Donald Maass Literary Agency

Shelf Awareness: Even in Tartarus, the great labyrinth builder reckons with the death of his son and confronts his failures as a father and a man in Seamus Sullivan’s debut novella, Daedalus Is Dead.

Daedalus’s son, Icarus, famously flew too close to the sun with the wings his father built for the two of them to escape from King Minos. The wax melted, and Icarus crashed into the sea and died. Years after escaping, building a monument to his son, and trying and failing to find any trace of Minos’s daughter Ariadne, Daedalus dies of an infection. But King Minos, now also dead, judges the souls in the underworld, and even though Persephone herself takes Daedalus into her service, Minos will not allow him to see his son again. What’s more, the Minotaur runs loose in Tartarus, devouring the spirits of heroes. But as Daedalus encounters people from his life, he realizes the stories he told himself about his actions don’t always match the perceptions of others.

This nonchronological telling of events flits between Daedalus’s time in the underworld and his memories of Icarus’s childhood and their eventual flight from Crete. Sullivan heart-wrenchingly conveys a father’s grief at the loss of his child. By giving the Minotaur a preferred diet of heroes, he also explores what exactly made a hero of Greek myth, and whether heroism and virtue have anything in common. The result is a devastating examination of fatherhood and masculinity. –Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Discover: In this devastating examination of fatherhood and masculinity, Daedalus spends his time in the underworld reckoning with his son’s death and confronting his own failures.

Publishers Weekly: An air of dark whimsy pervades Valentin’s thoroughly entertaining debut. In the five years since Mateo Borrero’s less-than-maternal witch of a mother went missing, the 23-year-old has just been trying to get by; not helping matters is the fact that he’s possessed by a demon. Working at a print shop barely pays the bills for him and his best friend and roommate, Ophelia De La Garza, who finds it hard to hold on to a job due to her partially involuntary powers of astral projection. Doing magic makes Mateo’s demonic possession worse, but it’s his best path to earning some fast cash, so he puts up an online ad offering his supernatural services. Enter the wealthy and endearingly naive Topher Nystrom, who hires Mateo to break the bad-luck curse that keeps killing the people around him. As Mateo and Ophelia dig into Topher’s life and the magic that’s affecting him, Mateo’s situation grows worse and they discover things may be more connected than they thought. Valentin puts a light comedic twist on a gripping story filled with dark magic and murder, and a budding romance between Mateo and Topher adds to the fun. Fans of queer romantic fantasy and cozy horror will be delighted.

Kirkus: Science writer and columnist Alkon offers an all-encompassing look at menopause and perimenopause—and how to thrive throughout both.

When the author started waking up multiple times a night, she chalked it up to stress. But when it became hot flashes and night sweats, she quickly realized “at 52, menopause was finally creeping up.” She begins with a deep dive into the current standard medical advice for women going through menopause, much of which is outdated or outright incorrect; she also offers compelling studies showing that many doctors are unable or unwilling to alter long-prescribed courses of treatment, even when presented with new information that directly contradicts them. The next section lays out the overwhelming number of mental, physical, and sexual symptoms that fluctuating and declining hormones can cause before looking at the long-term health benefits of hormone replacement therapies. Lastly, she offers in-depth advice on how to speak to a doctor in order to get care, based on the most current advice, before finally wrapping up with a brief rallying cry to fully embrace this phase of life. Overall, this is a rigorous and meticulous guide to everything related to menopause; a full bibliography, which is available on her website, would have added close to 250 pages to the book. Indeed, it’s so exhaustive that it verges on being overwhelming, but Alkon does a tremendous job of breaking down scientific facts for everyday readers; a chapter outlining the differences between oral micronized progesterone versus the much cheaper synthetic version is especially well done. It does fall short regarding a couple of questions readers may still have: Testosterone, which is frequently prescribed, warrants only two pages, which mostly say that there isn’t enough evidence for its effectiveness, and the recent proliferation of telemedicine companies that specifically focus on menopausal care isn’t covered at all. Still, Alkon’s affable voice more than makes up for any potential shortfalls; her smart, thoughtful accounts of her own experiences lend a feeling of camaraderie to the book.

A thoroughly researched, straightforward, and amiable menopause manual.