Kirkus This wordless story details the developing friendship between a homeless dog and a kind, patient young woman.The scruffy dog has floppy ears and long, reddish hair, and the light-skinned woman has long hair of the same auburn shade. The story is set in a modern city and a nearby park with a huge tree and a wooden bench that serves as the only shelter for the dog at night. When the woman comes to read on the bench, she spots the shy dog, gradually b...More

Publishers Weekly On an island of imaginary friends waiting "to be picked by a child and given a special name," one friend-he's adorably pudgy, and wears a paper crown-resolves to wait no longer. He sets sail in a small boat, but the sea serpents and whales he encounters are not nearly as daunting as the real world, which is gray and pedestrian: "No kids were eating cake. No one stopped to hear the music." At last, his human ...More

Publishers Weekly Ten influential black men-including Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King Jr.-are profiled in this husband-and-wife team's vibrant collaboration. Andrea Davis Pinkney introduces her subjects with powerful poems, before moving into image-rich, introspective, and candid descriptions of each man's influence on civil rights, culture, art, or politics: "[Malcolm X] th...More

Kirkus Vast, riveting far-future saga involving evil gods, interstellar war, and manipulative aliens, from the author of The Peace War and the splendid Marooned in Realtime. An unknown being or force has partitioned the universe into ``zones of thought'': at the bottom is the Slow Zone, where intelligence is modest and the speed of light a limiting factor; in the Beyond, where multi-light-speed ultradrive travel is possible, thousands of smart r...More

Book list Wasted lives, wasted time, and wasted opportunities are at the heart of this twenty-third entry in the long-running Kinsey Millhone series, which reveals how the deaths of two very different men impact Kinsey's life. The first man, Pete Wolinsky, found murdered in a local park, is a shady PI for whom Kinsey has little respect; the second, R. T. Dace, is an alcoholic vagrant who not only turns out to be Kinsey's relative but also leaves h...More

Library Journal In the late 1890s, Wilmington, NC, was a successful mixed-race community with a strong African American middle class that actively participated in a government comprising Republicans and Populists. Then white supremacist Democrats used a black newspaper editorial to foment unrest aimed at overthrowing Wilmington's elected officials, eventually dispatching 2,000 armed night riders to terrorize the populace. At least 60 black men were ki...More

Book list Mantel fictionalizes the life and times of Thomas Cromwell, crafty architect of Henry VIII's annulment from Catherine of Aragon, the execution of Sir Thomas Moore, Henry's schism with the Church of Rome, and the Reformation. Delving deeply into the psychology of the man behind the throne, she paints a portrait of a brilliant schemer, bullied by his brutish blacksmith father determined to rise above his circumstances by dint of his own wi...More