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THE DREAM HOTEL, by Laila Lalami “The Dream Hotel,” the fifth novel by the acclaimed Moroccan American writer Laila Lalami, is set in a near-future reality only a notch or two on the dystopian dial away from our present. Its protagonist, Sara Hussein, is a museum archivist in her late 30s, living in Los Angeles … Read more
THE TROUBLE OF COLOR: An American Family Memoir, by Martha S. Jones When Martha S. Jones was a student at SUNY New Paltz, she took a course called “Black Sociology” with Prof. James Bowen. It was the mid-1970s, and the first Black studies department, founded at San Francisco State University at the height of 1960s … Read more
In “Zero Sum,” Hecker lays bare the callous thinking of foreigners who raked in their profits and turned a blind eye to Russia’s deteriorating political situation. Even after Russian forces invaded Georgia in 2008, and seized Crimea in 2014, they dutifully contributed corporate tax dollars to the Kremlin’s war chest. The message from headquarters, the … Read more
Laura Sessions Stepp, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The Washington Post whose reporting on teenage sex and “hookup” culture on college campuses explored in strikingly intimate detail how adolescent girls and young women think about relationships, love and bodily autonomy, died on Feb. 24 in Springfield, Va. She was 73. Her husband, Carl Sessions Stepp, … Read more
John Casey, a writer of lyric yet taut prose in novels, essays and short stories who won the National Book Award in 1989 for “Spartina,” the story of a rough-hewn fisherman that reviewers called the best American story of nautical life since Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” died on Feb. 22 at his … Read more
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights books at least partly set in U.S. state capital cities. (Even if you don’t know the books in the question, if you remember your state capitals, … Read more
SUCKER PUNCH: Essays, by Scaachi Koul NO FAULT: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce, by Haley Mlotek I can’t recall the first time I saw “The Misfits,” John Huston’s 1961 cinematic masterpiece about a quartet of mutually disenfranchised wanderers, but I’m certain it was after I’d become a divorcée. I know it wouldn’t have … Read more
THE PASSENGER SEAT, by Vijay Khurana “The Passenger Seat,” Vijay Khurana’s unsettling and powerful debut novel, follows two teenagers on the fragile cusp of manhood in a Canadian border town. Adam lives with his “failure” of a father, a former boatbuilder now delivering pizza, and hasn’t seen his mother in six years. Teddy’s well-off family … Read more
We might pause here. Reading about someone else’s podcast research is on par with a friend sharing last night’s dream: If we’re not in it, don’t bother. But “See Friendship” holds our interest by sending Jacob on a spree of interviews with his former classmates, in Chicago and Los Angeles, that revises his memories of … Read more
Are you a fan of heart-pounding suspense and page-turning twists? If so, you’re in the right place. We’ve compiled a list of four thriller novels that are sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. “The Silent Patient” by Alex Michaelides: This psychological thriller follows the story of Alicia Berenson, a famous painter … Read more