July 2026 Prime Picks

Reviewer's Choice

Find Your Light
Gemma Petherbridge
Godsfield
978184181661 $22.99
www.octopusbooksusa.com

Find Your Light: Awaken Your Soul Power and Embrace Your Calling offers insights about soul missions, “lightworkers,” and spiritual matters. It comes from an energy healer and renowned speaker who outlines the process of channeling high-frequency vibrations to shift energy and promote healing.

Her review of lightwork and its connection to personal psychological growth and bigger-picture thinking creates powerful survey appropriate for new age and healing libraries and readers. Color illustrations throughout also settle Find Your Light neatly into the “appropriate for gift-giving” category.

French Country Cooking
Trish Deseine
Kyle Books
9781804194331 $39.99
www.octopusbooks.co.uk

French Country Cooking: Recipes & Table Settings For All Seasons offers nearly a hundred recipes that are seasonal, stem from French country influences, and come packed with classic French flair, from Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic to Apple Sorbet made with apples, lemon, apricot jam, and Calvados liquor.

Cooks who associate French cuisine with complicated fare will be delighted to realize that many of these dishes can be quickly assembled, such as Neck of Lamb with Carrots and Red Wine, or Hazelnut Cake.

A wealth of color photos makes this cookbook as visually appealing as its recipes.

Hamlyn
www.octopusbooks.com/uk

New cookbooks from Hamlyn feature attractive formats and recipes that will attract interest from a wide audience of cooks.

Saskia Sidey’s Broke Vegan: Over 100 Plant-Based Recipes That Don’t Cost the Earth (9780600640172 $14.99) acknowledges that specialty ingredients aren’t needed in order to cook effective, affordable, delicious vegan food.

Full-page color facing photos accompany many recipes, which include such attractions as Loaded Potatoes with Smoky Spicy Beans; Pimped Instant Ramen with sweetcorn, bok choy, and onions; and Spicy ‘Tuna’ Watermelon Tostadas.

The range of flavors that stem from common supermarket ingredients is impressive.

Three ‘Recipes For’ pocket-sized hardcover cookbooks by Francesca Huntingdon each hold 65 recipes each that are easy to produce, presented in packages that lend to gift-giving. All recipes are made from scratch and will prove especially attractive to new cooks just starting out.

Recipes for Soups (9780600640127, $12.99) holds a range of soup possibilities, from starters and summer fare to hearty winter soups. From Seafood Gumbo to a Curried Vegetable Soup, each is easy to produce and simply appealing.

Recipes for Summer (9780600640159, $12.99) is the perfect choice for hot weather and includes dishes such as Mixed Seafood Puff Pies, Spinach, Tomato and Egg Tarts, and Corn on the Cob with Turmeric Butter. These depart from the usual barbecue or cold soup focus to offer a range of possibilities for hot days and long nights.

Recipes for Savoury Bakes (9780640134, $12.99) samples the world of baked goods with dishes such as Spinach and Feta Tarts, Roasted Tomato & Onion Puff Pie, or Turmeric & Black Pepper Oatcakes.

The range of dishes in each little book is surprising, offering many flavor combinations and possibilities readers won’t find under one cover elsewhere, making for excellent cookbooks for home or library acquisition.

Caroline Hanna’s Hungry (9780600639831, $32.99) features nearly a hundred nutritionally balanced recipes for snacks, meals, and treats. It comes from a nutritionist who focuses on eating healthier foods.

Hanna has created a wealth of dishes complimented by facing pages of color photos, such as Harissa and Aubergine Beans, High-Protein Creamy Red Pepper Pasta made with cottage cheese, Parmesan, and red pepper and basil and a Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chilli spiced with cinnamon, cumin, pepper, and paprika.

The dishes are designed to pair high-value protein boosts with flavor, come from a range of international culinary influences, and represent unique adaptations of ingredients to healthier purposes, making Hungry a treasure trove of delights.

Mitchell Beazley
www.octopusbooks.co.uk

The French Riviera Cookbook From Nice to Cannes in 100 Recipes by Nicolas Sintes and Matteo Carassale (9781846017599, $45.00) features the dishes and travels of Provencal chef Nicolas Sintes, who shares seafood-emphasized fare from the French Riviera.

