In this breezy account, Becker (Character Matters) and Collamore, former advance aides for President George H.W. Bush, recall consequential moments from their tenures preparing the president for public appearances and collect stories from other advance aides. The result is a blend of memoir and watercooler discussion, with the authors offering running commentary between often comedic dispatches. Andrew Friendly, who worked for Bill Clinton, recalls a 1993 teleprompter malfunctioning during a congressional address that forced Clinton to pull his speech from memory. Becker recalls apologizing to First Lady Barbara Bush for managing to position her in front of defecating cows during a speech at the Florida State Fair; her colleague Gordon James recounts failing to fetch the diminutive Queen Elizabeth a stepping stool in 1991, allowing the audience to see only her purple hat. These lighthearted passages are offset by the occasional somber one, including chilling accounts of the assassination attempts on Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and subdued reflections on 9/11 and the Sandy Hook school shooting. Though most of the anecdotes are only a few paragraphs, they offer a tantalizing glimpse behind the presidential curtain. History buffs will relish the up-close perspective. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

From the evolution of the opposable thumb to the exploitation of fossil fuels, each stage of human development has been driven by an engineering advancement that involves “converting energy from one form into another,” according to this cerebral study. Biologist Ennos (The Age of Wood) begins with humanity’s antecedents, tree-dwelling primates who developed bodies that happened to be ideal for creating simple tools. Over time, early humans modified these tools to convert more energy with them, such as using “sling action” to turn stone blades into powerful projectiles. Meanwhile mastery over fire supplemented the power-generating potential of early humans’ metabolisms, allowing them to “divert more energy to.... supporting a larger brain,” and leading, over the ensuing millennia, to more and more energy-intensive technologies, from fired earthenware ceramics to the smelting of metals. In the early modern era, the discovery that coal contained “five times as much energy per unit as wood” facilitated the buildup of the “energy intense industries” that kicked off the Industrial Revolution. Today, “profligate” use of energy threatens humanity’s existence, Ennos notes, even it has “doomed us to be the slaves of machines” and “forced us to mimic them, carrying out repetitive but unskilled tasks.” The result is a striking call to reconsider whether humanity controls energy or it controls humanity. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Losing a baby broke the First Couple’s hearts but revived their marriage according to this emotionally probing history. Former Washington Post editor Levingston (Little Demon in the City of Light) recaps the death of Patrick Kennedy two days after Jackie Kennedy gave birth to him, five weeks early, in August 1963; he succumbed to hyaline membrane disease, a lung disorder that was often fatal in premature infants. Patrick’s demise, Levingston notes, captivated the world and inspired improvements in neonatal healthcare that have all but eliminated such deaths, funded in part by bills President Kennedy signed after his son’s death. But Levingston’s focus is on the tragedy’s role in JFK’s transformation from heartless womanizer—he was yachting with other women when Jackie gave birth to a stillborn daughter in 1956—to loving family man. This time, Kennedy stood vigil over his dying son and shed “cataracts” of tears after his death. In the aftermath, the couple made previously uncommon public displays of affection, while Kennedy bonded with his young children. (He also, according to Levingston, swore off sex with his two mistresses, even as he continued to rendezvous with them.) Later chapters explore how the newly rekindled relationship compounded Jackie’s trauma after the assassination. Levingston fleshes out his chronicle of the couple’s reconciliation in soap-operatic prose. It makes for an affecting if occasionally maudlin addition to the Camelot saga. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Miller riffs on Jane Austen’s Emma with the cute latest in her Silver Teapot series (after Not Exactly Mr. Darcy). Emma Jane “EJ” Bennett and Jordan Knightley, cocreators of the Christian dating app Dream Match, grew up together in small-town Wattle Vale, Australia, and have been inseparable ever since. Having relocated to Sydney, the pair now yearn for different things: Jordan’s drawn to a life centered on family and faith, while EJ hopes to grow Dream Match’s success. Her search for investors connects her to a circle of high-flying elites, including Eric Churchill, a wealthy, womanizing businessman of whom Jordan is immediately suspicious, though EJ’s convinced he’s the key to keeping the app afloat. When Eric and EJ start dating, she’s thrilled to step into his glittering world, but Jordan worries EJ’s abandoning her small-town values. After Jordan shows up at one of Eric’s parties and criticizes its waste and luxury, EJ returns home to Wattle Vale and tries to understand what’s driving her toward success—and how far she’s willing to go to obtain it. Miller has fun modernizing Austen’s conceit with lively characters and zippy dialogue, though she sometimes leans into predictable moralizing about the ills of a superficial lifestyle. Still, there’s plenty here to please Miller’s fans. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Oates (Fox) showcases her inventive approach to the serial killer trope in the first of three planned volumes collecting crime fiction she wrote under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. It opens with the pulpy 1999 novel Starr Bright Will Be with You Soon, in which exotic dancer Sharon Donner, who performs under the name Starr Bright, murders men across the American Southwest in an effort to rid Earth of “adulterers and fornicators.” Along the way, she seeks out her fraternal twin, Lily Merrick, whom she’d tormented when the two were children. Soul/Mate, originally published in 1989, centers on psychopath Colin Asch, who becomes obsessed with widow Dorothea Deverell after meeting her at a Massachusetts art museum. In a predictable development, Colin starts killing anyone who stands in the way of their romance. Also collected here are the late 1970s short stories “The Murderess,” about an unlikely friendship between two women, and “An Unsolved Crime,” which follows a man reflecting on the death of his stepfather. Oates’s plotting sometimes veers into melodrama, but her prose is reliably sharp (a woman’s face is “repulsive: not because it was ugly but because it had obviously been beautiful at one time and was now ravaged”). Fans of the author and of literary crime fiction will be pleased. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Music critic Maconie (The Nanny State Made Me) adds to the overflowing shelf of books on the Beatles with this earnest if stale ode to friends, promoters, supporters, industry connections, and odd characters in the Fab Four’s orbit. He profiles Astrid Kirchherr, the photographer who helped influence the Beatles’ style with her early monochrome portraits; drummer Pete Best, whose unceremonious 1962 firing “is the Kennedy assassination of the Beatles’ story,” according to the author; and lesser-known figures like Meta Davies, a traffic cop who supposedly gave Paul McCartney a parking ticket (though Maconie denies that she inspired “Lovely Rita,” which had already been recorded). Though the author wears his fandom proudly, he doesn’t gloss over less savory aspects of the Beatles’ history, including Lennon’s domestic violence allegations. Still, there’s little that’s revelatory, and the writing can feel like filler (see the entry for Sean O’Mahoney, the publisher of the magazine The Beatles Book, “an invaluable resource and more, a way for Beatles obsessives from Accra to Zagreb, Accrington to Zaragoza to share their passion and feel connected and nurtured by it”). This one’s strictly for Beatles completists. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Memoirist and former literary agent Bingley (Bertie, May and Mrs. Fish) finds profundity in the mundane in this lively collection of 26 autobiographical essays that employ a wide range of prose styles. “Down the Lane,” about Bingley’s late mother, opens with a breathless, paragraph-long sentence. By contrast, “No One Knows How Important I Am” utilizes staccato phrases and loose stream of consciousness to highlight Bingley’s fears, insecurities, and ambivalence about a lover (“My man isn’t cruel at work. Or maybe he is. I’m sure he isn’t. And anyway aren’t there laws to restrain cruelty in money manoeuvres”). The standout entry, “Princess Diana’s Funeral,” takes the fragmentation further: in it, Bingley recalls a series of conversations she overheard while waiting in line in various public places the evening before Diana’s funeral. The snippets of dialogue range from commonplace (“You still wanting to go to the toilet,” “Oh-oh this is my favourite song Jon Bon Jovi”) to bottled expressions of grief (“D’you really feel she’s gone”), and they come together to form an oddly moving mosaic of public mourning. With an evident love for language and the subtle textures of daily life, Bingley provides a dazzling trip inside her mind that rewards close attention. It’s a gem. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Levison follows A Nest of Snakes with an acerbic sophomore novel that considers the dark side of literary ambition. Middle-aged divorcée Marcy Jo Codburn is finally ready to realize her dream of becoming a published author. She writes daily, belongs to a robust writers’ group, and scrolls social media feeds that brim with publishing content. When bestselling author Francesca Barber comes to Connecticut for a book signing, Marcy manages to not only meet her but to overhear which bar she’s headed to after the event. Marcy sneaks into the bar to intercept Francesca, then spies her in the arms of a married man and seizes the opportunity to blackmail the author into being her mentor. She gets an outline for her new book from Francesca, but soon her scheme spirals out of control, and what begins as an attempt to break into the book world ends up turning criminal. Gleefully unlikable characters and witty observations about the drudgery of writing make up for some wobbly pacing. It’s a wild exploration of the lengths some people will go to be known. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Two gallerists battle over the right to represent an aging painter in this uneven novel from Cahill (Tiepolo Blue). Lorna Bedford, a New York City art dealer, was once close friends with famous painter Thomas Haller. She represented Haller during his early career and helped lead him to success. Now, however, Haller is working with Claude Berlins, a new dealer in Europe. Meanwhile, billionaire real estate developer and arts patron Leo Goffman wants to buy Haller’s new work but despises Berlins and would prefer to work with Lorna. Over the course of several twists and turns, Lorna seeks one last payout from Thomas, via Leo. It’s an affecting tale of the friends’ tangled bonds in a fickle industry, but the novel falters under the weight of its myriad subplots: a young man falls to his death, Goffman hits a woman with his car, a love child is given up for adoption. Still, Cahill writes beautifully of Haller’s work and creative process, as in the description of two abstract paintings that appear side by side as “an expanse of luminous pink, the brushstrokes destabilised in places by the action of a spray can and splashed solvents,” which turn out to be fragments from film stills. This is worth a look. Agent: Isobel Dixon, Blake Freidman. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

A strange widow arrives from the U.S. to Bäck, a remote coastal village in 1930 Sweden, in this magnificent 1964 novel from Trotzig (1929–2011), her English-language debut. The locals know little about Lydia, but the reader gathers she had married into the Lindgren family. Their ancestral farm is now run by 50-something Judit, known as the Queen for her imperious demeanor, and her younger brother Albert, a taciturn virgin. Their youngest sibling, Viktor, whom Judit cared for while their mother dealt with postpartum depression, left for America in 1920. Viktor met Lydia in New York City during the Depression, when they were both underemployed, and the pair became lovers, moving into a room together and sharing food. In the novel’s final sections, the reader learns the details of the couple’s brief marriage and Viktor’s death, and the story takes surprising and poetic turns over the course of Lydia’s time in Bäck, where she grows acquainted with Albert and Judit. Vogel’s translation masterfully renders Trotzig’s lush and lyrical descriptions of the rural Swedish landscape and Depression-era New York, the latter of which looks to Viktor like “the uncertain ocean of hunger and death.” Readers will be grateful for this introduction to a distinguished writer. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink