Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has […]
Perfect for readers who enjoy a good workplace drama as well as those who love old movies, Bock’s latest is set in the New York offices of a cable network called the Cinema Channel. In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center, marketing director Amy Greene and her husband, Jack, also a […]
Aki Kitamura is 27 and a full-time staff member at Pegasus Books. Recently married, she’s beautiful, hotheaded, stubborn, and unwilling to back down from her opinions. She landed the coveted job because of her grandfather’s ties to Pegasus Books, which doesn’t win her any friends at work. And she doesn’t get along with one of […]
Shortly before her 10-year high school reunion in June 1986, Sara Barlow moves back home to Arlington, Virginia, to apply for a teaching job at that same high school. A flood of memories washes over her, from her brief romance with Devlin Barrie to the still-unsolved murder of classmate Nina Farley. While riding in Devlin’s […]
Toussaint Batiste doesn’t care much for being addressed by his nickname, “Troubleman,” or “Trouble” for short. But having just finished a stretch in prison for involuntary manslaughter committed while he was still with the Philadelphia PD, Toussaint can’t seem to be anywhere, not even in a car belonging to the son of a trusted friend, […]
“Come and take a trip into / the biggest, brightest, bluest blue. // Where buoys bounce. / Where I am brave. / Where divers dip / below the waves.” At first glance, this appears to be a lighthearted swimming story, but, as readers soon discover, it’s much more—a reckoning beneath the sea. As the youngster […]
Stoffel was shaken by his breakup with Warboy, who’d been both a lover and a best friend. Not long after, someone offered to sublet Luke’s New York apartment (via an Airbnb app) for an entire month; the author, seeing this as a chance to escape, used the money to fly out to Laos, a country […]
Every child develops at their own pace, this book notes: Some acquire skills and abilities rapidly, but others need more time to reach the same targets. This book measures this progress in “inchstones” rather than milestones and reminds readers that, for some kids, “every inch they grow is real. And every inch is a big […]
Most Americans have heard of Frank Lloyd Wright, a name once synonymous with American architecture. Wright’s buildings, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, are rightfully considered masterpieces. But few these days know that he had been an irresistible magnet for the tabloids of his day, making him one of […]
It’s not unusual to hear of widespread ecological devastation in soundbite horror stories: Amazon rainforests are disappearing at the astonishing rate of an acre a second; the world’s ocean will soon hold more plastic by weight than fish. It’s both shocking and numbing. Lent (The Patterning Instinct, 2017, and The Web of Meaning, 2021) interrupts […]