Glow Diaries blogger Douglas aims to make “cooking with plants as simple and delicious as possible” in her wholesome if somewhat scattered debut collection. In lieu of an overview of pantry items and equipment, there’s a single sentence in Douglas’s brief introduction instructing home cooks to “get yourself some textured vegetable protein (TVP), nutritional yeast, flaxseed, tapioca flour, soy sauce and miso paste, plus a good-quality blender, and you should be set.” It’s indicative of her breezy tone, but those newer to vegan cooking may wish for a bit more orientation. The opening section, “Basics,” offers recipes for homemade dairy and meat substitutes, including “Parmesan” powder made with nuts, nutritional yeast, and salt, and tofu bacon crisped in an air fryer. Breakfast fare includes chocolate chia seed mousse, while the “Soups, Sides and Starters” chapter (which also, unexpectedly, includes sandwiches) offers broccolini in a lemon tahini sauce. Wide-ranging “Main Meals” include jackfruit and black bean tacos, Egyptian koshari, and mushroom bourguignon, while a chapter on pastas primarily features cream-based sauces veganized via soy milk and nuts. Salads, sauces, and desserts round things out. The organization occasionally confounds (lasagna appears in the main meals section instead of in the pasta chapter, for instance), but enticing photography and testimonials from a team of volunteer recipe testers add appeal. The author’s fans will be pleased. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

The fascinating and sardonic latest from Volodine (Bardo or Not Bardo) plays out in the mind of a schizophrenic who lives in a postapocalyptic psychiatric hospital among the living and the dead. Breton, the narrator, alternates from first- to third-person, as when he describes himself as a decrepit man who “could pass unnoticed amid a group of seventy-year-olds being led to the slaughterhouse.” He believes his fractious country’s once-reigning political party has tasked him with tracking down a foul-mouthed female paramilitary group called the Monroe Girls. Thirty years ago, Breton was madly in love with their leader, Rebecca Rausch, whose apparent suicide was perhaps the cause of his mental spiral. The funhouse narration flips through Breton’s myriad alter egos, including a bounty hunter named Kaytel. As Kaytel, he relies on informants including Breton himself and a “warlock, shaman, or clairvoyant” named Borgmeister, a stooge for the cops who gives his “dregs” to Kaytel. Later, the narrator reunites with Rebecca and the two team up to find Borgmeister. Volodine maintains control of the vivid images and wild flights of fancy, which range from spiders and sea urchins sprouting from human flesh to talk of cosmonauts and telepathy, thanks to his grounded and ironic prose. It’s a delight. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

In the feel-good debut novel from sportswriter Wojciechowski (coauthor of The Bus), a middle-aged golf reporter’s magic set of clubs alters his view of the game—and life. Joe Riley is partly estranged from his college-age son, Buddy, who comes across a bag of clubs at a garage sale that were supposedly made for golf legend Jack Nicklaus, and impulsively gives them to his father. With them, Joe can hit the ball a superhuman distance of 400 yards. When disgraced caddie Max “Hard Way” Mitchell sees Joe in action, he comes up with the audacious idea of coaching Joe into qualifying for the Masters Tournament. Joe, who has just been laid off from his TV gig, agrees to the plan, but, for an amateur, the road to Masters’ victory is paved with all sorts of hazards—including prying media, suspicious tournament officials, snobbish players, and an unforgiving course. The reader will cheer on Joe as he struggles to win the coveted green jacket and re-earn the respect of his son. Though filled with colorful characters and enough hilarious one-liners for a comedy roast, the narrative is overlong and overstuffed with golf lore, and the magical elements are underdeveloped. Still, this has a ton of heart. Golf enthusiasts ought to tee it up. Agents: Mark Tavani and David Black, David Black Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Pulitzer winner Erdrich (The Night Watchman) dives deep into the American psyche in this spectacular collection. The title story chronicles a young girl’s kinship with a lovesick dog and mysterious anointing by a snake (“I looked straight into its wise, primordial face. Its tongue flickered, sensing the currents of pandemonium, and then the forked tip touched my cheek”). In the standout “The Hollow Children,” a group of barflies in northern Minnesota reminisce about a deadly 1923 blizzard. The frame narrative seamlessly dissolves into school bus driver Ivek’s ambiguous account of the storm, in which he describes how he was forever changed by his harrowing drive with a bus full of children, which may or may not have sunk to the bottom of a lake. Two strange speculative stories concern a human-engineered afterlife in a place called Asphodel (“You say goodbye to your body very carefully. The toenails you’ve clipped and polished.... and goodbye tongue, that loved the kisses and also the body of my husband”). In the surreal “Big Cat,” a failed actor marries a woman who comes from a line of loud snorers. After they amicably divorce, they worry about the well-being of their teen daughter, who develops her own problem with snoring. A staggering sense of empathy infuses the stories (“Can it be that all of us upon waking sometimes feel malformed or broken, foolish, as we huddle in our nests all over the earth?”). With its range of voices and styles, this puts Erdrich’s powers on full display. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Weingarten, the president of the AFT, America’s largest educators’ union, debuts with a rousing inquiry into “what teachers do” and “why those who are afraid of freedom... try to stop” them. The book focuses on the onslaught faced by public school teachers during the two Trump administrations—in 2023 alone, she notes, 110 bills were presented in state legislatures attempting to curtail what teachers can and cannot do. In New Hampshire, the state education commissioner even set up a website encouraging the public to report educators who were illegally teaching about racism. The book contains a wealth of such examples from around the country, which Weingarten presents as an effort not only to smash the foundations of the American public school system but to pave the way for fascism, which she defines as the abandonment of logic and empirical evidence in favor of fanciful truths that the “leader” invents and espouses to his acolytes, who parrot them back as a show of loyalty. Public school teachers, she astutely observes, do four things that make them the number one enemies of fascism and its aims: impart critical thinking skills, create welcoming communities, foster lower-class students’ ability to achieve economic success, and serves as anchors of the labor movement. It adds up to a galvanizing portrait of teachers as society’s best bulwarks against anti-intellectualism and retrograde thinking. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Historian Larman (The Windsors at War) explores in this comprehensive account the critically overlooked second half of David Bowie’s career. The book opens in the late 1980s, when Bowie was recording albums and touring as a member of the rock band Tin Machine, before releasing a string of solo albums. Though none reached the heights of his 1970s and ’80s output, creative partnerships with such producers as Brian Eno helped Bowie go in new directions, from 1999’s heavily acoustic Hours to the industrial pop of 2002’s Heathens, and eventually return to critical and commercial relevance. After suffering a heart attack on stage in Prague in 2004, Bowie retired from touring and did not release a new album for 12 years; the critically lauded Blackstar came out only two days before his 2016 death. Drawing on a wealth of research, the author highlights the creative challenges faced by a star who was perceived to have “peaked long before... reach[ing] the age of forty,” and gives due to the “flawed but often brilliant moments” on Bowie’s path to reinventing himself. This casts fresh light on the rock star. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

