Ben Barnz’s partner has a theory that there is a major generational shift for gay people every five years. This book, then, is a memoir from almost four zeitgeist changes ago. Beginning in the week of the 9/11 attacks, "We" is a taste... Read More

Mephisto’s Waltz, a collection of short fiction by the late Mexican author Sergio Pitol, creates a world of eloquent transience, shifting from Mexico to Asia then into Warsaw, Ibiza, Bukhara, Vienna, Venice, and Rome. Pitol’s mastery... Read More

Traveler’s Diarrhea is an engaging, wryly humorous chronicle of travel to out-of-the-ordinary places. Forget the off-putting cover and the even more off-putting promise of humor “guaranteed to cause abdominal cramps, nausea” and... Read More

Bleak and unsparing in its stark description of a world without hope, "The City Where We Once Lived" paints the picture of a future racked by climate change and destruction. Those who have stayed in the North End of the book’s unnamed... Read More

Smith describes a very technical field in a way that clearly conveys its high stakes. Robin A Smith’s memoir, "Life with a View", reflects on a career in air traffic control, including concentrations on maintenance, development, and... Read More

Delightfully absurd, imaginative, and fun, W.B.’s adventures will make for great read-aloud fare. "The Splendid Baron Submarine" is a summer adventure story full of unexpected danger and wacky surprises, and is funny from its first... Read More

"A Tribute to My Son" is a prose-poetic exercise in grieving that attempts to explain the unexplainable. Samina Muhammad’s "A Tribute to My Son" is a mother’s plaintive lament, carried across poems and short essays that serve as a... Read More

From fishermen-crowded bars to Inuit heritage, Nancy Lord brings alive her Alaskan setting. The lives of a group of scientists—and one artist—are altered by an oceanography research trip in Nancy Lord’s insightful novel, "pH".... Read More