Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous “creepypastas,” Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear. Read more
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Mention Walter White and it will likely conjure an image of Bryan Cranston from “Breaking Bad,” playing the man who snarled, “I am the danger.” But there’s a real-life Walter White who deserves to be a household name — a Black man who faced unfathomable danger in pursuit of truth and justice as he did battle with the American way. White should rank alongside Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as a founding father of the civil rights era. Yet he is all but forgotten today. Read more
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The challenges here — for author and reader — are considerable. After all, Tokarczuk isn’t revising our understanding of Mozart or presenting a fresh take on Catherine the Great. She’s excavating a shadowy figure who’s almost entirely unknown today … As daunting as it sounds, The Books of Jacob is miraculously entertaining and consistently fascinating. Despite his best efforts, Frank never mastered alchemy, but Tokarczuk certainly has. Her light irony, delightfully conveyed by Croft’s translation, infuses many of the sections. What’s more, it turns out that the story of an 18th-century grifter inflated by Messianic delusions is surprisingly relevant to our own era. The quality that makes The Books of Jacob so striking is its remarkable form. Tokarczuk has constructed her narrative as a collage of legends, letters, diary entries, rumors, hagiographies, political attacks and historical records … This is a story that grows simultaneously more detailed and more mysterious … Haunting and irresistible. Read more
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Defense attorney Rudolf debuts with a searing look at systemic failures in the U.S. justice system. He notes that over the past three decades, nearly 3,000 people were exonerated and released from prison for crimes they had not committed, and delves into the factors behind these false convictions, including racial bias; the so-called trial penalty, which incentivizes defendants to plead guilty in order to avoid the likelihood of a harsher sentence should they be convicted at trial; and a reliance on suspect testimony. Rudolf also documents shortcomings in forensic science… Read more
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A bold and playful collection of erotic stories written by some of the world’s finest writers. The twist? Each story is “anonymous,” allowing for tales as subtle or explicit, strange or familiar, tender or fierce as each writer wishes–leaving readers to guess who wrote what. Read more
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In this thoughtful, engaging, and moving work, Slate writer Stevens posits that Buster Keaton’s life is an entry point to understanding the 20th century—and vice versa … Stevens’s acumen and analysis further elevate this book, offering insights and entertaining extrapolations on the myriad films and entertainment figures discussed within … More than a biography of Buster Keaton, this is a stunning, extensively researched, and eminently readable cultural history. Read more
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Journalist Katz (The Big Truck That Went By) delivers a searing and well-documented portrait of early 20th-century U.S. imperialism focused on the career of U.S. Marine Corps major general Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940). Contending that American military actions served the interests of U.S. business and financial institutions, often with dire effects on local people, Katz provides the geopolitical context behind interventions in China, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and elsewhere, and visits each location to document the legacy of U.S. interference. Read more
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Kirby’s book succeeds not just because she’s a preternaturally gifted prose stylist, but because of her willingness to take risks. She experiments with points of view and occasionally dips into metafiction (“Midwestern Girl Is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories” is a master class in storytelling, as well as a hilarious commentary on a fiction scene that’s seen men overrepresented for decades.) And yet she also knows when to tap the brakes, when to step back and let her carefully drawn characters speak for themselves. It’s a stunning collection from a writer whose talent and creativity seem boundless. Read more
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The book doesn’t feel speculative so much as inevitable, which is all the more horrifying. In fact, although the book isn’t billed as a horror novel, I felt consistently spooked while reading, disturbed but propelled on by Chan’s excellent pacing . Read more
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This masterwork of suspense is as careful with its sharp takes as it is with the bread crumbs it slowly drops on the way to its stunning end. It operates perfectly on many levels, resulting in a must-read for true crime addicts and experimental fiction fans alike. Read more
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