About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Nada Alic
Positive Booklist This sharp and biting debut story collection is tailor-made for millennial women. Alic imbues each story with humor and a keen talent for precise observation, all with a nonjudgmental wink as her characters traverse our twenty-first-century culture ... Alic takes surprising and sometimes absurdist spins on familiar themes. Each story is bookended by related, Twitter-esque interludes that remind readers that such sporadic, irreverent \'bad thoughts\' are worthy of attention and meaningful in a society that persists in dismissing women’s experiences. With a novel forthcoming, Alic is proving herself a bold new voice.
Jon Mooallem
Rave Booklist Mooallem brings together the best of his journalistic essays to create an intellectually moving collection. Together, the survival stories and treatises on environmental and social traumas offer a meditation on how various systems...cause and exacerbate problems with sometimes devastating and irreversible results ... lso included are his signature deep dives into idiosyncratic lives, from a man who created his own museum to a pigeon-based Ponzi scheme and a fervent community inspired by clouds. Readers will laugh and tear up as Mooallem makes us care about his subjects and feel better off for knowing their stories.
Natalie Eve Garrett
Rave Booklist Absolute must-read ... Serving at once as a how-to, therapy, and a literary companion, this collection will bring light to readers.
Claire Kohda
Positive Booklist Inventive and charming ... Kohda has created a provocative, sympathetic, and satisfying dive into the mind of an unusual young woman at a crossroads.
Katya Kazbek
Positive Booklist Transitions and growing pains are the themes in this debut novel ... Kazbek’s characters escape into books, drinking, and the meaning of songs, while the chapters are interspersed with a Russian fairy tale...which brings a bit of the fantastical to Mitya’s otherwise troublesome reality.
Megan Mayhew Bergman
Rave Booklist [A] new and compelling short story collection in which the past and present are in constant communication, weaving the intricate ties between families and lovers and their hopes and disappointments ... Ultimately, these are stories you want to live in, uninhabitable as they may be for the characters. In a collection perfectly suited for our moment, Bergman examines what remains of what was given to us and suggests how we might move on as the world continues to change around us.
Elaine Hsieh Chou
Rave Booklist ... engaging, humorous, and biting ... Chou’s distinct, self-effacing voice makes for a fun ride into a highly charged realm, with a plot that naturally escalates as she looks into various claims about truth in art, who appropriates whom, the limits of allyship, and how we gaslight ourselves in order to accept everyday racial horrors. The narration includes news articles, research excerpts, ransom notes, and even one highly comical courtroom-transcript version of Ingrid’s inner monologue. Overall, Chou reflects a world that’s complex and entertaining, one that will leave readers with a renewed perspective.