Therapist Collins (A Couple’s Guide to Sexual Addiction) chronicles in this candid memoir her long, rocky relationship with Tibetan Buddhism. After her marriage fell apart when she was 26, the author became interested in meditation, seeing in it a “way out” of the mental suffering that had long plagued her. At 34, she visited a friend at a Tibetan monastery on the Hudson River in Upstate New York and wound up staying for five years, drawn to the sense of security provided by the program and its spiritual teachers. Eager to become “the best student ever,” she threw herself into Buddhist practice, even as she recognized how it sparked an unhealthy sense of competition with other participants. After taking vows to become a nun, she embarked on a three-year retreat where participants engaged in rigorous, painful practices like sleeping cross-legged in a three-square-foot meditation box. But in her attempts to “pretzel myself into some version of an ideal nun,” she slowly came to realize she’d paradoxically rejected the central tenet of Buddhism—namely, that one must find acceptance in oneself rather than in external approval—and left the monastery. In lucid prose, Collins acknowledges the beauty of Buddhism while emphasizing the flexibility of a spiritual tradition where pursuing awakening can mean turning away from institutional practice. It’s a frank, refreshingly nontraditional take on what spiritual growth looks like. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

“Read this book,” memoirist Thanh (To the Bridge) implores in her introduction to this nightmarish memoir of everyday life in Gaza. “Hassan Kanafani risked his life to write it.” Drawn from the author’s Reddit posts spanning from December 2024 to July 2025, the diary centers on life in the tent that engineering graduate Kanafani—a pseudonym—shares with his parents, grandmother, and siblings. His eyewitness reports include harrowing stories of neighbors pulling the bodies of their children from rubble, meager meals cooked over fires made of scraps of clothing, and performative acts of gratitude cruelly demanded by aid workers. “They are killing us—not only with bombs and bullets, but with hunger, with imprisonment, and with the relentless, brutal violation of our dignity,” he writes, as he recalls walking the camp at night and hearing the buzz of drones intermingling with the cries of starving children. (He also keeps track of skyrocketing food prices resulting from Israeli blockades; a bag of flour rises to more than $200, a single onion to $13.) “The truth about the war on Gaza is simple,” Kanafani explains after a so-called ceasefire during which Israel never stopped its attacks. “The occupation doesn’t want to stop the killing. It only wants to change its justifications.” This astonishing account demands readers look directly at the horrors in Gaza without blinking. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Bahr (Stag) delivers a bold, propulsive tale of violence and vengeance in the early-20th-century American West. The action opens with outlaw Ben Kilt emerging from a shallow grave in the Montana wilderness, only to narrowly survive a mountain lion attack. He’s saved by Bonnie Grace, a 13-year-old Native American girl, and brought to the remote cabin where she lives with her enslaver, whom Ben kills. He then takes Bonnie along to help find the man who buried him alive: his half brother and bank-robbing partner, Sidney Bosco. Bahr mostly sticks with Ben’s viewpoint as his quest for retribution ramps up, but occasional interludes from Bonnie’s perspective inject the otherwise sinewy narrative with philosophical flourishes (“One must embrace the changes and in turn change with them,” the teenager muses of her entanglement with Ben). As the body count increases, Ben’s thoughts take on a bleakly cerebral valence of their own: “Dying’s all the same, kiddo. There’s no beating that,” he tells Bonnie after killing three men who’ve accosted her. Eventually, the mash-up of bloody violence and high-minded prose threatens to grow wearisome, but Bahr’s outré vision and well-developed characters save the day. Thriller fans seeking something off the beaten path should check this out. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

MacKenzie (Feast Days) delivers an ambitious blend of espionage thriller and metaphysical fiction that spans a decade of geopolitical upheaval and takes readers from the Horn of Africa to Myanmar. After the 9/11 attacks, American spy Anna Hendrix worked for years in counterterrorism before burning out and transferring to the “energy directorate.” As the novel opens in 2011, she’s back on the job after giving birth to her daughter, Thea. Anna is sent to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with a new mission: to investigate China’s interest in a mysterious, otherworldly metal of unknown origin known simply as “The Resource.” Soon, Anna finds herself on a global chase for a variety of bad actors, employing several identities to stay safe. MacKenzie sets Anna’s mission, which ends up lasting a decade, against a backdrop of real-world historical events from the assassination of Osama bin Laden to the shifting global alliances that follow the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Anna is the consummate spy, and MacKenzie effectively narrates the story from her first-person perspective, combining her sober investigative voice with moving philosophical meditations on motherhood. The result is a gripping, complex slow burn featuring plenty of old-school tradecraft that will appeal to fans of John le Carré, Graham Greene, and Dan Fesperman. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Mount Shasta, Calif., high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.” But Japanese American Izzy, conceived during a one-night stand in her mother Hanako’s final year at Harvard, has never known the identity of her father. So when she and her best friend find a letter in Hanako’s bedroom, the duo jump at the chance to ferret out Izzy’s dad’s true identity—only to find out he’s the Crown Prince of Japan. Desperate to know her father, Izzy agrees to spend the summer in his home country. But press surveillance, pressure to quickly learn the language and etiquette, and an unexpected romance make her time in Tokyo more fraught than she imagined. Add in a medley of cousins and an upcoming wedding, and Izzy is in for an unforgettable summer. Abrupt switches from Izzy’s perspective to lyrical descriptions of Japan may disrupt readers’ enjoyment, but a snarky voice plus interspersed text conversations and tabloid coverage keep the pages turning in Jean’s (Empress of All Seasons) fun, frothy, and often heartfelt duology starter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Kelkar’s (Bindu’s Bindis) novel features Oceanview Academy middle schooler Sonali, whose stoicism contrasts with her love of Bollywood movies’ melodrama. Stuck in a Los Angeles home with constantly arguing parents and her sensitive nine-year-old brother Ronak, Gujarati American Sonali, 11, tries to make sense of her world through the Hindi movies she’s seen all her life. Ever since an earnest public attempt five years ago to stop her parents’ fighting led to widespread embarrassment in front of family, Sonali has resolved to hide her emotions and do her best to ignore her parents’ arguments. But her efforts prove futile when her parents decide to try the “nesting” method of separation, where they take turns living in the house with Sonali and Ronak. The contemporary narrative takes an entertaining fabulist turn as Sonali’s life begins to transform into a Bollywood movie, with everything she feels and thinks made apparent through her “Bollywooditis.” Sonali’s first-person perspective is sympathetic as she navigates friendship and family drama, and Kelkar successfully infuses a resonant narrative with “filmi magic,” offering a tale with universal appeal through an engaging cultural lens. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

