Shelf Awareness

In The Muse of Maiden Lane, the final novel in her Belles of London quartet, historical romance author Mimi Matthews examines the effects of public perception on self-image--and weaves a love story shot through with starlight.

In Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel, Edwin Frank tackles an ambitious project that's ideally suited to his service as the longtime editorial director of New York Review Books and founder of the NYRB Classics series. This admittedly personal selection features some 30 novels, with ones from giants like Mann, Joyce, and Woolf alongside less commonly cited writers, like Natsume Sōseki (

Kim (who also had to "share everything" in her youth) charmingly recounts here the sibling negotiations necessary to maintain family peace. Her stylized pencil, watercolor, and collage illustrations--outlined in black and white, strategically enhanced with detailed colors and patterns--are reminiscent of comic panels with their generous use of white space, whimsy, and humor. She most often depicts the quintet as crowded together--a squished-in car ride, the malodorous single bathroom--because, with family, sharing is indeed caring. --Terry Hong

Discover: Mimi Matthews's fourth Belles of London novel sensitively explores the romance between horsewoman Stella Hobhouse and disabled artist Teddy Hayes.

Discover: Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb's fourth co-written novel delivers a charming slow-burn love story alongside a portrait of a young Queen Elizabeth gaining confidence as a leader.

In Water, Water, a collection of new poems, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins applies his signature wit and whimsy to everyday situations: waiting at the doctor's office, playing cards on a winter's night, reading the guest book at a lakeside cottage. In examining these ordinary moments (sometimes minutely), Collins holds them up to the light, revealing facets both absurd and beautiful: the exquisite torture (to some) of an all-violin jazz band; the "rough armadillo plates" of a pineapple; or the way that joy, personified, seems "down to earth,/ like a girl getting off a bus with a suitcase."

Elizabeth Burk's Unmoored traces the arc of an adventurous life defined by wanderlust and fresh beginnings.

A grieving child embarks on an action-packed adventure in the enigmatic, palindromic picture book Drawn Onward, written by Printz Award-winner Daniel Nayeri ( Everything Sad Is Untrue ). The lush, intricately detailed illustrations by Matt Rockefeller ( Poesy the Monster Slayer illustrator) use visual pacing and a videogame-like structure to invite close inspection and expand Nayeri's narrative in multilayered ways.

August Clarke is here and queer, etc. They have been published in PRISM international, Portland Review, and Eidolon, and in the Bury Your Gays and Unfettered Hexes anthologies. He was a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction and an Andre Norton Nebula Award, Locus Award, Dragon Award, and Pushcart nominee. He is the author of the series The Scapegracers, which he writes as H.A. Clarke.

David Hyde Costello is a picture book author and illustrator. He lives in Amherst, Mass. He also designs and creates the puppets which feature in his online videos and films such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: A Shadow Puppet Film.