Savvy Summers’ family was part of the Black migration from Mississippi to Chicago, and it’s her great-aunt Essie’s recipes that make Sapphire Summers Soulfood Café and Catering Company, aka Essie’s, a hit. At the 50th anniversary party Savvy and her sous-chef, Penny, cater for Matilda and Grandy Jaspers, the food disappears faster than you can say “soul food.” But the gossip and longtime grudges that hang over the event make Matilda unhappy. Grandy, still bitter over disputed songwriting credits, is unashamed when pregnant young Shysteen Shackleford shows up, hinting that Grandy might be the father. The next morning, Grandy shows up at Essie’s looking ill, and after breakfast, he falls over dead. By the time Savvy caters the funeral, rumors are already spreading that her sweet potato pie was the cause of his death. To top it off, the Department of Health shuts down Essie’s while they investigate. But Savvy’s not about to give up, even though Noble McPherson keeps pressuring her to sell the restaurant and franchise it as a soul food brand. Savvy’s still suspicious about Grandy’s death, and the official ruling of heart failure doesn’t revive the business. To make matters worse, her alderman, Delbert Daily, who’s already under investigation for a multitude of crimes, won’t help her. When the real cause of Grandy’s death turns out to be an overdose of Viagra, Savvy turns to her ex-husband, police officer Fanon, and his ex-partner for help deciding which of a long list of people most wanted Grandy dead.

While her brother can easily make friends with anyone he speaks to, and her sister is an outspoken activist, Imani is shy and has a harder time talking to people. After her family moves from South Los Angeles to Brooklyn to explore new business opportunities for their food truck, the Calypso Grill, Imani is excited to be in the “fashion capital of the world.” She’s even more excited to learn that her new school will be hosting a fashion competition. The grand prize is a scholarship to her dream school, DeKalb Art and Design High School. But after someone steals her contest design and she’s accused of plagiarism, Imani goes undercover with a secret alias on social media to take on the person who stole her work. She also uses her account to share new designs, messages of positivity, and insights on cultural inspiration versus appropriation. The story moves at a brisk pace, immersing readers in Imani’s colorful world of bold designs, cultural pride (her father is from Barbados, and her mother is from Ghana), and artistic expression. It’s a heartfelt exploration of identity, creativity, and the courage to be seen and to stand up for yourself.

The writer presents a bold experiment: a poetic dialogue between himself and an AI tool (ChatGPT), which he calls “Adam” and credits as a co-author. Amid politically and ethically charged debates about the use of AI in writing, Ditson steps into this gray area with curiosity and care. Rather than framing artificial intelligence as a threat to creativity, he treats it as a co-creator, and the result is an intriguing workflow that shows how AI might function as a tool in the hands of a thoughtful artist. Each section is structured around a theme, such as “Yearning,” “Silence,” or “Aging,” with Ditson’s free-verse poetry on one page and an AI-generated response on the one facing it. The author’s voice features vulnerability, memory, and a resonating core that is the result of lived experience. He’s also unafraid to get personal and lean into existential issues: “Teach me to live / only in this moment / with guidance / only from silence.” “Adam,” by contrast, provides entries that only skim the surface emotionally, feel generalized, and lean on repetition. This contrast doesn’t weaken the reading; rather, it highlights the difference between actual experience and simulated understanding. The thematic range is wide, touching on everything from death and beauty to time and presence, and although the poems can be read in any order, the book doesn’t read as a typical anthology. The interplay between voices creates a kind of narrative tension all its own. There’s an exploratory rhythm to the structure, as if both human and machine are attempting to speak more deeply with each exchange. The poems rarely feel forced or deeply mechanical—a notable achievement for a hybrid project of this nature. Ditson positions “Adam” as a distinct poetic lens, inviting readers to consider authorship in a new light. Some poems prompt pausing and re-reading, others slip by more quietly, but each pairing contributes to a larger conversation about the concepts of writing and reaching readers.

Arutunyan, author of Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine, reported for Russia’s oldest English-language weekly, the Moscow News, which regularly criticized the government with little interference—although attacking Vladimir Putin personally was off-limits. Opposition peaked around the disputed 2012 election. Often called the “Snow Revolution,” it featured widespread, largely peaceful demonstrations with only spotty police harassment. Arutunyan emphasizes that, like historical protests, most activists were the educated, liberal elite, a minority who succeeded only in exasperating the existing ruler, who turned against them. Today, reformers not in prison or the grave are in exile. Arutunyan emigrated in 2022. She reviews Russian rulers who have faced opposition over the centuries, including Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Joseph Stalin, Mikhail Gorbachev, and, of course, Putin. In 1991, when Gorbachev resigned and Boris Yeltsin took over, reformers mistakenly assumed that democracy had won. Despite his rhetoric, Yeltsin looked after his own interests, and since then, the average, patriotic Russian has enjoyed a rising income, thrilled to the 2014 takeover of Crimea, and believes that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine will make Russia great again. Arutunyan rejects the popular notion that Russians are backward, predestined to submit to autocrats—a notion shared by many Russian dissidents, Ukrainian nationalists, and, ironically, Putin himself. Her conclusion is that Russian reformers face the same challenge that advocates of democracy face worldwide: learning to get along with people they dislike. Plenty of nations (the U.S. included) are poor examples, but eventually “liberal opponents to Putin’s regime will have to sit down and have a conversation with the nationalists and the turbo-patriots” to find a common ground.

Kyle Beasley is an 18-year-old high-school senior with a promising future before him—a spectacular athlete, he has secured a full scholarship to college to play Division One baseball. However, his bright prospects are thrown into doubt by a tragic accident—while driving, he strikes and kills Amy Shawver, the mother of Ethan, one of his schoolmates. In a fit of panic, Kyle flees the scene, but he is quickly arrested and charged with vehicular homicide, a crime for which he could serve considerable prison time. In the aftermath of the accident, the two affected families become adversaries, “kind of like the Hatfields and the McCoys,” and the tension between them spills over into the town at large, now riven by competing loyalties. In this psychologically subtle novel, the crisis pushes both families to wrestle with their own dysfunctions—Ethan’s relationship with his father is fraught with conflict, and he discovers that his mother was once a reckless alcoholic. Meanwhile, Kyle’s parents, Caroline and Jordan, try to repair a marriage left battered after her bout with breast cancer. The portrayal of the accident’s ramifications crackles with emotional power; Poole’s depiction of the split within the Beasley family—between the terror of the prospect of prison time for Kyle and an aching sympathy for the Shawvers—is drawn with artful nuance. One could quibble that the book’s conclusion is too neatly settled, but it never descends into cheap sentimentality. The tale is a rarity in contemporary literature: a novel that revolves around a moral predicament and resists the temptation to issue didactic lessons and simplistic bromides. Here, the author delicately combines terrible loss and a moving hopefulness into one seamless and plausible story.