About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Ayobami Adebayo
Rave Publishers Weekly ... bright and distinctive tragedy ... Pitch-perfect details provide a sense of the characters’ lives—the red dust caked on Ẹniọlá’s white socks from long walks to school, the soft headscarf worn by Wúràọlá’s mother that “barely whispered”—and as the characters are pushed to the brink, Adébáyọ̀ delivers a searing indictment of the country’s corruption and gender inequalities. This packs a powerful punch.
Ayobami Adebayo
Positive Kirkus Once Adébáyọ̀ introduces a plotline involving rival politicians, the story’s trajectory becomes more predictable and moralizing (not to mention more violent). But the novel thrives in its particulars, from Ẹniọlá\'s struggle to maintain his dignity while openly begging on the streets, to Wúràọlá\'s tense relationship with her siblings and keeping up appearances. In the process she reveals how stifling—and dangerous—unthinking loyalty to tradition and family can be. A somber study of good intentions undone by money and abuse.
Bryce Andrews
Positive Publishers Weekly Rancher and conservationist Andrews... portrays the transformative beauty and violence of the American West in this evocative outing ... Andrews’s personal struggles are mirrored in his examination of the region’s beautiful if treacherous landscape ... It’s a bittersweet meditation on the true meaning of the Wild West.
Bryce Andrews
Positive Kirkus A powerful meditation on a rural life of hunting in a world of guns—some of them used for sinister purposes ... A welcome, eminently sensible contribution to the literature of the American West—and responsible gun ownership.
John Higgs
Positive Publishers Weekly ... scintillating study ... a thoughtful romp through pop culture that’s full of fresh ideas and sharp connections.
Miriam Darlington
Rave Kirkus Invigorating ... Heartfelt, enchanting, and beautifully written.
Charmaine Craig
Positive Kirkus As distant and self-assured as Tessa is, Craig never lets her first-person narrator off the hook, as she must acknowledge her own role in the disintegration of every meaningful relationship she has ... Cerebral and tense.
Charmaine Craig
Positive Publishers Weekly Swift and cutting ... The writing is biting and propulsive as allegiances shift and Tessa realizes she’s misjudged Wah. This confident work is sure to spark conversations.
Carmela Ciuraru
Rave Kirkus Eye-opening ... While the stories of betrayal and suffering might not exactly ruin literary heroes, readers beware: The reality is often harsh—but also fascinating ... An illuminating, well-rendered literary biography.
Carmela Ciuraru
Positive Publishers Weekly A harrowing history ... This bracing survey delivers.
Mariana Enriquez, trans. by Megan McDowell
Positive Kirkus A sprawling gothic novel holding a black mirror toward Argentina’s history of corruption and political violence and dosed with the conventions of horror fiction ... It’s awkward and exhausting by turns, often by design. Somehow the shock of such violence delivered upon children and the inevitable fatigue generated by unrelenting horror also mirror the author’s mistrust of reality as we know it ... A strange, arcane journey into South American horror with roots in the real evil that men do.
Thomas Mallon
Pan Kirkus Well-informed, unromantic ... Readable and intelligent, like all Mallon’s work, but overall a disappointment.
Thomas Mallon
Rave Publishers Weekly Sparkling ... Peppering the juicy drama of Dick’s ambition and unrequited love with pop cultural references, as well as cameos from Dyan Cannon and Kaye Ballard, Mallon creates a fascinating, page-turning tale. Readers will be swept off their feet.
Jen Beagin
Rave Publishers Weekly A delightfully off-kilter romantic comedy ... While the interpersonal intrigue is palpable, this is also very much a novel about place, full of alternately snide and affectionate commentary about the rapidly gentrifying town ... This unconventional love story has a surplus of appeal from page one.
Jen Beagin
Positive Kirkus A wonderfully off-kilter protagonist ... Beagin gives her characters choices and second chances, and the happiness she offers them begins with themselves ... Beagin establishes her place among artfully eccentric writers like Nell Zink, Elif Batuman, and Jennifer Egan.
Priscilla Gilman
Rave Publishers Weekly Poignant ... Bibliophiles will enjoy the literary cameos (Joan Didion, Toni Morrison) and reflections on literature, but Gilman’s wrenching recollections of marital, and familial, dissolution are near-universal. This is an eye-opening testament to the lasting wounds of divorce.
Priscilla Gilman
Rave Kirkus The narrative is passionate, resonant, and beautifully written, with just a few forgivably maudlin moments ... Evokes both a uniquely brilliant and troubled man and the poignantly relatable essence of the father-daughter connection.
Kidada E Williams
Positive Kirkus A broad-ranging study ... A deeply researched work that exposes the shameful legacy of the neo-Confederacy, one that lingers to this day.
Kidada E Williams
Positive Publishers Weekly Williams... pays tribute to Black families’ resilience and determination to fight back against harassment, details federal efforts to stop the terror campaign and the forces that undermined them, and examines how the trauma of racialized violence is passed down through generations. This harrowing report hits home.
Ilyon Woo
Rave Kirkus ... a gripping adventure ... Throughout, Woo’s narrative is suspenseful and wonderfully told. A captivating tale that ably captures the determination and courage of a remarkable couple.
Ilyon Woo
Positive Publishers Weekly Woo... seamlessly knits together an in-depth portrait of antebellum America and a thrilling account of an enslaved couple’s escape to freedom ... This novelistic history soars.
Danielle Clode
Positive Publishers Weekly Research offers an insightful peek into the world of koalas and makes a persuasive case that though they’ve been underestimated, koalas must not be taken for granted ... this is the outing animal lovers didn’t know they needed.
Eleanor Janega
Positive Kirkus Janega... pays close attention to the ancient and medieval standards of beauty, many of which persist to this day ... A breezy, pertinent study that demonstrates how learning about social constructs is crucial to changing them.
Eleanor Janega
Positive Publishers Weekly Accessible, informative, and clear-sighted about the insidious workings of misogyny, this is a persuasive call for deconstructing the past to create a more equitable future.
Edward J Larson
Rave Kirkus Larson’s stirring narrative includes the perspectives of free and escaped slaves ... An authoritative contribution to the dismal history of race in America.
Edward J Larson
Positive Publishers Weekly Larson’s memorable turns of phrase... and keen insights into important yet lesser-known figures keep the narrative moving, even as he sticks to mostly familiar terrain. The result is an accessible and informative overview of the paradox at the heart of the American experiment.
Heinrich Päs
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... overly knotty ... Though the philosophical discussions are easy to grasp, if a bit winding, Päs is less successful when it comes to science, and his explanations can be tough to parse ... Theoretical physicists might find some fascinating concepts worth considering, but lay readers are likely to be left scratching their heads.
Heinrich Päs
Positive Kirkus Serious explanations of quantum physics require close attention, so most readers will breathe a sigh of relief when Päs switches gears to deliver a history of science and religion in Western culture ... This is difficult stuff, but the glossary helps. A dense philosophical exploration of the cosmos—not for the faint of heart.
Richard Bradford
Mixed Kirkus Bradford seems to thrive only when sniping, deriding perceived flaws of style and soul, and discovering where the feet of clay are planted ... Few of Bradford’s observations are particularly original—he relies heavily on other secondary sources—but occasionally, he hits on a good one ... More often, Bradford falls into Albert Goldman–esque sanctimony ... It all seems a pointless exercise, but superciliousness is the coin of this particular critical realm.
Richard Bradford
Pan Publishers Weekly ... brisk but thin ... While Bradford offers a solid sense that Mailer could be unpleasant, he never quite digs into how, despite his wildly uneven output and appalling personal behavior, so many people championed him. There is no shortage of books on Mailer, and this one unfortunately doesn’t bring much new to the table.
De'Shawn Charles Winslow
Positive Kirkus Though not as intricately woven as Winslow’s first novel, this tale comes across as considerably more than a regional whodunit because of its author’s humane and sensitive perceptions toward his characters, even those who may not deserve such equanimity.
De'Shawn Charles Winslow
Positive Publishers Weekly There are a trove of surprises along the way to the well-earned resolution, and Winslow entrances readers with strong characters, impeccable prose, and brisk pacing. As a character-driven mystery, it delivers the goods.
Thomas Perry
Positive Kirkus Top-drawer thrills from an author whose hard-nosed hero is as professional as he is.
Thomas Perry
Positive Publishers Weekly The pages melt away as the story maintains a breathless pace throughout. This is further proof that Perry is a dominating force in the world of contemporary suspense thrillers.
V (formerly Eve Ensler)
Rave Publishers Weekly ... bracing career-spanning collection ... V’s explosive truth-telling is as provocative as it is intense. The result is a raw and relevant oeuvre.
V (formerly Eve Ensler)
Positive Kirkus Deeply felt, thoughtful, and lyrical, the narrative offers a reflection on the connectedness of the personal and political and the need for all humanity to reckon fully with its past in pursuit of a more just world. An elegant and timely book.
Dizz Tate
Positive Kirkus Dreamlike ... Tate intercuts the main narrative with some short chapters from adult versions of individual girls, all of them in various stages of imploding their own lives. These offer welcome reprieves from the cool veneer of the collective narration, which feels both conceptually satisfying but emotionally aloof, until everything—structure, story, and sense—shatters apart at the novel’s climax. Tate’s novel feels a bit like avant-garde fashion: surreal, impractical, but beautiful to see ... A promising first book whose enigmatic nature is both frustrating and alluring.
Dizz Tate
Mixed Publishers Weekly Uneven ... The finale’s murky, and the author leans a bit too much on the missing-girl trope. It’s an often beautiful work, but it’s also exhausting.
Laurent Mauvignier, trans. by Daniel Levin Becker
Rave Kirkus Mauvignier weaves lines of typical tension among family members and neighbors but makes it clear that some larger problem is looming ... The amount of detail and digression that Mauvignier explores in his slow, finely drawn (and smoothly translated) dissection of these lives is remarkable and goes far to sustaining interest amid minimal action. Readers whose tastes run to the pacey thrillers of James Patterson may find their patience frayed by the glacial progress of this quasi-Proustian noir. But if the beer god had meant everyone to drink Miller Light, he wouldn’t have given the Belgian Trappists all those rich recipes ... A compelling blend of mystery, horror, and suspense.
Laurent Mauvignier, trans. by Daniel Levin Becker
Rave Publishers Weekly Mesmerizing ... The omniscient narration moves elegantly from exterior descriptions to the recesses of the characters’ thoughts, and Becker’s translation lends menace and grace ... This is pleasurably cinematic even as it penetrates deep psychological mysteries. Readers will be riveted.
Wendell Steavenson
Mixed Kirkus Steavenson depicts her characters with very broad strokes, and the 1950s and ’60s landscape is decidedly generic, but her portrait of the post–WWII American upper class... is unquestionably compelling ... The novel ends with her departure for London, leaving behind a whole lot of unfinished business that blatantly signals there will be a sequel. There\'s little new in this familiar coming-of-age tale, but it\'s extremely readable and has an appealing protagonist.
Wendell Steavenson
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... layered if formulaic ... Steavenson adds rich scientific detail to the lab scenes, but the expositional dialogue and overly familiar emotional terrain tend to wear on the reader. This doesn’t quite stand out.
Alba de Céspedes trans. Ann Goldstein
Rave Publishers Weekly A fearlessly probing and candid look at marital dynamics and generational divisions ... Goldstein’s translation invigorates a remarkable story, one that remains intensely relevant across time, cultures, and continents.
Alba de Céspedes trans. Ann Goldstein
Rave Kirkus De Céspedes deftly charts the widening gap between Valeria\'s increasingly desperate inner life and the roles she feels forced to play in a feminist novel that consistently calls into question the ways its narrator makes sense of her claustrophobic domestic world. A wrenching, sardonic depiction of a woman caught in a social trap.
Jamie Kreiner
Positive Kirkus Kreiner uses a wide array of primary sources spanning the entirety of medieval Christendom, creating a pleasantly readable result. Good proof that the problem of distraction is nothing new.
Jamie Kreiner
Positive Publishers Weekly Meticulously detailed and surprisingly accessible, this lends new insight into one of the oldest human preoccupations. Readers will be enlightened.
Ali Winston, Darwin BondGraham
Positive Publishers Weekly In granular detail, the authors describe the fits and starts of the department’s efforts at reform ... Though occasionally plodding, this impressive work of reportage highlights the challenges of changing police culture.
Ali Winston, Darwin BondGraham
Positive Kirkus The wholly timely—if surely controversial—lesson that the authors draw, in a time of reform, is that all police departments require at least some outside, civilian monitoring. A fiercely argued case that the police can’t be trusted to police themselves—and that such policing is essential.
Katherine Kovacic
Positive Kirkus From odd jobber to adventuress, Peregrine Fisher proves a worthy successor to her Aunt Phryne ... Based on the hit TV sequel, this has all the pizzazz of the Phryne Fisher novels updated for a younger generation.
Katherine Kovacic
Positive Publishers Weekly A sprightly pace, amusing characters, and a vividly rendered Melbourne bode well for the sequel. Fans of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series will want to check out this one.
Eleanor Shearer
Rave Publishers Weekly ... lyrical and deeply evocative debut ... In scenes of vivid horror, stirring resilience, and moving reconciliation, Shearer shows the cruel effects of slavery and its aftermath. The beautifully written depiction of a mother longing for her children makes this transcendent.
Eleanor Shearer
Pan Kirkus It seems almost everyone [Rachel] meets has some information or skill to contribute to her search—so much so it starts to strain credulity. There’s also a streak of anachronism that weakens the book’s sense of history ... It’s a 21st-century feminist attitude that seems unlikely for a 19th-century woman, as do some of Rachel’s meditations on the destruction of the environment wrought by plantation farming. The novel’s flaws of plot, character, and verisimilitude are frequent enough that it doesn’t achieve the inspirational power it seems to aim for.
Ann-Helén Laestadius trans. Rachel Willson-Broyles
Positive Publishers Weekly Though the pace can be slack, the sense of place and character development make for an affecting portrait of the Sámi’s disenfranchisement. It’s a solid story of a family torn apart by cultural tensions.
Ann-Helén Laestadius trans. Rachel Willson-Broyles
Positive Kirkus Laestadius, who is Sámi and of Tornedalian descent, indicates in her acknowledgements that the novel is based upon actual occurrences in Sápmi territory. Willson-Broyles’ translation from Swedish is matter-of-fact and incorporates many phrases and words from the Sámi language. A revelatory account of not-well-known assaults on the rights of an Indigenous group.
Siddharth Kara
Rave Publishers Weekly ... tour-de-force exposé ... Throughout, Kara’s empathetic profiles and dogged reporting on the murkiness of the cobalt supply chain are buttressed by incisive history lessons ... Readers will be outraged and empowered to call for change.
Siddharth Kara
Rave Kirkus A penetrating exposé on the deliberate smoke screens created by powerful companies to obscure the realities behind the abysmal conditions of cobalt miners in the Congo ... The author’s well-written, forcefully argued report exposes the widespread, debilitating human ramifications of our device-driven global society. A horrifying yet necessary picture of exploitation and poverty in the Congo.
Kevin Cook
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... a fast-paced if sketchy account ... Drawing from extensive interviews with surviving group members, Cook is at his strongest when discussing the day-to-day life of the Davidians ... But the book’s account of the standoff... lacks some critical perspective ... Though Cook does reveal inconsistencies and misrepresentations in government accounts, this rehash sacrifices nuance for drama.
Kevin Cook
Rave Kirkus A fresh, powerful account ... In this engrossing resurrection... Cook digs deep to uncover the forgotten human side of these terrible events, and he offers a painstaking reconstruction of leader David Koresh’s life and ascent ... In describing the standoff with exquisite detail and care, Cook masterfully portrays the scope of the violence and heartbreak on all sides ... A thorough, engaging work that reminds us of the humanity behind tragedy.
Gothataone Moeng
Rave Kirkus Idiomatic phrases add texture to the prose, elegantly describing the characters\' lives and their internal conflicts ... A lovely debut brimming with deeply felt and well-rounded stories.
Gothataone Moeng
Rave Publishers Weekly ... lyrical and poignant ... Moeng adds to the stunning range of narrative styles ... The author brings insightful prose and a distinctive voice to these layered stories, demonstrating deep knowledge of her characters and care for their worlds. Moeng is a new force in the literary landscape.
Jane Harper
Rave Publishers Weekly ... stellar ... Writing at the top of her game, Harper effectively uses whodunit tropes to explore her characters’ hidden lives. Readers interested in literate and nuanced mysteries will be eager to see more of Falk.
Goldie Taylor
Positive Publishers Weekly ... indelible ... Taylor’s narrative is peppered with canny and insightful reflections ... This powerful examination of survival and self-forgiveness is an emotional reckoning.
Goldie Taylor
Positive Kirkus ... sometimes brutal, sometimes tender ... Though aspirational, Taylor doesn’t buy the line that hard work always leads to success ... An affecting memoir of overcoming adversity when every deck is stacked against you.
Annalee Newitz
Rave Publishers Weekly Newitz performs a staggering feat of revolutionary imagination in this hopeful space-opera built from three interconnected novellas ... Newitz masterfully grapples with questions of embodiment and personhood, exploring the power of coalition and the impossibility of utopia under capitalism. With the ethos of Becky Chambers and the gonzo imagination of Samuel R. Delany, plus a strong scientific basis in ecology and urban planning, this feels like a new frontier in science fiction.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
Positive Publishers Weekly Comprehensive ... Throughout, Petrzela critiques the fitness industry’s lack of attention to poor, working-class, and nonwhite communities, and marshals a wealth of information into a coherent narrative. This is a valuable survey of what exercise means in America.
Salman Rushdie
Rave Kirkus Rushdie reflects throughout on the nature of history and storytelling ... A grand entertainment, in a tale with many strands, by an ascended master of modern legends.
Geetanjali Shree, trans. by Daisy Rockwell
Positive Kirkus This ambitious novel is something of a behemoth, upending and redefining concepts of modernity, boundaries, gender, colonialism, and the India-Pakistan Partition ... Shree is occasionally prone to a didacticism that isn’t quite as mind-blowing as she might have intended ... Shree’s larger project is truly admirable: an utterly unique novel that redefines its own boundaries even as it unfolds ... Shree\'s experimental novel doesn’t always succeed—but even when it fails, it fails in a compelling way.
Geetanjali Shree, trans. by Daisy Rockwell
Positive Publishers Weekly Alluring ... The leisurely pacing and drawn-out accounts from the various characters make for a slow burn, but Rockwell does a lovely job preserving the Hindi wordplay in Shree’s kaleidoscopic epic. This is worth signing up for the long haul.
Patricia Engel
Rave Kirkus Engel\'s gift for dialogue makes the stories a pleasure to read despite their often grim situations ... Engel\'s multinational update of dirty realism is full of ironic flair, imagination, and empathy.
Patricia Engel
Positive Publishers Weekly Engrossing ... Engel’s alluring story lines and empathy for her characters make this a winner.
Delia Cai
Positive Booklist An unflinching but warmhearted examination of a young woman at a crossroads.
Delia Cai
Mixed Publishers Weekly Uneven ... Cai does a good job showing how Audrey was shaped by her mother’s disapproval, and there are plenty of engaging insights on race and class. On the other hand, the drawn-out passages on Audrey’s rekindled feelings for Kyle, which play a big part in shaping the final act, are a bit wearing. There seem to be two books at play, and one works better than the other.
Jessica George
Rave Kirkus Engaging ... With a light but firm touch, George illustrates the casual racism a young Black woman can face in the British (or American) workplace and how cultural barriers can stand in the way of aspects of contemporary life such as understanding and treating depression. She examines Maddie’s awkward steps toward adulthood and its messy stew of responsibility, love, and sex with insight and compassion. The key to writing a memorable bildungsroman is creating an unforgettable character, and George has fashioned an appealing hero here: You can’t help but root for Maddie’s emancipation. Funny, awkward, and sometimes painful, her blossoming is a real delight to witness ... A fresh, often funny, always poignant take on the coming-of-age novel.
Jessica George
Rave Publishers Weekly Pitch-perfect ... The work’s ample magnetism resides in the savvy portrayal of Maddie as a complicated, sharp, and vulnerable person who is trying to figure out adulthood. Readers will revel in this.
Joseph O'Connor
Rave Publishers Weekly Riveting ... Through wonderfully developed and varied characters, O’Connor conveys both the painful privations of life during wartime and the nobility of the Choir’s goals, and the unfolding of O’Flaherty’s marathon of undercover subterfuges that lay the groundwork for their mission in the middle section is a storytelling tour de force. This is top-drawer WWII fiction.
Joseph O'Connor
Rave Kirkus If the story were told in typical thriller style, emphasizing action over language, it would still be good, but O’Connor’s phrasings are a special joy ... A deeply emotional read. And when the action is over, the coda could water an atheist’s eye.
Pamela Anderson
Rave Kirkus Throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly ... A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson\'s good heart shines through.
Hanna Pylväinen
Rave Publishers Weekly ... captivating ... the author evocatively captures two cultures and shows what happens when Christian mores collide with the customs of the remote Sami. This is transcendent.
Hanna Pylväinen
Rave Kirkus Beautifully written and masterfully researched, the book\'s greatest triumph is the characters, full of human foibles, passions, and tenderness, jealousy, courage, doubts, and moments of transcendence ... Ambitious and resonant, a vivid, fascinating, and moving novel.
Tara Zahra
Positive Kirkus ... a history that holds relevance for today ... readers will often squirm at Zahra’s excellent yet unnerving history of an era when nationalism—always more powerful than ideology, economics, or brotherly love—exploded ... Discouraging yet important, expertly rendered political history.
Tara Zahra
Positive Publishers Weekly ... eye-opening ... Firmly grounded in historical scholarship yet speaking clearly to today’s anxieties over globalization, this expert study has much to offer.
Christopher Golden
Pan Publishers Weekly ... derivative and decidedly unscary ... Hopping between the perspectives of various one-dimensional characters does nothing to make the night’s horrors feel any more surprising or suspenseful. If this bit of ’80s nostalgia is intended to capitalize on the success of Stranger Things, it falls far short.
Christopher Golden
Mixed Kirkus In his attempt to liven up familiar tropes, Golden\'s new book is less daring than its blood-freezing, Siberian-set predecessor ... But it is no less nasty. Characters you may not expect to get it do. But even though Golden skillfully orchestrates a full cast of characters... the book lacks serious chills in the end—it\'s better at clever phenomena... than bumps in the night. An enjoyable but not terribly bone-rattling addition to Halloween horror.
Richard Hurowitz
Rave Kirkus Refreshingly, the author makes no pretense of inheriting the stories he tells ... This transparency will grip readers from the start ... In a time when our humanity is challenged by new heights of instability and new waves of antisemitism and ethnic hatred, it is an understatement to say this book is timely. A fresh, engrossing contribution to the literature on the Holocaust, focusing on heroics rather than despair.
Richard Hurowitz
Positive Publishers Weekly ... an inspiring group portrait of Holocaust \'rescuers\' ... This well-told history is a moving reminder that \'we can all contribute to the project of improving the world.\'
Jasmine Brown
Positive Publishers Weekly ... an eye-opening history ... This immersive tribute to a group of pioneering women will inspire readers of all backgrounds.
Jasmine Brown
Positive Kirkus At its best, this deeply researched, profoundly felt book effectively weaves personal and historical memory into a well-argued critique of American medical education. At times, the prose is clumsy, but overall, this is a promising debut from a young author.
Saket Soni
Positive Publishers Weekly ... revelatory ... a searing account of the harrowing road to justice.
Saket Soni
Positive Kirkus Harrowing ... with a sharp sense of irony ... A searing exposé of corporate criminality and its governmental enablers.
F Perry Wilson
Rave Publishers Weekly ... standout debut ... a trenchant, empowering look at how to fix doctor-patient relationships.
F Perry Wilson
Positive Kirkus ... insightful ... Mixing hard data with personal anecdotes, Wilson sets out a convincing case ... In an unstinting appraisal of the profession, Wilson effectively diagnoses the issues and looks for new paths forward.
Robert D. Richardson
Rave Kirkus Illuminating ... Brief but remarkably rich ... The author expertly frames the emotional and intellectual lives of these three significant artistic figures and demonstrates the relevance, for anyone, of what they accomplished in their profound negotiations with loss ... A stirring and keenly perceptive examination of bereavement and recovery.
Robert D. Richardson
Positive Publishers Weekly Stimulating ... Richard moves swiftly and confidently among his subjects, and successfully ditches \'a detached, critical, or judgmental\' approach in favor of a moving, candid group portrait. Fans and students of American literature will find this worth picking up.
Kathryn Ma
Rave Kirkus Rollicking, contemporary ... Ma knows how to twist a plot in unexpected, deeply satisfying directions by writing with compassion, humor, and insight.
Kathryn Ma
Positive Publishers Weekly Vibrant ... hough the episodic plot gets a bit unwieldy with its many side characters and hurdles...Ma does a good job conveying the bonds of Shelley’s community and family. This immersive story is worth a look.
Dan Levitt
Positive Kirkus ... page-turning ... The author notes that the process of completing this book “has been a continual source of wonder, stupefaction, exhilaration, and gratitude.” Readers will share those feelings. Lively, illuminating popular science.
Dan Levitt
Rave Publishers Weekly ... stellar debut ... winning mix of astronomy, physics, biology, and chemistry ... this is marvelous.
Riad Sattouf
Rave Publishers Weekly Sattouf... captures the unsentimental, wickedly funny realities of childhood in this collection of his inspired weekly comic ... The comic is, above all, ruthlessly honest about childhood ... Readers will laugh through tears as they follow her eye-opening exploits.
Riad Sattouf
Positive Kirkus Sattouf is a superb cartoonist, and each strip is a master class in the form. The serialized nature of the original makes some information repetitive, and the plot meanders with the seasons and discoveries of adolescent life. But the overall effect is a treat. Insightful, amusing, and elegant.
Valentine Low
Mixed Kirkus ... detail-heavy narrative ... Red meat for royal watchers; tedious for others.
Caroline Dodds Pennock
Rave Publishers Weekly Diligently and creatively mining primary source material, Dodds Pennock illuminates the Indigenous impact on European culture, including... the invaluable, if often unacknowledged, role Native peoples served in helping Europeans navigate the diverse cultures and geographies of colonized lands. This innovative and powerful account breaks down long-standing historical assumptions.
Caroline Dodds Pennock
Positive Kirkus In bringing these stories to light, Pennock creates a sharp challenge to Eurocentrism during the Colonial age ... A convincing history of Indigenous peoples’ deep integration into—and surprising influence on—European politics and culture.
Jeff Hobbs
Positive Kirkus A well-argued case for a better approach to turning young lawbreakers to better paths.
Jeff Hobbs
Positive Publishers Weekly Gripping and harrowing ... Deeply researched and fluidly written, this is a searing portrait of an ongoing tragedy.
Selby Wynn Schwartz
Rave Kirkus This book dares to invent a new form, one that embraces the maddening fragmentation of so many important women in history and reclaims it as a kind of revolutionary beauty. An exciting, luxurious work of speculative biography.
Selby Wynn Schwartz
Rave Publishers Weekly Schwartz’s account of what happens next as the central characters resist oppression speaks volumes on their efforts, and she contributes her own work of art with this irresistible narrative. Schwartz breathes an astonishing sense of life into her timeless characters.
Chris Whipple
Positive Kirkus Closely observed account of the accomplished yet beleaguered Biden White House ... Whipple delivers a few dishy bits of inside baseball, including an increasingly difficult relationship between Biden and Kamala Harris ... There’s more to the current administration than meets the eye, and Whipple is a reliable, readable interpreter.
