Features archive | BookPage

by Heather Seggel

Top Pick
S.C. Perkins taps into the current obsession with researching one’s ancestry with her terrific series debut. Murder Once Removed finds genealogist Lucy Lancaster researching a murder that took place in the 1800s, only to have it become frighteningly relevant in the present day. The killer could be one of two men with the same initials, and when his identity becomes a point of contention in a senate race, tempers run high. Suddenly historical research is crucial to restoring the peace. Perkins blends a serious interest in history with giddy energy and a burgeoning romance between Lucy and a confounding but adorable special agent. The Austin, Texas, setting makes for a rich atmosphere and some rapturous descriptions of Tex-Mex food. There’s also a sober consideration of the value, and risk, of learning about your past. Murder Once Removed kicks off this series with a bang. Here’s to many more to come.

From knitting to baking to Sudoku, cozy mysteries and niche themes are a natural pairing, but if they were all set in bookstores, would anyone complain? The Loch Ness Papers is Paige Shelton’s latest Scottish Bookshop Mystery, and this time the genial atmosphere at the Cracked Spine bookstore is shaken up by a murder with tenuous ties to Scotland’s legendary Loch Ness monster. Bookseller and American transplant Delaney Nichols is loving life in Edinburgh, juggling wedding plans and a visit from her family, when she meets an older man obsessed with Nessie. When he’s suddenly accused of murder, she’s determined to learn the truth. The warm relationships among characters—and Delaney’s gift for finding the best quote from the right author to direct her forward—make this the perfect book to curl up with on a rainy day.

A hotel ballroom plays host to murder in Mrs. Jeffries Delivers the Goods, Emily Brightwell’s latest in the Victorian Mystery series. When the lights are turned back on after a dramatic moment of silence at a party, one of the guests has a violent seizure and dies. A doctor determines that it was arsenic. The victim was a cad whom most people hated, but there’s still a dangerous killer on the loose. Inspector Witherspoon comes to the Wrexley Hotel to investigate, and without his knowing, the members of his household do their part to help. The unsanctioned detective work by housekeeper Mrs. Jeffries and company provides keen observations about class divisions, which Brightwell balances with humor in a story that runs like clockwork. Watching Witherspoon’s crew collect clues and sift through the suspect list, usually at meetings featuring tea and a selection of dreamy baked goods, is pure pleasure. This is Brightwell’s 37th book in the series, but newcomers will find their footing in a jiffy.

Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir

Well Read: Love of language

Feature by Robert Weibezahl

by Robert Weibezahl

The Comma Queen confesses her passion for everything Greek—language, history, landscape and culture—which was born out of her love for words.

Mary Norris, whose memoir of her years as a copy editor at The New Yorker (Between You & Me) was a surprise bestseller, reveals her nearly 40-year devotion to all things Hellenic in her captivating Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen.

Inspired by an unlikely moment—seeing Sean Connery’s cameo as Agamemnon in the movie Time Bandits—and spurred on by her boss and mentor in The New Yorker’s copy department, Norris took advantage of the magazine’s generous tuition reimbursement policy for “work-related courses” and enrolled in modern Greek at New York University. A new (well, in fact, ancient) world was unleashed for her. Before long, she was studying ancient Greek and deciphering classical texts. She found herself performing original-language versions of Elektra and The Trojan Women as a “mature” student with the Barnard Columbia Ancient Drama Group (and soliciting character advice from Katharine Hepburn). She immersed herself in the arcane language as best she could, fascinated by its foundational alphabet and the ways Greek survives in so much of modern English.

Most significantly, she went to Greece when she could, exploring the mainland’s many corners and its islands’ many charms. Daring to travel alone to even the most far-flung locales often proved to be an eyebrow-raising heresy in the patriarchal, tradition-centric country, but Norris persisted. Her adventures took her to places few tourists go, to nationally divided Cyprus (birthplace of Aphrodite) and to remote Kardamyli, where the English travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor—whom she calls her literary father—lived and wrote.

While Norris has a keen eye, zeroing in on the peculiarities and beauties of her beloved Greece, her always witty and self-aware narrative tends less toward the descriptive than to the country’s indelible psychic charms. At every turn, the past inextricably intertwines with the present as Norris seeks the origins of ancient Greek culture, rooted in both perceptible landscape and intangible myths. Nostalgia, from the Greek neomai, to return home, “may mean a yearning for a place,” Norris ponders, “but it is also a yearning for a time when you were in that place and therefore for the you of the past.”

Norris’ inviting book thrives on the writer’s unabashed enthusiasm to learn, to immerse herself in the new and to find clues to her own past in the newly discovered. “I knew a lot of Greek, but I wouldn’t say I spoke Greek or call myself a classicist,” she admits. “I was more in love with the language than it was with me. . . . I had not mastered the language, ancient or modern, but I got glimpses of its genius, its patterns, the way it husbanded the alphabet, stretching those twenty-four letters to record everything anyone could ever want to say.”

The Comma Queen confesses her passion for everything Greek—language, history, landscape and culture—which was born out of her love for words.

Romance

Romance

Digital Dalliances: Desire Lines

Feature by Savanna Walker

by Savanna Walker

Every month, we review the hottest new romance releases in our Romance column. But why let the print books have all the fun? In Digital Dalliances, we highlight digital-only releases guaranteed to heat up your eReader.

If you’re a romance writer who values rigorous historical accuracy (not all do—I see and love those writers who give me Ye Olde Ballgown Fantasia, because sometimes we all need that), the medieval period presents a particular set of challenges. If you’re going to be even vaguely accurate, you have to acknowledge that the era in Europe was dirty, dangerous and rife with inequality of all kinds. Elizabeth Kingston’s Desire Lines does more than just acknowledge the uncomfortable realities of the medieval period—it uses them as the foundation for one of the most moving love stories I’ve read this year.

Set in England and Wales during the 13th century, Desire Lines begins as Gryff, a falconer held captive by a band of thieves, is liberated by a mysterious and deadly woman whom the brigands make the fatal mistake of attacking. Nan, a servant to a powerful Welsh family, has no need or desire for a companion while traveling to find her long-lost sister. But she allows the obviously traumatized and lost Gryff to travel with her, unaware that he is a Welsh nobleman who, after years of captivity, stands to either inherit his father’s lands or be executed by the English king who conquered them.

Having been targeted for harassment and worse due to her beauty, Nan deeply distrusts men and doesn’t hesitate to protect her person with physical force. Her incredible skill with throwing knives is portrayed through Gryff’s eyes with suitable awe, and it is wonderfully satisfying to read a romance where a woman’s martial abilities aren’t something she needs to set aside in order to be properly “swept away by love,” but something that is a vital part of her. Her habitual silence is another, particularly brilliant weapon. Having so often lacked a voice in her own fate, Nan only talks when absolutely necessary, carving out power from the very lack of it by making her voice so scarce that when she does speak, everyone around her listens. It’s been several days since I finished Desire Lines and the grim, clear-eyed persistence of that, that insistence on her own sovereignty despite an entire world stacked against her, is still lodged firmly in my memory.

Meditating on class, trauma and gender as Nan and Gryff grow closer together through their travels, Desire Lines explores all the obstacles between its central couple, making their eventual HEA feel all the more precious. The way Gryff and Nan find hope in each other, and allow the other the space to express or not express all that has happened to them is quietly, achingly lovely, and it is rare that I finish a romance believing that a couple deserved their happiness as fervently as I wished it for the two of them.

It began in beauty and in blood.

He saw her face in an improbable moment, amid chaos and carnage—startling blue eyes and a soft mouth set in perfect, graceful lines—and then he saw the blood. Not a drop of it touched her. It was all around her, and all of her own doing. Ferocity and beauty, that’s how it began.

At first he only saw men dropping on the road, an incomprehensible sight. Eight men, vicious criminals, who had lain in wait behind the trees and sprung themselves on the small party with whom she traveled. They had done everything as they always did, Baudry and his men. Their habit was to fall on the armed knights first, while the women and children screamed in terrified confusion. It was always over quickly.

But this time Baudry and his men only crumpled to the ground one after the other, though it was clearly not the armed knights who caused it. Gryff looked up to the trees for archers, but there were none. This was not a rain of arrows. The horses reared and the women screamed and the attackers merely fell down dead, as though form a plague.

She was the plague.

Elizabeth Kingston’s Desire Lines does more than just acknowledge the uncomfortable realities of the medieval period—it uses them as the foundation for one of the most moving love stories I’ve read this year.

Fiction, Popular Fiction

Fiction Popular Fiction

5 coming-of-age literary novels for your April reading list

Feature by Cat, Deputy Editor

by Cat, Deputy Editor

Spring brings blooms and growth and change—just like the characters in these excellent April novels, each thought-provoking and enthralling in its own way. Whether or not they want to, these young men and women have a lot to learn, and readers will find much to enjoy in their journeys into early adulthood.

Lights All Night Long by Lydia Fitzpatrick

Gifted Russian teenager Ilya arrives in the U.S. for an academic exchange year, but like many young people trying to make their own way, he’s distracted by events back home. But Ilya has a good reason: His drug-addicted older brother has been accused of multiple murders. With the help of his host family’s daughter, Ilya tries to prove his brother’s innocence by scouring the internet, and the result is a darkly beautiful, intense tale of guilt, secrets and inescapable truth. It’s worth noting that the author’s writing is breathtaking, which is perfectly suited to the story’s measured pace; all the better to linger, my dear. Read our review.

The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handler

In the 19th century, a real-life stage magician named Lulu Hurst, known as the “Georgia Wonder,” captivated audiences with her apparent super-strength. Handler’s novel pulls from Lulu’s life to tell a story of growing up and growing away from the person you once were. As a girl, Lulu finds a book in her father’s study and learns her special skills, and she slowly transforms from a gawky, small-town farmer’s daughter to a well-known, alluring performer. When her performance goes on tour, she begins to see her parents and their shortcomings more clearly, and the reader is fully immersed in this introspection and process of self-discovery. Read our review.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Rooney became a literary sensation in her native Ireland with the release of her debut novel, Conversations with Friends. Her brilliant, Booker Prize-nominated new novel has only enhanced her reputation. Set in a small Irish town, it stars two 16-year-olds—uncool Marianne and football star Connell—who have different financial backgrounds and an unavoidable connection. It’s a bond that carries through their college years, when they become more like friends than lovers, though something deeper continues to simmer. Read our starred review.

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

Remember first love? Intense, obsessive, probably gross—and everyone at your high school was talking about it. Choi’s latest novel takes that intensity to a place we never would’ve expected. At the risk of spoilers, all we can reveal is that the first part of the book stars two rising sophomores who had a relationship and then broke up, as well as an acting teacher and a classmate named Karen. The rest of the novel challenges the very nature of fiction. Read our review.

A Wonderful Stroke of Luck by Ann Beattie

With her latest novel, Beattie serves up an unflinchingly bleak—albeit sometimes laugh-out-loud humorous—serving of millennial malaise. For young Ben and his posse at Bailey Academy, most of the grown-ups in their lives are either dead, dying or dysfunctional. After 9/11, the students draw even closer to their creepy teacher Pierre LaVerdere, and once again, it’s a connection that lasts long into adulthood. Read our review.

Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir

What they’re reading: Lori Gottlieb

Feature by Christy, Associate Editor

by Christy, Associate Editor

In Lori Gottlieb’s newest book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, the therapist is the one on the couch. After an unexpected breakup, the author, herself a therapist, begins the arduous process of finding someone to talk to. This book is the wise, funny and warm account of Gottlieb’s therapeutic journey, stitched through with tales of her patients’ fallibility and resilience. The result is an all-too-human portrait of our vulnerability and power as people struggling to get by and get better.

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author who writes The Atlantic’s weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column. Here’s what she’s been reading lately.

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro

This is a surprising book because, even though the ostensible mystery at the heart of Dani’s story—who her biological father really is—is solved at the beginning of the memoir, the book reads like a suspenseful existential thriller as she unravels the big questions of identity that are both specific to her and universal to the human condition. How much of our essence is determined by genetics? By environment? By who loved us or didn’t love us the way we wanted to be loved? How do even the best-kept secrets seep into our lives anyway?

The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese

I’m actually rereading this, because it’s the kind of book you return to again and again. This is a beautiful story about a doctor in El Paso and the intern training under him. They meet at a time when both are going through personal crises: the doctor’s marriage is falling apart, and the intern is trying to stay sober from a drug addiction. It’s a gorgeous memoir about friendship and its power and powerlessness to heal someone you care deeply about. Keep the tissues nearby.

The Elephant in the Room by Tommy Tomlinson

Yep, there’s a pattern here—I’m a sucker for a good memoir. I just got this book a few days ago, and I keep staying up way too late reading it. If the first two books deal with secrets, shame and addiction, this one tackles all of those things along with our complicated relationship with body image and self-esteem. Tomlinson’s honesty and vulnerability, along with his humor and powerful prose, make the sleep I’m losing well worth it.

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author who writes The Atlantic’s weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column. Here’s what she’s been reading lately.

Fiction

Fiction

What they’re reading: Candice Carty-Williams

Feature by Cat, Deputy Editor

by Cat, Deputy Editor

Queenie—a feel-good novel of relationships, race, friendships and the occasional therapy session—is Candice Carty-Williams’ first novel, but she’s no rookie. Starting in publishing at the age of 23, Carty-Williams created and launched in 2016 the Guardian and 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize, which focuses on and celebrates black, Asian and minority ethnic writers like herself. Here, she shares three books she’s recently enjoyed reading.

Lot by Bryan Washington

When I cracked open these short stories, I didn’t expect to be floored by Bryan Washington’s writing in the way that I was. I knew he’d be good, but I didn’t realize that he’d be this good. Lot is a one of those exceptionally told collections that give you such rich, lyrical snapshots of different parts of a place—in this case, Houston, Texas—that by the end you can see the whole area clearly even if you’ve never been there. And you can see the sharpest details of the lives of those living there. The opening of Lot is so arresting; you hit the ground running with it, and Washington’s prose is so quick that you’ve got no option but to keep moving through Houston the way his stories do. Mine and Bryan’s books came out on the same day in the U.S., so technically I should see him as a rival, but instead I can only admire from across the pond and hope to one day reach his levels.

Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn

One of my favourite novels of 2017 was easily Nicole Dennis-Benn’s first novel, Here Comes the Sun, and when her second, Patsy, was announced, I almost lost my mind. The richness of Dennis-Benn’s writing is taken to another level in Patsy, the story of a Jamaican woman working towards her own version of the American dream. When she secures her long-awaited visa, makes it to the U.S. and is reunited with her secret love Cicely, Dennis-Benn explores in such a textured, taut way what in love is gained, and what, or who, is left behind. One of the characters from Here Comes the Sun makes an appearance in Patsy, too, and if there’s anything that can make me more excited than a sequel, it’s two seemingly separate worlds connecting when you’re not expecting it. Bliss.

Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta

I know very little about Canada, and even less about how Jamaican culture sits within it, so this book is an utter treat for me. I’m really into the characters and people who are straddling two cultures and slotting into neither, given that so many of us second generation immigrants are, daily, and rarely give much time to examining the effects of that. Frying Plantain opens with young Canadian protagonist Kara Davis finding a dead pig’s frozen head in a freezer in Jamaica while looking for Ting and being mildly traumatized, while her Jamaican cousins couldn’t care less. Immediately we understand the world we’re about to enter, and how your identity being between and betwixt is so completely consuming. There are so many cultural touchpoints in this book for me straight from the off, and I, a second-generation Jamaican Brit, cannot get enough of the mentions of Jamaica, and how being there as a visitor can make you feel so at home, but so far from it.

Author photo by Lily Richards

Mystery

Mystery

Murders most foul

Feature by Annie Metcalf

by Annie Metcalf

It was much easier to get away with nefarious deeds in eras past. Crime fighters didn’t have the aid of DNA testing or security cameras, and it was relatively easy for a guilty party to slip away, change their name and evade justice entirely—all of which makes the sleuths in these three historical mysteries even more impressive.

An Artless Demise, the seventh installment of Anna Lee Huber’s Regency-era series, brings Kiera Darby back to London after scandal sent her to Scotland. Newly married to her partner in investigation, Sebastian Gage, Kiera hopes their return will be without incident. But when the killing of a young migrant boy resembles the methods of notorious criminals Burke and Hare, who sold their victims’ bodies to medical schools, polite society can’t help but recall Lady Darby’s late first husband, who purchased corpses from body snatchers in order to further his study of the body. Kiera tries to keep a low profile, but when a gentleman is similarly murdered in Mayfair, she and her husband are hired to investigate.

Huber highlights the simmering chemistry between the main couple, reminding readers of their physical and intellectual compatibility. Because the plot relies on the emotional toll of Kiera’s abusive first marriage and the criminal activity of her late husband, this installment—more so than other books in the series—will be best enjoyed by readers familiar with the first book. However, a solid whodunit and the atmospheric London gloom anchor the novel well, even for a new readership.

Inspectors Ian Frey and “Nine-Nails” McGray are summoned to a remote estate in Oscar de Muriel’s Loch of the Dead. The islands of Loch Maree are rumored to harbor healing powers or evil curses, depending on who’s telling the tale. The detectives are tasked with protecting Benjamin Koloman, the illegitimate son of one of the estate’s heirs, by his mother—who believes her son is in grave danger. After the unexpected death of the father he never met, Benjamin has been invited to take his place among the wealthy Kolomans. But does the close-knit clan really want him there, or is there something darker afoot? Frey and McGray deal with murder and metaphysical mayhem as the family’s past gradually comes into the light.

McGray and Frey are constantly bemoaning the other’s shortcomings in entertaining, relatable asides, although it’s clear a mutual respect has blossomed. McGray’s sincere belief in the supernatural is a unique twist on the hardened sleuth archetype, and Frey’s funny, fussy adherence to decorum grounds the reader in the time period. The mystery itself is delightfully gruesome and unhinged right up to the heart-pounding conclusion. Readers who love bickering banter and want a historical mystery with a twist will be pleased.

The intrepid Maisie Dobbs returns in The American Agent, set during World War II and the terror of the London Blitz. When Catherine Saxon, an ambitious American journalist, is found murdered, Maisie is enlisted to assist. Also working the case is Mark Scott, the American agent who helped Maisie get out of Munich two years prior. Maisie must balance her determination to find the killer with the suspicion that Mark isn’t telling the whole truth. As Londoners face the fire with stiff upper lips, Maisie homes in on the truth.

Jacqueline Winspear captures the juxtaposition of the utter chaos and eerie normalcy of the Blitz with cinematic style. Maisie is much in the mold of a Golden Age sleuth, with a sharp eye and almost unrealistically good instincts. The looming question of whether she will be able to balance motherhood with her dangerous career is brilliantly relevant both to the era Winspear writes about and the current era. A straightforward yarn with excellent historical detail, The American Agent will satisfy fans and newcomers alike.

Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality

Nonfiction Religion & Spirituality

A full set of tools for a fulfilling life

Feature by Julie Hale

by Julie Hale

Spring is the perfect time to freshen up your outlook—to cultivate new habits and attitudes that can lead to a more satisfying life. These four inspiring books are designed to help you thrive. Here’s to new possibilities!

Fear: We all submit to its grip every now and again. But if the feeling is getting in the way of your goals, it’s time to take action. Carla Marie Manly shows readers how to turn this emotion into a tool for growth in her new book, Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend. In this warm, welcoming guide, Manly, a clinical psychologist, digs deep into the subject of fear, exploring its connections to anxiety and childhood trauma. She also offers tips on how to constructively cope with worry, self-doubt and chronic stress—the forces that so often hold us back from happiness.

Breaking out of fear-based patterns is a crucial move on the journey to joy, Manly says, and she outlines a range of strategies, including visualization exercises and breathing techniques, for doing just that. Perhaps most importantly, she helps readers be receptive to “transformational fear”—a source of productive energy that can be a motivator for positive change, whether it’s making that dreaded doctor’s appointment or discussing relationship issues with a significant other. Sure, fear can paralyze, but it can also galvanize. Pick up a copy of Manly’s book, and prepare to feel empowered.

It may be small in size, but Diana Winston’s The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness brims with big-hearted advice on achieving inner peace. Winston is the director of mindfulness education at the UCLA Semel Institute’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. She describes natural awareness as the mind “at rest,” a condition of “simply being—without agenda.” Once you know how to tap into it, Winston says, natural awareness can help you shut out the pressures and demands of daily activity and increase your sense of focus.

In brief chapters, Winston probes the meaning of natural awareness and leads readers through “glimpse practices” that can be performed at any point during the day or folded into a meditation routine. These simple prompts—including evocative word phrases and body-focused exercises—will help awaken natural awareness. Winston writes for both the experienced awareness-seeker and the novice, and she supplements her advice with insights into her own life and mindfulness evolution. When “you feel a sense of contentment not connected to external conditions,” Winston writes, you’re experiencing natural awareness. Her gentle instruction can result in a more open, responsive and balanced way of being.

Another take-action guide designed to bring about fundamental change is Shunmyo Masuno’s The Art of Simple Living: 100 Daily Practices From a Japanese Zen Monk for a Lifetime of Calm and Joy. This international bestseller has helped people around the world quiet the chaos of everyday life, stress less and appreciate more. In the book, Masuno—chief priest of the 450-year-old Kenko¯-ji Temple in Japan—offers forthright advice rooted in the teachings of Zen, which, he writes, is “about habits, ideas, and hints for living a happy life.”

Divided into four parts, the book provides practical steps for becoming more present, as well as suggestions for building confidence and letting go of anxiety. Masuno’s tips are easy to execute. Simple changes—like waking up 15 minutes earlier than usual to savor the morning, or creating a pocket of quiet at work by doing a “chair zazen” (sitting up straight and breathing slowly)—will make a difference in your daily flow. Spare, evocative line drawings by artist Harriet Lee-Merrion accompany each lesson. Through this inspiring guide, Masuno shows that every step you take on the path of personal growth, no matter how small, can have a major impact.

Personal growth can be a faith-based process—one that often involves unexpected changes of heart, as bestselling author Barbara Brown Taylor demonstrates in Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others. Taylor, a professor of religion at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia, is candid about the ways in which teaching has informed her faith. Over time, her own Christian views have shifted.

“I found things to envy in all of the traditions I taught,” Taylor writes. In Holy Envy, she shares stories of spiritual discovery from campus and beyond, mixing accounts of classroom life into astute considerations of the world’s differing belief systems. She wants her students to recognize that “religion is more than a source of conflict or a calculated way to stay out of hell. Religions are treasure chests of stories, songs, rituals, and ways of life that have been handed down for millennia.” On field trips, Taylor and her students visit houses of worship in their many forms—synagogues and mosques, shrines and centers for meditation—and the excursions prove transformative. Heartfelt, thoughtful and beautifully written, Taylor’s book will give readers who are undertaking their own spiritual journeys a sense of purpose and perspective.

Four ecstatic collections for National Poetry Month

Feature by Matthew Johnstone

by Matthew Johnstone

Brenda Shaughnessy’s fifth collection, The Octopus Museum, is an immersive tour of social and ecological calamities, as well as an elegy for the present. Told from a distant but impending point of crisis by speakers who seem both strange and familiar, the book is composed of several galleries through which Shaughnessy grants glimpses of an unrecognizable world. The reader sees a tally of America’s destructive conditions, including our blindness to the environmental and social repercussions of consumerism. In “Our Beloved Infinite Crapulence,” the speaker depicts this shortsightedness:

“I should pull out my earbuds, and hear the world (my first love, my favorite store).”

Throughout this wondrous, flowing book, Shaughnessy’s world pleads with the reader to “stop already. Stop if you can,” while steering the reader toward another, equally important certainty:

“Knowing how to change—not color or mind or body or action but

perspective—and refusing to do it is how species vanish.”

Continuing his exploration of the sound and sense of language, Willie Perdomo’s The Crazy Bunch is the retelling of a single summer for a tight-knit group of young men. An energetic musicality of language is on full display, electrifying every exchange. Drawing heavily from the luminous, sonic explorations of the Beats, Perdomo paints his crew with a vernacular that, like those countercultural poets, defines itself against regimented communication:

“Stories started their

premises on the stoop, broke arcs by the time

they reached the uptown express, and the real

was played & buried by the time it got

directions.”

If “We Real Cool,” the iconic eight-line poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, had bloomed into a full-length collection, it might be The Crazy Bunch.

The title of Lee Ann Roripaugh’s latest collection, tsunami vs. the fukushima 50, refers to the 50 employees who remained on site at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant after the devastating 2011 tsunami. Tsunami, it becomes clear, is the vast entity formed by the prism of narratives merging through each poem in this collection. From the start, the personified Tsunami is sketched as polymorphic. Whether we see it through a contemporary, media-saturated lens (“call her the meme ”) or as an environmental lamentation (“a rising tide of salt tears / for the world’s fractured core”) or as Frankenstein’s creature (it “turns and faces / threatening villagers with / their flaming sticks”), Tsunami is personified and portrayed as both protagonist and antihero.

As in a Cubist painting, Tsunami seems to be no one particular thing. This book utilizes an innovative, fragmented diction that defies traditional prose as it attempts to invent a profound language to make sense of the senseless. Refracted in these scenarios are the manifold ways in which we attempt to define Tsunami and understand such a tempestuous entity. By giving the cataclysmic a voice, Roripaugh offers a path toward liberty through the chaos and confusion:

“sometimes I find myself hiding inside

a hibernating tsunami siren, paralyzed

and mute . . . trying

to wake and unquiet myself free”

Ilya Kaminsky’s widely anticipated second collection, Deaf Republic, is an intoxicating and wondrous formulation of strength in chorus through a community’s “silence / which is a soul’s noise.” After a deaf boy is gunned down by a soldier from a nameless army occupying the town of Vasenka, the townspeople begin an insurgency against their occupiers:

“Our hearing doesn’t weaken, but
something silent in us strengthens.”

Kaminsky, himself a near-deaf poet, offers an eccentric yet elegant response to trauma with Deaf Republic. In “To Live,” the reader learns that resilience and hope require an active imagining because “The heart needs a little foolishness! / For our child I fold the newspaper, make a hat.” To keep sorrow at bay, characters combat the evils of the world by inventing angels. Visions crop up amid the commonplace, as in “A Bundle of Laundry,” in which “Snow pours out of the sun.”

In these sincere, striking poems, Kaminsky posits the beauty of this world as essential—to inspire those who, unlike the people of Vasenka, don’t require beauty to merely exist. “Our country is the stage,” Kaminsky announces in “Gunshot,” and he warns against an idle or uncritical engagement with the world. “Search Patrols” addresses this complicity and its unknown repercussions:

“The crowd watches.

The children watch us watch.”

This collection places its most deliberate examples of optimism in its lowliest moments, affirming our ability to be stirred and incited by profoundly disheartening events. Kaminsky’s collection asks, “How do we live on earth?” He answers: We are resoundingly as complicit in the good as we are in the bad.

April’s celebration of poetry offers us the chance to see the world differently. These four collections invite us to pay attention to larger social and cultural issues, explored in distinct ways.

Fiction

Fiction

Literary glimmers

Feature by Lauren Bufferd

by Lauren Bufferd

Sing to It is the much-anticipated new collection from Amy Hempel, her first since 2006, and Lot by Bryan Washington is a stellar debut set among the diverse neighborhoods of Houston. Both collections share a generosity of spirit rooted in our common humanity and the social desire to connect.

Hempel is known for her brevity, and of the 15 stories here, 10 are less than three pages long. In some cases, an idea is succinctly stated and explored in less than three paragraphs. But there’s nothing minimal about the contents. Hempel packs a great deal into the briefest of fictions, creating balanced and nuanced stories of longing, love and loss.

Despite her creative thrift, it’s in the longer stories that Hempel’s empathy and ready wit shine. In “A Full-Service Shelter,” inspired by the author’s real-life dedication to animal advocacy, she repeats the opening phrase of each paragraph to drive home both the passion and futility in caring for abandoned, abused dogs. Most affecting is the novella “Cloudland,” about an unnamed middle-aged woman who is haunted by memories of a daughter given up for adoption. These recollections are made more painful when she hears a horrible rumor about the long-shuttered agency. The narrative shifts subtly in time, circling back and jumping ahead, revealing the character’s tenacity as well as her despair.

Washington’s brilliant and visceral Lot lives up to the considerable amount of buzz it has already received. Each story is named for a different Houston neighborhood, and roughly half concern a young man whose life is complicated by an adulterous father, a drug–hustling brother and a growing attraction to men. Though this main character is refreshingly straightforward about his sexuality, his relatives respond with shame, embarrassment and, in the case of his brother, violence.

The remainder of the stories emanate from locations across the sprawling Texan city. In “Alief,” through a first-person plural voice, neighborhood residents consider their role as they collectively witness a love affair that’s turned violent. “Peggy Park” recalls the pleasures of a pickup baseball team. In the book’s centerpiece story, “Waugh,” the two main characters are a young hustler and his pimp, and the focus is less on the hazards of their profession than on the bonds of trust and friendship that exist between them. Washington’s strong ear for dialogue and his lack of sentimentality serve these stories well.

Though their styles are different, Washington and Hempel capture both the harshness and the tenderness of the world. The stories are romantic but not corny and fiercely moral without being judgmental, capturing the complexities that make up a community.

Spring brings two new story collections from masters of the form—one new and one well-established.

YA, YA Fiction

YA Fiction YA

Cutthroat class is in session

Feature by Kimberly Giarratano

by Kimberly Giarratano

Adriana Mather’s Killing November opens as November Adley, an unassuming 17-year-old, wakes up at the Academy Absconditi. She was dropped off at this peculiar boarding school, which is housed in a medieval castle in an undisclosed European location, by her ex-CIA father with little explanation, other than the fact that she is there for her own safety.

But November feels anything but safe; in fact, one of the calculating and conniving students punches her in the face on her first day. And the administration? They simply encourage November to retaliate in an equally violent fashion. This is all a bit alarming, but soon November learns that she is a member of an ancient family of powerful assassins and tacticians. Without realizing it, November has been training for this school her whole life. But when a student at the academy is murdered, the blame immediately falls on November, and she’ll need to count on her survival instincts to find the truth.

Unlike her highly suspicious classmates, November is an optimist who refutes cynicism—even in the face of life-and-death conflict. What might be most refreshing for readers is the academy’s egalitarian ideals: There are no limitations placed on any student, regardless of gender. And November proves she can handle the most challenging task with aplomb, securing her place in this school of renegades.

Suzanne Young’s Girls With Sharp Sticks is also a tale of female empowerment but with a sci-fi spin. At Innovations Academy, the student body is a homogeneous group of intelligent and beautiful teenage girls who study gardening, etiquette and decorum in a repurposed factory. They are all graded on manners, beauty and compliance. This is the norm for Innovations student Philomena.

She doesn’t know what it’s like to have bodily autonomy or freedom, and she doesn’t question life at the academy until one of her friends goes missing. Suddenly, the academy’s all-male staff doesn’t seem like it has the girls’ best interests at heart. But any girl who doesn’t behave and comply with the staff’s orders gets a dose of impulse control therapy, which affects their memories. Even more disturbingly, a sweet budding romance between Philomena and a local boy is juxtaposed against the unsettling advances of the much older staff. As Philomena and the other girls discover what they’re really being groomed for, they begin to defy orders.

Girls With Sharp Sticks is a thrilling story about a sisterhood smashing the patriarchy. Philomena and her friends resort to subversion in order to protect one another, relying on the same tribal instincts that were encouraged in their education. While this novel reads like a feminist manifesto, it’s also a reflection of modern movements to end sexual harassment.

Both Killing November and Girls With Sharp Sticks are fast-paced and gripping female-centered stories in which the class curriculum centers on survival. But be prepared—they’re both perfectly primed for sequels.

Hidden campuses, bitter rivalries, subversive relationships and a lapse of adult supervision make two new boarding school stories tantalizing reads. The curriculum? It’s all about survival.

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

Playful poetry young readers will love

Feature by Julie Hale

by Julie Hale

We’re celebrating poetry’s impact and importance with five fabulous new collections, each filled with verses that will inspire the wordsmiths of tomorrow.

If you’ve ever wondered how to walk on Mars, distinguish a goblin from an elf or frighten a creepy monster, then you simply must get a copy of The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-to Poems. Instruction on the aforementioned activities can be found in this ingenious illustrated anthology, which features wonderful works from world-class poets—including Douglas Florian, Marilyn Singer, Nikki Grimes and Kwame Alexander—selected by Paul B. Janeczko (The Death of the Hat). In “How to Build a Poem,” Charles Ghigna offers fitting inspiration that sums up the collection’s aim:

“Let’s build a poem

made of rhyme

with words like ladders

we can climb”

Playful illustrations by Richard Jones bring unity to the assortment of voices, forms and poetic modes that fill this playful anthology. Who knew a how-to collection could be such a hoot?

Poetry rocks! If you require proof, just check out Rhett Miller’s No More Poems!: A Book in Verse That Just Gets Worse. Miller, whose day job is songwriter and frontman of the alt-country band Old 97’s, has produced a rowdy, rollicking, irresistible collection of poems, many of them written from a kid’s perspective. In pieces about too-early bedtimes, quibbling siblings and mysteriously missing homework, he brilliantly channels the mindset of a typical tween. Miller is a wordplay pro with the skills to set up extended rhyme schemes. Featuring bold mixed-media illustrations by Caldecott-winning author and illustrator Dan Santat, this inspired collection sings from start to finish.

Avery Corman’s Bark in the Park!: Poems for Dog Lovers is a fun frolic with canines of nearly every conceivable breed. Corman is an expert at articulating what makes dogs unique, whether the pooch is a cocker spaniel (“an always on-the-run dog, / A floppy ears and fun dog”), an Afghan hound (“Although he’s noble and aloof . . . he still says ‘woof!’”) or a pug (“Is the Pug cute / Or is the Pug ugh?”). Corman’s poems are compact—many consist of a single stanza—and filled with alliteration. Artist Hyewon Yum’s renderings of the pups (and their respective people) are spot-on. A sunny, silly, buoyant book, this is a winning tribute to a kid’s best friend.

In Isabelle Simler’s stunning volume Sweet Dreamers, it’s nighttime in the wild, and critters are quietly snoozing. Through minimalist poems, Simler explores their sleeping habits. A delightful menagerie of animals on land and in the sea—koala bear, cat, ant, giraffe, seahorse, stingray and dolphin—populate this lovely collection. Simler employs a spare writing style, yet she perfectly captures each creature in repose. The bat “dreams upside down,” she writes, “toes clinging to the ceiling, / kite-fingers folded like a blanket.” From the sloth, “slung like a hammock,” to the mighty humpback whale, who “nosedives / into sleep” in the ocean, “balancing on her head / or the tip of her tail,” Simler conjures up original imagery for each animal that readers of all ages will appreciate. Her dense, detailed illustrations, highlighted with vibrant touches of color, depict the glittering majesty of the natural world at night. The perfect way to wind down the day, Sweet Dreamers is the ultimate bedtime read.

Allan Wolf takes readers on an unforgettable galactic journey in The Day the Universe Exploded My Head: Poems to Take You Into Space and Back Again. Using a variety of poetic forms, including the sonnet and the elegy, Wolf writes about eclipses, meteorites, shooting stars, astronauts, cosmonauts and famous scientists. But this isn’t just straight-laced science; Wolf’s poems brim with mischief. He depicts Jupiter, the solar system’s largest occupant, as “the planets’ bodyguard,” whose “gravity keeps space debris / from landing in the yard.” And Saturn is a diva who’s proud of her planetary bling:

“My rings are often copied,

but they never get it right.

The secret’s in the extra ice

I add to catch the light.”

In her colorful, cosmic collages, illustrator Anna Raff imbues the planets with plenty of personality (the Sun sports Wayfarer-inspired shades; Neptune strums a guitar). From takeoff to touchdown, this space mission is a success.

We’re celebrating poetry’s impact and importance with five fabulous new collections, each filled with verses that will inspire the wordsmiths of tomorrow.

Fall 2019 preview: Most anticipated fiction

Feature by Cat, Deputy Editor

by Cat, Deputy Editor

Fall 2019, take us away. From Margaret Atwood to Stephen King, Ta-Nehisi Coates to Erin Morgenstern, these are the 20 most anticipated works of literary fiction coming this season.

Tidelands by Philippa Gregory
Atria | August 20

The superstar author of The Other Boleyn Girl, inspired by the fact that most people’s family histories can be traced to inglorious beginnings “in a muddy field somewhere,” kicks off an epic new series with a tale set during the English Civil War in 1648. Despite being about normal people instead of Gregory's typical decadent royal subjects, the novel is full of juicy hints of witchcraft and a fascinating social history—a midwife who lives with her children in the marshy region along England’s southern coast takes center stage.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
Ballantine | August 27

Lefteri’s own backstory is doing some heavy lifting in drawing attention to her debut: She’s the daughter of Cypriot refugees, and her novel was born out of her experiences working as a volunteer at a refugee center in Athens, Greece, and from the stories told by her Arabic tutor, a Syrian refugee. But the novel stands on its own as well. It’s the story of a beekeeper and his wife who are forced to flee Aleppo and journey through Turkey and Greece toward Britain.

A Door in the Earth by Amy Waldman
Little, Brown | August 27

Former New York Times reporter Waldman left an indelible imprint on readers with her her literary debut, The Submission, which examined the fallout of 9/11 at Ground Zero. Eight years later, Waldman returns with an even more ambitious tome, which proves to be as politically provocative and challenging as its predecessor. It’s a multifaceted examination of not just the situation in Afghanistan but also the complex consequences of awakening the sleeping giant that is America and receiving its attention.

Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis
Knopf | September 3

Freedom—its presence and absence, the longing for it—colors every page of De Robertis’ masterful, passionate and at times painful new novel set in 1970s Uruguay. It tells the story of five women who must navigate a country and a society in the grips of overwhelming oppression, at a time when being a woman who loves other women carries a sentence of at best ostracization and at worst obliteration.

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie
Random House | September 3

It’s difficult to write an open homage to one of the most famous and influential works of literature in human history, but in his insightful and wickedly funny way, Rushdie pulls it off with his new novel, a retelling of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. He explores a world obsessed with everything from reality TV to hacktivism with a tragicomic metanarrative, as the story of a daytime TV star, who has renamed himself “Quichotte,” is being told by novelist who goes by the pen name Sam DuChamp.

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Knopf | September 3

Lara Prescott’s first name was inspired by her mother’s love of Doctor Zhivago, both the epic David Lean film and the 1957 Russian novel by Boris Pasternak, a love story about Dr. Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova that spans the Russian Revolution and World War II. Prescott always felt a connection to the tale, and she’s written an absolutely thrilling debut: a fictional account of how Pasternak wrote his Nobel Prize-winner—and how the CIA used it as political propaganda during the Cold War.

The Institute by Stephen King
Scribner | September 10

Whether King is chasing “Stranger Things” or “Stranger Things” is chasing King, the result is the same: shocking suspense and hallmark thrills, as a ragtag collection of adolescents band together against a shady organization set on exploiting children for their unique “gifts.”

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Nan A. Talese | September 10

Atwood’s highly anticipated (and highly embargoed) sequel picks up 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. Let’s find out what’s really going on in Gilead these days.

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Riverhead | September 17

Woodson, who is completing her stint as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, returns to her beloved Brooklyn for her second novel for adults, this one about an unplanned pregnancy and its effects on an African American family. Kin and community have always been of primary concern to Woodson (as in her National Book Award-winning memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming), and she masterfully combines her characters’ lives with the sounds, sights and especially music of their surroundings, creating fiction that’s deeply personal and remarkably universal.

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Harper | September 24

The cover of Patchett’s newest is simply gorgeous (it’s a painting by Nashville artist Noah Saterstrom), and the story within is perfect for readers who love family dramas and the houses at their center. Set over the course of five decades, her latest novel follows siblings Danny and Maeve, who are exiled from their family’s estate, the Dutch House, by their father’s new wife. Patchett’s characters’ voices are on point, and the pages keep turning—proving, once again, that she simply cannot write a bad book.

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
Norton | September 24

Readers who love World War II novels, especially tales of female spies or the roles of women during the war, should consider this one necessary reading for the year. It’s set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, often considered one of the primary events that paved the way to World War II, and explores the stories of female soldiers who stood against the Italian army.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
One World | September 24

The National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me returns with an achingly intense adventure tale that was recently longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. It’s about a young enslaved man named Hiram Walker who nearly drowns but is saved by a strange blue light. As he joins an underground war against slavery, he discovers within himself his own magical powers.

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster | September 24

Yes, it’s another World War II book, but this one has a golem—and so much more. The golem, Ava, is created in 1941 Berlin by a rabbi’s daughter to protect a 12-year-old Jewish girl. Both girls attempt to flee Germany, but their lives take very different paths. The story wends from a French convent that’s hiding Jews to a mountain village humming with the spirit of resistance. Love and loss, grief and motherhood—it’s all magic in Hoffman’s hands.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Flatiron | October 1

Big-time fantasy author Bardugo, goddess of the Grishaverse, makes her adult debut with a ghostly story set among the Ivy-League elite. To begin with, the lead character’s name is Galaxy (aka Alex), and she is the sole survivor of an unsolved multiple homicide. While still in the hospital, Alex is offered a free ride to Yale—but why? And so begins a tale of secret societies, the occult and forbidden magic.

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson
Grove | October 1

The critically acclaimed author of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is back with an inventive, intelligent, bawdy novel that’s a bit like a literary playground. It has everything: Mary Shelley, A.I., sex dolls, cryogenics labs and some of the funniest writing we’ve come across this year. And of course, it’s a love story: The tale of Shelley at Lake Geneva runs parallel to that of a transgender doctor in Brexit Britain who has fallen in love with Professor Victor Stein.

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
Pamela Dorman | October 8

To be frank, we were nervous about Moyes’ newest. Stories of the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky are, it should come as no surprise, some of our favorites, but what does a Brit like Moyes know about Depression-era Kentucky? Fortunately, Moyes centers her book on Alice Wright, a British woman who travels to small-town Kentucky with her new husband and eventually joins the traveling librarians. The result is a must-read fish-out-of-water tale that capably balances its real historical backdrop. Also, it’s been optioned for film by Universal Pictures, with Ol Parker (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) to direct.

Grand Union by Zadie Smith
Penguin Press | October 8

Smith’s novels have brilliantly and brutally observed the modern world, so her first story collection is a big deal. It includes 11 new and unpublished stories (more than half haven’t been published before) as well as several of her best loved tales from The New Yorker.

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
Random House | October 15

The best way we can describe our impatience for Strout’s follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge is like a click beetle desperately dancing itself across the kitchen floor while a cat tries to eat it. In short, we are ready. We need more Olive Kitteridge, and chances are, so do you. And if Strout proved anything with My Name Is Lucy Barton and its follow-up, Anything Is Possible, it’s that she knows how to continue a story with love and care.

Find Me by André Aciman
FSG | October 29

Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, originally published in 2007, became an international bestseller due to the massive popularity of the 2017 film adaptation by Luca Guadagnino. Elio and Oliver’s story sparked an outpouring of love and heartbreak and things far more complicated, and with this new novel, readers are reunited with the two men many years later—and with Elio’s father, Samuel.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Doubleday | November 5

The author of The Night Circus is back with a tale that is utterly enchanting, an acrobatic adventure story for lovers of words, narrative structure and hidden realms. At its heart is a young man named Zachary Ezra Rawlins, who discovers a book in the university library that holds many mysteries within it, including a chapter from Zachary’s own childhood. Soon, Zachary has followed clues to painted doorways, liminal libraries and layers upon layers of stories—about pirates and dollhouses, a starless sea and owls, the love between Fate and Time, and the conference of the moon and sun. It’s the most fun you’ll have with a book this year.

The 20 novels we can’t wait to read this fall.

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Murders most foul

A full set of tools for a fulfilling life

Four ecstatic collections for National Poetry Month

Literary glimmers

Cutthroat class is in session

Playful poetry young readers will love

Fall 2019 preview: Most anticipated fiction

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