The German philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) remains famous today for his Marxist critiques of popular culture as well as for a prose style as intricately knotty as a macrame vest. Among his most characteristically memorable pronouncements was this: “The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism: to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that corrodes also the knowledge which expresses why it has become impossible to write poetry today.” Less daunting than this statement is his lecture to a German audience in 1962, published in German in 1963, and here translated into English for the first time. In just over 40 pages of compelling speech, Adorno outlines the nature of antisemitism, some reasons why it persists, and why it has been long embedded in our educational institutions. Adorno argues that antisemitism often begins “in the family home.” It is reinforced in schooling. “I suspect that a considerable number of teachers still sympathize silently, tacitly, non-explicitly with antisemitism.” What is the answer? Open-mindedness, a global sensibility, and an awareness of class and cultural conflict. “Effective prevention of antisemitism is inseparable from a prevention of nationalism in all its forms. One cannot be against antisemitism on the one hand while being a militant nationalist on the other.” Following the lecture in this book is an interpretive essay by the scholar Peter Gordon, situating the talk in the context of Adorno’s larger concerns with “group solidarity.” “The warm feeling of a collective bond,” Gordon writes, increases when the group expels those “who bear the stigma of difference.” Delivered over 60 years ago, Adorno’s lecture could be heard as fresh news today.

The Hellas Station is a trailblazing Mars colony staffed by only a handful of international, highly competent astronauts. One of these exceptional colonists is extra-special: Adam Flynn is the first human born on Mars (sadly, his mother died from cancer in the radiation-rich environment). Seventeen-year-old Adam has matured to be a survival-hardened and resourceful youth who has helped to ready Hellas Station for an influx of nearly 100 new settlers, all of whom are on a long, one-way trip and expect to spend the rest of their lives on the red planet. But Adam is emotionally unprepared for the arrival of the group, which includes 25 more young people, many of them genius-level high-achievers. They all know Adam’s story (unbeknownst to him, the first “Martian” boy is a celebrity figure on Earth) and treat him with a blend of curiosity and disdain. The military commander of the newcomers, Col. Griggs, is a glory-seeking, aggressive type (with two not-so-nice teenagers of his own) who usurps the authority of the established colonists and is particularly condescending to Adam, insisting he is just a “kid” and ignoring hisadvice on all matters Martian. Things begin to go badly: Adam notices an especially powerful dust storm bearing down on the complex, and the installation’s power failures are traced to a frightening infestation by a hitherto-unsuspected Martian life form. At first appearing as dark patches or tiny larvae, the marauders turn out to be countless beetlelike insects. Of course, Col. Griggs and his Earth allies vainly perceive the discovery of life on another planet as an opportunity for naming rights, and as a new potential food source. Adam, on the other hand, figures out quickly that it is the humans who are on the menu.

The first-person-narrated story begins on a note recalling Andy Weir’s popular novel The Martian (2011), sharing an emphasis on the hard science of exoplanet survival skills and making the most of limited resources, with the added YA-friendly perspective of a teen hero with a (very) circumscribed upbringing abruptly coming to terms with having other humans around who are his own age, particularly of the macho-jock and mean-girl sort. (Whatever raging-hormones youthful romance happens here is dialed considerably down.) At around the midway point, with the onslaught of the bug menace, things take a more Hollywood action-movie turn, which is ironic considering how frequently the youthful characters reference celluloid SF (especially 1986’s Aliens) and deny that their plight resembles hack scriptwriting: “If this were a movie, I’d grin triumphantly and say something clever. She’d laugh and give me a fist-bump. Except my life doesn’t seem to be shaping into that kind of movie.” Actually, that really is more or less what transpires, with Adam and select others doing superheroic acts in an oxygen-starved atmosphere and facing off against unimaginable hordes with the most meagre homebrew weaponry while tossing off courageous asides. There is gruesome gore and a shocking body count, underlying the message that haughty grown-ups should give more credence to precocious astro-kids, especially when it comes to monsters.

