“A Little Devil in America,” “Whereabouts,” and 63 Other Exceptional Titles | Starred Reviews, Feb. 2021

Essential titles reviewed in our February 2021 print issue, spanning mystery & suspense, sf/fantasy, romance, graphic novels, parenting, fiction, social sciences, and more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MYSTERY & SUSPENSE

Hepworth, Sally. The Good Sister. St. Martin’s. 

Weisel, Frederick. The Silenced Women. Poisoned Pen: Sourcebooks.

 

SF/FANTASY

Addison, Katherine. The Witness for the Dead. Tor. 

Beaton, E. J. The Councillor. DAW.

Clark, C. L. The Unbroken. Orbit.

Villoso, K. S. The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng. Orbit.

 

ROMANCE

Booth, Karen. Gray Hair Don’t Care. Karen Booth.

Hibbert, Talia. Act Your Age, Eve Brown. Avon.

Shupe, Joanna. The Heiress Hunt. Avon.

 

GRAPHIC NOVELS

Kimball, Margaret. And Now I Spill the Family Secrets. HarperOne.

Mulot, Jerome & others. The Grande Odalisque. Fantagraphics Bks.

Tidhar, Lavie (text) & Paul McCaffrey (illus.). Adler. Titan Comics.

Urasawa, Naoki. Asadora!, Vol. 1. Viz Media.

 

PARENTING

Johnson Dias, Janice. Parent Like It Matters: How To Raise Joyful, Change-Making Girls. Ballantine.

 

FICTION

Benjamin, Ali. The Smash-Up. Random.

Boyd, William. Trio. Knopf.

Brooks, Malcolm. Cloudmaker. Grove.

Hammer, Alison. Little Pieces of Me. Morrow.

Hannah, Kristin. The Four Winds. St. Martin’s.

Heiny, Katherine. Early Morning Riser. Knopf.

Hunt, Laird. Zorrie. Bloomsbury.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Klara and the Sun. Knopf.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Whereabouts. Knopf.

Manai, Yamen. The Ardent Swarm. Amazon Crossing.

Romano-Lax, Andromeda. Annie and the Wolves. Soho.

Wieringa, Tommy. The Death of Murat Idrissi. Scribe.

Yejidé, Morowa. Creatures of Passage. Akashic.

 

ARTS & HUMANITIES

Abdurraqib, Hanif. A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. Random.

Almontaser, Threa. The Wild Fox of Yemen: Poems. Graywolf.

Belieu, Erin. Come-Hither Honeycomb. Copper Canyon.

Joudah, Fady. Tethered to Stars: Poems. Milkweed.

Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century. Vintage.

Oates, Joyce Carol. American Melancholy: Poems. Ecco: HarperCollins.

Sun, Jonny. Goodbye, Again: Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations. Harper Perennial.

White, Edward. The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense. Norton.

Zminda, Don. Double Plays and Double Crosses: The Black Sox and Baseball in 1920. Rowman & Littlefield.

 

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Cohn, Jonathan. The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unifinished Crusade for Universal Coverage. St. Martin’s.

The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century. Univ. of North Carolina.

Cooke, Julia. Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am. Houghton Harcourt.

Elder, Robert. Calhoun: American Heretic. Basic Books.

Jaffe, Sarah. Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. Bold Type Books.

Jaouad, Suleika. Between Two Kingdoms. Random.

McGarrahan, Ellen. Two Truths and a Lie: Murder, Obsession, and Justice in the Sunshine State. Random.

Masur, Kate. Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction. Norton.

Miller, Reuben Jonathan. Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration. Little, Brown.

Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought. New Pr.

Mune, Christina D. Libraries Supporting Online Learning: Practical Strategies and Best Practices. Libraries Unlimited.

Plokhy, Serhii. Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Norton.

Selvaratnam, Tanya. Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence. Harper.

Stewart, David O. George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father. Dutton.

Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition. Penguin Classics.

 

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

America’s Test Kitchen. The Chicken Bible: Say Goodbye to Boring Chicken with 500 Recipes for Easy Dinners, Braises, Wings, Stir-Fries, and So Much More. America’s Test Kitchen.

Campbell, Olivia. Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine. Park Row: Harlequin.

Cohen, Jake. Jew-Ish: A Cookbook: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch. Houghton Harcourt.

Engelhart, Katie. The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die. St. Martin’s.

Karlawish, Jason. The Problem of Alzheimer’s: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease Into a Crisis and What We Can Do about It. St. Martin’s.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. Crown.

Tyler Ferguson, Jesse & Julie Tanous. Food Between Friends. Clarkson Potter.

Zitelman, Amy & Andrew Schloss. The Tahini Table: Go Beyond Hummus with 100 Recipes for Every Meal. Agate.

 

REFERENCE

Imperial China. DK.

Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps. Univ. of Chicago.

 

AUDIOBOOKS

Cummings, Elijah, with James Dale. We’re Better Than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy. HarperAudio.

French, Tana. The Searcher. Penguin Audio.

Gyasi, Yaa. Transcendent Kingdom. Books on Tape.

Comment Policy:
  • Be respectful, and do not attack the author, people mentioned in the article, or other commenters. Take on the idea, not the messenger.
  • Don't use obscene, profane, or vulgar language.
  • Stay on point. Comments that stray from the topic at hand may be deleted.
  • Comments may be republished in print, online, or other forms of media.
  • If you see something objectionable, please let us know. Once a comment has been flagged, a staff member will investigate.


RELATED 

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER?

We are currently offering this content for free. Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER?