Made-Up Books

In the admirable title-that-sums-up-the-story tradition of The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars, the story of this goofy, Day-Glo counting book is just that: if you can only draw worms, well, yo... (Tom)

These days, when public discourse seems like so much shouting past each other, the last thing you want to read is a fictionalized he-said/she-said about a #metoo moment. BUT! Not many write as lucidly... (Liz)

The ferocious energy of Marlon James's prose, the first sign of the literary genius that the Booker judges later recognized in A Brief History of Seven Killings, is immediately evident in this debut n... (James)

When I heard an interview with Jonathan Auxier talking about how many years of historical research he did when writing Sweep, I couldn't wait to dive into his authentic world of Victorian chimney swee... (Haley)

"Family is what you make it": Thao Lam's third picture book (and her first with words) takes an unexpected route to that final line, making a convincing and hilarious case for the dad/cat resemblance... (Tom)

Toews has become one of Canada's leading novelists by writing with insight, sorrow, humor, and anger about the patriarchal Mennonite community in which she was raised. So how would she deal, in fictio... (Tom)

Sure, many people are afraid of crocodiles. And many people are afraid of dentists. But what about a crocodile who (with all those teeth to take care of!) is afraid to go to the dentist? And a dentist... (Tom)

For those of us who are late catching up with the Oregon writer Molly Gloss, Saga Press is doing a great service this year by bringing much of her work back in handsome new paperbacks. Her books have... (Tom)

Beaty and Roberts have become picture-book superstars for their ongoing series about brilliantly ambitious youngsters—Rosie Revere, Iggy Peck, Ada Twist, and, coming soon, Sofia Valdez. And for good r... (Tom)

Luiselli has quickly built a reputation among American readers for her short novels and, especially, for Tell Me How It Ends, her short but blistering little book about working as a translator for Cen... (Tom)

One of the things I love best about young adult fiction is that it doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff. In Emily X.R. Pan’s impressive debut, just out in paperback, she illustrates an expert handling... (Anika)

For whatever reason (having nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that publishing is dominated by intellectually aspirant professionals who live in Manhattan and Brooklyn), the New York novel is a fi... (James)

I’ve thought for a while now that short stories just aren’t for me, but Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s debut has made me reconsider. At just under 200 pages, Friday Black is an intense and provocative rea... (Anika)

For many Seattleites, Snowpocalypse 2019 was an enforced staycation requiring the flip side of a “beach read.” And by pure luck (and Haley’s recommendation) I had a copy of The Orphan of Salt Winds on... (Liz)

I was enamored at first by the idea that an old, famous poet was the narrator of The Last Romantics, but what captivated me, once I started reading, was the narrator’s deep dive into her childhood wit... (Nancy)

When Kelly Yang was a child, she would hide out in the school library to avoid her bullies at lunchtime. Many years later, her love of books allowed her to turn her pain into an award-winning new midd... (Haley)

This short, intensely moving novel—an imagined dialogue between a mother and her teenage son after his suicide, written after Li lost her son in the same way—reads as though Li has invented, out of di... (Tom)

It's our third straight snowy selection for Phinney by Post Kids, and finally it reflects the local weather (and how). That little thumbnail image of the cover can hardly do justice to the intricate b... (Tom)

Two families, separated by decades and thousands of miles, discover the physical—and emotional—weight of a certain rare piano. That piano represents love, freedom, tragedy, grief, and, ultimately, let... (Doree)

Oh, Business Pig, I can't believe it's taken me this long to put you in the newsletter. Not very proactive of me! This little tale of a pig unlike any of the others in the barnyard—he was born, appare... (Tom)

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: You send your child out into the world, and tragedy strikes. The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker opens with a series of small-town college students falling aslee... (Doree)

It's been over 50 years since Percy's debut novel was the surprise winner of the National Book Award, and—gulp—it's been about 30 years since I first fell in love with its sprightly tale of despair, G... (Tom)

I must say that yellow is not my favorite color (or even close). But seeing what magic Olympia-based artist Corinna Luyken can work with it makes me think again. As she did in her wonderful debut, The... (Tom)

It's a few months after 9/11, and Lane Bueche, who has long fancied himself the Bill Clinton of Lake City Way, headed from the nowhere of north Seattle toward an upscale, intellectual life of NGOs and... (Tom)

Harold's woolly hat is indeed special. Made up of nine strokes of Vern Kousky's paintbrush, five red and four yellow, plus a little dab of blue at the teetering-over top, it's the kind of deliciously... (Tom)

