One night a few weeks back, I was at my friend Emily's for dinner. I noticed a stack of books on her mantel and asked if she'd been enjoying any of them. Her answer was a hearty yes!
Dear Emily. She and I bonded years ago over our literary tastes. So I was not at all caught off guard when she picked up Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf, $16) and began reading portions of "Especially Heinous" aloud. To our shared delight, the story is composed entirely of plot summaries of Law & Order: SVU.
"It gets even better with the perfect versions of Detectives Benson and Stabler, named Henson and Abler," she said, before reading an entry called "Appearances": "Benson sees Henson coming out of the precinct. Her stomach gnarls. The same face, but prettier. The same hair, but bouncier. She must find out what kind of products she uses. Before she kills her."
I have a deep fondness for reading aloud. Especially taut, dry wit. Even when nobody wants to hear it, I can't help myself. Reading the stories in Ben Marcus's new collection, Notes from the Fog (Knopf, $26.95; reviewed below), I caught myself whispering whole passages, like this description of a character's concerned office-mate in "The Grow-Light Blues":
"...a man who seemed to have been designed, by experts, to embody sorrow and regret. He shook his head with deep, theatrical empathy. His name was maybe Murray. Maury? Perhaps it was Larry. He was a tech."
Another favorite read-aloud is Sloane Crosley's work. Like her essay "Outside Voices," about a rich, noisy teen neighbor, in Look Alive Out There (MCD/FSG, $26): "Jared was quick to laugh, which would have been his best quality were it not for the laugh's resemblance to a hyena being choked to death by bubble wrap.... Really, I can't say enough bad things about it."
Perhaps to the vexation of everyone but Emily, I continue muttering essays and stories in their entirety, to no one in particular, laughing myself silly. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness
Grand Central Terminal is known today as a New York City icon. But in the 1970s, dilapidated and unsafe, it stood in danger of being torn down. In her third novel, The Masterpiece, Fiona Davis tells the stories of two fictional women whose fates become intertwined with that of the terminal, and their unexpected roles in the fight to save it.
Young, talented and hopeful, artist Clara Darden makes ends meet by teaching illustration classes at the Grand Central School of Art in the late 1920s. Despite sexism and snobbery from her colleagues and the school's director, Clara is determined to make it big. But the Depression and a complicated love triangle both take their toll, leading to Clara's disappearance from the art world. Nearly five decades later, recent divorcée Virginia Clay takes a job at the terminal's information booth. She stumbles upon the long-abandoned art school, and an unsigned painting that may hold clues to Clara Darden's whereabouts.
Davis (The Address) brings two very different eras to life, evoking the terminal's early Jazz Age glamour and its later state of decay. Both protagonists are women forced into independence, who build new lives on their own terms more than once. The terminal is full of colorful characters--Clara's fellow artists, Virginia's coworkers--and is itself a character, a part of the city both dynamic and enduring. Davis's compelling, richly detailed novel will appeal to art aficionados, those who love New York and anyone who relishes a story of reinvention. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Discover: Fiona Davis's third novel tells the stories of two women whose fates become intertwined with that of the iconic Grand Central Terminal.
Notes from the Fog, the inimitable third collection of short stories from Ben Marcus, opens with an eerie but familiar shift in filial behavior. "Cold Little Bird" follows a father's slow unraveling as his 10-year-old son retreats into cool reserve and stiff politesse. "I don't want your help at bedtime anymore.... I don't love you." By the time the boy is caught reading 9/11 truther literature to his little brother, the father has had it. "He was shaking his fist in his son's face. Just old-school shouting."
With pitch-black humor and a speculative flair, Marcus (Leaving the Sea) is a virtuoso at isolating the radio static that forms in human relationships. In many cases, like the estranged siblings in "George and Elizabeth," this shortwave interference is intentional: "her spam filter... was probably a group of human people, arms linked, blocking unwanted communications." The stories here are lean, every sentence flexing more than the sum of its parts. Although, keeping with the author's postmodernist inclinations, the fiction becomes more and more inscrutable the deeper one reads in the collection. "Critique," for instance, might render almost entirely opaque were its molecular descriptions of a nefarious hospital-as-performance-art piece not prefaced by the chilling (and telling) opening line, "In the year of I Can't Breathe...."
