This uneven dual timeline thriller from Eskens (Saving Emma) toggles between present day Minnesota and the war in Bosnia. In early 1990s Yugoslavia, Nura Divjak lives with her Muslim parents and younger brother in a farmhouse near Tuzla (in what is now Bosnia). When her family is murdered by Serbian soldiers, Nura joins the Bosnian army and falls in love with a fellow soldier named Adem. During an ambush, Nura is captured and meets a woman named Amina Junuzović in prison. After Adem dies in battle, Amina helps Nura escape, and together, the pair flee to the United States, where Amina gives birth to Sara, the daughter of a Serb who raped her, and Nura reinvents herself as a meek librarian named Hana. Thirty years later, when Amina is thrown off her balcony, “Hana” becomes Nura once again, determined to hunt down the killer before he comes after Dylan, Amina’s grandson. Nura first teams up with a handsome detective, then takes justice into her own hands, with dramatic results. Eskens strains to connect his past and present timelines, with a weak romance plot and a limp through line about Nura’s affinity for building traps—first for hunting food, then for hunting her adversaries—failing to raise the cumbersome present-day sections to the level of the fast-paced, well-researched historical chapters. It’s a mixed bag. Agent: Amy Cloughley, Kimberly Cameron & Assoc. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this stimulating meditation, Pierce (Hell Without Fires), dean of the Vanderbilt Divinity School, draws on “the subversive nature of the gospel” to examine the “historical wounds” of Black people in America. Exploring how shame is wielded by the powerful against the vulnerable, she links the story of how the prophetess Miriam was shunned for having leprosy to a viral 2015 video of an encounter in which a Black girl in a bathing suit was forcibly restrained by the police. In Pierce’s telling, the Bible story and the video both evoke how humiliation is internalized by Black women and girls who have historically been denied agency over their bodies. Elsewhere, she looks at how Black women in the rural South used knowledge passed down through generations to heal others with plants and roots for salves and painkillers, caring for the sick despite being wounded and endangered themselves. According to Pierce, the contemporary scientific validation of those ancestral healing methods disproves another “dominant story: that the traditions of rural southern folk were ignorant, unscientific, and based on superstition.” Such insights are thought-provoking, though the author’s tendency to rove rapidly between biblical, personal, and historical anecdotes can prevent them from cohering into a unified argument. Still, this is a resonant, richly detailed study of the complex relationship between race and faith in America. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

From the first days of rock ’n’ roll to the last days of disco, pop culture was markedly influenced by gay themes and undertones in movies, music, and art, according to this exuberant history. Journalist Savage (England’s Dreaming) surveys American and British showbiz figures, from rocker Little Richard, who deleted the explicit anal sex lyrics from his 1955 hit “Tutti Frutti,” but got plenty of "fruity" subtext across anyway, to the late 1970s disco group Village People, whose overt hymns to gay bliss became standards at straight weddings. Among the other cultural phenomena that he revisits are Andy Warhol’s elevation of camp into high art, David Bowie’s androgynous style and his 1972 confession that he was gay, and the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever, which brought disco, a musical style incubated in gay dance clubs, to its peak popularity. (The movie and its star John Travolta fairly oozed a homoerotic vibe, Savage contends, while deflecting it with a few homophobic scenes.) Savage offers a rich analysis of the symbiosis of gay subculture and the dominant postwar youth culture, both yearning for more sexual freedom, and backgrounds his narrative with the story of the evolving gay rights movement (he depicts the 1979 “Disco Sucks” destruction of thousands of disco records in Chicago's Comiskey Park as partly fueled by antigay backlash). Perceptive and elegantly written, this captivates. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this pseudoscientific treatise, Braden (Human by Design) contends that humanity is being slowly poisoned by advanced technology. According to the author, the 20th century saw the rise of “transhumanists” who sought to harness “the logic, speed, and efficiency” of technology—for example, by developing mRNA vaccines that “reprogram” the immune system—to perfect the human body with the goal of achieving immortality. Such actions interfere with natural design and stamp out the “imagination, intuition, innovation, and creativity” that makes humans special, Braden contends. In one of many instances of convoluted logic, he uses a kabbalistic system of assigning Hebrew letters to elements that comprise DNA to “prove” that God has “encoded” into humans a message that “our bodies are... biological temples” that technology threatens to spoil. Just as troublesome is the lack of any concrete evidence of the transhumanists’ supposed plot to merge “humans and machines into a unified digital landscape called the singularity.” This paranoid cri de coeur fails to persuade. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Journalist O’Brien (Glow) brings together a muddled array of meditations on motivating young people to adopt a “more gentle, humanistic and integrated way of living.” In the book’s opening and closing essays, she laments how social media has decimated teens’ self-esteem and left them feeling lonely, but her vague recommendation for parents to model healthy behavior avoids the crucial question of what example parents should set. A grab bag of activists, artists, businesspeople, medical professionals, and teachers contribute the rest of the entries, but many feel only tangentially related to the volume’s ostensible focus on supporting young people. For instance, Ryan Dusick describes how he became a therapist after suffering from depression and addiction during his stint as the founding drummer of Maroon 5, but the essay has little to do with the difficulties most young people face besides a tacked-on suggestion to “stay open to change.” There are a few highlights, such as Native American scholar Mindahi Bastida’s moving letter to his daughter calling on her to rediscover the importance of community and living in harmony with nature. More typical, however, is “commercial foreign policy” entrepreneur Ed Olver’s cliché-ridden plea for readers to “listen to your heart” and “express your authentic Self.” This comes up short. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Shade (Leather, Lace, and Locs) skillfully combines lesbian romance and chosen-one fantasy adventure against the vivid backdrop of a supernaturally tinged New Orleans. Suri Daniels discovers that the magic and ritual her late grandmother’s ghost has directed her to learn will serve its purpose when she steps into her fated role as priestess-guardian to the Orishas in the city. Meanwhile, 200-year-old cambion Lyla Jeffries, whose enslaved mother was human but whose father was a powerful demon, is called to serve as Suri’s protector against a voodoo priestess who schemes to enable the demon Lilith to take over Suri’s body and unleash chaos. Shade creates deep backstories for both women while building a complex magical world that respectfully draws on many traditions of the African diaspora. This adds richness and texture to the story, but slows the somewhat predictable plot. After so much setup, Lilith proves a disappointingly dull foe, and, though Lyla’s succubus nature and Suri’s sexual empath powers make a sexual encounter near inevitable, romance readers won’t find much actual heat as the leads quickly decide that sex is a distraction from their world-saving work. Still, fans of New Orleans magic and stories centering powerful Black women will find plenty to enjoy. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Gay’s featherweight follow-up to Bad Mormon offers a humorous if diffuse look at the author’s lifelong pursuit of pleasure. Peppered with observations about men, sex, food, and fun, the narrative can read like a teenage diary (early on, Gay shares a letter from her early 20s in which she admits she only “wants to be a superstar”), but the proceedings gain a measure of gravity whenever she discusses her Mormon upbringing in Colorado. Fans of the show, or of Gay’s previous memoir, will be familiar with the bullet points of her entanglement with the LDS church: her early devoutness, her eventual divorce from her husband, and her subsequent struggle to reconcile her identity as a wife and mother with an inner desire to let loose. Unfortunately, the book’s scattered focus dulls the impact of that arc, with entire chapters dedicated to prepubescent ear piercing and Gay’s teenage affinity for Neil Young. More serious sections, including one on body positivity, can feel muddled; Gay acknowledges the harms of fat-shaming before blithely endorsing weight loss drugs. There’s something to be said for Gay’s commitment to candor, but this is strictly for hardcore Housewives fans. Agent: Steve Troha, Folio Literary. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Marital secrets animate this heartrending standalone from McAllister (Wrong Place, Wrong Time). On a June morning in London, Camilla “Cam” Deschamps wakes to find that her husband, Luke, isn’t home. Then she discovers the cryptic note he left behind: “If anything... it’s been so lovely with you both.” As Cam tries to convince herself that Luke left early for his ghostwriting job, she drops off their infant daughter, Polly, at day care before heading to work. Soon after she arrives at her office, Cam learns that a hostage situation is developing at a nearby warehouse and Luke is the gunman. The seasoned hostage negotiator on the scene is convinced Luke is a family man who won’t resort to violence, but after Luke releases one of the hostages, he shoots the other two, then vanishes. Years pass with no sign of Luke, and Cam struggles to rebuild her life while secretly attempting to piece together clues that could point to her husband’s whereabouts or explain his actions. Though the pace can drag and certain twists are a bit convoluted, the gut-wrenching plight of McAllister’s three-dimensional heroine will keep readers flipping pages. This satisfies. Agent: Ariele Friedman, United Talent Agency. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this bracing blend of memoir and manifesto, activist Ross (Radical Reproductive Justice) details her decades of fighting for reproductive rights and calls for her fellow organizers to “build bridges instead of burning them down.” The narrative hinges on Ross’s work for organizations including the D.C. Rape Crisis Center, the National Organization for Women, and the Center for Democratic Renewal, focusing especially on the lessons she learned from collaborating with difficult colleagues, including former hate group members and violent criminals. With straightforward language and insightful anecdotes, Ross illuminates the concrete value of bridging divides, detailing the professional successes and personal growth she’s been able to achieve by remaining open to input from “spheres of influence” she’d initially dismissed. She backs up her prescriptive advice (“Value growth over punishment”) with writings by psychologists and thinkers including Audre Lorde and Martin Luther King Jr. Practical without being preachy, this is an invaluable road map for navigating tricky political waters. Agent: David Kuhn, Aevitas Creative Management. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

People of color are held back in the workplace by unjustifiably critical white colleagues, according to this eye-opening debut report. DEI consultant Dunn calls white skepticism of Black workers’ abilities “competency checking,” suggesting it usually takes the form of assuming Black intellectual inferiority, expressing surprise or unease when such expectations are upended, and defying the authority of Black individuals. Contending that Black employees are often subjected to heightened scrutiny, Dunn cites an experiment that found law firm partners picked out errors that didn’t exist in a legal memo when they thought it was prepared by a Black man and overlooked actual errors when they believed a white man wrote it. Competency checking can be particularly hard on Black women, Dunn argues, drawing on client interviews to suggest that Black female employees often meet resistance when exercising authority because doing so upsets the stereotype of the subservient domestic worker. Dunn marshals a damning array of studies demonstrating the persistence of workplace racism (one found that white workers were more likely to secure well-paying jobs than Black peers with equal education levels), and her pragmatic solutions include nixing such biased screening tools as personality tests and conducting audits to determine problematic practices in hiring and promotion. This is essential reading for anyone invested in creating a more equitable workplace. Agent: Susanna Einstein, Einstein Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/06/2025 | Details & Permalink