Worried by announcements of a new, high-tech fun house that might drive their employer, the Delta Game, out of business, middle schooler Sarah and her friends Hannah and West jump at the chance to give Mystery Mansion a try before it opens to the public. More’s at stake than they suspect, but Currie dispenses with the backstory in a perfunctory way at the end. Her real focus—and the chief appeal here—lies in the set of fiendishly clever escape rooms that she’s devised for the trio and the team dynamics that carry them through: Hannah is the reckless thrill seeker, West is the observant brainiac, and anxiety-prone Sarah has a knack for making correct choices. The story cranks up the suspense, and the Deltas call on all the courage and smarts they can muster, sweeping readers along as they work urgently against the clock to complete the course. Hannah is cued white, West is described as dark-haired, and narrator Sarah isn’t physically described.

In his nonfiction debut, Korga, who’s “spent an alarming number of years in DevOps, Platform Engineering, and other forms of YAML-based masochism,” writes on all aspects of the IT experience, from the language of dealing with customers and clients to establishing companies to dealing with AI (“Welcome to the age of artificial everything – accuracy sold separately”). He employs thousands of single-sentence paragraphs and tables of information instead of lengthy prose to convey his own wry approach to all these aspects of the industry. A frequent theme is his wariness about the actual customers and their perception of what IT does and doesn’t do. “When technical disasters threaten mission objectives and stakeholders demand explanations, fixing issues becomes secondary to narrative control,” he writes. “You don’t fix the bug – you weaponize it.” Repeatedly, Korga presents handy tables that decipher, for example, an HR phrase (“Let’s revisit this in the next cycle”), what that phrase sounds like (“maybe later”), and its actual meaning (“never”). In all of this, sarcasm seasons the book and is often deliciously deadpan (“Finance doesn’t block your requests because they hate you,” he writes. “They block them because they don’t even remember what you do”). The author’s thoughts on the stupidity (and cupidity) of tech startups (dubbed “Startupistan”) are particularly withering. For example, “In Starupistan, the regime does not fail; it simply enters a Glorious New Phase of the Revolution.” Readers who know nothing of tech support might find all this insider snark impenetrable, but even newbies will appreciate the chuckles.

Donutella is a sweets-and-makeup-inspired drag superhero of a comic book created by 12-year-old Korean immigrant Jae Han Kim. At school, Jae Han’s bullied by a group of jocks. At home, Jae Han’s parents dismiss his passion for drawing while heaping praise on his athletic older brother. But the tween has a diverse, close-knit group of friends, fellow misfits who take refuge at the library and hone their creative talents. When the mayor announces that the library will be razed to make room for a shopping mall, Jae Han deputizes his friends as the Library Avengers to save the day. While the storyline is fueled by power-hungry businessmen, unfair parental expectations, and corrupt politicians, the creative kids—and their vivid imaginations—keep the pace light and lively. The pages of girl-inspired comics of Donutella are hilarious and help Jae Han process each serious situation with outrageous solutions. Co-authors Chi—star of RuPaul’s Drag Race—and Lee sensitively explore themes of identity (in particular, Jae Han’s love of fashion and beauty, which his parents don’t understand) while celebrating a loving community as it speaks truth to power.

At the center of the narrative, set in the small town of Wintermere, are Sera Linden and Julian Vero, whose bond is revealed less through dialogue than through silence, shared labor, and gestures that skirt definition. Sera is leading a local revitalization project while Julian is undertaking a personal rebuilding task at the chapel.Their companions along the way—bookshop owner Ruth, coffee shop owner Gwen, cafe worker Jane—bring shades of conflict and communal tension, but the narrative’s truest focus is the slow, nearly devotional attention to the space in which they dwell. St. Avila’s chapel emerges not only as backdrop but as a living presence: damaged, tended, and finally restored without spectacle. Lane weaves recurring objects—a compass, sea glass, ash, wildflowers—into a symbolic range that roots the novel’s abstractions in tactile forms. Lane’s prose is lyrical and deliberate, its rhythm closer to liturgy than to plot-driven fiction: Time blurs, and chapters linger in long stillnesses in which light through a window or a hand touching a wooden doorframe carries emotional weight: “Sera stood at the threshold, one hand brushing the frame, as if needing to feel the grain of it before entering.” The work is not one of dramatic revelations but of placing of a piece of sea glass on a windowsill, or assembling an altar without ceremony. The closing movement shifts outward, showing St. Avila’s as a space that continues on, absorbing offerings from unnamed visitors and rumored to harbor two silent figures at dusk. The effect is elegiac and quietly mythic. However, the risks of such narrative restraint are real; the novel sometimes sags under its own quietude with extended passages of silence and symbolism that risk redundancy. Secondary characters recede in the final chapters, leaving the ending feeling almost too ethereal, with its emotional resonance dependent on readers’ patience with ambiguity; as such, those who might crave sharper dramatic arcs or concrete closure may find frustration.

Chen’s full-color photographs, showcasing the ins and outs of the automotive sports world, span more than 400 pages. Clocking in at over 2,500 individual photos, the book unfolds in reverse chronological order. It comprises four sections, beginning with Chen’s most recent collections—“A People’s Movement” (2020-2024) and “Lens on Fire” (2015-2019)—and working backward to conclude with his first five years in the business—“Laying Groundwork” (2005-2009). Some photographs are full page; many are smaller in size and grouped together in a collage depicting a particular car show or race. Included throughout are brief paragraphs that describe the events behind the photos, Chen’s methods, or suggestions for budding sports photographers (“My number one piece of advice for auto enthusiasts is to get off your comfy sofa and go out and find some cool cars in the wild”). The photos reveal a breathtaking talent for capturing movement, like flames bursting from a car’s hood at the Retro Havoc in Malaysia or a midcrash close-up on a racetrack. With vivid colors, crisp lines, and no shortage of Porsches, he captures the excitement of racing in all its forms and in all parts of the world (labeling the types of cars featured would have been helpful). The Pandem R33 GT-R against the neon lights of Tokyo gives way to the grit-crusted trophy trucks flying through the sand dunes of Baja, California—all while Chen’s eye for light and color combinations delight the reader. The prose that occasionally accompanies the pictures is conversational/unpolished (“This was a show that was on my radar for a while. Until recently it had quite the interesting name: it was called ‘Raceism.’ Although I completely understand that it was an unnecessary name, I still thought it was hilarious”) leaving the main focus (rightly) on the photographs. Part career retrospective, part coffee-table book, the collection is ultimately a remarkable celebration of car culture and sports photography.