In 2018, Jack Forester, a dedicated physician and medical school dean at New Canterbury University, is already struggling with the loss of his wife and the overwhelming responsibilities of running a hospital when his world is upended. A financial crisis threatens to bankrupt the medical center, and as Jack investigates, he uncovers shocking mismanagement and possible fraud. His pursuit of the truth puts him at odds with powerful figures, including a ruthless cybercriminal with a vested interest in the hospital’s collapse. At home, Jack is a single father to a young daughter, Julia, who’s beginning to ask difficult questions about her mother whom she barely remembers. Meanwhile, his teenage niece, Kaitlyn, arrives in his care under difficult circumstances, offering him a challenge and an unexpected source of strength. Just as Jack begins to untangle the web of deception surrounding the hospital, his past returns to haunt him. A notorious serial killer with whom Jack has history is back, and this time, he’s targeting those closest to him. Edwards, a physician, crafts an authentic medical setting, from the daily pressures of emergency medicine to the behind-the-scenes power struggles that shape hospital operations. His attention to detail, such as the protocols of hospital administration and the psychological burden of caregiving (“What would she remember of her childhood? He hoped it wouldn’t be of the hours she spent wondering when he would come home”), lends the story credibility and depth. Jack is a compelling protagonist—flawed yet determined, battling personal grief and forced into roles he never sought. Kaitlyn, a rebellious but intelligent teenager with a hidden talent for baseball, adds emotional weight to the story, and their evolving relationship is one of the book’s most rewarding aspects. Julia, though younger, serves as a constant reminder of the life that Jack’s trying to hold together, making the stakes more personal. The tension builds steadily as the various threats converge, leading to a climactic confrontation.

In 1787, Mary Wollstonecraft is fired from her position as governess of three young women on the charge of being overly progressive; the incident is a microcosm of her uphill struggle to affect “an end to women’s blind obedience.” She returns to London to pursue her ambition to become a writer, and with the encouragement of publisher Joseph Johnson, she establishes a reputation as a radical reformer, especially with her Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. However, despite her own efforts to control her passions, she becomes infatuated with the married artist Henry Fuseli. He indiscreetly boasts of her attachment to him, an embarrassment that threatens to ruin her good reputation. Obsessed with the ongoing revolution in France, she exiles herself to Paris, a tinderbox of political violence, and risks being imprisoned, as all foreigners are seen as potential spies. In this gripping “work of fiction told in chronological order” focusing on Wollstonecraft’s “late-blooming love affairs,” the legendary feminist is torn between the need to flee an increasingly unsafe Paris and her attachment to Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American adventurer and fellow writer. This account of Wollstonecraft’s life deftly manages to be both literarily inventive and faithful to the facts of her life. A fiercely independent woman dedicated to the liberty of women everywhere, Wollstonecraft in these pages struggles to reconcile her ideal of “rational love” with the consuming carnal desires she experiences. Mastro also thoughtfully depicts her intellectual crisis regarding the French Revolution; initially, she was enthusiastically in favor of it and pilloried Edmund Burke’s famous critique. But later, as the Revolution devolved into violence and tyranny, she came to wonder if he was actually right. The author’s prose authentically captures the dialogue of the time and powerfully evokes the contradictions that make Wollstonecraft’s legacy so richly complex.

