An insightful, raw YA novel about a young photographer navigating toxic relationships and how they influence her identity.
ARDEN GREY
by Ray Stoeve
Amulet/Abrams, April 2022
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)
Sixteen-year-old Arden Grey is struggling. Her mother has left their family, her father and her younger brother won’t talk about it, and a classmate, Tanner, keeps harassing her about her sexuality—which isn’t even public. (She knows she likes girls romantically, but she thinks she might be asexual.) At least she’s got her love of film photography and her best and only friend, Jamie, to help her cope. Then Jamie, who is trans, starts dating Caroline, and suddenly he isn’t so reliable. Arden’s insecurity about their friendship grows. She starts to wonder if she’s jealous or if Jamie’s relationship with Caroline is somehow unhealthy—and it makes her reconsider how much of her relationship with her absent mom wasn’t okay, too. Filled with big emotions, first loves, and characters navigating toxic relationships, Ray Stoeve’s honest and nuanced novel is about finding your place in the world and seeking out the love and community that you deserve.
Ray Stoeve is the author of the young adult novel Between Perfect and Real, which was a 2021 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. They also contributed to the young adult anthology Take the Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance. They received a 2016–2017 Made at Hugo House Fellowship and created the YA/MG Trans and Nonbinary Voices Masterlist, a database that tracks all books in those age categories written by trans authors about trans characters. When they’re not writing, they can be found gardening, making art in other mediums, or hiking their beloved Pacific Northwest.
Just days before spring break, Neil Kearney is set to fly across the country with his childhood friend (and current friend-with-benefits) Josh, to attend his brother’s wedding―until Josh tells Neil that he’s in love with him and Neil doesn’t return the sentiment.
Human rights organisations and governments speak of a crime against humanity, a « cultural genocide ». Mihrigul Tursun has repeatedly been a victim of Chinese efforts to totally assimilate the Uyghur minority. She experienced the so-called « re-education camps » in their indescribable cruelty, the physical and psychological violence, first hand. In a way that remains unexplained to this day, her young son died while she was imprisoned. Today, despite the threat that has not disappeared even in exile, she has the courage to speak openly about what she experienced and to describe from her own experience what the Uyghur minority in China has to endure. A significant eyewitness account that brings the reader closer to the people behind the news from China.
No one is as at home among wild woodland animals as Wolfgang Schreil: he gets up close and personal with red deer and lynxes, photographs a hunting stoat at ten paces, gets within touching distance of poisonous snakes, and stands among roe deer grazing peacefully by his side. How does he manage to get so unbelievably close to them, to share moments of connectedness that count among the happiest times of his life? For Wolfgang ‘Woid Woife’ Schreil, the woods represent a safe haven and place where we can be truly free. His gripping stories, his priceless knowledge of the animal world and his close-up animal photographs have made him a very special woodland ambassador. His immense passion for life and animals, his faith in the power of love, and his belief that nature’s greatest gifts are revealed to us if we are only patient, are an inspiration for each and every one of us who yearn to be mindful of what really matters.
Old-school mountaineers confront the unknown with courage and self-sufficiency. They go where no one else dares to go, and take unbelievable risks. Ever since man first stood on top of Mont Blanc in 1786, they have continuously pushed the boundaries of the supposedly impossible. Reinhold Messner’s new book is a memorial to those pioneers, a history of traditional mountaineering told through the stories of its most celebrated heroes, often in their own words. Messner’s incisive essays reveal the mental and physical qualities needed to achieve what they did: qualities such as courage and passion, self-reliance in the face of danger, and the ability to focus on important things – and the refusal to use technically sophisticated gear.