There are many standouts in this accomplished collection, but the elegant turns in "The Trees of Sawtooth Park" make it rise ever so slightly above the rest. In it, the fog of a pharmaceutical experiment and an unprecedented blizzard gracefully lift to unveil the human condition as absurd. It is quintessential Marcus and what makes his work worth treasuring. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness
Discover: The remarkable third story collection from Ben Marcus fixates on the static in human relationships.
Maggie Hope, former secretary to Winston Churchill and secret agent for the British Special Operations Executive, knows too much. Or so her superiors in SOE have decided, so they send Maggie to the Isle of Scarra, off the coast of Scotland. There, failed agents wait out the duration of the war, living in a grotesquely elaborate castle filled with the taxidermized victims of the late Sir Marcus Killoch's hunting addiction.
Maggie and her fellow "guests" at the castle are unhappy; they while away their days with sniping, arguing and drinking too much before dinner. But after five months on Scarra, things suddenly get interesting--and alarming. First, one member of their odd assembly dies of a heart attack, which doesn't raise too many suspicions. But then another drowns. And two more are found dead, apparently the victims of strychnine poisoning. Suddenly Maggie and her fellow prisoners realize that not only animals are being hunted on this island.
In clear homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, Susan Elia MacNeal (The Queen's Accomplice) has created a wonderfully believable scenario in which a dozen highly trained agents must pit their wits against each other and try to survive. Meanwhile, beyond the island, there are dangerous games afoot as Britain and Germany enter the desperate final days of the war. Readers of Jacqueline Winspear or Rhys Bowen are sure to love Susan Elia MacNeal both for her engaging characters and her historical accuracy. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.
Discover: In this intriguing historical mystery, a group of isolated special agents must figure out who among them is a killer.
Officer Carrie Santero is the first female cop in the history of the Coyote Township Police Department, located in sleepy western Pennsylvania's former coal country--"Pennsyltucky," people from the city call it. Santero's boss, chief of police Bill Waylon, sees her as a "race car" and is convinced that "a small-town PD was going to either sap the soul right out of her or drive her mental." As the gore-and-grief-filled The Thief of All Light progresses, the reader may find herself wondering, Not both?
Santero, a local gal, is in her fourth year on the force when she takes the lead on her first homicide: a disemboweled male corpse is found in a van parked outside a gay club. After two young women--one is Santero's best friend--go missing, Waylon decides to try to coax out of hiding his former partner, Jacob Rein. Rein is unusually canny, but he has been something of a recluse since serving 16 months of a four-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter after killing a child with his car.
Author Bernard Schaffer, a police detective who has previously published books independently, offers a gangbusters mainstream debut with The Thief of All Light, the first in the projected Santero and Rein series. There's great stuff here on the tensions between the old and new police guard, and the spiky dialogue elucidates character winningly. As for the story, it contains a couple of good surprises and one act shocking enough to make Hannibal Lecter lose his appetite. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer
Discover: In the bang-up first thriller in a new series, an unpolished trio of small-town Pennsylvania cops must connect the dots between a pair of abductions and a grisly murder outside a gay bar.
Kensington,
$26, hardcover, 368p., 9781496717139
Romance
Josh & Hazel's Guide to Not Dating
by Christina Lauren
Josh & Hazel's Guide to Not Dating
by
Christina Lauren
Hazel Bradford knows she's a lot to handle. She's loud, has a crazy, quirky sense of style and loves doing absurd things. She's a third-grade teacher, and eight-year-olds are basically her life. A lot of guys have been scared off over the years, but she would rather be herself than change for a boyfriend.
Then, Hazel discovers that Emily, a new co-worker, is the sister of Josh Im, Hazel's crush in college--until she threw up on his feet at a party. Emily, who thinks Josh's life is too dull, suggests that Josh and Heather hang out, just as friends. Hazel is enthusiastic, and Josh reluctantly agrees, only to discover that his world is about to be turned upside down.
Hazel and Josh start setting each other up on a string of double dates, although, strangely, they always find themselves having more fun with each other than their dates. There's definitely nothing going on between Josh and Hazel, right?
Hilarious, sweet and refreshing, Josh & Hazel's Guide to Not Dating is a nearly perfect romance. As Josh delves into Hazel's eccentric habits, and she learns more about his traditional Korean mores, they find unexpected connections and realize that maybe opposites do attract. Christina Lauren (a combined pen name of Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings) has created a funny, smart and dynamic heroine who attracts a quiet and kind hero. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.
Discover: In this funny romance, two friends keep setting each other up on dates, until they finally realize maybe they should date each other.
The story of Adam Schefter's high-profile career as a sportswriter and analyst forms the backdrop of The Man I Never Met. Schefter recounts how he began covering the Denver Broncos, later joined the NFL Network and ultimately wound up at ESPN. Despite his professional ascendancy, however, Schefter felt largely unfulfilled in his personal life. Upon reaching his late 30s, his career was taking off, but he was lonely. His incredibly moving, forthright memoir details how he met, courted and eventually married Sharri Maio, a 9/11 widow and mother. Sharri lost her much-loved, charming and successful husband, Joe, in the World Trade Center attack.
When a friend set Sharri and Schefter up on a blind date, Schefter was leery. He wasn't sure he--a workaholic bachelor--could deal with the magnitude of Sharri's loss or the fact that she was a mother to a son who was only six when his father died. Despite clear differences in their personalities, Sharri and Schefter were instantly attracted to each other. Through a rather tumultuous courtship, both of their lives changed for the better, but not without struggle, stirring losses, hard work, compromise and acceptance.
In a spiritual, serendipitous sense, Schefter truly believes that Joe Maio--with whom he shares a birthday--was directly responsible for him finding the love of his life and finally having a family of his own. Schefter pays thoughtful homage to Joe and all whose lives he touched, acknowledging his great admiration and respect for--and gratitude to--an absent man who is and will forever remain an active part in all of their lives. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines
Discover: A noted sports commentator tells the moving story of how he met and married a 9/11 widow with whom he shares his life and love.
St. Martin's Press,
$26.99, hardcover, 208p., 9781250161895
History
Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy
by Benjamin Balint
Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy
by
Benjamin Balint
Who owns the working papers, sketches and correspondence of an artistic genius: the artist and his heirs, the country of his language and work, or the larger diaspora of his ethnic origins? In the case of Franz Kafka, the German-speaking, Jewish Czech who set the tone for 20th-century literature, the legal answer didn't come until 2016--more than 90 years after his death. Unlike the bureaucratic nightmare fiction of Kafka's famous The Trial, Israeli translator and historian Benjamin Balint's Kafka's Last Trial tells a true, but similar, story of the tangled bureaucratic path Kafka's archives traveled. Despite his expressed desire to have them burned, their fate eventually rested with the Israeli Supreme Court to adjudicate between Kafka's close friend Max Brod's secretary's daughter, who possessed them, and the National Library of Israel. In follow-the-money fashion, at the heart of this legal wrangling was Eva Hoffe's desire to sell the archive to the highest bidder--potentially the well-funded German Literature Archive in Marbach.
Balint's research into this labyrinthine legal morass leads him into the history of Kafka's friendship with the much more prolific writer Brod and their involvement with a coterie of Prague Zionists. Exploring the friends' nights of philosophical and literary bandying, which often ended in brothels and cafes, he describes how the personal papers eventually found their way to Brod's confidante and secretary Esther Hoffe. Mixing biography, history, literary criticism and legal thriller, Kafka's Last Trial raises intriguing questions about the conflict between the state's interests in an artistic legacy and those of the artist and his heirs. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.
Discover: Balint's compelling history of Kafka's papers raises complicated issues of national and personal rights to an artist's legacy.
In 1924, the land surrounding the Gila River became the world's first official Wilderness when the Forest Service created a buffer around the only mountains in the American Southwest not invaded by development. Philip Connors (All the Wrong Places) has spent more than a dozen years as a fire lookout in the Gila, the job of "looking out a window" one he feels contentedly qualified to perform.
Continually threatened by political plans for "improvements" (mainly a dam allowing New Mexico to "give the concrete finger" to Arizona), the Gila remains mostly unspoiled. From the solitude of its dense mountaintops, Connors shares intimate recollections forged from the soil, timber and water of the Gila over the course of several summers. Replete with exquisite reverence for the land, A Song for the River is, at its core, a love story--essays on intimacy, grief, vulnerability and connectivity among men, women, children and the wilderness that binds them.
The epicenter is a 15-day period marred by five deaths, including a fellow lookout and three remarkable teens taking part in "experiential education." Connors weaves in captivating environmental and fire science issues, but his ruminations about new burns ("the birthday for the next forest"), interspersed with contemplations on finding meaning and solace after catastrophic loss, offer a dazzling display of emotion, too. Intensely intimate, Song feels written for the Gila, the souls lost and those who love them, but ends up a beautiful, voyeuristic experience that brings the reader into the fold. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review
Discover: A seasoned fire lookout in the American Southwest looks back on recent summers filled with flames and personal loss while considering how nature heals itself and those around it.
Cinco Puntos Press,
$22.95, hardcover, 246p., 9781941026908
Sports
Never Ran, Never Will: Boyhood and Football in a Changing American Inner City
by Albert Samaha
Never Ran, Never Will: Boyhood and Football in a Changing American Inner City
by
Albert Samaha
The Mo Better Jaguars of Brownsville in Brooklyn, N.Y., are a longtime Pee Wee football powerhouse. Under the direction of Coach Chris Legree, they dominated the local scene for years. But the program has struggled recently: growing concerns about concussions and creeping gentrification are only two of the pressures it faces. Journalist Albert Samaha spent two years shadowing the Jaguars--players, parents and coaches--and researching the challenges facing the boys and their beloved sport. The result is an insightful dive into Mo Better's triumphs and travails, filled with as much heart and grit as the boys who run through its pages.
Samaha delves into the stories of several players: Oomz, the tough-minded son of a Mo Better legend, who shares his father's nickname; Isaiah, a running back whose academic smarts are equal to his football skills; and Hart, a thoughtful lineman who works as hard as his less privileged teammates. Samaha also vividly portrays Chris and his assistant coaches, who grew up fighting the pressures their boys now face: substandard schools, tough family situations, the lure of Brownsville's street culture. Most Mo Better parents believe the neighborhood helps toughen up their sons for future challenges, but they also want their boys to make it out. Samaha explores these conflicting desires while recounting the action of practices and games with the sharp eye of a sportswriter. Packed with smart social commentary, sobering facts and the fierce joy of the game, Never Ran, Never Will is a complicated yet hopeful story of football and community. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Discover: Journalist Albert Samaha's account of youth football in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood is equal parts sobering facts and fierce joy.
Ada Limón is one of the country's finest poets. Her previous collection, Bright Dead Things, was a National Book Award finalist. The Carrying won't disappoint fans. The 62 poems in this stellar new collection, divided into three sections, offer candid, lyrical observations on love, loneliness, life, death and all the mysteries in between. Central to the collection is the poet's attempt to conceive a child. This subject lends itself to some uncomfortable, even painful, moments. "I want him to notice what he said, how a woman might feel agony,/ emptiness," the poet writes in "Mastering," when a male friend unwittingly highlights his own child over the poet's failed attempts. But these travails also lead to resilience and greater love of her husband, her art, her dog, her garden--as she says in "Maybe I'll Be Another Kind of Mother," "everything coming back to life."
Of course, Limón could never be satisfied with one subject. Her poems are like trees, branching three-dimensionally in myriad directions. She performs a near-miraculous feat in balancing razor-sharp imagery with deep ambivalence. Hope, though, is a pervasive theme. Several of the poems hail from the beginning of the Trump era and offer a kind of protest. Fear, hurt and anger show in "Killing Methods" and "A New National Anthem." But in the same breath the poet, true to her compass, shows how compassion and vulnerability may be the best defenses against tyranny.
It is this undying insistence on the goodness of the world that stays with the reader. The Carrying beautifully conveys the power of poetry in an age that needs it most. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset
Discover: Celebrated poet Ada Limón continues to awe and inspire in this deeply conceived collection about hope, loss and love.
"[T]he school wanted to try something new: Could they put [six] kids together in a room with one teacher and make something amazing?" For Ms. Laverne's fifth/sixth grade Brooklyn, N.Y., class, the answer is a resounding yes. Deemed "special kids," Haley, Holly, Ashton, Amari, Tiago and Estaban "learned differently." To enhance their regular schedule, the six are ushered every Friday afternoon into a former art room, cleverly renamed the "A-R-T-T room--A Room To Talk," and encouraged "to talk about the things kids talk about when no grown-ups are around."
The children are initially unsure how to interact, but compassionate concern quickly unites them when Estaban's father goes missing: Ms. Laverne's empathic lesson, "I want each of you to say to the other: I will harbor you," is already well-ingrained. Safe in ARTT, the children share such things as U.S.-born Estaban's worries for his parents, immigrants from the Dominican Republic; Amari's restricted freedoms as an African American youth; Ashton's discomfort with white privilege and his struggles with bullying; Tiago's clashes with racism despite being Puerto Rican and therefore American; Holly's challenges of everything she considers "unfair." Haley, the book's narrator, records the group's stories until she's finally ready to share her own difficult experiences.
