Henry Kissinger (1923-2023) began taping conversations—for recordkeeping and for his memoirs—as soon as he was appointed national security advisor in 1969, continuing after he was appointed secretary of state and stopping only when he left office in 1976. Conversation, even from educated speakers, is ungrammatical, repetitious, and cliché-ridden, so journalist Wells, author of Wild Man: […]
San Francisco defense attorney Joe Turner’s latest case takes him down south to Barton, Georgia. He’s there on behalf of his investigator, Chuck Argenal, whose 18-year-old nephew is accused of fatally shooting the small town’s high school quarterback. There’s quite a bit of evidence (though no discernible motive) implicating Carl Ledbetter, who’s on the autistic […]
Seventh grader Olivia feels out of place. Everyone in her life is focused on crushes and relationships, but she’d rather spend her time drawing and watching her favorite YouTuber. Her brother, Malcolm, who’s gay, is prioritizing his new boyfriend; her friends are obsessed with a new social media app called KruShh; and everyone’s talking about […]
Little Gnouf and Mirabelle—two “Gnoufs,” who look like pale-skinned children with snouts and animallike ears—are thrilled to be visiting the ocean for the first time. The pals are marveling at their surroundings when Mirabelle hears with her “magical ears” a far-off cry for help: It’s a baby whale trapped in a fishing net on the […]
In keeping with Romani traditions, young Marisol must enter an arranged marriage, though she’d rather stay with Mammie, Gran Rose, and her sister, Flora. Sneering “You’ll do what I want,” her future husband Levoy is abusive, just like Marisol’s father, so when both men are killed in a brawl at her wedding, Marisol isn’t heartbroken. […]
Laura is lucky—she’s recently received a Young Artists Grant to write her novel, right on the edge of turning 30. No one she remembers from high school writing classes or graduate humanities classes is making a living by writing. Despite her grant, Laura takes on odd jobs like teaching high school writing workshops. For 85 […]
Readers familiar with Harriet Smith as Emma Woodhouse’s mousy, unmarriageable protégé will be surprised to learn that Harriet (not her real name, by the way) is already at age 18 an accomplished con artist, trained by the father she turned on and fled, who’s hired by Mrs. Lavinia Churchill to recover some prized jewelry Jane […]
Davis writes early in her book, “America has a long and sordid history of mining the value of the art and inventions of Black people for its own benefit and erasing evidence of Black authorship to prop up the myth of white superiority.” It’s impossible to argue with that, as she demonstrates in this well-researched […]
In her fourth book set in a region unknown to many readers, Kassabova examines the threats facing one of the few remaining nomadic peoples in modernity: the Karakachans, “Greek speakers of mysterious origin” whose homeland is “impossible to know.” Moving their animals in search of fresh pasture, they have spent centuries breeding ancient races of […]
In humanity’s space-colonizing future, would-be Mars settler Michelle Arensen tries to put the suicide of her father behind her, working with her husband and brother to build a lasting Red Planet base. Suddenly, a bizarre phenomenon engulfs Michelle and other women on the expedition who find themselves held prisoner by faceless, noncommunicative humanoids. After a […]