Archives of "The BookBrowse Review": Reviews, previews, back-stories, news

Dear BookBrowsers,

With this issue, we bring you two intense debuts featuring fraught romance. In A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia, a theology teacher and a Catholic priest fall in love, while in Djamel White's All Them Dogs, a man returning to the gang scene in Dublin experiences an attraction to his literal partner in crime.

Veronica Roth, author of the popular YA Divergent series, returns with a novel for adults, Seek the Traitor's Son, boasting its own slow-burn romance between a character destined for impressive military victory or crushing defeat and the Knight sworn to protect her. Other fantastic new works of fiction are Ray Nayler's Palaces of the Crow, in which four children hide out in the Lithuanian forest during World War II, Returns and Exchanges by Kayla Rae Whitaker, following a family at the helm of a discount store chain over more than a decade, and Fran Fabriczki's Porcupines, about a Hungarian immigrant mother in Los Angeles and her daughter's determination to discover the truth of her paternity.

Plus, enjoy nonfiction navigating the outdoors just in time for summer: David George Haskell's How Flowers Made Our World, a biological and social history of flowering plants, and Nightfaring by Megan Eaves-Egenes, which seeks to rediscover the darkness of the night sky in an era of overwhelming light pollution.

Beyond the Book articles for the above include reflections on both natural and human-created wonders: the rose windows of Notre-Dame Cathedral, the intelligence of crows (as we might perceive it), and the complex ways that plants communicate (often unbeknownst to humans).

You can also read other reviews and articles, check out our latest list of previews, enter our giveaway of Yrsa Daley-Ward's novel The Catch, and find much more to explore.

Thank you for supporting BookBrowse!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

This issue has those big new releases you've been waiting for. Elizabeth Strout's The Things We Never Say follows Artie Dam, a secretly unhappy man living a charmed life. In Douglas Stuart's John of John, John-Calum (Cal) Macleod, a closeted art school graduate, reluctantly returns to his family's rural, conservative home.

We also cover Harriet Clark's captivating debut The Hill, loosely based on the author's own experiences growing up while visiting a parent in prison. A Beyond the Book article looks at the role of Clark's mother, a member of the guerrilla organization the Weather Underground, in the 1981 Brink's truck robbery in Nanuet, New York. (One of our featured First Impressions picks, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young by Zayd Ayers Dohrn—an upcoming Ask the Author interviewee—provides a nonfictional glimpse of a childhood with parents who were leaders of the Weather Underground.)

Other exciting fiction includes Mothers and Other Strangers by Corey Ann Haydu, a deep examination of motherhood and friendship, George Saunders' latest novel Vigil, in which an oil tycoon on his deathbed is tended to by a ghost, Portia Elan's Homebound, an unusual story featuring characters across time that is also a surprising piece of multimedia art, and Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Ananda Devi's All Flesh, a stunningly brutal tale of adolescence that casts a critical eye on societal fatphobia and social media culture. Our related reading list explores more significant Mauritian fiction available in English.

And Lindy West's memoir Adult Braces offers readers the chance to tag along on a hilarious, life-changing cross-country roadtrip.

Plus, find additional reviews and articles, previews of May books, the latest book club discussions, and more.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse member!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we cover Jordan Stump's brilliant translation of The Witch by world-famous French author Marie NDiaye, nominated for the International Booker Prize. It follows a woman gifted with the power of foresight who nevertheless finds her life spinning out of control.

We also review Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio's rendering from the Japanese of Mieko Kawakami's Sisters in Yellow, a tale of young women bonded together by desperate circumstances in 1990s Tokyo. Che Yeun's Tailbone tells a similar story of youth and desperation, focusing on a teenage runaway in Seoul during the 2008 financial crisis. In Kiran Millwood Hargrave's Almost Life, two women have a brief Parisian romance, and later struggle to live separate lives. Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julia Langbein also draws from a formative experience in France, as the protagonist revisits an affair she had with her professor while studying abroad, accompanied by a supernatural version of Monica Lewinsky. Abigail Savitch-Lew's Livonia Chow Mein is another excavation of the past—a character uncovering the history of her family and their Brooklyn neighborhood. Kim Samek's story collection I Am the Ghost Here uses literal time travel and bizarre physical scenarios to ponder possible futures amid the climate crisis, disability and long-term illness from Covid, and other timely issues. In a related reading list, we look at body horror fiction about women.

And speaking of gory details, Shelley Puhak's The Blood Countess separates fact from fiction in an examination of Elizabeth Bathory, Hungarian countess and alleged serial killer.

We hope you enjoy all this coverage along with other reviews and articles, previews of upcoming releases, recommended reading guides for book clubs, and more.

Thanks for subscribing to BookBrowse!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

Louise Erdrich is a renowned writer of many novels, but here we feature what is only her second short story collection, Python's Kiss. And along with it, another standout work that notably focuses on animals, María Ospina's Only a Little While Here, beautifully translated by Heather Cleary. (Accompanying Beyond the Book articles look at Ojibwe perspectives on the natural world and how to prevent urban bird strikes.)

Those are only a couple of examples of wildly inventive fiction in this issue. We also review Emma Straub's latest, American Fantasy, which follows the aging members of a boy band and their rabid fans on a themed cruise. In The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehmann, Queen Anne Boleyn miraculously survives her execution and goes on a revenge quest. Francis Spufford's Nonesuch, another alternative history novel set in London, shows a financial secretary living a fantastical version of the World War II era. Nancy Foley's I Am Agatha concocts a tale based on artist Agnes Martin's time in rural New Mexico about a stubborn woman and her relationships with others. Hallie Cantor's Like This, But Funnier is the charming, inspirational story of a hapless TV writer who accidentally steals material from her therapist husband.

And The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke, a pseudonym for authors V.E. Schwab and Cat Clarke, is a fun, bookish mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie.

Plus, check out additional reviews and articles, our latest First Impressions reads, previews of upcoming books, our giveaway of Fredrik Backman's My Friends, and more.

As always, thank you for subscribing to BookBrowse!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we bring you Frances Crawford's debut A Bad, Bad Place, which engages with 1970s working-class Glasgow through Janey, a punk rock-loving 12-year-old who gets swept up in a grisly murder case. Our accompanying "beyond the book" article looks at Glasgow's gritty literary image over time.

Other books we feature also focus on specific places and their people. El Paso, by award-winning journalist Jazmine Ulloa, examines the central role the titular city has played in American immigration history. Tara Menon's Under Water reflects on friendship, loss, and environmental catastrophe with dual timelines showing oceanic natural disasters experienced by one character in two locations—the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Thailand, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012 New York. Ruby Falls by Gin Phillips centers a real-world underground waterfall in a mystery set in Depression-era Tennessee. In T Kira Madden's Whidbey, a suspenseful meditation on the ripple effects of abuse, a young woman escapes to Whidbey Island in Puget Sound to avoid the media storm around the publication of another woman's memoir that includes details about her own life.

For something out of the ordinary, we recommend Rachel Hochhauser's Lady Tremaine, a Cinderella retelling from the point of view of the stepmother, or Caro Claire Burke's Yesteryear, about a "tradwife" influencer who finds herself seemingly transported to the past.

And Laura Mauldin's vitally important In Sickness and in Health draws attention to America's caregiving crisis and those who have been put in the difficult situation of caring full-time for a loved one.

Enjoy more reviews and articles, previews of upcoming releases, recent First Impressions selections, the latest news from the book world being discussed in our community forum, and more.

Thank you for subscribing to BookBrowse!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we bring you Tayari Jones' latest novel Kin, which follows Vernice and Annie, childhood friends from Louisiana, along diverging paths as they experience the world as young Black adults during the Civil Rights era. Nikesha Elise Williams' The Seven Daughters of Dupree, also partly revolving around Black women in the South, covers multiple generations of a family whose female descendants bear only daughters, from the Civil War to the Great Migration and beyond.

Different books illuminate other social and political histories. Tina Harnesk's The Secret of Snow, acclaimed in Sweden, explores the lives of two couples while addressing the displacement of the Sámi in Scandinavia. Cristina Rivera Garza's Autobiography of Cotton, a fascinating cross-genre work, fictionalizes the author's family history on both sides of the United States-Mexico border, including her grandparents' participation in a cotton workers' strike that the writer José Revueltas helped organize. Liadan Ní Chuinn's debut short story collection Every One Still Here reflects on the aftermath of the Troubles in contemporary Northern Ireland.

Two of the books we review here have titles that evoke eating, in very different ways! Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus ponders the significance of the seminal zombie movie Night of the Living Dead, while Rebecca Kauffman's heartfelt and humorous The Reservation focuses on the antics and personal stories of the employees at a restaurant in a university town set to host the famous writer John Grisham. Our accompanying reading list highlights other author cameos in fiction.

Plus, see more reviews and articles, including coverage of new paperbacks, recent First Impressions titles, previews of upcoming releases, the latest book news, and more.

Thank you for being a BookBrowse member!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we reflect on the fiction of Toni Morrison with Namwali Serpell's impressive book of essays On Morrison. An accompanying Beyond the Book article looks at how Morrison popularized awareness of the white gaze and how her intention to avoid it played out in her novel Beloved.

We also have exciting glimpses of newly released fiction to share. In Claire Oshetsky's Evil Genius, a young woman in an abusive marriage seeks out greater independence and control over her life; our related article explores the novel's connection to John Cheever's "The Five Forty-Eight." Lauren Groff's latest short story collection Brawler is another profound work that highlights aspects of domestic abuse and social inequalities in relationships. Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise is suspenseful but slow-moving in its depiction of a character who travels from America to Ireland to escape a bad situation, only to end up in another kind of trap. Katya Balen's Our Numbered Bones, one of a growing number of stories about bog bodies, features a writer grieving her stillborn child. Libby Page's This Book Made Me Think of You, a lighter and more straightforward novel about grief, follows a woman whose husband left her books to read during her first year alone after his death.

Author Jeanette Winterson examines the phenomenon of storytelling and imagines a better future using tales from The One Thousand and One Nights as a framework in One Aladdin Two Lamps. And science writer Michael Pollan turns to the nature of consciousness in A World Appears.

You can also check out recent paperbacks, our challenge to read 26 books across the decades of American history in 2026, book news, previews of March releases, and more.

Thanks for subscribing to BookBrowse!

— The BookBrowse Team

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