Home Book Trade Subscribe Login

Week of Friday, May 3, 2024

Among the stellar titles reviewed this week are two debut memoirs that grapple with what it means to love in the face of tremendous stakes. The Wives by Simone Gorrindo offers "an intimate, vulnerable portrait of a marriage and an important depiction of the sacrifice and bravery of military spouses"; and Loose of Earth by Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn is an "incisive" depiction of "the fault lines in a family and the unseen but real environmental hazards that threaten the health of human beings." Meanwhile, for kids, Brendan Wenzel's "rhyming picture-book charmfest" Two Together follows the friendship of a dog and a cat as they try "to get home safely."

In The Writer's Life, horror writer Nick Medina doesn't scare easily, but the author of Indian Burial Ground shares which novel consistently gives him chills and which book he had to put down because it left him so disturbed

--Dave Wheeler, senior editor, Shelf Awareness

The Best Books This Week

Fiction

Real Americans

by Rachel Khong

More Info Buy Now

Three generations of a Chinese-American family grapple with identity, expectations, and whether family equals destiny in Real Americans, the imaginative and expansive, yet intimate, second novel from Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamins).

On the eve of Y2K, Lily Chen meets Matthew at her employer's office party. Their connection is undeniable, and they fall in love, but Lily's mother, a dedicated geneticist, acts strangely resistant to the idea of Matthew. When a surprising truth comes out, everything Lily thought she knew about her parents and her relationship is rocked.

Sixteen years later, Lily and her teenage son, Nick, live on a remote island in Washington State. Nick doesn't know the identity of his father, nor why Nick presents as white when his mother is Chinese-American. Nick invests in a DNA test, and he's shocked when it leads him to his father, who invalidates the story of abandonment Lily has told Nick. At the root of everything lies the story of Lily's mother, Mei, her desperate escape from 1960s China, and the scientific discoveries that would impact the Chen family for generations.

This family saga shines as both ambitious and wholly unpretentious, with a sweeping scope that spans continents and eras, and an immediacy of emotion that maintains a sense of intimacy between the reader and its multiple protagonists. Traces of science fiction and magical realism give additional texture to the realistic storyline, all combining in an exploration of fate versus choice. Real Americans is a profound, riveting, and loving journey of betrayal and forgiveness, of words left unsaid, that will provide rich food for thought for book clubs and independent readers alike. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Discover: Three generations of a Chinese-American family grapple with identity, destiny, and forgiveness in this expansive yet intimate saga that moves from 1960s China to the 21st-century U.S.

Knopf, $29, hardcover, 416p., 9780593537251

Tenderloin

by Joy Sorman, transl. by Lara Vergnaud

More Info Buy Now

Can butchery become ballet? Is the dance of death one of romance and joy, or is it the crude swelling of muscle and a final rattle of breath before becoming mere meat? In the quixotic Tenderloin, French author Joy Sorman gives readers Upton Sinclair's The Jungle with a sprinkling of the absurdity and horror of Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch.

Pim is a skinny kid who aspires to become the best butcher in Paris. He wants money and accolades. He sees beauty in this dirty job that so few want to do, and he understands its value to the people who will pay to avoid having to do it themselves. Pim dedicates his life to the knife, to feeding people's intoxicating meat obsession, so that he can obtain a status that, eventually, he doesn't even want anymore. All Pim wants is the animal in its purest form: as a slab on his table.

Sorman's sentences swim and dive. Some are strikingly simple, while others go on for half a page but never lose readers. Sorman and her translator, Lara Vergnaud, are word magicians, and they've created a cacophonic dreamscape of power, sex, and intensity that stands on the shoulders of George Orwell's Animal Farm but is entirely its own oddity. Tenderloin peels back the layers of reverence for what we kill and what we consume. It also investigates the capitalist separation between the eater and the eaten, and the impact of that disconnect on humanity. Tenderloin is a dark, iron-drenched infestation of blood and sinew that triangulates and strangles. --Dominic Charles Howarth, book manager, Book + Bottle

Discover: Tenderloin echoes with the wild pulsing of blood and the screams from the slaughterhouse as it follows a young man who dreams of becoming the best butcher in Paris.

Restless Books, $18, paperback, 176p., 9781632063618

Reboot

by Justin Taylor

More Info Buy Now

As Thomas Wolfe wrote, one can't go home again, but that hasn't stopped television producers who hope to revive old programs from trying. Even characters in novels are getting into the act, as readers of Reboot, Justin Taylor's exuberant satire, will discover. One such character is David Crader, a star on Rev Beach, a mid-2000s "Dawson's Creek meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer" show about a beach with a "supernatural underbelly." Now David is almost 40, living in Portland, Ore., and hasn't appeared on screen in nearly a decade, thanks to a drinking problem. Mostly sober now, he runs a restaurant that closed for a year during the Covid-19 pandemic, and he stays financially afloat thanks to his role as the voice of Shibboleth Gold, the protagonist of a hugely successful "roguelike video game" with "beaucoup awards and downloads."

Rev Beach became popular again during lockdown, so when David attends a fan convention in Los Angeles, Grace Travis, his former co-star and wealthy first ex-wife, recruits him to round up the old cast for a reboot. That cast included Shayne Glade, who played the show's half-vampire dreamboat, and Corey Burch, the "Designated Fat Kid" who has since become a "Q-pilled anti-vax activist." Taylor (Flings) packs a lot into this novel, including a subplot about David's second ex-wife and six-year-old son. The result is like an overflowing tureen: the stew is tasty, but less might have been neater. Despite its excesses, the novel is great fun, with witty gibes at pop culture, conspiracy theorists, and the cult of celebrity. Remakes have their pleasures, but clever, original novels are worth tuning in for. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

Discover: In Reboot, Justin Taylor's witty satire, a former teen star who is now a restaurateur and voice actor is recruited to round up the old cast of his hit mid-2000s TV series for a remake.

Pantheon, $28, hardcover, 304p., 9780553387629

The Girl from the Grand Hotel

by Camille Aubray

More Info Buy Now

Set on the French Riviera, Camille Aubray's The Girl from the Grand Hotel begins as a beach read--and what a beach!--then evolves into a glossy-fearsome thriller partly based on true events.

