A lifelong East Ender who fought in gangs as a boy and whose mother was killed when a German bomb dropped on their house, 45-year-old Harryboy Boas resides in a small room in a scruffy boardinghouse, sleeps with prostitutes, and prides himself on his reading acumen (“This Zola is a terrific writer. He can be […]
Why do we love sports? Well, there’s the existential aspect: We need meaning in life, and sports provides it, at least for some. Then, as scriptwriter Schur and sportswriter Posnanski put it, “Life is lonely, and sports provide community.” What’s more, sports, at least in the authors’ case, allows them to go tearing off to […]
Shortly before her 10-year high school reunion in June 1986, Sara Barlow moves back home to Arlington, Virginia, to apply for a teaching job at that same high school. A flood of memories washes over her, from her brief romance with Devlin Barrie to the still-unsolved murder of classmate Nina Farley. While riding in Devlin’s […]
As Demers’ rhyming text suggests, love occasionally makes parents say ridiculous things: “I great big meal and tiny snack you.” It also stirs overpowering emotions (“And on each clock / My favourite minute / Is every one / That has you in it”). Some of the book’s sentiments are a bit cliched—“And every year / […]
Set in New York City, poet Bush’s novella follows Courtney, a teacher at a private preschool, over the course of one workday. Fresh off a “light nervous breakdown,” Courtney is contending with the ghosts of her past—a divorce; fraught family relationships; the death of her childhood best friend—while attempting to be fully engaged with her […]
Ten-year-old Kevin Aurelius and his two siblings travel with their vampire parents and a slew of creatures including an ogre, werewolves, and trolls—all members of a traveling circus known as the Carnival Monstromo. When a wrong turn strands them in the quiet human town of Lower Drudging, the carnival delays travel to the Festival of […]
The 17 tales herein feature an array of horrors. Some are blatantly sinister, like a serial killer who’s more than she appears to be; others seem innocuous but have the potential to become outright menaces, like an apparatus for keeping pests out of a garden. In still other instances, the true horror doesn’t reveal itself […]
Seventeen-year-old Ida Carter, who’s Black and bisexual, understands that beauty is currency. As the vice president of Banneker High’s Black Student Union, Ida is “Black popular.” She’s earned respect among the few Black students at her predominantly white school, but she’s nowhere near the top of the overall social hierarchy, and she’s not considered desirable […]
There are bodies everywhere in Araki’s lively fiction debut: bodies in the trunks of cars, on the side of the road and, most significantly for university student Haru, hanging from the ceiling at home. As an asteroid hurtles steadily toward Earth—the planet’s destruction is inevitable—it triggers a gamut of reactions. Haru’s mother has left the […]
Despite efforts to bring them up to speed, readers unfamiliar with the series opener may flounder as the mildly surreal continuing storyline takes a few more dizzying spins in this second entry. Being the last of the murderous Paladins still at liberty after Rodeo’s application of the Plunger of Truth, bad guy Athelstan concocts an […]