BookBrowse: Your Guide to Exceptional Books

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Death in the Jungle

Most people have heard the expression "drinking the Kool-Aid," but not everyone is familiar with its horrifying origin. The often offhanded phrase is a reference to the 1978 tragedy at Jonestown, a ...
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Beyond the Book

Cyanide Toxicity: How It Works

Death in the Jungle tells the true story of Jim Jones, the preacher-turned-cult-leader who founded the infamous Jonestown settlement, a socialist community that became a site of mass murder. Jones ...
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Review

Are You Happy?

Is anyone happy? The more we learn about people's lives, the harder that question becomes to answer. In Lori Ostlund's collection Are You Happy? we follow nine stories that are sincere, thoughtful, ...
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Beyond the Book

The Reality of Writing Workshops

Several stories in Lori Ostlund's Are You Happy? follow characters who are either teachers or students in writing workshops. Writing workshops are intended to help students strengthen their ...
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Review

The Names

The prologue of Florence Knapp's marvelous debut, The Names, begins on October 16, 1987, the day after the Great Storm hit England. We meet Cora, a young woman of Irish descent, as she and her ...
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Beyond the Book

Goya's Black Paintings

In a key scene in Florence Knapp's novel The Names, two characters are in an art gallery viewing an exhibition. The author writes: 'They stop in front of a hideous image, a painting ...
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Review

The Afterlife of Malcolm X

In The Afterlife of Malcolm X, Mark Whitaker charts the ways that Malcolm X's views have been interpreted and mobilized to create new movements since his assassination in 1965. Many readers will know ...
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Beyond the Book

The Nation of Islam

Malcolm X rose to public prominence as one of the faces of the Nation of Islam, which is a Black nationalist and religious movement and organization. The Nation of Islam was founded in 1930 by ...
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Review

Spent

They say every author puts a little of themselves into their work, but the brilliant Alison Bechdel has taken the expression to a new level in Spent, a rollicking, metafictional graphic novel. Bechdel...
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Beyond the Book

Alison Bechdel's Early Work: Dykes to Watch Out For

Alison Bechdel's new graphic novel Spent revisits several of the beloved characters that Bechdel made somewhat famous in her long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. Though it was never ...
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Review

The Corruption of Hollis Brown

"Corruption" seems like an accurate way to refer to the possession of a person's body against their will, which is what happens to the titular character in K. Ancrum's young adult novel The Corruption...
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Beyond the Book

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

In The Corruption of Hollis Brown by K. Ancrum, Walt, a ghost who was born in approximately 1916, shares a body with Hollis, a teenage boy he possesses in order to survive. As the two are still ...
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The BookBrowse Review

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May 21, 2025

The BookBrowse Review

May 21, 2025

This issue of The BookBrowse Review contains reviews and "beyond the book" articles for 14 titles, including The Names by Florence Knapp, This Is Your Mother by Erika J. Simpson, and The Afterlife of Malcolm X by Mark Whitaker. We also bring you our list of Book Clubs' All-Time Favorite Books, previews of upcoming books, book club recommendations, and more.

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The Book Club

Lies and Weddings
by Kevin Kwan

A forbidden affair erupts at a lavish Hawaiian wedding in this wild comedy from the author of Crazy Rich Asians.

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Your guide toexceptional books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.