Roughly a year after the nuclear meltdown that precipitated the events of Godspeed, Cedar Key (2024),the remaining few hundred residents of the titular locale—about a quarter of its former population—are slowly rebuilding their economy and infrastructure. Despite damage from nuclear fallout and extreme weather, the locals have managed to start breeding chickens again and have even mastered using slow-burning wood to create fuel for cars and boats. Although the once-central clamming industry is no longer viable, some fauna have returned to the island, including a bounty of white shrimp. The story opens with the marriage of Cedar Key’s Luke Buck to a woman named Kinsey from Sumner, on the mainland. Their wedding symbolizes a tenuous peace between the two communities, who came to blows over old grudges and dwindling resources in the early days of the “new world.” As it happens, the wedding isn’t the only cause for celebration, because Col. Robert McCloud—long assumed dead—returns in a dramatic crash landing after more than a year on the mainland. Sent out from Cedar Key for reconnaissance, the colonel was shot down in the wilds of Florida, surviving only by using his old Marine Corps training. He discovers in short order that he was shot down by Isaac Skipjack, a known entity on the island and the son of Buddy Skipjack, a fisherman who was caught stealing clams in the late 1990s and later died in the back of a police car. Now, years later, Isaac is leading a Coast Guard ship full of other mainlanders, with violence on his mind.

Bobbitt’s follow-up to his debut offers a reading experience that many readers will find similar to that of the first installment, which is a very good thing. Like its predecessor, this novel brims with characters whose attachments to one another feel real and carry emotional weight. For example, Mark David—a Cedar Key fisherman and the father of young mayor Hayes David—took young Isaac in years ago, but the boy soon discovered that Mark may have been involved in his biological father’s death. In addition, the author’s expertise about the culture and geography of the part of the country in which the series is set makes for a richly detailed, authentic-feeling read: “When the bay is glassy calm, and the tide is low, it’s easy for the farmer to think big thoughts about what everything means, to find allegory in a diving cormorant, metaphor in the interplay of light and water.” Such vivid prose abounds in these pages, and the action scenes studded throughout the narrative—most especially, the gun and naval battles in which characters on both sides of the conflict fight and die—make for a propulsive narrative through which readers will be happy to travel.

Following his father’s death, white farm boy Solomon Hunt, 15, sets off in hopes of supporting his mother and younger siblings. He meets the Seer, a nonspeaking little person with a mysterious history, and helps free him from the museum where he’s on display. The two go on the run, crossing the American Empire border into Buffalo. As they gather up other performers, they’re pursued by ruthless showman Leopold J. Coop, who has lofty political ambitions, across a nation in which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated before becoming president. Progressing toward Hollywood via steam train, dirigible, and stagecoach, their growing company of outsiders includes Cleo, a Black girl who was being used in a terrifying carnival act; Angus, an unusually tall white boy, who was sold by his parents; and genderfluid Chinese and Irish American martial artist John (sometimes Joan) Chan. With savagery that cuts to the bone—and without glossing over North Britain’s racialized abuses—Peacock highlights the American entertainment industry’s exploitation of vulnerable, marginalized people in this tense, triumphant outing. As the zigzag journey winds its way to a climactic confrontation, the story explores the autonomy-seeking leads’ belief that “we all just want to be respected, be recognized as individuals and be worth something.”

It’s been approximately a decade since vampires crawled from the grave and destroyed most of human civilization in a brutal, blood-soaked uprising. Orphaned twins Ripley and Ruby Clemmons were rescued from the Open—the wasteland between human enclaves where monsters roam free—by a man named Barnett who took them to Vaille (North Carolina’s biggest human compound) and raised them as his own. Now, 18 and almost full-fledged slayers, the twins face an unimaginable tragedy. While out on a mission in the Open, the twins’ squadron is attacked, and X, the most powerful vampire in the area, turns Ripley into a bloodsucker. Ruby, the story’s narrator, is devastated. With the hope of a possible cure for vampirism being dangled in front of her by Barnett, Ruby vows to find her sister and rescue her from X. But when she finally meets her sister again, her world is upended by revelations about X, an underground city of vampires, and research being conducted by the leaders of Vaille. A well-developed cast, intriguing character dynamics (the twins’ intimate bond is brilliantly explored), and excellent worldbuilding are the obvious strengths here, but the snarky sense of humor is what makes this novel so readable—and fun. Here, Ruby recalls when the apocalypse began: “I remember…worrying about lockdowns and seniors losing their chance at graduation. And then a sophomore died, reanimated into a vampire, and ate her way through the football team.” Equal parts romance and coming-of-age tale, this adventure at world’s end should satisfy teen and adult readers alike.

The day has arrived to select little Jojo’s kente, a Ghanaian cloth known for its striking patterns. Kente has a rich cultural history; as Daddy says, it all began many years ago, when, according to lore, two hunters saw the spider Ananse spinning a beautiful web and asked him to teach them. Mummy, Daddy, baby Jojo, and the story’s nameless young narrator enter a brick building filled with cloth and weavers hard at work at their looms, “moving their hands to an invisible beat.” One of the weavers asks the protagonist what story the cloth should tell, and the child points to the rainbow peeking through the windows. “Ah, Nyankonton,” the weaver says, “the story of God’s eyebrows.” Guided by the master weaver, the youngster gets to work on the loom: “We move…and sway, with hands and feet. Dancing.” As they “weave to the beat,” the child slips. Oh no! But the weaver is reassuring: “Kente is about love.” Zunon’s characteristic collage and mixed-media illustrations, radiant with bold color, practically leap from the page, conveying the richness of the fabrics. The layered images reflect the complexity of kente—textural, intricate, and deeply symbolic. Munsch’s lyrical text, infused with onomatopoeia and cultural detail, captures the rhythm of weaving, creating a narrative as vibrant as the cloth itself.

A family urn is stolen and three armed gangsters set off to retrieve it. They trace the urn back to two thieves who live in a three-story, six-unit apartment building in a small town, but complications quickly arise, and what could have been a simple task quickly spirals out of control. As they drive into town, the three armed men should be organizing their strategy, going over their plan to get the urn back. But instead they argue about trivial things: Why would you name your gun after your first girlfriend? Why does the youngest of the three always have to sit in the back seat like a child? Violence is coming, but they’re blissfully distracted by completely irrelevant side topics. The distractions continue as they enter the building. Each resident they encounter steers them away from their task by posing simple yet existential questions like: What is good and what is evil? When bad decisions are made, who deserves to die? When is it okay to end a life? What does it mean to be a good neighbor? As the gangsters and tenants debate these issues, bullets quickly start to fly and the blood flows. Everyone in the apartment building finds themselves on one end of a gun barrel. And before the triggers get pulled, each person reckons with essential notions of fairness, righteousness, and loneliness. Aeschbacher draws the story like a modern-day Adventures of Tintin, with scrappy, hand-drawn lines; subdued shades of mahogany and aubergine maintain the deadpan gloom of the tale. He takes a Richard Scarry approach to detail: His sketches of the apartment building include small elements of ceilings and furniture that fill each panel. There are no new beginnings for the people in the apartment building. Death—and perhaps a brief moment of enlightenment—beckons for them all.