In August 1993, Stevens was public defender for the courts of the North Slope Borough in Utqiagvik, Alaska, previously known as Barrow, a fishing town with a majority Inupiat population. While on vacation in the Lower 48, Stevens learned of the possible rape and double homicide of sisters Bernice and Wanda Ipalook of a large […]
She calls herself Kikiloa, but she’s better known as Mitochondrial Eve: the woman from whom all people now living are descended. Born in “the deep night of Africa’s great rift valley” some 200,000 years ago, she was betrayed by her father, impregnated, and enslaved. In the present day, we find her living in San Francisco, […]
When Mama Opossum goes out foraging, all 10 of her joeys come along for the ride, clinging to her back. When she stumbles and falls, all 10 roll off in different directions. Readers are invited to join Mama Opossum in searching the nighttime forest. (“There’s no time to lose. Let’s get to work!”) She finds […]
Three siblings look ahead to a long weekend, with older sister ’Tea in charge while Momma is working. Middle child Taylor is delighted that morning to find the titular postcard in the kitchen. Indeed, the whole neighborhood is abuzz with excitement over the opportunity to exchange their postcards for a surprise box “filled to the […]
Now that Halloween is in the rearview mirror in Eylan Hollow, Bailey Briggs is gearing up for the Christmas season at the Lazy Bones Bookshop, which she runs with help from her dedicated crew of workers and her big furry dog, Jack. At a reception where two competing historical societies will discuss mapping the town’s […]
Worsley was the chief curator of Britain’s Historic Royal Palaces for more than two decades and thus has a unique frame of reference on her subject. A political, social, and royal history, her book is braided with personal anecdotes. She recounts stories of the palaces’ “human inhabitants, all of them, high and low,” and she […]
When Anna Kamoria was attending her North Carolina high school, she also trained in sword fighting and martial arts with her mother Adelyna’s “handsome, stoic” friend Derrick, and she felt different from her classmates “in a way that made it hard to relate to others.” One night, her mother was murdered by unknown assailants and […]
Helene Weaver is a familiar figure in fiction (and memoirs): the larger-than-life, charismatic, mercurial, possibly mentally ill mother. Her daughter Gerry’s completely absent father is of zero importance in a novel so female-centered that male characters barely register. Helene takes temp jobs to support the duo’s wanderings up and down the West Coast while casually […]
Lamm was a young artist, posting her drawings for 200,000 followers on Instagram and successfully monetizing her artwork through brand endorsements and magazine assignments, when she accidentally typed the wrong password and was locked out of her account for several months. That’s when she realized that her career, as she writes in this accessible manifesto, […]
Cholera, a virulent, intestinal disease spread by contaminated water, emerged from South Asia in 1830, devastating the cities of Europe as it moved west. By 1832, it appeared in Canada, and, despite efforts to prevent its arrival, the U.S. didn’t have long to wait. Kelton meticulously documents the disease’s spread across the country and the […]