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CROCO

López’s deceptively simple premise unfolds with perfect pacing as a snake suggests that Croco wrap his body around a tree trunk, birds recommend that he flap his (nonexistent) wings, and monkeys encourage him to leap out—all techniques that work brilliantly for the advisers but prove useless for a crocodile. Translated from Spanish by Maude, this […]

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PRIETA IS DREAMING

The legacy of feminist author Anzaldúa (1942-2004) looms large. Her groundbreaking book Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) remains a touchstone for generations of scholars and activists. An editorial note explains that Anzaldúa had been developing her “Prieta stories” alongside nonfiction for her whole career. While a few came out during her lifetime, this book represents their first complete publication. […]

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EVERY LAST FISH

George is the author of Ninety Percent of Everything (2013), a revelatory and unexpectedly funny book about the shipping industry. In her latest work, she returns to the sea to focus on the fishing industry, another subject that, despite the prevalence of seafood, most of us know little about. It’s a startling account; much of […]

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STRONG FLOOR, NO CEILING

Today, less than a third of Americans say they believe in the American Dream, and almost 20 percent believe that it never existed. To Libby, this is a tragic commentary on the state of America’s middle class and uninspired political leadership. In this robust volume, the author offers a new “radically moderate” vision for the […]

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THE LAST NEANDERTHAL

Working in western France, Slimak, author of The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature, discovered that a group of Homo sapiens had taken up residence in a Neanderthal cave 54,000 years ago and remained for 40 years. Neanderthals themselves did not vanish for another 12,000 years, according to the latest evidence. Also […]

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THE STRATEGISTS

O’Brien, author of The Second Most Powerful Man in the World, offers an exploration of grand strategy: decisions by a supreme authority for actions beyond the command of military forces. Readers will learn more from stand-alone biographies of the author’s five subjects, but he provides solid overviews of their decision-making processes. All maintained that they […]

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FIVE-DOG EPIPHANY

Canines became a fixture in Leone’s life in 1994, when her then-6-year-old son, Jesse, made it clear he wanted a dog. The author and her husband bought him a bichon frise puppy named Goody, and they nicknamed him the “Prince of Dogs.” Twelve years later—and a few months after Jesse passed away in his sleep […]

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WISH YOU WERE HERE

As the story goes (related years later by a friend of the writer), once when Franz Kafka was walking in a Berlin park, he met a mother whose child, Saskia, was in tears. Learning that the child had lost her doll Christiana, he began bringing her postcards he’d gathered in his travels with notes from […]

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ELLIE’S DELI

Nina, who was introduced in the first book as a new addition to Ellie’s friend group, hasn’t gelled equally with all the pals and is stirring up drama. The venue where Ellie’s friend Charlie wanted to hold her bat mitzvah party closed, so she may not get to celebrate after the religious service. This leads […]

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THE KINGDOM OF HATCH

Arlo Hatch is a lawyer specializing in business litigation. Though his love for Stella, the daughter of one of his clients, is a bright spot in his life, Arlo is disenchanted with his career and yearns for a change. After Arlo is unsuccessfully mugged, Kostya Kozlov—a former client who was recently released from prison—benevolently takes […]