Clever wordplay immediately elevates Smith’s story beyond mere moralizing about the value of a growth mindset: “Habit” is the name of a tropical island, home to the eponymous creature, a large, rabbitlike being who prefers the tried-and-true to the new and unfamiliar. A “very small creature,” a bespectacled blue sphere with skinny limbs, encourages the […]
Born in Wales, Owen walks a fine line in 1377 York, where competing forces may tear Britain apart. He knows little of Tom’s life before he bought the York Tavern, married Bess 10 years later, and together, turned the inn into a thriving business. Owen’s wife, Lucie, an apothecary, tells him that Tom had come […]
In the latest in the Critical Lives series, Goodby and Wigginton, Thomas scholars at Sheffield Hallam University, offer a brisk but comprehensive look at the life of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), eschewing the popular image of a “rumpled, Dionysiac…summoner of elemental powers” in favor of a more nuanced portrait of a driven, focused writer who had […]
All Viscount Langdon wants is a bit of quiet to recover from his terrible railway accident, and his private island seems like just the place. But his solitude is disrupted one dark and stormy night when a beautiful aeronaut washes ashore after her hot air balloon collapses, and when he saves her from the ocean, […]
Confining his selections to athletes active at the beginning of 2024, Buckley dishes up an alphabetically arranged gallery of greats and potential greats that is thoroughly diverse in terms of age, race, nationality, gender, and sport. Some, such as LeBron James and Aaron Judge, will be familiar even to nonsports fans, but there are plenty […]
This novel take place in the aftermath of a high-profile trial, as 72-year-old retired teacher Helen Ryder (known to the other jurors as “Schoolmarm”) and other jurors reconnect after a series of suspicious deaths among their peers. Two months before, they voted to convict basketball player Roger “Buck” Dempsey for the murder of his wife, […]
War veteran and widower “Voodoo” leads a group of hackers and “wrench-turners” for the United States Naval Special Warfareunit at the Directorate in San Diego. His skills earned him a spot in a rescue operation the previous year in Japan; now, the CIA station chief in Japan wants the same team for a mission in […]
The novel follows Madison Cooper, who’s just started a new job at Know Inc., replacing someone who died in a hit-and-run incident. Her father died in the 9/11 attacks, leaving her with lasting trauma and questions about that day. While attending a support group, she encounters Will, a professional hacker, who helps her uncover that […]
Though she attempted suicide three times between the ages of 10 and 18, Chihaya writes, “One thing I was pretty sure about [the term] ‘nervous breakdown’ was that it was not for people like me.” The child of a Japanese immigrant and a Japanese Canadian woman who “didn’t really believe in the concept of mental […]
It’s certainly her most sharply focused. Alarmed that a series of anonymous threats she’s been receiving have escalated, London magazine editor Sarah Lampson asks Nancy Graham, her old roommate and colleague at Diagonal Press, to help figure out which of her former lovers is intent on killing her. But it’s already too late, for one […]