“The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other.” With that opening sentence, Stonex plunges us into the mind and world of Bridget “Birdie” Keller, a wife and mother in the rural countryside of Wiltshire, England. But Birdie’s world is not quite so tranquil: 18 years earlier, a man was […]
Journalist and author Cohen, author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, strikes gold with a story from Victorian Britain that comes with a scholar’s favorite documentation: court transcripts. In 1883 a wealthy Australian bought a used yacht in Britain and hired a crew to deliver it: an experienced […]
The author opens the book with a series of devastating events that occurred to people in the author’s inner circle that made him realize that “life can be more than mere survival.” Survival mode, he writes, is an “emergency response system” that may manifest as irritability, procrastination, or simply becoming numb. By contrast, thriving is […]
If the unnamed narrator of Tokarczuk’s latest novel appears to bear certain similarities to Tokarczuk herself—an abiding interest in mushrooms and astrology, say—that’s neither here nor there. The novel is set in a remote Polish village close to the Czech border: so close to the border, in fact, that when a visiting German tourist suddenly […]
Cassidy has always known that someday she’ll help run Silver Stallion Ranch, just like generations of Sterlings before her. Wilder Nash is a Hollywood heartthrob who’s trying to break out of commercials and high school prom-coms. Being cast as the lead in a historical Western miniseries might be his big break. The only problem: He […]
Hyman Tuchverderber was born to a Jewish family in Manchester, England. He was just 13 when Germany’s invasion of Poland incited World War II. He and his family survived the devastating 1940 Manchester bombings, which left the Tuchverderbers, like many others, financially strapped. Sixteen-year-old Hyman studied to be a wireless operator in the British Merchant […]
When Diana, a wealthy sugar magnate in her mid-70s, is abruptly forced into retirement by her own daughter, she relocates to the Ocean’s Edge, “a fifty-five plus community beautifully nestled along Florida’s Treasure Coast.” What begins as a quiet chapter in her life quickly turns into an unexpected adventure. Diana soon befriends a quirky group […]
These 11 stories are meditations on themes that are both timeless—women looking for love, longing for more from life, fighting for their dreams—and modern, filled with influencers and celebrity-driven culture and people living on the periphery of both. Through engaging and occasionally shocking stories, Rende deftly shows the balancing act between the online and performative […]
Gabby Greene is still figuring out what her life looks like. As a divorcee, mother of two, and fledgling spy, it’s hard to find the balance between intense espionage work and remembering to pack school lunches. There’s also the fact that her ex is keen on reconciliation while Gabby is actively navigating her feelings for […]
Gren Moritz is the newly elected Chief Minister for the Nations of Rivennia, and the first from Varcega. Varcegians believe in tradition; they eat farmed meat and practice arranged marriages (Gren’s wife, Lorelei, was carefully chosen by his grandparents). Gren’s main platform is “protecting humanity from the rise of ultrahumanism,” but his initial bill may […]