The Salt Princess

Written by: Anoosha Syed

First line: Under a sky studded with diamond, surrounded by hills as green as emeralds, lived four princesses in the Kingdom of Zammarud.

Why you should read this book: Princess Amal, the youngest of four sisters, is funny and free and loves pranks and says exactly what she thinks, which, everyone predicts, will get her in trouble one day. And one day it does, when her father is so deeply and publicly embarrassed by her plain spokenness that he banishes her. Fortunately, in her banishment she meets and falls in love with a handsome prince who encourages her to think up a new prank, one to make her father see how much she loves him.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's presented as being a traditional Pakistani story, but it's also a traditional European story most fairy tale aficionados have read before and this version does not seem to bring anything different for the tradition. 

All Is Nat Lost

Written by: Maria Scrivan First line: Hi, I'm Natalie! My class is learning about American independence so, Midway Middle School is taking a trip to Philadelphia Why you should read this book: Nat really wants to join her class for an overnight trip to Philadelphia, but her parents worry so much about whether she's responsible that she's afraid they won't let her go especially after she loses her bike. When they finally agree, Nat is overjoyed, and everything seems to be going well until she loses her phone and she and her friend lose the rest of the group! Now it's Nat and Flo in the big city, frantically trying to complete the scavenger hunt and find their way back to the rest of their class.

Why you shouldn't read this book: I imagine there is a species of parent that would lose their minds over a story about two pre-adolescent girls who get lost in a big city and not only does nothing bad happen to them, things work out pretty well.

Garlic and the Vampire

Written by: Bree Paulsen

First line: I tried to wake you so it's your fault if you're late today. 

Why you should read this book: Garlic, an anthropomorphic vegetable given life by Witch Agnes along with numerous other fruit and vegetable folks, is clumsy and anxious but dedicated to her work: providing garlic to the people of the village. One day, chaos and terror arrives in the form of a vampire inhabiting an ancient castle in the woods, and the other vegetables decide that Garlic, who naturally repels vampires, must go into the woods to investigate. Can Garlic overcome her fear and anxiety and defeat an enemy whose name strikes fear into her heart in this cozy tale of unearned terror? 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's a little bit silly, even for a children's vampire story.

American Animism: Stories

Written by: Jamey Gallagher

First line: She returned to work at the cryptid museum a week after the attack.

Why you should read this book: This one's a wild ride, and although there are certain themes that seem to recur through the unconnected stories, every one direct the reader to a different place with a different conclusion. Strange creatures, doomed relationships, tourist attractions, ghosts, and drug-fueled escape, both casual and chronic populate these fast-past short stories. Often, I have trouble with short fiction because I have to work to get into the story and then suddenly it's over, but these stories allowed me slip immediately into each world and then seemed to conclude at the perfect moment.

Why you shouldn't read this book: There is a fair amount of violence toward women, not gratuitously so, but not exactly pleasant either.

Kosher Soul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew

Written by: Michael W. Twitty

First line: When I first started talking about this developing this book, a fellow African American food writer asked what it was about, saying, "So you're not writing about Black [food], you're writing about Jewish [food]." 

Why you should read this book: Twitty goes on to explain that he is writing about Black Jewish food, because there are Black Jewish people and this is the second in a three-book trilogy (the first being The Cooking Gene) about the "intersections between food and identity." It takes the form of a series of essays and "mayseh" (stories) about the numerous threads that create Blackness and Judaism, and the food traditions that arise where these identities come together. Making the point that, while often overlooked as anomalies, Black Jews exist and the Black Jewish tradition in America is strong and stretches back centuries and encompasses a vast smorgasbord of flavor and ingredients; this book, of course, includes numerous delectable looking recipes.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You might need to have a previous interest in cooking or foodways or culinary history or at least intersectional identities to get into this one. 

Shanghai Immortal

Written: A. Y. Chao

First line: The steaming Shanghai night drapes heavy over my bare shoulders. 

Why you should read this book: Fast paced, luscious, fresh, and edgy, this is the story of Lady Jing, bad girl half-vampire half-fox spirit, consigned to live under the thumb of the King of Hell (Chinese version) since her grandmother's court rejected her outright as an abomination and her mother subsequently abandoned her. Devoted to rejecting tradition and making trouble, her life is upended the day she's commanded to escort a living mortal through Hell (the King of Hell needs advice on creating a viable banking system) and ends up sent to the mortal realm for her own protection. Jazz age Shanghai is a new world, where Lady Jing discovers she has friends, mortal and otherwise, and devotes herself to unraveling the conspiracy that catapulted her from the world where she endured for ninety years, just in time to finally grow up. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You aren't stirred by the idea of a half-vampire half-demon in a world that blends Chinese mythology with the advances of the early twentieth century. 

Station Eternity

Written by: Mur Lafferty

First line: Nobody ever believed murders "just happened" around Mallory Viridian.

Why you should read this book: This fun near-future science fiction murder mystery takes place primarily on the sentient space station where Mallory has fled to escape the constellation of murders that seem to happen all around her on Earth, where nobody believes they're not her fault even though she always finds the real killer. Surely the curse cannot follow her across the cosmos if she's only one of three humans on board, but her peace of mind is shattered when she learns that more earthlings are on their way. Suddenly, she's surrounded by death and mayhem again, and needs to use all her resources to unravel a series of mysteries and save the lives of every life on the station, including the station itself.

Why you shouldn't read this book: There are a couple main characters and many supporting characters, and the narrative perspective shifts frequently, often giving entire chapters to the point of view of a minor character for an entire chapter, which, to me, can be jarring. 

Yesteryear

Written by: Caro Claire Burke

First line: This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself. 

Why you should read this book: Natalie has always known that everyone around her is stupid, and that her beliefs about marriage and family and femininity are the only intelligent ways to view those concepts, so naturally, when her marriage falters after the birth of her first child, she focuses increasingly on creating a media empire based on her identity as a "trad wife," showcasing a perfect farm life based on conservative ideals. But Natalie's perfect world is shattered when she wakes up mysteriously transported to some strange nineteenth century farm, held hostage and forced to serve as a wife and mother to a husband and children who are sort of like her real husband and children on land that is a lot like her actual home, but not quite. Told in a series of flashbacks, Natalie's journey exposes the dark side of the lifestyle and the hypocrisy of the young women influencers promoting it. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Natalie is an utterly irredeemable character, smug and self-righteous with zero self-awareness, an unreliable narrator who absolutely deserves every awful thing that happens to her, which is interesting to read, but an unusual way to write a protagonist. 

The Bog Wife

Written by: Kay Chronister

First line: On winter nights, the burned heavy bundles of dried peat in the hearth and inhaled the scent of sacred ground burning while their father paced the length of the room, reciting the history of the Haddesley compact.

Why you should read this book: All their lives, the young adult Haddlesley children have been taught to honor the ancient compact between their family and their bog, which every generation offers up one magical wife to the eldest son, to continue the family line. But their vague, eldritch bog mother has mysteriously vanished, and one of the siblings has fled the land, and there are increasing doubts about the eldest son's suitability to serve as patriarch, and meanwhile, in true southern gothic fashion, the weight of their own history is literally crushing the family home. Naturalistic and supernatural, this delightful novel chronicles the breakdown of old family narratives about power and responsibility.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You believe everything your parents told you despite all evidence to the contrary. 

Dybbuk Americana

Written by: Joshua Gottlieb-Miller

First line: I don't like to guess what kind of Jew/I could have been/in 1492, 1942; pick a year/and I would have thought, "Bad Jew,"/looking in a mirror, under my breath. 

Why you should read this book: This collection of poetry examines the questions of identity, belief, and behavior that are, perhaps, unique to American Judaism. Frankly discussing the concepts of whiteness, assimilation, mixed marriage, antisemitism, family history, world history, philosophy, child rearing, and his own relationship with his community, his relatives, and himself, the author offers an honest picture of a man haunted by the quality of Jewishness that coalesces around spirituality and ethnicity in America. This large format book allows for a layout that seems to communicate the multitude of voices and ideas informing the author's journey and evolution as he places his life in the larger context of history, culture, and family. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Some of the experimental-feeling layout makes the poetry ambiguous or difficult to read.