A girl tries to avoid the cleaning part of a Sunday tradition in this wholesome picture book about family bonding. Every Sunday, Clara’s dad cleans and sings while her mother makes gumbo; Clara loves the singing but could do without... Read More

In Lilian West’s mystery novel "Pretty Dead Things", a bride-to-be works to solve a peculiar cold case buried and forgotten about for decades. Newly engaged Cora relocates to Hickory Falls, the small town where her fiancé grew up. At... Read More

In a remote Italian town, an unassuming cobbler is drawn into helping partisans fight against fascists and Nazis in Sacha Naspini’s novel "The Bishop’s Villa". Despite missing several fingers, René is the cobbler of Le Case. He’s... Read More

In Elizabeth Lowham’s enthralling fantasy novel "Casters and Crowns", a reverse Sleeping Beauty curse forces a princess to confront the truth about magic in her kingdom. Aria will inherit her father’s crown—if she can survive the... Read More

Visual anthropologist and filmmaker Sarah Thomas’s eloquent memoir-in-essays "The Raven’s Nest" covers her time in Iceland, where her views about people’s relationships to land and to each other sharpened. The book draws contrasts... Read More

In Peter Macsovszky’s philosophical novel "Making Skeletons Dance", a barfly takes on Amsterdam. As a struggling writer and relative newcomer to the Netherlands, Simon’s perspective on the place is different than most people’s. He... Read More

Gioia Diliberto’s "Firebrands" visits the Roaring Twenties and beyond, revealing how four women’s efforts shaped the course of American history. When American women won the right to vote in 1920, some politicians assumed they would... Read More

This picture book biography is the latest in a celebrated series, rooting adult successes in childhood lessons. Growing up, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry struggled in school; he failed his Naval Academy entrance exams and found little career... Read More