The Loneliness of Sunny and SoniaKiran Desai. Hogarth, $32 (704p) ISBN 978-0-3077-0015-5
Booker winner Desai returns 19 years after The Inheritance of Loss with an elegant bildungsroman of two Indian people and their convergence in the early 2000s U.S. The reader meets the pair before they meet each other, when they’re unhappy with their current partners. Sunny, a journalist in... Continue reading »
The Vanishing PlaceZoë Rankin. Berkley, $30 (384p) ISBN 979-8-217-18809-3
Rankin debuts with a triumphant thriller set in rural New Zealand. At the outset, a blood-stained child named Anya enters a grocery store in the village of Koraha and starts pulling items from the shelves and devouring them. When Constable Lewis Weston arrives, he’s stunned at her resemblance to an ... Continue reading »
Coffin MoonKeith Rosson. Random House, $28 (320p) ISBN 978-0-593-73340-0
Rosson, who put a fresh spin on the zombie apocalypse trope in the Fever House duology, is equally creative with vampires in this brilliant horror novel set in 1970s Oregon. After returning from the Vietnam War, Duane Minor takes a job at a bar owned by his in-laws. He and his wife, Heidi, adjust to... Continue reading »
The Honeycrisp Orchard InnValerie Bowman. Avon A, $18.99 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-0-06-345403-3
Bowman (Hiring Mr. Darcy) gets a new series off to an enchanting start in this pitch-perfect contemporary. After event planner Ellie Lawson’s boyfriend dumps her and her boss fires her from her prestigious Manhattan firm, she returns to her Long Island hometown to help her parents’ Honeycri... Continue reading »
The Name and the Mark (Vattu #1)Evan Dahm. Iron Circus, $25 trade paper (270p) ISBN 978-1-63899-155-7
The spectacular first volume of Dahm’s long-running webcomic ushers readers into an instantly immersive fantasy world. In the year “855 of the Blue Age,” a girl named Vattu is born into a nomadic tribe of diminutive, musical people called “fluters.” As Vattu grows up, she develops a contentious rela... Continue reading »
Tantrums in AirEmily Skillings. Song Cave, $18.95 trade paper (128p) ISBN 979-8-99129-880-3
In her excellent sophomore outing, Skillings (Fort Not) combines the brutal and acerbic honesty of confessionalism with the self-deprecating humor of the New York School to create an irresistibly original work. She excels at probing her own mind, bringing gravity to even seemingly banal or ... 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 »
Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed AmericaSam Tanenhaus. Random House, $40 (1040p) ISBN 978-0-375-50234-7
The conservative activist William F. Buckley helped make the American right a respectable rival to liberalism in part by making peace with liberal doctrine, according to this searching biography. Journalist Tanenhaus (The Death of Conservatism) recaps Buckley’s career as founder of the ... Continue reading »
Real Japanese Cooking: The Only Japanese Cookbook You Will Ever Need!Makiko Itoh. Tuttle, $39.99 (512p) ISBN 978-4-8053-1615-3
This excellent compendium from Itoh (The Just Bento Cookbook) offers an encyclopedic introduction to “the complete range of modern Japanese home cooking.” She breaks down Japanese food into three main styles: washoku, or traditional fare, includes sake-steamed cod, mixed rice with greens (“... Continue reading »
As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase UsSarah Hurwitz. HarperOne, $32.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-337497-3
Former White House speechwriter Hurwitz (Here All Along) makes a full-throated case for Judaism’s relevance in an increasingly secular and often openly antisemitic world. Raised on a “cultural Judaism” from which she gleaned mostly “a collection of social justice slogans and self-help clic... Continue reading »
White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the HistoryAnn Bausum. Roaring Brook, $24.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-250-81657-3
In this searing account, Bausum (The Bard and the Book) dissects the “series of lies” that represented the beliefs of the Confederate States of America known as the Lost Cause following the conclusion of the U.S. Civil War. Across four distinct parts, frank text outlines the buildup to and ... Continue reading »
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