It's 1939, and 20-year-old New Yorker Annabel has just lost her parents. Without benefactors, she's forced to drop out of Vassar, so she takes an administrative job at a Côte d'Azur hotel managed by her French uncle. Her employment coincides with the August arrival of famous faces: Hollywood is in town for the planned first-ever Cannes Film Festival. The film community is well aware of Adolf Hitler's advances elsewhere in Europe--as Annabel puts it, the festival was pointedly conceived as "a gathering for peace, freedom, and good­will." But things turn dark after she finds the dead body of a guest: a German tennis star who refused to join the Nazi Party.

The Girl from the Grand Hotel skips the big reveal of a traditional thriller, presumably so Aubray (Cooking for Picasso) can hew to actual events; her supporting cast is a who's who of Hollywood greats who were real-life participants in the pre-festival activities. Readers who like the pageantry of galas and the upstairs-downstairs tensions of Downton Abbey should swoon at this breathtakingly imagined novel. As for its somber turn, novelist-screenwriter F. Scott Fitzgerald, for whom Annabel is playing amanuensis, saw it coming: "Our French Riviera is lousy with spies this summer. Real spies, Annabel, not just our Hollywood spies--who are amateurs compared to these guys." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Discover: Part beach read and part thriller, this glossy-fearsome novel finds an American woman working at a Côte d'Azur hotel in 1939 when Hollywood arrives for the first-ever Cannes Film Festival.

Blackstone, $26.99, hardcover, 312p., 9798212417235

The Evolution of Annabel Craig

by Lisa Grunwald

More Info Buy Now

Lisa Grunwald's smart, empathetic seventh novel, The Evolution of Annabel Craig, examines issues of faith, intellectual freedom, and self-discovery against the backdrop of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, better known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, of 1925.

One afternoon in the small, quiet town of Dayton, Tenn., Annabel Craig overhears a group of town leaders plotting to make local teacher John Scopes the test case for a new law, the Butler Act, which forbids the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools. Annabel's sharp-eyed lawyer husband, George, joins Scopes's defense team, and Annabel watches (and takes photographs) as journalists, scientists, and lookie-loos descend on Dayton and the town itself is caught up in the tumult. Annabel confronts her assumptions about the relationship between science and faith, and about a woman's ability to make her own choices.

Grunwald (Time After Time) captures the rabid excitement of the trial while painting a nuanced portrait of Annabel: orphaned as a teenager, deeply in love with George, and worried about her marriage after some recent difficulties. Raised to obey male leaders on matters of faith, politics, and gender roles, Annabel begins to question those beliefs, especially when she hosts a young journalist named Lottie who challenges her on multiple points. As the trial drags on, Annabel has a front-row seat to courtroom debates, behind-the-scenes machinations, manipulation by (and of) local religious leaders, and new ideas about the choices available to women.

Thoughtful, well researched, and astonishingly contemporary, The Evolution of Annabel Craig is a compelling account of a landmark case in American law and a young woman forging her own path forward. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Discover: Lisa Grunwald's thoughtful seventh novel examines the Scopes Monkey Trial through the eyes of a female photographer struggling to find her own path forward.

Random House, $30, hardcover, 320p., 9780593596159

The Book Censor's Library

by Bothayna Al-Essa, transl. by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain

More Info Buy Now

The brutally funny and scorchingly beautiful prose of Bothayna Al-Essa's The Book Censor's Library conveys the cost of authoritarianism and book-banning in the most personal terms. Readers of satire and dystopic fiction will find a welcome companion in Al-Essa's third novel to be translated into English.

The new censor starts his career offended by the banality of romance novels and the inflated claims of self-help books. His superiors quickly redirect his efforts at assessment toward more important offenses within their totalitarian theocracy known as "the System": those against "the forbidden trinity of God, government, and sex."

During his training, the censor "had learned that language should be an impenetrable surface. It should be smooth and flat with no bottom where meaning could settle. It was a censor's job to curb imagination." But imagination lies in wait for the censor, both within the books he's asked to evaluate and within his daughter, a sensitive child who echoes fairy tales and children's stories from the prerevolutionary "Old World." The censor soon finds himself drawn to and then consumed by banned books, including Zorba the Greek, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio, Brave New World. He collects them into a library, and their contents even inhabit his dreams.

Aided by a group of resistance readers known as "Cancers," the censor embarks on a dangerous quest to rescue thousands more banned books from the impending flames of "Purification Day," but the mission may have dire consequences for the censor and the people he cares for.

In The Book Censor's Library, award-winning Kuwaiti writer Al-Essa (All that I Want to Forget) imparts themes that unfortunately remain timely. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.

Discover: The Book Censor's Library is a beautifully written and brutally funny satire about totalitarianism and censorship.

Restless Books, $18, paperback, 272p., 9781632063342

The Funeral Cryer

by Wenyan Lu

More Info Buy Now

British Chinese author Wenyan Lu writes sublimely of quotidian, quiet lives in her debut novel, The Funeral Cryer. Lu, born in Shanghai, identifies towns and cities of her birth country as settings for her fiction but relies on titles and descriptions rather than given names for her characters. That anonymity deftly underscores the universality of human experiences--trust, betrayal, disappointment, hope, and, for the lucky, maybe love.

Lu's protagonist is the eponymous funeral cryer, hired usually by strangers to grieve the passing of a family member. Hers is the only (sporadic) income supporting her and her indolent husband. Despite his unemployment--he claims mah-jongg winnings as his household contribution--he shows no gratitude to his working wife, repeatedly demeaning her with insults. As for the cryer, being "associated with death constantly" has made her the village pariah.

As Lu establishes the couple's routines, she also nimbly integrates small disturbances that grow. Their unmarried daughter, living in Shanghai, becomes pregnant. Her father dies; her mother unexpectedly moves in. The cryer continues to cry: "Miserable stories made me feel as if my life wasn't all that terrible; all the stories added a little excitement and life to my boring existence."

Lu is an astutely attentive writer, providing small details that cleverly imply broader meanings: the cryer wears her faraway daughter's left-behind clothing that doesn't quite fit; she can chat for a few minutes outside but can never go into a neighbor's home. Lest her protagonist seem more victim than active, Lu bestows the cryer with first-person agency to craft what proves to be a richly layered story. --Terry Hong

Discover: The everyday lives of nameless Chinese villagers populate British Chinese author Wenyan Lu's poignant novel The Funeral Cryer.

