Midway through his handsomely illustrated study of mapmaking, Cheshire quotes diarist Harold Nicolson’s eyewitness account of President Woodrow Wilson kneeling over a map at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, tracing new borders with his finger. The scene captures the book’s central concern: our enduring desire to organize the world through cartography. As the writer […]
Referred to as “the mother” and “the son,” these two people—like characters in Family Meal (2023) and Memorial (2020)—are equipped with the psychological tools needed to repair a wounded relationship but are almost entirely uncertain how to employ them. Truculent and alcoholic, he’s an English tutor in Tokyo but lately he’s been “forgetting his words.” […]
The three young women at the center of O’Hare’s debut—Róise, Maggie, and Harley—are closing out their 20s with a bang. Though “Róise assumed they would evolve naturally from twenty-something buck eejits into secure and self-actualized young women who had skincare regimes and remembered to pay the council tax on time,” this is definitely not on […]
Mike, a fluffy gray stray, has been searching for the perfect family. Older companions Annabell and Rose seem ideal, with their friendly faces, generous supply of tuna cans, and “hands just right for belly scratches.” But when the pair argue over who will take responsibility for Mike (“I can’t look after a cat! I already […]
After spending a year convalescing, 14-year-old Ella finds herself changed. Her left leg is weak, leaving her with a limp and requiring her to wear a special shoe. Being around a lot of people is overwhelming, which makes crowding into the Underground every night to shelter from air raids nerve-wracking—especially because the tunnels trigger memories […]
Half a century ago, a young Ugandan, expelled from the country for being of Asian origin and a refugee in England, refused to be relocated from London to a distant camp, saying, “We protest at being treated as objects or, at best, as cattle.” This affords development economist Easterly a starting point addressing the question […]
Amore, co-author of Stealing Rembrandts (2011) and head of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, here describes the colorful life of Myles Connor, a rock musician who turned to a life of crime throughout New England in the 1960s and ’70s. The author details many of Connor’s early exploits, including impersonating an […]
Maven Blackthorn hasn’t been home since her mom died under suspicious circumstances 12 years ago, but the death of her grandmother, Lorinda, forces her return to Solstice, Vermont. Maven’s daughter, Beatrix, has never seen where her mother grew up, but she quickly learns the Blackthorns have a reputation for witchcraft, largely fueled by a centuries-long […]
After a meteor crashes near Vincennes, Indiana, a cockroach-like, gigantic kaiju crawls out and starts causing mayhem; the U.S. military dubs it the Palmetto Bug Monster. A second behemoth soon appears in Alaska—a massive creature akin to a gecko, which surfaces in a dormant volcano. It’s the latter kaiju—regrettably referred to by authorities as “He-Knew-Pat-Sajak,” […]
After the influx of refugees from the ongoing genocide, Dževahira Torlak, who goes by Seka, lives in besieged Srebrenica with her parents, grandparents, older brother, her mother’s sister and sister-in-law, as well as an uncle and two young cousins. Her family has taken in two refugees, Edina Muharemović and her son, Ramo, who is Seka’s […]