Backwater by James Sallis. Soho, 2026. 9781641298599. 208pp.

I love short crime novels, and I love those written by James Sallis. He was a poet who created characters by sharing moments from their lives, whose books often move suddenly and naturally between a character’s present and the past in a way that feels natural. This was his last novel; Sallis died earlier this year. 

Bishop, a former detective turned jazz guitarist, is talked into coming back to the town where he grew up to help solve a murder (though there’s no body) by a friend from his days as a cop. By the time Bishop shows up to take a look, that friend has absented himself. Bishop sinks in behind his friend’s desk, into his files, and into life in a place he never wanted to return to. It brings back memories of moments on the police force, of growing up, and of books he’s read. He connects with the people he works with as much as anyone, and finds many things unchanged. And as he puts in time, much of it just spent listening and paying attention, solutions to puzzles and problems present themselves, as do a few other crimes and tragedies of different sorts. 

I’ve read most of Sallis’s novels more than once. For me, this is one of his best, right up there with Moth, Death Will Have Your Eyes, and Drive (which was the basis of the film starring Ryan Gosling). 

Monkeypig by Huw Aaron. Viking, 2026. 9798217039159.

Molly (a pig) lives in the jungle with a bunch of monkeys. No one notices she’s different. But then the head monkey calls a meeting, announces there’s an imposter among them, and sets out a series of tests to figure out who needs to be banished from their tribe. Molly is freaked out! But of course she doesn’t really need to be. My favorite part: Molly, entirely failing to eat a banana in the “correct manner.” Epic. 

All the Ice Cream in the Land by Emmy Kastner. Simon & Schuster Book for Young Readers, 2026.9781665984515. 

Princess Roselyn the Reticent’s every need is taken care of without her ever having to say a word. When she doesn’t say how much ice cream she wants for a snack, everyone thinks she wants more until the whole kingdom sets about making the largest bowl of ice cream ever. (In the end, she gets what she actually wanted all along.) Charming. 

The Fart Book by Todd Harris Goldman. Grosset & Dunlop, 2026. 

Ever wondered how often people fart? How many farts there are in a day? A week? A year? Now think about that with animal farts added in. This book would have broken my brain if I read it as a kid. (I respect the science of this book, but I think every number is based on an undercount.) Awesome. 

Unicorns in Uniforms by Beth Ferry & A.N. Kang. Simon & Schuster Book for Young Readers, 2026. 9781665975421. 

Unicorns run the village square at a magical place in the forest. They seem to do all the jobs, and they even defend everyone from dragon storms. Kang’s drawings are full of life and personality. This would be a great book for storytime, and I’d buy uniformed unicorn action figures in a heartbeat if they were available. 

Mr. Noodle’s Super Noodle Shop by Qinzi. Francis Lincoln, 2027. 9781805705130.

Mr. Noodle’s handmade noodles are the stretchiest! And while people are eating them, they discover other ways to have fun with his noodles. This makes Mr. Noodle very angry. Qinzi’s anthropomorphic animals are delightful, and I’d love to see parents try to keep their kids from playing with their noodles after reading this. 

The Underwear Wolf by Gideon Sterer, illustrated by Charles Santoso. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 20269781665955584. 

A highly organized kid gets a strange gift from his uncle, Larry: wool underwear. With them is a note not to wear them during the full moon. But the kid does. He turns into a wolf. The night calls! What follows is a wild adventure around town and in the forest that includes making a bunch of new friends. Santoso’s drawings are amazing, and, bonus, the book includes an epic wedgie.

Fly, Mama, Fly! by Anna McGregor. Scribble US, 2025. 9781964992143.

Guest review by Julie Strange

This absolutely gorgeous board book will make snuggling up with your toddler or preschooler all the more dreamy and wonderful. Printed with special neon ink, you’re transported into a magical world of a baby flying fox as they fly through the night with their mama. (They’re native to southwestern Australia and endangered.) There’s wonderful positional language in here –“under,” “over,” “past,” and “through” — and action words — “sip,” “nibble,” “bite” — that lend a lovely interactive element to reading time. My nearly-six-year-old loves this book, and frankly so do I. It will forever hold a special place on our shelves, and I will continue buying a copy for every new family member that comes along. (Bonus: five percent of profits from each copy sold is donated to the Australian Conservation Foundation.)

The Girl Who Raised The Dead by Kawashima Norikazu. English Translation by Ryan Holmberg. Smudge / Living the Line, 2028. (Original © 1987). 9781961581134. 204pp. Contains an essay titled “Magical Girls and the Occult in Postwar Japan” by Tanaka Hirokazu, which is worth looking at if only to see the original cover to this manga. 

Mirumo is killed when the umbrella she’s holding is struck by lightning. But then something truly weird happens, and she comes back to life after a mysterious light enters her body. Now she has secret powers, among them the ability to raise the dead. 

I went into this expecting some sort of zombie outbreak story, but it defied my expectations. Mirumo mostly uses he powers to help others. But she also has to fend off some violent attacks, the first at school and one later when she tracks down a murderer.

Stylistically, the book appears fairly innocent, though the horrific scene of the electrocution at the beginning sets the reader up for the bloody chaos later in the book. 

Note: this is the sixth book in the Smudge series of “vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga.” (If you love horror manga, it’s worth finding the other books in the series.)

Last Day Pool Party by Emma Steinkellner. Labyrinth Road / Random House Children’s Books, 2026. 9798217031429.  176pp.  

I fell in love with Steinkellner’s art when reading her The Okay Witch series. Her art plus the expert way she was able to juggle so many characters’ stories at the pool party pulled me through this graphic novel.

It starts with the graduation ceremony at Orange Grove Junior High where we’re introduced to the central characters: Dustin, Juhi, her best friend Liv, Paul, Maya, and Rose, who’s so invisible that her name is never called for graduation. It feels like the book is going to be Rose’s story — she has a list of things she wanted to do by the end of 8th grade, and the only one she has checked off is to graduate. I was ready for the book to be about her crossing off items at the pool party, and it kind of is, though her journey is woven in brilliantly with everyone else’s stories. Dustin is the party’s host; he became an outcast after he cried in a video featuring the popular Maya, who has problems of her own. Juhi is moving to London and hasn’t told Liv, who, after hearing the news, immediately starts auditioning new best friends. Paul sits inside for most of the party, playing video games, but even he has a part ot play later. 

This graphic novel has a brilliant mix of awful behavior, disasters, and nice moments that feel totally genuine. It is really something special by the end. I loved it. 

The Endless Game by J.D. Amato, art by Sophie Morse. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2026. 9781665927154. 248pp. 

Fred moves a lot, and now he’s the new kid in Lakeside, Illinois, where most of the kids take part in a high-stakes, summer-long game of capture the flag. (The homeschooled kids set the rules and act as judges.) Fred is immediately recruited to the Downhill team, which gives him an instant community. The Downhill King, Raquel, is trying to come up with a strategy for the summer; things are a little off because their former king (Mike) was framed for writing graffiti on a wall and sent away from the summer. (Can they find evidence to clear his name?) The Downhill team suspects the Uphill kids were responsible but can’t prove it. (In fact the Uphill King is a jerk who is clearly not above cheating to get his way; he’s a classic villain, even if all the kids on the Uphill team aren’t bad.) 

The game has been going for 75 years, and has been played by generations of kids in Lakeside. Adults aren’t allowed to play or interfere. The game goes from 11am until the lights come on at dusk. (Captured kids have to report to the other team’s jail during these hours.) Each team has a castle. There are raids and other forms of chaos, and, needless to say, heroes. It’s all a little out of hand, but it looks like a lot of fun, too, and, at best, it gives each of the kids a chance to figure out what they’re good at and how to contribute to their teams. 

My favorite character: Sarah, whose talent is hiding. She’s always wearing the craziest camouflage outfit. 

Buff Soul by Moa Romanova. Translator: Melissa Bowers. Fantagraphics, 2025. 9798875000683. 240pp.

A bookseller at Third Place Books told me about their obsession with this book and Romanova’s drawing style. It was such a passionate, slam-dunk of a booktalk that I bought a copy. And now I love Romanova’s style, too, particularly the way she draws people.

Buff Soul is an autobiographical graphic novel about Romanova’s time in the U.S. with her friends in the band ShitKid. (I knew I loved it when she hallucinates/dreams about characters from the Lord of the Rings movies being on her plane, after starting to watch the movie on her flight to the U.S.) The whole is a story of friendship, music, and drugs and alcohol, with a bit of sex thrown in. It’s full of what feel like bad decisions, though it’s not a book about dealing with the consequences of those as much as it’s a story of hanging in with people one cares about.

I loved it, and I plan to reread it after I read Romanova’s previous book, the Eisner-winning Goblin Girl.

Save It For Later: Promises, Parenthood, and the Urgency of Protest by Nate Powell. Abrams Comicarts, 2021. 9781419749124. 160pp. 

Powell (March, Swallow Me Whole, Any Empire, more) makes beautiful graphic novels. Every aspect of his work is amazing, but for me the thing I love about his comics is the control he has over the flow of the stories he tells; I’m not sure how he knows exactly where to put each sentence and image, and how to format it all so it works together so well. 

This feels like the most personal book of his I’ve read. It’s about parenting when the country is going in directions he and his wife don’t agree with, standing up and speaking out and protesting for what you believe in (even when it seems crazy), and trying to stay sane and responsible through all of it. It takes place between the beginning of the first Trump administration and Covid. John Lewis is present in the book as an influence and a friend, and we see Powell dealing with Lewis’s death. There’s a really rough moment at a comic convention that, as a comics fan, broke my heart. This is a tough read, a look at what we’re living through that asks us to consider what we’re going to do about it.  

After the Public Library Association’s 2026 conference, I had to stay in Minneapolis an extra day because of a blizzard sweeping across North Dakota. And after visiting the art museum to see the amazing Christine Sun Kim exhibit I hit a few used bookstores and Odd Mart, a store that has a wonderful collection of indie graphic novels. (It also sells gumballs for $28; each comes with a free T-shirt.)  Here are two books I picked up there:

Testament by J. Marshall Smith. Bulgihan Press, 2025. No ISBN. 118pp.

283 people and a T-3 series caretaker android spend years in a ship to get to Testament, a planet too distant from the United Colonial Fleet Authority to be viable for colonization. It’s a world full of life for them to explore, both with science and via the arts. But it’s a one-way voyage. The colonists won’t have any kids, but they do have religious faith. 

This is the story of the T-3 as it cares for the final two living voyagers, and then the last one. It’s a story of love and faith, and those don’t usually hold my attention. This one did. It’s beautiful.

Showtime by Antoine Cossé. Breakdown Press, 2017. 9781911081029. 176pp.  

This is the story of a road trip that’s part of an epic magic trick. It’s strange, compelling, and delightful in ways it’s hard to explain without spoiling it. Give it a read if you can get your hands on a copy. 

I’d read Cossé’s Mutiny Bay and Metax, and the only consistent thing about Cossé’s style is his ability to surprise me. Drawings that I’d have a hard time puzzling out by themselves work flawlessly as part of his sequential narratives. In particular, I love the way his art expresses space and motion, and how he switches between highly detailed drawings and others that look like they were drawn hastily with a marker.