Farrell Covington and the Limits of StylePaul Rudnick. Atria, $28.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-66800-467-8
An aspiring writer becomes enamored of a dashing fellow student at Yale in Rudnick’s dazzling and funny latest (after Playing the Palace). It’s 1973, and narrator Nate Reminger, who is Jewish, struggles to achieve his literary ambitions. He soon meets flamboyant and outspoken Farrell Coving... Continue reading »
Simply LiesDavid Baldacci. Grand Central, $30 (432p) ISBN 978-1-538750-63-6
Baldacci (The 6:20 Man) is at his best in this standalone thriller about an ex-cop and single mother who’s drawn into a murder investigation. Mickey Gibson has found some stability after her husband divorced her while she was pregnant with their second child, having moved to Williamsburg, V... Continue reading »
Ink Blood Sister ScribeEmma Törzs. Morrow, $27.99 (416p) ISBN 978-0-06-325346-9
Törzs’s spellbinding fantasy debut imagines a parallel Earth where gruesome magical spell books are written with the blood and bodies of people known as Scribes. Nicholas is tired of living in the gilded cage that is the Library, home to the world’s largest collection of spellbooks, where he is rout... Continue reading »
The Notorious Lord KnightlyLorraine Heath. Avon, $9.99 mass market (384p) ISBN 978-0-06-311467-8
A jilted woman gets revenge on her former fiancé in Heath’s delicious second Chessmen: Masters of Seduction Victorian romance (after The Counterfeit Scoundrel). Regina Leyland fled to the continent after Arthur Pennington, Earl of Knightly, left her at the altar. Five years later, she retur... Continue reading »
Minami’s LoverShungiku Uchida, trans. from the Japanese by H. Paige. Fantagraphics, $29.99 (200p) ISBN 978-1-68396-760-6
Uchida’s classic manga, first serialized in the underground Japanese magazine Garo, sketches the outline of a cute rom-com fantasy, then digs into murky psychological territory. Chiyomi, a high school girl, has gone missing, and only her boyfriend, Minami, knows the truth: she has inexplica... Continue reading »
Black Observatory Christopher Brean Murray. Milkweed, $16 trade paper (96p) ISBN 978-1-63955-026-5
In this playful and haunting debut, Murray turns his gaze toward the ordinariness and expansiveness of human life. Murray’s poems defy convention, propelling down the page with generous narrative energy, spinning stories about characters—“Winston,” “Knut,” and “Segovia”—with the detail-oriented eye ... Continue reading »
The Long March HomeMarcus Brotherton and Tosca Lee. Revell, $26.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-8007-4275-1
In this tour de force from Brotherton (A Bright and Blinding Sun) and Lee (A Single Light), four friends’ lives change irrevocably when America becomes embroiled in WWII. In 1930s Mobile, Ala., preacher’s son Jimmy Propfield shares an idyllic upbringing with childhood sweetheart Cl... Continue reading »
These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—AmericaGretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner. Simon & Schuster, $30 (384p) ISBN 978-1-982191-28-3
Morgenson, senior financial reporter for NBC News, and Rosner, a financial policy consultant, follow their 2011 collaboration, Reckless Endangerment, with a blistering critique of how private equity “extracts wealth from the many to enrich the few.” Damning case studies reveal how such firm... Continue reading »
Stuffed: The Sandwich Cookie BookHeather Mubarak. Chronicle, $29.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-79721-453-5
Sixty-five irresistible renditions of the sandwich cookie come together in Browned Butter Blondie blogger Mubarak’s sublime debut, which is as attractive to the eye as to the palate thanks to its mouthwatering photos. Employing 13 simple kitchen tools (including a cookie scoop and a kitchen... Continue reading »
Tell Me the Dream Again: Reflections on Family, Ethnicity, & the Sacred Work of BelongingTasha Jun. Tyndale Momentum, $22.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-496-45957-2
“I’ve always been caught between worlds... struggling to find a firm place to land,” writes Jun of negotiating a biracial identity in this stirring debut. The daughter of a Korean mother and a white father, Jun recalls how, as a kid, she’d think of purging the fridge of kimchi before her friends cam... Continue reading »
BigVashti Harrison. Little, Brown, $19.99 (60p) ISBN 978-0-316-35322-9
This ode to big self-love from Harrison (Sulwe) begins with a smiling, brown-skinned baby girl who has “a big laugh and a big heart/ and very big dreams.” Through a series of emotionally centered, affectionate digital images set against dreamy chalk pastel backdrops, this smiling, bouncing ... Continue reading »
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