A narrator who resembles her author both in name and occupation guides readers through the sexual proclivities and shades of gender expression that populated belle epoque Paris (with a brief digression to Georgian-era Wales). In cafes, cabarets, and opium dens, she introduces us to what translator Careau calls “the sexual underworld”: lesbians and gay men, …
Jan Sorrensen is still scarred from his last encounter with a ghost, an experience that he turned into a bestselling novel, which gave him the funds to invest in a forthcoming tourist attraction: coal mine tours in small-town Dundee, Pennsylvania. The mine that’s set to reopen was the site of a fatal fire back in …
From a 12-neck guitar to a euphonium that pours beer, there is no limit to the musical instruments a human mind can dream up. In this encyclopedic collection, Loughridge and Patteson expand on their website of the same name to bring an illuminating historical survey of “fictophones.” The chapters are divided into loose taxonomies. “Historical …
As a child, Molly, her older sister, Eileen, and their parents emigrated from New Ross, Ireland, to a bucolic farm in Ohio. Molly’s family members are close friends with their neighbors, the MacLeiths, owners of a profitable sawmill. Once Molly turns 15, she’s courted by one of their sons, Andrew MacLeith. Although Molly is charmed …
Winston “Wince” Fisher Jr. is in a rut. After his daughter was born, Wince tried to leave his high-octane life of crime behind for a safe career in wealth management, but then his business partner forced him out, and he signed a two-year noncompete clause. Now, the former criminal and three-time divorcé has nothing to …
Tom Glass has a dream to reform the pharmaceutical industry by making prescription drugs affordable, especially for the impoverished workers in developing countries who manufacture them. Endeavoring to discover untapped medicinal resources in the Amazon jungle, Tom struggles to balance his grand ambitions with a severe alcohol addiction that’s devastated his family and relationships. After …
Mikaberidze, professor of history at Louisiana State University, writes that Spain claimed North America in the centuries after Columbus but gave it a low priority. In 1682, La Salle sailed from Canada down the Mississippi and claimed all of North America for France. France’s priorities, however, remained local, leaving its colonies under-resourced and politically marginalized. …
The Glory Peak Ski Resort is founded in 1966 by Bill Macklemore, a World War II veteran–turned–ski instructor who developed a site near Fortooth into a premier skiing destination (it is said that “Fortooth was one of those towns where reality was far more potent than myth”). His devotion to his business is so all-encompassing …
What does it mean for the world to end? Spanish author Levi’s novel takes up that question both literally and figuratively. Largely structured as 19-year-old narrator Little Lea’s tale of her life, which she’s recounting to a man in search of his lost dog, this novel reckons with the appeal and dangers of home. “I …
