Travel blogger Rubiner (Fun with the Family in Iowa) became a dedicated diary keeper in 1977, at age 14, and has since filled 82 volumes with her musings and observations. In this illuminating account, she explores, among other things, why people feel the need to keep diaries, how these private writings are useful for historians, and how this practice has evolved in the digital age. Among the diarists referenced are such famous figures as Samuel Pepys, Queen Victoria, Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank, and Taylor Swift. But the author also spotlights diaries by lesser known figures that led to fresh historical insights when read in later eras, such as women whose experiences and opinions couldn’t be made public, as well as various explorers, naturalists, homesteaders, factory workers, prisoners of war, and others whose diaries exposed suppressed truths. Along the way, the author tracks how material changes to the diary’s form have altered people’s relationship to diary-keeping—during the 1800s, ready-made diaries sent the practice mainstream, feeding into a general rise in literacy; during the internet era, diaries suddenly had an audience, leading to a shift in how diaries were addressed and to the rising popularity, Rubiner perceptively notes, of a “confessional culture” and new types of “ego media” like memoirs and podcasts. While the prose is a bit workmanlike, this bursts with insights that entertain. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Poet and literature scholar Bennett (Spoken Word) offers a sprawling meditation on the history of African American child geniuses and prodigies. The author opens with recollections of his own upbringing by parents who saw him as a gifted child “destined for a path that would further the cause of our people’s freedom.” As he progressed through his studies, however, Bennett experienced the double-edged sword of such high expectations—“There was no middle ground: I was either an exemplar or a washout.” From there, the author employs a unique assortment of history, criticism, disability studies, and memoir to explore what it means to have potential as a Black child, delving into the early lives of such luminaries as James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as those of lesser-known figures like Thomas Fuller, an enslaved mathematical genius known as “The Virginia Calculator,” and Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins, a late-19th-century pianist who could precisely replay any musical performance he heard. While Bennett’s expansive analysis at times meanders, it abounds with insights, such as his perceptive deconstruction of the stereotype of the singular lone genius—the author carefully tracks how his subjects’ success came down to the care and education provided by teachers, families, churches, communities, and artistic forebears. It adds up to a profound rumination on what is needed to foster children’s promise. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Film historian Hofler (The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson) provides a chatty and entertaining behind-the-scenes account of the many lives of the classic film A Star Is Born. The movie was first made (starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March) in 1937 as a loose take on actress Barbara Stanwyck’s tumultuous marriage to vaudeville star Frank Fay; as the young Stanwyck’s star rose, Fay’s dimmed and he descended into alcoholism, precipitating the relationship’s demise. Hofler overviews the film’s remakes, including in 1954 as a comeback vehicle for Judy Garland; a 1976 version set in the rock and roll industry starring Barbra Streisand (whose gutsy character, Hofler asserts, was a kind of corrective to her real-life relationship with boyfriend Jon Peters, who tried to exert “all-encompassing” control over her career); and a 2018 version starring Lady Gaga in her Oscar-nominated film debut. While Hofler’s prose can be clunky, fans will delight in his attention to detail and trivia, including alternate casting options (Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant were considered as potential costars with Garland; Beyoncé was originally envisioned as the star of the 2018 remake). Informative and enjoyable, this will be popcorn for fans of the movie. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

The parallel careers of David Bowie and Prince get the full “academic treatment” in this intermittently illuminating anthology from Brooks (Liner Notes from the Revolution), a professor of Black studies at Yale. Bowie and Prince, who died within months of one another in 2016, each achieved notoriety for transcending gender conventions while pushing rock music into weirder, more expansive territory. Several refreshingly blunt and sometimes gossipy interviews with such decades-long creative partners as fellow musicians Donny McCaslin and Sheila E., film director D.A. Pennebaker, and costume designer Marie France discuss the artists’ impact. Scholarly offerings chart their cultural footprints; essays from Tavia Nyong’o, Francesca T. Royster, and Brooks persuasively unpack how both Bowie and Prince were creatively molded by Black women collaborators, despite being constrained in some ways by sexism (and for Bowie, by a 1970s flirtation with “white supremacist fascist cosplay”). Though some essays tread the same ground and disorienting shifts in tone can distract, the volume is rife with rigorous analysis, careful scholarship, and a few delightfully quirky sections (like “Critical Karaoke” interludes meditating on individual songs). It’s a unique if uneven contribution to the scholarship on two rock music greats. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

