New Releases Tuesday: The Best Books Out This Week

In this memoir, Ng writes of the consequences of the Exclusion Act, under which her Chinese family was suffocated. Ng came of age as the child of a seamstress mother, a sailor father, and the Orphan Bachelors of San Francisco’s Chinatown — men who were the walking embodiments of the Exclusion act. As a result of the legislation, they were unable to wed or have children, and so Ng and her siblings, and other children, became their adopted progeny. In Orphan Bachelors, Ng returns home to write the story of her ancestors who sacrificed so much.

Fifteen-year-old Anequs is a Nampeshiweisit, a revered person “in a unique relationship with a dragon.” But the colonizing Anglish don’t agree. If she can’t succeed in what they deem to be a proper Anglish dragon school — raising the dragon she found and bonded with to their standards and conforming to their ideas of what a lady is — her dragon will be killed. Anequs will attend the school, but she will maintain her Indigenous sensibilities about dragons, the land, and herself. This is the first in a YA fantasy series that I’m super hype for.

Clover was surrounded by death as a young child. Her kindergarten teacher died in front of her, her parents died in an accident, and the grandfather who raised her dies alone while she’s away from home. So she decides to become a death doula and help people at the end of their lives. But she spends so much time with other people’s deaths that she barely pays attention to her own life, until she meets Claudia, a grandmother who was a photojournalist in her younger years. As Clover listens to Claudia’s regrets surrounding the true love she left to marry someone else, she sets out to give the dying woman closure. The journey causes Clover to take stock of her own life, and maybe start living just a little.

In Victorian England, young scientist Mary discovers her great uncle Victor Frankenstein’s old papers, revealing a scientific discovery that could ensure her future in the field. Her and her husband decided to try Frankenstein’s techniques, but on a Plesiosaurus instead of a sewn-together human corpse. But while on this road of scientific discovery, she’ll question the predetermined role she has in the world and have to run for her life.

Music writer Jonathan Scott writes about the history of capturing sound in the west. While he documents well-known inventors like Thomas Edison, he also points out the contributions of lesser-known names who contributed to the creation of vinyls, EPs, and LPs. There were a lot of smaller inventions, court cases, and competition that led up to the creation of vinyl, which Scott acknowledges as the richer audio playback format as compared to digital ones. This is an interesting look at a specific part of music history.