Ring Shout (Tordotcom, 2020) is a fantasy built around an ugly moment in American history—the emergence of the second Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century....
29 min
1227
Deni Ellis Bechard, "A Song from Faraway" (Milk...
A young man visits his half-brother in Vancouver and steals a book that changes his life...
34 min
1228
Anne Louise Bannon, "Death of the Chinese Field...
Solving murders is just a past-time, but luckily, she has a keen eye for details and knows what it means when a boot print with a gaping hole is discovered near the bodies of several Chinese workers....
28 min
1229
Lisa B. Thompson, "Underground, Monroe, and the...
Lisa B. Thompson is equally renowned as a scholar of African and African-American studies and as a playwright...
57 min
1230
Maria Hinojosa, "Once I Was You: A Memoir of Lo...
Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago...
62 min
1231
Heather Lende, "Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaska...
Heather Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics during the past few years...
62 min
1232
Shakira Croce, "Leave It Raw" (Finishing Line P...
Like a storm waiting to break over a plain, Shakira Croce pulls at tensions and heartstrings in a debut collection filled with longing, wit, and intelligence...
30 min
1233
Morris Ardoin, "Stone Motel: Memoirs of a Cajun...
The preteen would learn as he matured that his father had reserved his most ferocious attacks for him because of an inability to accept a gay or, to his mind, broken, son. It became his dad’s mission to “fix” his son...
53 min
1234
Eshkol Nevo, "The Last Interview" (Other Press,...
In The Last Interview, a famous but stressed Israeli writer finds that the only way he can write is by answering a set of interview questions sent from a website...
36 min
1235
Jennie Fields, "Atomic Love" (G. P. Putnam's So...
Inspired by Leona Woods, the only woman who worked on the Manhattan Project, Atomic Love (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2020) tells the story of Rosalind Porter, a physicist recruited by Enrico Fermi to join his team at the University of Chicago...
26 min
1236
Melissa Valentine, "The Names of All the Flower...
Melissa Valentine and her older brother Junior grow up running around the disparate neighborhoods of 1990s Oakland, two of six children to a white Quaker father and a black Southern mother.
56 min
1237
Menna Van Praag, "The Sisters Grimm" (Harper Vo...
In a set up reminiscent of the show Orphan Black, four feisty young women struggle to make their way in the world, unaware that they are related...
26 min
1238
Jasper Fforde, "The Constant Rabbit" (Viking, 2...
In Jasper Fforde’s "The Constant Rabbit," residents of the United Kingdom live among human-sized anthropomorphized rabbits...
41 min
1239
Andrew Krivak, “The Bear” (Bellevue Literary Pr...
In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain....
59 min
1240
P. K. Adams, "Midnight Fire" (Iron Knight Press...
Set at the glittering Italianate court of King Zygmunt I of Poland/Lithuania and his son, Zygmunt August, these books map fictional plots onto real historical incidents to create fast-paced, fluid stories that are as much about the tensions of a culture in transition as what drives a person to commit murder....
29 min
1241
Sergio Troncoso, "A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’...
A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son (Cinco Puntos Press, 2020) is a collection of linked short stories, which Luis Alberto Urrea called “a world-class collection.”
32 min
1242
Kelly Harris-DeBerry, "Freedom Knows My Name" (...
Kelly Harris-DeBerry creates the world anew from scraps of memories and rhythm...
46 min
1243
Corey Sobel, "The Red Shirt" (UP of Kentucky, 2...
At first, Miles Furling plays football to fit in. By eighth grade he realizes that he is both gay and a football player...
39 min
1244
Carly Israel, "Seconds and Inches" (Jaded Ibis ...
In the opening sentence of her introduction, Israel writes, “My last name, Israel, means one who wrestles with God. And wrestling is all I know.”
57 min
1245
Jessica Gross, "Hysteria" (Unnamed Press, 2020)
Jessica Gross is a valuable ally. An intuitive reader of Freud her debut novel--Hysteria (Unnamed Press, 2020)--embraces Oedipal conflict, unconscious fantasy, and voracious sexuality...
44 min
1246
Linda Stewart Henley, "Estelle" (She Writes Pre...
Most people think of Edgar Degas as a French painter of ballerinas. But few have heard that his mother came from New Orleans or that he spent five months in that city between October 1872 and February 1873...
34 min
1247
Tracy Clark, "What You Don't See" (Kensington, ...
Cass Raines left the Chicago Police force after a morally bankrupt cop nearly got her killed...
"The New Wilderness" (Harper, 2020) is a poignant portrait of a mother and daughter fleeing the polluted cities of a near-future dystopia for a hand-to-mouth existence in the country’s last undeveloped tract....
34 min
1250
Ann Dávila Cardinal, "Five Midnights" (Tor Teen...
Ann Dávila Cardinal writes stories that thrill you. She writes about lives that face challenge and find a way through, despite the horror that chases them. She writes about Puerto Rico and trauma and belonging somewhere...