Chris Whipple
Positive Publishers Weekly Whipple provides a balanced assessment of the administration’s successes and failures ... Distinguished by Whipple’s impressive access and incisive character sketches, this is a valuable first draft of history.
Jonathan Carroll
Rave Kirkus \"Among Carroll\'s novels...this is one of his most elusive—the narratives overlap and interact with a slippery interior logic. The new novel also may be his most lyrical. Few recent works of fiction in any genre have touched on the vagaries of life, love, and art more movingly or with deeper understanding. An intoxicating, deeply affecting novel by the influential fantasist.\
Jonathan Carroll
Pan Publishers Weekly \"Carroll takes pains to assure the reader that the protagonist’s jokes are funny and his photographs magnificent, and the narrative frequently stalls to explain the message of a scene through heavy-handed metaphor, leaving little room for imagination or interpretation. Together with a stable of female characters almost universally concerned with motherhood, and disabled characters built on tired stereotypes, it makes for a turgid reading experience. While the alternate realities deliver some genuine surprises alongside the occasional heartfelt meditation on the randomness of life and the futility in trying to control it, the whole is too trite to be very thought provoking. All but Carroll’s most devoted fans can skip this.\
Jeff Guinn
Positive Kirkus \"In riveting detail, Guinn describes the high-tension ordeal, drawing on a wealth of new information, including several eyewitness accounts. As the author did in previous reports on Charles Manson and Jonestown, Guinn dives deeply into his subject to present a vivid combination of well-researched facts, personal testimonials, and controversial perspectives ... An engrossing report on David Koresh and the endurance of cult culture.\
Jeff Guinn
Rave Publishers Weekly \"Scrupulous and frequently enthralling, this is a sobering account of a tragedy woven into the fabric of modern America.\
Sheila Liming
Positive Booklist Readers will gain a new appreciation for their next get-together after reading this fascinating book and taking the author’s well written words to heart.
Sheila Liming
Mixed Kirkus A glancing meditation ... A hit-or-miss ramble in praise of giving time to wasting time.
Martin Riker
Rave Publishers Weekly A brilliant and innovative exploration of modern economic history in the form of a late-night waking dream ... Abby’s metaphysical wanderings swell to a scorching condemnation of modern life and an empathetic celebration of its meaningful moments. It’s a transporting, clever, and inspired work of fiction.
Daniel Torday
Mixed Kirkus \"Those who are following the investigation of the murder of Fritzman’s son and its connection to the various groups fighting tooth and nail for control of legalized weed in Ohio may find themselves floundering during extended descriptions of drug-induced experiences. But through it all, Torday’s redoubtable novelistic chops produce a steady stream of strong dialogue and sharply drawn scenes. The disparate elements of this ambitious mashup may make it difficult for it to find its ideal readers.\
Daniel Torday
Mixed Publishers Weekly \"...provocative if undercooked ... Leger’s less-than-captivating search for his own life’s purpose and meaning overwhelms the question of who really killed Osman, and the author never gets back to Gram, which makes the funeral and Johanna’s connection to the case feel like narrative contrivances. Still, the premise allows for some engaging insights on the potential and perils of faith. The author has a bold vision, but this doesn’t quite hang together.\
Robert D Kaplan
Positive Kirkus \"Kaplan can often sound pompous and old-fashioned (not a new criticism), but the advice that military actions should be carefully thought through, and then thought through again, should be heeded by anyone who contributes to making life-and-death decisions. A road map for effective, well-considered policy.\
Peggy Orenstein
Positive Kirkus A charming memoir of a quietly transformative year.
Peggy Orenstein
Positive Publishers Weekly Insightful ... Orenstein poignantly reveals what she’s learned from the craft...and humorously describes her hands-on experiences (on attempting to use an electric clipper on a ewe ... This snapshot of creative self-discovery will enlighten readers.
Paul Harding
Rave Kirkus As these characters find themselves rethinking their places in the world, Harding summons up lyrical sheets of prose, including one of the most evocative descriptions of a lobster dinner you’re likely to encounter. He has an eye for a striking image ... It’s a brief book that carries the weight of history ... A moving account of community and displacement.
Paul Harding
Rave Publishers Weekly Understated yet wrenching ... A remarkable achievement.
Felicia Kornbluh
Positive Kirkus Both timely and engaging, this insightful study reveals that the battle for abortion rights must be considered only one part of a much larger, more complex struggle that needs to address the protection of the sexual freedom and choices of all women ... Necessary reading for anyone worried about this post-Dobbs world.
Felicia Kornbluh
Positive Publishers Weekly Eye-opening ... Kornbluh makes public policy and legal history come alive by demonstrating the power of women’s collective action. The result is an inspiring study of how progress happens.
Aleksandar Hemon
Rave Kirkus Epic ... The writing remains powerful, beautiful, and the epilogue provides an origin story that puts everything that has preceded it in fresh light ... Hemon pulls no punches in his most ambitious novel to date.
Aleksandar Hemon
Rave Publishers Weekly Potent ... Hemon easily immerses readers in the characters’ various languages, particularly the Sarajevo \'Spanjol\' dialect, and brings home via vivid daydreams Pinto’s anguish while separated from Osman. Readers will delight in this sweeping epic.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Rave Publishers Weekly Divakaruni seamlessly weaves the political upheaval into the characters’ lives, including the nation’s bereavement after Gandhi’s assassination and Priya’s meeting with the female resistance leader Sarojini Naidu, while also depicting the beauty, vitality, and vastness of India. This is a must.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Positive Kirkus The author’s latest novel is an engaging family saga that explores resilience against a backdrop of violent national upheaval. The story is well paced as it follows its cast of characters through a chaotic world while still capturing the rich interiority of each of the three daughters. A moving depiction of family life following great loss.
Susan Griffin
Positive Kirkus Aiming to offer a \'kind and gentle\' writing guide, Griffin... takes a Zen-like approach to generating, constructing, and honing a piece of writing. In serene meditations, sometimes less than half a page long, she reflects on topics such as silence, focus, reading, the need for solitude, and the power of attentiveness to one’s surroundings and feelings ... Warm reassurance from a veteran writer.
Susan Griffin
Positive Publishers Weekly An elegant guide to the art of writing ... Sections titled \'How I Learned to Write\' appear throughout and add up to an illuminating memoir of her life in literature ... These pearls of wisdom will be a boon to novice writers.
John Hendrickson
Positive Kirkus Hendrickson poignantly chronicles his efforts to navigate adolescence and high school with a fear of speaking ... Hendrickson’s approach to his subject is both personal and investigative ... This appealing and perceptive memoir takes an unsentimental look at life with a speech disorder.
John Hendrickson
Positive Publishers Weekly Powerful ... The author is a thoughtful reporter, and he delivers a visceral understanding of how he compartmentalized his shame. This memoir casts a necessary light on a disability that too often goes unseen.
Graham Rayman, Reuven Blau
Positive Kirkus Moments of understanding are altogether rare in this brutal oral history ... If there were ever an argument for prison reform, it’s in these pages.
Philip Bump
Mixed Publishers Weekly Insightful if overstuffed ... More than 100 graphs visualize issues... in novel ways, allowing Bump to draw counterintuitive insights ... Often, however, the data overwhelms and the arguments sprawl in diffuse directions. This intriguing survey bites off a little more than it can chew.
Philip Bump
Positive Kirkus Less crystal ball than projection of probabilities, but rewarding, provocative reading for students of demographic trends.
Josh Riedel
Mixed Kirkus The novel’s intriguing premise... invites urgent questions about how technology operates in our lives. Unfortunately, Riedel glosses over key leaps in story logic and is light on memorable descriptive language. Riedel evokes the bougie Silicon Valley ecosystem by peppering scenes with cultural references, regional markers, and New Age business-speak but leaves his characters frustratingly underdeveloped ... A diffuse homily on technology and identity that is easy to read and easy to forget.
Josh Riedel
Mixed Publishers Weekly Riedel makes the most of his removed narrator, who has enough distance from the events to offer sharp insights on gentrification, workplace ennui, and the uncanny ways that tech has blurred his sense of reality ... It’s impressive how much Riedel packs into this.
Nyani Nkrumah
Rave Publishers Weekly Stunning ... The author is supremely gifted at bringing both her characters and their close-knit rural town to life. Readers will eagerly await more from this writer.
Matthew Salesses
Rave Publishers Weekly Brilliant and scathing ... Using language that is hilarious, caustic, and poignant, Salesses effectively interrogates whether and how Asians can contribute to American celebrity culture without meeting the same old racism in return ... Salesses fills the page with all the bold, kinetic confidence of an athlete striding onto the court.
Matthew Salesses
Rave Kirkus Salesses’ story is admirably multilayered, blending smarts about basketball, television, and the varying shades of anti-Asian racism, though he\'s less persuasive in arguing that incredible plot twists...are more true to life than the tropes suggest. Still, Salesses takes his source material from both basketball and TV seriously, and his storytelling is crisp while avoiding easy frothiness ... A smart, very meta take on love, sports, race, and media.
Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer
Mixed Kirkus Some essays are especially compelling... However, too many of the essays are slapdash, and the text has no center. Contributors often fail to adequately explain how myths originate in kernels of fact and, more importantly, what human needs they satisfy, and the myths they evaluate are mostly those of today’s right wing ... The result is a work that, lacking careful editorial oversight, is less coherent and credible than its serious purpose warrants—or as incisive as we would expect from its esteemed contributors.
Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer
Rave Publishers Weekly Illuminating and sharply written essays... Distinguished by its impressive roster of contributors and lucid arguments, this ought to be required reading.
Marisa Crane
Rave Publishers Weekly Crane brings their impressive imagination to the speculative details, which convey a great deal of thoughtfulness about how the second shadows affect people differently depending on their intersecting identities. They also treat their diverse cast with complexity and compassion ... The author’s profound maturity shines as they interrogate the creation of family, criminalization, and queer resistance.
Marisa Crane
Positive Kirkus Candidly explores the anguish of grief while remaining deeply insightful and often bitingly funny ... This novel skillfully probes the complexities of loss, love, and injustice. Writing fiction that convincingly leans toward hope is a challenging task, but Crane does so with self-assured, muscular grace. An anthem for queer love and solidarity that rises above the dystopian cacophony.
Grady Hendrix
Positive Kirkus Hendrix is hooked up to another Stephen King IV drip, nicely emulating the elder’s penchant for everyday human drama while elevating the creep factor with his own disquieting imagination ... The combination of Hendrix’s trippy take on the stages of grief and a plethora of nightmare fuel delivers a retro wallop for those in the mood. Warm up the VCR and fire up the air popper for a most bitchin’ horror story by a gifted practitioner of these dark arts.
Dan Kois
Mixed Publishers Weekly Charming if schematic ... Kois meanders through roughly sketched plot points....and resolves the substantial conflict that arises between the Emilys too quickly. With its sharp edges filed into a too-perfect smile, this one lacks bite.
Dan Kois
Positive Kirkus What does the Emilys’ story mean at a deeper level? It\'s hard to say ... Keenly observed if imperfect ... This atmospheric first novel is an ode to friendship, creativity, and an era now gone.
Henry Marsh
Positive Publishers Weekly Immersive ... Marsh interweaves tender moments from his personal life, including storytimes with his granddaughters, with discussions of gene editing and other medical topics. Readers will find much to appreciate in this pensive probe into what it means to face mortality.
Henry Marsh
Rave Kirkus Compelling ... The author offers a fascinating account of his often disagreeable treatment but remains entranced by the wonders of the natural world, science, and love for his family. The conclusion finds him still alive and, readers will hope, writing another book ... Another masterful memoir from Marsh.
Tracy Kidder
Positive Publishers Weekly Poignant ... Drawing on five years’ worth of reporting, Kidder vividly portrays life on the streets and in the program’s health clinics, and sheds light on various legal and policy matters, though the focus is less on the institutional forces that contribute to chronic homelessness than on the individual lives it touches. Keenly observed and fluidly written, this is a compassionate report from the front lines of one of America’s most intractable social problems.
Tracy Kidder
Rave Kirkus A searching, troubling look at the terrible actualities of homelessness.
Colm Toíbín
Positive Publishers Weekly Erudite ... Tóibín’s fans will relish these sharp reflections.
Colm Toíbín
Rave Kirkus Magnificent ... Throughout, the poetry of Tóibín’s prose is as impressive as always ... Readers...will savor every page of this book ... Erudite essays from one of the world’s finest writers.
Monica Heisey
Positive Publishers Weekly Appealing ... Even in its darkest moments the book is very funny, and Heisey’s inspired skewering of urban millennial life hits the mark. Readers will gobble up this Bridget Jones’s Diary for the smartphone era.
Monica Heisey
Rave Kirkus Novels about women who unravel somewhere around the age of 30 aren’t exactly rare, but this one stands out both because it’s laugh-out-loud funny and because of the artful way Heisey reveals that her heroine is most definitely not OK ... Her ultimate breakdown is inevitable, and she has to work hard to win back the trust of the people who love her most—and regain trust in herself. Maggie’s redemption is well earned ... Smart, bighearted, and hilarious.
Rick Rubin
Positive Publishers Weekly Meditative ... The dispatches read like ancient spiritual texts in their Zen-like wisdom.
Rick Rubin
Rave Kirkus Apothegmatic ... Learn, do, have fun: terrific encouragement for anyone embarking on a creative project, no matter what it might be.
Maria Dong
Positive Kirkus Vertiginous ... Some characters lack depth and verisimilitude, but Katrina’s fraught relationship with her immigrant parents rings true. Though the setup drags on, sapping the book\'s momentum, once the mystery drops into gear, increasingly bonkers twists propel the story to a cogent, poignant close ... A rabbit hole worth falling down.
Maria Dong
Rave Publishers Weekly Mesmerizing ... This nuanced depiction of a woman’s struggles with isolation and mental health rings entirely true. Fans of sharp, inventive fiction will be eager for Dong’s next.
Fatin Abbas
Positive Publishers Weekly Impressive ... Abbas skillfully navigates boundaries between the disparate players and builds a fine drama out of their negotiations and bonds. Readers will be captivated by this immersive novel.
Tove Alsterdal, trans. by Alice Menzies
Mixed Publishers Weekly Often gripping but haphazardly plotted ... A strong sense of place—in particular, the remote, sparsely populated north of Sweden—helps compensate for the meandering narrative and the author’s sometimes clumsy efforts to impose profundity and unearth big themes about societal change ... Scandi noir fans will hope for a tighter plot next time.
Tove Alsterdal, trans. by Alice Menzies
Positive Kirkus American readers will enjoy this dark, tightly plotted, and satisfying thriller.
Paul Auster
Rave Kirkus Brief but remarkably moving ... Though Auster’s arguments will be familiar to anyone who has followed gun control debates closely, the author’s overview is exceptional in its clarity and arresting in its sense of urgency ... A harrowing, haunting reflection on the routine slaughter wrought by guns.
Paul Auster
Rave Publishers Weekly Powerful ... Trenchant.
Pico Iyer
Rave Kirkus Iyer has written many beloved books on his expeditions around the world, and he has a gift for capturing the texture and cadence of a place and its people. His latest, which he sees as something of a capstone to his life’s work, is more than a travel memoir. He explores the idea of paradise held in different cultures and religions, making the text a spiritual journey rather than an itinerary ... With keen observation and beautiful language, Iyer shows us the essential truths of places, people, and ideas.
Pico Iyer
Rave Publishers Weekly Immersive and profound ... Iyer remains a cultural critic par excellence, matching penetrating insights with some of the most transportive prose around. This further burnishes Iyer’s reputation as one of the best travel writers out there.
Laura Zigman
Rave Publishers Weekly \"Zigman does a stellar job of creating well-rounded characters, and a satisfying ending tops off her well-crafted paean to sisterhood. Readers will love this.\
Laura Zigman
Rave Kirkus \"Zigman, who excels at depicting the emotional push and pull of sibling relationships, examines the conflicts and grief that play out in a family dealing with a disabled child with compassion and honesty. Yet she never loses her sharp sense of humor, as evidenced by the hilarious ongoing war between Joyce and her new upstairs neighbors ... Zigman doesn’t shy away from discussing the hardships the Mellishmans faced, but she also highlights small moments of wonder and joy that illuminate the sisters’ shared path. The world might feel small, Joyce learns, but the power of hope always looms large. A compassionate, often funny examination of shared family grief and love.\
Leigh Bardugo
Rave Kirkus \"The plot is relentless and clever, and the writing is vivid, intelligent, and funny at just the right moments, but best of all are the complex characters, such as the four murderers, each with a backstory that makes it possible for the reader to trust them to enter hell and have the strength to leave again. Like the first book, this one ends with a cliffhanger. Well-drawn characters introduce the criminal underworld to the occult kind in a breathless and compelling plot.\
Leigh Bardugo
Rave Publishers Weekly \"Bardugo surrounds Alex with fascinating supporting players, among them a damaged New Haven cop and a naive roommate excited by the lure of the supernatural, while keeping the story’s drive firmly in Alex’s grip for another scrappy underdog tale. The taut plot, often grisly magic, lavish scene-setting, and wry humor combine to make this just as un-put-downable as the first installment. Readers will be wowed.\
Kashana Cauley
Mixed Publishers Weekly ...[a] well-crafted if schematic debut ... Cauley’s understanding of plot is impeccable and she keeps the tension taut as Aretha gets more involved with the group, but though the author lightly grapples with the politics of gun ownership, the matter is ultimately reduced to cheap thrills, and the characters are written to type. It’s a good story, but it should have gone straight to screenplay.
Kashana Cauley
Rave Kirkus Cauley’s experience as a Manhattan antitrust lawyer infuses the office scenes with authentically cutthroat competition, and her comedy-writing chops shine in hilariously succinct characterizations ... But what really sets this debut novel apart is its finely tuned balance between extremes: humor and drama, conspiracy and reason, careful preparation and total chaos. Funny and fresh, Cauley’s prose moves dynamic characters through a vivid, living New York City.
Stephen Markley
Rave Publishers Weekly Brilliant ... Markley makes this anything but didactic; his nuanced characterizations of individuals with different approaches to the existential threat make the perils they encounter feel real as they navigate cover-ups and lies. It’s a disturbing tour de force.
Stephen Markley
Positive Kirkus Hyper-realistic, alarming ... Sprawling ... A more streamlined story that felt less inclined to bolster its authority with mountains of detail would likely have been more powerful. Nevertheless, the author has produced a highly memorable invention in a character named Kate Morris, a charismatic eco-activist with a ferocious clarity of purpose. Her narrative, taken on its own, is unusually vivid and distills much of what the novel seems to care about most: warning of massive disruptions to our civilization in the decades to come and exploring possibilities for maintaining our humanity as we struggle to manage them. An ambitious rendering of a forbidding future and the public and private challenges that will define it.
Janet Malcolm
Positive Kirkus A memoir as elusive as it is revealing ... What she does expose are sharp observations rendered in the precise, stylish prose that earned her acclaim ... A graceful meditation on memory.
Janet Malcolm
Rave Publishers Weekly Evocative ... Witty...and reflective...this is a monument to a master of her craft.
Manuel Muñoz
Rave Kirkus \"Nuanced, thoughtful, often moving stories.\
Manuel Muñoz
Rave Publishers Weekly \" ... [a] deeply affecting collection ... By making subtle connections between the stories, Muñoz adds texture to characters even if they’re not at the center, and throughout, Muñoz delivers breathtaking views into his characters’ hardscrabble world, and evokes the heat of their yearning. This packs a hell of a punch.\
Manuel Muñoz
Positive The Daily Mail (UK) \"The characters in Munoz’s tough and tender stories play out lives of complicated familial obligations and hard-scrabble economics in the orchards, bus stations and small apartments of California’s Central Valley as summer sizzles and hearts break ... There’s a glow of warmth as Munoz’s compassionate gaze lends grace to these incandescent tales of striving and survival.\
Tracey Rose Peyton
Mixed Publishers Weekly Powerful if uneven ... As a meditation on motherhood and bodily autonomy, this mostly succeeds, particularly in the novel’s closing chapters, yet the author’s choice to frequently shift perspective from the women to an omniscient narrator doesn’t quite work. Still, it’s clear Peyton has much talent to burn.
Tracey Rose Peyton
Positive Kirkus Searing ... Peyton weaves through the minds and spirits of her large cast of characters with insight and ease. The novel moves deftly between the third person and a collective \'we\' narrative, revealing the women\'s intimate interconnectedness and the intersectional interplay of age, race, gender, religion, and social status in the struggle to survive amid the horrors of life on the plantation ... Alternately suspenseful and poetic, this novel marks the beginning of a promising career for Peyton.
Martha C. Nussbaum
Rave Publishers Weekly [A] lucid analysis ... This trenchant and masterful blend of political analysis, philosophical study, and call to action is a must-read.
Martha C. Nussbaum
Positive Kirkus A thought-provoking guide to ethical coexistence with the diverse creatures of Earth.
An Yu
Positive Kirkus A semisurreal novel that contrasts the immediacy of daily life in Beijing with a mesmerizing dreamscape ... A mood of yearning and a search for emotional freedom drive this simply told yet enigmatic story that includes bursts of imaginative flare, often lit by an orange glow. Intimate, melancholic, unresolved—perhaps frustratingly so for some readers—yet hopeful, Yu’s story offers a restless female perspective working toward clarity. Dreamy and questioning, an unsettling novel composed of wistful notes.
An Yu
Rave Publishers Weekly Yu mesmerizes with this surreal story of music and mushrooms ... Yu brilliantly captures the dying throes of Song Yan’s three-year marriage to Bowen ... As Song Yan relentlessly surges toward independence and away from solitude and loneliness, Yu’s blistering narrative reaches a plaintive end. Readers will be enthralled.
V. V. Ganeshananthan
Positive Publishers Weekly A searing and intimate depiction of the Sri Lankan civil war from the point of view of an aspiring doctor ... Ganeshananthan credibly captures the horrors and pain of the conflict felt by those caught between loyalties. It all makes for a convincing and illuminating war novel.
Cheuk Kwan
Positive Kirkus \"His rich descriptions, humorous tone, and extensive research make for a pleasurable reading experience. The connections he draws between far-flung places are particularly impressive, revealing a deep empathy and knowledge about the people he encountered. Kwan’s inclusion of his personal history—and the histories of his film crew—gives the book an added feeling of intimacy. Only occasionally does the author feel out of touch—e.g., his lack of a critical lens about Israel’s tumultuous history. A heartfelt and entertaining culinary and historical survey of the Chinese diaspora.\
Tom Crewe
Rave Kirkus Crewe has his own rich and engrossing style, though, and his own approach to plot dynamics, concluding the story with a dramatic trial sequence that captures a mood of both frustration and defiance, blending the graceful ambiguity of literary fiction with the deftness of a page-turner ... A smart, sensual debut.
Tom Crewe
Positive Publishers Weekly Auspicious ... Crewe uses meticulously researched period details to great effect, and rounds out the narrative with solid characters and tight pacing. Readers will look forward to seeing what this talented author does next.
Bret Easton Ellis
Mixed Publishers Weekly Ponderous ... He often demonstrates his skill as a storyteller, but this book feels like two disparate novels—an overly detailed, fictionalized memoir and a high gothic serial killer thriller—that never come together meaningfully or believably. This is not the place to start for those new to Ellis, nor will genre fans find much to like.
Bret Easton Ellis
Positive Kirkus The usual issues with Ellis apply to this bulky novel: The flatness of the characters, the gratuitousness of the violence, the Didion-esque cool that sometimes reads as Olympian smugness. But as the story proceeds, it also becomes easier to admire Ellis’ ability to sustain the mood...he does ably capture how Bret’s paranoia intensifies out of that emotional distance and how the urge for feeling and connection infects and warps his personality. Bret Ellis the character is trying to play it cool, but Bret Easton Ellis the author knows just how much he’s covering up ... A surprisingly seductive work of erotic horror.
Bret Easton Ellis
Rave Irish Times (IRE) At 594 pages long, some bridging scenes could be culled for a tighter read, but The Shards is consistently engrossing. A return to form, the blend of confessional writing and horror-mystery makes for an addictively propulsive brew. Some may find one of the ending’s dangling possibilities a meta cop-out, not baked enough into what’s preceded. But Ellis has worked up so much goodwill, and the ending is sufficiently ambiguous, that this misstep is forgiven. For sheer enjoyment this ranks among Ellis’ very best ... What’s most endearing is Ellis’ vulnerability here ... Fascinating ... The Shards is the culmination of Ellis’ strengths. He has become a more integrated author: his signature provocations and meta elements have coalesced into a more humane package. The schlocky artifice is a smokescreen letting the more truthful, autobiographical currents come through.
Deepti Kapoor
Rave Publishers Weekly Searing ... Finely wrought characters ... Kapoor’s violent and bitter story is deeply addictive; this spellbinder would be easy to devour in one big gulp, but it’s worth savoring for Neda’s uncompromising take on what she terms India’s \'losing age, the age of vice.\' The author possesses a talent great enough to match the massive scope of her subject.
Deepti Kapoor
Positive Kirkus Fast-paced ... Kapoor switches points of view and timelines throughout the book to great effect; it doesn’t take long for the reader to become invested in the Mario Puzo–esque drama of the Wadia family and their associates. Her dialogue shines, and although the novel is a bit too long, it’s certainly gripping. Fans of crime novels will find much to admire in this quite entertaining book ... A bit too long-winded but a whole lot of fun.
Allegra Goodman
Pan Kirkus There isn\'t enough texture in its treatment of the many serious issues faced by its heroine to satisfy readers.
Allegra Goodman
Positive Publishers Weekly Bracing ... Sam’s mostly quotidian travails gain heft through Goodman’s perceptiveness, specificity regarding Sam’s emotions, and arresting turns of phrase ... It’s impressive how much emotional power is packed into this relatively contained story.
Parini Shroff
Rave Publishers Weekly Acerbic ... Shroff deals sharply with misogyny and abuse, describing the misery inflicted as well as its consequences in unflinching detail, and is equally unsparing in her depictions of mean-girl culture in the village. Readers are in for a razor-stuffed treat.
Parini Shroff
Positive Kirkus Some of Shroff’s attempts to insert serious discussions of abuse, misogyny, and class throughout the novel feel awkward, and the story could have used some editing (perhaps one less murder?). Still, if you can lean into the melodramatic slapstick nature of it all...the novel will reward you with occasional witty one-liners, tender moments of deep female friendship, and salient truths ... Readers will appreciate—if not quite be riveted by—this tale of the strength of women in impossible situations.
Tara Lynn Masih
Positive Kirkus Examines complex emotional relationships ... Some tales are very short, just a few pages, and those work well on an aesthetic level but don’t have enough substance to be truly striking. More rewarding are the longer stories ... Luminous tales set in evocative environments that explore how remarkable people can fade away.
Simon Van Booy
Positive Publishers Weekly Inventive and moving ... Each entry, sparked by \'the drunk librarian of memory,\' is rich in setting and emotion ... As ever with Van Booy, the reader is in good hands.
Simon Van Booy
Positive Kirkus Sentimental ... The concept of listening to a famous author reflect on life and writing is an appealing one, but the novel\'s aphoristic musings are often too pat to yield new insight or too abstract to reconfigure the reader\'s views ... The novel is most affecting when it commits to a narrative of its own ... A free-floating reflection on human connection that never quite touches ground.
Michael Hingston
Positive Publishers Weekly ... richly textured ... Full of colorful personalities, exotic locales, and unexpected twists, this is a jaunty historical footnote.
Hanne Orstavik, tr. Martin Aitken
Rave Kirkus ... penetrating ... Ørstavik maintains a brutally tender, hyperprecise gaze ... dark though its central topic undeniably is, the novel shares a compassionate vision, bridging the gulf between the one who will go on and the one who will not ... A remarkably frank and finely sieved account of two people approaching the ultimate parting of the ways.
Ama Codjoe
Positive The Poetry Foundation ... a heady mix of ekphrastic and archival poems ... densely packed with striking descriptions ... The collection also functions as a kind of layered self-portrait.
Ama Codjoe
Rave Publishers Weekly In this frequently gripping debut, Codjoe offers precisely crafted poems dealing with desire, memory, art, and ancestry. Her interest in public and private looking, in what is seen and perceived over what is, is carefully displayed ... This excellent book is worth multiple readings.
Thomas Beller
Positive Publishers Weekly Heartfelt ode to [basketball] ... Beller champions the sport as a lens through which to view life, and his devotion to it is palpable throughout ... Basketball aficionados will get swept up in this incisive study.
Anna Moschovakis
Rave Publishers Weekly A brilliant and prescient story ... Often, E breaks the fourth wall, anticipating and toying with the reader’s expectations ... Throughout, Moschovakis brings her fierce intelligence to bear in the structurally surprising and impeccably executed narrative. This is formal innovation at its finest.
Anna Moschovakis
Positive Kirkus Theory-driven, opaque, and formally experimental, the book risks abstraction that can be alienating, allowing its characters to exposit their thoughts on their lives, surroundings, memories, and expectations rather than explore these ideas in-scene ... Timely, perhaps even prescient ... Densely intellectual, the novel forces an alert reader to reconsider what it means to participate in the very act of reading.
Francine Prose
Positive Publishers Weekly Stimulating feminist history ... Though the history drags in places, it amounts to a lucid and persuasive reinterpretation. Readers won’t see Cleopatra the same way again.
Francine Prose
Positive Kirkus A fresh look ... A succinct biography ... A thoughtful, sympathetic portrait of a legendary historical figure.
Ben Macintyre
Positive Kirkus Numerous fictional portrayals of heroic prisoners outsmarting dastardly Nazis bear little relation to reality, but Macintyre tells an equally entertaining story that sticks to the facts ... Unlike many fictional portrayals, Macintyre chronicles what happened once the men were outside the walls ... A mixture of derring-do and a vivid, warts-and-all portrayal of the iconic castle.
Ben Macintyre
Rave Publishers Weekly ... riveting ... Though attempted \'home runs,\' or clean getaways in the lingo of Colditz POWs, provide much of the book’s drama, Macintyre also sheds light on how the prisoners relieved their boredom through theatrical productions, reading, and writing poetry. This is another engrossing tale of WWII intrigue from a master of the genre.
David Enrich
Rave Kirkus There are plenty of other shameful episodes, and Enrich is unblinking in reporting them, yielding a fast-moving, damning book ... Essential reading for students of the Trump corruption machine.
David Enrich
Positive Publishers Weekly ... impassioned ... Enrich’s condemnations of corporations and their lawyers aren’t always ironclad—he brushes aside testing results that found no contamination in Abbott’s formula—but he delivers a vivid, crackling account of the law at its most bullying. Readers will be outraged.
Michael Pedersen
Positive Kirkus This examination into \'male grief\' is flavored by the author\'s clear love of language, and comprehending his ruminations requires negotiating Scottish idioms—some of them annotated, though not all ... Ultimately, Pedersen offers an extended reverie on the dynamics of male friendship, an underexplored literary landscape ... A consistently intimate and often moving memoir of friendship.
Michael Pedersen
Positive Publishers Weekly As Pedersen struggles to memorialize his friend’s death among the \'beastly bite of grief,\' he finds humor and gratitude in his memories, constructing from them a passionate ode to companionship ... Despite its plaintive origins, this brims with beauty and love.
Amanda Jayatissa
Positive Kirkus The twists, after they are revealed, may feel a little familiar to readers of thrillers, but the pacing is expert; in the moment, each is surprising and creates a need to recalibrate what is known about these characters. In addition to offering unapologetically strong, vividly imperfect female characters, the novel offers commentary on social privilege in Sri Lanka and on the gaudy, illusion-filled world of social media influencers.
Amanda Jayatissa
Positive Publishers Weekly While the perpetrators are powerfully drawn and the social and political tensions in Sri Lanka sensitively suggested, some readers may feel frustrated by Amaya’s coy and often misleading hints about her past and her sudden shift late in the story to psychological health and benevolence. Ruth Ware fans will want to check this out.
Dipo Faloyin
Positive Publishers Weekly ... spirited ... Flashes of joy and humor enliven the proceedings. The result is an exuberant and informative introduction to one of the world’s most diverse continents.
Dipo Faloyin
Positive Kirkus A trenchant study demolishes stereotypes about Africans as a product of colonial history ... stern and vibrant ... A well-researched, cleareyed deconstruction of highly flawed conventional wisdom about Africa.
Charles Spicer
Rave Kirkus ... lively ... the result of intense research, it’s a page-turner ... A captivating and convincing revisionist history.
Charles Spicer
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... detailed yet unpersuasive ... Classifying the group’s members as \'amateur intelligence agents,\' Spicer draws a somewhat murky distinction between their attempts to “civilize” the Nazi regime in order to avert war and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement ... While Spicer reveals that Fellowship members passed valuable information on the inner workings of the Nazi government to British and U.S. officials, coordinated with anti-Nazi resistance leaders in Germany, and earnestly believed that improved trade relations and cultural exchanges could decrease the likelihood of war, he overstates how much \'the socially gauche National Socialists... admired and aped the British elites\' and underplays the \'naivety and gullibility\' of the Fellowship. This revisionist history feels like a bit too much of a reach.
Tom Mustill
Positive Kirkus Mustill uncovers numerous intriguing avenues as he recounts his travels around the world interviewing the growing number of scientists trying to make sense of an overwhelming stream of recordings from cetaceans (whales and closely related dolphins and porpoises) ... a fascinating world brought to life by Mustill ... Despite the absence of a primer on whale language, readers will savor this expert exploration of animal communication.
Tom Mustill
Positive Publishers Weekly ... colorful ... Mustill’s survey is shot through with fascinating characters ... Thoughtful and curious, this study sings.
Rae Meadows
Positive Kirkus Absorbing ... Writing with a confidence based on excellent research, Meadows vividly depicts the Soviet training system—and its abuses—without taxing readers with too many technical terms ... If there\'s a flaw in this smoothly paced novel, it\'s the lack of conflict motivating its characters to action. Although well drawn, they are passive figures living in a society that allows for no individual agency. Also, the book’s final section covering the collapse of the Soviet Union feels rushed. An enlightening portrait of a now-vanished world.
Luke Dumas
Rave Kirkus What makes this first-person novel so chilling is that Grayson, an American graduate student in Edinburgh, sounds completely sane ... Lean and propulsive, this dissection of evil marches forward with a deadly logic and sleight of hand, with occasional gaps filled in by an enterprising journalist and a Scottish information commissioner. The key is that we feel for Grayson ... The characters surrounding him, from his ghoulish family to his annoying roommate to his eventual victim, come to life on the page, all part of Grayson’s living nightmare ... It’s a patient pursuit and a patient book, one that builds without the reader quite realizing it. It blurs the line between mental illness and something less definable, more supernatural and sinister. A muscular, enigmatic, and devilishly smart read.
Luke Dumas
Rave Publishers Weekly Stellar debut, a complex whydunit ... Vivid prose enhances the twisty plot; Liam’s Scottish accent is \'melodic yet underpinned by something hard and jagged, like clear water flowing over a bed of pointed rocks.\' Admirers of Andrew Pyper’s The Demonologist will be riveted.
Aidan Levy
Positive Kirkus Meticulously researched ... Levy’s obsession with complete documentation also means that we only come to appreciate Rollins’ fascinating personality through the sheer weight of repeated anecdotes instead of synthesis on the part of his biographer. The portrait of Rollins the activist, yogi, and perfectionist genius that emerges frequently borders on hagiography, though the author gradually manages to convey the essence of an artist driven by a relentless spiritual quest to improve himself ... In fact, Levy\'s greatest contribution is his extensive account of the dissatisfaction that led to Rollins’ decision to practice on the Williamsburg Bridge for more than a year as well as the attention paid to the less-well-known work that followed. In this sense, Levy’s book counts as a success ... A definitive account of a jazz icon in which the level of detail will interest only superfans.
Sarah Gristwood
Rave Publishers Weekly Engrossing ... Mesmerizing detail ... Throughout, fascinating incidental details add insight and reveal personal connections between historical figures. The result is a fresh and tantalizing look at a much-scrutinized dynasty.
Sarah Gristwood
Positive Kirkus This book includes more literary scholarship than the average history buff expects, and most readers will be relieved when, around Page 80, Gristwood reaches the late 15th century and begins an appealing account of the Tudor years ... Readers may wince at the flowery exchanges between royal suitors and the increasingly elderly and unavailable Elizabeth. A solid, uniquely focused study of the irresistible Tudors.
Misty Copeland
Positive Kirkus Unfailing encouragement and pragmatic advice ... A candid, instructive reflection on artistry, dedication, and race.
Misty Copeland
Positive Publishers Weekly The strength that Copeland found in Wilkinson is moving, and she renders it gracefully throughout. This is an inspiring and insightful account.
Jefferson Cowie
Positive Kirkus Broad-ranging history ... Provocatively, Cowie argues that resistance to federal authority, as exemplified by Alabama Gov. George Wallace and his \'segregation forever\' vow, is almost always cloaked in the language of tyranny and freedom ... A lucid narrative that spans three centuries ... A powerful history showing that White supremacist ideas of freedom are deeply embedded in American politics.
Jefferson Cowie
Rave Publishers Weekly Gripping and haunting study ... [Cowie] astutely grounds his study in one specific place—Barbour County, Ala. ... Cowie’s meticulous accumulation of detail and candid assessments...make for distressing yet essential reading. This is history at its most vital.
Evette Dionne
Positive Publishers Weekly Sharp ... Crackling with conviction, this is an urgent call for change.
Evette Dionne
Positive Kirkus The author argues persuasively that the media plays a huge role in promulgating negative fat-girl stereotypes ... Vibrant, intimate, and intelligent, this book lays down the unapologetic demand that women of size finally be allowed \'to be fat in plain sight.\' A provocatively necessary collection.
Jamie Marina Lau
Mixed Publishers Weekly Imaginative if underpowered ... Lau makes some good points about consumerism and ably captures the mood of disenchanted youth, but the slow pacing and underdeveloped supporting characters make this feel aimless. Lau has plenty of talent, but while this starts strong, it falls apart at the end.
Jamie Marina Lau
Positive Kirkus A maximalist caper ... A hyperconscious maximalism that occasionally overwhelms the reader with the equity of its attention. There is so much to see in this novel that the reader is sometimes at a loss for where to look ... Funny, bold, capacious, and more than a little exhausting—this book mirrors modern life.
Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair
Positive Kirkus A fulsome biography set during a crucial period of the iconic musician’s life ... Kozinn and Sinclair create a thorough narrative ... Covering five years in more than 700 pages, the book is extremely detail-laden, probably more than some readers will want ... A gold mine for avid fans.
Matt Easton
Rave Publishers Weekly \"Drawing on evidence gathered by Munir’s family, Easton makes a persuasive case ... Easton lucidly unravels the complex history behind the murder and shines a well-deserved spotlight on and how tirelessly Munir’s wife and friends have worked to expose the truth. This harrowing account unearths the insidious legacy of authoritarian regimes.\
Matt Easton
Rave The Economist \"...reads like a gripping legal-procedural whodunnit, as evidence is slowly unearthed from telephone records, lost documents are retrieved from deleted computer files and intriguing new witnesses emerge ... As recent history, it is meticulous and moving.
Douglas Brinkley
Positive Kirkus Readable but overlong history ... A solid addition to the literature at the intersection of environmentalism and politics.
Lauren Graham
Rave Kirkus Graham writes with humor, authenticity, and humility. She gracefully tackles topics ranging from her first car in Los Angeles...to the nuances of talking about emotionally difficult subjects, like growing up without her mother present ... [Graham] presents a charming and candid depiction of life as a celebrity ... Graham doesn’t shy away from seemingly taboo topics, including aging in Hollywood, which she discusses with her characteristic humor and warmth ... Graham’s own celebrity status feels incidental in a collection that can stand on its own wit.
Helen Rappaport
Rave Kirkus .. riveting ... a snappy biography interwoven with a chronicle of tenacious—often frustrating—research ... well-constructed ... A strong-willed woman revived by an indefatigable biographer.
Bob Stanley
Rave Kirkus This author’s ability to assess the history of his subject through the lens of today’s music sets this book apart ... A delightful music history that gives pop its proper due without losing any of the fizzy fun along the way.
Jenny Xie
Rave Publishers Weekly Xie’s detached and precise language in the earlier poems echoes the oppressive climate of the Revolution and makes the more emotionally charged poems hit harder. This is a devastating master class in subtlety.
Joe Meno
Positive Kirkus Readers have an inherent desire to see talent recognized and to see it overcome adversity. Nothing drives the compulsion to follow Aleks and company to their literary conclusion more than this. At heart, these are good people, in tough circumstances, making the same mistakes that many of us make. Will they allow themselves the chance to obtain happiness?...A family of gifted individuals can’t seem to stop sabotaging their own lives, but you’ll want them to.
Joe Meno
Positive Publishers Weekly Though the family saga is relatively simple, the characters’ passions and their desire for fulfillment is made achingly real. This ought to please Meno’s fans and win him some more.
Peniel E Joseph
Positive Kirkus Joseph successfully links episodes in the struggle for civil rights to form a continuum of injustice and resolution.
Peniel E Joseph
Rave Publishers Weekly Joseph interweaves moving reflections on his experiences growing up in Jamaica, Queens in the 1980s. The result is an essential reframing of America’s past and present.
Elyssa Friedland
Positive Publishers Weekly ... delightful ... A lot of the details are delivered in exposition ... a glut of 1990s references eventually slips into overkill. Still, Friedland keeps up a steady supply of clever lines to convey the women’s mix of excitement and dread over the big event ... The author also does a good job with the heavier themes—in addition to the racism and sexism, there are nuanced accounts of Tara’s sexual assault and Melissa’s eating disorder. Overall, this strikes a fine balance between lighthearted and serious.
Douglas Rushkoff
Positive Kirkus ... scathing ... Though Rushkoff occasionally displays too evident a disdain for his subjects, he writes with knowledge and authority. The text conveys an appropriately urgent and serious message, while the closing section offers sound reason for hope and reasonable steps to take for a better future ... A dense but thorough and authoritative condemnation of tech worship.
Douglas Rushkoff
Positive Publishers Weekly ... fascinating and distressing ... It’s all rather intriguing, even if a couple of chapters feel somewhat tangential. This is an eye-popping look at some outlandish visions for the future.
Rubén Degollado
Rave Kirkus In this gloriously rich epic, we get to see a full picture of the family. Each interlocking chapter is told by a different character, unifying into a thoughtfully crafted history spanning decades. The characters, who are complex and tightly linked to one another, are enlivened by their belief in a mix of superstition, brujería, and Catholicism that feels both familiar and playful. Family celebrations like a Posada, a quinceañera, and the Fourth of July particularly highlight family dynamics. Though most of the stories focus on the Izquierdo family as a whole, there’s one called \'La Milagrosa Selena\' that is less a story and more a letter to the Diocese of Brownsville that advocates canonizing the queen of Tejano music, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez; it\'s a surprising delight ... An instant Tejano classic.
Rubén Degollado
Rave Publishers Weekly ... vivid ... Throughout, Degollado convincingly portrays the family’s mix of faith, superstition, and intergenerational volatility, and immerses the reader into a porous blend of English and Spanish. This is a gem.
Mazey Eddings
Rave Kirkus Lizzie is unusual for a romance novel character. She\'s even more commitment-phobic than Rake, defying gender stereotypes. And Lizzie has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Her need for sensory input makes regular sex an important part of her self-care. Eddings writes with compassion about Lizzie’s difficulties keeping on top of things, and her sex-positive attitude toward Lizzie\'s love life is a win for feminism. Reading about a neurodiverse heroine like Lizzie is refreshing. This is a funny, tumultuous novel that will inspire readers to think about how different kinds of brains shape our human need for love and sex ... A quirky and engaging second novel from an up-and-coming author.
Mazey Eddings
Positive Publishers Weekly ... charming and surprisingly deep ... Eddings handles Lizzie’s neurodivergence with sensitivity and care, crafting a heroine who will claim readers’ hearts from page one. The supporting characters are similarly well-drawn, particularly Lizzie’s icy, antagonistic mother, who readers will love to hate. This smart love story is a gem.
Josh Chin and Liza Lin
Positive Kirkus Occasionally, the authors wander away from their main theme, but they paint a grim, disturbing portrait that deserves close scrutiny, especially as the technology becomes more precise and easier to deploy ... The underside of digital technology on full, frightening display.
Josh Chin and Liza Lin
Positive Publishers Weekly ... rigorous and alarming ... This wide-ranging and deeply informed study offers crucial insights into the rising threat of digital surveillance.
James M Scott
Rave Kirkus Thorough ... excellent ... Scott evenhandedly examines the controversy surrounding the firebombing of Japanese cities and offers a sympathetic rendering of the devastating effects of those bombings on the civilian population ... Scott alternates his page-turning account of the air operations with devastating on-the-ground eyewitness reports of survivors, providing a kaleidoscopic portrait of both sides in a cataclysmic conflict ... A top-shelf World War II history told with meticulous research and considerable heart.
James M Scott
Rave Publishers Weekly ... immersive, meticulously researched ... Drawing on oral histories and survivor diaries, Scott vividly recounts the air raid on Tokyo orchestrated by Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, which incinerated one out of every four buildings in the Japanese capital and killed more than 100,000 people ... Full of vivid action scenes and sharp character observations, this riveting WWII history reveals the staggering cost of obtaining peace.
Louise Penny
Rave Publishers Weekly Nuanced characterization with nail-biting suspense ... Penny adds crucial details about Gamache’s backstory and satisfactorily resolves a plotline tease from earlier in the series. This tale of forgiveness and redemption will resonate with many.
Louise Penny
Rave Kirkus The plotting is complex and the characters as vivid as ever, but the opportunity to watch Gamache and Beauvoir\'s relationship develop is what makes this book one of Penny\'s best. Penny will have you turning the pages as fast as you can to see how she\'ll manage to tie everything together.
Iain MacGregor
Positive Publishers Weekly Brisk and dramatic ... Meticulous yet action-packed, this will thrill WWII buffs.
Iain MacGregor
Mixed Kirkus Uncertain focus notwithstanding, the battle makes for a compelling account, and MacGregor effectively uses primary sources ... MacGregor’s telling, however, is notably rough. In addition to presenting readers with the usual alphanumeric thicket of names pervasive in military histories, the author has a propensity for convoluted, awkward sentences that make the reading experience a slog. That the drama of the conflict, with the fighting waged room by room, still comes through is no small testament to the story’s bones, but readers will find a more satisfying study in Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad.
Lily Brooks-Dalton
Rave Kirkus Harrowing ... Brooks-Dalton creates an all-too-believable picture of nature reclaiming Florida from its human inhabitants, and her complex and engaging characters make climate disaster a vividly individual experience rather than an abstract subject of debate.
Lily Brooks-Dalton
Positive Publishers Weekly Gripping if underdeveloped ... By the end, Brooks-Dalton’s vision for what might be includes a radically changed state of Florida. Though the magical elements are unexplained and extraneous, the author sustains a steady pace from one storm to the next. Climate fiction aficionados will eat this up.
Estelle Paranque
Rave Publishers Weekly Political power and intrigue permeate this immersive dual biography ... The book’s most fascinating sections reveal how the two queens’ efforts toto forge a strong French-English alliance and calm religious conflict ... Paranque’s vivid character sketches and lucid explanations of the political and religious stakes involved result in a certifiable historical page-turner.
Estelle Paranque
Positive Kirkus Paranque often converts the material into fictionalized scenes with invented dialogue and insight into the characters’ thoughts. Although not always successfully, the tactic seems to preserve the spirit of the interactions. Solid diplomatic history and account of the lives of two female rulers who held their own in Renaissance Europe.
Buddy Levy
Positive Publishers Weekly Thrilling ... Full of evocative descriptions, harrowing action scenes, and incisive character sketches, this is a worthy addition to the literature of Arctic exploration.
Buddy Levy
Positive Kirkus Gripping ... Entertaining ... Hair-raising suffering and heroism in the Arctic.
Tegan Nia Swanson
Rave Kirkus Brash, atmospheric debut ... Though Swanson’s novel includes news stories, police interviews, and other elements of a detective story, it resists easy categorization. Swanson shifts from footnoted just-the-facts police interviews to lyrical prose poems to visual collages; the cast of characters is similarly diverse ... Swanson’s approach is impressionistic and heavy on allegory ... Swanson handles this in a witty, sober manner, so the effect is less New Age–y and more earthy and strange, like a Joseph Cornell shadow box. An inventive and beguiling debut.
Tegan Nia Swanson
Rave Publishers Weekly Impressive experimental debut ... The circuitous narrative branches out to include details about Marietta and Lena’s lives, the area’s dark lore, and a bevy of clues ... By the second half, the parts crystallize into a legacy of sexual abuse and a chronicle of revenge. The result is a darkly provocative assemblage ripe with quirky characters and undertones of horror, with allegorical notes grounded in the landscape upon which the citizens live and thrive. This gloomy and atmospheric mystery works on multiple levels.
Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
Rave Publishers Weekly Riveting debut ... The narrative provides plenty of celebrity encounters, but also reveals how restaurants work ... Readers will gobble up the juicy gossip and decadent stories from a man who has seen it all.
Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
Rave Kirkus Fast-paced, long on the meticulous details of service, unsparing of the salacious tales of sex, drugs, alcohol, run-ins with the mob, \'jumpers\' within view of the River Café, and much more. Readers interested in the who’s who of the NYC celebrity world will not be disappointed ... Cecchi-Azzolina’s prose can border on abrasive and overly detailed, but at its best, his tales are entertaining and affecting ... His honesty in acknowledging the many ills of the industry’s past and its continued long journey to legitimacy is enlightening and refreshing. An overlong yet vivid, candid account of an admirable restaurant career.
Lauren John Joseph
Mixed Publishers Weekly Joseph’s middling debut about memory and toxic relationships shows flashes of brilliance, but ends up feeling overwrought and overlong ... The author certainly has chops, as evidenced by the narrator’s sharp musings on the futility of existence...but the plot meanders and drags to the point of incoherence. This one needs a sharper focus to give its inspired moments their due.
Lauren John Joseph
Mixed Kirkus Almost operatic ... A debut that lies in the gutter while looking up at the stars, with moving, if sometimes overindulgent, results.
Rachel Kapelke-Dale
Rave Publishers Weekly The plot builds to a conclusion that’s inevitable but still surprising, exhilarating but also disturbing ... Will resonate with readers in the post-#MeToo era. This suspense-filled tale of revenge and redemption is hard to put down.
Kate Andersen Brower
Positive Kirkus Appreciative ... A well-researched, gossipy portrait of a star.
Kate Andersen Brower
Rave Publishers Weekly Glowing portrait ... Brower meticulously details Taylor’s stormy romantic relationships ... Brower convincingly depicts Taylor as a complex woman whose glamour, even today, is \'intoxicating.\' The result is a mesmerizing appreciation of a legendary star.
Bethany Brookshire
Rave Kirkus Page-turning ... The author delivers fascinating accounts of a score of widely deplored pests ... Insightful conclusion ... Outstanding, possibly mind-changing natural history.
Bethany Brookshire
Rave Publishers Weekly Eye-opening ... With clever anecdotes and fascinating history, Brookshire makes a solid case that humans ought to reconsider their relationships with animals.
Jenny Uglow
Positive Kirkus A vivid, engaging portrait of a productive artistic partnership.
Val McDermid
Rave Publishers Weekly Stellar ... McDermid creates a vivid sense of doom ... McDermid is writing at the top of her game.
Val McDermid
Pan Kirkus It was the year of many depressing developments, and McDermid has made poor Allie Burns slog through many of them, with very little of the suspense that made 1979, the first installment of her series, a page-turner ... The book\'s action climax takes place in East Germany, a setting so colorless and dull that two separate kidnappings can\'t raise the pulse of the narrative. Plodding mechanically and at undue length through her well-researched historical plot points, McDermid seems to have phoned this one in ... When the playlist at the end of the book is the highlight, you know you\'ve got problems.
Sabrina Imbler
Rave Publishers Weekly Captivating ... Imbler’s ability to balance illuminating science journalism with candid personal revelation is impressive, and the mesmerizing glints of lyricism are a treat. This intimate deep dive will leave readers eager to see where Imbler goes next.
Sabrina Imbler
Positive Kirkus In a book that is much more than an account of deep-sea creatures, journalist Imbler compellingly examines the parallels between the lives and priorities of people and aquatic animals. The author’s ability to locate connections across seemingly disparate topics...is both unique and engaging. Occasionally, Imbler’s juxtaposition of marine and human life feels forced, but the overall effect is heartening and encourages a reexamination of inherited ideas about family, community, and identity ... Elegant, thought-provoking comparisons between aspects of identity and the trials of deep-sea creatures.
Dunya Mikhail
Positive Publishers Weekly Frank and wrenching ... Mikhail’s sympathetic and fast-moving story of ordinary life and its violent disruption makes for a moving love letter to the Yazidi.
Leila Philip
Rave Publishers Weekly An enthralling history ... Philip’s vivid narrative is enriched by Native American legend...entertaining accounts of beaver devotees....and sharp prose ... The result is a triumph of popular nature writing.
Leila Philip
Positive Kirkus Most interesting is what Philip learned about beavers’ contribution to environmental restoration ... A spirited, informative historical and environmental investigation.
Marguerite Duras, trans. by Emma Ramadan and Olivia Baes
Positive Publishers Weekly Intense ... Though some of the narration can feel a bit redundant, Duras drops more than enough sharp revelations to carry the reader along. Though it’s not quite at the level of her masterworks, it offers glimpses of the heights to come.
Bora Chung, trans. by Anton Hur
Rave Kirkus Dark and visceral ... Whether borrowing from fable, folktale, speculative fiction, science fiction, or horror, Chung’s stories corkscrew toward devastating conclusions—bleak, yes, but also wise and honest about the nightmares of contemporary life ... Don\'t read this book while eating—but don’t skip these unflinching, intelligent stories, either.
Jessica Grose
Positive Publishers Weekly Stirring ... Grose is candid about her own experience as a mother, and moving stories from other women who have felt the weight of \'unrealistic, elitist, and bigoted expectations\' add heft to her survey. Mothers struggling to keep their heads above water will find camaraderie in this empathetic outing.
Jessica Grose
Rave Kirkus Grose’s fiery compassion is matched by her profoundly complex understanding of the material and her trenchant, witty prose. Although she consciously includes the voices of diverse, modern mothers, her analysis is sometimes more relevant to White, heterosexual, cisgendered mothers, particularly in the historical sections. Still, the author is clear in her intent to be inclusive, and her topic is relevant and worthy of discussion ... A deeply researched and highly relatable analysis of American motherhood, past and present.
Marcel Theroux
Positive Publishers Weekly Humorous yet insightful ... It’s frustrating that Theroux never resolves this underlying tension, though continued references to the game shed light on Jun-su and his friends’ understanding of the world ... This entertains and edifies in equal measure.
Marcel Theroux
Rave Kirkus Engrossing ... The heart of the story is consistently Jun-su, who navigates the traditional matters of maturity—love, sex, friendship—alongside a growing understanding of opportunities and mindsets that his friends and family aren’t privy to ... That makes the novel a remarkable bildungsroman; here, identity is both blossoming and severely suppressed ... Theroux’s deliberately flat, investigative-reporter tone clarifies the crisis ... A cleverly imagined tale of psychic repression and escape from it.
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, trans. by Brian Fitzgibbon
Positive Publishers Weekly Quiet and meditative ... Nothing much happens, but only in the way that one could say nothing much happens on any given day, the rhythms of which the author captures perfectly. The result is a rich slice of life.
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, trans. by Brian Fitzgibbon
Positive Kirkus Rudimentary plot aside, the real focus of the book is on Dýja’s ruminations about her own and Fífa’s belief systems about life and death ... Like her characters, Ólafsdóttir’s novel is emotionally chilly while intellectually passionate.
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, trans. by Brian Fitzgibbon
Rave Economist Every novel by Audur Ava Olafsdottir is a multifaceted gem, with a sparkle concealing dark hues and sharp edges ... Deftly translated ... A tranquil yet compelling meditation on life and death, darkness and light, from a reliably thought-provoking novelist.
Maria Ressa
Rave Kirkus Engaging ... [Ressa\'s] courageous work has garnered well-deserved international attention, and her book serves as a readable, urgent plea for journalistic integrity, vigilance, and transparency.
Maria Ressa
Rave Publishers Weekly Outstanding memoir-cum-action plan ... Elegantly written yet stuffed with research data and technical details, this is an essential update on the battle against disinformation.
Sam Lipsyte
Positive Publishers Weekly A charming comic mystery ... This whodunit homage comes complete with dark satirical observations of New York 30 years ago.
Sam Lipsyte
Rave Kirkus A badass book with brains, wit, moral decay, and radical outrage to spare.
Cormac McCarthy
Rave Kirkus A companion to McCarthy’s The Passenger that both supplements and subverts it ... A grand puzzle, and grandly written at that, about shattered psyches and illicit dreams.
Cormac McCarthy
Pan Publishers Weekly Underwhelming ... McCarthy has swum in these waters before, and with more impressive strokes. Strangely, The Passenger offers a more successful ending to the story of Alicia and Bobby. Though this volume feels extraneous, McCarthy diehards will still flock to it.
Judith Thurman
Rave Publishers Weekly Rewarding ... Masterfully avoiding solipsism and repetition, the author approaches each topic with a fresh eye. This solidifies Thurman as a master of the form.
Judith Thurman
Positive Kirkus A collection of essays from an incisive cultural observer ... Thurman’s interests are capacious ... Finely crafted, graceful, captivating pieces.
Nino Strachey
Positive Kirkus The author insightfully analyzes the substance of Bloomsbury’s social network, how their lives intertwined as a kind of queer chosen family, and how they adapted to heteronormative expectations while remaining true to their desires and identities. With short chapters written in lucid prose, this is a dream to read for those interested in queer history, and Strachey treats the colorful drama of her subject’s lives with tact ... This compact history proves that the lived experiences of our elders are essential resource for succeeding generations.
Mary-Alice Daniel
Rave Kirkus A powerful memoir ... Throughout the enchanting narrative, Daniel vividly shares her and her family’s traditions, customs, and religious views ... Daniel writes memorably about how her religious views have changed over the years and ponders how different she might feel had she stayed in Nigeria ... An absolutely fascinating work from a gifted storyteller.
Mary-Alice Daniel
Rave Publishers Weekly Incandescent debut ... A lyrical study in contrasts ... Generous doses of Nigerian history are stitched between personal anecdotes as Daniel addresses racism in the U.S. and the long arc of finding her identity as an \'American-African\' ... This is a gem.
Michael Kimmelman
Rave Publishers Weekly Scintillating ... Illustrated with vibrant color photos, Kimmelman’s loose-jointed text and dialogues oscillate between beguiling lore...and piquant evocations of the New Yorkish soul ... The result is an enchanting and lyrical montage of an ever-evolving city.
Michael Kimmelman
Positive Kirkus Lively book, which includes excellent photos ... Throughout, the author and his guides never lose sight of the people who live and work in these communities. Fascinating historical facts abound ... An important book for readers interested in understanding New York through its architecture.
Ed. by Eileen Myles
Positive Publishers Weekly Wide-ranging but deeply focused reading list ... Provocative introduction ... The collection amounts to a solid argument for the value of literature that lays bare its author’s personal investment.
Jane Smiley
Rave Publishers Weekly Remarkable ... The vivid historical details and vibrant characters bring Smiley’s setting to glorious life. This seductive entertainment is not to be missed.
Jane Smiley
Positive Kirkus [A] strange little book ... An oddly pleasant little trot through Gold Rush–era California.
Tyler Kepner
Rave Kirkus Lively ... A grand entertainment for every baseball fan.
Ethan Joella
Mixed Publishers Weekly Sentimental ... The interconnections feel manufactured, though as the characters make small progress in their efforts to move on from their pain and dilemmas, Joella builds toward a convincing set of resolutions. Readers might feel like they’ve been here before, but it’s comforting nonetheless.
Ethan Joella
Positive Kirkus The childlike pleasure of discovering connections like this is one of the most basic joys of reading and is key to Joella\'s storytelling ... The soothing tone and warm worldview of this grown-up bedtime story will be good for what ails you.
Heather Radke
Rave Publishers Weekly Whip-smart ... Marked by Radke’s vivacious writing, candid self-reflections, and sophisticated cultural analyses, this is an essential study of \'ideas and prejudices\' about the female body.
Jason McBride
Rave Publishers Weekly Comprehensive ... [McBride] manages to bring together her diaries, novels, poems, plays, and letters with reminiscences from her friends, lovers, and collaborators for a full portrait of her life ... The result is an excellent addition to American literary history.
Jason McBride
Positive Kirkus ... perceptive, thoroughly researched ... Informed by Acker’s published works, private papers, and many interviews, McBride presents a persuasive case for her enduring significance as \'an icon of unorthodoxy\' ... A brisk, engaging literary biography.
John Boyne
Positive Kirkus Boyne handles the alternating narratives well and uses them to create suspense, but they contribute to some avoidable repetitiousness in the writing and an occasional sense of aimlessness in the plot, unlike the taut, effective economy of Striped Pajamas. The ending may spark fierce debate, for what seems to be an act of redemption also smacks of self-justification that, in this fraught context, evokes grim historical antecedents ... A complex, thoughtful character study that avoids easy answers.
John Boyne
Mixed Publishers Weekly A seemingly redundant adult sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ... Boyne creates vivid characters, but a certain thematic obviousness dilutes the dramatic effect. Fans of the first book may enjoy revisiting the material as adults, but this doesn’t quite land on its own.
Rob Delaney
Rave Kirkus A devastatingly candid account of a parent’s grief that will have readers laughing and crying in equal measure ... Delaney is no stranger to balancing grief and humor, and it shows in this heartbreaking yet often darkly funny recounting of how he lost his third son, Henry, to brain cancer. The author’s work as a writer and actor in the dramedy series Catastrophe clearly primed him to share these poignant recollections. Few would attempt to bring humor and levity to such an unbearably sad story, but Delaney manages to do so with grace, sincerity, and warmth. His ability to weave laughter into something so dark also makes the book accessible for a wide audience, as the author gives readers permission to fully absorb his family’s story, to empathize and understand, without having to remain straight-faced and downcast. Throughout, Delaney includes playful but sincere asides ... a tender tale of how a family can remain loving and connected during and after tragedy, and Delaney pulls no punches in highlighting his own perceived shortcomings as a father and husband throughout the unimaginable ordeal. His raw honesty and ability to inject humor into the narrative are both charming and refreshing ... A heart-wrenching and impressively self-aware story of a father living through the death of his young child.
David Sax
Rave Publishers Weekly Provocative ... With moving anecdotes...Sax presents a solid case that technology should keep the \'real world front and center.\' This up-close look at the costs of digital convenience delivers.
David Sax
Positive Kirkus The author relies on (virtual) interviews throughout, synthesizing the views of academics, other authors, and his suburban peers. This creates a pop-psych feel to the text, rendered in an approachable, witty style punctuated with personal asides poking fun at his own relative privilege during the pandemic. Deft, colorful discussion focused more on social prescriptions than on specific, tangible analog things.
Jade Moon Le
Mixed Publishers Weekly Potent but uneven ... The narrative amounts to a drawn-out meditation on grief, and the prose is, at times, elegant in its heartbreaking simplicity ... Le frankly and thoroughly delves into the impact of mental illness and suicide ... But these fail to distract from structural issues such as confusing time jumps and abrupt chapter endings. It’s a strong effort, but one that unfortunately doesn’t quite cohere.
Shahan Mufti
Rave Publishers Weekly Gripping, meticulously researched history ... Mufti vividly captures the 39-hour crisis and the delicate in-person negotiations ... Expertly drawn from FBI files, wiretap transcripts, and interviews, this captivating history fascinates.
Shahan Mufti
Positive Kirkus \"A tense, often grisly account ... Mufti places the event in the larger context of America’s involvement in the tumultuous history of the Middle East, South Asia, and northern Africa. A brisk, engrossing work of investigative journalism. \
Emma Grove
Rave Kirkus Readers will be engrossed by this candid tale of intimate transition, bravery, and a fierce determination to confront demons in order to embrace the true self. Creatively conceived, Grove’s use of cartoons to tell her story is a clever choice. At nearly 900 pages, the book is a surprisingly brisk reading experience rendered effectively through the minimalist illustrations and powerful dialogue exchanges. Grove’s artistry also embellishes the journey with palpable character movement and facial expressions and mood representation. While untangling the complexities and often sobering dynamics of vulnerability and identity, Grove’s impressive comic journal illuminates, inspires, and educates ... A deeply personal, artistic self-portrait of being transgender and becoming whole.
Emma Grove
Positive Publishers Weekly ... a breezy affair even at close to 900 pages, dives into tangled questions of identity with clear-eyed, clean-lined assurance ... Grove’s simple but marvelously elastic, emotive art is reminiscent of Jules Feiffer. Though there are glimpses of Emma’s traumatic past and daily struggles at work and home, the bulk of the narrative consists of therapy sessions. Yet the characters are drawn with so much personality that it doesn’t grow visually dull. With quiet ease, Grove draws readers into Emma’s world and makes them feel the complexities and contradictions of her experience. Grove proves an impressive new voice in comics.
Emily Carrington
Positive Publishers Weekly Line drawings, with deceptively simple character designs, depict a life fraught with dangerous omens, carried in metaphorical and real images ... In depicting her abuse and the aftermath with rawness, realism, and a dreamlike final act—in which \'Lady Justice\' is a temp who’s late to pick up her child from day care—Carrington has done a service to all who navigate trauma without tidy endings.
Ed. by Joe Vallese
Rave Publishers Weekly Stellar ... There’s not a weak piece in the pack ... Taken together, the pieces are a brilliant display of expert criticism, wry humor, and original thinking. This is full of surprises.
Vasily Grossman, trans. by Elizabeth Chandler and Robert Chandler
Rave Kirkus Colorful depiction ... [Grossman\'s] knowledge is reflected in the novel’s details of military life, the cruelty of firebombing, the impact of an order forbidding surrender or retreat ... It’s clear that the journalist in Grossman cannot drift far from the plain truth, including criticism of the high command ... This hastily drawn picture laid the groundwork for the author’s sprawling wartime canvases.
Vasily Grossman, trans. by Elizabeth Chandler and Robert Chandler
Positive Publishers Weekly Insightful ... Hums with fine details ... Though straightforward and unmistakably propagandistic, it’s elevated by Grossman’s clarity of thought and vision. The result is a worthy look into Russian wartime psychology.
Sam Roberts
Positive Publishers Weekly Entertaining and informative ... Roberts’s wry wit and rigorous research enliven accounts of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the displacement of white residents from Harlem, and more. The result is a treasure trove of New York City lore.
Jeff Pearlman
Rave Publishers Weekly Entertaining ... The author’s facility at rendering dramatic sports moments into prose, such as when, in 1989, Jackson made a miraculous deep outfield throw to get a speedy opposing player out at home plate...makes this a standout addition to biographies of hall-of-fame athletes. Jackson’s fans are in for a treat.
Jeff Pearlman
Positive Kirkus Pearlman is no mere hero worshipper ... A good choice for devotees, showing how their hero sometimes has feet of clay—but remains a hero all the same.
D. T. Max
Rave Publishers Weekly Max...mixes his own commentary with the raw and revealing transcripts from his conversations with Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) near the end of the composer’s life, conducted for what became a posthumous profile ... Interspersed throughout are Max’s insightful reflections on the delicacy required for interviews ... Max paints a nuanced and sympathetic portrait of a notoriously private figure, enhanced with his own astute and earnest perspective.
Geena Davis
Mixed Publishers Weekly Spunky ... Davis hits typical memoir pitfalls, but frankly describes the sexual harassment she felt unable to call out as a woman with artistic ambitions in the industry before the vocabulary of #MeToo. She gets into her love of archery and the lack of roles for women over 40, but gives scant details of her experience of motherhood...or her four divorces. Davis displays trademark gumption, if uneven introspection, in this spunky chronicle of showbiz.
Geena Davis
Positive Kirkus Candid, engaging ... An entertaining and ebullient memoir.
Scott Turow
Positive Kirkus Pinky and her colorful cohorts are the book\'s main appeal, but readers wanting gunplay won’t be disappointed ... Turow clearly had fun writing this one, and his fans will have fun reading it.
Scott Turow
Mixed Publishers Weekly Disappointing ... The central plot doesn’t compel...and the unconventional Pinky—a former drug addict and police academy flameout with a pierced nose—comes across as more of a stereotype than a real person. Even devoted Turow fans will hope this is the last they see of Pinky.
Martha Anne Toll
Rave Kirkus Empathetic ... Toll creates a sense of mystery as to whether the bond between these two people will solidify or end in a rupture—and throughout, these flawed characters facing complex decisions are given their due ... An affecting chamber piece with plenty to say about art, trauma, and healing.
Martha Anne Toll
Mixed Publishers Weekly Bittersweet ... Toll is savvy in exploring how love can flourish in the face of trauma, but her theme is undercut by clichéd situations and dialogue ... Despite the pungent realism of the death camp setting and the vibrant depiction of the New York ballet scene, John and Katya feel a bit too wooden, with every emotion spelled out. It’s an ambitious if uneven effort.
Jasmine Guillory
Rave Publishers Weekly Scintillating ... An orgasmic combination ... The lush background and Guillory’s signature blend of sexy, sweet, and funny keep the pages flying. This is a gem.
Jasmine Guillory
Positive Kirkus Intoxicating ... Guillory’s latest romance is bursting with mouthwatering sexual tension and desire ... Despite plenty of moments overrun with miscommunication, Margot is a powerful protagonist, and her dedication to her career, despite the numerous challenges, is absolutely refreshing.
Grant Morrison
Positive Publishers Weekly ... intricate and fantastical ... Though the madcap theatricality can sometimes feel a bit overwrought, Morrison’s dense and often dazzling sentences brim with Wilde-esque wordplay. For readers willing to go the distance, magic awaits.
Grant Morrison
Positive Kirkus Whether there is too much of a good thing in the novel’s 448 pages depends on the reader’s stamina. Also challenging is Luci’s fat phobia: While perhaps unsurprising, given Luci\'s preoccupation with her age and appearance, the repeated digs at director Dominick Float’s weight become both tiresome and cruel ... A sparkling, self-indulgent novel that revels in the transformative and grotesque.
Jonathan Darman
Rave Publishers Weekly Written in elegant, evocative prose, this insightful portrait convincingly grounds Roosevelt’s public achievements in painful private experience. Readers will be riveted.
Jonathan Darman
Positive Kirkus ... capable ... A welcome, insightful addition to the literature surrounding FDR.
Beverly Gage
Positive Kirkus Overlong but rich ... A welcome reevaluation of a law enforcement legend, now much scorned, who so often operated above the law.
Beverly Gage
Rave Publishers Weekly Captivating ... Gage persuasively explains how Hoover went from a nationally popular figure to becoming \'a standard-bearer less for the unbounded promise of federal power than for its dangers.\' Nuanced, incisive, and exhaustive, this is the definitive portrait of one of 20th-century America’s most consequential figures.
Daisy Hay
Positive Publishers Weekly Illuminating account ... The real value of Hay’s account is in the small, humanizing stories she recounts ... Hay’s is a fascinating take on the intellectual and political development of the time. Fans of literary history will relish this opportunity to pull up a seat at Johnson’s table.
Allie Rowbottom
Rave Publishers Weekly Complex and deeply engaging ... It all builds to a scorching commentary on society’s blindness toward female pain ... Pitch-perfect.
Allie Rowbottom
Positive Kirkus Dark and poignant ... Rowbottom’s prose moves back and forth from striking imagery to staccato simplicity...which gives it an entrancing quality, like the best social media algorithms. While structurally the novel is conventional, tracking a naïve young woman’s entrapment in a sordid world and her reawakening as an adult, Rowbottom’s specificity about one moment in internet culture and the contradictory ideologies about autonomy and desire young women must parse make it worthwhile reading ... A challenging, compassionate novel about the aftermath of exploitation and packaged youth.
Matthew Cobb
Positive Kirkus A sober reflection ... Readers without a solid understanding of biology will likely find that the scientific complexity of the history robs it of some of its drama. Cobb’s focus, however, is not on the science itself but on the social and political context of these discoveries ... A look at genetic engineering that provides valuable background for rethinking the appropriate uses for these technologies.
Murasaki Yamada tr. Ryan Holmberg
Positive Publishers Weekly This groundbreaking comic was one of the first manga to depict matrimony and motherhood from such an intimate perspective, as Yamada drew on her experiences to illuminate Chiharu’s fictional compromised domesticity. Despite Chiharu’s simmering discontent, the moments of joy and love she experiences with her children (such as looking at puddles after the rain) bring levity to the everyday events. Yamada’s art style is so overly spare that it omits even characters\' faces at points, with loosely sketched gestural action. Defying conventions expected still by many manga fans, this will appeal best to manga-curious indie comics readers, especially fans of comics parenting chronicles by the likes of Keiler Roberts or Glynnis Fawkes.
Michael Deforge
Positive Publishers Weekly ... addictive ... DeForge’s nimble avian portraits demonstrate specimens simple and strange, gap-toothed evolutions of the elegant geometry of Charley Harper’s commercial illustrations. Deforge follows his birds with curiosity rather than seeking allegory, as he lets each fanciful wrinkle of the premise play out. It’s a knotty, whimsical triumph of often hilarious satire, in good company with George Saunders’s work.
Guy Delisle tr. Helge Dascher and Rob Aspinall
Positive Publishers Weekly While the latest from Delisle is more of a B-sides and rarities collection, it still shows that his status as a top-notch graphic novelist remains assured. These selections veer dramatically from his trademark self-deprecating travelogues. Delisle includes nearly two dozen disconnected short pieces, oddities that will manage to lodge and linger in the reader’s imagination ... Other, shorter riffs offer quick jabs ... This gently amusing grab bag is a must-have for Delisle fans, and it also provides a solid introduction to his artistry for newbies.
Mac Griswold
Rave Publishers Weekly ... impressive ... Incorporating thorough research and excerpts from Mellon’s personal archive, Griswold captures America’s changing social and cultural landscape through the eyes of a socialite who wanted to \'always give something back\' ... Griswold’s rich narrative highlights Mellon’s extravagance, but avoids mythologizing ... This is a fast-paced charmer for design enthusiasts and art mavens.
Mac Griswold
Positive Kirkus ... warm ... Acknowledging Bunny’s insularity and emotional limitations, Griswold still admires her ... A richly detailed rendering of a world of boundless extravagance.
John Lancaster
Positive Kirkus In this well-researched text, Lancaster delivers an expert description of the planes (mostly ex–WWI fighters) and biographies of the volunteers, and he devotes more than half of the story to the precise details of the race ... Entertaining fireworks during the early days of flight.
John Lancaster
Positive Publishers Weekly ... energetic and entertaining ... Lancaster brings to vivid life the eccentric cast of racers ... Though some participants get lost in the shuffle, there is no shortage of memorable characters and dramatic scenes. The result is a high-flying history of aviation’s white-knuckle early days.
Jamie K McCallum
Positive Kirkus Timely follow-up to Worked Over: How Round-the-Clock Work Is Killing the American Dream... A thoughtful consideration of work and the workaday world that brings the class struggle to the fore.
Jamie K McCallum
Rave Publishers Weekly Enlightening analysis ... Interweaving deeply affecting personal stories with whip-smart structural analysis, this is a revealing diagnosis of America’s ills and an invigorating call for change.
Marvel Moreno, trans. by Isabel Adey and Charlotte Coombe
Positive Publishers Weekly A layered if diffuse story ... An incisive perspective on the lives of three women ... Though the long, convoluted sentences wear on the reader, as does the lack of cohesion, Lina’s insights on domineering men are hard to ignore.
Marvel Moreno, trans. by Isabel Adey and Charlotte Coombe
Positive Kirkus A comprehensive indictment of the conditions facing woman in that coastal Colombian city in the 1950s ... Exposing the city\'s sexual violence, misogyny, classism, and racism in sharp and unrelenting detail ... Each young woman’s story is told with elaborate attention ... Patience is required to discern the interlocking web of family and professional connections...and the detail...may be daunting to the casual reader ... Moreno’s dense and incrementally meandering prose recites a litany of suffering layered upon suffering.
Michael Parker
Mixed Publishers Weekly Frank if uneven outing ... While the author aptly conveys Earl’s quotidian challenges post-incarceration, the book is marred by thinly developed characters ... It’s not bad, but other authors have done much more with stories of false convictions.
Rick Wartzman
Positive Publishers Weekly Thought-provoking treatise ... While acknowledging that small steps have been made, Wartzman argues that leaving fair labor practices up to a company itself can only change so much ... This smart survey offers much to consider.
Rick Wartzman
Positive Kirkus A detailed examination ... Wartzman’s investigation of the company in all its complexity is thoroughly researched, and he deftly and meaningfully connects the issue of chronically low wages at Walmart to a larger undervaluation of the labor of millions of Americans ... A well-written account.
Adam Rutherford
Positive Publishers Weekly Stinging study ... Rutherford writes in a pugnacious, sometimes polemical style...while conveying the science in a lucid, down-to-earth way. The result is a stimulating critique of one of science’s most disgraceful chapters.
Emma Smith
Positive Kirkus The author’s trenchant analysis, attention to detail, and conversational tone combine to make a page-turning historical study. At times, though, the rapid narrative pace becomes frustrating, as the author skips rapidly through trends—e.g., abolitionist book sales—that warrant more space. Nonetheless, Smith’s work is a delight for bibliophiles, historians, and curious readers craving an unconventional piece of nonfiction ... A fascinating material history of the book told through a geopolitical lens.
Emma Smith
Rave Publishers Weekly ... entertaining ... Readers should make space on their shelves for this dazzling and provocative study.
Andy Greenberg
Rave Kirkus A sinuous, eminently readable story ... Greenberg tells the stories of demolishing crime empires like AlphaBay and Hansa and their bosses with verve that’s refreshing for a book full of computers, code-breaking, and electronic cat-and-mouse games ... Greenberg’s book is reminiscent in all the best ways of Clifford Stoll’s Cuckoo’s Egg, smoothly blending crime writing with matters of the deepest techno-geekery ... An absorbing work of true crime—and, as the bad guys will tell you, true punishment.
Andy Greenberg
Rave Publishers Weekly Greenberg examines in fascinating detail how criminals have employed technology for their nefarious ends, along the way providing a history of Bitcoin and a look at a possible future technology that would make \'truly untraceable and anonymous finances possible.\' He brings to vivid life the assorted players, including the agents who cracked the crimes, those in law enforcement who succumbed to the allure of fast money on the dark web, and the private citizens who ushered in the golden age of cryptocurrency tracing. This is a must-have for the true crime shelf.
Anthony Horowitz
Positive Kirkus The real-life author, mostly eschewing the floridly inventive meta fireworks of his earlier tales, sticks more closely to his golden age models this time, producing an efficiently old-fashioned whodunit with all the surprises you\'d expect ... An expertly conventional puzzle.
Anthony Horowitz
Rave Publishers Weekly Fair-play whodunits don’t come much funnier than bestseller Horowitz’s brilliant fourth mystery ... Clues are adroitly hidden in plain sight. This humorous homage to golden age closed-circle mysteries is not to be missed.
Sevgi Soysal, trans. by Maureen Freely
Rave Publishers Weekly Wrenching ... The urgency of the prose and the fluid shifts in points of view underscore the precariousness of the characters’ lives during a tumultuous and violent period following a recent coup ... The environment’s inescapable heat and suffocating humidity feels palpable, and the novel powerfully underscores how the threat of violence drives all the characters into suspicion and paranoia. This story of persecution convinces with its urgency and humanity.
Sevgi Soysal, trans. by Maureen Freely
Positive Kirkus The novel shifts seamlessly between perspectives. The result is a complex portrait of 1970s Turkey that critiques the senseless violence inflicted by autocratic bureaucracy, with attention to the overlapping injustices of class, ethnicity, and gender that pervade and extend beyond the regime. Startling reflections on beauty and freedom are woven throughout ... An exciting translation of a feminist novel that renders a nuanced picture of the conflicting ideologies of 1970s Turkey.
Ian Kershaw
Positive Kirkus Authoritative ... Kershaw shows how better understanding the processes behind the rises and roles of leaders can provide insight into contemporary autocracy in countries like Turkey, Hungary, Russia, and China ... Through sharp profiles of key figures, Kershaw provides an important framework for understanding power and how it is used.
Ian Kershaw
Positive Publishers Weekly Astute ... Striking an expert balance between personality profiles and political and social analysis, this is a rewarding study of a turbulent century in European history.
Andrew Morton
Positive Kirkus Morton writes with reverence about his subject and adds some personal touches to her story ... He moves chronologically through the fairly well-known facts of Elizabeth’s life, adding poignant details ... A fitting tribute to a long reign.
Patti Smith
Positive Kirkus Inspired by the captioned photo format, this book provides an image for every day of the year and descriptions that are by turns intimate, humorous, and insightful, and each bit of text adds human depth to the image ... Part calendar, part memoir, and part cultural record, the book serves as a rich exploration of the author’s fascinating mind ... Powerful.
Michelle Obama
Positive The Guardian (UK) This book grew out of the great personal response to Becoming...who recognised their own lives in that of their former first lady. They will find more to recognise here, where the mundane is given equal billing with the entirely exceptional in what amounts to a carefully worked out manifesto for surviving, and hopefully thriving, in the world ... It is a polished performance, tightly structured, direct, conversational, in the folksy but laser-sharp public style both Obamas made their own ... There is a chapter on parenting, which she largely turns over to her own mother’s lessons, and is worth the price of admission alone. Occasionally she is so intent on finding the good, or going high...that she doesn’t mention how some shame-inducing experiences can be debilitating, life-limiting traumas, which seems a bit obtuse ... The Light We Carry is clearer than ever about just how much her focus, her hyper-preparedness and her knowledge that everything is vulnerable were shaped by her father’s progressive multiple sclerosis.
Meg Howrey
Rave Publishers Weekly Poignant ... Howrey expertly builds tension, leading the reader to feel alongside Carlisle both the draw of ballet and her anxiety about her reunion with her father. It’s a breathtaking performance.
Meg Howrey
Rave Kirkus Howrey goes back and forth between Carlisle’s present and her past, risking tear-jerking sentiment but landing, like a flawless jeté, on the side of pitch-perfect poignancy ... Incisive and effortless writing about relationships.
Natasha Leggero
Positive Publishers Weekly Irreverent ... Wise-cracking essays ... Parents without the luxury of a nanny may also raise eyebrows when yet another celebrity laments lack of leisure time. Still, behind the snark, Leggero conveys tender endearment for her four-year-old daughter. All in all, this will induce grins from stand-up fans who’ve been missing shows because they can’t get a babysitter.
Natasha Leggero
Positive Kirkus Humorous ... Leggero’s snark comes fast and furious throughout biting quips about nannies and the terror of having her elderly parents babysit ... Overall, she achieves a commendable balance among practical advice, wry commentary, and over-the-top offensiveness ... The benefits and headaches of later-life motherhood from a candid, often hilarious comedic mind.
Steve Martin
Rave Publishers Weekly Irresistibly charming ... In Bliss’s whimsical drawings, meticulously caricatured celebrities rub shoulders with comic-strip characters and Martin periodically wanders away from the narrative to talk to Bliss’s dog. The softly shaded pencil art moves smoothly between photorealistic portraits and loose, gestural cartoons as the material demands. Martin maintains his famous comedic persona of guileless arrogance, the jerk he’s played on and off since his early stand-up days. But his memories reveal a thoughtful, regularly starstruck performer.
Steve Martin
Positive Kirkus Lighthearted ... The narrative is both disarming and brief ... A diverting interlude with two exceptionally clever souls.
Brigitta Olubas
Positive Publishers Weekly Rich ... Hazzard emerges as intelligent, complex, and determined—fans of her work should check out this insightful portrait.
Brigitta Olubas
Rave Kirkus Illuminating ... Olubas offers a discerning, cleareyed perspective of Hazzard’s complex character and a persuasive appraisal of what distinguishes her work. An absorbing, well-crafted profile of a supremely gifted writer.
Clark Blaise, Fore. by Margaret Atwood
Rave Kirkus The first two-thirds of this book can feel old-fashioned, but mostly in a good way. The stories have an autobiographical buzz and intensity ... Peripatetic ... These stories cover ground not only geographically. They are also crowded with character and incident, always fiercely and smartly observed; Blaise is, as Margaret Atwood puts it in her foreword, \'the eye at the keyhole...the ear at the door.\'
William Magnuson
Rave Publishers Weekly Lucid, elegantly written account ... Paints colorful, sometimes inspiring narratives ... Far from an anti-corporate polemic, this is an evenhanded, richly nuanced examination of the modern economy’s central institution.
William Magnuson
Mixed Kirkus The book offers little fresh information about a well-worn topic ... Even the reforms to encourage better corporate behavior that Magnuson presents have been well covered. It’s clear the author knows his subject well, but there’s just not much more to say about it.
John Keay
Positive Kirkus A panoramic overview of the history, archaeology, geology, politics, religions, and cultures of the storied mountain range ... Eccentric characters ... A wide-ranging adventure into rugged terrain.
Neal Gabler
Rave Kirkus \"... fluent ... A thorough, admiring, and not uncritical study of a political lion whose roar is much needed these days.
Neal Gabler
Rave Publishers Weekly ... magisterial ... Though massive, it’s engrossing thanks to Gabler’s elegant, evocative prose ... This smart, illuminating, and stirring portrait of a liberal champion fascinates.
Paulina Porizkova
Mixed Kirkus The occasional repetitiveness and fairly haphazard organization of these essays make the book feel unpolished, but its raw honesty will appeal to Porizkova’s many fans ... A flawed but well-intentioned self-examination.
Paulina Porizkova
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... solid ... Much like her social media presence, the writing is simple to a fault but disarmingly honest. Porizkova’s scene setting is consistently vibrant enough to draw readers in, though the notes she hits can become repetitive ... Some of the insights—especially those about social media, the beauty industry, and the fetishization of youth—are sharp, crystallized by more than four decades in the spotlight...Other insights, such as the idea expressed in the essay \'Childhood\' that women marry men like their fathers and men marry women like their mothers, are more banal. Fans of Porizkova’s work will enjoy this glimpse into her life, but ultimately little sets it apart from other celebrity memoirs in the same lane.
Nick Hornby
Positive Kirkus This exercise will interest a particular Venn diagram of readers ... No one else could have gotten a book like this published, but no one else could have pulled it off, either.
Nick Hornby
Positive Publishers Weekly ... breezy ... Hornby’s admiration for his subjects is infectious, though readers who come to this with a basic knowledge with either artist will find much of the terrain covered here familiar. Even so, it’s a zesty tribute to two cultural legends not often spoken about in the same breath.
Michael Connelly
Rave The Real Book Spy Connelly delivers another winner ... Told with the same smooth prose that his fans have come to expect, Michael Connelly’s Desert Star twists and turns its way towards a gripping and thrilling final act that’s impossible to put down. While Connelly continues to build out Ballard, who may one day very well carry this franchise on her own, he certainly hasn’t forgotten about Bosch ... It’s especially fun to see Harry’s low-tech, old-school approach versus Renee’s penchant to embrace technology and newer, cutting-edge forensics. The balance is nice, but more importantly, highlights how the two characters really are better together than apart ... yet another page-turning, can’t-miss thriller from authors to ever do it.
Michael Connelly
Rave Publishers Weekly ... thrilling ... Both cases require deep dives into the past; both lead to great action scenes; and, as always, Connelly displays his encyclopedic knowledge of the latest forensics ... may not be as expansive as The Dark Hours, but it ranks up there with Connelly’s best.
Michael Connelly
Positive Kirkus As it turns out, the Pearlman case is considerably more interesting—partly because the break that leads the unit to a surprising new suspect turns out to be both fraught and misleading, partly because identifying the killer is only the beginning of Bosch’s problems. The windup of the Gallagher murders, a testament to sweating every detail and following every lead wherever it goes, is more heartfelt but less wily and dramatic. Fans of the aging detective who fear that he might be mellowing will be happy to hear that \'putting him on a team did not make him a team player\' ... Not the best of Connelly’s procedurals, but nobody else does them better than his second-best.
Quentin Tarantino
Rave Kirkus Tarantino’s collection of essays about the important movies of his formative years is packed with everything needed for a powerful review: facts about the work, context about the creative decisions, and whether or not it was successful ... Whether you agree with his assessments or not, he provides the original reporting and insights only a veteran director would notice, and his engaging style makes it impossible to leave an essay without learning something ... Like any good critic, Tarantino reveals bits of himself as he discusses the films that are important to him, recalling where he was when he first saw them and what the crowd was like ... With this collection, Tarantino offers well-researched love letters to his favorite movies of one of Hollywood’s most ambitious eras .. .A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.
Quentin Tarantino
Rave Publishers Weekly ... a brilliant and passionate take on the 1960s and ’70s films that shaped him ... Tarantino’s joy, generosity, and singular point of view bolster his arguments, and even when he’s taking down his heroes, it’s out of love ... Whip-smart and obsessive, Tarantino is great fun and tough to beat.
Blair Braverman
Rave Publishers Weekly ... spellbinding ... Braverman does a good job demonstrating how Mara’s expertise is constantly undermined by touchy would-be survivalists both on and off the show, and how the cast members’ relationships change once things get real and the crew mysteriously disappears. With danger setting in, the author keeps up a terrific sense of suspense about whether the crew’s abandonment is intentional. Like the best TV, readers won’t want this to end.
Blair Braverman
Mixed Kirkus Braverman does a great job of developing the characters, building suspense and raising the stakes, but leaves the reader unhappily perplexed about some critical matters ... A propulsive read marred by unanswered questions.
Greg Graffin
Positive Kirkus A well-crafted memoir and manifesto ... Unusually, Graffin expresses solidarity with the hippies who preceded (and were reviled by) the punks, and he even has sympathetic words for the hair metal bands of Sunset Strip, who never got beaten up by the LAPD as much as the punks did ... An entertaining, memorable look at \'the most intractable paradox of all: punk as a positive force in society.\'
Greg Graffin
Mixed Publishers Weekly Scattershot memoir ... Graffin’s narrative is not the typical punk confessional ... Graffin’s long-winded ruminations on punk humanism can be stilted ... His prose comes alive only when describing the very excesses he deplores ... This account of punk’s evolution mutes the sound and fury of the scene.
C. L. Polk
Rave Publishers Weekly Genre-bending fantasy ... Though readers will wish they had more time to explore this shadowy world, Polk’s focus on character development makes every interaction matter as they craft a layered exploration of love and power with genuine emotional stakes and a soaring, perfectly bittersweet payoff. It’s another winner.
Jody Keisner
Rave Publishers Weekly Riveting ... The essays attack difficult material straight on, but Keisner’s smart, clear, and incisive writing cuts deep.
Jody Keisner
Rave Adroit Journal Fresh and intriguing ... Through Keisner’s blend of beautiful prose and the breadth of research she uses to examine her own fears, I found comfort in knowing I’m not alone.
Priyanka Kumar
Rave Publishers Weekly Sparkling ... Kumar’s reflections are rendered in elegant prose and are rich with vivid descriptions ... These outstanding reflections will inspire and enlighten, and are perfect for readers of Diane Ackerman.
Priyanka Kumar
Rave Kirkus Delightful ... The narrative offers countless magnificent reminders of the beauty and force of nature ... Ultimately, this is a book about the interconnectedness of generations and ecosystems, and birds are the conduit between the two ... An eloquent depiction of how birding engenders a deep love of our ecosystems and a more profound understanding of ourselves.
Hugh Bonneville
Rave Publishers Weekly Acting memoirs don’t come much better than this humorous and self-effacing account by Bonneville ... He also provides genuine insights into the actor’s craft as well as moving sections detailing his aging father’s diminishing mental capacities. This one’s a winner.
Lyndall Gordon
Rave Publishers Weekly Illuminating ... If this fine and entertaining account leaves readers shocked by instances of Eliot’s theatrical and self-serving misogyny... It also treats the women in his life with dignity and goes a long way in reversing the erasure he attempted.
Rabia Chaudry
Rave Publishers Weekly Chaudry refreshingly eschews conventional narratives about weight loss ... Joy is contagious in descriptions of Pakistani street burgers, the rainbow hues of Punjabi daal, and 50 pages worth of delectable recipes. Victory is sweet and savory in this ebullient tale of self-acceptance.
Rabia Chaudry
Rave Kirkus This unblinking account ... tone of rueful candor ... Chaudry eloquently portrays the role of food in love and friendship. At the same time, she doesn’t flinch from reporting the humiliations heaped on the overweight at every turn.
Seishu Hase, trans. by Alison Watts
Positive Publishers Weekly When Tamon finally reaches his destination, the reunion waiting for him is indeed moving. Seishū imbues Tamon with a nobility that never feels sentimental or overdrawn. With this tender display, he proves himself a gifted storyteller.
Seishu Hase, trans. by Alison Watts
Positive Kirkus Heartbreakingly moving in its simplicity ... Hase’s staccato sentences and straightforward narrative structure should not be mistaken for shallowness... Hase’s novel is ultimately a touching meditation on shining lights in the face of trauma and hopelessness.
RJ Smith
Positive Kirkus A capable warts-and-all biography ... Smith always returns to the music, which, of course, was world-changing. On that note, Smith’s book is both a corrective and complement to Berry’s 1987 autobiography ... The best life of Berry in several years, though whether artist and art can be separated will be up to readers.
Wendell Berry
Rave Kirkus Simple, lyrical, immersive stories about work, neighbors, and the land ... Berry has [a] gift for entertaining amid serious intent, and the many lighter, very human moments in his elegiac, cautionary, wistful stories keep them from sinking into jeremiad without diminishing his message ... A fine collection by an enduring, endearing master.
Wendell Berry
Positive Publishers Weekly Expansive ... Berry’s humanity and clear-eyed intelligence steer the stories away from simple nostalgia and into a thoughtful analysis of how communities inevitably change over time. This accomplished author still has much to offer.
S. E. Boyd
Mixed Publishers Weekly Uneven ... The narrative loses focus by the final act. Still, there’s plenty of barbed commentary along the way ... Foodies might enjoy this.
S. E. Boyd
Rave Kirkus A helluva novel ... Hip-deep in knowing detail from the worlds of food, media, and Hollywood, they pull off a saucy spin on the death of Anthony Bourdain ... A hilarious, brilliant, cynical (and maybe even a little sad) takedown of the moral vacuum that is celebrity culture.
Kerri K. Greenidge
Rave Publishers Weekly Revelatory ... Greenidge offers no tidy or optimistic conclusions about the long shadow of slavery, but readers will be riveted by how she brings these complex figures and their era to life. This is a brilliant and essential history.
Kerri K. Greenidge
Rave Kirkus Absorbing ... Greenidge reveals the significant roles of Black women in the family’s complicated history ... The author’s discoveries reveal both \'white reformers’ disavowal of their complicity in America’s racial project\' and \'the limits of interracial alliances\' ... A sweeping, insightful, richly detailed family and American history.
Haruki Murakami, trans. by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen
Rave Publishers Weekly Stellar ... Lighthearted yet edifying, the anecdotes make for a fantastic look at how a key literary figure made it happen. Murakami’s fans will relish these amusing missives.
Haruki Murakami, trans. by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen
Mixed Kirkus Self-deprecating, introspective ... Dry and repetitious in places, Murakami’s gentle encouragement will appeal to hesitant novice writers.
A N Wilson
Positive Kirkus Anglo-Catholic and sometimes arch, Wilson is also a delightfully close observer of the passing scene ... Though it ends on a thud, Wilson’s yarn has much to recommend ... A readable, often entertaining summation of a life of hard work and second thoughts.
Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson
Rave Publishers Weekly The technical process of filmmaking is expertly explored ... The commentary crackles with humorous anecdotes and acerbic insights ... The result is a fascinating conversation about Hollywood’s magical blending of art and commerce.
Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson
Positive Kirkus This massive book contains thousands of quotes from producers, actors, directors, composers, and other professionals ... For a comprehensive history, important details are missing ... For cinephiles, however, this volume is a gold mine.
Deuxmoi
Mixed Publishers Weekly Evocative if underwhelming ... While the authors examine important themes—sexism, power imbalances, and enabler culture—there’s often too much exposition, and Cricket’s character development feels forced. It offers some insights on what makes an influencer tick, but not much else.
Deuxmoi
Positive Kirkus Both an ad for the real deuxmoi, a pseudonymous celebrity-gossip Instagram account, and a surprisingly good read ... For deuxmoi fans, this novel will be a solid extension of the brand\'s coming-of-age story, and they\'ll especially enjoy the inside jokes and liberal quotes from the real-life account, which helps create the tantalizing-yet-relatable tone ... A candid, unexpected critique of celebrity, hanger-on, and enabler culture.
Catherine Newman
Positive Publishers Weekly Moving ... Newman does a wonderful job channeling Ash’s sense of impending loss. Ash also keeps up a steady stream of wickedly wry observations ... Newman breathes ample life into this exquisite story of death and dying.
Catherine Newman
Rave Kirkus Ash makes for a unique and easy-to-love narrator, one who jokes about her own self-centeredness even as she devotes her time to helping her best friend. Newman is frank about the physical reality of cancer and explicitly shows how grueling it can be to care for a friend while watching them die ... Newman is also open and honest about how joy can commingle with grief and how happiness and gratitude can coexist with sorrow ... Newman perfectly captures the beauty and burden of caring for someone in their final moments while showing the gift of Edi and Ash’s once-in-a-lifetime friendship ... A warm and remarkably funny book about death and caregiving that will make readers laugh through their tears.
Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos
Positive Publishers Weekly Though Sarah remains a somewhat enigmatic figure, Geanacopoulos packs the narrative with intriguing details about piracy and privateering in colonial America. This seafaring tale fascinates.
Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos
Pan Kirkus Most of the narrative is ham-fisted, and the prose is pedestrian ... It’s better to walk the plank than to try to get through this one.
Russell Banks
Rave Publishers Weekly Heartbreaking ... Though Harley’s tale is deeply personal, Banks artfully presents it on a larger scale, showing how it fits in a centuries-long pattern of settlers who came to Florida seeking a better life ... Banks’s penetrating dissection of the American dream and its frequently unfulfilled promises is consistently profound. This is his best work in some time.
Russell Banks
Rave Kirkus Several themes at work here, but the core is the emotional mirror of memory, a construct of events and their recall, or, for a writer wondering how he will be remembered, a construct of his books and readers, for whom Banks may well be a prized piece of gray matter ... A multilayered tale of innocence and guilt from a gifted storyteller.
John Le Carre
Positive Kirkus Meticulously edited and expansively annotated ... The text proceeds chronologically, but often a quote from an older le Carré adds context and piquancy. Additionally, Cornwell regularly adds biographical context ... Le Carré’s wry modesty and cleareyed insight into human nature consistently shine through ... A collection of small insights about a complex literary titan—invaluable for fans.
John Le Carre
Rave Publishers Weekly Sparkling letters ... Le Carré’s letters are witty, affable, unctuous toward celebrities, tartly venomous toward unfair critics, and full of a subtle, penetrating literary sensibility ... Le Carré’s fans shouldn’t miss this stimulating compendium.
Lynn Steger Strong
Positive Publishers Weekly Delicate ... A disappearance midway through amplifies the plot, but the theme of grief takes center stage, as Helen’s memory permeates the gathering. Strong is adept as characterizing this loss in all its manifestations, and in rendering the challenges inherent in three families trying to celebrate together ... Of course, the drama and fully formed characters make readers feel otherwise. Once again, Strong demonstrates her talents for perception and nuance.
Lynn Steger Strong
Rave Kirkus Despite being set over just three days, Strong\'s book manages to distill the essences of not only the characters, but of their decades of shared history and the complicated, complex relationships among them ... With deft, discerning prose, Strong writes beautifully about mothers and the struggles, fears, and joys of motherhood ... As the novel comes to a close, Strong offers moments of connection among the family members that feel genuine and earned ... A quiet domestic novel that soars.
Kevin Wilson
Rave Publishers Weekly Delightful ... Wilson ably captures Frankie and her peers’ adolescent confusion and the creative power of like-minded teens, and his coming-of-age story is ripe with wisdom about what art means in the modern age. It adds up to a surprisingly touching time capsule of youth in the ’90s.
Kevin Wilson
Rave Kirkus The irrepressible Wilson presents a grunge-era fable about a pre-internet mass-hysteria incident and the alchemy of art ... Family dramas and short stories are the author’s sweet spots, but for this emotionally acute peek into the inner life of the artist, he’s turned to the uncomfortable exile of adolescence ... A warm, witty two-hander that sidesteps the clichés of art school and indie film and treats its free spirits with respect.
Matthew Perry
Pan Kirkus Perry is a blurter, not a storyteller, and no ghostwriter or collaborator was involved in this project. Though he asserts that he does not blame his parents for his difficulties, the author sticks a major pin in the day they sent him on an airplane as an unaccompanied minor when he was 5 years old. Some will find it hard to sympathize with this story, and further mean-spirited outbursts don’t help ... \'I am me,\' he writes. \'And that should be enough, it always has been enough.\' It’s not enough to carry this memoir ... Strictly for Perry’s fans.
Dionne Irving
Positive Publishers Weekly Penetrating ... Throughout, and in lucid prose, Irving depicts her characters’ chilly shocks over unexpected gaps in intimacy with their loved ones as they work to fit into non-immigrant Black spaces, making for stories that are both class-conscious and richly atmospheric. Irving’s inviting combination of subjects and style heralds a welcome new voice.
Dionne Irving
Positive Kirkus Expansive ... In several stories, characters are first presented one way—racist hicks; an earnest but clueless White mother; a long-lost parent—only for Irving to introduce a shift in perspective that encourages the reader not to judge so hastily. But a careful reader (or a frequent reader of short story collections) will soon become familiar with this convention, and instead of leading to a feeling of real enlightenment, the stories will feel tired. Irving is at her best in odd, harsh moment ... A first collection that hints at bigger things to come.
Louise Kennedy
Positive Kirkus Kennedy’s debut novel captures the odd ability of war-zone residents to be simultaneously adrenalized by and resigned to their environment. She also, nonchalantly, delivers the mundane details of generations of terrorism gone amok ... Kennedy’s characters are born and live under dark stars; she illuminates the unescapable harms that occur in that darkness.
Louise Kennedy
Positive Publishers Weekly Engaging if sometimes clunky ... The straightforward prose style can be wearing in its endless accrual of detail, but Kennedy does a lovely job at capturing Cushla’s mixed feelings and her determination to live her life during wartime. A solid character portrait emerges from the turbulent backdrop.
RJ Young
Rave Kirkus A unique synthesis of memoir and a history of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre ... Ambitious, forceful ... Young interweaves a jaundiced, potent examination of his own upbringing ... The swerve toward the personal is occasionally jarring, but the author’s prose is consistently acute and his societal analysis, astute ... Arresting.
RJ Young
Positive Publishers Weekly Provocative ... Though some of Young’s digressions run long, he skillfully captures the insidious workings of racism. The result is a fierce and poignant portrait of the aftereffects of racial violence.
Felix Gillette
Positive Publishers Weekly Comprehensive and brisk ... The result is a thorough, warts-and-all account of an entertainment industry giant.
Felix Gillette
Positive Kirkus Though their brisk narrative is straightforward, it contains plenty of business melodrama ... Entertainment buffs will find this report of a risk-taking network fascinating.
Matthew Quick
Positive Publishers Weekly Illuminating ... Quick adds credible details of moviemaking and dynamic secondary characters to a crackling narrative, which builds to an excruciatingly honest disclosure. The author’s fans will love this.
Matthew Quick
Positive Kirkus A story of unexpected twists and turns on the road to recovery after a shattering tragedy ... He doesn\'t delve into issues like gun control or the shooter’s motivations, which makes the story feel superficial at times. Instead, his focus is on Lucas\' healing journey, the people who love him (we should all be so lucky), and how the mind makes \'valiant attempts to protect us\' until we’re ready to deal with our losses ... When it comes to facing tragedy and trauma, Quick\'s novel shows us that it definitely takes a village to heal and move on.
Roseanne Montillo
Positive Publishers Weekly Engrossing ... True crime fans particularly interested in bloodshed among the upper classes will enjoy this dark look at two intertwined and unhappy lives.
Roseanne Montillo
Rave Kirkus The author\'s fascination with Woodward and Capote is evident in her elegantly novelistic retelling of their lives and the strange connections and parallels that linked them ... This engaging, well-researched book will appeal to true-crime aficionados, Capote fans, and anyone interested in a darkly intriguing story well told. A compelling mix of true crime and literary biography.
Erika T. Wurth
Rave Publishers Weekly Fans of supernatural thrillers and classic Stephen King will devour this tale of ghosts, heavy metal, and an urban Indigenous woman reckoning with the tragedies of the past from Wurth ... This atmospheric tale brims with monsters and the ghosts of both past and present—from supernatural visions to everyday racist microaggressions. Wurth’s decadently blunt prose makes it easy to smell the smoke in the air and hear the heavy metal lyrics about memory and identity. This fresh take on the ghost story is sure to wow.
Erika T. Wurth
Positive Kirkus Sometimes the plot feels a bit chaotic, but the tumult mirrors Kari’s roiling emotions ... Wurth—who is of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent—paints a compelling portrait of friendship, love, and the quest for self-respect, offering a fierce and generous vision of contemporary Native American life ... An engrossing modern horror story that blends the power of Indigenous spiritualism with earthly terrors.
Graeme MacRae Burnet
Mixed Kirkus Provocative ... As the novel progresses, the author’s layering of his fictional characters’ unverifiable testimony, frank deception, and self-aggrandizing half-truths with significant historical figures of the time...and GMB\'s omnipresent frame narrative overlap to the extent that it\'s hard to tell not just whose perception to trust, but which among all these counterfeit identities is real ... This results in a novel that strives toward the biggest of questions...but lacks the character-driven empathy that would encourage us to care about the answer ... A brisk and engaging novel that wears itself thin on the grindstone of its own conceit.
Percival Everett
Rave Kirkus A deadpan spoof ... Everett is adroit at ramping up the tension while sustaining his narrator’s droll patter and injecting well-timed ontological discourses on...well…nothing. It may not sound like anything much, so to speak. But then, neither did all those episodes of Seinfeld that insisted they were about nothing. And this, too, is just as funny, if in a far different, more metaphysical manner ... A good place to begin finding out why Everett has such a devoted cult.
Percival Everett
Rave Publishers Weekly Immensely enjoyable ... Throughout, Everett boldly makes a farce out of real-world nightmares, and the rapid-fire pacing leaves readers little time to blink. Satire doesn’t get much sharper or funnier than this.
Katherine Dunn
Positive Publishers Weekly Pungent ... The story has moments of hilarity, its raw prose fresh with unpretty evocations of stale rooms and bad poetry. It amounts to a sobering look at the reality of what one’s glory days actually entailed, shot through with the unmistakable undertow of pain and self-loathing.
Katherine Dunn
Rave Kirkus A gentle, funny, heartbreaking indictment of the naïve excesses of the 1960s and the testament of a woman who survived them.
Simon Parkin
Rave Publishers Weekly Vivid ... Character-driven and carefully researched, this is an engrossing look at a less-remembered aspect of WWII.
Simon Parkin
Positive Kirkus Richly detailed ... A vivid recounting of a shameful event that still resonates.
David G. Myers
Rave Kirkus Thinking about our own thinking is difficult, but this book offers useful advice in an entertaining package ... Though Myers is unquestionably an authority, he sometimes trades depth for breadth; some essays are just getting interesting when he moves on to another topic. The author does include a comprehensive reference section for those who want to further investigate a particular area ... A witty, enjoyable book with plenty of food for thought.
Onyi Nwabineli
Positive Publishers Weekly Powerful ... Nwabineli credibly portrays Eve’s gut-deep grief and her reckoning with the fact that she’ll never know what darkness lay within her partner’s thoughts. The author also skillfully sets up a series of surprising turns. The genuine displays of emotion and sharp narrative will keep readers turning the pages.
Onyi Nwabineli
Positive The Irish Times (IRE) ... the writing is buoyant, the characters are palpable, the content eschews grief porn. A pregnancy, however, is a known plot device and, in this novel, it feels like one. It accelerates Eve’s ability to evolve without closure, and its visibility calls attention to the book’s mechanics. The stilted dialogue in Eve’s memories, Q’s overlooked \'penchant\' for long absences – it’s debatable whether Someday, Maybe’s first-person narration is supposed to sow questions about reliability or absorb weak points in the narrative. Ironically, this debate produces a greater truth if not the novel’s conclusion: what we know about a person is just the story we believe.
Timothy Bella
Rave Publishers Weekly Brawny ... Though Bella didn’t interview Barkley, he judiciously assembles a wealth of material, including 372 interviews with Barkley’s childhood friends, coaches, teammates, and even cops who’ve arrested him. This is a must-read for basketball devotees, but even casual sports fans will be fascinated.
Timothy Bella
Positive Kirkus A pleasure for fans of the hard-charging legend.
Katy Hays
Positive Publishers Weekly Moody and suspenseful ... Readers will be fascinated by the evocative setting as well as the behind-the-scenes glimpses into museum curatorship and the cutthroat games of academia. It makes for an accomplished debut.
Katy Hays
Mixed Kirkus Hays sets the stage well for what might have been some truly creepy scenes, but those looking for chills should seek elsewhere. In the end, the plot and characters feel too formulaic and familiar to really surprise ... Murder! Occult! Obsession! The pieces are there, but the drama just…isn’t.
Edward J. Delaney
Rave Publishers Weekly A splendid fictional biography of Cary Grant ... Delaney vividly captures the intoxicating and toxic fumes of Hollywood...and presents an alluring amalgam of fact and fiction. Breezy and entertaining, Delaney’s portrait perfectly befits the glamour and fakery of his subject.
Edward J. Delaney
Rave Kirkus A beautifully imagined, sympathetic portrait of a flawed icon.
N. K. Jemisin
Mixed Publishers Weekly Loses some of the power of the first volume even as it continues to extol New York City’s diversity, history, and unusual kindness ... Jemisin embodies the spirit of the city in as lush and lively a voice as ever and does a masterful job incorporating even more history and magic. Where this falters is in the unchanging character dynamics, familiar narrative beats, and fight scenes that feel like retreads of those in book one. Still, readers looking for another underdog tale of human connection will be satisfied—though not blown away—by this series finale.
N. K. Jemisin
Rave Kirkus It\'s cathartic to imagine fighting these slippery, inimical forces with magic, to believe for a moment that some complex problems have direct solutions—that passion, faith, and the will to fight can make miracles happen ... A ray of hope in a dark time.
Bono
Rave Publishers Weekly Powerful and candid ... With remarkable frankness, he details what makes a great song...domestic life with his wife, Ali, and their four children; how the band almost fell apart ... Self-aware...and poignantly reflective...this is a must-read.
Bono
Positive Kirkus Candid ... At nearly every turn, the author spends less time on band details than he does wrestling with the ethical implications of his successes and failures ... There’s little in the way of band gossip, and the author has a lyricist’s knack for leaving matters open to interpretation, which at times feels more evasive and frustrating than revealing. But he also evades the standard-issue rock-star confessional mode, and his story reveals a lifelong effort of stumbling toward integrity ... Chatty and self-regarding but pleasantly free of outright narcissism. A no-brainer for U2’s legions of fans.
Bono
Positive Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Poetic yet conversational ... Surrender is very much a love letter to the woman who calls him on his nonsense while still clearly lighting his creative, altruistic and romantic fires. Bono’s authorial style may dazzle or grate depending on one’s taste. He is fond of the fragment ... How much of all this should any reader believe? I believed all of it. Bono never shrinks from the ugly or embarrassing, never fails to call himself out for his failures and overreaching.
Hilton Als
Rave Publishers Weekly Als brings serpentine prose and acerbic wit to this slim, two-part take on Prince, desire, and loss ... Don’t be fooled by the page count, Als conjures entire worlds between these covers. Readers are sure to find pleasure and pain in this bite-size delight.
Hilton Als
Positive Kirkus At fewer than 50 pages, this book is too short to address Prince’s protean nature in depth. But as an appreciation of the liberating power he had over Als as a gay Black man, it’s undeniably engrossing ... A lyrical, provocative take on pop music’s power.
Andrew K Diemer
Positive Publishers Weekly ... well-researched and vividly written ... This immersive history sheds valuable light not just on Still, but on the communal workings of the abolitionist movement.
Andrew K Diemer
Positive Kirkus ... deeply researched ... A welcome addition to the literature of abolitionism, spotlighting an important American.
Ted Conover
Rave Kirkus ... sharp, balanced profiles ... With empathy, compassion, and skillful storytelling, Conover engagingly shares the dreams and realities of those he met and befriended, offering a window into a community that few readers will ever experience ... A captivating portrait of a community on the fringes.
Ted Conover
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... impressively detailed if somewhat diffuse ... Vivid biographical sketches fascinate, but several narrative threads are left hanging, including the tensions between the off-gridders and longtime Hispanic residents of the valley’s towns. Readers will wish this intriguing snapshot had a sharper focus.
H W Brands
Rave Kirkus The Geronimo campaign has been so intensely studied for the last 150 years that it’s hard to imagine there’s much new information to discover. Noted historian Brands finds news, though, by placing the war against the Apaches in the larger context of the Indian Wars generally, from the mass hanging of Sioux rebels in 1862 to the Modoc Wars, Little Bighorn, the Red Cloud War, and more ... Brands is particularly good in placing all this in a political as well as military context, with Sherman wrestling with Indian Agency bureaucrats in Washington over whether they or the Army should oversee matters of war, peace, and, in the end, cultural extermination ... An excellent, well-written study—like most of the author’s books, a welcome addition to the literature of westward expansion.
H W Brands
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... a fine-grained yet somewhat lopsided look at the final military battles fought between the U.S. government and the Apache, Lakota, Nez Perce, and other Native American tribes ... Brands incorporates Indigenous perspectives, including She Walks With Her Shawl’s eyewitness account of the Battle of Little Big Horn, but most of the narrative is spent with U.S. Army general William Sherman and other military leaders, including Philip Sheridan and Nelson Miles. Though Brands quotes from Sherman’s letters and journal entries calling for peace, he’s more interested in delivering battlefield play-by-plays than interrogating the racist attitudes of the day or conveying the full range of the Native American experience. Though well written and often engrossing, this history is missing some crucial context.
Malcolm Gaskill
Rave Publishers Weekly Gaskill combines first-rate historical research with a driving narrative in this captivating study of a married couple accused of witchcraft in 17th-century New England ... Gaskill’s vibrant portraits of Springfield community members, especially town founder and magistrate William Pynchon, an amateur theologian whose life \'had been stalked by war, hunger and pestilence,\' and lucid explanations of Puritan theology and Massachusetts’s intertwined laws of church and state make for dense yet riveting reading. This portrait of early America fascinates.
Malcolm Gaskill
Positive Kirkus ... contextually rich ... Gaskill presents a meticulous, multilayered snapshot of this smoldering society, combining history, theology, and psychological speculation ... An elucidating study on the forces that fed witchcraft hysteria in early America.
Claire Keegan
Rave Kirkus ... pristine ... both concise and gut-wrenching. Her superficially simple prose persuasively conveys a child’s sometimes-innocent but always careful and insightful observations of the world. Keegan suggests that children see and understand more than adults might like to think without turning her narrator into a miniature grown-up ... The novella crescendos in a final scene that will inspire many to call their fathers—once they’ve finished weeping ... A heartbreaking but deeply humane story about parents and children.
Claire Keegan
Positive Publishers Weekly Charming ... The result will capture readers’ hearts.
Claire Keegan
Positive Irish Independent (IRE) She is very good—and this new book devoted to a single short story proves that ... Captivating ... Foster, like most of Keegan\'s short stories, shines like a jewel. But it is very much a traditional short story which is brilliant without being ground-breaking. Ford\'s lavish praise, quoted on the cover, may not do Keegan any favours since it raises expectations so high. This story is very good, but it\'s not as extraordinary as he suggests.
Dorthe Nors tr. Caroline Waight
Rave Kirkus ... graceful, lyrical ... deft and offhand pieces ... As the book progresses, Nors touches on a variety of intriguing rituals and landmarks ... An intricate reckoning with a world that, despite our best attempts to tame it, remains elemental and wild.
Dorthe Nors tr. Caroline Waight
Positive Publishers Weekly ... poetic ... Nors’s portrait of her connection to a landscape both \'harsh and mild\' enchants.
Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden
Positive Publishers Weekly Intriguing ... Dudley and Golden render their subjects—some of whom endured poverty and bullying in their teens—with warmth and admiration while acknowledging that competition between hacker gangs and ransomware hunters has helped spur more sophisticated viruses and bigger paydays. Readers will put down this engrossing underdog story just long enough to back up their own files.
Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden
Rave The Economist (UK) Though the general idea is easy to grasp—criminals encrypt the target’s files, then ask for money to decrypt them again—the nuts and bolts of cybercrime are often baffling to the uninitiated. Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden, a pair of journalists, have written a good introduction to the subject. They focus as much on people as on the computers ... Having access to those at the sharp end provides the authors with some fascinating anecdotes ... The ransomware business is complicated, ruthless and growing fast. Those looking for a guide should start here.
Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden
Positive Kirkus In some ways, this book is an update to that distinguished predecessor, though it also enters into the newer realms of the dark web, cryptocurrency, and high-level code-breaking ... An accessible, tautly written account of cyberwarfare in real time.
Bob Dylan
Rave Kirkus Nostalgia abounds in Bob Dylan’s eclectic and eccentric collection of impressive musical appreciations ... The author offers an extensive hodgepodge of illustrations and photographs alongside rich, image-laden, impressionistic prose ... The author is consistently engaging and often provocative in his explorations ... We can see the author’s mind working, reminiscing, but there’s little autobiography here. Where needed, he tosses in some prodigious music history and biography, and some appreciations read like short stories ... Dylan is clearly a believer, and he will convince readers to follow.
Matt Simon
Positive Kirkus Throughout the book, the author presents evidence obtained from his travels with research scientists studying the negative effects of microplastics. The evidence is clear: The oceans are growing more infested with microplastics, and they have become a fundamental component of the air we breathe ... A convincing treatment of a subject that will remain relevant for years to come.
Matt Simon
Positive Publishers Weekly Simon offers some solid solutions such as microfiber filters on washing machines, the use of more sustainable materials in clothing manufacturing, and in general reducing society’s dependence on plastic. This is a lucid, distressing look at a growing environmental concern.
Claudia Lux
Rave Publishers Weekly Lux brilliantly combines satire, suspense, and pathos in her remarkably assured debut ... Lux balances the whodunit plot and her antihero’s quest perfectly as the action builds to a surprisingly moving place. Readers of paranormal crime series such as Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files will be eager to see what Lux has up her sleeve next.
Neil Baldwin
Rave Publishers Weekly Mesmerizing ... The trailblazing Graham seemingly sculpted modern dance out of thin air, creating indelible works like Heretic, Lamentation, and Primitive Mysteries, always looking to the future. Provocative and passionate as the dynamo herself, this richly detailed and insightful page-turner will delight dance aficionados.
Natalie Livingstone
Rave Kirkus Richly textured ... An engaging, authoritative, and refreshingly intimate history.
Natalie Livingstone
Rave Publishers Weekly Comprehensive and colorful ... Livingstone expertly mines diaries, memoirs, and letters for vivid anecdotes ... This sparkling history is full of riches.
Kevin Chen tr. Darryl Sterk
Rave Library Journal At once vibrant and tartly observant, Chen’s tour de force reveals how we all hold onto the ghosts of the past ... A highly recommended story of past, identity, and family.
Kevin Chen tr. Darryl Sterk
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... haunting if overstuffed ... These strands, along with flashbacks of Keith’s relationship with T in Berlin, have a sort of stuttered pacing, but Chen does a great job creating atmosphere ... Eventually, Chen gets into the nightmarish details around T’s killing, but it takes too long to bring everything together. Though vivid, this ambitious novel is a bit too unwieldy.
Kevin Chen tr. Darryl Sterk
Mixed Kirkus ... there are moments when Chen creates a truly eerie atmosphere ... But, despite the diversity of narrators, there isn’t much diversity of voice—a lack of interiority makes it difficult to distinguish one character from another—and most of this story is told in a flat, expository style that is, ultimately, wearying. There is something initially powerful in the way that Chen presents cruelty as commonplace, but this stylistic choice quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns. It seems likely that most readers will either become anesthetized to the brutality or simply quit reading ... hen’s exploration of generational trauma is both too much and not enough.
Katie Hickman
Rave Publishers Weekly ... painstakingly researched and fluidly written ... Full of heartrending accounts of courage and tragedy, this is a vital contribution to the history of America’s frontier.
Devoney Looser
Rave Kirkus Household names in their time, these forgotten Regency novelists have gained an effective champion in Jane Austen biographer and scholar Looser ... Looser has ferreted out many wonderful lines from the vast correspondence between the sisters ... A triumph of literary detective work and storytelling, this is a must-read for the Austen and Brontë crowd.
Devoney Looser
Positive Publishers Weekly ... mostly solid ... offers plenty of insights into late-18th- and 19th-century social history. Though she’s a strong writer, Looser can sometimes get caught up in the details, slowing the pace. Even so, fans of the era’s literature will appreciate the light Looser shines on these lesser-known figures.
Jeanna Kadlec
Positive Kirkus ... the author doesn’t try to surprise us with shocking twists or turns. Instead, Kadlec tells us the story of her life so far in bits and pieces, interspersed with graduate-level research. This approach along with accounts of her childhood that never seem to go as deep as they could combines in a narrative technique that sometimes feels like it is meant to keep readers at arm’s length. The researched pieces—about the origins of evangelicalism, the 1990s explosion of purity culture, and the roots of misogyny and racism in the church—are fascinating, but more interesting is Kadlec’s personal journey ... Both memoir and thesis, this book highlights a cultural, social, and spiritual journey that will resonate with many.
Jon Meacham
Rave Kirkus ... deeply researched ... The author provides in-depth analysis of Lincoln’s career as president and on how his thoughts on the issues of slavery and the status of African Americans changed during the course of the war, right up to the Union victory ... While there are countless books on Lincoln, one of the most studied and written-about figures in history, Meacham’s latest will undoubtedly become one of the most widely read and consulted ... An essential, eminently readable volume for anyone interested in Lincoln and his era.
Jon Meacham
Rave Publishers Weekly Meacham more than justifies yet another Lincoln biography in this nuanced and captivating look at the president’s \'struggle to do right as he defined it within the political universe he and his country inhabited\' ... Richly detailed and gracefully written, this is an essential reminder that \'progress can be made by fallible and fallen presidents and peoples.\'
Ross Gay
Rave Publishers Weekly Stunning ... Gay’s curiosity is present on every page...and his precise yet playful prose sparkles ... This resonant, vivid meditation shouldn’t be missed.
Ross Gay
Positive Kirkus Gay...ruminates about joy in a warm, candid memoir composed of 12 essays. In prose that veers between breezy and soulful, the author reflects on a wide range of topics ... A pleasingly digressive and intimate memoir in essays.
Stacy Schiff
Rave Publishers Weekly Revelatory and frequently riveting ... Schiff vividly recounts major events in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, including the Stamp Act Crisis, the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party, and draws incisive sketches of Loyalist governor Thomas Hutchinson, Patriot lawyer James Otis, and others. Fast-paced and enlightening, this is a must-read for colonial history buffs.
Stacy Schiff
Positive Kirkus This is a meticulously researched and often eloquent work of historical biography, but it’s an occasionally dry cerebral exercise, lacking some of the author’s typical storytelling verve. Still, Schiff offers a welcome, fresh study featuring notions of liberty and democracy that feel particularly relevant in today’s consistently tumultuous political landscape ... A sturdy portrait of Samuel Adams for our times.
Sofia Samatar
Rave Publishers Weekly Fascinating ... Evocative ... Emerging from this is a vivid mosaic that interrogates the spirit of the faithful while celebrating the beauty of storytelling. This riveting meditation on the \'great tides of history\' yields a wondrous take on the ways the past and present intertwine.
Sofia Samatar
Rave Kirkus Vivid ... Complex and gorgeously written, this memoir invites readers on a journey to the ever expanding borders of human compassion.
Darryl Pinckney
Rave Publishers Weekly Sparkling ... His prose is entertaining, gossipy, and full of vivid thumbnails yet, in its loose-jointed way, deeply serious about literature and craft ... The result is a captivating portrait of the writing life in one of its richest settings.
Darryl Pinckney
Rave Kirkus Brilliant ... His memoir is both stunningly well written and stuffed with dishy gossip ... An essential document of literary history evoking an era of hope, youth, wisdom, and tragedy.
John Banville
Positive Publishers Weekly Artful and atmospheric ... Though short on plot, the book boasts some of Banville’s greatest prose ... Overall, it’s a fine addition to a brilliant body of work.
John Banville
Positive Kirkus Banville once again mines past work for characters and a challenging narrative ... Banville doesn’t offer a conventional plot or clear theme, but he does fashion alternative universes with his recurring, repurposed characters, and all his players find in the past an alternative world they can\'t help dwelling on. To a great extent, Banville seems simply to revel in the delights of creativity, piling up wordplay and allusions...playing the god of his literary realm, and all this with constant flashes of exquisite writing ... An intriguing puzzle box that is variously enchanting and frustrating.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Rave Publishers Weekly Eye-opening ... An extraordinarily gifted storyteller, Mukherjee offers an expansive chronology of discovery in cell therapies (such as IVF) and setbacks ... Both convincing and inspiring, and woven throughout his narrative are accessible explanations of cell biology and immunology. This is another winner from Mukherjee.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Rave Kirkus A lumionous journey ... Mukherjee...has a knack for explaining difficult ideas in terms that are both straightforward and interesting. In his latest, he punctuates his scientific explanations with touching, illustrative stories of people coping with cell-based illnesses ... Mukherjee occasionally digresses from the historical story to provide vivid portraits of key researchers, with recollections about his own work ... Understanding the mechanics is one thing, he notes; hearing \'the song of the cell\' is something else. This poignant idea serves as a suitable coda for a fascinating story related with clarity and common sense ... Another outstanding addition to the author’s oeuvre, which we hope will continue to grow for years to come.
Joseph Sassoon
Positive Publishers Weekly Grand if somewhat plodding ... Though dense, the narrative is enlivened by portraits of illustrious family members including Farha Sassoon, who successfully ran the Bombay headquarters of the business after her husband’s death in 1894, and WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon. The result is an impressive deep dive into a family that bridged East and West as they built—and lost—an empire.
John A. Farrell
Rave Publishers Weekly Farrell...untangles in this masterful account the complex blend of political dexterity, recklessness, and unflagging support of the less fortunate that defined Ted Kennedy’s rise ... Evenhanded ... The book shines in its vivid accounts of backroom political dealmaking, as Farrell enlivens his exhaustive research and expert analysis with a novelist’s pacing. The result is the definitive one-volume biography of a consequential American lawmaker.
John A. Farrell
Rave Kirkus Comprehensive ... Lengthy but engrossing ... An exemplary study of a life of public service with more than its share of tragedies and controversies.
Aimee Pokwatka
Positive Publishers Weekly Pokwatka’s speculative debut straddles the line between sci-fi thriller and literary fiction ... The result is a deeply felt, introspective meditation on motherhood and the nature of the self.
Vigdis Hjorth, trans. by Charlotte Barslund
Rave Publishers Weekly Gripping ... Hjorth keenly walks the line between Johanna’s concern and mania; as Johanna’s hang-ups occasionally spin out of control, they remain true to the character. This accomplished novel is hard to shake.
Vigdis Hjorth, trans. by Charlotte Barslund
Positive Kirkus She\'s compelling in her desire to understand what it means to be a fully grown woman and yet still need your mother. The novel\'s strength lies in its deft use of psychological analysis as it looks at this relationship through one lens after another. While it\'s full of metaphorical hauntings, it\'s most plaintive in Johanna’s desire to have a conversation with her mother. The novel falters in its resolution, but Johanna’s intelligence and emotion still captivate ... A darkly insightful examination of mother-daughter relationships that captivates with the suspense of a thriller.
Ethan Chatagnier
Rave Publishers Weekly ... soaring ... Chatagnier does an excellent job channeling the hippie students’ grit, joy, and constant self-awareness ... The elements of astronomy, numerology, love, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life are structured perfectly as each of the five commit to their \'long-shot missions and desperate hopes.\' Readers are in for a memorable adventure.
Ethan Chatagnier
Positive Kirkus Chatagnier describes the scenery of the American past with lyrical zest, but he doesn’t seem to have devoted much effort to imagining or researching what people’s lives were like back then. In his fantasy version of the novel’s timeline, unlike the same period on actual Earth, women, including women of color, are allowed to be mathematicians and scientists just like men. Women in his novel run telescopes and are professors at prestigious universities in more than token numbers ... For all the charm of these wistful musings, the plot makes little sense. (How has Crystal been supporting herself? Why hasn’t some reporter found her long ago?) And the novel’s ultimate revelation, when it comes, is a cliché ... Lyrical writing and a suspenseful story fall apart when anachronisms and lazy plotting undermine them.
Nicholas Dawidoff
Positive Kirkus The text—compassionate, thoughtful, and thorough to a fault—is caught somewhat uncomfortably between a sociological study of the causes and results of racial division and a more straightforward narrative of Bobby\'s conviction, imprisonment, and bumpy reentry into society ... The author’s research and dedication to the project are clear, but the book would have benefitted from a stronger editorial hand. Readers anxious to get on with the story may get bogged down in the long account, drawing on Fields\' sister\'s memoir, of his childhood in South Carolina. Certain chapters are not thoroughly integrated into the narrative structure. Overall, though, Dawidoff presents a compelling examination of a situation in which police officers eager to put another case in the \'solved\' column ignored obvious evidence and coerced a teenager into a confession of a crime he didn\'t commit. Anyone with grand illusions about the American justice system will have lost them by the end ... An uneven but rigorously reported, urgent book.
Nicholas Dawidoff
Positive Publishers Weekly Dawidoff stuffs the account with statistics on violent crime, digressions into the Great Migration and the history of New Haven, deep dives into street culture and police interview techniques, and intricate biographical sketches. Though meandering at times, it’s a searing portrait of injustice in America.
Joe Coscarelli
Rave Publishers Weekly ... pulsating ... an epic of music history ... Unparalleled success and crashing downfalls would be hallmarks to many artists, but, as Coscarelli makes stunningly apparent, their contributions put Atlanta on the map, turning \'the chip on the city’s shoulder... to a stage.\' This impassioned tribute to an overlooked pillar of music is spectacular.
Lev AC Rosen
Positive Publishers Weekly [An] appealing character-driven mystery ... This book’s real pleasure lies in the richly realized portrayal of its cast and their personal struggles. Rosen puts a welcome gay spin on the traditional country house whodunit.
Jemele Hill
Rave Publishers Weekly Poignant ... Hill evocatively details her childhood in 1970s Detroit, where poverty, absence, addiction, and abuse abounded in her immediate family ... The result is a powerful portrait of ambition, faith, and fearlessness.
Jemele Hill
Rave Kirkus Hill is relentless but fair, and she is equally comfortable parsing out instances of institutional racism and admitting to her own mistakes. She balances humor, vulnerability, and passion, creating a text that is both exciting and emotionally satisfying ... A frank, fearless, and entertaining memoir.
Rachael Bade
Positive Publishers Weekly Searing ... Throughout, the authors offer fly-on-the-wall accounts of Republican and Democratic strategy sessions and new details about Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine, the January 6 Capitol riot, and other events. Though some of the political and legal headwinds faced by Democrats get short shrift, this is a thorough and often riveting account of why the efforts to impeach Trump failed
Rachael Bade
Rave Kirkus A scorching exposé ... Comprehensive ... A must-read for students of the Trump years and their dreary denouement.
Peter Brooks
Positive Publishers Weekly Bracing and insightful ... Not all sections are lay-reader friendly, as Brooks lapses into the academic ... However, readers who stay the course will find this is a thoughtful and revelatory analysis of what’s lost when story trumps all.
Peter Brooks
Positive Kirkus Rigorous ... Brooks extrapolates ideas of narrative veracity, character, speaker, and audience, all while conscientiously maintaining his collection’s accessibility. Even readers who are not yet familiar with Proust or Faulkner will find stable footing in these essays despite their many erudite digressions throughout the canon ... An enlightening challenge to readers curious about literary theory and its real-world applications.
Matthew F. Delmont
Rave Kirkus Delmont sets the record straight ... The narrative is disturbing and painful, but it provides important pages that have been missing from American history ... A vital story well rendered, recounting a legacy that should be recognized, remembered, and applauded.
Matthew F. Delmont
Rave Publishers Weekly Revelatory ... The result is an eloquent and essential corrective to the historical record.
Tom Felton
Rave Kirkus Felton fills much of his memoir with charmingly told behind-the-scenes stories of what it was like filming the eight movies in the Harry Potter series ... The author’s anecdotes about his co-stars, from Daniel Radcliffe to Judi Dench, are similarly sweet and self-deprecating ... Unflinchingly forthcoming ... A surprisingly deep memoir from the actor who brought a memorable villain to the big screen.
Anand Giridharadas
Rave Kirkus Sharp ... Cogent, sometimes encouraging ... A welcome, revealing study of how political messages can be shaped positively to counter both enmity and disinformation.
Anand Giridharadas
Positive Publishers Weekly [A] searching study ... It’s illuminating to watch activists grapple honestly with the left’s internal divisions and rhetorical shortcomings, but the focus is on subtler manipulations, not open-minded dialogue with opponents ... Still, for those committed to the progressive agenda, this is an incisive guide to the art of persuasion.
Robin McLean
Positive Publishers Weekly Gritty and well-honed ... With merciless prose and a bold vision, McLean continues to impress.
Robin McLean
Rave Kirkus Knotty, artful ... Because McLean trades in feelings of fear and anxiety, she works to make her prose unsettling, occasionally abstracted, or heavily metaphorical ... Sharp, noirish, thought-provoking stories of lives out of joint.
Chelsea Manning
Positive Kirkus Manning demonstrates her integrity in this meticulous account of a person constitutionally opposed to secrets and lies.
Katherine Corcoran
Rave Publishers Weekly Searing ... Corcoran’s vivid account is based on hundreds of interviews she conducted in Mexico over seven years. Despite the lack of a satisfying resolution, this succeeds both as an homage to the heroic Martínez and as a gripping real-life whodunit.
Katherine Corcoran
Positive Kirkus Disturbing ... Readers will be transfixed by this alarming narrative, all the more timely as free speech, even in the U.S., is under attack yet again ... A tenaciously researched work of investigative journalism.
Jonathan Freedland
Rave Irish Times (IRE) Gripping, compelling, shocking and deeply moving.
Jonathan Freedland
Rave Kirkus First-rate ... Concentration camp stories make for painful reading, but British journalist and broadcaster Freedland relates a riveting tale with a fascinating protagonist ... Gripping ... Freedland smoothly recounts Vrba’s long, often troubled postwar life, during which he persistently criticized Jewish and Israeli leaders who could have resisted the genocide more than they did. A powerful story of a true hero who deserves more recognition.
Jonathan Freedland
Rave Publishers Weekly Harrowing ... Drawing on interviews with family members and former colleagues, Freedland presents a warts-and-all portrait of Vrba, and vividly captures the horrors of Auschwitz. The result is a noteworthy contribution to the history of the Holocaust.
Dani Shapiro
Rave Publishers Weekly Beautiful ... Shapiro imagines in luminous prose how each of the characters’ lives might have gone if things had turned out differently. It’s an intriguing meditation.
Dani Shapiro
Positive Kirkus Moody, meditative ... Considering it gets our attention with this super-plotty device, the book is actually more concerned with character development and metaphysical questions than event-driven storytelling ... Wears its philosophical intentions on its sleeve; well-developed characters and their interesting careers seal the deal.
Cormac McCarthy
Positive Publishers Weekly A rich story ... Staples of the philosopher-tramps, vagabonds, and sociopaths of McCarthy’s canon [are present], though their presence doesn’t feel quite as thematically grounded as they do in his masterworks. Still, he dazzles with his descriptions of a beautifully broken New Orleans ... The book’s many pleasures will leave readers aching for the final installment.
Cormac McCarthy
Rave Kirkus A beguiling, surpassingly strange novel ... It’s all vintage McCarthy, if less bloody than much of his work ... Enigmatic, elegant, extraordinary: a welcome return after a too-long absence.
