Dixon (Beaten, Seared, and Sauced) and prosecutor Owen collaborate on a so-so account of Owen’s work on a 1976 double murder case. After playing keyboards for various bands in his 20s, Owen enrolled in law school at DePaul University. While there, he spotted a recruitment notice from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, and though he “had no real idea what a state’s attorney did,” he applied to be an assistant and got the job. In 1979, after rising through the ranks to become the chief of gang prosecutions for Chicago, Owen came across a file on the 1976 double murder of 20-somethings Mark Demetrius and Marigray Jobes. Police initially arrested Demetrius’s acquaintance, Mitchell Weinger, for the stabbings but dropped the charges for mysterious reasons—possibly to do with the intervention of Weinger’s powerful family. Then Owen and his colleague, Mike Goggin, got involved, and their efforts led to Weinger’s conviction in 1980. Dixon and Owen’s propulsive pacing keeps the pages turning for a while, but long-windedness and awkward prose (“The name leapt from the page with the force of revelation, like something coiled and waiting to be found and put to use”) eventually weigh things down. This fails to ignite. (June)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink

An Armenian American woman’s childhood memories of the Lebanese Civil War come roaring back on 9/11 in the lyrical latest from Kricorian (All the Light There Was). Vera Serinossian, a collage artist, is about to begin a marriage counseling session with her husband on the Upper West Side when they learn about the attack on the World Trade Center. Vera, whose ethnically Armenian family emigrated from Beirut during the war when she was 12, races to pick up the couple’s young twins, who had just started school that week. Kricorian then flashes back to Vera’s wartime experiences, showing the inherent strangeness of living under siege. The war brings about unsettling changes: Vera becomes a go-between for a teenage friend and her much older paramour, while a bunch of local boys, including Vera’s older brother, start collecting bullet casings. As conditions continue to deteriorate, Vera’s mother pushes for the family to leave the country, but her paternal grandmother, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, refuses to flee (“Exile is a burning shirt I will never wear again,” she declares). Much of the narrative is devoted to flashbacks, which effectively inform Vera’s difficulty in dealing with the aftermath of the terrorist attack and her intense fear that there will be more bombings in New York. It’s an impactful story of trauma. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink

The dreams in this elegant collection from Egyptian Nobel laureate Mahfouz (1911–2006) reveal hints of regret over losing a former lover and fears of repression, all tinged with the wistfulness of old age. In an evocative introduction to his translation, Matar shares a story of meeting Mahfouz at a gathering in 1994 Cairo, five years after the author survived a stabbing by a religious extremist over objections to his novel Children of Gebelawi. Matar also introduces his wife Diana’s accompanying photographs, taken in the streets of Cairo around the time of his meeting with Mahfouz before such photography became impossible under the increasingly repressive Mubarak regime. The quotidian and spare scenes illuminate the images in Mahfouz’s dreams, about encounters with friends or musings on landmarks. Glimpses of warfare and political upheaval are peppered throughout, often with a pessimistic view. Most impactful are the recurring dreams of Mahfouz’s long-ago lover B and his continued desire for her, as he reads her obituary in one dream and she tells him to forget her in another, the latter of which yields the chilling line, “it was as though the very last candle had gone out.” Lovers of international literature will appreciate these well-honed snapshots. (June)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this comprehensive biography, James Beard Award winner Genoways (The Blessed Earth) examines the life of José Cuervo, “an active and aggressive molder of his moment and milieu.” The Cuervo family’s involvement in growing blue agave and distilling it into tequila—named for the Tequila valley—was firmly established by the late 1700s, when José’s great-great-grandfather was named Spain’s political chief in the region. However, in 1887, José watched his father lose the family business to (literally) cutthroat competitors. His inheritance gone, José began managing the agave estate of a wealthy great-uncle, whose death a few years later left a much younger widow. José married her in 1900 and expanded the business, building a state-of-the-art distillery, acquiring thousands of acres, and lobbying for railway connections. In 1904, Cuervo exhibited tequila at the St. Louis World’s Fair, where he made powerful American contacts. By the 1910 start of the Mexican Revolution, the region’s productivity made Tequila and José himself a target for the rebels. His intrepid escapes, entrepreneurial flair, and political ties carried him through the revolution and prepared the nascent country for establishing trade ties with the U.S. Though studded with murders and battles, the narrative is somewhat dry—the most lively moments come from the diaries of José’s niece, who kept sensitive and marvelously detailed records. Still, Genoways offers a rigorous and unique lens on Mexico’s revolutionary period. (May)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink

Journalist and humanitarian worker Almoghayer (Shell Shocked) offers a hopeful yet devastating portrait of the Gaza Strip before the latest war. The book begins as a series of profiles of locals, including Nermine, a young fashion designer attempting to share her art with the world despite Israeli blockades; Ibrahim, a Christian who dresses up as Santa Claus for local children; and Aisha and Ashraf, a lovestruck couple finally able to wed after winning a lottery. Almoghayer’s use of the present tense for his reportage is especially effective, transporting readers to the recent but startlingly distant-feeling past and preserving the small moments of delight and generosity that make up the Gaza he remembers. The author bolsters his account with analyses of globalization and cultural changes sweeping modern Gaza despite decades of Israeli blockades and blackouts, alongside tantalizing descriptions of traditional local meals and activities. However, pleasure and positivity are ultimately tamped down by reality: the book’s final chapters abruptly shift to a narrative of the author’s own 2015 captivity in Gaza after being kidnapped by members of a local ISIS faction. The book’s epilogue and endnotes also hauntingly recontextualize much of the resilience portrayed in its earlier sections through the lens of the current war in Gaza and Israel’s campaign of destruction. This bittersweet account, while swelling with optimism, preserves a record of many tragically lost people and places. (May)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink

Basketball legend and activist Abdul-Jabbar (On the Shoulders of Giants) provides an inspiring survey of the protest movements of the 1960s and ’70s. Rejecting the notion that protests are “relics,” Abdul-Jabbar shows how protesting has been continuously important since that era and draws parallels between past and present by also spotlighting later, less studied movements and protests like the 1997 Million Woman March, which “encouraged Black women to seek self-fulfillment.” The book is best when focused on Abdul-Jabbar’s own vivid reminisces. These include the two events that kick-started his political awakening in 1964—“meeting Dr. King in person and being inadvertently caught up in the Harlem riot”—and his participation in the 1967 Cleveland Summit, “a gathering of mostly Black athletes... tasked with choosing whether to support Muhammad Ali’s defiance of the draft,” which he calls a “defining experience.” His humor, even in the face of death threats (“I’ve become an all-you-can-hate buffet”), and honesty, including about when his advocacy fell short (“I was... a passive sexist accepting the inequality of women as inevitable”), are refreshing. Throughout, Abul-Jabbar makes a persuasive case for protest’s long-term efficacy, even when change is not immediate (“To protest is to play the long game”). The result is a powerful exhortation to take to the streets. (May)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink

Aliu revisits the humble Waterbury, Conn., setting of her novel Brass with this intelligent and hard-hitting story of Albanian adopted twins and their search for fulfillment. Drita and Pete are raised by Italian American couple Jackie and Dom, who adopted them shortly after they were born in 1972. Aliu builds narrative tension from the twins’ stark differences: growing up, Drita is straitlaced and docile compared to her stubborn troublemaker brother, Pete. As a teen, Drita dreams of becoming a nurse, while Pete, feeling unsettled over their lack of connection to their Albanian heritage, hangs out with a rough crowd. By 1996, he disappears. Three years later, not long after Drita returns to town from New York City, having completed nursing school, Pete’s former girlfriend, Shanda, a recovering heroin addict, shows up at the family’s door with their three-year-old son. As the novel unfolds, the reader gradually learns of the impetus behind Jackie’s maternal devotion. Aliu offers surprising insights and raises meaty questions about the meaning of family and unconditional love, and the story grows increasingly riveting as the reader learns about Pete’s connection to the Kosovo War and Jackie’s relationship to the twins’ mother. This one is tough to shake. Agent: Julie Barer, Book Group. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink

This scintillating diptych from Griffiths (Mr. Beethoven), originally published in 2008 and 2023, respectively, uses only the 481 words spoken by Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Here, Shakespeare’s tragic heroine, named O, is at the heart of a new story, one that contains familiar elements from Hamlet, such as many of the original characters, but is set in a world that resembles a melancholy version of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland. In a memorable moment of Let Me Tell You, O is led by her maid to a “green door in the mountain,” which opens into a chamber housing someone called the Lady Profound and her talking owl; in Let Me Go On, O sets out to meet a talking wishing well. Griffiths blends tragic elements into the fantastical tale. For instance, music “has gone for good,” and Ophelia’s mother (nonexistent in the original play) appears here as a dark, disturbed figure, described as “a length of hell”—one of many instances in which Griffith showcases his ability to create haunting images with a limited lexicon. Despite the story’s pathos, Griffiths finds much room for keen wit, such as Polonius citing the lyrics to the Beatles’ “Love Me Do.” Shakespeare lovers will get a kick out of this playful experiment. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink

Mushtaq makes her English-language debut with this virtuosic collection, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, about the public and private lives of women in southern India’s Islamic communities. In “A Taste of Heaven,” a wryly humorous tale of three children trying to comfort their rapidly declining great-aunt, the children tell her she’s already in heaven and that the Pepsi she’s drinking is aab-e-kausar, the water of a river in Paradise. Elsewhere, Mushtaq lands gut-wrenching social critiques, as in the title story, about a mother who resolves to self-immolate after her family refuses to support her choice to leave her unfaithful husband. In “The Shroud,” a wealthy housewife agrees to bring her cleaning woman a funeral shroud from Saudi Arabia, forgets to do it, and becomes inconsolable with guilt when the woman dies. In “Black Cobras,” a woman left destitute after her husband leaves her learns her rights under Sharia from the educated woman she does menial labor for, then tries to petition the local mosque for help. The stories are united by a keen eye for the interplay between their characters’ social circumstances and inner lives, as religious authority and economic class exert their influence. It’s an excellent introduction to an author of rare talent. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink

The intense latest from Thompson (Death Register) revolves around a Jamaican man tormented by memories of witnessing the rape of his high school teacher. As a student at an all-boys prep school in Jamaica, Nyjah Messado spends his free time writing poetry, charming girls, working as a meal delivery boy, and palling around with his classmate and friend Chadwell, an arrogant kid with the “good looks to match his manner.” Six years later, however, Nyjah remains haunted by the on-campus gang rape of teacher trainee Maude Dallmeyer, led by a boy named Snow after Ms. Dallmeyer caught him and another boy engaged in oral sex in front of their classmates, including Chadwell. Nyjah rushes to the headmaster’s office but can’t bring himself to report what he saw, while Ms. Dallmeyer leaves the school and nothing comes of the crime. After college, Nyjah has increasing trouble keeping the peace with Chadwell, who shamelessly embodies the sort of toxic masculinity and homophobia that’s encouraged in their culture. Nyjah, overwhelmed by guilt and feeling “like a man runnin’ from himself,” searches for Maude, wishing to apologize. Thompson’s novel effectively taps into the complexities of boyhood friendships and masculinity in its portrayal of Nyjah’s sluggish progress toward a sense of justice. This one leaves a mark. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/16/2025 | Details & Permalink