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When Dwa left his birthplace at the age of eight, the village of Alatsinainy Bakaro (Al Bak) had no electricity or running water. Now, he is about to return to the tiny highlands village after twenty-seven years of living in the capital city of Antananarivo. With no family left in the village, he resorts to posting a message on Facebook. A local family responds and invites him to stay with them, without knowing that—by sheer chance—they hold the same positions at the regional junior high school that Dwa’s parents had. Returning to his origins, in the home of a family that could easily have been his own, Dwa falls deep into nostalgia for his childhood. But understanding is hard to come by, and it is a tremendous challenge to reconcile his two worlds, so very different from each other. In the rural highlands of Madagascar, being an artist isn’t a job, and creating graphic novels as a career is an entirely foreign concept. But this journey that Dwa takes—and takes the reader on with him—is made all the richer for its reflections, quandaries, and considerations. In Back to Al Bak, full-page watercolors alternate with comic-strip exchanges to craft a rich and sensitive portrait of Dwa’s journey back through time and memory.

A coming-of-age tale of a young Dominican American boy facing a grave loss and a feathered phantom

Between the looming buildings of Brooklyn, a young Dominican American boy only ever called mijo by his family has just lost his father to brain cancer. In the wake of his grief, he begins to see his deceased father take the form of a pigeon and ghost, acting as protector and advisor in moments of duress and confusion. Determined to find out the truth behind his father’s appearances, he sets out on the streets of Brooklyn with his outspoken friend Naño, and in the hills of the Dominican Republic with his cousin Matias, in search of answers, only to discover more ghostly apparitions and inexplicable occurrences. In a world of lost things and in-betweens, the grief-stricken son must choose whether he can bear to let go of his father or accept the consequences of what we let haunt us.
 

A story of first love across cities spanning the decade that transformed the internet

In the halls of an elite East Coast high school, Arjun and Payal fall in love as the world begins to tilt toward the digital. Over the next eight years, their trajectories diverge as sharply as the fractured internet itself. Payal ascends to the dizzying, dopamine-fueled heights of New York’s influencer economy, finding fame on Boost, a looping video app that is as rewarding as it is demanding. Meanwhile, in a cavernous office in Chicago, Arjun, a musician whose dreams have quieted, now cleans up the same platform’s debris, moderating the internet’s darkest videos. When a brutal act of political violence against a beloved musician goes viral, this rip in reality forces the pair to confront the motivations of the platforms they inhabit. A sharp exploration of creative ambition and the multifarious nature of identity, this is a story of love in the time of infinite scroll and a look at what we sacrifice to be seen.

A mystery linking Manhattan circa 1991 to eastern Afghanistan in 2012, Blue Hours tells of a life-changing friendship between two memorable heroines. When we first meet Mim, she is a recent college graduate who has disavowed her lower middle class roots to befriend Kyra, a dancer and daughter of privilege, until calamity causes their estrangement. Twenty years later, Kyra has gone missing from her NGO’s headquarters in Jalalabad, and Mim—now a recluse in rural New England—embarks on a journey to find her. In its nuance, originality, and moral complexity, Blue Hours becomes an unexpected page-turner.