Gilbert, Taylor, and Allen debut with a quippy advice manual aimed at pastors’ wives and female pastors handling the ups and downs of ministry life. Cheerfully acknowledging that “once you’ve witnessed [the] behind-the-scenes” of church leadership, “there’s no unseeing it,” the authors expound on being compared to former pastors’ wives, parenting under a congregation’s scrutiny, and putting marital fights “on the back burner” when one is needed at church (“Step aside and allow the Holy Spirit to move when you must move on. He can reveal... a solution”). A particularly valuable section on sex in pastoral marriages captures the long-reaching effects of Christian purity culture (even after she got married, Gilbert “could not shake this strange underlying feeling that she might be doing something wrong” by having sex with her husband), and calls on Christian parents to initiate an “open dialogue with our children” about sex. The empathetic tone and down-to-earth humor (congregants “make life-altering decisions like choosing to follow Jesus or changing their hairstyle”) reinforce the simple yet worthy message that pastors, and their wives, are as flawed as everyone else. It’s an upbeat guide to the realities of ministry life. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Lobbyists have cemented corporate control over the federal government, according to this savvy debut from Wall Street Journal reporter Brody Mullins and his brother, Luke, a writer for Politico. The account begins in the 1970s, when corporations began pouring vast resources into lobbying firms that steered federal policy in a business-friendly direction. The authors then survey lobbying milestones of the last 50 years, including Paul Manafort’s Reagan-era efforts promoting oil interests, as well as lesser-known episodes like Tommy Boggs’s 1978 quashing of an FTC initiative to limit TV advertising of sugary foods to kids and Evan Morris’s 2010 insertion of extra patent protection for Genentech drugs into Obamacare legislation. The narrative unfolds as a soap opera starring colorful lobbyists who fit the cigar-chomping, champagne-swilling, secretary-harassing stereotype, and who reveled in petty corruption until it brought many of them down. (Morris, for example, embezzled millions from Genentech, then shot himself at his country club when federal investigations closed in.) It’s also a canny study of the evolution of political corruption, as influence-peddling advanced from surreptitious envelopes of cash to meticulously coordinated PAC bundling to the subtle orchestration of far-reaching PR campaigns aimed at swaying public opinion rather than bribing legislators. Deeply reported and punchily written, this is an entertaining—and disturbing—account of the devious subversion of democracy. (May)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Historian Wilford (America’s Great Game) argues in this vibrant account that the CIA came into being as a continuation of European imperial ambition. The CIA’s early, Ivy League–educated leadership “shared British values,” Wilford writes, and fancied themselves adventurers in the mold of T.E. Lawrence and Kim, Rudyard Kipling’s romantic portrait of the British Raj. (A bizarre number of early CIA agents were nicknamed “Kim.”) Founded in 1947 and freed from the wartime goals of its predecessor the OSS, the CIA latched onto fighting communism as its raison d’être—a so-called anti-imperialist effort that was carried out with supreme imperialist flair, Wilford contends, as the agency sought to prove America was “the rightful heir to European modernity.” Wilford structures his argument around profiles of prominent agents, including Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, architect of the CIA’s 1953 Iranian coup, who constantly played “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” from Guys and Dolls in the lead-up to the operation, and James Angleton, an obsessive orchid-growing loner and modernist literary scholar who went nearly insane trying to shake out the agency’s communist moles. The book is full of such striking character portraits, as Wilford evocatively suggests that the CIA’s tendency to overthrow foreign governments emerged from paranoia and personality defects among its leadership. This eye-opening slice of American history should not be missed. (June)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Actor and playwright Kingston delivers a knockout debut about coming to terms with her mother’s death. When Kingston was seven years old, her mother, Kristina, revealed that her once-manageable cancer had become terminal. Four years later, Kristina died, leaving behind a chest of letters and gifts for Kingston to open on birthdays and other milestones, including her first period and her high school graduation. Those missives taught the teenager things about Kristina she’d never known, including her professional achievements and family history, and kept Kingston feeling that “my mother anticipated what I needed before I knew it myself.” When, shortly after Kingston left for college, tragedy struck her family again, she clung to her mother’s letters harder than ever, relying on them and her surviving relatives to make it to graduation. Kingston shares many memorable moments, including how she tried to forestall her parents from sharing news of her mother’s diagnosis by cracking jokes, without allowing the proceedings to become maudlin. This gorgeous, openhearted meditation on grief and family deserves a wide readership. Agent: Brettne Bloom, Book Group. (May)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this fun and far-ranging account, sociologist Thornton (Seven Days in the Art World) explores the topic of women’s breasts from a female perspective—tying in multiple aesthetic, professional, and spiritual threads of analysis while eschewing the “male gaze.” Relating her own anecdotes on breastfeeding in the 1990s—when it still had a strongly taboo feeling, especially in public—and her postmastectomy mismatched synthetic breasts (nicknamed Bert and Ernie), she explains that losing her natural breasts for medical reasons inspired her to discover more about how other women (including trans women) relate to their tits. In sections covering the sex industry, breastfeeding, plastic surgeons, bra designers, and the body positivity movement, Thornton draws from informative, intimate conversations with experts. These include a wry, thoughtful plastic surgeon; sex workers who perform feats of asymmetric breast movement; cheerfully aging hippies who revel in the freedom of topless communal events; and Old Navy bra designers (the model who serves as the template for all the company’s bras has perfectly average breasts and a master’s degree in economics that helps her give market-oriented feedback). What emerges is an arresting look at how these subjects’ niche experiences have erased, in their own minds, any perception of breasts as merely “passive erotic playthings.” It’s an inviting and down-to-earth portrayal of women’s relationship with their bodies. (May)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

The American progressive left has lost its mind, according to this thin debut. Bowles, staff writer for the Free Press, surveys the far left’s most criticized flash points and failures of the past four years, including violence in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, drug use in Los Angeles’s Echo Park Tent Community, and the rise and recall of Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s anti–mass incarceration district attorney. Bowles concedes that “New Progressives” are well-meaning in their desire to battle bigotry and systemic violence, but criticizes their tactics, which she most successfully lampoons through personal recollections, like her mildly funny roast of an antiracist course she attended. Led by mostly white women instructors for mostly white women participants, the course serves as fodder for Bowles’s keen observation that critiques of “whiteness” have become just another outlet for white women’s “self-flagellation” over their bodies. Unfortunately, such perceptiveness is fleeting; by and large, the narrative has a feeling of incompleteness, as complicated subjects such as gender-affirming care for minors receive limited treatments so Bowles can quickly move on to easier, fringier targets, like nerdy Tumblr asexuals. Bowles glosses all these topics with the standard wokeness-gone-too-far veneer that originally made them go viral in right-wing media, while not adding much journalistic depth. The result is a toothless recap of anti-woke talking points. (May)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Mount Shasta, Calif., high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.” But Japanese American Izzy, conceived during a one-night stand in her mother Hanako’s final year at Harvard, has never known the identity of her father. So when she and her best friend find a letter in Hanako’s bedroom, the duo jump at the chance to ferret out Izzy’s dad’s true identity—only to find out he’s the Crown Prince of Japan. Desperate to know her father, Izzy agrees to spend the summer in his home country. But press surveillance, pressure to quickly learn the language and etiquette, and an unexpected romance make her time in Tokyo more fraught than she imagined. Add in a medley of cousins and an upcoming wedding, and Izzy is in for an unforgettable summer. Abrupt switches from Izzy’s perspective to lyrical descriptions of Japan may disrupt readers’ enjoyment, but a snarky voice plus interspersed text conversations and tabloid coverage keep the pages turning in Jean’s (Empress of All Seasons) fun, frothy, and often heartfelt duology starter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Kelkar’s (Bindu’s Bindis) novel features Oceanview Academy middle schooler Sonali, whose stoicism contrasts with her love of Bollywood movies’ melodrama. Stuck in a Los Angeles home with constantly arguing parents and her sensitive nine-year-old brother Ronak, Gujarati American Sonali, 11, tries to make sense of her world through the Hindi movies she’s seen all her life. Ever since an earnest public attempt five years ago to stop her parents’ fighting led to widespread embarrassment in front of family, Sonali has resolved to hide her emotions and do her best to ignore her parents’ arguments. But her efforts prove futile when her parents decide to try the “nesting” method of separation, where they take turns living in the house with Sonali and Ronak. The contemporary narrative takes an entertaining fabulist turn as Sonali’s life begins to transform into a Bollywood movie, with everything she feels and thinks made apparent through her “Bollywooditis.” Sonali’s first-person perspective is sympathetic as she navigates friendship and family drama, and Kelkar successfully infuses a resonant narrative with “filmi magic,” offering a tale with universal appeal through an engaging cultural lens. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

When she was six, Justice Kasric watched her blue-eyed merchant father play chess with the Faerie King. Now 15, Justice believes the event was merely a dream. She spends her days yearning for adventure, watching from the sidelines while her 16-year-old sister Faith, as slender and golden-haired as Justice but not as curious, becomes the toast of Victorian London society. One night, however, their father shatters their comfortable lifestyles when he forces the family—Justice, Faith, their younger brother Henry, and their constantly medicated, distant mother—into a locked carriage that takes them to a shadowy mansion. Justice’s discovery that the Faerie have invaded the human world and are targeting her family gains further urgency when she learns that her parents are on opposite sides of the conflict. Together, the Kasric siblings—including older brothers Benedict and Joshua—must find a way to save their family. While characters lack depth at times, and insufficient historical details don’t fully evoke the Victorian setting, Klaver’s (the Supernatural Case Files of Sherlock Holmes series) rich, lyrical descriptions augment the fantastical source material in this engaging series starter. Ages 13–up. Agent: Lucienne Diver, the Knight Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Nine years before this novel begins, eight-year-old best friends Esme Randal and Kayla Price snuck out of their cabin at Camp Pine Lake in Texas. They swore never to discuss the terrible events that followed, but when the girls, now 17, return to the camp as counselors-in-training from their hometown of Lewisburg, Pa., that proves easier said than done. Someone begins sabotaging camp activities, and ominous—and increasingly public—threats appear, referencing that fateful summer. The only other person who knows Esme and Kayla’s secret is a local girl named Lillian Campbell, whom they left to fend for herself that night in the woods. They’re loath to voice their suspicions of revenge lest they get in trouble or look bad in front of hunky fellow counselors Jake and Olly, but as events escalate, they realize they may not have a choice. Narrating from Esme’s increasingly apprehensive first-person perspective, Preston (The Twin) pays homage to classic summer camp slasher films. The underdeveloped, predominantly white cast relies heavily on stereotype, and the clichéd tormenter’s motive feels unearned, but horror fans will likely appreciate this paranoia-fueled tale’s gruesome, shocking close. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jon Elek, United Agents. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink