Books

One evening in 2020, I happened across a Twitter thread miles long. The original post had been yet another news item about the far-right conspiracy theory known as QAnon, and the replies were flooded with grieving users telling stories of loved ones who had all become so entrenched in the theory’s dark fever dreams that

“Too bad I never went to detective school,” Francesca Loftfield muses near the end of The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia. On a mission for an international aid group, the 27-year-old arrives in the titular Italian town in 1960, charged with starting a nursery school in the isolated mountain village. Life here couldn’t be more

In 18th-century England, women and men had no setting where it was acceptable to converse as equals on intellectual subjects like literature, fine art, foreign affairs, history, philosophy and science. That is, until women began hosting lively gatherings that defied sexist gender norms. When Elizabeth Montagu began hosting her salons in her house in London,

Shaun Hamill’s fiction jolts the reader with an immediate sense of ambition, a sense that they are about to be not just immersed, but plunged into something enormous that nevertheless keeps a grip on its humanity. With his follow-up to A Cosmology of Monsters, The Dissonance, Hamill once again retains that massive scope while telling

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of the National Book Award finalist The Undocumented Americans, has a lot in common with the titular protagonist of her debut novel, Catalina. Like Villavicencio did, Catalina attends Harvard as an undocumented student, and her broad ambitions could easily be imagined as the precursor to Villavicencio’s success. With the recent prevalence

New York City’s East Side at the turn of the 20th century comes vibrantly alive in The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld. In the late 1800s, Eastern European Jews began fleeing Germany’s pogroms and Russia’s Pale of Settlement, the largest ghetto in history. The East

In his introduction to The Art of Gothic Living: Dark Decor for the Modern Macabre, author Paul Gambino says that “Modern Gothic decor is the physical manifestation of the Goth ideology.” Just what that ideology is, however, is undoubtedly up for debate. That’s what makes Gambino’s selection of 15 different homes from three continents so

It’s clear from the jump of Jasmin Graham’s marvelous Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist why the author feels such a kinship with the titular fish. Sharks, who have survived five mass extinctions, are survivors. As Graham narrates her journey to becoming a marine biologist, from a childhood spent fishing with her

R. Eric Thomas reflects on the experience of returning home in his funny, forthright Congratulations, The Best Is Over!. Accompanied by his partner, David, a Presbyterian minister, Thomas leaves Philadelphia and goes back to Baltimore, Maryland, where he grew up, only to find a once-familiar landscape very much altered. In this inspired collection, he showcases

Brandon Keim’s thought-provoking, beautifully written Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-Than-Human World is perfect for those who love to read al fresco, surrounded by the very creatures the author urges us to view with curiosity, compassion and kinship. From adorable bumblebees to fearsome grizzly bears and everything—well, everyone—in between, Keim is

Young children courageously face their fears in Dare to Be Daring, a funny and reassuring tale told in upbeat, singsongy rhyme that provides an excellent mantra for situations when a little extra motivation is needed: “Today, I will dare to be daring.” As author Chelsea Lin Wallace acknowledges in straightforward, witty prose, trying something for

When I first saw Parachute: Subversive Design and Street Fashion, I didn’t think I was familiar with the Montreal-based brand, which was founded by American architect Harry Parnass and British designer Nicola Pelly in the late 1970s. But after spending only a few minutes with the book, I realized I was wrong. Parachute’s influence on

For so many of us, the refrigerator is an appliance we’ve interacted with daily for as long as we can remember. It’s also one we take for granted, rather than viewing it as emblematic of the world-changing innovation Nicola Twilley explores in Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. As readers will

Drew Beckmeyer’s The First Week of School is a game changer, an exceptionally creative back-to-school book that practically turns the genre on its head. It’s full of droll humor that will appeal to readers young and old. As the title suggests, it chronicles a first week inside an elementary school classroom, offering a bird’s-eye view

On the first morning of preschool, Ravi comes downstairs wearing ladybug wings and antennae. When he refuses cornflakes for breakfast, his mother tells him that it’s actually a bowl full of “aphids,” leading him to slurp it down. Later, when she suggests that Ravi brush his teeth, he replies, “Ladybugs don’t have teeth . .

In addition to her beautiful language and intricately constructed characters, one of Tana French’s great skills is her knack for an evocative setting. Think the deceptively quaint mountain village of Ardnakelty in The Searcher and The Hunter, or the siren call of cozy, idyllic Whitethorn House in The Likeness. But Broken Harbor is perhaps French’s

A Refiner’s Fire Hard to believe though it may be, Commissario Guido Brunetti has survived 32 hair-raising adventures thus far, and is back for number 33 in Donna Leon’s sophisticated police procedural series set in Venice, Italy. As A Refiner’s Fire opens, members of two rival gangs have been herded into the police station following

T.S. Eliot wrote, “There’s no vocabulary / For love within a family . . . the love within which / All other love finds speech. / This love is silent.” Not so for Nicole Treska, as she introduces her rogues’ gallery of a family in her debut memoir, Wonderland: A Tale of Hustling Hard and

Joseph Nightingale, nicknamed Fearless after a moment of heroism during the Bosnian conflict, is a British war photographer who was in Nairobi during the August 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy. While he was away, his pregnant girlfriend, an award-winning investigative journalist, was killed in an automobile accident. As Praveen Herat’s gripping debut political thriller,

Both an art book and a kind of poetic herbarium, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children defies easy classification. That’s for the benefit of readers, though: Untethered to the conventions of traditional genres, writer Jamaica Kincaid is free to create something brand new, and perusing the pages feels like true discovery. Kincaid’s tone shifts

Rosena Fung’s latest graphic novel, Age 16, explores the complicated relationships between three generations, jumping in time between the experiences of three 16-year-old girls: Roz in Toronto in 2000; her mother, Lydia, in Hong Kong in 1972; and Roz’s grandmother, Mei Laan, in Guangdong in 1954. How did you come up with the narrative structure

Ghosts haunt the pages of this summer’s best thrillers: figures out of memory, history and—just maybe—the Great Beyond. Originally published here.

Get ready to fall in love with Max, the irrepressible elementary school narrator of That Always Happens Sometimes. He’s full of energy and enthusiasm that constantly erupts like a volcano. In Kiley Frank’s clever text, Max poses a series of questions that reveal his personality, such as “Have your electric pencil sharpener privileges ever been

This reviewer is emphatically not a cat person. So it’s a testament to my faith in Lucy Knisley that I eagerly picked up Woe: A Housecat’s Story of Despair.  The comics included here will be familiar to the bestselling author’s numerous social media followers; over many years she chronicled the misadventures and many (many) demands

The author of The Night Ends With Fire, a new fantasy romance inspired by the legend of Mulan, shares her bookstore habits and favorite library memories. Originally published here.

Writing advice from Jami Attenberg, recipes from Black Appalachia, a guide to Japanese gift wrapping and more have delighted and inspired us in 2024. Originally published here.

When Daniel Lohr’s and Leah Auerbach’s eyes meet as they wait to board the SS Raffaello, their connection is instant and electric. The year is 1939, and they’ve both booked first-class passage on a weekslong journey from Trieste, Italy, to Shanghai. But while the cruise liner is massive in size and gorgeous in design, its

Set aside some time once you start reading Trust Her, because after a page of what seems like an idyllic summer outing on the Irish coast, Tessa Daly is plunged into a nightmare: held hostage and forced back into a life she thought she had left behind forever. Flynn Berry fans will recognize Tessa as

Surprise, surprise: Rom-coms still dominate. But moodier contemporary romances are on the rise and historicals are venturing into less-commonly seen eras. Originally published here.