Book reviews from Tin House Press — fiction, nonfiction, children’s and independent titles, read and reviewed by our editorial team.
“The world does not need another parenting book,” writes Grimm in her own parenting book, where she likewise notes that parenting can be so exhausting and baffling that it can use all the advice manuals it can get. “Every day of parenting is Saigon in 1975,” she writes. “It is often defeating, sometimes humiliating, and …
Morrell received a comprehensive education in food and drink from parents who ran a wine business. Moreover, her mother schooled her in social graces and an appreciation for beauty and knowledge, telling her, “Being erudite will only help you in life.” Morrell is erudite indeed, dropping $10 words (exuded, charlatan, unctuous) exactly where they fit. …
Over its tenure from 2009 to 2025, WTF, Marc Maron’s interview podcast, became a meaningful model for the medium—a line late in the book succinctly states that in the podcast universe, “in terms of one-on-one interviews there was a lot of Maron in the primordial ooze.” He steadily honed his craft, connecting with guests by …
Seeking a holiday gift for their landlady, Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock Holmes takes Dr. John Watson to Whiteley’s, where screams and blood alert them to a startling tableau: A man is dangling from the upper branches of the half-decorated Christmas tree adorning the emporium’s main floor. Inspector Darke, the Metropolitan Police officer called to the scene …
Prince Zayd of Dakaria doesn’t have time to grieve his dying father or savor a hard-won battle before he’s thrust into assuming a throne he isn’t ready for. Between fending off silver-hungry pirates, trying to avoid an unwanted engagement, and concealing a wound from a deadly poisoned arrow that’s curable only by a rare antidote, …
Nothing in Tyler Owens’ background could prepare him for the maelstrom of Lorna Eads. The son of “Sawdust Republicans who nonetheless spoke cordially of FDR and Carter,” he grew up in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and moved to California to study economics at USC. Although he was raised to have practical plans for the future, Tyler drops …
Stick begins with Eddigan, an elderly one-eyed wizard with diminished powers who lives alone in a forest with a raven. Eddigan’s hermit-like existence delays his inevitable surrender to the Arcansil, “the abandonment of magic, […] a process that strips the arcane from all magical beings” which is tearing its way through Eddigan’s Draywood Forest and …
Even before the reader meets upstanding Mark Greenley, former star college athlete and current dedicated paramedic and Little League coach, a murky opening chapter titled The Librarian introduces two blind men in a vaguely described room full of files that are labeled in braille, whose contents aren’t in braille—so the men can retrieve the files, …
The book opens in 1995 with Yacoobi on a bus bound for Afghanistan; she was returning to the country for the first time in more than two decades. She knew that her mission to set up clandestine schools for girls would almost certainly lead to her being “arrested, tortured, or killed on the spot” if …
In this novel’s version of planet Earth’s distant future, much like our contemporary world, some have rejected artificial intelligence and technology, while others seek to hasten humanity’s transformation. But in Vaughn’s accelerated dystopian society, humanity remains threatened by the Geometry, a mysterious superintelligence capable of erasing entire populations. After an amnesiac woman bursts from a …
