“Society cannot exist,” the philosopher Edmund Burke cautioned, without “a controlling power upon will and appetite…men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” A similar warning may reside in The Rock Eaters, Brenda Peynado’s beautifully bizarre…
Sheba Karim’s new novel, The Marvelous Mirza Girls, follows the gap-year adventures of Noreen, who moves to New Delhi from New Jersey with her hip single mom, Ruby, to recover from the recent death of her beloved aunt. During their…
Emery Lee’s Meet Cute Diary is a wonderfully refreshing pull of a book. In this transgender romcom, teen Noah anonymously runs a “meet cute” blog full of stories about trans people finding true love in the real world. But there’s…
During this pandemic, I have traveled, with nary a mask in sight, to the Highlands of Scotland, an island in Tahiti and, most recently, a mountainside village in Jamaica. Tamp down that frisson of anger you feel—I’m speaking, of course,…
Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, a “portrait of the artist as a shy, awkward Mexican-American girl,” follows its indomitable protagonist from kindergarten to 12th grade. Angie defines resilience, yet Donna Miscolta manages to empower her heroine without downplaying the violence…
Furia, by Yamile (sha-MEE-lay) Saied Méndez, is the gripping, new YA debut igniting positive reviews around the world. It introduces readers to Camila, an athletic dynamo intent on playing soccer and taking charge of her life in the face of…