Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has […]
The author says that he’s long been fascinated by John Hughes’ 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. As an undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago, he visited various locations shown in the film. His eagerness to understand how it was made led him first to film school and, ultimately, to interviewing much of the cast (including […]
It begins when Mike, newly demoted from investigator, sees flames half a mile away and rushes into a burning house, where he’s too late to rescue Jenna Malloy or her husband, gym owner Brian. The only survivor is a baby girl Mike finds in the arms of a neighbor, Karen Kershaw. Waldo County Sheriff’s Deputy […]
In I Who Have Never Known Men, which was republished in a revised translation in 2022, Harpman’s eerie prescience was on full display in a tale about 39 women and a girl held for decades in a bunker for reasons never made clear to them. The book, which was first published in 1995 in the […]
Sofia Mendoza injures her sister (after accidentally-on-purpose tripping her), so her father sends her to Forestjaw to reflect on her behavior. Things get off to a weird start: Monarch, Forestjaw’s leader and seemingly only real adult, greets the campers (or “candidates,” as she calls them) with a terrifying mechanical vulture on her shoulder before confiscating […]
As World War II winds down in 1945, Commander M.T. Kwan returns from serving with the British to his war-ravaged hometown of Guilin, China. As the Japanese pull back, Kwan—aka The Dragon—hopes to retrieve his family from where they’ve taken refuge farther inland. Colonel Lindsay Ride, his commandant with the British Army Aid Group, shows […]
Pedrito explains to younger sister Pipay that they’re going to celebrate Undas, “when families visit the cemetery and gather around their dead loved ones’ tombs.” This is typically celebrated on the first and second day of November during All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Pipay innocently asks if they’re still a family without their […]
Born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez in Venezuela, Carlos was just one of the countless fake names that “the Jackal” used. It was the one that stuck and the one that he used in Warrick’s opening episode, when Carlos and crew attacked a meeting of OPEC ministers in Vienna in 1975. Just whom he was working for […]
The story begins with Wifredo Lam’s childhood in a small Cuban village, where he shared a home with seven older siblings, his Chinese Cuban papá, and his African-Taíno-Spanish-Cuban mamá. His papá’s calligraphy work and his godmother’s Santería ceremonies formed the first major influences on the budding artist, whose predilection for sketching and drawing arose at […]
Panyushkin, the author of Twelve Who Don’t Agree, argues that by delineating the plights of ordinary Ukrainian citizens, the immensity and toll of the violence and suffering should become apparent. As a journalist who left Russia yet remains a keen observer of the conflict, the author maintains some distance—e.g., as he tries to point out […]