Hanover Square Press, $28.99, hardcover, 336p., 9781335016935

Mystery & Thriller

The Last Word

by Elly Griffiths

More Info Buy Now

Detective Inspector Kaur, who fans of Elly Griffiths will know from her Harbinder Kaur mystery series, may drop in and out of The Last Word, but the book is fueled by a trio of Shoreham-by-Sea amateur detectives. Readers who fondly remember these three characters from The Postscript Murders may find their affection becoming ardor while consuming this equally character-driven successor.

Ukraine-born care worker Natalka Kolisnyk and opera-loving octogenarian Edwin Fitzgerald have formed a detective agency following their friend's death, which was explored in The Postscript Murders. Finally they have, as Natalka puts it, "a proper case, not just stupid divorce stuff": Minnie Barnes believes that her mother, romance writer Melody Chambers, has been murdered. The death has been attributed to a heart attack, but Minnie is convinced that Melody's second husband--a pharmacist--replaced Melody's blood pressure medicine with poison in order to inherit her estate. As evidence, Minnie shows Natalka one of her mother's notebooks, in which Melody wrote, "I think my husband is going to kill me." Or are these words intended for a novel, as Melody's husband told the police?

Griffiths's irresistible premise leads Edwin and Benedict--Natalka's ex-Benedictine monk boyfriend--to go undercover at a writing retreat that Melody attended. The retreat produces not just a corpse but also some possibly incriminating writing exercises from the visiting authors. The novel's resolution is a little shaggy, but the friendships among its three outsider sleuths make The Last Word a transporting cozy mystery, albeit one with teeth. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Discover: The cast of Elly Griffiths's The Postscript Murders returns to figure out who killed a romance writer in this transporting cozy mystery with teeth.

Mariner, $27.99, hardcover, 352p., 9780063374720

Romance

Late Bloomer

by Mazey Eddings

More Info Buy Now

Two women fall in love on a North Carolina flower farm despite the con that brought them together in Mazey Eddings's steamy sapphic romance, Late Bloomer. Struggling artist Opal is surprised when her terrible friend gives her a belated birthday gift: a scratch-off lottery ticket. She's absolutely shocked when she wins $500,000.

Impulsive Opal jumps at the chance to start over and finally pursue her art as a career when she sees a flower farm for sale on Facebook Marketplace. After only a short conversation with the seller, Opal exchanges a check for the deed, but it will come as no surprise to readers that the sweet, generous woman who sold Opal this dream wasn't exactly straightforward.

Grieving farmer Pepper has been searching for her beloved Grandma Lou's will for months, but in the will's absence, Pepper's grifter mother inherited the Thistle and Bloom farm, and it apparently now belongs to Opal.

Eddings (A Brush with Love) skillfully takes a far-fetched premise and turns it into a funny, heartfelt romance. Sunshiney Opal and grumpy Pepper find common ground in their worries about failing as adults and their experiences of manipulation by those closest to them. Opal's sisters and Pepper's spirited queer friend group provide comic relief and the support both women need as they work to find a way out of the farm's dire financial straits.

Late Bloomer enchants with humor and heat, nuanced representations of neurodiversity--Opal self-identifies as neurodivergent and Pepper is autistic--and an especially swoony grump with a heart of gold. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian and freelance reviewer

Discover: Mazey Eddings queers the grumpy-sunshine trope with this steamy sapphic romance between two neurodivergent characters, set on a flower farm.

St. Martin's Griffin, $18, paperback, 400p., 9781250847089

Effie Olsen's Summer Special

by Rochelle Bilow

More Info Buy Now

Second-chance romance, culinary culture, and a beautiful seaside setting sweetly combine in Effie Olsen's Summer Special, a deliciously appetizing rom-com by food writer Rochelle Bilow (Ruby Spencer's Whisky Year).

Effie Olsen is single and 33 years old when she gets "fired from her dream job" as a chef in San Francisco. Broke and without a backup plan, she packs "the contents of her entire life" into a suitcase and returns to her "absurdly small, insufferably chatty" hometown of Alder Isle, Maine, for the first time in 16 years. Effie takes refuge with her father and younger sister, a "Generation Z financial prodigy," under the pretext of a summer visit.

Effie's return also reunites her with Ernie Callahan, her former best friend from high school. Ernie works as a butcher and prep cook at Brown Butter, a farm-to-table restaurant operated by a sexist male head chef who offers Effie a job. Working under the same roof, Effie and Ernie easily rekindle their friendship and create a "bucket list" of activities: watching sunsets, indulging in enormous lobster rolls, and even trying salsa dancing. But as she forms new memories with Ernie, a situation arises at the restaurant that calls professional integrity into question--and might prevent their friendship from becoming something more.

Bilow has worked as a line cook and at Bon Appétit magazine. Her insider knowledge is a key ingredient in this romance, adding depth and authenticity to this spicy and satisfying story that blends the pleasures of true love with elements of self-discovery. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Discover: In this fun, delicious rom-com, a chef who's down on her luck returns to her hometown in Maine and finds love with an old friend.

Berkley, $18, paperback, 384p., 9780593547908

Biography & Memoir

The Wives: A Memoir

by Simone Gorrindo

More Info Buy Now

An unflinching, powerful memoir by Simone Gorrindo, whose essays have appeared in the New York Times and New York magazine, The Wives is both an intimate, vulnerable portrait of a marriage and an important depiction of the sacrifice and bravery of military spouses.

In 2012, at the age of 28, a newly married Gorrindo left behind her dream job as an editor in New York to become an army wife in Georgia, giving up "career, friends, more than a decade of history." Her husband, Andrew, had never been able to shake off his desire to join the military. After couples therapy and many hard conversations, they headed off to enter a life that would prove to be alien and challenging, particularly for Gorrindo, who did not have army training to lose herself in.

Gorrindo's writing is evocative and immersive as she captures the many complexities of military life, such as the constant fear of receiving bad news and the debilitating loneliness caused by her husband's frequent deployments and the hierarchies of her new social circles. Gorrindo found herself in a community that was very different, culturally and politically, from anything she was used to. "I hadn't found a place here," she reflects, "or had not yet figured out how to fit into the place I had made."

