by Per Högselius, trans. by Agnes Broomé
"Beaches are places of mystery and contradiction," writes Per Högselius, a Swedish professor of technology and the history of science, in Death on the Beach: Essays from a Marginal World, translated by Agnes Broomé. In 15 fascinating, expansive essays that encompass wars, religions, crime novels, murders, poets, and much more, he proves his point that "the seashore is a borderland," a place that once "evoked fear and repulsion." His examples are often visually evocative. For instance, before the
Read More »
by Kathleen Hanna
Kathleen Hanna has led such a high-octane life that her memoir wouldn't need to be especially well written to hold reader interest. As it happens, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk delivers on both the sentence and the story fronts.
Born in 1968, Hanna grew up "at the lower end of middle class," bouncing between suburbs in Oregon and Maryland. Her father's alcoholism blighted a childhood redeemed by Hanna's youthful epiphany: "I had something to live for. I was a good singer." Despite a minefield of challenges,
Read More »
by Nick Crumpton, illus. by Gavin Scott
Zoologist Nick Crumpton and illustrator Gavin Scott follow their Everything You Know About Dinosaurs Is Wrong!--the first installment in the Everything You Know About series--with a mesmerizing dive into the world of the oft-maligned shark. Crumpton structures the work around common myths about the shark and its close relatives, the ray and the skate. Scott supports the fascinating text with naturalistic art that faithfully re-creates the animals described. The result is a spellbinding picture book for middle-grade
Read More »
by Sylvie Cathrall
Two bereaved strangers work to unravel the mystery of their siblings' disappearance in Sylvie Cathrall's dreamy, witty epistolary underwater fantasy, A Letter to the Luminous Deep, the first book in a planned duology.
E. Cidnosin is fascinated with the previously undiscovered "Elongated Fish" she spots through the window of the Deep House, her underwater home, so she writes to Henerey Clel, a natural history scholar and complete stranger. Her social anxiety leads her to exhort him not to read her letter but
Read More »
by Jonathan Rigsby
Possessed of a master's degree in Middle Eastern studies and performing at an exemplary level in his job as a counter-terrorism intelligence analyst for the State of Florida, Jonathan Rigsby in 2016 was successful by any reasonable definition of that term. But in the dark year when his marriage broke up and he desperately needed to supplement his income to hold up his end of the divorce settlement, he signed on as an Uber driver in his home town of Tallahassee, Fla. Drive: Scraping by in Uber's America,
Read More »
by Rex Ogle
In Road Home, the heart-wrenching final book in his memoir trilogy that began with Free Lunch, Rex Ogle details the turbulent summer of 1998 after high school when he came out as gay and was forced out of the house by his father.
"I never thought I would have so little," Ogle writes of his 17-year-old self, "Not when I need so much." The young man, with nowhere else to go, packs a duffle bag and drives from Alabama to New Orleans to stay with an older man whom he met during a vacation. Their short, tumultuous
Read More »
by Deborah Hopkinson, illus. by Kenard Pak
In the beguiling On a Summer Night, Deborah Hopkinson (Carter Reads the Newspaper) and Kenard Pak (On the Horizon illustrator) eloquently showcase the hushed, magical wonder of a hot summer night.
A child wakes on a night so warm that "even the crickets think it's too hot to sing." The child walks through the house and explores the yard in moonlit shadows. Hopkins sets the story in present tense, with a second-person voice asking: "What has woken you?" As the child explores inside and outside the home, the
Read More »