The short-lived 1990 TV series Twin Peaks cast a long cultural shadow, according to this energetic account from film critic Meslow (From Hollywood with Love). In 1988, filmmaker David Lynch and TV veteran Mark Frost brainstormed the project as a surrealist mystery centered on the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer. The premise left the show’s creators in something of a bind, Meslow explains, as they sought to “keep moving the mystery forward” without fully resolving the murder “because no one had any good ideas yet for what a post–Laura Palmer Twin Peaks might look like.” The show was canceled shortly after the killer was revealed in season two, though its cult popularity continued to grow thanks to buzz generated by its cliff-hanger ending and “hyper-serialized quality,” which made it an “irresistible prospect on DVD.” Frost and Lynch later returned to the material, with Lynch making a prequel film, 1992’s Fire Walk with Me, and the two teaming up for Twin Peaks: The Return, an 18-part miniseries released 25 years after the original show ended. Meslow interweaves his diligent account of the show’s cultural legacy with delightful peeks into its idiosyncratic production and the eccentric directorial style of Lynch, who advised Lara Flynn Boyle during one long, difficult-to-shoot scene to “think of how gently a deer has to move in the snow.” Fans will be riveted. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Popova (The Universe in Verse), creator of the blog The Marginalian, delivers a masterful exploration of life’s meaning by weaving together profiles of visionaries and discussions of science, art, and nature. She begins with Captain James Cook en route to Tahiti in 1769 to observe the Transit of Venus. Upon arrival, he documented a society startlingly unlike that of his native England, an anecdote that prompts Popova to reflect on humanity’s penchant to reject otherness (“the discomfort with which we recoil at cultural practices and personal choices different from our own... reveal[s] our own fears and insecurities”). Elsewhere, Popova discusses 18th-century chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who illuminated the nature of life by identifying oxygen and hydrogen; author Mary Shelley, whose novel Frankenstein reveals the power of social conditioning; abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who set out to prove one can “refuse to be made a monster by the world’s monstrosity”; and geologist Alfred Wegener, whose theory of continental drift forever altered humanity’s view of the planet. In Popova’s hands, their struggles and successes combine in a lyrical symphony of truth, made richer by reflections on the nature of the color blue, NASA’s Kepler mission, the 1815 eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora, the invention of the bicycle, and more. “Every story is the story of the world,” Popova deftly reveals. This is multifaceted and marvelous. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

This pulse-pounding romantic thriller from bestseller Krentz (Shattering Dawn) follows Sophy Harper and Luke Well, whose psychic families have a long-standing feud. So when Luke comes to Sophy’s shop asking for a favor, she’s surprised. Luke has learned that Sophy’s aunt Bea and his uncle Deke were having an affair—and that they’ve now both vanished into thin air, a disappearance he thinks may be connected to a local murder. The duo team up to investigate, leading them to the Fool’s Gold Canyon Art Colony—and straight into danger. The Colony’s founder, tech bro Trent Hatch, is definitely hiding something. As Sophy and Luke search for answers, Krentz keeps the twists coming at a breathless pace. Along the way, Sophy and Luke put aside their familial rivalry and fall for each other. This romantic turn is satisfyingly executed, as are the paranormal elements, which add an extra layer of intrigue. Krentz’s fans will not be disappointed. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Well-to-do policeman Leo Herzfeldt investigates a string of grisly murders in 19th-century Vienna in Pötzch’s lively sequel to The Gravedigger’s Almanac. In 1892, venerated Egyptologist Alfons Strössner discovers an unplundered tomb while lost in the desert. After sand collapses around him, he’s rescued by three colleagues, and they unearth the treasure together. Two years later, two of those colleagues have died under suspicious circumstances. When Strössner’s body is found inside a sarcophagus in Vienna’s Museum of Art History with emeralds pressed into his eye sockets, it looks like murder. As Leo investigates, more killings plague Vienna, including a mauled zookeeper and dismembered male prostitutes. Battling antisemitism and skepticism of his scientific methods from police colleagues, Leo enlists the investigative help of his love interest Julia Wolf and eccentric gravedigger Augustin Rothmayer, setting the stage for an entertaining if far-fetched climax. Other elements may also test the reader’s patience, including contrived romantic troubles between Leo and Julia, but this is still a supremely enjoyable, well-researched adventure. Readers will have fun. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink