Shi, an actor and founder of the Shaolin Temple Europe, debuts with a methodical introduction to Shaolin, a combination of meditation and martial arts that aims to unite body and mind. Drawing from more than three decades of training, Shi toggles between historical context—detailing the practice’s Buddhist roots and evolution—and instruction on how meditation and breathing exercises can help to boost awareness, emotional regulation, and moral clarity. The book shines in linking abstract concepts to embodied routines, connecting Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path to martial discipline. Yi also carefully draws out how key Shaolin values like loyalty, restraint, perseverance, and mental clarity apply to everyday situations, noting, for example, that greater mental awareness can help readers circumvent automatic emotional reactions and respond more productively to tricky situations at work or home. Written in plain prose and buttressed by lucid and in-depth explanations of the practice, this eschews quick fixes for important insights into cultivating peace and awareness for long-term personal growth. It’s a grounded, disciplined guide to finding steadiness in an increasingly stressful world. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Gibbs, best known for playing Florence Johnston on The Jeffersons, highlights her personal struggles and professional triumphs in this empowering autobiography. The action begins at the 2025 American Black Film Festival Honors, where Gibbs, at 93, told the room, “If you have some projects for me, my agents are standing right over there,” in the middle of her acceptance speech for a legacy award. That indefatigable spirit suffuses the proceedings: early sections about Gibbs’s turbulent Chicago childhood in the 1930s and ’40s are sandwiched between a glowing foreword from Regina King, who played Gibbs’s daughter on the TV sitcom 277, and a triumphant recollection of her move to Los Angeles in the ’60s. There, while working as a United Airlines flight attendant, Gibbs booked a slate of blaxploitation films that led to her defining role as the Jefferson family’s spunky maid. Gibbs deepens her behind-the-scenes anecdotes, which also include stints on Scandal and Tyler Perry projects, by interweaving them with an unflinching account of her abusive marriage to her high school boyfriend and details of her turn toward faith after she suffered a brain aneurism and a stroke. The result is funny, moving, and more than a little inspiring. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

The incisive latest from Molope (Such a Lonely, Lovely Road) finds a Black South African teen and her mother reckoning with their frayed bond in the aftermath of apartheid. Kelelo Malaka’s mother, Kewame, a former anti-apartheid activist, was a political prisoner at 16, before Kelelo was born, and later became famous thanks to a photograph showing her confronting an armed white soldier with Kelelo strapped to her back. Kelelo learns of her mom’s fame when she’s six and wishes the emotionally absent Kewame could be “[her] mother” rather than “Mother of the Nation,” as she’s called in the press. After apartheid, Kewame and her husband send a pubescent Kelelo against her will to a newly desegregated school, where she becomes withdrawn, forced by administrators to speak only in English and resentful at Kewame’s inability to be soft and comforting. For her part, Kewame, who struggles in an increasingly unhappy marriage, worries about Kelelo, and begins to grapple with how her commitment to activism has harmed her relationships. The story builds to an insightful depiction of the complexities of mother-daughter dynamics. As Kewame reflects, “We love like this, the women in this family: with tenderness and fury.” This will move readers. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Shakur, stepbrother of rapper Tupac Shakur, paints vivid portraits of his family and hip-hop culture in his raucous debut. The author recaps a boyhood spent between North Carolina, Harlem, and Queens, where he fell in love with rap in the 1970s, and his later exploits rapping and producing with Tupac’s Thug Life group. Opening sections celebrate Shakur’s father, Mutulu, a charismatic founder of the Republic of New Afrika organization, before the narrative zooms in on Shakur’s time with Thug Life in the 1990s. What follows is an entertaining picaresque featuring starstruck fans, celebrity cameos from Snoop Dogg to Madonna, and violent feuds (“There were several 9-millimeters onstage, including mine,” Shakur recalls of an Atlanta show). Later chapters depict a darker Tupac after he was shot in New York and convicted of sexual abuse; the stepbrothers drifted apart after Tupac “disciplined” Shakur by forcing him to fight members of his entourage. It adds up to a rich, clear-eyed study of a rapper’s life interspersed with uncompromising assertions of the author’s values (“In what world do the cops not care about a dying child?” he wonders when NYPD patrolmen ignore his report of a Black kid getting hit by a bus). Readers will be rapt. Agent: Jon Michael Darga, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | 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