Well, dear readers, we have lots of lovely things for you this week. Some are fancy, some are fresh, and some are a bit coy. Shrug off the dust of winter and prepare yourselves!
 

First up, we have Andrew Knoll's A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters. That's right: he summarizes a bit. Here and there. But mostly, Knoll has a deft touch and a light style that makes the subject material fascinating and engaging. It starts with dust, rolls through single-celled organisms all waving cilia, glances around at ferns and amphibians, mentions rocks a few times, and finally makes a grudging acknowledgment that human folk are stomping around on it. 
 

Oh, since we're wandering from book to book this week based on some obscure visual rationale, that means the next book this week is Ellen Marie Bennett's Dream First, Details Later. Bennett firmly believes in the maxim of "Jump First, Make Parachute On the Go," and this book is a handy playbook for everyone who can't quite figure out where to start. Bennett's position is that you should start, because that's the only way you're really going to know what needs to be done next. 

We're sure life on Earth started exactly this same way: well before anyone was ready. 
 

Next up is Elissa Washuta's White Magic, a collection of amazing essays about loneliness, addiction, cultural devastation, and grief. Washuta, a member of the Cowlitz tribe, explores the persistent trauma of colonization on the native peoples of North America, as well as her own efforts to find her own place and identity in this modern world. Along the way, she encounters Twin Peaks, Fleetwood Mac, and the modern occult fascination with witchcraft. Show up for the keenly worded personal essays; stick around for the delightfully nuanced commentary on finding yourself in the 21st century. 
 

Meanwhile, here is Eileen Garvin's debut novel, The Music of Bees, which is about solitary souls, struggling to find company and constancy in a world that may not have any need of them. It also has bees, which do double duty as a plot point and as a metaphor. Sweet, without being syrupy—naturally. 
 

Which brings us, tangentially and organically, to Silvia Moreno-Garcia's The Beautiful Ones, which is a story of socialites and telekinetics. The former live for gossip and scandal, while the latter merely want to be invisible and unnoticed. Naturally, in that time-honored tradition of Nothing Ever Goes as Planned (see Bennett's book above), our protagonist must choose between conformity and passion, and we all know how that struggle goes, don't we? 
 

And speaking of the dark things that live among us, Laird Barron is back with his third Isaiah Coleridge novel. Coleridge is an ex-enforcer turned private eye, and in Worse Angels, he gets drawn into a case involving a missing nephew which soon spirals into something much darker. Barron is an immensely talented writer, and his Coleridge books are both high-velocity thrillers and richly atmospheric meditations on philosophy and morality. Imagine Lee Child exhuming the bones of Edgar Allan Poe and grinding them into a powder for his protein smoothies. 
 

Speaking of atmosphere, Jhumpa Lahiri is back this week with Whereabouts, a slim book about an unnamed woman who restlessly wanders her city, attempting to find some way to quiet the persistent questions of identity and purpose that are her sole companion. Does it mean anything? Could the narrator be anyone? Is there a point to all this? We're not sure. But the cover is enigmatic and the flap copy is effusively ephemeral so it must be something, right? 

Its art. That's for damn sure. A-R-T. Plan accordingly. 
 

And speaking of art, John Grisham has written a book that isn't about lawyers. Sooley is about a young Sudanese lad who comes to North Carolina on a basketball scholarship, where he struggles against all manner of adversaries (both cultural, physically, and psychological). Folks forget that Grisham knows how to tell a compelling story, and there's a lot to keep your attention as young Samuel Sooleymon strives to earn his way into the NBA so he can afford to rescue his family from his war-torn homeland. 
 

Meanwhile, Martha Wells's Murderbot is back in Fugitive Telemetry. Murderbot hates talking to humans, but it has no choice when it gets sucked into an investigation of a mysterious death at the mall. If Murderbot is ever going to gain its independence, it's going to have to figure out how to deal with the fleshy ones, but man, they are so annoying. Another great entry in the Murderbot series. 
 

And speaking of fabulous characters that we always delight in seeing, the next volume in Jackson Ford's The Frost Files is out this week. Teagan Frost, the girl who can move sh*t with her mind, is back in Eye of the Sh*t Storm, where she's on the run from . . . oh, pretty much everyone. Again. No one gets a break in a Jackson Ford novel. 
 

And finally, Clarkson Potter has produced a marvelous set of National Park postcards, featuring the iconic images from the Fifty-Nine Parks project. The box contains one of each of the images, as well as extras of the most popular parks. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Which parks are the most popular? And now we're thinking about road trips, which leads us to . . .