New Books In Literature

In The Shape of Dreams (Random House, 2026) April Reynolds introduces readers to a trio of women bond in friendship as a neighborhood tries to seek justice from a system that has forgotten them. It’s the mid-eighties in East Harlem: a twelve-year-old black boy's murdered body is found by Mathilda "Twin" Johnson, an unlikely hero who is both the neighborhood’s troublemaker and its conscience. When she breaks a cardinal rule—“don’t call the cops”—her decision ensnares a community and brings unmanageable grief to a mother. Anita, a postal worker and army widow, is determined to solve her son's Tyrone's murder, and her quest galvanizes the neighborhood, which is itself a complex character in this teeming novel, with its Mets fans and gossips, immigrant shop owners and latch-key kids. The local dreamers include a charismatic man of the cloth, a teenage girl with a Whitney Houston voice and no prospects, and Anita’s opinionated friend Wanda, whose truant son the police harass and arrest on a regular basis. Everyone