New Releases and Award-Winning Crime Writing

Listen, Lucie is done waiting around to find the right guy to be in a relationship and co-parent with. So, after a nasty breakup leaves her childless, she decides to just find someone to raise a kid with and call it a day. The co-parenting website she goes on helps her come into contact with Collin Read, who shares a culture with her, and, most importantly, is ready to be a dad. Once she becomes pregnant, the two go back to Singapore and to her disapproving parents. They’re not the only ones to contend with, though, there’s also the way her body’s changing, work pressures, and an ex-fiance who pops up. Messy.

Here, Yong, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on COVID-19, has us take a step out of our own experiences. He details ways the world is perceived by living things other than humans, including the, um, interesting organs that do the sensing (apparently there are animals with eyes on their genitals, which sounds… inconvenient). There are turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that send out electrical messages into rivers, and squids that can see sparkling whales. I love books like this that make us question everything we know about life. So much of what we know to be true is actually just based on our senses — and even what we know we can’t perceive. This book shows how our senses aren’t to be trusted, which means that so much of what we know to be true may actually just be… what? Constructs, I guess?

Another interesting point the author makes: that each organism is capable of sensing only a small fraction of what is able to be perceived in the world. It reminds me of how humans are connected to other living things, and how we’re all needed in order to perceive the world.

Hopefully J. Patterson will pick up a copy of this one for himself. In it, Kendi continues to spread the word of anti-racism and its importance. With this book, he uses his wife’s experience with negligent maternal care and his daughter’s preschool years as starting points for talking about the importance of anti-racist work for children. Racism’s effects may start with children, but can impact us throughout our entire lives. By fighting against it — which would mean overhauling the education and health systems, according to Kendi — we can ensure a better quality of life for everyone. I like how he includes a lot of personal stories and shows how he’s made mistakes and had to reconsider how he did things.

The Silence that Binds Us by Joanna Ho

Echoes of Grace by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

The Loophole by Naz Kutub

Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe

The Sizzle Paradox by Lily Menon

The Self-Made Widow by Fabian Nicieza