Brownell’s book begins with Vee Haines waiting for her 9-year-old son, Ray, to come home. Their ramshackle homestead is in Starve-Out, New Mexico, a place so obscure that it’s not on any map. Vee tells Ray bedtime stories about her own childhood as the oldest daughter of a well-to-do banker in Chicago. Privately, she remembers […]
Wilder’s novel unfolds entirely within the uninterrupted narration of Warner Truman, an 18-year-old high school graduate whose tendency to self-aggrandize is immediately apparent: “I’m going to be president one day. No doubt about it.” Warner also announces that he is a hero, promising to eventually explain the tumultuous events that he feels have earned him […]
In her nonfiction debut, Calambichis offers advice and guidance to “those who want to build a food business with passion, discipline and purpose.” She provides worksheets and reference cards designed to translate her organizational ideas into practical real-world applications, focusing on three key frameworks: the “Blueprint Operating Model,” the “Blueprint Profit Framework,” and the “Blueprint […]
It’s 1930, and famous movie star Garland Westover is dead. Gracie Perkins and six other girls in the steno pool at Kaplan Talking Pictures are the only people who know this; they are also covering up his murder. Keeping this all a secret proves especially hard for Gracie, a 21-year-old who had been conducting an […]
Knowing that it’s wrong but attracted by the excitement of big, easy bucks, 17-year-old Ohioan Elliott allows himself to be drawn into the schemes of his troubled longtime friend, Felix Thurman. Felix, who struggles with his disengaged adoptive parents, has a new girlfriend, “tech goddess” Céline Moreau, whose dad “went to prison / for some […]
Kelly joins a new gym run by the Olympic coach, but she’s unsure of herself in the shadow of her “bubbly, / beautiful, confident” best friend, Jenny. Through Jenny, she meets Brandon, a cute boy she believes she doesn’t have a chance with since she’s “‘stocky.’ / And sad.” Kelly is devastated over the recent […]
In her excellent biography of Houston, cultural critic Lordi contrasts the legendary singer and actor with other Black cultural innovators, like Nina Simone, writing that Houston “appears not as a visionary but as a femme object we gaze at or gape at, asking what happened to her, not what she did.” She has a point. […]
The author, a writer based in San Francisco, didn’t get off to a strong start when it came to familial stability: Her biological father, Juan, left when her 18-year-old mother got pregnant in 1975. Heartbroken, her mother married a harsh man named Kurt, who moved their small family from suburban Oregon to an Army base […]
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 […]
Charlotte is enjoying a holiday in Devon with Mrs. Watson, Lord Ingram, and a group of family and friends when Mrs. Watson’s estranged sister, Justina Carstairs, the lady of a family of consequence, appears with ambiguous intentions. No sooner has she requested her sister’s presence at her home and suggested that something dangerous is imminent […]