The urge to get even runs like a thread through popular culture: Creators who successfully harness that primal drive in their fiction have often built successful careers around it, such as Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino. However, the devil lies in revenge’s details, as author Epperson suggests in this technothriller, which is built around a …
Tergit’s novel, hitherto unavailable in English, is in part a roman à clef, narrated in unadorned, matter-of-fact prose. The Effinger family is a blend of urban and rural, secular and religious, socialist and capitalist, its paterfamilias a watchmaker in a small German town, his children striving to find their places in the world as the …
Fetterman’s memoir addresses three major themes. The first—and the one he leads with—is depression and mental illness, which, combined with a stroke and heart trouble, brought him to a standstill and led him to contemplate suicide. The second is his rise to national-level politics from a Rust Belt town; as he writes, he’s carved a …
“Prides are usually made up of lionesses, their cubs, and one to a few adult male lions,” the titular lioness explains. The savannah can be a dangerous place, and living together means “safety in numbers.” Our narrator is pregnant and knows her “babies need food to grow.” She dispatches prey with strength and skills she …
Danny McGovern, a teenager with a traumatic brain injury, is the first patient to participate in the “New Human Project.” Advanced computer hardware is installed throughout his body, and this “rig” will enable the artificial intelligence now perpetually on duty inside Danny to prevent the dangerous seizures that constantly torment the youth. One ethical hitch: …
Middle-aged librarian Nelly finds escape from her solitary world in her love for (some might say obsession with) the life and work of author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the Little House on the Prairie books. Nelly’s fascination with the Little House books began early, partly as a means to escape a traumatic childhood that …
Forty-year-old author Joe Riley is reeling from a messy divorce (and medicating himself with plenty of alcohol) when he learns that he has inherited a remote cabin from his recently deceased uncle. The fondly remembered cabin, where he spent childhood summers alongside his cousins, seems the perfect place to work on his latest novel. But …
This fourth novel in this series unfolds in 1991 with the Greek American Jewish Covo clan settled in the New York City area and beset with ethical quandaries. Psychiatrist Nicky Covo faces a malpractice lawsuit alleging deliberate neglect of a patient who died by suicide—a charge that Nicky is almost certain is baseless. Meanwhile, his …
The book opens with an introduction that encourages readers to explore its contents however they wish rather than feeling constrained to read in order from beginning to end. Science writer Thomas divides the information into six sections: “Earth,” “Near-Earth Space, “Our Solar System,” “Stars,” “Galaxies,” and “The Universe.” Readers can tighten their Kuiper Belt and …
In a world populated by mambabarang—sorcerers with the ability to communicate with and control insects—12-year-old Yumi is a lowly Cricket who can’t wield her powers. Yumi longs to be in the capital city of Tinanglawan, where the revered Fireflies, who can manipulate light, live. When the rajah, the husband of the ailing empress, calls all …
