Delayed Rays of a Star, by Amanda Lee Koe At a New Year’s Eve ball in 1928, the German-born American photographer and photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt snapped a now-legendary photo of three women: Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl. In Amanda Lee Koe’s debut novel, Eisenstaedt’s impromptu portrait is […]
New year, new books—and these are some of the ones I’m looking forward to in 2021. My Year Abroad, by Chang-Rae Lee. I’m a fan of Lee’s stylish sentences and restrained voice, and his latest novel is the sprawling tale of a bored American college student, Tiller, and the exuberant […]
There is something unique about genre fiction. Perhaps it is the notion that great fiction should offer an escape. Perhaps it is with only these types of stories that true escapism can be attained some small path to temporary nirvana not found in other genres. That’s what we like to […]
The Oysters of Locmariaquer, by Eleanor Clark Late in Eleanor Clark’s extraordinary book, she tells us the oyster needs the same landscape that a plein air painter does: a certain air, light, chemistry. “The explanation,” she writes, “might be quite simple, not esoteric at all—in some common equation of factors […]
The MoneyBunny Series The internationally acclaimed MoneyBunnies Series, by Canadian author and illustrator Cinders McLeod, are the perfect books for young readers on your list, because it’s never too soon to learn financial literacy. Learning how money works, and having the skills to make informed decisions about personal money matters […]
Selected Stories, by William Trevor A volume of stories by William Trevor is a reader’s must-have, and this 2009 collection brings together some of the great writer’s best—48 classic stories, many of which were first published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and literary magazines such as Glimmer Train and the […]
There There: A novel, by Tommy Orange Brilliant. Innovative. Lyric. Tommy Orange’s stunning fiction debut is all those things, but trying to describe this eclectic, personal novel doesn’t do it justice. Called “groundbreaking, extraordinary,” by The New York Times, and garnering praise from People Magazine to Entertainment Weekly, and awarded […]
Science fiction, fantasy, mystery, suspense and horror novelist Rachel Caine lost her battle with soft tissue sarcoma on November 1. She was 58. First diagnosed in 2018, Caine, whose given name was Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, was born in West Texas, April 27, 1962, and published several series and novels under various […]
Thunderstruck & Other Stories, by Elizabeth McCracken Early on in Elizabeth McCracken’s extraordinary story collection, Thunderstruck, a grieving mother instructs her seventeen-year-old son to seal up the room of his dead sister. This, she imagines will somehow purge the house of the evil that caused her daughter’s lymphoma. “Don’t touch […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.