Every town should have a place like the Geode Cafe and Bookshop, where the citizens of Umbra River, California, can gather to chat, read, and sip espresso drinks. Geode—its name a nod to the town’s Goldrush past—is owned by retired schoolteacher and empty-nester Olivia, a cheerful woman plagued by occasional migraines. She loves that her two best friends are close by; Anna is an animal psychic and the owner of Besties, the pet supply store and animal shelter next door to the cafe, and Emmaline is an aspiring writer who uses the store’s storage closet as an office. Since her husband was killed by a drunk driver, the young Emmaline has been on her own with her 4-year-old son, Charlie—who, like Anna, displays some psychic gifts. The three friends meet for weekly dinner and gossip, where they get into the secrets—good and bad—of their private lives, as well as those of Umbra River’s history. When Charlie starts having visions of a ghostly boy on a horse, it leads the women into an investigation of the town’s darkest chapter. Corazza’s prose casts a comforting spell on the reader, in part because so much of it is dedicated to praising the atmosphere of Olivia’s shop: “Geode’s old plank floors gave Emmaline the feeling of being pulled into Geode’s warm, calmly lit space, and if the appearance didn’t do it, the aroma of dough baking and fresh coffee did.” The plot, such as it is, moves at a snail’s pace as the town and its characters are introduced from various perspectives, with much information repeated and many cute businesses described in great detail. Despite some exceptions—cafe manager Lucy is a stock Irishwoman out of a bad 1950s comedy—the characters are well rendered, and the reader is mostly content to listen in on their conversations as they navigate the sometimes strange but more often mundane twists in their personal lives.

A young child spends the day on the beach and receives advice on how to build the perfect sandcastle. The child is first encouraged to ask a friend to help. The pair then builds a solid base by forming a crater in a sand hill and packing it down. The book offers different options for building, such as two different methods to form castle towers (“stack soupy pancakes” or use “buckets and forms”). Once the castle is complete, the author suggests various tips for landscaping, decorating, and moat-building. The main text is written in verse with an AABB rhyme scheme. (The text occasionally visually reflects its own meaning—each word of the phrase “hip hip hooray” is bigger than the last, for example). Each page features a box with (nonrhyming) tips from a starfish, like first testing the sand to determine whether it’s a suitable spot for building: “Scoop up a handful of damp sand, squeeze it tightly, and then open your hand. If the sand ball stays together, you’ve found a good place. If it falls apart, keep hunting.” A helpful checklist ensures readers will have everything they need for their own beach day. Musil’s artwork features adorable, brightly colored fabric pieces arranged to depict the two children interacting with both their surroundings and various little sea creatures (including a crab taking a picture of their completed sandcastle). The story itself is fun in its musical rhythm (“Grab a pail. A tube works, too. / (Any hollow form will do.)”) and informative—in addition to building suggestions, the starfish tips provide further relevant information, like facts about sand and advice about avoiding damaging sea turtles’ nests while creating castles). Meyer has crafted a charming and joyous celebration of friendship, artistry, and nature in a surprisingly small package that is a true delight to read.

Now living in Germany, Hanefeld, who was born in 1958, grew up in England with her English mother and Czech father. The six relatives she knew on her father’s side were her grandparents, an aunt, and a great-uncle and great-aunt, who’d all resettled in England. The family never spoke of their background, and it was only in her late teens that Hanefeld realized they were German-speaking Czech Jews who fled their homeland just before the start of World War II. In 2004, a year before her father’s death, he unexpectedly sent her his aunt’s 1935 passport with a note that she and other close relatives, whom the family never mentioned, were murdered in concentration camps in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. That document prompted her to undertake a painstaking investigation, aided by family correspondence, her own fluency in German, and historical archives. As she tells of how she reconstructed the stories of her relatives’ lives, Hanefeld details some of her own memories and the emotional impact of her discoveries. After providing some background with a family-tree diagram, she devotes a chapter to each of 16 people, concluding with a dialogue between herself and her first cousin about the family’s legacy of silence, followed by an epilogue; she also includes a timeline and an extensive list of references. Overall, this is not a dramatic, novelistic memoir; at times, the narrative is slowed by excessive detail, and at others, the author summarizes and speculates when research couldn’t fill in gaps. However, her stories effectively reveal her family members as businesspeople, lawyers, homemakers, and students with everyday, unremarkable concerns, and, intriguingly, that appears to be Hanefeld’s point: “This is the quieter, less dramatic side of the Holocaust, but it too deserves attention,” and “the impact of personal narratives is greater than speaking abstractly about the vast numbers of people murdered.” She also discusses salient questions of identity, and how suppressed trauma can affect succeeding generations.