A series of mysterious disappearances in Tuscany drive this slow but satisfying crime novel from Fruttero and Lucentini (Runaway Horses). In a prologue, the 20-month-old son of a British tourist goes missing in the beachside town of Gualdana, then is swiftly reunited with his family. A year later, four more tourists vanish in the same area, and it turns out most of them were involved in a car accident the day before they disappeared. When the body of one of the missing people washes ashore, seasonal Gualdana resident and Italian Parliament member Giampaolo Bonanno considers it an accident, though not everyone agrees. Gabriele Monforti, a former businessman who’s trapped in a “tunnel of depression,” is unconvinced and fashions himself into an amateur sleuth in an effort to give his life some much needed direction. As Monforti investigates, the authors take their time unraveling the core mystery, injecting the action with discursive passages that, for example, explore Monforti’s attraction to the Cynic school of philosophy. Such tangents, while idiosyncratic, serve to deepen readers’ understanding of the characters considerably. Donna Leon devotees will be pleased. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Perrin’s clever third whodunit set in the English village of Castle Knoll (after How to Seal Your Own Fate) fleshes out the series’ backstory with a dual timeline mystery. In 1968, Frances Adams enrolls in the psychology department of University College London after a fortune teller informs her that she will be murdered (a prediction that comes true, decades later, in the first book in the series, How to Solve Your Own Murder). At school, Frances develops a knack for amateur detective work, and she probes the case of an acquaintance who’s found in an alley with her heart excised. Frances’s investigation alternates with a contemporary one set in Castle Knoll and featuring her great-niece Annie Adams, who’s haunted by a similar prediction from a psychic that “it will be your own heart, if left unguarded, that’s ripe for the knife.” Not long after she hears the prediction, Annie finds a corpse in a garbage bin, its heart removed, lying on top of an assortment of paintings by Annie’s mother. Perrin provides a keenly satisfying answer to the core question of whether the same killer is responsible for both murders, decades apart. Ingenious plotting and a menacing atmosphere make this irresistible. Agent: Jenny Bent, Bent Agency. (Apr.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review mistakenly implied that the character Annie’s mother was dead.

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Spanish writer Torres’s lyrical if unfocused English-language debut follows a 28-year-old writer navigating romantic turmoil and the loss of a parent. In 2019, Sara has recently relocated from London to Barcelona for a university lecturer position. Her girlfriend, D., plans to join her soon, but in the meantime, Sara takes up with a new lover, an actress referred to only as Girl. Between rendezvousing with Girl and teaching, Sara travels to Asturias to visit her mother, María Teresa, who has been battling cancer for a decade. After María Teresa dies, Sara declines to speak at the funeral, feeling unprepared and believing that “a mother’s funeral deserves silence. A thick and heavy silence that starts in the forehead and moves down, pressing against the eyelids and blocking the throat, like being drowned in oil.” D. then joins her in Barcelona, and Sara opts to cuts things off with Girl, yet she can’t shake her lingering feelings for her now ex-lover, even as time passes and the Covid-19 pandemic keeps Sara and D. cooped up in their apartment. The depictions of Sara’s unsettled love life can be wearying, though the passages on her grief are emotionally resonant. The plot never quite takes off, but portions of this emotive novel pack a punch. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Spufford (Cahokia Jazz) spins a lavish historical fantasy of a secretary and her lover battling time-traveling fascists on the eve of WWII. The story opens with daring Iris Hawkins enjoying a night out after a day of drudgery at her London financial firm. By chance, she meets brilliant engineer Geoff Hale, who’s besotted with gorgeous Nazi sympathizer Lady Lalage “Lall” Cunningham, and impulsively seduces him. After spending the night with Geoff, Iris sees a nightmarish inhuman figure keeping watch outside his house. She continues seeing Geoff, and the pair are visited by a friendly angel who warns them of a threat greater than Hitler: a cabal of British fascists including Lall are planning to use imprisoned angels, like the one Iris saw outside Geoff’s house, to go back in time and alter history for the worse. Spufford approaches the magical elements with lighthearted humor (“Oh, come on,” Geoff says to the angel. “No one has believed in the luminiferous aether since about, what, 1870! It doesn’t exist!” To which the angel replies, “I see that I have used terms you find anachronistic. Would you prefer it if I said that quantum tunneling was involved?”). As Iris enters a parallel world called Nonesuch to save London, Spufford sustains the tension all the way to the miraculous finale. Readers will be enthralled. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Mount Shasta, Calif., high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.” But Japanese American Izzy, conceived during a one-night stand in her mother Hanako’s final year at Harvard, has never known the identity of her father. So when she and her best friend find a letter in Hanako’s bedroom, the duo jump at the chance to ferret out Izzy’s dad’s true identity—only to find out he’s the Crown Prince of Japan. Desperate to know her father, Izzy agrees to spend the summer in his home country. But press surveillance, pressure to quickly learn the language and etiquette, and an unexpected romance make her time in Tokyo more fraught than she imagined. Add in a medley of cousins and an upcoming wedding, and Izzy is in for an unforgettable summer. Abrupt switches from Izzy’s perspective to lyrical descriptions of Japan may disrupt readers’ enjoyment, but a snarky voice plus interspersed text conversations and tabloid coverage keep the pages turning in Jean’s (Empress of All Seasons) fun, frothy, and often heartfelt duology starter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Kelkar’s (Bindu’s Bindis) novel features Oceanview Academy middle schooler Sonali, whose stoicism contrasts with her love of Bollywood movies’ melodrama. Stuck in a Los Angeles home with constantly arguing parents and her sensitive nine-year-old brother Ronak, Gujarati American Sonali, 11, tries to make sense of her world through the Hindi movies she’s seen all her life. Ever since an earnest public attempt five years ago to stop her parents’ fighting led to widespread embarrassment in front of family, Sonali has resolved to hide her emotions and do her best to ignore her parents’ arguments. But her efforts prove futile when her parents decide to try the “nesting” method of separation, where they take turns living in the house with Sonali and Ronak. The contemporary narrative takes an entertaining fabulist turn as Sonali’s life begins to transform into a Bollywood movie, with everything she feels and thinks made apparent through her “Bollywooditis.” Sonali’s first-person perspective is sympathetic as she navigates friendship and family drama, and Kelkar successfully infuses a resonant narrative with “filmi magic,” offering a tale with universal appeal through an engaging cultural lens. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink