Books

★ The Hostess Handbook According to Maria Zizka (The Newlywed Table), the three pillars of party planning are “the desire to host, some reliably excellent go-to recipes, and a bit of party know-how.” You’ll get a hefty dose of all three in The Hostess Handbook: A Modern Guide to Entertaining. It’s filled with a wide

When we bring our mobile phone to life with a tap or settle in behind the wheel of our car, few of us give much thought to the raw materials required to make these sometimes miraculous- seeming devices work. Journalist Vince Beiser has reflected deeply on that subject, and the result, Power Metal: The Race

In his 17th book of poetry, Scattered Snows, to the North, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Phillips gazes both inward and outward. His work carries a signature heft, a musicality and syntax that seems to rewrite itself with each read. Phillips tangles his sentences like few other poets working today, and often, rather than untangling them,

Fresh on the heels of his debut collection, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza (2022), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the American Book Award, the Palestine Book Award and the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize, the Palestinian poet and essayist Mosab Abu Toha’s

If you’ve ever been curious about how an idea turns into a piece of art, you’ll love The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing. This visionary book’s first two pages lay out its thesis in surprisingly simple terms. First, there’s a sketch of a prescription pad with a physician’s signature at the bottom.

Famous for the Thursday Murder Club series, Richard Osman has inaugurated a new series with We Solve Murders (10.5 hours). Amy Wheeler, a professional bodyguard, and her father-in-law, Steve, a retired police investigator, stumble upon a money smuggling scheme involving ChatGPT and murdered social media influencers. With all the energy of a Carl Hiaasen novel,

Literary powerhouses Renée Watson and Ekua Holmes combine forces to create Black Girl You Are Atlas, a phenomenal poetry collection celebrating sisterhood, womanhood, Black culture and the power of family and friendship. This book revels in the promise of adolescence while acknowledging its accompanying landmines of fear, self-doubt and uncertainty.  Renowned poet, novelist and Newbery

★ The Woodsmoke Women’s Book of Spells With The Woodsmoke Women’s Book of Spells, Rachel Greenlaw offers a haunting romantic fantasy. After a decade away, English artist Carrie Morgan returns to her hometown of Woodsmoke. She had reasons to run, including her family’s witchy reputation. But her grandmother left Carrie her cottage, and she decides

At the start of John Straley’s Big Breath In, 68-year-old Delphine is staying in a Seattle hotel across the street from the hospital where she is being treated for Stage 4 cancer. The marine biologist is far from everything she loves: her home in Sitka, Alaska; her son and grandson in California; and the whales

Mina’s Matchbox (8.5 hours), by award-winning author Yoko Ogawa, is a magical coming-of-age story centered on two girls on the brink of adolescence: sturdy, pragmatic Tomoko and her fragile, artistic cousin, Mina. Told from Tomoko’s point of view and set in Ashiya, Japan, in 1972, Mina’s Matchbox is touched with fairy-tale enchantment, depicting a family in

Comforting, kindhearted and soulful, Julie Leong’s The Teller of Small Fortunes offers a welcome reprieve from the dreary and violent stab-a-thons that often dominate the fantasy genre. Pull up a chair, grab your favorite mug and sink into this lovely debut’s warm embrace. Tao, a fortune teller from the Empire of Shinara, loves her life

Detective Vicky Paterson has seen more than her fair share of murders in the town of Fort Halcott, New York. But this one is the strangest yet, an unnerving ritualistic killing of a woman with hoarding disorder discovered amid the already horrific backdrop of her home. Meanwhile, hot on the trail of a missing girl,

You will never look at a cicada or a wasp the same way again. Originally published here.

You will never look at a cicada or a wasp the same way again. Originally published here.

A Grave in the Woods The typically unflappable Bruno Courrèges is annoyed. While he was on medical leave, his position as chief of police was taken over by an overbearing new hire, and she has no intention of vacating it until he has been cleared to return to service. Moreover, she has lectured him regarding

Book Nooks The question of how best to set up a personal library has confounded many a book collector. When it comes time to arrange them, all those wonderful volumes can seem like the pieces of an unsolvable puzzle. The literature lover who’s searching for solutions will welcome Book Nooks: Inspired Ideas for Cozy Reading

Shelley Burr’s gripping sophomore mystery, Murder Town, is set in rural Rainier, Australia, a fictional small town located halfway between Melbourne and Sydney. It used to be known as a nice place to take a break from that long journey, what with its pretty Fountain Park and popular local businesses like Earl Grey’s Yarn and

Run by Blake Crouch is a thriller that dips its toe just far enough into the world of science fiction to be deeply unsettling. In the lower 48 states of America, an aurora borealis has beamed brainwashing light into the eyes of unwitting citizens, turning them into homicidal, cultish maniacs. Crouch’s story follows a single

There have been other iterations of The 1619 Project, the groundbreaking reframing of American history that centers the Black experience. It was first a series of essays published in the New York Times Magazine in 2019, and it’s also been a podcast, an anthology, a children’s picture book and a documentary TV series. With The

I don’t mean this to sound melancholy, but I haven’t spoken to my father since he died. I know a lot of people do that with their dead, but it’s not in me. He’s not there anymore—definitionally—and it feels like cheating to make him up as I would a fictional character. Too easy, too narcissistic,

With the goal of sharing simple, delicious recipes filled with constructive tips to reduce waste, save time and cut costs, Every Last Bite: Save Money, Time and Waste With 70 Recipes That Make the Most of Mealtimes by British chef and writer Rosie Sykes (The Kitchen Revolution) is a delightful mix of global recipes reflecting her

Beauty and the Beast truly is a tale as old as time. There’s a charm to it that seems evergreen—the idea of a beast softened and redeemed by love. But what about what the Beast’s love does for Beauty? Can it lift her out of a life in which she feels trapped? Can it awaken

It all began with a T-shirt. On her 32nd birthday, Glory Edim was surprised by a gift from her ex-partner, a custom-made T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Well-Read Black Girl.” When she wore it on the streets of Brooklyn, she was again surprised: People stopped her to talk about books. Thus began an evolving conversation,

With his breakthrough 2014 novel, The Troop, which was one of the most acclaimed horror novels of the last decade, Nick Cutter established himself as a writer of propulsive, muscular, unrelenting journeys into terror. His latest book, The Queen, reaffirms his place as one of the genre’s most entertaining storytellers, delivering a creature feature and

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H.G. Parry (The Magician’s Daughter and The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep) provides a dazzling escape for lovers of magical universities and fantastical adventures that span both the human realm and the wilder, more unpredictable faerie world. When Clover Hill gets the opportunity to attend the school

Born in the American South to a banking family, Jennifer Neal has been traveling across continents, reinventing and reimagining herself for most of her life. Her migration story spans the American South, Japan, Australia and Germany in My Pisces Heart: A Black Immigrant’s Search for Home Across Four Continents. Neal (Notes on Her Color) is

What are your bookstore rituals? For example, where do you go first in a store?Lee Child: My first concern is how good of a breakfast I ate. How much weight can I carry home? I know there are going to be 20 or 30 titles I want. I usually glance at the front tables but start at the back,

When the first white flurries twirl on the frosty air where I live, I am instantly transported back to my 7-year-old self, running off to find my snow boots and mittens. But for many others, winter’s inexorable return means a depressing lack of light, bone-cold mornings and messy roads. Kari Leibowitz’s How to Winter: Harness

The work of award-winning actor and comedian Jenny Slate—whether her stand-up comedy, voice performances (Bob’s Burgers, The Great North), acting (Parks and Recreation, It Ends With Us), or beloved Marcel the Shell With Shoes On multimedia universe—leaves an indelible impression. Unsurprisingly, the prolific creator’s first memoir-in-essays, 2019’s Little Weirds, had the same effect thanks to

With incandescent prose and vibrant imagery, André Aciman evokes the rich, kaleidoscopic and sensual experiences of his coming-of-age in his memoir, Roman Year. Just before the Six Years War broke out between Israel and Egypt, 16-year-old Aciman fled Egypt with his deaf mother and younger brother. Packing all their belongings in 31 suitcases, the once