In 1963, Danny Prescott is an ordinary 16-year-old boy in Banning, Iowa, who is unaccustomed to being noticed by the likes of Brent Arrington, a star high school football player and the “closest thing Banning had to a celebrity.” So Danny, who is also on the football team, is surprised when Brent asks him for a ride to the home of Loretta Tinsley, a 13-year-old girl in junior high. While there, Brent and Loretta disappear into a hay loft, where Brent rapes her and casually emerges unperturbed by her anguished cries, grotesquely satisfied by his conquest. Danny does nothing to help her and even gives Brent a ride back to town. Danny quickly becomes emotionally overwhelmed by his cowardly inaction, which finally leaves him “shimmering with shame and humiliation,” an ignominy sensitively depicted by Whipple. Loretta presses charges, and Brent is arrested for rape while Danny is considered an accessory to the assault. Danny desperately wants to atone for his part in Loretta’s agony, especially after she attempts suicide, and tells the truth about what he saw. He even pines to testify against Brent. But Danny becomes the town pariah—some hate him because he won’t defend Brent, who makes a state football championship possible, and others because they see him as the star athlete’s accomplice. The school’s principal, Mr. Larson, tries to expel Danny, and local mothers take up a petition to remove him from school. Coach Esker discourages Danny from continuing to play football, and many of his teammates, Brent’s “loyalists,” shun him. Even worse, Brent assaults him brutally and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut.

Whipple’s moral drama is layered with complexity—the Prescotts have a long and fraught relationship with the Arringtons. This is especially impressive given the ordinariness of this town—Danny calls it a “grease spot on an Iowa map”—which serves as a perfect stage for the story, a small place that gives birth to big sins. At the heart of the novel is a delicately portrayed maturation of Danny—this unassuming virgin who longs to escape the aching provinciality of his life is compelled to grow up fast and ask himself hard questions about what it means to be a man. Whipple’s writing is generally poetically unembellished, but its plainness is the source of its gathering power, and it brings into sharp relief the averageness of those who participate in this moral contest. Here, Loretta’s father, Evert, confronts Danny regarding his responsibility for her rape: “Why didn’t you help my little girl? They say you’re a good kid. Why didn’t you help her when she cried out?…Why would someone she considered a friend…bring a monster to our farm?” This is an absorbing look into the ways even the most ordinary human beings can suddenly become key players in a terrible drama.

Arceneaux was the first pediatric cancer survivor and the first with a prosthetic body part to become an astronaut, part of the first all-civilian space mission in 2021. The author, who in 2022 published the adult memoir Wild Ride and its 2023 adaptation for middle-grade readers, here shares her story with an even younger audience. Told in the third person, the narrative emphasizes the bravery she summoned as she coped with a cancer that left her with a prosthetic leg bone and knee (hinted at with an incision line in one illustration) and went on to become a space traveler. Curiously, Hayley and her astronaut colleagues are portrayed as children. They play with a “stuffed toy alien,” and in an imagined episode, Hayley ventures outside the spacecraft to perform a repair. Accompanied by softly hued illustrations with character designs that recall Precious Moments figurines, the narrative emphasizes familiar details of space travel that will appeal to children; both their bodies and their food float in zero gravity. The mission splashes down safely, and Hayley rushes to hug her mom. Though Arceneaux was the youngest astronaut to have orbited the Earth, she was an adult when she did so. The odd choice to depict her as a child reduces her compelling story to a fantasy. Arceneaux is white; other characters are diverse.

This gray-haired, bespectacled, very chic grandmother “kvells” over every wonderful thing about the child (a glossary defines kvelling as “bursting with pride”). They play peek-a-boo, and Grandma hugs, kisses, and cuddles the little one. Baby’s every expression is met with excitement and joy, and Grandma decides that even the infant’s smiles are evidence of genius. There’s nothing subtle here and no shading in the art—brightly colored, vibrant double-page spreads present all the activities in sharp relief and large-scaled views. Facial expressions match the action, and even the dog gets in on the fun. Gran’s comments appear in speech bubbles or across the pages in dramatically large, bold fonts. Exclamation marks abound, and the text is peppered with Yiddish words that will easily be understood in context. Baby is Grandma’s “bubbeleh,” and she admires the child’s “punim” and kisses the little one’s “keppie” and, of course, those chubby baby thighs, the “pulkies.” The love between these two is palpable. Jewish readers will especially appreciate this tale, but the glossary and labeled diagram of the baby’s body parts ensure that all youngsters and their grown-ups will enjoy cuddling together to read it. The characters are light-skinned.