In the Paw & Order offices of private detectives Marlowe and Purrlock, the latter is hungry and the fridge is empty. The cat P.I. insists that he went to the grocery store just the day before, so he’s certain that someone must have stolen all the food. Purrlock is positive it must be the dastardly Meowiearty. In search of something to eat, the pair end up at the Grilled Cheese Festival, only to find out from Rabbit that all the grilled cheese sandwiches had been stolen. Purrlock is again sure that it’s Meowiearty’s doing, but Marlowe isn’t so sure. Police Sgt. Bear is on the scene, gathering clues, but he asks the detectives to work the case; from there, the pair interview two suspects: Jinny Giraffe and Allan Alligator. Both had motive and opportunity, but Purrlock continues to believe that Meowiearty is the real culprit. After their investigation concludes, Marlowe and Purrlock gather the suspects together, review the clues, motives, and opportunities, and reveal the identity of the dastardly villain that ruined the festival for everyone. At the end of a busy, productive day, the two detectives wind down with a nice grilled cheese sandwich. In this fast and fun graphic novel for young readers, Platt lays out the various pieces of the puzzle in a logical order, and Marlowe even breaks the fourth wall to advise readers to go back and examine details for themselves to see if they can figure out the solution on their own The full-color cartoon art is bright and colorful, and the animal characters feel distinct with clear personalities. The detective partners play off each other well, with Marlowe the more serious detective and Purrlock making outrageous accusations or jumping to conclusions. Young mystery lovers are sure to get a kick out of this book.

The story features an ensemble cast of compelling characters but centers on three in particular. First, there’s David Erdogan, a tech firm CEO who’s content to go along with the whims of his AI boss, Big Al, even if it means putting up with blackmail and any other number of dehumanizing attacks on his agency. Then there’s Katie, the morally gray hacker who steals bots’ memories and sells them on the black market; her latest victim is connected to an enormous conspiracy surrounding a major terrorist attack on Silicon Valley, some years before the start of the narrative. This victim is Livingstone1813, an AI academic researcher who studies humans and the dynamics of their relationship to artificial-intelligence technology. His missing memory, which was stolen by Katie, will prove vital to unpacking what’s behind a violent movement to push a constitutional amendment for AI personhood—although there’s clear pushback, as well: “Don’t cede to those who can’t bleed. Vote ‘NO’ to Personhood!” reads some acid-etched graffiti. Donoghue unfolds the narrative via the perspectives of these characters (along with a smattering of others), weaving a complex yet deeply intimate vision of a quickly emerging future in which capitalism and artificial intelligence conspire to rob both humans and bots of any remaining control over their own lives. The SF conceits merge with worldbuilding that’s revealed slowly but inexorably, resulting in what emerges as a memorable entry in the growing genre of AI thrillers. The clearly drawn characters, complex sociopolitical discourse, and, especially, Donoghue’s deep empathetic imagination for both humans and AIs makes the work feel like far more than the sum of its parts. Other novels have played in this high-tech sandbox, to be sure, but few have done so in a way that makes a reader think and care for both people and artificial entities in such strong and equal measure.

Simultaneously a record of comics art in Japan and an account of its trailblazing publishing industry, Exner’s book traces the initial spark of Japanese cartooning back to the 1890s, when newspapers began syndicating (and at times outright copying) American-made cartoons. Artists soon began their own homespun stories like Yutaka Aso’s Easygoing Daddy and Suiho Tagawa’s Norakuro, and competing magazines vied for their publishing rights. These pre–World War II years proved that comics were a lucrative pursuit, and publishers created omnibus collections that influenced a new generation of creators after the war. Advancements in the entertainment industry directly affected manga’s evolution. Exner (Comics and the Origins of Manga, 2021) details the influence of animation on creators like Astro Boy’s Osamu Tezuka, as well as international cinema’s effect on ’60s- and ’70s-era “gekiga” manga for adults. Each evolution saw publishers pivoting to bottle the lightning: Monthly magazines split into parallel publications to separately target both boys and girls, and nimble distribution led to books being available in toy stores and, for a time, even as rentals. Exner follows these developments through manga’s break into the U.S. industry in the ’90s and ends on the game-changing precipice of today’s trends in digital publication. Despite its far-reaching scope, Manga’s discussion of form and technique is limited: Exner returns to the abstruse term “transdiegetic” to describe comics “in light of their function of translating certain phenomena in the diegesis (story world), such as motion, sound, and pain, into a different form to make them perceptible to the reader.” This description, repeated throughout the volume, feels like a tiring effort to prepare the reader for a classroom quiz. Despite a narrow technical approach, Exner remains a passionate historian and has crafted a record that finely pinpoints major cultural touchstones while incorporating lesser-known titles that will thrill more seasoned readers.

It sounds romantic—a couple’s return visit to a quaint bed-and-breakfast to make more happy memories. Here, the author takes a darker view.  No need to wait for hints about where this dark novella, a disturbing portrait of a marriage in crisis, is heading; from the start, an atmosphere of horror creeps steadily through the pages. Clueless Nolan hopes that surprising his wife, Emma, with a getaway to the Tappy West Creek Bed & Breakfast inn will bring her out of her oppressive grief stemming from a second miscarriage. The first disquieting note: The reception area is oddly quiet, filled with cascading potted plants, “dim in the transient hour between late afternoon and early evening, when an amber shade steals over every inch of wall and furniture.” The inn is closed, says the establishment’s new owner, Leah. (Is the off-putting, coy, and cold Leah the source of the pervasive “loamy, sulfurous odor”?) And then there are the baby dolls, gradually multiplying in various rooms; walls sprout unpleasant, fleshy fungi, and the wallpaper’s roses appear to have eyes. Demoralized and vulnerable to Leah’s unhealthy manipulation, Emma views her own body as “a cruel tally of failed pregnancies and deflated hope,” and her self-doubt causes her to suspect that her husband is unfaithful. Here and there, Kherbash slyly undermines readers’ sympathy for Nolan, making clear that he disregards what she feels: “We’re here because I want to go back to where we were last year—before the pregnancy and the false hopes. I want to erase them. I want a do-over,” he says to himself. Nolan’s attempts to reestablish closeness with his wife drive her further away as Leah uses Emma’s grief, her yearning for a baby, and her dwindling self-confidence to poison her against her husband, leading to a disturbing, fevered scenario of twisted seduction and a shocking entrapment.

Shasta Rae Groene and her brother, Dylan, were 8 and 9 years old in the summer of 2005, when they were kidnapped from their home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where their mother, her boyfriend, and an older brother had just been tied up and beaten to death with a framing hammer and a rifle butt. The younger children were the actual targets of the massacre’s perpetrator, Joseph Edward Duncan III, aka Jet, a sadistic pedophile and recidivist sex offender with a Messiah complex. After the murders, Duncan took the children over the Montana state line and up into the wilderness of Lolo National Forest, where he held them captive and repeatedly raped them for seven weeks while regaling them with tales of previous rapes and murders of children in California and Seattle. An unusually strong-willed and resourceful child who was more worried about her brother’s life than her own, Shasta survived the ordeal, but Dylan did not. She would later say of Duncan, “I don’t think he counted on the fact that I was like ten steps ahead of him.” Olsen, a prolific and popular author of multiple true-crime books and fictional mysteries, became close to his subject over several years. His chief concern here is to tell the story of the therapeutic work Shasta did to try to find her way “out of the woods” of her trauma. He weaves that somewhat hopeful story together with the nauseatingly disturbing details of the crime, each parallel path unfolding through the book, dropping hints along the way of ever worse revelations to come.