Lovely color photos throughout capture not only finished dishes, but scenes of the region as Sintes presents dishes such as a Strawberry Tart with Lemon and Basil Curd, Fig Pavlova with Mascarpone Cream, and Violet Artichokes a la Barigoule.

The result is deliciously enticing, packed with not just recipes, but personality.

Sabrina Ghayour’s Persiana One: One Pan. One Tray. One Pot. (9781783256105, $34.99) bundles Middle Eastern culinary flavors into one pan/pot/tray dishes that will especially appeal to busy cooks seeking to infuse meals with high-value flavor and simplicity.

Access to Middle Eastern spices or ingredients such as rose harissa or pomegranate molasses is required to produce such appealing dishes as Spicy Orange Chicken Bites, infused with rose harissa, honey, and orange; Pomegranate Beef Short Ribs made with pomegranate molasses, cinnamon, paprika and brown sugar; or Carrot, Orange & Pepper Salad made with pomegranate seeds and dressed with pomegranate molasses, cinnamon, and pul biber chilli flakes.

These appealing cookbooks are highly recommended for cooks seeking high-quality productions with wide-ranging recipes.

Young Adult/Children

Blue Dot Press
www.bluedotkidspress.com

New picture book arrivals from Blue Dot Press offer elementary-level libraries and young picture book readers a fine selection of superior, uncommon works.

Jung Chang-hoon’s The Moon Tonight: Our Moon’s Journey Around Earth (9781737603252, $18.95) explores the science behind the Moon’s phases and natural history through the observations of a father and daughter. It comes from an astronomer who pairs science with first-person insights (“Tonight ... well, this is different. There’s no Moon in sight.”) to bring the moon’s history into a delightfully personal phase.

Marcelo Tolentino’s Sunday (9798989858811, $18.95) tells of an atypical Sunday where possibility, adventure, and new explorations stem from dreams come true.

Martin and his dog Maize encounter sacred creatures, cross deserts and “forge fertile forests,” and embark on all manner of world- and time-hopping discoveries on this special Sunday. “The world is waiting,” and Martin means to explore it with or without adults!

A fine rollicking adventure invites kids to set goals and embrace life’s wonders.

Erica Lee Schlaikjer’s Sky Luck (9798989858866, $18.95) tells of an unlucky boy who fails to see the night shooting stars that everyone around him enjoys.

Frustrated with his failure, the boy gives up on the night sky, but an understanding, visionary uncle invites him to view the sky – and life – differently.

Lovely illustrations by Dagmar Smith accent this tale of lucky omens and magical new ways of viewing the world, inviting read-aloud adults to help the very young develop their own sense of wonder about their lives through inquiries and seeing the world differently.

Miran Park’s Everything is Music (9798999567673, $19.95) reviews how music is not just in human endeavors, but everywhere in the world, from raindrops and birds to breezes.

A girl and her dog collect this music on a walk accented by action words as they move through the world. Two-color artwork camouflages nine instruments and musical notations in a manner that invites the very young to look closer to find the music in not just their worlds, but this picture book.

All are exceptional works, illustrating opportunities in novel ways for elementary-level libraries, the very young, and their read-aloud adults.

Penguin Books
www.penguin.com/kids

These new releases from Penguin Books offer picture book readers and elementary-level libraries excellent stories suitable for reading, rereading, and discussion.

Lauren Wolk’s The Outermost Mouse (9780593407776, $18.99) receives lovely illustrations by Kristen Adam as it surveys a mouse who loves her beach life and the huge house she’s built her own – until a storm arrives.

The mouse’s effort to protect her home against all odds makes for a lovely survey of the shoreline, nature, and survival tactics.

Jocelyn Chung’s The River of Giving (9780593533604, $18.99) celebrates intergenerational families and support systems in a survey of how caregiving runs through a little girl’s family like a river, from a grandfather who picks her up from school and her concern about his doctor’s appointments to a mother who helps her mother get ready for the day.

