Bookshelf

(New York: Penguin, 2018).
One Pomporromp grandchild will take it all: a large estate, an important title, a fancy castle. And most of all: unlimited magical powers. Who will win Wizardmatch? With themes of gender equality, favoritism, and sibling rivalry, Kirkus calls this novel for young readers “a stirring yet comedic look at the importance of family.”

(New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2018).
The author is CEO of Kronos, a global provider of workforce management and human capital management cloud solutions used within more than 35,000 organizations in more than 100 countries. According to one reviewer, his book “takes readers step-by-step through principles and practices that have helped Kronos win and grow mainly by inspiring its own workers to realize their full potential and having each other’s backs. Kronos’s bottom-line success is proof positive that Ain’s commitment to creating a satisfying, challenging and kind work environment is a very hard-nosed business strategy indeed. WorkInspired shows us all how to execute it.”

(Seattle: Marrowstone Press, 2018).
Weltner’s latest book of poetry was inspired while he was reading a lot of Horace and Vergil, ancient Greek lyric and tragic poetry, and ancient Chinese poetry. “Many poems, haiku-like, begin in a landscape that branches quickly into primal terrain, textual and sensual, where the past weaves its spell into a present always on the cusp of slipping away.”

(Other Press, 2019).The winner of numerous honors, including a Kirkus Reviews Best Biography of 2019, this book delves into the life of the French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot, best known for his work creating the first comprehensive Encyclopédie. However, as the author notes on his website, “[Diderot’s] most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity — for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century’s accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.”

(New York: SelectBooks, 2018)
“The shelves are heavy with books on yoga, but they do not show, scientifically, the connection between yoga and the DNA,” note the authors, who explore the interconnection of DNA and kundalini (a latent spiritual energy), and how diet, lifestyle, and meditation can help purify the body to its highest potential. Meade is a columnist and author of 30 books.

(Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
The author, an assistant professor of Spanish at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., “explores Queen Esther as an idealized woman in Iberia, as well as a Jewish heroine for conversos in the Sephardic Diaspora in the 16th and 17th centuries” by analyzing retellings of her life found in European and American literary texts.

Winchester, Va.: Red Moon Press, 2017)
A compilation of the author’s work described by the publisher as poems “of emotional weather, often wry, sometimes caustic, frequently amusing.” In this, his first full-length collection, “It is clear that when his poems do bulk up, there is a cumulative power and plangency to be had, more than any single poem could possibly offer.”

(New York: Guilford, 2017)
“This valuable volume presents a synthesis of four decades of systematic work within one of the most comprehensive, profound research programs on human motivation in the history of psychology,” noted a reviewer and professor at the University of Maryland. “It is a true milestone in motivational research, as rich in conceptual insights as it is in exciting findings. The book offers a formidable set of answers as to why people do what they do, and with what consequences.” Deci is the Helen F. and Fred. H. Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Rochester.

(Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 2017).
Based on a true story, the author’s first novel tells of Josephine McCarty, who in 1872 was indicted for murdering a man on a streetcar in Utica. Despite witnesses and common consensus that she would hang, officials called in a high-powered lawyer to aid the prosecution. Perhaps they realized the case was more complex than it seemed. “Compelling story which kept me intrigued to the last page,” wrote one reviewer.

(self-published: blurb.com, 2017)
A charmingly small book and simple tale of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem told through the wonder of butterfly metamorphosis.