In New Jersey in 2000, Tony Mazza (like matzah, only not, ha ha) stumbles out of a courtroom, wondering where he’s gone wrong in his life, and his narrative provides a thousand answers ranging from funny to sad. He relates his life in reverse: 2000 becomes 1994, then 1991 and so on, going back to […]
Alexander Matthews retired from the CIA and started Trinity Capital, a highly successful venture capital firm that often brings him to Russia. Once he’d been the CIA’s top spy in Moscow, but that’s all behind him now. But the Agency asks him for a favor: help extricate a Russian asset code-named Byron, a KGB-trained intelligence […]
Belichick coached the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl wins, but here he targets readers in less glamorous fields. “You know the feeling of settling back at your desk and opening your email after a long vacation?” he writes. NFL coaches do—every summer when training camp starts. Belichick encourages us to view such workplace […]
After Sir Julian Marston-Lang’s shady family did their level best to see that he didn’t inherit Marston Hall, his stately ancestral home outside of London, in Heley’s last book, False Witness (2024), some of the locals are determined that his efforts to rehabilitate the neglected property come to naught. Egged on by Sir Julian’s own […]
For playwright Ruhl, life has been a history of teachers. From her parents, through her kindergarten and school years, through college and graduate school, to professional life, Ruhl learns from everyone. She shows us how even the smallest moment can instruct, how a child can teach a parent, and how true creativity demands a willingness […]
Sometimes a celebrity memoir is all about the glitz and the glam, the hobnobbing with the who’s who of the media industry; Carter’s new memoir delivers on this front. She dishes on her run-ins with RuPaul, David Byrne, and a juicy fake kiss with pop star Pink among other celebrity encounters over the course of […]
Geneva Finch, 20, is on the beach near the festival celebrating novelist Mira Wallacz, who has just gone missing. She overhears Mira’s unauthorized biographer, a purported longtime friend, and a jealous-seeming literary rival discussing Mira; one comments that she “stirred a lot of unconscious anger.” Geneva, who came to the conference due to an affinity […]
It’s 1979, and Mickey, who was Surf City’s chief of police and is now Long Beach Island’s “one and only detective,” is in a helicopter above the southern New Jersey shoreline. The pilot is Claude Stellwag, who, like her recently deceased husband, is a Vietnam War veteran; he’s also one of her two current suitors. […]
Seventeen-and-a-half-year-old Alex thinks she’s seen every variety of foster mom. Her latest one, Monica, seems to be the overly earnest and anxious type. Alex has always been an urbanite, residing in San Francisco and other cities, so living in rural Jefferson, California, with Monica is an adjustment. (There is dial-up internet, and many cows.) In […]
It’s 1988, and Ben Davidson lives with his family in Tacoma, Washington. He has a passion for creating objects out of wood; more specifically, he makes custom mailboxes that look like houses as a hobby. Ben would love to do it for a living, but he wonders how he could ever make enough money selling […]