In this whimsical fantasy, a 40-year-old career case worker has his life turned upside down by a special assignment. Linus Baker’s job is to ensure the children are safe—or at least he’s convinced himself that the field visits he makes to the orphanages sanctioned by The Department of Magical Youth are crucial to the well-being of these unusual children. But everything changes for Linus when Extremely Upper Management sends him to report on an island orphanage that’s a place of last resort for magical children viewed as misfits by the establishment, as well as their unconventional caretaker. Linus may have always been a company man, but this visit forces him to question everything he thought he knew about the world—and himself. Many readers are going to find this quirky book a delightful surprise.

This poignant queer love story from TJ Klune follows Wallace, a man who's beginning to suspect that he might be dead. The author describes it as his take on a Christmas carol with Wallace Price playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. Intriguing, right? Before he died, Wallace had grown into a pretty terrible man. When he dies, he's not taken straight to the afterlife but instead to a peculiar tea shop that serves as a sort of waystation between worlds. In that tea shop Wallace is given a choice, if he decides to take it: now that he's dead, he can finally learn to live and make the most of the "life" he has now. Whimsical, weird, and touching, this is a book about love and loss, about grief and what it does to people, and ultimately, about hope.