Writer and film producer Fischer (The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures) explores in this entertaining group biography the lives and works of filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. He begins on the set of the 1968 film Finian’s Rainbow, one of the last gasps of Hollywood’s Golden Age. After winning a scholarship from Warner Bros., a young Lucas was tasked with observing the film’s director, the up-and-coming Coppola. The two had an instant connection and went on to start their own production company, American Zoetrope. Meanwhile, Spielberg, another promising young director, had landed a contract directing TV shows for Universal Studios but was eager to make movies. Fischer documents how the three ushered in a new era of film that rejected the old system of powerful studios controlling production and instead centered high-concept, director-driven blockbusters. Along the way, he chronicles how Coppola transformed The Godfather, a pulpy novel about the Mafia, into a film that “pushed the bounds of the medium”; follows Spielberg’s animatronic innovations in Jaws; and traces how Lucas turned his idea for a “sort of space opera thing” into the Star Wars franchise. Throughout, Fischer leverages a novelistic style that makes his extensive research and interviews a pleasure to read. This is a sure-fire hit for cinephiles. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Social media personality Brown debuts with a chatty guide that aims to help readers “begin showing up for yourself in the way you deserve.” He recounts how heavy drinking and tumultuous relationships derailed his professional acting goals before a 2018 reckoning in a hotel room prompted him to rethink the insecurities holding him back (“What would you say to your bestie right now if she were saying these things about herself?”). Drawing from his subsequent efforts to get his life back on track, the author explains how readers can identify damaging beliefs and coping mechanisms that erode self-esteem, “affirm the shit out of yourself” by embracing personality quirks and refusing to accept poor treatment from others, and begin “shaping your reality with intention” by clarifying goals and working to achieve them. Brown’s caustic humor (“What good is a dead bitch?” he asks in a section on emotional exhaustion) bolsters his refreshingly direct wisdom on how to live more authentically. Fans and newcomers alike will get plenty out of Brown’s sharp and sassy insights. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

This intricate and erudite study by Harvard historian Givens (Fugitive Pedagogy) explores the racist origins of the U.S. education system, finding that Black, white, and Native children’s educations in the 19th and early 20th centuries were not merely “unequal” but actually interdependent and “relational.” Through rigorous research, Givens surfaces a vast web of material and ideological connection. He spotlights the ways in which profits from slavery and the seizure of Native land underwrote white students’ educational expenses, and notes that the era’s curricula served to create a “national white identity” while alienating Native and Black children from their own cultures. He also uncovers deeper, thornier interconnections between government, education, and race, such as how white-run schools in Choctaw territory served as hubs for government-run tribal “enrollment and allotment” programs, which sought to “assimilate” Native people by forcing them onto individual plots of land; as well as how, before their forced removal, the Five Southern Tribes attempted to appease and assimilate with their white neighbors by enacting “anti-literacy” laws banning the education of Black people. Marvelously complex and expansive, this paints a troubling picture of how government-run education has served as a powerful apparatus of state control and racial domination in U.S. history. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Al-Wasity’s debut blends gothic fantasy with grounded refugee and class concerns to engrossing, if occasionally uneven, effect. Three years before the start of the book, Leena Al-Sayer developed “an affliction”­—the ability to see ghosts. With her widowed father imprisoned for trying to form a union and her brother desperately ill, Leena takes the secret of her affliction to the powerful Bram St. Silas, also called the Saint of Silence, in hopes of trading it for enough money to buy medicine. St. Silas does indeed pay for Leena’s secret, and also, unexpectedly, hires her to track down a ghost for him, leading Leena deep into the secrets and conspiracies woven into the fabric of both their lives. The details of Leena’s cultural heritage and refugee community are well-drawn and fascinating, but, in the second half of the story, they take a backseat to more familiar feeling aristocratic drama. Still, captivating characters, unexpected romance, and a devastating cliffhanger ending will leave readers eager for more. Agent: Chloe Seager, Madeleine Milburn Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Dean (Ice Town) chronicles a dysfunctional family’s implosion in this grim domestic thriller. Drew and Peggy Jenkins live with their 14-year-old son, Samson, on a canal boat in an unnamed Midwestern town where they’ve relocated after Drew forced them to sell the bungalow they inherited from Peggy’s mother. The domineering and abusive Drew—who’s seen in the prologue locking his parents in their bedroom and burning down his childhood home—won’t let Peggy work and makes little money himself. As Samson faces bullying at school, Drew tries to make his artistic dreams come true by plugging away at his novel. Secretly, Peggy has been writing one too, in between volunteer shifts at the local library. When she finishes her manuscript before Drew completes his and excitedly tells him of her success, including interest from a publisher, he’s thrown into an especially intense rage, pushing the family to the brink of disaster. Dean subjects Peggy and Samson to one humiliation after another at the hands of Drew but fails to generate enough narrative tension to justify the onslaught of misery. There’s a certain dark pull to Dean’s characterization of the sociopathic Drew, but this ends up being too predictable for its own good. Agent: Kate Burke, Friedmann Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this sometimes tender and often bitter outing from Korean Swiss writer Gremaud (All the World’s a Mall), a woman traces the footsteps of her “generator,” the father she never knew, from one nuclear power site to the next. The narrator, born Lee Hye-rin in Korea and going as Jennifer Ball where she now lives in Switzerland, travels to coastal Holyhead in Wales, where her father was born 82 years ago. From there, she travels to the nearby Wylfa nuclear plant, where he began his career, and on to Linkou in Taiwan, where he married a local Chinese woman and fathered two children. In Korea, she visits the site where the generator had an affair with her mother while he was there to help build the Kori I nuclear reactor. When the narrator was born in 1977, the generator’s career was at its zenith. By the late 1980s, after the Three Mile Island accident and meltdown at Chernobyl, his work dried up amid anti-nuclear sentiment. The novel offers intriguing insights into the nature of identity and one’s origins, along with pointed commentary on the generator’s achievements and the deep uncertainty left in his wake. This leaves readers with much to chew on. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Shriver’s jumbled latest (after Mania) blends a wicked satire of bleeding-heart liberals with a disingenuous parable about the dangers of unchecked immigration. In 2023, the New York City government offers a $110 per diem to residents who provide incoming asylum seekers with food and shelter in their own homes (in real life, a similar initiative was proposed but never enacted). Gloria Bonaventura jumps at the chance, having won her massive Brooklyn Queen Anne in a recent divorce and struggling with the cost of upkeep. She agrees to house Honduran migrant Martine Salgado over the strident objections of her do-nothing son, Nico, 26, who tells Martine the U.S. should have tighter borders. He’s suspicious when Martine claims that her three children have been kidnapped in Honduras, and that she needs $30,000 for the ransom. Meanwhile Gloria scrambles to come up with the money. The situation devolves into a nightmare out of a paranoid yuppie thriller after Martine’s brother Domingo joins the household, then invites a group of his “henchmen” to crash with them, and the story reaches a violent climax as the Bonaventuras’ fear clashes with the migrants’ greed. Some of the jokes land, as when Shriver bathes Gloria’s naive liberalism in self-satisfied patriotism (“We should be flattered so many refugees would rather live here”), but even readers who appreciate anti-woke provocations will be left scratching their heads. It’s a mess. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Strobel and Coe (Where Prayer Becomes Real), theology professors at Biola University, outline in this resolute guide how readers can strengthen their faith when they feel isolated from God. They argue that life is divided into joyous, abundant seasons of “consolation” in which believers feel connected to God and confident in their faith, and periods of desertion and desolation from which God appears to be absent. While painful, the periods of desolation allow believers to assess their flaws and brokenness, fostering an appreciation of God’s mercy and a deeper spiritual development. To tackle these seasons, readers must abandon notions that spiritual “progress” is linear, predictable, or subject to human control, and instead focus on bringing their pain, guilt, and despair to Christ “for love and forgiveness.” Strobel and Coe eloquently give voice to the doubts that arise when one’s faith flags, even if the solutions on offer—bringing one’s pain to God and resisting expectations of straightforward spiritual development—are easier said than done. Still, Christians who feel spiritually stuck will get plenty out of this. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Zelizer (The Journalism Manifesto), a professor of journalism at the University of Pennsylvania, argues in this intriguing but uneven study that many of America’s journalists “are so caught up in belonging to one side or the other they fail to lay out the stakes that matter most.” She contends that this divisiveness is the result of “us vs. them” habits journalists learned during the Cold War—ranging from political ideologies about American exceptionalism inculcated within reporters themselves, to “access journalism” coverage styles that involved cozying up to officials and editorial tactics for framing stories that tend to devalue one subject’s position relative to another’s. Zelizer’s account serves in part as a captivating history of U.S. media coverage of the Cold War—she describes reporters in full boosterism mode as well as those who lost access to government sources due to critical coverage. The connection between the Cold War and present-day reporting can feel tenuous at times, though her breakdown of the ways in which Palestinians are devalued in American news stories is fascinating, and her critique of the patness of American journalism has bite (many reporters use “familiar scripts in a business-as-usual fashion... however irrelevant they might be,” she contends). This impassioned reflection on journalistic ethics is at its best when it zeroes in on how professional laziness festers into something more dangerous. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

The intriguing latest in Hiarhara’s Japantown series (after Evergreen) centers on Ryunosuke “Louie” Wada, an 18-year-old orphan who leaves Yokohama, Japan, for the immigrant hub of sunny Pasadena, Calif., at the turn of the 20th century. Louie was trained in carpentry by his father, a master craftsman who was killed in a work accident not long after Louie’s mother died of tuberculosis. After accepting a carpentry apprenticeship in Pasadena and surviving a turbulent ocean journey, Louie moves into a seedy boarding house, where he meets Jack, a mysterious photographer; the Boyles, a pair of rowdy Irish brothers; and Gigi, a beautiful Japanese seamstress. Louie’s hired to work the annual cherry blossom dinner at a nearby hotel, where a painting owned by the event’s host, Japanese American artist Toshio Aoki, is stolen. Louie and Jack volunteer to locate the thieves, fancying themselves budding PIs, and Gigi also asks them to track down a man who owes her money. From there, the friends plunge into a vividly rendered, bygone Pasadena, full of opium dens, political corruption, and anti-Asian sentiment. Their adventures are delightfully escapist if a bit thinly plotted. Hirahara’s done better, but this is still an immersive treat. Agent: Susan Cohen, PearlCo Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink