Among the many scars left by the Holocaust remain the gaping grounds and bulldozed squares where houses of Jewish worship once stood. More than sites of faith, these buildings were community centers, nodes for family and social life. And in their shape and size, the European synagogues were structures unique to a time and place. […]
Nineteen-year-old Amara Kalogridas’ life isn’t perfect: Her mother died nine years ago, after which her father struggled with alcohol abuse, but her family has pulled through. Now, Amara, her brother, Greg, her best friend, Sophie, and her archaeologist father are working on a dig in Tunisia, where they’re hoping to learn more about the rise […]
This debut story collection lifts its title from a 1909 manifesto co-authored by urban designer Daniel H. Burnham, which also provides the epigram invoking the city’s motto: “Urbs in Horto—a city set in a garden.” More than a century later, that garden is no Eden. There are way more cracks than flowers: cracks in the […]
Ellie Belmont and Kathryn Kepler, together for five years, live a happy and fulfilling life in Edina, a suburb of Minneapolis. Despite their contentment, an email from Kathryn’s high school boyfriend prompts Ellie to face her fear that Kathryn might leave her for a man. The recently widowed Gary Gibson, a successful Florida real estate […]
This literary pas de deux from the veteran author and Pulitzer winner Butler is ostensibly set in Paris in 2020. That’s where novelist Amanda Duval and literary scholar Howard Blevins had hoped to revisit the places they first met in 1968—before they married, divorced, and remarried back in the U.S. But with Covid forcing everyone […]
Prince Elias of Gledann, the resentful heir of a domineering and abusive king, is forced into a politically motivated marriage with Princess Fu Liling of Toguan. Liling is both a dutiful daughter and a reluctant pawn; her bond with her own powerful father grants her unusual privileges as she steels herself to manipulate foreign courts. […]
This fourth installment of a series finds Farrell’s main characters, part-time private investigator Eddie O’Connell and his Uncle Mike, once again caught up in horse racing, bookmaking, and the mob. Mike, a retired cop, is the owner of O’Connell’s Tavern in Chicago, where Eddie acts as bar manager. As the novel opens, Eddie’s girlfriend, Nicole […]
In a prologue, Peter Jay uses the key given to him by his recently deceased father, John, to access a manuscript that “looks beneath the record” with margins “crowded with a single name, written over and over—Mr. Smith.” The narrative then continues in chapters that jump back and forth in time to share the saga […]
Journalist and commentator Freedland, author of The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz To Warn the World, writes that Adolf Hitler enjoyed overwhelming support from everyday Germans soon after he took office—and nearly to the end. He drew their backing with his declaration that supposedly depraved foreigners working with perfidious fellow citizens […]
Bourdain, notes editor Witherspoon, “had wanted to be a writer all his life.” His fame as the host of several television travel series, she adds, was accidental: The gigs were someone else’s idea, but as long as he got to write, it was fine. Some of the pieces assembled here are near-transcripts from those shows, […]