Volckmer’s coruscating debut takes the form of a Bernhardian monologue made during a medical exam. While the title is a nod to the novel’s setting, its alternate title (The Story of a Jewish Cock) engenders the salacious tone. Sarah, the German-born, London-based 30-something narrator, open... Continue reading »

Set in 1985, Colt’s excellent second hard-boiled mystery featuring Boston PI Andy Roark (after 2019’s The Off-Islander) finds Roark, a Vietnam War vet still traumatized by his combat experiences, supporting himself with routine investigations, until Thuy Duong brings him the case of her jou... Continue reading »

The depths of outer space test the strength of a dynamic heroine’s inner resolve in Stroud’s smart, introspective space opera set in the year 2118. Captain Ellisa Shann reroutes her patrol ship, the Khidr, in response to a distress call from the freighter Hercules, but the rescue m... Continue reading »

Feuding food truck owners make a sizzling connection in this enthralling romance from Smith (Faker). Nikki DiMarco spent the last year and a half learning to run her family’s Maui food truck, Tiva’s Filipina Kusina, to fulfill a promise she made to her late father. Then a competitive new bu... Continue reading »

Terry, as a child growing up between households and cultures—his Irish American father’s in the Chicago suburbs and his Native (Ho-Chunk) mother’s in the Wisconsin Dells—gets told off by his dad: “You’re too sensitive, Indio.” But fortunately for readers of this raw and intimate graphic memoir, Terr... Continue reading »

The devastating and electrifying second book from Corral (Slow Lightning) features an imagined multivoiced narrative at the U.S.-Mexican border and its surrounding deserts. The speakers are desperate, thirsty, bleeding, their plights depicted with urgent, stream-of-consciousness fragments b... Continue reading »

Fuller (Hearts of Middlefield) delights with four joyful Amish stories of love and faith. In “Young Love,” 20-something Fern has rheumatoid arthritis and worries her illness will one day make marriage and life as an Amish wife difficult. When her longtime crush, Dan, becomes single, Fern ov... Continue reading »

If an alien visitor wanted to collect 10 samples to represent life on Earth, which would it choose? Science writer Taylor (How Birds Work) offers some surprising answers in her outstanding work. The proposed selections—including, in addition to humankind, the stick insect, sponge, and dusky... Continue reading »

This visually stunning offering from Crary, executive director of FlowerSchool New York, highlights the creative potential of flower arranging. In his view, flower arranging can be approached as high art, and he describes the excitement of watching “a bale of branches and a bundle of flowers... turn... Continue reading »

Green (The Heart of the Matter), a rabbi and founding dean of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College in Boston, brings together 29 of his most stimulating “essays, short teachings, insights, and readings of Jewish sources” in this illuminating collection. Reflecting over 50 years of Green’... Continue reading »

In her author-illustrator debut, Allen presents an accessible introduction to political protest: “Marching is something people do together when they want to resist injustice.” Spare prose informs on the necessity of rallying and communal allyship, with graceful allusions to significant historical ev... Continue reading »