As he struggled with writing and illness, the “Alienist” author found comfort in the feline companions he recalls in a new memoir, “My Beloved Monster.” Read more
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Category: New Books
‘Another Day’s Pain’ by K. C. Constantine
Decades of unresolved trauma power the deeply moving, posthumously published final Rocksburg procedural (after 2002’s Saving Room for Dessert) from Constantine (1934–2023) … Constantine ends the long-running series on a high note, striking an elegiac tone that never tilts into triteness. Here’s hoping this graceful final act will spark new interest in an unsung master of crime fiction. Read more
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‘City in Ruins’ by Don Winslow
Winslow concludes his Danny Ryan trilogy—and his career as a novelist—with an addictive finale that charts the Rhode Island mobster turned Las Vegas casino mogul’s turbulent business dealings and deadly feuds … Bolstered by careful plotting and meticulous attention to character, Winslow’s ambitious narrative culminates with an exhilarating climax that beautifully wraps up the series’ many plot threads. It’s a fitting swan song from a giant of crime fiction. Read more
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Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe
This superb study by University of Cambridge particle physicist Cliff (How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch) examines contemporary physics’ most intriguing mysteries through profiles of the scientists trying to solve them … Cliff’s lucid explanations do a remarkable job of making the complicated physics accessible and even exciting, and the focus on the scientists’ stories ensconces the heady ideas in approachable, human narratives. This is a first-rate dispatch from the cutting edge of physics. Read more
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The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers
Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election and whom the entire conservative political class regarded as a chaotic clown with a violent following. Read more
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‘James’ by Percival Everett
Percival Everett’s new novel amends Mark Twain’s classic tale [Huckleberry Finn] with the enslaved sidekick, Jim, at its center … What sets “James” above Everett’s previous novels, as casually and caustically funny as many are, is that here the humanity is turned up — way up. This is Everett’s most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful. Beneath the wordplay, and below the packed dirt floor of Everett’s moral sensibility, James is an intensely imagined human being. Read more
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The Trump Indictments
Besides letting you pore over the indictment documents in printed form, the book offers some context from Murray and Weissmann. The professors include background on the cases, as well as comparisons to other cases abroad where criminal charges were brought against a former leader. Throughout the documents, the authors provide annotations and notes to help readers better understand. Plus, they even created a timeline and “cast of characters” section for easy referencing. Read more
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Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons
Worries about nuclear Armageddon, on the back burner for decades, seem to be reviving. In early November 2023, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was revoking its ratification of the 1996 global nuclear test ban treaty. In this astute assessment of the current situation regarding nuclear weapons, Scoles, a contributing writer at Popular Science and author of Making Contact and They Are Already Here, offers a must-read overview of America’s nuclear arsenal, emphasizing the technical details of keeping it up to date in the absence of testing, along with efforts at avoiding catastrophic surprises such as accidental explosions, unwanted actions by other nuclear powers, and simple theft of radioactive material for “trafficking or malicious use,” which has occurred more than 300 times during the past 30 years. Read more
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Entrapment, Corruption, Murder and Justice in Old Gotham
In “The Bishop and the Butterfly,” Michael Wolraich tells the story of the sensational true crime that dominated headlines and helped topple Tammany Hall. Read more
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‘The Writer as Illusionist’ by William Maxwell
So far as I can see, there is no legitimate sleight of hand involved in practicing the arts of painting, sculpture, and music. They appear to have had their origin in religion, and they are fundamentally serious. In writing—in all writing but especially in narrative writing—you are continually being taken in. The reader, skeptical, experienced, with many demands on his time and many ways of enjoying his leisure, is asked to believe in people he knows don’t exist, to be present at scenes that never occurred, to be amused or moved or instructed just as he would be in real life, only the life exists in somebody else’s imagination. Read more
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