Trisha, whose day job is working in the guest services department for the San Francisco Giants baseball team, attends the funeral of wealthy financier and open water swimmer Andy Barlow, who was chopped to pieces by a yacht propeller while training in San Francisco Bay. Andy was in business with his brother, Martin, who was secretly jealous of his sibling’s athleticism and annoyed by his preoccupation with swimming instead of working; he was also sleeping with Andy’s wife, Justine—or so says Harrison, Andy’s son, who wants Trisha, a skilled amateur detective, to look into his father’s death. She’s initially skeptical that foul play was involved, as the U.S. Coast Guard already ruled Andy’s death an accident. Still, she agrees to investigate with the assistance of her sister, Lena. She interrogates Justine, who’s either evasive or clueless about her family’s finances and seems to be hiding something about her relationship with Martin. Trisha later finds out that Justine wanted to break things off with Andy, and that hired goons from Las Vegas had come to collect on hisgambling debt. As more of Andy’s unsavory behavior comes to light, the suspect list only grows longer. Carroll’s novel features snappy dialogue, brisk characterizations of the Barlow family and their entourage, and generous helpings of technical detail about open water swimming. It also shows the author’s clear affection for the canyons, flora, and coastline of the San Francisco Bay Area: “Sausalito gleamed in the morning sun….Fall was San Francisco Bay’s summer, complete with warm weather, dazzling Pacific Ocean sunsets, and cloudless nights.” Overall, it’s a conventional but enjoyable whodunit with a plot that offers readers a round robin of familiar suspects; as such, the final reveal is unsurprising but still satisfying.

The story begins in the year 1831 of the Lucretian Era, a very early indication that this novel involves multiple layers of complex worldbuilding. Yamir Varro, the chief neuroscientist at Connectome Labs, has uploaded a copy ofhis brain into the android Y1, who narrates approximately a third of the novel in journallike “Logfiles.” Initially, Y1 longs for the company of Yamir’s wife, who refuses to interact with an android, and he regrets how he treated his college-aged son: “I missed so many of his milestones—losing his first baby tooth, playing his first game of stickball, shaving for the first time—because I was always at work.” Yamir is a pioneer, and his lab is on the verge of a major breakthrough, butthe world’s largest organized religion, The Temple, does not endorse his work. Olma, the Temple’s science and technology supervisor, is tasked with monitoring all emerging research that falls outside the faith’s strictures, and the novel closely follows her progress in its early stages. The tension soon ratchets up as Yamir’s lab is sold by Grady Leos, its owner, to the Temple and the androids are tasked with forced labor on a Martian settlement, as the Temple believes their leader, El, wants humans to eventually populate the red planet. What follows is a power struggle that pits the desires of Y1, Yamir and his family, and Olma against one another in an often thrilling narrative. The thoughtful, depressed android is an intriguing central character throughout. However, his logfiles are often overly and off-puttingly technical—“The repairs to the ASV3 aren’t going well. Zaltana replaced the leg destroyed by the explosion with one taken from the ASV2, but not every input aligns”—as well as occasionally repetitive. The close third-person narration following Yamir and Olma also relies on frequent scene-setting to remind readers of the stakes involved, which can, at times, become tiresome. Still, the central story and frequent twists will keep engaged readers hooked to the end.

Twelve-year-old Erin’s mother has struggled with depression ever since Aunty Sophie, Mum’s beloved sister, passed away. Erin herself battles fairly severe OCD; her symptoms—including compulsively checking things and counting—can be isolating. An ordinary summer trip to stay in a “static caravan” near a place in the countryside that was special to Mum and Aunty Sophie leads Erin to meet Bess, a mean-spirited yet magnetic girl. Following Bess’ lead, Erin ventures beyond the fence enclosing the caravan park and into the forest. When she climbs a tree to look at a goldfinch’s nest and falls, the goldfinches, fantastically, do more than heal her—they pass on some of their bird nature. Erin experiences a shift in her sense of time, develops the ability to fly, and can understand the speech of a particular goldfinch who strongly resembles her most precious childhood comfort object, Fable, a cuddly toy goldfinch. As Bess and the real Fable lead Erin to realize that something sinister is happening to the goldfinches, they find themselves in the crosshairs of a dangerous situation. The plot covers a lot of ground quickly, and though her abilities are mysterious, Erin is a compelling character whose OCD is part of her but does not define her. Well-placed illustrations appear at powerful emotional moments (final art not seen). Main characters present white.

After Emily’s parents, Morris and Rose, read a news story about how President Theodore Roosevelt spared the life of a wild bear on a hunting trip, the little girl helps her mother make a stuffed bear in his honor. Using velvet fabric, Emily stitches the seams while her mother tells the story of how Morris fled persecution in Russia for the United States. On the ship, he gave his treasured stuffed animal to a sad-eyed youngster, an act of compassion similar to the kindness that President Roosevelt showed to the bear. When Emily and her mother finish the toy, they call it Teddy’s Bear and display it in the family’s candy shop window. Soon kids all over Brooklyn—and indeed all over the country, including the president’s own children—are cuddling teddy bears sewn by Emily and her mother. The illustrations are flat but cheerful, depicting expository moments that reflect the text. Images of the original Teddy’s Bear himself are especially sweet. The characters are light-skinned; Emily’s mother uses several Yiddish phrases, italicized and integrated into the dialogue. An author’s note offers more context and clarifies that there’s no evidence that Emily helped create the bear (though she may well have assisted).

Daemicke links a teacher’s childhood gift of The Secret Garden to the community gardens that Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015) later planted in empty lots around Detroit with the aid of young volunteers. The author characterizes her subject as “a gardener not only of plants but also of minds.” Lin echoes that theme in emblematic tableaux that follow Boggs through early troubles finding work “because she was Chinese” and leadership of the Workers Party to grassroots initiatives like the “Detroit Summer” program. She had such close associations with Malcolm X and the Black Power Movement that her FBI file wrongly dubbed her “Afro-Chinese.” She spent decades involved in both local and larger causes and makes a final appearance here speaking to a diverse circle of youthful “solutionaries” (as she called them) about “art, the earth, and change, challenging them to turn ideas into action.” Daemicke brings home the reality that the struggle for civil rights, particularly for Asian Americans, has been long and tragic with a quick closing reference to Vincent Chin, victim of a hate crime in 1982. The narrative ends with hopes of making the world a “healthier, kinder, and more just place for everyone.”