With fearlessness and brutal honesty, Gorrindo invites readers into an exclusive, hidden world. She brings to life the strong, complicated women who became her found family and celebrates the loyal bonds of the sisterhood that ultimately rescued her from some of her darkest moments. --Grace Rajendran, freelance reviewer

Discover: Simone Gorrindo's debut memoir is a captivating and vulnerable look into the complex lives of military wives.

Scout Press/Gallery, $29.99, hardcover, 416p., 9781982178499

Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words

by Boel Westin, transl. by Silvester Mazzarella

More Info Buy Now

The subject of Boel Westin's Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words is a towering figure in 20th-century children's literature, best known for her enormously popular children's series featuring the hippoesque creatures known as Moomins and the other characters who populate their home in Moominvalley.

Westin's detailed biography, translated from the Swedish by Silvester Mazzarella, provides an intimate portrait of Jansson's life, and traces the development of her talent for drawing, illustration, and painting, encouraged by her unconventional artistic family in the decades prior to World War II. The book exactingly depicts her journey, including her technical detail and her thoughts on art, her evolving confidence as an artist, and the development of her singular style in various media as she studied in her native Finland, Stockholm, and Paris--and as she traveled across Italy, even as the storm clouds of World War II gathered.

Westin shares the origin story behind the Moomins, a reaction to the trauma of war: "The story of the family in the valley was a realisation of the idea 'of a happy society and a peaceful world,' a fiction sprung from the dreams of the war years and a longing for something else." But the standout elements of this impressive biography come in the form of Jansson's own sketches, paintings, journals, notes, and letters, as well as photos showing her at work. Seeing Jansson's process throughout the pages, readers gain an enhanced understanding of and appreciation for this exceptional artist who continues to inspire and delight the world to this day. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.

Discover: Boel Westin's biography of Tove Jansson is an exceptional work that details the life and artistry of one the most influential children's authors of the 20th century.

University of Minnesota Press, $29.95, hardcover, 576p., 9781517917296

Loose of Earth: A Memoir

by Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn

More Info Buy Now

Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn's incisive debut memoir, Loose of Earth, explores the fallout from Blackburn's father's colon cancer diagnosis in 1990s Lubbock, Tex., and depicts Blackburn's evangelical mother's increasingly desperate attempts to save her husband's life by acts of faith.

The oldest of five children, Blackburn was a young teenager already starting to question her parents' rigid views when her father was diagnosed. She watched as her parents sought out increasingly outlandish faith healers who made dramatic claims, and as her mother's strictures on diet and behavior grew more exacting, and she wondered if faith (or the lack of it) had any bearing on her father's health. As an adult, Blackburn extensively researched the link between cancer diagnoses and the presence of harmful chemicals developed for use in household and industrial products such as nonstick cookware and firefighting foams. The memoir juxtaposes this research against vivid scenes from Blackburn's childhood and her present-day attempts to understand her parents' actions.

Like its windswept west Texas setting, Blackburn's narrative contains both harsh realities and seductively powerful illusions. She details the tightknit community and the impossible promises of the church her family belonged to; her struggles to care for her siblings and her resentment toward her parents for keeping them so isolated; and her grief at the death of her dad and the rock-solid certainty of her belief. Quiet but unsparing in its gaze, Loose of Earth is an unusual faith-deconstruction memoir that deals with the fault lines in a family and the unseen but real environmental hazards that threaten the health of human beings and the earth they walk. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Discover: Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn's incisive memoir examines the connections between her father's cancer diagnosis, her family's evangelical faith, and the effects of harmful chemicals in the environment.

University of Texas Press, $26.95, hardcover, 216p., 9781477329627

History

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook

by Hampton Sides

More Info Buy Now

The epic final voyage of Captain James Cook was historic but also catastrophic, as historian Hampton Sides (In the Kingdom of Ice) masterfully recounts in The Wide Wide Sea. On July 12, 1776, Cook left England aboard the HMS Resolution, which was soon joined by the HMS Discovery, on a projected two-year exploratory expedition to the Pacific. Cook's "secret instructions" from the British Admiralty were large in scope: reach the Pacific Ocean via the Cape of Good Hope and return Mai, a beloved Tahitian crewmember, back to his home; sail to the Pacific coast of North America and claim any new lands for England; and seek the fabled Northwest Passage.

Sides is a superb storyteller with an eye for the physical beauty within "the blue void" of the Pacific, and he paints lush portraits of the islands Cook visited and their diverse cultures. Sides also examines Cook's unusual behavior, which included "uncharacteristic surliness" and "flights of temper," and suggests that Cook's "saturnine moods" may have been the result of acute sciatica. Whatever the cause, Sides reveals a man who, by this voyage, had become "a despot... with a mean streak" who "was slowly losing faith in the supposed benefits of cross-cultural contact." Sides's minute-by-minute account of Cook's last moments on the Big Island of Hawaii in 1779--the outcome of his intemperate decision making, Sides argues--is simply riveting. Populated with a panoply of colorful personalities and places, The Wide Wide Sea thrills as it also plumbs the problematic depths of "discovery." --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver

Discover: The last voyage of Captain James Cook charted historic courses, created new maps, and hastened the demise of a tired explorer who lost control of his vaunted calm--and paid the ultimate price.

Doubleday, $35, hardcover, 432p., 9780385544764

Business & Economics

The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power

by Dana Mattioli

More Info Buy Now

A riveting corporate exposé, The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power investigates in impressive depth the "feudal overlord" arrangements that sustain Amazon's position at the top of the economic food chain and enable it to overwhelm its competition using methods that sometimes verge on unethical.

Debut author Dana Mattioli is an award-winning journalist who has served as the Wall Street Journal's Amazon reporter since 2019. She conducted extensive conversations with more than 600 people, including current and former Amazon employees, board members, and members of its most senior team of executives, which Amazon calls its S-Team. Mattioli also interviewed "the company's competitors, including CEOs, sellers, [and] small business owners." Her alarming narrative captures how the organization serves as an "800-pound deterrent to would-be competitors," its success story littered with "cautionary tales" of former rivals who were obliterated by its tenacious reach.

