Book reviews from Tin House Press — fiction, nonfiction, children’s and independent titles, read and reviewed by our editorial team.
Carlos Smith grows up between cultures as the U.S.-born son of a Black American-Chinese father and a Colombian mother with Palestinian roots. His childhood in Bolivia is shattered when his friend Manny is murdered, leaving Carlos furious at the injustice of a world in which the innocent suffer. After moving to Missouri, he discovers a …
In the fifth book of Ellis’ Matt Jones thriller series, the 30-year-old LA homicide detective is called to the Brentwood home of A-list entertainment attorney Eli Stone and his partner, Dana Thatcher. Both Stone and Thatcher have been murdered but curiously met their demise in different ways: Thatcher was strangled, and Stone was shot three …
Zoe can’t wait to throw a party for her friends and their toys. She’s even built a little house out of blocks, with a pool on the roof for the occasion. But Car and Miles—a figure who, like Zoe, uses a manual wheelchair—can’t climb the steps to the roof. Chagrined, Zoe sets out to build …
The title comes from an old man Régnier overheard in a Belleville café in the 1990s who told two younger men sharing a joint that he didn’t need it because he was already “dosed,” meaning naturally balanced (“I’m comfortable in my chair”). Régnier, who was there to buy hashish, has never felt that way. His …
Thomas Grant has long struggled with strange abilities he doesn’t understand, including telekinesis and psychic dreams that seem akin to astral projection. When he joins his girlfriend, Allie Everett, and her parents, Brenda and Joe, on a trip to their hometown of Maple, New York, he finds that all the locals there have an unsettlingly …
Raised in France by a single mother (who, per the author, reveled in manipulation and emotional abuse), at age 19 Ranucci put an ocean between them by moving to New York City. The New Age movement emerging at the time resonated with her own spiritual questions, feelings of interconnectedness, and hope for transformation and self-knowledge. …
An unseen narrator who has a story to tell is also tasked with keeping all the participants’ contributions “nice, polite, and appropriate for kids.” Five animals assemble, along with a talking taco, a tan-skinned pirate, and a pale-skinned child astronaut. But as the narrator explains the guidelines (“I want us all to agree you will …
It’s the start of the hockey season in October 1992, and Georgina “Georgie” Law is preparing to spend all her free time at the Gardens, cheering on her beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. Georgie is a high school history teacher who inherited season tickets—and an all-consuming love for the team—from her late father. The Leafs, along …
These animals include Monster, a neurologically impaired squirrel who liked to have his best friend, a rabbit, sit on him, to a “militant chicken” named Stephanie who demanded and received obeisance from a German shepherd and a male cat; they also include dogs ranging upward of 75 pounds each who packed into a Toyota Corolla …
The “Farm” is a former elementary school converted to the campus of a Baptist women’s recovery program. The author, who is Jewish, arrived there when her financial and social support networks disintegrated and she had lost custody of her children. Through flashbacks, Stone reveals that her once-happy life, full of middle-class creature comforts (“soft bed …
