Set in Vermillion, Okla., in 1935, this superb series launch from Loewenstein (Unmentionables) introduces Sheriff Temple Jennings and his stalwart wife, Etha. Once relatively prosperous, Vermillion’s farmers must contend with the continuing crop-killing dust storms, and when they suffer, so... Continue reading »

Readers unfamiliar with Israeli author and public intellectual Oz (Judas) will find this collection of three essays, adapted from a series of lectures, a good introduction to his nuanced perspective. The title entry, about “the nature of fanaticism and the ways we might curtail it,” will ha... Continue reading »

Under a “stretching-out sky at the edge of the no-go desert,” a dark brown child with mirrored sunglasses gives readers a tour of a desert village, from “our mud-for-walls home” to “the sand hill we built to slide down.” But the best thing? Soaring out into the sand on the bike the kids have created... Continue reading »

In his eloquent and convincingly argued debut, Hearlson, a minister in the United Church of Christ, exhorts readers to reconsider Christianity’s subversive nature. “To speak the Holy No,” he writes, “is to refuse to be complicit in the oppression and violence of the ruling power.” Starting from the ... Continue reading »

Tsuge is one of the pioneers of gekiga, manga for adult readers, and this searing graphic short story collection plunges into the surreal, hardboiled world he created for alternative magazines in the 1960s and 1970s. Set in the tumult of postwar Japan, the narratives follow tough men and wo... Continue reading »

Voice actor Kinnear sounds playfully peevish and impatient when portraying the narrator of Horowitz’s hugely entertaining whodunit, adding to the novel’s sense of fun. Daniel Hawthorne, a respected former Metro policeman who has been hired to consult on a strange murder case, pressures popular novel... Continue reading »