Take the case of Ubi, a voice-activated device created by Leor Grebler in 2012. Ubi became the first of many startups to claim Amazon misused their proprietary information to directly compete with them. Before their talks petered out, Grebler shared troves of Ubi's proprietary data, "almost a road map for the product," with Amazon representatives in 2012 and 2013. Amazon released its voice-activated Echo device in 2015.

Mattioli had access to a multitude of "internal documents, emails... business plans, and strategy memos" that support her capacious reporting. Her spirited book takes readers inside the inner sanctum of a corporate giant that will "stop at nothing" to win. --Shahina Piyarali

Discover: The Wall Street Journal's Amazon reporter takes readers inside the inner sanctum of a corporate giant that will stop at nothing to obliterate its competition.

Little, Brown, $32.50, hardcover, 416p., 9780316269773

House & Home

Decorate Like a Decorator: All You Need to Know to Design like a Pro

by Dara Caponigro and Melinda Page

More Info Buy Now

Decorate Like a Decorator: All You Need to Know to Design like a Pro delivers on the promise of its title as it offers an impressive collection of photographs of interior spaces. Author Dara Caponigro, the editor-in-chief of Frederic magazine, has created a visual feast. Anyone looking to elevate their design acumen and shape their own incomparable custom spaces will find inspiration from these beautifully captured interiors, which display the talents of some of the world's leading professional decorators.

Caponigro draws on the expert work of Frederic's editorial team to assemble this breathtaking compendium. The result isn't so much a how-to or step-by-step instructional guide as a mind-opening wellspring of creativity and expression that will show readers what's possible.

Whether its photos are capturing slipcovers or folding screens, wall paint or picture rails, Decorate Like a Decorator leaves no element of a room overlooked. Caponigro even considers ceilings, a feature that likely goes unnoticed by most readers, declaring them an "oft-forgotten 'fifth wall' " and "an exciting opportunity to take a space to new heights." Readers whose homes are less lavish than some of the opulent mansions featured here will still find the book's principles translatable to their own abodes.

Decorate Like a Decorator belongs in any ambitious home decorator's library. Design afficionados will return to its wealth of ideas and informed insight again and again as they develop spaces that are both stylish and functional. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.

Discover: The impressive collection of photographs in Decorate Like a Decorator offers stunning and imaginative interior design approaches for any kind of space.

Monacelli Press, $65, hardcover, 264p., 9781580936309

Performing Arts

The Tony Awards: A Celebration of Excellence in Theatre

by Eila Mell

More Info Buy Now

Once a year, in June, theater lovers can watch the Tony Awards on television. The other 364 days of the year, they can read and revel in Eila Mell's glorious glitter bomb of a salute to Broadway, The Tony Awards: A Celebration of Excellence in Theatre.

This stately book commemorates three-quarters of a century of high-watermark theater as recognized by the American Theatre Wing, which originated and co-sponsors the Tony Awards (and which gave this book its imprimatur). Beginning with 1947's inaugural Tonys and proceeding through 2023, Mell (Designing Broadway, coauthored with Derek McLane) lists each year's winners in all categories, followed by award-holder commentary from names familiar and otherwise. Winners relive their big night, recall what went into earning an award, and explain what it represents. As actor Alan Cumming puts it, "When you win a Tony that becomes your prefix forever."

The Tony Awards amounts to an oral history featuring lavish layouts that include the odd promotional still or set design, but the illustrations are overwhelmingly photos of presenters and winners in their awards ceremony finery. (Readers should prepare to feel underdressed.) Sections at the end of each decade devoted to acceptance speech highlights will be like manna to theater geeks. Among the unforgettable remarks are winning actress of 1983 Natalia Makarova's muted tribute to her husband, "who didn't help much but wasn't in my way," and winning choreographer of 1973 Bob Fosse's rimshot-worthy line: "Let me just say thank you to all the marvelous people who helped with the show and say that they could not have done it without me." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Discover: Authorized by the American Theatre Wing, which originated and co-sponsors the Tony Awards, this stately book commemorates three-quarters of a century of high-watermark theater.

Black Dog & Leventhal, $55, hardcover, 320p., 9780762484416

Now in Paperback

Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

by Ava Chin

More Info Buy Now

Writer-professor Ava Chin skillfully mixed food and (maternal) family in her award-winning 2014 book, Eating Wildly. Her exceptional sophomore memoir, Mott Street, reads like a companion text, inspired by an adult reconnection with her estranged father, who abandoned his wife long before his daughter formed any memories of him. Mott Street is an expansive personal history that originates in China's Pearl River Delta in the 1860s and eventually leads to a six-story building at 37 Mott Street--considered "the height of luxury" when it was built in 1915--in New York City's Chinatown, where both of Chin's parents were born. For more than a century, the Chins and Ng-Doshims called the red-brick tenement home; Chin's writing studio is now on the fourth floor, making her a fourth-generation resident.

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act became the first U.S. immigration law specifically targeting race. Its repercussions hit Chin's ancestors--and thousands of others--truncating families, creating so-called paper sons, and transforming immigrant narratives into "complete and utter fiction," which Chin spent decades unraveling across oceans and continents. From historical erasure to her own separation from her paternal family, Chin discovers that "when you're Chinese in America, with roots that stretch back to the Exclusion era, it is the historical record that is a fabulist fabrication, and the oral stories, passed down from generation to generation, like rare, evolving heirlooms, that ultimately hold the keys to the truth." Enhanced with rare photographs and documents, Chin achieves on the page what wasn't possible in her own actual life: to entwine her parentage into a single enduring story of abiding resilience and indelible inspiration. --Terry Hong

Discover: Ava Chin's second memoir parses fact from legally created fictions to deliver a remarkable record of resilient generations of her pioneering Chinese American family.

Penguin Books, $18, paperback, 400p., 9780525557395

A Living Remedy

by Nicole Chung

More Info Buy Now

Nicole Chung's first memoir, All You Can Ever Know, looked closely at her experience as a Korean adoptee raised by "color-blind" white parents. With A Living Remedy, Chung again turns a thoughtful eye on her family, this time facing the loss of both parents in a devastating handful of years. Her narrative, understandably, tackles death and grief in all its myriad forms, but it also provides an incisive indictment of the U.S. healthcare system, and the ways it fails those living in economic insecurity.

After attending college across the country, Chung builds a life far from her parents in Oregon, a decision both difficult and necessary. But caring for aging parents at such a distance proves nearly impossible, especially when complications from diabetes and kidney disease strike her father, revealing just how vulnerable they are. She knows her father's death did not have to occur as it did, and writes, "It is still hard for me not to think of my father's death as a kind of negligent homicide, facilitated and sped by the state's failure to fulfill its most basic responsibilities to him and others like him." Then Chung's mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer as Covid-19 lockdowns set in. The distance becomes unbearable, and navigating this grief is its own challenge: "Loss in the time of coronavirus can feel like skirting the borders of a deep, dense forest that is still largely unknown and unexplored." Beautifully written, A Living Remedy faces loss in all its heartrending shades, but mingling in every dark moment is the light and love of family and the unquenchable faith of her parents. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

Discover: Nicole Chung's beautifully written memoir faces loss in all its heartrending shades, but mingling in every dark moment is the light and love of family and the faith of her parents.

Ecco, $19.99, paperback, 256p., 9780063031623

The Late Americans

by Brandon Taylor

More Info Buy Now

Brandon Taylor's The Late Americans offers an insightful and razor-sharp portrait of the interconnected lives of a cohort of writers, dancers, and thinkers living in the contemporary American Midwest. Seamus is a white, aspiring poet but his holier-than-thou writer's MFA workshop makes him viscerally sick. Ivan is an ex-dancer building a career in finance on the back of money raised by his pornography. And Fyodor is a mixed-race worker in a beef processing plant who can't stop pushing away his partner. Together with a whirlwind of other figures who swirl in and out of each other's lives in Iowa City, these characters share friendships and emotional fallouts, triumphs, and betrayals, forever grappling across the fault lines of race, sexuality, and class.

Like other works by Taylor (Real Life; Filthy Animals), The Late Americans demonstrates a nuanced understanding of not only individual characters but the social worlds that tie them inextricably together. Taylor's characters unfold through specific, recognizable details, like Fyodor's tenderness toward the meat he cuts, "which was rather soft and delicate, like cloth or dough. You had to respect its natural geometry"; or Seamus's particularly acute yet distant experiences of pain: "There was a faint rattle in his chest when he breathed.... His shoulder ached. He put his thumb into his mouth and bit hard on the gristle at its edge. There was a sharp prick of pain, and then only dull heat." But it's the way these people interact with each other, from new perspectives and in new contexts, like chemicals transforming in solutions, that results in a deeply evocative portrait of anxiety and vulnerability, ambition, and intimacy. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Discover: A splendidly wrought and emotionally engrossing novel comprised of linked character portraits, The Late Americans continues to cement Brandon Taylor as a standout literary voice.

Riverhead, $18, paperback, 320p., 9780593332344

Children's & Young Adult

Two Together

by Brendan Wenzel

More Info Buy Now

Although their perspectives on rainstorms and tree climbing may differ, a dog and a cat don't let this mar their close friendship in Brendan Wenzel's rhyming picture-book charmfest Two Together, in which the unlikely twosome share a timeless and relatable goal: to get home safely.

As a dog and a cat head home together on foot, they encounter the ordinary ("Two together much to see./ Unknown sounds. Smells on trees") and the relatively dramatic: they run into a toad, cross a stream, wake a bear, escape through a swamp, and so on, until finally, "Two together see a light!/ All is dark. Home is bright." Curled up together by the fireside, the companions even dream together: an illustration shows them running from the house and into the darkness, presumably in search of more adventure.

Simple, supple rhymes are just right for this old-fashioned, uncomplicated tale of friendship, but there's nothing atavistic about the art. As he did in They All Saw a Cat and Hello Hello, Wenzel throws a kitchen sink's worth of media at the page to see what sticks, and the answer is well, practically everything (but, according to the books cataloging page, "mostly acrylic, watercolor, colored pencil, and a computer"). Scenes viewed by the dog, who has rounded edges and a painted appearance, have a likewise round-edged-and-painted appearance; art showing the cat's perspective is, like the cat, sketch-like and shaded with what looks like colored pencil. Two Together is here to say that a marvelous whole can be spun from disparate elements--whether what's under consideration is artistic technique or a cross-species friendship. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Discover: In this rhyming picture-book charmfest, an unlikely twosome--a cat and a dog--share a timeless and relatable goal: to get home safely.

Chronicle, $18.99, hardcover, 48p., ages 3-5, 9781797202778

Miguel Must Fight!

by Jamie Ofelia, illus. by Sara Palacios

More Info Buy Now

In Jamie Ofelia's well-honed, winning debut, Miguel is a gentle, artistic boy in a family of sword fighters. Between Us and Abuela illustrator Sara Palacios endearingly captures the nature of this courageous and loving family in which Miguel is "like a paintbrush, clever and colorful, in a family of steely swords."

All Miguel's life his family has told him, "You must fight!" His abuelitos spar while sipping tea, his parents duel like dancers, and his little sister, Zulema, terrifies the other toddlers with her wooden dagger. But artistic Miguel "can't waste time fighting when there's so much beauty to capture!" Even the townsfolk worry about Miguel's disinterest in fighting, until a dragon gives the boy a chance to shine. Mami, Papi, Abuela, Abuelo, and Zulema all fail to destroy El Dragón, a ferocious fire-spewing beast. When the dragon taunts the family--"Is that all you've got?"--Miguel steps forward with a sketch of the dragon. "You perfectly portrayed my sparkling eyes, my bulging muscles!" El Dragón preens. The dragon flies off clutching the paper, the town is saved, and the mayor declares a fiesta in honor of the boy, "a verdadero [true] hero!"

Ofelia seamlessly weaves Spanish words into her sharp and sweet text and there is a glossary (complete with phonetic pronunciations) at book's end. Palacios's spirited acrylic, gouache, and digital illustrations resemble traditional cel animated cartoons and her palette matches the many greens of the cacti and other plants of the Mexican landscape. Action-filled art, a positive message of creativity over warfare, and text that balances English and Spanish assure an entertaining reader experience both solo and as a read aloud. --Melinda Greenblatt, freelance book reviewer

Discover: In this well-honed, winning picture book debut, Miguel is a gentle, artistic boy in a family of sword fighters.

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, $18.99, hardcover, 40p., ages 5-8, 9780316365093

What's Eating Jackie Oh?

by Patricia Park

More Info Buy Now

Patricia Park dishes out a searing indictment of model minority expectations in her deliciously sharp and meaty sophomore young adult novel, What's Eating Jackie Oh?

Fifteen-year-old Jacqueline "Jackie" Oh is sick of "drink[ing] the model minority Kool-Aid." She'd rather sling hash at Melty's, her Halmoni and Haraboji's ("H&H") Midtown deli, than study for her overachieving parents' Ivy League fast-track. Then Jackie lands in the hot seat when she is successfully cast in the competitive cooking show Burn Off! Each episode's challenges reveal layers of complexity about Jackie's loved ones and their generational trauma, and cooking under fire helps Jackie appreciate her multitudes as a New Yorker, classic chef, and member of her Korean immigrant family. Like her beloved scrappy dish budae jjigae, Jackie is "not this or that," and "that is the whole point."

This ambitious and culinarily robust three-part novel picks up steam as the competition intensifies, and Park's snappy dialogue and mixed-media format (particularly show transcripts) enhance Jackie's complicated internal processing. Though the novel ends abruptly, H&H are delightful foils, and their imperfect English and frequent use of Korean anchor Jackie's family identity. Park crafts cooking scenes with conviction and authenticity and includes several recipes in an appendix. Park revisits themes of identity politics, academic expectations, maternal conflict, and belonging from her poignant YA debut, Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim, and she draws from her 2022 New York Times op-ed, "I'm Done Being Your Model Minority," and the spike in anti-Asian bias for this plot. The result is a candid and empathetic, if hunger-inducing, feast for teen readers. --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf

Discover: A spot on a competitive cooking show fuels 15-year-old Jackie's insights about generational trauma and complicated family dynamics in a candid and culinarily elaborate YA novel.

Crown Books for Young Readers, $19.99, hardcover, 336p., ages 12-up, 9780593563410

The Door Is Open: Stories of Celebration and Community by 11 Desi Voices

by Hena Khan, editor

More Info Buy Now

How much can one place mean to a community? Eleven desi authors aim to answer in The Door Is Open, a heartfelt collection of interconnected middle-grade short stories edited by Hena Khan (Amina's Voice).

Eleven desi families who live in the fictional town of Maple Grove rely on the community center as a gathering place. It's where they host cultural and religious events and ceremonies, as well as spelling bees, band practices, and chess tournaments. But the community center is at risk of being shut down. Short stories early in the book note rumors of the community center's close, such as Veera Hiranandani's "Check Yourself" about Chaya, a girl determined to win a chess tournament. The center becomes increasingly more central until the book's culmination, "The Map of Home" by Sayantani DasGupta, focuses on the families' efforts to save their meeting place.

The Door Is Open is a wonderful celebration of the commonalities and differences across desi ("people originating from the Indian subcontinent," as defined in the acknowledgments) cultures. The writers of The Door Is Open introduce readers to a variety of those cultures through food, celebration, practices, and language. At the same time, these stories bring new perspectives to the challenges facing many preteens. Issues of racism, bullying, sexuality, abuse, and insecurity are deftly handled and, if not fully resolved, at least brought to a satisfying conclusion. The Door Is Open is a sharp, insightful celebration of how heritage can both make us distinct and bridge us together. --Kyla Paterno, freelance reviewer

Discover: The stories of 11 desi children and their families are told in a series of interconnected short stories about a local community center in this insightful middle-grade collection.

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, $17.99, hardcover, 336p., ages 8-12, 9780316450638

Puzzled: A Memoir About Growing Up with OCD

by Pan Cooke

More Info Buy Now

Puzzled: A Memoir About Growing Up with OCD is a vulnerable yet encouraging graphic novel memoir in which Irish cartoonist Pan Cooke shares his experience with undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Puzzled starts with 10-year-old Pan describing his bedtime routine: saying the Hail Mary prayer "again and again" because he gets "this feeling like something is wrong." Pan calls this unsettledness "the Puzzle"--each new prayer attempt "is a piece to it. But the more I add... the harder the solution becomes." Spiraling, counting, doubting, and obsessing take the place of praying as Pan becomes a teenager. Finally, during one of his many late-night thought spirals and Internet searches, he finds something that feels like "a piece that fits": a description of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Pan, armed with this new knowledge, accepts that he'll never solve the Puzzle, but with the help of friends, family, and therapy, he can get better.

In his debut, Cooke cleverly uses accessible situations and imaginative visuals to portray what he feels and experiences as a person with OCD: a snowball tumbling down the side of a mountain is building worry; a spinning film reel is doubt and intrusive thoughts; anxiety and fear are palpable as the bright-colored panels become dark and muted during thought spirals. Cooke deftly incorporates discussions of loneliness, disordered eating, and hypochondria, all offshoots of his OCD. He shares the different types and symptoms of the disorder and addresses stereotypes, such as the idea that OCD means a person is clean or organized. This window into the life of a person with OCD is affirming and eye-opening. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Discover: Irish cartoonist Pan Cooke shares his experience with undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder in this vulnerable, encouraging debut graphic novel memoir.

Rocky Pond Books, $13.99, paperback, 224p., ages 10-up, 9780593615621

In the Media

The Writer's Life

Reading with... Nick Medina

photo: Ashley Suttor

Nick Medina was born in Chicago, Ill. and is a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. He appreciates local and Native folklore, which, along with research into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) epidemic, inspired his debut novel, Sisters of the Lost Nation. His new novel, Indian Burial Ground (available now from Berkley), addresses the long-lasting impact of buried trauma, along with other issues that affect many Native and Indigenous communities.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Indian Burial Ground is a mythological horror story that forces its characters to address buried trauma that resurfaces years after it left its initial scars.

On your nightstand now:

I never read in bed, so it's technically not on my nightstand, but I'm currently rereading Stephen King's Pet Sematary. In preparation for the release of Indian Burial Ground, I decided to read (or reread) many of the stories that incorporate the Indian burial ground horror trope. Pet Sematary incorporates the trope but puts a twist on it by making it clear that Natives aren't responsible for creating the burial ground through magic, mysticism, or evil spirits. Rather, the burial ground has always been there (and always will be); the Micmacs just happened to occupy the land it's on. I don't scare easily, but this novel consistently gives me the chills. Tough to read at times, it's a horror classic for a reason.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I don't recall having a specific favorite, but when I was really young, I collected the Serendipity books written by Stephen Cosgrove, each about a creature--some ordinary, some fantastical--and which always had a moral to consider. When I got a little older, I was drawn to the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz, which eventually led me to seek longer horror stories and, lucky for me, the first Goosebumps book by R.L. Stine came out right about then. From then on, I read dozens of Stine's books and still find myself uneasily running my fingers over the raised bumps on the covers whenever I pull them from my shelves.

Your top five authors:

This is tough because it changes almost every time I read something that blows my mind. Since I'm currently rereading Pet Sematary by Stephen King, which has reawakened the awe I experienced the first time I read it, I'll put King at the top. Few authors have been around since before my birth who continue to give us all something new year in and year out. I admire that about him. I'm grateful for it too.

Other authors on my "must read" list are Paul Tremblay (what an honor it was and is to have a blurb from him on the front cover of my debut novel, Sisters of the Lost Nation), Rachel Harrison (I'm not just saying that because there's a blurb from her on the cover of Indian Burial Ground; I've loved everything she's written), Patricia Highsmith (a true master of mystery, thrillers, and suspense), and an up-and-coming writer named Cody Lakin (his first two novels, The Family Condition and The Aching Plane are wholly unique, smart, and haunting).

Book you've faked reading:

Do people really do this? I pick up books that I want to read. Faking it wouldn't do me any good.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. And now that I think about it, Olde Heuvelt should be on my top five authors list because I've loved everything I've read by him. Hex, about a small town trying to keep a witch under wraps, gave me literal nightmares. That's as good as it gets in my book.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I don't recall ever buying a book just because of its cover, but I recently saw an edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with a very cool and creepy depiction of the monster on the cover. I might have to add that one to my shelves.

Book you hid from your parents:

Unfortunately, I don't remember the title or the author, but I read a book I found at the library that very graphically detailed the killings of several serial killers (crime scene photos included). No question, I was too young to read that book when I did. My mother wouldn't have approved.

Book that changed your life:

I recently had the privilege to read a book that, as I am writing this, has yet to be released called Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel. It's a horror novel about sibling love and loyalty that addresses issues of racism, abandonment, and poverty. The way Viel writes about the fears and struggles her Black characters endure helped me understand and relate to certain racial issues in a way I never had before. It's a brilliant book.

Favorite line from a book:

Speaking of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a line immediately comes to mind from that novel. "Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful." It says a lot. Can any of us truly be fearless? Will we ever know such power?

Five books you'll never part with:

I'm of the belief that books should be shared, and I'm usually happy to pass them along once I've read them. There are, however, several that I cling to for one reason or another. Among them are:

A 1977 edition of Stephen King's The Shining with the original book jacket, which I found buried beneath books at a used book sale.
Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison. Rachel was the first author to send me a signed copy of her book after I got my own book deal. It was a pretty special moment for me.
A signed copy of Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith written by Joe Perry with David Ritz. Perry is one of my musical heroes, and it was a thrill to have him sign this book in person.
My Roots, an unpublished book written by my great-grandfather that details what he went through as an immigrant coming to this country.
Finally, the first copy I ever held of my very own book, Sisters of the Lost Nation.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Perhaps The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Rarely do I have to set a book down because I'm so disturbed. I had to do that with this one. I almost didn't want to know what was going to happen next. For me, it was a challenging and incredible reading experience.

Book Candy

Book Candy

Springan is icumen in. Merriam-Webster looked up "12 words for signs of spring."

---

CrimeReads investigated "crime novels with a sense of place and manners."

---

"I would rather fail than sit idle." (Vincent Van Gogh) Letters of Note shared several notable I would rather... examples.

Rediscover

Rediscover: Paul Auster

Paul Auster, "the prolific novelist, memoirist and screenwriter who rose to fame in the 1980s with his postmodern reanimation of the noir novel and who endured to become one of the signature New York writers of his generation," died April 30 at age 77, the New York Times reported. Auster published more than 30 books, including 18 novels and several acclaimed memoirs and assorted autobiographical works, along with plays, screenplays and collections of stories, essays and poems.

In 1969, after earning a master's degree in comparative literature from Columbia University, Auster "did a stint working on an oil tanker before moving to Paris. There he scraped together rent money by translating French literature while starting to publish his own work in literary journals," the Times wrote. He published his first book, a collection of translations called A Little Anthology of Surrealist Poems, in 1972. In 1974, he returned to New York City.

Auster's career began to gain momentum in 1982, with his memoir The Invention of Solitude, a rumination on his distant relationship with his recently deceased father. His first novel, City of Glass, was rejected by 17 publishers before it was published by a small press in California in 1985. The book became the first installment of the New York Trilogy--along with Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986)--three novels later packaged in a single volume.

His other novels include In the Country of Last Things (1987), Moon Palace (1989), Leviathan (1992), The Book of Illusions (2002), 4 3 2 1 (2017), and Baumgartner (2023). Among his memoirs are Hand to Mouth (1997), Winter Journal (2012), and A Life in Words (2017). Other books include The Story of My Typewriter (2002, with illustrations by the painter Sam Messer), Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane (2021), and Bloodbath Nation (2023).

He also wrote several screenplays, including Smoke (1995), directed by Wayne Wang and based on a Christmas story Auster published in the Times, which noted that it "drew deeply from his life in Park Slope, where he shared a brick townhouse with his wife, the novelist Siri Hustvedt." The director and writer also collaborated on a follow-up, Blue in the Face. Auster would go on to write and direct Lulu on the Bridge (1998) and The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007).

Auster was named a chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 1991. He was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

"Auster played brilliantly throughout his career in the game of literary postmodernism, but with a simplicity of language that could have come out of a detective novel," said Will Blythe, the author and former literary editor of Esquire. "He seemed to view life itself as fiction, in which one's self evolves exactly the way a writer creates a character."

"All along, my only ambition had been to write," Auster observed in his brief memoir, Hand to Mouth (1995). "I had known that as early as 16 or 17 years old, and I had never deluded myself into thinking I could make a living at it. Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.... All I wanted was a chance to do the work I felt I had it in me to do."

arrow_backPreviousApril 26, 2024 NextMay 10, 2024 arrow_forward