Hermium Goodspeed has something that thousands of kids his age want: an acceptance letter to one of the elite Seven Thunder military schools. However, Hermium is more nervous than he is excited; he doubts he’ll fit in at the school, because he’s scrawny, shy, and tends to sleepwalk. He’d much rather stay home and tinker […]
Opening and closing with scenes from a gig as a 33-year-old burlesque dancer, Campbell shows off her experience as a stand-up comic with a quip-laden narrative in which she chronicles both her youth as a picky eater from childhood through college and a yearslong, riotously contentious, on-again, off-again relationship with a sometimes pushy, sometimes disturbingly […]
With this account of two early-20th-century teams attempting to be the first to reach the South Pole, Stewart plays up the dramatic contrast between Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s arduous but successful expedition and the heroic but tragic saga of British Royal Navy officer Robert Falcon Scott, whose failure proved fatal to him and his team. […]
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s […]
In a prologue, Peter Jay uses the key given to him by his recently deceased father, John, to access a manuscript that “looks beneath the record” with margins “crowded with a single name, written over and over—Mr. Smith.” The narrative then continues in chapters that jump back and forth in time to share the saga […]
After spending a year convalescing, 14-year-old Ella finds herself changed. Her left leg is weak, leaving her with a limp and requiring her to wear a special shoe. Being around a lot of people is overwhelming, which makes crowding into the Underground every night to shelter from air raids nerve-wracking—especially because the tunnels trigger memories […]
Charlie Wags may appear to be an average golden-brown puppy, but he has a very special trick: with a wag of his tail, he can travel the world. In a departure from previous titles, the most recent of which is The Tales of Charlie Wags: London (2025), the Christmas season inspires Charlie to visit several […]
Tergit’s novel, hitherto unavailable in English, is in part a roman à clef, narrated in unadorned, matter-of-fact prose. The Effinger family is a blend of urban and rural, secular and religious, socialist and capitalist, its paterfamilias a watchmaker in a small German town, his children striving to find their places in the world as the […]
Emma Woodhouse Knightley has given up matchmaking for marriage and a peaceful life catering to the whims of her father, who imagines that sickness and death lurk around every corner. When Mr. Woodhouse announces that he’s marrying Miss Bates, it’s a major shock to Emma; her sister, Isabella; and their husbands, brothers George and John […]
“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 […]