In her first middle-grade novel since her 2014 National Book Award winner, Brown Girl Dreaming, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Jacqueline Woodson deftly alchemizes a sixth-grade classroom into an affecting metaphor for racial, political and socioeconomic challenges--enhanced by the transformative power of storytelling: "what matter[ed] most is that we were heard." Bonded and buoyed by their shared "stories on top of stories," Woodson's sextet commit to meet again in 20 years; readers should start praying now to be privy to what promises to be an astonishing reunion. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon
Discover: Jacqueline Woodson's Harbor Me is a powerful love letter to effective teachers, unexpected friendship and the healing magic of hearing, recording and sharing words.
Cassidy Blake's life is fairly atypical: her parents are ghost hunters and the authors of several volumes of afterlife knowledge. To top it off, Cassidy's best friend is a ghost--they met when the "corporeally challenged" Jacob saved Cassidy's life. Soon after her near-death experience, Cassidy discovered that she was able to see the world of the dead through a metaphysical partition that "isn't inherently scary, or bad. It's just another kind of space," which she and Jacob call "the Veil." An avid photographer, Cassidy enjoys taking photos, and goes on photographic missions through the Veil with Jacob, because the "[n]inth rule of friendship" is "ghost-watching is a two-person sport."
Much to Cassidy's chagrin, her parents have landed a gig in Edinburgh as hosts for a television program showcasing the world's most haunted locations, and she must go with them. Cassidy and Jacob have had adventures together, but they are unprepared for Edinburgh's spooky surprises. There, Cassidy feels the pull of the Veil more strongly than ever before, but what's on the other side might not want to let her--or Jacob--come back. Teaming up with new friend Lara, who shares her gift, Cassidy learns more about the Veil and tries safely to navigate the phantoms and hauntings in the city of ghosts.
Victoria Schwab's first foray into middle-grade fiction, City of Ghosts is an eerie but not-too-frightening story with witty dialogue and plenty of adventure. Schwab's portrayal of practical Cassidy and mischievous Jacob helps ground the narrative, keeping the fantastical elements from overshadowing the characters. And Schwab's "dark and menacing" city of Edinburgh is a character unto itself, so alluring that readers will undoubtedly want to travel to Scotland and look for ghosts and ethereal creatures themselves. --Clarissa Hadge, bookstore manager, Trident Booksellers & Cafe, Boston, Mass.
Discover: 12-year-old Cassidy has had her share of ghostly encounters, but when her parents take her to Edinburgh, the spirits she encounters are more sinister than friendly.
Belle Bear is a spirited little polar bear with a big heart, an orange cape, and a world full of snowy adventures...until she has to leave it all behind. The Adventures of Belle Bear is a heartwarming picture book about courage, self-confidence, and discovering the bravery to be yourself, no matter where life takes you.
Belle Bear lives with her beloved grandmother, Baba Bear, in the magical land of Mount Bearia. Her days are full of games, cozy hugs, and little moments that make her feel special. But when they must move to a new country, everything changes. There’s no snow, no other polar bears, and no cape. Just Belle Bear and the courage she has discovered yet.
Starting at a new school without familiar comforts, Belle Bear struggles to feel like she belongs. With gentle guidance from Baba Bear and a little courage from within, she begins to build her self-confidence. She makes new friends, explores new experiences, and learns that true confidence comes from believing in herself.
Perfect for families, educators, and anyone helping a child navigate change, The Adventures of Belle Bear is full of tender moments and important lessons: “You are kind. You are curious. You are brave. And you can do anything.”
Belle Bear also believes every child deserves a full belly and a bedtime story, and through December 31, 2025, 100% of the book’s proceeds will be donated to Good Shepherd Food Bank, Maine’s largest hunger-relief organization.
Whether for bedtime, a meaningful gift, or a story that helps children build courage and self-confidence, The Adventures of Belle Bear is a charming and inspiring addition to any bookshelf.
Dear Emily. She and I bonded years ago over our literary tastes. So I was not at all caught off guard when she picked up Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf, $16) and began reading portions of "Especially Heinous" aloud. To our shared delight, the story is composed entirely of plot summaries of Law & Order: SVU.
Another favorite read-aloud is Sloane Crosley's work. Like her essay "Outside Voices," about a rich, noisy teen neighbor, in Look Alive Out There (MCD/FSG, $26): "Jared was quick to laugh, which would have been his best quality were it not for the laugh's resemblance to a hyena being choked to death by bubble wrap.... Really, I can't say enough bad things about it."
