities, and those of the marines, in an extreme situation. This taut, entertaining military SF plot will appeal to fans of Jack McDevitt. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink