Recent Articles
Four stories from Sarah Braunstein's
Baby in a Box were first published in
The New Yorker, a magazine with a 101-year history of showcasing excellent short fiction from the likes of John Cheever, Mavis Gallant, Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, and William Trevor.
While short stories can be difficult to ...
...a beyond the book article for
Whistler
In Ann Patchett's novel
Whistler, a pivotal scene occurs between the primary character, Daphne Fuller, and her former stepfather, Eddie. In it, they discuss Eddie's beliefs about the afterlife, which he says he formed in part by reading
The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is the English title for a ...
...a beyond the book article for
As If
Isabel Waidner's novel
As If focuses on two men who look uncannily like one another. Doppelgängers—unrelated people who look near-identical—have been a subject of fascination for centuries, and remain one today.
The word doppelgänger comes from German folklore, and translates to "double goer." It ...
...a beyond the book article for
Earth 7
The title of
Earth 7 raises the question, right away, of more than one Earth. 'Earth 7' is not another planet, however; in the book, that name refers to a collection of Earth 'traces,' the preserved genetic materials of various Earth lifeforms. The people of Mars are intent on collecting these traces, so they might be able to mimic Earth-...
The protagonist of Dave Eggers's novel
Contrapposto is Cricket Dibb, a talented young man who wants a career as an artist. Throughout the book he relays his sheer bliss in creating a work of art he knows is good. In spite of his ability, he runs into roadblocks; galleries won't hang his work because they don't feel it's ...
...a beyond the book article for
Puck
One of the most interesting choices in Samantha Allen's
Puck is to not only turn Puck and Robyn into two separate characters, but a romantic pairing. It is almost like an inside joke about the original text between the author and readers, many of whom will know that in the source material, Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck and...
...a beyond the book article for
Gliff
In Ali Smith's
Gliff, two children living in a sinister surveillance state in the not-too-distant future return home to find a line of red paint circling their house. In this dystopian society where all-pervasive technology tracks and controls every aspect of people's lives, these red painted lines are used to flag those who have been ...
...a beyond the book article for
Fox
Edgar Allan Poe looms over
Fox—quite literally, in fact. Mr. Fox has a large bronze bust of Poe with a raven on his shoulder, a prize for winning a poetry contest, displayed in his office. But even beyond the bust, Poe recurs throughout the narrative. Not only does
Fox become a detective story,
a form Poe invented, Mr. Fox idealizes...
...a beyond the book article for
Endling
In
Endling, Maria Reva centers Ukrainian identity, whether her focus is on romance tours or the snail conservation efforts of one of the central 'brides' named Yeva. Through Yeva's work, we learn about the topography and life forms that shape Ukraine. One detail that stuck with me was the discussion of chernozem, the rich black soil that ...
...a beyond the book article for
Prophecy
Perhaps no current event better embodies
Prophecy's concerns about prediction, Big Tech, and ethics than the rise of prediction markets. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi have raked in billions of dollars with the idea of placing bets on the future, from the outcome of football matches to the front lines of war. What are they, and how ...
...a beyond the book article for
Land
In the early nineteenth century, Ireland was newly under British rule due to the Act of Union of 1800, which abolished Ireland's parliament, and led the British government to have an interest in recording Irish tenement valuations for taxation purposes. In 1824, a historic ordnance survey commenced—Ireland was about to become ...
Born in the early 1500s in Kent, England, Elizabeth Barton was known throughout her short life by various sobriquets: while her supporters called her the 'Nun of Kent' and the 'Holy Maid of Kent' both during and after her life, her detractors labeled her the 'Mad Maid of Kent' after she confessed to having fabricated her visions. But what...
In
We Could Be Anyone, one of the main characters, Lola, is turning into a tree, and she references instances from mythology where this happened to a female character. It's a surprisingly common phenomenon when looking at myths of various cultures. It is often specified what kind of tree a woman becomes, but it's generally unclear whether...
Something I found especially compelling while reading
Entangled States by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan was the way it questions rigid categories, both in physics and in how we understand people and the world around us. The double-slit experiment captures this beautifully: matter and light behave as both waves and particles, resisting any ...
Daniel Kraus's novel
Angel Down is set on a WWI battlefield in France. After a particularly brutal shelling, Private Cyril Bagger is sent along with a small group of others to "take care of" someone shrieking nonstop in No Man's Land. Instead of a wounded comrade, however, he discovers what appears to be an angel. One of...
...a beyond the book article for
Hotshot
In
Hotshot: A Life on Fire, author River Selby states more than once that their favorite firefighting tool is a Pulaski. The implement is similar to an axe one might use for chopping wood, but it terminates in a two-sided head, with an axe blade on one side and an adze or mattock on the other. (An adze is similar to a hoe, with the ...
In Emily St. James's debut novel,
Woodworking, the protagonist, Erica, must travel more than an hour each way, from Mitchell to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to attend a support group for transgender people. The group is small—seven people is 'a good turnout'—but it's there, and over the course of the book, the group's existence ...
Erika J. Simpson's
This Is Your Mother is an unconventional memoir about the author's mother Sallie Carol. Below we highlight some other recommended memoirs in which an author reflects on their relationship with their mother, often (but not always) after her death.
Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou: Angelou's seventh volume of ...
Eve J. Chung's historical novel
The Young Will Remember explores the history of the Korean War through the perspective of a Chinese American journalist who finds herself in North Korean territory after a plane crash. Falling between World War II and the Vietnam War, both of which were heavily publicized in American media, the Korean War ...
Christina Baker Kilne's latest novel,
The Foursome, is a fictionalized version of the story of Sarah Yates, one of two sisters who married one of the original 'Siamese twins,' Chang and Eng Bunker. As the wife of a conjoined twin, Sarah must navigate not only the emotional complexities of her marriage but also the complications of a ...
Seduction Theory is framed as a student's creative writing MFA (Master of Fine Arts) thesis, and the book's main characters are instructors in the program. MFA programs can serve as uniquely effective settings for stories. Many authors have been through them themselves, and can portray the experience in an authentic way. The often-...
Wally Lamb's novel
The River Is Waiting centers on the experiences of Corby Ledbetter, who is responsible for an unthinkable accident while intoxicated. Addicted to alcohol and lorazepam (an anti-anxiety medication in the benzodiazepine family), Ledbetter begins attending Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings to help him remain clean and ...
Korean immigration to the US occurred in three waves: first from 1903-1949, second from 1950-1964, and third from 1965 on. The first wave was mostly comprised of laborers who were brought in from Korea to Hawaii to work on pineapple and sugar plantations. The second wave began after Korea's liberation from Japanese rule in 1945 and ...
...a beyond the book article for
Odessa
In her debut novel,
Odessa, author Gabrielle Sher reimagines the legend of the golem to explore historical persecution of Jews, as well as notions of power and control. In traditional Jewish folklore, a golem is a being formed of earth or clay, given life by its creator using ritualistic incantations and scripture.
The word 'golem' comes...
In many ways, Emily Henry's
Great Big Beautiful Life is about the complex bond between mothers and daughters that prompts mothers to act in strange, counterintuitive ways. While the novel is quite unabashedly a romance, thoroughly embracing the genre's tropes, it is much more than a happy, breezy read with a satisfying end. Going against ...
When speaking about book bans, it rarely takes long for the 2019 graphic memoir
Gender Queer to enter the conversation. Its author Maia Kobabe, who is also the first contributing author to
Banned Together, never imagined that writing a memoir about eir experience growing up and coming out as nonbinary and asexual would lead to national ...
Aisling Rawle's debut novel
The Compound takes place on an unnamed reality competition television show, where contestants live together, compete in challenges to earn rewards, and gradually get banished until only one remains to win the grand prize. As it borrows recognizable elements from popular reality shows like
Survivor and
Love ...
In Megan Giddings' novel
Meet Me at the Crossroads, magical doors appear around the world, offering an entry into another dimension. The modern portal fantasy genre, where a magical entryway leads to another world, dates back to classic works like
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and
Alice in Wonderland. But as novelist and ...