Margaret Sullivan
Mixed Publishers Weekly Sincere if befuddled ... Use of her writing about real-life devastation as a metric for personal improvement, however, that undermines Sullivan’s claim to a high ethical standard; and her criticisms...often fall flat. The insider’s view into American journalism is engrossing, but Sullivan’s blind spots, when it comes to her own blunders, are large.
Margaret Sullivan
Positive Kirkus The author, whose liberal perspective is occasionally heavy-handed, acknowledges that Trump helped change journalism: It need not be adversarial, she holds, but it will necessarily be that way if it tells the truth about liars, and objectivity is a less-desirable standard than truth in the face of endless mendacity ... A welcome memoir of time in the reportorial trenches.
Lisa Russ Spaar
Positive Library Journal ... vibrant language ... Ranging from the 1970s to the 2010s, this forthright and exuberant tour-de-force effectively plumbs a young woman’s artistic and sexual awakening.
Lisa Russ Spaar
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... lush if flawed ... Spaar offers plenty of lyrical descriptions, but there’s a dissonance between the novel’s two halves that’s never resolved. It’s nicely written, but it doesn’t quite hang together.
Paul Newman
Positive Kirkus Raw ... Revealing ... Intimate reflections on an extraordinary life steeped in sadness.
Paul Newman
Rave Publishers Weekly Newman’s story unfolds in a humble, sometimes humorous narrative voice ... These collective perspectives do more than offer a prismatic view of film industry glamour and dirty laundry: they elevate the book from a humble autobiography to a more nuanced, human portrait...that Newman craved when he went on the record. With equal parts grounded authenticity and inviting charm, this candid memoir captures the life of a legend.
Veronica Roth
Rave Kirkus One could imagine a dystopian novel set during the uprising that toppled the Delegation in which someone like Sonya is a villain, righteously imprisoned when a new government is formed. But Roth isn’t interested in easy victories or happily-ever-afters. Instead, Sonya grapples with the inevitable failure of even the most optimistic governments, the risk that exciting and helpful new technologies can be used for evil, and the responsibility she still bears for who she was and what she did during the Delegation’s heyday. The novel manages to be an elegant social commentary without resorting to preachiness, and even the most cynical readers will be as surprised as Sonya when they reach Roth’s big reveals about the depths of the Delegation’s depravity ... A wonderfully complex and nuanced book, perfect for readers who grew up on dystopian YA.
Veronica Roth
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... sluggish ... The worldbuilding is fascinating, but Roth only scratches the surface, with more time spent developing Sonya’s life in prison than exploring the outside world or the ramifications of using Insight. This lack of depth extends to the protagonist; though readers will appreciate Sonya’s journey to self-awareness, her lack of interiority makes her difficult to invest in. This won’t go down as one of this talented author’s better works.
Ian Rankin
Positive Kirkus Two years after his checkered hero’s last outing, Rankin makes you feel the wait was worth every day, whatever comes next.
Ian Rankin
Rave Publishers Weekly ... outstanding ... The well-constructed plot is matched by brooding, atmospheric prose ... This is one of Rankin’s best Rebus novels in years.
Amber Tamblyn
Positive Kirkus Many of the essays are less prescriptive and more thought-provoking ... Depending on the reader’s disposition, Tamblyn’s own pieces will come off as self-indulgent or delightful ... By contract, Amy Poehler clearly understood the assignment ... Lessons worth learning: Listening and trusting yourself is always going to lead you on the right path eventually.
Amber Tamblyn
Positive Publishers Weekly ... deeply moving ... A lively conversation between actor America Ferrera and Tamblyn is especially enjoyable ... Intimate and thought-provoking, this collection packs a punch.
Emily Tamkin
Rave Publishers Weekly ... vibrant ... Tamkin brings nuanced perspective to such controversial matters as the alleged antisemitism of Muslim congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and the \'active role\' some American Jews \'play[ed] in upholding America’s racist, slave-based society\' (she notes that the first Jewish person to hold a cabinet position in North America was Confederate attorney general and secretary of state Judah P. Benjamin). Heartfelt, nuanced, and empathetic, this revelatory ethnography is a must-read.
Emily Tamkin
Positive Kirkus Though not a rigorous, scholarly treatment of the subject, the book ably reflects the author’s experience as a skilled journalist and storyteller ... An engaging gathering of voices demonstrate \'the one truth of American Jewish identity: it can never be pinned down.\'
Max Hastings
Rave Kirkus In his long, distinguished career, Hastings has masterfully covered both world wars, the Korean War, and Vietnam. In his latest, he thoroughly explores a fraught set of circumstances that almost lead to World War III. He sets the scene with a highly illuminating description of the Cold War world in 1960 ... Hastings does not hide his contempt for Khrushchev’s decision to send atomic weapons ... The author’s painfully insightful conclusion credits Kennedy with brilliant statesmanship but adds that most successors would have chosen war ... The definitive account of a brief yet frightening period in global history.
Max Hastings
Rave Publishers Weekly ... engrossing ... Hastings draws sharp personality profiles of John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, Fidel Castro, and their top-level advisers, and expertly mines archival records to recreate the contemporaneous rationale for their decision-making, even when it looks foolish or reckless in hindsight. He also expands beyond the \'pivotal thirteen days\' when the crisis reached its height, providing essential context in cogent discussions of the Cuban Revolution, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Soviet space program, and more. Flashes of color enliven sober warnings about the need for world leaders who can sift through multiple sources of information and back down from a fight when the cost is too great. This riveting history speaks clearly to the present moment.
Rupert Christiansen
Positive Publishers Weekly Sublime art leaps from great showmanship in this vibrant chronicle of early 20th-century ballet ... vividly sketched ... a stimulating recreation of a cultural watershed.
April Ryan
Positive Publishers Weekly ... passionate ... At times, Ryan’s prose reaches a prayer-meeting fervency, extolling Black women as \'truth-tellers\' who \'mobilize the conscience of a country that is too slow to act on what’s right.\' Forceful and inspired, this is a rousing praise song for strong Black women.
April Ryan
Positive Kirkus Though she moves fluidly across eras, Ryan focuses primarily on her role as a top White House correspondent during the Trump era and her reporting of—and sometimes personal involvement in—a range of stories prompted by his incendiary reign. Among the most memorable sections of the book are her response to the White supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville and her own often caustic exchanges with Trump and his representatives during press conferences. Ryan is particularly effective in evocatively setting forth the terms of her calling as a journalist. She argues convincingly that her career has been dedicated to posing questions too often slighted or silenced ... Also cogent are her accounts of recent efforts at voter suppression and the resistance being organized by formidably committed activists. A little more nuance might have been helpful in the author’s assessments of the status of a leader such as Kamala Harris, whose reputation among Black voters seems more complicated than Ryan implies. Overall, though, the author offers compelling commentary on the significance of Black women in contemporary America ... An impassioned celebration of Black women and their roles in transforming the nation.
John Irving
Mixed Publishers Weekly Overblown and underplotted ... The search for Adam’s father’s identity provides a thriller element, but it never generates much narrative momentum. Dickensian in scope, the book includes multiple story lines ... His enormous imagination, his storytelling gifts, and his intelligence are all on display, but this feels more like a coda to his career, if one with a still-resonant theme about family and the maternal relationship ... Irving’s fans may love this, but it’s not the place to start for anyone new to his work.
John Irving
Mixed Kirkus Sprawling ... Generally slow ... Irving’s writing can be painfully plain, short on imagery or elegance and long, oh so long, on repetition. But his imagination and empathy often work to charm a reader when the prose falls short. Here the consistent pleasure is an extended family whose distinctive voices deliver thoughtful messages of tolerance, understanding, and affection for those who are different. A book that will try a reader’s patience but may also reward it.
Samanta Schweblin, trans. by Megan McDowell
Mixed Publishers Weekly Undercooked ... Unfortunately, Schweblin’s stories are far more evocative than substantive, and their sense of uncanny weightlessness—told in brisk, nondescript prose, featuring nameless and indistinct narrators and aimless plots—diminishes intrigue and leaves the reader hungry for deeper imaginative leaps. The exception is \'Breath from the Depths,\' which follows Lola, a retiree, as she descends into dementia and feuds with the young mother across the street. Schweblin can evoke a mesmerizing, eerie tone, but too often does little more than that.
Samanta Schweblin, trans. by Megan McDowell
Positive Kirkus Ethereal ... Seven compelling explorations of vacancy in another perfectly spare and atmospheric translation.
Samanta Schweblin, trans. by Megan McDowell
Mixed Library Journal While these seven stories don’t necessarily exhibit the shimmering, otherworldly language for which she is famous, the inventive weirdness is there ... Throughout these sorrowing, often death-tinged stories, there’s emptiness—primarily of meaning and affection ... A sure bet for Schweblin fans and connoisseurs of off-kilter worlds, though some readers may feel distanced.
Barbara Kingsolver
Rave Publishers Weekly Deeply evocative ... Kingsolver’s account of the opioid epidemic and its impact on the social fabric of Appalachia is drawn to heartbreaking effect. This is a powerful story, both brilliant in its many social messages regarding foster care, child hunger, and rural struggles, and breathless in its delivery.
Barbara Kingsolver
Rave Kirkus It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society ... An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Fatimah Asghar
Rave Kirkus Kausar’s compelling voice, sometimes lyrical, sometimes heartbreaking, is skillfully crafted, changing subtly as she grows. The book’s ending, a jump forward in time, seems tacked on and less convincing than what went before, but the sisters’ story is a moving journey ... An assured first novel explores the bonds and divides among three orphaned sisters.
Fatimah Asghar
Positive Publishers Weekly ... elegant ... Asghar’s poetic sensibilities are on full display in the lyrical and oblique prose and the frequent formal experimentation enlivens the text ... The result is a creative telling of a tender coming-of-age tale.
Chris Dombrowski
Rave Kirkus ... heartfelt ... Nature lovers will be captivated by Dombrowski’s lyrical descriptions of the land and its wildlife, while parents are sure to relate to his familial challenges and sacrifices ... A beautifully and poignantly written tribute to a beloved landscape and its spirit.
Chris Dombrowski
Positive Publishers Weekly Nature writer Dombrowski evokes both wilderness splendor and the hardscrabble effort of living paycheck to paycheck in this exquisite work. In lyrical language replete with vivid imagery, Dombrowski reflects on his 25 years as a fly-fishing guide, his uncertainty over writing and poetry, his impending fatherhood and \'fear of ushering children into a periled world,\' and his precarious role as the breadwinner of his family. Dombrowski’s narrative is enlivened by a cast of friends who offer him and his wife, Mary, a sense of community in Missoula ... Punctuated by the frank candor of a writer weighing sacrifice and art, this introspective memoir will hook fans of A River Runs Through It.
Patrick House
Positive Kirkus [House] uses extended anecdotes that put complex concepts into accessible terms even while acknowledging that there are no easy answers in the study of consciousness ... House makes an interesting detour to wonder if a society of blind people could deduce the existence of the moon, while other essays look at the functioning of memory and prediction, which takes up a remarkable amount of the brain’s capacity. There is also a theory that consciousness links to movement, which is one of the most essential, if often unconscious, aspects of brain function. Though the author occasionally gets lost in his own musings, he offers readers plenty of fascinating questions about the brain, the mind, and the soul ... Mixing science, metaphors, and philosophy, House provides elegant frameworks for ways to think about thinking.
Patrick House
Positive Publishers Weekly ... quirky ... While the author expertly explores the evolution of the brain and the biological processes that underlie consciousness, he posits neither a definition nor a theory of consciousness. Instead, he offers 19 pieces that take different tacks in examining the topic ... Though the conceit can feel forced at times, House’s observations are intriguing, and the short essays are impressively rich. This is bursting with insight.
Tricia Hersey
Positive Publishers Weekly ... empathetic ... Hersey’s ministry background shines through in her passionate and eloquent arguments that read like a clear-eyed sermon, though the author sometimes struggles to find new ways to expand on her central point. Nonetheless, the provocative message will appeal to those tired of grind culture.
Stephanie Feldman
Positive Kirkus ... bewitching ... That this one-night mission comes with untold wonders and terrors is a surprise for Nina and a thrill for readers. Feldman conjures a near-future version of the U.S. entranced by mutual aid organizations–turned–secret societies and caught in a slow-burn environmental catastrophe that’s unsettlingly plausible, and her depiction of the aftermath of sexual assault is complicated in its rage and compassion. The novel’s pacing is electric, its worldbuilding seamless, and the magic that slowly reveals itself feels truly strange and captivating—a considerable feat. Only the slow unspooling of Nina’s backstory and the reason why she left the Saturn Club in the first place pose stumbling blocks to the reader; it’s hard to feel the desired shock of changing loyalties or the longing for healed relationships when the reader doesn’t have the full picture of one character’s ties to another ... A propulsive fantasy thriller about fortune-seeking at the end of the world that will leave you wanting more.
Stephanie Feldman
Positive Publishers Weekly ... grim, bewitching ... The story features moments of bizarre, distressing cruelty and occasional gore, but it’s grounded in themes of belonging, friendship, and the potential costs of ambition. Feldman brings impressive richness and depth to both Nina’s emotional evolution and the masterful worldbuilding. This is sure to win the author many fans.
Maya Phillips
Positive Publishers Weekly Astute ... Sometimes Phillips’s detailing of cartoon plots verges on encyclopedic, but for the most part, she keeps things brisk and is never short on sharp reflections. These sparkling essays demolish the boundaries between high and low art.
Michelle Webster-Hein
Positive Publishers Weekly Delicate ... Hein adds depth and complexity to the otherwise simple and restrained story by telling it from the various characters’ points of view ... For the most part, Hein’s eloquent writing and convincing portrayal of the characters’ faith and piety makes up for a fairly anti-climactic narrative. Overall, it lands as a worthy first outing.
Michelle Webster-Hein
Positive Kirkus Graceful ... With characters yearning for intimacy and acceptance, Webster-Hein delicately probes the meanings of family, freedom, and desire ... A gentle tale of love and loneliness.
Charlotte Van Den Broeck, trans. by David McKay
Rave Publishers Weekly Gorgeous and roving ... Van den Broeck’s exploration extends beyond the lives and works of her subjects, turning into both a philosophical meditation on creativity and a brilliant character study of misunderstood artists. The result is a genre-bending work that’s sure to fascinate those interested in art and architecture, as well as anyone curious about the dangerous mechanisms of the creative mind.
Clint Hill
Rave Publishers Weekly Immersive ... Packed with rare images and fond reminiscences, this is a page-turning portrait of the Camelot era.
Clint Hill
Positive Kirkus Replete with unseen private photos and anecdotes of a singular relationship, the book will appeal mostly to American historians but also anyone interested in the private world inhabited by one of the most beguiling but enigmatic first ladies in American history ... A fond remembrance of a glamorous, bygone era.
James Patterson & Brendan DuBois
Positive Kirkus \"Echoing Fletcher Knebel\'s Night of Camp David, which they acknowledge, and Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove, which they don’t, the authors set their rousing tale of a few good citizens determined to wrestle the country back from a delusional paranoiac in a world that’s at once absolutely menacing and deeply nostalgic. The perfect beach read for political junkies willing to change the frequency for a few hours.\
James Patterson & Brendan DuBois
Positive Publishers Weekly \"The authors offer nothing new, but they throw in some historical anecdotes of interest, deliver tense action scenes, and tie up all the loose ends. Those who haven’t already encountered the insane president plot will have fun.\
Andrew Miller
Rave Kirkus Moving and insightful ... The novel’s evocation of that time and place is cinematically clear, and the narrative revolves around [a] single dread-filled moment. But Stephen’s daily life, in all its middle-aged dreariness and incidental sweetness, is just as sharply drawn, as is his sojourn in the rehab center that sets him on his unsteady feet again and heading back to Belfast ... This immensely skillful novel suspends the reader, too, in that mysterious midway state. A moving drama of trauma and recovery.
Andrew Miller
Mixed Publishers Weekly Meditative if diffuse ... The dramatic highlights do not exert quite enough pull to sustain the novel’s tension ... There’s a lot driving this affecting exploration of truth and reconciliation, but it doesn’t quite hang together.
Alan Moore
Rave Publishers Weekly Moore further burnishes his reputation in his first prose collection ... The stand-out short novel, \'What We Can Know About Thunderman,\' is a scathing take on the American comic book industry and its impact on popular culture and politics, and will undoubtedly attract the most attention ... The superhero genre’s loss is fantastic fiction’s gain.
Alan Moore
Mixed Kirkus If Moore’s debut novel...is anything to go by, the difficulty is getting him to stop his flow of words. One might hope, then, that the restrictive length of a short story would provide some necessary structure. This collection definitely includes some tight, clever, and vivid entries ... But Moore goes off the rails with \'What We Can Know About Thunderman,\' the book\'s longest work, taking up fully half the pages. It’s a self-indulgently savage lampoon of the comic-book industry ... The story never has any clear destination other than to suggest that the industry is a cesspool that’s impossible to escape in any clean way. The well-informed reader will infer that Moore is still extremely angry at DC for a number of intellectual property issues, remains upset with the way Warner Brothers adapted his works for film, and isn’t exactly happy with Marvel, either. A mixed bag with a misshapen boulder in it.
Graham Boynton
Positive Kirkus An artist’s life and work are often intertwined; in the case of Peter Beard (1938-2020), the distinction was especially blurred. Boynton, a journalist and longtime friend, valiantly attempts a balanced perspective, yet the scale often tips in favor of his progressively chaotic existence ... Though Boynton offers due diligence to the process of Beard’s work and tracks the important milestones, we never quite get a handle on how he progressed as an evolving artist. Still, the author is convincing in his assertion that Beard will be best remembered for his work ... Engrossing.
Andrew Meier
Rave Publishers Weekly Sweeping ... Meier’s narrative mixes political drama...with colorful family melodrama ... It’s also a vivid panorama of the New York that made the Morgenthaus: Robert’s career furnishes a string of true crime stories, including the notorious \'Central Park jogger\' rape case, that illustrate the city’s racial tensions, mob corruption, and white-collar thievery. The result is a fascinating family portrait on the grandest scale.
Andrew Meier
Rave Kirkus Meier draws on hundreds of hours of interviews and prodigious archival research to craft an absorbing narrative following four generations of one of America’s most prominent families ... A majestic, authoritative multigenerational saga.
Nora McInerny
Positive Publishers Weekly ... humorous ... Occasionally, McInerny’s meditations can seem unfocused but her wit, vulnerability, and self-deprecation make her an enjoyable companion. Despite the title, this is nothing but a good time.
Nora McInerny
Mixed Kirkus The most successful essays perfectly balance vulnerability and humor to lead readers to gentle, compassionate insights. While most of the author’s conclusions are not particularly original, her appealing voice keeps the pages turning ... A lighthearted, mostly rewarding, not-particularly-profound collection.
Andy Davidson
Positive Kirkus Greed, trespass, revenge, and obsession provide the emotional palette for this breathless, wide-eyed horror fable that chronicles the unforgivable trespasses that cost multiple generations their souls ... This version of the hot, wet South isn’t a far stretch from Daniel Woodrell’s twig-snap rustic dread but is a closer cousin to the wetwork terror of John Hornor Jacobs or Joe Hill. The way Davidson deftly pirouettes his way between bated-breath anticipation and a denouement that owes as much to John Carpenter as H.P. Lovecraft is impressive, especially given a staccato storytelling style that, much like a good horror movie, conceals as much as it reveals ... A folksy novel about bad country people, tentacles and all.
Andy Davidson
Positive Publishers Weekly ... haunting, atmospheric ... Davidson impresses with his chilling and immersive worldbuilding, effortlessly blending generational trauma with supernatural danger. The result is a harrowing novel that’s sure to please fans of gothic horror.
Louise Glück
Positive Kirkus Like all babies, Marigold and Rose understand more than they can easily express, and the author imbues her protagonists with a rationalism that feels as true as it is funny. Glück calls this new book “a fiction,” and that is a precisely vague choice. It’s too short to be a novel and too long to be a short story. The word novella tends to suggest plot, which this text lacks. It’s tempting to suggest that it’s a fable, and it’s true that some readers might find a straightforward meaning in how Glück differentiates her characters ... Wise, funny, and wonderfully odd.
Louise Glück
Positive Publishers Weekly There’s not much of a plot, but Glück is surgically precise in her prose ... It’s an odd little work, but a good one.
E M Tran
Positive Publishers Weekly Tran further complicates the legacy with stories of the women’s ancestors who resisted third-century Chinese occupation and 19th-century French imperialism. Though the many threads can be hard to follow, and Tran’s decision to abandon Xuan’s daughters’ story lines will frustrate readers, she does an excellent job at conveying the cyclical nature of family and political history. Though a bit unwieldy, there are plenty of powerful moments.
Amina Cain
Positive Kirkus ... a spare, graceful meditation on her rich, idiosyncratic reading and her practice of writing ... Cain ties her development as a writer to her engagement in zazen meditation; in stillness, she was able to listen for her voice ... An intimate recounting of a literary life.
Amina Cain
Positive Publishers Weekly ... a rewarding collection of literary musings, combining personal reflections, criticism, and thoughts on the act of writing ... Readers will relish following Cain’s winding prose and carefully considered conclusions. Fans of her work—and of literary criticism more generally—won’t want to miss this.
Amit Chaudhuri
Rave Kirkus ... the book is only physically slight. It grips the mind, as much with appreciation as with frustration, and teases one into parsing what is real or autofiction, what is changeless or transient. A reader may even enjoy feeling a bit at sea, like the narrator: \'I’ve lost my bearings—not in the city; in its history\' ... A masterful writer in his own subtle, thoughtful, demanding genre.
Charles Leerhsen
Positive Publishers Weekly Irreverent ... Throughout, saucy quips are amply ladled on. It’s a three-dimensional view of a man who cultivated authenticity while he was alive, relayed with similarly frank humor.
Charles Leerhsen
Positive Kirkus This razzmatazz biography zips along nicely ... A chatty, quick-witted portrait of a complicated, tormented man.
George Saunders
Positive Publishers Weekly A wide-ranging collection that alternates his familiar fun house of warped simulations with subtler dramas ... Saunders’s four previous collections shook the earth a bit harder, but he continues to humanize those whom society has worn down to a nub. Despite the author’s shift to quieter character studies, there’s plenty to satisfy longtime devotees.
George Saunders
Rave Kirkus What can\'t George Saunders do? ... Saunders has revealed himself to be nothing less than an American Gogol: funny, pointed, full of nuance, and always writing with a moral heart. This, his first book of short fiction in nearly a decade, only cements the validity of such a point of view. The nine pieces here are smart and funny, speculative yet at the same time written on a human scale, narratives full of love and loss and longing and the necessity of trying to connect ... A tour de force collection that showcases all of Saunders’ many skills.
Leonard Cohen
Rave Publishers Weekly An enthralling collection of work written in the 1950s and ’60s, as complex and dark as his lyrics ... Cohen writes brilliantly of desire and cruelty as his desperate characters yearn for connection. This is magnificent.
Rina Raphael
Rave Publishers Weekly Sharp and evocative ... Guides readers to a more critical consumerism and an understanding that systemic solutions and community focus are required. This astute and revealing investigation packs a punch.
Rina Raphael
Rave Kirkus Eye-opening ... Raphael delves incisively into the marketing techniques used by so-called wellness companies and finds a remarkable level of manipulative cynicism ... She hopes the pendulum will swing back toward a more sensible center; until then, it’s clear that she subscribes to a useful piece of old advice: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is ... Writing with authority and empathy, Raphael tells a disturbing story of taking a good thing and then overdoing it.
Jorie Graham
Rave Publishers Weekly Collecting Graham’s four stellar eco-poetic volumes, this searing and sensitive portrait of environmental contingency is as formally ambitious as it is captivating and wise ... To hold these volumes together is to have proof of Graham’s unmatched powers and to reckon with the resilience the present age demands.
Ava Barry
Rave Publishers Weekly Rainey’s clouded personal history, including both her past as a globe-trotting violin prodigy and the aching void left when her artist-mother vanished when she was 15, adds intrigue. And she has a gift for tossing off memorable lines ... This evocative novel demonstrates that both the city and its magic remain very much alive.
Kirsty Bell
Rave Kirkus Enthralling ... Bell...has lived in Berlin long enough to feel \'the undercurrents and the downward pull that seem inseparable from Berlin’s identity.\' In this nuanced, layered narrative, she effectively describes that sensation, creating a complex hybrid of the past and present ... This sense of jumping between themes could have resulted in a tangle of confusion, but the author skillfully weaves the narrative threads into an elegant tapestry ... A remarkably absorbing work that requires close attention—and repays in full.
Sarah Horowitz
Positive Publishers Weekly Colorful ... Horowitz skillfully contextualizes this lurid tale with details about the Dreyfus affair and other contemporaneous events, and draws a nuanced portrait of Steinheil. This hits the sweet spot between true crime and women’s history.
Eduardo Halfon, trans. by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn
Mixed Publishers Weekly Absurdist, scattershot ... If this is about anything, it’s the messiness of identity, and how the characters use family, country, and history to create themselves and their stories. Unfortunately, the author doesn’t linger long enough on the various characters or situations to keep the reader engaged. It’s the kind of book that aficionados of the author’s work might appreciate, but on its own it tends to frustrate.
Eduardo Halfon, trans. by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn
Rave Kirkus Brief but eventful ... Another minimasterpiece by a master of the form.
Susan Linn
Rave Publishers Weekly Stunning ... Linn’s copious case studies and lucid explanations of the latest research into childhood development build a convincing argument. This is a must-read for parents and educators.
Susan Linn
Rave Kirkus Eye-opening and disturbing ... Linn’s examination of how screens have taken over childhood is a must-read for any parent.
Laurie Lico Albanese
Positive Publishers Weekly Standout ... Even those unfamiliar with the classic will be hooked by this account of a capable woman standing up to the sexist and racial prejudices of her time.
Laurie Lico Albanese
Positive Kirkus The author has incorporated plentiful research about the witch trials and, in Isobel’s present, the Underground Railroad. The rich details of life in Salem in the early 19th century, and especially about Isobel’s creative work as a seamstress and designer, enliven the tale ... Nathaniel Hawthorne plays an unexpected role in this lively fictional look at the origins of his masterpiece.
Mur Lafferty
Positive Smart Bitches Trashy Books This hemming and hawing about the humans’ arrival takes about a good first quarter of the book. I found this part to be a bit of a hurdle as my brain screamed, \'Get to the murders already!\' But when they happen, boy, does it happen quickly! I don’t want to reveal the initial victim that kickstarts everything, as I was personally way off base in my own prediction and I don’t want to spoil any surprise ... While the motivation for the station’s murders and why Mallory carries this curse drives the plot forward, it’s in these observations of us by alien eyes that I found myself immersed ... Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the romance in the book. Yes, there is one, but I personally found it meh. However, I say this as someone who prefers steamier scenes and enemies to lovers. A friends to lovers or second chance trope does nothing for me, sadly. If you love those, you’ll probably find more satisfaction there ... While the setup did take longer than I had liked, stretching the tension to the limits of my patience, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough once we got to the actual murder mystery part. Meeting all of the aliens, seeing how they existed within the station, and their interactions with Mallory was a fun and charming way to world-build, even if it did make me ponder my own frail mortality in the face of potential alien contact. And, despite the romance not being my jam, I know it’ll work better for some of you out there.
Mur Lafferty
Pan Publishers Weekly Lafferty tries to amalgamate a near-future sci-fi setting and a murder mystery plot into a breathless space adventure, but it never quite takes off ... A plethora of quirky alien and human characters inveigled into many subplots muddle through this middling tale, which is often interrupted by disjointed flashbacks. Sci-fi fans will enjoy the hip conversations of Lafferty’s aliens, who are connected in symbiotic two-race pairs, but mystery buffs will see the murder’s solution coming from a light year away. Only Lafferty’s diehard fans need apply.
Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe
Rave Publishers Weekly ... revelatory and often shocking ... Scrupulously documented and fluidly written, this is a jaw-dropping feat of investigative journalism.
Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe
Positive Kirkus A startling case study of how unchecked corporate power affects world affairs—and all of us.
Kim Hye-Jin tr. Jamie Chang
Positive Kirkus ... challenging ... Kim is unsparing in her depictions of the indignities of old age, the corrosiveness of homophobia, and the piercing loneliness that comes from living in a culture of silence ... A heavy but tentatively hopeful look at the struggle for intergenerational understanding through one mother’s eyes.
Kim Hye-Jin tr. Jamie Chang
Rave Publishers Weekly ... excellent ... Kim skillfully depicts the vulnerability and fear underlying her protagonist’s anxiety and anger, laying bare the ways in which family dynamics are fluid and full of paradoxes ... Kim’s compassionate portrayal of the narrator’s contradictions and ever-changing feelings makes her project captivating and moving. Readers will be grateful to discover this new author.
Thomas E. Ricks
Positive Publishers Weekly [A] penetrating study ... Ricks’s military metaphors sometimes feel strained, but they incisively spotlight the nuts and bolts of the movement’s achievements: meticulous planning and organizing, shrewd analysis of goals and the means to accomplish them, maintenance of discipline and morale, and cold-blooded realism. The result is a trenchant and stimulating guide to the strategies and tactics that can achieve sweeping social change.
Thomas E. Ricks
Positive Kirkus A novel interpretation ... A thoughtful contribution to the history of the struggle for civil rights in America.
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Rave Publishers Weekly Achingly gorgeous ... Belcourt weaves in a steady stream of references to work by Judith Butler, Roland Barthes, and Maggie Nelson without losing narrative momentum, and he delivers incendiary reflections on the costs, scars, and power of history and community. This is a breathtaking and hypnotic achievement.
Jess Kidd
Rave Kirkus Moving ... Kidd shows a keen understanding of how thin the boundary between the magic and the mundane is for children and treats their understanding of the world with seriousness and compassion. Her prose has an arresting simplicity that evokes fairy tales, and the echoes between Mayken’s and Gil’s experiences are treats for the reader to discover ... An ambitious, melancholy work of historical fiction that offers two wondrous young protagonists for the price of one.
Jess Kidd
Rave Publishers Weekly Intriguing ... Kidd effortlessly navigates between the two time periods, highlighting the similarities between Mayken’s and Gil’s lives and the increasing dangers they face. Readers will be swept up in this fast-paced narrative.
Ray Nayler
Rave Publishers Weekly Nayler’s masterful debut combines fascinating science and well-wrought characters to deliver a deep dive into the nature of intelligent life ... Nayler provides a tightly focused framework for the challenges Nguyen faces as she attempts to decipher octopus language and culture, which will especially please science-minded readers. Subplots featuring genius hacker Rustem and Eiko, a man trafficked into slavery aboard a fishing vessel, expertly weave into the narrative while also offering readers a broader understanding of the political and technological state of this near-future world. As entertaining as it is intellectually rigorous, this taut exploration of human—and inhuman—consciousness is a knockout.
Ray Nayler
Positive Kirkus Nayler maintains a cool, cerebral tone that matches up with the story\'s eerie underpinnings. Less an SF adventure than a meditation on consciousness and self-awareness, the limitations of human language, and the reasons for those limitations, the novel teaches as it engages. An intriguing unlocking of underwater secrets, with the occasional thrill.
Cody Keenan
Rave Kirkus Pertinent ... A moving portrait of a presidency and its top speechwriter.
David Quammen
Rave Publishers Weekly Quammen recounts in page-turning detail the scientific response to the Covid-19 pandemic ... This is a must-read for anyone looking to get a better handle on the pandemic so far.
David Quammen
Rave Kirkus Authoritative ... In addition to a hair-raising account of the ongoing pandemic, the author delivers an insightful education on public health and an introduction to numerous deadly epidemics over the past 50 years. He also educates readers about the centurylong history of the coronavirus ... Unsettling global health news brilliantly delivered by an expert.
Constance Wu
Rave Publishers Weekly \"Wu...dazzles in this essay collection about love, family, and her hard-won path to Hollywood success ... Wu remained undeterred, and it’s that dogged determination that radiates from every page. Fans will feel lucky to be in on the action.\
Constance Wu
Positive Kirkus The essays—parts of which she cleverly imagines as stage scenes—are intimate and rich in emotional detail. However, the time shifts and occasional lack of thematic connection sometimes limit the impact of the author’s message ... Disjointed in spots but thoughtful and often inspirational.
Simon Morrison
Mixed Kirkus Scholarly ... He does well with the early part of Nicks’ life, using a framework of biographical details and previously published interviews to flesh out how and why she became a singer. Morrison also skillfully handles deep dives into the imagery of Nicks’ lyrics, providing more information about the legend of Rhiannon than most fans will want to know ... Unfortunately, throughout the narrative, Morrison drops in long asides about subjects that are tangential to Nicks and her artistry ... More problematic are the pages of detailed descriptions about recording sessions that don’t involve Nicks as well as snide, speculative comments about her behavior ... A dry biography that lacks the mystical sparkle and steely resolve of the superstar’s success.
Adam Hochschild
Rave Kirkus The book is exceptionally well written, impeccably organized, and filled with colorful, fully developed historical characters. A riveting, resonant account of the fragility of freedom in one of many shameful periods in U.S. history.
Adam Hochschild
Rave Publishers Weekly Expert and eye-opening ... Meticulously researched, fluidly written, and frequently enraging, this is a timely reminder of the \'vigilant respect for civil rights and Constitutional safeguards\' needed to protect democracy and forestall authoritarianism.
Maggie Haberman
Rave Kirkus A damning portrait of narcissism, megalomania, and abject failure—and the price the country is paying in the bargain.
Orhan Pamuk tr. Ekin Oklap
Positive Publishers Weekly ... ambitious ... Though Mina’s romanticizing of her ancestors and her nation’s history can sometimes be overwrought, the story she shapes is consistently captivating. As a result, the grandiose statements—\'emotions and decisions of individuals could often change the course of history\'—wind up ringing true. Though it doesn’t stand with the author’s best work, the cracking narrative will keep readers in for the long haul.
Orhan Pamuk tr. Ekin Oklap
Positive Kirkus There is a lot at play here, and while Pamuk’s prose is as elegant and informed as ever, an occasional hint of pomposity does waft through his pages. Then, too, there is so much information to be conveyed that the burden sometimes falls to his characters, and dialogue becomes an unfortunate vehicle for exposition ... It’s possible the novel is overdetermined ... On top of all that, there’s a murder mystery at play. And yet, despite these flaws, Pamuk’s storytelling is so compelling and coy; his intelligence and interests so wide-ranging; the project, as a whole, so ambitious, that the book has survived its own excesses. There is a great deal here to savor ... Not quite a triumph, Pamuk’s latest work still manages to delight.
Jessi Hempel
Positive Kirkus As she explores how her family healed from the secrets it kept, Hempel also offers provocative glimpses into the complexities of what it truly means to forgive and love ... A thoughtful, compelling, unique memoir.
Jessi Hempel
Positive Publishers Weekly ... eloquent, intricately woven ... Hempel’s work has an urgent, intimate feel as she documents her family’s unraveling and eventual rebuilding ... what rises from the rubble is a deeply moving portrait of generational trauma and painstaking repair. This interrogation of familial fissures and bonds radiates with empathy and grace.
Jeremiah Moss
Rave Publishers Weekly ... razor-sharp essays ... Shot through with pinpoint character sketches, incisive reportage on the Occupy City Hall protest movement, and lucid discussions of queer theory, this is a vital contribution to New York City history.
Jeremiah Moss
Rave Kirkus ... dynamic ... With raw emotion and spot-on sociological portraits, Moss ponders the reasons why \'I feel such relief in the turbulence of the disorderly city\' ... A captivating chronicle driven by keen wit, a strong sense of place, and a clear love of a city’s old soul.
Joanna Quinn
Rave Publishers Weekly The emotional upheaval of the interwar years in England is dramatized afresh in Quinn’s dazzling and imaginative debut ... Thorny, idiosyncratic Cristabel is a formidable first among equals in this expansive cast of memorable eccentrics. Peacetime whimsy gracefully segues into scenes of unbearable tension and heart-wrenching suspense as Cristabel boldly infiltrates Paris on the eve of its liberation ... a reading experience to be long cherished.
Joanna Quinn
Mixed Kirkus The war that begins just as the children enter adulthood sweeps them apart and turns Quinn\'s debut into what feels almost like a different book entirely, driven by fear and suspense rather than whimsy and humor, with scenes of espionage and violence careening toward what one suspects is inevitable tragedy. Which, to be fair, is exactly the sort of thing war does in real life. Told partly with letters, lists, and scrapbook cuttings, there\'s something old-fashioned about this novel, even in its handling of its stubborn, independent female lead, a Jo March type, if Jo March joined the British special forces and became a secret agent in France ... This big, old-fashioned, seriocomic \'crumbling estate\' family saga works best before the war comes along.
Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Finney Boylan
Positive Kirkus ... the novel is well plotted but sometimes feels long-winded, including characters who don\'t have much significance and details that don\'t seem relevant. It takes a while for the book to get moving, but once the trial begins, it becomes more compelling, and the courtroom scenes are where the writing shines brightest. The characters aren\'t as well developed as they should be, though, often feeling wooden or monochromatic—some always say the right thing while others always say or do the wrong thing—and the ending is predictable ... A well-paced story that highlights several timely issues, with a stimulating courtroom trial that makes it worth reading.
Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Finney Boylan
Positive Publishers Weekly ... spellbinding ... Both teens have troubled relationships with their fathers, and the authors painstakingly explore the impact of physically and emotionally abusive men on their families. After a big reveal in the second half, the canvas stretches to include a primer on transgender issues, and the shift is mostly seamless though sometimes didactic. More successful is the atmospheric texture provided with depictions of Olivia harvesting honey and the art of beekeeping, and the riveting trial drama. Overall, it’s a fruitful collaboration.
Kieran Setiya
Positive Publishers Weekly ... insightful ... The critical engagement with historical philosophers gives the impression of a lively debate, and Setiya excels at discerning which ideas speak to modern maladies and which don’t hold up. This thought-provoking treatise enlightens.
Lydia Millet
Rave Publishers Weekly A brilliant story of survival...subtler and more effective than the NBA-shortlisted A Children’s Bible ... Millet bakes a sense of foreboding into the atmosphere, making the scenes especially fraught. Her character work—notably of the men—is precise and stunning, as she locates their foibles and virtues, and injects a surprisingly moving dose of optimism into Gil and the married couple as they try to endure. This wonderful and dynamic writer is at the top of her game.
Lydia Millet
Rave Kirkus How we can nurture ourselves, the people dear to us, and the world around us are key issues in this gentle, meditative novel, told from Gil’s point of view to slowly build a marvelously full, if inadvertent, self-portrait ... Philosophical questions are raised with a very light touch by Millet, who enfolds thematic and psychological depths in elegant, deceptively simply prose. Her lovely, moving conclusion affirms that \'separateness had always been the illusion…the world was inside you.\' Another life-affirming work from a writer who always carves her own literary path.
Therese Beharrie
Rave Publishers Weekly ... charming ... Levi is a charming hero up against impossibly high stakes, and Gemma’s sunshiny outlook is sure to endear her to readers. Their slow-burning will-they, won’t-they combined with Beharrie’s laugh-out-loud narration makes this a surefire crowd pleaser.
Elizabeth McCracken
Positive Publishers Weekly A mischievous and loving portrait of her late mother ... A refreshing outing, and one that sees McCracken gleefully shatter genre lines.
Elizabeth McCracken
Rave Kirkus Braided into McCracken’s gorgeously spiraling narrative is an expansive meditation on the act of writing and, intriguingly, the art of writing memoir ... The novel assumes a hybrid quality that could be called autofiction but really is an homage to the art of great storytelling ... Novel? Memoir? Who cares. It’s a great story, beautifully told.
Elizabeth McCracken
Rave The Star Tribune ... funny, perceptive ... McCracken\'s mother, Natalie, is such an original person and worthy subject that it\'s evident why her loss drove McCracken to convey her spirit in a book ... This compact, wise, heartfelt book is another sign that McCracken continues to do it right.
Julia Scheeres
Rave Publishers Weekly A page-turning biography ... The authors paint a vivid picture of the challenges Robinson faced ... The account is enlivened with copious excerpts from Robinson’s column and her memoir, all of which bring home her firebrand style. This entertaining account delivers.
Donald Yacovone
Rave Publishers Weekly A monumental assessment ... Yacovone’s survey is expansive and eye-opening, revealing that the problem was a national phenomenon...that greatly influenced the country’s political discourse. This troubling and powerful history is essential reading.
Donald Yacovone
Rave Kirkus Provocative ... An outstanding contribution to the historical literature of American racism and racist ideologies.
Sandra Cisneros
Rave Publishers Weekly The introspective latest from Cisneros sweeps through her life with blunt observations and heartfelt prayers ... These plainspoken, affecting poems reveal a writer fortified by a sometimes difficult past who has come to embrace the freedom that comes with self-acceptance.
Jonathan Coe
Rave Kirkus There is so much to enjoy about this book, which is rooted in extensive research about Wilder\'s life and the making of Fedora, including the recollections of someone who actually lived a version of this experience—and yet it reads like a fairy tale ... Beautifully written and full of wisdom, this unusual and fascinating book contains many treats, including a miniscreenplay done in Wilder\'s style and an unforgettable scene in which Calista and Billy sample Brie de Meaux on a French farm where it is made. If you love novels set in the world of moviemaking, this is as good as the best of them.
Jonathan Coe
Rave Publishers Weekly A witty elegy for the last gasp of old Hollywood ... A lengthy flashback to Wilder’s life as a German émigré is affectingly rendered in screenplay format. Coe’s fictionalized account of the real-life filming of Fedora...is filled with hilarious anecdotes and some hard-won wisdom. As Wilder embarks on what will turn out to be his penultimate picture, Coe brings great sympathy to his touching depiction of an older artist fighting to remain relevant. Coe’s fans will fall for this one.
Margaret A. Burnham
Rave Publishers Weekly A searing study ... Burnham illuminates the role that white terror played in controlling Black life, resistance efforts mounted by Black communities in the face of indifference and hostility from federal and local governments, and the legacy of Jim Crow in the modern-day judicial system. The result is an essential reckoning with America’s history of racial violence.
Margaret A. Burnham
Rave Kirkus A searing indictment ... Most of the author’s illuminating and disturbing examples come from the mid-20th-century because abundant federal records exist ... An indispensable addition to the literature of social justice and civil rights.
Elias Canetti, ed. by Joshua Cohen
Rave Publishers Weekly Impressive, career-spanning ... Varied and powerful, this is a great introduction to Canetti’s work.
Elias Canetti, ed. by Joshua Cohen
Positive Kirkus A well-chosen introduction to a lauded intellectual.
Stephanie Lacava
Mixed Publishers Weekly Sharp if uneven ... While LaCava is a funny and astute observer...a high-stakes turn involving Margot’s blurry arrangement with Graves fails to come together. Though it ultimately frustrates, LaCava gets plenty of mileage out of her protagonist’s small dramas.
Lara Gabrielle
Rave Publishers Weekly Sparkling ... Gabrielle’s narrative is a breezy, colorful saga of Old Hollywood, full of showbiz picaresque, glamorous parties at Hearst’s San Simeon castle, and a touching romance between two flawed, magnetic personalities. Film buffs will want to check this one out.
Lucy Ives
Positive Publishers Weekly A discursive and funny Nabokovian story ... Brave readers will enjoy piecing together the puzzle.
Lucy Ives
Positive Kirkus To invoke the word metanarrative doesn’t really begin to describe what the author is doing here—at least in part because readers might reasonably debate what the \'narrative\' is. Ives has created a novel in which the main character finds release, if not catharsis, in a novella written by another author who is also Ives’ creation ... This work is a commentary on itself, which should feel claustrophobic, but, by the end, readers might come away with the sense that Erin may have escaped this enchanted circle. Not the kind of resolution most readers crave, perhaps, but it’s something. A novel—in the loosest sense of the term—for people who love footnotes.
Annie Ernaux, trans. by Alison L. Strayer
Rave Publishers Weekly Entrancing ... Ernaux’s writing is astonishingly candid as she illustrates the ways loss, heartache, and love intersect with her craft as a writer ... Fans will relish every scintillating detail.
Annie Ernaux, trans. by Alison L. Strayer
Positive The Complete Review ... uncharacteristically long for an Ernaux-book, fuller if not necessarily richer. Where her novels (or novellas or memoirs or whatever one wants to call them) tend towards the almost stark and simple, Getting Lost is expansive -- the events drawn-out, lingering, inescapable, the frequent repetitions making it realistic in a different way ... resembles nothing so much as a a lovelorn teen\'s Angst-ridden diary. Obsessive, tear-stained, intimate, it is dominated by emotion -- yet much of it is cooly and succinctly observed. It is an interesting yet unsettling read.
Kamila Shamsie
Mixed Publishers Weekly Nuanced ... Though the revelations aren’t that surprising, Shamsie is perceptive when it comes to picking apart the nuances of the women’s shifting dynamic. It’s not the author’s best, but it shows her to be a consistently thoughtful writer.
Kamila Shamsie
Positive Kirkus Th[e first] portion of the novel is sophisticated and poignant and crescendos to a pivotal scene in a car that is suspenseful, chilling, and masterfully executed. The second half fast-forwards to 2019, when the pair are living in London ... This portion of the novel is more scattered than the first. The maneuvering required for their powerful roles, while it allows Shamsie to touch on hot-button political issues, often lacks the exquisite nuance of her depiction of long-lasting friendship ... A quiet, moving portrait of two lifelong friends.
Bruce Henderson
Rave Publishers Weekly ... exceptional ... Henderson enriches his sweeping overview of the Pacific campaign with intimate profiles of Tom Sakamoto, one of only three Japanese Americans to witness Japan’s 1945 surrender aboard the USS Missouri, and other Nisei soldiers who made vital contributions to American victories at Iwo Jima, Leyte, and elsewhere. The result is a stirring tribute to the courage and sacrifice of young men who exemplified \'the true definition of patriotism.\'
Bruce Henderson
Positive Kirkus Henderson brings a great deal of investigative acumen to his latest to give personal depth to the bigger picture ... This book is an important step in providing much-needed recognition for these brave Americans ... A fascinating piece of history with threads of courage and poignancy, brought to life by an accomplished storyteller.
Kate Atkinson
Rave Kirkus While the story unfolds over a period of weeks and is almost entirely contained to London, it sprawls across social classes and gives voice to a glorious miscellany of characters ... Like all of Atkinson’s novels, her latest defies easy categorization. It’s historical fiction, but there’s a sense of knowingness that feels contemporary, and if this irony may feel anachronistic, it also feels spiritually correct. Intertwined mysteries drive the plot, but this is not a mystery in any conventional sense. The adjective Dickensian feels too clichéd to be meaningful, but Atkinson does excel at creating a big, bustling universe fully inhabited by vivid characters. And, like Dickens, Atkinson is obviously fond of her characters—even the ones who do horrible things. Sometimes this means that she lets us know the fate of a character with a walk-on part. Sometimes her care manifests in giving a character the sort of perfect ending that seldom exists outside of Greek tragedy or screwball comedy. And, in one exquisite moment, the author shows her love by releasing characters from the confines of the narrative altogether—a choice she seems to offer as a gift to both her creations and her readers ... Already one of the best writers working, Atkinson just gets better and better.
Kate Atkinson
Rave Publishers Weekly ... glittering ... Atkinson’s incisive prose and byzantine narrative elegantly excavate the deceit, depravity, and destruction of Nellie’s world. She also turns this rich historical into a sophisticated cat-and-mouse tale as the various actors try to move in on Nellie’s turf. Atkinson is writing at the top of her game.
Annie Proulx
Positive Kirkus ... ranges widely in this short book. She provides a particularly good compact history of the draining of the fens of eastern England in an act pitting capitalists against working people and turning the vast wetlands, \'one of the world’s richest environments,\' to farmland—and, of course, releasing greenhouse gases to accompany those generated by the first factories of the Industrial Revolution ... An eloquent, engaged argument for the preservation of a small and damp yet essential part of the planet.
Annie Proulx
Rave Publishers Weekly ... stunning ... Her dire warnings are leavened with glimpses of potential hope, but the bigger picture is bleak ... Proulx’s prose is, as ever, stunning ... This resonant ode to a planet in peril is tough to forget.
Silas House
Positive Kirkus House delivers this straightforward adventure with efficiency and poignancy, capturing the brief idyll of freedom Lark and his family enjoyed before leaving and the newfound appreciation he has for an environment and liberal society that are both rapidly collapsing. And the novel’s style has a clarity and rough-hewn simplicity that bring the story’s conflicts into sharp relief ... The novel’s chief flaw is its overfamiliarity, to the point of almost feeling like a pastiche of dystopian-novel plots and styles ... House seamlessly works in present-day concerns about rampant fundamentalism and willful ignorance about climate catastrophe, but for anybody well versed in the genre, this will feel like well-trod ground ... A cleareyed and engaging, if familiar, apocalyptic yarn.
Silas House
Positive Publishers Weekly ... brutal yet hopeful ... House’s dystopia is an overly familiar one, slipstreaming behind Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, though the author fearlessly leans into his dark vision and adds texture with flashbacks to Lark’s early years and chapters narrated from Seamus’s point of view. The result is a fiercely visceral reading experience.
George Prochnik
Positive Kirkus A dark, brooding, and highly literate meditation.
George Prochnik
Pan Publishers Weekly ... overwrought ... Prochnik’s musings betray too much focus on Trump as the cause of everything evil. Several chapters revisit the trauma that the author and his liberal circle suffered on election night in 2016, which he compares to the sinking of the Titanic, the 9/11 attacks, Kristallnacht, and other Nazi outrages ... Prochnik’s unfocused erudition illuminates little beyond Trump’s ability to stoke hysteria in his detractors while robbing them of perspective.
Iain Reid
Rave Publishers Weekly ... exquisite ... Reid teases at the secrets of Six Cedars without ever fully resolving them, amid Penny’s confused but salient perceptions, leaving readers contemplating their own mortality and primed to see the sinister behind the mundane. Despite the lack of resolution, the story feels complete as it closes with a disturbingly upbeat and peaceful scene. This deep plunge into fears about growing old and losing control is unforgettable.
Fredrik Backman
Mixed Publishers Weekly ... satisfying if overlong ... Backman’s narration often feels heavy-handed, and his aphorisms alternate from opaque to obvious ... Moreover, many of the chapter-length asides are entirely too aside and lead nowhere. The tension, however, remains palpable after a former hockey player returns to Beartown and everyone assumes he’s out to settle a score, and a series of threats escalate into explosive violence and a painful resolution. This will do the trick for insatiable Beartown fans, though others can take a pass.
Fredrik Backman
Mixed Kirkus Beloved characters return, new ones are introduced, tragedy is promised. Backman repeatedly tells the reader about his characters’ overwhelming love for each other, but their ability to actually care for one another comes and goes with the demands of the unwieldy plot. He wants to assure readers that this makes his characters complex, but it really renders them pawns. To stoke the conflict between the towns, he includes not only the pregnancy-ending factory accident of a nameless woman (ushering in a suspiciously out-of-place anti-abortion sentiment), but also the murder of a beloved dog. These machinations are not alone in being soppy and unearned. The book is almost 700 pages long and covers only a two-week span. Backman writes with wit and sincerity and is a talented web-spinner, but with a tale this long, the lack of nuance becomes grating. There’s also a brief \'not all men\' message that, given the toxic nature of the narrative, is hard to ignore ... A moralistic noir masquerading as a heart-warmer.
Adam Hamdy
Rave Publishers Weekly ... stellar ... Intelligently plotted and powerfully told, Hamdy’s deviously twisty tale of fate and coincidence, love and courage, and profoundly tough choices will shock, stir, and haunt readers long after the final page. Hamdy has upped his game with this one.
Adam Hamdy
Mixed Kirkus For about three-quarters of its length, this British thriller balances twists and turns with weighty matters of fate, regret, grief, and longing. It’s a multimedia production, with narrative bites coming from court transcripts, transcribed video tapes, good old-fashioned letters, and a third-person omniscient narrator. It keeps the reader guessing, as a thriller is supposed to. And then it falls off a cliff, much as one of its characters does. It hints at a possible science-fiction element throughout; three of its main characters are high-level scientists, and the novel leaves a trail of breadcrumbs suggesting that their work might come into play. When it does, the results are kind of interesting, then quite imaginative, as long as you don’t think about it too much. Then the author explains. And explains. And explains. Harri all but vanishes for multiple pages at a time. Come back, Harri! She does, eventually, but by then the reader is swimming in scientific theory and wrestling with the book’s wordy take on the space-time continuum. It’s admirable when an author is willing to take a leap, but this one happens so fast and switches the novel’s tone (not to mention its genre) so completely that the reader might wonder what happened to that lean thriller they were just reading. The novel ultimately gets so mired in plot exposition that the ending seems further away the closer you get ... Too much exposition stalls a promising thriller.
Ann Mah
Rave Kirkus ... delightful and surprisingly insightful ... Making good use of historical and biographical details, but not strictly bound by them, Mah follows her heroine from the ocean-liner journey ... Mah convincingly depicts this year as a pivotal one in Bouvier\'s life, both a sentimental and a political education ... Mah, who clearly loves Paris and all the details of French living, affectionately and precisely captures life in the post–World War II city, with many deprivations but a spirit of hope. Her Jacqueline—bright, observant, and a little naïve—is an engaging and believable character, and it\'s easy to imagine how her experiences during this year will shape her future life. While Jackie runs into people the reader will recognize, Mah doesn\'t overstate their importance in her life ... Staying within the consciousness of Jacqueline as she is at this point, Mah smoothly walks the line between biography and fiction ... Fans of the former first lady and Paris should be beguiled.
Ann Mah
Positive Publishers Weekly ... sumptuous ... Mah brings insight and vivid details to young Jacqueline Bouvier’s adventurous spirit. Historical fiction fans will be drawn like moths to a flame.
Ainslie Hogarth
Rave Kirkus Hogarth\'s way with words enlivens every page of this psycho romp ... Her fearlessness and utter lack of inhibition animate the desperate longing and bitter trauma at the heart of this ghost story, administered with a steady drip of comic relief ... Profane, insane, hilarious, disgusting—and unexpectedly moving.
Ainslie Hogarth
Rave Publishers Weekly Hogarth turns the tale of a haunting on its head in a masterfully crafted horror novel that’s by turns humorous and deeply unsettling ... Abby makes a wonderful narrator; full of wry insights and frothy humor, she fully engages reader sympathies—until revelations about her childhood with her own mother suggest that she may be projecting her troubled emotions onto others. This dark domestic drama packs a punch.
Anthony Sattin
Rave Kirkus Brimming with literary, historical, and anthropological references, Sattin’s book makes a splendid rejoinder—and without its fictions—to Bruce Chatwin’s now-classic book The Songlines ... A treat for any thoughtful traveler, armchair or otherwise.