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EVERY DAY I READ

“I still can’t believe I wrote and published an essay collection spurred solely by my love for reading.” Readers of this book might feel the same way. Filled with breathless pleasure, this clutch of essays by Korean author Hwang (Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, 2022) hovers between the trite and the profound. Big books take […]

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FROSTLINES

National Geographic writer Shea has traveled throughout the far north and illuminates it with an emphasis on climate change. He concentrates on lands from northern Canada to Norway, which are warming three or four times more rapidly than temperate regions. The heat is destroying the Arctic cryosphere—sea ice, snow, permafrost, weather patterns, and ocean currents […]

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THIS YEAR

Too often, lyrics collections can be little more than keepsakes for fans, easily thrown together and presented without any context or new material. That was never going to be the case for Darnielle—the indie folk musician has always had a strong literary bent, as evidenced by his three well-received novels, Wolf in White Van (2014), […]

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BELLYRINA

In this installment of the Dancing Ever After series, young Peter enjoys a beautiful morning alongside friends Milo the Cat, Ren the Bird, and Roxy the Duck. Suddenly, “a HUNGRY WOLF with a grumbly tummy” swoops in, swallowing Roxy and chasing the others until Peter captures it. A large sneeze launches Roxy out of the […]

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AMERICA’S MIDDLE EAST

Lynch, a specialist in international affairs, writes sharply of what he calls America’s “morally and strategically catastrophic policy” in the Middle East, premised on support for autocrats in a region whose burgeoning and mostly young population is “bursting with frustrated talent and boundless potential that neither needs nor wants America to provide order.” Those people […]

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DEATH AND DINUGUAN

Life in Shady Palms suits Lila Macapagal down to the Illinois ground. The tiny town is devoid of chain restaurants and megastores (there’s not even a Walmart), leaving plenty of room for Lila, Elena Torres, and Adeena Awan to offer residents treats like mocha chai latte and white chocolate flavored with pistachio, rose water, and […]

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ROBERT B. PARKER’S SHOWDOWN

In Boston, private detective Spenser meets young Daniel Lopez, whose Guatemalan immigrant mother, Marisol, was murdered six weeks ago in Miami. “It has come to my attention, Mr. Spenser,” he says, “that a lot of my life story turned out to be a lie.” Because of a DNA test, Daniel thinks he is the unacknowledged […]

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ENCOUNTERS WITH JANE AUSTEN

Few writers have seen their work reinterpreted as much as Jane Austen’s. “We all encounter Austen differently and from the position of where and when we read her,” writes the scholar Jennie Batchelor in the book’s introduction. “How we read her changes as the world changes around us.” This anthology, a melange of fiction, poetry, […]

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THE HOLY NAIL

It’s 1945 and World War II is effectively over in Europe. Two American GIs, Nick Genova and Joe Cohen, have fought their way up the Italian Peninsula and are now on leave in Milan. The two New Yorkers are so close that they’re known as a single unit called “Brooklyn.” Nick has heard about a […]

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WELCOME TO THE FAMILY

It was supposed to be, in the words of Universal Pictures’ Scott Stuber, “a small kids and cars movie for spring break.” But in the hands of director Rob Cohen, and stars Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, the 2001 movie The Fast and the Furious became something else—a massive, iconic blockbuster that turned into an […]