Books

It’s common practice among many publishers to leave translators’ bylines off book covers—an act of erasure that reinforces the widely held belief that original texts are sacred and thus superior to any translation. Jennifer Croft, who is best known for her translations of Nobel Prize-winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk’s books, is challenging readers and critics
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Annie Brown was the proverbial glue of her family. She picked up her husband, Bill, at a party and they married after their fling led to a pregnancy—the first of many for the Brown family. Annie brought joy to the patients at the nursing home where she worked. She provided accountability for her best friend,
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Leslie Jamison has been lauded for her essay collections Make It Scream, Make It Burn and The Empathy Exams, as well as her memoir The Recovery. In her new memoir Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, Jamison focuses on her first years of newly single motherhood and the unraveling of her marriage. An incisive observer,
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Inexperienced and often impulsive, teenagers can make dumb mistakes that they may spend the rest of their lives trying to rectify. Rene Quiñones was a San Francisco gang member who went to prison, then turned his life around as a violence prevention counselor and business owner. Sadly, his son Luis, nicknamed Sito, didn’t have the
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Despite her love for logic and science, 12-year-old Sahara Rashad longs for a trip from her home in Queens, New York, to Merlin’s Crossing, a wizard-themed amusement park. Alas, as Nedda Lewers’ magical coming-of-age adventure Daughters of the Lamp opens, Sahara realizes her dad didn’t find her “Ten Reasons the Rashad Family Should Go to
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The Latino community doesn’t exist as a monolith. Latin Americans hail from over 20 countries, each with its own unique ethnicity and culture. African, Spanish and Indigenous influences vary wildly but are consistently present in most groups. Labels like Hispanic or Latino don’t snugly fit this growing population, and some people shrug them off entirely.
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In Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York author Ross Perlin examines a duality of the world’s most linguistically diverse city. Home to over 700 languages, 21st-century New York City is a vital nexus where people from all over the world can find others speaking their mother tongue; but the
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Without any career prospects after grad school, Alicia finds her dead-end retail job tolerable only because of two co-workers she sort-of calls friends: bright, bubbly Heaven and jaded, focused Mars. After a rare appearance at one of Heaven’s parties, Alicia tries to return to the Toronto apartment she shares with her mother only to be
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Kacen Callender dedicates their first foray into young adult fantasy, Infinity Alchemist, to “the younger me who always wanted to write a YA fantasy.” While this might make one imagine a teenage Callender dreaming of a future as an author, Callender explains it is actually in reference to their early days of their career, when
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If you asked romance author Tia Williams what her favorite genre is, you might be surprised to learn it is horror. In fact, she once took a yearlong class on Dracula, taking an interest in the mythology of immortality and the fearsome, seductive title character. Williams chuckles as she says, “I’d love to write [a
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In Olivia Dade’s witty and warm new romance, At First Spite, the incredibly named town of Harlot’s Bay in coastal Maryland is the perfect place to start over. That’s good because jilted, 37-year-old Athena Greydon has two graduate degrees, no job and nowhere else to go. Even before her broken engagement to man-child Dr. Johnny
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★ Canadian Boyfriend Jenny Holiday’s Canadian Boyfriend, in which a dance teacher tends to her own emotional wounds while helping a young widower manage his new reality, is a true romance gem. When one of Aurora “Rory” Evans’ students, Olivia, returns to class after losing her mother, Rory is especially attentive to her and Mike
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Anita Kelly dedicates their latest rom-com, How You Get the Girl, to “every queer and trans person in Tennessee. Your joy will outlive the cruelty of your government.” A teen librarian by day, Kelly knows intimately how remarkable educators can make all the difference in the world. Julie Parker is enjoying her first season as
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If you asked romance author Tia Williams what her favorite genre is, you might be surprised to learn it is horror. In fact, she once took a yearlong class on Dracula, taking an interest in the mythology of immortality and the fearsome, seductive title character. Williams chuckles as she says, “I’d love to write [a
0 Comments
Kacen Callender dedicates their first foray into young adult fantasy, Infinity Alchemist, to “the younger me who always wanted to write a YA fantasy.” While this might make one imagine a teenage Callender dreaming of a future as an author, Callender explains it is actually in reference to their early days of their career, when
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What happens to a family after a dangerous, life-changing and historic journey? That’s the focus of Veera Hiranandani’s wonderful Amil and the After, which follows 12-year-old Amil and his family, who, during the Partition of India in 1948, have just migrated to Bombay from what would become Pakistan. It’s a worthy companion novel to Hiranandani’s
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Last year I told everyone who would listen about a book I was reading—Breath by James Nestor—and how radically it had impacted my thinking. Most of us breathe poorly, and it’s a real problem. Another excellent, easy-to-browse resource to get your breathing back on track is Jean Hall’s Breathe: Simple Breathing Techniques for a Calmer,
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Like his mentor Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis had a dream. Amid the turmoil and violence of a segregated South and a nation embroiled in the struggle for racial reconciliation, Lewis envisioned and championed what he called a “Beloved Community” in America, “a society based on simple justice that values the dignity and the
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The protagonist of Temim Fruchter’s remarkable debut novel, a queer grad student studying Jewish folklore, describes her work as collecting scraps. In the wake of her father’s death, 30-year-old Shiva decides to get her master’s, hoping to unravel the family mysteries her mother has kept hidden from her all her life. Shiva eventually travels to
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Behind You Is the Sea, Susan Muaddi Darraj’s debut novel, brings readers into the lives of three Palestinian families in and around Baltimore: the Salamehs, the Baladis and the Ammars. Generational disputes form the core of the novel’s action, which unfolds through weddings, graduations, unplanned pregnancies and funerals. Women’s issues are also at the fore,
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Almost from the moment it docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, much has been written about the Clotilda, the schooner that brought 110 captive Africans to the U.S. in 1860, more than five decades after the slave trade had been outlawed. The illegal voyage was conducted with stealth, but the arrival of the ship was an
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As a 19-year-old undergraduate, Antonia Hylton read an academic paper that mentioned Crownsville State Hospital, known at its founding as the Hospital for the Negro Insane. That reference triggered an obsession with the hospital’s bleak history that has carried her through the 10 years it took to produce Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim
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A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles As the days become shorter, there’s nothing more comforting than immersing myself in a sweeping historical novel—the bigger, the better! When my book club recently voted to read Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow (Penguin, $18, 9780143110439), I welcomed the opportunity to escape nightly into the grand halls
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