What’s unsaid often leaves the strongest impression, as Tye suggests in this unflinching account of growing up in 1970s Texas. The book’s title nods to the Austin neighborhood where his father moved him and his brother, Kenny, in June 1970. But the author’s hopes for stability there—after attending eight schools and living in 10 different areas—were crushed by the abusive actions of Beulah, his new stepmother. When she broke all his record albums and demanded that he quit his after-school library job, the author, weary of a life that was “turning into a fight of old versus new,” left home for good. The move would consign him to sleeping in secluded areas or on friends’ couches, even as he continued attending school and worked toward a better future. He quickly began maximizing his street smarts (“I learned that people treated me better if I didn’t have my pack with me”), which enabled him to gain a string of entry-level jobs and more stable living situations. However, the era’s casual feel-good ethos left the author feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. After he asked his latest girlfriend if they were in love, her jarring response (“Don’t get confused. It’s just sex”) only strengthened the loner’s emotional armor. Meanwhile, he was always aware that one mistake could land him in jail or back under Beulah’s unforgiving control. The point is driven home by one of the book’s funniest scenes, in which the author sheepishly confesses his age (just 16) to a clueless server demanding to see his driver’s license (“It got really quiet at our table”).

When he could no longer fend off adult life, the author decided to join the U.S. Marine Corps—a life-changing move that would cost him another woman’s affections but would also point him toward his future, settled career. The decision sets up the most moving portions of this memoir, as when Tye unexpectedly reconnects and reconciles with his father, now divorced from Beulah and filled with regret at not doing more to get his son back home. As his father’s health began to fail due to a recurrence of cancer, the pair had to face the demons that had pulled their relationship apart, as the author effectively recollects: “All those feelings—betrayal, fear, anger, loneliness—had gone into boxes on a shelf in the back of my mind. Now we had opened the box.” How they navigated such a task will hit home for any reader who’s faced a similar wrenching situation, and Tye’s heartbreakingly honest narrative style will prompt nods of agreement with one of the book’s core theses: “If there is one thing I know about, it is accomplishing the mission.” This combination of mission and memoir highlights the power of forgiveness to repair shattered lives—and, in doing so, may help some readers to find their own higher purpose.

Audrey Adams is a barista in a Brooklyn coffee shop. She can’t help but be attracted to Theo Sullivan, a painfully shy customer who doesn’t remove his KN95 mask, even to drink his coffee. One day Theo tries to help Audrey with an aggressive customer, but the woman retaliates by ripping the mask off his face, revealing a large, disfiguring facial scar. Theo flees the shop and doesn’t return, leaving only his sketchbook behind. A few weeks later, Audrey spies him on the street and encourages him to come back. The two begin dating and quickly fall in love. Audrey had moved to New York for college after being raised by a foster mother in Tampa, Florida. Now 24, she is just one semester shy of finishing her degree in electrical engineering at NYU. Theo grew up in New York. His parents divorced, and while his late father was a mechanic, his mother is a lawyer from a wealthy, powerful family. Theo never fit in with his mother’s clan, preferring to work in his father’s garage. He eventually pursued art and design instead of law school, making him even more of a black sheep. Even though there are interesting opportunities for friction and conflict in Audrey and Theo’s relationship—for example, class differences or their eight-year age gap—the novel’s only source of tension is Theo’s refusal to tell the story of his life-threatening accident. Harris makes several disjointed narrative decisions. The body of the novel is told exclusively from Audrey’s point of view, except for a 35-page flashback of Theo’s accident. Even more unusual is a 74-page epilogue that retells most of the major plot points from Theo’s perspective, which has the unfortunate effect of making this lonely, broken man seem sidelined in his own story.

The mouse who narrates this tale seems cautiously intrigued when a human parent and child (both of whom present white) move into a house where the rodents have been living under the floorboards. But the other mice are alarmed; after all, they’ve all heard Uncle Rupert’s tales. People “are three THOUSAND times bigger than we are,” they “make us run in wheels for their own entertainment,” and they have “brightly colored fur” (this last is paired with a fresh and contemporary image depicting a trio of kids with hair dyed different hues). We follow the mice as they sneak out at night to explore the contents of the moving boxes, making a mess. The next day, the child sets a glass jar over a hole in the floorboard and catches the narrator. Initially scared, the rodents come to the protagonist’s rescue and soon discover the child’s benevolent purpose: building a “Mouse Land” from the emptied boxes. Just as the mice are about to celebrate, a menacing-looking housecat shows up, sending the rodents scurrying, nixing the possibility of cross-species friendship, and bringing the tale to an abrupt end. Mixed-media illustrations recalling the artwork from Emily Arnold McCully’s mouse books set a cozy tone, while effective use of composition and layout differentiate the human and rodent realms. The narrator’s exuberant voice, marked by enthusiastic asides, is endearing, and images of the mice romping will enchant even the most rodent-averse.

How does a person survive a trauma-filled childhood to rise to the top of a scientific field?As a child to neglectful, drug-addicted parents, Sussillo writes that he did most of his growing up in group homes, where he learned to survive amid stern houseparents and abusive housemates. Luckily for him, he found joy in arcade and computer games, which soon offered him opportunities to understand the inner workings of computer programs. “Computers made you like an army general or master chef,” he writes. “You gave the PC carefully written recipes, and it executed those recipes faithfully and without complaint, forever and ever.” In adolescence, he became enthralled with things he learned about from popular science magazines and television shows, ideas that further fed his intellectual curiosity. His story ping-pongs from the many terrible role models in his life to the occasional angels—friends, relatives, and teachers—who show Sussillo how friendship, love, and shared interests can make life worthwhile. The author sprinkles in well-written and engaging asides on scientific topics that fascinated him as a youth, such as physics, coding, and neuroscience, and that foreshadow his career path, which centers on understanding complex systems. His smarts and inquisitiveness certainly served him well, and he also credits years of psychoanalysis as a key factor in becoming the person he is today. Sussillo is clear-eyed about how his tumultuous past gave him a unique perspective on the world. He writes, “The very chaos that had once seemed like an insurmountable obstacle could be a source of strength, resilience, and especially creativity.”

Writing in first person from the point of view of light itself (“I spin the wheel of life”), Herz compares his subject to a rolling marble and an ocean wave. With nods to X-rays, radio waves, and other forms of “traveling energy,” he describes the topic first in simple terms and then in greater detail in a follow-up section. Light illuminates everything earthly and astronomical. Moreover, Herz goes on, light has been long cherished as a symbol of a “guiding presence,” glowing atop candles and in places of worship as a reminder “that there is something greater out there.” Using long-exposure photo shoots, López once more finds an inspired way to depict the physical phenomena that the author personifies in his two-tiered explanatory narratives. Her artwork has impressionistic elements, depicting a pair of tan-skinned children and a sometimes-animate plush bunny as they celebrate sunbeams and a rainbow, gaze into mirrors, swish in a pool to show how light bends in water, and point to the nighttime sky. Despite a bit of poetic license in the claim that all living things depend on light (since there are some dark-dwelling creatures that don’t), this eloquent, elegant testimonial offers much to engage heads as well as hearts. “Until the stars dim, I show the way. I AM LIGHT.”