Posts in the Books category.
Displaying 41 through 60 of 861. Subscribe: See All Books.
February 25
Book: How to Sell a Haunted House
Louise's parents have died, and she needs to deal with her ne'er-do-well brother to sell the family home and its collection of her father's academic papers and her mother's puppets. But some houses don't want to be sold. [more inside]
Book: The Survivalists: A Novel
"In the wake of her parents’ death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life—success—until she falls for Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur. Moving into his Brooklyn brownstone to live along with his Hurricane Sandy-traumatized, illegal-gun-stockpiling, optimized-soy-protein-eating, bunker-building roommates, Aretha finds that her dreams of making partner are slipping away, replaced by an underground world, one of selling guns and training for a doomsday that’s maybe just around the corner" (Penguin Random House). [more inside]
February 23
Book: Strong Female Character
Stand up comedian Fern Brady was told she couldn't be autistic because she's had loads of boyfriends and is good at eye contact. This is a story of how being female can get in the way of being autistic and how being autistic gets in the way of being the 'right kind' of woman.
Book: Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York
The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable.
He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim.
Nor will he be his last. [more inside]
Book: Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones
December 12th, 2019, Jade returns to the rural lake town of Proofrock the same day as convicted Indigenous serial killer Dark Mill South escapes into town to complete his revenge killings, in this riveting sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw from New York Times bestselling author, Stephen Graham Jones. [more inside]
February 15
Book: The Chaos Machine:The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds
From a New York Times investigative reporter, this “authoritative and devastating account of the impacts of social media” (New York Times Book Review) tracks the high-stakes inside story of how Big Tech’s breakneck race to drive engagement—and profits—at all costs fractured the world. The Chaos Machine is “an essential book for our times” (Ezra Klein). [more inside]
February 14
Book: The Night Ocean
Marina Willett, M.D., has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends--or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police say it's suicide. Marina is a psychiatrist, and she doesn't believe them.
February 11
Book: The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Producer Rick Rubin shares his thoughts on the act of creation and creativity. [more inside]
Book: And The Answer Is...
Alex Trebeck resisted writing a memoir, right up until he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. What he produced in his final year of life is funny, insightful, and touching, but it's more of a highlight reel of his life than an in-depth autobiography. It reads like it's a series of blog posts, with no more than a few pages ever dedicated to any chapter.
Book: The Invisible Kingdom
A landmark exploration of one of the most consequential and mysterious issues of our time: the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases. [more inside]
Book: Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
If "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" is your kind of language game, then Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea (2001) might be your kind of book. On the small coastal island of Nollop, named for Nevin Nollop, the supposed creator of the pangram* about the dog and the fox, a cenotaph bearing the famous sentence is falling apart, letter by letter. The town council decides that destroying letters is Nollop's divine will, and bans the use of each letter as it falls to the ground--with increasingly draconian punishments for anyone caught reading, writing, or speaking them. Can a a few desperate townspeople save language--and themselves--from these letter-perfect theocrats?
* Pangram: "A phrase, sentence, or verse composed of all the letters of the alphabet." [more inside]
February 10
Book: The Deluge by Stephen Markley
In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come. [more inside]
February 9
Book: The Cloisters
In this “sinister, jaw-dropping” (Sarah Penner, author of The Lost Apothecary) debut novel, a circle of researchers uncover a mysterious deck of tarot cards and shocking secrets in New York’s famed Met Cloisters. [more inside]
February 4
Book: Children of Memory
The ark ship Endiku left the ruins of Earth to seek a new home for its crew. They make landfall and carve out a way of life, albeit at great cost. Many years later, the granddaughter of the ship's captain swears that she saw her grandfather enter the woods, and seeks to rescue him from the fabled Witch that lives in the hills. [more inside]
January 31
Book: White Horse by Erika T. Wurth
White Horse is a gritty, vibrant debut from Erika T. Wurth about an Indigenous woman who must face her past when she discovers a bracelet haunted by her mother’s spirit. [more inside]
January 24
Book: The Glass Hotel
Somewhere at sea, a woman goes overboard. Somewhere in New York, a financial fraud comes undone. Somewhere on a remote Canadian island, a window is graffitied. Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, The Glass Hotel, knits together these strands in a story about self-invention, loss, and the ghosts of lives that might have been. [more inside]
Book: Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries
The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead. [more inside]
January 23
Book: Jeeves and the King of Clubs
Storm clouds loom over Europe. Treason is afoot in the highest social circles. The very security of the nation is in peril. Jeeves, it transpires, has long been an agent of British Intelligence, but now His Majesty's Government must turn to the one man who can help . . . Bertie Wooster. [more inside]
January 22
Book: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously. [more inside]
January 18
Book: The Measure
What would you do if everybody on the planet woke up one morning with the ability to know how long they will live? Would you even want to know? In "The Measure," that happens, and the book follows eight NYC residents as they grapple with the ramifications of that knowledge. Along the way, the book addressees some truly interesting questions, such as if you are 30 and know you will die at 42, is it selfish to marry and have children? If you are 30 can you marry somebody you know will die at 42? It also dives into the government response, and it's just as bad as you expect. I read this book in 3 nights, staying up late each night before forcing myself to put it down and go to sleep.
« Older posts | Newer posts »