FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto greets the news that her sister, Isabel Parker, has died in prison with a combination of relief and skepticism. Could the nightmare that began when 15-year-old Isabel killed her parents and brother—in The Lies You Wrote (2024)—and then embarked on a quarter-century career of murder finally have come to an […]
Ungashick takes the story of Operation Overlord and the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France and maps its lessons about strategy and logistics onto the business world to highlight leadership principles. D-Day, the author writes, “was the greatest combined amphibious-airborne invasion in history and the most complex military operation ever executed”; analyzing that operation, he stresses […]
Lindy and her family started their travel adventure after her dad quit his job as a software engineer to avoid “melting down faster than a computer with no fan.” Her mom is “trying to life-coach through lifestyle,” generating content as she poses in front of scenic vistas in national parks and curating flawless images of […]
Yet Dinah and Joe Marino really are happy together. She’s a homicide detective with the LAPD; he’s a psychologist who left the police to open his own clinic. They may not have much of a sex life, but they’re so mindful, attentive, and solicitous of each other that, as Dinah says, “He’s the best part […]
This collection abounds with bad decisions, traumatic events, and ominous conclusions. In an introduction, British writer Stuart Evers observes that “the lives Meyer depicts are small ones; ones lived in the margins of society.” The story “I’m Still Here!” follows a boxer—“a Black Dutchman from Rotterdam with a mashed-up face”—as he endures existential doubt and […]
A group of hunter-gatherers is endangered by murderous timbermen in the Brazilian rainforest. Above the Arctic Circle, an old Inuit woman takes her skeptical, indolent “grandson” to a remote old village (from which oil companies uprooted them) to enact an obscure ritual. Both use ancestral memories to summon help from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization of […]
Harrold is a former butler to King Charles III and the United Kingdom’s “leading expert on etiquette,” according to the jacket description, but he makes a good impression and does well without a ghostwriter. The Crown plays a modest role in the lives of most Britons, but Harrold’s parents were genuine enthusiasts who enjoyed visiting […]
Jovita’s father always told his daughter to use her palabras—her words—and when Jovita grows up, she doesn’t let him down; she writes and speaks about the injustices she sees in her community. As a teacher, she writes about the importance of bilingual and bicultural education. When she becomes a journalist, she uses her words to […]
On September 13, 2022, Iran’s morality police arrested 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini for having too much hair protruding from her hijab (“Members of the Gasht-e Ershad then grabbed Amini and began forcing her into their van”). Three days later, she was dead in Kasra Hospital, another victim of the country’s re-education centers. Photos of Amini in […]
In this deeply personal yet socially illuminating memoir, Maxfield navigates her Jewish American experience, tracing the tension between assimilation and exclusion. She writes: “Here’s what happens when you’re Ashkenazi Jewish. You get put in the ‘White’ box because of the color of your skin. But the self-described ‘real’ white people, the so-called ‘fringe’ groups, don’t […]