Michel Leboeuf’s "Lost Songs of Nature" is a thought-provoking study of “acoustic ecology,” or the natural and human-made sounds of the world, that carries warnings about contemporary threats to biodiversity. Organized into five... Read More

A Black woman in academia mobilizes her research skills to investigate a murder in Zoe B. Wallbrook’s spirited novel "History Lessons". A junior professor at illustrious Harrison University, Daphne studies the history of Black families... Read More

African identities are diverse in Iheoma Nwachukwu’s haunting, award-winning collection "Japa and Other Stories". Japa is both noun and verb, identity and a place in the mind. Japa children escape Nigeria to far-flung continents,... Read More

A mudslide sets off a string of unexplained violence in "The Orchids Lady", a sun-suffused mystery novel in Freya Smallwood’s Abelove and Bradley series. Ogy Bradley is a neuroscientist and widower who returns home to find his quiet... Read More

Resembling an updated Devil’s Dictionary with its sarcastic definitions of buzzwords and euphemistic phrases, "A Dictionary of Modern Consternation" sifts through business and technology jargon and slang vocabulary in a subversive... Read More

Downtrodden heroes are the focus of "Prairie Edge", an intimate, unsparing novel about the lives of Indigenous people in Canada. Ezzy is an aimless young man of Métis descent who has been scarred by stints in prison. He struggles to... Read More

A powerful wizard protects her right to self-determination in Patricia A. McKillip’s fantasy classic "The Forgotten Beasts of Eld". “Every time I read "The Forgotten Beasts of Eld", I am filled with love,” writes Marjorie Liu in... Read More

A father’s suicide shakes loose family secrets, reigniting interest in a cold case, in Kate Brody’s engrossing thriller "Rabbit Hole". A decade past her older half-sister’s disappearance, Teddy teaches in the high school where her... Read More