When she was six, Justice Kasric watched her blue-eyed merchant father play chess with the Faerie King. Now 15, Justice believes the event was merely a dream. She spends her days yearning for adventure, watching from the sidelines while her 16-year-old sister Faith, as slender and golden-haired as Justice but not as curious, becomes the toast of Victorian London society. One night, however, their father shatters their comfortable lifestyles when he forces the family—Justice, Faith, their younger brother Henry, and their constantly medicated, distant mother—into a locked carriage that takes them to a shadowy mansion. Justice’s discovery that the Faerie have invaded the human world and are targeting her family gains further urgency when she learns that her parents are on opposite sides of the conflict. Together, the Kasric siblings—including older brothers Benedict and Joshua—must find a way to save their family. While characters lack depth at times, and insufficient historical details don’t fully evoke the Victorian setting, Klaver’s (the Supernatural Case Files of Sherlock Holmes series) rich, lyrical descriptions augment the fantastical source material in this engaging series starter. Ages 13–up. Agent: Lucienne Diver, the Knight Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Nine years before this novel begins, eight-year-old best friends Esme Randal and Kayla Price snuck out of their cabin at Camp Pine Lake in Texas. They swore never to discuss the terrible events that followed, but when the girls, now 17, return to the camp as counselors-in-training from their hometown of Lewisburg, Pa., that proves easier said than done. Someone begins sabotaging camp activities, and ominous—and increasingly public—threats appear, referencing that fateful summer. The only other person who knows Esme and Kayla’s secret is a local girl named Lillian Campbell, whom they left to fend for herself that night in the woods. They’re loath to voice their suspicions of revenge lest they get in trouble or look bad in front of hunky fellow counselors Jake and Olly, but as events escalate, they realize they may not have a choice. Narrating from Esme’s increasingly apprehensive first-person perspective, Preston (The Twin) pays homage to classic summer camp slasher films. The underdeveloped, predominantly white cast relies heavily on stereotype, and the clichéd tormenter’s motive feels unearned, but horror fans will likely appreciate this paranoia-fueled tale’s gruesome, shocking close. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jon Elek, United Agents. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Inspired by her own family’s refugee journey from Vietnam to Hong Kong, Văn’s (If You Were Night) spare picture book, powerful in its deliberate simplicity, follows a black-haired, pale-skinned child as they, their guardian, and two younger siblings join other asylum seekers for a perilous maritime voyage. In a third-person voice, Văn anthropomorphizes objects, relaying their wishes: “The dream wished it was longer,” one spread reads, as a balding, mustached guardian holds the protagonist close, and a guardian with a bun rouses the second child to dress them. “The clock wished it was slower,” the subsequent pages read, as the two children tearfully hug their mustached guardian goodbye. The narrative continues as the now family of four make their way onto the boat and beyond. A final-act switch to first-person perspective drives home the journey’s personal nature. Intricate, lissome fine-lined art by Ngai (Dazzle Ships) recalls classical Asian compositions, Japanese woodblock prints, and an evocative sensibility in a gradated, surrealistic color palette. A seamless interweaving of elegant prose and atmospheric art marks this affecting immigrant narrative. Back matter includes heartfelt author’s and illustrator’s notes. Ages 4–8. (May)

Correction: A previous version of this review misquoted the book's text.

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

In a straightforward picture book debut by Meloy (the Apothecary series), a red-orange octopus is “happy in his cave,” until a human, portrayed as a pale hand, tricks the cephalopod into occupying a glove and subsequently takes him to “a glass house that wasn’t a cave.” Though the octopus is offered interactive tests and activities—including building blocks, a jar to unscrew, tight passages to navigate, and a camera to photograph visitors to his aquarium home—his days lack differentiation, and the pining octopus soon devises an intrepid plan to return home. The sympathetic prose is rhythmic, allowing readers to see the octopus’s perspective at every step of the process: of the glass house, “There were no waves. No little shivery ones. No big tumbling ones.” Sala (Green on Green) contributes vibrant art rendered in gouache, watercolor, and pastel on paper; particularly effective are spreads of the sinuous subject’s ocean life, with its richly varied flora and fauna. The Finding Nemo–esque adventure follows a predictable arc, but the tender narrative is gratifying and may serve as an effective jumping-off point for discussions about animal captivity. Ages 3–7. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink