Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary by Stefan Fatsis (Atlantic Monthly Press). Reviewed by Randy Cepuch. “But then the internet came along, making it possible for online editions to be updated much more quickly. The big books with tiny type disappeared from nearly every desk when it became easier to look up words on your phone. The transition was still underway when the people at Merriam-Webster gave Fatsis a key to the company’s building in Springfield, Massachusetts, and access to the files documenting where words came from and how they’ve been defined.”

Happy People Don’t Live Here: A Novel by Amber Sparks (Liveright). Reviewed by Keith Donohue. “A decade before the story begins, Alice took her baby, Fern, and ran away from her controlling and abusive husband. Every few years, they move from one anonymous town to another, arriving finally in Pine Lake, Minnesota, and a run-down apartment in a converted sanitorium. A handful of zany tenants occupies the other flats: a woman who earns a living as a mermaid and likes to bathe in her tailed costume; a divorced professor of medieval history; the Glass Girl, a woman with fragile bones; the Cursed Lady; an Old Soldier who may have been a writer; and a disgraced taxidermist.”

Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida by Gilbert King (Flatiron Books). Reviewed by Mariko Hewer. “It’s almost impossible to overstate the number of things that went sideways in Schofield’s murder case. A prosecutor who intentionally misled jurors, violated courtroom rules and ethics, and manipulated witnesses and suspects? Check. A defense attorney ‘whose grasp of the case was fragmented and inconsistent,’ to the extent that he was later forced to testify that he should’ve had ‘a better understanding of character evidence’? Present and accounted for. Crucial evidence that eluded the defense’s scrutiny and may well have been actively suppressed by the state? Absolutely.”

Tall Is Her Body by Robert de la Chevotière (Erewhon Books). Reviewed by Priyanka Champaneri. “The novel’s opening act of violence is the first of many peppering these pages, and each time Fidel gains a certain amount of security, the world tilts. Soon after, he must again find his way with a new home, a new relative, a new set of histories to navigate, and one more thing: a new spirit to acclimate to.”

Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore by Ashley D. Farmer (Pantheon). Reviewed by Tim Hirschel-Burns. “With the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation serving as a key marker, Moore called for reparations both because of their moral justification and for their potential to serve as the financial engine of a thriving Black nation. She urged Malcolm X to take up this call. (He was among the first to call Moore by the title she would be remembered by, ‘Queen Mother,’ which elders from Ghana’s Asante tribe later officially bestowed upon her.)”

Secret Maps: Maps You Were Never Meant to See, from the Middle Ages to Today by Tom Harper, Nick Dykes, and Magdalena Peszko (University of Chicago Press). Reviewed by Tom Peebles. “The vignettes are enriched by the high quality of the book’s illustrations. The maps that serve as the focal points for each are remarkably well-reproduced, with brilliant colors. Readers can easily imagine themselves on a tour of the British Library, moving from room to room with Harper, Dykes, or Peszko serving as their well-informed docent.”

The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit, and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty by Tracy Borman (Atlantic Monthly Press). Reviewed by Bob Duffy. “This is an old and timeworn tale, but under Borman’s industrious scholarship, it takes on fresh urgency, at least for students of the period. She tells it in the vivid and expressive detail it deserves, and she writes brilliantly, one of the very best of the bevy of Tudor historians who have emerged in recent years.”

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