The linked generations thrive with love as well as caregiving, outlining family support via many interactions and with lovely illustrations by Sarah Gonzales.

Eliza Wheeler’s A Cozy Summer Day (9780593617236, $18.99) tells of the animals of Acorn Village who spend summers together and enjoy many different activities, from snacking on strawberries and picnicking to napping.

The moments unfold with joy and participatory fun as animal friends and neighbors move through their long summer day. A Cozy Summer Day is an inviting, reflective story kids and read-aloud adults will relish for its immersive warmth.

Charley’s Honky-Tonk Mission: The Story of America’s First Black Country Music Superstar by Beatrice Winifred Iker (9798217003693, $18.99) provides picture book readers with the inviting biography of Charley Pride, who played baseball in the Negro Leagues before his rise to country music fame. Verse by Iker and lovely illustrations by Miguelina Milien capture the extent of Pride’s achievements and the connections he forged within a traditionally white musical genre, presenting these in an inviting, revealing, lyrical history.

Lucy Knisley’s Searching for Wocks (9780593858257, $18.99) tells of a preschooler’s hunt for treasures ranging from “wocks” to bottle caps, twigs, and stones. Her obsession and identification of “wocks” from the rest of the world’s wonders makes for a revealing, engaging story the very young will appreciate.

Today We’ll Be Eaten by Alan Barillaro (9798217004362, $19.99) tells of Ladybug and Dragonfly, who are caught up in a big storm that renders them helplessly adrift. Each are convinced today is the day they’ll be eaten, but as they await their certain fate, something magical happens.

As curious Fish and Frog decide to emulate the bugs, an odd form of life appreciation evolves between them which offer some intriguing insights the very young usually don’t receive, making Today We’ll Be Eaten perfect for adults interacting with young listeners.

Riding Magic by Kelly Starling Lyons (9780593323953, $18.99) receives exceptionally lovely illustrations by E.B. Lewis as it surveys Dom, who spends time with Magic, her favorite horse, but still is afraid to ride.

Lyons provides an exceptionally evocative, lyrical first-person exploration of Dom’s fears: “The sound of their hooves echoes the beat of my heart. Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Clio-clop. Clip-clop. I watch them grow smaller and smaller until they’re tiny as toys. I sigh when they disappear.”

On Our Bikes by Dan Saks (9798217142798, $18.99) receives vibrant illustration by João Fazenda as it follows kids who grow up riding bikes and “live to bike. We’re born to ride!” A rollicking rhyme follows the bikers, which include parents and their children, through city streets with a lively review of the fun to be had from a shared biking adventure.

Marcus Cutler’s I Think We’re Upside Down! (9798217113552, $18.99) tells of Raccoon and his friend Rabbit, whose focus on playing basketball is thwarted by a ball that falls up instead of down. How can they make a hoop shot under such conditions?

The two work together to employ creative thinking and problem-solving in this winning story, which invites young reader participation.

Susan Cain and three generations of the Cain family document the process of saying goodbye to friends in Lucky & Norman: Saying Goodbye is Bittersweet (9780593695685, $19.99). Lucky and Norman are two donkeys that Sam and Eli meet on the first days of their farm vacation.

The boys want to befriend the donkeys, but Lucky and Norman initially refuse all moves to become friends. Slowly, the boys win them over and all is well – but their relationship is limited to vacation time, which soon will be over. How can the boys say goodbye when they’ve spent so much time winning the donkeys’ trust?

Stella Lin’s gorgeous, good-sized drawings accompany a warm-hearted picture book story of achievement, friendship, and animal-human bonding.

Bonsoir Lune’s Watermelon Pool (9798217111787, $19.99) tells of a ripe watermelon which bursts open one hot summer’s day, prompting a new attraction – a watermelon pool. The miniature humans who enjoy a dunk in this pool face special challenges, from a long climb up a slippery slope to a preponderance of seeds.

A fun story evolves in which a watermelon pool offers some unique attractions – and troubles – in this inviting, whimsical picture book story, translated from the Korean by Frances Cha.

These are fine acquisitions for home and library alike.