An enthusiastic customer tipped us off to this graphic novel, nearly a year after it came out. All we needed to hear, really, was "two cats in a robotic dog suit," but "narrated by a sentient litter b... (Tom)

I hardly ever truly laugh out loud when I'm reading. But I make a racket when reading Portis, especially this novel, the third of the merely five he has written in fifty years. I could describe the pl... (Tom)

I usually watch the Booker Prize unfold with nothing at stake. But this year I picked up Milkman: within ten pages I was in love, and when I saw it on the shortlist, I finally understood how my husban... (Liz)

I've been reading these stories for months, off and on in between other books. I'm not sure I could have read them any other way: they read easily, but take some digesting, in the best way. Gallardo w... (Tom)

When I first started to read on my own I couldn’t get enough of Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family chapter books, which I recently heard called the “Jewish Little House on the Prairie.” The series f... (Liz)

What do you do if the monster under your bed turns out to be a pretty great friend? Well, if you're Tiger, you bring back a little bit of dinner for your friend and play games until bedtime, before yo... (Tom)

This one sneaked up on me. It’s the story of two bourgeois families, neighbors in a Northern Italian town, beginning with the deaths of both patriarchs and following the second generation as it comes... (Liz)

This is a tough one to describe, because as soon as I start I'm afraid I'll scare some of you off. Avian demigods? Fertility goddesses? An epic journey to the Isle of the Dead to recover a lost love?... (James)

This month's Phinney by Post selection (see above) was so tiny I added a couple of our popular Penguin Modern booklets to the package, including this perfect companion, Berger's marvelous elegy for hi... (Tom)

The duo behind Last Stop at Market Street, the rare picture book weighty enough to win the Newbery Medal, returns with another story balancing melancholy and hope. It's Carmela's birthday, and she get... (Tom)

This could be a book—it's shaped like one, and it has a title and an author—but once you start taking the postcards out to mail to your friends, who will appreciate Gauld's wry cartoon commentaries on...

We're all getting used to seeing labradoodles and puggles, but this new oversized board book takes the canine combos a step further. Three sets of flip pages let you concoct your own new breeds: how a... (Tom)

Ray Eccles is leading a modest, unassuming existence when he's abruptly struck on the head by a falling bird and finds his whole life changing course. Read Harriet Paige's new novel and you may find y... (James)

The reputation that Olivia Laing gathered from her books on writers and nature (To the River), writers and drinking (The Trip to Echo Spring), and writers and loneliness (The Lonely City) caused quite... (Tom)

There's no Waldo in this big book, but it seems like just about everything else has been squeezed into its crowded pages. Wimmelbooks like this ("wimmel" means teeming or swarming) have been huge hits... (Tom)

Just read the first two pages—the "Sort of Preface" to this 1972 story collection—and see if you can resist going further. That sly confidence, that voice: lively, boastful, affectionate, exasperated!... (Tom)

I usually watch the Booker Prize unfold with nothing at stake. But this year I picked up Milkman: within ten pages I was in love, and when I saw it on the shortlist, I finally understood how my husban... (Liz)

Over twenty years in the drawing, Berlin covers just a few crucial years in the city's history, from late 1928 to the end of the Weimar Republic in early 1933. Lutes's scope is wide—he marks the major... (Tom)

As far as time-travel goes, Charlotte takes a minimal leap—she only goes forty years into the past. But since she is living in 1958, today’s reader goes back a nice round century. Details about the Gr... (Liz)

One sign of how much Lin's new picture book feels like a timeless classic is how surprising it is to turn to the book's last pages and learn that the fable she tells—of a girl whose nighttime nibbles... (Tom)

Not many kids' books come with a foreword, an introduction (with endnotes), and an afterword, but the reappearance of the only children's book by the great James Baldwin (nearly forgotten after it was... (Tom)

When I started listening to the audiobook edition of French Exit, I thought, "Oh, this narrator [the book is read by Lorna Raver] is a bit much." Well, it turned out she was just right, because French... (Tom)

How could Adrian Simcox have a horse? He lives in town, in a tiny house, and horses are expensive! Chloe's sure that the red-headed dreamer in her class is telling lies, and she makes sure everyone kn... (Tom)

Sometimes a book takes the world by storm and, nearly as quickly, recedes from awareness. Buoyed in part by the drama of its writing and rediscovery (Nemirovsky wrote this fictional account of the Fre... (Tom)

One of my favorite books from last year was the Booker-longlisted Reservoir 13. Although it didn’t win, it was such a phenomenon in Britain that the BBC commissioned McGregor to write a series of comp... (Liz)