Writing in oratorical language, Salomon begins with her subject’s childhood in Mississippi, where “hate ran as deep as the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers,” but the love she received from her aunt and grandmother “flowed stronger than hate and river currents.” Young Myrlie showed the strength of character necessary to confront white bullies and later to […]
Pizza-making begins promisingly (“Mix. Roll. Pull”), but tossing the dough brings disaster: “SPLAT.” The pair are determined (“Again,” “pull”), but alas, the final step is always followed by “STICK,” “SPLAT,” and “PLOP,” whether it’s Penguin or Owl throwing the pie to the sky. Draped in dough, they finally have a joint light bulb moment—time for […]
It was sci-fi writer William Gibson who said that the future is already here; it’s just very unevenly distributed. Kobie, a contributing editor at Wired and the futures editor at PC Pro, would probably agree, as she romps through a series of gee-whiz ideas for machines that have failed to fulfill their much-hyped promise. The […]
It’s the 1970s in Walnut Creek, in an unnamed U.S. state, long before cellphones and social media, and preteen Jimmy Hamilton daydreams about big league baseball, throws crab apples at the neighbor’s cat, and hopes his mom doesn’t order him to tear down his tree fort. On the plus side, summer and Little League are […]
Patricia is a middle-aged, single mother whose newlywed only daughter, Ashley, died after being denied a medically necessary abortion. Ashley’s husband, David, is suing Ashley’s doctor, the hospital, and the hospital’s lawyer, Brenda Phillips, who plans to run for office on a conservative, pro-life platform. Patricia plans a more drastic action: murder. But when she […]
New Yorker staff writer and journalism professor Lemann, author of a previous title on the SAT (The Big Test), contributes to Princeton’s “Our Compelling Interests” series by addressing the problem of access to higher education. With some selective colleges and universities reinstating the standardized SAT as an admissions criterion (after dropping the requirement during the […]
Over the course of only a few weeks, a toxic algal bloom has spread from the Pensacola, Florida, coast to the Atlantic Ocean. It’s bright red and caused by microorganisms called dinoflagellates, and it’s killing sea creatures and producing life-threatening anaphylactic reactions in humans. In the midst of this environmental disaster, 25-year-old Diane Nelson, an […]
The Sender sisters, Molly and Clara, are surprisingly successful 18-year-old co-managers of a revived Yiddish theater on Second Avenue in Manhattan. That’s because they’re also more than a century old; Molly and Clara are Estries, undead women from Ashkenazi lore who turn into blood-drinking monsters and can fly around on owls’ wings. They’ve done a […]
In order for Luna Gold and Aoife Walsh to date, Luna must lift the Veil for Aoife, allowing her to perceive the existence of magic. Luna, a fat Black lesbian witch, must also cast a memory spell that will cause Aoife, a biracial (white and Black) bisexual mundane, to forget about her if the two […]
It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to […]